Spirit and Sonship: Colin Gunton's Theology of Particularity and the Holy Spirit (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies) 9780754669111, 9781315610351, 0754669114

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Spirit and Sonship This book weaves together an interpretation of Christian Scripture with a conversation between Colin Gunton and Dietrich Bonhoeffer concerning the role the Holy Spirit plays in shaping the person and work of Christ. The result is a theological description of human personhood grounded in a sustained engagement with, and critique of, Gunton’s theological description of particularity – a topic central to all his thinking. In the course of the conversation with Bonhoeffer the book also offers one of few broad assessments of his work as a systematic theologian. In bringing together the work of two important modern theologians, this book explores both the possibilities of theology generated from Christian Scripture and the central importance of the doctrines of Christ and the Trinity in understanding what it means to declare someone or something unique.

ASHGATE NEW CRITICAL THINKING IN RELIGION, THEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL STUDIES The Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. Headed by an international editorial advisory board of acclaimed scholars spanning the breadth of religious studies, theology and biblical studies, this openended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Other Recently Published Titles in the Series: Jürgen Moltmann’s Ethics of Hope Eschatological Possibilities For Moral Action Timothy Harvie Reading Anselm’s Proslogion The History of Anselm’s Argument and its Significance Today Ian Logan The Challenges of the Pentecostal, Charismatic and Messianic Jewish Movements The Tensions of the Spirit Peter Hocken Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance Myk Habets Creativity, Spirituality, and Mental Health Exploring Connections Kelley Raab Mayo Trusting Others, Trusting God Concepts of Belief, Faith and Rationality Sheela Pawar What’s Right with the Trinity? Conversations in Feminist Theology Hannah Bacon

Spirit and Sonship

Colin Gunton’s Theology of Particularity and the Holy Spirit

David A. Höhne Moore Theological College, Australia

First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © David A. Höhne 2010 David A. Höhne has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Höhne, David A. Spirit and sonship : Colin Gunton’s theology of particularity and the Holy Spirit. – (Ashgate new critical thinking in religion, theology and biblical studies) 1. Gunton, Colin E.–Knowledge–Particularity. 2. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906–1945. 3. Jesus Christ–Person and offices. 4. Holy Spirit–Biblical teaching. 5. Son of God– Biblical teaching. I. Title II. Series 232.8–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Höhne, David A., 1967– Spirit and sonship : Colin Gunton’s theology of particularity and the Holy Spirit / David A. Höhne. p. cm. – (New critical thinking in religion, theology, and biblical studies) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-7546-6911-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Particularism (Theology) 2. Salvation–Christianity. 3. Holy Spirit. 4. Gunton, Colin E. 5. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906–1945. I. Title. BT761.3.H64 2009 230’.52092–dc22 ISBN: 978-0-754-66911-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-61035-1 (ebk)

2009018784

Contents Introduction  

1

1

Establishing an Exegetical Description  

25

2

Establishing a Theological Alternative  

51

3 The Spirit Enables Sonship  

77

4 The Spirit Opens Sonship  

113

5 The Spirit Preserves Sonship  

141

Conclusion  

169

Bibliography   Index  

177 187

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Introduction

Many common people do not distinguish the essence (ousia) from the idea of substance (hypostasis) in the mystical dogmas. Putting together these similarly hidden thoughts they deem it to make no difference to say essence or substance.

These words are found in a letter from one Cappadocian Father, Basil of Caesarea, to another, Gregory of Nyssa. In Basil’s comment we observe what the late Professor Colin Gunton of King’s College London alleged was one of Augustine’s chief theological failures: that is, to appreciate the significance of the concept of hypostasis. In Gunton’s reading of historical theology this led to a dangerously monistic or modalistic view of God in Western thought that undermined any theological or philosophical attempts to articulate particularity. It was Gunton’s view that Augustine’s failure exacerbated the difficulties of balancing the metaphysical dialectic between the one and the many. This book will focus on one aspect of Gunton’s search for a solution to this ancient problem. That aspect is Gunton’s peculiar contribution to the discussion, namely, that particularity is best understood as the product of mutually constitutive relations. What this means for Gunton can be seen in his statement: Both persons and things are … substantial particulars and rendered such by the patterns of relations that constitute them what they distinctively are: with God

Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 38.1.1. All translations of Basil’s work are my own. There is some contention over the authorship of Epistle 38, traditionally ascribed to Basil but more recently since Hubner (Reinhard Hubner, “Gregor von Nyssa als Verfasser der sog. Ep.38 des Basilius zum unterschliedlichen Verständnis der Ousia bei den kappadozischen Brüdern”, in Epektasis: Melanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Danielou, ed. J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser [Paris: Beauschesne, 1972]) thought to have been written by Gregory of Nyssa. Gunton took a traditional stance on the matter (Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2nd edn, 1997], p. 10).  Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 40.  In his address at Gunton’s memorial Christoph Schwöbel remarked: “If we still followed the ancient custom of venerating the great doctors of the church by a particular title, Colin Gunton would have to be the doctor particularitatis, the teacher of the significance of particularity who was never content with abstract generalities” (Christoph Schwöbel, “A Tribute to Colin Gunton”, in The Person of Christ, ed. Stephen R. Holmesand Murray A. Rae [London: Continuum, 2005], p. 14).  



Spirit and Sonship in the first instance and with other temporally and spatially related particulars in the second.

A person or thing is what it is, and not something else, by virtue of the matrix of relationships in which it exists. The matrix consists of God as creator on the one hand and everything and everyone else in temporal and spatial proximity on the other. Gunton achieved arguably the clearest articulation of his view in his 1992 Bampton Lectures that were subsequently published under the title, The One, the Three and the Many. Acknowledged by John Webster as “his most ambitious book”, this work showcases Gunton’s attempt to reformulate modern thought and practice in line with his interpretation of the ancient Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Trinitarian theology, the scarlet thread of his work, provided for Gunton the resources for maintaining the appropriate conceptual balance between unity and diversity in creation. Appealing to Coleridge, Gunton wrote: The Trinity is the idea of ideas … Trinitarian conceptuality enables us to think of our world, in a way made impossible by the traditional choice between Heraclitus and Parmenides, as both, and in different respects, one and many, but also one and many in relation.

It was Gunton’s contention that the “one and many-ness” of the divine creator, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, held the key for understanding relationality and particularity in the cosmos. In fact, Gunton nominated relationality and substantiality (a synonym for particularity) as twin transcendentals for establishing a Trinitarian metaphysic of culture. He argued that these two concepts were

 Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 203.  John Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth: Jüngel, Jenson and Gunton”, in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918, ed. David Ford and Rachel Muers (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 261.  Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 7. “Heraclitus is the philosopher of plurality and motion: the many are prior to the one, and in such a way that there is to be found in nature no stability” (ibid., p. 17). Parmenides is the polar opposite: “The many do not really exist, except it be as functions of the One” (ibid., p. 18). For Parmenides, only that which is unchanging is real. This is what reason teaches us, contrary to appearances presented to the senses. These two poles help to give some form to a definition of modernity, which according to Gunton, is more a “family of dogmas and practices” (ibid., p. 12). At one pole, there is modernism, which to Gunton is Parmenidean (ibid., p. 69). It has an intrinsic commitment to an objective universal truth that is discerned by the rational exercise of scientific method. At the other pole, postmodernism, or later modernism as Gunton prefers, is characterised by an abandonment of objective truth and a Heraclitian desire for change and plurality (ibid., p. 70).  Ibid., pp. 210ff.

Introduction



echoes in creation of the divine being. Thus everything and everyone in creation is perichoretically united and hypostatically particular. The Failure of Western Metaphysics According to Gunton As indicated in the above quote, Gunton’s motivation for developing his Trinitarian theology of particularity was a perceived failure on the part of traditional Western metaphysics to account adequately for the unity and diversity of the world in which we live. In a characteristically broad analysis of the history of Western thought and practice, Gunton lays the blame primarily at the feet of two culprits – Plato and Augustine. These ancient thinkers represent for Gunton, in the first instance, a philosophy that robs the particular of genuine concrete substantiality: since Plato’s system of forms meant that the reality of a thing or person was not accessible to the senses but transcendent in the mind of the One. In the second instance, as anticipated above, Augustine came to undergird all that was wrong with Christian, especially Western, thought about God with serious consequences for Christianity’s understanding of the creation.10 Plato’s Preference for the Mind Gunton judged that Plato’s thought in works like the Phaedo and the Symposium “systematically downgraded” bodily sexuality and sexual distinction. Gunton asserted: “The Symposium … reveals an evasion of what I believe to be the fact that the whole person, body, mind and spirit, and not merely a part, is definitive of human being.”11 For Plato, the true person is the soul. The result is that the material body comes to be understood as “that which divides one human being from another

 Webster comments that Gunton’s approach to key terminology in historical discussion of the Trinity was “not always accorded thorough analytical treatment: [and] when coupled with a somewhat broad-brush presentation of the doctrine’s history … suggest that too much ground is covered too quickly” (Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 261). In reviewing the lectures, Maurice Wiles was certainly unhappy with Gunton’s analysis of the Western tradition: “The vast sweep of the argument, which contributes to the impressiveness of the work as a whole, contributes also to doubts about its more specific thesis … The first [doubt] concerns the historical diagnosis of our present condition. The Western tradition is castigated for its homogenising effect. But is not Gunton himself guilty (perhaps inescapably so in a book of such broad scope) of homogenising the tradition? (Maurice F. Wiles, “The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity,” Journal of Theological Studies 45 [1994]: 787). 10 Gunton’s prejudice against Augustine was something he admitted openly: “I don’t like Augustine, I think he is the fountainhead of our troubles” (Colin E. Gunton, The Barth Lectures, ed. P.H. Brazier [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2007], p. xxiii). 11 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 48.

Spirit and Sonship



rather than relates them to each other”.12 Gunton contended that the interaction between humans here is a matter of the linking of souls, with the body being at best an obstacle. This creates problems since our bodies are what enable us to be particularised and distinguished from others. If, as Plato asserts, we are essentially souls, Gunton claimed that a number of unfortunate implications follow: First there is a major breach between appearance and reality. Second, we do not really have our beings in relations of mutual constitutiveness with each other across the whole range of our relations, bodily and mental or verbal.13

The consequence, in Gunton’s view, is that relationality is a matter of the internal only, not the external relations that we have with each other and the world around us. He concluded, “what is lost, in sum, is a recognition of the otherness-in-relation in which alone can particularity be truly preserved”.14 The result is a conception of humans in terms of their rational capacities at the expense of the aesthetic and the material. This is further heightened when, according to Gunton, we consider what Plato wrote in the Phaedo. The teaching of the Phaedo is that because the real person is the immaterial soul, engagement with materiality should be reduced to a minimum particularly because the pleasures of sense rivet the body to the soul, and so prevent that progressive separation of the two that is the aim and end of philosophy.15

Plato’s suspicion of art is an obvious outcome of the dubious status of matter in his thought. Yet art, Gunton argued, is a prime example of engagement with the particulars of our world: The results of human craft or art are particular: the outcome of engagement with the material world in all its brute particularity and intractability. The downgrading of art is thus one of the results of Plato’s disqualification of the particular from being the bearer of truth.16

Gunton’s thesis then, was that the modern discomfort with particularity has its roots in the Platonic suspicion of the world of matter, plurality and becoming. Here we enter the domain of the doctrine of creation. Gunton’s question at this point 12

Ibid. Ibid., p. 49. 14 Ibid. 15 Plato, Phaedo, 83b5–e3, cited in Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 50. 16 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 50. 13

Introduction



was whether, “Platonising elements have expelled from the Western mind features of the theology of creation which enable particularity to be truly conceived”.17 Augustine’s Rational God The meat of Gunton’s contention with Augustine in the Bampton Lectures is found in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. In the chapter entitled “Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West”,18 Gunton raised critical questions regarding the extent to which Platonising doctrines “undermine the doctrine of God known as triune even while it is being stated”.19 He pursued two related aspects: “the use Augustine makes of Christology in his development of the doctrine of the Trinity, and what in general he makes of the humanity of Christ”. The first Neoplatonic assumption that Gunton suspected Augustine of was “the material order’s incapacity to be really and truly the bearer of divinity”.20 He pointed to Augustine’s description of Old Testament theophanies as mediated through angels rather than substantially involving God the Word: “If, then I am asked how either the voices of the sensible forms and figures (species) were produced before the incarnation of the Word … I answer that God made them through the angels.”21 Gunton contended that here Augustine is shying away from “the involvement of God with the material order.”22 A second area of suspicion was the way Augustine treated the human story of Jesus. According to Gunton, Augustine was unable to handle such episodes as Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan: “It would be utterly absurd for us to believe that he received the Holy Spirit when he was already thirty years old … but [we should] believe that he came to that Baptism both entirely sinless and not without the Holy Spirit.”23 Gunton’s complaint here was as much about Augustine’s view of the Spirit as his Christology: “Augustine appears to treat the Spirit … substantially rather than personally and relationally”.24 The Spirit, it is argued, seems to possess Jesus rather than realising his humanity in relationship to the Father. 17

Ibid., p. 51. Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, ch. 3. Gunton acknowledges that this essay began life as a seminar paper delivered at King’s College London in January 1988 (ibid., p. 30). 19 Ibid., p. 33. 20 Ibid., p. 34. 21 Augustine, De Trinitate, 4.31, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 35. 22 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 35. 23 Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.46, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 37. 24 Gunton took issue with Augustine’s pneumatology. He was highly critical of the decision to designate the Spirit as either “the Gift of God” or “the love of God”. Principal in Gunton’s complaints was the lack of Scriptural support for either, which even Augustine 18



Spirit and Sonship

A third instance of Augustine’s Neoplatonism is exhibited, in Gunton’s estimation, when he argues in Book 11 of De Trinitate for the superiority of the inner, rational, nature as an analogy of the Trinity.25 Gunton again cited De Trinitate: “We reject everything that is material. Even in the world of spirit, nothing that is changeable must be taken for God.”26 The problem here for Gunton was related to Christology. If God is present to the world in the human reality of Jesus, then the world can facilitate that kind of meaning.27 Consequently Gunton accused Augustine of not believing that the material world is the place where meaning, including theological meaning, can be found. Finally, Augustine’s chief defect was his articulation of the triunity of God. Due to his inability to understand the Cappadocian distinction between ousia and hypostasis,28 says Gunton, Augustine all but gives up on the theological importance of maintaining the balance between the one-ness and the three-ness of

admitted: “The Scripture has not said: ‘The Holy Spirit is charity’” (Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.27, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 49). Augustine’s rationale for the choice was dismissed as “special pleading” : “Holy Scripture proclaims that God is charity. Charity is of God, and its effect in us is that we dwell in God and he in us … It follows that the Spirit himself is the God who is charity. If among God’s gifts there is none greater than charity, and this is no greater gift of God than the Holy Spirit, we naturally conclude that he who is said to be both God and of God is himself charity” (Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.37). Gunton’s concern is that essential elements of the economy of salvation are absent. There is nothing of the eschatological work of the Spirit. For example, “although he affirms the doctrine, the resurrection of the body plays no constitutive part in his theology”. He adds, there is no “conception of the Spirit as realising the conditions of the age to come particularly through the creation of community.” A third omission is “the part played in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity by the incarnation – for an incarnational conception of love is scarcely to be found.” In all there was an “inadequate economic hypostatic weight” in Augustine’s articulation of the Spirit (Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 51). 25 Gunton was also critical of Augustine’s Trinitarian analogies: “The crucial analogy for Augustine is between the inner structure of the human mind and the inner being of God, because it is in the former that the latter is made known, this side of eternity at any rate, more really than in the ‘outer’ economy of grace” (Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 45). In defence of this allegation he points to the presence of “a Platonising doctrine of knowledge as recollection” in Augustine’s work: “We developed an account of the mental trinity, in which memory supplied the source from which the thinker’s view received its form, the conformation itself being a kind of image imprinted by the memory, and the agency by which the two are conjoined being love or will” (Augustine, De Trinitate 14.8, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, pp. 47–8, emphasis added). 26 Augustine, De Trinitate, 8.3, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 38 n.11. 27 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 37. 28 Gunton cites Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.10: “I do not know what distinction they wish to make” (Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 40).

Introduction



God.29 Unlike the Cappadocians Augustine is not asking: “What kind of being is this that God is to be found in the relations of Father, Son and Spirit? But, What kind of sense can be made of the apparent logical oddity of the threeness of the one God in Aristotelian subject-predicate logic?”30 In Gunton’s view, Augustine consequently makes the one-ness of God his substance and struggles to avoid the three persons slipping into the category of accident. Even when the concept of relations is introduced it is used as a logical rather than ontological predicate. Thus De Trinitate reads: “The particulars in the same Trinity that are properly predicated of each person are by no means predicated of that as they are in themselves (ad se ipsa), but in their relations either to one another or to the creature, and it is therefore manifest that they are predicated relatively, not substantially.”31 The being of the particular persons, Gunton concludes, lacks any distinguishable identity and therefore is lost in the all-embracing one-ness of God. The result for Augustine, and for the Western theology that followed him, is either monism or modalism. Trinitarian Particularity as a Remedy for Modernity Gunton’s assessment of traditional Western theology, after Augustine, was that it failed to provide theological grounding for the concept of person as being in community.32 It also exhibited a discomfort with divine presence in creation, an omission of the Spirit’s economic involvement with Jesus the Messiah and an underlying reticence about affirming the goodness of creation.33 This, Gunton contended, is a theology incapable of addressing the undercurrent of Platonic scepticism regarding the concrete substantiality of persons, things, or the world.

Gunton cites Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.10: “Dictum est tamen tres personae non ut illud diceretur sed ne taceretur” and draws attention to 7.7: “this formula was decided upon, in order that we might be able to give some kind of answer when we were asked, what are the three?” (Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 40). 30 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 40. 31 Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.12 (cf. 7.3, where Augustine says that with predicates like “begotten”, “the essence is not revealed, since they are spoken of relatively”), cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 41, emphasis added). 32 From very early on Gunton’s theology was in reaction to the Western medieval version of the classic concept of God. Remarking on Aquinas’ Five Ways in his doctoral thesis, Gunton wrote: “Together they build up a picture of the one changeless, infinite, perfect abstract absolute” (Colin E. Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth [London: SCM, 2nd edn, 2001], p. 4). 33 See also Colin E. Gunton, “Between Allegory and Myth: The Legacy of Spiritualising Genesis”, in The Doctrine of Creation, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), pp. 47–63. 29



Spirit and Sonship

It is also inadequate to address the Enlightenment’s counter-reaction of elevating the individual to transcendent status.34 The antidote for this modern malaise was, for Gunton, that the particularity of persons or things be understood as the consequence of mutually constitutive relations. More than this, because the discussion is theological not merely philosophical, the perfection of particularity (concrete substantiality) in creation is the eschatological work by the Spirit of the Father, through the Son. In this Gunton was committed to the notion that “[divine] economy embraces the being of the world in its relations to God and the actions of God in relation to the world”.35 Consequently it is God’s work through the Son and in the Spirit to provide an echo of his own being in that which he creates and redeems insofar as it is “a structured though open embracing of time by eternity”.36 It is an open embrace because it was imperative for Gunton that the ontological integrity of both creator and creation be upheld at all times. It is a structured embrace in that Gunton sought to maintain a conceptual progression from creation to redemption. It is the aim of this book to explore, appraise and develop Gunton’s theological proposals regarding particularity. To elaborate we return to Webster’s evaluation of Gunton’s theological project mentioned above.37 Webster counsels that although Gunton’s reading of Augustine and others is “certainly sketchy” it is best understood “as a foil to a constructive doctrine of the Trinity”.38 For this reason we shall concentrate on Gunton’s attempts at renewing Christian theological focus with an appropriate emphasis on the triune nature of God.39 While the many arguments that Gunton has with Augustine will appear frequently in the course of our exploration, there will be no re-reading of Augustine per se; nor shall we seek to vindicate Plato.40 Worthwhile as those exercises might be, another of Webster’s 34 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 129. In fact, Gunton ventures that such a view of God may well have been worth rejecting in the modernist revolt. 35 Ibid., p. 160. 36 Ibid., p. 161. 37 See p. 2 above, esp. n. 6. 38 Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 259. 39 Webster comments: “Gunton was a major figure in retrieving the theology of the Trinity from the periphery and returning it to the centre of British theology” (ibid.). 40 In reviewing the Bampton Lectures, David Brown was unhappy with Gunton’s portrayal of Plato. He complains: “No acknowledgement is made of Plato as the great philosopher of relationality, with every particular necessarily related to its own form and that in turn to the Form of the Good” (David Brown, “Impressive in Range and Coherence”, Expository Times 105 [1994]: 219). Brown fails to notice that it is the kind of relationality exhibited in Plato’s system against which Gunton contends; a relationality that robs the particular of genuine concrete substantiality because of its dependence on a form in the mind of the Good. For defence of Augustine against Gunton’s claims see Bradley Glen Green, “Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine: An Exposition and Analysis of the Theology of

Introduction



more weighty criticisms of Gunton will guide our attention: “When his [Gunton’s] theology does not persuade, it is usually because he does not pause sufficiently long over exegetical or historical description, or because he assumes the validity of his presuppositions and presses ahead to draw corollaries.”41 We shall explore, appraise and expand Gunton’s theology of particularity through attention to his failure to pause over exegetical and historical description in the first instance and by testing the validity of his presuppositions in the second. Throughout the book, we will engage in a more sustained investigation of the narrative specifics of the Scriptural configuration of the economy of salvation.42 However, since Gunton’s use of historical sources was a tapestry with many loose threads we shall confine our attention to the sources upon which he relied most heavily. His adoption of Basil’s description of hypostases and the perfecting work of the Spirit are perhaps the two most important examples of inadequate attention to historical detail. They can be introduced here briefly since, as with Augustine’s thought, they will reappear throughout the dissertation. Basil’s Trinitarian Ontology What was the Cappadocian distinction between ousia and hypostasis that Augustine is alleged to have misunderstood and why is it important? Gunton argued that “by using hypostasis to refer to the concrete particulars – the persons – and then proceeding to say that the ousia – general being – is constituted without remainder by what the persons are to and from each other in eternal perichoresis, the Cappadocians made it possible to conceive a priority of the particular over the universal”.43 The divine persons mutually constitute one another in that they share the one divine ousia in, with and for each other, so as to establish each other absolutely as unique hypostases.44 Colin Gunton in Light of Augustine’s ‘De Trinitate’” (PhD: Baylor University, 2000); Neil Ormerod, The Trinity (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 2005). A more general defence of Augustine, not citing Gunton, can be found in Michel R. Barnes, “Rereading Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity”, in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 145–76. Each of these works claim that on balance, Augustine’s theology was less Platonic than Gunton suggests. 41 Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 262. 42 In the Bampton Lectures, Gunton commented: “We could, I believe, make far more of the narrative particularities than we do” (Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 181). 43 Ibid., p. 191. 44 Ironically, for all his devotion to the ancient doctrine of the Trinity, it is Coleridge to whom Gunton turns in the Bampton Lectures in order to expand the meaning of perichoresis: “The three do not merely co-inhere, but dynamically constitute one another’s being in what Coleridge called an ineffable cycle of Being, Intelligence and communicative Life, Love

10

Spirit and Sonship

Were we to enquire as to how this Cappadocian understanding of hypostases came about, we would be disappointed. There is no reference in the Bampton Lectures to any text from any of the Cappadocians discussing this topic. In fact, were it not for a passing mention in a previous essay, “The Concept of the Person”,45 we might never have been told where Gunton’s notion of person as hypostasis actually came from. This is a great pity for the source is Basil’s 38th Epistle and it is a detailed treatise on the significance of hypostases in relation to ousia in the Godhead. Even a brief exposition of this letter would have strengthened Gunton’s case. Therefore we shall consider what Basil wrote: “The Son, who is the one coming forth from the Father, making known the Spirit through himself and with himself, alone only begotten received from the unregenerate light, has not one thing [οὐδεμιαν], according to the peculiar notes, in common with either the Father or the Holy Spirit but alone is known by the mentioned signs.”46 The phrase, “has not one thing … in common with” in a discussion of the relations between Father, Son and Spirit seems startling until we recall that Basil’s intent is to discuss the particularity of each ὑπόστασις.47 In this context the Son does not have anything in common with the other two because he is not more, or the most, Son-ish of the three. Son-ness is not a characteristic the three have in common. In the context of discussing divine persons their “peculiar notes” (characteristics) are absolute. To be “alone only begotten received from unregenerate light” is not a trait that any other being shares such that we might variously attribute it to the Son and then to anyone else who had a similar “bundle of properties”. The phrase is in effect equivocal of Sonship. Here is the historical support for the notion of hypostatic particularity that Gunton advocates. For Basil, to have a ὑπόστασις is to be a singularity – to be a unique, concrete subsistence in and from relations. This radical particularity prompts Basil to expend much energy in the rest of the letter to ensure that the particularity of persons does not lead to their segregation from one another or their isolation from the divine ousia. Thus we read statements like:

and Action” (Mary Anne Perkins, “The Logos Reconciler”, citing Coleridge’s unpublished “On the Divine Ideas”, cited in Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 164). 45 Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, ch. 5. 46 Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 38.4.29–35. 47 Basil indicated that focus on particularity need not be at the expense of universality, rather it is a matter of giving due weight to the peculiarity that results in the concrete manifestations of a general essence. What happens in the process is described thus: “Whenever someone has turned their attention from what is common to the contemplation of the distinct things through which one word is distinguished from another, the distinguishing faculty of each word will no longer be kept through all characteristics in one word in relation to another; even if in some things it was found having a commonality” (Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 38.2.28).

Introduction

11

Whenever an astute person observes the greatness of a certain person [πρόσωπον] of the Holy Trinity … he will succeed, without variation in seeing the glory through them, that is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For, there is no void interval of thought between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Since there is nothing that can be inserted through the middle of these [the Trinity], nor is there some other thing giving subsistence beside the divine nature so as to be able to distribute itself, through the insertion of the other three, with itself; Nor, having distinguished continuity, can anyone make, from the interval of some irresistible emptiness, the harmony of the divine essence gape with the addition of the empty void.48

We may perceive each of the three uniquely but not because we have isolated one from the others or segregated each of the three. There is no individualisation of deity in either the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit. Nor is there any other divineness (other than that which the three share in, with and for each other), which exists apart from, in and amongst the three. Gunton could have drawn specific attention to the above passage in order to substantiate a difference between a Cappadocian understanding of God’s Triunity and that which he discerned in Augustine but he did not. The second foundational concept that Gunton took from Basil was his proposition that the Spirit is the perfecter of Creation.49 Gunton claims that for Basil, the distinctive function of the Spirit is perfection, “to bring to completion that for which each person and thing is created”.50 So the peculiar contribution of the Spirit in the economy of salvation is to “realise the true being of each created thing by bringing it, through Christ, into saving relation with God the Father”. Even though Gunton repeatedly appealed to Basil on this issue and even consistently cited Basil’s major work on the Spirit – De Spiritu Sancto – he spent less time expounding this work than he did Augustine’s De Trinitate.51 When we consult De Spiritu Sancto, we find 11 references to ὑπόστασις and all but one are references to the distinction of divine persons.52 However, in chapter 16 we find Basil’s view: “That the Holy Spirit is in every conception not divided from the Father and the Son, alike in the creation of perceptible objects, in the

Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 38.4.50. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 182. 50 Ibid., p. 189. 51 Exposition of De Trinitate forms the basis of Gunton’s essay on Augustine mentioned above (see p. 5). By contrast not even an entire essay was devoted to De Spiritu Sancto despite Gunton’s stated desire to re-invigorate pneumatology (see, e.g., Colin E. Gunton, “God the Holy Spirit: Augustine and His Successors”, in Theology through the Theologians [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996], pp. 105–28). 52 Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 5.7.9; 16.38.21; 16.38.102; 17.41.20; 18 Title; 18.44.21; 18.45.6; 18.47.22; 25.59.38; 25.59.42; 29.72.17. 48

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management of human affairs, and in the expected judgment.”53 The aim of this work is to defend the full divinity of the Spirit along with the Father and the Son. Hence Basil seeks to establish the Spirit as an equal and distinct agent in the economy of salvation. One significant aspect of this is that “in this way, therefore in creating, the Holy Spirit, the one administering Grace from himself at the same time, is present in the things being perfected, not out of a process but from creation itself straight to perfection, for the completion and the attaining of their subsistence (ὑπόστασις)”.54 This is the only occurrence of the hypostasis terminology in the context of a description of the work of the Spirit. Basil proposes the idea that the Spirit is “the perfecting cause” (τὴν τελειωτικήν)55 of created things, specifically angels. It is this notion of the Spirit “perfecting” and, in so doing, enabling a created thing to “attain and complete” a hypostasis that is so important to Gunton.56 As mentioned above, Gunton wants to say that the work of the Spirit is to constitute particularity. However, closer consideration of what Basil is describing here should have tempered Gunton’s enthusiasm. The angels are perfected yet, “not out of a process but from creation itself straight to perfection”. Of course angels are part of the creation but their perfection as described here is surely atypical and therefore hardly precedent for appropriating the work of perfecting hypostatic substantiality to the Spirit and that in the economy of salvation. Furthermore, Basil uses the traditional language of the redemptive work of the Spirit for Christians though he does not mention the attainment of substantiality. Through the Holy Spirit is the restoration into paradise; the way up into the kingdom of heaven; the return to adoption as sons; the freedom to call God our Father, to become partners of the grace of Christ, to bear the title children of light, to partake of eternal glory, and in general to be in all the riches of blessings, in this age and in the age to come.57

There is here mention of the eschatological work of the Spirit but no special articulation of hypostatic ontology in the creation or redemption of human persons.58

53

Ibid. 16 Title. Ibid. 16.38.102. 55 Ibid. 16.38.15. The Father being the cause of all things, the Son the creative and the Spirit the perfecting cause. Basil clarifies this remark with: “Let no one suppose me to speak of either there are three original (originating) subsistences (ὑπόστασις) or to assert the imperfection of the operation of the Son” (ibid. 16.38.21). 56 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 182. 57 Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, 15.36.1. 58 In a later essay Gunton conceded: “While both Athanasius and Basil do appeal to his creating function, it is the Spirit’s enabling of human piety that plays the main role” (Colin E. Gunton, “Creation: (2) The Spirit Moved over the Face of the Waters: The Holy 54

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It could be argued that we are being overly pedantic until we take into account the importance of language to Basil in this work. He writes: “For if the difference of language designates, as we are told, that the nature [φύσις] has been changed, then let identity of language compel our adversaries to confess with shame that the essence [οὐσία] is unchanged.”59 The basic tenet of this work on the Spirit is that if things are described the same – namely Father, Son and Spirit – then they are the same.60 If they are not described in the same fashion it is therefore fair to assume that Basil did not hold them to be the same. It cannot be denied that De Spiritu Sancto is replete with the language of perfection but to suggest that this includes concrete substantiality is a matter of inference rather than observation. While the notion of hypostatic constitution by the Spirit of persons or things is attractive, it does not seem explicit or continuous in Basil’s thought. Though briefly stated, these two examples from Gunton’s use of Basil lend weight to Webster’s criticism regarding historical description. Without a connection between divine persons as mutually constituted particulars (hypostases) and the perfecting work of the Spirit, it is less easy to posit that Basil’s notion of triunity was derived from the economy of salvation. Yet Gunton accused Augustine of such a failure. A lack of conceptual coherence in Basil’s thought in support of particularity is a serious problem for Gunton who understood systematic theology in terms of “[perceiving] connections between truths, and [knowing] which [belonged] to which”.61 For one thing it brings into question the basis upon which truths might be connected to one another. As will become clear through our exploration of his thought, Gunton’s basic commitment was to the explication of the Christian understanding of the economy of divine salvation – the Christian gospel of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah in the Spirit and for the perfecting reconciliation of all things to God the Father. Even so, we might ask, whence comes such a message? Time and again Gunton’s answer was: “From the Christian Scriptures – the Bible.” This leads us back to the question of exegetical investigation.

Spirit and the Created Order”, in Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2003], p. 115). 59 Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, 5.11.17. 60 Mark J. Larson, “A Re-Examination of De Spiritu Sancto: Saint Basil’s Bold Defence of the Spirit’s Deity”, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 19 (2001): 81–2. 61 Emil Brunner, The Mediator, p. 262, cited in Colin E. Gunton, “Authority and Freedom: P.T. Forsyth’s The Principle of Authority”, in Theology through the Theologians, pp. 221. Brunner is describing Irenaeus, however, the description also reflects Gunton’s esteem for Coleridge: “It is such a concern [Coleridge’s] for the interrelatedness of things, of world and life, of theology and ethics, that founds the necessity for being systematic in theology, for thinking things together” (Colin E. Gunton, “The Nature of Systematic Theology: Anselm of Canterbury, Samuel Taylor Cleridge and the Possibility of an English Systematic Theology”, in Theology through the Theologians, p. 13).

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A Possible Exegetical Description As will be seen, Webster is correct in criticising Gunton’s theology for a lack of exegetical description. Considering that Gunton felt free to rebuke Augustine for a lack of Scriptural support for his understanding of the Trinity, it is only appropriate that Gunton’s work receive the same scrutiny.62 However, in the spirit of constructive theology that was so characteristic of Gunton’s project, we shall not merely point out areas in which Webster’s criticism is fair. Instead we shall undertake a fresh reading of Scripture so as to map out the theological concepts that Gunton proposed against the particularities of biblical narrative in order to turn his broad sketch into a more vivid portrait. This is one sense in which we shall seek both to appraise and develop Gunton’s suggestions; yet this methodology must be further clarified. The notion of generating theology, especially Trinitarian theology, from Scripture needs some explanation.63 David Kelsey has argued that different theologians mean quite different things when they state that theology must “accord with Scripture”.64 Kelsey described Barth as construing Scriptural narrative as an agent-rendering story focused upon Jesus Christ. The actions and identity of Jesus Christ provide the conditions for the possibility of divine–human encounter in the present even as patterns in Scripture identify critical aspects of the character of God.65 As we shall see, Kelsey’s description of Barth paints a broad picture of Gunton’s approach to Scripture in respect to doctrine. That said, in his later writings, Gunton was determined to portray the triune God as the agent whom Scripture renders, often in contention with Barth.66 So in proposing to appraise and develop Gunton’s theology with regard to Scripture we are suggesting two things. Firstly, closer attention to the narrative of Scripture only strengthens Gunton’s position on particularity understood as an eschatological work of the Spirit. That is, where possible, we shall take what he offers by way of comment on Scripture and seek to go deeper, exploring the intricacies of the narrative’s fabric and the possible re-figuration of the triune God that emerges.67 Secondly (and because we are advancing further along a theological trajectory) this reading of Scripture will 62

See n. 24 above. Wiles, in his review of the Bampton Lectures, asked: “Can the witness of the New Testament really be used to authorise so precise a philosophical and theological vision against the claims of alternative understandings?” (Wiles, “The One, the Three and the Many”, p. 787). 64 David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), p. 1. 65 Ibid., p. 39. 66 See most obviously Gunton, Barth Lectures. 67 We shall follow a course similar to that of Eugene F. Rogers, After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West, ed. Stanley Hauerwas and Peter Ochs, Radical Traditions (London: SCM, 2006). 63

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critique Gunton’s system, as he critiqued Augustine’s. It might well be argued that a more sustained reading of Scripture will inevitably require a more sophisticated approach to the relationship between Scripture and theology than Gunton ever explicitly stated. We shall deal with this issue by explaining the choice of Scripture texts to be explored. Luke-Acts as a Canonical Practice of Theology Gunton held that the active and formative nature of the Spirit’s relations with Jesus during his human career could be perceived in the Gospel narratives.68 Yet he did not go so far as to examine systematically any of the Gospels to explore the possibilities for seeing the perfecting work of the Spirit in the particularising of Messiah Jesus. It is our contention that to overlook the narrative specifics present in the Gospel configurations of Messiah Jesus is to leave a crucial gap in any theology of particularity conceived in the economy. The Gospel narratives are, after all, a fundamental testimony in the Christian tradition. Furthermore, from a theological point of view, it is in the person of Messiah Jesus that the being of creation is embraced in the life of God. In the present thesis, while we could have engaged in an exploration of the four Gospel accounts, we have chosen to focus on the narrative of Luke-Acts for three reasons. Firstly, they are the longest account of the human career of Jesus and the early church. There is simply more material to reflect on in order to construct a theology of the particularising work of the Spirit in Messiah Jesus.69 Secondly, and following on from this, there is a more explicit emphasis in the Lucan accounts on the relations between Jesus and the Spirit than in the other three.70 Any single Gospel narrative is by no means the whole of the economy of salvation but, as Ricoeur points out, it theologically encompasses the “Christian pattern” of history – Creation to New Creation.71 68

See for example Colin E. Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited: Edward Irving’s Christology,” in Theology through the Theologians, pp. 151–68. 69 For justification of reading the books as a two-volumed work, see Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation, vol. 2: The Acts of the Apostles (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990). 70 Max Turner, “Luke and the Spirit”, in Reading Luke, ed. Craig Bartholomew et. al., Scripture and Hermeneutics (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), p. 268. Turner writes: “Mark has six references to the Spirit, Matthew twelve, while Luke has some twenty references in his ‘former treatise’, and no less than sixty in the book of Acts.” 71 Paul Ricoeur, “Toward a Narrative Theology”, in Figuring the Sacred, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 237. In conversation with Ritschl, Ricoeur refers to Christology as having an echo of the “encompassing story” since “it grounds the community of sinners on the loving initiatives of Christ assuming the sin of the world, and therefore including them in his story” (ibid., p. 242). Ritschl summarised the linear arrangement of Genesis to Revelation in Scripture as a “meta-story”. In as much as this meta-story describes the relationship between God, as originator and redeemer, and

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The third reason for reading the Luke-Acts narrative is to follow what Vanhoozer calls the canonical practice of “learning the meaning and correct grammar of ‘God’.”72 More than treating Scripture as an agent-rendering story, we shall explore the possibilities of Scripture’s use of Scripture to construct theology.73 As Ricoeur has argued, the way biblical stories have been told constitutes the reason for telling them. It is a fundamental characteristic of sacred texts to project a total world horizon.74 This is the importance of attending to the fabric of Gospel narratives for theology because they are in themselves theological.75 If we may borrow some of Ricoeur’s language about narrative, Gospel narratives are theological configurations that emerge from a theological pre-figuration to facilitate theological re-figuration.76

humanity in creation, then that relationship is encompassed in the human career of Messiah Jesus. 72 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2005), p. 213. Vanhoozer develops a strong case for understanding the canon of Scripture as both “the material principle of the drama of redemption” and “the formal principle of the drama of redemption” (ibid., p. 177). This means that Scripture not only describes, in Gunton’s language, God’s account of the economy of salvation but also sets the norms for how God enables humans to participate in it – including normative means of interpretation. 73 In general we shall follow the “nine theses on the interpretation of Scripture” listed in E.F. Davis and R.B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 1. However, we shall maintain Vanhoozer’s position that: “To confess the Rule of Faith is to emphasise its origin in divine rather than human action. The Rule does not originate in a community’s self-description; nor is the Rule merely a declaration of an interpretative interest on the part of an interpretative community … On the contrary; the Rule is a confession precisely because it acknowledges what God has done (Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, p. 207, emphasis original). 74 Paul Ricoeur, “Interpretive Narrative”, in Figuring the Sacred, p. 181. For the importance of Old Testament Scripture for Luke’s configuration of the Messiah, see Charles A. Kimball, Jesus’ Exposition of the Old Testament in Luke’s Gospel, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 94 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994). 75 Our reading of the theological content of Luke will hold Gunton both exegetically and theologically accountable based on the warrant articulated by Vanhoozer: “Authority accrues to the linguistic practices of the canonical authors rather than to those of contemporary Christians because the former are the divinely/dominically commissioned communicative agents upon whose testimony the communicative action of the latter rests” (Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, p. 196). 76 Ricoeur was originally describing the mediating relationship of a textual configuration between “the temporal aspects prefigured in the practical field and the re-figuration of our temporal experience” (Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative [Chicago: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], vol. 1, p. 54).

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It is an obvious fact, though often overlooked in terms of its theological significance, that Christ or Messiah is a title not a surname.77 As such it is already a statement of particularity with immense implications for the economy of salvation. By choosing to refer to Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of God, as Messiah we have already revealed one aspect of our approach to the present theological re-figuration. Namely we are refusing a purely speculative theology whose discourse does not rely on any reference to the stories about Israel, Jesus and the early church.78 Instead we recognise that the term Messiah represents a particular person with a historical particularity founded in the history of God’s dealing with a particular people – the nation of Israel.79 For God to particularise Jesus as the Messiah in the power of the Holy Spirit meant, for the early church, that the particular history of the chosen people has reached its fulfilment.80 Yet it also implies, based on the understanding of this particular community, that the God of Israel and creator of all has designated the boundaries and direction of history for creation. In the resurrection of Jesus from the dead the temporality of creation has been revealed to be under the sovereign guidance of its creator, the God and Father of the Lord Messiah Jesus.81 Gunton refers to the importance of relating Jesus to Israel but never formally pursues the relationship. In the present volume, the purpose of reasoning from Christian Scripture is not to establish a privileged reading of Luke-Acts or any other part of Scripture. Nor do we expect to prove a doctrine per se. Instead, we desire to explore the theological possibilities involved in addressing the problem of particularity in modern thought and practice when one engages deeply with Christian Scripture. In this sense we shall engage in a Ricoeurian wager, namely we shall have a better understanding of humanity and of all beings if we follow the indication of Scriptural narrative.82

N.T. Wright, Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), p. 21. 78 Ricoeur, “Toward a Narrative Theology”, p. 236. 79 N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 2 (London: SPCK, 1996), pp. 481ff. 80 N.T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans”, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. L.E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), vol. 10, p. 416. 81 N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 3 (London: SPCK, 2003), p. 724. 82 In his book, The Symbolism of Evil, Ricoeur wrote that by following “the indication of symbolic thought ... I shall have a better understanding of man and of the bond between the being of man and the being of all beings” (Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil [New York: Harper and Row, 1967], p. 351). 77

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Bonhoeffer as a Conversation Partner In reading more of Scripture than Gunton did, we shall be seeking to address the shortcomings Webster perceived in Gunton’s exegetical description. The subjective element of Webster’s comment, that Gunton’s theology does not persuade (Webster?), is not possible to redress. However, at the very least the element of inconsistency in Gunton’s method, of favouring Scripture yet engaging insufficiently with it, can be rectified. Nevertheless, as we have indicated, this is only one way in which we shall appraise and develop the notion of particularity as an eschatological work of the Spirit. A second facet of this thesis will be to engage in a sustained “testing of the presuppositions” involved in Gunton’s theology of particularity. In short we will pose the question as to whether there might be some other way to solve the problem of the one and the many from a Christian point of view. Might there be an approach that is not explicitly Trinitarian, one at home in the Augustinian tradition? To answer this question we shall create a theological conversation between Gunton’s proposal and the work of another modern theologian – Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Gunton’s project is, to a large degree, an intentional contribution to the greater conversation regarding modern thought and practice from a Christian perspective. Bonhoeffer’s pedigree in this area is unquestionable.83 With Kant behind him, Heidegger before him and Barth and Bultmann on either side, Bonhoeffer’s theology was forged in the crucible of some of modernity’s greatest theses and modern Christianity’s greatest antitheses.84 Of course, far more than these, 83

Floyd repeats a quip made by Harvey Cox: “Bonhoeffer has served as a veritable Rorschach test for modern theology” (Wayne Whitson Floyd, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, in The Modern Theologians, p. 43). A more poignant observation is made a little further on: “While Adolf Hitler was writing Mein Kampf in prison, Dietrich was immersed in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason” (ibid., p. 44). 84 The question of philosophical influence between Kant and Heidegger will be addressed in Chapter 2. Bonhoeffer’s philosophical background is well documented in the secondary literature though little is made of its contribution to his theology. Important exceptions, especially for this volume, are Paul D. Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Charles Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Promise of his Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Barth and Bultmann are by no means the only eminent Christian theologians that Bonhoeffer engages with but are, arguably, leading figures of twentiethcentury theology. Considering that both Bonhoeffer and Gunton owe a formative debt to Barth, an alternative line of inquiry could have been established into their respective variations from Barth. However, following the counsel of Higton (which he claims would have been Barth’s and Frei’s) we shall treat the Dogmatics as “subordinate to the practice of exegesis”. Instead we shall attempt to penetrate “beneath the messy particulars of the Bible”, to develop Gunton’s theology (Mike Higton, “The Fulfilment of History in Barth, Frei, Auerbach and Dante”, in Conversing with Barth, ed. John C. McDowell and Mike Higton, Barth Studies [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004], p. 138).

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Bonhoeffer’s theology was a voice against one of modernity’s worst excesses – Nazism.85 His effort to address this ideology as a Christian theologian was a regular subtext in much of his writing; it governed the course of his actions and led ultimately to his untimely death. Further, Bonhoeffer has been brought into the conversation here because of his distinctive theological method. At all times Bonhoeffer strove to keep the incarnate, crucified and risen Christ – the God–Man – at the centre of his thinking. Such an approach is hardly exceptional and not one with which Gunton would disagree. However, Bonhoeffer’s focus was always Christ for the “here and now” as was typified in his famous question: “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?”86 His concern for a theology that addressed “a world come of age” meant that his attention was always on “the everydayness”87 of life in the world. Bonhoeffer eschewed theology built on metaphysics or focused on “the world to come”. In an early seminar paper entitled, “Holy Spirit According to Luther”, Bonhoeffer drew attention to Luther’s methodological opposition to Catholic scholasticism. For Luther, one does not start with “the questions raised by metaphysics concerning the Trinity”. Rather, a question is “answered from the perspective of human experience”.88 This understanding of Luther bred during his tutelage under Harnack puts the young Bonhoeffer at odds with Gunton’s project.89 In comparison Gunton’s quest for transcendentals like hypostatic particularity seems rather Idealist. It ought not to be inferred from the above description that Bonhoeffer was some kind of modern Unitarian.90 Instead, we want simply to highlight the distinction John A. Moses, “Bonhoeffer’s Germany: The Political Context”, in The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. John W. de Gruchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 86 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 30.4.44”, in Widerstand und Ergebung, ed. C. Gremmels et al., DBW 8 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1998), p. 402. The original quote is: “What unceasingly moves me is the question, ‘what is Christianity, or also, who Christ actually is for us today?’” 87 This term is Heidegger’s from Being and Time adopted and adapted by Bonhoeffer in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein: Tranzendentalphilosophie und Ontologie in der systematischen Theologie, ed. Eberhard Bethge, DBW 2 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1988). 88 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Seminararbeit über den heiligen Geist bei Luther”, in Jugend und Studium 1918–1927, ed. Hans Pfeifer et. al., DBW 9 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986), p. 357, emphasis added. 89 Martin Rumscheidt, “The Formation of Bonhoeffer’s Theology”, in Cambridge Campanion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 53–4. According to Rumscheidt, “Harnack was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s eminent teacher, even though the latter went his own way in both method and interpretation” (ibid., p. 55). Cf. Harnack’s comments regarding the difference between Christianity and the later ideology imposed upon it (Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. N. Buchanan et. al. [London: Williams and Norgate, 3rd edn, 1897], vol. 1). 90 Note the extended section of Sanctorum communio entitled, “Der heilige Geist und die Kirche Jesu Christi” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, ed. Eberhard Bethge, 85

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between Gunton’s explicitly Trinitarian theology and that of Bonhoeffer whose theological focus was on “Christ alone”. For Bonhoeffer Christ is “the reality of God and the world”.91 Therefore the God–Man Jesus Christ stands at “the centre of human existence, of history and of nature”92 as the ultimate, giving reality to all that is penultimate.93 From this perspective individuals are given personhood as Christ brings them out of their destructive quest for autonomy and into the freedom of “Christ existing as community”. This is Bonhoeffer’s description of the church, which is at once hidden in the world yet manifest wherever Christ takes form in the responsible action of persons for each other. This précis needs to be appropriately expanded and what we shall see is a theology that offers a significant solution to the problematic relationship between the one and the many. One question that needs to be answered, then, is whether Gunton’s explicitly Trinitarian hypothesis regarding particularity actually makes that much difference to the discussion. Alternatively, even if Gunton has not read Augustine with appropriate rigour, should Bonhoeffer exhibit the shortcomings of which Augustine is accused, then Gunton’s insights about the Western tradition and his Trinitarian response have all the more value. In all, this thesis could be viewed as a “tale of two Christologies”. On the one hand we will explore Gunton’s pneumatological Christology with its constant emphasis on the interaction between Messiah Jesus and the Spirit in relation to God the Father. On the other hand we shall consider Bonhoeffer’s re-figuration of Christ as the Gegenlogos confronting autonomous humanity and incorporating them into his body – the Church. Outline of this Book What remains now is to outline the course of the book that will enable us to explore, appraise and enrich Gunton’s proposal that particularity be understood as an eschatological work of the Holy Spirit. The first chapter will establish a process by which an exegetical description of particularity from mutually constitutive relationships can be undertaken. We begin by exploring Gunton’s desire to link the perfecting work of the Spirit in the economy of salvation with the constitution of the hypostasis of the Son, Messiah Jesus. Gunton contended that we must attend to the Spirit’s activities in the human DBW 1 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986), pp. 100ff.). What we shall see, however, is that Bonhoeffer’s re-figuration of Christian theology focused his language on Christ often completely overlooking the Spirit. 91 See the essay entitled “Christus, die Wirklichkeit und das Gute”, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethik, ed. Eberhard Bethge, DBW 6 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 2nd rev. edn, 1998), pp. 31–61. 92 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, in Berlin 1932–1933, ed. Eberhard Bethge, DBW 12 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1997), pp. 306–7. 93 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, pp. 137ff.

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career of Jesus in order characterise who he is as divine. Through appeal to Irving’s Spirit Christology, Gunton proposes the Spirit as working transcendently to enable the incarnate Son to be truly or prototypically human. Furthermore, he wanted logical priority in understanding the person of Messiah Jesus to be given to Scripture’s depiction of the incarnate Son in history. We will see that Gunton’s foundational works on Christology lack evidence of the elemental role of Scripture in the form and content of Christology. Consequently, after some consideration of issues involved in theological interpretation of the Luke-Acts story and a refiguration of Frei’s notion of identity description, we propose the Spirit as the chief collaborator with Jesus in the events surrounding the climax of the Scriptural drama. The first event to be considered is the annunciation to Mary and here we begin the process of mapping Gunton’s concepts onto the Lucan narrative. The Spirit’s action for Jesus in this episode is to locate him spatially and temporally in a matrix of personal relationships consisting of God, John the Baptiser and Israel. The Spirit’s action in this relational pattern constitutes the identity of Jesus as the Son of God and son of David. The narrative anticipates that Jesus will express his unique place in the matrix by acting as the long awaited human mediator of divine salvation for Israel. With the possibility of an exegetical description of particularity underway we turn our attention to the alternative theological discourse. Charles Marsh has identified three main areas of Bonhoeffer’s thought – revelation, social ontology and sociality.94 Throughout the rest of the thesis I shall employ these themes as topics of conversation between Gunton and Bonhoeffer. We begin discussion on the topic of revelation via Gunton’s diagnosis of the twin evils of modern thought and practice – displacement and disengagement. Briefly stated, Gunton sees much of the malaise of modern culture as due to the displacement of God from the centre of the modern world-view. In his place stands the autonomous individual who, in order to gain a renewed sense of the world’s coherence, disengages from other persons and things. Chapter 2 will examine the extent to which Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric epistemology solves the problems Gunton raises. As mentioned above Bonhoeffer proposes that knowledge of the ultimate reality of both God and the world is found in the person of the God–Man, Jesus Christ. Because the conversation between Gunton and Bonhoeffer is artificial, since as we shall see the former rarely acknowledged the latter, we shall introduce into this chapter a third interlocutor, Paul Janz, to ensure that Bonhoeffer’s epistemology and subsequent theology are more than a mere foil for Gunton. Against Janz we shall see that Bonhoeffer’s epistemology emerges from disputation with both Kant and Heidegger to rest between the poles of the “Who?” and the “Where?” of knowledge. Accordingly we shall see that the answer to the question “Who is Jesus Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 56. We make this statement mindful of Floyd’s comment: “We don’t see the development of a methodologically consistent system, but an emerging coherence of a constellation of issues and themes that dominate his [Bonhoeffer’s] writing almost from the beginning” (Floyd, “Dieetrich Bonhoeffer”, p. 55). 94

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Christ?” aptly deals with Gunton’s concerns about displacement, while the answer to the question “Where is Christ met?” resolves the conundrum of disengagement. Bonhoeffer’s is an epistemology that gives appropriate place to the transcendent while ensuring that relationships are intrinsic to truth and meaning. All this is achieved without mention of the Spirit or God’s triunity. The third chapter will combine the elements of exegetical description and theological conversation in an exploration of Gunton’s account of revelation. On this topic Gunton’s choice for Trinitarian theology will be vindicated. At the same time, the description of the Spirit’s perfecting work will be developed to include enabling the Messiah to be the liberator of the children of Adam. The conversation with Bonhoeffer will be sharpened through attention to his demands for nonreligious interpretations of theological concepts. We will see that Gunton’s notions of a general theology of revelation and the Spirit’s role in perfecting knowledge meet these demands. In addition we will show that Gunton’s epistemology enables him to be more positive towards penultimate things than Bonhoeffer was. Gunton’s solution to the problems of displacement and disengagement will encompass a broader horizon of human knowledge. However a need for greater exegetical description will arise in considering Gunton’s articulation of knowledge of the Good. Through a close reading of the Lucan accounts of the Baptism, Temptation and Nazarene sermon we will be in a position to amalgamate Luke’s portrayal of the Messiah with Gunton’s quest to see particularity as an eschatological work of the Spirit. Finally, two implications will be pursued that relate to Gunton’s desire to interpret the Spirit’s perfecting of the Messiah as the foundation for particularity in general. Chapter 4 will address the question of how it is that individuals might be particularised based on what we have discovered of the Messiah’s particularity. The chapter begins with an investigation of Bonhoeffer’s social ontology and pays close attention to his description of individual existence, in dispute with Heidegger. Working out of an ontology where act defines being, we shall see that Bonhoeffer proposed a way of being where individuals participate in the particularity of the Messiah by freely taking responsibility for others in a specific community. What is more, the implicit metaphysics of Bonhoeffer’s social ontology are essentially relational without need of appeal to the transcendent. In contrast, Gunton’s Trinitarian theology describes personal hypostases being perfected in the image of Christ by the Spirit. This image is manifest in the giving and receiving of freedom. The greater breadth of Gunton’s account of individuation will show both strengths and weaknesses in conversation with Bonhoeffer. Gunton’s system will be more accommodating to the notion of personhood outside the community. It also allows for the possibility of persons not in Christ to perform the Good. Ironically, however, the breadth of account leads ultimately to rather unsatisfactory generalities, considering we are in search of a concrete substantiality for persons. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s depiction fills in some of the gaps but again we have need of recourse to Luke’s portrayal. The chapter finishes with reflection on the transfiguration of the Messiah and the suggestion that the next aspect of the Spirit’s particularising work be the

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perfecting of filial relations between God and individual persons through the Son. The Spirit opens Sonship by including others in the Son’s redemption and enabling them to be addressed as children. These children are able to participate in the Messiah’s liberation of others still. The final chapter will address the effect on the particularity of the Son when his personal relationship with the Father is opened to others. The conversation in Chapter 5 revolves around criticisms that Gunton made of Western ecclesiology. He contended that ontologies of church that were insufficiently pneumatological resulted in docetic and monistic ecclesiologies. Considering the noted absence of the Spirit in Bonhoeffer’s theology and his emphasis on “Christ existing as community” as a description of redeemed sociality, the possibilities for dialogical tension are strong. Therefore we firstly investigate Bonhoeffer’s notion of the Kollectivperson and chart its development in later writings into the notion of Christ taking form in the community. What we find is that while Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology avoids monism, the question of docetism constantly lingers over his Christology. Next, we turn again to Gunton’s Spirit Christology to explore its conceptual benefits for ecclesiological description. Gunton proposed an increased focus on the constitutive role that the Spirit plays in the church based on the previously explored description of the Spirit’s work for the Messiah. Here, the Spirit mediates the presence of the transcendent Messiah in order that the church might manifest to the world the kingdom of God’s chosen king. We will see that Gunton’s employment of explicitly Trinitarian language ensures that at all times the absolute particularity of the Son, Messiah Jesus, is maintained. The chapter closes with reflection on Luke’s account of Pentecost for three reasons. First we consider the way the narrative differs from Gunton’s claims concerning whether or not the church possesses the Spirit. Luke’s account is not clear on this issue. The second reason is the opportunity to provide greater exegetical description of Gunton’s propositions regarding the particularity of the risen Messiah. Thirdly, consideration of this event completes our portrayal of the Spirit’s perfecting work. The coming of the Spirit from the Father and through the risen Messiah preserves his Sonship absolutely. In all, this will confirm the criticisms that Webster makes concerning the paucity of exegetical description in Gunton’s theology. However the conversation with Bonhoeffer will vindicate Gunton’s use of explicitly Trinitarian theology for a Christian account of substantiality, especially the substantiality of persons. Furthermore, from our theological interpretation of Luke-Acts, we will suggest that by portraying the Spirit’s perfecting work as the locating, enabling, opening and preserving of Sonship, Gunton’s proposal that particularity be understood as an eschatological work of the Spirit is both refined and expanded.

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Chapter 1

Establishing an Exegetical Description

The crucial analogy for Augustine is between the inner structure of the human mind and the inner being of God, because it is in the former that the latter is made known … more really than in the ‘outer’ economy of grace.

Against Augustine, Gunton contended that if we are to understand creation then we must understand the being of God from the economy of salvation. Unfortunately for Gunton, as seen above, the foundational concepts of particularity from mutually constitutive relations and the perfecting work of the Spirit in the economy of grace were no better connected in the work of Basil of Caesarea. Even so, Gunton sought to establish God working by his Spirit as the mediator of perfection in creation’s relationality. He declared, persons and things to be particularised as the Spirit moves them towards perfection because the Spirit is the perfecting cause of creation. The Spirit perfects, that is, gives ontological direction to, the hypostases of everything in creation towards the Father, through the Son. This allows us “to develop an ontology of the material particular as that which is destined to achieve a distinctively finite completeness or perfection in space and through time”. This is not a static notion of perfection but rather a sense of having come through a state of fallenness by means of redemption in order to be what they were meant to be in ongoing relationship with the living creator. Gunton suggests that the gift of particularity that the Spirit brings means: “Substantiality is not given from the beginning but has to achieve its end. It is something that by divine and human agency is to be perfected through time and in space, and so is given from the concrete future that constitutes the promise of particular perfection.” The focus of this divine and human agency is revealed to be pre-eminently in the person of the Son, Messiah Jesus. For here, it is asserted, the promised particularity is “previewed” in time and space via the resurrection in the Spirit. Gunton argues, however, that it is the perfection of the Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 45. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 206.  Elsewhere Gunton writes: “As the ‘perfecting cause’ the Holy Spirit, the Lord the Giver of Life, gives reality to the world by perfecting what the Father does through his Son: originating what is truly other” (Colin E. Gunton, Intellect and Action [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000], p. 104).  Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 208.  Elsewhere Gunton wrote: “God the Father through his Spirit shapes this representative sample of the natural world for the sake of the remainder of it” (Gunton, “Creation: (2) The Spirit Moved over the Face of the Waters”, p. 117).  

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human life of Jesus as a whole through the mediation of the Spirit that reveals “that which he was created to be, his particular telos”. By Gunton’s own terms, an appropriate theological link needs to be established between the perfecting work of the Spirit in the economy of salvation and the constitution of the hypostasis of Messiah Jesus. As mentioned in the Introduction we shall seek to develop an exegetical description of this dynamic from Luke’s Gospel. In doing this we are seeking to address Webster’s criticism regarding the paucity of exegetical description in Gunton’s theology. Before this, however, we must look more closely at Gunton’s proposals concerning the relationship between the person of Jesus Christ and the Spirit. Gunton’s Particular Christology In the Bampton Lectures Gunton proposed that the Gospel narratives of the Spirit’s relation to Jesus show the distinctiveness of the different phases of his life: That the Spirit formed his body in the womb and enabled him to confound the doctors in the temple does not rule out the fact that at the baptism there is a new particularity in his life … The new endowment with the Spirit also brought Jesus into particular relation with his own people, a relationality subsequently worked out in temptation, teaching, works of power, suffering and death.

The Spirit acts on and for Jesus moving him towards a perfection that is his particularity in relation to God the Father and his people, the nation of Israel. Jesus’ actions, from this perspective, could be seen to be various expressions of these two fundamental relationships. Yet the question still remains, in what sense might this be taken to be the constitution of the divine Son by the Father in the Spirit? The Hypostasis of the Messiah In his last major work, Act and Being, Gunton criticised Hilary of Poitiers’ “Christology from below” describing it as “the method according to which one moves from the human (in modern fashion, ‘historical’) Jesus to the divine Christ (per Christum hominem ad Christum deum!); rather that discerning, through the gift of the Spirit, the human Jesus as also the divine Christ”. What Gunton considered Gunton, Intellect and Action, p. 106. Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 262.  Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 183.  Colin E. Gunton, Act and Being (London: SCM Press, 2002), p. 136 n. 6. Gunton is referring to Hilary, On the Trinity, 2.28. Gunton acknowledges the focus of Hilary’s work was the doctrine of God and, especially, the second member of the Trinity.  

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deficient in this work was “the failure to draw on the human career of Christ to characterise who he is as divine”.10 In order to avoid positing a logos asarkos, conceived somehow independently of the human Jesus, we must identify the divine person by means of his human being. This, “is precisely where we should expect to find what kind of divine person we are encountering”.11 Following Pannenberg, Gunton resolved that it is not sufficient to develop a theological understanding of divine persons based solely on the immanent relations.12 Especially when the economic relations of the persons in the Godhead are portrayed in the Scriptures. Yet Gunton’s support for Pannenberg was by no means unqualified. In an earlier paper, Gunton affirmed the general action of the Fathers in concentrating their description of the biblical relations in the relations of origin.13 He maintained that “the purpose of developing a notion of the eternal Son of God is that it enables us to speak of one who is God in a different way from God the Father”.14 In addition, Gunton had no intention of introducing economic actions into definitions of the eternal being. Instead his purpose was “to show in what ways the Father, Son and Spirit are to be distinguished in the mode of their actions in the world”.15 So, while he agreed with Pannenberg that the distinctive subjecthood of the Son ought to be retained, he argued: “His [the Son’s] proper autonomy derives rather from the freedom, given by the Spirit to be the kind of subordinate Son that he is.”16 Furthermore, and again contra Pannenberg, Gunton insisted that in order to do justice to the notion of eternal begottenness we ought to uphold that “the Son is the kind of eternal Son that he is by virtue of the way in which he is related to the Father by the Spirit in the eternal triune love”.17 Aware of the ironically Augustinian character of such a statement, Gunton concluded: “The Father who begets and the Son who is begotten are together one God in the κοινωνια of the Spirit. They are one because the Son and the Spirit are, in a sense, though as God, subordinate in the eternal ταξις as they are in the economy. But in another sense Gunton, Act and Being, p. 136. Ibid., emphasis original. 12 Pannenberg states: “When Scripture bears witness to the active relations of the Son and the Spirit to the Father, it is not good enough to treat these as not constitutive for their identity and in this respect to look only at the relations of begetting and proceeding (or breathing), viewing solely the relations of origin, which lead from the Father to the Son and the Spirit, as applicable to the constitution of persons. None of the other relations is merely incidental to the Son and Spirit in their relation to the Father. All have a place in the distinctiveness and fellowship of the Trinitarian persons” (Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, cited in Gunton, Act and Being, p. 137). 13 Colin E. Gunton, “And in One Lord Jesus Christ … Begotten Not Made”, in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, pp. 58–74. 14 Gunton, “And in One Lord”, p. 71. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., p. 72. 17 Ibid., p. 73. 10

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they are not subordinate, for without his Son and Spirit, God would not be God.”18 So the responsive action of the Son and the particularising action of the Spirit are as important, though consequent, to the constituting action of the Father in deriving the distinctive personhood of each. This still begs a number of questions in terms of deriving the personhood of the eternal Son from Messiah Jesus. Persons, Divine and Human  The first question is, as Gunton himself asks, “Are persons, divine and human, univocally persons?” He argues that if the answer to this question is yes, but that answer proceeds analogically, then the problem of projection is difficult to avoid. It is an issue that, in Gunton’s mind, has dogged Western thought for centuries, since such an approach can involve a Neoplatonic quest of ascending through levels of being from higher to lower. Instead, he proposes that the attributes of particular persons be spoken of “in the closest possible relation to action[s]”.19 Yet even here care must be shown. Whenever the distinction of persons is left to the language of divine origins, the distinction is invariably made in the wrong place, “attributing creation to the Father, redemption to the Son and to the Spirit the motive power of the Father’s and the Son’s action in the world; or, alternatively, they [are distinguished] in terms of creation, redemption and sanctification”.20 Gunton claims that this way of thinking misses the biblical point that all three of the actions quoted above are ascribed to the Father: “The Father is the one who creates, reconciles, sanctifies, and the rest, but does so in every case by the actions of his two hands.”21 He claims what is missing is a distinction between the different kinds of action of the three persons. This, in Gunton’s assessment, is the reason that Western theology is inherently modalistic. When the Father creates, the Son redeems and the Spirit sanctifies, efforts to ensure that the economic actions of the Trinity remain undivided (opera ad extra trinitatis sunt indivisia) are compromised: “there is always a temptation to attribute the unity of the divine action to some deity underlying the reality of Father, Son and Spirit.” Instead, the distinction ought to be made along the lines of

18

Ibid. Gunton, Act and Being, p. 138. This premise is actually the main thrust of the book – that the attributes of God, and hence his being, are best spoken of in accordance with the practice of Scripture, in terms of the actions of God. 20 Ibid., p. 139. 21 Ibid. 19

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initiation and mediation.22 The Father is “the original cause of things made”; the Son is “the creative cause”; while the Spirit is “the perfecting cause”.23 So Gunton is dedicated to a doctrine of appropriation in seeking to establish distinctively the hypostasis of Messiah Jesus, and for that matter the Spirit. Yet, in continuing discussion of the language of divine and human persons, he is aware that an important difference exists between the notion of person, divine or human, and the notion of the individual. “The three are not individuals, for none of their actions can be identified except as it takes place in relation to the other two.”24 What needs to be established here is a sense of divine agency in relation. This is an important concept of Gunton’s and may well be the key to understanding his thought on mediation in the economy of salvation.25 In terms of the hypostasis of the Son, “he is an agent because the Father sends and the Spirit empowers”.26 By becoming incarnate the Son becomes the subject of action, in fact, “a particular mode of action and therefore of being”. It is only the Son who becomes incarnate and thus “the one oriented to identification with those made in the image of God”.27 Furthermore: The Son, as the one through whom the Father upholds creation within his creative power (the “creative cause”), works in the world in ways suggested by Old Testament Scripture and becomes incarnate in order, through the Spirit’s power, to recreate the world which was threatened with a return to nothingness … To this end, he teaches, acts and takes the initiative in going to Jerusalem to

22 Mediation is a key theological term for Gunton, and Webster is especially critical of the use of such terminology without sufficient clarity (Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 260). Webster observes two main senses in which mediation is used. The first of these relates to what has been outlined above, that the works of God are the works of the Father through the Son and in the Spirit: “the Son acts ‘immanently’, within created reality, the Spirit acts ‘transcendentally’ or ‘eschatologically’, bringing creation to its end”. The second sense relates to Augustine’s compromise with Neoplatonism that creates a dualism between time and eternity (Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 35; cf. p. 6 above). In response, Gunton “is emphatic that any theology of incarnation must safeguard the full integrity of Christ’s humanity and this can only be achieved through pneumatological teaching” (Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 261). The second sense will come under scrutiny throughout our interaction with Luke’s narrative. 23 Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 16.38.13–15, cited in Colin E. Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, in Theology through the Theologians, p. 197, emphasis added. 24 Gunton, Act and Being, p. 143. 25 See the comments of Webster (n. 22 above). 26 Gunton, Act and Being, p. 143, emphasis original. 27 Ibid.

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Spirit and Sonship suffer – a form of freely willed action … It is as such, as an authentically human agent, that he is the divine Son.28

We are not told which parts of the Old Testament Scripture suggest such a description of the Son, in fact, the only Scriptures cited in the discussion of the Son in this chapter of the book are 2 Cor.13: 14 and Jude 20–21, which speak of the grace or mercy of the Son as his “primary characteristic”.29 Gunton simply asserts the Son acts in relation to the Father and the Spirit as they act upon him.30 In this sense, as we indicated above, his actions are expressions of relationship with a particular character.31 This is the way that Gunton spoke of the Messiah Jesus’ agency and how he wished to articulate the hypostasis of the incarnate Son. Every proposition concerning the actions of a particular person entails a number of necessary and dependent relationally focused clauses, which is allegedly reflected in Scripture. In the end Gunton settles the question of univocal language for divine and human persons in the affirmative since, “persons are those particular beings – hypostases – whose attributes are manifested in particular kinds of action, such as love, relationality, freedom, creativity”.32 Gunton concludes, just as Jesus’ love, as human love, is the Father’s love in action, so also Jesus’ person is “the exact representation” of God’s being.33 The answer to the question of univocality is a provisional “yes”, based on the underlying assumptions about what it is to be a 28 Ibid., pp. 143–4, emphasis original. We recall the point in Epistle, 38 at which Basil was able to distinguish the concrete substantiality of the Son in terms of being, “the one coming forth from the Father … alone only begotten received from the unregenerate light” (Basil of Caesarea, Epistle, 38.4.29; cf. p. 10 above). In Basil’s thinking this phrase included the incarnation and Gunton’s comments above could have helped to flesh this out. 29 This does not mean the Father or the Spirit are not gracious but rather if, in the terms of 2 Cor. 13:14, the Father’s identifying characteristic is love, then, grace (as the primary characteristic of the Son) is “the form of action towards the world which the Son reveals … Grace is a form, the form, of love in action” (Gunton, Act and Being, p. 140). 30 The corollaries mentioned here can be balanced by statements Gunton made elsewhere: “The distinguishing mark of the Son’s action in the world is that he is sent by, given by and obeys the Father even at the cost of his life, not heteronomously, as being merely commanded, but as realising his obedience in the freedom of the Spirit who maintains him in truth, by which must be understood maintaining him in right relation to his Father” (Gunton, “And in One Lord”, pp. 71–2). 31 See n. 22 above. At one level Webster’s criticism is fair: Gunton never stops his arguments to deliver crisp and concise definitions. Yet, especially in the context of a description of the one “through whom and in whom all things hold together”, one is inclined to think that lengthy descriptions of the divine mediators (Son and Spirit) are the same thing. There are two senses of mediation in Gunton’s writings because there are two absolute, particular divine mediators. 32 Gunton, Act and Being, pp. 146–7. 33 Gunton cites the niv translation of Heb. 1:3 (Gunton, Act and Being, p. 147).

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person. Of course there is an obvious circularity to Gunton’s argument. Human persons are what they are because of what we know about divine persons. Yet, we only know about divine persons based on the human person of Jesus. We must explore more of Gunton’s approach to Christology to see how this tension is resolved. The Direction of Christology The second question that arises out of an economic grounding of the hypostasis of the Son concerns what otherwise might be called the direction of Gunton’s Christology – from above or below. Apart from the noted criticism of Hilary we might expect that Gunton advocated a kind of Christology from below.34 He first addressed this topic in his major Christological work, Yesterday and Today. Most instructive for our exploration is the epilogue included in the second edition of this work published in 1997. Here Gunton acknowledges that the doctrine of the Trinity had, in some ways, “overtaken Christology at the centre of [Gunton’s?] constructive theological endeavour”.35 He admits that it was through reading the Christology of Edward Irving that his thinking developed. In the original edition of Yesterday and Today, however, Gunton argued that the traditional distinction in Christology between methodology that focused on the historical Jesus (below) or on the divine Logos (above) was by no means as clear as its various proponents claimed. Gunton argued, largely though not exclusively in dialogue with Pannenberg, that Christologies from below invariably either devolve into a kind of docetism where humanity is really divinised or, in Pannenberg’s case, serve a Hegelian framework of meaning that robs the historical Jesus of actual concrete necessity.36 Gunton also critiques Origen and Hegel, as Christologies from above, for straying away from soteriology towards cosmology and ultimately missing the point of the biblical understanding of Jesus Christ.37 At this time Gunton favoured what he referred to as “Christology from Above, Type B”. Stated simply: “It is possible, for example, to begin with a relatively informed [simple] confession of faith (‘Jesus is Lord’) and move from there to a full doctrine of the incarnation and the Trinity.”38 The comment was made in dialogue with Pannenberg, whose Christology from below Gunton understood to be based on a desire to avoid beginning with a “fully fledged doctrine of the incarnation or of the Trinity”. Significantly for this thesis Gunton claimed that his Type-B Christology was the style of the New Testament writers whose texts need to be read as works of theology, contra Pannenberg.39 The significance here 34

See p. 26 above. Colin E. Gunton, Yesterday and Today (London: SPCK, 2nd edn, 1997), p. 221. The first edition of the work was 1983. Presumably Gunton is referring to himself here since the remark is not qualified. 36 Ibid., p. 31. 37 Ibid., pp. 50–51. 38 Ibid., p. 44. 39 Ibid., pp. 61–2. 35

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is that Gunton’s approach to theology is similar to the approach to Scripture as stated in the introduction.40 Furthermore, Gunton finally settles on what we shall call a “God–Man” interpretation of the New Testament writers who: “All write of Jesus [the historical man] as inseparably bound up with God’s saving activity, sometimes explicitly calling him divine, at others suggesting or implying by the course of the story as a whole that the agent of salvation is here in person.”41 As we shall see, this bears a striking resemblance to Bonhoeffer’s understanding of who Jesus Christ is in reality. In the later edition of Yesterday and Today, and in reference to the notion of a direction for Christology – from above or below, Gunton adopted Irving’s “high doctrine of the incarnation and a radical doctrine of the self-emptying of the eternal Son, which ensures that his full humanity is also guaranteed”.42 In this scenario the incarnation is the historic entrance of the eternal Son incognito into human existence. Gunton’s understanding of Irving’s kenotic Christology was that “it is a kenosis or self-emptying, but one understood as the expression of the inner dynamic of the Trinity, not as a sloughing off of certain attributes”.43 This inner dynamic comes down to the way that the eternal Son relates to the Father in the Spirit as manifest in the man Jesus. Gunton quoted Irving to show the correlation: The person, the I who speaketh, acteth, suffereth in Christ is not the Divine nature, nor yet is it the human nature, alone; but it is the Divine nature having passed into the human nature, and therein effecting its will and purpose of acting or of suffering. I totally reject … the language of those divines who say, “Now, the Divine nature acteth, now the human nature acteth;” language which I hold to be essentially Nestorian.44

From the above, the radical nature of the Son’s kenosis is not so much the absence of his power as his refusal to use it in a way that compromises his humanity. This is where Irving’s pneumatology takes effect in Gunton’s thinking. Gunton shows special interest in the place that Irving gives to the Spirit in his Trinitarian description of the incarnation: “He [the Son] submits himself unto His Father to be made flesh; His Father sendeth the Holy Spirit to prepare His body … and thus by creative act of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, not by ordinary generation, 40

See p. 15 above. Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 74. 42 The most notable evidence of the interaction with Irving comes in “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”. We will have cause to refer to this essay a number of times throughout this thesis and therefore at present we shall concentrate on the elements that Gunton thought noteworthy for the second edition of Yesterday and Today. 43 Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”, p. 156. 44 Edward Irving, “The Doctrine of the Incarnation Opened”, cited in Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 222. 41

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Christ is constituted a Divine and human nature in one person.”45 Here is the inner dynamic of the Trinity mentioned above and a similar description is employed for the sense of sinlessness that Jesus is held to have accomplished: “I have the Holy Spirit manifested in subduing, restraining, conquering the evil propensities of the fallen manhood, and making it an apt organ for expressing the will of the Father.”46 Expressed in this manner, the action of the Spirit is held to be the personal agency of God the Father enabling the incarnate Son to be truly human. The incarnate Son achieves an “active obedience” which thus becomes the means of God’s saving action. The chief advantage of this, according to Gunton, is that the Christology avoids the weaknesses of enhypostatic Christologies where “the humanity of Jesus [appears] simply to be the instrument or organ of the Word”.47 More importantly, in relation to Gunton’s criticisms of Augustine, the humanity of Jesus is fallen in the same manner as ours. Jesus does not exist in some pristine pre-Fall state and hence is able to be perfected by the Spirit.48 Because of his obedience to the Spirit’s leading Jesus is “real man”. Gunton interprets Irving to mean that, by virtue of his relation to the Spirit, “Jesus is enabled to be both truly human and, so to speak, prototypically human”.49 At this point even Gunton acknowledges the potential for the circularity we noted at the close of the previous section: “Christology requires Trinitarian shaping, and yet the Trinity must be based on a satisfactory Christology.”50 Gunton claims 45 Edward Irving, “The Doctrine of the Incarnation Opened”, cited in Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 222. Farrow considers the implication of such a Christology to be an “inverse form of monotheletism, for which reason it must be rejected” (Douglas Farrow, “Person and Nature: A Critique of the Necessity–Freedom Dialectic in John Zizioulas”, in Person of Christ, p. 94). Farrow’s remarks refer to Gunton’s account of this Spirit Christology in Colin E. Gunton, The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 109–10. However the point being made there by Gunton is the same as above and closer attention to the full picture presented by Irving would have shown Farrow that the divine will of the Son is in concert with the Father through the submission to become incarnate. The issue will be given further clarity in Chapter 3, where I will consider Gunton’s concept of the Father’s authority of grace in relation to the free will of Messiah Jesus. 46 Edward Irving, “The Doctrine of the Incarnation Opened”, cited in Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 222. 47 Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 223. Earlier in the book, Gunton criticised Schleiermacher for his attempts to overcome the anhypostasia/enhypostasia tradition. According to Gunton, Schleiermacher’s Christology from below meant that “because the humanity was not the locus of divinity in itself but depended for its humanity upon the eternal Word, it was able to remain a genuine humanity … [However] by locating [the genuine human reality] in itself, Schleiermacher loses the humanity altogether, and so commits the error he himself believes the tradition to embody” (ibid., p. 155). 48 See p. 5 above; cf. Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 36. 49 Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 223. 50 Ibid., p. 224.

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that any circularity is only apparent because there are actually two movements involved in the thought process that are operating on different levels: “Christology is the basis of the doctrine of God, but once that is established, the enriched doctrine of God enables us, by a kind of returning movement, to show that the claims of Christology are indeed rooted in the way that God is.”51 So we begin with Christ in order to establish our doctrine of God so that the resultant understanding of divine life can enhance Christology itself. The origin of the Christology now becomes the last critical question for the Spiritual perfecting of the Messiah’s hypostasis. The Christology of Scripture Throughout our exploration of Gunton’s Christology we have continually alluded to the idea that Scripture plays the determinative role for Gunton in establishing the person of Messiah Jesus. In Yesterday and Today, Gunton’s argument reached a crux when he asserted: “The historical man Jesus is never construed apart from his meaning as the presence of the eternal God in time. The New Testament, if we take it seriously, will not allow us to choose between time and eternity, immanence and transcendence, in our talk about Jesus.”52 As we indicated above, Gunton calls for a theological reading of Scripture. He argues against the “quest for the historical Jesus” claiming “it attempts to find the wrong kind of assurance for faith”.53 Appealing to Frei’s Eclipse of Biblical Narrative for support, Gunton opines that a merely historical reading of the New Testament seeks “to wring from the texts the kind of information that they cannot give because they do not contain it”.54 Instead Gunton wants the Bible to be seen as a theological interpretation of historical events. Taking this line further he wants logical priority in understanding the person of Messiah Jesus to be given to the depiction of the incarnate Son in history: “If we take the one human and divine reality of Jesus Christ to be the logically primitive reality, then the diversities of expressions can be understood as different attempts to express in words the richness of this reality, which must necessarily transcend all its verbal expressions.”55 The clear diversity in description of Messiah Jesus that can be found in the New Testament is held together by the common testimony to the presence of the divine in history. This, claims Gunton is the approach of the New Testament writers and this should therefore be the approach at the base of any configuration of the hypostasis of the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth: “the documents say what they do on the basis of 51

Ibid. Ibid., p. 207. 53 Ibid., p. 59. 54 Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, cited in Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 60. 55 Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 72. The argument is based on Gunton’s analysis of historical approaches to the above and below nature of Christological claims. Gunton sees the quest for the historical Jesus in biblical studies to be a form of the Christology from below that seeks on the basis of human rationality alone to discern matters in eternity. See above n. 46. 52

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a view of history in which time and eternity are, so to speak, given together”.56 We must understand that the New Testament writers have the Old Testament as historical background. In fact, “the Old Testament provides the groundwork or inner logic of incarnation”. Gunton is not proposing a literalistic reading of the Old Testament but rather that the New Testament writers be viewed as working from a living tradition of meditation on the relationship between God and the world. Gunton quotes Anderson’s Historical Transcendence and the Reality of God: Especially important is Ex.3: 13–15: “This self communication of God … marked Israel off from all others, but also served to place the reality of God in the world even as he was marked off from the world” (p. 112) “the inner logic of the incarnation is organically connected to the relation of Jahweh to Israel” (p. 118) “God’s self-communication is a unity of act and being. There is no Logos of God apart from the Logos of the flesh – this is not made explicit prior to the incarnation, but the inner logic is there in God’s self-communication to Israel, in his humanity” (p. 118).57

So in Gunton’s mind the Bible is the foundation for discerning the person of the incarnate Son and hence his hypostasis. We only take the New Testament configuration of Messiah Jesus seriously if we read them theologically, based on the canonical tradition of articulating the relationship between God and the world. It is at this point that Webster’s criticism concerning exegetical description in Gunton’s theology really bites. Throughout this section on the hypostasis of Messiah Jesus we have followed a thread of Gunton’s thought that sought to establish the plausibility of univocal description of divine and human persons via a pneumatological understanding of Christology as grounded in the accounts of the New Testament. The foundation for Gunton was the Scriptural theology of the presence of God in the history of the man Jesus of Nazareth. Even if we allow univocal language for divine and human persons and the need for this to be interpreted through a Trinitarian matrix of Spirit and Christ relations, the paucity of Gunton’s exegetical description confirms Webster’s evaluation. Despite the enthusiastic claims for the logically primitive Scriptural configuration of the person of the Messiah there is, in practice, scant evidence from the texts themselves that any of the assertions are justified. In the original Christology study (Yesterday and Today) the chapter on the New Testament “is not so much an exegesis of New Testament Christology as an attempt to gather together the insights of some recent writings in order to Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 77. Ibid., p. 79. It could be suggested that the narrative account of the burning bush confrontation between Moses and YHWH raises as many questions as it answers. While it is true that the basic concept of the presence of the divine in the historical world is consistent with the account, Gunton’s enthusiasm for Anderson’s support overlooks the fact that God tells Moses that he is to be God to Pharaoh (Exod. 7:1). 56 57

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understand the kind of claims that are being made by some texts”.58 Gunton sought to link together methodological observations he made of traditional dogmatic approaches to Christology with then recent writings on methodology in biblical studies. This in itself is not especially problematic. However, it has been seen that Gunton made many weighty assertions about the nature of biblical testimony to Christ. Yet when we press for evidence to substantiate the claims we find sweeping generalisations like: “What the Fourth Gospel appears to say is that the divine Word ‘became flesh,’ and that therefore there was a series of events taking place within the continuum of space and time, which were also more than simply spatial temporal.”59 Apart from the fact the John’s Gospel states fairly bluntly that the Logos became flesh (ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, John 1:14), it could have only furthered Gunton’s cause to give some indication of which of the many events in that narrative “were more than simply spatial temporal”. Considering that the biblical accounts were proclaimed as so important to both the form and content of Christology we might have expected some thorough engagement with some of them. It is difficult to reconcile such broad statements with the call to “take the New Testament seriously”. The shortcomings of this original study in terms of exegetical rigour were only exacerbated in the watershed essay on Irving’s Christology. Admittedly this is a reading of systematic theology and the coherence of ideas is the main focus for Gunton. However, we note that with only two references to Scripture in the whole paper it would seem that it was not Irving’s dedication to theological interpretation of Scripture that attracted Gunton to him. The two references are Acts 2 and Hebrews 2. Gunton reports that Irving appealed to these passages to support a view of the priesthood of Christ in relation to the Spirit. We are not actually told what Irving understood the references to mean beyond the fact that they were held to undergird “that Christ’s priestly office derived from baptism”.60 Irving’s point is that Christ only baptises with the Spirit after his resurrection. Gunton interprets this to mean that only after passing through the full recapitulatio himself does Christ becomes the giver of the Spirit. This fits neatly with what has been observed regarding the perfecting of Christ in his human career but it does give the impression that the benefit of Irving to Gunton was that the former was already saying the things that the latter desired. The foundational nature of Scripture for the form and content of Christology is by no means evident in practice. In light of the evidence we contend that if Scripture is so important for the configuring of the personhood of Messiah Jesus then why not thoroughly engage with it.61 By Gunton’s own reckoning the only hope for understanding the perfection of the Messiah’s hypostasis as an eschatological work of the Spirit is if greater Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 63. Ibid., p. 77. 60 Colin E. Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”, p. 163. 61 Gunton, “And in One Lord”, p. 64. In this essay Gunton calls for an examination of “something more of the character of sonship” that is present in the biblical narratives. This 58 59

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attention is given to the form and content of the biblical rendition. Hence we shall embark upon a reading of the Luke-Acts account in order to appraise and develop the Trinitarian Christology necessary for Gunton’s notion of particularity. Theological Interpretation of Scripture Before we come to the Scriptures we ought to collate some of the assumptions that we have either stated in the Introduction or otherwise collected through exploring Gunton’s thinking. We have interpreted Gunton as desiring a theological configuration of the person of Messiah Jesus as a consequence of his active and passive relations with the Spirit as depicted in Scripture. It is taken as given that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth reveals the triune God and that revelation enhances the biblical portrait of the Messiah as the incarnate Son of the Father in the Spirit. The enhancement comes through observing the interaction between the Messiah and God’s Holy Spirit, as the Spirit acts on and for Jesus to enable him to be God’s agent of salvation. Gunton held this Spirit Christology to be a core element of the Gospel narratives. Furthermore, the eschatological work of the Spirit in perfecting particularity in creation is focused in the Spirit’s work of constituting the hypostasis of God the Son, Messiah Jesus. Since Gunton has given little specific guidance, let us consider then what could be involved in casting the Spirit as the eschatological agent of perfection in a Gospel narrative. Genre and Canonical Practice We noted in the introduction Ricoeur’s description of the Gospel accounts as interpretive narratives – the way the biblical stories have been told constitutes the reason for telling them.62 This proposition can be nuanced by the contribution of Burridge on the Gospels as ancient biography.63 Burridge has shown convincingly that the genre that best represents the Gospel narrative is Graeco-Roman biography. In labelling the Gospels biography, Burridge shows that recent advances in understanding Gospel narratives can be taken a step further, “leading us to expect the depiction of one person, the subject, as understood by another person, the author, leading us to the climax of the subject’s death”.64 Regrettably the general is the main aim of engaging with Luke, to observe how a biblical writer establishes the form and content of Sonship. 62 See p. 16 above; cf. Ricoeur, “Interpretive Narrative”, p. 181. 63 Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2nd edn, 2004). 64 Richard A. Burridge, “From Titles to Stories: A Narrative Approach to the Dynamic Christologies of the New Testament,” in Person of Christ, p. 53. This essay represents, in Burridge’s own words, “a brief summary of my PhD thesis”, “What Are the Gospels?” first published by Cambridge University Press in 1992. The recent advances that Burridge

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nature of Burridge’s work allows little in terms of a specific description of Luke: “Jesus is concerned for the poor, the lost, outcasts, women, Samaritans and Gentiles. He is also a man of prayer.”65 In one respect this ought not surprise us for, as Green shows, in modern biblical scholarship Luke’s theological contribution has been largely bypassed in favour of questions of historicity.66 The notion of Luke as theologian in Green’s work points to another limitation in Burridge’s biography model for the Gospels – namely the importance of Israel’s Scripture. So while we might accept that Luke’s Gospel is a biography of Jesus of Nazareth, with Green we see the portrait of Jesus so configured as “the midpoint of the narrative of Israel’s story”. He describes this story as “the story of the actualisation of God’s promises to Abraham”.67 Yet, as we shall see, the horizon of Luke’s account is broader still as the Genealogy of Jesus’ descent from Adam in Luke 3:23–38 indicates. Hence, we will take it that the Luke-Acts story is a configuration of Jesus as “the pre-eminent performer” in the drama of Scripture. Vanhoozer writes: “The Son ‘performs’ what God the Father scripted … The Son is also the centre of the Spirit’s performance in Scripture.”68 Collaboration between Spirit and Messiah The next issue to consider is the portrayal of the Spirit as an active participant (or performer) in the biography of Jesus. Shepherd has mounted a good case for referring to the Spirit as a character in the Lucan narrative.69 After a lengthy acknowledges include Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation, vol. 1: The Gospel According to Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986). 65 Burridge, “From Titles to Stories”, p. 54. 66 Joel B. Green, “Learning Theological Interpretation for Luke”, in Reading Luke, p. 55. Green writes: “Practically devoid of such statements [theological claims in the form of propositions], Luke and Acts seem to contribute little to ‘theology,’ so were analysed with referent to their potential contribution to our historical portraits of the apostolic era” (ibid., p. 56). 67 Ibid., p. 65. We are actually steering a course between Burridge and Green. Burridge writes: “One implication of the biographical hypothesis is that the gospels are about a person, more than theological ideas” (“From Titles to Stories”, p. 51). This conclusion is reached largely due to the lack of a comparable historico-theological element in the GraecoRoman model that Burridge adopts (see Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, pp. 105ff.). On the other hand Green writes: “Luke’s use of the Scriptures is primarily ecclesiological rather than Christological in orientation” (“Learning Theological Interpretation for Luke”, p. 57). Green claims that Luke “is not seeking to defend Jesus’ status before God … he is forming Christian identity” (ibid., p. 57). As we shall see, the identity of Jesus as the Son in the Spirit is the warrant for a sense of Christian identity. 68 Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, p. 189. 69 William H. Shepherd, The Narrative Function of the Holy Spirit as a Character in Luke-Acts, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 147 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994).

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discussion of the problems involved in defining a character in modern literary criticism, Shepherd shows that this discussion produces two basic understandings of the term – a character is an actor in a story (either explicit or implicit) or a character interacts and conflicts with other characters.70 On the basis of this definition he goes on to show how in Luke’s narrative the Spirit can be seen as a character.71 Now following Gunton’s trajectory we are looking to give the Spirit a primary role in the constitution of the subject of the biography – Messiah Jesus. Without displacing Jesus as the protagonist, the Spirit would play the role of the chief collaborator to the point of acting on and for Jesus especially in relation to any antagonists.72 Furthermore, since we are working along Gunton’s second movement in Christology (where the Trinitarian understanding of God develops Christology) there is a possibility that a Trinitarian ontology might affect the classically received tradition of the priority of action over characters.73 Ricoeur highlights the contention over which comes first. He cites Aristotle: “For tragedy is Shepherd, Narrative Function, p. 51. There are difficulties with this position to be sure, especially in terms of the relationship between characters and “real people”. In addition there is a question of the extent to which characters exist as much, if not more, in the re-figuration as opposed to the configuration of the text. Crites’s insight into the difference between sacred and profane narratives is helpful here: “For the sacred story does not transpire within a conscious world. It forms the very consciousness that projects a total world horizon, and therefore informs the intentions by which actions are projected into that world” (Stephen Crites, “The Narrative Quality of Experience”, cited in Ricoeur, “Toward a Narrative Theology”, pp. 243–4). As a sacred text, Luke’s characterisation of the Spirit is meant to make a connection between a character and a real person. Also, as a sacred text, the configuration is meant to have a strongly determinative effect on the re-figuration. 72 Cf. Rogers, After the Spirit. In this way we are expecting Luke’s configuration to offer more than the Spirit simply empowering Jesus for prophetic ministry as Turner suggests (see Max Turner, Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel’s Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement 9 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996], p. 438). Turner argues that the concept of the Spirit as “the Spirit of prophecy” enables recipients to know God and to make him known. Gunton’s concept of the Spirit as “the Spirit of perfection” includes both of these and more, spanning the full horizon of the economy of salvation. 73 Gunton called for a new metaphysic in contrast to “Aristotle, and certainly in logic until the time of Kant”, that spoke of relation as subordinate to substance (Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 151). This understanding of reality is based on the premise that: “Relations are what take place or subsist between substances that are prior to them: something first exists, and then enters or finds itself in relation to other things, which may change its accidents, but not what it really is (short of destroying it)” (Aristotle, Categories, 7, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 152). In place of this Aristotelian concept, Gunton advocated returning to the Cappadocian view that relations are between persons, yet are constitutive of what those persons are: “The persons are not persons who then enter into relations, but are mutually constituted, made what they are, by virtue of their relations to one another” (Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 152). 70 71

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not an imitation of men but of actions and of life. It is in action that happiness and unhappiness are found, and the end we aim at is a kind of activity, not a quality … What is more, without action there could not be a tragedy, but there could be without characterisation.”74 While Ricoeur opts for the notion of “parts of a tragedy” – in this situation character and act combine in function – the basic Aristotelian ontology of causality prevails. Namely, that things or persons come into relations with each other through actions. Ricoeur is content to work with this as the basis for the “organization of action” that makes up emplotment.75 If, however, ontology is founded in the being of God who is, in himself, eternal relations (as in Basil’s Trinitarian theology), then even causality is an expression of prior relations.76 Bringing this scenario into the narrative world, even if a character emerges in the emplotment by action (causally), we will expect it to be an expression of a prior relation. We can further clarify this point through comparison with Frei’s approach in The Identity of Jesus Christ.77 Particularity and Narrative Identity In The Identity of Jesus Christ, Frei follows fairly closely the process of identity description mentioned above in Ricoeur (from Aristotle). Thus Frei adopts the concept of intention-action to indicate that “[Jesus’] specific identity was what he did and underwent, the Saviour in need of redemption, the crucified human saviour identified as the one, unsubstitutable individual, Jesus of Nazareth.”78 To this Frei adds the notion of self-manifestation, which “tries to point to the continuity of a person’s identity throughout the transitions brought about by his acts and life’s events”.79 This aspect is the persistent, yet unfinished quality of a person at any given stage of the story. It is an attempt to understand identity by giving attention to a broader context than the isolated self in the moment of action. If we were to refigure Frei’s notions in Gunton’s conceptuality we might find this: we shall expect the identity of Messiah Jesus to be manifest in what the Spirit does to enable him to act freely towards the Father and for others so as to be the unsubstitutable Son of God. The Spirit of God’s actions for the Messiah will gradually deepen in significance as the Messiah encounters different scenarios on his way to accomplishing the promised salvation of God. The significance of the Spirit’s actions will be measured against possible threats to the character of the relationships, especially those between Jesus and God on the one hand and Aristotle, Poetics, 50a16–24, cited in Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, p. 37. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 32–3. 76 In Gunton’s own words the logic of divine love disclosed in Jesus compels us to understand God “as being eternally in himself that relatedness to the other which actualises itself in our history” (Gunton, Yesterday and Today, p. 135). 77 Hans W. Frei, Identity of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975). 78 Ibid., p. 164. 79 Ibid., p. 165. 74 75

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God and his people Israel on the other. The Spirit will emerge as the mediator of God’s power to perfect good or righteous relations within the given matrix – again between Jesus and God and God and Israel.80 The Son’s particularity will be perfected as the Spirit enables him to progressively contextualise his actions on the basis of his relation to the Father as Son and to Israel as Saviour. In the final analysis, the quality and nature of the relationships between characters will be an essential referent for determining their identity. In this way the re-figuration is distinguished from Frei’s by giving greater weight to the relational context of actions in the semantics of identity and admitting a larger world-view for the narrative than the chapters of Luke-Acts alone.81 The Spirit will act with and for the Son to perfect his identity in relation to God and his people as the events of the Scriptural drama reach a climax. We turn now to the first of these events, the Messiah’s conception, to consider the significance of the Spirit locating Jesus in the line of David as the long awaited saviour of Israel. Locating the Messiah as Son of David and Son of God “It is by the power of his Spirit that God the Father shapes a body for his Son in the womb of Mary, enabling this sample of human flesh to be that which it was created to be, in distinction from all other created persons and things.”82 In this summary statement Gunton sought to encapsulate two strands of thought the he deemed had to be held in tension. The first strand was Irving’s insistence that Christ’s body “came from the common stock from which ours and that of other living creatures 80 Rogers, also in conversation with Frei, suggests two approaches to an identity description of the Spirit. The first is “a pneumatology might simply apply the same procedure to the Spirit that Frei applies to the Son”. The second approach is where “a pneumatology might claim that the ‘presence’ brought with Christ’s identity is not separate from the Holy Spirit: Christ’s presence, on that view, just is his Spirit”. Rogers seeks to leave the option open since, in his view, “the only interaction of the Spirit with plot and circumstances that could distinguish the Spirit from the Son, will be the Spirit’s interactions with the Son”. This leads Rogers to the conclusion that “the theologian is never seeking the identity of the Spirit apart from that of the Son”. In this way it is claimed that the actions of the Trinity remain undivided as “the Spirit alights, abides, or comes to rest on the Son” (Rogers, After the Spirit, p. 7). This approach seems characteristic of the Augustinian tradition against which Gunton is reacting. As noted Gunton’s preference is the language depicting the Spirit acting transcendently on the immanent but incognito Son. Gunton is against any notion of Jesus possessing or being possessed by the Spirit. 81 Frei rejects attempts to identity descriptions that add “a kind of depth dimension to the story’s surface, which is actually a speculative inference from what is given in the story, rather than a part of it” (Frei, Identity, p. 135). Such a procedure, in Frei’s estimation, enables a “story behind the story”. Yet, to read Luke as theological configuration of the Old Testament is to choose “a story behind the story”. 82 Gunton, Christian Faith, p. 102.

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is constructed”.83 The Spirit builds a body for the Son of the same finite and contingent matter as that which constitutes the person of other human beings. The second thread that concerned Gunton was the importance of maintaining the idea that this is a re-creative work on the Spirit’s part: “The re-creation of the world is begun, but first only as the renewal of a representative sample of that which is fallen.”84 Gunton observed this action of the Sprit to be “especially explicit” in Luke’s Gospel and so we shall enter his narrative world. Locating the Messiah: A Relational Matrix We begin a description of the spatial and temporal location of the Messiah by the Spirit with the announcement to Mary of the impending birth of a son. Here Luke introduces what we shall explore as the beginning of a portrayal of the Spirit’s constitution of the incarnate Son’s hypostasis. To the town of Nazareth in Galilee the angel Gabriel has been sent to deliver news to the young girl Mary. As with John before him, the announcement of Jesus’ imminent birth comes in mixed circumstances.85 If Elizabeth considered herself to live in shame, how much worse will it be for Mary to fall pregnant while betrothed to a man whom we will discover will not be the father? Luke makes no comment regarding propriety in Mary’s case but it is at least possible to intuit in the coming events, the shadow of disgrace lingering over Mary’s situation.86 Either way, as far

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Ibid. Ibid. 85 For a summary of various opinions comparing the nativities of Jesus and John see Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 248. From the beginning the circumstances of John’s appearance in the world are mixed. The time and place, though noted in the text, are mundane. Zechariah and Elizabeth are marked as extremely devout and of godly lineage, but they are “advanced in their years” and Elizabeth is barren. Blameless as they are, they live with shame in the community (see Luke 1:25). 86 Bock notes but dismisses the suggestion that Mary’s haste to visit Elizabeth is due to a desire to avoid the Nazarenes discovering the pregnancy (Darrell L. Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament 3a [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994], p. 134). He points out that she returns home while still in her third month. Still we are told that Elizabeth has entered confinement in the context of disgrace (Luke 1:24–25) and now Mary has gone to join her: an expedient action if nothing else. Later Mary accompanies Joseph to Bethlehem. Philip Yancey (The Jesus I Never Knew [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995]) suggests that this too may have been a matter of expedience. In contrast Nolland states that Mary may have been required to attend for taxation purposes (John Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, Word Biblical Commentary 35a [Dallas: Word, 1989], p. 101). Bock comments that the reference (Luke 2:5) is so brief that it is difficult to tell anything about Luke’s intent (Bock, Luke 1:1–9:20, p. 206). 84

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as Gunton’s thought is concerned, it is obscurity as opposed to fallenness that is most prominent. Despite Mary’s ordinariness, the holiness of her child is a direct consequence of God’s presence in her body.87 Through the mediating work of the Spirit, the power from the Most High will cause her to bear a child.88 At the level of embodiment, the person of Jesus is constituted in the Spirit even more so than John. Though an extraordinary conception, John is still known as the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth (cf. 1: 13–17). In contrast Jesus will be the son of Mary and “thought to be the son of Joseph” (3:23),89 yet as “Holy begotten one” he “will be called Son of God.”90 Jesus owes his origin to God in a unique fashion. By his Spirit, 87

Luke 1:31 justifies this statement as a literal reading could be “you will be seized in the stomach”. This is a significant variation to the presence of the Spirit in John where the Spirit fills him “from or out of the womb of his mother”. There is some discussion between commentators regarding the presence of the Spirit with the infant John. The phrase is a Semitism, according to Brown, that can be read either as “the time when the child is in the womb (Jdg. 13:3–5) or to the time of emergence from the womb” (Brown, Birth of the Messiah, p. 261). Shepherd (Narrative Function, p. 118) opts for the former reading, citing the reaction of Elizabeth in Luke 1:41 as evidence. Joseph A. Fitzmyer (The Gospel According to Luke 1–9, Anchor Bible 28 [Garden City: Doubleday, 1981], p. 326) opines that it was later theological speculation that interpreted the words as “sanctification of John in his mother’s womb”. Two things stand in favour of the latter reading based on details that all of these commentators have overlooked. Firstly in Luke 1:41, the child leaps in Elizabeth’s womb when the Spirit comes upon her suggesting the Spirit’s presence with the child is a necessary contingency. Secondly, and more importantly for the configuration of Jesus as Messiah, John will distinguish between himself and Jesus on the basis of being able to give the Spirit (Luke 3:16). This distinction will ultimately particularise Jesus as the Son absolutely at the Pentecost manifestation as attested by Peter (Acts 2:33). 88 For a discussion on the virginal nature of conception, see Brown, Birth of the Messiah, pp. 517ff. Irving’s description of the event, “His Father sendeth the Holy Spirit to prepare Him a body” (see Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”, p. 155), seems apt. 89 We note that only David and the Most High are specifically mentioned as Jesus’ fathers in the angel’s announcement to Mary. All quotes from Luke’s Gospel are my own translation unless otherwise stated. 90 The significance of the angel’s words in Luke 1:35 is much discussed by the commentators, especially in terms of the presence of God. Nolland suggests that Mary’s experience is to be compared to the dramatic way in which the glory of YHWH in the cloud marked his coming down upon the completed Tabernacle. Nolland opines that, “ἑπισκιαει, ‘will overshadow,’ like ἑπελευσεται, ‘will come upon,’ has probably been influenced by the lxx text of Ex. 40:35” (Luke 1–9:20, p. 54). In contrast Brown strongly contends that: “It is totally a guess to assume from the verb episkiazein that Luke thinks of Mary as Tabernacle or the Ark of the Covenant overshadowed by or containing the divine presence. To be precise, in the OT the cherubim rather than God are said to overshadow the Ark (Ex. 25:20; I Chr. 28:18); moreover, the Ark and the Tabernacle are not the only places overshadowed by divine presence (Deut. 33:12; Ps. 91:4)” (Brown, Birth of the Messiah, p. 328). Brown’s alternative to the Tabernacle symbolism is to delve even further back

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God is the child’s progenitor, not by some kind of mythological union between divine father and human mother since the actual mechanism remains a mystery. It is a creation ex nihilo as Gunton opines, even if the sense in which God might be present is ambiguous. The child is the Son of God; however it is the relation with King David that will give his sonship a concrete sense in the first instance. Gunton often commented on the importance of linking Jesus to the nation of Israel but never pursued the significance that New Testament writers associate with the relationship between the two. In Luke’s account the narrative identity of Jesus in relation to Israel is focused in his descent from King David.91 The annunciation to Mary implies that it is the Spirit’s work to locate Jesus in the history of his people via the relation to his ancestor. Like John, due to the actions of the Spirit, Jesus “will be great”, but instead of the office of prophet of the Most High, Jesus will be Son (Luke 1:32, cf. 1:13). The angel immediately goes on to name Jesus as successor to David as King of Israel. This hendiadys indicates that sonship should be understood in terms of kingship, yet Jesus will not be just another heir of David. The angel’s message particularises Jesus since he will be the final son of David to be Son of the Most High because, “he will reign forever [and] his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:33). Jesus is distinguished among the sons of Israel as one chosen (Messiah) to rule and that rule will have a temporal transcendence.92 in the pre-figurative tradition drawing allusions to “the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters” in Gen. 1:2. In this way, Mary’s child is a new creation ex nihilo (Brown, Birth of the Messiah, p. 314). Certainly Luke’s configuration is attempting to deal with a phenomenon that is outside everyday experience and from that point of view Brown’s reference to the creation story, though no less speculative, is apt. However, that the divine presence can overshadow more than one thing increases the possibility of the inference. The extent to which we can be certain about influences is of course limited, especially without any direct quote. Nolland makes a further useful remark in that “there is not the slightest evidence that either of the verbs involved has ever been used in relation to sexual activity or even more broadly in connection with the conception of a child” (Luke 1–9:20, p. 54). In the Lucan narrative, and in support of Gunton, the child’s conception within the body of the mother is the focus of the Spirit’s work. If the Tabernacle inference is allowed then perhaps the spatial relationships can be metaphorically accounted for by seeing the mother’s body as the courtyard surrounding the Tabernacle (Exod. 27:18). This was a sacred space to be sure yet essentially distinct from the Tabernacle itself in terms of the divine presence. The significance of this Tabernacle allusion will be intensified when we reflect on the Transfiguration. 91 Mark L. Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts: The Promise and Its Fulfillment in Lukan Christology, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement 110 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). 92 In 2 Sam. 7:8–16, David is told that his son will be great, he will be God’s son and that his house and his kingdom will endure forever (Shepherd, Narrative Function, p. 120). If this is the pre-figurative basis for Luke, it serves to highlight the words in 1:35 all the more. The kingship of Mary’s son, and therefore his sonship of the Most High, will be due to more than the paternity of David. The direct intervention of God through the Spirit

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We are still not able to expand on the notion of Jesus as the divine presence (the Son is indeed incognito as Gunton desires). However we can anticipate the Spirit enabling something more than human for Jesus’ monarchy. What we are able to develop is the idea that Jesus is distinguished from among all the sons of David as the one who will save. Zechariah’s prophecy (1:69) anticipates the validation of this distinction within the history of Israel. Jesus as Messiah will be the “salvation from the house of the Lord’s servant David” to which John, as prophet, will testify. Consequently we can suggest that through the Spirit the reign of Messiah Jesus will mark the perfection of kingship in the biblical drama. In Gunton’s terminology, the history of God’s intention to save his people is directed towards Jesus by the actions of the Spirit in locating Jesus as the son of David. The Spirit shapes the identity of the Son of God by locating him at the anticipated climax of Israel’s drama as the son of David; the agent of divine salvation. Perfection through Conflict The Spirit continues to intensify Messiah Jesus’ relationship to Israel as saviour via a further annunciation. When Mary and Joseph take the infant for dedication in the Temple they meet Simeon (2:25–32). Prepared and prompted by the Spirit, Simeon enters the story expressly to testify to the future of the child. The child is to be consecrated in accordance with the Law’s requirements for first-born sons (2:23).93 However Simeon’s inspired appearance predicts a particular sense of sanctification for this son. Of all the first-born sons of Israel, the child Jesus is to be God’s salvation. The narrowing of focus on Jesus in relation to Israel is, however, matched inversely with the scope of the salvation that God will bring though him. Simeon announces that the salvation prepared by God is to be both “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” and “glory for your people Israel” (2:32).94 Simeon’s prescription for the Messiah exceeds that of Zechariah and introduces a further distinction between Jesus and John. John and his ministry are defined entirely in relation to a single ethnic group.95 In contrast Jesus, though Israel’s will constitute Messiah Jesus as Son of God in a divine sense, otherwise it would not be appropriate to refer to his kingdom as being εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, “into eternity”. 93 For a full discussion of the details of the first born ransom see Brown, Birth of the Messiah, pp. 447ff. 94 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, vol. 1, pp. 41–2. 95 Compare Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah: “Many of the sons of Israel will turn back to their God. He will go before God in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn back the hearts of the fathers to their children, the disobedient to the wisdom of righteousness and to prepare for the Lord a ready made people” (Luke 1:16–17) and Zechariah’s own words: “Blessed is the Lord, the God of Israel because he has appeared to help and make a rescue for his people, to raise up a horn of salvation for us from the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:68–69).

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Messiah, will bring a salvation with universal significance. But, while John’s ministry will elicit rejoicing amongst his generation (Luke 1:14) Simeon implies that the work of God through Jesus will bring about upheaval.96 The ministry of Jesus will involve conflict within Israel arising from the reversal of the status quo and open opposition to him. Hence there will be discord in Israel in response to the concordance that Jesus brings for the whole world. A paradox will emerge, as John will testify to God’s making of peace (Luke 1:79), even as Jesus the saviour will be a “sign to be spoken against”.97 The mundane human circumstances of Jesus’ birth will give way to genuine expressions of fallenness as the narrative anticipates the possibility of God’s action to save being rejected by its promised beneficiaries. Put differently, God’s actions by his Spirit to perfect the particularity of the Messiah as saviour will also be shaped in relation to forces seeking to confound, confuse and consume. Mapping Gunton’s Concepts onto Luke’s Narrative As we bring this chapter to a close we can begin the process of developing Gunton’s proposals for particularity on the basis of reading Luke’s narrative. As noted, Gunton suggests a sense of perfection where movement in a certain direction has the consequence of particularity or substantiality developing from mutually constitutive relations through time and in space. For him, the focus of this movement in the economy of salvation is the Spirit’s relations with the incarnate Son throughout his life, death and resurrection. Hence he proposes the particularising of the Messiah by the Spirit is both the precedent for the perfection of substantiality in the cosmos and the manifestation of God the Son’s identity. Through his exegesis of Luke’s annunciation accounts, we have begun correlating Gunton’s philosophical and theological concepts with a narrative identity description. Consequently, we have described the Spirit as the divine agent who locates the Messiah in space and time. In this way we gain some sense of how the Spirit’s work could be described as eschatological in the broader scope of the drama of Scripture. We have identified in the emplotment a relational matrix from which the person of Jesus will emerge. The matrix consists of God, David, Israel and John the Baptiser. These are the relationships in which the Messiah’s identity is constituted. Since the annunciation is at such an early stage in the narrative we must concede that at one level any identity description is proleptic. However, this does not mean capitulation to Frei’s assertions about Jesus’ nativity: “He is not an individual person Jesus, not even ‘of Nazareth.’ He is not even really an individual Israelite, but Israel under the representative form of the infant king figure called 96 Tannehill suggests that “reversal” will be a key theme throughout the emplotment that starts in the Magnificat and is emphasised in the Benedictus (Narrative Unity, vol. 1, p. 43). 97 “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34).

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Jesus.”98 While most of his remarks seem better suited to Matthew’s configuration as opposed to Luke’s, Frei does say of Luke: “Jesus’ identity is signified in terms of Adam, in whom Israel, mankind, and God are all directly connected.” He claims that Jesus is “little more than a symbol of Israel”.99 These strong remarks will make a good platform on which to establish the possibility of describing particularity as an eschatological work of the Spirit according to a narrative. God the Spirit and Messiah Jesus Gunton appealed for a logically primitive sense of divine and human identity for the Messiah as the incarnate Son. In the conception of Jesus Gunton wanted to maintain both the common humanity of the child in fallen flesh and the re-creative work of the Spirit in the child in anticipation of the perfection of the cosmos. In addition, the Spirit constitutes the hypostasis of the God–Man even as his divine nature is revealed. What we observed in Luke’s account was a definite sense in which the child is “of God”. God, by his Spirit, was the progenitor of Mary’s child. However, from the account Luke gives, the significance of God’s action is more likely to be obscured by the mundane rather than contrasted with the profane. Mary is portrayed as blamelessly faithful and, furthermore, the child is described by the angel as holy in utero (cf. Luke 1:35).100 Thus while it is possible to accommodate Irving’s description of “the Spirit preparing for Him a body”, the child does not immediately seem to share in the fallenness of humankind even if the events of his life will eventually be overtaken by such fallenness. In one sense this is obvious since he is not in a position to manifest any possibility of transgression and so in the narrowly defined aspect of Frei’s selfmanifestation the child has no individual identity. Nevertheless, and here we can distinguish our description from Frei’s, it is the child’s sonship of God by the Spirit that will be manifest in the narrative. This relational context is intrinsic to the meaning of the manifestations and co-terminous with the child’s identity. The sense in which the incarnate Son will express his relationship to the Father in the Spirit is, in Luke’s account, due largely to his relationship with David. This is the human history Gunton wants to reveal who Jesus is as God the Son. In Luke’s account the identity of David as king is bound up with his descendants and the salvation of Israel through the various prophecies that appear Frei, Identity, pp. 165–6. Ibid., p. 166. 100 Rogers seeks to highlight the active nature of Mary’s relationship with the infant Jesus: “The call of Mary resembles the call of a prophet, indeed the prophet par excellence, since she is the one who delivers the Word of God” (After the Spirit, p. 105). Luke’s narrative tends, by contrast, to highlight Mary’s passivity. In fact, in the case of Mary’s prophetic utterance (Luke 1:46–55, the Magnificat), it is Elizabeth who is identified as “filled with the Spirit” (Luke 1:41), not Mary. The relationship between Jesus and Mary in the narrative is eclipsed in significance by the link with David that Mary affords. 98

99

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in the nativity section of the plot. Zechariah looks forward to a time for Israel of “redemption”, “salvation” and “rescue” (Luke 1:68, 71, 74). Israel, as the saved children of Abraham (Luke 1:73), will be the fearless ones serving in holiness and righteousness (Luke 1:74, 75). They will have been living in darkness and the shadow of death yet will be guided into the way of peace (Luke 1:79). This salvation, and hence their status or identity as saved ones, is available because God has come and has acted upon the house of David (Luke 1:68–69). From the announcement to Mary and the prophecy of Simeon we saw that Jesus is this son of David, the first-born son of Israel who will effect God’s salvation. As such, Jesus is the perfect son who will effect an everlasting salvation for Israel with universal significance. The spatial and temporal transcendence is possible because of the actions of God’s Spirit in locating Jesus in the house of David, at the time of God’s salvation. For Israel, freedom from her enemies is dependent upon the reign of God’s King. Jesus in relation to Israel is Messiah and Saviour, while the people of Israel in relation to Jesus are the saved. The critical aspect of this relational dynamic is that the one Spirit engenders anticipation of salvation in the people, through the prophets, and the same Spirit constitutes the identity of their saviour as the Son of God. In fact, the actions of the Spirit provide the conditions for the possibility that Israel’s identity, as the saved, will be dependent upon the identity of Jesus the Saviour. As Gunton proposed, the substantiality of the hypostases will develop through time and space. We can agree with Frei’s claim that Jesus receives his identity from Israel, but attention to the eschatological nature of the Spirit’s work means that the manner in which Jesus receives his identity also affects the one from whom it is received. In this sense it is possible to see a relational dynamic of mutual constitution – not merely reciprocal but asymmetrical – as the identity descriptions of both Israel and the Messiah will be brought to God’s designated telos by the eschatological work of the Spirit. As mentioned, the final element of the relational matrix from which Messiah Jesus is constituted is between him and John. At the moment of God’s salvation, as the promises to Abraham and David reach their fulfilment, John receives his distinction through association with Jesus. At the same time, Jesus’ significance is dependent upon his place in the story of anticipation that John’s prophetic ministry enacts.101 Through the agency of the Spirit, John and Jesus will mutually constitute each other as characters and once again this happens in an asymmetric fashion.102 The asymmetry is a matter of both temporal and spatial juxtaposition. In temporal terms, Jesus is he whom John will anticipate, while John is the one who goes

101 This is not to overlook the essential unity shared by the two: both born in miraculous circumstances, both born to righteous families, both born to significant lines of the Israelite nation and in fact into the same family. 102 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, vol. 1, p. 25.

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before the saviour.103 In spatial terms we note the distinction in the Spirit’s actions between the two.104 The Spirit is especially present for John’s testimony from birth, yet the Spirit is active in an essential manner on Jesus in conception. Hypostatic Substantiality and the Economy of Salvation In the Introduction, we observed that there was no link in Basil’s thought between the substantialising of divine persons and the economy of salvation. Considering that Gunton criticised Augustine for such a failing, his preference for Basil’s ontology over Augustine’s loses some of its value. However, if it could be shown that mutually constitutive relations in the economy of salvation shape hypostatic particularity, then the conceptual possibilities present in Basil’s thought gain much greater currency. If the Spirit is portrayed in Luke’s configuration as God’s agent responsible for locating the Messiah at the climax of Israel’s history, then there is a possible link between the identity description of Jesus and Israel’s long anticipated salvation by God. In fact we have suggested that the Spirit performs the former action for the sake of the latter. That is, the Spirit locates Jesus in the line of David as the Son of God who will save God’s people. In Basil’s re-figuration the Father and the Spirit give the Son his sonship absolutely. Luke’s narrative anticipates God giving Jesus his sonship through the Spirit and David, absolutely. At one level David’s gives Jesus a sonship like every other Israelite of that line.105 Yet through the special intervention of the Spirit, the sonship of Jesus will be constituted in two unique ways. Firstly, from a temporal point of view, Jesus’ sonship will be everlasting. Like no other son of David, Jesus will reign over the house of Jacob “into eternity”.106 Since Jesus is the fulfilment of the promise made to David, Jesus’ sonship is grounded in a relation of descent and yet uniquely so, for Jesus will be the saviour that was promised for Israel. The sonship of Jesus does not negate the sonship of every other heir of David;107 103 Here again we note the element of ambiguity involved in Jesus’ identity because strictly speaking John will anticipate the coming of God to save his people (Luke 1:17, 76). 104 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, vol. 1, p. 25. 105 Hence the Genealogy of Luke 3:23–31. 106 The details of this will not be explained until Pentecost (Acts 2). The limitless aspect of the reign of Jesus also distinguishes Jesus from David in spatial terms. Simeon’s prophecy indicates that the salvation that Jesus effects will be for Gentiles as well as Israel. 107 In this sense sonship is not an abstract quality peculiarly present in Jesus above and beyond the rest of David’s heirs. Yet the fact that Israel has waited such a long time for salvation from the son of David is an implicit criticism on the whole house and could perhaps exemplify the fallenness into which Jesus is located. Having overlooked the Davidic link between Jesus and Israel Gunton was never in a position to incorporate the possibility in his assertions.

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Jesus will perfect the sonship of David in being the everlasting saviour of the children of Abraham. Indeed, as well as being the son of David, Jesus will be the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:32). Through the mediation of the Spirit, Jesus is begotten of God and therefore Son of God absolutely.108 As the Son of God, Jesus will exceed even his father David in relation to the Most High.109 Yet it is, in Luke’s configuration, as the son of David that Jesus will manifest his sonship of God. This is the critical sense in which the divine person is substantiated (manifest) in human form as Gunton proposed yet did not pursue. David and Jesus mutually – though asymmetrically – constitute each other’s identities. The determining factor will be the mediation of the Spirit who at once locates Jesus in the line of David and yet at the same time will enable him to transcend that line. Therefore it is through the eschatological mediation of the Spirit from within the relationship between Jesus and David that the particularity of Jesus will be constituted. The narrative origins of Messiah Jesus anticipate a parallel with Basil’s relations of origin though, of course, not an exact one. Basil considered the relations in the Godhead where persons share the one essence absolutely – characters in a realistic narrative cannot do this. However it is possible that, with the governance of the Spirit, the identity descriptions in Luke’s configuration are shaped with concrete substantiality as a consequence of their mutually constitutive relations. In addition we have suggested that this takes place within the context of the Spirit’s eschatological or perfecting work. Jesus, as the incarnate Son, is being moved towards the consummation of God’s intention to save his people. An eschatological identity description derived from Gunton’s view of perfection is – logically – proleptic. However, as we have shown, no less substantial as a result. We do not expect Frei’s notions of action-intention and self-manifestation to be eclipsed as we explore the direction in which the Spirit moves the Messiah. Instead they may be useful to articulate the sense in which the Messiah expresses his relationship with God and Israel as Luke’s narrative develops. Our chief concern at this juncture is to introduce Bonhoeffer into the theological conversation. We have established the possibility of developing Gunton’s exegetical description of particularity. Now we need to add the further element of theological accountability to our efforts to appraise and develop the Spirit’s agency in eschatological substantiality.

Brown, Birth of the Messiah, p. 312. The narrative of 1 Samuel makes possession of the Spirit a key aspect of David’s Messianic status (1 Sam. 16:13), yet Luke makes no specific reference to this in relation to Jesus. 108 109

Chapter 2

Establishing a Theological Alternative

It is such a concern [Coleridge’s] for the interrelatedness of things, of world and life, of theology and ethics, that founds the necessity for being systematic in theology, for thinking things together.

The key phrase in the above quote is “thinking things together”. It was the modus operandi for Gunton’s description of the economy of salvation. However, as we have observed, Webster was unconvinced about the level of sustainability in some of the corollaries that Gunton drew from his presuppositions. We have observed the validity of Webster’s other criticism concerning exegetical description and, in response, established a pattern for mapping Gunton’s concepts onto the narrative of Luke-Acts. That is, we have a description of Scripture’s “logically primitive” picture of the relationship between the incarnate Son and the Spirit. Specifically, Luke’s annunciation account provided the conditions for the possibility of expressing the person of Messiah Jesus as son of David (the full significance of Jesus’ relationship to Israel) and Son of God (the former sonship being the narrative shape of the latter sonship). In addition we were able to discern an initial aspect of what it means to describe the Spirit’s actions in the life of Messiah Jesus as perfecting. The Spirit locates the incarnate Son in the line of David amongst the people of Israel as God’s agent of salvation. We must now investigate Gunton’s presuppositions in his theology of particularity in line with Webster’s general critique. Perhaps the most significant assumption observed in the previous chapter was the need for an explicit Trinitarian redescription of Christology. Despite the inherent danger of circularity in such a move, Gunton insisted that the dual movement from Christology to the triune being of God and back to Christology was necessary to remain faithful to Scripture and provide the necessary elements for a Christian theology of the particular. It is these assumptions that we shall explore through conversation with Bonhoeffer. As indicated in the introduction, Bonhoeffer makes an ideal contributor to Gunton’s debate with modern thought and practice. Bonhoeffer was deeply concerned with what he described as a “world come of age” and, as we shall see, his explanation of this phrase parallels neatly Gunton’s diagnosis of modernity. However, as Feil acknowledges, “one cannot present Bonhoeffer’s view of the world adequately without including his Christology”. Bonhoeffer, like Gunton after him, gave a 

Gunton, “Nature of Systematic Theology”, p. 13. Ernst Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Martin Rumscheidt (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), p. 59. 

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foundational position in his theology to the re-figuration of Jesus Christ as the God–Man, the one who ultimately revealed the reality of both God and the world. Feil summarises this well when he writes: “Jesus Christ is in the midst of the world as the world’s centre; he is the mediator [Mittler] to God, to the world and to true worldliness.” In one respect this is no different from Gunton who repeatedly, and especially in the Bampton Lectures, preferred the description of Messiah Jesus as “the one in whom all things hold together”. Nevertheless Bonhoeffer’s refiguration of the God–Man is by no means a Spirit Christology. It is on the basis of this difference that we shall carry on the conversation between the two theologians. For as Clifford Green has shown, relations between the one and the many was an integral part of Bonhoeffer’s theology. In order to give structure to the dialogue between Gunton and Bonhoeffer we shall differentiate three main interwoven themes in the latter’s theology: epistemology, sociality and social ontology. Bonhoeffer’s distinct rendering of these loci will act as theological benchmarks against which we shall measure Gunton’s proposals regarding particularity. In each of them we expect to find a substantive antidote to the malaise of modern thought and practice that Gunton diagnosed as displacement and disengagement and for which he prescribed a fully Trinitarian exposition of the Christian gospel. Thus the dialectic we intend to create revolves around the extent to which Gunton’s presupposition of explicit Trinitarian theology is necessary in order to give a Christian understanding of substantiality. At the same time, and considering Bonhoeffer’s strong relationship with Luther and the Augustinian tradition, should it be possible to show that Bonhoeffer’s theology exhibits characteristics for which Gunton criticised Augustine, then, the validity of Gunton’s Trinitarian premises will be enhanced. Even if this is not the case, if it can be shown that Gunton’s methodology provides a thicker and richer theological description of the subject at hand then his assumptions will be all the more attractive. Lastly, as mentioned in the Introduction, to ensure that Bonhoeffer’s description of epistemology is more than a mere foil for Gunton’s system, a third conversation partner will be introduced in this chapter – Paul Janz. Janz has done significant work on Bonhoeffer’s epistemology, whereas Gunton only ever made passing reference to him. Contra Janz we shall argue that Bonhoeffer’s epistemology emerges from disputation with both Kant and Heidegger to rest between the 

Ibid., p. 60. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, see esp. ch. 6.  See Clifford Green, Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, rev. edn, 1999).  See Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 56. As we shall see it is unwise to hold too tightly to such a division, even at a thematic level, within Bonhoeffer’s thought. Such is the care with which he took to shape a thoroughly integrated system of knowledge as wissen, kennen and können.  See Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire. 

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poles of the “Who?” and the “Where?” of knowledge. The contention with Janz will make clear that Bonhoeffer’s answer to the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” aptly deals with Gunton’s concerns about displacement while the answer to the question “Where is Christ met?” offers a serious solution to the conundrum of disengagement. In terms of testing Gunton’s presuppositions, Bonhoeffer’s is an epistemology that gives appropriate place to the transcendent while ensuring that relationships are intrinsic to truth and meaning. All this is achieved without mention of the Spirit or God’s triunity. Gunton on Displacement and Disengagement We turn to Bonhoeffer’s epistemology or description of revelation. First, though, we shall provide some context by way of the Gunton’s description of modern thought and its alleged failure to preserve a concept of particularity. If it can be shown that Bonhoeffer’s theology provides an alternative solution to the problems that Gunton identifies, then Gunton’s presuppositions will come under all the more pressure. The Displacement of God by the Human Mind In the Bampton Lectures, Gunton identified two central problems in the thought of modernity. The first problem is one of displacement: “Modernity is the era which has displaced God as the focus for the unity of meaning and being.” Gunton’s claim was that modernity operated on the basis that: “God is no longer needed to account for coherence and meaning of the world, so that the seat of rationality and meaning became not the world, but the human reason and will, which thus displaced God or the world.” The consequence of this displacement is that the human mind alone gives order to human experience in relation to other humans, the world and to God. Following Blumenberg, Gunton attributes the first critical instance of this not to Descartes but to William of Ockham.10 According to Blumenberg, Ockham denied the existence of universals in the cosmos choosing instead to posit real existence solely in otherwise unrelated particulars.11 This, said Gunton, rendered creation meaningless and made God’s will redundant as its fundamental unifying Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 28. Ibid. 10 Interestingly Bonhoeffer puts the beginning of the “world come of age” at around the same period though not specifically citing Ochkam (see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 8.6.44”, in Widerstand und Ergebung, p. 476). 11 Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, cited in Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 28; see also Colin E. Gunton, A Brief Theology of Revelation, Warfield Lectures 1993 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 47ff.  

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foundation. Instead, human rationality was invoked to provide the necessary coherence for the cosmos.12 In an important precursor to the Bampton Lectures, Enlightenment and Alienation, Gunton accused Descartes, in his time, of compounding Ockham’s problems. Gunton judged Descartes to have renewed Plato’s suspicion of perception, due to the inconstancy of the world that affects one’s senses. In reaction to this Descartes “turned away from the slippery world outside to the world within, the world of rational ideas and mathematical certainty”.13 Hence only the mind, in itself, can be trusted to compile a reliable interpretation of reality. Gunton described Descartes as having set Western thought on a path of ever increasing alienation from the world as perception and reason are pushed further and further apart. In the process, human rationality increasingly impinged upon the place of God in ordering the universe. Gunton understood the later Kant as attempting to settle the division between mind and perception once and for all with, “a massive assertion of the priority of rational understanding”.14 In this scenario space and time were part of the framework of meaning supplied by the mind so that it could experience the world in an ordered way; “it supplies what it cannot discern”.15 Gunton quoted the Critique of Pure Reason to highlight the logo-centric character of Kant’s philosophy: “Reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own … constraining nature to give answer to questions of reason’s own determining”. Gunton admits that Kant allowed some level of interaction between reason and nature, but points out that: “It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an 12

Blumenberg had reasoned that without universals there was no way of discerning God’s will in nature and therefore creation was meaningless: “theological absolutism denied man any insight in to the rationality of the Creation” (Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, cited in Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 57). Gunton claimed that Ockham, and the West, had inherited Augustine’s understanding of God’s will in creation. The problem for the West was Augustine’s tendency to downplay the Christological elements of creation and ignore the pneumatological even more. The outcome is that creation is the result of arbitrary will. Worse though is the fact that despite a Christological directed to the other, the willing of creation is divorced from the historical economy of salvation (Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 54). The result is a notion of the world held together by universals, “a timeless conceptual structure informing otherwise shapeless matter”, as opposed to the world being “held in continuing relation to God the Father” by the Son and the Spirit (ibid., p. 55). The replacement of Christology by universals generates a very different conception of the relation of the universal and the particular: “Not the particularising will of God, but general conceptual forms come into the centre” (ibid., p. 56). 13 Colin E. Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2006), p. 16. 14 Ibid., p. 23. 15 Ibid., p. 24.

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appointed judge who compels the witnesses to answer questions, which he has himself formulated.”16 In Gunton’s analysis, Kant’s philosophy represents a coup d’état of human reason over the world (and God) even as it leaves humanity with a world that is, “essentially other and unknown”.17 Disengagement from the Other In Gunton’s diagnosis of modernity, the phenomenon of displacement led directly to the practise of disengagement: “Disengagement means standing apart from each other and the world and treating the other as external, as mere object.”18 The result of this practice is that “we use the other as an instrument, as the mere means for realising our will, and not in some way integral to our being”.19 If the human mind takes on God’s role as the fundamental point of reference for all knowledge and experience, it follows that all other points of reference – be they divine, human or natural – have to be distanced from the observer in order to be reintegrated by the human mind: “The other becomes the person or thing from which one must escape or over which one must rule if one is to be human.”20 Gunton sums up the effect of these two problems in a quote from Havel: “I believe that with the loss of God, man has lost a kind of absolute and universal system of coordinates, to which he could always relate everything, chiefly himself. His world and his personality gradually began to break up into separate, incoherent fragments corresponding to different, relative, coordinates.”21 Thus, the displacement of God has had disastrous effects in terms of human self-understanding and the ability to relate rightly to others – be they persons or things. The outcome is a fragmentation of society as individuals gather in ever decreasing aggregates of ethnic groups, demographic units or special interest collectives. At this juncture, however, Gunton points to a strange paradox in thought and practice that results from the displacement of God. On the one hand, modernity sees itself as having freed the individual from the oppression of a distant deity, but on the other hand, it enslaves her with the constant pressure of homogenisation. The logic of this is that when the one (God) is displaced by the many (individual humans, each with the power of self determination), the displacement happens in two ways: “Either the many become an aggregate of ones, each attempting to dominate the world, the outcome being those regimes now labelled fascist, in which the strongest Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 27; Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation,

16

p. 6.

17 Colin E. Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture: Towards an Epistemology of the Concrete”, in Gospel and Contemporary Culture (London: Mowbray, 1992), p. 87. 18 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 14. 19 Ibid., p. 14; see also the discussion in Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, pp. 71ff. 20 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 71. 21 Václav Havel, Open Letters: Selected Prose, 1965–1990, cited in Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 71.

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survives and dominates; or the many become homogenised, contrary to their true being, into a mass.”22 Gunton gives evidence for this homogenisation paradox in a quote from Hauerwas on liberal systems of justice: “Individualism, in an effort to secure societal cooperation and justice must deny individual differences.”23 What follows, according to Gunton, is an inadequate conception of relationality: “that is, of how we are each distinctive and different by virtue of and not in despite of the fact that we are related to each other.”24 The tragic consequence is that what makes a person distinctively someone becomes irrelevant. No value can be given to the characteristics of the individual (or anything else for that matter). Thus Gunton summarises another trait of the modern condition: “its homogenising abolishes particularity”.25 If we have understood Gunton correctly, in order to address modernity’s problems of displacement and disengagement, we need a theory of knowledge that is founded upon appropriate relations between God, humanity and the world. This would involve a transcendent element with knowledge as gift, yet properly finite. At the same time it is knowledge that is obtained through relationships of personal engagement with others. It is our contention that all these aspects of a theology of knowledge are present in the work of Bonhoeffer; to which we shall now turn. Bonhoeffer on Displacement and Disengagement Marsh’s nomination of revelation, social ontology and sociality as the three main themes of Bonhoeffer’s work is based on one of the few comprehensive analyses of his thought.26 While we have followed Marsh’ s lead in approaching Bonhoeffer, we can distinguish our reading from Marsh’s at a number of points. Firstly, Marsh seeks to interpret Bonhoeffer in relation to Barth, Hegel and Heidegger.27 In contrast we shall give some attention to the influence of Heidegger but, in the main, we are Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 33, emphasis added. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character, cited in The One, the Three and the Many, p. 45. 24 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 45. 25 Ibid., p. 46. 26 Stephen Plant, Bonhoeffer (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 153. We should confine this remark to English language works. Marsh’s study was well received by senior Bonhoeffer scholars: for example, Godsey writes: “the profoundest study of Bonhoeffer’s theology to appear in many years” (John D. Godsey, “Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, Theology 98 [1995]: 195). Green commented in his review that the book was “a milestone in Bonhoeffer studies” (Clifford J. Green, “Recent Works About Bonhoeffer in English”, Religious Studies Review 23 [1997]: 226). 27 Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pts I, II. The sections of this book consist of several chapters dealing with Barth, Heidegger and Hegel respectively. The emphasis throughout is on Bonhoeffer’s interaction with Barth. 22 23

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concerned with establishing Bonhoeffer as an independent conversation partner for Gunton.28 Secondly, Marsh stresses a Trinitarian assumption in Bonhoeffer’s theology.29 As we shall see in the last chapter the attempt is forced.30 In fact, as explained above, the absence of the Spirit in Bonhoeffer’s Christology and the independence his theology has from the doctrine of the Trinity in general is the reason Bonhoeffer has been chosen as a dialogue partner for Gunton. In contrast to Marsh’s work, the present volume benefits from access to the complete critical edition of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke. For the most part we shall concentrate on Bonhoeffer’s major academic works, but we will consult letters, papers and other writings where appropriate. Our aim in this investigation of Bonhoeffer’s writings is to highlight his theological contribution for the sake of conversation with Gunton. We begin with the Ethik in order to develop a structure for Bonhoeffer’s epistemology. Knowledge of Ultimate Reality For Bonhoeffer, to know God is to know ultimate reality. What is real cannot be abstractly separated from God, but “the real has its reality only in God”.31 One knows the reality of the world when it is understood in relation to God. Furthermore, “the reality of God is not just another idea”;32 for the reality of God has revealed and testified to itself in the centre of the real world: “In Jesus Christ the reality of God has been received in the reality of this world.”33 What may seem like a circularity is explained by his contention that it is not possible to speak of either the reality of God or the reality of the world without speaking of Jesus Christ. In Christ the offers meets us, to receive a share in the reality of God and the reality of the world, together, not one without the other. The reality of God opens itself in the same way that it puts me completely in the reality of the world. However I find the reality of the world always, already borne, adopted and reconciled in the reality of God.34 28 See p. 18 above, for discussion on the issue of Barth’s influence on the present dialogue between Gunton and Bonhoeffer. Hunsinger was less enthusiastic about Marsh’s interpretation of Barth compared to the contribution the book made to Bonhoeffer studies (George Hunsinger, “Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, Modern Theology 12 [1996]: 122). 29 Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 9. 30 Plant agrees in his review of Marsh, remarking: “Pneumatology is underdeveloped in Bonhoeffer, and this offsets his Trinitarian theology” (Stephen Plant, “Fresh Treatment of Bonhoeffer”, Expository Times 106 [1995]: 188). 31 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 35. All quotations from Bonhoeffer are my own translations from Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke (DBW), unless otherwise indicated. 32 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 39. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., p. 40.

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It is in the person of Christ that the reality of God and the reality of the world are met at the same time. The above quote mentions two things that are crucial to Bonhoeffer’s articulation of Christocentric knowledge: Firstly the notion of “being met in Christ” and secondly finding reality “always, already borne”. These two aspects relate, in Bonhoeffer’s theology to the “Who” of reality and “Where” reality is experienced. By this we mean how one comes to have knowledge of reality and where such knowledge is available. The two aspects are Bonhoeffer’s solution to the problems of displacement and disengagement. Meeting Christ: The “Who?” of Knowledge Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Modern Thought In order to understand Bonhoeffer’s epistemology we must first contextualise his thought in relation to modernity and his diagnosis of it. In his Habilitationsschrift, Bonhoeffer was especially concerned to establish how we ought to speak about knowledge within the context of a Western philosophy dominated by self-consciousness. He declared: “The question of cognition is the question of the I to the I, towards itself … that is, the question of human beings.” From this Bonhoeffer initially concludes: “The meaning of epistemology is anthropology.”35 The grounds for this conclusion lay in the connection he makes between “the capacity of human beings to know” and “being human itself” in philosophy.36 In Bonhoeffer’s assessment, regardless of whether one starts with transcendence or ontology, human rationality is unable to conceive appropriately the truth about the world and its meaning. The basis for these claims comes in Section A of the Habilitationsschrift. Here, Bonhoeffer examines the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant.37 We can capture the essential thrust of Bonhoeffer’s examination of Kant in the following: So long as the resistance of transcendence to thought endures, that is, so long as the thing-in-itself and the transcendental apperception are understood as

Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 25. Like Gunton, Bonhoeffer highlights the importance of Descartes. He comments: “Since Descartes the passion of the philosophers has been inflamed here” (ibid.). 37 In saying this we must admit that Bonhoeffer’s engagement with Kant’s texts is not any more thorough than Gunton’s. The difference between the two lies in the extent to which Bonhoeffer actually engages with the mechanisms of Kantian thought in contrast to Gunton’s description of it. As Janz points out, Bonhoeffer perceives a necessary distinction in modernity from Kant onwards (Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 110). Janz comments: “Kant’s critical philosophy is commonly spoken of as having its transcendental centre in a single primary locus: that is, in the Ding an sich, or the ‘thing-in-itself.’ This is only half correct, as Bonhoeffer implicitly and quite correctly recognises” (ibid., p. 108). Janz praises Bonhoeffer on this point even though he is much less enthusiastic about the rest of Bonhoeffer’s project. 35 36

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purely conceptual limits, from which the one does not engulf the other, talk of genuine transcendentalism can occur. In cognition the human Dasein knows itself to be fixed between two poles transcending it … Since, through this, the human Dasein gains an excellent mode of being [Seinsart] before other entities … the human Dasein itself, in the orientation towards transcendence, is, for transcendentalism, also the point of relationship for world knowledge itself.38

In his analysis, Kant’s basic premise is that knowledge is attained only through strictly maintaining the transcendence of, and distinction between, the concept of the “I” (being – the thing-in-itself) and the concept of the “I think” (act – transcendental apperception). Janz’s summary is helpful here. “The ‘transcendental attempt’ is the attempt of thinking (act) to understand the pre-theoretical thinking being out of which thinking proceeds, or which is the condition for its possibility.”39 Bonhoeffer describes the dynamics of this in epistemology as follows: “Epistemology is the attempt of the I to understand itself. I reflect on myself; I and myself move apart and come together again.”40 These two poles can only be considered as limits. They have no being in themselves and are only instances of pure cognition. Yet this, for Bonhoeffer, is the great contradiction; we understand ourselves from within the limits of our own reason. Furthermore, the logic of Kant’s system means that the “I” is “constantly directed in reference to itself, without ever being able to get to itself”, otherwise it would cease to be pure thinking. “The attempt to understand oneself purely from oneself must collapse because Dasein, in its nature, is not in itself self-subsistent but precisely ‘in reference to’.”41 When thinking attains the “I” we have a logical absurdity. If the “I” tries to comprehend itself, it passes from being to act and back again as the perspective of the referent changes from being the object of thought (“thing-in-itself”), to being the subject (the “apperception” or thinking self). “For this reason, the impossibility of Dasein, to understand itself as performance, is displayed precisely because it is essentially an execution of act.”42 Thus Bonhoeffer concludes: Human beings understand themselves ultimately, not from the transcendent but rather from themselves, from reason, as the case may be, from the limits that reason has set for itself, whether the limits are rational or ethical in kind … the human is itself from its own self-imposed limits, i.e. Dasein understands itself from itself as pure act.43

Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, pp. 28–9. Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, pp. 106–7. 40 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 27. 41 Ibid., p. 31. 42 Ibid., p. 32. 43 Ibid., pp. 29–30. 38 39

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The autonomous Dasein ends up being locked inside its own reason completely cut off from transcendence. Janz judges Bonhoeffer favourably up to this point and rather grudgingly admits that Bonhoeffer has read Kant fairly. Janz claims, however, that Bonhoeffer has left out Kant’s empirical realism, “which is both the source and the goal of his entire transcendental or critical enterprise, that yields very different outcomes for both epistemology and theology”.44 Whether or not Kant’s empirical realism is as effective as Janz wants it to be,45 we suggest the reason that Bonhoeffer has overlooked it has more to do with Bonhoeffer’s close affinities with Heidegger’s ontological vision of reality.46 Apart from interaction with Rorty, Janz seems to ignore Heidegger completely and therefore, we suggest, has not fully appreciated the extent of Heidegger’s opposition to Kant47 and, by association, Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the presuppositions of transcendental

Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 112. Janz is particularly devoted to correcting misreadings of Kant (see esp. God, the Mind’s Desire, ch. 6). 46 Rumscheidt notes: “Heidegger’s seminal Sein und Zeit had appeared two years before Bonhoeffer wrote Akt und Sein, where he makes extensive reference to Heidegger” (Rumscheidt, “The Formation of Bonhoeffer’s Theology”, p. 65). Thus Bonhoeffer’s early theology emerged in the context of one the twentieth century’s most “influential critics of modern philosophers, especially Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Husserl” (Robert B. Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture [Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn, 1999], p. 118). Furthermore, Caputo makes a number of observations about the young Heidegger, which shed interesting light on the conditions for the possibility of seeing him as an influence on Bonhoeffer. Caputo notes: “With the turn from Catholicism to Protestantism, the philosophical interests of the young thinker shifted … from scholars like Aquinas, Scotus and Suarez [to] Pascal, Luther and Kierkegaard, who in turn led him back to Augustine and Paul … Heidegger’s model in this project was Luther’s critique of Aristotle and medieval Aristotelian scholasticism … It is no exaggeration to say that Heidegger’s attempt to formulate a ‘hermeneutic of facticity’, or what came to be called in Being and Time an ‘existential analytic’, which would mark out the distinctive traits of ‘factical life’ – of Dasein – was inspired by Luther’s critique of medieval metaphysical theology and Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegelian speculative Christianity” (John D. Caputo, “Heidegger and Theology”, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], pp. 272–3). There is a significant overlap here in the list of sources for Heidegger and Bonhoeffer. As we shall see below, both writers look to Augustine and Pascal for the basis of notion of “always, already” that is so important in their respective projects. 47 Marsh summarises Heidegger’s opposition to Kantian subjectivism: “The aristocracy of the self-reflective subject and the privileges accorded its cognitive domain are contested in Heidegger’s attempt to deconstruct the whole architecture of the philosophy of subjectivity” (Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 118). Kerr also notes that Heidegger repeatedly mocks the “knowing subject” as an “isolated subject, bare and without a world” (Fergus Kerr, “Heidegger’s Cosmological Myth”, in Immortal Longings [London: SPCK, 1997], p. 47). 44 45

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philosophy.48 We shall return to Janz’s reading of Bonhoeffer regarding some of the implications of Bonhoeffer’s Christology. However, for now we shall move on to Bonhoeffer’s consideration of the ontological configuration of knowledge. After dealing with the transcendental attempt to articulate epistemology, Bonhoeffer moves on to consider the ontological attempt. Bonhoeffer distinguishes transcendental notions from ontological ones as follows: “The first [transcendental philosophy] conceives thinking ‘in reference to’ transcendence; Idealism takes transcendence, Being, into thinking; Ontology, at last, leaves Being in absolute freedom from thinking. It places Being before thinking … thinking must, again and again, be suspended in Being.”49 The ontological approach brings together two major claims, λογος – rationality – and ὀν – Being. In ontology, ὀν is free and resists the claims of rationality. Yet this begs the question of how ontology can be critically pursued. The answer, according to Bonhoeffer, is: “Only if one – here it must be the Logos – yields its claim, or moves itself towards the other. But that can only take place in the movement of thought, so that the movement of thought somehow intrinsically belongs to Being.” The key notion is the unconditional priority given to the question of Being over that of thought. Rationality must surrender any claim over ontology or suspend its judgement but it must do so as an act of Being itself. In sympathy with Heidegger, Bonhoeffer dismisses the claims of phenomenology and pursues Heidegger’s notion that thought “stumbles across itself as Dasein in a world, It is ever already in a world, as it is ever already itself. The Dasein is ever already its possibility, in authenticity and in-authenticity.”50 Bonhoeffer joins in with Heidegger’s criticisms of “Descartes and all his followers”.51 He affirms Heidegger’s contention that it is evident that Dasein is in a real external world: “For this reason realism is right; but it is incorrect in seeking to substantiate this outside world.”52 Yet Bonhoeffer notes that the problem with attempting to supply such a proof lay in the presupposition of both an isolated subject on the one hand, and, on the other, an isolated existing thing. According to Bonhoeffer: “Heidegger has succeeded in coercing together Act and Being in the concept of Dasein; in other words Dasein’s decision and what is already decided of Dasein is determined here together.”53 Yet the success that Heidegger has achieved is not without a price. The suspension of thought in Being is dependent upon the view that Dasein – human beings – have systematic access to Being at their disposal. They already know what Being is, such that they are able to interpret it. They already know what it is because they are part of it. Furthermore, God is completely displaced 48 Janz engages with Rorty and a number of other “post-subjective” thinkers in chapter 2 of God, the Mind’s Desire, which is rather disparagingly entitled “Theology and the Lure of Obscurity”. 49 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 54. 50 Ibid., p. 64. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., p. 65.

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since, “everything in [Heidegger’s philosophy] is orientated to the closed-ness of the ultimate in itself through the Dasein. The closed-ness of Being can no more be detached from the ultimate.”54 Dasein, along with all Being, is a “closed-in finitude”, which leaves human thought closed in upon itself. Not only has God been displaced, now the “I” is completely closed off or disengaged from anything transcendent, including, potentially, the other. In the final analysis, Bonhoeffer concludes that both transcendental and ontological philosophy have the same outcome: “In the first trap, reason sets the limits for itself, in the second trap Being somehow falls under the lordship of the thinking I. Consequently, in either trap, the I understands itself from itself in a closed system.”55 Bonhoeffer declares the “enclosed I” to be cor curvum in se – the heart turned in upon itself.56 In this situation, in order for Dasein to meet Christ, it must be completely transformed. Faith itself must be created in Dasein. “Here there is no prearranged hearing ability for hearing.”57 Instead Dasein must be “placed into the truth … [for] only the one who has been placed in the truth can understand himself in the truth”.58 In sum, autonomous human reason is separated from the truth of ultimate reality, both God and the world. In addition, it is incapable of reversing the situation alone. This leads us to an obvious epistemological question: “How is Dasein to be placed into the truth? How does one hear who is deaf?” Bonhoeffer’s response to these questions is consistent with his approach to human reason. The answer is: “Wrong question”. One must ask “Who?” not “How?”. “Who are You?” – God’s Replacement of the Self  Bonhoeffer’s Christology lectures begin with the same low view of autonomous reason. Christ the Gegenlogos dramatically confronts human rationality as its conqueror and apocalyptic judge: “Ich bin die Wahrheit, ich bin der Tod des Menschenlogos, ich bin das Leben des 54

Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., p. 71. Gunton never directly engages with “Ontological” philosophy per se. His attitude towards what he simply refers to as “existentialism” is that it was a direct descendent of Kant. In so far as both existentialism (Gunton is referring to Sartre) and Kant maintain the necessity to “assert the will, to impose a pattern [of order] of some kind” (Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 63) they are the same. To Gunton both involved a view of autonomy as “the rational will as imposing moral laws on itself, and not only on itself but on any other moral agent supposed to be in the same kind of situation” (ibid.). While we might want to draw a distinction between the ontological philosophy of Heidegger that Bonhoeffer engages with and the later existentialist philosophy of Sartre to which Gunton refers, we can at least see convergence between Gunton and Bonhoeffer in terms of their assessment of the Enlightenment’s displacement of God. 56 This is an adopted dictum Bonhoeffer credits to the Reformers. It most closely relates to Luther’s description of sinful reason in Lectures on Romans (see editorial note 20 in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, trans. Martin Rumscheidt, DBWE 2 [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996], p. 41). 57 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 52. 58 Ibid., p. 74. 55

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Gotteslogos, ich bin der Erste unde der Letzte.”59 Christ as Gegenlogos overwhelms the confines of human rationality such that the only appropriate response is that of Paul on the road to Damascus: “Who are You?”60 The Gegenlogos refuses to be classified and hence encapsulated by human reason even though human reason continues to seek for the conditions of possibility. Hence the risen, living Christ turns the question back on his examiner: Who are you then that you so ask? Are you in the Truth that you so ask? Who are you, you who can only ask about me because through me you are the justified, the divinely gifted?61 Janz rightly interprets the dynamics of the above situation as “not merely [a] quantitative [challenge]”.62 Instead, Christ mounts a challenge to, “the autonomous self’s own basic self-understanding as ‘I’”.63 Janz also correctly points out that Bonhoeffer does not give much clarification as to what happens to the confronted individual and how their knowledge changes. That is, Bonhoeffer does not fully describe how one moves from being an autonomous Dasein to an appropriate “creaturely existence”.64 Janz’s project concerns the preservation of human rationality in the Christian theology of thinking and he is especially keen to avoid 59 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 282. The original German has been retained so as not to lose the full effect of Bonhoeffer’s rhetoric: “I am the truth, I am the death of human reason. I am the life of the reason of God. I am the first and the last”. 60 Acts 9:5. The confrontation of Dasein with Christ means, in ontological terms, there is a certain logicality to the “Who?” question that goes beyond mere piety. For Heidegger, “all explications arising from an analytic of Da-sein are gained with a view toward its structure of existence … we shall call the characteristics of being Da-sein existential” (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, ed. Denis J. Schmidt, trans. Joan Stambaugh, SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy [Albany: SUNY Press, 1996], p. 42, emphasis original). These existentials are the features of Da-sein’s way of being in the world as opposed to the Aristotelian categories of its ontic make up. Thus, “existentials and categories are the two fundamental possibilities of the characteristics of being … Beings are a who (existence) or else a what (objective presence in the broadest sense)” (ibid., p. 42, emphasis original). So when Dasein encounters Christ, the question “Who?” is a necessary aspect of understanding both Christ’s way of being in the world and coming to terms with Dasein’s own existence. Marsh agrees that this is an echo of Heidegger’s authentic questioning (Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 120). 61 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 286. 62 Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 206. 63 Ibid., emphasis original. 64 Ibid., p. 206. Creaturely existence is a description that Bonhoeffer gives of preFall Adam in the Genesis lectures (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, ed. Eberhard Bethge, DBW 3 [Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1989]). Janz quotes Bonhoeffer: “The creatureliness of the human being, no less than its freedom, is not a quality, not something locatably ‘there’ (Vorfindliches), nor is it any existing thing … The ‘image that is like God’ [or] the likeness, the analogia of human beings to God is not analogia entis but analogia relationis” (Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, pp. 60–61, translated and cited in Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 197).

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“positivistic shortcuts” which compromise the integrity of human rationality.65 Whether or not Bonhoeffer’s epistemology meets Janz’s requirements, we contend that it is possible to gain adequate insight into Bonhoeffer’s view of the change that occurs when Dasein meets Christ. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s articulation of the change is a significant solution to the problem of displacement. The autonomous reason is confronted out of the Truth by the one who is ultimately in the Truth. This is what makes Christ ungraspable and leaves the human logos facing a boundary which it cannot cross. The autonomous individual is displaced from the position of ordering reality in her own way because she meets Christ: “For me, in my place, where I should stand.”66 As he stands in the individual’s place Christ becomes the limit of her existence: He stands at the boundary of my existence and still in my place. That is an expression for the fact that I am separated from the I that I should be by an inexceedable boundary. The boundary lies between my old and new I, thus in the centre between me and me. As the boundary Christ is at the same time my recovered centre.67

In Bonhoeffer’s schema, Christ meets the individual as the person in the right place with God and exposes the individual’s closedness towards God (that they have displaced God as the centre of meaning and truth in the world). Yet since Christ confronts the individual as pro me, he is the one who mediates the possibility of a new creation to a present experience in fallenness. Not only that, he mediates God to the individual and the individual to God. As the inexceedable limit of individual existence, Christ is more than the autonomous individual can be for itself before God and at the same time, all an individual needs to be with God. As pro me, Christ has the knowledge of ultimate reality for us as gift. Janz does not discuss the pro me aspect of Bonhoeffer’s Christology. He prefers to concentrate on the negative aspects of Christ as the boundary of human existence. In this vein the “Who are you?” question is “the question of dethroned reason, appalled and languishing”.68 He equates Bonhoeffer’s attitude towards reason with Kierkegaard’s “despair” and then proceeds to enlist the help of Kierkegaard in order to fill in the blanks that he [Janz] perceives to be left by Bonhoeffer’s theology: “Bonhoeffer’s autonomous human being, which claims to be able to place itself into the truth about itself, is precisely Kierkegaard’s ‘self for itself’ which is the self in misrelation with itself (and with God).”69 Janz opines: “The heart of the internal Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 206. Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p, 306; see also Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 124. 67 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 306; see also Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 69. 68 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 282, translated and cited in Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 206. 69 Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 208. Janz interprets Kierkegaard’s despair as “the self to be in a state of misrelation”. He claims there are two forms of despair or misrelation. 65 66

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conflict of the cor curvum in se [is that] the self he is and cannot bear to be, is precisely the self that wills to be itself.”70 The Kierkegaardian self despairs of being itself in the face of the Gegenlogos, yet this is exactly the self that it wills to be and the confrontation with the Gegenlogos prohibits this will to be from happening. For Janz this marks “an extremely important station on the way from autonomous human being to creaturely human being and penultimacy”.71 “For even though the despair is ‘over oneself,’ nevertheless because it is for the first time recognised as despair over oneself even willing to be oneself, or because it is recognised for the first time as the possibility of a misrelation within the self even as the self will to be itself, therefore it signals the ascendancy from the actuality of despair (in which the self does not recognise its despair or misrelation) to the recognition of the possibility of despair and as such the recognition of the possibility of sin, and thus also the readiness for repentance and faith.”72 Perhaps the key phrase in this quote is “recognised for the first time”. This is what the Kierkegaardian self does when it asks the “Who?” question. Basically the self realises, having examined itself in light of the “Who?” question, that there is something wrong with it in relation to God.73 This is an important rational precursor for the self’s act of repentance and If the self had established itself the first kind of despair would be for the self to will to die. The second form belongs to the self established by another. “It is: ‘in despair to will to be oneself,’ that is, despite having been established by another, still to will to be oneself autonomously and thus to be in an actual state of misrelation with oneself” (ibid.). 70 Ibid., p. 210, emphasis original. 71 Ibid. Bonhoeffer’s distinction between penultimate and ultimate things is very important for Janz’s theology of epistemology. He gives an apposite summary of the conceptual basis of Bonhoeffer’s theology: “The penultimate can be seen not only as that which precedes the ultimate, but also thereby anything that announces it, or that prepares the way for it … the penultimacy of what is next-to-last consists entirely in its ‘being regarded as penultimate by the ultimate once the ultimate has been found’ … something like ‘the outer covering of the ultimate’ … [but] there is no way that this status could be seen as an independent possession of any sort … rather the ultimate conditions the penultimate … [there is] no way to the ultimate from the penultimate” (Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 194). Janz equates the experience of penultimacy for humans with the creaturely existence. This seems unwise given that Bonhoeffer’s description of the latter was based on his meditation on Gen. 1:26–28, that is, on pre-Fall humanity. When we consider Bonhoeffer’s theological application of the concept we read: “What is this penultimate? It is all that precedes the ultimate – thus the justification of sins by grace alone – and will be spoken to as penultimate from the already found ultimate” (Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 151). Funamoto comments that the penultimate is “everything that precedes the justification of the sinner by grace alone” (Hiroki Funamoto, “Penultimate and Ultimate in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics”, in Being and Truth [London: SCM Press, 1986], pp. 378–9). This more naturally equates the penultimate with fallen Adam. 72 Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 210. 73 It is important to note that the self does the questioning in this scene: not, as we pointed out, Christ himself in the confrontation.

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receipt of grace. “The self becomes conscious of its sin”, and therefore is “ready for genuine repentance and the gift of faith by grace alone”.74 Here is our point of contention with Janz’s interpretation of Bonhoeffer via Kierkegaard. Bonhoeffer’s theology does have gaps but it is unlikely that such gaps will support a view whereby, through further self examination, Dasein will be ready to be “placed into the truth”. Instead, Christ confronts the individual and drags them out into the light and realisation that he [Christ] is pro nobis. All this knowledge is given to Dasein in the “concentrated moment of justification”. In his later Ethik, Bonhoeffer asks: “What happens here?” when the individual meets Christ. It is “an ultimate thing, a touching of no human being, doing or suffering. The dark human life, barred from inside and outside, always deep in an abyss and hopelessness, losing itself in the pit, is torn open with power, the word of God breaks in; the human recognises God for the first time in redeeming light.”75 The cor curvum in se invaded by Christ is “torn out of the imprisonment in one’s own I, liberated in Jesus Christ”.76 The individual is given the gift of faith in the offer “to receive a share in the reality of God and the reality of the world together, not one without the other”.77 Bonhoeffer’s description has a strongly apocalyptic feel as autonomous reason is confronted with its inadequacy not by looking at itself but by recognising God as the redeemer of its closedness in Christ: “He leaves the human reality to exist as penultimate without it being independent and without ruining it; as penultimate, that wants to be taken seriously in its manner and not taken seriously, as penultimate that became the covering of the ultimate.”78 In a manner highly reminiscent of Luther’s theologia crucis Bonhoeffer describes “human glory coming to its ultimate end (letzten Ende) in the image of the battered, bleeding, spat-upon crucified one”. Here on the cross “the ultimate has become reality as God’s judgement on all that is penultimate yet at the same time as grace for the penultimate, which bends to the judgement of the ultimate”.79 The autonomous self is confronted with its closedness – its sin – in the form of the crucified Christ. This is the meeting of ultimate and penultimate that places Dasein into the truth, for though he is the Gegenlogos, Christ is the Gegenlogos pro nobis. In addition, “the resurrection is already in the midst of the partially fractured old world as the ultimate sign of its end and its future, and at the same time as living reality”.80 The resurrection does not abolish the penultimate, in fact, as long as the earth remains, so too will the penultimate. Instead, “eternal

Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 211. Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 137, emphasis added. 76 Ibid., p. 138, emphasis added. 77 Ibid., p. 40; see also Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 124. 78 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 149. 79 Ibid., p. 150. 80 Ibid. 74 75

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life, the new life always breaks powerfully into the earthly life and creates room for itself in earthly life”.81 It is unwise to overlook the theological basis for the understanding of the penultimate/ultimate relationship in Bonhoeffer’s thinking. Janz, however, concentrates on the formal aspect of definition between the two concepts and associates creaturely existence with the penultimate. Contra Janz we contend that the autonomous self is the penultimate self and Christ enters into this penultimacy on the cross pro nobis.82 Hence he is the ultimate amidst the judgement of God on all that is penultimate. The resurrected Christ is the ultimate reality of creaturely existence with God, acting as a barrier between the penultimate self and God but pro nobis. Janz appeals to the Genesis lectures for his understanding of creaturely existence but would have done better to cast the penultimate in terms of the orders of preservation that Bonhoeffer developed. There, Bonhoeffer contended: “The conserving act of God with the world is that he accepts the sinful world and through order it knows its limits.”83 The orders of our fallen world are “God’s order of preservation based on Christ”. “That is the new act of God with humanity, that humanity is preserved (in its fallen world, in its fallen orders on death) on the resurrection, on the new creation, on Christ.”84 Creation is preserved in its fallen/ penultimate state for Christ who is its ultimate reality. The real significance of our contention with Janz actually concerns the dialogue between Gunton and Bonhoeffer. It is not difficult to interpret Bonhoeffer as configuring Christ as the solution to creation rather than its perfection and the distinction between penultimate and ultimate reflects this. What this means, however, is that Bonhoeffer’s re-figuration of creation is haunted by the kind of arbitrariness of which Gunton accuses Augustine.85 For example, in discussing “The Beginning” in the Genesis lectures Bonhoeffer, seeking to protect God’s freedom in creating, writes: “It is not possible to ask the question concerning the Why of creation, concerning the plan of God for the world, concerning the necessity of creation.”86 Yet, as Gunton contends, the New Testament describes Christ as one “in whom, through whom, and for whom are all things”.87 Bonhoeffer’s lack of clarity carries over into the discussion of creation ex nihilo. He begins well with the resurrection as the hermeneutical key for creation: “The God of creation, of the beginning par excellence, is the God of the resurrection.”88 In the face of the 81

Ibid. “In the likeness of sinful flesh” (see Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, pp. 294–5). 83 Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 129. 84 Ibid., p. 130. 85 See n. 12 above; see also Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, pp. 82–3; Gunton, “Between Allegory and Myth”, pp. 56–7; Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator, Edinburgh Studies in Constructive Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 57–8. 86 Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 30. 87 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 179. 88 Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 33. 82

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nothingness (dem falschen Nichts) we are to take comfort from the fact that the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is the one who creates from nothing. Yet Bonhoeffer misses the chance to add that the bodily resurrection of the man Messiah Jesus is God’s unrivalled statement of commitment to a creation that lives in fear of nothingness. Regrettably Bonhoeffer’s rhetoric clouds the issue with phrases like “There is absolutely no transition, no continuum between the dead and the resurrected Christ but the freedom of God, which accomplished in the beginning a work out of nothing.”89 He seems to confuse the primordial nothing with the full effects of sin, death and evil, which Christ took upon himself at the cross.90 To be fair, Bonhoeffer maintains that God preserves the world even when it is fallen. Nonetheless, in the section on “Curse and Promise” we read: “Curse is the affirmation of the destroyed world by the Creator.”91 In this scenario humanity is allowed to live in the world with the “word of the God of wrath” as the promise. Humankind has the promise of “victory over the serpent”.92 Nevertheless the man and woman will struggle together with each other and the world: “even this belonging [Man to Woman] is now curse and promise in one”. This section reaches its bleakest point as Bonhoeffer combines preservation with the curse of death. Adam is preserved, in the words of Genesis 3:19, “ ‘until you again become the earth from which you are taken.’ The fallen Adam lives on his way to death.”93 Promise and curse is the world in which Adam is preserved in order that Christ may come as the solution to the crisis. In the Ethik Christ is certainly pro nobis, for the penultimate, this is why neither the radical (hatred of the penultimate) nor the compromise (hatred of the ultimate) solutions are serious in maintaining the relationship between penultimate and ultimate.94 Jesus Christ resolves the dialectic between the two but not because creation is being perfected to that end for, as Janz rightly reminds us, “there is no way from the pen-ultimate to the ultimate”.95 The penultimate only anticipates the ultimate insofar as it is something that all of fallen creation must go through in order to hear the ultimate word. Hence Bonhoeffer writes of Paul and Luther: “Luther had to go through the cloister, Paul had to go through the piety of the Law, yes the thief ’had to’ go through the liability of the cross in order to hear the ultimate word. A road had to be travelled, it had to be the whole length of the path through the pen-ultimate things.”96 89

Ibid. Ibid., p. 35: “The dark depth – the first sound of the power of the darkness is that of the passions Jesus Christ”. 91 Ibid., p. 124. 92 Notably, not with Luther’s anticipation of the Christ (Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1­–5, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, LW 1 [St. Louis: Concordia, 1958], p. 191). 93 Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 126. 94 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, pp. 144–5. 95 Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 194. 96 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 142. 90

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Christ, the unattainable Gegenlogos, comes into this struggle as its unforseen and unachievable solution.97 Even if Gunton had misread Augustine on the economy of salvation, it is not hard to see Bonhoeffer’s description showing signs of the arbitrary in relation to divine will. In reference to the conversation with Janz, it is not with Janz’s description of theological epistemology, taken as a whole, that we are contending. Rather, it is the specifics of his use of Bonhoeffer. From what we have explored in Bonhoeffer we propose that it ought to be acknowledged that the final “enemy” of autonomous reason is the grace of God. It is Christ pro nobis who prepares Dasein for faith and repentance, the placement in the truth.98 Knowledge of ultimate reality is entirely a gift conferred on Dasein by God through and in Christ. In reference to Gunton, Bonhoeffer’s solution to the problem of displacement is the gracious act of God that places the individual into the truth. His assessment of modern thought is no more exegetical than Gunton’s, yet Bonhoeffer’s attention to the fundamental mechanics of both transcendental and ontological philosophy provides a more holistic analysis of autonomous rationality. What Gunton identified as a split between perception and rationality that led to a withdrawal into a priori structures of the human mind as the means of ordering the world, Bonhoeffer has described as the cor curvum in se, the heart turned in on itself. From a Christian perspective this means that the inability of Dasein to know the truth of ultimate reality is more than cognitive. Bonhoeffer points out the circularity of the individual trying to understand itself and the world from itself. More than this, the appeal to Luther’s dictum adds a volitional character to the crisis that suggests the problem of displacement is not accidental – something that could be rectified merely by a change in cognitive patterns. When God grants the individual knowledge of the ultimate reality of himself and the world in Christ, Bonhoeffer emphasises that Dasein has to be “torn out of itself”. Yet Bonhoeffer also emphasises that the knowledge of ultimate reality is the gracious gift of Christ pro nobis. The picture of the cross, where the God–Man is revealed as the victim of Dasein’s closedness, contextualises the violent images of the Gegenlogos confronting the individual. As yet we have not addressed Gunton’s concern about preserving the finitude of human knowledge even as we seek to overcome displacement. We suggest that this will be rectified as we consider that, in Bonhoeffer’s thought, Dasein’s relation to the transcendent is restored in a certain place. We will now turn our attention to the “Where?” of knowledge in Bonhoeffer’s thought. This will open the way for us to explore the “always, already” element of his epistemology. At the same time we shall be able to appreciate the fecundity of his thought in solving the problem of disengagement.

97

Ibid., p. 158. See the section “Vorbereitend der Weg”, in the “Letzte und Vorletzte Dinge” essay (Bonhoeffer, Ethik, pp. 153–62). 98

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Meeting Christ: The “Where?” of Knowledge Between Christ and Church In the previous section Bonhoeffer displaced the question regarding the truth of ultimate reality from a “how of access” to the “who is Christ?” Following Bonhoeffer’s logic we must now ask: “Where?” That is, “Where is Christ met?” or more appropriately, “where does Christ meet the individual?” The quest for location leads us to Bonhoeffer’s preference for the “worldliness” of truth. It also opens up further possibilities for exploring the influence of Heidegger’s ontology on Bonhoeffer’s epistemology, especially the notion of discovering truth, “always already in the world”. Through interaction with Heidegger, Bonhoeffer establishes an intensely relational understanding of knowledge, which is a powerful remedy for Gunton’s diagnosis of disengagement in modern thought. In Bonhoeffer’s theological epistemology, Christ, the Gegenlogos appears not only as “idea”, but also as person and this has ontological implications for knowledge of truth: “The ultimate issue of critical thought is that it must ask the ‘Who-question’ but it cannot. That means we can only ask about the ‘Who’ where what is questioned has already been revealed; where the immanent logos is already rescinded, i.e. the ‘Who’ can only be asked under the assumption that the answer has already come about.”99 The individual discovers that Christ is always already in the world and consequently, the individual can now know itself and others in that world. Hence, for Bonhoeffer, the “Who?” question is therefore a question about transcendence and existence – it is the transcendent Dasein of the other: “The question concerning ‘Who’ expresses the ‘differentness’ of the other. The ‘Who-question’ is at the same time the question of the existence of the questioner. In the ‘Who-question’ the questioner asks about the boundaries of his

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Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 283. Bonhoeffer directs his readers to Augustine and Pascal who point out that men seek in the church that which has already been found (ibid., p. 284). This is the explanation for the notion of “always, already”. Heidegger used these same sources in Being and Time. He notes Scheler’s incorporation of Pascal and Augustine on affects in the context of Dasein’s “Attunement – Befindlichkeit” (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 131). In this section Heidegger addresses the importance of affects that make up Dasein’s attunement or disposition. Dasein’s attunement is the reaction it has to the situation that it discovers itself in and against which it continually struggles to live authentically (Charles Guignon, “Heidegger’s Anti-Dualism”, in Heidegger’s Being and Time, ed. Richard Polt [Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005], p. 78). Disclosedness is the encounter between Dasein and other things in the world, how it comes to know them or use them. Significantly, Heidegger, through Pascal and Augustine, implies that the disclosure is a matter of charity or grace. Bonhoeffer here, and as we shall see below in Akt und Sein, posits the occurrence of this disclosure as Dasein meets the church in Christ and consequently understands the world from the church. For Bonhoeffer, Dasein is given knowledge of others but serves them rather than using them.

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own existence.”100 The answer to the “Who?” question is a gift and through this Dasein discovers the world that has always been existing outside its self absorbed state. Dasein becomes appropriately aware of the network of relationships within which it has always lived.101 “The ‘Who-question’ is the religious question par excellence; it is the question concerning the other human, the other being, the other authority. It is the question about life in proximity.”102 As such, the “Who?” question can only be answered in a dynamic of personal engagement – clearly the opposite of what Gunton perceives to be the practise of modernity. There can be no “standing apart from each other and the world and treating the other as external, as mere object”.103 Instead, the individual finds herself (and truth) only in relation to others, dependent upon them for her being. Bonhoeffer’s social epistemology presents us with a good picture of the converse of disengagement. In his habilitationsschrift, Bonhoeffer described the “life in proximity” as the church or community [Gemeinde]. When Dasein is placed into the truth, it is, at the same time, placed in the church: “Revelation is only to be thought of in reference to the concept of church, where church is comprehended as constituted through the present proclamation of the death and resurrection of Christ in the community, through the community, for the community.”104 In this situation, the proclamation 100 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 283. Note the similarity with Heidegger, for whom the individual discovers particular features of the world and in this basic sense understands the world. However, “understanding grasps not only the world, but also Dasein’s way of being in the world. So an understanding of the world is always also a self-understanding” (David Couzens Hoy, “Heidegger and the Hermeneutic Turn”, in Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], p. 177). 101 For Bonhoeffer transcendence happens in a state of referential dependence upon other beings. Again, consider in Heidegger’s ontology, transcendence is achieving ontological comprehension – a comprehending of Being. This is not a domain to be captured but rather an occurrence that is “always in the process of being achieved”. “Dasein is not the source of its own Being but rather finds itself as an already existing fact” (William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought [New York: Fordham University Press, 4th edn, 2003], p. 37). Heidegger describes Dasein discovering itself as “thrown” into a world of relationships (ibid., p. 37). We ought to add though, that Heidegger makes a distinction between discovery and disclosure. Discovery [Entdecktheit] is strictly speaking, for Heidegger, where “assertions uncover or discover some fact about the world” (Couzens Hoy, “Heidegger and the Hermeneutic Turn”, p. 177). Disclosure [Erschlossenheit] “makes the phenomenon of discovery intelligible”, that is, enables Dasein to know what to do in its world (ibid.). For Bonhoeffer, when Christ confronts Dasein in the “Who?” question Dasein comprehends the Being of beings and it is placed, rather than thrown, into relation with the Transcendence that is the “other”. This is principally Jesus Christ but consequently every other as well. 102 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 283. 103 See Gunton’s comment on p. 55 above; cf. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 14. 104 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 107.

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and the community are the one act of God.105 “Proclamation and community adhere that way in each other, that each one considered by itself, loses its sense entirely.”106 In the church, Christ gives himself to his new humanity in such a way that he draws together in the church all whom he has won for himself. He binds and commits himself to the church and they to one another.107 It is here that we begin to gain a sense of the thoroughly integrated relationality of Bonhoeffer’s theology when it comes to epistemology. He claims that Dasein is brought into encounter with the transcendent in such a way that it is “in-reference to” both God and world. Thus the two “poles” of transcendental philosophy mentioned above108 become God and the church since, in the first instance the world is the community of the church and the church is the place where one meets Christ. In this community others, “even become Christ for us in demand and promise, an existential limitation from without, and as such, at the same time, the guarantor of revelation”.109 For Bonhoeffer, meeting Christ in the church creates the conditions for the possibility of the transcendent retaining genuine objectivity. Christ and Christ-in-the-other are the things standing over and against the “I”, resisting its power. The church is the external that stands over and against the “I”. It is also the place where the “I” discovers itself. Thus “Christ existing as community” gives the individual any knowledge of the transcendent in existential terms.110 This is an important characteristic of Bonhoeffer’s approach and gives us insight into the way that the finitude of human knowledge is preserved. Since, one individual cannot have absolute knowledge of another, as distinct from genuine, the transcendent exists always and only as gift. We finish by considering how Bonhoeffer’s epistemology solved the problems of displacement and disengagement in one movement. Encountering Christ in Another’s Gracious Actions In order to gather this section, in fact this chapter, to a conclusion we shall again compare our findings on Bonhoeffer with Janz’s project. In seeking to understand the “Who?” of knowledge we have distinguished our reading of Bonhoeffer from Janz’s by the extent to which we have emphasised the gracious actions of Christ as Gegenlogos pro nobis. In addition we have emphasised the importance of Heidegger’s ontology in Bonhoeffer’s epistemology, which was something that Janz overlooked. Now we 105

Ibid., p. 109; see also Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, pp. 305–6. Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 108. 107 Ibid., p. 109. 108 In Kantian terms the Ding an sich and the apperception form the transcendental limits. Bonhoeffer also states: “One does not come across the community in an individualistic manner that treats it as andere Ding an sich!… Through the person of Christ other human beings, too, are moved out of the world of things – to which they, as still something existing, continue to belong – and into the social sphere of persons” (ibid., p. 124). 109 Ibid., p. 111. 110 Ibid. 106

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shall consider how these two distinctions lead to a different outcome in assessing the contribution of Bonhoeffer’s work to theological thinking both in relation to Janz and, more importantly, to Gunton. The “Where?” of knowledge in Bonhoeffer’s epistemology manifests the transcendence of Christ in the community and especially in the gracious actions of others towards the self for that is how Christ himself meets the autonomous “I”: “I hear another human truly proclaim to me the Gospel; he hands me the sacrament; you are forgiven; he and the community pray for me and I hear the Gospel, pray with and know myself in Word, Sacrament and prayer of the community of Christ, the new humanity, be they here now or elsewhere. I am conjoint with this community, borne from it and bearing it.”111 It is in these gracious acts that the individual meets others as Christ always and already pro nobis: “The entry of grace is the ultimate.”112 Christ discloses to Dasein that she is both come to life in the community and as such already bears the community in herself. The displacement of God is overcome at the same time as disengagement from the other. In fact, it is the act of Christ to engage the autonomous I as the transcendent other through the gracious actions of the immanent other. The renewed sense of placement for Dasein is two-fold. Firstly Christ replaces her in the world in relation to God. At the same time, this is done in the one movement that includes being placed into the community. Bonhoeffer identifies two main actions whereby Christ meets the individual in the community. The first act of grace in which Christ is encountered is the Word of the Gospel. The address of God in the Word meets Dasein as a gracious action of the church.113 In fact Christ is present as the word of the Church. “His existence [in the Church]

111

Ibid., p. 118. Bonhoeffer’s description of knowledge in, with and for action is quite similar to Heidegger’s idea of comprehension for embarking on projects. In this situation Dasein’s knowledge is können as much as wissen and kennen (Richardson, Heidegger, p. 62). This holistic (Gestalt) sense of knowledge that is intrinsic to Heidegger is also central to Bonhoeffer. 112 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 155. 113 The logic of this address, according to Bonhoeffer, lies in the fact that, “because humanity has a logos, God meets humanity in the Logos” (Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 297). This is not to say that the Logos can be objectified and analysed by the human logos but rather that Christ accommodates himself to the human logos in giving himself to it. As we have mentioned above Christ gives himself to the human logos as a person and therefore cannot be reduced to a mere idea – the normal currency of human logos. Bonhoeffer points out that the Word is structured as “address and idea”, whereas human thought has only idea. Human thought grasps the idea, “by its own free will, accept[s] it, adopt[s] it” (ibid., p. 298). Yet, as we have already shown, the Gegenlogos cannot be grasped but is, instead, the address of God to Dasein. It is only possible between the addresser and the respondent. The address “is not abstract [allgemein] and accessible at any time, but it happens there, where the address is given to another” (ibid., p. 298). Thus Christ reveals himself “where and when the Father wishes”, yet when he does reveal himself it is as pro nobis.

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is to be present as a sermon.”114 The individual meets Christ in the church as the Word because as the Word he [Christ] is the truth – “Truth is only in and through the Word.”115 God had bound himself to address Dasein in the church in this Word, and only in this Word. This, according to Bonhoeffer, is why the sermon came to be so significant during the Reformation: “the sermon is the form of the present Christ”. Again it is God’s Word that has entered into a human word. Therefore, just as Luther encouraged his followers to “point to this man and say, ‘That is God’”, so Bonhoeffer contends that we, “should point to this human word and say, ‘That is God!’”116 Thus the preacher speaks God’s Word to the congregation, yet the preacher is the one who speaks God’s Word. This is the first aspect of the conditions for the possibility for truth and meaning to be restored to the world of Dasein. The second main act of grace that Dasein receives is the sacrament. As Dasein is brought into the Church to meet Christ, she meets him in both Word and sacrament, because “here two things must be said: Christ is wholly Word, Sacrament is wholly Word; And: Sacrament is distinguished from Word in as much as it has its own right to exist as Sacrament in the Church.”117 So Christ is wholly the Word and the Sacrament is wholly the Word; yet the Word and the Sacrament are distinct, and therefore, so too are Christ and the Sacrament. Yet Christ is wholly present in the Sacrament and therefore the individual meets Christ in the Sacrament. The most significant thing in the present context is that the sacrament is another opportunity for the individual to meet Christ in the gracious act of another. The sacrament is the proclamation of the Gospel. “The deed is consecrated and interpreted by the Word. It is not a mute action.”118 It is the promise of the forgiveness of sins that makes the sacrament what it is. Yet this too is a gracious act of Christ in his church towards Dasein. So knowledge of ultimate reality involves identity and location. It is a matter of passive and active experience. Christ makes himself known as Gegenlogos pro nobis – the “Who?” of ultimate reality and this in the gracious actions of the Gemeinde. In this place the knowledge of ultimate reality becomes also acquaintance (kennen) and capability (können) as Dasein not only meets Christ in the other’s gracious actions but also and in turn acts for others. This is the creaturely existence that Bonhoeffer described and hence we diverge from Janz’s re-figuration of Christian epistemology based on Bonhoeffer’s theology. Janz, in a strongly Kantian fashion, has rightly identified the “Who?” question of knowledge, answered in the person of Christ as Gegenlogos, as the means of access to the transcendent God-with-us.119 This he claims results in the necessary ontological change from cor curvum in se to creaturely or pen-ultimate existence: “The whole Ibid., p. 299; see also Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 158. Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 297. 116 Ibid., p. 300. 117 Ibid. 118 Ibid. 119 Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 214. 114 115

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real world of human habitation, endeavour and possible experience now opens up as a pen-ultimate, as the world of creaturely being, that which has its being from God and therefore can be understood only from God, that is, only from the ‘Who?’”120 One of the advantages of this is that the referent to the transcendent, “is to be found only in the worldly, the ‘supernatural’ only in the natural, the holy only in the profane, the revelational only in the rational”.121 This in turn enables him to steer an epistemological course between the Scylla of dogmatism and the Charybdis of scepticism – there is no truer reality and the world we sense is the real world. From our reading of Bonhoeffer the knowledge of the transcendent comes through understanding Christ as Gegenlogos pro nobis. It is the revelation of Christ standing between God and the world, as the ultimate reality of both, that draws the cor curvum in se out of himself. Yet, as we have seen, this is only one pole of the Kantian transcendent that Bonhoeffer incorporates into his theological epistemology. If the act of thinking is displaced through confrontation with the Gegenlogos, the being of the thinker is also displaced out of himself and found instead in the church. Here in a far more Heideggerian sense than Janz allows, it is disclosed to Dasein that Christ always and already exists in the world as the Gemeinde in which Dasein has his creaturely being. It is in acquaintance with the gracious actions of others in the church that Dasein meets the Gegenlogos as pro nobis. In the church Dasein comprehends the conditions for the possibility for ultimate existence as grace ushers in the ultimate. The transition does not stop the world from being penultimate but the conditions for the possibility of creaturely existence are experienced in reality in relation to Christ, the ultimate, existing as community. We contend that for Bonhoeffer the value of the penultimate is founded upon Christ’s entry into it and for it. Bonhoeffer’s concern was for the conditions for the possibility of knowledge of the reality of God and the Good. His epistemology could be described as realist because of his agreement with Heidegger who rejected Kant. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s subsequent re-figuration of penultimate reality does not contain the Kantian divide between knowledge and ethics. With Dasein discovering itself in community as it is placed into the truth, the conditions for the possibility of solving Gunton’s two modern ills of displacement and disengagement are comprehensively met. Knowledge of ultimate reality has been imparted to the individual and experienced by her in Christ as community. At all times such knowledge is kept for the individual in Christ, yet at the same time it can be experienced by the individual as gift in Christ, through Word and Sacrament amongst the community. In this way the individual discovers the transcendent as always, already around her once she has been opened to others. God replaces himself as the ultimate reality in Christ and the reality of the world. The individual discovers herself always and already located in the world with God. Through the 120

Ibid., p. 215. Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 44, cited in Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire, p. 216.

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gracious acts of other to whom Dasein has been opened by Christ, the conditions for the possibility of creaturely existence are realised in personal engagement. What we have discovered in our initial reading of Bonhoeffer is a substantive alternative discourse on the problems of displacement and disengagement. Which, in turn, suggests a genuine solution to the dysfunctional practises of modern culture that undermine particularity. All this has been achieved from within the Western, Augustinian tradition of which Gunton is so critical. In fact, the only element of doubt that could be raised in regards to Bonhoeffer’s theology was the nature of the link between creation and redemption. Therefore we shall turn to explore Gunton’s description of epistemology in order to consider what difference an explicit Trinitarian Christology might make to modern dysfunctional notions of particularity.

Chapter 3

The Spirit Enables Sonship The essential elements are now in place for a theological conversation regarding Gunton’s proposal that particularity be understood as an eschatological work of the Spirit. We have the possibility of re-figuring Gunton’s basic concepts in the economy of salvation through a reading of the Luke-Acts narrative and an alternative theological discourse against which to compare the results. The previous chapter explored Bonhoeffer’s thought on knowledge of the ultimate reality of God and the world imparted to the individual in the person and work of Messiah Jesus. Here the individual is placed into the truth through being engaged by Christ in the church in the gracious actions of others. Bonhoeffer’s articulation of theological epistemology was seen to be a substantive remedy for the modern malaise of displacement and disengagement. We now turn to explore, appraise and develop Gunton’s explicitly Trinitarian solution to these problems. What we shall find as we advance along Gunton’s theological trajectory is, that having located him in the history of Israel as God’s saviour, the Spirit perfects the sonship of Messiah Jesus by enabling him to institute a perfected place for his Father through engagement with his people. Bonhoeffer on Theological and Non-Theological Thinking The dialogue between Gunton and Bonhoeffer will be sharpened by a passing remark the former made in his Warfield Lectures. In the context of critiquing Barth’s work on revelation, Gunton sought to defend Barth against Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer had described Barth’s theology as a “positivism of revelation”. Such a remark, according to Gunton, was “half baked”. There is a certain irony here, for closer examination of Bonhoeffer’s writings reveals that he and Gunton held similar grievances against the theologian who influenced them both. Bonhoeffer described the decline of Christian religion in Western Europe in several letters to Erbehard Bethge. In these letters he gives his own diagnosis of the displacement of God in Western thought. Like Gunton after him, Bonhoeffer Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 53. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 5.5.44”, in Widerstand und Ergebung, pp. 413–16; Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 8.6.44”; Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 30.4.44”.  Selby sees in the prison correspondence Bonhoeffer attempting to match the historical development of human autonomy and the gospel impetus to autonomy: “both  

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laments the part played in this decline by Christian theology. He considers himself to be amidst a generation of “religion-less” people wondering how Jesus could be Lord of the religion-less. Barth, according to Bonhoeffer, began down this line of thinking only to revert to a “positivism of revelation” which Bonhoeffer sees as a restoration of the old view of the foundational importance of religion in modern society: “Barth … had these thoughts and yet neither implemented nor developed them. Instead he arrived at a positivism of revelation, which, when it comes down to it, still remains essentially a restoration. Nothing is actually gained here for the religion-less worker or person.” Exactly what the phrase, “positivism of revelation”, means is difficult to determine. Interestingly for our conversation with Gunton, Bonhoeffer’s bid to understand Christianity without religion is an attempt to see Christ as “really Lord of the world [wirkliche Herr der Welt]”. In a religion-less “world-come-of-age”, there are none religiously preferred (religiös als Bevorzugte) but rather those who wholly belong to the world. Bonhoeffer himself opines that the matter may be resolved through further consideration of the distinction between the “penultimate and ultimate”. In the previous chapter requiring a situation where the deus ex machina is replaced by a God who is truly a suffering participant within the life of the world” (Peter Selby, “Christianity in a World Come of Age”, in Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 235). Jüngel takes this further, perceiving a Christological reflection as the background for interpreting the historical status quo, “in which we have to live and to explain the world ‘even if there were no God’” (Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983], p. 60).  Gunton shares the element of positive regard for the Enlightenment in Bonhoeffer‘s comments: “Whatever has been made of Bonhoeffer’s words … the positive thrust of his assertion is surely justified. There are false theologies, and false uses have been made of them; and in freeing us from them the Enlightenment’s demand for autonomy is to be given its proper place” (Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 67). For Gunton’s attitude to Christian theologies adverse effects on Western thought, see, e.g., Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many; Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation.  Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 30.4.44”, p. 404.  For an apposite summary of the discussion between Barth and Bonhoeffer scholars on the subject, see Ralf Wüstenberg, A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity, trans. Douglas W. Stott (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 60ff. Wüstenberg understands the charge to be levelled against Barth’s concept of religion as opposed to his doctrine of revelation. Barth’s view of religion was positive in the context of revelation: “by contrast, Bonhoeffer wants to understand human beings without rather than with religion” (ibid., p. 64).  Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 30.4.44”, p. 405.  Ibid.  Ibid., p. 406. Funamoto comments: “We can say that Bonhoeffer insists on the necessity of recovering attention to the natural from the perspective of the gospel” (“Penultimate and Ultimate in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics”, p. 388).

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we noted Bonhoeffer’s desire to understand Christ as being the ultimate reality of the world but not at the expense of penultimate things. In contrast to either the radical or the compromise Christianity, Bonhoeffer saw penultimate – worldly – things as being valuable because Christ entered into them as Saviour. What this may indicate in relation to Barth is that Bonhoeffer did not perceive the former to have developed an epistemology that gave sufficient place to the importance of living in this world. There was, perhaps, for Bonhoeffer, too great a distinction between theological and non-theological thinking in Barth’s work. That Bonhoeffer might have perceived such a distinction should have been more significant for Gunton. Gunton himself sensed a contrast in Barth’s thought “between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of other objects”. He offers the following quote from chapter 5 of Church Dogmatics: “We have all other objects as they are determined by the pre-arranged disposition and pre-arranged mode of our own existence.”10 Gunton disagreed and considers such talk, “strangely Kantian”.11 Such unguarded pronouncements represented to Gunton an extremely unhelpful widening of what he refers to as “the gulf” that already exists in our modern culture between theological and non-theological thinking.12 We shall use this issue of the relationship between theological and nontheological thinking to heighten the dialectic between Gunton and Bonhoeffer’s respective methodologies. Since Bonhoeffer has already given a good answer to the problem of displacement and disengagement, as we explore Gunton’s Trinitarian alternative we shall appraise his proposals in relation to Bonhoeffer’s desire for a “non-religious interpretation of theological concepts”.13 Of special interest will be the way Gunton articulated the perfecting role of the Spirit in the relationship between penultimate and ultimate things. He desired a sense of placement and engagement for the individual that made a notion of hypostatic particularity possible in terms of knowledge of, acquaintance with and ability for God and others in the world. Before we get to this however, and as we did for Bonhoeffer, we shall explore Gunton’s analysis and critique of Western epistemology on the way to what he labels “a general theology of revelation”. 10 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1, cited in Colin E. Gunton, “The Knowledge of God: ‘No Other Foundation’: One Englishman’s Reading of Church Dogmatics Chapter V”, in Theology through the Theologians, p. 67. 11 Bonhoeffer likewise remarked to Bethge that Barth’s Commentary on Romans contains many, “neo-Kantian eggshells” (Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 8.6.44”, p. 481). No specific example is given. 12 Gunton admits that the later Barth was much more careful and therefore he (Gunton) resists making too much of a single statement (Gunton, “Knowledge of God”, p. 67). 13 Bonhoeffer complains to Bethge that Barth’s theology neglects the world that lives outside the church’s sphere of interest in personal salvation. This is not to imply that Bonhoeffer considered Barth’s ethical observations (such as they were at the time) somehow inadequate but rather that “in the non-religious interpretation of theological concepts he has not given concrete direction” (Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 8.6.44”, p. 481).

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Gunton’s General Theology of Revelation In his Warfield Lectures, Gunton attempted a non-religious interpretation of one of the twentieth century’s theological shibboleths – revelation. Following Coleridge’s maxim that “all Truth is a species of revelation”, Gunton sought to close the gap between revelation and autonomous reason that he claimed had been opened during the Enlightenment.14 He refers to this as an uncalled for choice: “Because it is believed that revelation takes away our autonomous reason and leaves us in thrall to the authority of others or the impersonal other, it becomes necessary to replace it with pure untrammelled reason. On the other hand, if reason is autonomous and self-sufficient, we do not need revelation.”15 Gunton proposed to bridge the gap between revelation and discovery or autonomy and authority in two ways. His first step was to hold firmly to the importance of mediation in knowledge. That is, all knowledge is mediated to us in one way or another. The second way was through an increased focus on the role of the Holy Spirit as the one sent from God through the Lord Jesus to “lead us into all Truth”.16 We shall pursue Gunton’s idea that all truth is revealed through these two corollaries, mediation and the work of the Spirit, in order to see how well Gunton’s theological epistemology brings knowledge of the penultimate in a “world come of age”. Reason and Perception in Knowing the World For Gunton, the place to start in understanding the relationship between discovery and revelation was the reintegration of reason and perception. To accomplish this he turned to the philosophy of science espoused by Michael Polanyi. A central tenet of Polanyi’s theory was a renewed confidence in the process of perception. He wanted to bring the Enlightenment’s extremes of empiricism and idealism back together. Gunton stated: “Polanyi developed a relational rather than objectivising conception of knower and known; that is to say, he stressed that our relationship to a person or thing is primary to our knowing them.”17 It is what philosophers might otherwise refer to as “knowledge by acquaintance” (kennen). It happens as a product of indwelling the world and it is to be contrasted with “an epistemology of spatial distance”. This was Gunton’s phrase to describe what he perceived as the Enlightenment tendency to favour objectification through isolation as the basis of knowledge. He characterised an Enlightenment view of knowledge as follows:

14

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Letter to Thomas Poole, 23 March 1801, cited in Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 22. 15 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 21. 16 A growing importance in Gunton’s theology was the desire to see work of the Holy Spirit as more than “applying the benefits of Christ to the believer” (see especially, Gunton, “God the Holy Spirit”, p. 105). 17 Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, p. 85.

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Knowledge is something (1) possessed by an individual, who (2) stands over against something which is conceived to be spatially distant. The spatial distance is bridged by bringing either the mind into conformity with the world (‘realism’) or the world into conformity with the mind (‘idealism’). In either case, (3) the intellectual bridge between the two is provided by the foundational axioms, which are conceived to link the mind with the world.18

This spatial distance is overcome in the first instance, through acknowledging that the mind is related to the world through the body and its sense organs. These, while by no means perfect, need not be treated as useless, or worse as perniciously misleading,19 but rather as the means by which the knowledge of the world is mediated to us. The dynamics of this process view of knowledge are encapsulated in an example that Polyani gave: “Think how a blind man feels his way by use of a stick, which involves transporting the shocks transmitted to his hands and the muscles holding the stick into an awareness of things touched by the point of the stick.”20 The blind man, though aware of the pressure of the stick on his hand, must learn to transfer, “his attention to the world through the stick”. Polanyi referred to the knowledge of the stick touching the ground as “focal awareness”, and the knowledge of the stick touching the man’s hand was termed “subsidiary awareness”. The man’s subsidiary awareness of this stick in the process of learning more about the world was what Polanyi refered to as “tacit knowledge”. It is the means we employ in our quest to learn more – namely our senses. For Gunton it meant: “The mind is not related to the world by clear and distinct ideas or relationship conceived in primarily mathematical terms, in a disembodied way. In order that the blind man may perceive the world he must indwell the stick he carries.”21 In Gunton’s opinion then, Polanyi has established a practice whereby a person is “acting upon the world not simply to dominate and control, but also to receive”.22 We have a real continuity with that which we indwell.23 It is not completely external 18

Gunton, “Knowledge of God”, p. 53, emphasis original. Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, pp. 16ff. 20 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge, corr. edn, 1962), p. 55, cited in Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 38. 21 Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 40, emphasis original. 22 Ibid., p. 41, emphasis original. 23 While not disagreeing with Gunton, van den Brom contends: “Polanyi does not say that we indwell the world but argues that we indwell our languages, ideals, theories, etc. the ‘fiduciary framework’ through which we are in touch with the world” (Luco Johan van den Brom, “Can Anything Good Come from Nazareth? Universality of Divine Action in the Particularity of Jesus Christ”, Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 43 [2001]: 113). In defence of Gunton, Polanyi states of tools (and inter alia, external objects): “Our subsidiary awareness of tools and probes can be regarded 19

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to us and hence Gunton contended: “Where the Enlightenment attempted to erect safety fences, to find an area where reason was safe from risk, Polanyi’s postcritical approach takes the risk of personal commitment to be the only possible route to discovery.”24 In the end what Gunton settled upon was a critical realism where “sensation and reason, passive reception and active understanding, operate together”.25 It is a creative process where imagination26 in continuity with other mental processes leads a person to “stumbling discovery rather than the quest for certainty”.27 It is possible to know the world, “though not infallibly, nor with an aim at a kind of omniscience”.28 The reason for this is, Gunton claimed, that “we are both part of it [the world] and able to transcend it through our personal powers of perception, imagination and reason”. Hence knowledge of any kind is not to be understood “on the analogy of the machine or of omniscience”.29 Furthermore, the now as the act of making them form a part of our own body … We pour ourselves into them and assimilate them as part of our own existence. We accept them existentially by dwelling in them” (Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 59, emphasis added). The implicit physicality would indicate far more than a merely cognitive fiduciary framework. 24 Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 41. 25 Gunton suggests: “A realist view is encouraged by a belief that there is enough in common between the perceiver and his world for him to understand it as it is” (ibid., p. 47). 26 Imagination is used in Coleridge’s sense: “While fancy is at the mercy of the law of association, the imagination exercises a ‘shaping and modifying power’” (ibid., p. 33). This is imagination in an exalted sense. Gunton asserts: “It is not simply the mind’s aimless and uncontrolled (‘Pavlovian’) reaction to stimuli, but the way by which we are able to penetrate and, indeed, repeat after it, the very divine act of creation”. Gunton’s objection to both Plato and Kant on this issue is that “neither of them has place for the mind’s freedom in developing concepts” (ibid.). According to Gunton, the error of both Plato and Kant is “to isolate the merely intellectual contribution to human rationality from a broader conception of the relation of person to reality as rooted in time and space” (Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, pp. 90–91). Gunton wants freedom for the mind to describe, in some way, the world as it is. In order to do this successfully one must, inter alia, take into consideration the role of imagination, and therefore metaphor, in human conceptuality. Gunton contends that “imagination represents the material and, so to speak, embodied character of our relations with the world” (ibid., p. 90). Consequently rationality ought not be seen as disembodied since it is through our bodies that we are related to the world. The chief vehicle for the imagination is the metaphor whereby we image the world indirectly but genuinely. “They are means of interpreting one part of the world by another, a sign that the words refer and describe without direct imaging, but imaginatively transcending the imaging power of language” (ibid., p. 91). The freedom of the mind in rationality is its ability to produce ideas that go beyond previous achievements by means of a “creative leap”. 27 Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 43. 28 Ibid., p. 48. 29 Ibid., p. 38. Gunton equates mechanical notions of knowledge with the philosophy of John Locke: “Locke’s theory is that the object, out in the world, possesses qualities which transmit ideas into the mind … The mechanical properties are really in the objects, absolutely” (ibid., p. 18).

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consequent excessive expectations that have historically devalued the senses, in favour of purely rational functions, can be lowered. The unwarranted regard for explicit knowledge can be rejected in favour of Polanyi’s slogan that we always “know more than we can tell”.30 As was, unfortunately, so often the case with Gunton’s work, Polanyi’s theory was presented rather than argued.31 Therefore we shall only make a brief observation before moving on. At the risk of making word associations, we note Polanyi’s sense of stumbling discovery is reminiscent of Heidegger’s idea of Dasein “stumbling across itself in a world”, that Bonhoeffer adopted.32 The basic outcome is the same in that both Bonhoeffer and Gunton have a commitment to a form of realism. Yet in following Polanyi, Gunton made explicit a sense in which the penultimate might be known apart from Christ, at a much broader level than Bonhoeffer’s ethics-centred epistemology allowed.33 For Bonhoeffer the connection between the individual and the non-personal realm only comes after Dasein has been placed in the church by Christ as this church is placed in the world by Christ. In a “world come of age”, Gunton’s use of post-critical philosophy allows humans to know something of the world without entering the church. At the same time he has greatly diminished the rational powers of the autonomous “I” pointing to “a community of the person and her world”.34 For Gunton epistemology is where “claims for knowledge derive from the concrete relation in which a person exists with reference to whom and what he knows”.35 In this scenario, and in contrast to Bonhoeffer, the “Where?” of knowledge is the whole world. However, like Bonhoeffer, knowledge is only possible through engagement with the other. General Revelation as Knowledge Mediated by the Other The possibility of integrating reason and perception in the process of knowing formed the basis for Gunton to consider the mediating role of the other in

30

Ibid., p. 39. This is perhaps, as Webster has suggested, another case where Gunton “assumes the viability of his presuppositions and presses ahead to draw corollaries” (Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 262). 32 Bonhoeffer writes: “For this reason realism is right [it is already in a world]; but it is incorrect in seeking to substantiate this outside world” (Akt und Sein, p. 64). 33 We note that Heidegger’s Dasein knows itself to be in a world but then needs to work out “what to do” (Couzens Hoy, “Heidegger and the Hermeneutic Turn”, p. 177). Considering the influence of Heidegger on Bonhoeffer, it is not surprising, perhaps, that Bonhoeffer’s epistemology was absorbed in the field of the ethical. In addition Bonhoeffer himself focuses his discussion of the penultimate on two things: “das Menschein und das Gutsein – being human and being Good” (Ethik, p. 151). 34 Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 48. 35 Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, p. 99. 31

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epistemology.36 He sought to reduce the gap between theological and nontheological thinking by addressing unnecessary distinctions between them. In terms of epistemology for a religionless world, Gunton’s intention was to reduce the monopoly that theology holds on a term like revelation.37 He claimed that “all kinds of things are revelatory … not necessarily of God … but of themselves, or of the order of things in the world”.38 This assertion is based on an extremely broad definition of revelation as “the making known of that which otherwise remains hidden or unknown”.39 For evidence of this general revelation Gunton appeals, somewhat anecdotally, to the experience of getting to know another person via the mediation of the five senses. In this context even self-revelations are not always willed and the possibility of deception means that we are able to hide even as we reveal. There is, claims Gunton, “no need to deny that things, as much as – or rather, in different ways from – people, in some way hide their true being”.40 Nonetheless, he contends, we open ourselves through mediation, either by action or speech, and this is not direct knowledge.41 In fact, he contends, the notion of mediation holds equally for selfknowledge: “We are beings only in relation, and cannot know ourselves without the mediation of others.”42 Ultimately we know as much as we are allowed to know and as much as we are prepared to risk opening ourselves to others.43 36 We have already referred to Webster’s criticisms of Gunton when it comes to a definition of mediation (Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 260). Here we could add Gunton’s attitude towards theological language in general: “a demonstration of how words work as part of Christian enterprise will be more persuasive than fitting them into some theoretical scheme decided in advance” (Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study in Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988], p. 28). At the risk of subverting this statement we could point to Gunton’s thought on metaphor as a guide to his use of the mediation concept. In an attempt to rehabilitate the notion of metaphor in general discourse (and theological discourse in particular) Gunton settled on a basic definition: “in metaphor patterns of meaning are created from the fusion of notions which are, and remain, disparate” (ibid, p. 37). As we shall see the idea of something (or someone) bringing together two disparate things, especially God and creation, is basically the way that Gunton speaks of the mediatorial work of both the Son and the Spirit – though in particular ways. 37 Gunton seeks, “to put the doctrine of revelation in its systematic place, in relative subordination to other doctrines, so that the part may not become the whole, and thus strengthen rather than weaken its position” (Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 50.) 38 Ibid., p. 106. 39 Ibid., p. 68. 40 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 201. 41 Gunton wanted to avoid the implication that knowledge of another is analogical, founded upon some inner experience after the fashion of Descartes. 42 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 24. 43 This is consistent with Bonhoeffer’s position on the other in community as one transcendent pole for knowledge.

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In the impersonal realm Gunton is keen to press Kant on the idea that we must wait on nature to reveal her secrets, even if “we must rack her in our laboratories and dominate her by our concepts”.44 With the qualifications on the extent of human knowledge as set out by Polanyi, Gunton maintained an important place for science. Science is authoritative by “being one of the vehicles by which the truth of the natural world is revealed to us”.45 Thus scientific knowledge is both mediated and mediation: “It is the case that nature does not reveal its secrets apart from structures of human rationality.”46 Gunton opined that there is something in the way that humans work in the world that may actively correspond with the way that the world is. He paraphrases Irenaeus: “we are the ones in whom nature becomes articulate”.47 Scientific theory is “the means by which the structure of the world is made known, revealed, to us”.48 In the end he proposed the simple point that if all scientific writings were lost we would no longer know and be able to manipulate the world in the same way that we now do.49 Gunton completed the sketch of general revelation by pointing to the increased importance in Western culture of an ecological understanding of the world.50 This is evidence for the relational nature of knowledge that operates in similar ways whether the issue is personal or impersonal reality.51 It seems that he wanted to acknowledge twentieth-century calls to accept art as an equally valid source of knowledge (with the natural sciences) of the world.52 He opines: “In the first place we can say that the shape, colour and texture of a piece of pottery can be revelatory of the way the natural world is.”53 Whether we are talking about Shakespeare’s plays or classics of the fine arts, “what is interesting here is the way in which the works of human hand, imagination and mind may reveal something of the way the world and human life are”.54 Whether it is science or art, the knowledge of the world that is gained is a revelation mediated through its intrinsic relationality.

44 In the previous chapter we referred to Kant’s rather triumphalistic attitudes towards the command of human reason as “judge who compels the witness to answer questions” of nature. Gunton pointed out that we still do need to be taught by nature (Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 25). 45 Ibid., p. 27. 46 Ibid., p. 34. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., p. 28. 50 Note Webster’s observation: “the idiom of his [Gunton’s] writing is usually second order, not first order” (Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 162). 51 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 29. 52 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, pp. 130–31. 53 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 29. For a related discussion on inspiration in the arts, see Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, pp. 90ff. 54 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 30.

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As we indicated at the beginning of this section, Gunton attempted to bring revelation and discovery closer together. He did this by domesticating the former and rehabilitating the latter. In order to span the gap between theological and non-theological thinking he suggested the same basic approach must be used for knowledge of the penultimate as well as the ultimate. That is, individuals must personally engage with that which is beyond or outside themselves, with all the attendant risks and contingences, in order to gain knowledge. Yet, Gunton’s description of revelation considers the individual more generally as mens corvum in se. It addresses a sense of the True that is distinct from the Good – a nonmoral truth. Bonhoeffer’s discussion of ultimate reality did not really allow for this. While we were able to describe both Gunton and Bonhoeffer as holding realistic epistemologies, the difference between them is a matter of eschatology. Bonhoeffer’s eschatology was shaped by the notion of Christ being the solution to creation and focused on the individual as cor curvum in se. Here knowledge of ultimate reality is dominated by the restoration of the Good especially in a world come of age.55 Gunton’s description of redemption explicitly concerns all of creation being moved by the Spirit towards its goal, which is previewed in the Messiah. His system allows an explicit distinction between the True and the Good within the penultimate and ultimate. Furthermore, unlike Bonhoeffer, the shape of Gunton’s eschatology allows for a sense in which the penultimate anticipates the ultimate. The key is the role of the Spirit, to which we now turn. The Spirit of Truth and the Perfection of Knowledge Gunton sought to bring theological and non-theological thinking together firstly through closing the gap between reason and perception and then by domesticating the idea of revelation. In this scenario all knowledge is indirect or mediated, with knowledge of ultimate things being a particular kind of knowing. For Gunton knowledge of ultimate things involved avoiding two of the traditional shortcomings of Christian theology. On the one hand is the drive to establish a “natural theology” that might somehow deliver knowledge of God in abstraction from his revelation of himself in Jesus and the Israelite drama. On the other hand one must avoid trying to “prove the necessity of God from the inexplicability of the world”, or worse, create “an argument to God from the gaps in our knowledge”.56 55 A basic premise behind this phrase was that God was no longer needed to explain “science, society, public life, Art or ethics” (Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 8.6.44”, p. 476). Bonhoeffer sought to develop his religionless Christianity within this climate. In contrast Gunton was seeking to reclaim a Christian description of culture without those aspects of theology against which modernity perhaps rightly rebelled (The One, the Three and the Many, p. 129). 56 Colin E. Gunton, “Creation and Re-Creation: An Exploration of Some Themes in Aesthetics and Theology”, Modern Theology 2 (1985): 7. This is not the same distinction

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The way forward is twofold. Firstly, Christian theology must destroy any logical link between the doctrine of creation and natural theology.57 It must be freed from any entanglements with Platonic or Aristotelian notions of being and correspondence between divine and human reason. Only then can the Christian doctrine of creation out of nothing provide “a common foundation for all the human enterprises we call culture, not just theology, but science, politics, ethics and art as well”.58 In this vein Gunton contended that Christian epistemology flows out of the understanding that: Primarily in worship, but in other relations as well, the Christian community is brought to the Father by the Spirit through the Son; or similarly, but with a slight difference of emphasis, through the Son and in the Spirit … Believing the world to have been created and redeemed by God the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit, the Church responds with the particular mode of action and life which she believes to be appropriate to her belief.59

It is the dual mediation of Son and Spirit for the Father in creation and to the Father in redemption that forms the basis of Gunton’s theological epistemology. At one level this grand metanarrative makes for quite a contrast to Bonhoeffer’s more existential theology with its focus on Christ as the ultimate reality of God and the world. Nevertheless, both Gunton and Bonhoeffer rest on an “ecclesial way of

that Bonhoeffer makes between der Radikalismus and der Kompromiß for the relationship between the ultimate and the penultimate (Bonhoeffer, Ethik, pp. 144–5). These refer to ways in which the Christian lives rightly in the world before God. What Gunton is referring to is ways Christianity has abortively tried to argue from understanding to faith. 57 In short, Gunton held that Augustine effectively replaced Christ with “almost eternal Platonic forms” as the mediators of creation: “The ideas are certain original and principal forms of things … not themselves formed … are contained in the Divine Intelligence … everything which can come into being and pass away … is said to be formed in accord with these ideas” (Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, 46.2, cited in Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 44). This according to Gunton became the structuring, relational framework for creation and introduced Neoplatonic notions of graded being in the creation. In addition to this a further Platonic–Aristotelian notion of “an immediate, or near immediate, relation of the rational mind with the divine rationality was posited” (Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 45). In both cases the functions of Christ and the Spirit as the mediator of creation and the mediator of knowledge of creation are displaced to imminent realities: “the continuity between human reason and God mediated by the semieternal (and therefore semi-divine) forms” (ibid., p. 45). What was the Christian doctrine of creation was confused with a Christo-pagan natural theology. Gunton concludes that when medieval Platonic–Aristotelian worldview was thrown out by modernity so was the Christianity that had become so entangled with it. 58 Ibid., p. 55; see also Gunton, Triune Creator. 59 Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, p. 98.

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knowing” even if epistemology tended to take priority in Bonhoeffer’s thinking.60 Gunton’s second way forward is a renewed and enhanced understanding of the role of the Spirit in the mediation of knowledge of creation. The Spirit of Truth as the Mediator of Knowledge As we have seen, Gunton was firmly committed to understanding the Spirit as the mediator of eschatological perfection in creation: If the Spirit is indeed the perfecting cause of creation, whose function is to bring the world through Christ to a completeness, which it did not have in the beginning … The destiny of things on this account is to be presented before the throne in their perfection, not without the human creation, indeed, but transformed in such a way that their true otherness is not only respected but achieved.61

This notion of the Spirit’s perfecting work in conjunction with the assumption that God as creator is the source of all being, meaning and truth leads Gunton to assert that any development of knowledge, be it in terms of truth, beauty or goodness, is actually the work of the Spirit. “If there is a revelation of the truth of the world, it is because the Spirit of truth enables it to take place.”62 This means that we are neither the creators of knowledge nor its controllers, despite the fact that “the concepts by which we express it [the truth] are in part the free creations of our minds”.63 The Spirit is the governor of revelation both for theological and non-theological thinking. This does not mean that all knowledge is the same kind but it does imply we cannot know anything unless we are taught by that which is other than ourselves, which “means God the Spirit albeit in diverse mediations”.64 Instead of the struggle between revelation from above and discovery from below, it is more of view of knowledge, “before and after”, as the perfecting Spirit goes before human interaction with the world enabling truth about the nature of the cosmos to be discovered. Any knowledge of truth is the gift of the Spirit. 60

Nickson notes that Bonhoeffer refused to sidestep the epistemological question in theology “by retreating into the realms of ethics or feeling” (Ann L. Nickson, Bonhoeffer on Freedom: Courageously Grasping Reality, Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology & Biblical Studies [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002], p. 48). Of course Bonhoeffer’s theological epistemology makes no allowance for a natural theology like Gunton describes above. In this respect Bonhoeffer is a product of his time insisting on revelation as a first order issue in theology (Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pt. 1), again in contrast to Gunton. 61 Colin E. Gunton, “The End of Causality? The Reformers and their Predecessors”, in The Doctrine of Creation, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), p. 81. 62 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 34. 63 Ibid., p. 35. 64 Ibid.

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We may at this point ask how the Spirit does this. How does the Spirit act as the mediator of truth in creation? On the whole, and as interesting and potentially useful as this idea might be, the Spirit’s mediation of knowledge is largely something simply asserted by Gunton within the creation/eschatology framework mentioned above. In the Bampton Lectures he insisted on the Spirit’s ability to cross boundaries: “Spirit relates one to another beings and realms that are opposed or separate.”65 It is a consequence of having or being spirit that enables something or someone to “be open to that, which is other than itself, or to move in relation to the other”.66 Gunton claims this as a biblical understanding of the fact that “by his Spirit God comes into relationship with the world, creating and renewing it”.67 The result of this is that creation is opened to God by God the Spirit. Both Old and New Testaments evidence a relational dynamic between God and humanity in the context of the Spirit.68 Gunton acknowledges that this language of openness is limited to the personal realm: “It has to do with the unique features of persons, their ability to transcend themselves, to think and act beyond the present and the place in which they are set.”69 However, this is what dovetails the pneumatological and relational aspects of Gunton’s epistemology together. Being or possessing spirit is a theological way of speaking of “the personal agency of God towards the world; anthropologically [it is] a way of speaking of human responsiveness to God and to others; cosmologically [it is] a way of speaking of human openness to the world and the world’s openness to human knowledge, action and art”.70 The Idealist use of spirit here is to be distinguished from a Hegelian transcendental notion of Spirit.71 In the first instance, Gunton is not saying that everything is spirit. He acknowledges that “to make everything spirit is to bring about a loss of particularity, or so it Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 181. Exactly what it means to “be open” is never really explained. We are left to infer from the discussion of general revelation that it means something like “willing and able to reveal”. Perhaps we could add “openness” to Webster’s list: “Along with ‘mediation,’ terms such a ‘communion,’ ‘person,’ and ‘relation’ are used with great suggestiveness but not always accorded thorough analytical treatment” (Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 261). 67 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 181. Gunton offers Ezek. 37 where the prophet envisions the Spirit coming upon the bones in the valley, Luke’s account of the creation of the infant in the womb of Mary and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 68 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 182. Gunton offers Rom. 8:15–16: “When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit.” 69 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 184. 70 Ibid., p. 186. 71 Gunton’s theological assessment of what happened for Hegel is that Christology was swallowed up in a kind of rationalist pneumatology. Father, Son and Holy Spirit do not maintain their reality as persons, but the Father and the Son are little more than stages on the way to the final self-realisation of the rational Spirit (Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, p. 93). 65 66

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would appear, because it is the material shape of the objects of our experience that is the means of their individuation and the mark of their particularity, so that I recognise someone by the shape of his head, the distinctive character of her walk.72 In the end only God is spirit. Persons have spirit but things neither have nor are spirit. Nonetheless, all who are or have spirit are able to be open to others and therefore humans can participate in the relational knowledge of creation under the governance of the Spirit. Divine assistance in discerning the truths of the world ought not to imply that human knowledge can go beyond its finite limits. This brought Gunton back to the eschatological nature of the Spirit’s work. The knowledge of creation that comes through being part of it is limited by time.73 “The truth of all forms of culture, sacred or profane … will finally come to be known at the end of all things, at their judgement.”74 The implication is that with the passing of time, the consequent pruning of the traditions that are handed down through it “leave us with provisional answers to the question of whether and in what sense the things we have received are true”.75 Since it is the work of the Spirit to move all things through Christ to the Father, the truth that the Spirit opens a person up to in creation is also shaped into that perfecting trajectory. Christian epistemology then is the rational articulation of the character of God, human reality and the world “characterised by a particular relation – the indwelling of Christ through the agency of the Spirit”.76 The Spirit is “revealed, that is to say, as the mediator of relation to God through Christ and consequently as the mediator of revelation”.77 At this point we have exposed a stark contrast between Gunton and Bonhoeffer. Despite the protests of scholars like Marsh who plead for an interpretation of Bonhoeffer “that always presupposes the primary objectivity of God’s trinitarian identity”,78 from what we saw in the previous chapter the Spirit barely rates a mention. Christ makes himself known even as he reveals the ultimate reality about God and the world; he is the Gegenlogos who confronts the autonomous “I”. When the Spirit does appear in Bonhoeffer’s discussion of Christology, He is conflated with the divine Word: “That Christ is the Word means that he is the Truth. Truth is only in the Word and through the Word. Spirit is originally Word, not power, act or feeling. ‘In the beginning was the Word and through the Word are all things accomplished.’ The Spirit is power and act Only as Word.”79 No doubt we are Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 186. Gunton again finds support from Polanyi who called for, “the realisation that we operate in time, moving with the help of tradition one step at a time” (Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 51). 74 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 88. 75 Ibid. 76 Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, p. 98. 77 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 121. 78 Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. ix. 79 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 297. 72 73

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meant to understand in this assertion Bonhoeffer’s desire to keep Word and Spirit together. Even so it is a poor reflection on his pneumatology, which, in the refiguration presented in the previous chapter, is otherwise absent from his theology of knowledge. Again, in defence of Bonhoeffer, Kelly and Nelson point out that the especially Christocentric language of the Christology lectures should be balanced by Bonhoeffer’s attitude towards the Spirit in both Sanctorum communio and the later Discipleship: “Bonhoeffer’s pneumatology in Discipleship retrieves his reflections on the Body of Christ of Sanctorum Communio.”80 They offer: “It is the Holy Spirit who brings Christ to the individuals (Eph. 3:17; 1 Cor. 12:3). It is the Spirit who builds up the church by gathering the individuals, even though in Christ the whole building is already complete (Eph. 2:22; 4:12; Col. 2:4).”81 Bonhoeffer does give the Spirit the role of facilitating the meeting between Christ and the believer in the community and the various gracious acts of community members. Even so Kelly and Nelson are forced to admit a number of times: “Bonhoeffer’s earliest pneumatology did not change drastically in the years that followed … At times he did not distinguish between the work of Jesus’ post-resurrection presence as church and the extraordinary mission of the Holy Spirit.”82 In course material from the Finkenwalde Seminary not mentioned in Kelly and Nelson’s study we find some of Bonhoeffer’s most concentrated attention to the Holy Spirit. In the second section of the second course running from 4 November 1935 until 15 March 1936, Bonhoeffer lectured on biblical material on the Holy Spirit.83 Here, the work of the Spirit is distinguished from Pentecost by relating it to the ministry of Jesus though without exploration.84 In discussing the triune relations he seems surprised at “the Dasein of the Spirit [is] before the incarnation!” in reference to Matt. 1:18 and wonders how “to overcome” the Spirit’s presence at the Baptism. The issue surrounds Jesus remarks in John’s account that “the Spirit cannot come until he departs”. He concludes: “As God, the Spirit is already there.”85 In these lectures, Bonhoeffer is clear on the personhood of the Spirit and denounces Schleiermacher’s statement that “the Spirit is a something”.86 Concerning the offices of the Spirit (penitence, conversion, renewal and sanctification), Bonhoeffer refers to the Spirit as “the Spirit of realisation”.87 This is interesting Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson, The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 68. 81 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, cited in Kelly and Nelson, Cost of Moral Leadership, p. 68. 82 Kelly and Nelson, Moral Leadership, 65. 83 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Bibelkundliche Lehrverstaltung über Neutestamentliche Grundbegriffe”, in Illegale Theologenausbildung: Finkenwalde 1935–1937, ed. Otto Dudzus et. al., DBW 14 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1996). 84 Ibid., p. 471. 85 Ibid., p. 472. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid., p. 474. 80

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considering the Heideggerian edge in his epistemology explored above in Chapter 2. Realisation suits the “always already” character of knowledge in Bonhoeffer. In anticipation of what we shall explore in Chapter 5, Bonhoeffer makes much of the Spirit constituting the community.88 In terms of the ongoing conversation with Gunton two things are worthy of comment. Firstly, Bonhoeffer does not commit any of the transgressions of which Gunton accused Augustine. The Spirit is definitely a distinct person in accordance with the testimony of Scripture. A second feature is that the Spirit’s offices incorporate him in the economy of salvation and give his work an eschatological facet. However, Bonhoeffer’s thought is centred on the Spirit applying the benefits of Christ to the believer/community. Such a focus for the Spirit was a chief area of complaint that Gunton held against the Western tradition.89 Thus in comparison to Bonhoeffer, Gunton’s description of the Spirit governing the discovery of all truth in knowledge of the penultimate and the ultimate has certainly brought the two close together. There is little room for the deus ex machina that Bonhoeffer wanted to dispel from his religionless Christianity.90 The only problem for Gunton is that his suggestion has little exegetical description. Considering the importance of this aspect of his position we ought to expect a more concerted effort to ground his thought in Christian Scripture. For, as we shall see, Scripture takes a central place in his theological epistemology. Saving Knowledge of God Mediated through Scripture With the Spirit as the mediator of all truth the conversation regarding theological and non-theological thinking has moved away from non-religious interpretation. Gunton’s epistemology achieved a renewed sense of God’s placement by positing the Spirit as the mediator of all revelation. Even so, this move afforded him the possibility of divine initiative in knowledge of penultimate reality and a strong dependence upon the mediation of knowledge by another. Divine initiative in the actions of another was the basis for Bonhoeffer’s knowledge of ultimate things. Gunton’s theology offers the possibility of seeing the reality of ultimate things as the perfection of an individual’s knowledge of God and penultimate things. As mentioned above, knowledge of ultimate things comes via mediation. Gunton contends that modern thought, and especially religion, has absorbed from Hegel a “revelatory immediacy” that amounts to “a direct apprehension of the content of the faith that will in some way or other serve to identify it beyond question”.91 The result of following Hegel, in Christian thought, is an implicit breach between the Word of God and Jesus the man which is not only damaging to Christology but will inevitably lead “to the neglect of the historical life of Christ 88

Ibid., pp. 475–6. See Gunton, “God the Holy Spirit”. 90 Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 30.4.44”, p. 408. 91 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 4. 89

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as the basis for our knowledge of God”.92 The focal knowledge of Christ and, through him the knowledge of God, comes to us, according to Gunton, mediated by the Bible.93 Scripture mediates knowledge of the life, death, resurrection and heavenly session of Jesus the Christ. This, Gunton contended, is the knowledge of God’s saving acts for his creation. Again the role of the Spirit is integral and this gives substance to the important distinction between revelation and inspiration. Inspiration is the means by which the Spirit drew the apostles (and the prophets of Israel) into the communion with God and his people. Gunton offered: “Part of what it means to say that scripture is inspired is accordingly to be found in an affirmation that God the Spirit enabled members of a community in a particular time to articulate what it was about that particular configuration of events that is uniquely significant for the salvation of the world.”94 The Spirit then leads people to Jesus who reveals the Father.95 The Spirit orders the process of community formation even as he governs the documents of this community so that, at all times, the words are human words that serve the eschatological purposes of the Spirit of Truth. Gunton opined: “Revelation thus takes shape in an ecclesial relation between inspired teacher and inspired taught.”96 The Spirit’s perfecting work does not stop with the compilation of the Bible but is intrinsic to the knowledge that is imparted in the reading of Scripture. The relation of apostle to Christ means that the Spirit empowers certain particular individuals to become mediators of the saving knowledge of Christ: “the Spirit is in the apostolic word, it is not simply with it and in us”.97 Although it was not specifically mentioned in our re-figuration of Bonhoeffer’s epistemology, Wilmer notes a similar attitude towards the Bible in Bonhoeffer’s thought: “Because of its content, the Bible has specific capacity to save; it is centred on Christ and the cross.”98 For Bonhoeffer, it is “in the Bible that the Ultimate is 92 Alan Spence, “Christ’s Humanity and Ours”, cited in Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 5. 93 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 108. Gunton holds that “scripture is revelatory in that sense by virtue of the fact that it participates in those things – persons and events – that we call revelation”. Scripture is testimony to revelation and therefore is best spoken of as revelatory. 94 Ibid., p. 76. 95 Gunton distinguishes himself from Barth here claiming that Barth has a tendency to suggest that Christ reveals himself (ibid., p. 75). Even if this is not a fair criticism of Barth it is certainly consistent with the re-figuration of Bonhoeffer’s epistemology presented in the previous chapter. 96 Ibid., p. 77. 97 P.T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, cited in Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 78. 98 Haddon Wilmer, “Costly Discipleship”, in Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 183.

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met”.99 For Gunton, at least, the centrality of the Bible was based on what Kelsey might call “the mode of concrete actuality”.100 That is, God is understood to be present “in and through an agent rendered present” by the narrative.101 However it ought to be noted that Gunton was keen to distance himself from “narrative theology”. He argued: “The narrative [of a Gospel] is not … immediately – that is without mediation – related to the reality of its readers, though the relation is direct.”102 Even so, with the Bible playing such a central role in the mediation of revelation, especially of Messiah Jesus as the mediator of God, it is hard not to be dissatisfied with the fact that Scripture played such a slight role in the substantiation of Gunton’s thought. Saving Knowledge through Personal Relationships It will be recalled that the “Where?” of knowledge for Bonhoeffer was the context of the church and thus in a context of personal relationships. Gunton’s idea of the Spirit governing all knowledge allows him to address Bonhoeffer’s position at a much broader level through the issue of church tradition. He wrote: “we do not have direct, unmediated relation to him [Jesus], at least in the sense that the words which communicate his reality are firmly anchored in the past”.103 To compensate for this Gunton asserted that tradition is a matter of personal relation throughout time: “The interpretation of the revelatory particulars is entrusted to particular people, who by handing on what they have received become what we call a tradition”.104 Gunton was perhaps making explicit what was implicit in Bonhoeffer’s “always already” disclosure of the truth to Dasein. It means not only that personal knowledge need not be individualistic but also that community knowledge need not be idiosyncratic. The Spirit ensures that there is a participatory aspect to knowledge that takes it beyond mere propositions.105 The kind of knowledge then is that given to the individual as they enter a community; centred on and ordered around the one who is “present-in-absence”.106 One question now remains for Gunton and that is, “how

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Ibid., p. 184. Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, p. 161. 101 Ibid. This is actually Kelsey’s understanding of Barth’s view of Scripture. However, given Gunton’s insistence that it is a personal relationship that is mediated through the narrative, it seems an appropriate match. 102 Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 117. 103 Ibid., p. 108. 104 Ibid., p. 109. 105 By “propositions”, Gunton means: “revelation is a form of personal relation of God to the world conveyed by forms of words” (Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 106). This is the mysterious sense in which we communicate the postulates of Christian faith such that others find in what we say something revelatory, that is “Jesus died for our sins”. 106 Gunton, Intellect and Action, p. 63. 100

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can that unique personal relation [of apostles and prophets] be communicated to us, or become ours?”107 Gunton asserted that focusing revelation on the triune God’s action in the economy of salvation, “involves necessary reference to the economy of creation, salvation and the final redemption of all things”.108 When we consider the Gospel accounts, we learn of God’s intention to re-establish divine rule. God’s intention to perfect the creation is both, “re-inaugurated and declared”, such that completion of revelation is deferred even as nature of that future impinges upon creation in the person of Messiah Jesus, the mediator of creation. The dynamics of this “futurepast”109 are managed in the Gospel narratives in various seminal events that focus upon the revelation of God in the Spirit to the man Jesus who is God the Son (and his followers thought not without subsequent interpretation). Gunton held that the baptism, the Caesarea Philippi confession (with the subsequent transfiguration) and, crucially, the resurrection, were instances of revelation that focus on the salvific character of Jesus’ sonship.110 Furthermore, and here the sense of revelation as “knowledge that could not otherwise be known” comes to the fore, that God achieved his salvation through the death of his Son on the cross. Jesus is revealed as Messiah and Saviour: “the restoration and realization of the predestined human relationship to the Father”.111 This saving knowledge is mediated to us by means of the narrative but in such a way as to ensure that “the knowledge [of which the narratives speak] is first of all knowledge by acquaintance that is a function of the interrelatedness of persons”.112 A comparison between Gunton and Bonhoeffer at this point is revealing. Bonhoeffer’s notion of the individual being met by Christ in the church seems more immediate than Gunton might at first allow. Yet, Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on preaching and sacrament ensures that the gospel is personally mediated far more directly than Gunton’s emphasis on Scripture and tradition. Bonhoeffer promotes Christ as pro me for the individual while Gunton has the Spirit ensuring that the reader learns that the historical career of the man Jesus of Nazareth was God’s action of salvation. This personally mediated knowledge seems ironically less personal, more abstract. It also leaves Gunton wide open for a Kantian split between knowledge and ethics, something avoided adroitly by Bonhoeffer. Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 109. Ibid., p. 112. For Gunton this implies that a purely narratively defined God is too narrow a picture having no place for things like Wisdom literature, which also make God known as Creator. 109 Gunton contends that “the relation between past and present is the central focus of a discussion of the nature of revelation” (ibid., p. 114). If the person of Jesus is the centre of theological epistemology, we need says Gunton, a way of understanding the present sense of revelation without losing the essential historical contingency of Jesus’ place in our past. 110 Ibid., p. 116. 111 Ibid., p. 116. 112 Ibid., p. 118. 107 108

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An Interim Assessment Thus far in this chapter we have explored Gunton’s theological epistemology with reference to Bonhoeffer’s demand for non-religious interpretations of theological concepts. That is, in a world come of age, at the very least, theological and nontheological thinking needs to be brought close together. This, we suggest, Gunton has achieved conceptually. That is, the combination of the concepts of all knowledge being revealed through mediation, in concert with the Spirit’s eschatological role of mediating all truth, does offer the possibility of human thinking operating similarly across vastly different kinds of knowledge. In Bonhoeffer’s terms, the penultimate and the ultimate are known in a similar way. God enables knowledge of both, with knowledge of the ultimate being the perfection of knowledge of the penultimate. In this way Gunton has established the conditions for the possibility of knowledge being “wholly within the world” with God, in his Spirit and through his Son, as “really Lord of the world”.113 Here creation and redemption are kept firmly together in the knowledge of God’s saving acts through the Son in the Spirit. This remark must be qualified immediately; for, in fairness to Bonhoeffer, his discussion of the difference between ultimate and penultimate was in the context of knowledge of the Good and the meaning of reality.114 The former aspect of epistemology has largely been absent from our exploration of Gunton’s work and it is one of the things in our ongoing dialogue between the two theologians to which we must attend.115 We have also noted that Gunton’s work on epistemology has introduced a number of concepts for which he has offered little or no exegetical description. This must surely be a problem for a theologian who places Scripture at the centre of his theology as we have seen. For this reason we shall return to the narrative of Luke to examine Gunton’s concepts of mediation, relationality and the governance of the Spirit; and to investigate what sense they take on in the narrative of God’s saving acts through Jesus and in the Spirit. This will be in addition to our ongoing task of refiguring the particularity of the Son as the eschatological work of the Spirit. Through engagement with Luke’s narrative we have already identified the Spirit as the one who locates the Messiah as Son of God and son of David. We move on to identify the Spirit as the one who enables the Messiah to express his relationship with God and his people Israel.

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See p. 78 above, in reference to Bonhoeffer’s remarks in “An Eberhard Bethge 5.5.44”. 114 Note the essays “Christus, die Wirklichkeit und das Gute” (pp. 33–61) and “Die letzten und die vorletzten Dinge” (pp. 137–62) in Bonhoeffer, Ethik. 115 Gunton himself admits favouring knowledge of the Good above the other transcendentals of Truth and Beauty (“Authority and Freedom”, p. 242).

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Luke on Knowledge of Sonship in the Spirit We have noted the importance of the Baptism for Gunton’s understanding of revelation. He also looked with special interest to the account of the Temptation to outline the basis for an understanding of freedom in the light of knowledge of the Good.116 With these episodes, and the Nazarene sermon, we will have the opportunity to explore the relationship between the Spirit’s particularising work and epistemology.117 We might summarise Gunton’s view of knowledge as that which is mediated by the Spirit to the knower in relation with the person or thing known. If this is the case, then as we come to Luke’s narrative we ought to be sensitive to what knowledge the Spirit is mediating to Jesus in the context of his relations with God and Israel. God’s Most Intimate Other In keeping with the method established in Chapter 1, I shall be mindful of the actions of the Spirit on and for Jesus in the network of relationships that make up the narrative. The relational context of the Baptism scene is a large crowd gathered around John the Baptiser in the wilderness. Significantly, the crowd seek knowledge: “they were all wondering in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah” (Luke 3:15). John does not directly answer their question. Instead he speaks of another. This coming one will far surpass John in power (ἰσχυρότερός) and his ministry will reflect this.118 The interaction between John and the crowd is, inter alia, in the course of a spiritually significant moment as “all the people were being baptised”. During this time of devotion and rededication,119 in the midst of the people and their curiosity regarding the Messiah, the narrator introduces the praying Jesus. The particularity of Jesus in relation to the people can be seen to begin here because, of all the newly dedicated, God speaks to this supplicant.120 In doing so God answers their question regarding the identity of the Messiah: “When all the people were baptised Jesus, having also been baptised, was praying. The heavens Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 93. Most commentators agree that Luke 3:21–4:30 marks a unit dedicated to Jesus’ preparation for his subsequent ministry. For discussion see Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, pp. 331ff. 118 The narrator does not reveal whether John’s response meant anything to the crowd and the detail regarding the ministry of the coming one is left dormant until Act 2 when the Spirit is poured out. 119 Wright describes the scene as “a prophetic renewal movement within Judaism” (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 160). Note also that John and the crowd are discussing the Good in this scene (Luke 3:8–14). 120 McDonnell reminds us that up to this point Jesus came to the Jordan, “without fame, an anonymous face in the crowd” (Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation [Collegeville: Glazier, 1996], p. 4). 116 117

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were opened and the Holy Spirit appeared in the bodily form of a dove and descended upon him. A voice came out of heaven, ‘you are my son, the beloved. In you I am delighted’” (Luke 3:22). From among the people and in preference to John, God designates Jesus as the Messiah with the Spirit. Again by the Spirit, Jesus is distinguished from John in the purposes of God. By the Spirit Jesus is distinguished amidst the faithful. At the same time God confirms the expectations raised by the announcement of Jesus’ birth to Mary. At that time Jesus was spoken of as the son of David who would inherit his throne and rule over Jacob (1:32–33). Years later in this historically sacred place, in a scene laden with expectation, the heavens open and God speaks to particularise Jesus as Messiah by the Spirit.121 The Spirit mediates from the Father knowledge of beloved sonship to Jesus in relation to himself and the crowd gathered around John. In Gunton’s terms, the Spirit opens the way between Jesus and heaven, governing the knowledge that is mediated to him from the Father in word and deed. Luke’s configuration implies that Jesus now knows himself to be God’s Messiah through the Spirit and amidst the faithful of Israel. It remains to be seen to what extent Jesus may have internalized, or have been opened to, this knowledge. In a number of places Gunton described the importance of this event in terms of Jesus’ identification with humanity and his anointing with the Spirit for later ministry.122 Yet he never paused to consider the sense of sonship conveyed in the Father’s address and action in the Spirit.123 The words God speaks evoke the divine pronouncement of Ps. 2:7 and could allude to the Davidic covenant recorded in 2 Sam. 7:12–14.124 These references suggest that in this apocalyptic moment, God 121 Ricoeur reflects on the prophetic call to the office of mediator as part of the basis for configuring the summoned self in narrative. The first aspect of the prophetic call is the confrontation with God. The scene is marked by “the strongly asymmetrical structure of the dialogic relation between the I of the prophet and the divine I” (Paul Ricoeur, “The Summoned Subject in the School of the Narratives of the Prophetic Vocation”, in Figuring the Sacred, p. 265). Consequently the prophetic ego is “radically decentred”. How great is the contrast with the Baptism where the first divine words are “You are my Son”. The Messianic ego is radically centred in relation to the divine. 122 See, e.g., Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited, pp. 162–3; cf. p. 33 above. 123 This is regrettable to say the least considering Gunton’s desire to “identify the divine person in the human story” (Act and Being, p. 136; cf. p. 27 above). 124 As in Chapter 1, we shall take Luke’s citation of Old Testament (lxx) Scripture as an invitation to consider his configuration of the human career of Jesus in the light of such texts. In the case of non-cited allusions we will follow the practice of Vanhoozer (Drama of Doctrine; see also R. Bauckham, “Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story”, in Art of Reading Scripture, pp. 38–53) of privileging texts from the Old Testament as source material. Thus for Luke 3:22 we suggest the following be considered: “Proclaiming the command of the Lord, ‘The Lord said to me, you are my son. I have today begotten you’” (Ps. 2:7, lxx); “When your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who will come from your own body and I will prepare his kingdom … I will

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anoints Jesus with the Spirit as the Son – the promised Messiah of the line of David. Read in this way, the Spirit brings together the threads of ancient anticipation to form a nexus in the person of the supplicant Jesus. As we suggested in Chapter 1, this is the narrative’s means of configuring the Spirit’s eschatological work of perfection. To the words of institution “You are my son” are added the personal encouragements of “beloved and well pleased”.125 The intimacy of the address hints at an extensity of meaning involved in the interchange. Here at Jesus’ Baptism, by the Spirit, God distinguishes Jesus from himself, as Messiah and beloved. Moreover, the one who has been revealed in the narrative to enjoy the essential presence of God in his person is publicly recognised by God as Son in the Spirit.126 There is an absolute sense to Jesus’ sonship that forms a vertical development in the story thus far, for now the Son is nominated in the narrative by the Spirit as God’s “most intimate other”.127 Up to this point we may have recognised God restore his throne forever. I will be a father for him and he will be a son for me” (2 Sam.7:12– 14, lxx). Fitzmeyer objects to any Messianic allusions in this scene: “There is simply no evidence that the titles ‘Son (of God)’ or ‘Servant of Yahweh’ were regarded as messianic (i.e. belonging to an expected future anointed agent of Yahweh) in pre-Christian Judaism” (Fitzmyer, Luke 1–9, p. 480). More recently Lee has shown extensive evidence contrary to Fitzmyer’s claim in OT pseudepigraphic letters, Qumran documents and rabbinic sources (Aquila H.I. Lee, From Messiah to Preeistent Son, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 192 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005], p. 240). Dumbrell also points to the reference to David’s receipt of the Spirit in 1 Sam. 6:13 which, when taken with the Spirit’s departure from Saul in the following verses, suggests the spiritually designated one was the Messiah of God (William J. Dumbrell, “Spirit and Kingdom of God in the Old Testament”, Reformed Theological Review 33 [1974]: 5). Finally, Isa. 11:2 portrays the Davidic king thus: “A staff will come out from the root of Jesse and a flower from the root will rise up. The Spirit of God will rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness” (lxx). 125 See Bock for discussion of the sources of the additions. He favours Ps. 2:7 with Isa. 42:1 or 41:8 (Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, pp. 341ff.). We note that an alternative translation for εὐδόκεω is “to consider something as good and therefore worthy of choice” (Walter Bauer et al., A Greek­–English Lexicon of the New Testament [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2nd edn, 1979], s.v. εὐδόκεω). This suggests further support for the sense of Jesus being distinguished from amongst the devoted sons and daughters of Israel following John. The second phase of Ricoeur’s summoned self involves God making “a self announcement before calling the prophet (e.g. YHWH speaking to Moses Ex.3:6)” (Ricoeur, “Summoned Subject”, p. 265). Again in contrast, God’s utterance to Jesus is an emphatic identification of another with a subsequent identification of the other with himself. Furthermore, where the prophetic address has a third phase of “I send you”, the words to the Son are “I am well pleased with you”. 126 Through the action of the Spirit, God is uniquely present in the child (cf. Luke 1:31– 35). Note the discussion in Chapter 2, regarding the possibility of Tabernacle symbolism being involved in the announcement to Mary. 127 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 320ff. Ricoeur coins this phrase in discussion of the self’s

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present in Jesus but now a special distinction is revealed between God present and God speaking from heaven with the Spirit. Consequently we take issue with Conzelmann’s insistence on seeing Luke’s Christology as purely subordinationist. Granted there is an “absence of the idea of pre-existence”. However to insist that “there is no idea of a physical divine nature in the title of ‘Son’”,128 is to ignore the, albeit subtle, way the person of Jesus is, through the Spirit, gradually rendered in the account. From the perspective of Gunton’s main epistemological themes, this brief hint of Jesus as the incarnate Son intensifies the significance of the Messiah’s role as mediator between God and His people. A possibility now exists for interpreting the subsequent actions of Messiah Jesus as the direct actions of YHWH for his people. This raises the question of the meaning of freedom for Jesus; a subject that Gunton discussed in the context of the Temptation episode to which we shall now turn. Sonship and the Authority of Grace As mentioned above, Gunton saw the Temptation narrative as an instance of freedom in the context of knowledge of the good. His concern with the passage was to show sympathy with the Enlightenment’s demand for personal autonomy on the one hand, yet on the other, to direct the discussion towards a Christian rationale for recognising autonomy as, “the law of our own being”.129 For Gunton, the Temptation episode was a prime example of the problem that “the right action, when we can recognise it, often seems burdensome and heteronomous”.130 Following on from the Baptism where Jesus is “called and empowered by God to enter upon a particular career and to perform it humanly”, the temptations are “meant to indicate the meaning and direction of this particular human life”.131 The tempter’s questioning repetition of God’s pronouncement (“If you are the Son of God”), suggests ways such a person should behave. They relationship to his own body. With this notion in mind, the narrative could imply that God distinguishes, in the Spirit, his embodied presence and (through the emerging particularity of the Messiah’s Sonship we have outlined in the narrative) reveals his presence to be a personal other, who he names as the beloved Son. Such a reading could at least instantiate, if not substantiate, Gunton’s claim that, “it is as human that Jesus expresses the divinity of the eternal Son” (Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”, p. 167). 128 Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St Luke (London: SCM, 1982), p. 174. 129 Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 93. Here Gunton condemns the broad tradition of Modernist moral philosophy (from Descartes through Kant to Satre) which, Gunton showed, amounted to a displacement of God by the self-as-will. With the help of Murdoch, Polyani and Coleridge, and some mea culpa for aspects of power in Aquinas’ theology, Gunton argued for “a Trinitarian understanding [that] makes it possible to see God as one who demands, indeed, but also takes upon himself the burden of those demands; making them freely performable” (ibid., p. 100). 130 Ibid., p. 93. 131 Ibid.

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present opportunities for autonomy. The outcome is that Jesus rejects the offers “in favour of a kind of heteronomy”.132 Jesus is obedient to God and the “law of his being”133 and thus accepts God’s elevation in subordination. Gunton opined that these features are meant to indicate that Jesus was not merely passive but freely obedient to God in the desert. The engagement with Luke’s account was rather cursory and therefore belied the complexity of the interactions as Luke has depicted them. A more careful reading is needed, one that, we suggest, will bring to light much that could develop Gunton’s ideas about particularity and epistemology. In keeping with the overall thrust of this chapter we shall ask the same question of the Temptation episode that we did at the Baptism; that is, what knowledge is the Spirit mediating to Jesus in the context of his relations with another? To this we can add, in what sense is this knowledge of the Good heteronomous and what does the configuration suggest to be the “law of Jesus’ own being?” Luke 4 begins with the newly anointed Messiah sent out into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tested.134 The episode in the desert is “book-ended” by references to 132

Ibid. Gunton borrowed this phrase from Wilfrid Mellers, Bach and the Dance of God, cited in Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 92. Apparently the phrase originated with Bultman but Mellers gives no citation. 134 Dumbrell suggests a pattern for Messianic preparation based on the accounts of Saul and David. Both Saul and David are subject of deliberate divine choice (1 Sam. 9:16; 16:1). Both Saul and David are anointed by Samuel, which brings them into a special relationship with YHWH as Messiah (1 Sam. 10:1; 16:13). Both Saul and David are empowered for office with the Spirit, and finally, both are publicly attested through mighty acts (1 Sam 11; 17) (W. J. Dumbrell, The Search for Order [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994], p. 63). Without discounting this suggestion we note also that Israel, called “my son” by YHWH in Exod. 4:22–23, was led into the wilderness by the cloud and pillar of fire (Deut. 8:2; see Matthias Wenk, Community-Forming Power: The Socio-Ethical Role of the Spirit in Luke-Acts, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 19 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000], p. 196) – the cloud that was later to descend upon the Tabernacle to fulfil the promise that God would dwell amongst his people (Exod. 25:8; see Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, p. 178). Again there is the possibility of associating God’s presence with the one called “Son”. Furthermore, during the Exodus, the particularity of Israel as God’s chosen people is established in relation to the rest of the nations (“And now, if you listen, having heard my voice and guard my covenant, you will be my special people from all the nations for the whole earth is mine” [Exod. 19:5, lxx]). In this seminal event Israel is given a mediatorial identity in relation to God and the rest of the nations in that she is designated as God’s “royal priesthood”. The implication is that the narrator is merging Israel’s sonship of Yahweh with the Davidic king’s (See Wenk, Community-Forming Power, p. 197). There is a reconstitution of Israel’s sonship in the person of Messiah Jesus (N.T. Wright, “Jesus, Israel and the Cross”, Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 24 [1985]: 84). Israel failed to obey YHWH during her desert sojourn; a failure that was to be repeated again and again throughout her history (Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts, p. 215). In contrast to this, the Spirit will perfect Jesus to succeed in his trials, preparing him potentially to fulfil the expectations established for Israel (I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: 133

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the Spirit’s initiative. This indicates that while he is not specifically mentioned in the confrontation between Jesus and the Devil, he is nonetheless present empowering and perfecting Jesus throughout.135 Luke’s insertion of a genealogy just prior to the journey into the wilderness intimates the broadest horizon of the Biblical drama as the stage for what follows. For the genealogy connects Jesus with Adam, “the son of God”.136 We noted above the sense of God’s choice and designation of Jesus from among the faithful of Israel in the Baptism scene. The genealogy adds to the A Commentary on the Greek Text [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978], p. 166). The Spirit has located Jesus in the network of constitutive relations between God, his people and the rest of the nations by empowering him to occupy the place of Israel for the sake of the rest of humankind. This suggests that the heteronomy of the episode needs to be viewed in the context of God’s promises to Israel and the law of Jesus’ being is one of mediation. 135 Shepherd, Narrative Function, pp. 131–2. Turner suggests that the dual ascription of the presence of the Spirit, “filled with the Spirit / led by the Spirit”, is “intended by the narrator as a general characterisation of Jesus’ relationship to the Spirit in the ministry, from Jordan onwards, rather than having restricted reference to the period of testing” (Turner, Power from on High, p. 202). There is considerable discussion regarding the sense of the phrase, “led by the Spirit” and its subsequent meaning. Conzelmann’s heavy emphasis on Jesus’ subjection to the Spirit overlooks the text’s emphasis on Jesus’ subjection to God (Theology of St Luke, p. 28). Scholars sensitive to the flow of the narrative compare this episode with the ministry of Simeon in Luke 2:26–27, also led and filled with the Spirit (e.g. Tannehill, Narrative Unity, vol. 1, pp. 59–60). Our interest is in the agency of the Spirit in the constitution of Jesus’ Messianic sonship and hence we follow those favouring the Spirit’s empowerment of Jesus for his role as Son (Marshall, Gospel of Luke, p. 169). For Gunton, obedience to the Spirit’s leading shows that Jesus, “is real man” (Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”, p. 163, emphasis original). More attention needs to be paid to the circumstances developed in the narrative than Gunton does to ensure that this reality does not become, ironically, an abstraction. 136 Fitzmyer rejects too close an association between the Genealogy and the Temptation favouring instead a connection with the Baptism: “Now, as the Period of Jesus is about to be begun, it is seen as related to the course of history stemming not only from Israel but from humanity and ultimately from God himself”. There is no “second Adam” or “last Adam” motif (Fitzmyer, Luke 1–9, p. 498). While Fitzmyer’s point is acknowledged – that the three episodes allude to the temptation of Israel in the wilderness – it is not “eisegetical” to perceive an allusion to the seminal crisis in the human story in which Fitzmyer has just placed Jesus. Nolland, suggests: “Luke would have us see that Jesus takes his place in the human family and thus in its flawed sonship; however, in his own person, in virtue of his unique origin (Luke 1:35) but also as worked out in his active obedience (Luke 4:1–13), he marks a new beginning to sonship and sets it on an entirely new footing” (Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, p. 173). If Jesus has taken on the flesh of Adam, then his victory by the Spirit in the flesh cannot be isolated from the theological significance of Adam’s failure in the garden. However, with Fitzmyer and contra Marshall (Gospel of Luke, p. 166), attempts to see a purpose in the Temptations in terms of encouraging the faithful to resist the devil’s wiles ignore the particularity of Jesus that is being established here. The Spirit brings Jesus into this critical event in order to distinguish him from any other. He ought to be seen as antitypical rather than exemplary.

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coming confrontation the possibility that God has chosen Jesus through the Spirit from within all of humanity starting with Adam. The one designated as Son of God by the Spirit is led by the same Spirit into the wilderness for the sake of the one who failed in Paradise. The Spirit’s perfecting work will take place in a scene of desolation to restore the potential for a sacred space of flourishing. Once again the Spirit establishes a temporal connection across the span of the human story in order to single out Messiah Jesus as the one who will bring the salvation of God.137 It marks a discontinuity even as it effects a recapitulation in the biblical drama. Messiah Jesus, empowered by the Spirit, will confront evil amidst the desolation that symbolises the alienation of humanity from God. Yet he does so as God’s particular man in the Spirit of God. God’s man – in the line of fallen Adam, in the likeness of sinful flesh – undergoes the test of fidelity as portrayed in the wasteland confrontation with the Devil.138 On the basis of this reading we can offer answers to two of the questions raised at the beginning of this section. Firstly, in Christology, Gunton follows Irving in asserting “the humanising activity of the Holy Spirit”, as opposed to the Spirit being some immanent drive.139 Gunton is adamant about preserving Jesus’ free choice based on pneumatology rather than Christology since, in his view, it demonstrates “the human relevance of Jesus’ sinlessness”. Jesus’ freedom, due to his relation to the Spirit, is precedent for those who live in him. Moreover, since the Spirit is God’s transcendent mediator of eschatological perfection, “Jesus’ obedience to the Father through the Spirit can be seen as the free response to an other, rather than a programmed outcome of an immanent directionality”.140 This is the sense of Jesus’ autonomy in accordance with “the law of his own being”, mentioned above and it is evidenced in Luke as the Spirit enabling Jesus to perfect the sonship of Adam. It is the ultimate reality of humanity created to live obediently with God. The second answer concerns the “kind of heteronomy” evidenced in Luke’s account. Gunton advocated the notion of “the authority of grace”.141 Here, freedom “consists in service to the truth … to the personal authority that is God’s”. It is not as authoritarian as it sounds since “obedience to true authority is the way by which the self is established in its true integrity, and, indeed, rationality”.142 The discussion then turned on the nature of true, as opposed to false, authority. According to Gunton, “all authority is external to the agent”, especially divine authority.143 False authority though, exerts a pressure, “which cannot evoke and 137 See the discussion regarding the place of the infant in God’s promises of salvation in Chapter 2 above. 138 Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, p. 371. 139 Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”, p. 161. 140 Ibid., p. 162. 141 Gunton, “Authority and Freedom”, p. 224. Gunton credits the phrase to W.A. Whitehouse, The Authority of Grace (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981). 142 Gunton, “Authority and Freedom”, p. 226. 143 Ibid., p. 227.

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nourish our moral soul”.144 Only God’s authority is “absolutely self-grounded”, and since this is a personal authority, revealed in the cross, that establishes itself in the destruction of sin and guilt, we discover an authority “with a right and a claim on us”.145 Yet, the salvation that God offers on the cross is, “redemption in and with the created order, not out of it”, so the authority of God is the authority of a redeeming Creator. Thus, the “kind of heteronomy” that Gunton advocated is the claim of the redeeming Creator who reveals his authority in the reconciliation achieved on the cross. The Lucan Temptation will not contradict this. Jesus, the son of Adam and the Son of God, will triumph over the Devil in the power of the Spirit as part of the redemptive career that is perfected on the cross.146 Yet that final triumph is anticipated in the wilderness as Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, freely submits to the authority of God’s grace in redeeming the descendants of Adam. Here we shall see the Messiah himself given the knowledge of ultimate reality as the Spirit enables him to interpret his identity as the Son of God for the perfection of his relationship with God and Israel. At the same time he will express Sonship of God as saviour of Israel. In looking to Luke’s narration of the Temptation of the Messiah we are seeking an epistemology that delivers knowledge of, acquaintance with and ability to do the Good. Inspired Knowledge of Sonship Enabling the Good Having been led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days without food, the devil approaches Jesus with a simple, yet significant, challenge – feed yourself: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit returned from Jordan and was led into the desert by the Spirit, being tempted by the devil for forty days. He ate nothing in that time and when the period was finished he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread”. Jesus answered him, “It is written, man will not live by bread alone.” (Luke 4:1–4)147

The devil does not seem to question the fact that Jesus is the Son of God but rather what Jesus considers this to signify in terms of his freedom to act.148 Jesus’ reply 144 P.T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, p. 251, cited in Gunton, “Authority and Freedom”, p. 227. 145 Gunton, Gunton, “Authority and Freedom”, p. 228. 146 Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 93. Gunton acknowledges that the questions of the tester are repeated there (“If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself” [Luke 23:37]). 147 All translations of Luke and Deuteronomy are my own. 148 He does not, for instance, ask, “Did God really say that you are the Son of God?” after the fashion of the question posed to Eve in the Garden (Gen. 3:1). Nolland opines that the issue at stake is not one of power since, “[his] sonship involved participation in

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indicates that he understands his freedom to act, and thereby the meaning of his Sonship, to be defined by Scripture (“It is written …”). Yet the sense in which the Father might remain the arbiter of Jesus’ identity (his self-knowledge remains a gift) is complex in its layers. On the surface, we might infer that Jesus chooses not to turn the stones into bread because Scripture tells him that he needs more than bread to sustain him in his hunger. He declines Satan’s challenge because Scripture tells him that he ought not need to feed himself as the Son of God. If we were to use Gunton’s conceptuality, we might say that the Spirit opens Jesus to accept the external authority of Scripture, which mediates God’s authority to determine the nature of Jesus’ freedom to act as the Son of God.149 Jesus, therefore, understands himself, in the Spirit and through Scripture, to be the Son of God insofar as he trusts God to sustain him in his hunger. We may, however, refine what it means for Jesus to know himself as the Son through Scripture and in the Spirit by looking into the dramatic context of Jesus’ quotation.150 The words that Jesus quotes “are written” in Deuteronomy 8.151 This passage recounts Moses’ interpretation of Israel’s wilderness experience, especially addressing adversity: Remember all the way which the Lord your God led you in the desert so that he might afflict you and test you and discern what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commands or not. He afflicted you and you got weak from lack the powers of the Father to a degree not anticipated for the sonship of Adam, nor for the sonship of Israel (Exod. 4:22–23; Jer. 31:9; Hos. 11:1), nor perhaps even for the sonship of the messiah” (Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, p. 179). Unfortunately for Nolland, Luke has yet to indicate the extent of Jesus’ power in any form. The question of avoiding suffering looms larger as the narrative progresses leading to the Gethsemane trial and finally the cross. Perhaps the question might be rephrased: “Do you really need to suffer like this in order to be the son?” 149 This would give Gunton’s rather vague notion of “openness” the sense of a free willingness to engage personally. 150 Kimball describes Jesus’ use of Scripture as “a literal application of the OT (i.e. without midrashic techniques) in a debate pattern similar to certain rabbinic disputations in which questions and answers are drawn from Scripture” (Jesus’ Exposition, p. 96). Here we are headed towards Vanhoozer’s view of Messiah Jesus as “the pre-eminent performer” in the drama of Scripture. Vanhoozer writes: “The Son ‘performs’ what God the Father scripted … The Son is also the centre of the Spirit’s performance in Scripture” (Drama of Doctrine, p. 189). 151 Kimball, points to the importance of the concentration on Deuteronomy throughout this confrontation: “the fact that the choice was in all three cases made from this single small section of the Old Testament suggests that … he not only wished to be seen, but saw himself, as Israel, tested and taught in the desert as God’s ‘son’ Israel had been” (Jesus’ Exposition, p. 90). Whether or not such intention can be ascribed to Jesus himself, it is a clear possibility that it was the narrator’s intention to depict him as such.

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of food and he fed you the manna, which your fathers did not see, so that he might teach you that man does not live by bread alone, rather, man will live by every word, which comes from the mouth of God. For 40 years your garments did not wear out, your feet did not become callous. Know in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, in the same way the Lord your God disciplined you. (Deut. 8:2–5, lxx)

In these verses God speaks, via Moses, an exhortation to Israel to remember the purpose of their time in the wilderness.152 There, the people were led into the wilderness as a test of their faithfulness. Israel was hungry and was fed directly by God to teach them that they need more than bread to live. The bread that God gave them – manna – was both a sign of care for the nation and a symbol of the preserving power of God’s word.153 God preserved Israel in the wilderness at the most basic level and proved himself to be a trustworthy Father to Israel his son.154 Placed in this context Jesus’ reply to Satan gains an intensity of meaning. At the Devil’s invitation, Jesus is interpreting his sonship. In the Spirit, he engages with the drama of his people and their experience with God as Father. The drama of Israel becomes the sedimentation of his identity upon which his obedience will add his distinct innovation.155 Thus the implication of Jesus’ response is that he understands himself as being treated as Son in the same way that Israel was treated by God. The knowledge of the Good here is that he [Jesus] is being disciplined by God his Father. We might say that, according to Scripture, it is his hunger/ suffering that designates him as the Son of God more than his ability to feed himself. Under the Spirit’s governance, the Messiah engages with his people as Son of God the Father. The knowledge of sonship is mediated in the Spirit to Jesus through Scripture as personal relation and as knowledge of the Good. The other two challenges show a similar pattern. The Spirit enables Jesus to both interpret his autonomy before the Father and to engage personally with his people. The second test brings the sense of sonship as Messiah closer to the sense of the sonship of the nation:

152

Brueggemann comments: “The wilderness memory [for Israel] is one of vulnerable dependence” (Walter Brueggemann, Deuteronomy, Abingdon Old Testament Commentary [Nashville: Abingdon, 2001], p. 103). 153 Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11, Anchor Bible 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 389. 154 Gerhard von Rad, Deuteronomy, trans. D. Barton, Old Testament Library (London: SCM, 1966), p. 71. 155 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, p. 121. Ricoeur describes the self’s permanence in time as a sedimentation. We suggest that Luke again constitutes Jesus’ identity in a relation of perfection with his people. Jesus inherits their sonship as the explanation of his own experience. It is as Ricoeur describes: “the notion of acquired identifications by which the other enters into the composition of the same” (ibid.).

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And taking him up, the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in an instant. The devil said to him, “I will give you all this authority and their splendour for it has been given to me and I may give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if you bow down before me and worship me it will all be yours.” Jesus replied, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.’” (Luke 4:5–8)

If we allow the connection between the Baptism pronouncement and Psalm 2, the Devil seeks to supplant the place of God in the constitution of Jesus’ kingship.156 In Ps. 2:8 the Father says to his Son: “Ask me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession” (lxx). In this light, universal rule is implicit in the status of the Son, yet here in Luke the Devil seeks to displace God as the Messiah’s benefactor if the Son submits instead to him. As before, the Messiah responds to the challenge to interpret his sonship but he chooses to read the inheritance of his sonship through the experience of his people. His words “are written” in Deuteronomy 6, which contains Israel’s Shema – the leitmotiv of Jewish spirituality.157 Yet the quote comes at the point where Israel is exhorted not to forget YHWH once they come into their inheritance: When the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers – to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob – to give you; large and beautiful cities, which you did not build, houses filled with all good things that you did not fill, cisterns that you did not cut, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant; and having eaten and been filled, be on your guard lest you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Fear the Lord your God and to him you will give service and to him you will cling and to his name you will swear. Do not go after other gods, from the gods of the nations around you. (Deut. 6:10–14, lxx)

When Israel, as God’s son, comes into its inheritance with all its riches and blessings they must beware not to forget the grace of God that has redeemed them for this place.158 They must remember that YHWH is the source of their fullness

156 Strauss draws attention to the fact that such rule has already been promised to Jesus making the present offer a short cut to avoiding suffering and death (Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts, p. 217). 157 Marshall, Gospel of Luke, p. 166. Talbert helpfully points out that the order of Luke’s account (food, false worship, putting God to the test) is congruent with Psalm 106 that focuses on Israel’s failure in the wilderness (Charles H. Talbert, Reading Luke: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Third Gospel, Reading the New Testament [Macon: Smyth & Helwys, rev. edn, 2002], p. 50). 158 Brueggemann, Deuteronomy, p. 86.

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and cling to him as Father.159 They are to hold exclusively to him as the benefactor in the face of competing claims for the pagan gods around them.160 Furthermore, the dramatic situation of Moses’ admonition is to remember God as the source of their blessing before they come into their inheritance such that they will serve him faithfully when they do. The Messiah’s recourse to these words places himself under the authority of God’s grace in anticipation of his perfection of kingship. In the Spirit, and through the mediation of Scripture, Jesus knows himself to be the inheritor of universal authority from the Father. The knowledge of the Good here comes in the form of the Son’s not presuming upon God’s grace revealed to him in the story of his people.161 In the third attempt to subvert the dynamics of Jesus’ sonship, the Devil attacks Scripture as the source from which the Son interprets his identity:162 The devil took Jesus into Jerusalem and placed him upon the highest point of the Temple. He said to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you to keep you and take you in their hands lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him and said, “It says, ‘Do not test the Lord your God.’” (Luke 4:9–12)

Up to this point, Jesus has interpreted his sonship through engagement with the word of God to his people. The Scriptural rendition of sonship has been the privileged determinant of the Good in each situation. So now the devil invokes Scripture perhaps to test Jesus’ freedom to interpret his sonship on this basis.163 The devil’s quotation “is written” in Psalm 90:

Weinfeld, Deuteronomy, p. 344. Weinfeld suggest that the repetition of the father’s names highlights the generational faithfulness of YHWH even before his act of redemption. All this makes the distinction between YHWH and “other gods” more acute. 160 Von Rad, Deuteronomy, pp. 64–5. 161 The discrimen employed by Jesus here is reminiscent of Kelsey’s notion of the ideational mode of God’s presence: “God’s presence is something like understanding the basic truth about oneself and one’s world. Or: It is like having personally appropriated a set of concepts with such seriousness that they decisively shape one’s emotions, passions and feelings” (Kelsey, Uses of Scripture, p. 161). We could add for the present scene: “and one’s behaviours”. 162 Tannehill offers: “This … most clearly resembles the renewed period of intense temptation in the passion story. The setting of the last temptation is Jerusalem, and it concerns using God as a guarantee of rescue from death. The one with the divine Spiritpower is tempted to use that power to make himself invulnerable” (Narrative Unity, vol. 1, p. 60). 163 Kimball, Jesus’ Exposition, p. 93. 159

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If you make the Most High (Oh Lord my hope!) your refuge, harm will not come to you because he will command his angels concerning you to keep you in all your ways. They will take you up upon their hands lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will set foot upon asps and cobras and trample on lions and serpents. Because he hopes on me [the Lord], I will also deliver him. I am with him in trouble; I will rescue him and glorify him. I will satisfy him with a long life and show him my salvation. (Ps. 90:9–16, lxx)

The passage is, in part, a commentary on the encounter thus far. Jesus has made God’s word his refuge and the extent to which Jesus has shown deference to Scriptural propositions, could well be seen as hoping in God. Now the promissory sense of God’s word is introduced where before Jesus has invoked commands. The devil gives Jesus an opportunity to fulfil the promise in the most spectacular way. On the highest point of his Father’s house (cf. Luke 2:49), Jesus is challenged to show that he is the Son of God by casting himself upon God’s promise to save him.164 Rather than engaging in debate over the validity of the promise, Jesus’ reply follows his previous pattern of appealing to God’s command. He refuses the opportunity to prove that the promise is sound by declaring that to do so would be to wrongly test God. He repeats words from the context of the Shema of Deuteronomy 6. His quote follows on almost immediately from the one in the second temptation.165 Thus, he will not pre-empt the receipt of his inheritance neither will he presume upon God’s promise. Once again the Spirit has enabled Jesus to submit to the authority of God’s grace through engagement with the story of his people. The sonship of Israel has been the law of the Messiah’s being and the source of knowledge of the Good. Jesus has been particularised absolutely in the drama of Scripture. He has not displaced God as the ground of truth and goodness nor disengaged from the other – his people. Thus the Spirit’s work throughout these scenes has been to distinguish him from within the community of God’s people and, in fact, in relation to any other son of Adam. There is one final episode in this section of Luke – the Nazarene sermon. We will examine briefly this passage before considering some of the implications for Gunton’s theological suggestions. Knowledge of Sonship and the End of Heteronomy The Spirit brings the triumphant Messiah out of the wilderness having given a particular shape to Jesus’ identity as the “more powerful one” that John foresaw.166 When he enters the synagogue of his hometown in Nazareth (Luke 4:16) he publicly announces, through the use of Isaiah 61, that he is the long awaited Spirit-endowed Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, p. 382. Jesus quotation in this scene is from Deut. 6:16. 166 Fitzmyer, Luke 1–9, p. 513. 164

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Servant of the Lord who will bring about the salvation of the Lord.167 Once again, Jesus freely interprets his identity in the power of the Spirit and through Scripture. Furthermore, as in the birth narratives, the Spirit’s temporal governance is affirmed as the prophetically anticipated telos of God’s activity is focused on the Messiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because of whom he anointed me to preach good news to the poor, having sent me to proclaim liberation to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to send in freedom the ones having been oppressed. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke 4:18–19). The sense of the Spirit’s perfecting empowerment of the Messiah is intensified as Jesus, for the first time, publicly declares the character of his Sonship. In Bonhoeffer’s words Messiah Jesus is, “the man for others”.168 The significance of the empowerment for self-placement becomes all the richer. In Gunton’s terminology, Jesus emerges into the public view as the Spirit empowered Messiah who will, under the authority of God’s grace, realise the law of his own being in opposing the forces of heteronomy.169 Importantly the question of Jesus’ sonship arises again albeit in the negative: “Is not this Joseph’s son?” which, in the narrative, contrasts with Luke’s ascriptions of sonship and hints at the future antagonism that Jesus will face.170 This also marks a critical incidence of the sense in which Jesus is particularised from among his fellow Israelites. It is, and will be, through the Spirit’s designation in their midst as opposed to the crowds expectation or recognition.171 To them he is hidden, as Bonhoeffer continually emphasised.172

167

Here also is the last significant contrast with Ricoeur’s summoned subject. Ricoeur writes of “the dialogic structure … of the commissioning [being] sealed by the word or ‘reassurance’: ‘I will be with you in truth’; ‘Go, I am with you’; ‘I will open your mouth’” (“Summoned Subject”, p. 266). The Son’s announcement that God’s Spirit is with him to empower him as Saviour makes complete the contrast with previous prophets. Ricoeur describes the prophet as being attached to his people through the commission. Luke’s account portrays the Son as attached to his people by volition. 168 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Entwurf Für Eine Arbeit”, in Widerstand und Ergebung, p. 559. 169 Robert C. Tannehill (Luke, Abingdon New Testament Commentary [Nashville: Abingdon, 1996]) notes that chief among the Messiah’s tasks is deliverance from the forces of chaos that lead to captivation, blindness and oppression. This is the “good news“ for the poor (Luke 4:18). It is not necessary to create a division between the “anointing” at the Baptism and the mention of “anointing” in Nazareth, as Fitzmyer (Luke 1–9, p. 529) seems to do. Tannehill is therefore correct in seeing a prophetic character to the mission of the Messiah through the invocation of Isaiah 61. 170 We recall the warning in Simeon’s prophecy that Mary’s son would be “a sign spoken against” (Luke 2:34), cf. p. 45 above. 171 We note that the section of Luke that we have been exploring began with Israelites looking for the Messiah. 172 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, pp. 294ff.

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Sonship: Renewed Placement and Engagement We began this chapter with the aim of exploring Gunton’s own solutions to the problem of displacement and disengagement in modern thought and practice in terms of their effect upon knowledge of particularity. Conversation with Bonhoeffer added the caveat that Gunton’s solutions had to be expressed in a manner that kept theological and non-theological thinking together. In fact, Bonhoeffer’s desire for non-religious interpretations of theological concepts was given priority in appraising Gunton’s work. What we discovered was that in Gunton’s realistic epistemology with a general concept of revelation of knowledge mediated by others it is not possible to know anything without engagement. When the Spirit of Truth is acknowledged as perfecter of this engagement, knowledge of both penultimate and ultimate things is a matter of gift. Knowledge of truth, beauty and goodness all come to the individual by divine initiative through interaction with others, be they personal or impersonal. Theological and non-theological thinking operate in the same domain with the exception that knowledge of ultimate things is perfected knowledge that saves: received in community and grounded in Scripture. On the subject of Scripture, Webster’s concerns about a lack of exegetical description were again shown to be warranted. However, in Gunton’s favour, his Trinitarian approach was able to deliver a broader description of theological epistemology than Bonhoeffer’s specifically Christocentric approach. Gunton’s continued lack of exegetical description presented further opportunity to develop his concepts through engagement with the Lucan narrative. From consideration of Jesus’ Baptism, Temptation and maiden sermon arose the possibility of describing the promised son of David and Son of God as God’s most intimate other by the Spirit. This one, designated by the Spirit as Messiah, was enabled by the same Spirit to act under the authority of God’s grace as God’s agent of salvation. The inspired Messiah Jesus freely interpreted the Good as an expression of sonship of the Father in order to perfect Israel’s relationship with Him. The Spirit not only empowered Messiah Jesus to be free but also, and as anticipated at his birth, to be the one who will bring freedom from the heteronomy of captivity, blindness and oppression.173 We are seeking to develop Gunton’s concept of particularity as an eschatological work of the Spirit. Central to this is the perfecting work of the Spirit in and for Messiah Jesus. From what we have seen we might conclude that the mutually constitutive relation between the Spirit and the Son in the narrative has rendered the latter as God’s most intimate other and agent of salvation for humanity. The Spirit’s identity has likewise developed such that he is not only the one who locates the Messiah in the relation of sonship, he also empowers him to express 173 From the interaction of the Son and the deceiver we might even suggest that it is bondage to refusal of discipline, blindness to the promise of inheritance and oppression towards pre-empting God’s deliverance.

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that sonship. The action of the Spirit through Scripture enabled the Messiah to know what sonship was in such a way as to be acquainted with its dynamics (the law of his being) and to be able to express freely that sonship for others. In all this God is placed at the centre of meaning and truth as the Messiah accepts suffering/ discipline in the light of his inheritance without pre-empting God’s deliverance. As such he is perfected for the salvation of Adam’s sons as the perfect Son – he is enabled for full engagement with and for humanity. This chapter has provided further confirmation of Webster’s criticisms of Gunton’s exegetical description. However, Gunton’s presupposition of Trinitarian Spirit Christology has been vindicated in relation to Bonhoeffer’s alternative on the topic of revelation. We move on to consider Bonhoeffer’s description of social ontology and the possibilities that his theology provides for describing the life of particular persons. We have already been given a sense of this insofar as his description of the “Where?” of knowledge entailed a life of giving and receiving acts of grace in community. Gunton’s description of epistemology has been largely confined to exploring the Son’s knowledge in the Spirit and his consequent particularity. We must explore more of Gunton’s work to understand the sense in which this particular knowledge might be passed on to another. That is, in what sense do others participate in the Messiah’s particularity by the Spirit; considering that what it is to be particular is founded in the Spirit’s work for him. The Spirit enables the Son to liberate others. In what sense are these others particularised in the freedom in which the Messiah lives?

Chapter 4

The Spirit Opens Sonship Following the trajectory of Gunton’s theology of particularity has led us to a description of the Spirit enabling knowledge of, acquaintance with, and ability to perform, the Good. This is a particular kind of knowledge, along with knowledge of the True and the Beautiful, which the Spirit mediates in the process of perfecting creation through the Son for the Father. In this process the incarnate Son is perfected as the Messiah of God and Saviour of the descendants of Adam. This chapter will investigate Gunton’s description of how it is that individuals might be particularised based on what the Spirit does for the Son. The conversation between Gunton and Bonhoeffer has revealed in Bonhoeffer’s theological epistemology knowledge of ultimate reality is imparted to the individual through engagement with Christ in the gracious acts of others. As we shall see this approach lays the foundation for a social ontology that deconstructs Heidegger’s language of authentic existence in exchange for a notion of individuation through responsible living for others in a specific community. Among other things, the significance of Bonhoeffer’s contribution will be found to lie in a metaphysic that is essentially relational without need of appeal to the transcendent. In contrast, Gunton’s desire to avoid anything that resembles a Platonic sense of individual existence through appeal to a Trinitarian metaphysic results, ironically, in a description of personal particularity that is so general that we shall have to look to Bonhoeffer to fill in some of the gaps. In addition we shall have need for further recourse to Luke’s narrative to gain some sense of how we might express the Spirit’s work of individuating persons in the economy of salvation. This we shall describe as the opening of sonship or the perfecting of filial relations between God and human persons. Bonhoeffer on Individuation within the Community Shaping a theological description of personal individuation from Bonhoeffer’s work is not a straightforward matter. As Marsh has pointed out this is due largely to the fact that, in the main, Bonhoeffer’s energy was directed against Enlightenment thinking that was inappropriately focused on the generation of an “autonomous I”. Chief among Bonhoeffer’s philosophical conversation partners was Heidegger and it is in contrast to this highly influential modern thinker that we shall discern the contours of Bonhoeffer’s thought and their development in time. 



Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 137ff.

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In Sanctorum communio Bonhoeffer had argued: “It is only in the You that the I originates; responsibility originates only in reaction to the demand.” Yet it is not a human You that creates the I. Rather: “God or the Holy Spirit appears with the concrete You. Only through its acts will the other become to me a You, in this my I originates. In other words every human You is an image of the divine You.” It is in the institution of this I/You dynamic that social life comes into existence. God gives substance to the You of others which in turn provides the demand for ethical decision that moves an individual from isolation to personhood: “The individual becomes a person ever and anon in the ‘moment’ through the other.” God wills the creation of the You that provides the “moment” for ethical decision that gives rise to the personhood of the individual. The actions of God here are founded in his free will. In fact a great deal of the substance of person and community for Bonhoeffer revolves around the notion of freely exercised will. Hence a community (Gemeinschaft) is such because those in whom it consists freely will each other. It is an exercise of “Sinnwillen – will to meaning”. This is contrast to the will of a society (Gesellschaft), which is better described, by Bonhoeffer, as a zweckrationalen Willen – a “rational-purpose will”. He also held that “a concept of God is imagined in relation to thought on the concept of person and community of persons”. By this line of argument we ought to be able to establish Bonhoeffer’s notion of God from the description he gives of the person. In fact, we might infer that Bonhoeffer’s basic conception of God is that he is the one who wills in absolute freedom. The question is, though, “Is God’s absolutely free will for meaning or for purpose?” If it is the former then is there a chance that Bonhoeffer carries in his theology the kind of arbitrary understanding of God’s will for which Gunton criticises the medieval scholastics? The central problem, for Gunton, in this scenario is the understanding of the will as “a morally ambivalent faculty”. It can serve to give freedom to others or to deprive them. This understanding is based upon Gunton’s claim that “the orientation of the will is essential in any Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 32. Marsh points to similar interaction with Heidegger in the Habilitationsschrift. He notes that Heidegger’s Being-with means that “the world is always referential totality for the sake of the I that is Dasein”. The self is still the centre of the universe and the other only has being insofar as it is ready-to-hand in Dasein’s world. “The other is still re-contained in the I such that the conception of the self-finding or self-discovery of the I in the other can never be attained” (Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 129). Without the substantial existence of the other there can be no true community.  Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 33.  Ibid., p. 34.  Ibid., p. 56.  Ibid., p. 19. Bonhoeffer cites the correlation between Aristotle’s notion of the polis and the Aristotelian concept of an impersonal God as evidence.  Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 53. 

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understanding of what it is to be a person and to be a personal agent in the world”. The problem for the West, according to Gunton, is that the choice of following Augustine means the willing of creation is divorced from the historical economy of salvation. In Chapter 2 we noted that Bonhoeffer’s orders of preservation linked creation to redemption but only such that the latter was the solution to the former. Even if the orders of preservation are taken as a will to purpose then the possibility of arbitrariness remains and Gunton’s Trinitarian presuppositions are again, potentially, justified. In terms of God’s will for an individual we also saw in Chapter 2, that Christ drags her out of her cor curvum in se, as he meets her in the gracious acts of the other. This initiates the realisation of the always and already existence of the other and in turn forms the foundation for a conception of the self. The individual is to understand herself in terms of being Christ for another in the community. This involves understanding her penultimate existence from the perspective of her participation in ultimate reality. She must see herself as having been transformed from being in Adam to being in Christ. Bonhoeffer fashions this social ontology against Heidegger’s “being with”. From Adam to Christ: From Inauthenticity to Ultimate Reality In his Habilitationsschrift, Bonhoeffer developed the idea that upon encountering Christ in the community it is disclosed to Dasein that it has moved from “beingin Adam” to “being-in Christ”: “The Word [of God] lets humanity understand itself as ‘Being in Adam’ or ‘Being in Christ’; as being in the community of Christ, so that the foundation of unity through the word becomes identical with the foundation of unity through being in Adam or in Christ.”10 To be in Adam is a false existence, the cor curvum in se that we observed in Chapter 2.11 The self, stands alone in untruth, “the world is ‘their’ world, fellow human beings have sunk into the world of things (cf. Heidegger’s, ‘Mitsein’)”.12 In theological terms, being 

Ibid. Ibid., p. 55. 10 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 98. The bi-polar distinction first appears in Sanctorum communio (see “Lehre von der Ersünde” in Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, pp. 70–87). 11 Without being placed “in-reference” to the transcendent God, Dasein does not even understand its state before him: “ ‘Thinking which knows itself as lord of its world’ corresponds to the situation of loneliness, thus will this situation now be recognised in its real nature as indebtedness towards Christ” (Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 140). See also Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, pp. 71–2. 12 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 136. Mitsein or Mitda-sein is Heidegger’s way of relationally substantiating Da-sein. Da-sein has to “take care” (manage its possibilities, current situation and the temptation to submit to I) of itself. Yet it cannot do this in isolation, it has to deal with other Da-sein and thus discovers itself to be Mitda-sein: “In being-with as the existential for-the-sake-of-others, these others are already disclosed in their Da-sein 

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in Adam is being in sin and therefore guilt. Yet this too has an ontological sense summed up in Heidegger’s “everydayness”. “The everydayness of human beings in Adam is guilt … it is a compulsive seeking after pleasure in the creature and it is, therefore, always already in flight from that which right, knowledge of which sets pleasure within its proper limits: from death and the self.”13 The ordinary life of those in Adam is a boundary-less existence driven by desires into further isolation with death being the only point of reference. The implication from Bonhoeffer’s thought is that there is no possibility for the individual to attain any sense of substantial identity or personal particularity. The isolated and alienated individual lives in a constant state of anxiety as she struggles against limits of finitude and the oppressive weight of das Mensch. Though she might long to establish herself over and against das Mensch and in face of death, “everything accosts her, has become her accuser, and she remains still alone and defenseless”.14 No foundation for identity or authentic existence can be found in Adam because (here Bonhoeffer appeals to Luther) authentic life is in Christ: “ ‘Seek yourself only in Christ and not in yourself, and you will find yourself in him eternally’ … the solution to this problem [cor curvum in se] comes as humanity re-orients its gaze towards Christ … escaping from the lordship of the I into the lordship of Christ … it discovers

… This disclosedness of the Mitda-sein of others which belongs to being-with means that the understanding of others already lies in the understanding of being of Da-sein because it is being-with … Knowing oneself is grounded in primordially understanding being-with” (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 116). Dasein has its being as being-with-others. At one level this is a matter of Dasein distinguishing itself over and against others. Yet Dasein also has to struggle against being absorbed by the others (Günter Figal, “Being-with, Dasein-with, and the ‘They’ as the Basic Concept of Unfreedom, from Martin Heidegger: Phänomenologie Der Freiheit”, in Heidegger’s Being and Time, p. 114). It cannot be entirely or securely an “I am”, if it also has to be a “with-them”. “It is not I myself who for the most part and on average am my Dasein but the Others [das Mensch] – No one is himself in everydayness” (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 120). He contends: “This, being-with-one-another dissolve’s one’s own Da-sein completely in the kind of being of ‘the others’” (ibid., p. 119). Dasein loses itself in others in inauthentic existence. When this happens in everyday living Dasein becomes the das Mensch. So the das Mensch as das Mensch dissolve too: they are now part of Dasein (Figal, “Being-with”, p. 110). In this lies its power: “We enjoy ourselves and have fun the way they enjoy themselves … But we also withdraw from the ‘great mass’ the way they withdraw, we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking. Das Mensch which is nothing definite and which all are, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness” (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 119). Heidegger’s rather negative assessment of Da-sein’s struggle to “bewith-others” makes an apt context for understanding Bonhoeffer’s “being-in-Adam”. The challenge for Bonhoeffer’s “being-in Christ” will be to articulate Dasein’s engagement with the community in a way that does not repeat the homogenising effects of das Mensch. 13 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 146; cf. n. 12 above; Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 119. 14 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 148.

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itself in original freedom as God’s creature.”15 The individual finds in Christ an identity (authentic existence) as a cognizant participant in God’s creation. As we saw in Chapter 2, Dasein meets this world in the new creation of the church. Engagement with Christ opens Dasein for engagement with others – those also engaged with Christ – ultimate reality. This notion of church is not an institution but rather the proximal encounter with others in Christ and with Christ in his revelation. As we saw in the discussion of epistemology, it is in this context that both Dasein and the other emerge from the world of things and become known as persons.16 An individual’s identity is constituted as personal in encounter with Christ and in the context of the community. Bonhoeffer describes the dynamics of this encounter as: “a person ‘is’ only in the act of self-giving”.17 The act of selfgiving is a free one based on the self-giving of Christ. In contrast to Heidegger’s position, Bonhoeffer describes authentic existence (personal identity) as a matter of giving oneself up to and for others as the experience of ultimate reality.18 The difference in ontology that Bonhoeffer is proposing is based on Luther’s view of the relationship between act and being for those in Christ: “Being comes before working, and suffering comes before being. Therefore coming into existence, being, and working follow in this order.”19 Bonhoeffer interpreted suffering (pati) here in terms of the relationship between God and humans, as “being acted upon”. Thus he writes:

15 Ibid., p. 149, citing Martin Luther, “A Sermon on Preparing to Die”. Bonhoeffer clarified this original creaturely freedom in the later Genesis lectures: “Being free means ‘being-free-for-the-other,’ because I am bound to the other” (Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 59). 16 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 124. 17 Ibid., p. 125. The rhetoric here is problematic. Should we assume that one is not a person without self-giving considering that the act is only possible for those in Christ? 18 Bonhoeffer’s rhetoric once again has the potential to create difficulties: “This understanding of person is attained through the person of Christ and true only for the personal community of the Christian church instituted in Christ” (Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 125). Considering the state of those in Adam, we might wonder the extent to which those not in the church can be considered persons? 19 Bonhoeffer cites Luther in Latin: “Prius est enim esse quam operari, prius autem pati quam esse. Ergo fieri, esse, operari se sequuntur” (Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, LW 25 [St. Louis: Concordia, 1972], p. 104 n. 2 [trans. altered], cited in Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 113. I am grateful to Dr Charles Weiss of the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge for the translation). The significance of this move, in terms of the conversation with Gunton, is that Bonhoeffer is still operating well within an Aristotelian ontology of causality. That is, actions and relations do not actually have the same ontological status since beings come into relation on the basis of actions. All that Bonhoeffer has really done is to displace the self as the origin of authentic existence as we shall see below.

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Spirit and Sonship Existence is defined as pati, that is, one can primarily speak “authentically” of existence as being encountered existence. Every concept of existence, which is not composed of being encountered or not being encountered by Christ, is “inauthentic” (as well as Heidegger’s “authentic” existence) … Encountered existence is existence in social reference, existence in reference to Christ, which knows itself as rejected and accepted in its historical wholeness.20

Dasein does not achieve authenticity/identity for itself; it is a gift from the encounter with Christ. Being and act are brought together in wholeness because Christ brings them together pro nobis. Furthermore, Christ brings act and being together through the other for it is the personal interactions within the community that the individual meets him. Bonhoeffer addressed the chief distinction between “inauthenticity” and “ultimate reality” in his inaugural Berlin lecture. The key issue was the concept of “potentiality for being – Seinkönnens” in Heidegger’s work.21 According to Bonhoeffer, Heidegger understood potentiality thus: “Dasein is primarily Beingpossible. Dasein is everything that it can be and it is as per its possibility.”22 Furthermore, the difficulties for Dasein in achieving its possibility anticipated in “being-towards-death” are its fall into inauthenticity under the pressure of being-with others. It is less Heidegger’s appraisal of the state of Dasein in tension with das Mensch that concerns Bonhoeffer so much as the solution the former offers. For Heidegger, Dasein is summoned from its inauthenticity in the call of conscience:23 “The Dasein calls itself back to itself, it has lost itself in the world, it is in the foreign place, the uncanniness of the world makes it anxious, that is its guilt (or its nothingness as Heidegger thinks of the concept of guilt).”24 In this situation, the summons of conscience, Dasein resolves to live towards its 20 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 113. Earlier Bonhoeffer had written: “existence is imagined in reference to revelation; as existence affected by revelation or not affected by revelation” (ibid., p. 75). Compare with Heidegger’s claim: “The nonrelational character of death understood in anticipation individualises Da-sein down to itself … Da-sein can authentically be itself only when it makes that possible of its own accord” (Being and Time, p. 243, emphasis original). 21 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Antrittsvorlesung: Die Frage nach dem Menschen in der gegenwärtigen Philosophie und Theologie”, in Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928–1931, ed. Reinhart Staats et. al., DBW 10 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1991). 22 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, cited in Bonhoeffer, “Antrittsvorlesung”, p. 363. 23 Steven Crowell, “Subjectivity: Locating the First-Person in Being and Time”, in Heidegger’s Being and Time, pp. 117–40. Crowell notes that this is where Dasein moves from third person to first person in the second section of Being and Time. Heidegger writes: “Da-sein calls itself in conscience … And it does this only because in calling the one summoned, it does not call him into the public idle chatter of the they, but calls him back from that to the reticence of his existent potentiality-of-being” (Being and Time, p. 254). 24 Bonhoeffer, “Antrittsvorlesung”, p. 364.

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death thus taking on its guilt and achieving a unity of act and being. In contrast Bonhoeffer contends if humans consciously take upon themselves the realities of guilt and direct themselves towards death: Humanity becomes the world power; it has ascended itself to tragic loneliness. (Humanity alone remains, it understands itself from itself; the being of the world has no relevance for its authentic self-understanding. Again in the long run humanity still answers the question concerning humanity itself).25

As we have already seen, Bonhoeffer’s theological definition of this scenario is the cor curvum in se.26 When Christ takes Dasein out of itself he gives himself and the church as the answer to the human question. In this way the question becomes serious again, because “it is no longer includes itself in its answer”.27 Humans know their foundation comes from God not themselves.28 This foundation appears when “humanity comes across itself in the world” summoned to the cross of Christ.29 Heidegger’s notion of potentiality is abandoned entirely since, “humanity can no longer understand itself from itself but rather from Christ who exists as community, from his word which the community bears and without which the community does not exist”.30 So identity/authenticity is a gift to one who has been placed into the truth (ultimate reality), brought into Christ existing as community.31 No longer a being-towards-death, the self is now “being-towards-Christ, Dasein is free”.32 The self does not substantiate itself through its own actions but is acted upon by Christ. The individual actualises his new ontology via replication of Christ’s act for others and this is the only sense in which Dasein has any potentiality. Being comes through act (Christ’s) and is manifest in the repetition of that act. The self is one who acts for others. Marsh highlights the self’s change in ontology through placement in the community: “Christ existing as community provides the space wherein I move from the powerlessness and agony of my individual death to the gladness of our dying in Christ.” In this community, “I am not freed from the other, nor do I give

25

Ibid., p. 365. Ibid., p. 369; see also above Chapter 2. In effect what Bonhoeffer is asserting is that despite Dasein’s efforts at authenticity, it remains in Adam. The only ontological change possible is the one initiated by Christ. 27 Bonhoeffer, “Antrittsvorlesung”, p. 369. 28 Earlier Bonhoeffer wrote: “Not a self-losing in the self, but rather a self-finding in Christ” (Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 156). 29 Bonhoeffer, “Antrittsvorlesung”, p. 376. 30 Ibid., p. 377. 31 Robert P. Scharlemann, “Authenticity and Encounter: Bonhoeffer’s Appropriation of Ontology”, Union Seminary Quarterly Reivew 46 (1992): 257. 32 Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, p. 152. 26

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the other over to its alien autonomy, but am free for and with the other”.33 This is undoubtedly the case and Bonhoeffer has established a significant corrective to, if not a distinctive idiom within, the modern ontology of act and being. Nonetheless being defined or realised through act is a bare existence and the sense in which such a person might be described as “who” feels more functional than particular.34 While Christ’s Dasein – the God–man pro nobis structure35 – has the advantage of the definite article, he is “the man for others”; for the individual there appears much less certainty. We need then to explore Bonhoeffer’s later writings to gain a more definite sense of how one is individuated amidst the community.36 There are a number of signs that this later work was still in conversation with Heidegger, albeit indirectly.37 Individual Being from Responsible Action Thus far we have given the most attention to the church as the context in which gracious actions determine being. Yet Bonhoeffer’s desire for a religionless Christianity was in part a move to ensure a consistency of life for the individual in the world qua world. His later prison writings described a this-worldliness (Diesseitigkeit) for Christian action (based on Christ’s being the ultimate reality of the world) as “life in the abundance of the tasks, questions, successes and fiascos, experiences and helplessness”.38 In the Ethik we may discern Bonhoeffer’s description of the conditions for individual living in the world as “the structure of a

Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 133. If Christ’s Dasein determines the ultimate reality of the world (and individuals gain their otherness in him) and if Christ can only be met in the “Who?” question, are we not therefore justified in expecting the answer to the concrete substantiality of the self to be found in answer to a “Who?” question? 35 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, pp. 291ff. 36 Surprisingly Marsh makes scant reference to Bonhoeffer’s later work save a reference or two to the prison correspondence. 37 Contra Scharlemann (“Authenticity and Encounter”, p. 254). Bethge indicates that Bonhoeffer was still reading Heidegger during his imprisonment (Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography [Minneapolis: Fortress, rev. edn, 2000], p. 944. I am grateful to Dr Stephen Plant for this reference). Considering the amount of interaction we have shown between Bonhoeffer and Heidegger we ought to consider seriously that Bonhoeffer uses the term “structure” (Struktur) for the responsible life. The Struktur des Dasein is its way of being in the world in Heidegger’s language (see Being and Time, § 2). Scharlemann seems to have overlooked that in the Christology lectures Bonhoeffer wrote of the pro me Struktur des Christus – a direct challenge to Heidegger’s ontology. Now here in this later work, Bonhoeffer still retains Heideggerian terminology in order to articulate his distinct theological refiguration of being towards Christ in the world. 38 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “An Eberhard Bethge 21.7.44”, in Widerstand und Ergebung, p. 542. 33 34

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responsible life”.39 The structure of a responsible life is a way of being in the world consisting of vicarious representative action (Stellvertretung), in accordance with reality (Wirklichkeitsgemäßheit), taking on guilt (Schuldübernahme) and freedom (Freiheit).40 Stellvertretung, or vicarious representative action, is the action one takes in the place of another.41 It is the basic means by which the individual finds their identity in others: “the I of several people is incorporated in his own self”.42 This, according to Bonhoeffer, refutes the notion of the isolated individual as the agent of ethical behaviour. The essential meaning of Stellvertretung, like everything else in the world, is found in the person of Jesus Christ. He is “the life, our life” because “he lived as the incarnate Son of God as our vicarious representative”. Since Jesus lived this way, “all life is through him destined to be vicarious representative action”.43 Christ stands at the centre of human existence and therefore he is “the initiator and reality of new humanity”.44 Consequently Bonhoeffer maintains that responsible living is possible “only in perfect devotion of one’s own life to other humans … only the selfless live”.45 Lest the principle of selflessness be abstracted from the ultimate reality of Christ, Bonhoeffer insists that vicarious representative action be in accordance with Christ’s reality. The reality in which one acts vicariously and in accordance with is, as we saw in Bonhoeffer’s epistemology, not an esoteric ideal but the man Jesus Christ. He is the truth of the ultimate reality both of God and the world. So we read: “reality is first and last not an ‘it,’ but rather the real man, namely the man who is God incarnate”.46 Thus a vicariously representative action is “action 39 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, pp. 256ff. Wannenwetsch identifies a useful distinction between Bonhoeffer’s responsible living and Niebuhr’s “responsible self”. Wannenwetsch shows “responsible acting and living means responding to Christ and neighbour and not to a ‘responsible self’” (Bernd Wannenwetsch, “Responsible Living or Responsible Self? Bonhoeffer's Reflections on a Vexed Moral Notion”, Studies in Christian Ethics 18 [2005]: 125). The point he is making is manifest in the present discussion in the way that Bonhoeffer distinguishes himself from Heidegger in relation to the role of the conscience. 40 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 289. 41 As early as Sanctorum communio we read: “In Christ, once and for all, – in which lies the very nature of the truly vicarious representative action – is humanity in the set community of God … [my] agency for the other comes about from the life principle of vicarious representation (Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 92). The concept is widely recognised as a leitmotiv in Bonhoeffer’s theology. 42 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 257. 43 Ibid., p. 258. 44 Green, Bonhoeffer, p. 56 (cf. Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 306; Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 69; see also p. 62ff. above). 45 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 258, emphasis original. We might wonder from this at the sense in which those not living responsibly are alive. 46 Ibid., p. 261, emphasis original; cf. Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 283. The question as to whether those not in Christ can live this way remains open.

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in accordance with Christ [which] is action in accordance with reality”.47 As the individual acts selflessly as Christ she authenticates her existence. At the same time because Christ’s action is towards the world, towards all penultimate things, Dasein’s actions need not be confined to the church.48 This is because Christ is the truth of the ultimate reality of God. Christ’s action validates human action in relation to God. “Emanating from him alone is human action that is not pulverized in conflicts of principle, but rather comes from the fulfilled reconciliation of the world with God.”49 Bonhoeffer notes two important limits upon a responsible life. Firstly, “action that accords with reality stands within the boundary of our creatureliness”.50 Having been placed into the truth we find ourselves always already with the conditions in which we must act.51 The second limitation on our responsibility is that “the other people one encounters must also be reckoned as responsible”.52 Part of recognising the other as concrete creature is to acknowledge his/her responsibility. The limitations, especially the first, are important for our discussion because they offer the possibility of appreciating the concrete spatial and temporal distinctiveness of the individual. Though the individual’s actions have the same character as Christ’s (in relation to God and the world) they are by no means in the same circumstances. Hence the way is open for Dasein to be individuated from Christ and others even while he is united with both. Even so, Bonhoeffer maintains strong parity between the actions of Christ and the individual by including acceptance of guilt as part of a responsible living. “Jesus becomes guilty as a responsible agent in historical Dasein of humanity … Now every vicariously representative, responsible action has its origin in this sinless-guilty Jesus Christ … Because Jesus accepted the guilt of all humanity upon himself, therefore everyone acting responsibly becomes guilty.”53 To take on the guilt of others means to take responsibility for others despite the guilt that one might incur for so 47 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 262. Rasmussen helpfully summarises this in two question: “ ‘What is the truly real here?’ [and] ‘What action on my part accords with this reality?’” (Larry Rasmussen, “The Ethics of Responsible Action”, in Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 219). 48 Note that action in accordance with Christ “leaves the world to be the world … it reckons with the world as world” (Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 264). Rasmussen comments: “Understanding responsibility in Bonhoeffer’s ethics … requires that we understand that for him the relationship with God is both ‘social,’ or relational, and completely ‘this worldly’” (Rasmussen, “Ethics of Responsible Action”, p. 218). 49 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 266. Hence the self acts vicariously under the grace of God. 50 Emphasis original. We note also that in Sanctorum communio Bonhoeffer distinguished between the salvific character of Christ’s actions and those of Christians (Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 99). 51 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 267. 52 Ibid., p. 268. 53 Ibid., p. 275.

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doing.54 The acceptance of guilt also has its limits and in this case it is conscience. Again Bonhoeffer employs Heideggerian terminology to describe the process of the conscience: “The conscience is the call to unity with oneself, brought out of a depth beyond one’s will and rationality to the hearing of the human existence.”55 Yet, as we would expect from the inaugural Berlin lecture seen above, this is not Heidegger’s call to authenticity and hence disengagement with the other. It is not the victory of the autonomous I over all things but rather the unity of act and being that comes through being placed into the truth by Christ existing as community – “Jesus Christ has become my conscience.”56 In language highly reminiscent of Luther’s Freedom of the Christian Man, Bonhoeffer describes the conscience as having been set free for the service of God and the neighbour, “especially where a person enters into the community of human guilt”.57 The conscience limits taking on and bearing another’s guilt in two ways. In the first instance, the amount of guilt one may incur in acting responsibly “has its concrete limit in the unity of the oneself with one’s load bearing capacity [Tragkraft]”.58 There is a second limit upon the conscience according to Bonhoeffer. Even a conscience that has been freed by Jesus Christ “is [bound by] the law of loving God and one’s neighbour as it is in the Decalogue, in the Sermon on the Mount and in the apostolic parenesis”.59 Thus the responsible self lives in love with God and the neighbour, vicariously bearing as much guilt as it she is able for others. Again it is the limits that Bonhoeffer acknowledges that offer the conditions for the possibility of individuation amongst those in Christ. The conscience here acts as an individual indicator in vicarious action. In this element of the responsible life’s structure we also begin to gain a sense of the last element, that is freedom.60 54

Earlier Bonhoeffer had described the need to bear with others: “the law of Christ is a law of bearing. Bearing is suffering” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gemeinsames Leben: Das Gebetbuch Der Bibel, ed. Eberhard Bethge, DBW 5 [Munich: Christian Keiser Verlag, 1987], p. 84). The exhortation was in the context of the Christian community. Bearing the guilt of others is to be expected in penultimate reality even if it is not salvific as were the actions of Christ. Nickson notes that this is one of the most radical insights in ethical theory offered by Bonhoeffer considering the traditional position of freedom from guilt (Nickson, Bonhoeffer on Freedom, p. 139). Our comparison between Bonhoeffer and Heidegger certainly confirms this. 55 Bonhoeffer refers the reader to Heidegger’s, Being and Time, esp. §56, “The Character of Conscience as a Call” (Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 277 n. 96). See also Heinz Eduard Tödt, “Conscience in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethical Theory”, in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: Old Europe and New Frontiers, ed. Guy Carter [Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991], pp. 48–9). 56 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 278. 57 Ibid., p. 279. 58 Ibid., p. 282. 59 Ibid. 60 Bachtell overlooks the role of accepting another’s guilt in his discussion of freedom in Bonhoeffer’s thought. Perhaps this is why Batchell settles for the weaker “deputyship”

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We have already exhibited much of the sense of freedom that the responsible self has once Christ existing as community has placed him into the truth. One vicariously represents others because one has been freed to do so. It is the same for taking on another’s guilt. Bonhoeffer writes: “Without support through people, circumstances or principles, but under consideration of all given, human, general and principal circumstances, the responsible Dasein deals in the freedom of one’s own self … He himself must watch, judge, assess, decide himself and act. He himself must review the motives, the views, the values and the sense of his actions.”61 The responsible self is responsible for the ways and means that she acts in relation to God and others. At the same time she gives others freedom to take responsibility for themselves and for her. She expresses her freedom by thoughtfully engaging in the vicarious representation of others.62 Discerning to what extent she can accept their guilt and proceeding under the grace of God, she is mindful of the need to respect the responsibilities of others.63 This is the structure of her particular life, her way of being in Christ individually. The Dasein of the individual then in Bonhoeffer’s thought is one who, in the freedom of God’s grace and in conjunction with the law of love, vicariously represents the other by serving them even to the point of adopting their guilt in order to call them to their own responsibility before God in relation to Christ existing as community. The actions taken are limited to a specific time and place in accordance with the reality of Christ and Dasein’s creatureliness. Bonhoeffer’s description of being as “responsible in the world” is a coherent and integrated account of life for the individual with God and others. The important limitations on the general pattern of relations that we noted – limits of creatureliness and conscience – enhance the possibilities of conceiving individuation even as someone gives herself up for others. They offset the functionalist flavour of this social ontology that we noted above by providing the conditions for the possibility of concrete actions in and for a concrete community. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s description gives us a definite sense of how and to what extent one participates in the particularity of Christ: something as yet lacking in Gunton’s theology. We have a definite sense of how one acts in the freedom that Christ himself enjoyed and makes available to others. Once again Bonhoeffer’s work has proven to be a for Stellvertretung instead of the fuller “vicarious representative action” (Donald S. Bachtell, “Freedom in Bonhoeffer”, in A Bonhoeffer Legacy: Essays in Understanding, ed. A.J. Klassen [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981], pp. 338–9). 61 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 284. 62 Bachtell suggests that for Bonhoeffer, “One does not have freedom; rather, one participates in it” (Bachtell, “Freedom in Bonhoeffer”, p. 331). The most poignant act of free responsibility was tyrannicide (Rasmussen, “Ethics of Responsible Action”, p. 223). 63 Bonhoeffer had earlier described giving others their freedom as commensurate with bearing with them: “When the Christian lets God create His image in another, he allows the other freedom and even bears the load of such freedom of the other creature” (Bonhoeffer, Gemeinsames Leben, p. 86).

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substantive alternative discourse on the issue of particularity. We shall move on to consider what difference Gunton’s presupposition of Trinitarian theology can make in the conversation. Gunton on the Free, Personal Hypostases At a basic level Gunton’s theology of particularity was a search for an appropriate conception of personhood. The distinction we have noted, especially in comparison to Bonhoeffer, was the former’s desire to found the quest on the notion of divine personhood. This was understood as the particular consequence of divine perichoresis. Thus Gunton’s theological ontology is fundamentally social by definition.64 From there Gunton sought to articulate the economy of salvation such that God, working through the Son and in the Spirit, provides an echo of his own being in that which he created and redeemed. Hence Gunton favoured the Cappadocian language of hypostasis for the fundamental unit of substantiality in creation. Furthermore, as we shall see, in contrast to modernity’s pursuit of individual identity, Gunton sought the conditions for the perfection of created personal hypostases. Such a description seems to operate at a level of abstraction an order of magnitude beyond Bonhoeffer’s I/Thou dialectic. However, it was what Gunton deemed necessary in order to achieve what we could refer to as a healthy relationship between ultimate and penultimate things.65 Gunton’s approach was seen to work in his favour in comparison with Bonhoeffer on the subject of revelation. The comparison on the issue of social ontology will highlight the essential distinctions in theological emphasis between the two theologians. The Material Person In the Bampton Lectures, Gunton proposed that persons be understood as personal hypostases. They are who they are by virtue of the mutually constitutive relations in which they exist.66 His concern was with the conditions necessary in order to allow persons to be particular in relation. The first step, he claimed, is to maintain “an adequate conception of the concreteness of the world within which personal life is lived”.67 Traditionally the notion of substance has been used to describe the “thingness” of the world. Yet in Gunton’s mind this has too often suffered from a lack of “concreteness” due to the West’s propensity for favouring “timeless 64

Of course, Gunton was at pains to distinguish his theology from social Trinitarianism. See the Preface to the second edition of Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, pp. xv ff. 65 An issue with which some have suggested Bonhoeffer struggled unsuccessfully (see Thomas I. Day, “Conviviality and Common Sense: The Meaning of Christian Community for Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, in Bonhoeffer Legacy, pp. 227–8). 66 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 196. 67 Ibid.

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underlying substratum” of a Platonic kind.68 The prevailing attitude regarding the vagaries and inconstancies of perceived knowledge that Gunton pointed to in the previous chapter has diverted attention from the “constitutive relationality of other particulars” towards “underlying generalities”.69 As an alternative Gunton proposed understanding reality thus: “Something is real – what it is and not something else – by virtue of the way it is held in being not only by God but also by other things in the particular configurations in space and time in which its being is constituted; that is to say, in its createdness.”70 Such a “realistic” view, in Gunton’s mind, is a less about the transparency of things to human intellect and more about the possibility of a concreteness of things in time and space. He contends that the failure of Western thought to establish the substantiality of material particulars is reflected in the failure to determine personal identity. Gunton asserts that one reason behind the failure to establish what it is to be a person lies in a wrong distinction between persons and things. It is acceptable to view things as “constituted by externality or external relations”, he ventures, but not people. In contrast to things, people are constituted internally, “because we believe that we know ourselves not by observing our relatedness with the other but by some kind of introspection”.71 As noted in the Introduction, Gunton countered: “Both persons and things are hypostatic in the sense of being substantial particulars and rendered such by the patterns of relations that constitute them what they distinctively are: with God in the first instance and with other temporally and spatially related particulars in the second.”72 As with knowledge, so here Gunton’s thought works similarly with selfhood. The philosophical importance of the individual is relativised in order to reinterpret the theological significance. The key to understanding revelation was to see that it happens all the time and that the saving knowledge of God in Christ is one particular revelation, albeit the most important. Now here with personhood, the substantiality of the person as being in relationship is only one kind of substantiality in the world, all of which

68

Ibid., p. 197. Ibid., p. 198. See also the discussion on knowledge through perception in Chapter 3. Gunton acknowledges Duns Scotus and George Berkley as possible exceptions to this Western trend. Scotus’ haecceitas, which denote the singularity of a thing, have an unfortunately vague definition. The term is said to give an object it’s “thisness”, but not such that it’s ultimate reality has any qualitative determination. There is no sense of a “relationality corresponding to” and hence it disappeared with Ockham’s subsequent nominalism (ibid., p. 198). According to Gunton, Berkeley proposed that “things are perceived to be because God sees to it that they are”. However, Berkeley’s idea terminology results in the particulars appearing to be “unstable and occasional moments of perception rather than substantial entities” (ibid., p. 199). 70 Ibid., p. 200. 71 Ibid., p. 202. 72 Ibid., p. 203. 69

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is established in the same way. Furthermore, all of this constitutes what it is to be a person.73 Gunton employs the same understanding of “being acted upon” as Bonhoeffer but across the whole spectrum of penultimate things. The Spirit is the mediator of God’s perfecting action giving ontological direction to the hypostases of everything in creation towards the Father, through the Son. Therefore, individuation in penultimate reality is a function of material relations in a matrix of time and space, directed by the Spirit towards the creatureliness anticipated in Messiah Jesus. It is both dynamic and stable – a matter of nature and nurture: a broad horizon for the most profound upheavals and the subtlest of nuances. All the while this movement is matched by the concrete substantiality of embodiment, the enduring nature of physicality and the persistent form of matter. While Bonhoeffer was perfectly happy to affirm embodiment and createdness, his eschatology has creation languishing in the promise of God’s wrath and the curse of death; waiting for the somewhat arbitrary solution, which is Christ.74 There is little room for sense of anticipation of the ultimate by the penultimate that we see in Gunton’s description of the Spirit instantiating echoes of the life of God in creation. Personal Correspondence Since all of life in creation somehow echoes the being of God, the next step for Gunton was to delineate the particular correspondence that humans have with their Creator. It is here that Gunton’s understanding of the Imago Dei fits. In contrast to what he perceived as the inadequacy of traditional efforts, those equating the imago with rationality and/or the importance of human dominion as a constituent,75 Gunton promotes a Christological understanding of the concept.76

73 Knight’s reflections on Gunton’s view of person are useful at this point. He writes: “The identity of each person is not hidden in a monadic place-without-extension (the mind or the soul), but spread across the whole nexus of human personhood, constituted and sustained everywhere, and by everyone. One person is not the function of many other persons, for then the question would indeed just be of which persons and which community. Each person is a function of all persons” (Douglas Knight, “From Metaphor to Mediation: Colin Gunton and the Concept of Mediation”, Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 43 [2001]: 121). Knight may not have been careful enough in this summation. As we shall see the nexus of human personhood is constituted and sustained by the Messiah not humanity in general. In addition, particular communities do play a formative role in shaping created personhood above humanity universal due the limits of time and space in which a person exists. 74 See Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 126. 75 Gunton, Triune Creator, pp. 193ff; see also Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, pp. 100ff. 76 Gunton followed the exegetical insights of Francis Watson, Text and Truth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997). Elsewhere Gunton points to the fact that the New Testament

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The advantages of a Christological interpretation are threefold. The first is that the language of Gen. 1:26 can be read plainly: the “likeness” aspect of being in God’s image “involves physical resemblance”. The basic premise is that “if humans are made in the likeness of God, then God will resemble the human form if and when he makes himself visible”.77 This is not to say that God is human in form but rather “without abandoning his spirituality, God purposes to become human in the incarnation of his Son and to be seen as such”.78 The second advantage is that the likeness that human creatures have to their creator is grounded in the concrete person of the incarnate Son whose person and actions are “the one true homoioma of the Father’s person and actions”.79 Thus, the sense of personal particularity of the human hypostasis cannot be some kind of Platonic essence. The “Who?” of a particular person is derived from the identity of the ultimate reality of God in creation. The third advantage of a Christological interpretation is eschatological and is dependent on the notion of perfection. As we have noted elsewhere Gunton proposed that creation be viewed as a project with Messiah Jesus as the goal: As created, it is perfect, because it is God’s project: what he purposes for that which is not God but creation, and therefore, intrinsically finite and temporal. But it is not perfect in the sense of complete. It has somewhere to go, and that is one of the points of the doctrine of recapitulation. Jesus Christ recapitulates our human story in order that the project of the perfection of all things may be achieved.80

Articulated in this way eschatological teleology is inextricably bound up with soteriology. The importance of this for an understanding of the imago is that human hypostases are not only incomplete they are also corrupt.81 It suggests answers to some important questions about being human for which previous notions of image of God were ill equipped. What, he asks, in the first instance, is to be made of the personhood of “those so enslaved to evil as to be virtually deprived of the capacity to love?” In the second instance, what account can be given of the personhood of those “so incapacitated as to be incapable of any ‘human’ response?”82 That is, in what sense is a human being a person if they appear to be devoid of reason and/or consciousness? Gunton’s answer to both these questions is the same: “However horrible the deformity, however great the need for redemption in its broadest sense, writers reorder the language of “image” and “likeness” to Messiah Jesus (Colin E. Gunton, Christ and Creation, Didsbury Lectures [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992], p. 100). 77 Francis Watson, Text and Truth, p. 289, cited in Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 200. 78 Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 200. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., p. 202. 81 Gunton, Christ and Creation, pp. 103ff. 82 Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 203.

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those created in God’s image remain so” because of Messiah Jesus. “The risen Jesus remains Jesus of Nazareth” and his humanity is a promise of God’s gracious commitment to all who bear Jesus’ image.83 Genesis 1 is fulfilled in Messiah Jesus and must therefore be understood on the basis of this eschatological event for he is the mediator between Creator and creation.84 As we would expect, Gunton wanted to move the discussion towards the question of relations for they were, for him, an ontological category. Here we find another rare reference to the work of Bonhoeffer: “This is where … Bonhoeffer [was] right: we are concerned with an analogy of relation rather than one of being.”85 Yet the crucial matter is to determine the actual relations in which the human creature, as distinct from other creatures, exists. Since God, as creator of all things, sustains everything in and through Messiah Jesus, “then that is the primary analogy of the continuing subsistence of the image of God in humanity”.86 Thus likeness to God is a matter of being personal because Jesus is a person. “What makes Jesus the particular person that he is?”87 According to Gunton the answer lies in his relation to Israel and Israel’s God realised through the Spirit. Our development of Gunton’s theology in the previous chapter enables us to describe this identity as the perfect Son of God, the inspired Messiah who fulfils God’s promise to bring freedom for all those made in his image. Gunton made 83

Ibid., p. 204. Gunton, Christ and Creation, p. 100. 85 Ibid., p. 206. Gunton cites Bonhoeffer’s description of imago relationalis from Creation and Fall: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1–3, trans. J.C. Fletcher (London: SCM Press, 1959), pp. 36–7. Gunton comments: “In point of fact, perhaps we must … move towards an analogy of relation that generates a kind of analogy of being, for we are concerned with ontology.” Creatureliness was a facet of the responsible life but the emphasis there was on the finitude with which one human can accept responsibility for the guilt of another (see p. 122 above). Bonhoeffer’s theology of the imago differs significantly from Gunton in that Bonhoeffer held that the imago could be lost through sin: “Imago dei – the human in his being for God and for the next man, in his resurrected creatureliness and limited image of God. Sicut deus – the human equal to God in his knowledge-out-ofhimself of good and evil, in his boundlessness and his act-out-of-himself, in his aseity, in his being alone … Imago dei, sicut deus, agnus dei [Lamb of God] – the human brought to the sacrifice for the sicut deus, killing the false being God in actual being God, the Godman re-establishing the imago dei (Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, pp. 104–5). In Gunton’s theology the imago is instantiated in pre-Fall Adam but belongs to Christ. After the Fall all humans bear Christ’s image dysfunctionally. It would seem that Bonhoeffer’s imago relationalis refers more to the nature of relations and is therefore not ontologically essential to the same extent. Bonhoeffer’s descriptions of sicut deus, being in Adam and cor curvum in se consistently undermine a concrete sense of penultimate personhood. 86 Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 207. 87 Gunton makes reference to Heb. 5:8: “‘He learned obedience from what he suffered’ a reference surely not to the cross alone, but to his whole life as it so culminated” (Gunton, Intellect and Action, p. 106). 84

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no such connection between the imago and Sonship even though the implication of his thought was that all bear the imago. In fact his description of the personal hypostasis of each person terminated with a combination of “genes, dispositions, nourishment, culture – by which [Gunton] mean[t] all human activity in making use of the creation – and the rest”.88 Gunton was aware, however of the need to make a distinction between those who bear the image of the Messiah obediently and those who do not, and this is where the church featured in his argument. The church becomes the place where the perfect image of Christ is, by word and sacrament, anticipated in distinct persons.89 Gunton suggested that in the church human persons enter into the perfecting dynamic by “being [by the Spirit] with and for God in Jesus Christ and so for one another”.90 It is here that Gunton “located the characteristics and callings that we believe to be in some way intrinsic to personality: freedom, responsibility, creativity and the rest”.91 Regrettably Gunton never expanded upon the sense of responsibility or creativity (let alone the rest!) leaving us with only the broadest generalities.92 He did at least channel some energy into the topic of freedom and we shall finish the exploration of his work on that subject. Before then we can say that Gunton has achieved perhaps a clearer sense of the possibilities for personhood for those not in the church than Bonhoeffer. At the same time, Gunton’s description allows for the possibility of penultimate persons acting for the Good as the Spirit instantiates the image of Christ in them.93 The difference lies in the language of perfection, which circumvents some of the difficulties with the either/or style of Bonhoeffer’s Adam/Christ social ontology. For Gunton the personal hypostasis – person – is “one who is constituted in the relations of body, mind and Spirit”. She receives her identity from God through the Son and in the Spirit, as she lives with and from others in her particular place and time.

88 Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 208. “The Spirit’s perfecting activity may be rejected, but it remains a form of divine relation even to those apparently seeking to destroy themselves, in deed, those also who apparently succeed in the attempt” (ibid., p. 209). 89 Ibid., p. 210. Gunton comments that the church is the place where non-idolatrous forms of being human can be developed (Gunton, Christ and Creation, p. 106). Regrettably he gives no indication of what that might look like. 90 Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 210. 91 Ibid. 92 As for creativity we could refer to Gunton’s very brief remarks on imagination (see p. 82 n. 26 above; cf. Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, pp. 90ff; Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation, p. 33). Here is perhaps where the theological preoccupations of Gunton and Bonhoeffer really do diverge. Gunton was a systematician whose interest was in the theology of creation. Bonhoeffer would more normally be associated with ethics. Their interests in anthropology differed accordingly. 93 This provides a mechanism for describing the Good in creation that is outside the church though still at the instigation of God.

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One thing certainly lacking in Gunton’s account of personhood thus far is any sense in which one might contribute to the personhood of others, how one might express his relationship with others. Despite the reservations that one might have about Bonhoeffer’s modern ontology the responsible self has her Dasein structured, in accordance with Christ, for an active contribution to the personhood of others. Furthermore, unless Gunton is able to establish a genuine sense of freedom for the person in their relations we may well ask whether his Spirit governed, eschatologically driven theology is really that different from Hegel whom he rejects. Persons Acting in and for Freedom An intrinsic facet of Bonhoeffer’s responsible being was her vicarious representation of others, bearing their guilt within the limits of conscience and creatureliness. Bonhoeffer stressed that such action had to be undertaken in freedom and hence freedom is an integral aspect of ultimate existence. In contrast Gunton focuses solely on freedom as the point from which one may discuss the specifics of the particular person: “Our freedom is what we each make of our own particularity, and none of us are truly the particular persons we are created to be except in love and fellowship with our neighbour.”94 Particularity is perfected in mutually constitutive relations when actions that express the relationship are undertaken freely in the context of love for and fellowship with others – thought not necessarily in the church. As we would expect, and like Bonhoeffer before him, Gunton appeals to Christ as the model for such action. Yet Gunton’s approach has an interesting variation. He asks: “Can we speak in all this of the formation of Jesus’ ‘character,’ of his exercising ‘virtues?’”95 For if Jesus is the perfected human person then whatever it means for us to be persons will be found in him. While engaging with Luke’s narrative in the previous chapter we had the opportunity to consider the notion of Jesus being freed by the Spirit to act in accordance with the “law of his own being” under the “authority of God’s grace”.96 The way to understand what this means for other humans is found in the answer to Gunton’s question: “What is the relation of the human Jesus to the God who directed to his death a moral agent who manifested a measure of reluctance in obeying the divine command?” His answer is that “the obedience of the cross was the particular form that Jesus’

94 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 62; Gunton, Act and Being, p. 105. For Gunton this derives from the sense in which God is free: “May we say that the triune life is free by virtue of the free but ordered perichoresis – the ταξις – of Father, Son and Spirit in which there is constituted a communion in which each of the hypostases is what he is from and through the others?” (Gunton, Act and Being, p. 107). 95 Gunton, Intellect and Action, p. 107. 96 See p. 103 above. These two concepts were Gunton’s suggestions for co-ordinating the relationship between knowledge of the Good and the freedom to perform it.

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free obedience took”.97 The answer offers a rich theological expression of what it means for him to be Messiah. Time and space were so ordered by the perfecting Spirit (locating and enabling) that the one man Jesus of Nazareth was prepared for the one service to God. However, death on the cross for the sins of the world is “that which he did with his own particularity; that which enabled him to be and do what was truly and distinctively his action”. The Spirit is again the mediator of freedom and the character of that mediation is continuous for those who are in Christ. Gunton described it thus: “they are enabled by the Spirit’s action to do that which is the particular form of action appropriate to them in the present.”98 The contrast between Gunton and Bonhoeffer on this point is significant. Gunton’s interpretation of freedom treats the language of vicarious representation and the bearing of guilt as merely contingent upon spatio-temporal circumstances. Vicarious representation is not an intrinsic element of any person’s way of being in the world as it was for Bonhoeffer. In Gunton’s description one acts for another’s freedom whether or not they need saving from something.99 Put differently, Gunton’s description includes the possibility for the giving of freedom to others to include the spheres of the True and the Beautiful as well as the Good. We might infer that this includes giving others the freedom to pursue non-moral truth or beauty like science or art. Unfortunately the paucity of Gunton’s explanation of responsibility leaves us guessing. In sum, Gunton proposed the following two theses: Freedom is what I do with my own particularity, that which enables me to be myself and do what is truly and distinctively mine.

97 Colin E. Gunton, “God, Grace and Freedom”, in God and Freedom: Essays in Historical and Systematic Theology, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 129. 98 Gunton, “God, Grace and Freedom”, p. 130. 99 We noted the need for Bonhoeffer to make qualifying remarks about the extent to which one is able to act vicariously for another – principally that only Christ’s actions are salvific (see n. 50 above; cf. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 99). In fairness to Bonhoeffer however, as many have commented, we cannot overlook the significance of his particular situation at the time of essaying responsible living, especially his involvement in the coup attempt. Furthermore we note the considerable effect that Gunton’s Trinitarian theology had on his view of the atonement: “Although under the conditions of the Fall the sacrifice of Jesus must take the form of spilling of blood, that aspect is not of the essence of sacrifice, which is rather to be found in the notion of gift. It is the Father’s giving of the Son, the Son’s giving of himself to the Father and the Spirit’s enabling of creation’s giving in response that is at the centre” (Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, p. 225 n. 19). Gunton has appeared to make contingent, Christ’s giving of himself in the economy of salvation, what was definitive for Bonhoeffer.

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Freedom is that which others do to and with my particular being, in enabling me to be and do, or preventing me from being and doing, that which is particularly myself.100

On the basis of this, the particular person is the one who has been given the freedom to be who they distinctively are: “one’s self-realisation, one’s freedom, is something that depends integrally and not merely contingently upon one’s relation to the other”.101 Yet at the same time, one expresses that freedom in acting for or contributing to the freedom, and hence particularity of others. The horizontal aspect of the Spirit’s action is the formation of the church as a community that anticipates perfected diversity and particularity. Gunton reckons that, “if we are intrinsically relational beings, the grace – gracious action – of God is to be understood as that whereby he realizes forms of relationality which can be described as free”.102 The church is the pre-eminent place for this action. In the end freedom and therefore particularity is something that we give to and receive from others. Instead of freedom from the other God acts through the Son and in the Spirit to provide the conditions whereby we are free for and with others. Apart from what we have already said, if we were to take further issue with Gunton’s focus on freedom we might do so through criticisms levelled at Bonhoeffer by Thomas Day. Day refers to Bonhoeffer’s responsible living as “ethics for the elite”.103 Even if this were true of Bonhoeffer, at least in comparison with Gunton, Bonhoeffer’s theology incorporates the difficulties involved in living with others. To leave the Spirit’s perfecting work to the creation of freedom shows little consideration for some of the harsher realities of penultimate life. The myriad of complexities involved in personal interaction to say nothing of the confounding effects of sin make Gunton’s proposal inadequate. From a Christian perspective we must look to Bonhoeffer in order to have some sense of how a particular person uses their freedom. Luke on Sonship through Filial Relations Gunton’s theology of particularity offers much on the particularity of the Son but from what we have seen, disappointingly little on the sense of particularity that the Spirit achieves for anyone else. Bonhoeffer’s description of responsible living goes some way to filling in the blanks in Gunton’s system. However there is 100

Gunton, “God, Grace and Freedom”, p. 122. Ibid. 102 Ibid., p. 131. 103 Day, “Conviviality and Common Sense”, p. 215. Day seems to have overlooked the qualifying remarks that Bonhoeffer made regarding free responsibility and “the daily routine of the peasant, a factory worker, a lowly office worker, a military recruit, an apprentice or a pupil” (Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 286). 101

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more that can be said. The issue will be explored through two aspects of Gunton’s theology that only rated a passing mention for him but are, as we shall see, critical to a notion of personal particularity. The first of these appears as one aspect of Gunton’s view of justification that bears upon the freed person: “If we bear in mind that justification is inseparable from adoption as children of God, we shall realize that the being of the justified is indeed changed, for they are, like an adopted child, brought into a new set of relationships.”104 The importance of the person as a child of God receives little more attention in Gunton’s writings.105 Yet we contend that the gift of a filial relation with the Father in the Spirit and through the Son is, in fact, the ultimate perfection for the human hypostasis. This is the context in which the person is given a name – surely the pinnacle of personal particularity.106 The second aspect of personhood, which is closely related to the first, is the issue of address. Gunton makes the point that “to be human is to be addressed by God”.107 That is, we are called by God to certain forms of relationship with him, other humans and the world. Gunton retreats from this notion due to a danger that it minimises the material aspect of humanity – it concentrates the focus on cognitive aspects of humanity and repeats, in Gunton’s mind, the evils of the Hellenistic past. In spite of that, as we have seen, the Father’s addressing Jesus as Son at his Baptism marks a critical incident in the perfecting of his particularity. So we shall return to the drama of Scripture to explore what forms of relationship the Son is being called to in relation to God, other humans and the world.

Gunton, Christian Faith, p. 143. The notion does appear at the end of Bonhoeffer’s Habilitationsschrift, however the emphasis there is on the notion of trusting like a child as opposed to being gifted with a filial identity (Bonhoeffer, Akt und Sein, pp. 157ff). 106 We note that Basil described names as manifestations of the relational dynamic that leads to the status of hypostasis (Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 38.2). 107 Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 206. 104

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Perfecting Relations through Personal Address In the previous chapter, the section of Luke’s narrative under consideration began with the address of the Father to the Son (Luke 3:22). We may describe what followed in the wilderness temptations and return to Nazareth (Luke 4:1–21) as Jesus’ interpretation of that address. Luke’s story advances and we re-enter the course of the narrative between two further, yet no less critical addresses. After the highpoint of Peter’s confession – in terms of the disciple’s recognising Jesus’ Messianic status108 – Jesus and the three ascend a mountain to pray and, for their ears, God addresses the transformed Jesus as his chosen Son.109 Jesus is addressed as Son in two ways. From a subjective viewpoint, we again find Jesus praying in a symbolically rich environment. Through an obviously divine intervention he finds himself in the presence of two of Israel’s “great and good”. Here the past is not made present by invocation but by manifestation. Both Moses and Elijah spoke with God on a mountain (Sinai – Exod. 24:15–16; Horeb – 1 Kgs 19:8–9), and their association with Jesus here on a high mountain clothed in glory suggests a “summing up” of the scope of YHWH’s history with Israel. Whether or not Moses and Elijah represent “the Law and the Prophets”, as Nolland suggests,110 they do represent significant moments of national constitution and re-constitution in the history of Israel.111 Might we not infer that, in the Spirit, 108

“Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah of God’” (Luke 9:20). Most commentators note a change in the emplotment following this address as Jesus now works to shape his disciples understanding of what it means for him to be the Messiah – principally in terms of his death. 109 Nolland notes that the verb, “to flash or shine like lightning” (ἐξαστράπτων) appears in the lxx of Ezek. (1:4, 7) in connection with the outskirts of God’s glory as Ezekiel sees God upon his throne. The effect upon Moses of speaking with God upon Mt Sinai is similar (Exod. 33:29, 30, 35) (John Nolland, Luke 9:21–18:34, Word Biblical Commentary 35b [Dallas: Word, 1993], p. 498). The reference to the cloud overshadowing (ἐπεσκίαζεν) them alludes strongly to the birth announcement and it is not difficult to envisage the glory of Jesus’ (and Moses and Elijah) visage being the Shekinah glory that settled upon the Tabernacle (Exod. 25:8) as YHWH descended from the mountain to dwell amidst his people. Nolland opines: “The cloud is the sign of God’s (hidden) presence (Ps. 18:11; Ex. 19:16 etc.) and the mode of his transportation (Is. 19:1; Ps. 18:10; 104:3). Here the correlation of the ‘cloud’ and ‘voice’ points uniquely to God’s speaking from Mt. Sinai (Ex. 19:16; Deut. 5:22)” (Nolland, Luke 9:21–18:34, p. 501). The narrative gives the impression that the eternal Son may be less incognito here than Gunton prefers when he writes: “Is the weakness of much Christology … in wanting to see it [the presence of God] poking through all or some of the time before it can be confessed?” (Gunton, “Christology: Two Dogmas Revisited”, p. 165). 110 Nolland, Luke 9:21–18:34, p. 499. 111 If for no other reason than they represent the only other two periods in the history of Israel that involved such great displays of divine power and moments of crisis for God’s people (W.J. Dumbrell, The Faith of Israel [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2nd edn, 2002]).

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the Father publicly addresses the Son as the perfect mediator between heaven and earth, that the glory emphasises the perfected status of that mediation?112 Moses and Elijah speak with Jesus concerning his ἐξοδον (Luke 9:31). Considering the extent to which Jesus has already identified himself with the sonship of Israel in the narrative, it is difficult to overlook the suggestiveness of this term from the perspective of the Scriptural drama. Commentators point to the importance of this scene as an encouragement to the disciples in the light of Jesus’ prediction of his death.113 But Tannehill points also to the importance of the encounter for Jesus himself – after all Moses and Elijah speak with him.114 Therefore, apart from the common translation of ἐξοδον as “departure”, the subject of the discussion may also be rendered as Jesus’ redemption or even victory, which connotes, or anticipates, a particularity for his death in the Israelite story.115 A close link between the salvation of God and the liberation that the Messiah is going to achieve in the Spirit has already been established.116 When the cloud envelops the mountain and YHWH speaks, his words particularise both the place of Jesus in the history of God’s addressing Israel and Jesus’ interpretation of his ministry as the Messiah (cf. Luke 9:21–24.). The Spirit will enable the Messiah to deliver freedom by submitting himself to death. The objective, and more obviously direct, aspect of God’s address is to those gathered with Jesus. It is the symbolism of inclusio both through address and gathering them in the cloud that anticipates the Spirit’s opening of Sonship for others.117 Even as he spoke to Moses and Elijah in the clouds upon Sinai, God now speaks to the disciples endorsing Jesus as the Messiah in their very presence. Amidst this glorious manifestation of divine presence the Father once again publicly particularises the sonship of Jesus as the Messiah by addressing 112 Following Shepherd we have taken it as given the Spirit continues to work in and for the Messiah even when not named in the text (Narrative Function, p. 137). 113 For a summary, see Bock, Luke 1:1–9:50, p. 862. 114 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, vol. 1, pp. 223–4. Note the sense of συνεστῶτας which we have translated as “supporting” means to “stand with or by” as in “to be in close association, to endorse or even affirm” (Bauer et al., Greek–English Lexicon, s.v. συνίστμηι). 115 Wright interprets the Transfiguration as playing an important part in pre-figuring the triumphant return of YHWH to Zion in the work of the Messiah who will return Israel from exile and defeat evil at the same time (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 651). It was in conversation with Moses regarding the redemption of Israel and victory over Pharaoh that YHWH first referred to Israel as “My Son” (Exod. 4:22). Jesus has publicly committed himself to a course of action that ends in his death (Luke 9:22), in order for Jesus’ sonship to be preserved he must be redeemed from this fate. 116 See p. 109f., above. 117 The cloud covers all present, not just Moses and Elijah, contra John Paul Heil (The Transfiguration of Jesus: Narrative Meaning and Function of Mark 9:2–8, Matt 17:1–8 and Luke 9:28–36, Analecta Biblica 144 [Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2000], p. 149). Luke makes it clear that the disciples “were afraid as they entered the cloud” (Luke 9:34).

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him as “my son” (Luke 9:35). We also note that Luke specifically emphasises that Jesus is chosen of God (ὁ ἐκλελεγεμένος) making explicit what was implicit at his Baptism. More importantly, before two of Israel’s great mediators, the Father particularises Messiah Jesus as the one through whom he will address Israel.118 In terms of Luke’s configuration, the Messiah is not only endorsed by God but is revealed to enjoy God’s immanent presence in an unprecedented manner. The inclusion of the disciples in the cloud represents the profound extent of their future participation in the sonship of the Messiah.119 The liberation that Jesus announced for the sons of Adam will come through the Spirit’s act of including them in the redemption of the Messiah. While Gunton acknowledges the Transfiguration as a moment of direct revelation he pays little further attention to the significance of what is revealed in the address.120 The Spirit and Participating with the Son Some time later, with the return of the seventy-two, there is much rejoicing both from the disciples and Jesus at the disciples’ participation in the promised deliverance from evil oppression (Luke 10:17–20; cf. 4:18). This situation is another significant moment of address. The verses are conspicuous in that the narrative provides further anticipations of the disciples participating in the sonship of the Messiah. Jesus joyfully responds to the Father’s vindication of the mission of the seventy-two through the acts of power (Luke 10:17). In the Nazarene sermon Jesus announced that it was in the Spirit that he would release the captives and bring freedom to the oppressed. That the disciples engage in Jesus’ mission in kind suggests that they have participated in the work of the Spirit after the fashion of the Son.121 Again there is an anticipation of the opening of sonship, this time in terms of the means by which such a relation could be expressed. Jesus’ declaration in the Spirit on the return of the disciples provides further insight into the development of divine relations in the narrative: I praise you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to children; Yes Father for this was your good pleasure. My Father has given all things to me and no one knows who

So Luke 9:35 has the divine imperative, αὐτοῦ ἀκούετε, “listen to him”. Consider that when God’s glory descended upon the Tabernacle in Exod. 25 and when his glory descended upon the Temple in 1 Kgs 8 all humans were evacuated. 120 See Gunton, Brief Theology of Revelation, p. 115. 121 Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament 3b (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), p. 1011. In Bonhoeffer’s terms their actions are in accordance with Christ’s reality (see Ethik, p. 261). Participation by the Spirit in God’s saving acts also gives further substance to Gunton’s notion of the giving and receiving of freedom. 118 119

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the son is except the Father and no one knows who the Father is except the son and the one to whom the son may choose to reveal him (Luke 10:21–22)

Although Jesus has previously referred to God as Father, this is the first time that he addresses him as such directly (cf. Luke 2:49; 6:36; 9:26). As if in parallel to the Father’s designation of the Son in the Spirit, now, once again in the Spirit, the Son acknowledges and, in fact, testifies to the Fatherhood of God.122 The reciprocity of the relations between Jesus and the Father is publicly instituted and, in terms of the revelation about which Jesus speaks, constituted in the Spirit.123 Thus we might infer that the perfection of the Father’s personhood also falls within the particularising work of the Spirit manifest in personal address. The disciples have won a victory over the forces of chaos – evidencing the fact that the Father has given all things to the Son.124 The sonship of the Messiah, in bringing freedom, stands as a vindication of his peculiar place in the plans of God. At the same time, it would appear that the disciples have been vindicated as those able to participate in the salvation of God like the Son via the Spirit. Of course Jesus, in the presence of the seventy-two, articulates a distinction in relations between himself and them in regards to the Father. The perfected identity of the Son still belongs with the Father. Yet, through the Son and by the Spirit, in relation to the Father, the disciples are addressed as children. The children are those to whom the Father has revealed the mission of the Son to bring freedom in the Spirit. In one sense the disciples are simply being distinguished from “the wise and intelligent”. Nevertheless, the early chapters of Luke’s account portray the salvation of God in terms of the raising up of the lowly (Luke 1:52; cf. 2:34).125 If nothing else then, the status of children before the Father in relation to the Son is a favoured one. The question that now remains is, whose children are the disciples? The Spirit as Gift from the Father The last instance of address that we shall consider occurs in the context of Jesus instructing the crowds about prayer. Considering the prominence of prayer in the Diane G. Chen, God as Father in Luke-Acts, ed. Hemchand Gossai, Studies in Biblical Literature 92 (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), p. 170. 123 In this sense the Spirit is more than a bond between the Father and the Son. In the unfolding economy of salvation the Spirit is an active agent in the constitution of divine persons as they relate to one another and as others know them. Hence the sonship of the Son and the fatherhood of the Father are both the work of the Spirit yet in concert with the others. Identity is a product of the relations of two for the sake of the third. Thus the Father by the Spirit constitutes the Son and at the same time the Son in the Spirit constitutes the fatherhood of God. 124 Bock, Luke 9:51–24:53, p. 1012. 125 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, vol. 1, pp. 26–7. 122

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other instances of sonship, it is not unreasonable to expect something significant here.126 Jesus encourages the disciples to prayerfully approach God with their needs confident of his goodness towards them because, “if then, you who are evil ones know to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:13). In these words a parallel is drawn between God and earthly fathers. The good, in fact greater, gift that comes from the Father in heaven is the Spirit. By association then, the ones to whom the Father gives the Spirit are his children. The narrative contains the expectation that Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit and now Jesus himself, contextualises that action (cf. Luke 3:16). The Holy Spirit will be a gift from God for those who ask. Whereas the disciples have previously participated in the Spirit’s power, now they can look forward to personal possession of the Spirit.127 The disciples do not actually receive the Spirit until Pentecost, yet we have here the significance of that act. Receipt of the Spirit by the church will mark their constitution as God’s children. Tannehill comments: “In both Luke-Acts and Paul’s letters, the experience of a new, closer relation to God through the Spirit lies behind this connection between the Spirit and God as Father.”128 The sonship of the Messiah will be opened to others when they received the Spirit as a gift from his Father. Personal Particularity and Filial Relations Our reading of Luke suggests that in the Spirit and through the Son persons are ultimately particularised by the perfecting of filial relations with God. The Spirit opens the relational dynamic of the sonship of the Son to include others. The Spirit includes others in the redemption of the Son in order to liberate them from bondage, blindness and oppression for filial relations with the Father and each other. In the Spirit and through the Messiah they express their filial relationship with God by participating in the liberation of others. By the Spirit they may now enjoy the address of God as children and address the other as sibling. This reading allows us to develop the significance of bearing the image of the Messiah that Gunton identified as peculiar to personal hypostases while at the same time incorporating some of the shape of Bonhoeffer’s responsible living. The Spirit incorporates persons into the church to perfect a creaturely relation with God to a filial status. A filial relationship with God in the economy of salvation is perfected through being included in the redemption of the Messiah. The Son Chen, God as Father, p. 173. Talbert points out that in contrast to the things that an earthly father might give his children, God gives himself (Talbert, Reading Luke, p. 139). As we have seen Gunton is emphatic that the Spirit be thought of as God acting transcendently. At this point Luke’s narrative makes the immanent possession of the Spirit quite feasible. 128 Tannehill, Luke, p. 191. 126

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expresses his filiality with the Father and his brothers and sisters in the Spirit as Saviour. In reference to Gunton’s extremely broad remark on giving and receiving freedom, Luke indicates that the priority in the economy of salvation is the giving of freedom for the perfection of the Good. This is because, as we saw in Chapter 3, knowledge of sonship is closely tied with acting for the Good. If the disciples are now given knowledge of their sonship in the Spirit, the ensuing freedom they receive as sons is, in the first instance, a freedom for the Good as they participate in the liberation of others for filial relations with God. However, this need not be to the exclusion of freedom for the True or the Beautiful. In fact, we suggest that the Spirit’s action of perfecting the Son as Saviour sets a precedent for the use of freedom in the economy of salvation against which other uses are relativised but not negated. Hence by the Spirit all God’s children are enabled to participate freely in the economy of salvation according to where and when they have been located. The Son as Saviour in the Spirit is the peculiar agent of redemption, yet by the Spirit his siblings participate in the manifestation of that liberation within the limits of their creatureliness and conscience as Bonhoeffer described. This chapter has addressed the issue of how the Spirit individuates persons on the basis of his perfecting work for the Messiah. We shall finish by considering how the Spirit preserves the particularity of the Messiah when his sonship has been opened to include others. That is, we seek a description of how the absolute particularity of the Messiah is preserved by the Spirit in relation to the community of God’s children. We shall pursue this answer amidst conversation between Gunton and Bonhoeffer on sociality.

Chapter 5

The Spirit Preserves Sonship We have described how the Spirit particularises persons by perfecting for them filial relations with the Father, as they are included in the redemption of the Messiah. Gunton’s proposal, that the Spirit particularises in the giving and receiving of freedom in accordance with the manner with which a person bears the image of Christ, was shown to be inadequate. While his suggestion opened up greater possibilities for portraying personhood in penultimate reality (including the possibility of them achieving the Good), his depiction of the Spirit perfecting personal hypostases through mutually constitutive relations was too general. His exclusive focus on freedom in relationships was judged to be insufficient compared to the vast web of personal interactions and contingencies he sought to describe. Through examining Bonhoeffer’s notion of responsible living and observing the formation of filial relations in the Lucan account we were able to suggest a more concrete shape for particular personal existence with others. Gunton’s Concerns about Ecclesiology We shall explore one further issue arising from Gunton’s theology of particularity. This will be the implication for the particularity of the Son once his personal relations with the Father have been opened to include others. If the Spirit opens the sonship of the Son for others, how is the absolute particularity of the Messiah preserved in relation to the community of God’s children? Gunton was highly critical of the failure of Western theology to draw appropriately upon the doctrine of the Trinity in articulating the ontology of the church. He claimed that an imbalance between Christological and pneumatological factors (favouring the divine nature of Christ) has led to docetic doctrines of the church. Such doctrines compromise the particularity of the risen Christ. In addition he holds that much Western ecclesiology has been dominated by monistic conceptualities from pagan philosophy that also undermine the Christian view of community.  See “The Community: The Trinity and the Being of the Church”, in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, ch. 4.  Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 70. The monistic conceptions mentioned here refer to observations that Gunton credits to Harnack’s, History of Dogma. Gunton refers to Cyprian’s church as “an imitation of the conception of a political empire”. In addition Gunton perceives a tendency in Augustine to associate the clergy with the real church and the ubiquitous presence of Platonism this time in the form of a visible and

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An ontology of church that is insufficiently pneumatological, according to Gunton, has resulted in two specific problems. The first results from a Christology that focuses too closely on the divine nature of Christ at the expense of his human nature. It manifests itself in either a view that all humanity is ultimately the church of Christ or that the church eclipses Jesus of Nazareth as the one through whom God effects salvation. The consequence is a view of the church in Western ecclesiology that affords it greater omniscience and/or infallibility than might be claimed for Jesus himself. This leads to a second problem for a Christological determination of ecclesiology – authority. In line with what we have explored elsewhere, Gunton states: “it is only through the Spirit that the human actions of Jesus become ever and again the acts of God”. In contrast, the church sometimes appears to claim a logical link between Spirit and institution with the result of undue confidence in claims to possess divine authority on the church’s part. The solution, as we might expect, is “a greater emphasis in the action of the Holy Spirit towards Jesus as the source of the particularity and so historicity of his humanity”. The development that Gunton wished to make, with the help of Irving and Owen, was to understand the humanity of Jesus as free, particular and contingent. These three factors must be understood as “enabled by the (transcendent) Spirit rather than determined by the (immanent) Word”. Free, particular and contingent humanity was thus also to be the description of the church. The result was an account of the being of the church that preserved the particularity of the risen Christ.

invisible church. (Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 59; see also Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, pp. 198–9).  Gunton associates the former problem with the way Barth’s doctrine of election is interpreted as universalist: “God is none other than the One who in His Son or Word elects Himself, and in and with Himself elects His people” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 66); and the latter with elements of the Second Vatican Council’s ecclesiology: “As the assumed nature … serves the divine Word as a living organ of salvation, so, in somewhat similar way … does the social structure of the church serve the Spirit of Christ” (Lumen Gentium, 8, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 66).  Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 66: “That Jesus is without sin does not imply that he is omniscient, or even infallible”. Gunton quotes Jesus’ ignorance of “the Day” in Mark 13:32 as support for this remark. As always, Gunton wants a configuration of the human Jesus freely accepting the Spirit’s guidance in the face of temptation as opposed to “some inbuilt divine programming” (ibid.).  Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 67.  Ibid.  In an earlier essay Gunton wrote: “The Spirit is not some inner fuel, compulsion or qualification – in fact he is nothing impersonal at all – but the free Lord who as our other liberates us for community” (Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 194).

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Bonhoeffer on Christ and the Church The issues that Gunton raised have special pertinence to the conversation with Bonhoeffer. We have continually referred to Bonhoeffer’s idea of “Christ existing as community” as a description of the church’s being. In addition we have noted Bonhoeffer’s tendency to focus exclusively on the actions of Christ (in preference to the Spirit) in and for the church. In this last chapter we shall begin by posing Gunton’s questions to Bonhoeffer’s theology of sociality. How, for instance, does Bonhoeffer avoid docetism in his description of the Gemeinde? What is the metaphysic behind Bonhoeffer’s notion of Christ existing as community? How does his description of the community avoid monism? If Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology avoids the errors of docetism and monism, while retaining a sense of free, contingent particularity for the community, then, as with personal particularity, Gunton’s insistence on Trinitarian formularies will be brought into question. What we shall find is that while the conditions for particular created personhood are maintained, if not furthered, the integrity of the risen Christ’s humanity (and therefore particularity) is undermined. Christ as the Kollectiv- or Gesamtperson The foundation for Bonhoeffer’s understanding of sociality was developed in Sanctorum communio. There, he described the establishment of an I–You relation that provided the possibility for community. Bonhoeffer then poses the question of the conceptual nature of such a community: “Should the position of equilibrium between social and personal being be upheld, which sense has the community as a metaphysical entity in relation to the individual?”10 His answer is that the community can be treated as a collective person (Kollectivperson). This collective person has the same structure as that of the individual person.11 It is a notion of the community as a single entity that is founded upon the idea of individual personal being and not devaluing it in any way, yet at the same time transcending it. The collective person has its being in the unified acts of the community. However, “the collective person is neither prior to the individual nor a consequence of it”.12 The collective person can take the place of a You in the I–You relation dynamic with an individual I. That is, the collective person also comes into being in a moment of ethical action in the same manner that the individual person does. The importance 

Green points out that the two terms are interchangeable (Bonhoeffer, p. 41). Feil comments that Bonhoeffer sought a concept of person “that would not by its very nature rule out, but rather fundamentally embrace the sociality of people” (Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 6). 10 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 48. 11 Ibid. Bonhoeffer describes persons as structurally opened or closed. In short, one is either opened or closed towards community (ibid., pp. 40ff.). 12 Ibid., p. 49. 

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of the concept lies in the assertion that “God wants not a history of individual humans, but rather a history of the community of humans”.13 Bonhoeffer privileges this divine perspective in articulating the need for and basis of community. The metaphysic employed here is certainly not pagan like those Gunton criticised.14 In fact, the life of the collective person is described by the use of Hegel’s objective spirit. Here “in the community the individual stands compared with his objectified self. Here his own life has flowed into the community and confronts him daily in content and form as a regulative principle of his behaviour.”15 Ahlers contends the Kollectivperson was a concept adopted from Hegel. Yet unlike Hegel, Bonhoeffer, over time, decreased the level of distinction between Christ and the church.16 Marsh counters this remark by stating that the form of Hegel’s notion was incomplete (God remains other than the world in his prevenient grace) and Bonhoeffer capitalised on this to “preserve the integrity of the Gospel”.17 Hence Christ becomes the divine You, the human other who grounds I–You interactions in community. We may still wonder whether Bonhoeffer’s emphasis has not shifted in favour of the divine nature of Christ at the expense of his humanity. In addition, Hegel’s theology is notoriously monistic and we noted above Gunton’s reservations that Father and Son do not maintain their reality as persons, but are little more than stages on the way to the final self-realisation of the rational Spirit.18 We have indicated a tendency in the Christology lectures to conflate Christ and the Spirit19 and the possibilities of monism that such a move opens up. Marsh maintains that Bonhoeffer’s use of Hegel matured beyond the doctoral thesis especially in his Hegel Seminar.20 Marsh offers the centrality of Christ in the Christology lectures21 and the creation of humanity living freely with God in the Genesis lectures22 as evidence of Bonhoeffer’s successful adaptation of Hegel.23 Even if Bonhoeffer has successfully adapted Hegel in these instances, as we shall see, both works show evidence that leaves Bonhoeffer open to the charge of docetism and therefore we shall digress momentarily in order to consider the facts.

13

Ibid., p. 51. See n. 2 above. 15 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 65. 16 Rolf Ahlers, “Hegel and Bonhoeffer: Community and Return”, in The Community of Freedom, American University Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), p. 149. 17 Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 88. 18 See p. 89 n. 71 above; see Gunton, “Knowledge and Culture”, p. 93. 19 See p. 90 above; see Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 297. 20 Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 92; see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Hegel-Seminar 1933, Internationales Bonhoeffer Forum 8 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1988). 21 See Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, pp. 306ff. 22 See Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, pp. 69ff. 23 Marsh, Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 93–4. 14

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In the Christology lectures Bonhoeffer insists that the institution of the two sacraments means more than that the historical Jesus gave them, but rather that the exalted Christ is present in them.24 This begs the question of how the man Jesus, albeit the exalted one, is present in the elements of the sacrament. He is quick to point out that the sacraments are not a second incarnation – not a concealment of the incorporeal in bodily form: “The sacraments are not the incarnation of Christ but rather the final abasement of the God/Man.”25 He asserts that the sacramental presence problem “is not … about the possible union of the divine and human, it is much more concerned with the disguise of the present God/Man in his humiliation”.26 Unfortunately this raises more questions than it answers and casts doubt on the logical integrity of Bonhoeffer’s focus on the concealment of the God–Man. Can the exalted one be present in the likeness of sinful flesh in the same way that he is present in the sacrament? A “yes” answer here could easily lead to docetism for it would imply that Christ’s human nature was not essential to his person. Bonhoeffer claims in the above that the answer would be no. Despite this, if we accept that he is present in the sacrament, it is by no means clear in what sense the integrity of his humanity is maintained. In discussing the creation of humanity in the Genesis lectures Bonhoeffer wrote: God glorifies himself … in the specific being of the human body. Therefore God goes again in a body, where the original body in its created being is destroyed, in Jesus Christ. Then where this body is riven, God goes in the form of the sacrament of the body and blood. Body and blood of the Lord’s Supper are the new created realities of the promise for the fallen Adam. Because Adam is created as a body, therefore he is redeemed also as a body, (God comes to him as a body) in Jesus Christ and in the sacrament.27

These propositions are problematic for maintaining a concrete substantiality for human embodiment. We agree that God enters into human embodiment, although it is in Christ’s body, not the sacrament, that Adam’s body is redeemed. The bread of the sacrament cannot be the peculiar embodiment of humanity if this embodiment is to have any integrity. In what sense is Adam’s humanity actually bodily redeemed if Christ can be human and non-human at the same time? Once again Bonhoeffer’s theology shows signs of docetism. Returning to the dynamics between the Kollectivperson and the individual, the person is confronted with himself, as the collective person reflects back his life and the life of others. The Kollectivperson as objective spirit is the unified will of all the persons in the community “exerting itself effectively on the members of the 24

Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 302 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Bonhoeffer, Schöpfung und Fall, p. 73. 25

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community”.28 The whole is greater than the sum of its parts but, nonetheless, is entirely dependent on each one of them. The substantiality of the collective person means that God can address it as “You”, just like an individual. In fact, Bonhoeffer is keen to promote the equality, if not priority, of this notion in comparison to the address of God to an individual. Israel as the “people of God” is cited as the prime example: “The call applies not to the individual, but rather the collective person … The individual has not sinned but rather the people.”29 Nevertheless, the collective person is still dependent for its identity upon the actions of each sinful individual. The complement of this proposition is that: “Like every person, the collective humanity is also capable of hearing the call to ethical standing in the history of Jesus Christ.”30 The persons who answer this call of God become the church whose collective person is Christ and thus the Church is “Christ existing as community”.31 Considering Bonhoeffer’s remarks about the relationship between the concept of person and the doctrine of God, his working metaphysic is remarkably similar to Gunton’s.32 If the Kollectivperson is neither prior to nor a consequence of the individuals that make it up, is not this description of unity effectively the same as the divine perichoresis to which Gunton appeals? Gunton was emphatic about the need to understand divine unity as neither prior to the persons nor consequent of their interaction.33 The question then, for an ontology of church, will be 28 Consider the correlation between the description of the Kollectivperson given above and the way that Bonhoeffer described Christ mediating between persons in the community: “He [Christ] stands in the centre between the other person and me … Therefore every immediate way to the other is cut off, but now the following of the new and exclusively real way will be pointed to the other via the mediator” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, ed. Eberhard Bethge, DBW 4 [Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 2nd edn, 1994], p. 94). Here Bonhoeffer seems to add a new dimension to the sense in which Christ is the centre of human experience that we explored in Chapter 2 (see p. 63 above; see also Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, p. 306). Christ as the Kollectivperson of the Gemeinde mediates the relations of persons within the community. 29 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 74. 30 Ibid., p. 76. 31 Green notes that the Adam/Christ dichotomy to which we drew attention in the previous chapter is another way of describing the Gesamtperson (Bonhoeffer, p. 44). He comments that Adam “represents a fundamental and universal mode of human being which is operative in all the individual and corporate life of humanity, pervading all its diversity and changes”. Christ, in comparison, represents “a mode of personal and corporate being in which all people may be restored to their authentic humanity” (ibid., p. 45). The Idealist nature of these descriptions heightens the danger of Christ’s particularity being diffused in the community. 32 “A concept of God is imagined in relation to thought on the concept of person and community of persons” (Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 19; cf. p. 144 n. 6 above). 33 See p. 28f., above.

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whether it is a Trinitarian metaphysic that is needed or simply one of personal interdependence. The divine initiative in the institution of the Kollectivperson meant that the unity of the community is hidden: “The unity of spirit of the community is a divinely willed primordial synthesis.”34 It is not a matter of uniformity, unanimity or congeniality.35 Gunton was especially critical of ecclesiologies that too easily identified church unity with divine mandate. In contrast, Bonhoeffer described a hidden unity: “It is much more truly precisely there, where the hardest outer extremes appear to preside, where every being leads a wholly individual life and it [the unity] is possibly not there where it seems to preside precisely the most.”36 Bonhoeffer’s description suggests the possibility of unity being inversely proportional to uniformity. Hence, the community’s ability to equate a unanimous decision with divine will is severely qualified.37 The same hiddenness that will later be attributed to the presence of the God–Man in the incarnate Christ is found here to underlie the notion of the collective person.38 Christ exists as community – but in a hidden fashion. Therefore, Bonhoeffer’s description of the Kollectivperson includes a level of contingency that Gunton demanded of an ecclesiology.

Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 128. “The unity of the Christian church is not grounded in the unity of human spirit but rather on divine unity of spirit and both are, in the first instance, not identical” (ibid., pp. 132–3). The issue of unity is one of the chief complaints that Gunton brings against Western ecclesiology. Via Harnack, Gunton criticises the growing institutionalism in the Western church for insisting on a political uniformity (cf. Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 62). As we can see from the above this is anything but the case in Bonhoeffer’s Kollectivperson. 36 Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 129. 37 Contra Hegel, Bonhoeffer asserts: “The possibility of conceiving the individual and the community as pure instrument of the Holy Spirit is illusory” (Sanctorum communio, p. 144.) The community between God and humans or between humans themselves is continually broken and renewed again (by God). The community of sinners (peccatorum communio) lives side by side with the community of saints (sanctorum communio). The collective person is “Christ existing as community” only to the extent that “God himself is effective in the repentance [of the community]”. Christ exists as community is the instances of the community’s holiness rather than the community of sinners per se. By delineating between these two Bonhoeffer is able to refer to the collective person of the Church – the objective spirit – and the person of Christ present to the community. Bonhoeffer may be interpreted as maintaining a church within a church but certainly not in the sense of certain persons [the clergy] being the true community. Gunton accused Augustine of holding this position (see n. 2 above). 38 Bonhoeffer promotes what he calls “the Lutheran concept of church” whereby the church remains a community of sinners: “The absolute Spirit simply does not go into the subjective spirits and gather them into objective spirit; rather, the Christian church is a Church of the Word, i.e. of faith” (Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 143). 34 35

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With regards to the church and the Spirit, in Sanctorum communion, Bonhoeffer distinguished between Christ as the collective person and the work of the Spirit. He specifically rejects the notion of the Spirit as the personality of the collective person: “One could ask whether the personality of the church might not be best identified through the Holy Spirit. Indeed the Spirit is reckoned biblically to be the principle of unity. However, the peculiarity of the subject matter is characterised precisely through the collaboration of Christ and the Spirit.”39 We will defer the details of this collaboration for the moment. At this point we could perhaps explain this rather strange distinction as an attempt to maintain the works of the triune God ad extra as united. Even so, the idea of Christ as collective personality diminishes his particular personhood. This difficulty notwithstanding, the concept of the Kollectivperson provides a concise account for the corporate aspect of Bonhoeffer’s social ontology giving shape to the ideas we saw in the previous section like vicarious representation, bearing guilt or even just “being for another”.40 In addition, this metaphysic allows for diversity in unity that is so central to Gunton’s position. Our concern however, is that while the substantiality of the individual might be preserved amidst the community, there is a possibility of reducing the person of Christ to an abstraction. Has the humanity of the risen Christ been eclipsed by the humanity of the church? The relationship between the risen Christ and Christ existing as community did cause conceptual difficulties for Bonhoeffer. In the doctoral dissertation he drew attention to the New Testament witness to Christ as the church and present in the church. For him this signified that the church is at once complete in the person of Christ and at the same time expanding with the concrete community in space and time. In spite of this, the duality causes Bonhoeffer difficulties: The realisation occurs through the spirit of Christ and the Holy Spirit. What the spirit of Christ is for the body, the Holy Spirit is for the individual. The Holy Spirit brings Christ to the individual (Rom. 8:14; Eph. 2:22); who establishes community among them (2. Cor. 13:13; Phil. 2:1). That is, he utilises the social

39

Ibid., p. 133. Green suggests that while the actual term “Kollectivperson” (or Gesamtperson) is not used in the seminary writings “it is clearly presupposed” (Bonhoeffer, p. 154). Hence we read: “[the church] is supposed to be thought by the church as an embodied person, to be sure an entirely unique person” (Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, p. 232). Yet even here Bonhoeffer’s rhetorical remarks produced difficult implications for the humanity of Christ: “The body of Jesus Christ is his community. Jesus Christ is at the same time himself and his community … Jesus Christ lives, since Pentecost, in the form of his body, the community … here is the assumed humanity … The space of Jesus Christ in the world after his departure has become occupied by his body, the Church. The Church is the present Christ himself (ibid., pp. 231–2, emphasis added)’ It is not difficult to interpret these remarks as being consistent with the statements from Vatican II that Gunton criticised. See n. 3 above. 40

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character of humanity, while the spirit of Christ is directed towards the historical becoming of collective life.41

We would assume that the spirit of Christ refers to his distinct person but it is by no means clear. We are at least given more of the sense of collaboration between Christ and the Spirit. The most generous reading of the above quote might be that the Spirit works in forming individuals into community such that as a collective person they manifest the spirit of Christ. However, talk of two spirits in the church is awkward. The situation becomes critical as Bonhoeffer tries to come to terms with the identification of Christ and the church community: “A total identification between Christ and community cannot take place, since Christ has gone to heaven and now is with God and we are waiting for his return … This remains a continuous problem.”42 The appropriate manner with which to articulate the heavenly session of Christ and his presence on earth in the church was at this early stage a dilemma for Bonhoeffer.43 From what we have observed, and despite the benefits of the Kollectivperson as a description of the church’s being, the balance between Christology and pneumatology was awkward. This balance was the key issue for Gunton and, for him, necessitated an explicit Trinitarian metaphysic of community. As we move to his later theology we shall see that preserving the particularity of the ascended Christ did indeed remain a “continuous problem” for Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 86. Ibid. 43 In a meditation on the Ascension dated April 1940 (just prior to the commencement of the Ethik) Bonhoeffer appeals to the tradition of “Lutheran Fathers” on the topic: “The human nature of Jesus Christ, if it is freed from the state of humiliation, takes part in the characteristics of the divine nature undisguised” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Betrachtung zu Himmelfahrt”, in Konspiration und Haft 1940–1945, ed. Jorgen Glenthøj et. al., DBW 16 [Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1996], p. 475). He follows the Lutheran notion of communicatio idiomatum to assert: “The humanity and divinity are finally permitted to pass over into each other, therefore to meet clearly in that mystical identity” (ibid., p. 476). The humanity however remains subjugated to the triune being. Nevertheless, from the right hand of God, Jesus “takes part in God’s world rule; he is far from and near to the world at the same time like God himself” (ibid., p. 478). Bonhoeffer does not mention how he sees this as being possible. Instead he offers a threefold soteriological significance. Firstly, “the head [of the community] is in heaven, the body on the earth. The invisible head rules the visible body” (ibid., p. 479). Second, “Christ as the high priest has reconciled us with God and stands before God in eternity to be a sacrifice interceding for us there” (ibid., p. 480). Third, “We recognise the future judge for whom we must wait in the elevated Lord” (ibid.). The implication for Bonhoeffer was “we are already in heaven with Christ” (ibid., p. 481). It would seem that Bonhoeffer was quite comfortable expressing the poles of the Christ–church relationship. The difficulties arose when it came to describing the presence in the church of the ascended Christ. 41 42

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The Form of Christ in the Community By the time of the Ethik, Bonhoeffer’s language of the Kollectivperson had undergone a development to incorporate the relationship between reality and Christ taking form (Gestalt) in the world. As we saw in Chapter 2, Christ is the ultimate reality of God and the world.44 The sense of this reality “is not an idea through which the given world should be sublimated. It is also not a religious rounding off of a profane worldview.”45 After all, ultimate things do not destroy penultimate things; nor does ultimate reality merely follow the penultimate. As we have seen, those in Christ participate in two conjoined realities: penultimate and ultimate. So the church is “the place – that is the space – in the world where the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the whole world becomes witnessed to and proclaimed”.46 Reality for the community is the faithful response to the one through whom God has revealed the reality of the world and himself. In this space “Christ forms humanity to a pattern [Gestalt] identical with him”.47 The formation is not a matter of “coercion to an ideal, a type, or a specific idea of humanity”. Instead the community is “being freed to be the humans who we are in reality”. On the one hand this means the genuine creaturely existence we observed as the consequence of being met by Christ.48 On the other hand, when we consider that Christ manifested the ultimate reality of worldly life at the cross, we gain insight into why Bonhoeffer describes formation as hidden since it is a formation after the image of the crucified God–Man.49 It is as the humiliated God–Man that “the form of Jesus Christ gains form in human beings”.50 The church must take on this form of Christ in reality: “It [der Gestalt] is also not mimicry, not a repetition of his form but rather his own which he takes in human form. Again the human will not be transfigured with an alien form, in the

44 Bianchi links Bonhoeffer’s insistence on Christ as the reality of the world with the later religionless refocusing of transcendence in encounter with the sufferings of others (Eugene Bianchi, “Bonhoeffer and the Church’s Prophetic Mission”, Theological Studies 4 [1967]: 805). 45 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 32. 46 Ibid., p. 49. 47 Ibid., p. 81. 48 See p. 62ff. above. 49 See Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 150. D’Isanto attempts to defend Bonhoeffer’s thought against the charge that the community is “the hypostatization of God’s being” (Luca d’Isanto, “Bonhoeffer’s Hermeneutical Community”, in Theology and the Practice of Responsibility, ed. Wayne W. Floyd and Charles Marsh [Valley Forge: Trinity Press, 1994], p. 143). Unfortunately she appeals to Bonhoeffer’s work on the sacraments in the Christology lectures as an explanation of the meaning of humiliation. As we have already noted (p. 145) this line of reasoning seriously detracts from the integrity of Christ’s humanity. 50 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 83.

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form of God, but rather his own, relevant and essential form.”51 The ultimate form of Christ in the world is the vicarious representation of others bearing their guilt. This cannot be replicated, as only Christ’s actions are salvific. However, this is the relevant and essential form of Christ pro nobis that the community takes as those in Christ live responsibly. The createdness of the community (and the persons of which it consists) is preserved; and Bonhoeffer again meets Gunton’s demand that the church not exceed Christ himself. The language of formation (Gestaltung) easily accommodates the aspect of contingency that Gunton wanted for the church. Bonhoeffer relativises any special claims that a church might make about itself. It is not a religious community made up of people who worship Christ but rather, is Christ revealing his form among human beings: “The church is nothing but the exemplar of humanity in which the form of Christ has been really attained.”52 Perhaps however, we might still wonder about the exact nature of the risen Christ who is the reality, not just the form, of God. So the form of Christ that exists in the community is the relational dynamic that the church has with God and the world. The community (and therefore the individuals of which it consists) acts towards God in the same manner that Christ does but only on the basis of his prior relations.53 In addition the persons in the community relate to one another in the same pattern in which Christ relates to them. Hence Christ forms the community as his Kollectivperson. This relational dynamic gains specificity when we recall what Bonhoeffer also wrote in the Ethik about responsible living. The responsible person acts in accordance with reality (Christ) through freely and vicariously accepting the guilt of others.54 This is the form of Christ that is attained in the individual and likewise in the community. From the perspective of Bonhoeffer’s ontological mediations, such concrete actions in I–You relations cannot but result in a concrete substantiality for persons with all the worldly reality that Christ himself enjoyed. Unfortunately, a question still hangs over the substantiality of the risen Christ himself. This notwithstanding, the relational element in Bonhoeffer’s explanation is the point at which the possibility of a particular community – and by association particular persons – comes into view. In the context of the present discussion, Bonhoeffer’s (later) famous question: “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” appeared as “How may Christ take form among us today and here?”55 Rather than trying to prescribe the Good for all times and all places, Bonhoeffer again shows sensitivity to space and time and writes: “The human in every part of his history is the person plainly adopted in Christ … It goes therefore with ‘among us,’ ‘today,’ and ‘here’

51

Ibid. Ibid., p. 84. 53 The church as the form of Christ in the world is real yet only because of God’s gracious revelation of the reality of Himself in Christ. 54 See p. 121 above. 55 Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 86. 52

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as the sphere of our decisions and encounters.”56 Christ attains his form in the particular lives of persons and communities (Kollectivpersonen) in the dynamics of their moments of ethical decision – in their “everydayness”.57 Every person and Kollectivperson exists already in the history of Christ taking form in a segment of human history that Christ himself chooses. Bonhoeffer’s description of Gestaltung does much to clarify his description of the church’s being. As Christ takes form in the particular community, individuals are freed from their self-centredness to serve God and each other in various ways. Christ, as the Gestalt, is the one from whom and to whom the individual gives and receives his or her distinctive life. As such, the relationality that Bonhoeffer describes is, in practice, remarkably similar to the notion of perichoresis employed by Gunton. That the Kollectivperson is hidden in the world does not mean that Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology reflects the kind of duality of which Gunton criticised Augustine. The Kollectivperson is neither a special group of persons within the community (that is, the clergy) nor is it an invisible group transcendent with God. The Kollectivperson as the Gestaltung of Christ bears all the foibles and contingencies of penultimate reality that Gunton demanded in ecclesiology. Bonhoeffer’s care in ensuring that the life of the Kollectivperson is equally as hidden as the divinity of the God–Man, ensures that there is no sense in which the community might somehow eclipse Christ as the agent of salvation in the world. The only concern we have voiced in all this is the possibility of docetism in Bonhoeffer’s description of the community. His desire to unite the presence of Christ with the Kollectivperson, especially in the sacraments, undermines the particularity of the risen God–Man. It is with this concern in mind that we return to Gunton’s theology of particularity. As noted above, Gunton had deep concerns regarding the effect on the risen Christ of our speech regarding the community. Gunton continually pressed for more pneumatology, yet Bonhoeffer’s later work seems to have achieved most of what Gunton desired without the need for explicit mention of the Spirit.58 Considering the observations made regarding the similarities in metaphysics employed by both theologians we can again ask what difference do the explicit Trinitarian formulations make? What we shall find is that explicit Trinitarian language maintains the necessary balances required for describing the relationship between Christ and the church while preserving his absolute particularity. As before we will 56

Ibid., p. 88. Note the understanding of person from Sanctorum communio is still present even in the later writings (see Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 49). 58 It is regrettable that Bonhoeffer did not take up explicitly the collaboration between Christ and the Spirit referred to above (p. 148f., cf. p. 90; see Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum, p. 86) while articulating the notion of Gestaltung. His equation of the relation between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as “reality and becoming real … past and present … history and event (faith)” (Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 34) does little to distance his theology from modalism. 57

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need to have recourse to Luke’s narrative in order to develop Gunton’s work and complete our portrait of the Spirit as the perfecting agent of Sonship – both for the Messiah and for those with whom, and by the Spirit, he has a filial relationship. Gunton on the Spirit and the Church The Church as an Eschatalogical Work If Gunton’s diagnosis of Western ecclesiology is correct, then either the church displaces the humanity of Christ or assumes its institution to be a sign of possession of the Holy Spirit. Either way, the community claims an inappropriate relationship to the divine. Gunton’s solution was to clarify the eschatological dimension of pneumatology in relationship to the community: “When that is lost, the Spirit tends to be institutionalised, so that in place of the free, dynamic, personal and particular agency of the Spirit, he is made into a substance, which becomes the possession of the church.”59 Gunton claimed that inadequate pneumatologies invariably exhibit equally problematic Christologies. The issue turns first on the manner and character with which Christ is said to have instituted the church. A second aspect is “the way the church is conceived to be patterned or moulded by the shape and direction of Jesus’ life and its outcome”.60 In terms of the first or “historical” aspect of the Christological problem, Gunton perceived a distinction in whether Jesus is seen to be establishing a new community as a “reconstitution of Israel” or whether the disciples “are the first of an order of clergy”. The former would preserve the economic particularity of Jesus, the latter would be less likely to do so as each successive generation of church leaders are seen as representations of Christ to the community. From what we have seen Bonhoeffer’s sense of Christ taking form in the world is clearly nowhere near the latter, even if there is little sense of connection with the former.61 Gunton questioned the feasibility of establishing “direct causal and therefore ontological and logical links between past historical events and present conditions”. Yet Bonhoeffer’s distinction between ultimate and penultimate things ensures that the reality of Christ in the world stays with Christ himself as he chooses to instantiate his form in particular communities in their various historical and spatial representations.62 From a more dogmatic point of view, Gunton promoted the significance of the contingency of Christ’s Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 64. Ibid., p. 65. 61 Although we note Bonhoeffer’s thought on the relation between God and the Kollectivperson used Israel as an example (see p. 146 above; see also Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 74). 62 See p. 152 above; see also Bonhoeffer, Ethik, p. 88. We note also Bonhoeffer’s continued insistence on Christ at the centre of history deposing any other Messianic claims 59 60

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humanity for ecclesiology. Whatever we might make of the idea of the God–Man’s hiddenness, the contingent nature of “Christ existing as community” was clear for Bonhoeffer.63 The Gestalt of Christ in community is, inter alia, hidden in the world awaiting revelation. Hence the community cannot claim to be any more authoritative in the world than the God–Man is discernable in history as ultimate humanity.64 If Bonhoeffer’s description achieves appropriate levels of contingency for the church, what difference does a Spirit Christology make to a conversation about ecclesiology? In keeping with what we have already witnessed, Gunton contended that due significance ought always to be given to the eschatological role of the Spirit in the ontology of the church.65 Accordingly, he wrote: “The action of the Spirit is to anticipate, in the present and by means of the finite and contingent, the things of the age to come.”66 Of greatest importance for Gunton is to achieve appropriately in ecclesiological description a reduction in focus on the constitution of the church by Christ and an increase in focus on the constitution of the church by the Spirit.67 To support this contention Gunton appealed to John Owen who, in this regard, pursued a line of argument similar to that which Gunton found in Irwin.68 Owen’s

or developments in human society be it church or state (see Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, pp. 307ff.) 63 Bonhoeffer, “Christologie”, pp. 343ff. 64 See the discussion of Gegenlogos in Chapter 2 above. 65 Gunton contends: “If we cannot conceive the Spirit as the free Lord, then we may succumb to the temptation of identifying him with some immanent causal force: with our ecclesial or political institutions, or with some private experiences and beliefs“ (Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 189). The question we might ponder from Bonhoeffer’s work is, “What if we leave him out all together? What will we lose in our understanding of community if we do?” 66 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 67. 67 Gunton continually advocates the otherness of the Spirit: “The Spirit is not some impersonal inner fuel, compulsion or qualification – in fact he is nothing impersonal at all – but the free Lord who as our other liberates us for community” (Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 194, emphasis original). 68 Cf. ibid., pp. 151ff. According to Gunton: “What Owen offers is a doctrine of the transcendence of the Holy Spirit, whose importance is that it runs counter to theology’s tendency to conceive the Spirit as an essentially immanent force: as something within an already given person or institution qualifying its existence“ (ibid., p. 191). Gunton points to descriptions of the Spirit’s actions in Scripture to justify an “over-againstness of the Spirit”: “The wind blows where it wills (John 3); but the Spirit also searches the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10), and aids the believer who cannot find the words in which to pray (Rom. 8)” (ibid.). What then shall we make of the language of “being filled” with the Spirit that we find in the Lucan account of the primitive church? Since Gunton gives no reason to privilege one part of Scripture over another we shall have to look to the narrative to accommodate both.

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virtue is to “limit the direct operation of the Word on the human reality of Jesus”.69 Gunton quotes Owen at length: The only singular immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself … [there is no] transfusion of properties of one nature into the other, nor real physical communication of divine essential excellencies unto humanity … The Holy Ghost … is the immediate peculiar, efficient cause of all external divine operations: for God worketh by his Spirit, or in him immediately applies the power and efficacy of the divine excellencies unto their operation.70

The humanity of Jesus remains genuinely so and the capacity of the man Jesus to do God’s work is, in itself, God’s work.71 To Gunton this does not rule out a Christomorphic direction for the church but rather ensures that such a direction is achieved in the church in the same free, particular and contingent manner. He makes explicit that which was only implicit in Bonhoeffer. When Christ takes form in the Gemeinde it is by the Spirit. A Trinitarian Ontology for the Church Gunton sought to maintain the balance between Christology and pneumatology in ecclesiology through appeal to the doctrine of the Trinity. He did this not in a merely logical way so as to make direct comparisons between the church and either the unity of God or his diversity. Instead, appealing to Coleridge, he claims that firstly an appropriate distinction must be maintained between Creator and creature. This will ensure that monism is avoided. A Trinitarian ontology of the church ensures that the relation between God and the world is a personal one: “Such relation as there is is personal, not logical, the product of the free and personal action of the triune God.”72 The distinction between Creator and creation is thus the ground for understanding the ontology of both. The world in its contingency is entirely dependent upon the actions of God to sustain it; and these are mediated through the transcendent Spirit. The implication that follows is that the church cannot be anything other than contingent and finite lest it be something more than created.73 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 69. John Owen, A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 69, emphasis original. 71 Gunton commended Owen as having “a freedom sometimes lacking in Western theologians to attribute distinct modes of being and action to the Spirit” (Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 192). 72 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 72. 73 Gunton admits that this is another way of making the same point that we pursued with the emphasis on the humanity of Jesus. What is interesting here is that this metaphysic really only requires God, the world and a mediator between the two. Bonhoeffer’s description 69 70

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What then is the likeness of God in the church? Gunton’s answer, following Zizioulas, was communion or community: “For God, to be is to be a communion of distinguishable but inseparable persons.”74 The importance of this notion of community is the contrast that Gunton seeks to make between it and church as institution: “A community constituted by its members by virtue of their free relatedness to each other … By contrast, an institution is a given reality to whose being the particular persons who join it are, if not irrelevant, at least secondary.”75 Due to their impersonal nature institutions come to rest their authority on static historical grounds, which are deemed by Gunton to be “inimical” to freedom. In contrast, “one implication of the threefold community that is God is its dynamism: the being of God is a community of energies, of perichoretic interaction”.76 The mutually constitutive relations that produce particularity in all creation are anticipated in perfected (which in this context invariably means free) form in the church. So just as the likeness of God was the man Jesus in perichoretic relations with the Father in the Spirit, so too is the church. However, Gunton is careful to qualify any comparison between God and church: “If there is one, it should be of an indirect kind, in which the church is seen as called to be a … finite echo of bodying forth of the divine personal dynamics.”77 The sense of this statement depends on a comparison between Cappadocian and Augustinian notions of the Trinity and it affords another opportunity to consider the distinction between Gunton and Bonhoeffer. According to Gunton, the Augustinian understanding of the Trinity is “modalist in direction, if not actually modalist”. That is, the oneness of God is given an essential priority over the threeness such that, “the three persons of the Trinity tend to be conceived as posterior to an underlying deitas or being of which they are, so to speak, outcrops”. Gunton further alleges that this modalistic tendency results in ecclesiology that “conceives the being of the church as in some sense anterior to the concrete historical relationships of the visible community”.78 This has two historical outcomes. Either an invisible and ontologically prior church is posited, as distinct from the mixed historical community; and/or an order of persons is said to act as the unifying structure of this mixed community.79 The contrast between of Christ as the ultimate reality of both God and the world fits this neatly (see p. 57ff. above; cf. Bonhoeffer, Ethik, pp. 35ff.). 74 Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 196. 75 Ibid., p. 198.This is entirely consistent with the description that Bonhoeffer gives of the Gesamtperson right down to the emphasis on freedom (see p. 143ff. above). 76 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 72. 77 Ibid., p. 73. 78 Ibid., p. 74. 79 Gunton uses the term “mixed” in a historical sense in that some present in the community are “saved” while others are not. He illustrates the second tendency from de Lubac: “No constituted assembly without a constitution, which includes a hierarchy … no realised community (Gemeinschaft) without a society (Gesellschaft) in which and through

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the above and the Cappadocian ontology is that the Cappadocians held no notion of being anterior to the three persons. In the introduction we noted Basil’s comment that there is not “some other thing giving subsistence beside the divine nature so as to be able to distribute itself, through the insertion of the other three, with itself”.80 The Cappadocians, though read largely through Zizioulas, are also called upon once again to substantiate Gunton’s use of a doctrine of appropriations in articulating the nature of community. This forms the basis for a recurrent theme: “In the economy, the Son represents God’s immanence in history: he becomes flesh, history. The Spirit, contrary to what is often assumed, is God’s transcendence.”81 The consequence of the above, according to Gunton, is that the church ought to be understood as instituted by Christ and constituted by the Spirit. A church constituted by the Spirit’s transcendent liberating action is deemed to be free from the oppression of institutionalism. The church does not exist without this action or, conversely, the church is not an already existing entity to which the Spirit might be added as energy for action or authorisation. Whether or not Gunton has read Augustine correctly, it is interesting to compare Gunton and Bonhoeffer on the issue of visibility. Bonhoeffer did have a notion of invisible church, but this was largely related to the fact that Christ himself is the church as opposed to some invisible transcendent community.82 As we have already noted, the hidden nature of Christ as God–Man is repeated in the Kollectivperson but certainly not in some special groups of persons who provide a structure to the outward mixed society. Instead, Christ takes form in individuals severally and corporately whenever and wherever persons live responsibly together. Perhaps the greatest concern we might have with Bonhoeffer’s theology is the possibility of modalism. His articulation of reality in terms of God, Jesus and the world serves to draw a clear distinction between creator and creation but the sense of triunity in the Godhead is by no means necessary for understanding his ecclesiology.83 Yet the question that we have pursued throughout this thesis remains, “so what?”

which it is realised” (Henri de Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, p.75, cited in Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 74). We recall the distinction that Bonhoeffer made between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in terms of the focus of will. For Bonhoeffer the former is charcterised by the will to meaning and the latter a will to purpose. In his thinking the two are in no way related as true versus visible. 80 Basil, Epistle 38.4.50, emphasis added. Gunton himself notes Basil’s comment in the treatise on the Spirit, “the ordering of the church [is] among the gifts of the Spirit” (Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 16.39.26–32, cited in Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 196). 81 Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 199. 82 See for example Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 86. We might say of Bonhoeffer’s work that Christ both institutes and constitutes the church. 83 The scant number of references to the Spirit in Bonhoeffer’s Ethik (six according to the index) only exacerbate this tendency.

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What difference does the explicitly Trinitarian theology actually make to ecclesiology? Gunton argued for “a description of the actual relations in which members of the community have their being, an ontology of the community which lives by its own descriptive strength rather than needing the support of – say – an ideal invisible background”.84 Significantly this description need not be Trinitarian but simply metaphysical. In exploring Bonhoeffer’s use of the Kollectivperson we observed that “the collective person is neither prior to the individual nor a consequence of it”.85 As noted above this is remarkably similar to Basil’s description of divine life in which divine persons share the one being in and with each other. In addition we also noted that one of Bonhoeffer’s working principles was that “a concept of God is imagined in relation to thought on the concept of person and community of persons”.86 This involved a community life where a person is confronted with himself as the collective person and reflects back his life and the life of others. The Kollectivperson as objective spirit is the unified will of all the persons in the community “exerting itself effectively on the members of the community”. This seems inter alia equivalent to Gunton’s preferred description of dynamic mutual constitution or perichoresis. However, while it has been clear that Bonhoeffer has evaded most of Gunton’s concerns with regard to description of the community the one difficulty that emerged repeatedly in our analysis of the Kollectivperson and Gestaltung was the danger of docetism. What is needed is a metaphysic that deals appropriately with issue of divine presence on the one hand while preserving the particularity of the risen Messiah on the other. The Church and Divine Presence For Gunton the question of divine presence in the church is answered by establishing an appropriate link between the Spirit as the source of freedom and the being of the church. The salvific work of Christ is fundamental to this link: “The atoning death of Christ on the cross is the necessary condition of any human liberation, and our justification through the cross the sole gateway to the life that flows from a renewed relation with out maker.”87 However, what Christ has achieved in the past needs to be related to the present. The first step, for Gunton, was to relativise the importance of the doctrine of election in understanding the church. His desire was to qualify the sense in which “election is something taking place entirely in our past … something far from liberating us, appears to have determined our future apart from us”.88 Instead he urged that the emphasis fall on the work of the Spirit “who comes from the Father and calls us into the body, of which the Son is the head, [so] that we may gladly accept our election as the source of our Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 77. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum communio, p. 49. 86 Ibid., p. 19. 87 Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 200. 88 Ibid., p. 201. 84 85

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liberation”. As we noted in Chapter 3, the Spirit mediates the saving knowledge of Christ’s particular actions for us. The liberating action of the Spirit results in our being brought into relation with Christ “through the medium of the community of his body”. In language highly reminiscent of Bonhoeffer, Gunton concludes, the Spirit enables “us to be with and for the brothers and sisters whom we do not ourselves choose”.89 The second step for relating Christ’s achievement in the past to the present life of the community marks the end of Gunton’s thought, even as it was the beginning of Bonhoeffer’s. Gunton finished by calling for the visible community to be a community in which “the promised and inaugurated reconciliation of all things” is realised.90 In this vein the acts of proclamation and celebration of the gospel sacraments (Baptism and Eucharist) “are temporal ways of orienting the community to the being of God”.91 Public speaking of the gospel message directs the community towards the Word, “whose echo it is supposed to be”. The sacraments incorporate persons into the community and share “the love of the Father towards his world as it is mediated by the Son and Spirit”. The being of the church depends on the continued historical movement of the Spirit to bring persons into Christ and thus into and with each other. There is therefore no timeless church, “only a church then, now and to be”.92 Gunton’s pneumatological emphasis provides some clarification for the question of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper that we have noted in Bonhoeffer’s theology.93 Gunton discusses sacraments and church in conversation with another Lutheran theologian, Robert Jenson. He criticises Jenson’s tendency to equate the risen Christ with the church, which as we observed is a possible reading of Bonhoeffer.94 According to Jenson: The church, according to Paul, is the risen body of Christ. She is this because the bread and cup in the congregation’s midst is the very same body of Christ … For the proposition that the church is a human body of the risen Christ to be ontically straightforwardly true, all that is required is that Jesus indeed be the Logos of God … He needs no other body to be a risen man, body and soul. There is and 89 Ibid., emphasis original. We note Gunton’s use of filial language in this instance is, like Bonhoeffer, despite an absence in discussions of identity. 90 Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, p. 81. 91 Ibid., p. 82. 92 Ibid. 93 See n. 74 above. 94 We recall the Bonhoeffer’s rhetoric from Nachfolge: “The body of Jesus Christ is his community. Jesus Christ is at the same time himself and his community … Jesus Christ lives, since Pentecost, in the form of his body, the community … here is the assumed humanity … The space of Jesus Christ in the world after his departure has become occupied by his body, the Church. The Church is the present Christ himself” (Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, pp. 231–2, emphasis added).

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needs to be no other place than the church for him to be embodied, nor in that other place any other entity to be the “real” body of Christ.95

From these words Gunton also adduces that “the Church … not just represents but actually is the presence on earth of the eschatological kingdom”.96 If Gunton has misrepresented his former teacher in these quotes it is less significant for us than the opportunity to consider Bonhoeffer on the subject.97 While Bonhoeffer maintains the difficult aspect of the presence of the God–Man’s body in the elements of the Lord’s Supper, he does not explicitly abandon the risen humanity of Christ as Jenson appears to do in Gunton’s analysis. It is by no means “enough” for Bonhoeffer that “Jesus be the Logos of God”. As we have seen above, his later writings focus on Christ’s presence in the community as he takes form in their ethical actions. The risen humanity of Christ is less important than his presence in the here and now. In contrast to either Jenson or Bonhoeffer, Gunton interprets the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians to argue that Christ is portrayed “as a particular human being rather than the apparently social or corporate person we have met in Jenson [and Bonhoeffer]”.98 Gunton observes that in his oneness with the church Christ is also its transcendent Lord. This leads to an important distinction between Gunton and Bonhoeffer on the particularity of the risen Christ. Gunton desired equal emphasis on the absence of the ascended Lord from the church in his body at the right hand of the Father.99 Without giving any detailed explanation he noted the same difficulty that Bonhoeffer faced in Sanctorum communio, namely that the words of institution in the Christian rite of the Lord’s Supper indicate a “real absence” as much if not more than a “real presence”. What Gunton concludes is that “we must qualify the immediacy of talk of the Church as Christ’s availability to the world”:100 “The Father’s Spirit is the one who determines the ascended Christ’s relation to the world during that period [between the resurrection and the return]

Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, cited in Colin E. Gunton, “The Church and the Lord’s Supper”, in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, p. 220. 96 Ibid., p. 221. 97 Gunton admits that Jenson’s position is more nuanced than some of his citations suggest (ibid., p. 220). 98 Ibid., p. 224. Gunton was reading 1 Cor. 15. 99 Gunton notes the words “until he comes again” from 1 Cor. 11. He claims this insight from Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, cited in Gunton, “Church and the Lord’s Supper”, p. 225. 100 Gunton, “Church and the Lord’s Supper”, p. 226. In conjunction with a fairly standard Reformed view of the Lord’s Supper Gunton interprets the elements of bread and wine as representations of perfected creation in that they are brought in the Spirit and through Christ to God in worship (Gunton, “Creation: (2) The Spirit Moved over the Face of the Waters”, p. 120). 95

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… the presence of Christ is not as but through the Spirit, who is the mediator of both Christ’s presence and his (eschatological) otherness.”101 Christ is present in and to the Church via the mediation of the Spirit. The significance of this description is that the church can still be referred to as Christ’s body even as Christ’s being is other. How then is Christ present through the Spirit? Gunton’s answer is: “The Spirit enables it [the church] from time to time to be that which it is elected to be.”102 What is meant here is that the church in its Spirit enabled actions, genuinely but not continuously, anticipates the life “of the age to come”. This life or way of being is prevenient in the incarnate Christ and occasionally experienced as a foretaste of his perfected state. Ultimately for Gunton Christ is present in the church through the transcendent actions of the Spirit. In a bid to preserve the particularity of the Messiah, Gunton continually refers to this presence as an echo of divine life. That is, the church enjoys in the Spirit and, through the Son, the same relationship with God as Father that the Messiah does. The church is still intended to represent Christ to the world but in so far as the church is the domain of his transcendent rule rather than as an instantiation of his person. The Spirit anticipates the kingdom by freeing the finite and contingent to be particular. If Bonhoeffer’s Gestalt of Christ is a strong notion of presence then Gunton’s echo might well be interpreted as weak. However, the distinction between Gunton and Bonhoeffer is more than a choice of words. Despite the similarities in the metaphysics underlying community life, Gunton’s explicit Trinitarian description preserves the particularity of the God–Man on the one hand and avoids a monistic theology on the other. As we have noted, the possibility of docetism or modalism is never far away from Bonhoeffer’s work. While Bonhoeffer has clearly protected the description of the church from false expectations, Gunton’s theology protects our notion of God as well. What remains for us now is briefly to map Gunton’s description of the Spirit’s preserving work against the Lucan narrative in order to complete our description of particularity as an eschatological work. This is of special interest because as we shall see the Pentecost account of the coming of the Spirit is, to a certain extent, ambivalent towards Gunton’s dogmatic claims. As we shall see the language of gift and receipt at times evades Gunton’s tight description and his insistence that the Spirit not be thought of a possession of the church. Luke on the Spirit of Sonship The central issue in this chapter has been the preservation of the particularity of the Messiah. As we draw this chapter to a close we shall be looking for the sense in which this is portrayed in the narrative of Acts. In the previous chapter on personhood we made a number of observations concerning the anticipation of the 101

Gunton, “Church and the Lord’s Supper”, p. 230, emphasis original. Ibid., p. 231.

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followers of Jesus participating somehow in his sonship of the Father in the Spirit. We shall develop the institution/constitution dynamic between Messiah and Spirit that Gunton advocated and we expect the opening of filial relations (depicted in the previous chapter) to be incorporated into this conceptuality. In addition we shall be sensitive to the portrayal of divine relations that would mitigate against monism and of special interest will be the attitude of the narrative towards the humanity of the ascended Jesus. That is, we need some substantiation of Gunton’s present/absent depiction of the resurrected Messiah. Therefore we turn to the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 to observe the entrance of the church into the drama of Scripture. The Spirit: Transcendent Actor or Immanent Possession? Gunton was at pains to assert that the Spirit is a personal other acting transcendently on and for the individual as opposed to being immanently possessed by her. We had no difficulty observing such relational dynamics in the case of the Messiah. Yet the second volume of Luke’s story begins with Jesus instructing the disciples in the Spirit (Luke 1:2) and the reaffirmation that they themselves are also to receive the Spirit shortly in Jerusalem (Luke 1:5, 8).103 We may wonder how someone can receive something that is not immanent? Could not Jesus have said: “The Spirit will act upon you at that time?” The disciples have somehow already participated in the power of Jesus to bring liberation as we noted in the previous chapter.104 At the very least what Jesus describes here anticipates a development in the common expression of the filial relation the disciples will share with Jesus. The actual coming of the Spirit during the feast of Pentecost is filled with apocalyptic images and eschatological significance, as we shall see from the commentary offered through Peter.105 103 The tension between being acted upon by and possessing the Spirit becomes clear in these two verses: “You will be baptised in the Holy Spirit after not many days … you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming on to you and you will be my witnesses”. Bauer et al. note the sense of ἐπελθόντος, “to come upon”, as “movement from a transcendent realm” (Greek–English Lexicon, s.v. ἐπέρχομαι). The language makes the possibility of an immanent presence quite reasonable. 104 See p. 137 above. 105 Shepherd comments that Peter has taken over from Jesus as the “most reliable human commentator in the narrative” (Narrative Function, p. 158). Peter’s prominence in leadership is an obvious particularisation within the community and yet it is grounded in a spatio-temporal experience shared by a few others: “It is necessary, therefore, for one of these men having been gathered with us in all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went out from us, beginning from the baptism of John until the time in which he was taken up from us, to become a witness of his resurrection with us“ (Acts 1:21–22). Peter is distinguished as spokesman amongst a particular group of men who were witness to the human career of Jesus. Thus at one level apostolic particularity has a profoundly mundane character. In fact Peter’s vision in Acts 10 suggests that even as chief spokesman and having

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The Spirit came amidst “the sound from heaven of a mighty rushing wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting” and “separating tongues like fire were seen by them” (Acts 2:2–3). Gunton is adamant that the spectacular signs not be equated with the Spirit himself. He writes: “It is much to be regretted that the interpretation of the account of the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 has been so dominated by the wind, the fire and the apparently ecstatic behaviour of the apostles. The Lord is not in the wind and the fire (1 Kings19!) but in the creation of the community, and that is the real point of the symbolism.”106 While we can agree with Gunton that the apocalyptic signs should be distinguished from the Spirit a few points ought to be noted from the details of the account. Firstly, the signs do suggest some kind of divine presence. Beale draws attention to the echo of Sinai, “where God appeared in the midst of loud ‘voices and torches and a thick cloud’ and ‘fire’” (Exod. 19:16–20; 20:18).107 In addition, the phrase, “tongues of fire” appears in Isa. 30:27–30 where YHWH descends upon his holy mountain appearing in “dense smoke … his tongues like consuming fire”.108 Secondly, within this scene of divine immanence the disciples are described as “filled with the Holy Spirit”.109 Here the disciples are individually touched and baptised with the Spirit received the Spirit, Peter’s understanding of the situation was appropriately contingent in keeping with Gunton’s concerns about the church. Furthermore his position of leadership within the community also appears to be contingent given his departure from the narrative after Acts 15. 106 Gunton, “The Church: John Owen and John Zizioulas on the Church”, p. 190 n. 5. 107 Gregory K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, ed. D.A. Carson, New Studies in Biblical Theology 17 (Leicester: Apollos, 2004), p. 204; see also Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 31 (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 235. Lincoln notes that in the second century Jews were commemorating God’s giving of the Law to Moses at Sinai during the Feast of Weeks at Pentecost (Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary 42 [Dallas: Word, 1990], p. 244). Beale (Temple, p. 210) also makes an interesting association between Luke’s description of the events of Pentecost and the Chronicler’s account of the dedication of Solomon’s Temple. Compare: “There came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house … and there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves” (Acts 2:3) and “Fire came down from heaven … and the glory of the Lord filled the house … and they gave … praise to the Lord” (2 Chron. 7:3, lxx). 108 Beale, Temple, p. 205. 109 Shelton observes: “the concept of ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ … is used perhaps to describe the reception of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4) and to indicate that a special dispensation of the Spirit was responsible for the authoritative speaking of believers (2:4; 4:8, 31; 9:17; 13:9)”. He also notes the phrase “full of the Holy Spirit” can refer to “the quality of a personality (6:3, 5; 11:24)” or to the presence of divine power “enabling him to speak or act authoritatively (7:55 Cf. Lk.4:1)” (James B. Shelton, “ ‘Filled with the Holy Spirit’ and ‘Full of the Holy Spirit’: Lucan Redactional Phrases”, in Faces of Renewal, ed. Paul Elbert [Peabody: Hendrickson, 1988], p. 82). Talbert equates “filled with the Spirit” with being “empowered to do God’s will” and bases his assertion on a the role of prayer in LukeActs (Charles H. Talbert, Reading Acts: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the

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as both John the Baptiser and Jesus had promised.110 This is not to say that the flame is the Spirit any more than the dove was for Jesus at the Jordan. Nevertheless, the language in these verses equates easily with immanent possession of the Spirit by an individual. The third thing to consider is that in one sense the community already exists before any of them have “officially” received the Spirit – “And when the day of Pentecost drew near they were all together in the same place” (Acts 2:1). It does not seem unreasonable to assume that this is, inter alia, the group of a hundred and twenty gathered around the newly reconstituted twelve. If, as Gunton has consistently maintained, the Spirit is not the immanent presence of God or the immanent possession of the individual or community, such a conclusion is not immediately obvious from this narrative. The account certainly mentions that the disciples were “enabled by the Spirit [τὸ πνεῦμα ἐδίδου ἀποφθέγγεσθαι αὑτοῖς]” to speak in other tongues. It is however, by no means clear that this was the transcendent action of the Spirit that is so important to Gunton.111 The Spirit enables Peter (whether by transcendent act or immanent direction or both) to interpret the events as the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy. A temporal particularity is announced that suggests some interesting divine associations: “In the last days, says God, I will pour forth from my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions and your elders will dream dreams. And even upon my servants in those last days I will pour forth from my Spirit and they will prophesy” (Acts 2:17–18). God has spoken through the prophet to designate as “the last days” the time when his Spirit will speak generally through members of the community (notably expressed in filial terms).112 What is Acts of the Apostles, Reading the New Testament [New York: Crossroad, 1997], p. 42). He claims that one of the functions of prayer for Luke is “as a source of power to enable one to do God’s will” and cites Luke 4:18–21; 22:39–46 in conjunction with Acts 1:14; 2:1–4; 4:29–31. 110 Note that the Spirit rests upon them as he did with Jesus (Luke 3:20–22). 111 Talbert notes the prevalence of empowerment language in the context of the Spirit: “The motif of empowering by the Spirit builds on an Old Testament/Jewish base. There the Spirit is understood as an empowering enabling agent. A craftsman is, by the Spirit, enabled to build the Tabernacle (Ex. 31:3); an administrator is, by the Spirit, equipped for leadership (Deut. 34:9); judges are, by the Spirit, given physical strength (Judg. 14:6) and power in war (Ps-Philo 27:9–10); Daniel is enabled to understand mysteries (Dan. 5:14); Ezra is enabled to write down the holy scriptures (4 Ezra 14:22); the Messiah will be empowered for his rule (Is. 11:2; 11QMelch 2:18; 1 Enoch 49:3; 62:2; Ps. Solomon 17:37; T Levi 18:7)” (Talbert, Reading Acts, p. 48). Significantly however, Talbert makes no distinction between transcendent acts by the Spirit and immanent possession by or even of the Spirit. 112 Talbert makes an interesting observation in light of Gunton’s advocacy of the church’s contingency. Talbert writes: “It would … be a mistake to think of Pentecost as a once-for-all event for the evangelist. In Acts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is depicted as repeatable in the life of the church (e.g. 4:31; 8:17; 10:1–11; 18; 19:1–6)” (Talbert, Reading Acts, p. 50). Here we have another possibility of association between Jesus and the disciples. Peter’s use of Joel’s prophecy suggests that now, in the Spirit, the disciples

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of interest here is the fact that previously Peter had referred to the Spirit speaking through David as a prophet (see Luke 1:16). The Spirit is explicitly distinguished from God as the one whose presence enables testimony to this eschatalogically perfected time. Furthermore, the sign of eschatological perfection – prophetic testimony – indicates a filial group participating in the liberating acts of God.113 The Absolute Particularity of the Son Peter now addresses the diaspora crowd, and as he does so the narrative indicates an intensity of meaning to the giving of the Spirit that goes beyond the Pentecost feast. Throughout this speech the link between David and Jesus that we have continually drawn attention to in Luke’s narrative is reintroduced in a definitive way. The hearers are implicated in the death of Jesus who had been previously attested to them as one through whom God did “miracles, wonders and signs”. Yet it is neither his deeds nor his death that is the ground for Jesus’ particularity at this time. It is the fact that God has vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead and that the Messiah has poured out God’s Spirit. In terms of Gunton’s concerns about human and divine action and interaction the scene presents a complex overlay of speakers all providing interpretations of the relationship between the coming of the Spirit and the resurrection of Jesus. Peter invokes, in the Spirit, David’s prophecy have become performers of the Scriptures after the likeness of Jesus in the wilderness. That is they are taking an active part in the drama of Scripture that we have described as the perfecting work of the Spirit. 113 Talbert, Reading Acts, p. 44. A number of commentators point to the event of Pentecost as the reversal of the curse of Babel. Dumbrell draws our attention to the description of “Jews from many nations, hearing the wonders of God in their own tongue” (Search for Order, pp. 223–4). Whereas at Babel, God confused the language of the nations and they were scattered over the earth, here at Pentecost the nations are gathered together again in order for God to address them. What Dumbrell does not mention is that those gathered hear of the wonders of God “in their own native language” (Acts 2:8). The Spirit’s actions do not diminish the natural particularities of this new community. Ironically it is the plurality of address that is the most prominent feature considering the universal language of koine Greek. At the same time a group is being particularised through this address. In Chapter 3 we focused on the sense in which Jesus is particularised from within the people of Israel through the work of the Spirit. Here at Pentecost a distinction is made between Israelites who have received the promised Spirit and those scattered among the nations. Furthermore it is from this larger group that “converts” will be taken in the first instance which will later cut across another important distinction with the drama of Scripture – namely that between Jews and Gentiles: “The ones from the circumcision group who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had also been poured out upon the Gentiles” (Acts 10:45). Throughout the Acts narrative those who receive the gift of the Spirit will be implicitly distinguished from “the sons of Israel” whether they be Jewish or not. Thus the gift of the Spirit will constitute a community within those who would otherwise be considered the people of God.

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(acting as the Spirit’s mouthpiece? cf. Acts 1:16) recorded in Scripture concerning the experience of the Lord – meaning Jesus: “For David said about him, ‘I saw beforehand my Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand I will not shaken. Because of this my heart is gladdened and my tongue rejoices; because you will not abandon my soul in Hades nor will you permit your Holy One to see decay. You have made known to me the way of life. You will fill me with the joy of your face’” (Acts 2:25–28). In Psalm 15 (lxx), David calls on God for protection confident that he will be rescued, not necessarily from death, but from decay in the realm of the dead.114 In the Spirit Peter reads this as David’s inspired foresight into the experience of God’s Holy One. The implication is that the experience of the “I” is the experience of Jesus in the face of death – he did not falter but instead entrusted himself to the Lord’s refusal to allow him to remain dead.115 Having resisted (in the Spirit) the temptation to pre-empt God’s deliverance, the Messiah is redeemed from death by resurrection in the Spirit. In a literal sense the Spirit preserves the Sonship of the Son by resurrecting him as the Son. God’s work of perfecting Jesus was not thwarted by death but rather consummated in his resurrection. The Spirit’s action for Peter is to enable him to hear the Spirit’s voice in David’s poetry such that Peter is able to prophesy concerning the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, Peter interprets the prophetic experience of David in the Spirit to the same end. Significantly, for our discussion with Gunton, here the insight that Peter is given has a mundane rationality to it.116 The logic of Peter’s prophecy would appear to be: God promised David that his Holy One would be raised to life from death. David died and his tomb is present to all of Peter’s audience; therefore David was not referring to himself but to Jesus to whose resurrection Peter and the others bear witness (Acts 2:29–32). Jesus is now publicly confirmed as the son of David par excellence – for no other son of David’s was resurrected. On top of all this the coming of the Spirit, Peter prophesies, is vindication of Jesus as Messiah, the one who will rule at the right hand of God: Therefore having been lifted to the right of God, having received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father, he poured forth this, which you see and hear. For David did not ascend to the heavens but he said, ‘The Lord said to my lord, “sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet,” ’ Therefore let all the house of Israel know beyond doubt that God has made one and the same, Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2:33–36)117 114

Significantly the lxx of Ps. 15 finishes v. 11 (not quoted here) with “pleasures at your right hand in the end”. 115 The redemption that Jesus discussed with Moses and Elijah in Luke 9:31 (cf. p. 136 above) has been achieved through resurrection. 116 Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 250. 117 David’s description of the ascended one as Lord is all the more provocative in the lxx than the mt. The mt uses ‫ ְיהוָה‬for “the Lord” and ‫ אַדִֺני‬for the latter “my lord”. In contrast the Greek has only the one term κύριος. Both terms are applied to the covenant

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The promised Spirit has enabled the followers of Jesus to recognise him as the perfect Son of David (and therefore of God) (cf. Luke 24:45–47). Having submitted to suffering, the exalted Messiah receives his inheritance at the right hand of God on high. Messiah Jesus is the son of David par excellence who is granted, not an earthly throne, but to sit at the right hand of God as his Son.118 That the Messiah is the one who pours out the Spirit of God gives us another sense of the preservation of his Sonship. Luke’s account highlights the fact that the Son mediates the filial relationship in the Spirit to the Father (Acts 2:33). The absolute sonship of the Son is preserved because he is the one to whom God gives the prerogative of opening filial relations in the Spirit to others. The coming of the Spirit is a “coronation gift” of God the Father to his Son that vindicates his sonship by making what was otherwise implicit – hidden – in the narrative explicit in the experience of his followers. Jesus has been perfected as Messiah by the Spirit as son of David and therefore Son of God; a fact that is now to be publicly testified. Furthermore, he who, in Gunton’s terms, was incognito during the terrestrial career of Messiah Jesus is also publicly revealed since the Messiah is named as Lord.119 Our two themes come together in that the possession of the Spirit is the grounds for the absence of Jesus. In the Spirit Peter has named Jesus as the one who bestows that Spirit from the Father. To Basil’s description of the immanent Son as “alone only begotten received from unregenerate light” we can now add an economic portrait of “the perfect mediator of filial relations with the Father in the Spirit”. Yet at the same time it is entirely contingent upon his absence. It is the Messiah who acts transcendently from “the right hand of God” who is the subject of Peter’s inspired prophecy. The prophecy regarding the Messiah is the work of the Spirit but also the work of the Son in pouring out the Spirit. The Pentecost account gives a very strong impression that the Messiah acts transcendentally and the Spirit is the immanent presence of God. Such a description presents some interesting tensions for both our dialogue partners. Gunton would only allow talk of the transcendent actions of the Spirit, Bonhoeffer stressed the immanent presence of Christ. Luke’s account makes explicit what was only implicit in Bonhoeffer’s description of the God of Israel in the mt. Johnson notes the consistent practice of the lxx: “The title ‘Lord’ should refer not to an earthly king, but to God” (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra pagina 5 [Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992], p. 55). Moessner opines that “the referent of ‘my Lord’ from the well-known Ps. 110 … is the same ‘Lord’ whom David ‘keeps seeing before me continually in my presence’ as cited from Ps. 15 and for whom, as God’s ‘holy one,’ David prophesies resurrection from the dead” (David P. Moessner, “Two Lords ‘At the Right Hand?’ The Psalms and an Intertextual Reading of Peter's Pentecost Speech (Acts 2:14–36)”, in Literary Studies in Luke-Acts, ed. Richard P. Thompson and Thomas E. Phillips [Macon: Mercer University Press, 1998], p. 216). 118 Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts, p. 140; see the discussion of Ps. 2:7 in Chapter 3 concerning the sonship of Jesus as Messiah. 119 Strauss argues that when Peter describes Jesus as Lord, he means that Jesus is the Messiah (Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts). However the Joel prophecy indicates that God will pour out his Spirit and Peter pronounces this the action of the Messiah.

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Gemeinde. Luke focuses on the transcendent actions of the Messiah through the Spirit, which is congruent with Gunton’s description even if Luke allows a greater sense of the Spirit’s immanence. It is the actions of God through the ascended Messiah and in the Spirit that constitute the Church. As such the church is a community particularised through receipt of the Spirit’s power. Filial relations with God in the Spirit are expressed through testimony to the absolute Son as Saviour. The Spirit opens these relations in such a way as to preserve the particular sonship of the Messiah.

Conclusion Our exploration of Gunton’s theology has come to an end. We must collate our findings in order to give some appraisal of his work on particularity and to reflect on the ways in which we have been able to develop it. To organise the results we shall return to Webster’s comments noted in the Introduction: “When his [Gunton’s] theology does not persuade, it is usually because he does not pause sufficiently long over exegetical or historical description, or because he assumes the validity of his presuppositions and presses ahead to draw corollaries.” A Paucity of Exegetical Description in Gunton’s Theology Webster was critical of the general lack of exegetical description in Gunton’s theology. Our exploration of his work on particularity showed this area to be no exception. Throughout our investigation of Gunton’s thought the paucity of exegetical material was a common feature. Despite advocating a logically primitive configuration of the incarnate Son in Scripture, Gunton’s engagement with the particularities of even the Gospel narratives was found to be cursory. In Chapter 1 we noted that while Gunton promoted the importance of the Virgin Birth for establishing the portrait of Jesus such that we might know who he is as divine, he looked to Irving for an interpretation of the event. Though Gunton considered the Baptism and Temptation as critical for understanding what it means for the Messiah to be a free agent of the Good under the authority of God’s grace and in accordance with the law of his own being (as noted in Chapter 3), his attention to the details of either occasion was perfunctory. Gunton held the Transfiguration to be an actual instance of revelation in the Bible but any significance the episode might have had for the particularity of the Messiah was overlooked as we saw in Chapter 4. Finally, as noted in Chapter 5, even though the resurrected Messiah was held to be the preview of the Spirit’s perfecting work in the economy of salvation and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost was to describe the constitution of the Church in such a way as to preserve the particularity of the risen Christ, in practice these watershed moments were only briefly visited. In addition to all this, though he frequently mentioned the importance of the relationship between Jesus and Israel, no treatment of the wider drama of Scripture was given save a remark from Davidson to the effect that the Old Testament contained the internal logic of the Incarnation. If at any point Webster found Gunton’s theology unpersuasive, our 



Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth”, p. 262.

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appraisal is that the deficiency of the latter’s exegetical description of particularity could easily have contributed to the problem. The Validity of Gunton’s Presuppositions As we noted, the second aspect of Webster’s general critique was whether the presuppositions upon which Gunton based his concept of particularity were valid. The principal presupposition on which we have focused in exploring Gunton’s theology of particularity was his Spirit Christology. The relationship between the Messiah and the Spirit in the economy of salvation was the context in which the concepts of mutually constitutive relations and the perfecting work of the Spirit are manifest together so as to reveal the nature of divine life. Spirit Christology formed the heuristic for discerning the “echo” of divine life in the rest of creation. This presupposition was tested through conversation with the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was chosen as a dialogue partner primarily because his Christocentric theology was not explicitly Trinitarian. By investigating three central loci of Bonhoeffer’s work we sought to establish a substantive and alternative theological discourse on particularity. What we discovered in the course of conversation was that overall, Gunton’s choice of Trinitarian formularies was vindicated. Revelation and Particularity The first of Bonhoeffer’s theological loci that we investigated was revelation. This was the subject of Chapter 2. Gunton had diagnosed two essential causes for dysfunctional notions of particularity in modern thought and practice. The first was the displacement of God by the human mind as the ground for truth and meaning in the world. The second and subsequent cause was disengagement from others in order to objectify and manipulate them for one’s own ordering of the world. In Bonhoeffer’s theology we discovered a description of revelation that rectified both these problems. Firstly, Christ meets the autonomous individual as the truth about the ultimate reality of God and the world. The autonomous individual, described as cor curvum in se, is dragged out of her self obsessed state to be gifted with the knowledge that Christ is pro nobis. The individual discovers Christ as the ultimate reality of a world always and already in existence. This gift of the truth is imparted to her through the gracious acts of others, since Christ meets her in community. In Christ, God is reinstated as the ground of meaning and truth in the world. In the community where Christ exists, the individual re-engages with others and for others as she meets Christ is their gracious actions and is Christ for them in kind. In sum, what we discovered was that Bonhoeffer’s theological epistemology addresses the fundamental causes of dysfunction in modern thought and practice that undermine a notion of particularity.

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However, in Chapter 3, in exploring Gunton’s Trinitarian theology of revelation we observed a far broader scope for addressing the problems of displacement and disengagement. While Gunton argued for a realistic epistemology similar to Bonhoeffer’s, he managed to keep theological and non-theological thinking together (a demand of Bonhoeffer’s) with his general theology of revelation. This concept combined the ideas, firstly, that all knowledge of truth is mediated and secondly, that the Spirit is the perfecter of knowledge. In Gunton’s theological epistemology revelation is domesticated and discovery is rehabilitated. Thus all knowledge of the truth, in what Bonhoeffer referred to as penultimate reality, is mediated to us through our senses in relation to personal and impersonal others. In addition, the Spirit, as the one who leads us into all truth, governs the process of revelation and discovery. Knowledge of the truth of ultimate reality (knowledge of God and the Good) is mediated to us in a similar way. For Gunton, knowledge of ultimate reality is mediated to us by the Spirit and in Scripture. This saving knowledge is the truth regarding God’s actions to redeem the world through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The Spirit mediates saving knowledge to the individual as Scripture is read both in the proximate and with the historical community. The antidote for displacement is the Spirit’s work of perfecting knowledge of God through the Son for the individual. The antidote for disengagement is found in the possibility of genuine, though mediated, knowledge of others in relationship. Social Ontology and Particularity The second locus of Bonhoeffer’s theology was symbiotically related to the first. His description of revelation was dependent upon a social ontology. In Chapter 4 we explored the development of Bonhoeffer’s description of particular persons over and against Heidegger’s language of authentic existence. We were led to this by Gunton’s focus on the particularity of Jesus and the need to ascertain how others are individuated in the perfecting work of the Spirit. Bonhoeffer’s description of revelation gave us a basic notion of individual being in which persons act as Christ for others in the community. This account was broadened in later work in order to encompass individual existence beyond the Gemeinde and was referred to as responsible living. The contours that shape responsible living include freely and vicariously bearing the guilt of others in accordance with the ultimate reality manifest in Christ. The specifics of individuation were dependent firstly upon creatureliness – a person’s spatial and temporal circumstances – and secondly upon conscience. Those in Christ have been given knowledge of, acquaintance with and the ability to act for the others. As they do so they have the opportunity to participate in the particularity of Christ in a coherent, integrated and particular way. The fecundity of Bonhoeffer’s thought led to the question of what difference we might expect Gunton’s Trinitarian formularies to make on the issue of individuation in community.

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What we found was that Gunton’s broad description of personal hypostases giving and receiving freedom, in accordance with the extent to which they bear the image of Christ in the Spirit, was too general. As he had done with revelation, Gunton sought to domesticate the substantiality of persons by highlighting that personal hypostases were only one kind of particulars in creation. As hypostases, persons are what and who they are by virtue of their relationship with God on the one hand and other temporally and spatially related particulars on the other. The particularity of personal hypostases in relation to the non-personal is grounded in their relationship to God through Christ; who is the image of God in creation. Persons bear this image with varying degrees of dysfunctionality depending upon the extent to which the Spirit perfects it in them. The chief indicator of the perfecting work of the Spirit was the level of freedom that each person gives to and receives from others, in relation to God through the Son. Gunton’s account of personal particularity differed from Bonhoeffer’s at a number of significant points. On the positive side, the breadth of description made it easier to explain personhood in penultimate reality compared to Bonhoeffer’s dichotomous portrayal of social ontology. At the same time, Gunton’s explanation allowed for the possibility of those outside the Gemeinde acting for the Good. Bonhoeffer’s portrayal of penultimate reality was unclear about this. However, on the negative side of the comparison, Gunton’s sole focus on the giving and receiving of freedom was judged to be inadequate considering the vast array of relationships and contingencies he attempted to encompass; to say nothing of the effects of sin. On the topic of personal particularity, Gunton’s Trinitarian presuppositions were deemed to be less effective than the alternative. Sociality and Particularity The last topic of conversation between Gunton and Bonhoeffer concerned sociality and formed the substance of Chapter 5. We began with issues that Gunton had raised regarding the need for a Trinitarian account of the church’s being. Gunton had argued that an insufficiently Trinitarian description of the church’s ontology led to a monistic ecclesiology. In addition, he argued that if ecclesiology were not based on the kind of Spirit Christology that we have observed in his work, then it would be docetic. In the course of conversation with Gunton, we had observed in Bonhoeffer’s work a clear preference for the language of “Christ existing as community” to describe the church. If such an account of the church’s being could avoid monism then Gunton’s presuppositions would again have been undermined. We also observed that Bonhoeffer’s theology focused on the acts of Christ in and for the church with little reference to the Spirit. If Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology were to avoid docetism, then Gunton’s theological premises would be brought into question yet again. What we discovered in this chapter was that Gunton’s choice of Trinitarian formularies was vindicated. Bonhoeffer’s concept of the Kollectiv-/Gesamtperson did give the community a relational dynamic that bore strong resemblance to

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Gunton’s concept of perichoresis. As the notion of Kollectivperson developed in Bonhoeffer’s later work into die Gestaltung of Christ in the world, the elements of contingency and particularity that Gunton advocated for ecclesiology were clearly present. However, throughout the investigation of Bonhoeffer’s writings on the community, the humanity of the risen Christ, and therefore his particularity, was continually undermined. In addition, we noted that Bonhoeffer’s description of ecclesiology only required God, Jesus and the world. In conjunction with this, the equation of the Spirit with impersonal notions like “becoming real, the present or the event” cast the shadow of modalism over his theology. In contrast to Bonhoeffer, Gunton argued for the Spirit’s transcendent actions as that which constitutes the church. The ascended Christ is present in and to the church via the mediation of the Spirit. The Spirit enables the church to anticipate genuinely, but not continuously, the life of the age to come. This life is prevenient in the incarnate Son and occasionally experienced as a foretaste of his perfected state. Thus the church is a contingent and particular echo of divine life. That is, from time to time, the church enjoys in the Spirit (and through the Son) the same relationship with God the Father, as does Jesus. The church represents Christ to the world but as the domain of his transcendent rule rather than as an instantiation of his person. Despite the similarities in the metaphysics underlying the community life, Gunton’s explicit Trinitarian description preserves the particularity of the God–Man on the one hand and avoids both monistic and docetic theology on the other. Developing a Theology of Particularity The aim of this dissertation was to explore, appraise and develop Gunton’s theology of particularity. We have outlined the results of the first two lines of inquiry, now we must reflect on the possibilities involved in the third. The need for greater exegetical description was met in the form of a theological interpretation of the Luke-Acts narrative. As the conversation with Bonhoeffer progressed our reading of Luke provided a grid upon which Gunton’s theological concepts were mapped. Thus the particularities of the Lucan narrative gave coherence to the actions of God through the Spirit, for the Messiah, in the economy of salvation. Through sensitivity to the matrix of relationships in which Jesus was portrayed as protagonist (and the Spirit as his chief collaborator), we developed a narrative description of particularity from mutually constitutive relations. What emerged was an account of the Spirit’s perfecting of sonship. Gunton contended that we could only understand the identity of the eternal Son in the life of the man Jesus. He described the Spirit preparing the body of the incarnate Son at his birth allowing the divine to remain incognito in the one hypostasis: being made from the same corruptible physicality that belongs to all human beings. In Chapter 1 we followed Luke’s account of the announcements made to Mary by the Angel and (in the Spirit) by Simeon. We interpreted these as indicating that the identity of Jesus was to be an expression of his relationships

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with King David and God. As the son of David, Messiah Jesus was to be the long awaited saviour king of Israel. Jesus’ sonship of David provided the narrative shape of his sonship of God. The perfection of the Messiah’s sonship would come in the face of opposition, though with universal significance. We described the first aspect of the Spirit’s perfecting work as locating the incarnate Son in the line of David amongst the people of Israel as God’s agent of salvation. The conversation between Gunton and Bonhoeffer on the topic of revelation left us, in Chapter 3, with a number of Gunton’s theological concepts in need of exegetical description. Gunton had described the Spirit opening persons so that knowledge could be mediated to them through relationships with others. In addition, he proposed that the Spirit worked to enable Jesus to be a free agent of the Good. Gunton held that Jesus acted under the authority of God’s grace and in accordance with the law of his own being. Our reading of Luke 4 focused on three episodes: the Baptism, the Temptations and the Nazarene sermon. In the first episode, we saw how God acted in the Spirit to designate the Messiah as his most intimate other. Of all the sons of Israel, Jesus heard God’s address as beloved. A special distinction emerged between God present and God speaking from heaven with the Spirit. A new intensity was given to the sense in which the Messiah would be the agent of divine salvation. In the second episode the Messiah was led by the Spirit into the desert to perfect the sonship of Adam. Here the Spirit enabled the Messiah to interpret freely his Sonship of God. In the Spirit and through Scripture the Messiah engaged with the story of his people Israel to confront Satan as God’s chosen one. With the knowledge mediated to him by Scripture the Messiah submitted to the authority of God’s gracious desire to redeem the sons of Adam. The Spirit enabled the Messiah to accept suffering, defer the attainment of his inheritance and not to pre-empt God’s deliverance. In the third episode, the Messiah revealed that the Spirit had located him at the telos of God’s activity. In the Spirit he interprets freely his sonship as the prophet of salvation and the liberator of those captive to the effects sin. Our reading of these three events developed the sense in which the son of David would act freely as God’s agent of salvation. The Spirit enabled Jesus to perfect his sonship of God by mediating to him knowledge of, acquaintance with and the ability to do the Good. In Chapter 4 we noted that Gunton’s description of the particularity of persons (other than the Messiah) stopped at an inadequate level of generality. To compensate we considered aspects of Bonhoeffer’s responsible living. However, the main development came from the theological interpretation of Luke’s narrative. Here we described the Spirit opening the sonship of the Son by perfecting filial relations with the Father for other persons. Gunton had mentioned in passing that God adopted freed persons as children. He had also remarked that a significant aspect of bearing the image of Christ was to be addressed by God. We developed these two ideas as features of the Spirit’s perfecting work through reading several episodes of address surrounding Luke’s Transfiguration account. In the presence of Moses, Elijah and the disciples Jesus was again addressed by God as the Son. Amidst obvious divine activity with rich symbolism from the drama of Israel,

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Jesus was glorified and particularised as the perfect mediator between heaven and earth. Yet the address of God was directed to the disciples and their inclusion in the cloud of glory intimated participation for them in the coming redemption of the Messiah. Later, having participated in the Messiah’s mission of liberation, the disciples were present when Jesus addressed God as Father in the Spirit. At that time, by the Son and in the Spirit, in relation to the Father, the disciples are addressed as children. These children were then exhorted by the Son to call on the Father that they might receive the Spirit. Putting all these elements together we suggested that persons are ultimately particularised by the Spirit perfecting, for them, filial relations with the Father, through the Son. The Spirit opens the sonship of the Son to incorporate others and they are given a name – son or daughter. This is the ultimate sense of what Gunton described as personal hypostases bearing the image of the Messiah. In addition, though the Son in the Spirit is the peculiar agent of redemption, in the Spirit his siblings are freed to participate in the manifestation of that liberation for others within the limits of their creatureliness and conscience as Bonhoeffer described. The final aspect of our description of the Spirit’s perfecting work followed on from Gunton’s explanation of the church’s being. The central issue in this part of the conversation with Bonhoeffer was the preservation of the risen Messiah’s particularity. Gunton proposed a description of the church’s ontology that echoed the triune being of God. Of special importance was the need to portray the church as existing in the same way that Christ himself lives and acts – in the Spirit. To avoid both monism and docetism, Gunton described the Spirit acting transcendently to constitute the church and make present the physically absent Messiah. We took up these concepts in a reading of the Pentecost story in the beginning of Acts. Here, we noted the Spirit could be both a transcendent actor and be immanently possessed by the church. Gunton was adamant that all accounts of the Spirit’s action must be as transcendent. Luke’s depiction was not definitive either way and allowed for both portrayals simultaneously. Through Peter’s sermon Luke describes the vindication of Jesus as the Messiah. Having resisted (in the Spirit) the temptation to pre-empt God’s deliverance, the Messiah is redeemed from death by resurrection in the Spirit. Having submitted to suffering the exalted Messiah receives his inheritance at the right hand of God on high. Messiah Jesus is the son of David par excellence who is granted, not an earthly throne, but to sit at the right hand of God as his Son. Here is the absolute perfection of his particularity by the Spirit. Furthermore, it is the transcendent Messiah who mediates filial relations with the Father for the church in the Spirit. In Gunton’s terms, he who was incognito during the terrestrial career of Jesus is now publicly revealed as the Messiah is named Lord. To Basil’s description of the immanent Son as “alone only begotten received from unregenerate light”, we can now add an economic portrait of “the perfect mediator of filial relations with the Father in the Spirit”. Furthermore, our account of the perfecting works of the Spirit is now complete. 



Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 38.4.30.

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In following the trajectory set by Gunton’s proposals we began with particularity as an eschatological work of the Spirit in and for the incarnate Son. In comparison with the work of Bonhoeffer, Gunton’s explicitly Trinitarian theology of particularity offered, at a number of points, a broader description of substantiality in the economy of salvation. However, through theological interpretation of the Luke-Acts narrative we developed Gunton’s proposition into the perfection of the Messiah’s particularity coming as a result of the Spirit’s locating, enabling, opening and preserving his sonship of the Father. The perfection of this sonship remains the heuristic for discerning the perfection of particularity in the rest of creation. As the incarnate Son, the Messiah is the particular part of creation in which the Spirit’s activity is focused. Yet the developments we have made to the original position provide a portrait of the Spirit’s work that is more specifically grounded in the Scriptural drama (one of Webster’s chief concerns). This has provided a vivid portrait of the incarnate Son in the first instance and secondly, and more importantly, a richer and more detailed description of what it means to appropriate the perfection of particularity to the Spirit. Furthermore, our development of Gunton’s theology has allowed a genuinely concrete description of personal hypostases, the one point at which Webster’s concerns regarding Gunton’s presuppositions seemed most apt.

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Index

Augustine of Hippo Gunton’s critique 5–7, 25, 29n22, 54n12, 87n57, 115, 141n2 influence on Bonhoeffer 20, 52, 60n46, 67, 70n99, 92, 147n37, 152 Barth, Karl Bonhoeffer’s critique 77–8, 78n6, 79n11, 79n13 Gunton’s critique 77, 79, 93n95, 142n3 influence on Bonhoeffer 18n84, 56 on Gunton 14, 18n84 Basil of Caesarea De Spiritu Sancto 11–13, 29n23 Epistle 38 1, 9–11, 30n28, 134n6, 157n80, 175n2 Trinitarian theology 49–50, 158, 167 Frei, Hans 18n84, 21, 34, 40–41, 46–8, 50 Hegel, George W. F. 31, 56, 60n46, 89n71, 92, 131, 144, 147n37 Heidegger, Martin 60n47, 63n60, 83n33, 115n12, 118n23, Bonhoeffer’s critique 52, 56, 62, 115–20 influence on Bonhoeffer 19n87, 60, 60n46, 61, 70, 70n99, 71n100, 71n101, 73n111, 75, 114n2, 120n37, 123 hypostasis 1, 6, 9–12, 20, 26, 29–31, 34–6, 42, 47, 125, 128, 130, 134, 173 identity 7, 27n12, 38n67, 74, 90, 116–21, 125–6, 127n23, 128–30, 134n105, 138n123, 146, 149n43, 159 of Messiah Jesus 14, 21, 40–41, 41n80, 44–50, 97, 101n134, 104–11, 138, 173

Irving, Edward 21, 31–4, 36, 41, 43, 47, 103, 142, 169 Janz, Paul 52–3, 58–61, 63–9, 72–4 Kierkegaard, Søren 60, 64–6 Luther, Martin 60, 62n56, 68n92 influence on Bonhoeffer 19, 52, 66, 68–9, 74, 116–17, 117n19, 123, 147n38, 149n43 Marsh, Charles 21, 56–7, 60n47, 63n60, 90, 113, 114n2, 119, 120n36, 144 Pannenberg, Wolfhart 27, 31 perichoresis 9, 125, 131n94, 146, 152, 158, 173 Polanyi, Michael 80–85, 90n73 Ricoeur, Paul 15–17, 39–40, 98n121, 99n125, 99n127, 106n155, 110n167 Shepherd, William H. 38–9, 43n87, 102n135, 136n112, 162n105 Talbert, Charles H. 107n157, 139n127, 163n109, 164n111, 164n112 Tannehill, Robert 15n69, 37n64, 102n135, 110n169, 136, 139 Turner, Max 15, 39n72, 102n135, Webster, John 2, 3n9, 8, 8n39, 13–14, 18, 23, 26, 29n22, 30n31, 35, 51, 83n31, 84n36, 89n66, 111–12, 169–70, 176 Wright, N. T. 17n77–81, 97n119, 101n134, 136n115 Zizioulas, John 156–7