Conversational Theology: Essays on Ecumenical, Postliberal and Political Themes, with Special Reference to Karl Barth 9780567658173, 9780567663153, 9780567658203

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Conversational Theology

Conversational Theology: Essays on Ecumenical, Postliberal and Political Themes, with Special Reference to Karl Barth George Hunsinger

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © George Hunsinger, 2015 George Hunsinger has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-567-65817-3 PB: 978-0-567-66912-4 ePDF: 978-0-567-65820-3 ePUB: 978-0-567-65819-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hunsinger, George. [Essays. Selections] Conversational theology : essays on ecumenical, postliberal, and political themes, with special reference to Karl Barth / by George Hunsinger. pages cm ISBN 978-0-567-65817-3 (hardcover) 1. Theology. 2. Barth, Karl, 1886-1968. 3. Political theology. 4. Postliberal theology. I. Title. BR118.H87 2015 230–dc23 2014030973 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain

I like old Barth. He throws the furniture around. Flannery O’Connor

Dedicated with thanks to Christiane Tietz

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Preface

ix

Introduction

1

1

3

Conversational Theology: The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Barth

x xi

Part One Ecumenical Theology

19

2 3

21

4 5

Karl Barth on the Lord’s Supper: An Ecumenical Appraisal The Dimension of Depth: Thomas F. Torrance on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper The Eucharist and Social Ethics After Barth: A Christian Appreciation of Jews and Judaism

45 65 93

Part Two Postliberal Theology

109

6 7 8

111

Postliberal Theology Frei’s Early Christology: The Book of Detours Between Barth and Troeltsch: H.R. Niebuhr’s The Meaning of Revelation

129 145

Part Three Political Theology

163

9 Karl Barth and Human Rights 10 The Political Views of Karl Barth

165 179

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11 Social Witness in Generous Orthodoxy: The New Presbyterian ‘Study Catechism’

205

Conclusion

233

12 Le Chambon: How Did Goodness Happen?

235

Index of Terms Index of Names

241 248

Acknowledgements The publisher and author gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following material (sometimes with revisions): ‘Conversational Theology: The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Barth’, Toronto Journal of Theology 17 (2001), pp. 119–32; ‘Karl Barth and the Lord’s Supper’, in What Does It Mean to Do This?, ed. James J. Buckley (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), pp. 24–46; ‘The Dimension of Depth: Thomas F. Torrance on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper’, Scottish Journal of Theology 54 (2001), pp. 155–76; ‘After Barth: A Christian Appreciation of Jews and Judaism’, Pro Ecclesia (forthcoming, 2015); ‘Postliberal Theology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Kevin Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 42–57; ‘Hans Frei’s Early Christology’, in Pro Ecclesia (forthcoming, 2014); ‘Between Barth and Troeltsch: H.R. Niebuhr’s The Meaning of Revelation’, in Theology as Conversation, ed. B. L. McCormack and K. J. Bender (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 142–58; ‘Karl Barth and Human Rights’, Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift 28 (2011), pp. 168–78; ‘The Political Views of Karl Barth’, in The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, ed. John Witte Jr. and Frank S. Alexander (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 352–80; ‘Social Witness in Generous Orthodoxy’, The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 21 (2000), pp. 38–62.

Abbreviations References to Barth’s Church Dogmatics are listed in the text by volume and part number as follows: (II/1), for example, is the abbreviation for vol. II, part 1. rev. means revised translation.

Preface This book falls into three parts, bracketed by an Introduction and a Conclusion. Chapter 1, the Introduction, is based on interviews Karl Barth gave during the last years of his life. In it some of the main themes of the volume are introduced. Part One, ‘Ecumenical Theology’, consisting of Chapters 2–5, examines selected themes connected mainly with the eucharist. In Chapter 2 Barth's view of the Lord's Supper is compared with that of Alexander Schmemann before being subjected to an ‘ecumenical appraisal’. Chapter 3 turns to the sacramental theology of Thomas F. Torrance. I have filtered out his rather distracting use of the term ‘dualism’, which I take to be overly broad, in the hopes that his groundbreaking contributions on this theme might eventually receive the attention they deserve. Chapter 4, ‘The Eucharist and Social Ethics’, is published for the first time. It was written for the 2014 session of the official Reformed/Roman Catholic International Dialogue, to which I am a delegate. This section ends with an essay that draws on Barth’s views of Jews and Judaism while also going against and beyond those views. Part Two offers three essays on ‘Postliberal Theology’. The first was my contribution to a Cambridge Companion volume on postmodern theology. The second, written in 2013 for a Princeton conference on the legacy of Hans W. Frei, analyses his notoriously vexing argument in The Identity of Jesus Christ. I argue that his ‘formal’ descriptive schemes are finally unsuccessful for his purposes, but that he finally found what he was looking for in the Chalcedonian Pattern. The third essay in this section turns to Frei’s teacher, H. Richard Niebuhr. Niebuhr, perhaps, helped open the way towards postliberal theology, but in the end remained much closer to Troeltsch in his christology than to Barth. Part Three focuses on ‘Political Theology’. The first essay in this section, ‘Karl Barth and Human Rights’, was my address to the assembly of the

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Evangelische Kirche in Germany on the occasion of my receiving the 2010 Karl Barth Prize. Barth’s political views are then surveyed more comprehensively in the next essay, taken from a volume published by Columbia University Press on the political views of modern theologians. ‘Social Witness in Generous Orthodoxy’, the final essay in this section, discusses the social aspects of The Study Catechism (1998) of the Presbyterian Church (USA), of which I was the principal author. The book concludes with a brief meditation on André Trocmé and the village of Le Chambon, where the lives of as many as 2000 Jewish children were saved during the Nazi occupation of France. As far as I know, Barth and Trocmé never met, but I regard Trocmé's work as a practical application of Barth's political views at their best.1

1

I have written more about Trocmé in my book The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 305–10.

Introduction

1

Conversational Theology: The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Barth During the last decade of his life (1959–1968), right up to the time of his death at age 82, Karl Barth took part in an astonishing number of recorded conversations and interviews. Collected transcripts now filling three large volumes in the Gesamtasugabe combine to form a total of more than 1000 pages. The last of the three collections, Gespräche 1964–1968, ed. Eberhard Busch (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1997), will be discussed in this essay.1 Although the conversations add little to our knowledge of Barth’s theology in its basic contours, they are fascinating for at least two reasons. First, they allow us to see Barth in action. We see him, for example, as a careful listener who first makes sure that he understands the question before launching into an answer. We also see him as a stickler for precision who thoughtfully explains why he doesn’t like certain words like realistisch, or protestantisch, or Toleranz. We see him joking with an apparent twinkle in his eye, or retorting with critical relish. Perhaps most unexpectedly, we see him as someone who has committed vast amounts to memory. Not only are apt lines of poetry or literature spontaneously quoted – Goethe, Schiller, Fontane – but also (to students from Tübingen) a hefty block of material straight from the Greek New Testament, not to mention a regular sprinkling of verses from hymns and songs. Details like these convey a vivid sense of Barth’s humanity. The conversations are also invaluable, because they allow Barth to present his ideas in accessible form. Labyrinthine sentences, dialectical to and fro, extensive thematic development – all hallmarks of the Church Dogmatics – are necessarily at a minimum. Barth simply explains his views in ordinary language. The result is reminiscent of Luther’s ‘table-talk’. What we get is 1

The previous volume is Gespräche 1959–1962, ed. Eberhard Busch (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1995). An intermediate volume, Gespräche 1963, ed. Eberhard Busch contains another 450 pages (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2005).

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something readers of Barth’s weighty tomes might otherwise think scarcely imaginable – conversational theology. An attempt will be made to survey these conversations in a way that is reasonably comprehensive. Three headings will be used to collect ideas scattered throughout the interviews: ecumenical theology, doctrinal theology and political theology. Although Barth addressed a wide variety of audiences – students, professors, clergy, lay people, the general radio-listening or television-watching public – little attempt will be made to keep track of them. For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on Barth’s expressed views.

Ecumenical theology When these conversations took place, excitement was in the air about the Second Vatican Council, which was nearing or had reached its conclusion. Perhaps as much as 20 per cent of this volume concerns how Barth sees breaking developments within Roman Catholicism. At the same time, other ecumenical dialogue partners also come into view, most notably conservative Protestants, liberal Protestants and Jews. Barth had always understood himself as an ecumenical theologian. ‘I might claim in all modesty that my Church Dogmatics is neither a Lutheran nor a Reformed dogmatics. Although I shouldn’t speak with my mouth too full, I actually wrote it as an ecumenical dogmatics’ (p. 14). He believed that internal unity had to occur within the major church bodies before a larger unity would be possible. ‘First unity has to come about for Protestants among themselves. Then in the Catholic church the conservatives and the progressives will have to unite. And only then will we be able to get any further’ (p. 185). Besetting temptations of ecumenical dialogue – evasion, equivocation, compromise and the like – would bring no real progress. Confessional differences had to be faced openly and honestly. ‘It is … essential to acknowledge the differences. Only when the differences are seen and overcome will a true spiritual unity become possible’ (p. 199). Above all, ecumenical progress would depend on a fresh recovery of the Word. ‘What we really need to have is preaching – I’m talking about the Word – yes, the Word of God, not on a par with some sort of dogma, but the Word of God’s

The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Barth

5

free grace, for you and for me, for us all and for the whole world. That’s what the ecumenical movement should be doing’ (p. 217). To overcome historic divisions in the church, Barth placed his hopes primarily on the freedom of God’s Word in proclamation. Indeed, what Barth found most interesting about Vatican II was not its turn to the world, but its turn to the Word. ‘For me the most interesting thing about the Council wasn’t that it opened itself up more fully to the world and to the other churches than until now. No, the really interesting thing was undoubtedly that the Council turned the church toward the Word, toward the Word of the gospel’ (p. 216). Full of untold promise, the renewed Catholic emphasis on the Word posed a healthy challenge to the Protestant churches. ‘I often actually sense in Catholicism’, Barth said pointedly, ‘a stronger Christian life than in the Protestant churches’ (p. 199: cf. p. 353). It occurs to me as something worth pondering that it could suddenly take place that the first will be last and the last first, that suddenly from Rome the doctrine of justification by faith alone will be proclaimed more purely than in most Protestant churches. (p. 100) One might well ask from time to time whether today the Catholics are not more in tune with the Reformation than we are …. In any case it gives us something to think about that today one can already converse with many Catholics with far greater understanding than with certain Protestants. (p. 415)

In particular Barth enumerated five points that gave promise of an ‘astonishing renewal’ in Roman Catholicism after Vatican II. 1. The Bible has taken centre stage and is recognized as the witness to revelation. 2. Bound up with that is a concentration on Jesus Christ. 3. The church is now understood essentially as the people of God. 4. The genuine function of worship – with preaching and the eucharist as its two poles – has again been placed on the lampstand. 5. A necessary and proper opening of the church to the other confessions, to the religions and to the world has taken place at the Council (p. 324). Barth’s new irenicism went so far that he even regularly retracted his earlier famous or infamous remark about the analogia entis as the invention of the

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Antichrist (pp. 17, 88–91, 142–44, 484–86). ‘It is now no longer necessary to discuss this theory’, he noted. ‘We are in unity about what can be meant by it’ (p. 337). Barth was not unaware, of course, that historic stumbling blocks still remained. The question of papal infallibility continued to be what it had always been, a ‘great offence’ (p. 105). The enormous role played by Mariology, in which Mary’s significance almost reached that of Jesus, was also a ‘great specific difficulty’ (p. 193; cf p. 102). While the Pope and Mary clearly posed the greatest problems, others could not be ignored. Among them, Barth specifically mentioned the idea of the Roman Catholic church as the Incarnation’s prolongation, the church’s overly juridical character and above all its displacement of proclamation by the sacraments (p. 192). ‘In Catholicism everything revolves a little too much around the sacrament’ (p. 192). Despite these predictable worries, however, Barth’s attitude towards the Catholic renewal remained upbeat and hopeful overall. Conservative Protestantism, though much less prominent, also received occasional notice from Barth, particularly with reference to the ‘No Other Gospel’ movement of the day. Against this tendency, Barth was critical, urging that it was not enough merely to say the right thing – ‘the crucified and risen Savior! the entire scriptures! the whole confession!’ (p. 212). On the contrary, one had to say the right thing in the right way. Doctrine and ethics must not be separated, he insisted, especially when it came to grave social evils. It is not enough only to say, ‘Jesus is risen’, but then to remain silent about the Vietnam War …. Don’t misunderstand me. I haven’t side-stepped your direct question about whether Jesus is bodily risen. I said Yes to that. But now everything depends on how that Yes gets said. (p. 408)

Ethics without doctrine, for Barth, was nothing, but doctrine without ethics was worse than nothing, serving to undercut the very truth it upheld. At the same time, the Catholic renewal had made it all the more imperative for Protestants to return to their own sources. ‘We have to discover Luther and Calvin anew’, said Barth, ‘without becoming their prisoners’ (p. 199). Taken together, Luther and Calvin represented mutually complementary emphases of abiding theological significance.

The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Barth

7

Luther and Calvin are constantly concerned about two great themes at heart. Luther teaches the freedom of the Christian as someone who believes in God’s Word. Calvin teaches the majesty of God, who gives the gift of faith and obedience. These are the two poles, so to speak, of the Reformation. Luther is more oriented toward humanity, and Calvin more toward God. (p. 193)

Scripture and confession would remain little more than formal principles unless Protestants could learn once again what Luther and Calvin both knew: that the gospel is not something the church can ever control or possess, but that it confronts the church – both preacher and congregation alike – as something ever new (p. 213). Conservative evangelical theology and modern liberal theology were, Barth proposed, really siblings under the skin. Each in its own way represented a regression to the errors of the nineteenth century. Having both of them in view, he remarked, ‘I find it lamentable that in the church’s theology and preaching, a relapse to the 19th century is everywhere evident’ (p. 212). In particular, he noted that the theological left was really less progressive than it supposed. It isn’t just a matter of the Bultmann school. I view the whole Bultmann school as a reversion to questions from the 19th century long since left behind. Schleiermacher and Feuerbach are also again in the air. At the time of the ‘Strauss affair’ in Germany, people also spoke in this way. And now these good people suppose – I mean those on the ‘left’ – that they are producing something highly modern, but in essence it’s nothing new. Only they don’t know it. They haven’t adequately studied the history of theology. Otherwise they wouldn’t act as though a new era had dawned with their existentialism. It’s the same old stuff in a new form. (p. 212)

Neither the left nor the right could adequately proclaim the gospel, because neither knew how to uphold contemporary relevance and doctrinal substance at the same time. Just as the left wanted relevance without substance, so the right wanted substance without relevance – the impasse of the nineteenth century. ‘These two extremes’, said Barth, ‘…are for me a thing of the past. On both sides one must go forward instead of always moving backwards’ (p. 213; cf. p. 423).

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Several interesting passages offer insight into Barth’s attitude towards Judaism and Jews. As we now realize from Eberhard Busch’s massive research, during the Hitler period Barth was far more actively engaged on behalf of the Jews than was previously known.2 When asked about Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy, in which Pope Pius XII is censured for failing to help the Jews, Barth replied that he had been so taken by seeing the play that he then arranged to meet the author personally. He hoped a similar play would be written about the failures of the Swiss. ‘Because in this area we didn’t do any better than the Vatican, and we bear our share of responsibility. Hence, no arrogance on our side!’ (p. 201). The so-called Jewish question, he suggested, was much more nearly a question about Christians. ‘Today it is above all important that we grasp this: that we all stem from the Jews. Christ was a Jew and so were all the people who wrote the New Testament’ (p. 207). A church that turns against the Jews can only make itself impossible, for by that very token it has turned against God. The experience of the Jewish people with God, Barth believed, was of great importance for the entire world. ‘In the Jews we have before us right down to the present day a living Bible, so to speak, in a certain form; but in any case there they are. They can’t be wiped out, just as the Bible can’t be wiped out’ (p. 208). Barth opposed efforts to missionize the Jews, because it was a mistake to suppose that Jews needed to be ‘converted’. Just as Jesus stemmed from the Jewish people, so the Jewish people were, whether they acknowledged it yet or not, ‘the people of Jesus’ (p. 208). Barth therefore did not, as has today become increasingly fashionable, attempt to place Judaism and Christianity on common ground by muffling christology while amplifying eschatology. He would not emphasize common hope at the expense of christological disagreement. ‘The Christian is not someone who looks only into the future for a Messiah who has yet to come. On the contrary, the Christian also looks back first to the Messiah who has already come. Then – only on that basis, but then really – the Christian looks forward into the future for the coming Messiah’ (p. 308). Because of God’s promises and covenant with his chosen people of Israel, the church can never replace Israel but is rather grafted into it to form a covenanted solidarity. ‘We are all so to speak only an expanded people of Israel’ (p. 422). God’s constant 2

Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl Barth und die Juden 1933–1945 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirschener Verlag, 1996).

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faithfulness to Israel, whatever its obedience or disobedience to God, can only bring hope to us all. ‘God keeps his promises, God helps this people. This is something wonderful, this is a consolation’ (p. 422).

Doctrinal theology Although many theological questions were posed by Barth’s interlocutors, certain themes remained relatively untouched. Christ’s resurrection emerged as a major topic, for example, yet little was asked of Barth about Christ’s saving death. Again, although justification by faith emerged in general terms, Barth’s remarkable doctrine of simul iustus et peccator – which he applied not only to justification, but also to sanctification – was not probed. Nor did anyone ask him about important matters from his unfinished dogmatics. One would especially have liked to hear him talk about the Lord’s Supper, for example, or about how he would have approached the entire undeveloped doctrine of redemption. Nevertheless, despite missed opportunities, the material that surfaced is as engaging as it is copious. Barth’s view of the sufficiency of Holy Scripture often came up, but always in ways that were more nearly practical than doctrinal. Barth expressed his growing concern about the neglect of scripture in the life of the community and the individual believer. ‘We need to take time again for scripture …. Gather around the table to study scripture together!’ (p. 171). The hopes of ecumenical reunion rested on a deeper encounter with scripture by Protestants and Catholics alike. ‘And both of us together need to learn to think more nearly on the basis of scripture. Yes, that can bind us together, and that alone’ (p. 194). Bible reading should follow the ancient pattern of lectio divina. ‘Every believer needs to get used to reading continuous passages …. For me as a theology professor, it is a daily duty …. One needs to accustom oneself to reading the Bible’ (p. 243). The frantic pace of modern life, Barth observed, mitigates against meditation on the Word. Today theologians are always travelling. Instead of their staying at home, I fear that a great majority of them are out there sitting in cars, in waiting rooms, in trains or in airports. When do they ever find time to read the Bible? … What we really need today is almost a new pietism. (p. 390)

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Barth’s appreciation for the vitality of scripture, he added, had grown from his experience in the pastorate: Here’s how it was for me. Not until I was working as a pastor did I finally discover that the Bible is a good book. Yes, I had become a pastor without knowing that it’s a really good, a really interesting, a really worthwhile book, a book above all books. And then I learned it. And for me a completely new existence began. (p. 432)

Following the lead of Luther and Calvin, Barth emphasized that the central content of the Bible was not a system of doctrines, but Jesus Christ himself (p. 424). He pressed this insight in new directions, however, when he turned to hermeneutics. What he once stated in another connection applied equally well to biblical interpretation: ‘And in particular one ought not to resort too quickly to unity, synthesis and homogenizing’ (p. 195). Premature closure had to be resisted, he argued, because the content of the Bible could not be understood apart from its narrative unity. Just as Barth had proposed that God’s being is in his act, and that Christ’s person is in his work, so he also urged that the name of Jesus is inseparable from the narrative in which it is embedded. This inextricability of name and narrative demanded a particular sort of historical understanding. The narrative of Jesus Christ provided the key as much to the unity of scripture as also to the larger history of the world. ‘I actually think on the basis of this history. And I see in this history the key to all histories. For the history of Jesus Christ, whose content is the covenant between God and humankind, is the beginning as well as the end and goal of all things’ (p. 165). By understanding biblical narrative theologically – and thus as a ‘witness’ rather than as a ‘report’ – Barth broke with modernist preoccupations – in particular, with historicist and rationalist frameworks of interpretation. Establishing factuality behind the text was just as uninteresting to him, theologically, as striving for some kind of totalizing systematic coherence. He believed that a new conception was needed of what counts as scriptural ‘unity’, one that allows diverse themes to remain in tension. Biblical doctrines are held together, as he saw it, not by a static logic, but dynamically and dialectically through patterns of thinking grounded in the biblical narratives. These narratives, which bear witness to the mysteries of divine revelation, typically

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generate antithetical statements when they are conceptually redescribed, but these antitheses are not best regarded as ‘contradictions’. I would not say, contradiction! I would rather say, speaking by way of juxtaposition, do you follow me? It involves now this and then that …. This kind of thinking needs to be a narrative or historical thinking (ein geschichtliches Denken). One may not think [in terms of a static logic]. (p. 272)

Antithetical modes of thought were built into central church doctrines, Barth noted, for example, of the Trinity, of the Incarnation and of the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom, to name only a few. Significantly, a conceptual resolution of such antitheses, however tempting, always resulted in simplicity at the expense of adequacy, and in extreme cases landed in heresy. An interpretive strategy of juxtaposition, on the other hand, such as Barth proposed, would not privilege one existing strand in scripture while drastically marginalizing another. It would allow the various tensions to stand. It would in that way attempt to do better justice to the whole range of scripture as it attested the whole counsel of God. Barth’s proposal, evidenced perhaps more nearly in his exegetical deliberations than in his theoretical remarks, amounted to a new hermeneutical strategy, at least in explicitness and scope. He opted neither for synthesizing the various diverse strands, nor for discarding one of them, but for juxtaposition.3 This brand of narrative thinking, Barth believed, was the fitting hermeneutical response to divine revelation. For revelation was always the unity of word and deed – of actions in the form of speech, and of speech in the form of actions. Barth explained: The Word of God is the Word that is spoken by him in and with his action. Act and Word belong together. God’s revelation never consists in mute deeds. It is rather an act that as such speaks a Word to human beings. Any theology that would separate God’s mighty deeds from his spoken Word finally proves itself to be destructive of the Christian idea of revelation. (p. 176) 3

It might be added that these juxtapositions were always controlled and interpreted by the christological centre. The various divergent strands in scripture were therefore not only juxtaposed, but also ordered to one another in a particular way. Just as Christ’s cross was not the final word but his resurrection, so also the divine Yes incorporated the divine No within itself so that the No existed in service of the Yes.

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As enacted speech or eloquent action, divine revelation has been shaped by the Holy Spirit into apostolic narratives that are stabilized in scriptural testimony. Christ’s resurrection is the cardinal example. What we see at stake in the resurrection is what we see in general with everything in the Bible. It is a matter of reality, of history, which then as such is Word. One may not abstract and say, it is only Word. On the contrary, something takes place, and what takes place is something that speaks. And that speaking itself is precisely the speaking of an event. (p. 38)

The Holy Spirit by whom God’s deeds had been biblically inscribed was the same Spirit by whom their meaning is imparted to faith. Revelation, Barth emphasized, was ‘for all, but not all can grasp it. The Word of God can only be understood through the power of the Spirit’ (p. 176). The living God continued to speak through Jesus Christ, God’s decisive Word, as attested in scripture. ‘Yes, of course he speaks today. The God who has spoken his decisive Word in Jesus Christ – he is no dead God, as today the fools say, but he is the living God, who also speaks today’ (p. 253). The idea of freedom was a theme that especially distinguished Barth’s account of both divine and human existence. At the highest level, God’s sovereign freedom was secured by the doctrine of pre-temporal election. Election was the pivot of freedom, so to speak, connecting God with creation, eternity with time and in particular the Holy Trinity with the covenant of grace. God’s covenantal actions in history were grounded in his prior act of self-determination from all eternity. God’s action in time and history is a matter of miracle and mystery, because everything he does and says here is free from all fortuitousness. God always acts in freedom – in his eternal freedom. Everything that takes place here has taken place already in him. With everything there is this divine ‘pre-’. (pp. 78–79)

The Holy Trinity, Barth explained, was no mere function of election. Although for Barth election was indeed the self-determination of God, the Trinity was prior to election and presupposed by it. Otherwise God would not be God (and in particular God would not be the Trinity), except in relation to the world. Although God does not will to be who he is without the world, God does not need the world to be God. An interviewer wondered whether

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Barth would still endorse what he had written back in 1932 in the first volume of his dogmatics: God would not be any the less God if he had created no world and no human being. The existence of the world and our existence are in no sense necessary to God’s essential being, not even as the object of his love …. God is not at all lonely even without the world and us. His love has its object in himself. (I/1, pp. 139–40)4

To which Barth replied, ‘Splendid, isn’t it!’ (p. 286). The event of pre-temporal election was an event within the being of the Holy Trinity: ‘an eternal testament, carried out between the Father and the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit. And that is an event, it is an enactment’ (p. 78). Barth noted that he had been criticized for defining predestination not simply as an eternal divine action, but as ‘an action even within the very being of God’. Such criticism, he thought, missed the significance of the doctrine of Trinity. ‘But to me the doctrine of the Trinity is wonderful’ (p. 78). To dispel all confusion, Barth distinguished among the doctrines of reconciliation, election and the Trinity by ranking them. Election, he stated, was always election to reconciliation – that is, to justification, sanctification and vocation. Therefore, everything in the doctrine of reconciliation was but an explication of the doctrine of election. In turn, the doctrine of election was grounded in something beyond itself. ‘And behind the doctrine of election stands the doctrine of the Trinity. That is the order. The doctrine of the Trinity, election, and then sanctification, etc.’ (p. 293). Within the Augustinian and Reformed traditions, Barth’s doctrine of election was strongly revisionist. Predestination, Barth proposed, was not God’s dreadful decree that determined the eternal destiny of the human race by a separation of the ‘sheep’ from the ‘goats’. On the contrary, grounded in the Holy Trinity, election was God’s eternal self-determination not to be God without us, but rather to be God for us in Jesus Christ. There is no depth in God in which he is not fully determined by this gracious decision. In pretemporal election God has determined himself to be God for us. The electing God is the God who speaks both a Yes and No – Yes to creation; No to sin, evil and death. In Christ, whose death and resurrection embodied them 4

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I, part 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975, second edition), p. 139 (translation revised).

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both for our sakes, the No is overridden by the Yes. This profound revision (perhaps Barth’s greatest contribution to the history of doctrine) could not but have ramifications throughout the whole of his theology. God’s free selfdetermination meant that divine freedom was not arbitrary but wholly an expression of divine love (pp. 267, 289), that the gospel was not a message of rules and regulations but of freedom (p. 259), and that election itself purposed to liberate humankind from its bondage to sin and death for eternal life in communion with God. The freedom of God was to be answered by responsible human freedom. Everywhere I see the danger of unfreedom. I saw it in America, and then in parting I said to them I hoped a theology of freedom would also arise in America. That’s what I said to the Americans. I would say the same thing to the Swiss if I had the chance, and also to the Germans if they would still listen to me: The sovereign God’s freedom and the responsible human being’s freedom! (p. 259)

The authority of God was none other than the authority of freedom, not of compulsion or coercion. ‘The freedom of God is the authority that calls us to freedom’ (p. 399). Human freedom before God was above all to be realized in prayer. Without prayer the theological task would be impossible. ‘Without entering into prayer one cannot think even the tiniest theological thought sensibly – not the tiniest!’ (p. 83). In the Christian’s daily life, regular times of prayer were just as necessary as spontaneous prayers of the moment (p. 244). At the heart of prayer was thanksgiving: ‘I believe that what is really missing for us is that we aren’t sufficiently thankful for what God gives us …. And I believe that the great sin is ingratitude’ (p. 244). Because prayer was no substitute for action, the watchword was, ‘Pray and work!’ ‘Ora et labora!’ Ora! – because by ourselves we can neither obtain faith nor love nor understanding nor correct discernment. They become possible for us only as we request them from free grace and so from God, who gives them. Labora! – because these things are not served to us on a platter, but are constantly to be gained afresh though sheer work. (p. 441)

One final theme may be noted. Throughout the interviews Barth’s understanding of Christ’s resurrection was a recurring topic of interest. An

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especially interesting exchange took place in an extensive conversation with theology students from Tübingen (pp. 33–52). Curiously, however, one theme never surfaced, even though for Barth it was perhaps the matter of greatest ‘objective’ significance. Unencumbered by modernist arguments about ‘historicity’ (whether pro or con), Barth proposed that, ontically, the significant matter was not so much that the resurrection event was ‘historical’ as that Christ had been elevated from time into an eternal mode of existence without losing his essential temporality.5 Consequently, the risen Christ, in his saving significance, was able to be the Contemporary of each and every human being, in all times and places.6 In and through the living Christ, crucified and risen, God related to the entire human race. God’s affirmation and judgement of the human race in the life history of Jesus Christ was the beginning and end of all things. When the question of ‘historicity’ took centre stage, however, as it did with the Tübingen students, then, in effect, Barth would advance the proposition that Christ’s resurrection was indeed a historical event, and yet it was unlike any historical event that we know. Over against theologians like Bultmann and Ebeling, Barth affirmed that, yes, Christ’s resurrection was really a bodily event. It was really ‘spatio-temporal’: ‘somatic, visible, audible, tangible’ (p. 34). ‘It was a matter of the same human being, Jesus of Nazareth, who had previously been among them, and who was now seen in his glory’ (p. 35). Over against theologians like Pannenberg, on the other hand, Barth contended that no, modern critical methods of investigation are not germane to this event in its essential uniqueness (p. 45). Poetic or even mythic elements are ineffaceable from the biblical depiction, precisely because this event is, by definition, a mysterious conjunction of historicity and transcendence (pp. 46–47). Barth rejected the search for the historical Jesus, because he did not believe him to have been lost. ‘As if there were any other life of Jesus than that of him who was raised at Easter!’ (p. 36). The Easter Jesus, as attested by the apostles, was the only Jesus there has ever been. The living Jesus Christ! He himself, not an idea of him, but rather he himself, whom they had known, but who was now revealed to them as the Lord of 5 6

E.g., Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV, part 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), p. 313. E.g., Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III, part 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), p. 440.

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life and death [cf. Rom. 14:9], and who as such now became the content of their message …. (p. 37)

Therefore, when taken from a ‘post-critical’ point of view, or what is much the same thing, when taken with a sense of humour (p. 41), the New Testament metaphor of the ‘forty days’ cannot possibly be improved upon. It is perfectly adequate to convey the ‘astonishing reality’ of Easter in all its ‘absolute uniqueness’ (p. 43). The Gospel of the ‘forty days’ – related first simply in the sense of the New Testament – is indeed identical with the Gospel itself. It sums up each and every thing that the New Testament has to say …. But this is not [merely], so to speak, a piece of the Gospel, a moment, but rather this is the Gospel: ‘I live, and you shall live also’ (John 14:19) … – that’s the Gospel. (p. 33)

Political theology Because of his outspoken political views and activities, Barth had always been a ‘public intellectual’ embroiled in controversy. This description more or less persisted until the end of his life. When friends gathered for the celebration of his 80th birthday, he reminded them of his origins. The reader of the Church Dogmatics certainly needs to know that I come from religious socialism. And I originally pursued something other than ‘church dogmatics’ – namely, lectures on bringing factories to justice and on trade union problems – and I also became a member of the Swiss Socialist Party. And when I took part in these activities, it somehow hung together with a particular discovery – namely, that the children of this world are often wiser than the children of light. (p. 401)

Elsewhere he reminisced further about his early pastorate: ‘The socialists were among the most avid listeners to my sermons, not because I preached socialism, but because they knew I was the same man who was also attempting to help them’ (p. 506). By the late 1960s, however, times had changed: Today there are really no longer any genuine alternatives. No great fundamental ideas seem to clash. I often feel at a loss about which party to vote for, if at all. (p. 551)

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Barth’s chastened attitude towards socialism emerged clearly in his long conversation with the Marxist, Milan Machovec (pp. 311–19). Nevertheless, Barth regarded certain political issues as urgent, especially concerning militarism and world peace. Although the church would be foolish to take a stand on every single issue of the day, he believed, some matters called for political decision in the witness of faith. The question of nuclear weapons weighed heavily on his conscience: ‘A practical pacifism with the slogan “War – never again!” is something that today really ought to force itself on the church. Especially in view of the development of nuclear weapons and the threat that all life might be destroyed’ (p. 179). In 1966 he listed four issues that posed a political challenge to the church: rapprochement with the communist nations of the Eastern bloc, protest against the Vietnam War, nuclear disarmament and resistance to anti-semitism (p. 219). It was not a good sign, he felt, that on these urgent matters the church could not bring itself to clear convictions (p. 220).

Conclusion In conclusion, it may be noted that throughout these conversations Barth often displayed a sense of sober realism combined with robust hope. For example, he acknowledged that, humanly speaking, the prospects for the Christian church did not seem particularly bright. Minority status would seem to be its permanent worldly lot (p. 307). Fundamentally, the number of dedicated Christians had never been more than a few (p. 317). Nevertheless, the church lives not by worldly prosperity but by its living Lord, who has triumphed over sin and death, and he is present in the community as the Lord of the entire world (p. 299). It is not we who must care for the dear God, but he who cares for us. In every respect we must take that into account, and live without anxiety on that basis. He cares for us, and he cares for our church and our communities. He sees to it that his truth does not fall to the ground, but rather that it remains on the lampstand. (p. 426)

The last conversation to be transcribed took place on the telephone between Barth and his life-long friend Eduard Thurneysen on the evening before

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Barth died. Thurneysen jotted down what he remembered Barth had said to him: Yes, the world is dark! Only let us not lose heart! Never! … Let us not lose hope for all human beings, for the whole world of the nations! God will not allow us to fall, not one single one of us, nor all of us together! Es wird regiert! (p. 562)

These were, in effect, Barth’s last words on earth, summing up the work and convictions of a lifetime: ‘Es wird regiert!’ Loosely translated: ‘There is nothing outside the governance of God!’

Part One

Ecumenical Theology

2

Karl Barth on the Lord’s Supper: An Ecumenical Appraisal As is well known, Karl Barth offered no sustained account of the Lord’s Supper in his Church Dogmatics. Although such an account was planned, he did not live long enough to write it. It would have appeared in Church Dogmatics, volume IV, part 4, after his discussions of baptism and the Lord’s Prayer. The material on baptism eventually appeared as IV/4, ‘Fragment’. An abbreviated discussion of the Lord’s Prayer then appeared in a separate volume called The Christian Life (Eerdmans, 1981). The Christian Life was published posthumously, while the IV/4 ‘Fragment’ appeared shortly before Barth’s death. By the time he was writing vol. IV, Barth had come to reject the idea that baptism and the Lord’s Supper should be regarded as ‘sacraments’. There was one and only one sacrament, he contended, and that was the mystery of the Incarnation itself. Accordingly, baptism and the Lord’s Supper should not be regarded as ‘means of grace’, but rather as ‘responses to grace’. They did not have to do with God’s actions towards us, but rather with our actions towards God. In the Doctrine of Reconciliation, he concluded, they belonged in the final section concerned with ‘ethics’. In the earlier volumes of Church Dogmatics, Barth devoted occasional attention here and there to the Lord’s Supper. Although these discussions were not sustained, they are still of interest. Prior to volume IV, moreover, he still looked on baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments.1 The discussion that follows will examine three themes from Barth’s earlier and later volumes: the relationship of preaching to the eucharist, the possible nature of the ‘sacramental union’ and the idea of eucharistic sacrifice. 1

Or at least he had not yet explicitly rejected the idea.

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I In the early volumes of his Dogmatics, Barth argued, in good Reformation fashion, for the priority of the Word over the Sacrament, and therefore for the priority of proclamation over the Lord’s Supper in worship. ‘Real proclamation’, he wrote, ‘is that event in the church’s life which governs all others’ (I/1, 88 rev.). It is because of proclamation that the church is a creature of God’s Word (creatura verbum dei). Through this ongoing event the church receives its very existence. By means of proclamation, the church is, and continually becomes, what it is. It is ‘continually called and upheld and enlightened and guided by [God’s] Word’ (III/3, 22). ‘We have to say that in this event the church itself must ever and again become the church’ (I/1, 88). Therefore preaching is ‘the central part of the church’s liturgy’ (I/2, 231). It does something that the sacraments can never do. It represents ‘the comprehensive and unassailable givenness of revelation itself ’ (I/2, 231). Being less restricted than the sacraments, preaching represents more fully the whole counsel of God. The purpose of the sacraments is then to illustrate the content of preaching and give it special emphasis. ‘What applies to proclamation and the church generally cannot be better illustrated than by the sacrament’ (I/1, 88). The earthly elements in the sacrament are ‘consecrated’ and ‘sanctified’ by God’s Word in order to ‘seal’ and ‘confirm’ what the Word proclaims (I/1, 88; I/2, 227). Along these lines Calvin’s view is summarized with approval: ‘[The sacraments] are, so to speak, seal-impressions, or paintings, or reflections of the divine promise of grace; they are supporting pillars of faith, or exercises (exercitia) to develop certainty about the Word of God’ (I/2, 229). By contrast, the Roman Catholic neglect of preaching, and its reversal of this pattern in favour of the sacraments, is singled out for pointed criticism. According to Catholic teaching, preaching is not strictly necessary. ‘The Mass may be complete without it’ (I/1, 66). For the Catholic church, Barth wrote, it is ‘as though preaching did not even exist as an indispensable means of grace’ (I/1, 65). Theological discussions about the ‘teaching office’ could proceed in ‘complete silence about preaching’ (I/1, 65). ‘In sharp distinction from the sacrament’, Barth noted, ‘preaching is not a constitutive element in the Roman Catholic concept of the priesthood’ (I/1, 67). Even in the best of cases, the

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celebration of the sacrament took precedence over the proclamation of the Word. But this method of operating was not without consequences for the Catholic church, for it led to a certain ‘poverty’ at the centre of this ‘mighty structure’ (I/1, 67). Before turning to examine how Vatican II attempted to correct this situation, a special contribution of the sacrament to preaching, as understood by the earlier Barth, may be noted. At one point Barth went a small step beyond the Reformation when reflecting on John 1:14. ‘Ο λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο (Jn. 1:14) – preaching, too, can and must say this. But in a way which preaching can never do, the sacrament underlines the words σάρξ and ἐγένετο. … The sacrament’s insistence upon this quality in divine sign-giving is its special feature as compared with preaching and its special feature in the whole life of God’s people assembled to form the church. (I/2, 230)

Here the sacrament did not merely confirm, illustrate or seal the Word of preaching. It palpably attested an essential quality of revelation. For revelation, by definition, involved the giving of signs, and the sacrament manifested this quality in a way that surpassed what preaching could do. The givenness of signs in the sacrament represented, uniquely, the objective aspect of divine revelation. Roman Catholic teaching since Vatican II offered some redress to Barth’s concerns. It made preaching essential to the liturgy though without entirely reversing the traditional priorities. In the document Sacrosanctum Concilium (4 December 1963), Vatican II affirmed that the Mass was not complete without preaching, at least as far as Sunday worship was concerned: 52. By means of the homily the mysteries of the faith and the guiding principles of the Christian life are expounded from the sacred text, during the course of the liturgical year; the homily, therefore, is to be highly esteemed as part of the liturgy itself; in fact, at those Masses which are celebrated with the assistance of the people on Sundays and feasts of obligation, it should not be omitted except for a serious reason. 56. The two parts which, in a certain sense, go to make up the Mass, namely, the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharistic Liturgy, are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship ….

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At the same time, however, the eucharist retained pride of place. Vatican II stated explicitly and in various ways the ongoing priority of the sacrament. ‘The eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life’ (Lumen Gentium 11; cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, pp. 11–13, 14). The Eucharistic Liturgy still took precedence over the Liturgy of the Word. Moreover, insofar as ‘private Masses’ were permitted and conducted without the necessity of preaching, the Mass was still seen as complete without it. Ecumenically, the result would seem to be a matter of impasse. On the one hand, we have the Reformational view, represented by Barth, that preaching is essential for Christian worship and for the very being of the church, while the eucharist, though important, would be optional on any given Sunday (even if required on some regular basis). (The later Barth urged that it be celebrated every Sunday.) On the other hand, we have the contemporary Roman Catholic alternative that the eucharist is always essential, while preaching, though mandatory except under exceptional circumstances, is still secondary and in principle dispensable. A way beyond the impasse is suggested by Alexander Schmemann. In his book The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (St. Vladimir’s, 1988), Schmemann posits an ‘unbreakable unity of word and sacrament’ (p. 69). The word proclaims Christ in his saving significance as the Incarnate Saviour. The sacrament, on the other hand, is said to do more than merely ‘confirm’ the word and ‘illustrate’ it. It rather ‘fulfills’ and ‘interprets’ it. In the sacrament we partake of him who comes and abides with us in the word, and the mission of the church consists precisely in announcing the good news. The word presupposes the sacrament as its fulfillment, for in the sacrament Christ the Word becomes our life. … It is precisely through the sacrament that the word is interpreted, for the interpretation of the word is always witness to the fact that the Word has become our life. … The sacrament of the word … finds its fulfillment and completion in the offering, consecration and distribution to the faithful of the eucharistic gifts.2 (pp. 68–69)

Schmemann suggests that the separation of the word from the sacrament in the West – whether by emphasizing the word at the expense of the sacrament 2

There is a slight tilt here in favour of the sacrament. For Barth and the Reformation, Christ would already have become our life through the event of preaching.

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or the sacrament at the expense of the word – led to ‘an erroneous, one-sided and distorted understanding of both word – i.e. Holy Scripture and its place in the life of the church – and sacrament’ (p. 66). I daresay that the gradual ‘decomposition’ of scripture, its dissolution in more and more specialized and negative criticism, is a result of its alienation from the eucharist – and practically from the church herself – as an experience of a spiritual reality. And in its own turn, this same alienation deprived the sacrament of its evangelical content, converting it into a self-contained and self-sufficient ‘means of sanctification’. (p. 66)

When the sacrament is severed from proclamation and so from scripture, it threatens to become an object of priestly manipulation and superstition. On the other hand, when scripture is severed from its fulfilment in the sacrament, it all too easily dissolves under the pressures of modern scholarly dissection. Only when word and sacrament are held firmly together in the liturgy, and so in the formative experience of the church, can each truly be what it is. Although Barth saw no direct way beyond the liturgical impasse as noted here in the Western churches, he nonetheless suggested, at one point, a promising pattern of thought. As I have shown in several places, he often drew upon the logic of the ‘Chalcedonian pattern’ to set forth two terms and their relationship. Abstracting from the famous and authoritative ‘Chalcedonian Definition’, which related the two ‘natures’ of Christ, Barth characteristically drew upon the logic of Chalcedon to elucidate the relationship of other paired terms. Of particular interest in this connection is his discussion of ‘justification’ and ‘sanctification’. With an explicit use of Chalcedonian terminology (quoted repeatedly in the original Greek), Barth explains that these two concepts are best seen as related ‘without separation or division’, on the one hand, and ‘without confusion or change’, on the other. The errors that can creep in through either ‘separating’ or ‘confusing’ justification and sanctification are elaborated at some length (IV/2, pp. 499–511). However, beyond working with the ideas of unity-in-distinction and distinction-in-unity here, as implied by the Chalcedonian pattern – ‘without separation or division’ suggests an inseparable unity, while ‘without confusion or change’ implies an abiding distinction – Barth typically added the idea of an asymmetrical ordering principle (as originally entailed by the fact

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that in the Person of Christ the divine and the human are not on the same plane). Therefore, one might anticipate that in conclusion Barth would order ‘justification’ clearly over ‘sanctification’ – or would he perhaps do the reverse? In fact, he does neither. Instead he proposes what might be called a ‘double asymmetry’. If we think in terms of ‘ground’ and ‘consequence’, he suggests, then justification would be the ground and sanctification the consequence. The priority and precedence would then belong to justification. However, if we think in terms of ‘precondition’ and ‘telos’, then the pattern would be reversed. Justification would become the precondition while sanctification would be the telos. In that sense the priority would belong to sanctification. ‘We can and must give the primacy’, Barth concluded, ‘now to the one and now to the other, according to the different standpoints from which we look’ (IV/2, 511). The idea of a double asymmetry can be used to relate word and sacrament. If we adopt the ground/consequence standpoint, the priority would be assigned to the word as the ground so that the sacrament would be seen as the consequence. (This move would be in line with the Reformation.) If, on the other hand, we took the standpoint of precondition/telos, the situation would be much the reverse, with the priority being assigned teleologically to the sacrament for which the word would then serve as the precondition. (This standpoint would comport with Catholicism.) There would be no higher synthesis. Each standpoint would have its relative legitimacy, and each would necessarily complement and supplement the other. The language of ‘confirmation’ would align with the first move, while the language of ‘fulfillment’ would befit the second. Along these lines, I suggest, the Western liturgical impasse on this question might find a happy resolution.

II A much deeper problem for ecumenism concerns the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, a notoriously vexed question. One popular solution among Protestants is just to affirm Christ’s real eucharistic presence while paying no special attention to how his body and blood might be related to the gifts of bread and wine. As attractive as this solution might seem, it unfortunately does nothing to bring the churches closer to visible unity. The question of

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Christ and the consecrated elements must be tackled directly if eucharistic sharing is ever going to occur where it now fails to exist. Barth sometimes seemed to adopt the more popular view. He connected the eucharistic ‘presence’ of Christ with his ‘body and blood’ yet without investigating the question of the status of the elements. He could use language about ‘Christ himself ’ as though it were simply identical with language about his ‘body and blood’. ‘In order that others may … appropriate what is active and revealed in him’, Barth wrote, ‘he … does not offer up anything less than himself, his body and blood: This is my body. And this is my blood’ (IV/2, 258). The Lord’s Supper meant, Barth explained, that ‘he will give them his body to eat and his blood to drink. He will give them himself at the cost of his death’ (II/2, 474). The Christian was someone who was baptized into Christ, and who could ‘receive his body and blood, Jesus Christ Himself, in the Lord’s Supper’ (III/3, 273). Christ was said to use ‘the bread and the wine only to signify himself ’ (II/2, 474). The idea of ‘real presence’ did not need to be restricted to the eucharist. Barth reasoned: There is obviously no baptism or Lord’s Supper without his real presence as very God and very Man, both body and soul. But this presence cannot be regarded as restricted to what were later called the ‘sacraments’. For these are only a symbolical expression of the fact that in its worship the community is gathered directly around Jesus himself, and lives by and with him, of the fact that through faith he rules over the hearts and lives of all even apart from worship. (III/2, pp. 467–68 rev.)

In good Reformed fashion Barth was inclined to focus more on the eucharistic action than on the elements. As the community engaged in the action of eating the bread and drinking the cup, it received Christ, who was really present, along with his benefits. The offering of My body and blood has for you the effect that as you eat this bread My life is given to you as yours, and that as you drink of this cup you may live with joy and not with sorrow, as innocent and not condemned. … Do this (‘in remembrance of me’) as you eat this bread and drink this cup. Proclaim in this way the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor. 11:26), i.e., until his presence, already experienced here and now with this eating and drinking, is revealed to all eyes. (III/2, 214)

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The command ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ ‘ referred to the disciples’ ‘sacramental’ action of eating and drinking, which in turn meant their communion in Christ’s body and blood. ‘Real presence’ was a matter of his action in their action. And that is why the eucharistic action as the crowning act of worship – τοῦτο, this, i.e., the common eating and drinking of the disciples according to his command – is no more and no less than his body and blood. … This action then, accomplished εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν [in remembrance of me], is the direct proclamation of his death until he comes (1 Cor. 11:26). In this provisional form as the action of the community, it is his own action, the work of his real presence. Here and now he himself is for them – his offered body and his shed blood – the communion of saints thanking and confessing him in this action. (IV/2, 658)

Barth had little patience with ‘complicated arguments as to the precise nature of the bread and wine’ (III/2, 502). The closest he came to reflecting directly on their special eucharistic status – apart from passing remarks like saying they are sanctified by the Word (I/1, 89) – took place when he considered the concept of ‘sacramental union’. As was perhaps to be expected, Barth examined this idea only to reject it. Barth’s main concern was that the ‘hypostatic union’ (unio hypostatica) was something sui generis, in other words, in a category by itself (IV/ 2, 37, 52). It was irreducibly singular and absolutely unique. It could have no true analogies. Not even the idea of a ‘sacramental union’ (unio sacramentalis) – a term found not only in Luther and the Lutheran confessions, but also (as Barth fails to note) in Reformed theologians like Vermigli, Bucer, Cranmer and occasionally Calvin – could serve as a proper parallel (IV/2, pp. 54–55). The Incarnation itself, Barth insisted, represented the only possible ‘sacramental union’, because, according to his later thinking, the Incarnation was itself ‘the one and only sacrament’ (IV/2, 55). The idea of a sacramental union between Christ’s life-giving flesh and the eucharistic elements led in the end, Barth warned, to the impossible Roman Catholic view that the church was a prolongation of the Incarnation (incarnatus prolognatus). The Incarnation, Barth argued, allowed for no ‘repeated actualization’ (wiederholten Verwirklichung) of itself – no ‘representation and repetition’: not in the sacramental union and not in the being of church (IV/2, 55).

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A similar point was made regarding imagery. Because the mystery of the Incarnation was incomparable by definition, none of the traditional images for it could withstand scrutiny. Absolute caution is needed in respect of comparisons like the followingthat the Word is in flesh like a man in his clothes, or a sailor in his boat, or glowing and heat and light in iron. The fathers occasionally used pictures like this, and they have a passing value by way of illustration. But it must not be overlooked how incongruent they really are. We have to realize that the being of the Son of God in human art and kind is not really like the external association of two realities like a man and his clothes or a sailor and his boat, nor like the relationship between a substance like iron and its properties of glowing and heat and light, so that it has no real analogies in the proportions of these relationships. (IV/2, 53)

The care with which Barth frames these reflections is not to be missed. Because the Incarnation has ‘no real analogies’, ‘absolute caution’ is needed in making any ‘comparisons’ to it. All images and examples are finally ‘incongruent’. Nevertheless, pictures may occasionally be used as long as it is recognized that they have only ‘passing value’ by way of ‘illustration’. Illustrations are therefore not absolutely ruled out if used with the proper caution. A salient difference emerges at this point between dogmatic theology and ecumenical theology. Dogmatic theology seeks to determine what is doctrinally correct, as seen from a particular confessional standpoint. Once that determination has been made, the task is to defend it against any conflicting positions that may be found in other confessional traditions. When these conflicting positions are ‘church-dividing’, however, so that the divided churches can no longer engage in eucharistic sharing, then ecumenical theology must go beyond dogmatic theology. It must strive to achieve sufficient ‘convergence’ (not necessarily consensus) that the obstacles to eucharistic sharing are mitigated and overcome. As I have argued elsewhere, while no tradition can be expected to compromise on essentials, false contrasts need to be overcome, and every step towards confessional convergence must be taken that can be taken without theological compromise.3

3

George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 9–10.

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As I have argued at length in The Eucharist and Ecumenism, if Protestants today were to embrace something like the Eastern Orthodox view of unio sacramentalis, as actually happened to varying degrees during the Reformation – not only among the Lutherans but also among the Reformed (particularly Vermigli, Bucer and Cranmer) – then to that extent a major step would be taken towards ecumenical healing and convergence. Although Barth discussed the patristic image of the iron in the fire, he considered it only in relation to the unio hypostatica but not in relation to the unio sacramentalis (IV/2, 53, 66). In Eastern Orthodoxy, however, beginning with the patristic period, the image of the iron in the fire was used as an illustration for both forms of union. In the sixteenth century this usage was then picked up, in various ways, by both Lutheran and Reformed theologians to illustrate the unio sacramentalis (and among the Lutherans also the unio hypostatica).4 Barth is of course correct that the mystery of the Incarnation is incomparable so that no proper analogy or illustration can be found for it. All suggested analogies or illustrations can only be flawed and incongruous. A total ban against them for that reason, however, would seem to be overly severe. In another connection Barth himself would cite Hilary of Poitiers: Non sermoni res, sed rei sermo subjectus est (I/1, 354).5 ‘The thing itself is not subject to the word, but the word to the thing’. Or perhaps better, ‘The subject matter is not subordinate to the language, but the language to the subject matter’. In other words, the language needs to be interpreted in light of the theological content to which it refers, and not the reverse. Therefore, as long as certain analogies or illustrations are kept under theological control, so that their limitations are clearly recognized, there would seem to be no good reason not to use them with all due caution. The image of the iron in the fire has obvious limitations for both the unio hypostatica and the unio sacramentalis. Because the image is impersonal and mechanical, and because each of the unions in itself is incomparable, Hilary’s rule would have to apply: Non sermoni res, sed rei sermo subjectus est. Nevertheless, in certain respects, the iron-in-the-fire image is not a bad device for illustrating 4 5

Ibid., pp. 41–46. Hilary of Poitiers, ‘On the Trinity’ (IV.14), in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), p. 75.

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what is at stake in certain applications of the Chalcedon pattern. The picture of a red-hot iron glowing in the fire captures at least three important elements: unity (‘without separation or division’), distinction (‘without confusion or change’) and an ordering principle of priority or precedence (asymmetry). As the fire suffuses the iron, the two enter into a kind of mutual participation (unity). Nevertheless, the iron remains iron, even as the fire remains fire; neither disappears into the other (distinction). At the same time, the fire retains a kind of priority or precedence over the iron; the fire may be conceived as transcending the iron that rests in it (asymmetry). If not too much weight is put on it, the illustration would seem to be of tolerable and passing value. It is worth noting that Barth did not always shy away from using the image himself. ‘Red-hot iron burns’, he once wrote, ‘not because by its nature it possesses burning activity, but because it has acquired the latter through its union with the fire’ (I/2, 137). This was stated in illustration of the unio hypostatica, or more specifically, of how, in the Incarnation, the ‘flesh’ is related to the ‘Word’ as the iron is related to the fire (Jn. 1:14). With this illustration in mind, let me try to lay out how I see the analogy between the hypostatic union and the sacramental union. I see it as an analogy of proportion: A is to B as C is to D. The first two terms have a relationship to each other similar to that which the second two have to each other. The similarity holds true in spite of the differences in the two relationships. With regard to the hypostatic union, A is divine and B is human. The two terms are therefore radically different. God, who is not an object in the universe, belongs to no genus, but the human nature of Jesus belongs to a genus in the creation. Mark McIntosh puts their relationship nicely. The divine and human ‘natures’ are united, he says, in the Person of the Son, who enacts them in a living unity. In his Person, I would add, the two natures enjoy a dynamic oneness, what the tradition calls communio naturarum. I would interpret this idea, in the first instance, as a living communion of the two natures. By living communion, I mean that in his divine nature the Son acts in and through his human nature, and that in his human nature he operates receptively in and through his divine nature. It is the Son who acts, not the natures, but in him the natures are not static. They rather coinhere in a mysterious dynamism. This living communion, like all forms of theological communion, is governed, I would say, by the Chalcedonian pattern. The divine and human natures subsist

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in the single hypostasis of the Son ‘without separation or division’, ‘without confusion or change’ and with an ‘asymmetrical’ priority of the divine over the human. The human nature is assumed into union with the Person of the Son so that, through him as the personal acting subject, it enters into concert with his divine nature. Two corollaries would follow from this analysis. One pertains to suffering and death, the other to exaltation and transfiguration. These are of course complicated questions. Here I must be brief. As to the first, I would say that through his divine nature the eternal Son suffers and dies in his human nature. His suffering and death are therefore incomprehensible but real. Through his Incarnation Son enters fully into suffering and death without ceasing to be the impassible and immortal God. The inconceivability of this humiliation seems be what Cyril had in mind when he suggested that the Son ‘suffered impassibly’ and ‘died immortally’.6 The second corollary is much the reverse. Through his divine nature the Incarnate Son elevates his human nature into a glorified and immortal final state. His human nature, while it does not cease to be finite and fully human, is inconceivably exalted into a new, ‘divinized’ form. It is the splendorous form that was unveiled on the mount of transfiguration, and while now hidden to us in the time between the times, it is fully enjoyed by him in heaven, even as it will be universally manifested at the end of all things. The inconceivability of this exaltation seems in optimem partem to be what Gregory of Nyssa and other Eastern Fathers meant when they wrote about the ‘transelementation’ of Christ’s human flesh.7 This dynamic coinherence of divine and human natures in the action, passion and exaltation of the Incarnate Son is what I take to be the communio naturarum. In short, the communio naturarum is a form of koinonia, anchored and actualized in the Person of the Word made flesh, and governed formally by the Chalcedonian pattern.8 6

7

8

See Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 135–75. Despite certain problems in some of their expressions of it. See Donald Fairbairn, ‘Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50 (2007), pp. 289–310. In these formulations I have tried to follow the outlook of the Reformed tradition as set forth by Barth. While not rejecting the communio naturarum, Barth anchors it in the unio hypostatica, ‘giving priority and precedence to the doctrine of the unio hypostatica over that of the communio naturarum’ (IV/, 2, 66; cf. 68).

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Turning to the sacramental union, on the other hand, the two terms – Christ’s flesh and the sacramental elements – both belong, respectively, to one or another genus in the creation. In that sense they differ not in essence but in mode. Through the presiding eucharistic minister, the risen and ascended Son, in the epiclesis of the Spirit, unites his life-giving flesh with the gifts of bread and wine. The gifts are inconceivably elevated, transformed and offered in a new mystical or sacramental mode of being. Just as in the hypostatic union the Son’s flesh exists in his Person in dynamic union with his deity, so also in the sacramental union the elements come to exist no longer in their pre-consecrated state, but in a mysterious superabundance with Christ’s life-giving flesh. Without ceasing to be bread and wine, they are made one with his glorified flesh so that by means of them the Son will unite the faithful to himself through his body and blood. I take this mystical transformation and union to be what Vermigli, following Theophylact, meant by ‘transelementation’. The bread and wine are transelemented in order that through them, succinctly put, the faithful themselves might be transelemented into Christ. Again, we have a pattern of dynamic coinherence. Christ’s flesh dwells in the elements, and the elements dwell in his flesh, through a type of asymmetrical union: without separation or division, without confusion or change and with priority and precedence belonging throughout to Christ’s flesh, or better, to the living Christ under the aspect of his flesh. ‘The bread that we break is it not a participation [koinonia] in the body of Christ?’ (1 Cor. 10:16). The quality of koinonia – regarded as a dynamic, differentiated and asymmetrical form of reciprocal participation – is the common element in both the hypostatic and the sacramental unions.9 Despite all differences, the common quality of koinonia is, in effect, what allowed the early Greek Fathers to apply the image of the iron in the fire to both the sacramental and the hypostatic unions. As McIntosh eloquently suggests, ‘The bread is more bread than ever, more deeply Food, more profoundly the means of Communion, precisely by being the Body of Christ; the very trajectory 9

See Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 36 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959), p. 34. At this point Luther interprets the sacramental union, as implied by 1 Cor. 10:16, in analogy with the hypostatic union.

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of its creaturely “nature” is not abrogated but supereminently consummated as Christ releases it into his own life’.10 This explanation of the analogy between the two unions is meant to clarify how ‘transelementation’ might be understood in relation to the Incarnation. The formal terms of the analogy could be re-stated, in light of this analysis, more precisely as follows: B is to A as C is to B′, where B stands for Christ’s human nature, A for his divine nature, C for the consecrated elements and B′ for Christ’s glorified, life-giving flesh (or more precisely, for the incarnate Word under the aspect of his life-giving flesh). The koinonia relation of B to A in the hypostatic union is similar to that between C and B′ in the sacramental union. Other traditions might wish to offer different interpretations of eucharistic conversion. My claims are meant to be modest. This view of transelementation, I suggest, could be adopted without compromise by the Reformed; and if it were, it would not be church-dividing. Although far from anything found in Barth, it does not seem incompatible with much that he affirmed. It tries to take his dogmatic convictions seriously while moving them in a more ecumenical direction.

III Barth arguably failed to exploit the full potential of his theology regarding the eucharist. One statement in particular helps to make this failing clear. In the midst of a fine comment on the Lord’s Supper, he distances himself from the Roman Catholic mass. The eucharist is not to be seen, he says, as ‘a re-presentation and repetition’ of Christ’s sacrifice – ‘as in the Romanist doctrine of the mass’ – but rather as ‘a simple and full enjoyment of its benefits’, and in particular of ‘the eternal life won for us in him’ (III/2, 502).11 From the standpoint of Barth’s theology, this is an odd comment. It reflects standard Reformation polemic more than his own best insights. It not only conflates re-presentation unnecessarily with repetition, but also divorces 10

11

Mark McIntosh, ‘Christ the Word Who Makes Us: Eucharist and Creation’, Pro Ecclesia 19 (2010), pp. 255–59; on p. 259. Note that this remark was penned in 1948, well before the emergence of anything like Vatican II. Moreover, by ‘re-presentation’ what Barth had in mind was probably something sacerdotal, not something effected by the living Christ himself.

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Christ from his benefits. These are two moves, however, that Barth has taught us to avoid.12 First, Barth knew that Christ could not be enjoyed without his benefits, and that the reverse was also true, namely, that his benefits were unavailable without his person. Christ’s benefits could be enjoyed only by way of participatio Christi. Moreover, Barth also knew that Christ’s person was inseparable from his work, so that where Christ was present, his saving work was present as well. Humankind was not saved by the work of Christ in abstracto, Barth held, so much as by the person of Christ in his work. A separation of Christ’s work of sacrifice on the cross from its benefits, as though the sacrifice were merely past while the benefits alone were present fails to correspond with Barth’s best insights. The very being of Christ was in his saving actions. Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross belonged inseparably to his being as a person. His sacrificial work had no benefit that could be enjoyed apart from his person to which both the work and the benefit belonged. Secondly, the idea that the being of Christ was in his work, and the work of Christ in his being, committed Barth to a doctrine of ‘re-presentation’. Regardless of what one calls it (and it is not easy to find a satisfactory term), it is the actualistic idea that Christ’s being in act involves a perfect work (opere perfectus) that is also a perpetual operation (operatione perpetuum).13 The perpetual operation adds nothing new in content to the perfect work, which by definition needs no completion. Yet it belongs to the perfect work’s perfection that it is not merely encapsulated in the past. On the contrary, it operates perpetually to make itself present for what it is, again and again. Barth explained: In God’s revelation, which is the content of His Word, we have in fact to do with His act. And first, this means generally with an event, with a happening. But as such this is an event which is in no sense to be transcended. It is not, therefore, an event which has merely happened and is now a past fact 12

13

Nevertheless, it was Barth’s considered judgement. ‘There can be no question of any repetition or representation of that event, or even of an actualisation which has still to be effected. It needs no completion or re-presentation’ (IV/1, 295). It is ‘impossible to make what took place ἐφ’ ἅπαξ in Jesus Christ coincident with what takes place in faith’ (IV/1, 767). ‘The most questionable feature of the Roman Mass’ is ‘its character as a representation of the sacrifice of Golgotha’ (IV/3, 395). Barth (mistakenly) saw the Roman Catholic view of the Mass as involving a ‘new sacrifice’ (IV/2, 640). Barth first used these terms, which he borrowed from Quenstedt, in his classroom lectures from 1924, which were posthumously published as Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1985), p. 148. See also I/1, 427.

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of history. God’s revelation is, of course, this as well. But it is also an event happening in the present, here and now. Again, it is not this in such a way that it exhausts itself in the momentary movement from the past to the present, that is, in our to-day. But it is also an event that took place once for all, and an accomplished fact. And it is also future – the event which lies completely and wholly in front of us, which has not yet happened, but which simply comes upon us. Again, this happens without detriment to its historical completeness and its full contemporaneity. (II/1, 262)

The event of Jesus Christ, Barth suggested, is not only ‘a past fact of history’, but also ‘an event that is happening in the present here and now’. Furthermore, ‘in its historical completeness’ and ‘full contemporaneity’, is it is also an event that is ‘truly future’. The past-tense form of this untranscendable event is definitive and constitutive, its future-tense form is final and unsurpassable, while its present-tense form is at once secondary and derivative (with respect to its past) and yet also anticipatory and provisional (with respect to its future). The full contemporaneity of Christ’s person in his work here and now, and of his work in his person, would have to take place, at least for the earlier Barth, primarily through Word and Sacrament. Yet it fell to T. F. Torrance, Barth’s student, to make the connection that his mentor never quite managed to carry through: ‘The action of the Supper’, wrote Torrance, ‘is not another action than that which Christ has already accomplished on our behalf, and which is proclaimed in the gospel’. 14 It is rather the very same action in a new and sacramental form.15 Ecumenical theology after Barth has every reason to exploit this insight. According to Geoffrey Wainwright, eucharistic sacrifice ‘is likely to be the area of greatest difficulty for classical Protestants on the way to an ecumenical eucharist’.16 Protestants, he notes, ‘are still likely to balk at the idea from Vatican II that the church or the faithful “offer the divine victim to God” ’.17 ‘Clearly’, he continues, ‘there is still theological work to be done towards an 14

15

16

17

Thomas F. Torrance, Conflict and Agreement in the Church, vol. 2 (London: Lutterworth, 1960), p. 152. Just as Barth could write about the ‘threefold parousia’, or one parousia in three very different temporal forms (IV/3, pp. 292–96, 755, 794), so also is it possible to conceive of Christ’s ‘threefold saving sacrifice’, or his one saving sacrifice in three very different temporal forms, as is explained more fully below. The intermediate form would be the eucharist. Geoffrey Wainwright, ‘Ecclesia de Eucharistia vivit: An Ecumenical Reading’, Ecumenical Trends 33 (October 2004), pp. 129–37, on p. 132. Ibid., p. 133.

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ecumenical eucharist in so far as its sacrificial nature is at stake’.18 Wainwright even states that eucharistic sacrifice may be a more difficult problem to solve than that of eucharistic ministry: ‘I would suggest that settlement of the meaning of eucharistic sacrifice is logically prior to the question of the disabling ‘defectus’ which Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism alleges in the ministry of those who preside at the Lord’s Table in the Protestant churches’.19 Wainwright does not elaborate on the barriers to a settlement with classical Protestantism. Obviously, they are mainly two: first, that the sacrifice of Calvary is unrepeatable; and second, that the eucharist is not a meritorious work. Can the eucharist be understood as a ‘sacrifice’ in a way that honours the unrepeatability of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice on the cross? Furthermore, can it be conceived as a ‘sacrifice’ in a way that prevents it from functioning as a ‘meritorious work’? The first of these questions will be considered here, with reference to the work of Torrance.20 Torrance’s contribution of to the question of eucharistic sacrifice is at least threefold. He developed an integrated conception of Christ’s person and work, he showed how the cross and the eucharist can be held together in a pattern of unity-in-distinction and he explained how Christ’s vicarious humanity allows participatio Christi to be grounded in grace alone. In addition, he also connected eucharistic sacrifice with Christ’s ascension. First, Torrance developed an integrated conception of Christ’s person and work. The person of Christ, he explained, cannot be separated from his work, nor his work from his person, because ‘his person and his work are one’.21 As the Incarnate Son, Christ ‘confronts us as he in whom person and word and work are indissolubly one. It is his own person that he communicates in his words and deeds, while his words and deeds do not only derive from his person but inhere in it’.22 As Christ’s person and work are one, so also are his Incarnation and Atonement. The two are necessarily inseparable and mutually implicated in

18 19

20 21 22

Ibid. Ibid., p. 134. The problem of defectus is dealt with in Part III of my book The Eucharist and Ecumenism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), from which material in this essay has been excerpted. Both questions are considered at greater length in The Eucharist and Ecumenism. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1992), p. 63. Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection (Grand Rapids, WM: B. Eerdmans, 1976), p. 48.

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each other. For Torrance, as for the great patristic theologians on whom he relies, like Athanasius and Cyril, the Incarnation reaches its fulfilment in the Atonement, while the Atonement finds its essential premise in the Incarnation. That was the point of Torrance’s (and Barth’s) insight that we are not saved by the death of Christ, but by the person of Christ in his death. Torrance’s second contribution was to show how the cross and the eucharist are held in a unity that does not violate but reinforces their distinction. The one perfect and indivisible act of Atonement in Jesus Christ assumes two different forms. The constitutive form is the cross, while the mediating form is the eucharist. The cross is always central, constitutive and definitive, while the eucharist is always secondary, relative and derivative. The eucharistic form of the one sacrifice does not repeat the unrepeatable, but it does attest what it mediates and mediate what it attests. What it mediates and attests is the one whole Jesus Christ, who in his body and blood is both the sacrifice and the sacrament in one. As the sacrifice, he is the Offerer and the Offering. As the sacrament, he is the Giver and the Gift. The Son’s sacrificial offering of himself to the Father for us on the cross is the ground of the Father’s sacramental gift of his Son to the faithful in the eucharist. The cross was styled by Torrance as the ‘dimension of depth’ in the eucharist.23 The eucharist has no significance in itself that is not derived from the cross and grounded in it. Therefore the cross alone is the saving ‘content, reality and power’ of the eucharist.24 It is a matter of one reality, one priestly sacrifice of Christ, in two different temporal forms. The eucharistic form here and now participates in, manifests and attests the incarnational form of the sacrifice there and then. What took place in the perfect tense is finished, indivisible and all-sufficient. What takes place in the eucharistic sacrifice is not a matter of repetition but of participation, manifestation and witness. Mention may be made, thirdly, of a further contribution, namely, Torrance’s idea of Christ’s vicarious humanity. Christ himself, Torrance proposed, functions vicariously as our human response to God. It is by grace through faith that the faithful are given to participate in Christ’s perfect human

23 24

See Chapter 3 in this volume. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1975), p. 82.

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offering of himself to God. Eucharistic mediation and participation provide an answer to the question of repetition that so worried the Reformers and Karl Barth. These ideas also address the problem of the mass as a meritorious work. In the eucharist the living Christ re-presents himself in his vicarious humanity – that is, in his body and blood – so that the faithful are given an active though secondary and derivative participation in it. Recall Calvin’s view that it is in and through the priesthood of Christ that we ‘offer ourselves and all that we are to God’ (Institutes, II.15.6). Torrance has shown that there is no reason why this, the self-offering of the faithful, should not be given a eucharistic location. Finally, like Calvin and the general Reformed tradition, Torrance developed the idea of Christ’s ascension. Unlike them, however, and in particular unlike Barth, he applied it to the question of eucharistic sacrifice. Torrance distinguished three aspects of Christ’s priestly office in his ascension: his eternal self-offering, his perpetual intercession and his continual benediction.25 These will be discussed, briefly, in reverse order. According to Torrance: (i) The ascended Christ’s eternal benediction is his sending of his Spirit. It is this gift that creates union and communion with Christ. Through this benediction the faithful live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sakes died and was raised (2 Cor. 5:15). (ii) The ascended Christ’s perpetual intercession, in turn, is his continual prayer before the Father. By his Spirit he takes up the church’s prayers into his own continual intercession, where they are purified and perfected. Because Christ’s being is in his act, however, his perpetual intercession is finally inseparable from his person. His perpetual intercession and his eternal selfoffering are one. (iii) Finally, the ascended Christ’s eternal self-offering provides a basis for understanding eucharistic sacrifice. Christ’s priestly sacrifice and oblation of himself are multifaceted. In one sense they are necessarily over and done with. But ‘in their once for all completion’, noted Torrance, ‘they are taken up eternally into the life of God and remain prevalent, efficacious, valid, [and] abidingly real’.26 Christ’s historical self-offering on Calvary has taken 25 26

Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection, pp. 115–18. Ibid., p. 115.

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place once-for-all and needs no repetition. But since the Offerer and the Offering are inherently one, Christ’s atoning sacrifice is taken up, through his resurrection and ascension, into the eternal presence of the Father. His selfoffering ‘endures for ever as the one, perfect, sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world’.27 The eucharist must be seen to have a twofold aspect. It involves both communion and sacrifice. ‘Eucharistic sacrifice means that we through the Spirit are so intimately united to Christ, by his body and blood, that we participate in his self-consecration and self-offering to the Father’.28 ‘It is his one sufficient and once for all offering of himself for us that is our only sacrifice before God’.29 ‘What we do as we gather together in Christ’s name is to offer Christ to the Father, for he who has united us to himself has gathered up and sanctified all our worship and prayer in himself ’.30 There is therefore one sacrifice common to Christ and his church – that is the highpoint of Torrance’s teaching. What he says about the eucharist runs parallel to what he said in another place, following Athanasius, about baptism, namely, that there is ‘one baptism common to Christ and his church’.31 ‘Because he is baptized’, wrote Athanasius, ‘it is we who are baptized in him’.32 The baptism of the faithful is not another or separate baptism alongside the baptism of Christ. It is rather a participation in his one vicarious baptism as undergone for their sakes. Just as Christ’s baptism is vicarious, encompassing and inclusive, so the same is also true of his atoning sacrifice on the cross. The sacrifice of thanks and praise that is offered by the faithful in the eucharist is taken up into the one atoning sacrifice of Christ, enacted on their behalf. His completed and perpetual self-offering, as sacramentally re-presented in the eucharist, serves as their means of eternal access to the Father of all mercy and righteousness. The sacrifice common to Christ and his church is seen as one sacrifice in three modes: 27 28 29 30 31

32

Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation, p. 133. Ibid., p. 134. Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 117. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation, p. 212. Torrance, ‘The One Baptism Common to Christ and His Church’, in Theology and Reconciliation, pp. 82–105. Athanasius, ‘Oration Against the Arians I.48’, in Athanasius, ed. Kahled Anatolios (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 106.

Karl Barth on the Lord’s Supper ●

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the once-for-all and historical mode in which the work of expiation was completed, the ascended and eternal mode by which its efficacy never ends, the daily and eucharistic mode through which the faithful come to dwell in Christ and he in them as his sacrifice continually becomes theirs and theirs his.

While these different modes remain truly distinct, they also form an inseparable unity. It is the unity of a single great sacrifice. It was once accomplished on the cross, then elevated in its efficacy to eternity, on which basis it is re-presented in the Word and by the Spirit for daily participation, reception and acknowledgement by the church. The sacramental means for this daily participation, reception and acknowledgement is the eucharist as communion and sacrifice.

IV Three questions about the eucharist have been examined in this essay: (i) how preaching and the eucharist are related in Christian worship, (ii) how the unio hypostatica might be related to the unio sacramentalis and (iii) how Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary might be related to the eucharistic sacrifice. On the first question, a resolution was proposed through the grammar of a ‘double asymmetry’, as derived from a suggestion of Barth’s. From one standpoint the priority and precedence would belong to preaching; from another it would belong to the eucharist. The second question moved towards ecumenical convergence by applying the logic of the ‘Chalcedonian pattern’, as again derived from Barth’s writings. Applied beyond and against him, the pattern established a basis for seeing the hypostatic and the sacramental unions as analogous examples of koinonia relations, despite their irreducible differences. Finally, on the basis of Barth’s ‘actualism’, but against his considered judgement, a proposal was sketched to explain how eucharistic sacrifice could be affirmed without compromise by a theology rooted in the Reformation, and in particular in the Reformed tradition. The once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary was seen as involving a perpetual operation that allowed for its continual eucharistic selfactualization. In these and other ways, Barth’s great dogmatic achievement, it was suggested, allows for fruitful ecumenical extensions.

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Liturgical postscript Are there any precedents for the Reformed churches in particular, and the Protestant churches in general, that could be drawn upon for guidance in incorporating the theme of eucharistic sacrifice into their liturgies? A few prayers and hymns may be noted. A liturgy from the Church of Scotland (1957) includes this eucharistic prayer: We bless you for his continual intercession and rule at your right hand, … and pleading his eternal sacrifice, we your servants set forth this memorial which he has commanded us to make.33

In a prayer from the Scottish Episcopal Church (1982), the theme of union with Christ is brought out more directly: Made one with him, we offer you these gifts and with them ourselves, a single, holy, living sacrifice.34

Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice, its perpetual efficacy and its eucharistic availability through the Holy Spirit, all receive fine expression in this prayer from the Church of England Liturgical Commission (ca. 1985): Father, as we plead his sacrifice made once for all on the cross, we remember his dying and rising to glory, and rejoice that he prays for us at your right hand: pour out your Holy Spirit over us and these gifts, which we bring before you from your own creation; show them to be for us the body and blood of your dear Son; unite in his eternal sacrifice all who share the food and drink of his new and unending life.35

Turning from prayers to hymns, an astonishing number by Charles Wesley have been collected by J. Ernest Rattenbury.36 For Victorian beauty and the 33

34

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36

Cited by Max Thurian, Eucharistic Memorial, vol. 2 (London : Lutterworth Press, 1961), p. 106. Here lightly edited. Cited in Kenneth Stevenson, ‘Eucharistic Sacrifice: What Can We Learn from Christian Antiquity?’, in Essays on Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Early Church, ed. Colin Buchanan (Bramcote Notts: Grove Books, 1984), pp. 26–33, on p. 32n. Cited in Bryan D. Spinks, ‘The Ascension and Vicarious Humanity of Christ’, in Time and Community, ed. J. Neil Alexander (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 1990), pp. 185–201, on p. 201 n. 83. J. Ernest Rattenbury, The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley (Cleveland: Order of St. Luke Publications, 1990).

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keen spirit of the Reformation, however, William Bright’s great hymn of 1874 is unsurpassed and provides a fitting note on which to end: And now, O Father, mindful of the love that bought us, once for all, on Calvary’s Tree, and having with us him that pleads above, we here present, we spread forth to thee that only Offering perfect in thine eyes, the one, true, pure, immortal Sacrifice. Look, Father, look on his anointed face, and only look on us as found in him; look not on our misusings of thy grace, our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim: for lo, between our sins and their reward we set the Passion of thy Son our Lord. And so we come: O draw us to thy feet, most patient Savior, who canst love us still; and by this food, so aweful and so sweet, deliver us from every touch of ill: in thine own service make us glad and free, and grant us never more to part with thee.

3

The Dimension of Depth: Thomas F. Torrance on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper Introduction ‘All the gifts of God set forth in baptism’, wrote John Calvin, ‘are found in Christ alone’ (Inst. IV.15.6).1 The baptismal gifts, for Calvin, were essentially three: forgiveness of sins, dying and rising with Christ and communion with Christ himself (IV.15.1, 5, 6). They were ordered, however, in a particular way. Communion with Christ, Calvin considered, was in effect the one inestimable gift that included within itself the other two benefits of forgiveness and rising with Christ from the dead.2 Forgiveness and eternal life were thus inseparable from Christ’s person and so from participatio Christi through our communion with him. Only by participating in Christ through communion could the divine gifts set forth in baptism be truly received. Any severing of these gifts from Christ himself would result only in empty abstractions. No spiritual gift – neither forgiveness nor eternal life nor any other divine benefit – was ever to be found alongside Christ or apart from him. Christ’s saving benefits were inherent in his living person. Only in and with his person were they set forth and available to the church. Communion with Christ was thus bound up with Christ’s person in his saving uniqueness. He himself and he alone, for Calvin and for the whole Reformation, was our 1

2

Quicquid enim in Baptismo proponitur donorum Dei, in Christo uno reperitur. Unless otherwise indicated, I am using my own translations, though I tend to follow Allen closely. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., tr. John Allen (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Education, 1928). Cf. Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin (London: Lutterworth Press, 1956), p. 220.

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wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (I Cor. 1:30).3 It was only a short step from the centrality of communion with Christ to the idea of one baptism common to Christ and his church. As the sign and seal of participatio Christi, baptism meant that the baptized person was granted a share in Christ’s own baptism in the Jordan, which he had undergone for the sake of sinners. A person’s baptism here and now partook of Christ and his baptism there and then. Calvin wrote: He honored and sanctified baptism in his own body that he might have it in common with us as the most firm bond of union and fellowship that he humbled himself to form with us; and so Paul proves us to be God’s children from the fact that we have put on Christ in baptism (Gal. 3:27). Thus we see that the completion [complementum] of baptism is in Christ, and for this reason we call him the proper object of baptism [proprium Baptismi obiectum]. (IV.15.6)

The general reason why Christ received baptism was that he might render full obedience to the Father. And the special reason was that he might consecrate baptism in his own body, that we might have it in common with him.4 From baptism our faith receives the sure testimony that we are not only ingrafted into Christ’s death and life, but are so united with Christ himself as to partake in all his benefits. (IV.15.6)

In baptism, Calvin believed, we so put on Christ that we enter into inseparable union with him in his dying and rising for our sakes. Our baptism finds its ground and fulfilment not in itself but in him. Baptism testifies that we are so 3

Calvin, Comm. on I Cor. 1:30: Since there are many who, while they do not wish to withdraw deliberately from God, do however seek something apart from Christ, just as if he alone did not contain all things in himself (ac si non omnia in se unus contineret), Paul tells us, in passing, what, and how great, are the treasures with which Christ is provided, and in doing so he seeks to describe at the same time our mode of existence (modus subsistendi) in Christ…. Finally, let us not seek the half, or some part (non dimidium aut partem aliquam), but the totality of the benefits in Christ (bonorum omnium) which are listed here. For Paul does not say that he has been given to us as something to add on to, or to be a buttress (in supplementum vel adminiculum) to righteousness, holiness, wisdom and redemption, but he ascribes to Christ alone the complete fulfillment of them all (sed solidum omnium effectum ei soli assignat).

4

(Calvin, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960], pp. 45–47.) Significantly, a survey of the standard scripture index to Calvin’s Institutes indicates that in that work no New Testament passage is cited more frequently than I Cor. 1:30 (though it is twice matched – by Jn. 20:23 and Matt. 16:19). The frequency is twelve citations. Comm. on Matt. 3:13.

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united with Christ that we share in all his blessings. His baptism becomes ours, and ours becomes his, because in his very body he has consecrated baptism for us by making it his own. Calvin’s theology of baptism, obviously very rich, is much richer than can be indicated here. In and with this richness, however, are also certain perplexities and ambiguities. One of these concerns what might be called the complex temporality of salvation. Ever vexing for the church, this question remains unresolved, right down to the present day. Baldly stated, the question for Calvin is whether he is as consistently christocentric in his understanding of salvation as his commitments would seem to require. The basic options come down to two. Either salvation must be spoken of essentially in the perfect tense, or else also in the present tense alongside the perfect tense. (The use of the future tense would coordinate with which option is taken.) If salvation is essentially in the perfect tense, then its present and future tenses must be seen as modes of receiving and participating in the one salvation already accomplished in Christ. If, on the other hand, salvation occurs essentially also in the present tense alongside the perfect tense, then its present and future tenses must somehow supplement and complete a process that Christ initiated in his earthly existence, but did not entirely fulfil. An image for the first idea would be a circle with its centre and periphery, whereas an image for the second would be an ellipse with two foci.5 The circle would mean that salvation is to be found solely and entirely in Christ the centre, whereas the ellipse would mean that Christ at one focal point is the condition for the possibility of a salvation that does not become fully actual until appropriated at the other focal point by the church. Either salvation is a perfect actuality in Christ to be received and partaken of for what it is, or else it is an existential possibility that becomes fully actual and complete only upon the church’s reception. In the latter case, the act of reception is constitutive of salvation, in the former, strictly speaking, it is not. In the former case, the act of reception becomes the mode of participation in a salvation complete and perfect in itself. Calvin’s ambiguities at this point, which are often quite subtle, can be no more than suggested. Suffice it to say that his standard remarks about regeneration 5

These images, of course, have been famously proposed by Karl Barth, who saw what was at stake, and who powerfully urged the first option. For a discussion unsurpassed in its incisiveness, whether in Barth’s own corpus or elsewhere, see his Church Dogmatics, vol. I, part 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), pp. 250–57.

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seem to hover ambiguously around both possibilities, falling now to one side, then to the other, with no real ultimate resolution. Sometimes ‘regeneration’ or ‘sanctification’ seems essentially a matter of participatio Christi (option 1), whereas elsewhere it seems more nearly an existential supplement alongside justification by the perfect righteousness of Christ (option 2). For example, the first option would seem to be in view when Calvin writes, ‘Do you wish, then, to obtain righteousness in Christ (iustitiam in Christo)? You must first possess Christ, but you cannot possess (possidere) him without becoming a partaker of his sanctification (sanctificationis eius particeps), for he cannot be divided’ (III.16.1). Here sanctification seems to be essentially a matter of possidere et participatio Christi. The accent falls on the totality, indivisibility and fullness of what is already actual in Christ. The same accent seems evident in the statement with which we began: ‘All the gifts of God set forth in baptism are found in Christ alone’ (Inst. IV.15.6). More in line with the second option, however, would be a statement like this: ‘We cannot be justified by faith alone, if we do not live in holiness’.6 Here Calvin’s wording seems open to the view that living in holiness is a necessary condition for justification, or at least a necessary supplement alongside it, as opposed to its provisional manifestation. Or again, ‘We obtain regeneration by Christ’s death and resurrection only if we are sanctified by the Spirit and imbued with a new and spiritual nature’ (IV.15.6).7 Here he would seem close to the idea that being imbued with a new and spiritual nature is the condition for obtaining regeneration, as if regeneration were the uncertain telos instead of the assured basis of whatever takes place in nobis through faith.8 Whether these latter statements and others like them in Calvin could finally be interpreted as in line with the first option after all, or whether that would 6 7

8

Non posse nos gratis iustificare sola fide, quin simul sancte vivamus. Comm. on I Cor. 1:30 (ET, p. 46). Regenerationem vero ita demum ab euis morte et resurrectione consequimur, si per Spritum sanctificati imbuamur nova et spirituali natura. Here I have cited from the Battles translation: Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p. 1308 (my italics). My point is not that this translation is necessarily the best rendering of the Latin, only that Calvin’s wording is ambiguous enough that it can be pressed in this direction. Allen and Beveridge, in their different translations, both soften the si to ‘when’. In context, in these passages as elsewhere, Calvin is clearly concerned to counter Catholic criticisms that justification, as taught by the Reformation, abolishes sanctification. Too often, however, in countering this allegation, Calvin resorts to formulations that leave him open to misunderstanding on another flank. What he seems to mean is that justification, properly understood, is not only compatible with sanctification, but also includes it. But the perfect tense of sanctification in Christ seems threatened – or at least rendered ambiguous – in various ways, for example, by his use of conditional clauses beginning with the word ‘if ’ (or its equivalent).

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even be a good idea, need not be pursued here. What are arguably at least ambiguities in Calvin’s discourse, however, became less and less ambiguous as the Reformed tradition went on. Later forms of pietism, puritanism and eventually modern liberalism, existentialism and liberationism undeniably shifted the temporality of salvation away from the first option to the second. The definitive locus of salvation came increasingly to be seen not as what has taken place in Christ, but instead as what takes place in us or among us. Although the first option had deep roots not only in the New Testament but also in patristic and Reformation theology, its inner logic slipped more or less into obscurity. The idea that the existential moment of salvation could be seen as participating baptismally and eucharistically in a salvation that it did not constitute but purely received, and whose perfection in Christ remained hidden to faith until the final consummation (cf. Col. 3:3), became at best a distant memory. Emphasis on the objective character of salvation in Christ could be dismissed with ready assent as little more than an obvious absurdity – for example, as a stone thrown down from heaven (Tillich’s reproach against Barth). In any case the ellipse with two foci proved inherently unstable over time, tending to resolve itself into another circle with a different centre. In modernity (and ‘post-modernity’) humanity and its much vaunted spirituality became the pivotal term, around which all else was thought somehow to revolve. The immense contribution of Thomas F. Torrance to an understanding of the sacraments in the Reformed tradition can be appreciated in this setting. What Torrance accomplishes is, in effect, to bring Calvin and Barth together into a brilliant new synthesis. Like Calvin (but unlike Barth), Torrance sees baptism and the Lord’s Supper as forms of God’s Word, establishing and renewing the church in its union and communion with Christ. Like Calvin, that is, he sees the sacraments as vehicles of testimony that impart the very Christ whom they proclaim (by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit), as opposed to Barth, who insists on seeing them ‘ethically’ as no more than a grateful human response to a prior divine grace not mediated or set forth by the sacraments themselves. (Indeed, even using the term ‘sacraments’ for baptism and the Lord’s Supper is something that Barth notoriously abandons.) However, like Barth (but unlike Calvin), Torrance has an unambiguous grasp on how salvation must be spoken of essentially in the perfect tense. He thereby

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uses a consistently christocentric soteriology to ‘disambiguate’ (to borrow an inelegant term from recent philosophy) Calvin’s view of the sacraments. The result is surely the most creative Reformed breakthrough on the sacraments in twentieth-century theology, and arguably the most important Reformed statement since Calvin.

Torrance on the sacrament of baptism Like Barth, Torrance teaches that ‘the primary mysterium or sacramentum is Jesus Christ himself ’.9 The sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, therefore, point away from themselves to him. The reference to Jesus Christ necessarily brings with it a complex temporality. The risen Jesus Christ is continuously present to the church, clothed in his Word and his Spirit, as the one who has accomplished the world’s salvation in and of himself. What takes place in the present tense (through Word and Spirit) fulfils but does not supplement what has already taken place in the perfect tense (through Christ’s Incarnation and perfect obedience). ‘Baptism sets forth’, writes Torrance, ‘… what God has already done in Christ, and through his Spirit continues to do in and to us …. Our part is only to receive it, for we cannot add anything to Christ’s finished work’ (pp. 87–88). Salvation’s present tense manifests and fulfils its perfect tense. Baptism therefore always involves a twofold reference. ‘Baptism is … not a sacrament of what we do but of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, in whom he has bound himself to us and bound us to himself, before ever we could respond to him’ (p. 103, italics added). That is the first and primary reference. ‘But it is also the sacrament of what God now does in us by his Spirit, uniting us with Christ in his faithfulness and obedience to the Father and making that the ground of our faith’ (p. 103, italics added). That is the second and dependent reference, internally (not externally) related to the first. The relation of the present to the perfect tense is, we might say, an analytic not a synthetic relation. The perfect tense of our salvation in Christ becomes what Torrance calls ‘the dimension of depth’ in the sacraments (p. 83). The perfect tense indicates 9

Thomas F. Torrance, ‘The One Baptism Common to Christ and His Church’, in Theology in Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 82–105; on p. 82. References hereafter in the text.

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the ‘ultimate ground’ of the sacraments, that which constitutes ‘their content, reality and power’ (p. 82). The dimension of depth in the sacraments involves not just the perfect tense in general, however, but more specifically ‘the act of God fulfilled in the humanity of Christ’ (p. 82). It is the reference to Christ’s humanity that is crucial. The sacraments can be seen in their depth only when traced back to Christ’s humanity in its vicarious significance – ‘to their ultimate ground in the Incarnation and in the vicarious obedience of Jesus Christ in the human nature which he took from us and sanctified in and through his selfoffering to the Father’ (p. 82). The efficacy of the sacraments – their content, reality and power – is ultimately grounded in ‘the whole historical Jesus from his birth to his resurrection and ascension’ (p. 82). Baptism, for example, is focused beyond itself ‘upon the one saving act of God in Jesus Christ …. When the church baptizes in his name, it is actually Christ himself who is savingly at work, pouring out his Spirit upon us and drawing us into the power of his vicarious life, death and resurrection’ (p. 83). At the heart of the perfect tense for Torrance, and of the sacraments in their dimension of depth, is therefore the idea of Christ’s vicarious humanity. This idea involves, as we have seen, the entire history of the Incarnation – ‘what has been done for us in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ’ (p. 88). Vicarious humanity means that everything Christ has done and suffered in his humanity was done and suffered in our place and for our benefit. ‘Our adoption, sanctification and regeneration have already taken place in Christ, and are fully enclosed in his birth, holy life, death and resurrection undertaken for our sakes’ (p. 89). The perfect tense then determines the present tense. Salvation comes to us ‘more by way of realization or actualization in us of what has already happened to us in him than as a new effect resulting from [his finished work]’ (p. 89). Note that any residual ambiguity in Calvin’s soteriology of sanctification has here been dispelled. It is in the vicarious humanity of Christ that the definitive sanctification of our humanity has taken place. In the assumption of our flesh (assumptio carnis) to his own person, as lived out in his birth, life, death and resurrection, our human nature has been judged, purified and renewed. Christ’s vicarious sanctification of our humanity has, we might say, the status of a ‘concrete universal’: its saving significance resides in its radical particularity. It is unique, all-embracing and all-sufficient, not just prototypical

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or provisional. It is a blessing into which we are incorporated, a reality in which we come to participate, not just a model to which we are conformed.10 Our inclusion in the church as the body of Christ is based in the perfect tense: ‘We have been adopted through his incarnational assumption of us into himself, sanctified through the obedient self-offering of Christ in his life and death, and we have been born again in his birth of the Spirit and in his resurrection from the dead’ (p. 89). Vicarious humanity means that when Christ entered into the hopelessness of our plight, he also at the same time took us up into the perfect obedience that he offered to the Father. Having assumed our twisted humanity, he has sanctified and renewed it from within. By virtue of his vicarious obedience (both passively and actively),11 he himself and he alone is our salvation – its content, reality and power. ‘That is why baptism is understood properly only in that dimension of depth reaching back into Jesus Christ himself, for it belongs to the peculiar nature of baptism that in it we partake of a redemption that has already been accomplished for us in Christ’ (p. 89). Seen in this dimension of depth, our baptism involves a twofold movement of simultaneity – from Christ to us and from us to him. As Christ communicates himself to us in baptism, so he also joins us at the same time to himself. Therefore, as we receive him into our hearts, we are also drawn at the same time into living participation in him. Both aspects of this twofold movement find their depth in the perfect tense of his assumptio carnis. Having already bound himself to us and us to himself by his Incarnation, he 10

Cf. the phrase drawn from Cranmer’s great eucharistic Prayer of Thanksgiving: ‘…that we are members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people’. (The Book of Common Prayer [New York: Oxford University Press, 1979], p. 339 [Rite I].) For U.S. Presbyterians, a similar phrase could still be found in The Book of Common Worship (Philadelphia: The Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian church in the U.S.A., 1946, 1960), p. 164. In the newer Presbyterian Book of Common Worship (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), the phrase completely disappears.

11

The implication of this for an understanding of the saving life and activity of Jesus is immense. It laid the emphasis not only on what was called Jesus’ ‘passive obedience,’ in which he submitted to the divine judgment upon us, but also upon his ‘active obedience’, in which he took our place in all our human activity before God the Father, such as our acts of faith, obedience, prayer, and worship. To be united with Christ is to be joined to him in his life of faith, obedience, prayer, and worship, so that we must look away from our faith, obedience, prayer and worship to what Christ is and does for us in our place and on our behalf.

Torrance, ‘The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition’, The Donnell Lecture delivered at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, 1988, unpublished ms., pp. 5–6. (Although they share the same basic christocentric emphasis on salvation’s perfect tense, Torrance characteristically places much more weight than Barth on the priestly, vicarious and mediating nature of Christ’s active obedience.)

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now actualizes and manifests this blessing in a secondary, dependent way. In baptism, the perfect tense of our salvation in him becomes present to us for what it is – by making us present to itself; its objective reality becomes, as it were, subjectively accessible and actual. On the basis of ‘his atoning and sanctifying incorporation of himself into our humanity’, Christ acts upon us in baptism through his Spirit so that his finished work ‘takes effect in us as our ingrafting into Christ and as our adoption into the family of the heavenly Father’ (p. 88). Baptism is thus well described, with Irenaeus, as ‘the sacrament of the incarnational reversal’ (p. 94).12 Just as Adam’s disobedience was reversed by Christ’s obedience, so also is our lost condition reversed through our participation in Christ’s new humanity, first objectively (extra nos), then subjectively (in nobis). ‘Hence the reality of our baptism is to be found in the objective reality of what has already been accomplished for us in Jesus Christ and is savingly operative in us through union and communion with Christ effected by the Spirit’ (p. 94, italics added). Our baptism ‘is not a separate or a new baptism but a participation in the one all-inclusive baptism common to Christ and his church, wrought out vicariously in Christ alone but into which he has assimilated the church through the baptism of the one Spirit, and which applies to each of us through the same Spirit’ (p. 88). In our baptism, then, the risen Christ’s saving obedience unto death (perfect tense) and his self-communication (present tense) bring us not only to the point of reception and participation but also into living communion. Again, the perfect tense is the dimension of depth in the present tense; his finished work pro nobis the content, reality, power of his self-communication. Christ’s selfcommunication involves at least three things simultaneously: our receiving of him into our hearts, our participating in him personally and our communing with him eternally. When we receive the one Jesus Christ by faith, he himself enters our hearts, that he may dwell in us forever, and we in him. Just as there is no present tense without the perfect tense, so also there is no reception without 12

For Irenaeus Baptism is certainly the sacrament of the whole incarnational reversal of our lost and disobedient estate in Adam which was carried through in the penetration of the Son of God into our alienation in the birth of Jesus, in the whole course of his obedient and saving humanity from infancy to maturity, in his death and resurrection and ascent to the right hand of the Father. As such the reality of our baptism is to be found in the objective reality of what has already been accomplished for us in Christ alone.

Torrance, ‘Draft of Interim Report’, Special Commission on Baptism, The Church of Scotland, 1956, ms. pp. 20–21; cf. Interim Report, May 1956, pp. 13–14.

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participation, and no participation without communion. Reception and participation take place ultimately for the sake of communion.13 We might say, very roughly, that reception is oriented to the past, participation to the present, and communion to the future. Reception of Christ means acknowledging who he is and what he has done for our sakes. Participation in Christ means being clothed and renewed by his perfect righteousness.14 Communion with Christ is eternal life itself. We receive him by grace through faith, partake of him by virtue of his vicarious humanity, and enjoy communion with him in reciprocal love and knowledge. As the purpose of communion would suggest, the christocentric reality of our salvation, as manifest in baptism, is also essentially trinitarian. By virtue of our union with Christ, we are drawn into the eternal communion of the Holy Trinity. The twofold movement from Christ to us and from us to Christ occurs in a specifically trinitarian context. When re-described from this perspective, it is, as Torrance notes, a movement that comes to us (a) from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit while also being, at the same time, a movement bringing us (b) in the Holy Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. The Incarnation is the vehicle of mediation between heaven and earth, between the Trinity and the community of faith. This mediation moves in two ways at once. It brings God down to us in human flesh in order that, through that same flesh, we might be elevated to communion with God. Through the incarnate Son, who is our Mediator, the triune God opens ‘his inner life and being to communion with us’ and ‘creates genuine reciprocity between us and himself ’ (p. 100). 13

14

By distinguishing ‘participation’ from ‘communion’ (words which can overlap in meaning), I am using the former in the ontic sense of ‘real union’ and the latter in the more noetic sense involving cognition and volition. Torrance does not reject the Reformation idea of ‘imputation’, but following Luther, Calvin and Barth, he places it in the context of participation. Justification has to be understood, he writes, ‘not just in terms of imputed righteousness but in terms of a participation in the righteousness of Christ which is transferred to us through union with him’ (‘The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition’, ms. p. 6). The forensic imagery of imputation, as Torrance is keenly aware, although helpful is not sufficient. Its great value lies in clarifying that Christ’s righteousness is not bestowed upon us piecemeal but as an indivisible whole. Its insufficiency, on the other hand, lies in the misleading implication, seized upon by opponents of the Reformation, that our righteousness in Christ is no more than a ‘legal fiction’. The context of union and communion with Christ helps overcome this misunderstanding – as also does the free, gracious and miraculous nature of the transaction that Luther and Calvin in particular grasped especially from their reading of Rom. 4, in which the justification of the godless, through their being clothed in the righteousness of Christ, is perceived as being just as much a free miracle of grace as the creation of the world ex nihilo and the resurrection of Christ from the dead. See Torrance, ‘Justification: Its Radical Nature and Place in Reformed Doctrine and Life’, in Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), pp. 150–68, esp. pp. 153, 155.

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This profound reciprocity in word and act is fulfilled in Christ and in the Spirit: in Christ, for it is in hypostatic union that the self-giving of God really breaks through to man, when God becomes himself what man is and assumes man into a binding relation to his own being; and in the Spirit, for then the self-giving of God actualizes itself in us as the Holy Spirit creates in us the capacity to receive it and lifts us up to participate in the union and communion of the incarnate Son with the heavenly Father. (p. 100) By virtue of the humanity of the incarnate Son, God has ‘opened his divine being for human participation’ (p. 101). With the Incarnation our human nature has been assumed once and for all into the mutual relation between the Father and the Son. By our elevation into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity through our union with the incarnate Son, ‘God interacts with us in such a way as really to give himself to us and make us share in his own inner life and light and love’ (p. 101). The ‘point of contact’ between the Trinity and us (as between us and the Trinity) is thus Christ’s vicarious humanity, existing as it does in hypostatic union with the eternal Son. Our union with the person of Christ, which Calvin called an unio mystica, presupposes the hypostatic union, but does not reduplicate it.15 We share in the communion of the Trinity as we are joined to the person of the incarnate Son by virtue of our participation in his vicarious humanity. ‘Only by way of the Incarnation’ are we ‘given access to, and knowledge of God in his own inner life and being as Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ (p. 100). We are thus given a share through the Spirit in the communion of the incarnate Son with the Heavenly Father. That is the deepest reason, theologically, why baptism is administered in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (p. 102). The vicarious humanity of Christ is the central element in Torrance’s understanding of baptism. It is the element that holds together the present tense of salvation with the perfect tense so that the finished work of Christ is properly manifest as the dimension of depth in the sacrament of baptism. At the same time it is also the central element that joins God to us and us 15

Two possible mistakes need to be avoided here. One is to reduce the unio hypostatica downwards to the unio mystica. This is the typical mistake of modern liberal theology. The other moves in the opposite direction by dissolving the unio mystica upwards into the unio hypostatica. This is the typical mistake of various high sacramental ecclesiologies. By seeing the unio hypostatica as absolutely sui generis and the unio mystica as pertaining to our union with the person of the incarnate Son by virtue of our participation in his vicarious humanity, Torrance preserves their proper distinction, and so the proper unity-in-distinction (and distinction-in-unity) between Christ and his church.

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to God in a properly christocentric and trinitarian way. As the mediating factor joining church, Incarnation and Trinity, it powerfully illuminates the historically vexing in nobis aspect of our salvation by clarifying the profound interconnections among reception, participation and communion. It improves on Calvin by grounding the present tense of sanctification unmistakably in the perfect tense. It improves on Barth by eliminating the false dichotomy that he posits between ‘witness’ and ‘mediation’, as if baptism could be a witness to grace without also being at the same time a means of Christ’s self-mediation to us. Finally, it improves on what Torrance calls ‘flat’ views of the sacramental rite of baptism, as if it were the church (not Christ himself and Christ alone in and through the church) which is somehow also the agent and substance of our salvation, or as if salvation were essentially a spiritual process initiated by the sacrament of baptism, rather than Christ’s incorporating of us into union and communion with himself in his finished, perfect and sufficient saving work (pp. 83, 98–99).

Torrance on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper The discussion of the sacraments in Torrance’s theology is ecumenical in orientation. We might think of it as attempting to combine ‘the Protestant principle’ with ‘Catholic substance’ – not so much in Tillich’s sense as in another sense all his own. The Protestant principle is not diluted to ‘prophetic protest’, nor is Catholic substance reduced to polymorphous ‘concrete embodiments’ of indeterminate spiritual presence. Rather, for Torrance, something more robust and venerable would be meant. The Protestant (and Patristic) principle would mean salvation in and by Christ alone, while Catholic substance would mean baptism and the Lord’s Supper as specific sacramental forms of the one saving act of God in Christ and through the Spirit. Again, with the Lord’s Supper as also with baptism, salvation’s perfect tense is set forth as the dimension of depth informing the present tense, the vicarious humanity of Christ is the element central to them both, and the purpose of reception and participation is eternal life in communion with God. However, whereas baptism involves our once for all incorporation into Christ and his community, the Lord’s Supper or the eucharist involves the

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continual renewal over time of our communion with Christ in the church. Accordingly, the ‘dimension of depth’ (a term Torrance uses again here) needs to be described in a slightly different way. Although the definitive significance of the perfect tense clearly remains, the accent shifts, when we consider the eucharist, to Christ’s one saving work in its eternal and perpetual validity. At the same time the inseparability of Christ’s person from his work is also accentuated, regardless of whether the focus is on the present or the perfect tense, because there is no person without the work, and no work without the person. The risen Christ lives eternally and perpetually in his one vicarious, perfect, and finished work – even as the work lives also in him. In a way that endures, the work is in his person even as his person is in the work. ‘What he has done once and for all in history’, writes Torrance, ‘has the power of permanent presence in him. He is present in the unique reality of his incarnate Person, in whom Word and Work and Person are indissolubly one’.16 What he has done in history has validity for both time and eternity. On the ground of ‘his one perfect all-sufficient sacrifice’, Christ presents us continuously to the Father in a way that calls for ‘our continuous living communion with him as the Son’ (p. 111). His being can never be separated from his action, for in the person of the incarnate Son, ‘being and act are inseparably one’ (p. 135). Therefore, ‘all that he has done for us in his union with us … remains a present hypostatic reality creating and inviting communion with us’ (p. 135). The real presence of Christ in the eucharist is therefore his presence in the unity of his person and work. His personal presence brings with it the presence of his finished work in all its content, reality and power. The perfect tense of his work is present, we might say, in and with his person. ‘It is the whole Jesus Christ whose historical life and passion, far from being past, persist through the triumph of the resurrection over all corruption and decay’ (p. 135). It is thus the whole Jesus Christ who as ‘continuing living reality’ mediates his real presence to us, in the unity of his person and work, ‘through the Spirit … in the eucharistic worship of the church’ (p. 135). In the eucharist this mediation of the whole Christ takes place by virtue of his real presence to us in his body and blood. ‘Body and blood’, as Torrance keenly perceives, involve a reference to Christ in his priestly significance. ‘The key to the understanding of the 16

Torrance, ‘The Pascal Mystery of Christ and the Eucharist’, in Theology in Reconciliation, pp. 106–38; on p. 120. References hereafter in the text.

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eucharist is to be sought in the vicarious humanity of Jesus, the priesthood of the incarnate Son’ (p. 110). Intercession is the essence of the priestly office. The intercession of Christ is basically twofold: first, he interceded for us by his sacrificial death in our place and on our behalf; then, upon his resurrection and ascension, he continues to intercede for us by offering himself, and us in union and communion with himself, to the Father. The flesh of the Word made flesh, the body and blood of the incarnate Son, are the perpetual means of our union and communion with Christ, and of his union and communion with us, in the exercise of his priestly role. Through the same body and blood once sacrificed on the cross of Golgotha, he now gives himself to us perpetually in the eucharist and offers us eternally to the Father. Torrance writes: The union of Jesus Christ with us in body and blood by virtue of which he became our Priest and Mediator before God demands as its complement our union with him in his body and blood, in drawing near to God and offering him our worship with, in and through Christ, while his continuous living presentation of us before the Father on the ground of his one perfect all-sufficient sacrifice calls for our continuous living communion with him as the Son. It is in this union and communion with Christ the incarnate Son who represents God to us and us to God that the real import of the Lord’s Supper becomes disclosed, for in eating his body and drinking his blood we are given to participate in his vicarious self-offering to the Father. (p. 111) The real presence is the presence of the Saviour in his personal being and atoning self-sacrifice, who once and for all gave himself up on the cross for our sakes but who is risen from the dead as the Lamb who has been slain but is alive for ever more, and now appears for us in the presence of the Father as himself prevalent and eternal propitiation. (p. 120, slightly altered)

Although Torrance presupposes a real eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharist, he does not, in the essay under discussion, propound a theory of how these might be related to the eucharistic elements of bread and wine. Similarly, in the baptism essay previously discussed, no theory is set forth for understanding just how the baptismal waters themselves might be related to Christ’s cleansing and sanctifying of us by his Spirit, in uniting us with his vicarious humanity. The general tenor of the essays would seem to suggest, however, that the relations of signum and res are more nearly

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instrumental than parallel or symbolic. The elements, in other words, seem to be instruments of Christ through his Spirit, attesting in the sacraments what they mediate, and mediating what they attest. What they attest and mediate in each case, however, is the one whole Jesus Christ in his full depth so that he is acknowledged as perfected in history, present perpetually, and valid eternally in the significance of his vicarious humanity. Torrance interprets the question of eucharistic sacrifice along much the same lines as he does real presence. The one priestly sacrifice of Jesus Christ involves a twofold movement in various temporal forms. The twofold sacrificial movement consists of (a) Christ’s self-giving to us in the Spirit and (b) his self-offering of us to the Father in such a way that (c) the self-giving and the self-offering are one. Moreover, the one priestly sacrifice of Christ has a definitive and originative form (as signified by the perfect tense) which then serves as the content, reality and power of all subsequent and derivative forms (as signified by the present tense). Christ continues to give himself to us today in the eucharist as the one who has already given himself to us, unsurpassably, in his life, death and resurrection. The eucharistic form of his priestly sacrifice participates in the incarnational form, yet without adding to it or supplementing it, as if the incarnational form of were not already complete and perfect in itself. The eucharistic form does not repeat the unrepeatable, but it does attest what it mediates, and mediate what it attests – the one whole Jesus Christ, who in his vicarious humanity, his body and blood, is at once both the Giver and the Gift. The incarnational form of Christ’s one priestly sacrifice is thus perpetually present in and with its eucharistic form in the church. Together the two constitute an inseparable unity that nonetheless preserves their necessary distinction – without separation or division, without confusion or change and with strict precedence accorded to the Incarnation as fulfilled by the cross. That is, the precedence belongs completely to the incarnational form of Christ’s one priestly self-sacrifice. Upon it the eucharistic form is therefore completely dependent. With this proviso in place, however, the actual content, reality and power of the eucharistic sacrifice is entirely one and the same as that of the Incarnation as fulfilled by the cross. It is a matter of one reality, one priestly sacrifice of Christ, in two different temporal forms, such that the subsequent form (eucharistic) participates in, manifests and attests the originative form

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(incarnational) that is definitive, finished and all-sufficient. The eucharistic sacrifice is not a matter of repetition, but of participation, manifestation and witness. ‘If we are to understand aright what is traditionally spoken of as “the eucharistic sacrifice” ’, writes Torrance, ‘it will be important to discern clearly how these two aspects of Christ’s one saving work are related to each other: his self-giving to humankind and his self-offering to God’ (p. 117, slightly altered). The first aspect involves a movement from God to us. Christ came to participate in the depths of our hopeless plight in order that he might abolish it in himself. By his Incarnation he has bound himself to us while also binding us to himself. Incorporating himself into our humanity, he has given his very self to us, becoming bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. He has identified with us to the uttermost, ‘penetrating into the disobedient and corrupt condition of our human being, in order to pour out the love of God upon us, take away our sin and guilt, and endow us with divine holiness’ (p. 117). That is his saving work as it moves from heaven to earth. It is the aspect of his self-giving to us. The second aspect of his saving work is the reverse movement from earth to heaven. It is the aspect of his self-offering to God. The obedience that he offered to God he offered for us vicariously ‘as our own act towards God’ (p. 117). He consecrated himself for us in order that we might be consecrated through him. He offered himself to God, in holy obedience and atoning sacrifice, for our sakes so that ‘we, through sharing in his self-offering, may offer to God through him a holiness from the side of humankind answering to his own’ (p. 117, slightly altered). The key to this twofold movement is participation. Aphoristically stated: with the Incarnation, heaven participates in earth that earth might participate in heaven. God participates in human flesh that human flesh might participate in God. Holiness participates in corruption that corruption might be uncorrupted by participating in holiness. Christ binds us to himself in his incarnational self-giving unto death in order that he might bring us into living union and communion with himself in his eternal self-offering to God. This twofold movement is the dimension of depth in the eucharist. When we celebrate the eucharist ‘in memory of ’ our Lord, receiving his body and blood with the bread and the cup, ‘Christ through the Spirit is really present … taking up the eucharistic memorial we make of him as the concrete form of his own

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self-giving and self-offering, assimilating us … to himself and lifting us up in the closest union with himself … to the presence of the Father’ (p. 118). As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper in the church, we ‘offer Christ eucharistically to the Father through prayers and thanksgiving in his name as our only true worship’ (p. 118). What we do thus stands ‘in holy analogue and in union with what he has done for us in his self-offering and self-consecration to the Father, for it is done in the same eternal Spirit in whom he fulfilled his atoning sacrifice and now presents himself in our nature before the Father for us’ (p. 118). With our eucharistic sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, we participate in Christ’s own self-offering to the Father. Putting it the other way around, Christ, in his real presence, includes our eucharistic sacrifice in his and makes it his own. ‘His self-offering is utterly unique and completely vicarious … a self-offering made in our place, in our stead, and on our behalf which we could not make’ (p. 133). It was accomplished ‘once for all and does not need to be repeated’ (p. 133). But as such it is ‘eternally valid’ in God, and ‘eternally prevalent’ for us (p. 133), for the Gift is identical with the Giver, the Giver is identical with the Gift (p. 132), and the Offering and the Offerer are one (p. 133). The eucharistic sacrifice does not merely a correspond to Christ’s self-offering; it is a ‘participation through the Spirit in Christ’ in his entire self-giving and self-offering for us (p. 136). ‘Thus the eucharistic sacrifice means that we through the Spirit are so intimately united with Christ, by communion with his body and blood, that we participate in his self-consecration and self-offering to the Father and thus appear … before the Majesty of God … with no other sacrifice than the sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Mediator and High Priest’ (p. 134, italics original). Our sacrifice becomes his, even as his has already become ours, by virtue of his incarnational self-giving and self-offering, in other words, by virtue of his vicarious humanity, first in the perfect and then in the present tense. Torrance is careful to explain that participation takes place without synergism. ‘Synergism’ does not rule out all modes of cooperation between divine and human willing, but it does rule out all modes in which human willing is thought somehow to effect our salvation, even if in a secondary or subordinate way. Our participation in Christ, and here in particular, our eucharistic participation in his priestly self-offering to God, occurs strictly in the mystery of the Holy Spirit. The question is not the fact but the status of human willing and acting before God. As an ‘act of prayer, thanksgiving and

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worship’, the eucharist is undoubtedly ‘the act of the church’ (p. 109). But in the eucharist as elsewhere, it is the action of the Holy Spirit, not of the church, that brings us into living union and communion with Christ. The act of eucharistic worship in the church must be seen as an act ‘in which through the Spirit we are given to share in the vicarious life, faith, prayer, worship, thanksgiving and self-offering of Jesus Christ to the Father’ (p. 109). The eucharist is ‘not to be regarded as an independent act on our part in response to what God has already done for us in Christ’ (p. 109). It is rather an ‘act toward the Father already fulfilled in the humanity of Christ in our place and on our behalf, to which our acts in his name are assimilated and identified through the Spirit’ (p. 109). In the eucharist we are so intimately united to Christ through the Spirit that in and with our actions ‘it is Christ the incarnate Son who honors, adores and glorifies the Father’ (p. 109). In the eucharist it is by the Spirit that we truly receive God’s self-giving to us in the body and blood of Christ, and so also truly share ‘in the self-offering of the ascended Son’ to the Father, in that same body and blood, as ‘grounded in his passion and resurrection’ (p. 118).17 The mystery of Christ’s real presence in the eucharist, like the mystery of our reception of and participation in his body and blood, is a mystery to be adored and glorified, not a mystery to be explained. Torrance writes: How he is … present is only explicable from the side of God, in terms of his creative activity which by its very nature transcends any kind of explanation we can offer. That is what is meant by saying that he is really present through the Spirit, not that he is present only as Spirit, far less as some spiritual reality, but present through the same kind of inexplicable creative activity whereby he was born of the Virgin Mary and rose again from the grave. (p. 119–20, italics original) In this way [Reformation theology] sought to let the mystery of the real presence of Christ in the objective depth of his divine-human person and the eternal reality of his atoning sacrifice once for all perfected through the offering of his body, continually confront us in the eucharist, without attempting to explain how this actually takes place in terms of causal-spatial connections with which we operate in any natural philosophy, and therefore without having recourse to any other analogy than that which rests upon 17

The focus on Christ’s blood, though often repugnant to modern and Gentile sensibilities, is profoundly Hebraic in its priestly significance. See ‘Meditation on the Blood of Christ’, in George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 361–63.

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the hypostatic union of divine and human nature in Jesus Christ himself. (pp. 126–27, italics original)

The God who created the world out of nothing, who became incarnate in the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit and who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead is the same God who acts upon us in the eucharist. By the sheer sovereignty of his grace, this God is free to bring us into freedom, in and through the real presence of Christ. And so in the eucharist we are brought by a power not our own worthily to receive and partake of Christ’s body and blood, which, grounded in his sacrificial death and glorious resurrection, are at once his perpetual self-giving to us as well as his eternal self-offering for us, that we might be brought to eternal life in communion with the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion The one saving act of God through Christ and in the Spirit assumes, as Torrance understands it, a number of different temporal and substantive forms. One of these is the eucharist. Everything depends, however, on how the various forms of God’s one saving act are ordered in relationship to one another. Like baptism, the eucharist is no more than a mediating form of the one saving action, and not in any sense its constitutive form. Like the preaching of the gospel, the eucharist is always secondary and derivative in relation to the finished work of Christ, the one form of our salvation that is central, originative and definitive. No secondary form can do anything more than manifest, attest, mediate and participate in the one central form, precisely because Christ’s finished work of salvation, being once-for-all, perfect and all-sufficient, allows for no supplementation, repetition or increase. In its perfection, however, the finished work of Christ (opus perfectus) does allow for secondary forms of self-manifestation, self-attestation and self-mediation (i.e., Word and Sacrament) which participate in the central form without becoming confused with or changed into it (operatione perpetuus). With this accent on the opus perfectus, as focused on Christ’s fulfilment of his priestly office, and especially on the vicarious significance of his active and passive obedience by virtue of his Incarnation, Torrance upholds the

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Protestant principle that affirms salvation in and by Christ alone. At the same time, with a complementary stress on how the operatione perpetuus manifests, attests, mediates and participates in this one opus perfectus, especially as focused here on the body and blood of Christ as the eucharist’s true content, reality and power, Torrance also upholds Catholic substance. For without violating the Protestant principle, he makes sense of the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in and with the bread that we break and the cup that we bless. He also makes sense of the church’s eucharistic offering of Christ to the Father in a sacrifice of thanks and praise, as an offering that is graciously assimilated by Christ into his own eternal self-offering for our sakes (as grounded in his death and resurrection) to the Father. The mediating factor that joins the opus perfectus of Christ’s finished saving work with his ongoing operatione perpetuus is again the vicarious humanity of Christ, here particularly its real eucharistic presence to the church in the form of his body and blood. Torrance’s rich conception of this vicarious humanity amounts to a powerful theological and ecumenical advance in understanding the eucharist. It improves on Calvin, for example, by accepting while also surpassing his view of the sursum corda. For whereas Calvin was correct to stress, in effect, that we are elevated by the Spirit to participate in the incarnate Son’s eternal self-offering to the Father, he failed to see clearly at the same time that in and with the bread and the cup Christ is really present to the church, through the very same Spirit, in the vicarious humanity of his body and blood (pp. 118, 128). Torrance improves on Barth, furthermore, by again overcoming the unfortunate split Barth posited between the eucharist as a response to grace and the eucharist as also an indispensable manifestation, attestation, mediation and partaking of grace (pp. 109, 129). Finally, he improves on ‘flat’ views of the eucharist that lose the dimension of depth because they undervalue salvation’s perfect tense and blur it into the present tense. They focus improperly on the eucharistic rite in itself and on the church’s supposedly causal or constitutive actions – as opposed to the church’s receiving, manifesting, attesting, mediating and participating in the one saving divine action of salvation as historically perfected, perpetually present and eternally valid by the Father through the Son and in the Spirit (pp. 120, 122–25, 131).

4

The Eucharist and Social Ethics A good place to consider the social significance of the eucharist is Paul’s discussion in 1 Cor. 11:17–34. It is evident from this passage that Paul expected the Corinthian celebration of the Lord’s Supper to be a counter-cultural event, because he expected it to manifest the community’s new humanity in Christ. Yet instead of exemplifying the communal transformation that Christ had effected, the Corinthian eucharist served only to reproduce some of the worst contradictions evident in the surrounding culture. Paul’s censure was severe. Since 1 Cor. 11:17–34 has often been consulted because of its importance for understanding the institution of the Lord’s Supper, Paul’s most immediate concerns have sometimes been overlooked. The focus here will be on Paul’s original context and intent. A verse-by-verse analysis will make it possible to draw some conclusions at the end about the eucharist and social ethics.

Thesis and structure Paul’s primary concern in this passage is to confront abuses in eucharistic worship that have arisen in Corinth through social stratification. He appeals to a primitive Lord’s Supper tradition in order to correct the abuses. An analysis of his argument will lead to suggestions for Christian social ethics today. Paul draws upon norms that ought to govern Christian practices in corporate worship and social life. The passage exhibits a particular structure:1 A. Paul’s criticism of the abuses at the Lord’s Supper (11:17–22) 1

I would like to thank my colleague and former student Keith L. Johnson for showing me an unpublished essay he has written on 1 Cor. 11:17–34, which I have sometimes followed closely, as in this observation about the structure. I have also drawn freely from Chapter 7 of my book The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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B. The Last Supper tradition, which should inform their observance (11:23–26) A′. Paul’s instructions to correct the abuses at the Lord’s Supper (11:27–34)

A. Paul’s criticism of the abuses at the Lord’s Supper (11:17–22) Preliminary remarks Recent sociological research has clarified some of the more enigmatic aspects of this passage. It seems that the community would assemble in a wealthy member’s house where the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in conjunction with another meal. Though many details remain obscure, at least this much can be surmised: The church at Corinth was composed of people from different social strata, the wealthy and the poor, as well as slaves and former slaves. It was customary for participants in the Lord’s meal to bring from home their own food and drink. The wealthy brought so much food and drink that they could indulge in gluttony and drunkenness [in conformity with existing social customs]. The poor who came later, however, had little or nothing to bring, with the result that some went hungry …. The Corinthians’ meal … had become a social problem for the Christian community: (1) The meal made beforehand was apparently different in quantity and quality. (2) Some members [the wealthier] began eating before the others arrived and before the Lord’s supper took place. (3) … [T]he ones who arrived late [i.e., slaves, former slaves, and the poor] found no room in the tricliniumm which was the dining room [a privileged place] where regularly only twelve could recline for the meal.2

Another commentator describes the situation like this: The well-to-do would come early, while the slaves would arrive late. The latecomers would doubtless find no place to be besides the atrium of the house and would be entering hungrily a scene where others had already 2

Panayotis Coutsoumpos, Paul and the Lord’s Supper: A Socio-Historical Investigation (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), p. 105.

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reached the point of satiety …. [As] the wealthy came early, they joined the host in the dining room for the best food and drink. By the time the slaves gathered in the atrium to partake of the meager amount that they had brought or that was left, the early arrivals would be in their cups [i.e., drunk].3

The upshot was a pattern of hierarchical seating prior to the Lord’s Supper, with the best places reserved for those of higher rank. Disparities in food and drink were openly in evidence, in both quantity and quality, with some persons having more than enough while others had very little. The community was sundered by a display of conspicuous consumption at the expense of the poor and needy. It seems that the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in the course of an actual meal. No sharp distinction was drawn between the common meal, on the one hand, and the eucharistic bread and cup, on the other. The observance of the Supper would have taken place in the midst of the meal itself. Otherwise, it would be hard to make sense of the passage. It also seems that this gathering bore resemblances to Graeco-Roman banquets familiar at the time. An unofficial code of conduct governed these festivities. For example, ‘it was normal practice to rank one’s guests in terms of social status, with those of higher status eating with the host in the dining room and others eating elsewhere and getting poorer food’.4 The guests were expected to bring their own provisions, which would vary according to the personal resources of each one. When those attending were all of the same socio-economic status, the prevailing norms would not be disruptive. The church in Corinth, however, was not a socially homogenous group. It was a mixture of men and women, slaves and free, Jews and Greeks, and rich and poor. When combined with stratified social conventions, the diverse guest list meant that food and drink would not be equally distributed. Paul found the Corinthian practices to be contrary to the gospel and shocking to the conscience. Inappropriate cultural norms had triumphed over Christian behaviour. The real purpose of the eucharist was forgotten. 3

4

Charles H. Talbert, Reading Corinthians: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2002), p. 95. Ben Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), p. 241.

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Paul urged a new set of practices that would break with prevailing social norms. ‘Paul is intent on one thing: to uproot the Corinthians’ meal from the poisonous soil of Greco-Roman conventions and replant it in the nourishing soil of Christ’s loving sacrifice for others’.5 v. 17 But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. (ESV)

This verse marks a transition in the structure of the chapter (But …). It stands in evident contrast to v. 2, where the Corinthians were praised for their behaviour. Now, however, Paul is unable to commend them. As Fee observes, Paul ‘bursts forth with a rhetorical force altogether missing from the immediately preceding argument’.6 The verb synerchesthai (‘to come together’), which has a double meaning, appears for the first of five times (vv. 17, 18, 20, 33, 34). It can denote either ‘to assemble’ for a meeting or else, more specifically, ‘to be united’. While Paul uses the verb to mean ‘to assemble’, he also plays off the second sense, because when the Corinthians come together ‘they paradoxically do not come together in unity and peace’.7 Indeed, their gathering achieves exactly the opposite. Instead of building up the community, it ends up by damaging it. The Corinthians are worse off, Paul asserts, for having met. ‘The meal that was supposed to be a sign of their integration and unity has become a flash point highlighting their inequality and alienation’ (Garland, p. 536). v. 18 For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part.

Paul writes of their coming together ‘as a church’ (en ekklesia). Barrett comments, ‘The Corinthian assembly (ekklesia) is marked by division. The unity of 1 Cor. 10:17 is not yet achieved; indeed it is denied at the Supper itself ’.8 He adds: ‘This [disunity] is not treated as a reason for giving up the Supper, which, in Paul’s view, does not wait upon the realization of perfect unity; but is rather a means toward this realization’ (Ibid.). As Robertson and 5 6

7 8

David E. Garland, First Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003), pp. 534–35. Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987), p. 535. Richard B. Hays, First Cornithians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), p. 194. C. K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 261.

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Plummer note, ‘ “church” in the sense of a building for public worship cannot be meant; there were no such buildings’.9 ‘That it met … in the house of Gaius (cf. 1:14)’, Bruce suggests, ‘may be inferred from Rom. 16:33, where Gaius is called “host … to the whole church” ’.10 With a house large enough for church gatherings, Gaius would have belonged to the wealthy set. Paul states that he has heard about divisions in their assembly. The source of his knowledge may have been some church members of lower socio-economic status. Bruce even suggests that ‘Paul’s informants may have been “Chloe’s people” (as in 1:11) or his more recent visitors from Corinth (cf. 16:17)’ (Bruce, p. 109). Paul allows that on the whole he believes that the reports are accurate. Perhaps he reserves final judgement because his informants were poorer members of the community. He may have worried that they were not entirely disinterested observers (Fee, p. 537). What distresses Paul, however, is yet another instance of ‘divisions’ (schismata) in the community. He has been striving to combat such divisions throughout his letter. Those here do not seem to be identical with those in Chapter 1, nor again with those implied in Chapter 8. This time they are between the rich and the poor. Taken in context, schismata means that there are not yet separations from the church as opposed to dissensions within it (R&P, p. 239). Paul is keenly aware, however, that such dissensions have the potential to rupture the community more severely. v. 19 For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

This verse is notoriously perplexing. The phrase ‘in order that’ (hina) seems to imply that Paul somehow accepts the community’s factions as necessary or even as divinely ordained. But that would fly in the face of his unswerving opposition to communal divisions. Fee describes this statement as one of the ‘true puzzles of the letter’. He suggests that Paul may be referring to the divisions from an ‘eschatological perspective’ (Fee, p. 538). Campbell takes another tack, however, asking, ‘How could Paul casually refer to the inevitability of divisions after what he had said about divisions in the first chapter of this very letter?’11 9 10 11

Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, I Corinthians (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1911), p. 239. F.F. Bruce, I & II Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971), p. 109. R. Alastair Campbell, ‘Does Paul Acquiesce in Divisions at the Lord’s Supper?’ Novum Testamentum 33 (January 1991), p. 63.

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He argues for a freer translation: ‘For there actually has to be discrimination in your meetings, so that if you please, the elite may stand out from the rest’ (Ibid., p. 70). Perhaps it would be better to designate those whom Paul wants to ‘stand out’ (phaneroi) by using the term ‘faithful’ rather than ‘elite’. Those who are genuine or approved by God would be ‘the faithful’ (dokimoi) through whom divine providence would turn this evil tendency to good account (R&P, p. 240). The ominous threat of schism is a summons to faithfulness under the providence of God, whose will is that his people should be one. The faithful would be recognized as those who strive to overcome the threat of schism. vv. 20–21 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.

Calvin comments, ‘Paul now condemns the abuse that had crept in among the Corinthians’ observance of the Lord’s Supper, namely, their confusing of profane banquets with the sacred and spiritual feast, and as if that were not enough, mixing in contempt for the poor …. They desecrated the sacrament by observing it in the wrong way’. 12 They were erring, Calvin thinks, in more than one sense: (i) through ‘vanity, over-indulgence and intemperance’, (ii) through ‘supplementing their sacrifice by a feast’, and, not least, (iii) by humiliating those who were poor (Calvin, p. 240). Because of these evils Paul judges severely that what they are eating is not the Lord’s Supper. It is rather something contrary to the gospel. Any gathering marked by such disgraces could not be in accord with the Supper. Paul is exasperated at a spectacle where some go hungry while others over-indulge themselves. The verb prolambanein (‘to devour’) is particularly strong. The problem was not merely that the rich consumed their feast before the others arrived. The problem laid rather in the blatant disparity between the haves and the have-nots. The rich feasted in the presence of the poor, showing no inclination to share their food and drink. ‘Members of the church were expected to share their resources’, writes Barrett. Paul expected the rich ‘to bring more than they needed and to make provision for the poor’ (Barrett, 12

John Calvin, The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1960), p. 239 rev.

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p. 263). Instead they kept their provisions to themselves while the poor could only look on, perhaps eating the scraps left over. Calvin sums it up: And one is hungry. One bad aspect of the situation was that while the rich indulged themselves sumptuously, they appeared, in a way, to be mocking the poor for their poverty. Paul points to the inequality hyperbolically when he says that some are drunken while others are hungry. For some had the means of stuffing themselves, while others had next to nothing to eat. Thus the poor were exposed to the derision of the rich, or at least they were exposed to shame. It was, therefore, an unseemly spectacle, and not in accord with the Lord’s Supper. (Calvin, p. 241 rev.)

According to Paul, the Lord’s Supper could only cease to exist where indignity, humiliation and lack of generosity were the rule. Unseemly practices like these could only falsify the holy meal. It is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat. v. 22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

While self-indulgent feasts were well-known in Graeco-Roman culture, Paul regards them as an outrage if practised in gatherings of the church. He therefore vents his anger at the wealthy. Although he does not necessarily deny them the right to eat and drink as they please, he draws the line at the Lord’s Supper. Common meals in the church, he insists, must not violate Christian unity. At the very least, this unity would require an equitable sharing of food. Paul thus implores the rich to dine in their own homes and to cease humiliating the poor when the community gathers as ‘the church of God’. ‘The phrase tou Theou’, write Robertson and Plummer, ‘is added with solemnity to give emphasis to the profanity …. The majority of the Corinthian Christians would be poor’ (R&P, p. 242). In short, the vast majority, who have little, are disgraced by the minority, who have much. Paul is angry not only on behalf of the poor, but also for the sake of the church, which is called to be one in Christ. He is indignant that the rich conform so fully to this world while being transformed so little by Christ (cf. Rom. 12:1). He tells them pointedly that their actions are far from praiseworthy. Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

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To sum up: The celebration of the Lord’s Supper at Corinth was disfigured, as Paul saw it, by a sorry spectacle of inequalities: inequalities of class (haves/ have-nots) (v. 21), of status (high/low) (vv. 21–22), of consumption (excess/ want) (v. 21) and, perhaps most disturbingly, of regard (honour/shame) (v. 22). Paul analysed the disorder into two parts, a lesser and a greater. The lesser disorder was the conjunction of the two meals, and the solution was simply to disjoin them. Other meals, Paul urged, should take place at home (v. 22). While not directly denouncing the excesses of the privileged, Paul left little doubt that he saw them as contrary to the gospel, and especially to the unity of the eucharistic assembly. Humiliating those who had nothing (v. 22) was the greater disorder. It threatened the community by splitting it into factions (v. 19). The Corinthians had enmeshed themselves in a tangle of sorry contradictions between Christ and culture. By deferring to the wealthy at the expense of the poor, they could only undermine the integrity of church. Or do you despise the church of God …? (v. 22). The rich, through their practices, were virtually excommunicating themselves from the sacred meal.

B. The Last Supper tradition, which should inform their observance (11:23–26) Preliminary remarks ‘Up to this point’, writes Calvin, ‘Paul has been showing what was wrong; now he begins to teach them the best way to rectify matters’ (Calvin, p. 242). ‘Paul here asserts’, writes Barrett, ‘…that the words and acts of Jesus at the Last Supper should be taken as controlling the supper eaten by the church of his own day’ (Barrett, p. 264). This is the only instance, as Fee points out, where Paul cites from the Jesus traditions as we know them from the synoptic gospels (Fee, p. 545). For that reason it is of great interest. Nevertheless, regardless of how Paul’s citation may help in reconstructing the early Christian eucharist, this sort of reconstruction is unnecessary for understanding his admonition to the Corinthians. The important thing to discern is why Paul turns to this tradition in this context. It seems that he is not trying to teach the Corinthians something about how the Lord’s Supper originated or to correct their theology

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about it. On the contrary, he intends to draw a contrast between Jesus at the Last Supper and the Corinthians in their own assemblies. The disorders at Corinth struck a blow to the heart of the community. Humiliating the poor, neglecting the needy, and engaging in conspicuous consumption at the Lord’s Supper were affronts to the gospel. By contrast, Christ’s sacrificial sharing of himself, under the forms of his body and blood (vv. 23–26), had social and ethical implications. It required believers not only to conform to Christ in his sacrificial self-giving (cf. Eph. 5:2), but also to rise above cultural antagonisms of religion, ethnicity, status, and gender in the community: for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28). In the eucharistic assembly, deeds of humiliation, neglect and self-indulgence were not only blameworthy. For the community they were self-destructive. v. 23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,

Paul states that he had previously taught them what he ‘received from the Lord’. Uncertainty has arisen about what exactly is meant here. Did Paul receive his information directly from the Lord or only as transmitted through intermediaries? Barrett notes that Paul’s words echo technical language from the Jewish tradition for the transmission of religious instruction. He suggests that ‘we may see the authority of the Lord operating with, and through, the human tradition (which is now enshrined in scripture)’ (Barrett, p. 266). Bruce concurs: ‘The Lord is not only the originator of the chain of tradition but the one who, exalted in glory, maintains and confirms the tradition by his Spirit’ (Bruce, p. 110). It seems clear that Paul wishes to emphasize the authority and reliability of the teaching. This verse displays a repetition of the verb paradidomi: It states that Paul also handed over (or ‘delivered’) to them, what the Lord Jesus did on the night in which he was handed over (or ‘betrayed’). In the second instance the passive voice allows the verb to point to both the divine and human causes of Christ’s death. (For an extensive discussion of this mysterious double aspect, see Barth, II/2, 458–506 and IV/1, 259–73.) vv. 24–26 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me’. In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my

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blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Paul here states that the bread is to be broken and the cup to be drunk in remembrance of Christ. In this way, he suggests, the Lord’s death is proclaimed until he comes. Remembering and proclaiming (anamnesis and kataggellein) would seem to be inseparable aspects of the Lord’s Supper. Just as the meal is interpreted by the proclamation of the word, so also is the word interpreted by – and embodied in – the celebration of the meal. While the proclamation may have involved some sort of homily, the Supper in itself is a proclamation of the gospel. It proclaims the word of Christ in the form of a communal and liturgical action. The Lord’s death is proclaimed by the very celebration of the Supper. Moreover, the social practices of the liturgical community need to correspond to, and not contradict, Christ’s saving death. They need to be embodiments of forgiveness and reconciliation. They need to exhibit deeds of self-giving and self-sacrifice for one another in love. They need to demonstrate concern for the needy and for the dignity of each member in the community. They need to symbolize, attest and mediate the gospel as a Christ-centred, community-restoring and life-giving event. The death of Christ, we might say, was the death of death, and therefore of the things that make for death. By virtue of the incarnate Lord who died, this death involves a transvaluation of all values, or distorted ‘values’, and a repudiation of what Paul elsewhere calls ‘the flesh’. The ‘flesh’ finds cultural expression in every form of social humiliation and injustice. It can therefore be said that in the death of Christ, death dies, humiliation is humiliated and social injustice is exposed for what it is. The lost, the humiliated and the needy are taken up, by the cross, into the body of Christ, in whom they are restored, exalted, and filled with good things. To turn the Lord’s Supper into an occasion for re-humiliating the poor or once again disregarding the hungry would be tantamount to re-crucifying Christ. For the crucified Christ has made the poor and the needy his own. Paul here recounts the words of Jesus as spoken over the bread and the cup. He focuses on what Jesus did for the sake of the community. He emphasizes that Jesus gave up his body on behalf of others. He reminds the Corinthians

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that the Lord’s Supper involves living in the new covenant. It means being bound together in responsibility to one another in Christ. It means sharing in the covenant meal by which Christ’s saving death is remembered and made present. Having been reconciled to God through the Lord’s body and blood, the members of the community are now made one among themselves. They are called to live as what they are: one body in Christ. The Corinthians are thus enjoined to adopt a disposition of generosity and self-giving. They are called to walk in love, as Christ loved them and gave himself up for them, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph. 5:2). They are called to abandon the claims of social status that bring ruin on the community. They are called to recognize that Christ’s sacrificial death overrides and contradicts not only the prevailing customs of Graeco-Roman society, but also their thoughtless actions in the assembly. ‘For the blood was poured out’, writes Calvin, ‘to reconcile us to God, and now we drink it spiritually in order to have a share in that reconciliation’ (Calvin, p. 249). We cannot be made one with Christ without being made one with one another. We cannot enter into the real presence of Christ without entering into reconciliation with our sisters and brothers. We cannot receive Christ’s body and blood in the Holy Supper while neglecting the needs of those for whom he died.

A′. Paul’s instructions to correct the abuses at the Lord’s Supper (11:27–3) Preliminary remarks Having stated the problem and invoked the tradition, Paul now turns to correct the abuses. He begins, however, by warning about the dire consequences that will ensue if the Corinthians do not change their behaviour. Collins notes that these verses are ‘replete with judicial language’.13 Six words derived from the Greek root krin, all relating to judgement, appear in vv. 29–32 alone. They show that judgement is the principal theme of this section. Judgement is variously to be executed, in one way by the Lord, in another by members of 13

Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999), p, 436.

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the community (Collins, p. 436). Nevertheless, Paul’s meaning has often been misunderstood. As Fee notes, the judgements can only be understood in the context of Paul’s argument that the Lord’s Supper must not be abused. If his words are interpreted too broadly, his point is ‘missed altogether’ (Fee, p. 559). Paul has a very specific focus in mind. He is commenting neither on the nature of the sacraments nor on broad issues of personal piety and moral rectitude. Rather, his concern is mainly about the moral and spiritual dispositions of the rich. He urges them to adopt attitudes that will foster appropriate behaviour at the Lord’s Supper. v. 27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

For Paul, the rich could not abuse the poor at the Lord’s Supper while leaving the Lord himself unscathed. A slightly more literal translation of v. 27 would read: Whoever … eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the Lord’s body and blood. Contrary to much traditional interpretation, it seems that the ‘unworthy partaking’ was not primarily a matter of inward disposition or general moral behaviour, but a specific matter of behaviour in the eucharistic assembly. Humiliating the needy was the offense, and doing so at the Lord’s Supper was, according to Paul, tantamount to crucifying Christ. You will be guilty, he warned the offending social elite, of the Lord’s body and blood. Paul’s use of the adverb ‘unworthily’ or ‘in an unworthy manner’ (anaxios) has led to widespread misinterpretation. It has been typically understood in a sweeping sense. But Paul did not mean that only the truly upright person could partake of the bread and the cup. He was not concerned with general questions about a communicant’s moral or spiritual character. He was concerned with the actions of a specific group. He was not thinking about those who might be leading less than perfect lives, but about those who made a mockery of the holy supper by their unworthy behaviour at its observance. ‘Partaking of this meal “in an unworthy manner” ’, writes Fee, ‘is what the entire section is about’. But the focus is not so much on ‘the person doing the eating’ as on ‘the manner in which it is being done’ (Fee, p. 560). Paul is thinking, writes Barrett, ‘of the moral failings of factiousness and greed which marked the Corinthian assembly’ (Barrett, p. 272). Paul is censuring the behaviour of the rich.

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Whoever offended against the least of the Lord’s brothers and sisters in the assembly could not but offend against the Lord himself. The body and blood sacrificed on the cross and offered in the eucharist were dishonoured by the behaviour of a specific group. The rich could not humiliate the poor at the eucharist without making themselves liable to judgement. By deforming the gathering into a source of division, they were effectively re-crucifying Christ. They made themselves guilty of the Lord’s body and blood. vv. 28–29 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

Some members of the Corinthian community had failed in discerning the body (diakrinon to soma) and therefore brought down judgement on their heads (v. 29). It seems important not to be too restrictive in interpreting this contested reference to ‘the body’ (to soma). It arguably refers primarily to reconciliation as the community’s raison d’etre, but it carries a wider resonance at the same time. Having failed to discern that they were all one body, one community, in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 12:12–13), what the Corinthians had failed to see was that they belonged inseparably to one another, that they were committed to one another’s care (cf. 1 Cor. 10:24). At the same time, however, as members of the body of Christ, they belonged no longer to themselves but to another (1 Cor. 6:20; Rom. 7:4; 2 Cor. 5:15), that is, to the crucified and risen Lord. Therefore, the phrase ‘discerning the body’ alludes also to Christ and his saving death. Moreover, since Christ was present and offering himself to the community in the forms of his body and blood, an indirect reference to the eucharistic elements cannot be ruled out. The gift of the eucharist was precisely the gift of participating in his body, which had been given over to death for their sakes (v. 24). The failure of discernment was therefore threefold: communal, christological and eucharistic. For all three – Christ, the community and the eucharist – finally coalesced into one indivisible body, a seamless web of unity-in-distinction, which would later be called the totus Christus. Paul’s call to self-examination must be seen in this context. It is not primarily a call for the Corinthians to probe the ‘inner recesses of their consciences’ (Hays, p. 200). It is rather is a command to consider how their

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actions at the supper are affecting their brothers and sisters in Christ. ‘This is not a call’, writes Fee, ‘for deep personal introspection to determine whether one is worthy of the Table’ (Fee, p. 561). It is essentially a call for the rich to repent. Bruce writes: For certain members of the church to eat and drink their fill, in unbrotherly disregard of their poorer fellow-Christians, as some were doing in Corinth, was to eat ‘without discerning the body’, without any consideration of their fellowship in Christ. Such conduct was a serious profanation of the holy supper …. (Bruce, p. 115)

The self-examination that Paul enjoins is essentially an exhortation that the rich should develop a more robust social conscience. Those who fail to do so are liable to judgement. ‘The context’, write Robertson and Plummer, ‘implies that the judgment is adverse and penal; but it also implies that the punishments are temporal, not eternal. These temporal chastisements are sent to save offenders from eternal condemnation’ (R&P, 252). The rich will incur judgement, with momentous consequences, if they continue to mistreat the poor in their midst. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Seek justice, correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. (Isa. 1:16b–17) (Cited by Fee, p. 564n.) vv. 30–32 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Although it may seem implausible to modern sensibilities to suppose that weakness, sickness and death could result from this failure of discernment (v. 31), Paul was essentially making a spiritual point. The body of Christ in Corinth was imperilled not just by sickness, but by a sickness unto death. By entering into contradiction with their true identity as the body Christ, the Corinthians had also entered into contradiction with the Lord and the eucharist. They could not undo their baptism, their union with one another and with Christ; they could only offend against it.

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For Paul, the identity of the community in Christ was an indicative before it was an imperative. It could be resisted or restored, but not escaped. When the Corinthians entered into conflict with it, it could only boomerang against them, bringing dire consequences in its train. Where once life had been offered and received, the Lord’s Supper became an omen of death (v. 29). The signs of divine judgement in Corinth, as Paul discerned them, were meant to be remedial, leading to repentance before it was too late (vv. 31–32). Paul seems to be saying that discernment, self-examination, spiritual discipline, and repentance would serve dispel the divine judgement. Paul is calling the Corinthians, writes Hays, to ‘exercise self-regulatory judgment to bring greater order to the Lord’s Supper by disciplining those that treat it as their own private dinner party’ (Hays, p. 202). Fee strikes a cautionary note: Any magical view of the sacrament that allows the unrepentant to partake without ‘discerning the body’ makes the offer of grace a place of judgment. Grace ‘received’ that is not recognized as such is not grace at all; and grace ‘received’ that does not recognize the need to be gracious to others is to miss the point of the table altogether. (Fee, p. 567)

Calvin points to the remedial purposes of the divine judgement: Paul had already pointed out the seriousness of the offense, in saying that those who eat unworthily shall be guilty of the Lord’s body and blood. Now he is giving them cause for alarm by the threat of punishment. For many people are not disturbed by the sin itself, but only if they are visited by the judgment of God …. When God punishes us, he intends to shake us out of our lethargy, and stir us up to repentance. (Calvin, pp. 253, 255 rev.)

This judgement is tempered by grace: But if you are serious in your intention to aspire to the righteousness of God, and if, humbled by the knowledge of your own wretchedness, you fall back on the grace of Christ, and rest upon it, be assured that you are a guest worthy of approaching this table. By saying that you are worthy, I mean that the Lord does not keep you out, even if in other respects you are not all you ought to be. For faith, even if imperfect, makes the unworthy worthy. (Calvin, pp. 253) vv. 33–34 So then, my brothers [and sisters], when you come together to eat, wait for one another – if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home – so that

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when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.

‘This conclusion’, write Robertson and Plummer, ‘indicates where the great fault had been. In the common meal of Christian love and fellowship, there had been no love and fellowship. Having charged them to secure the necessary internal feeling by means of self-examination, he now insists upon the necessity for the external expression of it’ (R&P, pp. 254–55). Paul’s primary concern is that members of the community should welcome one another, wait for one another and show hospitality towards one another in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The occurrence of the Supper in the context of a larger meal seems to be retained, but its defilement by GraecoRoman customs is to be abandoned. Staggered arrivals, self-indulgent feasting by the rich and perhaps even hierarchical seating are no longer to be tolerated. A general distribution of food seems to be envisioned, almost as if at a ‘potluck’ dinner, but the point is that all should eat together. If the rich want to indulge themselves, let them do so at home, ‘in order that decency and order may prevail in the assembly’ (Barrett, p. 277). Paul is not attempting to achieve ‘radical economic equality’ (Hays, p. 203). But he is attempting to achieve a real equality in practice among all those who gather for the Lord’s Supper. Paul hopes to correct the problem to this extent until he can visit them in person. He has urged that the believers at Corinth ‘put both others and the whole church before their individual desires’.14 With this provisional solution, Paul promises that he will come with further direction when he visits them again.

Social and ethical implications Three implications may be drawn from the preceding biblical exegesis. First, the church is called to be a counter-cultural community. Second, in a world of social divisions the eucharist is to be a site of both real and symbolic reconciliation. And finally, the eucharist makes it imperative for the church to care for the poor, the hungry and the needy – both within it own ranks and beyond. The burden of this imperative falls most heavily on the rich.

14

Marion L. Soards, 1 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), p. 250.

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The church as a counter-cultural community In 1 Cor. 11:17–34 Paul argues that the church cannot live in conformity to Christ unless it breaks with certain social conventions in the surrounding culture. The church is not to be transformed by the culture, but rather the culture is to be transformed by the church. The church is therefore called to a twofold task in social ethics. The first involves the ordering of its common life; and the second, involves its action in the world. Ecclesial ordering and secular intervention are not mutually exclusive, and at times they may overlap. Nonetheless they are ordered in a particular way. Priority belongs in principle to shaping the community’s life. As has been famously said, the community does not have a social ethic so much as it is a social ethic (Hauerwas). A community whose common life merely reflects the disorders of the surrounding culture is not strongly situated for social action. To some degree – and where is this not the case? – the gospel must progress in spite of the church, and always against its failures. Social action, of course, cannot necessarily wait for the proper ordering of the community’s internal affairs. The community must proceed on several fronts at once. Nevertheless, the shared bread of the eucharist commits the community to being an assembly that cares for the poor, the needy and the humiliated – first of all within its own ranks. It cannot credibly work for social change in the outside world if its common life fails to reflect a new social order in its own right. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (Jn. 13:35). Racial reconciliation, gender equality and environmental responsibility – beginning but not ending at the local level – are imperatives to which the community can respond creatively, for example, without waiting for others to change. A church whose policies, structures and internal relations gave more evidence of an alternative society would make a greater impact on the larger world. This aspect of Christian social ethics has too often suffered neglect. Christian ethics should not underestimate the power of a compelling counter-cultural example. At the same time Yoder is undoubtedly correct that the community’s approach to the surrounding culture will be differentiated rather than monolithic. Some elements of culture the church categorically rejects (pornography, tyranny, cultic idolatry). Other dimensions of culture it accepts within

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clear limits (economic production, commerce, the graphic arts, paying taxes for peacetime civil government). To still other dimensions of culture Christian faith gives a new motivation and coherence (agriculture, family life, literacy, conflict resolution, empowerment). Still others it strips of their claims to possess autonomous truth and value, and uses them as vehicles of communication (philosophy, language, Old Testament ritual, music). Still other forms of culture are created by the Christian churches (hospitals, service of the poor, generalized education).15

At least two further points may be mentioned in this regard. First, as an alternative social order, the eucharistic community must be prepared for situations where faithfulness to Christ means non-compliance with the world. The withholding of consent is an elementary, if potentially costly, way for the community to maintain its integrity while engaging in social witness. Noncooperation is an important strategy in waging non-violent struggle. Boycotts, disinvestment and conscientious objection to unjust wars are only some of the more familiar forms that this strategy may assume. Combining a high view of the eucharist with something like the social witness of historic peace churches would seem to be a matter of urgency for ecumenical progress in the twentyfirst century. Furthermore, whether in actions of boldness or modesty, the community will always be chastened in its quest for social responsibility. It will always need to be informed by a sense of its own finitude and indeed its own sin. Cultural transformation, in the largest sense, is not something the community is called to accomplish. In an ineffable way it has already been accomplished by Another. That the eucharist is celebrated by forgiven sinners should serve as a living reminder of what can only be attested in humility and hope with respect to cultural transformation. In a difficult world, it is a gift of grace. But grace without the corresponding action is not grace. One last point here. I am not arguing that the eucharist is able to transform the culture. I am arguing that when properly conducted, according to 1 Cor. 11:17–34, the eucharist is already the transformation of culture. It embodies an eschatological cultural transformation in both its religious (vertical) and 15

John Howard Yoder, ‘How H. Richard Niebuhr Reasoned’, in Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture, ed. Glen Stassen, D.M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 69

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social (horizontal) dimensions. It breaks with service to false gods as well as with inhumane social relations. The transformation of culture is something the eucharist already is and continually becomes, not merely something it effects outside the liturgy, though that may also occur. When the eucharist fails to embody this transformation, it falls short of its true reason for existence.

The eucharist as a site of both real and symbolic social reconciliation Since writing my book The Eucharist and Ecumenism,16 I have learned that apartheid in South African culture had its roots, in part, in a decision by the Dutch Reformed church to allow segregated celebrations of the eucharist.17 Dirk Smit, a white South African Reformed theologian, writes: It is tragic – but true – that the twentieth-century story of apartheid in South Africa in a way originated in the Lord’s Supper, in the heart of Christian worship. In 1855 white worshippers in a rural Dutch Reformed Synod decided that it was indeed ‘preferable and scriptural’ that all believers shared the same worship and the same congregation, but granted that, where these measures obstructed the Christian cause ‘as a result of the weakness of some’ – clearly the requests from those white members who were not willing to share the same table and cup with black believers, often from slave origins – their Christian privileges could be enjoyed ‘in separate buildings and even separate institutions’, in other words [eucharistic] worship could be organized separately, based on descent, race and social status …. This church policy of separate churches would later form the religious roots of the ideology, and since 1948 the official political policy, of apartheid. [After] 1960 the few (white) theologians, ministers and believers in the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) who opposed this ecclesiology and pleaded for the unity of the church, were rejected as traitors of the volk, the people.18

‘How much longer’, asked Karl Barth in 1953, ‘will it be possible in the United States and South Africa to ratify the social distinctions between whites and 16 17

18

Supra n. 1. See Chris Loff, ‘The History of a Heresy’, in Apartheid is a Heresy, ed. John de Gruchy and Charles Villa-Vicencio (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 10–23 Dirk Smit, Essays on Being Reformed: Collected Essays 3 (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2009), p. 461, italics added

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blacks by a corresponding division in the church, instead of calling it in question in the social sphere by the contrary practice of the church?’19 Barth regarded racial segregation and apartheid in the churches as an intolerable violation of their oneness in Christ. Racial segregation and apartheid were not to be ratified by the practices of the churches but challenged by their contrary practices. In the midst of racial segregation, the churches were called to be counter-cultural communities of reconciliation, including racial reconciliation. Ratifying racial segregation by the practices – including the eucharistic practices – of the churches was, if anything, even more flagrant and egregious than the abuses of the poor by the rich against which Paul had to protest in Corinth. In both cases the community of reconciliation was badly sundered. In the United States and South Africa, moreover, the kind of overt division and schism that Paul strove to prevent would become institutionalized in racially segregated Christian communions. Even today in those countries the wounds are not fully healed. In South Africa, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches fought to maintain multi-racial worship, often with success. With reference to the cathedral in Johannesburg, Desmond Tutu wrote: I will always have a lump in my throat when I think of the children at St. Mary’s, pointers to what can be if our society would but become sane and normal. Here were children of all races playing, praying, learning and even fighting together, almost uniquely in South Africa. And … I have knelt in the Dean’s stall at the superb 9:30 High Mass, with incense, bells and everything, watching a multi-racial crowd file up to the altar to be communicated, the one bread and the one cup given by a mixed team of clergy and lay ministers, with a multi-racial choir, servers and sidemen – all this in apartheid mad South Africa. – then tears sometimes streamed down my cheeks, tears of joy that it could be that indeed Jesus Christ had broken down the wall of partition and here were the first fruits of the eschatological community right in front of my eyes, enacting the message in several languages on the noticeboard outside that this is a house of prayer for all peoples of all races who are welcomed at all times. That has been the tremendous witness of St. Mary’s over the past fifty years.20 19 20

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 4, part 1 (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1956), p. 703. Desmond Tutu, ‘St. Mary’s Cathedral, Johannesburg’, in Hope and Suffering, ed. John Webster (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1984), p. 135.

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Elsewhere Bishop Tutu continues: The Christian’s ultimate loyalty and obedience are to God, not to … a political system. If certain laws are not in line with the imperatives of the gospel, then the Christian must agitate for their repeal by all peaceful means. Christianity … has public consequences and must make public choices. Many people think Christians should be neutral, or that the church must be neutral. But in a situation of injustice and oppression such as we have in South Africa, not to choose to oppose, is in fact to have chosen to side with the powerful, with the exploiter, with the oppressor.21 The church in South Africa must be the prophetic church, which cries out ‘Thus saith the Lord’, speaking up against injustice and violence, against oppression and exploitation, against all that dehumanizes God’s children and makes them less than what God intended them to be.22 For my part, the day will never come when apartheid will be acceptable. It is an evil system and it is at variance with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why I oppose it and can never compromise with it–not for political reasons but because I am a Christian.23

Bishop Tutu’s remarks suggest how to think about social injustice from a centre in the eucharist. Whatever the social, ethnic, class, gender or other such divisions that may exist in any given society, they are to be counted as nothing when it comes to the celebration of the eucharist, where none are to be excluded or discriminated against on such grounds. A church that overcomes such divisions in its own eucharistic practices bears powerful witness to the surrounding world. It is a church equipped to work against them outside the church at the same time. In doing so it will also be acting in accord with the ninth of the Ten Commandments. As we read in The Study Catechism of the Presbyterian Church, USA: Question 113. What is the ninth commandment? ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor’ (Ex. 20:16; Deut. 5:20).

21

22 23

Tutu, ‘Politics and Religion’, in Crying in the Wilderness: The Struggle for Justice in South Africa, ed. John Webster (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982), p. 34. Tutu, ‘The Theology of Liberation’, in Crying in the Wilderness, p. 36. Tutu, ‘Where I Stand’, in Crying in the Wilderness, pp. 54–55.

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Question 114. What do you learn from this commandment? God forbids me to damage the honor or reputation of my neighbor. I should not say false things against anyone for the sake of money, favor or friendship, for the sake of revenge, or for any other reason. God requires me to speak the truth, to speak well of my neighbor when I can, and to view the faults of my neighbor with tolerance when I cannot. Question 115. Does this commandment forbid racism and other forms of negative stereotyping? Yes. In forbidding false witness against my neighbor, God forbids me to be prejudiced against people who belong to any vulnerable, different or disfavored social group. Jews, women, homosexuals, racial and ethnic minorities, and national enemies are among those who have suffered terribly from being subjected to the slurs of social prejudice. Negative stereotyping is a form of falsehood that invites actions of humiliation, abuse, and violence as forbidden by the commandment against murder.

Paul’s censure of the rich in 1 Cor. 11:17–34 can be read as an application to the eucharist of the Ninth Commandment when understood in these terms. A social interpretation of the Lord’s Supper and the Ten Commandments suggests that Christians ought to be schooled to confess not only their personal, but also their social sins. As noted by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, however, such confessions are rare: ‘We could hear hundreds and hundreds of confessions over a period of years, as I did, and remember on the fingers of one hand the persons who had ever spoken to us about racism or wars and … everyday social and economic injustice’.24 Racial prejudice, abusive behaviour arising from male privilege, indifference to the needs of the poor and oppressed, resentment of various stereotyped groups, wishing to see one’s country resort to a ‘pre-emptive’ war by which another country might be utterly destroyed and so on – these are the kinds of social sins that fly in the face of the new humanity established in Christ. They are the kinds of sins that Paul’s censure of the rich in 1 Cor. 11:17–34 might have served to sensitize the church’s social conscience. Clearly, Christians still have a long way to go on this score. The question, however is not easily dismissed. ‘Sin or evil that is not recognized, not confessed in other words’, wrote Carl Jung, ‘is a poison and creates disharmony 24

Daniel Berrigan and Robert Coles, The Geography of Faith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 151.

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and destroys community life ….’25 Personal and liturgical confessions of sin ought to include a social dimension.

The eucharistic imperative to care for the poor and the hungry Near the end of his First Apology, Justin Martyr writes: Those who have the means help all those who are in want, and we continually meet together. And over all that we take to eat we bless the creator of all things through God’s Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. And on the day named after the sun all, whether they live in the city or countryside, are gathered together in unity. Then the records of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as there is time. When the reader has concluded, the presider in a discourse admonishes and invites us into the pattern of these good things. Then we all stand together and offer prayer. And, as we said before, when we have concluded the prayer, bread is set out to eat, together with wine and water. The presider likewise offers up prayer and thanksgiving, as much as he can, and the people sing their assent saying the amen. There is a distribution of the things over which thanks have been said and each person participates, and these things are sent by deacons to those who are not present. Those who are prosperous and who desire to do so, give what they wish, according to each one’s own choice, and the collection is deposited with the presider. He aids orphans and widows, those who are in want through disease or through another cause, those who are in prison, and foreigners who are sojourning here. In short, the presider is a guardian to all who are in need. (1 Apology 67)

Where idolatry and self-justification are banished by the power of Christ’s sacrificial love, indifference to the needy also necessarily disappears. Never turn away those in need, but always share all things with your brother [or sister], and never say that your possessions are exclusively your own, because if you share in eternal things, how much more in things that are temporary. (Didache 4.8)

According to the Didache, notes Stevenson, ‘confession of sins and reconciliation’ were seen as ‘a regular feature of the eucharistic assembly’. The ‘pure’ or ‘undefiled’ eucharistic offering ‘must not be despoiled by dissensions 25

I am unable to find the source for this remark.

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in the community’. The eucharist was expected to express the overcoming in Christ of every cultural division, especially those rooted in enmity, while at the same time committing all who partook of it to sharing with the poor.26 The Bible contains more than 300 verses on the poor, social justice, and God’s relation to them.27 The Lord God who made heaven and earth is revealed as One who takes the needs of the poor to heart, who identifies with the oppressed, and who calls his people to remember them with compassion and justice. ●

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‘Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute’. (Prov. 31:8) ‘Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God’. (Prov. 14:31) ‘Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?’ (Isa. 58:6) ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ (2 Cor. 8:9)

This latter verse is particularly important. First, it offers a Christ-centred reason to act on behalf of the poor. Just as Christ abased himself to alleviate our poverty before God, so in turn we are called to act on behalf of the poor in witness to him. We are to honour the grace we have received by acting generously towards others in need. We are to treat them as we, by grace, have been treated with compassion by God. Otherwise we would be thankless servants. Second, this verse appears in a passage where Paul is discussing his apostolic collection. He appeals to the Corinthians to contribute financially, as they had promised, to the poor of the Jerusalem church. He presented his collection to them in ‘ecumenical’ and ‘sacramental’ terms. 26 27

Kenneth W. Stevenson, Eucharist and Offering (New York: Pueblo, 1986), p. 15. The material that follows is taken from my book The Beatitudes, Paulist Press, 2015 (forthcoming).

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Ecumenically, according to Paul, the collection was a matter of koinonia or fellowship (2 Cor. 8:4). It expressed the spiritual bond of peace in Christ by which all believers, Gentile and Jewish, were one. The collection was meant to forestall the spread of fatal divisions in the church. Sacramentally, furthermore, the collection was a matter of eucharistia or thanksgiving (2 Cor. 9:11). It was an act of gratitude on the part of the Gentile Christians for the grace they had received through the outreach of the Jerusalem church. Paul conceived of the collection in eucharistic terms as an expression of material spirituality. The Pauline collection, we might say, was virtually as ‘sacramental’ as the eucharist, so that in a sense it was a concrete extension of the eucharist. The financial gift itself was seen as an embodiment of grace, the cash as a veritable sacrament of koinonia (2 Cor. 9:13). Eucharistic fellowship with the Jerusalem poor was embodied in this concrete, material gift. As with ‘the sacraments’ (as they were later called), so also with the collection, for this collection was meant to effect what it symbolized (koinonia) and to symbolize what it effected (eucharistia). Abstract expressions of fellowship were not enough. As we think about the social implications of the eucharist for today, the question arises: Might not some version of the Pauline collection be revived by the churches today? Could not a new collection be designed with ecumenical breadth (koinonia) and sacramental depth (eucharistia)? Might Protestant congregations organize relief efforts for impoverished Roman Catholics around the world, while Roman Catholic congregations reciprocated in kind by doing the same for Protestants? Years ago Oscar Cullmann, the distinguished New Testament scholar, made this proposal. It would be, he suggested, a collection for the poor in order to realize the unity of a divided church. Other strategies, some of which already exist, might also be implemented, or implemented more fully. What about ‘sister church’ programs that pair particular congregations in affluent circumstances with majority-world congregations living in extremis? Such programs, which exist but need to be expanded, could be devised internationally, but they might also be implemented domestically, or even across town in a particular locale. Face to face contact through such a program could be key in generating the urgently needed motivation.

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What about a greater use of church volunteer ‘work projects’, again whether internationally, domestically or even locally, that would meet the concrete needs of the poor in particular ways? What about greater support for already existing church relief agencies like Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Church World Service and the Catholic Overseas Development Agency? What about increasing congregational awareness of and participation in already existing micro-loan projects that foster economic self-sufficiency and sustainability? Concern for the poor, of course, need not always be tightly linked with concern for the unity and well-being of a divided world-Christianity, though overall both concerns are finally inseparable. Many steep challenges of transparency, accountability, cross-cultural sensitivity and responsible administration would need to be met. But in a world where children are dying from poverty by the tens of thousands each day, almost anything would be better than indifference. It is Jesus who blessed the poor in spirit, and it is he himself who is their blessing. What makes them blessed is precisely his presence to them. Though his presence is now hidden, it will not remain so for ever, but one day will be openly revealed. ‘As you did it to one of the least of these …, you did it to me’ (Matt. 25:40). Jesus and the poor are one, for he has entered into their plight and embraced it as his own. In and through him their sorrow will one day be no more. A great reversal is therefore at hand. In and through Christ, the last will be first, the first will be last and all things will be made new. That is the promised future, as inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection, the future of the kingdom of heaven. For the time being, this great reversal is to be proclaimed and practised by Christ’s followers, whom he had made conscious of being poor in spirit. The promised future needs to be declared by faith and practised in advance through works of justice and love. The spirit of justice and love, as informed by the promised future, means honouring Christ through the poor. To sum up: the eucharist has social implications – first, for the internal ordering of the church’s life, including its sacramental life, and second, for its work of social witness in the world. A eucharistic church will be a countercultural church that refuses to reproduce within itself the social contradictions

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of the surrounding culture. It will be a fellowship of reconciliation in which all members regardless of race, gender, class or other social categories will be accorded a basic respect and dignity in Christ. And finally, it will be a church that has a heart for the poor, with special efforts to meet their needs within the ranks of the eucharistic community as well as in the outside world.

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After Barth: A Christian Appreciation of Jews and Judaism Is a non-anti-Judaic Christianity possible? That is the question I hope to address in this chapter. A lot will depend, in the end, on what counts as being ‘anti-Judaic’. I am going to argue that Christianity enters into profound selfcontradiction whenever it is anti-Judaic, as it regrettably has been throughout most of its history. I am going to go further, however. I am going to argue that Christianity cannot love Jesus Christ without also loving the Jews, who are his people, and that when Christianity does not love the Jews, it corrupts its love of Jesus Christ at the very core. Loving Christ, I will argue, is inseparable from loving the Jews, and where the Jews are not loved, Christ himself is dishonoured. I am therefore going to argue for a form of philo-semitism or Judaeophilia as governed by a centre in Christ.1

Part I: The case for a soft supersessionism Because of that same christocentrism, however, I am also going to argue for a form of supersessionism. Despite the almost universal conviction in contemporary theology that supersessionism is the inevitable cause of antiJudaism, to say nothing of its more repellent cousin anti-semitism, and that therefore any form of supersessionism is unacceptable, I am going to argue that the inner logic of the Christian faith cannot dispense with supersessionism in some form. The form that I will advocate is the one that David Novak has called ‘soft supersessionism’.2 According to this view the new covenant does 1

2

For the history and potential dangers of philo-semitism, esepcially in its abstract forms, see Philosemitism in History, ed. Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). David Novak, ‘The Covenant in Rabbinic Thought’, in Two Faiths, One Covenant?: Jewish and Christian Identity in the Presence of the Other, ed. Eugene B. Korn (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 65–80.

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not replace the old covenant, but it does fulfil, extend and supplement it, while also fundamentally confirming it. Along these lines, I will suggest that there is only one covenant, and thus only one people of God, and yet that there are also two faiths. The presence of two faiths – which in some ways, though not in all, are diametrically opposed – represents a festering wound in the one people of God. No one knows how this wound can be healed. Neither Christians nor Jews know how to heal it. Only God can heal it. The day is long since past when Christians might hope to alleviate this wound by adopting St. Paul’s strategy of ‘making Israel jealous’. Today this strategy, which was scarcely ever adopted, smoulders in ruins. After the long and unbearable history of Christian anti-semitism, and especially after the Shoah – for which Christian history supplied the dreadful background, if not the direct cause – Christianity would be delusional if it thought it could any longer do anything to make Israel ‘jealous’. It would be a major step, and one that cannot be taken for granted, if Christianity would systematically commit itself to contrition, confession and (insofar as possible) reparations. It would be a major step if Christianity were to commit itself not to making the Jews jealous, per impossible, but somehow simply to making them less terrified, less isolated, less vulnerable to existential threats in the world. It would be a major step, in other words, if Christianity were to enter fully into solidarity with the Jews. But as I will argue solidarity is not enough. Perhaps I should mention at this point, as an aside, that I do not believe the necessary solidarity should be uncritical. How to enter into solidarity with the Jews today in a way that accords with a larger commitment to justice and peace is not an easy question. I cannot go into it here, and in any case I have no special wisdom. As the founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, I tend to align myself with Israeli groups like Rabbis for Human Rights that work against torture and other injustices in their own country, and with spin-offs in the United States like T’ruah that do similar work against solitary confinement and torture by our own government here at home. I now return to my main theme. What the gospel asks of Christians is solidarity, yes, but more than solidarity it requires love. Christ must be loved and honoured in the Jews, because the Jews must be loved and honoured in Christ. They must be loved and honoured in Christ, precisely because he

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has made them his own. While there are precious few examples of what this solidarity and love might look like, for the sake of clarity I will mention at least one. During the Nazi occupation of France, the lives of as many as 2000 Jewish children were saved in the southern mountain village of Le Chambon, under the leadership of a Reformed pastor named André Trocmé. Le Chambon stands as an emblem of what Christianity is called now more than ever to become. It stands as an emblem of Christian solidarity and love towards the Jews as grounded in love for Christ. It is worth mentioning that the people of Le Chambon did not try to convert the children. They simply tried to help them by taking the necessary risks of love. Love for Christ is also the ground for the ‘soft supersessionism’ that I am advocating. Love for Christ, according to Nicene Christianity, is tantamount to love for God, because Christ is God with us in human flesh. He is the eternal Word of God who became incarnate for our sakes without ceasing to be God. He is thus the beyond in our midst. He encounters us as God’s self-revelation, as the reconciliation of the world with God and as the proper object of our worship. He himself is the Saviour of the world. According to Christian faith, however, he is what he is as the world’s Saviour only because he is also Israel’s long-awaited Messiah. The universality of his saving significance is grounded in the particularity of Israel. It was one of Karl Barth’s signal achievements to insist that God’s covenant with Israel is irrevocable. Although he arguably kept too much anti-Judaic baggage in his theology, he can at least be credited with this much. He invalidated every form of ‘strong supersessionism’, according to which Israel is replaced by the church in God’s covenant. Insofar as his ‘softer supersessionism’ retained anti-Judaic elements, however, he cannot be followed by Christian theology today. What needs to be worked out is a soft supersessionism purged of every anti-Judaic element. Soft supersessionism is unavoidable, because there is only one covenant and only one people of God. It is impossible to read Holy Scripture in any other way. There is no other covenant than the one established by God with Israel, and thus no other people is, or could possibly be, the elect people of God. By virtue of the divine election, Israel’s unique status is irrevocable and indeed eternal. Nothing Israel can do, whether in obedience or disobedience, can revoke its status as God’s elect.

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Christianity, let me hasten to add – and not least Karl Barth – has said far too much about Israel’s disobedience and far too little about its ongoing obedience – even after its rejection of Jesus Christ. Even worse, Christianity – and not least Karl Barth – has said far too much about the church’s obedience and far too little about its disobedience – most especially its historic disobedience in the form of anti-semitism, mass persecution of Jews and the teaching of contempt. All other forms of churchly disobedience, I would argue, are contained in this one toxic form. If there is indeed a disobedience of Israel to the Lord their God, then that is between Israel and the Lord their God. Christians have long since discredited themselves in this arena. If it is somehow a form of disobedience for Jews not to accept Jesus Christ, Christians at this point have only themselves to blame. They need to attend all the more to the log in their own eye. Every possibility of Christian triumphalism was consumed in the fires of Auschwitz. Nevertheless, according to apostolic authority, God’s covenant with Israel is fulfilled in Jesus Christ for the sake of the world. All the promises of God are Yes and Amen in him. Not even Christian disobedience can overturn the covenant’s fulfilment in Christ. Like Israel’s election, it is grounded solely in the free grace of God. Nor can it be overturned by well-meaning Christians today in their quest for a meaningful repentance. Repentance, yes, but not at the expense of the Word of God. There is only one covenant, and according to apostolic authority, it has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ – for Jews, for Christians and for the world – by grace alone. Just as there is only one covenant, so also is there only one people of God. Karl Barth’s doctrine of the one twofold people of God is another signal contribution. As I have already suggested, however, it cannot be carried out in the way he suggested. Israel cannot be the type of disobedience that is destined to pass away while the church is the type of obedience that is destined to prevail at the close of the age. The disobedient type should have been represented by Adam with the obedient type being represented by Christ. Christ would then have his own twofold relationship to the one elect people of God as constituted internally by both Israel and the church. There is only one indivisible people of God, I would contend, and yet everywhere it is riven into factions. The unity of this one people is displayed

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neither among Jews nor among Christians – nor, to say the least, in the wounded relations between Christians and Jews. Among the Jews, we have divisions of varying degrees and stripes in at least the following groupings: secular Jews, synagogue Jews of various denominations and baptized Jews in Christian congregations, including the recent phenomenon of messianic Judaism. Among Christians, the fragmentation is, if possible, even worse. In Nicene Christianity, as I would like to think of it, we have Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics and Reformational Catholics, including innumerable subdivisions and factions within each of them. In this situation, Nicene Catholics are seeking to recover a lost unity today, at least among those who are ecumenical. We would then also have non-Nicene forms of Christianity, including a number of modern liberal Christians as well as, at the other extreme, those Evangelicals, Charismatics and Pentecostals not in accord with Nicaea.3 Notwithstanding all these sorry divisions, subdivisions and factions, I want to suggest that Jews and Christians, whether separately or together, cannot undo their divine election as the one indivisible people of God. In a way that passes all understanding, Jews and Christians together are one in Christ, from a soft suprsessionist standpoint. For the time being, and apparently until the end of history, they are more perfectly in Christ than he is in them. This would be as true (though in many and different ways) for the Christians who acknowledge Jesus Christ as for the Jews who do not (or do not yet) acknowledge him. In one way or another they are all one in Christ, by Christ, despite their being riven into factions. Sub specie aeternitatis, what is true de iure in Christ overrides all that exists to the contrary in history, and what is not yet true in history will be severely judged and forgiven, transcended and overcome, at the end of all things. No doubt Jews will immediately fear at least two things about this latest turn in my argument. They will tend to fear their coercion by Christians and their disappearance as Jews. If these fears, which are understandable, cannot be convincingly addressed, then my argument for a soft supersessionism will 3

No Jews were present at Nicaea, presumably because there were no longer any Jewish-Christian bishops. Moreover, as my colleague Ellen Charry points out, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed would have been improved if it had added a phrase about the Exodus: ‘We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, who delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt’. The absence of Israel from the creed reflected the general disappearance of Jews and Jewish consciousness from the churches.

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turn out to be anti-Judaic after all, despite my best intentions. I must therefore explain why I think my argument supports neither the dreaded coercion nor the feared disappearance. As is well known, Karl Barth discouraged all Christian missions to the Jews. Evangelical missions are appropriate, he believed, only where persons need to be delivered from idolatry. He argued that the Christian community can never presume to proclaim the one true God to Jews in place of an idol. As the people of the covenant, they already know, worship and serve the one true God even after they have rejected Jesus Christ. He argued that the Jews need to be shielded against well-meaning but finally insulting efforts to convert them. The Jews in their own way are witnesses in the world to God’s love. They are witnesses in their very Jewishness, for their preservation as a people despite all that has assailed them throughout history attests, Barth argued, the covenant faithfulness of the God who will not let them go. On these grounds, my own argument would rule out any Christian coercion of Jews to convert and any proselytizing efforts that would specifically target them. As exemplified by the people of Le Chambon, what the Jews need from Christians is not evangelism but solidarity in times of need and above all the practice of love.4 Let me ask a difficult question. Would it be possible for Jews to become Christians without ceasing to be Jews? Insofar as Jews became Christians wouldn’t their Jewishness simply disappear into the predominantly Gentile Christian community? Isn’t Torah-observance essential to maintaining the Jewishness of the Jews? I have no easy answers to these questions. Consider that today Christians in the aggregate represent about one-third of the world’s population or roughly 2.3 billion people out of a total of seven billion people. Place alongside that the far smaller number of Jews, who total only about fourteen million people or less than 0.2 per cent of the world’s population. On these grounds alone it is easy to see how Jews might simply disappear on the absurd hypothesis that they all became Christians. Theologically, furthermore, it seems that there are good reasons for believing that God wills the continued existence of Israel. It is hard to see how the Jewish people could retain their Jewish identity apart from their ongoing 4

For an sensitive approach to this question that is neither anti-Judaic not anti-Evangelical, and thus one with which I am in substantial agreement, see Gavin G. D’Costa, ‘What Does the Catholic Church Teach About Mission to the Jewish People?’, Theological Studies 73 (2012), pp. 590–613.

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Torah-observance. As Bruce Marshall has argued, ‘In permanently electing Israel, it seems that God has also permanently willed the practice of Judaism’.5 If Marshall is correct, as I believe he is, how would that comport with the form of soft supersessionism that I am advocating? Again, the matter is delicate and complex. A narrow path needs to be charted, as I see it, between anti-Judaism, on the one hand, and what I will call anti-Evangelicalism, on the other, by which I mean a position contrary to the gospel. A position would be anti-Judaic if it led to the disappearance of the Jews, while it would be anti-Evangelical if it compromised on the imperative that Jesus Christ be recognized for who he is as confessed by faith. In principle, as I see it, this imperative is incumbent upon all peoples, the Jew first, as Paul put it, and then also the Greek. At this point I would invoke the Pauline theme of the hardening of Israel, though this needs to be done, if possible, in a careful and charitable way. The mystery of the Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah remains, from a Christian standpoint, a painful mystery. It is a mystery especially at the time of Christian origins, though as I have suggested it can hardly be looked on merely as a mystery today. When Paul pondered this mystery in his own historical moment, he could not do so without anguish. This was in part surely the anguish of love. The monumental failure of Christianity towards the Jews in the subsequent history of the church can largely be traced, I believe, to a loss of the empathic bond that Paul felt towards his fellow Jews, as expressed in his cry of anguish. The Christian loss of empathy was accompanied by a progressive loss of love. At the very point where love ought to have prevailed, it was notoriously twisted over time into animosity, hatred and contempt. With regard to the rejection of Jesus Christ by the Jews, and then the rejection of the Jews by Christians, which I have contended is tantamount to their own rejection of Jesus Christ, I would take solace in the words of Augustine. ‘For in a strange and ineffable way’, he wrote, ‘nothing is done without the will of God, even that which is done contrary to it’.6 From the 5

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Bruce Marshall, ‘Elder Brothers: John Paul II’s Teaching on the Jewish People as a Question to the Church’, in John Paul II and the Jewish People, ed. David G. Dalin and Matthew Levering (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2008), p. 122. Augustine, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Charity, Book 26 (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1947) p. 454.

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standpoint of my soft supersessionism, both Jews and Christians have done something that is contrary to the will of God, each in their own way. If Augustine is right, however, neither the one rejection nor the other can finally escape the overruling providence of God. The Pauline theme of the hardening of Israel in order that Gentiles might be grafted in, and so join the people of God, was arguably a beginning in this direction. Paul was trying to make sense of God’s strange and dreadful providence. It seems that in early Christianity it was possible to become a Christian without ceasing to be Jew. The earliest Christians were predominantly Jews who remained law-observant. Even Paul did not reject this form of Christianity in principle. His mission was to establish another form of Christianity alongside the first, a form in which Gentiles could become Christians without needing also to become law-observant. Paul could not have known that by the vicissitudes of history, or the inscrutable providence of God, the lawobservant Christian community in Palestine would soon be decimated by the Romans when they laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, and that such communities would cease to survive in dispersion past the first few centuries, not merely because they died out but because they were actively resisted by both Gentile Christianity and the newly emergent Rabbinic Judaism.7 Paul could not have known (and in my opinion would certainly have opposed) the intolerable development that the Gentile Christian communities he was establishing would soon lose their JewishChristian counterpart for ever. Where does all this leave us? It is the will of God that the Jews should not cease to exist. Since Torah-observance is a necessary condition for the preservation of Jewish identity, it is the will of God that Torah-observance should not cease to exist. At one point in history it was possible for Jews to become Christians without ceasing to be law-observant Jews. Most Jews refused this option, which in any case soon disappeared. Nevertheless, the imperative did not disappear that all persons and peoples should acknowledge Jesus Christ for who he is as confessed by faith. Paul believed that in some sense all of Israel would be saved, and that God desires all others to be saved 7

See David G. Horrell, ‘Early Jewish Christianity’, in The Early Christian World, vol. 1, ed. Philip F. Esler (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 134–67; on pp. 159–60.

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along with them by coming to a knowledge of the truth. In the Latin West, and in our own day, Karl Barth then, almost single-handedly, revived the long-lost prospect of a universal hope, though he was actually in accord with much Greek patristic teaching. According to this hope, the day will come when Jesus Christ is thanked and praised without exception for who he is. ‘At the name of Jesus’, we read, ‘every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil. 2:10–11). It is to the abiding shame of Christians that because of their lovelessness, hatred and contempt throughout history, almost no Jew today can hear these words without something like horror, revulsion and dismay. As Barth once said in a slightly different connection, perhaps in the end the Lord God will have a little less trouble with them than he had with us. The emergence of messianic Judaism in our own day is an important and unexpected sign that it might still be possible for some Jews to become Christians without ceasing to be Torah-observant Jews. It would be quixotic, however, to expect this movement to catch on very widely. Messianic Judaism is a sign, not a model. It attests in practice the kind of thing I am affirming theoretically, but, humanly speaking, has little or no prospect of becoming more than a tiny minority.8 Until this movement learns to locate itself within the churches of Catholic Christianity, moreover, instead of standing as a mere sect outside it, it will not be ecumenically viable.9 For all practical purposes, therefore, it is the institutions and practices of Rabbinic Judaism that are necessary for Jews and Judaism to survive. According to my version of ‘soft supersessionism’, every actually existing form of Jewish existence – whether secular, rabbinic or baptized – has its own relative validity and invalidity this side of the 8

9

If Messianic Judaism were ever to locate itself within and not outside the churches of Catholic Christianity (whether Roman, Eastern or Reformational), perhaps it would need to be in the form of something like a “religious order.” It seems that some Messianic Jews are sympathetic to this idea. Theoretically, I could see something similar happening for Protestants relative to the churches of Roman and Eastern Catholicism, that is, they would not disappear but would become something like a religious order. For the ecumenical divisions among the Christian churches, and some suggestions about how they might be overcome, see George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). ‘From a Christian theological point of view it is fully possible to have a Jewish Christian community established on equal terms with Christians from other cultural backgrounds. Since a Jewish Christian community was a reality in the first century, there seems to be no reason why it cannot be reintroduced.’ George C. Papademetriou, ‘Jewish Rite in the Christian Church: Ecumenical Possibility’, Scottish Journal of Theology 26 (1973), pp. 466–87.

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eschaton, and much the same would need to be said all the more about every actually existing division of Christian existence in and among the churches.10 I believe I have said enough, however, to establish my two main points in this section. It is possible, at the theoretical level, to construct a version of soft supersessionism that is neither anti-Judaic nor anti-Evangelical. It is not anti-Judaic because it eschews every form of religious coercion, and because it respects the indispensability of a Torah-observant Judaism. It therefore respects the ongoing necessity, by the providence of God, of Rabbinic Judaism, which has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the sixth century CE. Again, it is hard to see how Jews could survive as Jews without it. My proposal is not anti-Evangelical, on the other hand, because it upholds the imperative that Jesus Christ should be acknowledged by all for who he is, by the Jew first and then also by the Greek, and the hope that this imperative will one day be accomplished universally by the inscrutable grace of God – through and in spite of the church. Let me review my larger argument. I have suggested that there is only one covenant and thus only one people of God. I have also contended that within this one covenant two faiths coexist. The two faiths converge in some ways while diverging in others. According to my soft supersessionism, the covenant established by God with Israel was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Israel did not cease to be God’s people when it rejected him, but it was supplemented and fulfilled by the inclusion of Jews and Gentiles who did believe in him. In the course of history, the one indivisible people of God suffered, among other things, the infliction a mortal wound that it could not heal, not only because some accepted Jesus Christ while others did not, but even more because they mostly turned against one another in enmity, with the burden of guilt resting most heavily on the Christians as history progressed. Christian enmity towards the Jews then came, directly and indirectly, to an unspeakable culmination in the Shoah. I have not yet developed the essential christocentric grounds that I see for philo-semitism or Judaeophilia. Before doing so, however, I want to examine a little further the indivisible oneness of God’s people. I have argued that there 10

To a certain extent therefore my soft supersessionism is like Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It leaves everything as it is. It describes but does not resolve the existing tensions while finding something of value in each of the major tendencies or traditions.

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is only one covenant, not two – in other words, not, as some have urged, one for Christians and another for Jews. There are not two parallel covenants, but rather one covenant in two forms, namely, the old form and the new. Over against the Lutheran tradition, which tended to pit the new covenant sharply against the old, the Calvinistic or Reformed tradition, to which Barth belonged, always insisted on one covenant in two forms. From the standpoint of a soft supersessionism, the deep wound within the one people of God means that some of its members continue to adhere, in various ways, to the old form, while others, also in various ways, embrace the new. Strictly speaking, therefore, I need to modify what I said earlier about there being two faiths within a single covenant. There are not really two faiths but, again, only one faith in two forms, namely, the old form and the new. Today the old form is represented in various ways by Judaism, while the new form is represented by various versions of Christianity. Those who adhere to the old form of faith will see the others at worst as idolaters, or as interlopers, or, perhaps in the best of cases, as fellow-travellers. Those who adhere to the new form will – if they subscribe to my version of a soft supersessionism – look on their opposite numbers with empathy, respect, patience, contrition and love – for the sake of Christ. Gentile Christians in particular will be stricken by their need to find that godly grief which leads to repentance, as Paul described it, in order to reach at least a modicum of reconciliation, however partially, with the long-suffering Jews. They will all – Jews and Gentles alike – call upon God for the grace that might heal their unhealable wound, but they will resist every form of premature closure. They will resolve instead to live out their days in the unbearable pain of their wounded body, the pain of the open questions that each one must pose to the other. Together they will bear the pain of the wounded body of faith, and in the midst of this pain persevere. Only God, as I said before, can remove this pain.

Part II: The template of God’s covenantal love From the standpoint of a soft supersessionism, how are the universality of Christ and the particularity of Israel related? Karl Barth offers the following

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suggestion, one that I believe is seminal for the scope of his entire theology. He writes: God is he who [loves his Son Jesus Christ], in his Son Jesus Christ all his children, in his children all human beings, and in human beings the whole creation. (II/1, 315 rev.)

This proposition specifies the objects of God’s love by means of a graded scheme. Starting with radical particularity, it ends in complete universality. We might picture it as a series of concentric circles that are centered on Christ, as if on a bullseye. With Christ at the center, the first circle around him is comprised of ‘all God’s children’, by which Barth means Israel and the church. The second concentric circle then widens out to include ‘all human beings’, while the outermost circle embraces the whole creation. The result is three concentric circles centered on Christ. Note that the syntax hinges on the words ‘in’ and ‘all’, which provide the grammar governing the whole proposition. The word ‘in’ suggests relations of both participation and mediation. Let’s begin with participation. When joined with the adjective ‘all’, the word ‘in’ serves to incorporate universality into particularity. The whole creation participates in God’s relationship to humanity, all humanity participates in God’s relationship to his children (Israel and the church), while all God’s children – the one twofold people of God – participate in his unique relationship to Jesus Christ. This would comprise the movement from the universal to the particular. The reverse movement would run from the particular to the universal. It describes the event by which God’s love is mediated from the one to the many, or from the particular to the universal. Christ the centre represents the point of radical particularity. As God’s Son, he is seen as the direct and supreme object of God’s love. In him God’s love is then mediated to all God’s children (Israel and the church), in them it is mediated to all humanity, and finally in humanity it is mediated to the whole creation. Just how this mediation is thought to occur is left open, but that it occurs in these terms is the salient point. With this scheme in mind, I want to focus on the pattern of unity that governs how Jesus Christ is related to God’s children. The elect children of God, as conceived by Barth, constitute one twofold people. Although they are one, they are also internally differentiated. Their internal differentiation

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can be worked out in a way that goes somewhat beyond Barth. Within the one people of God, Israel would arguably have priority as the ground, while the church would have priority as the goal. The church would belong to the one people of God only as it was grafted into Israel. Israel would thus stand out as the original and proper object of God’s love, through whom, along with the church, that love would be mediated to the world. In Barth’s scheme, God’s love for Israel is grounded in his love for Jesus Christ. Therefore, God’s love for Jesus Christ would be inseparable from his love for Israel, just as God’s love for Israel would be inseparable from his love for Jesus Christ. Together they would constitute an unbreakable bond. Their unity cannot be destroyed because it is grounded in divine election. The direct object of election, as Barth conceives of it, is of course Jesus Christ, but in him the original object of election would be Israel. The election of Israel is exemplified by the fact that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. The love of Jesus Christ has made the people of Israel his own by virtue of divine election. Election represents a kind of covenantal ontology of love that binds Jesus Christ to the Jews. This bond of Jesus Christ with the Jews in covenantal love is, I would suggest, the ground of Christian philo-semitism or Judaeophilia. Jesus Christ cannot be loved without also loving the Jews. The one cannot be loved without the other, nor can the one be held in contempt without dishonouring the other, because election has forged them into an inseparable union of love. Jesus Christ’s undying love for the Jews, regardless of whether it is acknowledged and reciprocated or not, means that loving Jesus Christ while holding the Jews in contempt is a contradiction in terms. The blindfold that Christian iconography would place around the eyes of the Jews belongs more properly to the eyes of the church in its anti-semitic and anti-Judaic moods. Barth did not make this logic of Christian philo-semitism explicit although I believe it is implicit in his theology. He did, however, assert, if not a robust union in love, as least a corresponding union in suffering. Jesus Christ suffers in the sufferings of the Jews, he claimed, and those who inflict suffering and abuse on them secretly inflict it on Christ himself. Before I quote Barth to this effect, let me first try my hand at a variation on his seminal proposition. It might run like this:

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God is the One whose love suffers in his Son Jesus Christ. In and through Jesus Christ his love suffers in the sufferings of all his children. In and through his children it suffers in the sufferings of all human beings, and in and through human beings it suffers in the sufferings of the whole creation.

I believe this variation represents the spirit if not the letter of Barth’s theology. Jesus Christ participates in the sufferings of all these others, even as the sufferings of these others are mediated to him, in the same graduated and differentiated pattern of unity-in-distinction that we saw before. And just as before we might give the sufferings of the Jews pride of place. Barth was uncompromising in connecting the sufferings of the Jews to Jesus Christ. During the church struggle against Nazism, he wrote: Whoever rejects and persecutes the Jews rejects and persecutes him who died for the sins of the Jews – and then, and only thereby for our sins as well. Anyone who is a radical enemy of the Jews, were he in every other regard an angel of light, shows himself, as such, to be a radical enemy of Jesus Christ. Anti-semitism is sin against the Holy Ghost. For anti-semitism means rejection of the grace of God.11

As powerful as this statement is, it nevertheless focuses on rejection and persecution. Those who reject and persecute the Jews are rejecting and persecuting Jesus Christ. An inseparable union between them is clearly implied. As far as I know, however, Barth never explored the larger implications of this insight. He never pressed Christ’s union in suffering with the Jews forward to include their inseparable union in covenantal love. He did not quite see that the very logic of his Christ-centred rejection of anti-semitism implied an equally Christ-centred affirmation of the Jews, that is to say, a philo-semitism grounded in covenantal love. Here is a similar statement from the same period. In Israel the really suffering One who bears the wrath and judgment of God is not Israel itself but he to whose advent Israel looks forward and who furnishes the clue to the inner meaning of its existence: Israel’s Messiah in the one day of his passion. He and not Israel is also the One 11

Karl Barth, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), p. 51 rev.

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who really suffers in all that the Jews of today have to endure. He is the One who is intended, aimed at and smitten, hated and pushed aside. (II/1, 395–96)

What I wish to focus on from this statement is the preposition ‘in’. Jesus Christ is said to be the one who really suffers ‘in all that the Jews of today have to endure’. This can only mean that Jesus Christ suffers in the unspeakable sufferings of the Jews. It can only mean that he has truly made the sufferings of the Shoah his own. From the standpoint of my soft supersessionism, it could even be taken to imply that he is the hidden Messiah of the Israel. He himself, states Barth, ‘is the One who is intended, aimed at and smitten, hated and pushed aside’. In this line of interpretation an obvious danger exists. It is the danger that the unspeakable sufferings of the Jews might be eclipsed. Unfortunately, this danger is not entirely absent from the tenor of Barth’s remarks. Nevertheless, the preposition ‘in’ could be taken in a different direction. It could be taken to imply a strong unity-in-distinction. It could allow that full weight be accorded to that which is unspeakable while still believing with fear and trembling that the unspeakable has been taken up by the hidden Messiah of Israel into the very heart of God. It could therefore be taken as a sign of hope against hope. The preposition ‘in’ points beyond solidarity to participatio Christi. According to this view, Jesus Christ participates fully in the sufferings of the Jews. When they are despised and rejected, he himself is despised and rejected, not merely in solidarity, but by an ineffable union of covenantal love. He takes them into his wounded body that they might be given a share in his risen body. They are not without hope because through his sufferings he has overcome the world. God is the One whose suffering love triumphs in his Son Jesus Christ. In him this suffering love triumphs in the sufferings of all his children. In his children it triumphs in the sufferings of all human beings, and in human beings it triumphs in the sufferings of the whole creation.

This is the scope of resurrection hope. It ends in complete universality. But it begins, I am bold to say, in the ineffability of God’s covenantal love for the Jews.

Part Two

Postliberal Theology

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Postliberal Theology If postliberal theology depends on the existence of something called the ‘Yale School’, then postliberal theology is in trouble. It is in trouble, because the so-called Yale School enjoys little basis in reality, being largely the invention of theological journalism. At best it represents a loose coalition of interests, united more by what it opposes or envisions than by any common theological programme. One indicator that the Yale School is mostly a fiction is that no two lists of who allegedly belongs to it are the same. Everyone agrees that the short list includes Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, both of whom taught at Yale over roughly the same period, more or less from the 1950s to the 1980s. After that, however, the nominees vary widely, though they can perhaps be divided into three categories: Frei and Lindbeck’s Yale colleagues, their Yale-related contemporaries, and their students. Does the Yale School include Brevard Childs, David Kelsey and Paul Holmer? All were colleagues, and all have been nominated; but why other colleagues should be excluded, like Nils Dahl, Wayne Meeks, Gene Outka or even Robert Clyde Johnson, is not clear. Does it include Stanley Hauerwas, a frequently mentioned contender, not on the Yale faculty, but with a Yale Ph.D.? Does it include William Placher, Bruce Marshall, Ronald Thiemann, Kathryn Tanner, David Yeago, Joseph DiNoia, James Buckley or myself, to mention only a few? Who knows? We all did our doctoral work at Yale, which at least seems to have placed us in the running. Prima facie, however, one is looking at a fairly diverse bunch. Are there unifying interests or themes? If we stick for a moment with Frei and Lindbeck’s students, certain tendencies are perhaps discernible, but only with varying degrees of convergence, divergence and incompatibility. One axis might run, say, between ‘neo-

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confessionalists’ and ‘neo-secularists’. Roughly speaking, the former would tend to move from the traditional to the modern, from received confessional theologies to theological method, or from ecclesial commitments to secular disciplines, whereas the latter would move more in the opposite direction, from the methodological to the confessional, or from the secular to the ecclesial, with a complex range of options in between. The only real commonality would be somehow to negotiate these interests. Another axis would represent ecumenical interests that traverse the familiar confessions or communions, representing yet also criss-crossing the Reformed, the Lutheran (mostly evangelical-Catholic in tendency), the Anglican and the Roman Catholic traditions. Not least, but perhaps crucially, another axis might span, or exemplify, a neglected difference between ‘postliberal’ and ‘neoliberal’ positions. That difference, however, in some sense, is arguably the difference between Frei and Lindbeck themselves. Besides the lack of a common programme, the main reason why there is no Yale School is that little-noticed differences exist between the two defining principals. Though not absolute, they are by no means negligible. Frei was oriented towards Barth; Lindbeck, towards Aquinas and Luther. Frei’s method of relating theology to other disciplines fell most naturally into thoughtforms reminiscent of Barth (gospel/law); Lindbeck’s method, by contrast, into thought-forms indebted to Luther (law/gospel). The logic of Frei’s theology tended to move from the particular to the general, from the ecclesial to the secular and from the confessional to the methodological; the logic of Lindbeck’s theology moved more or less in the opposite direction, from the general to the particular, from the secular to the ecclesial and from the methodological to the confessional.1 The two theologians also differed on questions of truth. Although both were ‘nonfoundationalists’ sympathetic to Wittgenstein, holding that cognitive and pragmatic aspects of truth should be seen as inseparable, Frei did not follow his colleague in making the one a function of the other. As opposed to Lindbeck’s pragmatism that made truth depend strongly on use, Frei quietly aligned himself instead with a less pragmatist position that he called ‘moderate propositionalism’.2 Nor did Frei think, as did his colleague, that doctrines qua 1

2

For similar (and much more detailed) reflections on how the two Yale theologians follow contrasting procedures in their methodologies, see Mike Higton, ‘Frei’s Christology and Lindbeck’s Cultural– linguistic Theory’, Scottish Journal of Theology 50 (1997), pp. 83–95. See Hans W. Frei, ‘Epilogue: George Lindbeck and The Nature of Doctrine’, in Theology and Dialogue, ed. Bruce D. Marshall (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 140–41.

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doctrines were merely regulative (as opposed to being also constitutive).3 The former theologian was thus somewhat less latitudinarian than the latter.4 Frei stood for ‘generous orthodoxy’; Lindbeck, for ‘orthodox generosity’. Consequently, with respect to truth and method in theology, Frei may be seen as more directly ‘postliberal’; Lindbeck, as slightly more ‘neoliberal’. ‘Postliberalism’, as used here, would be that form of tradition-based rationality in theology for which questions of truth and method are strongly dependent on questions of meaning, and for which questions of meaning are determined by the intratextual subject matter of scripture. Postliberalism bids for a paradigm shift in which liberalism and evangelicalism are overlapped, dismantled and reconstituted on a new and different plane. Neoliberalism, by contrast, would be more nearly a revisionist extension within the established liberal paradigm. It does not so much depart from as perpetuate the liberal/evangelical split characteristic of modernity itself. The neoliberal elements in Lindbeck’s thought can be seen in his ‘culturallinguistic’ theory. This theory is really a combination of three theories in one: a theory of religion, a theory of doctrine and a theory of truth. The theory of religion is ‘cultural’; the theory of doctrine, ‘regulative’, and the theory of truth, ‘pragmatist’. Whereas the theory of religion is possibly postliberal, the theories of doctrine and truth are more properly neoliberal. For Lindbeck as well as for modern liberal theology, both ‘doctrine’ and ‘truth’ are so defined as to make them strongly non-cognitive. Any conceivable propositional content in theological language is relativized, if not eliminated. Although the strategies of relativization are different, the modern liberal aversion to propositional content is the same. Modern liberal theology tends to regard received church doctrines as propositional, but truth as ‘experiential-expressive’. It proceeds, in effect, to 3

4

See for example Frei, Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 124–25. In this passage Frei discusses the historic Chalcedonian Definition. Note that he does not distinguish sharply between ‘first-order’ and ‘second-order’ discourse, but more mildly between first-level and second-level functions. Most importantly, Frei does not regard the second-level function as merely regulative. On the contrary, he takes it for granted that this grammatical level also makes truth claims, functioning in a way that is conceptually ‘descriptive’ or ‘redescriptive’. See also p. 42. For an example of Lindbeck’s ‘latitudinarianism’, see his essay ‘Atonement and the Hermeneutics of Intratextual Social Embodiment’, in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), pp. 221–40. He finds a way of validating both Anselm and Abelard on the atonement.

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turn its non-cognitive theory of religious truth against received doctrines so that propositional content is at once relativized and made dependent, in meaning and truth, on logically independent interpretative schemes (e.g., ontology, metaphysics, analytical philosophy, historicism, naturalism, social theory, depth psychology). Once Christian doctrinal content has been relativized, reinterpreted or reduced by independent disciplines functioning as interpretative schemes, practical content is typically promoted as the remaining element of religious significance. Lindbeck’s ‘cultural-linguistic’ theory is ‘neoliberal’ insofar as it achieves much the same outcome by other means. Whereas liberalism relativizes doctrine’s propositional content by reinterpretation, neoliberalism does so by redefinition (the ‘rule theory’). Whereas liberalism promotes religion’s practical content by way of a theory of religious truth that is ‘experientialexpressive’, neoliberalism does so by means of a new theory of truth that is more pragmatic. The neoliberal critique does not break with the liberal paradigm. Although it substitutes pragmatism for expressivism, it perpetuates the liberal aversion to propositionalism. Neither liberalism nor neoliberalism can quite do justice, from a properly postliberal point of view, to the truth claims of Christian discourse. The first use of the term ‘postliberal’, in the relevant sense, occurred in Hans Frei’s doctoral dissertation.5 Although in that work it merely indicated the two basic phases of Barth’s development (from liberal to postliberal), the stage was set for thinking about ‘postliberalism’ as a theological option in its own right. At least three aspects in Barth’s break with liberalism, as Frei analysed it, turned out to be portents of the future: critical realism (dialectic and analogy), the primacy of God and christocentricity. A suggestive convergence emerges at this point between Barth and Lindbeck. If one were to correlate Barth’s postliberalism with the latter’s cultural-linguistic theory, the results might be a theory of truth determined by critical realism, a theory of doctrine determined by divine primacy and a theory of religion determined by christocentrism. Although on this reading postliberalism would not be confined to the ‘Yale School’, that School would represent a partial mediation 5

Hans W. Frei, ‘The Doctrine of Revelation in the Thought of Karl Barth, 1909 to 1922: The Nature of Barth’s Break with Liberalism’, unpublished dissertation (Yale University, 1956), pp. 430–34, 513, 536.

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and independent development of richer, more definitive postliberal theologies such as are found in figures like Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth.6 In what follows, some ideas of Frei and Lindbeck will be examined in relation to such larger programmes as they bear on the emergent themes: truth, doctrine, religion.7

Postliberalism: Truth as determined by critical realism Lindbeck’s typology of the nature and function of theological language is, arguably, something like comparing two apples and a banana. ‘Cognitive propositionalism’ and ‘experiential expressivism’ are the same sort of thing, but the ‘cultural linguistic theory’ is not.8 When the latter is unpacked, the relevant aspect is, as suggested, a pragmatist theory of truth, more nearly neoliberal than postliberal in inspiration. My own work has involved a sympathetic re-working of the Lindbeck typology to direct it more plausibly along postliberal lines.9 Although differing from Lindbeck at the theoretical level, the revised typology is by no means incompatible with much of Lindbeck’s actual writing since The Nature of Doctrine. In any case, the new typology was constructed, in part, to rescue Barth’s postliberalism from the invisibility to which the Lindbeck proposal seemed otherwise to consign it. (A typology that cannot really account for figures like Barth and von Balthasar, in such matters, would seem to have something against it.) The revised typology re-designates cognitive propositionalism as ‘literalism’, and amends experiential expressivism to simply ‘expressivism’. From a postliberal point of view, the real problem with the former is not that it is 6

7 8

9

The idea that Barth and Balthasar might be regarded as the key ‘postliberals’ in theology, while Frei and Lindbeck are essentially stalkinghorses for them, respectively, is overlooked by Paul J. DeHart, The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology (London: Blackwell, 2006). To make his case that ‘postliberal theology’ is in ‘decline’, DeHart would need to take Barth and Balthasar into account. Since these are obviously enormous topics, what follows can be no more than a sketch. See Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), pp. 30–45. See George Hunsinger, ‘Beyond Literalism and Expressivism: Karl Barth’s Hermeneutical Realism’, in Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 210–25. In other words, this essay represents an alternative to key aspects of Lindbeck’s typology.

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either ‘cognitive’ or ‘propositional’, but just how it is so. Regardless of whether biblical narrative or language about God is in view, literalism sees the mode of textual reference as strongly univocal in ways that postliberalism would regard as untenable.10 Postliberalism, on the other hand, would largely agree with Lindbeck’s analysis of expressivism, but it need not restrict what religious language is supposedly ‘expressing’ only to non-cognitive religious experiences. (Some of Lindbeck’s early expressivist critics thought they could dispatch his entire typology merely because of this restriction.) The logic of expressivism does not change when it is expanded, as the revision allows, to include the covert linguistic expression of social or political power relations (e.g., ‘patriarchy’). The manifest content of religious language is still equivocal in its mode of reference; its surface content must still be unmasked and reinterpreted for its real cognitive content, which is always latent, and always unavailable apart from the use of some logically independent conceptual scheme (or a combination of schemes). Since neither biblical language about events nor language about God can be taken ‘literally’, the only alternative, supposedly, is to take it ‘metaphorically’ or ‘symbolically’, as if the meaning of these terms were obvious, uncontested or context-neutral.11 In any case, the mode of reference with respect to the manifest content (about God or events) is always strongly equivocal.12 ‘Realism’, according to the revised typology, is the distinctively postliberal option. Where literalism sees the mode of reference for theological language as univocal, and expressivism as equivocal, postliberalism sees it as analogical. Analogy (in Barth’s case often combined with dialectical modes of expression) allows for significant elements of both similarity and dissimilarity between word and object, text and referent, whether the textual referent is God or historical events or some combination of the two. Analogical modes of reference are, by definition, neither univocal nor equivocal, but they are 10

11

12

A good representative of the literalist type would be Carl F. H. Henry. See, for example, his essay ‘Is the Bible Literally True?’ in God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 4 (Waco, TX: Word, 1979), pp. 103–28. The revised typology makes it clear that ‘literalism’ and ‘realism’ both have their own contextually determined definitions of ‘metaphor’, and that the respective definitions across the typology are at strong variance with one another. Consequently, a mere appeal to ‘metaphor’ solves nothing. A good example of this type would be Paul Tillich, though the progeny in academic religious studies are legion. See, for example, his essays in Theology and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 3–75.

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nonetheless communally standardized and propositionally valid in ways that Lindbeck’s pragmatism disallows.13 With respect to language about God, by opting for analogical modes of reference, postliberalism merely retrieves patristic and medieval insights that were often eclipsed during modernity by the polarized clash between liberalism and fundamentalism. ‘God is light’, wrote Irenaeus in a remarkably pithy comment, ‘but he is unlike any light that we know’.14 God’s cognitive availability through divine revelation allows us, Irenaeus believed, to predicate descriptions of God that are as true as we can make them, while God’s irreducible ineffability nonetheless renders even our best predications profoundly inadequate. Because only God is properly light, all other light is necessarily improper and dependent, and yet our only conceptual access to the light which God is depends inexorably on that light which is not God. Whether postliberalism thinks this matter through with someone like Barth in terms of the actualism of grace, or with someone like von Balthasar in terms of the Roman Catholic understanding of the sacramentum mundi, the false polarizations of modernity are overcome. Instead of divine availability at the expense of irreducible transcendence (literalism), or divine transcendence at the expense of real availability (expressivism), postliberal critical realism recovers the historic ecumenical conviction of divine availability to true predication in the midst of transcendent ineffability. The Yale emphasis on narrative may be placed in this context. By coupling Barth’s distinctive sensitivity to biblical narrative (Geschichte) with Auerbach’s figural analysis of literary realism, Frei gained both a critical and a constructive vantage point. In The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative,15 he developed an influential criticism of modern biblical hermeneutics; and in The Identity of Jesus Christ,16 13

14

15

16

I suspect that literalism and expressivism would each have its own distinctive way of accommodating what is valid in Lindbeck’s pragmatism. For a discussion of how pragmatic factors can be accommodated by realism, without ceasing to be realism, see Hunsinger, ‘Truth as Self-Involving: Barth and Lindbeck’, in Disruptive Grace, pp. 305–18. Irenaeus, Against Heresies ii.13.4 in A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 374 (translation slightly revised). For a discussion of this seminal point in Irenaeus, see George Hunsinger, ‘Uncreated Light: From Irenaeus and Torrance to Aquinas and Barth’, in Light From Light: Scientists and Theologians in Dialogue, ed. Gerald O’Collins and Mary Ann Meyers (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 208–35; on pp. 208–12. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974). Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975). For a discussion of this work, see Chapter 7 in this volume.

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he constructed rudiments of a narrative christology. In his later work he shifted away from making formal claims about how the narrative genre logically depicted Jesus’ unsubstitutable identity as the Savior to more sociological or historical claims about how the church, on the whole, has read the gospel narratives in this way.17 At least three issues of importance for the future of postliberal theology arose from Frei’s hermeneutical work: first, the relationship between intratextuality and extratextuality; second, the postcritical interpretation of biblical narratives; and finally, how to understand the overall unity of the biblical witness. For Frei, intratextuality was related to extratextuality as meaning was related to truth, and everything depended, he insisted, on keeping the two logically distinct. His ambiguous phrasing, however, sometimes created the impression that ‘what the narratives are about’ (the identity of Jesus Christ) was merely intratextual and nothing more. What Frei meant is surely captured, however, by Francis Watson, who has defined ‘intratextual realism’ as ‘the irreducibly textual mediation of realities that nonetheless precede and transcend their textual embodiment’.18 The problem of extratextual truth was something that Barth wanted to solve by reconceiving the true referent and then appealing to the actualism of grace alone.19 The meaning and truth of biblical narratives, he believed, did not depend strongly on historical veracity narrowly conceived. Whether or to what extent postliberalism ought to follow him is a matter that will continue to be vigorously discussed.20 What postcritical biblical interpretation might mean is again something that finds its richest range of examples in the towering postliberal figure of Karl Barth. As Rudolf Smend has suggested, Barth is the proper successor 17

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19

20

See Frei, ‘The “Literal Reading” of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?’ in Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 117–52. Francis Watson, Text, Church and World (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994), p. 286. Watson’s book is an excellent example of recent postliberal hermeneutics. On Barth’s reconceiving the narrative referent, see Hunsinger, ‘Beyond Literalism and Expressivism’, in Disruptive Grace, pp. 212–15. On his appeal to the actualism of grace, see pp. 219–21. See also George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 289 n. 1. With respect to Frei and his modifications of Barth, especially regarding the precise status of historical investigation into Christ’s resurrection, see my discussion in the ‘Afterword’ to Theology and Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 265–68. See also my remarks in ‘The Daybreak of the New Creation: Christ’s Resurrection in Recent Theology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 57 (2004), pp. 163–81; on pp. 176–77.

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of Wellhausen and modern biblical criticism.21 Barth presupposes the full validity of biblical criticism, in principle, without being hamstrung by it. It frees us, he believed, from naive realism (literalist univocity) without heavily determining (as often supposed by literalists and expressivists alike) the larger questions of meaning and truth. Those questions are still logically inseparable from the direct wording of the biblical texts, he maintained, to which we can never pay thoughtful enough and close enough attention. Although in hindsight some of Barth’s exegesis may seem excessive or overly imaginative, it would surely be ungenerous not to acknowledge his enormous contribution in this area,22 one that, along with von Balthasar’s, has scarcely begun to be tapped and assessed.23 Frei knew that the category of narrative was insufficient to account for the unity of scripture, even though, with Barth, he regarded narrative as central to that unity.24 More recent postliberal proposals have appealed, among other things, to the shape of the canon, to narrationally structured symbolic worlds, or to authorial discourse.25 This is obviously a very large area, and one that can barely be touched upon here. If one further comment on Barth may be permitted, however, it would be this: He did not think that the unity of scripture depended finally on any such proposals as those just mentioned. That his work was done prior to the advent of redactional criticism may not be so great a liability as some would suggest. He knew enough about the diversity of scripture to realize that no large-scale efforts at conceptual harmonization were likely to succeed. Instead he proposed a postliberal strategy of juxtaposition, at once ordered and yet also flexible, centred on the particularity not of a system but a name.26 That the one living Jesus Christ is 21

22

23

24 25

26

Rudolf Smend, ‘Nachkritische Schriftauslegung’, in Parrhesia: Karl Barth zum achtzigsten Geburtstag (Zurich: EVZ-Verlag, 1966), pp. 215–37. See also George Hunsinger, ‘‘Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation: Rudolf Smend on Karl Barth’, in Thy Word is Truth: Barth on Scripture, ed. George Hunsinger (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012), pp. 29–48. For an initial appreciation, see, for example, James A. Wharton, ‘Karl Barth as Exegete and His Influence on Biblical Interpretation’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 28 (1972), pp. 5–13. For a discussion of postcritical exegesis in von Balthasar, see Brian McNeil, ‘The Exegete as Iconographer: Balthasar and the gospels’, in The Analogy of Beauty, ed. John Riches (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), pp. 134–46. Frei, ‘Remarks in Connection with a Theological Proposal’, in Theology and Narrative, pp. 31–32. For a useful survey see Lindbeck, ‘Postcritical Canonical Interpretation: Three Modes of Retrieval’, in Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs, ed. Christopher Seitz and Kathryn Greene-McCreight (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 26–51. For a brief account of the juxtapositional strategy, see my essay ‘Karl Barth’s Christology: Its Basic Chalcedonian Character’, in Disruptive Grace, pp. 131–47.

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himself the unity of scripture, requiring dialectical explication without the aid of a single unifying scheme (or set of schemes), is an option whose promise postliberalism has yet to explore.

Postliberalism: Doctrine as determined by the primacy of God Lindbeck’s ‘rule theory’ of doctrine has not had many takers, nor is it likely to do so. Lindbeck acknowledges the oddity of his proposal: ‘It may seem odd to suggest that the Nicaenum in its role as a communal doctrine does not make first-order truth claims, and yet this is what I shall contend’.27 One reason for the demurral is that not even Wittgenstein dichotomized the firstorder and second-order discourse as Lindbeck does. Frei is much closer to Wittgenstein when he assumes that a proposition’s ‘second level’ doctrinal usage can be both regulative and assertive at the same time (more or less the usual ecumenical position). Another reason is that Lindbeck seems to have misread Lonergan on the Nicene Creed. As Stephen Williams has shown, Lonergan, on whose account Lindbeck leans heavily, does not see the Nicaenum as merely regulative.28 Finally, as a means of accounting for continuing ecumenical disagreement (the motive Lindbeck gives for his idea), the rule theory seems like too much of a tour de force. The best hopes for ecumenical rapprochement, it would seem, lie not in one side capitulating to the other (the only option Lindbeck mentions besides his own), nor in minimizing intractable differences, but rather in pushing forward, in mutual repentance, to more complex and multidimensional doctrinal formulations that can critically appropriate what is valid in opposing views (Aufhebung). Lindbeck’s rule theory has the merit of calling attention, however, to the peculiar axiomatic status of certain propositions (implicit or explicit) in Christian discourse. These axioms, whether regulative, assertive or both, are often at variance with the reigning plausibility structures of modernity. Theologians who operate within those plausibility structures, like David Tracy or James Gustafson, have resorted to accusing Lindbeck, and with him 27 28

Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, p. 19. Stephen Williams, ‘Lindbeck’s Regulative Christology’, Modern Theology 4 (1988), pp. 173–86.

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the whole postliberal enterprise, of something called ‘fideism’. Evangelical conservatives, for their part, have voiced similar anxieties about ‘relativism’. Although these charges are not always backed by careful definition and analysis, they do signal a certain widespread uneasiness with postliberal epistemologies. What might be said in reply? This is again a very large topic that can be dealt with only in very broad strokes. The philosophical discussion of non-foundationalism after Wittgenstein has sometimes moved in directions favourable to postliberalism.29 The theological epistemologies of Barth and von Balthasar, which at first seemed odd to many, do not seem quite so strange in light of recent philosophical developments. Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, has developed an account of traditionbased rationality. He argues strongly against the possibility of neutrality in assessing the claims of rival large-scale traditions; and he explains how, by means of empathy, imagination and insight, their adherents can nonetheless understand, disagree with and learn from one another. The rational possibility of a paradigm shift, of switching from one large-scale commitment to another, is sensitively discussed. It is, however, the illusion of a view from nowhere – of ‘a tradition-independent rational universality’ – that is apparently behind such (foundationalist) epistemological anxieties as ‘fideism’ and ‘relativism’.30 The illusion of a neutral standpoint must be left behind, because when it comes to the large-scale traditions that govern existential commitments, there is no circumventing (for anyone) the risks of faith. Between postliberal theology and contemporary epistemology, the parallels, which are just beginning to be explored, can be suggestive. Von Balthasar’s religious epistemology converges, for example, with Hilary Putnam’s ‘internal realism’. According to Victoria S. Harrison, five key similarities stand out.31 (1) All knowledge begins in a set of antecedent beliefs about the world; no knowledge can exist without some prior belief. (2) Because objectivity is always relative to a conceptual scheme, objectivity 29

30

31

For a good, brief introduction to ‘nonfoundationalism’, written with theological interests in mind, see William C. Placher, Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), pp. 24–36. For a more technical discussion, see John Thiel, Nonfoundationalism (Minneapolis: Fortress/Augsburg, 1994). Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 335, 352–53. Victoria S. Harrison, ‘Putnam’s Internal Realism and von Balthasar’s Epistemology’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 44 (1998), pp. 67–92, esp. 82.

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is not the same as neutrality. ‘The objects really exist, but … one requires a conceptual scheme appropriate to identifying the object in question’.32 (3) Because method depends strongly on the object of knowledge, no one method is valid for all forms of inquiry. (4) Rationality is analogical, not identical, across the intellectual disciplines. (5) Some subjective belief-stance is the precondition for obtaining knowledge in any field. In short, like MacIntyre, Putnam contends that there is no neutral conception of rationality to which we can appeal, a belief shared by postliberal theology – over against modern theology in its standard liberal and evangelical forms. In Types of Christian Theology, Hans Frei reflected on the kind of relationship proper to theology and other disciplines. He rejected various modern options in favour of postliberalism. Neither assigning logical priority to secular disciplines nor seeing them in co-equal mutual correlation with Christian theology was adequate. Secular disciplines were to be subordinated to ‘Christian self-description’ (as Frei called it), and used only on an ad hoc basis, for purposes of description rather than large-scale explanation. Although the reasons Frei gave for subordination were largely pragmatist in orientation (Christian theology is a practical discipline of communal self-description), more substantive, if underdeveloped, reasons seem also to have been in force. In carrying out the theological enterprise, Frei urged that Christian categories take logical priority over other disciplines.33 This advice was apparently the direct methodological outcome of what he had discovered in his dissertation about ‘God’s priority’ as a major theme in Barth’s break with liberalism. ‘Theology arises’, he noted, ‘because the church is accountable to God for its discourse about God’.34 Two applications of Frei’s methodological advice are instructive. The interdisciplinary proposal developed by Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger is perhaps the most explicit account to date of the postliberal grammar embedded in Frei’s typology. Theology and psychology, she proposes, are not properly related by granting priority to psychology, nor by co-equal mutual correlation, nor by ‘integration’. ‘Integration’ is not a theoretical desideratum, but a skill to be developed by the ecclesial practitioner (in 32 33 34

Harrison, ‘Putnam’s Internal Realism and von Balthasar’s Epistemology’, p. 85. Frei, Types of Christian Theology, esp. pp. 38–46, 78–83. Ibid., p. 39.

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the context of pastoral counselling). The grammar governing the relevant interdisciplinary relations is provided by the Chalcedonian pattern. Theology and psychology are related in practice by a pattern of inseparable unity (‘without separation or division’), irreducible distinction (‘without confusion or change’)35 and asymmetrical ordering (the logical precedence of theology over psychology). It is especially van Deusen Hunsinger’s asymmetrical ordering principle that gives postliberal methodological expression to the priority of God.36 Her work stands out as a model for how to relate Christian theology to other disciplines from a post-liberal perspective, according to the grammar of the Chalcedonian pattern. Theology and philosophy are two disciplines related by much the same postliberal grammar (though more implicitly) in Bruce Marshall’s recent work, yet with much greater emphasis, as is perhaps appropriate to the case, not only on theology’s priority, but also on its assimilative power. By contrast to the familiar methodological practices of modernity, which have correlated, subordinated, assimilated or curtailed Christian theological content to some grand secular philosophy (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Bloch, Whitehead, Ricouer, Jung, Hayek, Fukuyama, Irigaray, Derrida – the list is endless),37 Marshall offers something refreshingly different. He not only tackles some of the toughest minds in contemporary philosophy (Frege, Tarski, Davidson), but shows an unerring postliberal touch. Arguing on trinitarian grounds that the Christian way of identifying God ought to have unrestricted primacy when it comes to the justification of belief, he proposes a trinitarian way of reshaping the concept of truth. Whatever the disputes about the details, Marshall admirably demonstrates what Frei meant by making ad hoc, descriptive use of a secular discipline without losing proper theological control.38 35

36

37

38

Note that by allowing each discipline its own genuine relative autonomy (‘without confusion or change’), and by focussing mostly on ad hoc modes of relation, postliberalism blocks the methodological imperialism associated with a movement like radical orthodoxy. Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, Theology and Pastoral Counseling: A New Interdisciplinary Approach (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995). Insofar as ‘radical orthodoxy’ merely reverses this relation, it remains trapped within the bounds of modernity. Bruce D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Note that, although Marshall contends that a sentence’s meaning depends on its truth (pp. 90–96), he also states that ‘whether a sentence is true depends, in part, on what it means’ (pp. 97–98). In the relevant sense, his views comport with ‘postliberal theology’ as defined at the outset of this chapter.

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Postliberalism: Religion as determined by christocentrism The hallmark of a properly postliberal approach to religion is that it speaks on the basis of explicit religious commitment. In line with its non-foundationalist leanings in epistemology, it sees modern attempts to speak on the basis of neutrality as illusory; because neutrality is finally a non-neutral commitment, and what is worse, one that typically leads to distortions in its interpretations of religion. Although postliberalism does not eschew the search for adequate descriptive categories that will illumine what ‘religion’ is, it will favour descriptions that are formal enough to include all the relevant phenomena, yet open-textured enough to allow for religious disagreement and irreducible difference. It will acknowledge that actual religious commitment has too often been a source of arrogance, bigotry and violence while yet seeking for resources within the tradition from which it speaks for combatting such deplorable evils. For postliberalism, no one strategy is mandatory for negotiating between formal description and explicit commitment. The only requirement would be somehow to do justice to both (and evaluation would pertain to how well both requirements are met). At the descriptive end of the spectrum, Paul J. Griffiths has proposed that religions are distinguished by three main properties: comprehensiveness, unsurpassability and centrality. A religion will offer a ‘comprehensive’ account of the world, one that somehow provides a framework for interpreting all aspects of experience. It will be ‘unsurpassable’ in the sense that, for its actual adherents, no other account can replace or subsume it. And it will be ‘central’, because it will be vitally related to the deepest questions of human existence (ultimate loyalty, lifestyle, morality, death, etc.).39 What is of interest here is not the relative adequacy of this account, but rather the kind of account that it is. It is the kind which makes clear that religions are inherently exclusive in the sense that one cannot adhere to more than one at the same time.40 Griffiths – perhaps the most outstanding Christian representative of a postliberal approach to religious pluralism – goes on to 39

40

Paul J. Griffiths, ‘The Properly Christian Response to Religious Plurality’, Anglican Theological Review 79 (1997), pp. 3–26. The problem of syncretism would complicate though not invalidate this account.

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correlate his formal proposal with a keen appreciation for von Balthasar’s way of relating christology to religious plurality.41 Griffiths owes an obvious debt to Lindbeck’s influential ‘cultural-linguistic’ theory of religion. Like Griffiths, Lindbeck also moves mostly from formal, phenomenal analysis to considerations of explicit religious (Christian) commitment. Religion, he argues, is not primarily a matter of assent to religious truths; nor it is primarily a matter of particular symbolic forms (whether linguistic or not) that somehow codify and transmit deep, prelinguistic ‘religious’ experiences. Rather, as Clifford Geertz has pointed out, religion is more like a cultural system that one linguistically inhabits, and within which one is shaped into a form of life, so that becoming religious is something like learning a language.42 Lindbeck’s theory of religion has been effective in its argument against expressivist interpretations of religious truth. Although language and experience may well be related dialectically, many have found it to be plausible, as Lindbeck argues, that from a cultural-linguistic point of view, experience is more nearly shaped by language than the reverse.43 Griffiths offers a valuable corrective to Lindbeck, however, by allowing a stronger place for cognitivepropositional elements: But the uncomfortable fact remains that religious world-views do have explicit truth-claims associated with them; that these truth-claims are in many cases simply incompatible with one another; and that the incompatibility of truthclaims, coupled with significant differences in stated religious goals, leaves us absolutely no good reason to believe either that all religions are aimed at the same goal or that all conflicts between religious truth-claims are merely apparent.44

Although Lindbeck need not disagree with any of this, his aversion to propositionalism leads him to minimize the ways in which religions may actually involve incompatible truth-claims. 41

42 43 44

See Griffiths, ‘One Jesus, Many Christs?’, Pro Ecclesia 7 (1998), pp. 152–71, esp. 165–68. When Griffiths eventually switched fields to Roman Catholic philosophical theology, postliberalism lost one of its most distinguished theological interpreters of the religions. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, pp. 31–42. Ibid., pp. 36–37. Paul Griffiths and Delmas Lewis, ‘On Grading Religions, Seeking Truth, and Being Nice to People – a Reply to Professor Hick’, Religious Studies 19 (1983), pp. 75–80, esp. 79.

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To sum up: Lindbeck is arguably ‘neoliberal’ insofar as he displays what I have called the liberal aversion to propositionalism. This aversion clearly shows up in his theory of truth and his theory of doctrine, and to some degree also in his theory of religion. He is nonetheless ‘postliberal’ in several respects. First, by criticizing both literalism and expressivism, he attempts to move beyond these sterile alternatives. Second, he approaches the idea of analogical reference, holding that Christian theological language, when used properly in practice, does make truth claims and impart true knowledge of God, even though we cannot specify the modus significandi. Third, he does not believe that all conflicts between religious truth claims are merely apparent (though he wishes to maximize that possibility). His insight into religion as a cultural– linguistic system, his break with foundationalism, and his emphasis on the incommensurability of different religions – most recently on the irreducible particularity of Israel – are all enormously important contributions. Finally, he enlivens postliberalism’s ecumenicity, not least by tilting toward von Balthasar in a way that counterbalances Frei’s interest in Barth. Within postliberal approaches to religion, an unresolved tension exists between those who proceed from descriptive formality to commitment and those who move more in the opposite direction from explicit commitment to formality. The former, like Lindbeck and Joseph A. Dinoia,45 strive towards a winsome irencism that would minimize conflict; the latter, like von Balthasar and Barth, tend more readily towards tough-minded polemic and critique; Griffiths stands somewhere near the midpoint. All, however, would uphold the basic Christian conviction, which they regard as logically non-negotiable, that salvation is through Christ alone; and all attempt to reconcile the solus Christus with the salvation of non-Christians. Griffiths distinguishes the Christian response to religious pluralism into a priori and a posteriori aspects. Since Barth represents perhaps the strongest a priori (as well as polemical) response within postliberalism, his views may be briefly noted to round out the spectrum.46 Barth was concerned not 45

46

Joseph A. DiNoia, The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992). For an excellent discussion, see Garrett Green, ‘Challenging the Religious Studies Canon: Karl Barth’s Theory of Religion’, The Journal of Religion 75 (1995), pp. 473–86. Excellent also is Joseph A. DiNoia, ‘Religion and the Religions’, in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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primarily with religious pluralism, but with ‘religionism’ as a modern Christian heresy. Liberal theology had made experiential-expressive ‘religion’ into the criterion of revelation rather than the reverse, a move that represented a fatal anthropocentrism at the expense of christology. Following Luther,47 Barth then went on to depict religion as a form of faithlessness and therefore sin. As a perennial human phenomenon (not least within the church), religion was always both inevitable and futile. Since it could not deliver what it promised, it resulted in ‘a sterile cycle of religious affirmation, crisis, and breakdown, followed by the outbreak of new religious movements condemned to repeat the process’. 48 Only in the sense that one could speak of a ‘justified sinner’ was it possible to speak of ‘the true religion’. Where someone like Lindbeck offered a formal analysis for how one religion might be exclusively true (‘categorial adequacy’), Barth’s argument was substantive: ‘On the question of truth or error among the religions only one thing is decisive … the name of Jesus Christ’.49 A richer elaboration of both formal and substantive considerations, a more fully informed analysis of both a priori and a posteriori elements, as represented most promisingly by Griffiths, sets an important agenda for the future of postliberalism’s approach to religious pluralism. Finally, a comment from Lesslie Newbigin will serve to round out the picture of how postliberalism views religion from a standpoint determined by christocentrism. Newbigin provides a response to the categories of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism that dominate much contemporary discussion. Postliberals would not locate themselves within any of these categories. It has become customary to classify views on the relation of Christianity to the world religions as either pluralist, exclusivist, or inclusivist …. [My] position is exclusivist in the sense that it affirms the unique truth of the revelation in Jesus Christ, but it is not exclusivist in the sense of denying the possibility of the salvation of the non-Christian. It is inclusivist in the sense that it refuses to limit the saving grace of God to the members of the Christian church, but it rejects the inclusivism which regards the 47

48 49

Luther (not Barth or Bonhoeffer) was the first theologian to interpret Paul’s polemic against ‘the law’ as a polemic against ‘religion’. See Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, in Luther’s Works, vol. 27, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964), pp. 87–90. Barth as summarized by Green, ‘Barth’s Theory of Religion’, 481. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I, part 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), pp. 280–361, on p. 343 (following Green’s translation, ‘Barth’s Theory’, 482).

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non-Christian religions as vehicles of salvation. It is pluralist in the sense of acknowledging the gracious work of God in the lives of all human beings, but it rejects a pluralism which denies the uniqueness and decisiveness of what God has done in Jesus Christ.50

Newbigin here represents what Frei meant by ‘generous orthodoxy’. In a way typical of postliberal theology, he combines a high christology with an open soteriology. The biblical witness to Jesus Christ as the world’s unique and indispensable Saviour, he believes, still allows (and even requires) certain questions to remain open in hope.51

Conclusion Although Frei, Lindbeck and the ‘Yale School’, gave strong impetus to postliberal theology, postliberal theology involves far more than the Yale School. It includes not only perhaps the two greatest theologians of the twentieth century (Barth and von Balthasar) and at least one great missiologist (Newbigin), but also a number of promising younger theologians whose work is just starting to bear fruit. They can be recognized by a common set of goals, interests and commitments, especially their ecumenical interests and their desire to move beyond modernity’s liberal/evangelical impasse. As made newly possible in our culture by the rise of non-foundationalism, they have begun to rethink old questions like the truth of theological language, interdisciplinary relations and religious pluralism. They are the tribe Lindbeck hopes will increase.

50

51

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 182–83 (italics added). For a deft survey of Karl Barth’s view of ‘religion’ and ‘religions’, see Sven Ensminger, Karl Barth’s Theology as a Resource for a Christian Theology of Religions (London: T. & T. Clark, 2014).

7

Frei’s Early Christology: The Book of Detours When I first read Hans Frei’s book The Identity of Jesus Christ,1 shortly after it was published in 1975, I was still a graduate student. I can remember how frustrated I felt about the opening chapters that were titled ‘The Problem of Presence’. Why focus so abstractly on the term ‘presence’, I wondered, and why problematize it at such length? Wasn’t this an artificial place to start? If the goal was to discuss Jesus Christ’s identity, why not just get on with it and come straight to the point? Beginning with ‘presence’ as a way of getting to ‘identity’ struck me as tedious and unnecessary, especially because Frei as much as conceded, for about thirty-five belaboured pages, that there was in fact no viable way from the presence of Jesus Christ to his identity. Had anyone ever supposed otherwise? I wondered. Had anyone argued that Christ’s identity could be derived from his presence? Wasn’t Frei tilting at a problem where none existed in the first place? As I re-read these chapters nearly forty years later, I must confess to a remembrance of things past. My old feelings of frustration and perplexity resurfaced as I encountered Frei’s decision to fret at such length over the so-called ‘problem of presence’. I can also remember a corresponding sense of relief when I later turned to Frei’s companion piece entitled ‘Theological Reflections on the Accounts of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection’. This essay, appearing in the Christian Scholar in 1966,2 apparently predated a much longer article titled ‘The Mystery of the Presence of Jesus Christ’, which was published in Crossroads in 1967.3 It was 1

2

3

Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975). Hereafter cited in the text as IJC. Frei, ‘Theological Reflections on the Accounts of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection’, Christian Scholar 49 (1966), pp. 263–306. Reprinted in Frei, Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 45–91. Material from this volume is hereafter cited in the text as TN. Frei, ‘The Mystery of the Presence of Jesus Christ’, Crossroads 17 (January–March 1967), pp. 69–96 and (April–June 1967), pp. 69–96.

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this latter work that was then eventually reprinted between two covers as Frei’s Identity book. The Christian Scholar article managed to make Frei’s central points without sinking into the quagmire of ‘presence’, and indeed without mentioning the term, at least with respect to the idea of ‘self-presence’. Starting immediately with the gospel accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection, it goes straight to Frei’s two proposed modes of identity-depiction: the intention– action scheme and the self-manifestation scheme, to which we will return at a later point. The Christian Scholar article makes Frei’s foregrounding of the category of ‘presence’ in his Identity book all the more perplexing. Nevertheless, I can think of three reasons why he may have done so. The first is the idea of what Frei dubbed ‘coinherence’. This term had been central to his 1956 Yale dissertation on ‘The Nature of Barth’s Break with Liberalism’.4 Barth’s break with liberalism, Frei argued, was carried out largely as a break with coinherence. Coinherence was, by this account, the secret premise of modern liberal theology. It posited that the reality of God was somehow interior to and given with universal human self-consciousness. (Though Frei does not say so, it is possible that for this idea Calvin’s ‘seed of religion’ stands somewhere remotely in the background.) An immediate relationship with God was seen as constitutive of human nature (BBL, 137). The objective content of revelation was then posited in and with its subjective apprehension in human self-consciousness. In principle, the result was a relationship of coinherence or Ineinanderstellung ‘in which Jesus Christ, the Word of God, or even history is immediately present in … faith’ (BBL, 119). This coinherence of revelation’s subjective apprehension with its objective content meant two things. Not only was God not radically an object over against present experience, but at the same time a kind of ‘relationalism’ resulted in which the two – God and religious self-consciousness – were seen as innate aspects of one and the same subjective reality. Furthermore, because the relationship between the two was posited as symmetrical, it was also in principle reversible. The logic of relationalism thereby made it vulnerable to reductionism. It allowed God to be unmasked as nothing but an illusory projection of religious self-consciousness. Feuerbach’s smile was waiting in the 4

Frei, ‘The Doctrine of Revelation in the Thought of Karl Barth, 1909 to 1922: The Nature of Barth’s Break with Liberalism’, unpublished dissertation, Yale University, 1956. Hereafter cited in the text as BBL.

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wings. Frei’s worry about ‘presence’ in his Identity book owes something to this worry about the logic of relationalism and the corresponding danger of reductionism (IJC, 149). Second, in the new Preface added in 1975 when the Crossroads essay was published as a book, Frei tells us that through the concept of ‘presence’ he was trying to capture a broad phenomenon in modernity with a single term. He writes: This notion of ‘presence’ seemed to me to be the distillate of the philosophical conceptuality under which such otherwise very different people as Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, and the dialectical theologians of the 1920s [like Bultmann and Gogarten] set forth their religious and theological proposals. (IJC, ix)

Although Frei is sweeping and elusive here, it seems that he is thinking once again, only this time more obliquely, about what his dissertation had called ‘coinherence’ and ‘relationalism’. Once again, an innate relation to God – which was supposedly constitutive of the self – set the terms for Christian revelation. Jesus Christ’s presence to the self was somehow implicated in the self ’s presence to itself. Christological presence and self-presence were very much entangled. Whether or not this is the difficulty that Frei had in mind, he immediately saddled himself with a liability. Contrary to what he intended, the concept of ‘presence’, at the outset of his argument, tended to overpower his discourse about Jesus Christ. At least rhetorically, it seemed that Christ was being explained with reference to ‘presence’ rather than the other way around. If instead the accent had fallen on the living Christ, Frei’s portrayal of ‘presence’ might have seemed very different. The living Christ in his concrete presence to faith might have been set forth as a presence that was active, independent and self-communicating. Christ’s presence would then have been differentiated more sharply from human self-presence. That is clearly where Frei wanted to go. Nevertheless, he was hamstrung by his philosophical starting point. He unwittingly instantiated, even if only indirectly, the difficulty he intended to remove. A third reason why Frei may have chosen to foreground the problem of presence perhaps laid closer to home. In H. Richard Niebuhr’s posthumously

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published volume of lectures from the 1950s, entitled Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith,5 a number of remarks appear that are strikingly reminiscent of the issues Frei was struggling with in his early christology. ‘We cannot proceed from a pre-existent Christ to an incarnate Christ’, wrote Niebuhr, ‘we can only move backward from the contemporary Christ to the historical, from the historical to the pre-existent’ (FE, 88, italics added). This remark is followed by a footnote in which the present tense is described as ‘the Locus of Reality’ (FE, 88n.). The proper procedure, Niebuhr continued, is to move ‘backward from the present givenness of Jesus Christ in whom we trust and to whom we want to be loyal’ in order to find the proximate ground of this presence in the community that mediates him, but ultimately in Jesus’s own self-consciousness relative to God (FE, 89, italics added). ‘The present Jesus Christ of faith is the companion who reconstructs the faith by which we have lived in the past’ (FE, 89n., italics original). Our confidence in the Christ who is present to us is not based on ‘confidence in those who reported his deeds’ (FE, 90). It is rather based on our encounter with him here and now. We encounter him ‘as a person who accompanies in unseen presence those who believe in him’ (FE, 91, italics added). ‘He has’, Niebuhr explains, ‘all the characteristics of a mythological figure’ (FE, 92). Christ is present to us in mythological form as ‘the personification of … faithfulness’ (FE, 92). He is present to faith ‘not as a remembered figure’, but as ‘a living being present with his past’ (FE, 94). Christ’s resurrection is not something we recollect, according to Niebuhr, but something we experience in the present (FE, 97). ‘He is built into the structure of our conscience’ (FE, 98, italics added). He functions to turn ‘our distrust of God … somewhat in the direction of trust’ (FE, 99). The spiritual transition from disloyalty to loyalty is the saving significance that Niebuhr ascribes to the mystery of the presence of Christ. I have slightly oversimplified what Niebuhr says in these lectures in order to highlight their evident points of contact with what was worrying Frei at about the same time. Was Frei consciously but covertly contradicting some key views of his mentor? Whether he may have read or heard the Niebuhr lectures collected in Faith on Earth is by now impossible to determine. As 5

H. Richard Niebuhr, Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Hereafter cited in the text as FE.

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Niebuhr’s prize student and Yale colleague, however, it does not seem farfetched to suppose that Frei may have encountered these Niebuhrian themes in some form. The ‘common conceptuality’ (IJC, ix) that troubled Frei about modern academic christology may also have been something that he perceived in his mentor. To sum up: Whether in his dissertation, in his Identity book or perhaps also in his teacher, Frei regarded the concept of ‘presence’ as the Achilles’ heel of modern christology. Having lost confidence in the historical veracity of the gospel narratives, modern christology had relocated itself firmly in the domain of religious self-consciousness. Christology was no longer grounded in history so much as in religious experience. The identity of Jesus as a particular person was less important than his function as a religious symbol. However, if the source and ground of the Christ symbol was ascribed to religious self-consciousness, then the mystery of his presence and the mystery of self-consciousness were ultimately one and the same. The reduction of Christ’s presence to consciousness could not be far behind. Anthropology had asserted itself as the meaning of Christ. The question was, where was saving significance to be found? – in Christ as a particular person or in Christ as a religious symbol? To explain Frei’s solution to this dilemma, let me summarize the main argument of his Identity book. Over against what he discerned in modern christology, and perhaps even in H. Richard Niebuhr, Frei contended that Christ’s identity and saving significance could not be grounded in his presence. On the contrary, the reverse was true: his saving presence was a function of his prior identity as a particular person. In short, we cannot proceed from Christ’s presence to his identity, but only from his identity to his presence. It helps to see that the terms ‘identity’ and ‘presence’ can be correlated with those of witness and mediation, though Frei did not make this move. We can then say that for Frei ‘witness’ gives us the identity of Jesus Christ, while ‘mediation’ gives us his presence. For Frei, the saving identity of Jesus Christ was grounded in the gospel narratives. These narratives, as he understood them, belonged more nearly to the genre of ‘legendary witness’ than to that of ‘historical report’. The stories were stylized portraits more than literal accounts. Nevertheless, although it was not their primary purpose to report historical facts, neither were they entirely

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devoid of such facts.6 It followed that the stories could not be relegated merely to the category of ‘myth’ or ‘symbol’. Any mythological elements that may have been employed were in fact ‘demythologized’, Frei argued, by their being subsumed into Jesus Christ’s identity as a particular person. The meaning or claim of the narratives was that these mythological or universal elements had been entirely co-opted by the particularity of Jesus. It was finally he who gave content to them, not they to him. Jesus was an unsubstitutable person in his saving significance. He did not illustrate or symbolize anything other than himself. He was of universal significance precisely in his radical particularity. The depiction of his unsubstitutable identity was grounded most especially in the gospel stories surrounding his resurrection. Regardless of whether their claim to universal significance was true, that was the meaning of the stories when read their own terms. It was in this sense that the stories served to attest the saving identity of Jesus. He was an irreducibly particular person for whom none other could be substituted. As someone irreducibly particular, he enjoyed universal saving significance. If witness gives us Jesus Christ’s saving identity, then mediation gives us his saving presence. The very narratives by which his identity is depicted are also the means by which his presence is made available to faith here and now. As Frei states more broadly, the Word of scripture is the temporal basis of Christ’s presence, while the church’s Sacraments are its spatial basis (IJC 17–18, 156, 158–59, 165). In other words, the mystery of Christ’s presence to faith is not only grounded in his resurrection as attested by the gospel stories. At the same time his presence is also mediated into the present by Word and Sacrament. Frei could perhaps have made this point more clearly if he had spoken more directly about the risen Christ as a living and active Subject. He could then have said that the risen Christ is our Contemporary who attests himself whenever he is spoken of in accord with the gospel witness, and that he also mediates himself and his presence to faith by means of Word and Sacrament. If the risen Christ had been explained not just as a ‘presence’, but as the 6

For a discussion of how Frei deals with the factuality question, see George Hunsinger, ‘The Daybreak of the New Creation: Christ’s Resurrection in Recent Theology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 57 (2004), pp. 163–81; on pp. 176–77.

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living Subject who at once attests and yet also mediates himself through Word and Sacrament, he might have emerged more distinctly as a reality over against religious self-consciousness. Christ’s sovereign presence as an acting Subject would not have remained so occluded by German Idealist conceptions. The idea of union and communion with Christ (Christus praesens), which Frei mentions only sparingly, might also have been etched more sharply. Unfortunately, in his Identity book Frei does not immediately explain why Christ’s identity cannot be grounded in his presence. Before arriving at his announced destination – namely, a narrative account of Christ’s saving identity as a particular person – Frei allows his argument to travel down many unexpected byways. No clear map for this itinerary is provided. Only in retrospect can the reader perhaps grasp why these detours were taken. One’s bafflement – having been first elicited by the abstract discussion of presence – only intensifies as Frei’s next stop turns out to be not the gospel narratives, but formal patterns of identity depiction, with special reference to Gilbert Ryle. One then has to pick up again almost immediately for an excursion into Gnosticism and dying-and-rising saviour myths. Like a child on a long road trip, one may begin to ask oneself, are we there yet? Regrettably, as so often happens, the answer is still no. The reader is next led on a guided tour through several twentieth-century novels to see how unsuccessfully they depict their heroes as Christ-figures. Only after that does light start to appear at the end of the tunnel, or perhaps better, at the end of the warren. Just as a sinking feeling may set in that the argument has gone hopelessly astray, Frei arrives, as promised, at ‘The New Testament Depiction of Jesus Christ’. Nevertheless, even the most indefatigable traveller cannot help wondering, why so many detours along the way? Why did Frei turn his Identity book into a book of detours? Although no definitive answer can be given, at least two possible factors may be relevant. First, Frei seemed to have possessed a mind like a highly sensitive photographic plate. He took in everything all at once, and he did so in finegrained detail.7 When he tried to articulate his perceptions, he sometimes had difficulty in sorting out the forest from the trees. He would no sooner take up 7

I have also used this image to describe Frei in an earlier essay. Hunsinger, ‘Hans Frei as Theologian: The Quest for a Generous Orthodoxy’, Modern Theology 8 (1992), pp. 103–28; on p. 104.

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one topic than it led him to think immediately of another. His inherent sense of subtleties and complexities could outstrip his capacity to express them. Consequently, he often seemed more profound than clear. Moreover, a fine line exists between subtlety and obscurity, and Frei was not unknown to cross the line. He once confided to me that one of his philosophical colleagues at Yale regarded him as a fuzzy thinker. Even when he may have been fuzzy, however, he was never superficial. In the midst of any possible fuzziness, important insights were struggling to get out. Aspects of Frei’s early christology have been subjected to a thoughtful critique in a book by David Lee entitled Luke’s Stories of Jesus: Theological Reading of Gospel Narrative and the Legacy of Hans Frei.8 Although I cannot do full justice to Lee’s rich and fair-minded discussion, I want to lift up three of his most telling concerns. First, I think he is right to point out that in the Identity book, Frei works only with a generalized version of the gospel story. This is ironic given Frei’s plea that the whole text should be respected in its final form. It raises questions about how much his christology is really derived from the gospel narratives (LHF, 60n., 66–67). Second, Lee questions Frei’s intention-action scheme of identity depiction. Is it truly as formal and descriptive as Frei claims? The identity of Jesus in the gospel narratives, Frei argues, emerges through the interaction of character and circumstance, more or less as characters emerge in a realistic novel. As the gospels proceed, according to Frei, Jesus is increasingly identified by what he does and what he undergoes. From a strictly literary standpoint, however, as Lee points out, the intention-action scheme emphasizes narrative events at the expense of other narrative elements, especially Jesus’ narrated teachings, which are not much engaged. In Frei’s interpretation, too much of the narrative is simply bracketed out (LHF, 64). I will return to this point later, because it has significant christological implications. Finally, Lee also questions Frei’s other scheme of identity depiction, involving what Frei calls a person’s self-manifestation. A person’s identity, Frei argues, is manifested by events or activities that display what a person 8

David Lee, Luke’s Stories of Jesus: Theological Reading of Gospel Narrative and the Legacy of Hans Frei (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). Hereafter cited in the text as LHF. (I should mention that Lee also delves deeply into Frei’s later work.)

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is like when he is most fully himself. Jesus is then claimed to be most fully himself in the resurrection stories, because they most clearly depict him in his oneness with God. I think Lee is right to argue that here Frei’s point is not convincingly made. It is not clear that the gospel stories must lead inexorably to his resurrection. From a literary standpoint, as George Steiner has argued, they might have ended otherwise (LHF, 74, n. 67). Nor, as I will argue more fully later, is Frei’s ‘Anselmian’ argument convincing that Jesus cannot not be conceived as raised, and that to know his identity is to have him be present (LHF, 70–75). Lee concludes that in his Identity book Frei’s reading of the gospel narratives is governed by theological or dogmatic interests. I think this judgement is correct, but it is again ironic, because the subtitle of the book states the relation in reverse. Frei claims to be elucidating ‘the hermeneutical bases of dogmatic theology’ when what he actually develops, in practice, I think, are more nearly the theological or dogmatic bases of scriptural hermeneutics. I want to suggest that this is one of those fuzzy areas in Frei where something profound is struggling to get out. Furthermore, what I think is struggling to get out is something that Frei himself calls a ‘high christology’ (TN, 32, 37). For the remainder of this paper I want to do three things. I want to show first, that Frei thinks his Identity book offers a high christology; second, that he does not succeed in this project; and finally, that at the end of his career he does succeed in showing how a high christology can be based on an interpretative scheme that avoids his earlier deficiencies. First, in his Identity book Frei thinks he is offering a high christology. For our purposes a high christology may be defined as one in which the death of Jesus as a particular person has universal saving significance. Frei supposes that he has assembled the elements of a high christology through his critical analysis of Christ-figures as they are depicted in modern novels. The novelistic Christ-figures fail, he argues, because they cannot hold together the defining elements that allow a Christ-figure to emerge as the Saviour. Novelistic Christfigures are indeed invested with an irreducible particular identity, but they cannot carry universal saving significance. This makes them the diametrical opposite of dying-and-rising saviour figures as found in mythology. They are indeed of universal saving significance, but devoid of all particular personal

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identity. Only Jesus as depicted in the gospels, Frei maintains, can hold particularity and universality together in a single person. The particular and universal elements as depicted in the stories also force us to raise the question of factuality, according to Frei, because of how the narratives climax in the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Along with particularity and universality, a high christology needs one more element. It needs what Frei calls the pattern of exchange. According to this pattern in its simplest form, Jesus dies that others might live. Furthermore, although he is innocent, he dies for the guilty. The guilt of the guilty is laid on him so that through him their guilt might be exchanged for his innocence. Although Frei’s account of this pattern remains terribly sketchy, I think he is right as far as he goes.9 That is, I think a high christology does entail a pattern of exchange. Frei argues that novelistic Christ-figures cannot pull it off, but that the gospel stories succeed in ascribing this pattern to Jesus. Frei also thinks he has succeeded in showing that this is the case. Second, in his Identity book Frei does not succeed in his project of developing a high christology. He handles only one of its elements successfully. His analysis of how the gospel stories depict Jesus as a particular person who as the Saviour cannot be substituted for anyone or anything else is reasonably convincing. Frei does not succeed, however, in explaining how Jesus can have universal saving significance. His two schemes of identity-depiction – the intention–action scheme and the self-manifestation scheme – both tend to militate against it. They give us only a Jesus who is fully human but not one who is fully divine. In a high christology, however, it is ordinarily the deity of Jesus that makes his saving significance to be of universal scope. By his own admission, the identity-depiction schemes that Frei uses function only 9

‘Luther’, Frei told John Woolverton in an interview, ‘was an early influence on me at Yale Divinity School’. Martin Luther seems to be in the background when Frei refers to ‘The Pattern of Exchange’ (IJC, 74–84, 160). In The Freedom of a Christian Luther wrote: [Faith] … unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom … Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sin, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life and salvation will be the soul’s. For if Christ is the bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which belong to his bride and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers? (LW 31:351)

Frei offers nothing this detailed and specific. For Karl Barth on the pattern of exchange, see Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV, part 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), pp. 75–77. For Frei’s personal reference to Luther, see John F. Woolverton, ‘Hans W. Frei in Context: A Theological and Historical Memoir’, Anglican Theological Review 79 (1997), pp. 369–93; on p. 378.

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to describe Jesus as a ‘full human being’ (IJC, 137). They are ill-equipped to portray him as anything more. In the gospel stories, Jesus’ deity is depicted, if at all, in two main ways: first, through what he says and does; and second, through his resurrection appearances. When the narrated Jesus speaks of himself as the Son of Man, when he forgives sins, when he performs miracles of healing, when he stills the storm at sea or walks on water, when he is accused of blasphemy, an implicit claim is arguably being made that he is more than merely human. By factoring out this kind of material, which he approaches with a moderate scepticism, Frei deprives his argument of one possible narrative source for ascribing deity to the identity of Jesus Christ and therefore universal significance to him. Perhaps the most obvious way in which the gospel stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances might seem to invest him with deity would be through their depiction of the risen Jesus as the object of worship. Leaving aside the gospel of Mark, whose oldest manuscripts notoriously include no appearance stories, all three other gospels, each in its own way, depict Jesus as someone who is now worshipped as God (Matt. 28:9, 17; Luke 24:52; John 20:28). These stories are certainly suggestive though perhaps not devoid of ambiguity. In any case, Frei does not avail himself of this narrative element. Instead he takes another tack. On the one hand, Frei claims that in the resurrection appearances Jesus is ‘most fully himself ’, while on the other hand, he also plays his ‘Anselmian’ card. Neither move is successful. The selfmanifestation claim seems unconvincing, because the idea of Jesus being ‘most fully himself ’ is not a clear and distinct idea. Not only is it a subjective and perhaps slightly whimsical judgement, but it is also not obviously a narrative element in the appearance stories.10 If Jesus is fully but merely human – and Frei’s identity-depiction schemes offer nothing more – then it is hard to see how the appearance stories manifest Jesus as ‘one with God’, as Frei claims. We would need to know in what sense Jesus is thought to be one with God, and in any case why he is not still merely human. For someone to be raised from the 10

As Lee observes about the Emmaeus Road story in Luke 24: ‘Jesus is concerned not to assure the disciples that he is risen, but rather that it was necessary that he should suffer’ (LHF, 292). This is said over against Frei, who wrongly seems to suppose that the story serves mainly to identify Jesus as risen. The Emmaeus story also seems to imply that the true identity of Jesus is made known through the scriptures (Luke 24:27) and the breaking of bread (Luke 24:30) (not narrowly through the gospel stories themselves).

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dead entails no logical implication, by itself, that he is thereby not just human but truly God. If the appearance stories somehow depict him as being truly God, as for example when he is worshipped, that is another matter entirely. The bare fact of his being raised would not be enough to make him more than human, even if his comings and goings were portrayed as mysterious. Unfortunately, neither will Frei’s ‘Anselmian’ argument for Christ’s resurrection hold up to scrutiny. Disbelief in Christ’s resurrection is said to be ‘rationally impossible’ (IJC, 151). Frei asks, ‘How can he who constitutes the very definition of life be conceived of as the opposite of what he defines? To think of him as dead is the equivalent of not thinking of him at all’ (IJC, 148). To grasp who Jesus Christ is means to see that his non-resurrection is inconceivable (IJC, 145). His identity ‘is such that he cannot be conceived as not present’ (IJC, 155). This line of argument fails to distinguish between two types of necessity, the one strict and the other conditional. In his famous (and famously vexing) ontological argument, Anselm relies on the idea of strict necessity. The formulation ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’ cannot be denied to the definition of ‘God’, he argues, without lapsing into logical incoherence. The conclusion (that ‘therefore God necessarily exists’) takes the form of strict necessity (regardless of whether one decides the inference is valid or not). The same cannot be said of Frei’s proposal, which might be rephrased as follows: ‘If the identity of Jesus Christ is what the gospel narratives depict it to be, then he cannot be conceived as not risen from the dead’. In this case the conditional clause can be denied without incoherence. Hence while the conclusion follows logically from the premise (supposing that Frei is correct about how the narratives depict Jesus), its necessity is still conditional, because the premise is merely conditional. A careful reading suggests that Frei saw the difference between these two types of necessity without ever making it clear. His point was more limited than may have appeared at first glance. Anyone who had accepted the conditional clause, he wanted to say, was logically committed to the stated conclusion – a point of some pastoral (and perhaps polemical) significance (IJC, 152).11 11

I have drawn here upon an argument I made in Hunsinger, ‘Christ’s Resurrection in Recent Theology’, pp. 177–78. (Infra, n. 6.)

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The third element in a high christology is the ‘pattern of exchange’. In order for this pattern to be sustained, Jesus must be truly God as well as truly human. If he were not truly human, he could not take sin and death upon himself in order to bear them away for the good of others. If he were not truly God, on the other hand, he would lack the power to overcome the terrible destruction he freely embraced, again for the good of others.12 Because Frei fails to establish the deity of Jesus Christ, he fails to establish his universal significance, and without his universal significance the pattern of exchange cannot be sustained. A further problem may be noted in passing. Frei does not succeed in deriving the pattern of exchange from the gospel stories. He can only import it by drawing on other scriptural texts, like Isa. 53 (the Suffering Servant passage) and Phil. 2:6–11 (the Pauline hymn about Jesus’ humiliation, obedience unto death and subsequent exaltation). Frei’s reading of the gospel stories at this important juncture in his argument suggests that his narrative interpretation is again being driven by larger dogmatic considerations. To sum up: Frei offers a convincing account of Jesus’s irreducible particularity, but fails to establish Jesus’ universal saving significance, because he fails to establish that Jesus is truly God (as depicted in the narratives). Consequently, he cannot sustain his account of the pattern of exchange, which requires that Jesus have universal significance for the good of others. Therefore, although in his Identity book Frei wishes to propound a high christology, he succeeds in establishing only one of its three defining elements by means of a narrative analysis. In an essay written prior to his Identity book, Frei discusses the christology of H. Richard Niebuhr in light of the Chalcedonian formula. He notes with approval that in the book Christ and Culture,13 Niebuhr propounded a ‘moral analysis’ of the Incarnation as opposed to a ‘metaphysical analysis’. Rather than focusing on Jesus’ divine and human ‘natures’ in their mysterious unity-indistinction, Niebuhr sought to find Jesus’ divine–human union in his ‘moral, historical acts’. The result, Frei suggested, pointed towards a unique ‘moral Sonship’ in which Jesus was completely one with God’s will while also being 12

13

In the Christian Scholar article, Frei wrote about Jesus’s ‘omnipotence’ (TN, 49), but in his Identity book he dropped the term, in favour of a contrast simply between ‘power and powerlessness’. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951).

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completely one with human beings. This oneness was moral and volitional as opposed to metaphysical or ontological. Frei described Niebuhr’s approach as ‘an important and fruitful new suggestion in modern theology’ which held ‘every promise of being useful’.14 It is intriguing to think that Frei might have conceived his Identity book as an attempt to expound upon Niebuhr’s suggestion. Like Niebuhr, he seemed to think that christology should focus on Jesus’ deeds as opposed to his natures. Frei would thus be drawing positively upon his teacher, not just possibly attempting to correct him. It is instructive, however, that in pursuing such a programme Frei was unable to provide a convincing account of a high or Chalcedonian christology. Rather than being alternatives, it seems that a ‘moral christology’ could not be successfully worked out in accord with Chalcedon without being developed as a ‘metaphysical christology’ at the same time. In his 1986 Princeton lectures, shortly before the end of his life, Frei returned to the problem of a high christology in accord with Chalcedon. Although he had long since left his earlier christological project behind, he had not lost his interest in the christological significance of the gospel stories. Although they no longer served as the basis for deriving a high christology, he believed that they could be interpreted through the lens of the Chalcedonian formula. It would be an ecclesial, committed interpretation, informed at once by both dogmatic and exegetical reflection. It would presuppose, in effect, a complex and subtle feedback loop that moved dialectically from exegesis to dogmatics and back again, in a continual process of dynamic interaction. Frei’s insight into how the Chalcedonian formula functions is the most brilliant suggestion for its use that I have seen. ‘The formula’, he writes, ‘is a conceptual re-description of a synthesis of the gospel stories understood as narratives identifying Jesus Christ’.15 The gospel stories, Frei now suggests, are 14

15

Hans W. Frei, ‘The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr’, in Faith and Ethics: The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, ed. Paul Ramsey (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1957), pp. 65–116, especially the section entitled ‘Christology’ (pp. 104–16). I have quoted from pp. 110, 114 and 116. Note that Troeltsch, however, had already formulated the relationship of God and Christ as ‘a unity of will, not as an essential unity in substance’. See Ernst Troeltsch, The Christian Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 90; cf. p. 100. Hans W. Frei, Types of Christian Theology, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 125. Hereafter cited in the text as TCT.

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to be read through Chalcedon as a hermeneutical lens or an interpretive rule. Just because some episodes depict Jesus in his humanity (e.g., John 19:28), that does not mean that he is not truly God. Conversely, just because others depict him in his deity (e.g., Mark 4:39, 6:49), that does not mean he is not truly human. When the human predication is in the forefront, the divine is always presupposed, and vice versa. Faithful or ecclesial reading moves back and forth between these predications. As Karl Barth points out, the true deity and true humanity of Jesus can neither be simultaneously depicted nor inclusively apprehended. ‘When the one is heard, the other can be heard only indirectly, in faith …. Faith is the perception either way of what is not said’.16 In this way the two predications are held together by Jesus as the single subject of the gospel stories as confessed by faith. The unity of these divergent predications in the narrated figure of Jesus must be accorded priority, states Frei, over ‘their abiding logical distinctness’ (TCT, 126). ‘What is at stake’, he concludes, ‘is the proper identification of the agent under a categorical scheme …. [T]he meaning of the doctrine is the story rather than the meaning of the story being the doctrine’ (TCT, 126). The meaning of Chalcedon, in other words, is the story rather than the reverse. What we encounter here is the maturation of Frei’s hermeneutical thought. He still proposes to read the gospel stories identifying Jesus through a hermeneutical scheme. The scheme is no longer regarded merely as a formal device, however, because Chalcedon is at one level a first-order statement that summarizes and asserts the mystery of Jesus’ divine–human identity (TCT, 124). Nor is this interpretive scheme derived merely from the gospel stories. It is derived from the New Testament witness taken as a whole. From the standpoint of faith, it was formulated by an ecumenical council of the ancient church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It serves as an authoritative device that establishes the ‘literal sense’ of the New Testament witness to Jesus as confessed by the faithful community. The Chalcedonian formula thus authorizes and ensures the kind of high christology with a narrative orientation that the early Frei had sought but 16

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I, part 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), p. 180.

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never found. Although he took many detours to get there, he arrived at Chalcedon as his hermeneutical home.17

17

Perhaps the major question that Frei left open regarding the identity of Jesus Christ pertained to whether he thought God suffered and died in the Incarnation to save us from sin and death. In his early christology, with its rather Nieburhian and Troeltschian undertones, he seemed to lean in a somewhat ‘dualist’ direction. In that case he might most consistently have held that God did not suffer in the Incarnation. With his later espousal of Chalcedon, however, Frei might have been open to a more ‘unitary’ and theopaschite christology. He might have held with Cyril and Barth that the impassible God suffered and died for our sakes on the cross.

8

Between Barth and Troeltsch: H.R. Niebuhr’s The Meaning of Revelation

The meaning of revelation as set forth by H. Richard Niebuhr continues to have remarkable appeal. His book The Meaning of Revelation, which first appeared in 1941, has enjoyed a steady readership for more than six decades, being newly reprinted in 2006, an impressive run by any reckoning.1 Because the book is at once accessible yet also elusive by turns, a critical examination may not be amiss. Its central theological contents will here be assessed from the standpoint of Nicene Christianity. The two Niebuhr brothers – Reinhold and H. Richard – might be regarded as religious thinkers who worked largely within the genre of wisdom literature. Each in his own way had much wisdom to offer that was undoubtedly compatible with Nicene Christianity. On the other hand, neither of them would seem entirely satisfactory from a Nicene standpoint. It should not be forgotten, in this respect, that neither of Niebuhrs wished to be regarded as a theologian, each preferring instead to be thought of as a social ethicist. While that would not be problematic as far as it went, it did not prevent either of them from taking a stand on vital doctrinal issues. Perhaps the best critical assessment of Reinhold Niebuhr’s theology per se is the neglected work by Shirley C. Guthrie, The Theological Character of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Social Ethic.2 Guthrie did a fine job of explaining the theological concerns that would arise from a Nicene standpoint. Nothing 1

2

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941); with a new Introduction by Douglas F. Ottati (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2006). Hereafter page references cited in the text according to the 1941 edition. Shirley C. Guthrie, The Theological Character of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Social Ethic (Winterhur: Verlag P.G. Keller, 1959).

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quite comparable seems to exist for H. Richard Niebuhr, though surveys of his specifically theological contribution can be found in Libertus A. Hoedemaker’s The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr3 and Lonnie D. Kliever’s H. Richard Niebuhr.4 Also by way of introduction, it can be said that H. Richard Niebuhr qualified, broadly, as an academic liberal theologian, even though he had many interesting criticisms to make of liberal theology. He once targeted theological liberalism, for example, when he famously wrote, ‘A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross’.5 Clearly, Niebuhr’s brand of liberalism was going to be a one without superficiality, sentimentality or cant. As a final introductory comment, it should be noted that Niebuhr is not easy to interpret, because it seems that he may have been theologically ambivalent at crucial points. He not only said different things in different places, but also had a penchant for couching his ideas in subtle and inconclusive rhetoric. The syntax could be complex, almost to the point of obscurity or studied indeterminacy. Niebuhr was often suggestive and allusive rather than straightforward and direct, typically telling the reader what he rejected without being quite clear about what he intended to affirm. Reticence – or not wishing to assert more than one feels one can really take responsibility for – was a hallmark of the academic liberal mind. Though more nearly revisionist than rejectionist, Niebuhr seemed to approach traditional or Nicene Christianity in a way that combined personal loyalty with a troubled sensibility. He seemed sceptical towards Christian belief in its particulars while affirming its more general implications. It is noteworthy that Niebuhr’s best students tended to resolve his ambivalences either to the left or to the right, with James Gustafson and Gordon Kaufmann falling into a much more open scepticism than Niebuhr evidenced, while in turn Hans Frei and Paul Ramsey operated more clearly than their esteemed teacher within the bounds of traditional Christianity. One often feels that in his measured tones Niebuhr might be presupposing more than he was prepared to state. One of his distinguished colleagues, also 3 4 5

Libertus A. Hoedemaker, The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1970). Lonne D. Kliever, H. Richard Niebuhr (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1977). H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1937), p. 193.

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a former student, once remarked to me that ‘Niebuhr was more orthodox in spirit than in doctrine’.

The Meaning of Revelation in Niebuhr and Nicene Christianity: A study in contrasts With these considerations in mind, let us turn to the question of how the argument in The Meaning of Revelation shapes up against the standards of Nicene orthodoxy. The observations offered here are confined almost entirely to that work alone. No attempt is being made to comment on Niebuhr’s output as a whole. As already suggested, there are complex cross-currents running through the body of his work. Some of them may be more in convergence, others more in divergence, with Nicene Christianity than appeared in his revelation book. Furthermore, no attempt will be made to cover the book’s entire argument. Attention will be paid primarily to how the ideas of ‘revelation’ and ‘God’ are defined and interrelated, particularly with respect to Jesus Christ. As a point of reference, we may take this statement from Karl Barth: The doctrine of the Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian, and therefore, what already distinguishes the Christian concept of revelation as Christian, in contrast to all other possible doctrines of God or concepts of revelation. (I/1, 301)

According to this view, any proposal about ‘the meaning of revelation’ must be measured against the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. That doctrine effectively supplies the standard of theological adequacy or inadequacy. Insofar as the Holy Trinity is set forth as revelation’s content, its meaning will, from the standpoint of Nicene Christianity, be theologically adequate. Insofar as its content may be non-trinitarian, however, or perhaps even anti-trinitarian, the standard of theological adequacy will not be met. It goes without saying that if a position should turn out to be theologically inadequate, that does not mean it contains nothing worthwhile. It can obviously contain valid insights and fruitful modes of thought without ceasing to be inadequate as a proposal about revelation when everything is taken into account.

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As it happened, The Meaning of Revelation contained only one explicit statement about the doctrine of the Trinity. It came near the very end of the book. Here it is in full. The doctrine of the Trinity is no satisfactory or final formulation of this understanding [‘our effort to understand (God’s) nature’], but is more satisfactory than all the ancient and the modern pantheons wherein we ascend beyond the many gods or values to someone who is limited by them. The unity of the God who appears as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not the unity which we conceived as the common source and spirit of beauty, truth and goodness, especially not as we conceive truth, beauty and goodness in our own image. And so the oneness which the God of Jesus Christ demands in us is not the integration of our purposes and values but our integrity, singleness of mind and purity of heart. (MR, 184)

This passage is not easy to make out for some of the reasons already suggested. It consists very largely of statements about what is not the case. We are left pretty much on our own to puzzle out what the author thinks may actually be the case. Furthermore, the syntax is challenging, even as the rhetoric is ambiguous, with the tone being oracular, leaving a general impression of profundity. What can be teased out of this passage? At least this much: First, the doctrine of the Trinity does not seem to be denied but in some sense to be affirmed. Nevertheless, it may be asked, in what sense? The only explicit formulation might be felt to carry modalistic overtones: ‘the unity of the God who appears as Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. Modalism may be defined as the view that God is essentially one in eternity, while only appearing as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in history. Modalism is above all concerned to uphold the idea of God’s essential unity. If Niebuhr wished to avoid leaving the impression of possible modalism, he did little to counteract it in this statement, which seems concerned primarily with God’s oneness – an observation that would be irrelevant were it not corroborated elsewhere in his writings. With respect to the doctrine of the Trinity as a ‘formulation’, it is said to be neither satisfactory nor final (though it is tantalizingly regarded as preferable to other unspecified views). Nicene Christianity would agree that, in some sense, no particular theological formulation is ever ‘satisfactory’, nor is any ever ‘final’. But it would also say, with Philip Schaff, that ‘This

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fundamental and comprehensive dogma secured the unity and the full life of the Christian conception of God; and in this respect it represents, as no other dogma does, the whole of Christianity’.6 Niebuhr’s revelation book contains no such statement, nor as far as I am aware is any to be found elsewhere in his corpus. The passage cited seems to suggest that God’s unity is finally inconceivable, and especially that it is not the kind of unity we might be inclined to devise when we did so ‘in our own image’. However, it is not clear what to make of this remark, since neither Arianism nor modalism would deny that God’s unity is inconceivable, nor that it would be a mistake to conceive of the divine unity idolatrously ‘in our own image’. What the idolatrous mistake might be remains elusive. Finally, the passage ends rather oddly by changing the subject. It shifts from the unity of God to ‘the oneness which the God of Jesus Christ demands in us’. This turn is indeed puzzling. What happened to the doctrine of the Trinity? It has vanished as abruptly as it emerged. ‘The God of Jesus Christ’, however, is a telling phrase to which we will return. We may infer that Niebuhr is more interested, throughout the book, in dispositional and anthropological matters like ‘our integrity, singleness of mind and purity of heart’ (all worthy themes, to be sure) than he is in setting forth the doctrine of the Trinity as the content of a distinctively Christian understanding of revelation. What about Jesus Christ in this book? Is there any passage where his deity as the second ‘person’ of the Trinity or as the eternal Son is set forth and openly affirmed? As it happens there is none. Instead there are a few ambiguous comments whose drift, insofar as it can be worked out, tends towards denying Christ’s Incarnation and his resurrection, while Christ’s atoning sacrifice or reconciling work on the cross receives no real mention at all. Before quoting some passages from the book, a summary statement will be attempted based on a wider reading of Niebuhr’s writings. For Niebuhr, it seems that Jesus was the centre of loyalty but not the object of faith. He was the revelation of God but not the person of God in selfrevelation. He was the church’s companion, prototype and source but not the 6

Philip Schaff, The History of the Christian Church, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1988), p. 670.

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incarnate Saviour who died for our sins and was raised again bodily from the dead.7 He was fully human, perhaps divinely human, but in the end, it would seem, also merely human.8 In the revelation book, as elsewhere, Niebuhr often spoke about ‘the God of Jesus Christ’ (e.g., MR, 85), but never about Jesus Christ as God. For him, Jesus was the instrument, though not the content, of divine ‘self-revelation’ (cf. MR, 152). Jesus was never presented as the object of worship or as the central reality of revelation (as opposed to being its vehicle). The content of revelation was finally something other than Christ himself.9 While, if pushed, there is perhaps a semi-Arian trace in Niebuhr’s view of Christ’s person, there are passages (not prominent in the revelation book) where Niebuhr wrote about Jesus as the ‘Son’ in a way that might suggest something more nearly like a Nestorian tendency. (As used here, ‘semiArian’ would mean that Jesus was somehow of ‘like essence’ with, though subordinate to, the Father, while ‘Nestorian’ would mean that Jesus and the Son were two different ‘persons’ or acting subjects, united only by a coincidence of wills.) A modalistic tendency in the doctrine of the Trinity would perhaps be more in line with the Nestorian than the semi-Arian tendency in Niebuhr’s statements about Christ’s person. In any case, the language is almost always vague and elusive, so that it seems best to reserve final judgement. One can indicate no more than ‘tendencies’ while leaving the question unresolved. From the standpoint of Nicene Christianity, however, it must be wondered why such important matters should be allowed to languish in uncertainty. 7

8

9

James Gustafson’s reminiscence is telling: ‘I recall Niebuhr saying to me on his return from the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches, with real passion, “Christ, Christ, Christ! Church, church, church!” Nobody speaks about God anymore! When I was young it was religion, religion, religion!’ Forward to a new edition of Radical Monotheism (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox, 1993), p. 5. For a sympathetic account of this uncertainty, see Hans W. Frei, ‘The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr’, in Faith and Ethics, ed. Paul Ramsey (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 115–16. Frei points to a place in Christ and Culture (New York: Harper Brothers, 1951) where Niebuhr allows that his essentially ‘moral analysis’ of Christ’s character would not necessarily be incompatible with a ‘metaphysical’ analysis of Christ’s person. On this slender basis Frei asserts that Niebuhr’s christology would ‘meet the test’ of conforming to Chalcedon (p. 115). Frei is on more solid ground when he suggests that Niebuhr leaves us with an essentially ‘economic Trinitarianism’, a polite way of saying ‘modalism’ (p. 98). These points are missed (though indirectly confirmed) in Kliever, ‘The Christology of H. Richard Niebuhr’, The Journal of Religion 50 (1970), pp. 33–57.

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Consider the following remarks. ‘But despite its pragmatic values a definition of revelation in terms of the person of Jesus is manifestly inadequate’ (MR, 148). Or again, ‘… the definition of revelation as the self-disclosure of Jesus is rationally and morally inadequate’ (MR, 149). Here Niebuhr came very close to denying core convictions of Nicene Christianity. He wanted ‘revelation’ to be defined in non-propositional terms: ‘Revelation of the person of God through Jesus Christ does not include communication of the propositions that Jesus was born of a Virgin, that the scriptures are inerrant, and that history is catastrophic’ (MR, 174). Maybe not. But just what do these negations rule out, and what in turn do they actually rule in? Denying the ‘Virgin Birth’ has typically gone hand in hand with denying the Incarnation. Rejecting a fundamentalist view of inerrancy, moreover, would tell us nothing about what a proper idea of scripture as God’s Word would look like. (Niebuhr’s view of revelation in this book is notable for its curious silence about how Holy Scripture might be seen, if at all, as God’s Word.) Furthermore, the relevance of Niebuhr’s point about ‘history’ is not clear. Niebuhr would apparently prefer to see history as tragic rather than catastrophic. Little hangs on this. More importantly, however, one notes an apparently instrumentalist use of the preposition ‘through’, whereby ‘God’ is said to be revealed ‘through’ Jesus Christ, no more, no less. Similar questions arise about the relationship envisioned between the meaning of revelation and the cross of Christ. In the book Niebuhr stated that ‘God’s son’ was ‘slain by our iniquities’ (MR, 166), but nowhere do we find it stated that he was slain ‘for our iniquities’. It is said that God’s beloved son was not allowed to ‘exempt himself from the suffering necessary’ for the work of completing and redeeming creation (MR, 166).10 Yet what that ‘necessity’ for Christ’s suffering might have been is nowhere explained. These sketchy remarks are about as close as the book comes to discussing the saving significance of Christ’s death. By contrast, for Nicene Christianity, reconciliation as accomplished on the cross is at the very heart of what revelation must be about. 10

Are there echoes in this statement of Schleiermacher?

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‘Sacrifice’ and ‘propitiation’ are listed as among the outmoded ideas of a ‘primitive past’ (MR, 178). From a broadly Nicene standpoint, however, neither Passover nor the eucharist, to say nothing of the cross, can properly be understood without them. The theme of Christ’s resurrection was another matter that would seem more essential to Nicene Christianity than to Niebuhr: ‘We see the power of God over the strong of the earth made evident’, he wrote, ‘not in the fact that he slays them, but in his making the spirit of the slain Jesus unconquerable’ (MR, 187). This remark was about as close as Niebuhr would come in the book to affirming anything like Christ’s resurrection, that is, that the ‘spirit’ of the slain Jesus was ‘unconquerable’. In short, whether it was a matter of the Incarnation, the atonement or the resurrection, the meaning of revelation, for Niebuhr, did not seem to include anything like the full deity of Jesus Christ, his atoning sacrifice or his transfigured bodily identity in and through his resurrection. On these grounds a Nicene doctrine of the Trinity would hardly be possible. The meaning of revelation, for Niebuhr, had little or nothing to do with God’s triune identity. One last point. Note that Niebuhr’s concept of revelation heavily privileged the present tense. Consider the following remark: The God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ is now trusted and known as the contemporary God, revealing himself in every event; but we do not understand how we could trace his working in these happenings if he did not make himself known to us through the memory of Jesus Christ; nor do we know how we should be able to interpret all the words we read as words of God save by the aid of this Rosetta stone. (MR, 154)

Elsewhere revelation is described as being essentially ‘a contemporary event’ (MR, 41). The implication seems to be what while God is our contemporary, Jesus is present only by way of ‘memory’. By contrast, for Nicene Christianity, revelation has essentially three tenses, with the life-history of Jesus Christ there and then occupying the controlling centre. By virtue of his resurrection and ascension, moreover, the living Christ also determines the present and the future. By so heavily privileging the present tense, Niebuhr effectively threw the covenant with Israel (on which no weight is placed in the book) into the same

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kind of oblivion, with respect to revelation, as is undergone by the Trinity and the authority of scripture. Note that in the passage cited, the ‘Rosetta stone’ (Christ as the clue to scripture) is accorded importance mainly because it allows us to gain a glimpse of how God may be ‘revealing himself in every event’. Any scandal of particularity is dissolved, it would seem, in standard modernist fashion, by reinterpreting the particulars of biblical revelation in terms of some larger conceptual scheme (as opposed to the other way around). Moreover, how seriously is Niebuhr to be taken when he states that God is being revealed ‘in every event’? Are there not some events so evil that they do not reveal God? (In other writings, especially The Responsible Self, Niebuhr’s God approaches being identical with Fate.)11 Finally, Niebuhr’s ‘presentizing’ of the meaning of revelation would seem also to be a way of essentially ‘existentializing’ it. From the standpoint of Nicene Christianity, the dispositional, chastened and restrained aspects of Niebuhr’s theological anthropology are in fact arguably the book’s strength, but would hardly be adequate to define the meaning of revelation. At this point, the following observation may be ventured. Suppose someone said some things that were valid though not sufficient, and yet asserted them as if they were sufficient. A complex situation would be created. Insofar as the valid elements were valid they would remain valid. But insofar as sufficiency were claimed for them, the assertion would be false. Because Niebuhr’s theological anthropology is arguably one thing while the meaning of revelation is (from a Nicene standpoint) quite another, it might be best finally to receive the book as wisdom literature rather than as adequate for doctrinal theology. Indeed, from a Nicene standpoint, the concepts of God and revelation in the book are, as has been suggested, either non-trinitarian, or sub-trinitarian, or finally perhaps even anti-trinitarian, though in any case underdeveloped. Nevertheless, there would be no reason, in principle, not to learn from Niebuhr’s theological anthropology, as long as the meaning of revelation, as confessed by the Nicene faith, were properly set forth and affirmed. 11

Niebuhr, The Responsible Self (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).

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The rise of historicism and the retreat to inwardness: On the distinction between internal and external history The preface to H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Meaning of Revelation contains the following remark: Students of theology will recognize that Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth … have been my teachers. … These leaders in twentieth century religious thought are frequently set in diametrical opposition to each other; I have tried to combine their main interests, for it appears to me that the critical thought of the former and the constructive work of the latter belong together. (MR, x)

Niebuhr does not explain how he thinks he might be reconciling Troeltsch and Barth in the book. He leaves it up to his readers to work this out. The question might be phrased like this: In what ways does Niebuhr converge with these two thinkers, in what ways does he diverge from them and in what ways might he be seen as combining their main interests? Although Niebuhr’s response to Troeltsch will be examined, some suggestions about how Niebuhr might be related to Barth will set the stage.

Niebuhr’s convergence with Barth In the first part of this essay it was suggested that theologically the connection was not always great. Niebuhr did not share Barth’s robust commitment to Nicene Christianity. One searches in vain, whether in this book or in any of his writings, for an unambiguous affirmation of the full deity of Christ (the touchstone of the trinitarian faith). For Niebuhr (as noted), while Jesus was the object of loyalty and devotion, he was not the incarnate Son. He was the source but not the content of revelation. Accordingly, from a Nicene point of view, what we find is a relatively weak view of the Incarnation, of the atonement, and of Christ’s bodily resurrection. All this is rather far from Barth. For Nicene Christianity, it might be said that Jesus is logically indispensable. He was a unique person who accomplished our salvation in a way that only he was equipped to do. We find this affirmation represented in the 1998 PCUSA Study Catechism.

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Q 29. What do you believe when you confess your faith in Jesus Christ as ‘God’s only Son’? A. That Jesus Christ is a unique person who was sent to do a unique work. Q 30. How do you understand the uniqueness of Jesus Christ? A. No one else will ever be God incarnate. No one else will ever die for the sins of the world. Only Jesus Christ is such a person, only he could do such a work, and he in fact has done it.12

As here set forth, Jesus is logically indispensable, because only a divinehuman person could have accomplished his unique saving work. Deny his uniqueness as the incarnate Son and by the same token one has denied the unsubstitutable uniqueness of his saving work in bearing the world’s sin and bearing it away.13 Nevertheless, even if Jesus were not logically indispensable, he could still be materially decisive. While for Barth he was both, for Niebuhr he was at least the latter. Although it was not inconceivable that some other person might have played, or might yet play, a similar spiritual role, as a matter of contingent fact only Jesus, for Niebuhr, was the one who revealed that ultimate reality was finally benevolent towards us, despite all strong appearances to the contrary. That was Niebuhr’s basic quandary. How can we believe in the benevolence of God? How can we believe in it when our earthly life is beset by so much tragedy, misery, loss, destruction and death? Without ever quite explaining 12

Compare these affirmations with a similar section in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563): Q 15. What kind of mediator and redeemer should we look for then? A. One who is truly human and perfectly righteous, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also truly God. Q 16. Why must the mediator be truly human and perfectly righteous? A. God’s justice demands that a human being must pay for human sin; but a sinful human could never pay for others. Q 17. Why must the mediator also be truly God? A. So that the mediator, by the power of divinity, might bear the weight of God’s wrath as a human being, and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.

13

Note that the word ‘unique’ is ambiguous. It can be used in either a relative or an absolute sense. When used relatively, it points to a special occurrence within a larger class, as when each person’s thumbprint is unique, yet still within the larger class of thumbprints. When used absolutely, as when Nicene Christianity speaks about the uniqueness of the incarnate Son as a divine-human person, it means ‘exclusively unique’ or sui generis, for it is talking about something that by definition is one of a kind. Niebuhr can use the term ‘unique’, but seems to mean it only in the more relative sense of ‘materially decisive’. See, for example, MR, 126.

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how, Niebuhr found in Jesus the decisive clue. By the powerful example of his unswerving faith in God, despite his being rejected, abandoned and betrayed, and finally condemned to death on a cross, Jesus revealed that God was to be trusted no matter what, and he inspired in us the same faith as was in him. He thus became the object of our loyalty and devotion. In that sense (though only in that sense), Jesus was materially decisive. Although he was much more than that for Nicene Christianity (and so for Barth), at this point we have a moment of convergence. Another point of limited convergence concerned the nature and function of religious language. Like Barth, Niebuhr held, in the end, that religious language was informative, that it made truth claims, that it had propositional content. He seemed to reject what has been called the ‘expressivist’ view. In contrast to someone like Tillich, he did not think we needed to correlate non-informative religious symbols with informative concepts, or expressions of inner experience (‘metaphors’) with formulations of cognitive content (concepts).14 Although Niebuhr’s stance with regard to propositional content was not simple, and although he did not explicitly use the idea of analogy, in the end he seemed closer to ‘realism’ than to either ‘literalism’ or ‘expressivism’.15 The clearest apparent rejection of the logic of expressivism in The Meaning of Revelation came when Niebuhr affirmed his own view over against ‘social mysticism’: It cannot be enough to say that in revelation we meet the divine self, for if this meeting is pure immediacy which does not provide us with truths about God it would remain incommunicable and unable to provide the reasoning heart with principles of understanding. (MR, 175–76)

Whatever else this statement might mean, it seemed to affirm that ‘truths about God’ were not absent from the meaning of revelation. This interpretation 14

15

For the expressivist, concepts without metaphors were empty, whereas metaphors without concepts were blind. It came down to a matter of the head without the heart (concepts) and the heart without the head (metaphors), so that the two had to be brought into mutual correlation. In Tillich, for example, ‘God’ as someone who spoke and acted was a non-informative symbol, whereas ‘the Ground of Being’ was the informative concept needed to interpret it. God did not really speak and act (that would be ‘absurd literalism’), but since we are persons, it was as if God did so in our religious ‘experience’. The phrase ‘as if ’ would give us the syntax of equivocation in the expressivist viewpoint. For these distinctions, see George Hunsinger, ‘Beyond Literalism and Expressivism’, in Disruptive Grace (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 210–25.

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of Niebuhr was supported by his favourable quoting of Herrman, where we read that revelation was ‘not the stimulation of numinous feelings’ though it was ‘necessarily accompanied by religious feelings’ (MR, 152). Recall that expressivism needed independent interpretive concepts precisely because it effectively defined ‘revelation’ in terms of numinous or religious feelings, which were expressed in (and evoked by) non-informative religious symbols. So again, Niebuhr seemed to be distancing himself from expressivism. Finally, whatever else we might think about the eloquently stated convictions at the book’s conclusion (on MR, 186–87), they certainly assumed that revelation had cognitive content in and of itself, content which should continually prompt us ‘to rethink all ideas about deity’ (MR, 187). It would seem that although revelation’s content (in effect, for Niebuhr, what it affirmed about God, freedom and immortality) was in line with theological liberalism, Niebuhr’s view of revelation (contrary to many liberal views) was not essentially non-cognitive. Accordingly, his view of religious language was in some sense ‘realist’. Religious language for him had propositional content, even if that content was a matter of perpetual discernment and refinement by the reasoning heart. Niebuhr therefore converged with Barth insofar as they both affirmed three things: (a) that Jesus was materially decisive for revelation, (b) that revelation involved truths about God and (c) that religious language was not merely expressive but informative.16 There were also divergences, however, insofar as Barth went on to affirm: (a) that Jesus was not only materially decisive for revelation but also logically indispensable, (b) that truths about God could not be restricted by the deliverances of historicism and 16

Niebuhr and Barth would also agree that revelation encountered us as whole persons. It was no more a matter of the heart without the head (expressivism) than of the head without the heart (some versions of literalism). For both theologians revelation was always a matter of the cognitive, the affective and the practical: in effect, the head, the heart and the hand. For various reasons, Barth downplayed the affective dimension more than did Niebuhr, while Niebuhr perhaps in the end privileged the practical dimension more than Barth would. These were differences, however, within what was essentially a shared holistic stance regarding the meaning of revelation in its mode of address.

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(c) that revelation informed us about a God who was trinitarian in and of himself to all eternity, not simply in relation to us (and our ‘experiences’). The latter point was examined previously in Part One of this essay.17 The point about historicism, to which we now turn, involved Niebuhr’s critical appropriation of Troeltsch.

Niebuhr’s convergence with Troeltsch Despite the cognitive aspects in Niebuhr’s conceptions of revelation and religious language, a certain anti-propositionalist strain appeared in his argument at the same time. Although revelation was not merely the stimulation of numinous feelings, neither was it ‘the communication of supernatural knowledge’ (MR, 152). What revelation meant ‘cannot be expressed in the impersonal ways of creeds or other propositions but only in responsive acts of personal character’ (MR, 153, italics added).18 Along the same lines we read that ‘revelation is not the communication of new truths and the supplanting of our natural religion by a supernatural one’ (MR, 182). Niebuhr’s evident aversion to the ‘supernatural’ converged with the historicism that we find in Troeltsch. Niebuhr disavowed any propositionalism that would affirm ‘supernatural’ interventions in the realm of ‘external’ history.

17

18

As previously noted, Hans Frei suggests that Niebuhr’s theology tended towards ‘economic trinitarianism’. See Frei, ‘The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr’, p. 98. Frei’s essay is still perhaps the best analysis of Niebuhr’s theology to have been written. By way of digression it might be added that in recent theology another type of ‘economic trinitarianism’ has emerged. It is not modalistic in tendency, but instead has tritheistic and sometimes subordinationist implications. It is not modalistic, because modalism presupposes a strong conception of the ‘ontological divide’ between God and the world. The newer economic trinitarianism, by contrast, systematically blurs or relativizes this difference. It involves what might be called the ‘historicization of eternity’, because it seems to take eternity as no more than a transcendent dimension that runs along in tandem with history (on which it is in some sense dependent). Eternity and time, God and the world, appear to be two interrelated dimensions of one and the same reality. Though not co-equal, the difference between time and eternity becomes merely relative, arriving finally at a point of dialectical identity. At the same time the divine unity is made to rest entirely on perichoresis, since the ideas of divine simplicity and aseity (and therefore God’s radical otherness) are discarded. Economic trinitarianism of this second, ‘panentheistic’ type can be seen (in various ways) in the early Pannenberg, the later Moltmann, Jenson and LaCunga. For a trenchant critique of panentheism, see Barth, II/1, 312. Barth would not say ‘only’ here. For him it would be ‘both/and’. He would say: ‘not merely in creeds but also in responsive personal actions’.

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Historicism, as vigorously set forth by Troeltsch, involved three main components: analogy, probability and correlation. A long, if somewhat difficult, passage from Troeltsch may be quoted, which sets these components forth. For the means by which criticism becomes possible at all is the application of analogy. The analogy of that which happens before our eyes … is the key to criticism. The illusions, … the formation of myths the deceptions, the party spirit, which we see before our eyes are the means of recognizing such things also in the tradition. Agreement with the normal, usual, or at least variously attested, happenings … as we know them, is the mark of probability for happenings which the critic can recognize as really having happened or can leave aside. The observation of analogies between past events of the same kind makes it possible to ascribe probability to them and to interpret the unknown aspects of the other. The omnipotence thus attaching to analogy implies, however, the basic similarity of all historical events, which is not, of course, identity … but presupposes that there is always a common core of similarity, on the basis of which differences can be sensed and perceived.19

From this passage the three components of historicism can be lifted out: ●

●

●

19

Analogy. The idea of analogy as here conceived was essentially something metaphysical. It posited that all events in history were ‘of the same kind’. They were all fundamentally similar. They exhibited ‘a common core of similarity’. Probability. This basic similarity between events present and past was a necessary condition for making probability judgements. All judgements about historical events were merely probable, and events could be judged as probable only if they agreed with ‘normal, usual, or at least variously attested happenings as we know them’. Correlation. Historical criticism had therefore to reject as ‘mythical’ any claims that supernatural events had occurred. Events of that kind could not be correlated with present events as we know them. Historicism had therefore to reject all faith in miracles, as well as any claim that God was directly revealed in one series of events over against all others. Ernst Troeltsch, ‘Über historische und dogmatische Methode’ (1898), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1912), pp. 729–31. Quoted by Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 175–76.

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Hans Frei has suggested that Troeltsch’s analysis of historical method may lie behind Niebuhr’s distinction between internal and external history. He wrote: Troeltsch saw in scientific-historical method a grave threat not merely to miracle-trusting faith or a stringent orthodoxy, but to the claims for the historical uniqueness of Jesus Christ by the later nineteenth-century tradition. Undoubtedly Niebuhr felt that the historical method of Christian faith could not challenge this point of view, (which Troeltsch shared with so many others in modernity) in regard to the objects of historical knowledge. It is unwarranted dogmatism to except the event ‘Jesus Christ’ from the laws of analogy, interrelation and probability that govern our knowledge of historical events. Instead of disputing the correctness of this understanding of the object, Niebuhr suggested that side by side with the ‘external’, scientific method there is an existential, participative ‘internal’ understanding of history.20

Frei went on to note that shifting revelation from external to internal history would not have satisfied Troeltsch. The claim for a special apprehension in history and internal participation, Troeltsch contended, is no better founded than the orthodox argument for cosmic miracle. He thought that the simple transfer [of miracle] from nature to spirit was the common core of the nineteenth-century Christian historical tradition. Niebuhr’s Christology and doctrine of grace in The Meaning of Revelation, and other writings of that period, indicate how close he is to the position Troeltsch rejected.21

For the nineteenth-century tradition of academic liberal theology, whose most distinguished representative was Schleiermacher, the rise of historicism had meant a retreat to inwardness. As Frei suggested, Niebuhr aligned himself with this tradition. In doing so he diverged greatly from Barth without, it would seem, finding a position that would have satisfied Troeltsch. At this neuralgic point he combined the main interests of neither thinker. The alternative to the inward turn, Frei suggested, would have been to dispute the correctness of this understanding of the object, in other words, 20 21

Frei, ‘Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr’, pp. 89–90. Ibid., p. 93. According to Frei, Niebuhr interprets revelation as a kind of internal miracle. While Barth would not disagree, he sees revelation primarily as an ‘objective miracle’, so to speak, because it is identical with the advent of Jesus Christ.

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to challenge the underlying assumptions of historicism. Barth of course did exactly that at great length, but for a brief, incisive and accessible rebuttal of historicism, it would be hard to surpass Jürgen Moltmann.22

Conclusion: The humility of relativism as a point of convergence Historicism, for Troeltsch, led inexorably to cultural and historical relativism in theology. Although Niebuhr was undoubtedly influenced by Troeltsch at this point, he did not adopt Troeltsch’s relativism uncritically. Instead he deepened it by transposing it onto a more directly theological basis. This point was well explained by Frei: In worship, ethics, and theology we must remember that it is the one sovereign and gracious Lord who confronts us in all things. Theocentric or religious relativism is inescapable not because there is no absolute, but because there is one exalted being who is absolute, who defeats and converts our natural polytheism and forces us to acknowledge that all values and beings, even our thoughts and confessions about him, are relative.23

While at this point, Niebuhr converged with and went beyond Troeltsch, he also stood, as it turns out, in significant convergence with Barth. For much the same reasons as Niebuhr gave, Barth agreed that all our thoughts and confessions about God were merely relative so that they needed to be questioned and reconsidered again and again. ‘The truth itself ’, wrote Barth, ‘demands complete openness’ (II/2, 648). We do not secretly ask: How can I progress further on the right path which I am, of course, already treading? It necessarily means that even in relation to our best works and the most sacred of our hypotheses and convictions we confess that we are sincerely sorry and repent, not of the grace of God which has hitherto sustained and controlled us, but of the way in which we have treated the grace of God even in our best works and the construction of our most sacred hypotheses and convictions. (II/2, 646)24 22 23 24

Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 172–82. Frei, ‘Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr’, p. 87. Barth, of course, keeps theological certainty and self-critical humility, orthodox conviction and healthy relativism, in dialectical tension.

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Theocentric relativism led Niebuhr to rely on grace alone as the only factor that could convince us about the truth of the gospel. Frei attributed this aspect to the influence of Troeltsch. ‘Niebuhr’s confessional, nonapologetic theology, his completely nondefensive understanding of culture has undoubtedly been deeply influenced by Troeltsch’.25 Perhaps so. At the same time, however, the very same aspect – confessional, non-apologetic, non-defensive – was very much a hallmark of Barth’s theology. Perhaps at this point, at least, Niebuhr had indeed found a way to combine the main interests of the two thinkers from which he wished to take his bearings.

25

Frei, ‘Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr’, p. 89.

Part Three

Political Theology

9

Karl Barth and Human Rights The last decade or so in the United States has seen a steady stream of disquieting events. These include a possibly stolen presidential election, the momentous atrocities of September 11, 2001, and the emergence of the many troubling questions that still surround them. Afghanistan, the ‘graveyard of empires’, was then invaded (something always dubious, though at the time widely supported), soon to be followed by the deceptions of the Iraq war and the shambles of the occupation – all at enormous cost in treasure and lives. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and rendition to torture may also be mentioned along with yet another suspicious presidential election. Along the way there was the staggering transition of the United States from being a major international creditor to being the largest debtor nation on earth. Finally, but not least, we saw the false hopes raised by the Obama administration, which has not only grievously failed in its promise to dismantle the organizational infrastructure that made U.S. torture possible (though for now it has scaled it back), being notoriously unable even to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, but which has also reinforced, by its gross inaction, a widespread culture of impunity in American politics. Under Obama no one in high places has been held accountable for the massive Gulf Coast oil spill, the criminality of the Wall Street financial crisis and the resort to torture itself. More recently a third war, increasingly a catastrophe for the inhabitants, was initiated for ostensibly ‘humanitarian reasons’ in Libya, a country that like Iraq is rich in oil, while the long-sought Osama bin Laden, unarmed and nonresisting, was subjected to extra-judicial killing rather than being captured and put on trial, according to international law, as were the war criminals at

Lecture delivered in Dresden on 4 June 2011 on the occasion of receiving the 2010 Karl Barth Prize.

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Nuremberg in 1945 (who were not summarily executed and dumped into the ocean). It is not a pretty picture, and this is only a partial list. In the wake of the Bin Laden killing, which was greeted throughout the United States with jingoistic celebrations of vindictive glee, the sordid American debate has flared up again about whether torture is ever justified. Once again it has become necessary to rehearse the arguments that torture is immoral, illegal and counterproductive – in that order. Torture is immoral because it brutalizes a helpless victim, whether guilty or innocent, to the point of irreversible psychic ruin, if not death. It is illegal because it is an international crime prohibited by a body of existing law. And it is counterproductive because it has been known at least since Aristotle that torture does not produce reliable results (and you don’t have to be Aristotle to figure that out). Virtually all experts agree, except for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution, that torture is not useful in gathering intelligence. The resort to torture, according to some analysts, may actually have prolonged the search for Osama bin Laden by many years. Torture is not just one issue among others. As law professor Jeremy Waldron has noted, the prohibition against torture is ‘archetypal’, containing the rule of law within itself, being an ‘icon of the whole’, so that it marks the line between civilization and barbarism, between constitutional government and dictatorship.1 Torture embodies a profound threat to constitutional government and the rule of law. At the same time, it is also a profoundly moral and spiritual issue. In 2005, one year after the release of Abu Ghraib photos, I began organizing against the Bush torture programme. Remembering Martin Luther King’s statement that ‘A time comes when silence is betrayal’, I could not bear it that American churches were not doing more to speak out. I eventually founded the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) through a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in January 2006.2 When asked at the conference how my work against torture related to my study of Barth, I replied, ‘What good does it do to spend your life reading Karl Barth, if you are not ready to act when the time comes?’ 1

2

Jeremy Waldron, ‘Torture and Positive Law’, Columbia Law Review 105 (2005), pp. 1718–30, 1734–39 (quoted phrase, p. 1722). See the book that came out of the conference, Torture is a Moral Issue: Christians, Jews, Muslims and People of Conscience Speak Out, ed. George Hunsinger (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008).

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Today NRCAT is the most religiously diverse progressive political movement in American history. It includes Catholics and Evangelicals, Muslims and Jews, ‘mainline’ Protestants and people of many other religious affiliations. In a short period of time – six years ago on this date NRCAT did not exist – it has seen extraordinary growth, it has gained the respect of the major human rights organizations and it has increasingly captured the attention of elected officials. Starting out as the work of three unpaid volunteers, including myself, each of whom took on what amounted to a second full-time job, the organization now has a paid Executive Director and a small full-time staff in Washington DC. Around the country NRCAT now has more than 300 religious member organizations, and 58,000 individual supporters.3 The long-range goals of NRCAT since its founding have been: To bring about changes in U.S. policy that would prohibit – without exception – all U.S.-sponsored torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees. To expand the moral consensus among the American people that torture is never acceptable. To equip national and regional religious organizations, congregations, and individuals to engage actively in efforts to end U.S.-sponsored torture including educating the public about torture and detainee treatment and urging the public to end U.S.-sponsored torture, including torture by proxy.

Today its most immediate efforts are directed towards: The creation of a nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry that would investigate the nature of the torture practices and policies of the U.S. government after September 11, 2001. The bringing of those responsible to public accountability. Ending solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Urging the U.S. government to adopt the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), which would establish an inspection system for places of detention around the globe.

From the standpoint of Reformation theology, what basis might exist for this kind of work? Two main answers would seem to exist, though they are not mutually exclusive. The one, based on the doctrine of creation appeals to belief 3

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that all people are created in the image of God. Following John Calvin, this has often been the approach taken by members of the Reformed tradition. The second answer looks more to the doctrine of salvation in Christ as centred in justification by faith. This was the approach taken, as it turns out, by both Martin Luther and Karl Barth. Let us examine each of these answers briefly.

The Reformed appeal to the image of God Since Calvin restricted the scope of salvation to the elect, it would not have been possible for him to ground anything like universal human rights and the rule of law directly in his doctrine of salvation. He did, however, make significant appeals to the doctrine of creation, according to which all human beings are made in God’s image. For example, in his Institutes Calvin wrote: There is really only one way by which we can arrive at a point that is otherwise not only difficult, but altogether against human nature, namely, that we should love those who hate us, render them good for evil, and bless them when they curse us. We can only reach this point when we remember not to reflect on their wickedness, but to look upon the image of God in them, by which their faults are covered and obliterated, so that by its beauty and dignity we are attracted to love and embrace them. (Inst. III.7.6; my translation)

According to this statement, the image of God was to be seen not merely in all human beings, but particularly in those who were acting as our enemies. The work of the Creator, by whom the divine image was imparted, was to serve, Calvin urged, as an overriding factor in the way we should treat our enemies, despite any misuse they might make of the image they bear. A more recent example of appealing to the image of God can be found in Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, a distinguished Reformed philosopher of religion who taught at Yale. What makes the imago Dei important for Wolterstorff is ‘that every human being possesses a certain dignity on account of bearing the imago ….’4 ‘My account of rights’, he continues, ‘is a dignity-based account’ 4

Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, ‘Modern Protestant Developments in Human Rights’, in Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction, ed. John Witte, Jr. and Frank S. Alexander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 164. Hereafter page references cited in the text.

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(p. 169). ‘Rights are what respect for worth requires’ (p. 170). All persons have a ‘worth-bestowing relation to God’, precisely because they bear God’s image, including ‘even the most impaired human beings’ (p. 171).5 Wolterstorff concludes his reflections by suggesting how the creation-based motif of the imago Dei might be combined with elements from the Christian doctrine of salvation: ‘God loves redemptively’, he writes, ‘all who bear the imago Dei – loves them equally and loves them perpetually. It is the worth we have on account of being so honored by God that grounds natural human rights’ (p. 171). Human rights are here seen to be grounded in the worth accorded to all persons who bear God’s image and who are loved redemptively by God.

Luther and the evangelical ‘as’ The other possible answer – by which a conception of universal human rights might be grounded most directly in the doctrine of salvation in Christ – seems first to have been adumbrated by Martin Luther. Although Luther, of course, did not reflect directly on the modern idea of human rights any more than did Calvin, his thinking established a certain direction that would later prove to be important to someone like Barth. Luther based his evangelical ethics not so much on the imago Dei as on the indicatives of saving grace. He could affirm these indicatives with exuberance: Well now! My God has given to me, unworthy and lost human being, absolutely for nothing and out of pure mercy, through Christ, the fullness of all godliness and blessedness, so that I henceforth need nothing more than to believe that it is so.6

The gift of salvation to lost sinners was a complex event. It occurred in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. Accomplished by Christ in his saving obedience there and then (solus Christus), complete salvation in all 5

6

For a case that the dignity of impaired persons can be well upheld on the basis of Barth’s relational account of the imago Dei, see Joan E. O’Donovan, ‘Man in the Image of God: The Disagreement Between Barth and Brunner Reconsidered’, Scottish Journal of Theology 39 (1986), pp. 433–59. Quoted in Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), p. 727 n. 2. The passage cited is from WA 7, p. 35, the German-text version of Luther’s ‘The Freedom of a Christian’. I owe this reference to Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism (New York: Oxford, 1961), pp. 65–66.

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its fullness (tota salutis) was given – absolutely for nothing and out of pure mercy (sola gratia) – to unworthy and lost human beings here and now (totus peccatores), on the sole condition that they receive it by faith (sola fide). As seen from salvation’s originating side, divine mercy was the inner motivation, steadfast love was the enacted content and sovereign freedom was the essential form of this gift. Ethics was then a matter of deriving the human imperative from the divine indicative. The indicative established the model (the analogans) to which our lives were meant to conform (the analogate). Conformity to Christ (with due respect to his unrepeatable uniqueness) emerged as the guiding norm. In response to his self-giving love, our lives were to be distinguished by gratitude, benevolence and freedom. Luther continued: Well, then, for such a Father, who has so prodigally lavished upon me his blessings, I will in return freely, joyously and for nothing do what is wellpleasing to him, and also be a Christian toward my neighbor, as Christ has been toward to me; and I will do nothing except only what I see to be needful, useful and blessed for him, because I indeed through my faith have enough of everything in Christ. See, thus there flows from faith love and delight in God, and from love a free, willing, joyous life to serve our neighbor for nothing. For just as our neighbor suffers want and is in need of our superabundance, so have we suffered want before God and been in need of his grace.7

The evangelical ‘as’ found expression here at two points: As our neighbor suffers want, so we have suffered want before God. I will be toward my neighbor as Christ has been toward me.

An analogy of neediness called forth an analogy of benevolence. It was a pattern that moved from the greater to the lesser. Since God had delivered us so lavishly from the greater need of sin, death and the devil (as Luther might put it), how could we fail to reach out to our neighbours when we saw them in temporal need? Since God had so abundantly blessed us, we would gladly do in return what was pleasing to God. That meant acting towards others as God in Christ had acted, and continued to act, towards us. We would undertake 7

Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism.

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whatever was ‘needful, useful and blessed’ for them. In accord with the grace we had received, we would serve them ‘freely, joyously and for nothing’. We could not love God and take delight in him without reaching out in kindness to our neighbour. Others were to be regarded with charity despite their guilt and shame, for that was how Christ had regarded us. Since we all shared a solidarity in sin, we could not deny them a measure of the kindness that Christ had shown to us.

After Luther: How Barth socialized the evangelical ‘as’ In working out his ethics of justification, Luther restricted what I have called the evangelical ‘as’ – ‘Live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us’ (Eph. 5:2) – to the private sphere. For him, the injunction to show kindness towards others with their moral weaknesses and failings, as Christ had done towards us, pertained only to private or interpersonal relations, or to the spiritual realm of faith and Christian community. It did not directly carry over into secular government or political affairs. A different calculus was in order there – one less generous, more limited and more severe. Social ideals inspired by the gospel, like forgiveness, equality and non-retaliation, did not apply in the public domain, where the attempt to realize them could only go awry. Luther’s famous opposition between the law and the gospel (with its obvious Augustinian roots) led him to posit a dichotomy between the secular and the spiritual realms. When the secular realm was redefined by Barth as falling under the lordship of Christ, it became possible for him to socialize the evangelical ‘as’. While he did not make that move in his 1938 essay,8 he went on to make it elsewhere. He followed the exact logic of Luther’s ethics while extending it into the sphere of social and political responsibility. He reasoned by analogy from justification to justice. In his hands, the doctrine of justification led to a Reformation version of what Latin American theologians would later call ‘God’s preferential option for the poor’. 8

K. Barth, Rechtfertigung und Recht (Theologische Studien 1), Zürich 1938 (Neuauflage Zürich 1998).

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Like Luther, Barth argued that for lost sinners the righteousness of God meant both mercy and judgement. Insofar as the sinner was condemned and put to death, God’s righteousness meant the awfulness of judgement. But insofar as the sinner was justified by grace and endowed with the blessing of faith, God’s righteousness meant the primacy of mercy. Righteousness was a predicate that defined who God was, both in himself and for us. Barth wrote: God is righteous in himself, always doing what befits him and is worthy of himself, defending and glorying in his divine being. He does this also when he makes himself to be our righteousness. He procures right for those who in themselves have no righteousness, indeed for those whose righteousness he discloses as unrighteousness. He does not leave them to themselves. On the contrary, he gives himself to them in his own divine righteousness. Against their merit and worth, and solely by his own merit and worth, he makes himself to be the ground on which … they can truly stand and live. (II/1, 387 rev.)

God’s righteousness, according to Barth, embraced both retributive and restorative aspects. It slayed in order to make alive, and it made alive by slaying. The selfsame sinner who was abolished in Christ was restored with him from the grave. In his death Christ was made one with the condemned, while in his resurrection he triumphed as their hope. His union with them was at once vicarious and yet real. In an unparalleled, apocalyptic transaction, retribution had been justly carried out even as the sinner was restored to new life. God had not compromised his righteousness one whit while still causing his mercy to prevail. From this affirmation of God’s righteousness in the service of his mercy – the divine indicative – there followed, Barth believed, a social imperative. God’s work of mercy implied ‘a very definite political problem and task’ (II/1, 386). God had intervened on behalf of lost sinners despite the end they deserved. From one standpoint, the forgiven sinner simply represented human misery as seen in all who were weak and defenceless, all who were helpless and in distress (cf. Rom. 5:6). God’s mercy towards sinners had consequences for all other, if lesser, needs. Barth noted that God’s concern for the harassed and oppressed people of Israel – and in Israel ‘especially the poor, the widows

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and orphans, the weak and defenseless’ (II/1, 396) – had foreshadowed God’s intervention on the cross. The God of the Bible was a God of righteous mercy who took human misery to heart, entered into it himself and overcame it from within (II/1, 369). Reasoning from the greater to the lesser, Barth concluded: To establish justice for the innocent who are threatened and the poor, the widows, the orphans and the strangers who are oppressed … God stands at every time unconditionally and passionately on this and only on this side: always against the exalted and for the lowly, always against those who already have rights and for those from whom they are robbed and taken away. (II/1, 386 rev.)

God’s concern for those in distress could not be taken seriously, Barth wrote, ‘without feeling a sense of responsibility in the direction indicated’ (II/1, 386). A definite political attitude was established by God’s work of mercy. The believer ‘justified by Christ’s blood’ (Rom. 5:9) was made responsible ‘to all those who are poor and wretched’. The believer was summoned to show mercy as he or she had received mercy, and therefore ‘to espouse the cause of those who suffer wrong’ (II/1, 387). Why? Because in them it was made manifest what he or she was in the sight of God – a person in need of mercy that rectified wrong (II/1, 387). A solidarity in need connected believers to the poor and oppressed. The justified sinner therefore knows that justice – every rightful claim which one human being has against another or others – enjoys the special protection of the God of grace. As surely as [the believer] lives by the grace of God, he cannot avoid this claim. He cannot avoid the problem of human rights. He can only will and affirm a state which is based on justice. By any other attitude he rejects the divine justification. (II/1, 387 rev.)

Divine justification meant mercy towards those in need. It meant that God had not only dealt with our sin, but had looked from our sin to our suffering, from our guilt to our bondage, and from our arrogance to our folly (II/1, 371). It meant that our negation of God’s affirmation had been negated by grace so that our liberation and restoration prevailed. Justification meant the removal of injustice, the prevailing of mercy, the restitution of the sinner and the imperative of justice for the oppressed.

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Conclusion: Christians and torture The international Christian communities have taken a clear stand against torture and in favour of universal human rights. For example, a 1974 consultation on ‘Human Rights and Christian Responsibility’, organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) stated that … the emphasis of the Gospel is on the value of all human beings in the sight of God, on the atoning and redeeming work of Christ that has given to humanity true dignity, on love as the motive for action, and on love for one’s neighbor as the practical expression of an active faith in Christ. We are members one of another, and when one suffers all are hurt.

Three years later, the WCC issued an official ‘Statement on Torture’. It said in part: We are called to bear witness to the light which has come into the world through our Lord Jesus Christ. At the same time, we know: ‘the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, lest his deeds be exposed.’ (John 3:19–20)

The statement continued: Today, we stand under God’s judgment, for in our generation the darkness, deceit and inhumanity of the torture chamber have become a more widespread and atrocious reality than at any other time in history. No human practice is so abominable, nor so widely condemned. Yet physical and mental torture and other forms of cruel and inhuman treatment are now being applied systematically in many countries, and practically no nation can claim to be free of them.9

Nor have similar statements been lacking from the Vatican. In June 1982 Pope John Paul II, before the International Committee of the Red cross, in Geneva, declared, in a particularly eloquent statement:

9

World Council of Churches, ‘Statement on Torture’, The Ecumenical Review 29 (1977), pp. 406–08.

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The thought of Jesus being stripped, beaten and derided until his final agony on the cross should always prompt a Christian to protest against similar treatment of their fellow beings. Of their own accord, disciples of Christ will reject torture, which nothing can justify, which causes humiliation and suffering to the victim and degrades the tormentor.10

The Pope concluded: Christ’s disciple refuses every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify and in which the dignity of humanity is as much debased in the torturer as in the torturer’s victim.11

The Catechism of the Catholic church, furthermore, condemns torture, saying that which ‘uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred’ is ‘contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity’. Official Catholic statements along these lines could be multiplied many times over. How sad it is, therefore, that in December 2007, Archbishop Desmond Tutu found it necessary to ask: Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government?12

Bishop Tutu suggested that by detaining terrorism suspects without trial, the United States and Britain were pursuing policies like those of South Africa’s apartheid-era government. Even more dismaying, if possible, however, were the results of a survey, released in 2009 by the Pew Research Center. Those polled were white churchgoers: white non-Hispanic Catholics, white Evangelicals and white mainline Protestants. Among those who attend church regularly, a majority of 54 per cent responded that torture could be ‘justified’. By contrast, torture was said to be rarely or never justified by a majority of those who do not attend 10

11 12

John Paul II, Address to the International Committee of the Red cross, Geneva (15 June 1982), L’Osservatore Romano, English edition, 26 July 1982, p. 3. Ibid. ‘Terror Detentions “Like Apartheid-era” ’, Reuters (11 December 2007).

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church regularly. The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.13 In 1948, in the immediate aftermath of the crisis years in Europe, Albert Camus, the French existentialist philosopher, was invited to speak at a Dominican monastery. The friars wanted him to address them about how an ‘unbeliever’ viewed Christians in the light of the era that had just passed. What the world needs today, Camus told them, are ‘Christians who remain Christians’. He continued: For a long time during those frightful years I waited for a great voice to speak up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation …. It has been explained to me since that the condemnation was indeed voiced. But that it was in the style of encyclicals, which is not all that clear. The condemnation was voiced and it was not understood. Who could fail to see where the fault lies in this case?14

Camus then issued an unforgettable appeal: What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.15

What Camus voiced more than sixty years ago has lost none of its urgency today. The crisis of our national descent into torture is, for our churches, supremely a crisis of faith. If Camus was right about what the world expects of Christians, then how much more must be expected of them, and not just by the world, today? 13

14

15

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, ‘The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate’, 30 April 2009. A more recent Pew poll found that support by the American public for the use of torture ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ rose from being a minority position in 2004 to the majority position in 2011. See Pew Research Center, ‘United in Remembrance, Divided Over Policies: Ten Years After 9/11’ (1 September 2011), http:// people-press.org/2011/09/01/united-in-remembrance-divided-over-policies/. Albert Camus, ‘The Unbeliever and Christians’, in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (New York: The Modern Library, 1960), pp. 51–56; on p. 53. Ibid.

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But let us give the last words to Karl Barth: Human life–one’s own and that of others–belongs to God. It is His loan and blessing. For God has unequivocally and fully accepted it in Jesus Christ, in the incarnation of His Word. Therefore respect is due to it, and, with respect, protection against each and every callous negation and destruction. (III/4, 397–98) Where Christians are unwilling to love [their neighbors in need], how can they say that God loves them or that they are loved by God? … Their decisive presupposition in respect of every human person can be only that Jesus Christ has died for his sin too, and for his salvation. They must regard and approach every person from this angle. Hence they can never be against human beings. They can only be for them, not just theoretically but practically … . The whole credibility of the Christian service of witness as a human act depends on … the work of active human love … . (III/4, 503–4 rev.)

10

The Political Views of Karl Barth

Late in life, Barth captured the thrust of his political views in a single line. In a letter of 1967 to Eberhard Bethge, he writes of ‘the outlook which I presupposed without so many words and emphasized merely in passing, namely ethics, co-humanity (Mitmenschlichkeit), a servant church, discipleship, socialism, movements for peace – and throughout all these, politics’.1 Political matters, while never minor for Barth, were constantly overshadowed, as he admitted, by his chief concern, which was ‘to give a new interpretation of the Reformation’.2 Nevertheless, Barth’s political writings make up a significant portion of his corpus. It is only because his dogmatic output looms so large that his political output seems diminutive by comparison. While Barth’s work in theology was detailed and sustained, his political essays were more or less ad hoc. He always saw an integral connection between the two, with theology holding the centre, while politics was assigned to the periphery. He believed that they could not possibly be separated, especially when it came to grave social evils. ‘It is not enough’, he once remarked, ‘only to say, “Jesus is risen,” but then to remain silent about the Vietnam War’.3 Ethics without doctrine, he believed, is nothing, but doctrine without ethics is worse than nothing. He therefore reconceived ethics as internal to the dogmatic task. In modern Protestant theology, he felt, neither the left nor the right could adequately set forth the gospel. Neither knew how to

1

2 3

Karl Barth, Fragments Grave and Gay, ed. Martin Rumscheidt, trans. Eric Mosbacher (London: Collins, The Fontana Library, 1971), pp. 120–21 (translation revised). Ibid., p. 120. Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968, p. 408.

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uphold doctrinal substance simultaneously with contemporary, political relevance. The left wanted relevance without substance, even as the right wanted substance without relevance – the very impasse Barth discerned in the nineteenth century. ‘These two extremes’, he states, ‘… are for me a thing of the past. On both sides one must go forward instead of always moving backwards’.4 In politics as well as in theology, we might say that Barth understood himself as a ‘post-liberal’ theologian. That is, he understood himself as breaking with the thought-forms of modern academic theology as well as with ‘economic liberalism’ (modern capitalism). He usually associated the beginning of his break with theological liberalism with his turn to religious socialism. In about 1916, during his Safenwil pastorate, he became a Swiss religious socialist. Because of his trade-union activities on behalf of the workers in his village, he was known as the Red Pastor. Looking back on that period he once said in an interview, ‘I decided for theology, because I felt I needed to find a better basis for my social action’.5 Barth’s political views can be surveyed under three broad headings: church and state, democratic socialism, and international peace. Since these themes are not easy to disentangle, their separation cannot always be neat. Moreover, in a manner that could be exasperating for his critics, to say nothing of his supporters, Barth would sometimes seem to operate more intuitively in arriving at political decisions than on the basis of explicit argumentation. What he regarded as the flexibility and freedom necessary to being a Christian, others have dismissed as arbitrary. While that charge would not be impossible, it could be made to stick only after careful consideration (not always evident in his critics). It is generally true, however, that Barth’s political views manifested a double aspect. A fixed side, for Barth, was always made to coexist with an open-ended side. While he wanted the fixed side to allow for stability while avoiding the pitfalls of legalism, he wanted the openended side to permit a fresh response to new actualities, under the sovereign leading of God.

4 5

Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968, p. 213. Quoted from manuscript notes of an interview between Karl Barth and Margareta Deschner, 26 April 1956, in John Deschner, ‘Karl Barth as Political Activist’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 28 (1972), p. 56.

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Church and state Church–state relations reached a crisis for Barth during the Third Reich. A stance had to be taken in the 1934 Barmen Declaration6 – one strong enough to be meaningful, yet broad enough to gain as much support from the churches as possible. The Barmen Declaration, with Barth as its principal author, served as the manifesto of the German confessing church, which resisted Hitler. A brief look at it will provide a vantage point from which to examine other statements by Barth on the theme of church and state. The positive thesis of Barmen Article I runs as follows: ‘Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death’.7 This thesis means that in matters of faith and practice, Jesus Christ, as attested by scripture, is both necessary and sufficient. His is the only voice that the church may trust in life and in death, and the only one that it must obey. No other person or principle can carry this authority, for no other is the Word of God. Each positive thesis in Barmen is followed by a negative one. For Article I, the negative thesis can be paraphrased as saying that nothing apart from or alongside the authentic, scriptural voice of Jesus Christ can properly become a source of authority for the church in its own proclamation and teaching. Here Barmen famously rejects natural theology, and this rejection has implications for the question of natural law. But two points about Barmen and natural theology may be noted here. First, natural theology is rejected primarily in the form of culture-religion. The ‘natural’ is essentially understood as something that is culturally mediated and historically conditioned. No non-mediated ‘nature’ is accessible as such. This point pertains to how Barmen understands the centrality of Jesus Christ. Since he is seen as the Lord, his centrality cannot be separated from his exclusive sovereignty (in line with the First Commandment, ‘You shall have no other gods beside me’ [Ex. 20:2; Deut. 5:7]). ‘[Where Jesus Christ] no longer speaks the first and last word, but only at best an additional word’, writes Barth, an ‘assimilated and domesticated theology’ will be the inevitable 6

7

‘The Theological Declaration of Barmen’, in Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century, ed. Arthur C. Cochrane (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), pp. 334–36. Ibid., p. 334.

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result.8 Even in forms that may seem benign and congenial, natural theology in its independence of revelation is always a rival claimant. Here is the place to remember, Barth urged, that the church cannot serve two masters; it will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other (Matt. 6:24). Either Christ relativizes natural theology, or natural theology relativizes Christ. When relativized by natural theology, Jesus Christ no longer functions as the one Lord who is necessary, sufficient and supreme. While some forms of relativization are more blatant than others, the more subtle and sophisticated forms can serve to pave the way for versions that are cruder and even barbaric. The Christ of natural theology is always, for Barth, the relativized Christ of culture. The trajectory of natural theology leads, in effect, from the Christ who is not supreme, to the Christ who is not sufficient and finally to the Christ who is not necessary. Culture-religion, relativization and domestication, or assimilation, indicate that the Lordship of Christ is no longer acknowledged or understood. By rejecting all independent or second authorities, Barmen reaffirms the unabridged Lordship of Jesus Christ against the modern inroads of cultural (and in Germany, finally Nazi) self-assertion in the church. Second, it is important to realize that Barmen’s rejection of natural theology is broadly cognitive in force. It does not imply that nothing good, beautiful, true or worthwhile can be found outside of scripture and the church. ‘God may speak to us’, writes Barth, ‘through Russian communism or a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub or a dead dog. We shall do well to listen to Him if He really does so’.9 No such source can serve as an authority or norm for the church’s preaching, however, for it has no independent revelatory or epistemic status. Only by criteria derived from the gospel can it be determined whether God might be speaking through those other sources or not. The question of natural theology, for Barth, is thus a question about the justification of belief. The political implications of Barmen’s first article are spelled out, in various ways, by the rest of the declaration. Only a sketch can be given here. Article II, which asserts that no area of life falls outside the Lordship of Christ, 8

9

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–1961), vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 163. (Hereafter cited as II/1.) Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 60.

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implies that faith cannot be disconnected from politics or from political judgements. Article III, which sees the church as exclusively the possession of Jesus Christ, carries the reverse implication that faith may not be reduced or made subordinate to political programmes and pursuits. In other words, while Article II implies that faith and politics cannot be separated, Article III implies that they must not be blurred or confused. Article IV rejects the imposition on the church of an alien polity and thus suggests a measure of autonomy and non-conformity in the church’s relation to the world. Article V then interprets the traditional two-kingdoms doctrine in a christocentric way, so that the church’s order of loyalties is clear and only conditional loyalty to the state is permitted. Finally, Article VI, which rejects any ‘arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes and plans’,10 while affirming service to the message of the gospel, implies that all political activity engaged in by the church assumes the status of a witness to grace. Of these themes, two are perhaps especially important: Barmen’s interpretation of the two-kingdoms doctrine and the proposal that faith and politics are related by a pattern of order, unity and distinction. It can be argued that in the history of the church, two competing views of governmental authority have contended with one another. One view, dominant in German Protestant theology right down to the confessing church (as well as elsewhere), understood scripture to teach that the state, because it was instituted by God, can command unconditional authority within its own sphere of competence. The secular authority is a bulwark against anarchy. No matter how repressive, it is to be resisted only if it seeks to meddle in ecclesiastical beliefs and affairs. This view is associated (perhaps more rightly than wrongly) with Augustine and Luther. The alternate view agreed about the state’s limited sphere of competence, as well as about the legitimacy of resistance if the state oversteps its boundaries relative to the church. Unlike the first view, however, this second view believed that scripture does not teach a requirement of unconditional obedience to the secular authority, no matter how repressive it might be (as long as it respects ecclesiastical boundaries). Instead, this view understood scripture to mean that the state, because it was instituted by God, has obligations to fulfil, such as rewarding good and punishing evil. If these obligations are violated so as 10

‘Theological Declaration of Barmen’, p. 336.

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to establish a pattern of serious malfeasance, the state forfeits its legitimacy as well as its divine mandate. This view is associated, in turn, with Aquinas and Calvin. A salient difference between the two views is clear. The one held that to obey the state, even the radically unjust state, is to render obedience to God. The other held that times may come when obedience to God requires political disobedience and resistance to the state. The fifth article of Barmen, though circumspect, is so formulated as to remain open to the second view. It is a novel version of that view to the extent that the question of obligation(s) is stated, implicitly, in terms of a graduated schedule of loyalties culminating in the church’s loyalty to Jesus Christ. The state is seen as divinely appointed to the task of ‘providing for justice and peace’,11 and to this end it is allotted the means of coercion. The justice and peace that the state can provide will never be more than rough, however, since we live in ‘the as yet unredeemed world’.12 Nevertheless, if the state should grievously violate its defining purpose, then the article implies that the church must then obey ‘the power of the Word of God by which God upholds all things’.13 As I Peter 2:17, cited at the beginning of Barmen V, suggests, although the emperor is certainly to be honoured, God alone is to be feared. While the wording of Article V is not quite the open appeal for resistance that Barth would later issue in his own name, it seems to be as close as he could come at that time for the confessing church. During the Nazi period, especially after 1935, Barth constantly appealed to these ideas to encourage the confessing church to resistance. For, as was clear to him, the National Socialist state was increasingly implicated (to use a later terminology) in crimes against humanity and peace. Neither Article V nor Barmen as a whole is free from ambiguity, however. Neither rules out the possibility that the declaration could be read as compatible with the very deepseated view that required unconditional obedience to the secular authority, no matter what. Although Barmen V sets forth the state’s basic obligations, it does not indicate what the church should do if they are breached. Resistance is at best a possible implication of Barmen V; although not ruled out, neither 11 12 13

Ibid., p. 336. Ibid., p. 335. Ibid., p. 336.

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is it clearly ruled in. Barmen establishes a graduated schedule of loyalties, but remains silent about what to do in cases where they come into conflict. Barth lamented that the confessing church too often took the path of ‘inner immigration’ rather than outward resistance. In 1943 he wrote about the Protestant churches in Europe for the American journal Foreign Affairs.14 He believed the churches in Holland, Norway and Great Britain stood in contrast with the confessing church in Germany. The former were politically progressive, yet theologically lacking, because while they opposed Nazism, they failed to attack culture-bound theology. The German situation was much the reverse. Theological assimilation was opposed, yet resistance to Nazism was lacking. The confessing church displayed ‘a kind of schizophrenia’ in adopting ‘totally divergent yardsticks … for the inner and the external life’.15 The disconnection of faith and politics that Barmen rejects was overridden by a version of the traditional two-kingdoms doctrine. Barth often illustrated the inseparability he saw between faith and politics with the metaphor of a circle comprised of a centre and a periphery. ‘[N]o matter how far they [the confessing church] may have progressed in other directions’, he writes, ‘they will have to learn from the other churches that there are a Christian center and a Christian periphery, that the Christian substance and its political application are indeed two different things, but that there is only one truth and one righteousness – and no [one] can serve two masters’.16 The centre of the circle is the gospel, while political decision constitutes the periphery. Together they form an organic whole within which the two remain distinct. The pattern of order, unity and distinction became the hallmark of how Barth saw the relationship between faith and politics. His view of the gospel’s epistemic status could be described as ‘non-foundationalist’. The gospel does not rest on anything other than itself, or, to put it another way, on anything other than the miracle and mystery of divine grace. Because faith in the gospel takes precedence, with politics as a secondary and dependent application, their ordering is asymmetrical. Within that asymmetry, however, the two form 14 15

16

Karl Barth, ‘The Protestant Churches in Europe’, Foreign Affairs 21 (1943), pp. 260–75. Karl Barth, The Church and the War, trans. Antonia H. Froendt (New York: Macmillan Company, 1944), p. 12. Ibid.

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a unity-in-distinction. Faith and politics, the centre and the periphery, are related, in effect, by the Chalcedonian pattern. They exist ‘without separation or division’, on the one hand, yet ‘without confusion or change’, on the other. In the church, as Barth saw it, while politics is a function of the gospel, the gospel is essentially independent of politics. Politics is not central, the gospel is not peripheral, but neither can be had without the other.17 Between the late 1930s and the 1940s, Barth wrote several seminal essays in which he explored these matters further.18 In particular he expanded the metaphor of a circle, with its centre and periphery, so that it now included the idea of concentric circles. If we place Christ at the centre, he proposed, we could then think of two concentric circles, the inner one representing the church (‘the Christian community’) and the outer one the state (‘the civil community’). Although a more complex pattern results from this unity-indistinction, certain aspects remain the same. By setting up the relations in this way, Barth avoided setting church and state over against one another in a fundamental opposition or dichotomy. On the contrary, each exists in its own way under the one Lordship of Christ. The overall conception that Barth proposed with his image of concentric circles can be summarized in thesis form. Christ, church, and state (centre, inner circle and outer circle) are related in these essays as follows:19 1 The state belongs to the redeemed creation. It involves more than the need for order under the destabilized conditions of the fall. 1.1 The state is a part of the created order (status integritatis), because like all of creation, it exists in its own way as a theatre for the glory of God. As a part of the creation, the state finds its origin and limit in God. 1.12 Because of its origin and limit in God, the state’s tendency to deify itself, under the conditions of the fall, is illegitimate. The state’s self-deification must not be taken seriously, but inwardly and outwardly opposed. 17

18

19

An earlier version of this analysis of Barmen appeared in George Hunsinger, ‘Barth, Barmen and the Confessing Church Today’, Katallagete 9, no. 2 (1985), pp. 14–27. Karl Barth, Community, State and Church: Three Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1960). The essays are ‘Gospel and Law’, ‘Church and State’, and ‘The Christian Community and the Civil Community’. An earlier version of these theses appeared in George Hunsinger, ‘Karl Barth and Radical Politics: Some Further Considerations’, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 7, no. 1 (1978), pp. 167–91.

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1.2 The state belongs to the redeemed order of creation, moreover, because all power on heaven and on earth has been given to the risen Lord, Jesus Christ. 1.21 Because all power (not just some) has been given to the Lord Jesus Christ, the state finds its positive goals and limits with reference to the kingdom of God. 1.22 Since its goals and their limits are set by its relation to God’s kingdom, the state must beware not only of attempting too much, but also of attempting too little. 1.23 Utopian schemes, for example, would mean attempting too much while merely preventing anarchy would, in general, mean attempting too little. 1.24 The state has the positive task, divinely appointed, not only of preventing the worst, but also of promoting the common good, so far as possible, by securing justice, freedom and peace. 1.25 The means of coercion at the state’s disposal are meant to be used for the sake of justice, freedom and peace. As far as possible, these coercive means should be subject to constitutional checks and balances and democratic controls. 2 The church is that part of creation whose special task is to bear witness to redemption. 2.1 Since the church, like the state, is a part of the good creation, its relationship to the state cannot be essentially negative. 2.11 Because the church’s relation to the state is essentially positive, the church can never place itself in fundamental opposition to the state, no matter how corrupt, nor can it withdraw from participating in the responsibilities of the state, even when they may include the use of coercion. 2.2 Since the church knows, unlike the state, that the creation has been redeemed, the church knows the state’s origins, limits and goals better than the state does itself. 2.21 Knowing these origins, limits and goals, the church has a special responsibility to work and pray that the state might conform to them.

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3 The tasks of the state are, so to speak, strictly horizontal; the tasks of the church are both vertical and horizontal. The state exists for the humanization of creation; the church exists for the christianization of human beings. 3.1 The state’s tasks are horizontal because they concern relations among human beings, which pertain to the material creation. 3.11 The state exists for the sake of humanizing creation, because at the secular level the grace of creation involves making and keeping human life human. 3.12 Insofar as the state humanizes the creation as redeemed by Jesus Christ, it anticipates the kingdom of God. 3.2 The church’s tasks are both vertical and horizontal because they concern the relationships of God for human beings and human beings for God, and therefore of human beings for one another. 3.21 The church exists for the sake of christianizing human beings, because at the spiritual level the grace of redemption involves their conversion from themselves to Christ. 3.22 By christianizing human beings as redeemed by Jesus Christ, the church anticipates the kingdom of God. 3.3 Therefore, both church and state anticipate the kingdom of God and the redemption of creation, but they do so in fundamentally different ways. Members of the church are obligated to participate in the tasks of the state, but only by working toward humanization, while members of the state (of the civil community) are obligated to participate in the tasks of the church, but only by truly becoming Christians. 4 The state cannot become a church, and the church cannot become a state. 4.1 The state cannot become a church, because the horizontal tasks allotted to it are relative, provisional and external. 4.11 Since its tasks are horizontal, the state can have no direct concern with the relationship of God to human beings or of human beings to God. 4.12 Because the state’s aims are relative, they can never usher in the kingdom of God or be of ultimate importance. Most importantly, they can never be made absolute. However, because they are

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provisional, they can and must point to God’s kingdom, at least parabolically. Finally, because they are merely external, they can never make an ultimate claim on the inner, spiritual life of citizens of the state. 4.2 The church cannot become a state, because its vertical and horizontal tasks, while relative and provisional, are not only external, but also, so to speak, internal or spiritual. As such the church does not use means of coercion – and if it does, it enters into self-contradiction. 4.21 Since its tasks are vertical as well as horizontal, the church is properly concerned with the relationship of God to human beings and of human beings to God, as well as of human beings to one another, including their social and political relationships. 4.22 Since the church’s tasks, like those of the state, are both relative and provisional, they cannot usher in God’s kingdom; but they can and must point to it parabolically. Yet because the church’s tasks, unlike those of the state, are internal or spiritual as well as external, they make an ultimate claim on both the inner and outer lives of its members. 4.3 Since the state cannot become a church, it has no right to establish a civil religion; and since the church cannot become a state, it has no right to establish ‘Christian’ political organizations, such as labour unions or political parties. 4.4 Neither church nor state will exist in the kingdom of God, but God will be all in all. 5 The state needs the church, and the church needs the state. 5.1 The church needs the state to establish the orderly preconditions for the church’s proclamation and witness, and the state needs the church to remind the state of its divinely appointed origins, limits and goals. 5.2 Therefore, the state best serves the church by remaining the state and the church best serves the state by remaining the church. These theses reflect Barth’s distinctive understanding of creation from the standpoint of redemption. This standpoint allows Barth to establish a strong relationship between the tasks of the state and the kingdom of God. At the

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same time, it allows for an essentially positive relationship between the tasks of the church and those of the state, which, though distinct, are nonetheless complementary. If we consider these theses in light of the Barmen Declaration, we can see that they elaborate Barth’s ideas along the lines Barmen sets forth. The same basic pattern of order, unity and distinction is evident in each case. After Barmen, Barth refined and developed, but did not fundamentally change, his viewpoint. The image of concentric circles – perhaps the root metaphor of all Barth’s thinking about church and society – was used to explain how, since Christ is the centre, the church is then the first circle out, followed next by the larger society. The two concentric circles are each governed in distinctive ways by that single centre, which establishes their unity-in-distinction. The inner circle of the church can even function, at best, as a role model for a properly ordered human society. The power of a good example, Barth believed, would do more to influence the surrounding world than would any political action in which the church might engage. Moreover, a church that is disordered within – by racism, for example, or social inequality, or gender inequality, or chauvinism – can scarcely expect to be taken seriously if it undertakes political advocacy in the civil society for justice, freedom and peace. In society, Barth maintained, the church should stand for social values consistent with the gospel: for placing the needs of concrete human beings over abstract causes, for the rule of law and constitutionality in government, for giving priority to those who are socially and economically vulnerable, for freedom of conscience and political judgement, for the political responsibility of all adult citizens regardless of race, creed, gender or class, for the separation of powers (legislative, executive, judicial), for freedom of speech, for political power in the form of service, for the larger social good over narrow, parochial interests (such as those of the rich and powerful), and for making war and political violence legitimate only as a last resort. Barth’s attempt to derive and support these positions with analogies drawn from the gospel was, as is generally recognized, only partially successful. Nevertheless, it has not always been noticed that Barth explicitly presented his analogies as being suggestive rather than definitive. Where his argumentation by analogy seems deficient, perhaps the task of evangelical social ethics after Barth would be not to reject

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his analogical procedure wholesale (as some have done), but rather to find better analogies where necessary, and to present them less impressionistically, and more carefully and extensively.

Resistance to tyranny If we look back from these summary theses on church and state to Barth’s earlier social ideas, some interesting developments stand out. Among them, the right to resist tyranny calls for special comment. This right was explicit in Barth’s 1928/29 ‘Theses on Church and State’, which he formulated in his course lectures on Ethics (published only posthumously in 1978).20 Barth maintains that because the secular authority rests on force, persons faced with tyranny or oppression cannot rule out, as a last resort, ‘violent revolution on the part of the rest of the citizens’.21 Nothing even close to this idea was inserted into the Barmen Declaration, presumably not because of Barth, but because he perceived that in 1934 the German church was simply not ready for it. In his circular letters and other communications with the confessing church throughout the Nazi period, Barth repeatedly had to contend with the prevailing fear that greater resistance would be unpatriotic. In his 1937/38 Gifford Lectures, published as The Knowledge of God and the Service of God, Barth took up the question of political resistance in more detail. Perhaps one reason he chose to comment on ‘The Scots Confession’ of 1560 as the basis for his lectures was that it allowed him to address this very theme.22 The Confession itself states that it is the Christian’s duty to ‘repress tyranny’ and ‘defend the oppressed’. ‘[U]nambiguous commentary’, Barth observes, was provided by John Knox and his friends – with ‘their words and deeds’.23 Sometimes, Barth acknowledged, the abuse of political power must be endured. Under certain conditions, however, according to the Confession, 20

21 22 23

Karl Barth, Ethics, ed. Dietrich Braun, trans.Geoffrey W. Bromiley (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981), pp. 517–21. Ibid., p. 520. Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939). Ibid., p. 229.

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‘there may be a resistance to the political power, which is not merely allowed but enjoined by God’.24 The Confession draws a very clear distinction between lawful and unlawful authority. It thinks concretely on the basis of what the secular authority in question wills and does. Barth explains, Does the political power – this king or that magistrate – do what it is its business to do? Does it abide by God’s commandments? Does it remain within the bounds of justice and within the bounds of its task? Does it therefore, by showing this attitude, possess legitimate ‘authoritie’? That is the question. Is it not one which can and must be raised constantly in connection with every political power? This question is certainly asked by God.25

The secular authority ceases to be legitimate when it systematically violates the freedom it ought to safeguard and destroys justice and peace. Barth comments, ‘Just because there is no alteration in the Divine appointment of the political order, it is now manifestly true that “God Himself does … judge even the judges themselves” and that the sword they wield is turned against themselves’.26 Therefore, Barth concluded, there are times when endurance is not enough, and when even passive resistance must be left behind. ‘It could well be’, he states, ‘that we had to do with a Government of liars, murderers, and incendiaries, with a Government which wished to usurp the place of God, to fetter the conscience, to suppress the church and become itself the church of Antichrist’.27 In such cases ‘active resistance as such cannot and may not be excluded’.28 It is worth noting that Barth’s argument here, as elsewhere, was based solely on scripture – and on the Confession that interprets it. Barth did not move to scriptural interpretation only after having engaged in more general considerations, such as those based on ‘natural law’. On the contrary, as was characteristic of him, he moved only from the particular to the general. Here the particularity of scripture and its witness to divine revelation were taken as sufficient (as well as necessary). Again, Barth’s attitude towards natural law will be taken up more fully later. 24 25 26 27 28

Ibid., p. 229. Ibid., p. 224. Ibid., p. 225. Ibid., p. 230. Ibid., p. 231.

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When Barth discussed resistance to tyranny, the theme of desacralization also appeared. Whether political power is being exercised legitimately does not depend, Barth notes dryly, on whether rulers profess to be Christians: ‘When this is the case, one can rejoice at it for their sakes, and perhaps for the sake of the church also. But that in itself does not make clear the significance of the political order as service of God’.29 The service that the state owes to God ‘does not become clear by rulers professing the Christian faith and indeed being known as men who personally are sincerely pious’.30 Piety of course can be used to obscure injustice. Similarly, the secularism of a non-Christian ruler can make clear – and sometimes ‘clearer in fact than where the State seems to have a very Christian appearance’31 – that living up to the state’s divinely appointed obligations is independent of the religiosity (or lack thereof) of those who hold political office. Earlier in his career, Barth had made much the same point with respect to political resistance. In the first edition of his commentary on Romans (1919), he writes, ‘That Christians have nothing to do with monarchy, capitalism, militarism, patriotism, free-thinking, is so self-evident that I do not even need to mention it’.32 He then goes on to exhort ‘desacralization’ as a basic Christian duty: ‘Thou shalt starve the state of religion. Thou shalt deny it the elevation, the seriousness, and significance of the divine. Thou shalt not have your heart in your politics. Your souls are and remain alien to the ideals of the state’.33 This attitude is then enjoined on those engaged in active resistance: Let there be ‘strike, general strike, and street fighting, if need be, but no religious justification or glorification of it … military service as soldier or officer, if need be, but on no condition as military chaplain … social democratic but not religious socialist!’34 Over the years, Barth’s political views would continue to develop and become more nuanced, but the desacralizing, deflationary imperative remained a constant, as he saw it, in how the church should relate the gospel to the state.

29 30 31 32 33 34

Ibid., p. 223. Ibid. Barth once noted drily that Hitler kept Daily Bible Readings on his bedside table. Ibid., p. 224. Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Bern: G.A. Bäschlin, 1919), p. 381. Ibid., p. 388. Ibid., p. 390.

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Democratic socialism Parliamentary democracy, Barth believed, does not work very well without economic democracy. Economic liberalism (or capitalism) is a system that inevitably concentrates wealth and power into the hands of a small minority (e.g., the one percent). By contrast, economic democracy (or democratic socialism) is a system that promises to distribute political power more equitably precisely by eliminating extreme inequalities and concentrations of wealth. Without economic democracy, parliamentary democracy is hobbled. Concentrated power in the hands of the few means that parliamentary means are twisted for elitist ends. Necessities are denied to the many while luxuries are delivered to the few. Antisocial phenomena like huge armaments industries, imperialistic wars abroad and chauvinistic diversions at home are less often the exception than the rule. Capitalism goes hand in hand with the thwarting of democratic change and with large quotients of social misery. Throughout his life Barth favoured ‘practical’, non-authoritarian socialism, essentially because he believed in democracy. Unlike some of his adherents, Barth was always a ‘public intellectual’ embroiled in political controversy – a situation that persisted until the end of his life. When friends gathered for the celebration of his eightieth birthday, he reminded them of his origins: The reader of the Church Dogmatics certainly needs to know that I come from religious socialism. And I originally pursued something other than ‘church dogmatics’ – namely, lectures on bringing factories to justice and on trade union problems – and I also became a member of the Swiss Socialist Party. And when I took part in these activities, it somehow hung together with a particular discovery – namely, that the children of this world are often wiser than the children of light.35

Elsewhere he reminisced further about his early pastorate: ‘The socialists were among the most avid listeners to my sermons, not because I preached socialism, but because they knew I was the same man who was also attempting to help them’.36 35 36

Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968, p. 401. Ibid., p. 506.

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A milestone in Barth’s view of theology and socialism was his 1911 essay ‘Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice’. It was a talk he presented to the Safenwil workers during his early pastorate. While both his theology and his socialism would change significantly as time went on, elements of continuity would remain. Barth criticized his socialist listeners for their tactics, but not for their goals. I have said that Jesus wanted what you want, that he wanted to help those who are least, that he wanted to establish the kingdom of God upon this earth, that he wanted to abolish self-seeking property, that he wanted to make persons into comrades. Your concerns are in line with the concerns of Jesus. Real socialism is real Christianity in our time.37

Socialism fights against the capitalist system, he explained to a critic, ‘because the net profits which become part of the private wealth of the entrepreneur are by no means equivalent to his contribution to the common production’.38 Underlying this social analysis was a modern liberal christology. It valued Jesus less for his once-for-all saving work than for the power of his saving influence: ‘The best and greatest thing that I can bring to you as a pastor will always be Jesus Christ and a portion of the powers which have gone out from his person into history and life’.39 The later Barth would no longer flatly identify Jesus with a human project as he did in Safenwil; ‘Jesus is the movement for social justice’, he tells the workers, ‘and the movement for social justice is Jesus in the present’.40 He would distinguish more thoughtfully between two different plights: that of the victim and that of the sinner. Sin by definition is a plight, he came more clearly to see, that sinners cannot overcome by their own efforts. They need a Saviour who bears their judgement for them and bears it away even as they also need one who can confer upon them the righteousness they completely lack, and so make them capable of eternal life in communion with God. Not only is the terrible plight of sin beyond human remedy; it is universal in scope, because no human being is excluded from it. The significance of the Saviour is 37

38 39 40

Karl Barth, ‘Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice’, in Karl Barth and Radical Politics, ed. and trans. George Hunsinger (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), p. 36. Ibid., p. 44. Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., p. 19.

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correspondingly universal in scope. Barth broke with the liberal view of Jesus (that saw him essentially as a source of empowerment) when he realized that Jesus is unique in kind – a unique person who came to do a unique work. Barth then embraced more fully the ecumenical faith that no one else other than Jesus would ever be God incarnate, that no one else would die for the sins of the world, and that no one else would ever be in himself or herself the Mediator of righteousness and life. For the later Barth, the plight of the sinner does not abolish the plight of the victim; but it does relocate the victim within a larger soteriological scheme. While the sinner’s plight is beyond human remedy, universal in scope, and a matter of hostility and estrangement towards God, the victim’s plight is essentially different. It is not beyond all human remedy, not universal in scope (since if there are victims, there are also perpetrators and bystanders), and the hostility and estrangement at stake exists primarily among human beings. Being a victim of injustice is a social disorder rooted in the deeper disorder of sin towards God; however, the God who became incarnate in order to deal with our deepest need is by no means indifferent to our lesser needs. Since God’s very being is mercy, Barth argued, God takes all our distress into His own heart, participating in it by sympathy and doing what is necessary to remove it.41 God makes the suffering of the world His own, and abolishes it in Himself for the good of all. Although a hierarchy of needs exists, with sin at its very root, God’s compassion reaches out to every level of our misery and guilt. The Old Testament constantly bears witness, the later Barth observed, to God’s vindication of the right of all those who are vulnerable and downtrodden: the oppressed, the poor, the widows, the orphans and the aliens in the land. ‘God always stands on this and only on this side, always against the exalted and for the lowly, always against those who already have rights and for those from whom they are robbed and taken away’. 42 In this divine care for the downtrodden, Christians will discern a parable of how God has acted towards themselves in their plight as sinners: [T]here follows from this character of faith a political attitude, decisively determined by the fact that man is made responsible to all those who are poor and wretched in his eyes, that he is summoned on his part to espouse 41 42

Barth, II/1, p. 369. Ibid., p. 386 (rev.).

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the cause of those who suffer wrong. Why? Because in them it is manifested to him what he himself is in the sight of God.43

By any other political attitude, stated Barth, we reject the very mercy we receive from God. On these grounds, Barth concludes that the ‘church must stand for social justice in the political sphere’.44 Standing for social justice is at once an end in itself and yet also an act of witness to something beyond itself. The church is a witness to the fact that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. And this implies that – casting all false impartiality aside – the church must concentrate first on the lower and lowest levels of human society. The poor, the socially and economically weak and threatened, will always be the object of the church’s primary and particular concern, and it will always insist on the state’s special responsibility for these weaker members of society.45 The church must remain vigilant, for example, that ‘equality before the law’ does not become a smokescreen behind which the weak are exploited by the strong, the poor by the rich, the dependent by the independent, the employees by the employers. To Barth this concern meant that the church must stand on the political left. That was the fixed side which then allowed, in practice, for a measure of open-endedness: ‘And in choosing between the various socialistic possibilities (social-liberalism? co-operativism? syndicalism? free trade? moderate or radical Marxism?), it will always choose the movement from which it can expect the greatest measure of social justice (leaving all other considerations to one side)’.46 Barth’s argument was thus constructed from a sequence of analogies derived from the gospel. First, he established a hierarchy of needs in which the deepest misery, that of sin, stands in analogy to social misery, which, though lesser by comparison, is not trivial. The church’s response to social misery, in turn, must reflect God’s compassionate response to human sin as known and attested by the church. Compassion in its political form will be discerned in movements that give priority to the neediest sectors of society. For Barth, this compassion means some form of democratic socialism – that 43 44

45 46

Ibid., p. 387. Karl Barth, ‘The Christian Community and the Civil Community’, in Community, State and Church: Three Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1960), p. 173. Ibid. Ibid.

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socialism which is as wholly committed to the freedoms of parliamentary democracy and civil liberties as it is to the struggle implicit in economic democracy against the abuses that always accrue from vast concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the few. While Barth’s argument was not exhaustive and left a fuller case to be made, prima face, it seems fair to say that it was not implausible.47 The high point in Barth’s espousal of democratic socialism came in the Church Dogmatics when he discussed the ethics of work in modern society. Among the standards that Barth established for assessing work, three are especially noteworthy: the criteria of objectivity, worthy aims, and sociality. The first concerns a wholehearted engagement in the practices necessary for achieving excellence in one’s field of endeavour; the second, the worthwhileness of the ends being pursued; and the third, ‘the humanity of human work’, that is, the degree to which it promotes humane coexistence and social cooperation.48 It was the second and third criteria, above all, that Barth brought to bear against capitalism. Work as it is now organized in Western capitalist society, he suggested, conforms poorly to the criteria of worthy aims and humane sociality. Capitalism, Barth believed, exacerbates some of the worst propensities of human nature. It fosters a revolution of empty and inordinate desires. It promotes ‘lust for a superabundance’, ‘lust for possessions’, and ‘lust for an artificially extended area of power over [human beings] and things’.49 It generates enormous disparities in wealth and power, thus concentrating life-and-death decisions ‘in the hands of the relatively few, who pull all the strings … in a way wholly outside the control of the vast majority’.50 A system that heightens self-seeking, debases culture and, not least, obscures its own injustices, it is ‘almost unequivocally demonic’.51 In these and other ways, it violates the dignity of work. 47

48

49 50 51

See most recently Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). For a useful discussion of Piketty, see Benjamin Kunkel, “Paupers and Richlings” in London Review of Books, Vol. 36, No. 13 (3 July 2014), pp. 17–20. Piketty provides massive technical documentation for the spirit of Barth’s views. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–1961), vol. 3, pt. 4, p. 535. (Hereafter III/4.) Ibid., p. 538. Ibid., p. 532. Ibid., p. 531.

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Work that possesses human dignity, Barth observes, would look very different. What are we to think of all the work which is thought worthwhile, and which is therefore done by those involved, only because they can definitely count on the stupidity and superficiality, the vanity and bad taste, the errors and vices of numerous other people? What are we to think of all the work to which people are drawn only because there are others who are prepared to ruin themselves either physically or morally? What are we to think of the work which flourishes in one place only because [human beings] elsewhere are afflicted with unemployment and therefore with want? What are we to think, as we must ask in relation to the problem of war, of direct or indirect participation in the work of an armaments factory, the achievements of which in so-called peace have often proved to be one of the most potent causes of war? Finally, what are we to think of work which, while it is intrinsically neither useful nor harmful, presents so unworthy an aspect just because it is directed neither to good nor evil, nor indeed to [human beings] at all, but past them to a purely illusory yet dynamic and in its conjunction of the two, almost unequivocally demonic process which consists in the amassing and multiplying of possessions expressed in financial calculations (or miscalculations), i.e., the ‘capital’ which in the hands of the relatively few, who pull all the strings, may equally well, in a way wholly outside the control of the vast majority and therefore quite arbitrarily or accidentally, be a source of salvation or perdition for whole nations or generations?52

The Christian community, Barth urges, must not allow itself to ‘participate in the great self-deception’ of capitalism.53 It must not regard its supposed benefits, necessity or even legitimacy as something that conforms to what is commanded by God. It must not accept the proposition, for example, that although the wealth under capitalism is inequitably distributed, each person’s income reflects how hard or how valuably that person has worked. For ‘the only choice which employees often have is between starvation and doing work which either does not benefit the cause of [humanity], is detrimental to it, or is completely alien[ated], being performed in the service of a sinister and heartless and perpetually ambiguous idol’ – namely, mammon in the guise 52 53

Ibid., pp. 531–32. Ibid., p. 541.

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of ‘capital’.54 Because capitalism forces people to work for ‘meaningless ends and therefore dishonestly’, Barth wondered in the 1950s whether it was not almost inevitable that communism would triumph over it. ‘[I]s it not almost inevitable’, he asks, ‘that the Marxist tyranny should finally overwhelm us, with its new and very different injustices and calamities, to teach us mores, true ethics, in this respect?’55 If we substitute the term ‘Islamist’ for the term ‘Marxist’ in this quotation, Barth’s concerns might not seem outdated even today.56 The command of God, Barth writes, ‘is self-evidently and in all circumstances a call for counter-movements on behalf of humanity and against its denial in any form, and therefore a call for the championing of the weak against every kind of encroachment on the part of the strong’.57 Since the Christian community has been slow to recognize what God’s command means in a capitalist society, Barth felt that it is scarcely in a position to point the finger at injustices elsewhere. Instead, he urges it to concentrate on the disorder in the decisive form still current in the West, to remember and to assert the command of God in the face of this form, and to keep to the ‘Left’ in opposition to its champions, i.e., to confess that it [the Christian community] is fundamentally on the side of the victims of this disorder and to espouse their cause.58

International peace It should not be forgotten that Barth first became a theologian in opposition to a ‘pre-emptive’ war. More precisely, he felt compelled to re-examine everything he had learned from his revered teachers because of his fierce opposition to what he called their ‘war theology’ – a theology that turned to the gospel to sacralize a war of aggression. 54 55 56

57 58

Ibid., p. 532. Ibid. See, for example, Ann Elisabeth Mayer, “Islam and Human Rights Today,” in Torture Is a Moral Issue: Christians, Jews, Muslims and People of Conscience Speak Out, ed. George Hunsinger (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 205–219. Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 544. Ibid.

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And then the First World War broke out and brought something which for me was almost even worse than the violation of Belgian neutrality – the horrible manifesto of the ninety-three German intellectuals who identified themselves before all the world with the war policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. And to my dismay, among the signatories I discovered the names of almost all my German teachers (with the honorable exception of Martin Rade). An entire world of theological exegesis, ethics, dogmatics, and preaching, which up to that point I had accepted as basically credible, was thereby shaken to the foundations, and with it everything which flowed at that time from the pens of the German theologians.59

Not long afterwards, in a step that would lead to the rebirth of twentiethcentury theology, Barth sat down under an apple tree and ‘began, with all the tools at my disposal, to apply myself to the Epistle to the Romans’.60 After the outbreak of the war, things did not go smoothly for Barth even with his teacher Martin Rade, a man of pacifist leanings. Barth had once served as an assistant editor at Die Christliche Welt, where Rade was the longtime editor. Barth responded to Rade’s first three wartime issues with a letter of protest and told him that the journal had ceased to be Christian and had simply gone over to the world. Where Barth could see only a debased power struggle and a racist bid for superiority, Rade had been investing the war with a halo of piety. From a Christian standpoint, ‘the only possibility at the present moment’, says Barth, ‘would be unconditional protest against war as such and against the human failures that brought it about’.61 If no other form of protest were possible, even silence would be better than what Rade had been putting out, because even silence would be a form of protest. But Rade was permitting Christians to support the war with a good conscience. ‘How are people to make progress’, asks Barth, ‘if now, in this terrible explosion of human guilt, their actions are rewarded with the consolation of a good conscience? At the present moment, unless one prefers to keep wholly silent, can anything be said

59

60 61

Karl Barth, ‘Concluding Unscientific Postscript on Schleiermacher’, in The Theology of Schleiermacher (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982), pp. 263–64. Ibid., p. 264. Karl Barth, ‘Letter to Martin Rade’, Neue Wege: Blätter für religiöse Arbeit 8 (1914), p. 430, quoted in Walter Bense, ‘The Pacifism of Karl Barth: Some Questions for John H. Yoder’, in The American Society of Christian Ethics, 1977, Selected Papers, ed. Max L. Stackhouse (Waterloo, Ontario: The Council on the Study of Religion, 1977), p. 63.

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other than “Repent”?’62 Barth’s own 1914 sermons bristle with protests against ‘war theology’.63 If we consider his whole career, Barth’s stance on the problem of war is not easy to characterize. He seems to have hovered somewhere between ‘relative pacifism’ and ‘chastened non-pacifism’ (though he called for armed resistance to Nazi Germany). Yet in some sense he never wavered from his early Safenwil convictions: ‘War is always terrible, and we know that we must find a way even for our own country to extricate itself from its entanglements in militarism and armaments. Let us not be deceived by the pagan wisdom that “whoever wants peace must prepare for war”. On the contrary, whoever wants peace must prepare for peace’.64 Or again, God however is love and his kingdom is not of this world. God has nothing to do with violence. Love wants to dismantle injustice, to renounce the advantages of status or property …. There are two orders that we need to keep straight so that we don’t confuse them: the one that arises from self-seeking and leads to violence; the other that aims to be based on God’s love …. Where violence reigns, there is simply no just peace and no lasting blessing to be expected – not in the family, not in business, not in our country.65

The gospel, according to Barth, established a standing presumption against war. A presumption, however, was not, to Barth’s mind, an absolute proscription. Here, too, the fixed side requires dialectical balance by an open-ended side. What God might require of us in any particular situation has to remain open. The burden of proof is always heavily on Christians who think they can participate in war, or in preparations for war, with a good conscience. Nevertheless, borderline situations cannot be ruled out in advance. Barth did not ask the abstract question, Is war intrinsically right or wrong? Nor did he ask the casuistic question, Under what general circumstances is war right or wrong? He always asked the situational question, Is this particular war actually demanded of us, in spite of everything, by God? 62

63 64

65

Barth, ‘Letter to Martin Rade’, Neue Wege: Blätter für religiöse Arbeit, p. 431, quoted in Bense, ‘Pacifism’, p. 63. Karl Barth, Predigten 1914, ed. Ursula and Jochen Fähler (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974). Karl Barth, Konfirmandenunterricht, 1909–1921, ed. Jürgen Fangmeier (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1987), p. 174. Ibid., pp. 179–80.

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The upshot of Barth’s complex, dialectical stance seemed to be a kind of informed intuitionism. One responds to the contingencies of the moment on the basis of discernment formed by a conscientious immersion in the ethos of the Christian community. One listens, in light of the gospel, for what God is commanding here and now through the language of the facts. One then acts on one’s own responsibility (though not without consultation with others) in fear and trembling. On this basis, during World War II, Barth could give the Czech soldiers a good conscience, while denying it to the Germans. He could stand for peace in 1914 and call for war in 1939. He could endorse Swiss armed neutrality against the Germans, even donning the uniform himself, but then oppose nuclear armament in Europe after the war. We might say that Barth was a ‘just-war pacifist’, except that his relation to the just-war tradition was idiosyncratic. He strongly upheld the ius ad bellum principles of last resort (into which he subsumed the principle of right intention) and acting only in self-defence. Yet he argued that war should sometimes be fought even without a reasonable chance of success, and he presupposed the principle of legitimate authority. Even more strangely, he said next to nothing about ius in bello principles like non-combatant immunity and proportionality, perhaps because he took them for granted (though even that would be odd, given the brutality of twentieth-century warfare).66 Nevertheless, what Barth wrote about war in the Church Dogmatics not only reflected his peculiar dialectics of responsible, situational discernment; it also moved much closer to the pacifism of his early career than to the chastened non-pacifism of his anti-Nazi period. ‘It is not exaggerating’, writes John Howard Yoder, ‘to say that in the pages devoted to the question of war Barth offers a criticism of the belligerent tradition of official Christianity which is unprecedented and unparalleled from the pen of the occupant of any official European chair of theology’.67 Barth writes, for example, Does not war demand that almost everything God has forbidden be done on a broad front? … [C]an it and should it nevertheless be defended and 66 67

But see Barth, III/4, p. 453. John Howard Yoder, The Pacifism of Karl Barth (Washington, DC: Church Peace Mission, 1964), p. 16.

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ventured? … [Almost] all affirmative answers to this [latter] question are wrong if they do not start with the assumption that the inflexible negative of pacifism has almost infinite arguments in its favor and is almost overpoweringly strong.68

The mass slaughter of modern war, Barth averred, is difficult to distinguish from mass murder.69 Peace is therefore ‘the real emergency’,70 and no peace can be made secure without real social justice. As long as ‘interest-bearing capital’ reigns supreme, the mechanism for war is already set going. It must be replaced, for the sake of peace, by democracy and social democracy in its stead.71 Barth’s final word on the subject in the Church Dogmatics reflects his generally anti-ideological and situational outlook: The direction of Jesus must have embedded itself particularly deeply in the disciples …. They were neither to fear force nor to exercise it …. What the disciples are enjoined is that they should love their enemies (Matt. 5:44). This destroys the whole friend-foe relationship, for when we love our enemy he ceases to be our enemy. It thus abolishes the whole exercise of force, which presupposes this relationship, and has no meaning apart from it …. [T]here is a concrete and incontestable direction which has to be carried out exactly as it is given. According to the sense [Sinn] of the New Testament we cannot be pacifists in principle, only in practice. But we have to consider very closely whether, if we are called to discipleship, we can avoid being practical pacifists, or fail to be so.72

Like the orientation Barth discerned in scripture towards justice for the poor and oppressed, his presumption in favour of pacifism was patterned on the prior activity of God. Non-violence is the pattern manifested in Christ’s passion as it led him to the cross. It is therefore the pattern to which Christian obedience is called to conform.73

68 69 70 71 72 73

Barth, III/4, pp. 454–55. Ibid., p. 456. Ibid., p. 459. Ibid. Barth, IV/2, pp. 549–50. See George Hunsinger, “The Politics of the Nonviolent God: Reflections on RenŽ Girard and Karl Barth,” in Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 21–41.

11

Social Witness in Generous Orthodoxy: The New Presbyterian ‘Study Catechism’ The twentieth century witnessed a number of initiatives to encourage political responsibility in the church. Each achieved a measure of success before hitting on diminishing returns. Religious socialism of the 1910s and 1920s in Switzerland and Germany, the American social gospel of about the same era, the worker-priest movement in postwar France, Latin American liberation theologies in the 1960s and 1970s with their base communities, the black theologies of the same decades in the United States and Africa, and the slightly later feminist and womanist theologies in industrialized nations – these and other efforts were progressive campaigns that made a mark but did not quite prevail. The recurring pattern of early promise broken by arrest and eventual decline surely had causes that were various and complex. Yet these campaigns all had at least one thing in common. Each in its own way forced the church to choose between progressive politics and traditional faith. Each made it seem as though the two were mutually exclusive. Each therefore forged an unwitting alliance with its opposition, which shared the same diagnosis, only from the opposite point of view. Each failed to see that confronted with a forced option, the church will inevitably choose not to abandon traditional faith. Equally tragically, each failed to see that the forced option between progressive politics and traditional faith is false.1 The falsity of the option might have been plain from the existence of a number of prominent figures. Dorothy Day, William Stringfellow, Fanny Lou Hamer, Oscar Romero, André Trocmé, Marietta Jaeger, Helmut Gollwitzer, Lech Walesa, Kim Dae-jung, Ita Ford, Desmond Tutu and not least Karl Barth are among the many twentieth-century Christians known for their progressive 1

I do not mean to suggest that combining progressive politics with traditional faith will guarantee success, only that forcing the church to choose between them virtually guarantees failure.

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politics. They saw no reason to choose between their love for Jesus Christ as confessed by faith and their love for the poor and the oppressed. They had learned from initiatives for political responsibility while refusing the fatal choice. Traditional faith was for them not a hindrance but an incentive for progressive political change. It sustained them in struggle through their darkest hours. It was not for them something disreputable to be hidden from those in need. Nor was it something to be rejected because dishonoured by injustice and failure in the church. It was rather the hard-won and priceless deposit of truth that withstood every effort to discredit its relevance. In 1998 the 210th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted two new catechisms. In a church wracked by divisions over various social issues, the catechisms passed the Assembly by an impressive 80/20 per cent margin, with the drafting committee receiving a standing ovation after the vote.2 Answering a questionnaire when the Assembly was over, a strong majority of the delegates (60 per cent) said they regarded the new catechisms as the most important item they had acted upon. The catechisms have since been published in a number of forms. Assisted by study guide materials, they are slowly seeping into the life of the church, being used for confirmation classes, leadership training programmes and congregational education. They are not proposed as tests of orthodoxy, but simply as much-needed teaching tools for those who wish to use them. They can be employed flexibly and creatively in a variety of different settings. The real test will be the extent to which the catechisms are actually taken up and used. The longer of the two documents, The Study Catechism,3 on which this essay will concentrate, is distinctive in that it seeks to combine – in however rudimentary a form – traditional faith with progressive politics. This combination of both traditional and progressive motifs would seem to make The Study Catechism relatively unique in the history of Reformed catechisms and confessions, not to mention other Reformation or ecumenical symbols. The new catechism endeavours to balance concern for the church with concern for the world. Taken as a whole, it aims to be both traditional and 2

3

The catechisms were written by a Special Committee of the General Assembly that worked over a four-year period. I was the principal author of The Study Catechism. The Study Catechism: Full Version is available for purchase through the Church Store at pcusa.org. It can also be obtained online as a pdf download at http://www.pcusa.org/resource/study-catechismfull-version-biblical-references/.

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contemporary, both evangelical and liberal, both Reformed and ecumenical. It casts a broad yet careful net in an attempt to be as inclusive with integrity as possible. ‘Generous orthodoxy’ might be used to sum up the balance that both catechisms seek to strike. A remark from the one theologian whose work in particular, more often than not, brought the drafting committee into unity, illustrates the term. We ought not to exclude anyone from our hearts and prayers, this theologian advised, but rather to embrace ‘all people who dwell on earth. For what God has determined concerning them is beyond our knowing except that it is no less godly than humane to wish and hope the best for them’. Although these are not always the sentiments associated with John Calvin, they appear in his work more often than commonly supposed.4 Certainly they represent the Reformed tradition at its best. When asked about the term ‘generous orthodoxy’, which he coined, the late Hans Frei of Yale once commented, ‘Generosity without orthodoxy is nothing, but orthodoxy without generosity is worse than nothing’. The new catechisms offer the broad centre of the Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA) the vision of a generous orthodoxy that can embrace its diversity, help to heal its wounds and equip it for faithful service to Christ in the century that lies ahead. Before turning to the theme of social witness, a sketch of the new catechisms will be provided, followed by some brief reflections on how catechisms have functioned in the Reformed tradition.

The new catechisms: An overview The shorter of the two adopted by the 1998 General Assembly, called The First Catechism, aims to reach children who are nine or ten years old. With sixty short questions and answers, it surveys the biblical narrative in outline. After a short prologue, designed to draw the children in, it traces the following sequence: creation and fall, Israel as God’s covenant people, Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, and the church in the power of the Holy Spirit, concluding with an explanation of the Lord’s Prayer. For the sake of 4

See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (III.20), ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p. 38.

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simplicity in the flow of questions, the Ten Commandments, though listed, are not expounded. Elementary teachings about scripture, the sacraments, worship and mission appear in the section on the church. For each question and answer, specific Bible verses are attached. This method is designed to help pupils gain a basic grasp of the biblical material on which the answers are based. (A similar correlation of scripture with the questions and answers of The Study Catechism has also been prepared.) It seemed advisable not to call this document a ‘children’s catechism’, since it may also be useful for some adults. While The First Catechism has a narrative structure, The Study Catechism unpacks the basics of the Christian faith by examining the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. Lengthier and more detailed than the narrative catechism, it is suitable for use with ages fourteen and up. Traditional topics like the creation of the world ‘out of nothing’ or like Jesus Christ’s Incarnation, saving death and resurrection receive significant attention. At the same time, more contemporary concerns like faith and science, the problem of evil, and Christianity’s relation to other religions are also touched upon. Openly affirming key Reformation themes, such as justification by faith alone and the scripture principle, the catechism is ‘evangelical’. Yet in an equally open way, social concerns, biblical criticism, modern scientific findings, and hope for the whole creation find glad affirmation as well, ensuring that the catechism is also ‘liberal’. Finally, distinctive Reformed convictions (for example, on providence, covenant and adoption as God’s children) are balanced by a deliberate ecumenism (for example, on the Trinity, the sacraments and ‘anti-supersessionism’).5 The use of catechisms was revitalized by the Reformation. In normal Protestantism a minister could enter the pulpit and presuppose a fully catechized congregation – a situation that prevailed for at least 300 years. Today this level of Christian education is almost beyond imagination, at least for the PCUSA. In the continental Reformed tradition it was common to preach throughout the year on the Heidelberg Catechism. Two services would be held each Sunday, with the evening service focussing on a question and 5

Like the Heidelberg Catechism (but unlike the Westminster standards), it might be mentioned, The Study Catechism gives little prominence to ‘predestination’, thus taking a moderately Calvinistic position.

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answer from the catechism. The evening service presupposed that most people in the congregation had been through confirmation where the catechism was thoroughly studied. Sometimes, notwithstanding the Heidelberg’s length, confirmands had memorized the whole thing. In the Reformed tradition’s Anglo-American branch from which Presbyterian churches come, the Westminster standards were used in a similar way. Young people studied them for confirmation and instruction, sometimes memorizing The Shorter Catechism, though a preaching service directly on the Westminster standards was not as common. Luther is the figure whose vision was formative. He and his followers had no idea what was going to happen in the dangerous period after the German Reformation took wing. Never far from his mind from one year to the next was whether he would be alive or murdered. Eventually, various theologians set out from Wittenberg to visit the local congregations. What they found was not encouraging. Luther once came across a priest who could not recite the Lord’s Prayer. (We think things have declined for us in the PCUSA, and they have, but there is a point we haven’t reached yet.) Luther revitalized the church through the catechisms. His shorter catechism, which is very simple, has lasted right down to the present day. He saw catechisms as a way of reversing the church’s decline, and it worked for hundreds of years. Luther thought that the catechism should be taught at home. He did not see the Christian household as a part of the church. He saw it as a form of the church. It was a school for faith. Parents used the catechism to teach their children around the dinner table. Note that the word catechesis means oral instruction, not memorization. Luther and the Reformation believed that all Christians needed a basic understanding of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. As much as anything it was the catechisms that were responsible for the success of Protestantism. They made it possible to transmit a lively, well-informed faith from one generation to the next. When the catechisms were used as the Reformation intended, memorization was secondary to understanding.6

6

As T. F. Torrance has pointed out, in previous generations people who were brought up on The Shorter Westminster Catechism, even when not otherwise highly educated, acquired an intellectual and spiritual proficiency not easily matched by church-goers today. See T. F. Torrance, The School of Faith (New York: Harper, 1959), p. xxix.

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Robert Wuthnow, the Princeton sociologist of religion, has said that the biggest reason why ‘mainline’ Protestant churches in the United States are no longer retaining their young people is that they have failed to teach them a clear, compelling set of religious beliefs. The new catechisms could contribute to reversing this contemporary decline. ‘Today in all dimensions of life’, Jürgen Moltmann has written, ‘faith is urged to prove its relevance for the changing and bettering of the world. Under the pressure to make itself useful everywhere, Christian faith no longer knows why it is faith or why it is Christian’.7 Social relevance, as Moltmann suggests, will continue to elude a church that fails to fulfil its primary vocation as a community of faith. Christian faith that no longer knows why it is faith or why it is Christian has little to offer anyone. The halfhearted, low-commitment religion of much middle-class American church life corresponds to the safe, domesticated deity so devastatingly described by H. Richard Niebuhr: ‘A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross’.8 Wrath, sin, judgement and the cross are difficult themes that require responsible retrieval in the church today, without which there will be no liberation from mediocre Christian niceness. Shallow notions of ‘self-esteem’, pervading every sector of the church, whether ‘evangelical’ or ‘liberal’, in our increasingly therapeutic culture, have everywhere taken their toll. ‘Adequate spiritual guidance’, wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘can come only through a more radical political orientation and more conservative religious convictions than are comprehended in the culture of our era’.9 These words seem truer today than when Niebuhr first wrote them, and they may well be truer than he knew.

Generous orthodoxy: Two samples The new catechisms are no panacea, because of course there are no panaceas. At least three generations of ever-declining catechesis, however, have not promoted the progress of the gospel. Presbyterian churches that at the turn 7 8 9

Jürgen Moltmann, Umkehr zur Zukunft (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1970), p. 133. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper, 1937), p. 193. Reinhold Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era (New York, Scribners, 1936), p. ix.

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of the last century were reeling from distasteful heresy trials enter the new millennium with an identity crisis. Excessive laxity has replaced the earlier rigidity. The promise of a generous orthodoxy might be the prospect of arresting destructive pendulum swings between unsatisfactory extremes. Here are two small samples of orthodoxy and generosity as embodied in The Study Catechism. Question 52. How should I treat non-Christians and people of other religions? As much as I can, I should meet friendship with friendship, hostility with kindness, generosity with gratitude, persecution with forbearance, truth with agreement, and error with truth. I should express my faith with humility and devotion as the occasion requires, whether silently or openly, boldly or meekly, by word or by deed. I should avoid compromising the truth on the one hand and being narrow-minded on the other. In short, I should always welcome and accept these others in a way that honors and reflects the Lord’s welcome and acceptance of me. Question 30. How do you understand the uniqueness of Jesus Christ? No one else will ever be God incarnate. No one else will ever die for the sins of the world. Only Jesus Christ is such a person, only he could do such a work, and he in fact has done it.

Christians are called to make large claims about Jesus Christ, but not about themselves. Humility, openness and compassion are the only appropriate characteristics for those who know that through Jesus Christ they are forgiven sinners. Christians cannot disavow Christ’s uniqueness without disavowing the gospel. No mere human being, no matter how praiseworthy, can be affirmed as Lord and Saviour. Only because Jesus Christ is fully God as well as also fully human is he the object of Christian worship, obedience and confession. Christ’s uniqueness as confessed by faith is the foundation of generosity, not its ruin, for his uniqueness ensures that every wall of division has been removed. ‘One has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised’ (II Cor. 5:14–15 RSV). Christians cannot live for Jesus Christ without renouncing a life lived only for themselves. They cannot devote themselves to him without living also for the world that he loves, indeed, the world for whose sins he gave himself to die. Remembering that they, too, are

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sinners whose forgiveness took place at the cross, they stand not against those who do not yet know Christ, but always with them in a solidarity of sin and grace. This solidarity is the open secret of generous orthodoxy, which knows that there is always more grace in God than sin in us. ‘Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God’ (Rom. 15:7).

Social concerns: Justice, peace and the integrity of creation Christians are called to bear social witness to Christ in two ways, first through the ordering of their common life, and second through direct action in the surrounding world. Ecclesial ordering and secular intervention comprise a unity in distinction. They are not alternatives, and may well at times blend together. Nonetheless they are ranked in a particular way. Priority belongs (in principle) to the ordering of the church’s common life. Note that social witness, whose direct action cannot always wait for the proper ordering of the church’s common life, must proceed on several fronts at once. Nevertheless, social witness in discipleship to Christ requires the church to be a countercultural community with its own distinctive profile. It must stand over against the larger culture when that culture’s values are incompatible with the gospel. No doubt a church that emphasizes distinctiveness at the expense of solidarity falsifies itself by becoming sectarian. A church that loses its distinctiveness, however, through conformity and capitulation, evades its essential vocation of discipleship, especially when it means bearing the cross for being socially dissident. A Christian is an unreliable partisan who knows that peace with God means conflict with the world (even as peace with the world means conflict with God). ‘You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored?’ (Matt. 5:13). ‘You are the light of the world’ (Matt. 5:14). Disciples are not above their teacher (Matt. 10:24). The rule for social witness is that faithfulness is a higher virtue than effectiveness. Some things ought indeed to be done regardless of whether by human calculations they promise to be effective; and other things ought not to be done, no matter how effective they may promise to be. An example of the first would be things that are so evil that they need to be opposed

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regardless of whether they can be prevented, such as torture practiced by our own government. An example of the second would be adopting impermissible means to attain commendable ends. The latter merits special comment. Effectiveness pursued at the expense of faithfulness, which is always the church’s undoing, very often arises from the allure of attaining commendable ends through impermissible means. This heedless strategy is nothing more than disobedience rooted in a basic distrust in God. It calls the divine sovereignty, wisdom and beneficence into question. It doubts that God is faithful. At the same time it miscalculates what will actually result after impermissible means are employed. The God who brings good out of evil and life out of death is the God who requires the church to speak truth to power come what may. The God whose foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and whose weakness is stronger than human might, is the God who calls the church into ever renewed conformity with its Lord through apparently senseless actions of compassion, non-compliance, and illustration. Note that faithfulness need not be in conflict with effectiveness. Both values are always to be maximized as much as possible. But in conflict situations, which are by no means uncommon, there can be no doubt which direction is expected of the church and commanded by its Lord. ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you’ (Matt. 6:33 KJV). ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’ (Rom. 12:21 RSV). ‘For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). With these principles in mind – the priority of the church’s ordering over its direct action in the world, and the priority of faithfulness over effectiveness – the theme of social witness in the catechism may be pursued.

The integrity of creation Whether the human race will survive the 21st century is not clear. What is clear is that the means and mechanisms of self-extinction already exist. The bane of modern technology may turn out to be greater than the boon. Ecological destruction is the slow version for which the quick version is nuclear war and its military analogues, with the intermediate version as overpopulation and the gross maldistribution of resources. Widespread devastation, falling short

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of self-extinction, could still be severe. At the level of technology and social policy, Christians qua Christians will have no special expertise with respect to details. What they have to offer through their social witness is an orientation and direction. Through ordering (or re-ordering) their common life as well as through direct action in the world, they will always stand, without neglecting the threat of divine judgement, for the possibility of repentance and the reality of hope. They will challenge the technological imperative, which holds that ‘if it can be done, it must be done’, as the symptom of a larger idolatry of human self-mastery and deceit. They will seek to break with destructive habits of consumption, heedless waste of earth’s resources and unrestrained pursuit of private gain at the expense of public good. How to adopt simpler, more sustainable patterns of living, not least in the ordering of the church’s common life, as well as in the private lives of individual Christians, awaits serious discussion and implementation in the church. Question 19. As creatures made in God’s image, what responsibility do we have for the earth? God commands us to care for the earth in ways that reflect God’s loving care for us. We are responsible for ensuring that earth’s gifts be used fairly and wisely, that no creature suffers from the abuse of what we are given, and that future generations may continue to enjoy the abundance and goodness of the earth in praise to God.

The catechism can do little more than establish generous orthodoxy’s basic outlook. Here it undertakes a modest act of theological repentance. Widely publicized criticisms have not implausibly shown how the biblical injunction to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ (Gen. 1:28) has served to underwrite ecological irresponsibility more often than one would wish. What these criticisms overlook, however, is not only the indeterminacy of the text, but also the larger theological resources that scriptural communities possess, not to mention the possibility of their learning from past mistakes. New occasions teach new readings – as well as new duties that were unforeseen. Scriptural communities, whether Christian or Jewish, have always known that the earth belongs to another than themselves. ‘The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it’ (Ps. 24:1). They have known that they are not the proprietors but only custodians of a world they

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have received as a gift. ‘The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it – you have founded them’ (Ps. 89:11). They have also seen that profound disorders in our relationship to God inevitably have earthly consequences: ‘The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant’ (Is. 24:5). Finally, they have known, to cite a specifically Christian example, that grace offers the uplifting possibility of renewal despite grievous sins of the past: ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect’ (Rom. 12:2). These verses are among the ones appended in the catechism to Question 19. While the limits to this approach are obvious, the catechism at least makes a beginning. It orients catechized Christians towards ecological responsibility in a way consonant with traditional faith.

Non-violence and peace Modern warfare with all its horrors has been the defining experience of the twentieth century. A few statistics help tell the story. In this century more than 100 million people have died in major wars – out of an estimated 149 million total since the first century. In most wars fought in the 1990s, the vast majority of deaths were civilian. In 1995 world military expenditures amounted to more than $1.4 million per minute. An estimated $8 trillion dollars has been spent since 1945 on nuclear weapons. The world stockpile of nuclear weapons, despite recent reductions, still represents over 700 times the explosive power in the twentieth century’s three major wars, which killed forty-four million people.10 The church urgently needs to reconsider how it can be more faithful to the gospel of peace in the midst of this unprecedented world-historical crisis. 10

According to the June 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health around 90 per cent of all deaths in war are civilians: ‘The proportion of civilian deaths and the methods for classifying deaths as civilian are debated, but civilian war deaths constitute 85–90% of casualties caused by war, with about 10 civilians dying for every combatant killed in battle’. See also William Eckhardt, ‘WarRelated Deaths Since 3000 B.C.’, Bulletin of Peace Proposals (December 1991); Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1996 (Washington, DC: World Priorities, 1996); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).

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No power but the power of love The very idea of ‘social witness’ implies an orientation towards the centrality of God. It means that Christian social action, whether within the community of faith or the larger world, is more than an end in itself. This action does not simply aim to alleviate social misery in the form of hunger, nakedness, homelessness, terror, illness, humiliation, loneliness and abuse. Efforts to name and oppose social injustice, no matter how important and necessary, are only one aspect of ‘social witness’. As Aristotle has pointed out, any given action or policy can be an end in itself while also serving as the means to a greater end. As important as bread is to us, we do not live by bread alone. Human flourishing, as we know from the gospel, depends on more than the alleviation of social misery and the satisfaction of earthly needs. The main purpose for which we were created is to glorify and enjoy God forever. This purpose is acknowledged by social witness in at least two ways. First, Christian social witness is parabolic in intent. It aims, in all its forms, to enact parables of God’s compassion for the world. Although not all needs are alike, with some lesser or greater than others, God cares for us as whole persons in all our needs. The highest purpose for which we were created is not always remembered in this context. Being created to live by and for God, we know a need which only God can fulfil. Being creatures fallen into sin, moreover, we also endure a terrible plight, fatal and self-inflicted, from which we are helpless to free ourselves, but can be rescued only by God, without which we would be cut off from God and one another forever. According to the gospel, God has not abandoned us without hope to this plight, for God does not will to be God without us. On the contrary, God has spared no cost to rescue us. The point is this. No human action, not even by the church, can do for us what God has done, or be for us what God indeed is, at the deepest level of human need. Human action can nonetheless, by grace, serve as a witness. It can point away from itself to God. It can enact parables of compassion that proclaim the gospel. In addressing itself wholeheartedly to lesser needs, Christian social witness points at the same time to God as the only remedy for our greatest need. Christian social witness, in its efforts to alleviate social misery, is thus at once an end in itself while also serving as the means to a greater end.

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Secondly, social witness cannot be parabolic in intent without also being analogical in form. It must correspond to the content it would attest. It cannot point to God without corresponding to God. Correspondence to God is the basic criterion of social witness, and it is this criterion that makes faithfulness more important than effectiveness. The validity of Christian social witness cannot be judged by immediate consequences alone. It must rather be judged, primarily, by the quality of its correspondence to God’s compassion as revealed and embodied in Jesus Christ. No social witness can be valid which contradicts faithful correspondence, even when that means leaving the consequences to God. Consequences are in any case greatly overrated with respect to their predictability and controllability, just as they are also commonly misjudged when uncompromising faithfulness results in real or apparent failures. It is no accident that the words witness and martyr are semantically related. The promise of the gospel is that faithful witness, whether successful in worldly terms or not, will always be validated by God. To believe that supposed effectiveness in violation of faithfulness is promised similar validation can only be illusory. No comprehensive policy of social action, regardless of what it is, will ever be without elements of helplessness, tragedy and trade-off in the face of human misery. It is always a mistake for faithfulness to overpromise what it can deliver in resisting evil or effecting social change, though it may sometimes be surprisingly effective, or even compatible with maximal effectiveness, depending on the case. Social witness qua witness, in any case, cannot allow itself to be determined primarily by the question of effectiveness, but rather by faithful correspondence to the cruciform compassion of God. The unprecedented horrors of modern warfare raise acute questions for Christian social witness with respect to non-violence and peace. Who exactly is the God to whom Christian social action would bear witness? What forms of social action (whether in ecclesial ordering or secular intervention and participation) would correspond to the prior and determinative reality of God? How is God’s power exercised in the world, and how is it related to God’s love? What does it mean to say that God is omnipotent? Although these and other questions require greater treatment that can be afforded here, we are already in the vicinity of the first article of The Apostles’ Creed.

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Question 7. What do you believe when you confess your faith in ‘God the Father Almighty’? That God is a God of love, and that God’s love is powerful beyond measure. Question 8. How do you understand the love and power of God? Through Jesus Christ. In his life of compassion, his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, I see how vast is God’s love for the world – a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes, yet so strong that nothing will prevail against it. Question 9. What comfort do you receive from this truth? This powerful and loving God is the one whose promises I may trust in all the circumstances of my life, and to whom I belong in life and in death. Question 10. Do you make this confession only as an individual? No. With the apostles, prophets and martyrs, with all those through the ages who have loved the Lord Jesus Christ, and with all who strive to serve him on earth here and now, I confess my faith in the God of loving power and powerful love.

Here again, although the catechism cannot do everything, it can at least do something. By interpreting the divine power in terms of the divine love, it establishes a basic orientation and direction for social witness. It establishes the presumption that no social witness can be valid which exercises or endorses power in flagrant violation of love. Many questions necessarily remain open. In the tradition these questions circulate around the place of law, justice and coercion in the work of love, and around the perceived need for recognizing ‘two realms’, at least one of which (the secular realm) is thought to necessitate power structures, authorities and policies that are not only coercive but at times inevitably and perhaps massively violent. Without rejecting these traditional perceptions wholesale, the catechism generally places a question mark beside them (in their commonly received forms). Much depends on whether certain countervailing divine attributes (like mercy and righteousness, or love and wrath) are best understood dualistically, through a ‘pattern of disjunction’, or else integratively, through a ‘pattern of mutual inclusion’. In the second pattern the positive divine qualities would be seen as including and fundamentally determining the negative ones, with the latter being expressions of the former. Stronger

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constraints than traditional are thereby placed on adhering directly to compassion in faithful witness, on pain of severe dis-analogy to the God ostensibly attested.11 (Note that the question of which pattern for the divine attributes is valid is logically independent of its social consequences. That question must be decided on its own merits. One of the most lamentable aspects of contemporary Christian social ethics is the unfortunate tendency to manipulate the doctrine of God in order to generate what are perceived as desirable social outcomes. Such instrumentalizing of God stands in violation of faithful witness, making God into the object of wish-fulfilment and projection. T. S. Eliot is still right when he said that the greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason.)

The non-violent cross The catechism explains the first article of the creed on a christocentric basis. It appeals to Jesus Christ’s Incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection to validate the conviction that God’s power is immanent in God’s love. Jesus Christ’s life history clarifies the whole history of the covenant. It shows definitively that God knows no power but the power of love, and that God’s love is powerful. It reveals how free and strong that love is – so free it is ‘ready to suffer for our sakes, yet so strong that nothing will prevail against it’. A challenge thereby surfaces against too readily accepting any analysis that would pit ‘powerless love’ against ‘loveless power’, with the latter condoned as a necessary evil. Although loveless power cannot be denied as the terrible reality it is, the gospel includes the great promise that in the ultimate scheme of things there is no such thing as powerless or ineffective love. How is the ultimate reality of love’s triumph to be faithfully attested here and now? Won’t the implicit constraints of love, as argued here, on the permissible uses of power have deleterious consequences? Won’t preventable evils be accepted, and attainable goods be sacrificed, if social 11

In other words, the constraints are definitely weaker when (with the normal Augustinian tradition) the pattern of disjunction is in force. In that case, the divine righteousness, holiness and wrath are viewed as operating, in some strong sense, alongside and independently of the divine mercy, grace and love. This apparent split in God then warrants a corresponding split in earthly life between the spiritual (ecclesial) and the secular realms, with correspondingly different ethical norms supposedly applying to each domain. Representatives of this tradition, like Calvin, acknowledge that the pattern of disjunction makes it seem as though God’s being is in tragic conflict with itself. Whether this is really the proper point at which to invoke, as they do, the divine inscrutability, is one of the key points disputed by those who adhere to the pattern of mutual inclusion.

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witness inordinately restricts itself to forms of suffering love? The historic differences on these matters within the broad Christian tradition will undoubtedly persist. Yet doesn’t the cross of Christ seem clearly to establish a strong presumption that social witness will most fittingly take shape through actions and policies of non-violence, not excluding resistance and direct action, even to the point, perhaps, of civil disobedience, civilianbased defence and conscientious objection to unjust wars? Why should the grotesque sacrifices required by armed conflict automatically seem more necessary and promising than the sacrifices that undeniably would be required by alternative strategies of non-violence? Doesn’t the unprecedented world-historical military crisis call the church to re-examine whether it has fully taken the measure of the faithfulness required by the gospel? Can the church today responsibly participate in the preparations and mechanisms of mass destruction? Can it pretend that the history of the twentieth century did not occur? The triumph of God’s suffering love, as revealed and embodied in Christ, is a theme that unifies the entire catechism. The catechism conveys the basic Christian conviction that in reigning from the cross, the suffering love of God has triumphed in its very weakness over all that is hostile to itself (cf. I Cor. 1:25). Here is one example of this theme. Question 41. How did Jesus Christ fulfill the office of king? He was the Lord who took the form of a servant; he perfected royal power in weakness. With no sword but the sword of righteousness, and no power but the power of love, Christ defeated sin, evil and death by reigning from the cross.

Relative to historic Reformed standards, the catechism offers an interpretation of Christ’s threefold office that is unique in being thoroughly christocentric. It is not the office which defines Christ, but Christ who defines the office. Here the royal aspect of the threefold office is defined as centred on the cross. The divine strategy for defeating sin, evil and death – regnantem in cruce – is fulfilled in suffering love. ‘God does not use violent means to obtain what he desires’, wrote Irenaeus.12 God does not liberate 12

Irenaeus, ‘Against Heresies’, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 527.

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us from our captivity, echoed Gregory of Nyssa, ‘by a violent exercise of force’.13 Since the greatness of the divine power is revealed in the form of the cross, how can Christian social witness fail to match? The basic criterion of faithful social witness (conformity to the God whose action is attested) would seem to point the church in principle towards strategies of nonviolent love. An important test for non-violent social witness is whether it can incorporate a strong element of justice. If this witness meant simply capitulating to evil, violence and abuse, it would not only be deficient in itself, but also in its testimony to God. For God is not merciful without also being righteous, nor gracious without also being holy, nor loving without also being wrathful towards everything that tramples on love. Domestic and sexual violence, for example, long suppressed from the light of day in church and society, have recently emerged to illustrate how traditional pastoral counsels to submission, whether well-meaning or thoughtless, can be tragically mistaken and abused. Non-violence is not the opposite of resistance and prudence. It is the opposite of vindictiveness, retaliation and hatred – including policies or actions based on them. It recognizes that there is a time to resist and a time to flee as well as a time to suffer and submit. It allows for non-retaliatory initiatives of protest and self-defence. It nonetheless finds it hard to understand how one can love one’s enemies by killing them. It is prepared if necessary to suffer and die for peace rather than kill for peace. Its deepest motivation is not to keep itself morally pure, but to bear faithful witness through conformity to the enacted patterns of divine love. It believes, when grounded in the gospel, that sin can be forgiven without being condoned, for this is how we are all forgiven by God. Question 81. Does forgiveness mean that God condones sin? No. God does not cease to be God. Although God is merciful, God does not condone what God forgives. In the death and resurrection of Christ, God judges what God abhors – everything hostile to love – by abolishing it at the very roots. In this judgment the unexpected occurs: good is brought out of evil, hope out of hopelessness, and life out of death. God spares 13

Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, XXII, in The Nicene and Post-Fathers, second series, vol. 5, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 492.

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sinners, and turns them from enemies into friends. The uncompromising judgment of God is revealed in the suffering love of the cross.

The social witness of the catechism to non-violence and peace takes place mainly at the level of its affirmations about God. It affirms that as revealed and embodied in Jesus Christ, God’s power is the power of love, that it reigns over all that would oppose it and that it triumphs through the suffering of the cross. The church cannot possibly be faithful in witness without meditating on the heart of the gospel. While not all disagreements are likely to be removed, a strong presumption towards non-violence is required by the cross. Arising from the gospel as considered in itself, this presumption seems especially urgent for the century ahead. Trusting in the sure promises of God, social witness will ever need to ponder anew that fellowship with Christ does not exclude fellowship with him in his sufferings. ‘God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord’ (I Cor. 1:9). ‘I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord … that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may obtain the resurrection from the dead’ (Phil. 3:8, 10–11).14

Social justice The catechism takes the same approach to social justice as it does towards ecological responsibility and peace. It offers an orientation and direction, no more, no less. It establishes work for social justice on the basis of traditional faith, especially as interpreted christocentrically. Six areas in particular may be noted: against social prejudice, solidarity with the oppressed, concern for the poor, social witness without resignation, full equality for women in church and society, and systemic focus. 14

It might be noted that the catechism acknowledges the reality of institutional violence. It thereby goes beyond traditional Reformation catechisms, for it interprets the Ten Commandments as pertaining to more than relations between individuals. For the commandment against murder, it offers this explanation: Question 108. What do you learn from this commandment? God forbids anything that harms my neighbor unfairly. Murder or injury can be done not only by direct violence but also by an angry word or a clever plan, and not only by an individual but also by unjust social institutions. I should honor every human being, including my enemy, as a person made in God’s image.

A context is thus established (among other things) for naming institutional violence and seeking to end it.

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Against social prejudice A neglected theme in Holy Scripture is the interconnection between lies and violence. Where there is the one, scripture recognizes, there is likely to be the other. Violence (as for example when perpetrated by governments or powerful social groups) commonly requires lies to conceal itself, just as lies commonly prepare the way for brutality and abuse. Lies are a form of verbal violence, just as violence is the ultimate defamation of the other. Relevant verses from the psalms and the prophets are cited by Paul. In the long, harrowing passage on the divine wrath at the opening of his Letter to the Romans, the apostle writes: ‘Their throats are opened graves; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of vipers is under their lips …. Their feet are swift to shed blood’ (Rom. 3:13, 15). In explicating the commandment that forbids false witness against one’s neighbour, the catechism draws attention to this scriptural insight. Question 115. Does this commandment forbid racism and other forms of negative stereotyping? Yes. In forbidding false witness against my neighbor, God forbids me to be prejudiced against people who belong to any vulnerable, different or disfavored social group. Jews, women, homosexuals, racial and ethnic minorities, and national enemies are among those who have suffered terribly from being subjected to the slurs of social prejudice. Negative stereotyping is a form of falsehood that invites actions of humiliation, abuse, and violence as forbidden by the commandment against murder.

No previous Reformed catechism, to my knowledge, has named social prejudice and negative stereotyping as a violation of the ninth commandment. Nor has any sought to explain how the commandments against false witness and murder are interconnected. Confessing and repenting of social sins have rarely been emphasized in church catechesis as strongly as they have been for personal sins. Finding a convincing basis within the tradition for redressing this unhappy imbalance has clear advantages for the church over other strategies. Anti-semitism, misogyny, homophobia, racial prejudice and the demonizing of enemies all stand in direct violation of the ninth commandment. They have all implicated the church in murder. It will be a wonderful day when social prejudice and negative stereotyping are disorders that the church finds only in the surrounding world. Until then actions against social prejudice belong above all in the renewing of minds within the ordering of the church’s common life.

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How much longer, for example, will the de facto segregation of the churches in my own country continue to ratify and perpetuate the American system of apartheid? How can the churches expect to bear faithful witness to the reconciliation accomplished at the cross when they fail to be fellowships of reconciliation in themselves? Anti-racism programmes recently approved for use within PCUSA congregations are a step in the right direction. ‘Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy’ (Prov. 31:8–9).

Solidarity with the oppressed A recurring phenomenon in the history of Christian theology has been the displacement of central truths by lesser truths. Usually these displacements are more or less temporary. Nevertheless, they can cause real confusion while they last. Polarizations and animosities typically form between two groups – those in their wisdom who passionately reject one truth that they might recover the centrality of another, and those who do much the same thing only in reverse. In such cases the solution arises when central truths are allowed to be central and lesser truths are allowed to be lesser. The truth of neither is denied, and room can even be found for allowing the lesser truths, perhaps previously unnoticed or neglected, to assume the urgency of situational precedence.15 During the last twenty-five years or so, the church has increasingly witnessed the emergence of victim-oriented soteriologies. The plight of victims, variously specified and defined, has been urged by prominent theologians as the central soteriological problem. It can scarcely be denied that the history of the twentieth century has pushed the plight of victims to the fore. Nor can it be denied that the church has too often seemed illequipped to bring the plight of victims, especially victims of oppression and social injustice, clearly into focus for itself so that reasonable and faithful remedies might be sought. Victim-oriented soteriologies have undoubtedly made an important contribution to a better understanding of the church’s social responsibility. 15

This kind of flexibility between de iure and de facto considerations was recognized by Calvin. Commenting on a scriptural passage whose syntactical ordering places duties to others before duties to God, Calvin wrote: ‘Nor is it strange that he begins with the duties of love of neighbor. For although the worship of God has precedence and ought rightly to come first, yet justice which is practiced in human relations is the true evidence of devotion to God’. (Commentary on Micah 6:6–8 in Calvin: Commentaries, ed. Joseph Hartounian [Philadelphia: Wesminster, 1958], p. 316).

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Polarizations and animosities have developed, however, to the extent that the plight of victims has displaced the soteriological plight of sinners, or even eclipsed it. Victim-oriented soteriologies have unfortunately tended to define the meaning of sin entirely in terms of victimization. Sin ceases to be a universal category. It attaches to perpetrators and to them alone. Since by definition victims qua victims are innocent of being perpetrators, they are to that extent innocent of sin. If sin attaches only to perpetrators, however, victims can be sinners only by somehow becoming perpetrators themselves (a move not unknown in victim-oriented soteriologies). Victim-oriented soteriologies, with their bipolar opposition between victims and perpetrators, display a logic with sectarian tendencies. How the cross of Christ is understood by these soteriologies is also worth noting. The cross becomes meaningful because it shows the divine solidarity with victims, generally ceasing to find any other relevance, at least positively. (In extreme cases the theology of the cross is trashed as a cause of victimization. But such denunciations, when meant de iure, exceed the bounds even of heterodoxy and so cease to be of constructive interest to the church.) The cross, in any case, is no longer the supreme divine intervention for the forgiveness of sins. It is not surprising that more traditional, sin-oriented soteriologies should react with unfortunate polarization. When that happens, sin as a universal category obscures the plight of oppression’s victims, rendering that plight just as invisible or irrelevant as it was before. Atonement without solidarity seems to exhaust the significance of the cross, and forgiveness supposedly occurs without judgement on oppression. The task of generous orthodoxy in this situation is to dispel polarization by letting central truths be central, and lesser truths be lesser, but in each case letting truth be truth. No reason exists why the cross as atonement for sin should be viewed as logically incompatible with the cross as divine solidarity with the oppressed. Good reasons can be found for connecting them.16 The great historical ecumenical consensus remains, however, that the central significance of the cross, as attested by Holy Scripture, is the forgiveness of sins. This established consensus pervades every aspect of the church’s life, not least including baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It has by this time withstood 16

See especially the work of my student Nathan D. Hieb, Christ Crucified in a Suffering World: The Unity of Atonement and Liberation (Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress Press, 2013).

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all the onslaughts of unbelieving modernity (so that the only question today is not whether the ecumenical consensus will survive but whether those churches devitalized by modern scepticism will). It is reflected throughout the new catechism.17 No ecclesial catechesis can be valid which fails to affirm the forgiveness of sins as the central truth of the cross. Lesser truths, however, ought not to be pitted against central truths. Lesser truths, moreover, gain rather than diminish in significance when decentred, for they no longer have a role foisted upon them that they cannot fulfil. Generous orthodoxy as evidenced in the catechism attempts to do justice to both central and lesser truths in themselves as well as to their proper ordering. Question 42. What do you affirm when you say that he ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’? First, that our Lord was humiliated, rejected and abused by the temporal authorities of his day, both religious and political. Christ thus aligned himself with all human beings who are oppressed, tortured, or otherwise shamefully treated by those with worldly power. Second, and even more importantly, that our Lord, though innocent, submitted himself to condemnation by an earthly judge so that through him we ourselves, though guilty, might be acquitted before our heavenly Judge.

The oppressed have always understood that the cross brings them consolation and hope by placing God into solidarity with their misery. The AfricanAmerican spiritual is exactly right when it laments, ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus’. The gospel does not obscure that our Lord was ‘mocked and insulted and spat upon’ (Luke 18:32), that he was ‘despised and rejected’ by others (Is. 53:3). Admittedly, the church has not always kept pace with scripture in recognizing that ‘The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble’ (Ps. 9:9). It has not always prayed fervently enough with the psalmist: ‘May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor’ (Ps. 72:4), nor has it always acted conscientiously enough on the basis of such prayers. Social witness has a perpetual obligation to solidarity with the oppressed. 17

The treatment of our Lord’s priestly office may be mentioned as an example. Question 40. How did Jesus Christ fulfill the office of priest? He was the Lamb of God that took away the sin of the world; he became our priest and sacrifice in one. Confronted by our hopelessness in sin and death, Christ interceded by offering himself – his entire person and work – in order to reconcile us to God.

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This obligation, however, is entirely consonant with the truth (which can be displaced only at our peril) on which the entire gospel depends: ‘For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (II Cor. 5:21).

Concern for the poor When the universality of sin is recognized as the central soteriological problem, the results can be liberating. All illusions are dispelled, for example, that though others may be needy, I am not, and that I am therefore somehow above others if I am in a position to help them in their need. Acknowledging my need, conversely, brings no implication that I am beneath others who may help me. When recognition is accorded to the universality of divine grace, moreover, I am freed from moralistic forms of obligation. For when grounded in the reception of grace, social obligation is not an externally imposed duty, but a response to the needs of others in gratitude to the God who has already responded so graciously to me. My response to others is based on a solidarity in sin and grace. It occurs as an act of witness to the gospel and through participation in the grace of God. ‘Walk in love, as Christ has loved us and gave himself up for us’ (Eph. 5:2). Question 64 in the catechism states that the mission of the church is to extend mercy and forgiveness to ‘the needy’ in ways that point to Christ. The next question follows with a definition. Question 65. Who are the needy? The hungry need bread, the homeless need a roof, the oppressed need justice, and the lonely need fellowship. At the same time – on another and deeper level – the hopeless need hope, sinners need forgiveness, and the world needs the gospel. On this level no one is excluded, and all the needy are one. Our mission as the church is to bring hope to a desperate world by declaring God’s undying love – as one beggar tells another where to find bread.

The ordering principle that distinguishes and unites our lesser needs with our central need is again in evidence. Our lesser needs are related to our central need by a unity in distinction. Concern for the poor and needy stands in inseparable unity with the forgiveness of sins, without displacing it or becoming a substitute for it. The catechism makes a similar move when it explains the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer.

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Question 130. What is meant by the fourth petition, ‘Give us today our daily bread’? We ask God to provide for all our needs, for we know that God, who cares for us in every area of our life, has promised us temporal as well as spiritual blessings. God commands us to pray each day for all that we need and no more, so that we will learn to rely completely on God. We pray that we will use what we are given wisely, remembering especially the poor and the needy. Along with every living creature we look to God, the source of all generosity, to bless us and nourish us, according to the divine good pleasure.

Concern for the poor and the needy has a solid basis in traditional faith, as when linked with this petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Through the recovery of sound catechesis, concern for the poor, among other things, could become more deeply embedded in the life of the church. A person who fears and blesses the Lord ‘opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands to the needy’ (Prov. 31:20). It will be a great day when congregations not only give money to help the poor, but also create situations in which the poor feel welcome to participate in the life and work of the congregations themselves.

Social witness without resignation Hope for the next world has sometimes been thought to relieve us of responsibility for this one. The catechism connects our ultimate hope indivisibly to our smaller hopes, without confusing them. It grounds all our hopes in the gracious reconciliation accomplished at the cross. Urging constancy in work and prayer, it promotes social witness without resignation. Question 86. Does resurrection hope mean that we don’t have to take action to relieve the suffering of this world? No. When the great hope is truly alive, small hopes arise even now for alleviating the sufferings of the present time. Reconciliation – with God, with one another, and with oneself – is the great hope God has given to the world. While we commit to God the needs of the whole world in our prayers, we also know that we are commissioned to be instruments of God’s peace. When hostility, injustice and suffering are overcome here and now, we anticipate the end of all things – the life that God brings out of death, which is the meaning of resurrection hope.

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Full equality of women in church and society The catechism presupposes that the full equality of women in church and society is compatible with the heart of the gospel as understood by traditional faith. Although this presupposition is contested today, the many complexities cannot be discussed here. From the standpoint of generous orthodoxy, however, ‘defecting in place’, as advocated by some, is, regretfully, not always easy to distinguish from defecting from the gospel. As one avowedly post-Christian feminist theologian has shrewdly argued, Christians must at least believe that Jesus Christ is unique. She then goes on to show that this very minimal condition is not met by a number of avowedly Christian feminist theologians, some of whom are quite prominent.18 Since she believes that feminism and the gospel cannot be reconciled, she challenges these theologians to quit the church. Their responses are not always encouraging. If no better reasons can be found for not quitting the church than the merely expedient ones commonly offered for ‘defecting in place’, feminist concerns face dismal prospects outside narrow circles. Fortunately another cohort of feminist theologians is emerging. (I am thinking, for example, of figures like Katherine Sonderegger of Virginia Theological Seminary, Judith Gundry of Yale, and Janet Martin Soskice of Cambridge.) They complement and bring a new level of sophistication to the important, though not always well known, work of ground-breaking activist groups like Christians for Biblical Equality. Gender equality and the elimination of male privilege are too important to be left to the tragically confused who think they can blame constitutive elements of the gospel for women’s oppression, while still gaining a wide hearing in the church. Both logically and psychologically, the contradiction is unstable. It will inevitably resolve itself in one of two ways: either by reconciling feminism with biblical faith or else by choosing feminism over biblical faith and quitting the church. Half-way measures, whatever their appeal, will be unsustainable. A challenge to generous orthodoxy, yet to be fully met, is how to reconcile feminist concerns with traditional faith. The direction, however, is clear: ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ’ (Eph. 5:21). The church awaits a feminism that is both orthodox and generous. 18

Daphne Hampson, Theology and Feminism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 59–66, 156–60.

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The catechism makes its own effort, however modest, in opting for the hopeful alternative. A simple misconception is cleared up: Question 11. When the creed speaks of ‘God the Father’, does it mean that God is male? No. Only creatures having bodies can be either male or female. But God has no body, since by nature God is Spirit. Holy Scripture reveals God as a living God beyond all sexual distinctions. Scripture uses diverse images for God, female as well as male. We read, for example, that God will no more forget us than a woman can forget her nursing child (Is. 49:15). ‘ “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you”, says the Lord’ (Is. 66:13).

Beyond that, male privilege is disallowed, abuse is condemned, and women’s full participation in the leadership in the church is affirmed. Question 13. When you confess the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, are you elevating men over women and endorsing male domination? No. Human power and authority are trustworthy only as they reflect God’s mercy and kindness, not abusive patterns of domination. As Jesus taught his disciples, ‘The greatest among you will be your servant’ (Matt. 23:11). God the Father sets the standard by which all misuses of power are exposed and condemned. ‘Call no one your father on earth’, said Jesus, ‘for you have one Father – the one in heaven’ (Matt. 23:9). In fact God calls women and men to all ministries of the church.

Many questions remain to be addressed, but once again, in its own way, the catechism makes a start.19

Systemic focus Although the gospel provides every reason for Christians not to be moralistic, they not only too often are moralistic, but also allow moralism to substitute for clear-sighted social analysis. They fail to inquire very deeply into the logic of incentives established by social and economic systems. Though not always free of this problem, Calvin can be an exemplary corrective. Ever alert to 19

A more detailed argument for the ordination of women can be found in George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 231–41.

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the disorders of the human heart, he does not restrict his social criticism to spiritual disorders alone. For example, in a comment relevant to our own day regarding the way impoverished, debt-ridden peoples are treated by affluent nations, Calvin wrote, ‘Trade carried on with far-off foreign nations is often replete with cheating and extortion, and no limit is set to the profits’ (Comm. on Isa. 2: 12, 16). Commerce is condemned by the prophet, he noted, ‘because it has infected the land with many corruptions’ (Ibid.). When abundance is accumulated by exploiting the vulnerable and defenceless, Calvin concluded, it only ‘increases pride and cruelty’ (Ibid.). Human beings ‘steal’, wrote Calvin in another place, ‘not only when they secretly take the property of others, but also when they make money by injuring others, accumulate wealth in objectionable ways, or are more concerned with their own advantage than with justice’ (Comm. on Ex. 20:15/Deut. 5:19). The catechism makes explicit (modestly) the systemic consciousness that seems nascent in Calvin’s ruminations. It recognizes that theft can be more than just a moral or spiritual phenomenon. In explaining the eighth commandment, it states: Question 112. What do you learn from this commandment? God forbids all theft and robbery, including schemes, tricks or systems that unjustly take what belongs to someone else. God requires me not to be driven by greed, not to misuse or waste the gifts I have been given, and not to distrust the promise that God will supply my needs.

Dispositions towards greed, abuse and waste are not merely moral disorders but also specifically spiritual ones, rooted in distrust and disobedience to God. At the same time they can also find institutionalized expression through the logic of incentives built into large-scale social and economic systems. It is this latter dimension that the church must take more seriously today than in the past in order to exercise social responsibility in the modern world. Although large areas for discussion and disagreement remain, the church can only gain by including a greater systemic focus within its concerns. Again, typical mistakes will need to be avoided which pit moral, spiritual and institutional considerations against one another. As the catechism recognizes, they are interconnected. A systemic focus would foster a new sensitivity to forms of exploitation and oppression that the church, especially in affluent

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countries, cannot responsibly shrug off with cheap resignation. Large-scale, non-governmental initiatives – modelled perhaps on the Pauline collection in apostolic times – might be among the strategies the international church could adopt in addressing the scandalous differentials of wealth and poverty within its own ranks, though broad-based and multidimensional initiatives of various kinds are urgently needed by the vast majority who constitute the world’s poor.

Conclusion This essay has sought to explain how the new catechism supports social witness on the basis of generous orthodoxy. It has argued for two principles which, though not explicit in the catechism, are consonant with it: the de iure precedence of ordering the church’s common life so that it accords with the gospel (without discounting direct action in the surrounding world) and, more controversially, effectiveness within the limits of faithfulness alone. The chief criterion of social witness, it has been argued, is conformity to the enacted patterns of the divine compassion as revealed and embodied in Jesus Christ. The established ecumenical concern for justice, peace and the integrity of creation was interpreted (in reverse order) within this context. The catechism promotes ecological responsibility through its instruction about the image of God. It establishes a strong presumption to non-violence through its teachings on the cross of Christ. Last but not least, it encourages social justice in the following ways: (i) by opposing negative stereotyping on the basis of the ninth commandment, (ii) by establishing ecclesial solidarity with the oppressed on the basis of the prior divine solidarity, (iii) by highlighting a biblical concern for the plight of the poor, (iv) by opposing weak resignation in the face of social evils, (v) by calling for women’s full equality and the elimination of male privilege on a biblical basis that the entire church can take seriously, and (vi) by recognizing a systemic focus for the church’s social responsibility in the modern world. In these ways, an attempt was made to show how progressive political aspirations can be grounded in traditional faith, when interpreted, with the catechism, in the form of generous orthodoxy.

Conclusion

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Le Chambon: How Did Goodness Happen? By his own account Philip Hallie, a philosopher of ethics at Wesleyan University, had devoted his life’s work to investigating human cruelty. ‘I had studied’, he writes, ‘the tortures white men inflicted on native Indians and then upon blacks in the Americas, and now I was reading mainly about the torture experiments the Nazis conducted upon the bodies of small children in [the Central European] death camps’.1 Throughout it all, as he watched for recurring patterns of persecution, Professor Hallie strove to maintain an attitude of strict scientific detachment. And as he did so, over the course of years, his soul seemed to have passed, he tells us, from an initial stage of shock and outrage into one of little more than boredom and numbness. One day, as he was reading in an anthology of documents from the Holocaust, he came across a short article about a little village in the mountains of southern France. As usual, I was reading the pages with an effort at objectivity …. About halfway down the third page of the account of this village, I was annoyed by a strange sensation on my cheeks. The story was so simple and so factual that I had found it easy to concentrate upon it, not upon my own feelings. And so, still following the story and thinking about how neatly some of it fit into the old patterns of persecution, I reached up to my cheek to wipe away a bit of dust, and I felt tears upon my fingertips. Not one or two drops; my whole cheek was wet. (pp. 2–3)

What Philip Hallie had encountered was the story of Le Chambon and its French Reformed pastor, André Trocmé. During the darkest days of World War II, in full view of the Vichy government and a nearby division the Nazi SS, Le Chambon’s villagers, under the leadership of André Trocmé, organized to 1

Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 2. Hereafter page numbers cited in the text.

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do something beyond all telling, namely, to save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death. Professor Hallie thereupon resolved to put aside his investigation of human cruelty in order to pursue a very different sort of work, which eventually appeared as Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. The subtitle of this remarkable volume is The Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. The basic question which Hallie raises – how did goodness happen there? – is not only exceedingly complex, but also finally so elusive as to defy all attempts at a definitive answer. Perhaps such happenings of goodness, rare and unpredictable as they are, must inevitably remain mysterious in the face of all attempts to explain them. Certainly Hallie’s own efforts at explanation vary widely in quality and force. In any case what follows can be only the briefest of sketches. Without hoping to be in any way exhaustive, I will not try to explain so much as merely to describe certain significant features which seem to emerge from Hallie’s account of what goodness actually looks like under such trying circumstances when it happens.

An ethic of watchfulness Goodness could not have happened in Le Chambon, as Hallie makes abundantly clear, if the villagers had not adopted an ethic of watchfulness. Their own long, bloody and vividly remembered history as a persecuted minority – for these people were Huguenots in overwhelmingly Catholic France – had undoubtedly heightened their sensitivity to government sponsored lies and violence. They staunchly refused to believe the propaganda that was being disseminated all about them, choosing instead to remain watchful and alert to the plight of those in need. The Jewish children who showed up on their doorsteps were not at all what vile Nazi propaganda, reinforced by centuries of disastrous Christian anti-semitism, would make them out to be. They were, as far as these villagers were concerned, simply fellow human beings in jeopardy of their lives. They were therefore to be given refuge and help, regardless of the risks for those who helped them. In this matter the villagers had been influenced by Pastor Trocmé. As Hallie observes, Trocmé ‘believed

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that “decent” people who stay inactive out of cowardice or indifference when around them human beings are being humiliated and destroyed are the most dangerous people in the world’ (p. 266). We may pause here to ask some simple, if disturbing, questions. Where is it today that human beings around us are being systematically humiliated and destroyed? Are there perhaps sources of propaganda and violence, not excluding our own government or even our own tradition, which might indeed be turning us into some of the most dangerous people in the world – people who stay inactive out of cowardice or indifference? And if we would somehow resolve to lay aside an ethic of indifference in favour of an ethic of watchfulness and action, how can it really be done? How might that goodness which seems once to have happened in Le Chambon happen again in our churches and in our own lives even today?

An ethic of non-compliance Goodness could not have happened in Le Chambon, as Hallie’s account also makes clear, if the ethic of watchfulness had not been supplemented by an ethic of non-compliance. For the villagers, non-compliance meant, again under the leadership of Pastor Trocmé, a commitment to non-violent resistance. Trocmé’s sermons, says Hallie, emphasized the need to obey one’s own conscience when there is a conflict between it and the laws and commands of governments. He often talked about the ‘power of the spirit’, which he described as being a surprising power, a force which no one can predict or control. He offered no systems or methods – this would be to violate the surprising force of the spirit – but he had one principle which he never forsook: the obligation to help the weak, though it meant disobedience to the strong. (p. 170)

Hallie’s book contains many stories of how the people of Le Chambon had to disobey the strong if they were to fulfil their obligation to help the weak. One of the most memorable concerns a time when Pastor Trocmé was confronted with a top leader from the Reformed Church of France (p. 143).

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Church official: What I want to say is this: you must stop helping refugees. Trocmé: Do you realize what you are asking? These people, especially the Jews, are in very great danger. If we do not shelter them or take them across the mountains to Switzerland, they may well die. Church official: What you are doing is endangering the very existence not only of this village but of the Protestant church of France! You must stop helping them. Trocmé: If we stop, many of them will starve to death, or die of exposure, or be deported and killed. We cannot stop. Church official: You must stop. The marshal will take care of them. He will see to it that they are not hurt. Trocmé: No.

André Trocmé and the remarkable villagers he led refused to abide by such an ethic of safety-first as urged by this ranking official of the church. The higher allegiances by which they felt themselves bound not only made them watchful over against all official lies and propaganda for the sake of the abused, the vulnerable and the oppressed, but those same allegiances also made them non-compliant over against all official sources of pressure and threats at considerable risk to themselves. But now perhaps we come closer to the heart of the matter. Just what exactly were those higher allegiances by which the Chambonnais felt themselves to be bound?

An ethic of fidelity and witness The ethic which informed and shaped the life of André Trocmé, and through him the life of his entire village of parishioners, was above all an ethic of fidelity to Jesus Christ. And for Trocmé this ethic of fidelity involved a steadfast commitment to the way of non-violence. In an interesting contrast to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Trocmé once considered and then rejected entering into a plot to assassinate Hitler. ‘It is because I feared separating myself from Jesus Christ’, Trocmé later reflected, that he decided against such a course of action, remembering that Jesus himself had ‘refused to use arms to prevent the crime that was being prepared for him’ (p. 265). Trocmé’s obedience to Jesus, Hallie comments, ‘was not like the obedience of a soldier to a military leader; it was

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more like the obedience of a lover to his beloved’ (p. 161). In other words, Trocmé’s commitment to non-violence was grounded not in the law but in the gospel. It was not the rigid adherence to a principle, but the response of love and fidelity to a person. It was a matter not of necessity and coercion, but rather of freedom and grateful devotion. ‘Trocmé would not separate himself from Jesus’, writes Hallie, ‘by hating and killing his fellowman’ (p. 84). This ethic of fidelity was very closely connected in Trocmé’s mind with an ethic of witness to the cross. André Trocmé confessed the traditional faith of the church, from which he drew some remarkably untraditional conclusions. He affirmed the Incarnation and the Atonement. That is, he affirmed, as Hallie points out, that God had shown us how precious humankind was to him by taking the form of a human being and coming down to help us in our deepest need. Jesus Christ had enacted our salvation by dying in our place on the cross. ‘In short’, says Hallie, Jesus was for Trocmé the embodied forgiveness of sins, and staying close to Jesus meant always being ready to forgive your enemies instead of torturing and killing them. Trocmé could not bear to separate himself from Jesus by ignoring the precious quality of human life that God had demonstrated in the birth, the life, and the crucifixion of His son. (p. 34)

In other words, Trocmé believed, in the words of St. Paul, that ‘one had died for all’, or, in the words of Isaiah, that ‘he was wounded for our transgressions’ and that ‘with his stripes we are healed’. And Trocmé also believed, again in the words of St. Paul, that in consequence Christians were called to a passionate ethic of fidelity and devotion, living ‘no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised’. The practical conclusion which Trocmé drew from this confession of faith was one which determined not only his thought, but also his life and ministry. ‘By choosing to save [humankind] at the price of his life’, Trocmé wrote in his book Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution, ‘Jesus forever joined two facts: redemption and nonviolence. Because Jesus is the Redeemer no one can any longer save by killing or kill to save. Life alone, life given, not exacted from others, can save a [person’s] life’. Here is where the ethic of fidelity and devotion crosses over into an ethic of witness. ‘Nonviolence is above all’, Trocmé wrote, ‘a witness to God’ (p. 168). It is not a mere technique for social

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change, which would make it into little more than a means to some higher end. For Trocmé non-violence was more nearly an end in itself, for Christian believers could have no higher goal than to bear witness in the world to God’s love for the world in Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself on the cross that we might be redeemed from death to life. The function of God’s people on earth, Trocmé wrote, ‘is to be God’s witnesses of the cross and redemption’ (p. 166). ‘The object of nonviolence’, he continued – whether it be the enemy who means us harm or the neighbour who claims our help in need – ‘the fabric of which it is knit, is the human being as person, always unique in the sight of God’s person, since the unique Son of God sacrificed His life for this person’ (p. 172). Space does not permit further exploration of how this ethic of nonviolence – of watchfulness, non-compliance, fidelity and witness – may have enabled goodness to happen as it did in Le Chambon. Pastor Trocmé not only practised this ethic for himself, but also conveyed it to the hearts of his parishioners so that when the time came they were ready. Although more might be contemplated, when all is said and done, one thing remains clear. When the time came, they did not fail to act on behalf of so many persecuted children and adults.

Index of Terms

Note: The letter ‘n’ following locators refers to notes

analogia entis 5–6 analogy 30–1, 34, 114, 116, 156, 159, 190 of benevolence 170 from justification to justice 171 of neediness 170 anti-Evangelicalism 99, 102 anti-Judaic/anti-Judaism 93, 95, 98–9, 102, 105 anti-semitism 17, 93–4, 96, 106, 223, 236 antithetical modes of thought 11 apartheid 83–5, 175, 224 Arianism 149 assumptio carnis (assumption of the flesh) 51–2 asymmetric ordering principle (double asymmetry) 25–6, 31–2, 41, 123, 185–6 Atonement 37–8, 152, 154, 225, 239 see also Incarnation Aufhebung (opposing views) 120 Augustinian tradition 13, 171, 219n. 11 authority of God 14 baptism centrality of communication 46 of Christ 40, 46 of the faithful 40 humanity of Christ 55 and the Lord’s Prayer 21 and the Lord’s Supper 21, 49–50 peculiar nature of baptism 52 reality of salvation 54 sacrament of 50–6 sanctified baptism 46 separate baptism 40 theology of baptism 47

Bible, central content of the 10 blasphemy 139 body and blood (eucharistic elements) 26–8, 33, 38–40, 42, 57–64, 73, 75–7, 79 bread and wine 26, 28, 33, 58 Calvary 37, 39, 41 capitalism 180, 193–5, 198–200 capitalism (economic liberalism) 194 catechism 205–33 of Catholic Church 175 children’s catechism 208 evangelical 208 first catechism 207–8 generous orthodoxy 214, 232 Heidelberg 208 liberal 208 new catechism 207–10, 226 reformed catechism 206, 223 shorter catechism 209 social justice 222 social witness of the 222 use of 208–9 women equality 229 Catholic Overseas Development Agency 90 Catholic Relief Services 90 Catholic substance 56, 64 Chalcedonian definition 25, 113n. 3 Chalcedonian formula 141–3 Chalcedonian pattern 25, 31, 32, 41, 123, 186 Christ (Jesus) see Jesus Christ Christian coercion of Jews 98 Christian conception of God 149 Christians for Biblical Equality 229

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Christian theology 95, 101n. 9, 122–3, 224 christocentrism 93, 114, 124–8 church-dividing 29, 34 Church of Antichrist 192 Church of England Liturgical Commission 42 church relief agencies 90 church–state relations 181–91 equality of women in 229–30 Church World Service 90 code of conduct 67 cognitive aspect of truth 112 cognitive propositionalism 115, 125 coinherence 32–3, 130–1 communio naturarum 31–2 conceptual harmonization 119 conservative Protestantism 4, 6 Corinthian practices 67 correlation 122, 159 counter-cultural 65, 80–4, 212 covenantal actions 12 created order (status integritatis) 186 creatura verbum dei (creature of God’s Word) 22 critical realism 114–20 cross 11, 35, 37–8, 40, 41, 42, 58, 59, 74, 77, 144, 146, 149, 151, 152, 156, 173, 175, 204, 210, 212, 218, 219–22, 224, 225, 226, 228, 232, 239, 240 cross-cultural sensitivity 90 cultural-linguistic theory 112n. 1, 113–15, 125 cultural transformation 82 democratic socialism 180, 194–200 desacralization, theme of 193 discernment 77–9, 157, 203 discipleship 179, 204, 212 divine–human union 141 divine indicative 170, 172 divine judgement 79, 214 divine justification 173 divine transcendence 117 doctrinal theology 9–16 doctrine of creation 167–8 of salvation 168–9 of the Trinity 13, 147–50, 152

dogmatic theology 29, 137 double asymmetry 26, 41 ecological destruction 213 economic democracy (or democratic socialism) 194, 198 economic trinitarianism 150n. 8, 158n. 17 ecumenical (ecumenism) 26, 37, 208 ecumenical theology 4–9, 29, 36 effectiveness vs faithfulness 213, 217, 232 election direct object of election 105 divine election 97, 105 explication of the doctrine of election 13 function of election 12 Israel’s election 95–6, 105 pre-temporal 12–13 environmental responsibility 81 epiclesis 33 epistemology 121, 124 equality 80, 171, 222 equality before the law 197 eschatology 8 ethic of fidelity 238–40 of justification 171 of non-compliance 237–8 of watchfulness 236–7 of witness 238–40 eucharist Ninth Commandment 86 social implications 89–91 eucharistic elements 28, 58, 77 eucharistic Liturgy 23–4 eucharistic mediation 39 eucharistic sacrifice 21, 36–42, 59–61 Eucharistic worship 57, 62, 65, 83 evangelical 97, 113, 121–2, 169–73, 208, 210 conservative evangelical theology 7 evangelical-Catholic 112 evangelical missions 98 social ethics 190 exclusivism 127 exclusivist 127

Index of Terms existentialism 7, 49 experiential expressivism (expressivism) 113–17, 127, 156–7 explicit commitment vs formal description 124, 126 extratextuality 118 faithfulness 9, 50, 70, 82, 98, 132, 212–3, 217, 220, 232 fellowship/koinonia 32–4, 41, 46, 78, 80, 89, 222 abstract expressions of fellowship 89 eucharistic fellowship 89 of reconciliation 91, 224 feminism over biblical faith 229 feminist theology 229 fideism 121 First Catechism, The (PCUSA) 207, 208 forgiveness 45, 74, 171, 212, 225–7, 239 formal description 124 formal description vs explicit commitment 124 freedom of God 5, 14 fundamentalism 117, 151 gender equality 81, 229 generous orthodoxy 113, 128, 205–33 catechism 214, 232 challenge to 229 polarization 224 promise of 211 samples 210–12 solidarity 212 Gentile Christianity 100 German confessing church 181 German Protestant theology 183 Gesamtasugabe 3 Geschichte (biblical narrative) 117 Gespräche 3 gifts of bread and wine 26, 33 gospel analogies from 197 Corinthian practices 67 epistemic status 185 feminism and 229 function of 186 human flourishing 216 narratives 118, 133, 135–7, 140

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non-foundationalist view of 185 preaching of 63 proclamation of 74 promise of 217 social ideals 171 stories of Jesus’ resurrection 139 synoptic 72 synthesis of 142 truth of 162 Graeco-Roman customs 71, 80 Graeco-Roman society 75 Gulf Coast oil spill 165 hermeneutics 10–11 biblical hermeneutics 117 scriptural hermeneutics 137 high christology 128, 137–8, 141–3 historicism 154, 158–9 analogy 159 assumptions of 161 components of 159 correlation 159 probability 159 rise of 160 Holocaust 235 Holy Spirit 12–13, 42, 49, 54–5, 61–3, 87, 143, 148, 207 Holy Trinity 12–13, 54–5, 147 homogenous 67 Huguenots 236 human imperative 170 hypostatic union (unio hypostatica) 28, 31, 33–4, 55, 63 idolatry 81, 87, 98, 214 illustrations 29–31, 213 imagery 29, 54n. 14 Incarnation Atonement and 37–8, 152, 154, 239 history of 51 moral analysis of the 141 mystery of the 21, 29–30 prolongation of the (incarnatus prolognatus) 28 relation with sovereignty and freedom 11 sacramental union 28 Trinity and 56 vehicle of mediation 54

244

Index of Terms

inclusivism 127 inclusivist 127 inequality 68 in nobis 48, 53, 56 integrity of creation 213–15, 232 intention–action scheme 130, 136, 138 intercession 39, 42, 58 internal realism 121 international peace 180, 200–4 intratextuality 118 intratextual realism 118 intuitionism 203 ius ad bellum 203 ius in bello 203 Jesus Christ birth 51 bond with Jews 105–6 centrality of 181 church’s loyalty to 184 communion with 39, 45–6, 49, 53–4, 57–8, 62, 135 compassion 211 crucifixion 219 death 38, 51, 73–5 divine 73 divine–human union 141 gospel accounts of death and resurrection 130 history of 10, 15 human causes 73 human nature of 31 humility 211 identity of 118, 133, 136, 139–40 Jewish rejection 99 life-history of 51, 152 narrated teachings 136 narrative of 10 openness 211 particularity of 134 person of 151 rejection by the Jews 99 sacrifice of 59, 61 sacrificial love 87 scriptural voice of 181 uniqueness of 155, 160, 211 vicarious obedience of 51 Judaeophilia 93, 102, 105 Judaism 8, 93, 97, 99–103

judgement 69, 75–8, 137, 172, 195, 210, 225 divine judgment 79, 214 of the human race 15 political 183, 190 probability 159 justification 5, 9, 13, 25–6, 48, 123, 168, 173, 193 of belief 182 by faith 208 just-war 203 Last Supper tradition 72–80 lectio divina 9 legitimacy of resistance 183 liberal theology 7, 113, 127, 130, 146, 160 liberationism 49 literalism 115–17, 126, 156 literary realism 117 liturgical postscript 42–3 liturgy 22–5, 42, 83 Lord’s Prayer 21, 207–9, 227–8 Marxism/Marxist 17, 197, 200 Mass (Roman Catholic Mass) 22–4, 34, 35n. 12, 39, 84 mediator 54, 58, 61, 155n. 12, 196 messiah 8, 95, 99, 106–7 messianic Judaism 97, 101 metaphysical christology 142 materially decisiveness of Christ 155–7 militarism 17, 193, 202 Mitmenschlichkeit (co-humanity) 179 modalism 148–9, 150n. 8, 158n. 17 moderate propositionalism 112 modernity 49, 113, 117, 120, 123, 128, 131, 160, 226 monarchy 193 monumental failure of Christianity 99 moral christology 142 moralism 230 moral rectitude 76 moral sonship 141 mutual inclusion, pattern of 218, 219n. 11 mystery of Christ’s presence 62, 129, 132, 134 of divine grace 185 of divine–human identity 143 of the Holy Spirit 61

Index of Terms of the Incarnation 21, 29, 30 of the Sacraments 23, 33, 50, 134 of self-consciousness 133 naive realism (literalist univocity) 119 narrative thinking 11 natural theology 181–2 neo-confessionalists 111–12 neo-secularists 112 Nestorian tendency 150 New Testament 3, 8, 16, 49, 89, 135, 143, 204 Nicene Christianity 95, 97, 145–54, 155n. 13, 156 nonapologetic theology 162 non-cognitive theory of religious truth 114 non-foundationalism 121, 124, 128, 185 non-violence and peace 215–22, 238–40 novelistic Christ-figures 137–8 nuclear disarmament 17 Old Testament 82, 196 once-for-all (sacrifice of Christ) 37, 40, 41–2, 63, 195 one covenant 94–6, 102–3 one in Christ 71, 97 one people of God 94–6, 102–3, 105 operatione perpetuum (perpetual operation) 35, 63–4 opere perfectus (perfect work) 35 Ora et labora (Pray and work) 14 pacifism chastened non-pacifism 202 favourable presumption 204 practical pacifism 17 relative pacifism 202 participatio Christi 35, 37, 45–6, 48, 107 patriarchy 116 patriotism 193 pattern of exchange 138, 141 people of God 5, 94–7, 100, 102, 104–5 personal piety 76 Pew Research Center 175 philo-semitism 93, 102, 105–6 pietism 9, 49 plight of sinners 225 pluralism 124–8 political theology 16–17

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political violence 190 postliberalism 120–8 bids for a paradigm shift 113 patristic and medieval insights 117 post-liberal theologian 180 postliberal theology 111, 118, 121–2, 128 post-modernity 49 power of love 216–19 pragmatic aspect of truth 112 pragmatist 112–13, 115, 122 preaching 4–5, 7, 22–3 Christian worship 24 contribution of the sacrament 23 importance of Mass 23 norm for 182 preaching of the gospel 63 relationship with eucharist 21 Roman Catholic neglect 22 Westminster standards 209 precise nature of the bread and wine 28 precondition 26, 122, 189 predestination 13, 208n. 5 Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA) 207 priest 58, 61, 209, 226n. 17 priesthood, Roman Catholic 22 probability judgements 159 proclamation 5–6, 22–3, 25, 28, 74, 181, 189 propitiation 58, 152 propositionalism 114, 125–6, 158 Protestant churches 5, 37, 42, 185, 210 Protestantism 6, 37, 208, 209 Protestant principle 56, 64 Protestant theology 179 psychology 114, 122–3 puritanism 49 Rabbinic Judaism 100–2 racial prejudice 86, 223 racial reconciliation 81, 84 racial segregation 84 radical economic equality 80 radical particularity 51, 104, 134 realism 116 real presence 26–8, 57–9, 61–4, 75 real proclamation 22 reconciliation 13, 21, 74–5, 77, 80, 84, 91, 95, 103, 151, 224, 228 redactional criticism 119

246

Index of Terms

Red Pastor 180 Reformation 5, 7, 22–3, 26, 30, 34, 41, 43, 45–6, 48n. 8, 167, 171, 179, 206, 208–9, 222n. 14 reformational Catholics 97 reformation idea of imputation 54n. 14 reformation theology 49, 62, 167 Reformed Church of France 237 Reformed standards 220 reformed tradition 13, 39, 41, 49, 103, 168, 207–9 regeneration 47–8, 51 relationalism 130–1 relativism 121, 127, 161–2 religious instruction, transmission of 73 religious language 116, 156–8 religious pluralism 124–8 religious self-consciousness 130, 133, 135 religious socialism 16, 180, 194, 205 religious symbols 133, 156–7 repeated actualization, (wiederholten Verwirklichung) 28 re-presentation, doctrine of 35 resistance to tyranny 191–3 resurrection 9, 12–15, 40, 48, 51–2, 57–9, 62–4, 90, 107, 130, 132, 134, 137–40, 149, 152, 154, 172, 208, 219, 222 revelation 12, 23, 151, 156 righteousness 40, 46, 48, 54, 79, 172, 185, 195–6, 213, 219, 227 Roman Catholic Church 6, 84 Roman Catholicism 4–5 Roman Catholic mass 34 Rosetta stone 152–3 rule theory 114, 120 sacramental union (unio sacramentalis) 21, 28, 31, 33–4, 41 sacraments dimension of depth in the 51 efficacy of 51 favour of 22 nature of 76 purpose of 22 reformed tradition 49 sacramental action of eating 28 sacramental union 21, 28, 31, 33, 41

Torrance on 56–63 ultimate ground of 51 unio sacramentalis 30 unity of 24 vehicles of testimony 49 sacramentum mundi 117 sacrifice in three modes 40–1 sacrificial movement 59 Sacrosanctum Concilium 23, 24 sanctification (sanctificationis eius particeps) 9, 13, 25–6, 46, 48, 51, 56 Scottish Episcopal Church 42 scriptural communities 214 scripture by Catholics 9 holy scripture 9, 25, 95, 151, 181, 223, 225 by Protestants 9 Word of God 4, 12, 22, 95–6, 130, 181, 184 secular authority 183–4, 191–2 seed of religion 130 self-assertion 182 self-indulgent feasts 71, 80 self-manifestation 63, 130, 136, 138 self-revelation 95, 150 September 11, 2001 165, 167 Shoah (Holocaust) 94, 102, 107 signum and res (sign and thing) 58 simul iustus et peccator 9 sin 14, 17, 60, 82, 86–7, 127, 141, 146, 155, 170–1, 173, 177, 195–7, 210, 212, 216, 221, 225, 227 sister church programs 89 sober realism 17 social ethics 65, 81, 190–1, 219 social imperative 172 socialist/socialism 16, 180, 193, 195, 197 social justice 222–32 Concern for the poor 227–9 negative stereotyping 223 against social prejudice 223–34 social witness without resignation 228–9 solidarity with the oppressed 224–7 systemic focus 231–2 women equality 229–30 social reconciliation 83–5

Index of Terms social responsibility 82, 224, 231, 232 social witness 82, 90, 205, 207, 212–14, 216–18, 220–3, 228, 232 aspect of 216 basic orientation and direction for 218 purpose 216 rule for 212 test for 221 validity of 217 sola fide (failth alone) 170 sola gratia (pure mercy) 170 solidarity with oppressed 224–6 solidarity with the Jews 94 solus Christus 126 soteriology 50–1, 128, 224–5, 227 spatio-temporal 15 spiritual disorders 231 sui generis 28, 55n. 15, 155n. 13 supernatural 158, 159 supersessionism/supersessionist (soft supersessionism) 93–103 sursum corda 64 Swiss Socialist Party 16, 194 synergism 61 telos 26, 48 temporality of salvation 47, 49 Ten Commandments 85–6, 208–9, 222n. 14 theocentric relativism 162 theological assimilation 185 theory of religion 113–14, 125–6 Theses on Church and State 191 Third Reich/Nazi party 181

247

threefold parousia 36n. 15 Torah-observance 98–102 torture Abu Ghraib 165–6 Christians 174–7 Guantanamo Bay prison camp 165 immoral 166 official Catholic statements 175 Pope John Paul II’s statement 174–5 prohibition against torture 166 rendition to 165 threat to constitutional government 166 WCC’s statement on 174 Tota salutis (complete salvation) 170 totus Christus 77 totus peccatores (wholly sinners, fallen) 170 transelementation 32–4 triumphalism 96 Tübingen 3, 15 tyranny, resistance to 191–3 unio hypostatica 28, 30–1, 41 unio mystica (Mystical union) 55 Vicarious humanity (of Christ) 37–9, 51–2, 55–6, 58, 64 victim-oriented soteriologies 224–5 Virgin Birth 151 Wall Street financial crisis 165 war theology 200–2 worker-priest movement 205

Index of Names

Note: The letter ‘n’ following locators refers to notes Abu Ghraib 165–6 Adam 53, 96 Apostles’ Creed 208, 209, 218 Aquinas, Thomas 112, 184 Aristotle 166, 216 Athanasius 38, 40 Auerbach, Erich 117 Augustine/Augustinian 13, 99, 100, 171, 183 Barmen Declaration 181, 190, 191 Barrett, C.K. 68, 70, 72, 73, 76, 80 Barth, Karl 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 41, 47n. 5, 49, 50, 56, 64, 73, 83, 84, 93, 95, 96, 98, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 130, 143, 145, 147, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205 Berrigan, Daniel 86 Bethge, Eberhard 179 Bin Laden, Osama 165, 166 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 238 Bruce, F.F. 69n. 10 Bucer, Martin 28, 30 Bultmann, Rudolf 7, 15, 131 Busch, Eberhard 3, 8 Calvin, John 6, 7, 10, 22, 28, 39, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54n. 14, 55, 56, 64, 70, 71, 72, 75, 79, 130, 168, 169, 184, 207, 231

Campbell, R. Alastair 69n. 11 Camus, Albert 176, 176n. 14–15 Catechism of the Catholic Church 175 Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg 201 Christ and Culture 141 Christian Life 5, 21, 23, 24 Church Dogmatics 3, 4, 16, 21, 194, 198, 203, 204 Coles, Robert 86n. 24 Collins, Raymond F. 75n. 13, 76 Coutsoumpos, Panayotis 66n. 2 Cranmer, Thomas 28, 30 Cullmann, Oscar 89 Cyril 32, 38 Deputy, The 8 Didache 87 Die Christliche Welt 201 Dinoia, Joseph A. 111, 126n. 45 Ebeling, Gerhard 15 Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, The 117 Eliot, T.S. 219 Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, The 24 Eucharist and Ecumenism, The 30, 83 Fee, Gordon 68n. 6, 69, 72, 76, 78, 79 Feuerbach, Ludwig 7, 130 First Apology 87 Frei, Hans W. 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 160, 161, 207 Garland, David E. 68 Gavrilyuk, Paul L. 32n. 6

Index of Names Geertz, Clifford 125 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) 206 Gogarten, Friedrich 131 Griffiths, Paul J. 124n. 39, 125, 126, 127 Guantanamo Bay 165 Gundry, Judith 229 Gustafson, James 120, 146, 150n. 7 Guthrie, Shirley C. 145n. 2 Hallie, Philip 235, 236, 237, 238, 239 Harrison, Victoria S. 121, 122n. 32 Hays, Richard B. 68n. 7, 77, 79, 80 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 123, 131 Heidelberg Catechism 155n. 12, 208 Hitler, Adolf 8, 181, 238 Hochhuth, Rolf 8 Hoedemaker, Libertus A. 146 Horrell, David G. 100n. 7 Hunsinger, Deborah van Deusen 122, 123n. 36 Hunsinger, George 29n. 3, 30n. 4, 38n. 23, 115n. 9, 156n. 15, 186n. 17, 186n. 19, 230n. 19 Identity of Jesus Christ, The 117, 118, 129, 133, 139, 140 Institutes of the Christian Religion 45n. 1, 48, 207n. 4 International Committee of the Red cross 174–5 Irenaeus 53, 117, 220 Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution 239 ‘Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice’ 195 John Paul II (Pope) 174–5 Kaufmann, Gordon 146 Kierkegaard, Søren 131 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 166, 168 Kliever, Lonnie D. 146 Knowledge of God and the Service of God, The (1936/38 Gifford Lectures) 191 Knox, John 191 Le Chambon 95, 98, 235, 236, 237, 240 Lee, David 136, 137 Lewis, Delmas 125n. 44

249

Lindbeck, George 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 120, 125, 126, 127, 128 Loff, Chris 83n. 17 Luke’s Stories of Jesus 136 Luther, Martin 3, 6–7, 10, 28, 33n. 9, 54n. 14, 112, 127, 138n. 9, 169–71, 183, 209 Machovec, Milan 17 MacIntyre, Alasdair 121, 122 Marshall, Bruce D. 99, 111, 123 Martyr, Justin 87 McIntosh, Mark 31, 33, 34n. 10 Meaning of Revelation, The 145, 147, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 160 Moltmann, Jürgen 158n. 17, 159n. 19, 161, 210 ‘Mystery of the Presence of Jesus Christ, The’ 129 National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) 94, 166–7 ‘Nature of Barth’s Break with Liberalism, The’ 130 Nature of Doctrine, The 112, 115, 120, 125 Newbigin, Lesslie 127, 128 Niebuhr, H. Richard 131, 132, 133, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 210 Niebuhr, Reinhold 145, 210 Niesel, Wilhelm 45n. 2 Novak, David 93 NRCAT (National Religious Campaign Against Torture) 94, 166, 167 Nygren, Anders 169n. 6 OPCAT (Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture) 167 PCUSA Study Catechism 154 Plummer, Alfred 69, 71, 78, 80 Pope John Paul II 174–5 Pope Pius XII 8 ‘Problem of Presence, The’ 129, 131 Putnam, Hilary 121, 122 Rade, Martin 201 Rattenbury, J. Ernest 42

250

Index of Names

Responsible Self, The 153 Robertson, Archibald 68, 69n. 9, 71, 78, 80 Safenwil 180, 195, 202 Schaff, Philip 148, 149n. 6 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 7, 131, 160 Schmemann, Alexander 24 ‘Scots Confession of 1560, The’ 191 Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) 4 Smend, Rudolf 118, 119n. 21 Smit, Dirk 83 Soards, Marion L. 80n. 14 Soskice, Janet Martin 229 Spinks, Bryan D. 42n. 35 St. Paul 46, 65–80, 81, 84, 86, 88–9, 94, 99–100, 103, 223, 239 Stevenson, Kenneth W. 42n. 34, 87, 88n. 26 Study Catechism, The 206, 208, 211 Talbert, Charles H. 67n. 3 Theological Character of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Social Ethic, The 145 Theological Reflections on the Accounts of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection 129 theological repentance 214 Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, The 146 Theophylact 33 Thurneysen, Eduard 17, 18 Tillich, Paul 49, 56, 156 Torrance, Thomas F. 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 209n. 6

Tracy, David 120 Trocmé, André 95, 205, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240 Troeltsch, Ernst 145, 154, 158, 159n. 19, 160, 161, 162 Tutu, Desmond 84, 85, 175, 205 Types of Christian Theology 122 Vatican Council 4 Vermigli 28, 30, 33 Vietnam War 6, 17, 179 Virgin Mary/Mary 62, 63 Von Balthasar, Hans Urs 115, 117, 119, 121, 125, 126, 128 Wainwright, Geoffrey 36, 37 Waldron, Jeremy 166 Watson, Francis 118 Wellhausen, Julius 119 Wesley, Charles 42 Wilhelm II, Kaiser 201 Williams, Stephen 120 Witherington, Ben 67n. 4 Wittgenstein 112, 120, 121 WCC (World Council of Churches) 174 Wolterstorff, Nicholas P. 168, 169 World Council of Churches (WCC) 174 World Vision 90 Wuthnow, Robert 210 Yale School 111–12, 114, 128 Yoder, John Howard 81, 82n. 15, 203