Theology of the Manifest: Christianity without Metaphysics 9781978715486, 9781978715493

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Theology of the Manifest

Copyright © 2023 by Lexington Books. Not for distribution.

Copyright © 2023 by Lexington Books. Not for distribution.

Theology of the Manifest Christianity without Metaphysics Steven Nemes

L E X I N G T O N B O O K S / F O RT R E S S A C A D E M I C

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Copyright © 2023 by Lexington Books. Not for distribution.

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 9781978715486 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978715493 (ebook) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

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For my wife and son. “If now you find a different teaching in the Fathers than that which is contained in the teaching of Christ and if you abide by that of the Fathers more, it must needs follow that you are not in the church or communion of God but in the church of the Fathers. At that point they retort, ‘One has to be able to become united through the common voice of the gathered Fathers.’ Answer: No. One has to be united through the one word of God.”—Huldrych Zwingli

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Copyright © 2023 by Lexington Books. Not for distribution.

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction

1

Chapter 1: Method



9

Chapter 2: Onto-Epistemology Chapter 3: God

45

77

Chapter 5: The Church



Chapter 6: Baptism and Eucharist

113

141

165

Bibliography Index

23



Chapter 4: Jesus

Conclusion



171

181

About the Author



185

vii

Copyright © 2023 by Lexington Books. Not for distribution.

Copyright © 2023 by Lexington Books. Not for distribution.

Acknowledgments

This book offers a summary presentation of some of the important conclusions I have come to as a result of many years of research and hard thinking on the central questions of Christian philosophy and theology. It is also the fruit of over a decade’s struggle with the claims to authority of the catholic tradition of Christian thought, especially as embodied in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox iterations of this tradition. There are very many people who helped me in various ways to arrive at the place where I find myself now, more than I could hope to mention here, but it is only appropriate that I thank those whose influence was particularly strong. I am especially grateful for the time I spent at Fuller Theological Seminary during my doctorate, where I spent nearly every day engaged in theological reflection and debate with James Arcadi, Oliver Crisp, Jesse Gentile, J.T. Turner, Jordan Wessling, and Chris Woznicki. Truly those were golden times, and I fondly remember mornings, afternoons, and evenings spent in spirited discussion with J.T., whose roommate I was and whose energetic hostility to—so it seems—all of my ideas always helps me to formulate them and argue for them better. I am also grateful to Oliver, as well as to Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen and John Behr, who each read my dissertation and passed it with distinction. The present book builds significantly on that work, expanding its argument and pushing it further. I am likewise grateful to Eugen Matei, who was very kind to me during my days at Fuller and treated me like a friend and a son. I am likewise grateful to Virgil Brower, Neal DeRoo, and Kristóf Oltvai, whom I met at a conference in Valparaiso, Indiana in 2019 and who each in his own way assisted me greatly in my understanding of phenomenology. I am also grateful to Steven DeLay, whose work on French phenomenology of religion has been very helpful to me, with whom I have more recently come into contact, and who has been kind to me. I am particularly grateful to my parents, Steve and Valeria, for their constant support during my studies, and especially to

ix

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Acknowledgments

my mother, the first true theologian of the Nemes family, without whose influence in my life I would never have been a theologian myself. Finally and most of all, I am grateful to my wife, Rachel, who in just a few years has brought more joy into my life than I ever expected I could have.

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Introduction

Two fundamental convictions motivate the composition of this book. The first is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the theological method and onto-epistemological presuppositions of the catholic tradition of Christian thought such as it has developed to the present day. The second is that it is both desirable and possible to understand the Christian faith otherwise. The purpose of the present work is to substantiate this first claim and to follow through on the second by showing the possibility of a new path forward for Christian theology. The “catholic” tradition in the context of the present work refers to the Christian theological mainstream as it has evolved in history to the present day. This usage of the term “catholic” corresponds to Jaroslav Pelikan’s.1 This tradition thus includes not only Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy but also more traditional sorts of Protestantism. Anyone counts as a “catholic” who would claim as his or her theological forebears figures such as Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine of Hippo, and others in this same line, rather than their respective theological opponents. Yet it is not any one of these figures taken individually that is the target of the present counter-argumentation, but rather this entire traditional understanding of the Christian religion that emerged out of them in time. Even so, Thomas Aquinas will be especially prominent in the discussions to follow as its paradigmatic representative. The principal error of the catholic perspective is its inherent onto-epistemological dualism. It proposes sharp dichotomies between incommensurate spheres of reality without strict correlation to one another: the apparent and the real; nature and supernature; philosophy and sacred doctrine; science and revelation; creature and Creator; history and eternity; the world and God.2 These dualisms force theology into a fallacious “logic of the inaccessible” that operates by means of the errors of non sequitur and petitio principii. The case will be made that these dualisms ultimately make theological knowledge to be impossible. Indeed, the commitment to these 1

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Introduction

dualisms is arguably also connected to the problems of sectarianism and violent intolerance which have long afflicted the catholic tradition. The argument of this book is that the way out of trouble for Christian theology is to reject these dualisms that have come to define the catholic perspective. Such a rejection will naturally require a reinterpretation of the content of the faith at certain points. Most chapters of this book are preoccupied with putting forth exactly such reinterpretations as regards God, Jesus, the church, and the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. The problems afflicting the catholic tradition are dissolved when these central items of the faith are understood in a non-dualist fashion. These items are all to be reinterpreted in light of the phenomenological onto-epistemological principle that appearance and being are strictly correlated: things appear as they are and are as they appear. Put another way, the way a thing appears corresponds to the way it is, and the way it is corresponds to the way it appears. There is no such thing as an appearance without a basis in being, nor a being which is not in principle apparent. This is the central commitment of a “theology of the manifest.” The present book proposes the “theology of the manifest” both as a critique of the methodological and onto-epistemological underpinnings of the catholic tradition and as the presentation of a viable alternative. This catholic tradition is ontologically dualist. The “theology of the manifest” is ontologically non-dual. The catholic tradition distinguishes between the apparent and the real, the natural and the supernatural, the philosophical and the theological, the scientific and the revealed. The “theology of the manifest” does not propose any such hard distinctions. The catholic tradition is “metaphysical” in the sense of being principally occupied with non-manifest realities that can only accessed by being thought about, the existence or non-existence of which would make no manifest difference within the world of experience. The “theology of the manifest” is “phenomenological,” not in the sense of being rigidly Husserlian but rather in that it tries to speak only about manifest things and about manifestation as such. It thus strives to be a Christianity “without metaphysics” in the sense just defined, i.e., a Christianity of the manifest. The catholic tradition places a special emphasis on faith conceived as belief in speculative ontological theses affirmed by certain authoritative figures in the tradition and an understanding of salvation that includes metaphysical transformations. The “theology of the manifest” understands the Christian religion sooner and principally as a way of relating interpersonally to God and to others within the frame of human experience. It sees Christianity as an encounter with the loving God as the source of one’s own life and being in the intimacy of one’s subjectivity, an encounter mediated by the person of Jesus that makes possible a different kind of life in the world that is genuinely joyful. It is a Christianity “without metaphysics,” an “immanent Christianity.”

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The “theology of the manifest” does propose reinterpretations of certain items of Christian faith, but these are not so drastic as to produce something entirely new or unrecognizable. Its vision in many ways could thus perhaps be understood as a continuation of the project of the Reformation. It will become evident in time that this book is essentially a work of (radical) Protestant philosophical theology. The perspective that it proposes is not stereotypically “Protestant” to the extent that traditional Protestantism inherits some of the dualisms of catholic theology. Yet it is plainly not a “post-liberal” theology of the sort proposed by George Lindbeck.3 Likewise, its method and emphases are recognizably phenomenological without being “Heideggerian” in the way of Rudolf Bultmann.4 Its principal philosophical influence and inspiration is sooner Michel Henry. Henry was himself a Roman Catholic, and yet some of his most ardent theological critics are catholics, Roman or otherwise, who judge that he did not adequately grasp some of the commitments of this theological tradition. Examples include Emmanuel Falque5 and Joseph Rivera.6 The present work does not share their concerns with Henry’s thought. It sees in his phenomenology of life certain possibilities for developing and refining Protestant theology in a manner similar to the significance of Thomas Aquinas for Roman Catholic theology. So also, the principal theological influence and inspiration of the “theology of the manifest” proposed here is Huldrych Zwingli. Henry has not presently been compared in much detail to Protestant theologians or thinkers, so that it is all the more significant that one can find certain remarkable instances of overlap in thought between Henry and Zwingli on a number of issues, which will become evident in the course of the forthcoming discussion. Citations from them both will populate the discussions to follow; they are the present text’s two principal inspirations and “heroes.” One could say that the present work is best understood as proposing a kind of “post-catholic phenomenological Protestant theology.” Or in fewer words: Christianity “without metaphysics.” Once more, “metaphysics” in the present context means something specific, namely reasoned discourse about things as they are in themselves, independently of their manifestation in experience. The “theology of the manifest” as a Christianity “without metaphysics” thus strives not to speak about things except as manifest. Its proposals are in many ways consonant with the theology of Reformed Protestantism while at the same time going beyond some of the broader catholic commitments of the Reformed tradition out of allegiance to the consequences of a broadly phenomenological philosophy. It sees in this pairing of Henry and Zwingli a new and promising direction for “post-catholic” Protestant thought. Such a project as a “theology of the manifest” will inevitably seem controversial and perhaps even contradictory in the minds of many. For example,

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Introduction

Dominique Janicaud famously objected to the very possibility of a phenomenological theology.7 But the entirety of the present work is an argument for the conclusion that a “theology of the manifest” is not only possible but even necessary. Still other persons will find the claim that something could be “fundamentally wrong” with the catholic tradition of Christian theology incredible and arrogant from the start. But the initial implausibility which this claim could have in the ears of many can only be overcome once the general landscape of such a theological alternative has been laid out clearly. Indeed, this incredulity itself may be a result of presupposing the various problematic commitments of the catholic tradition at which the present work takes aim. The reader is therefore invited to suspend disbelief and to consider the matter with an open mind. This book can give the impression that it is trying to pass as a systematic theology, but it is not. More precisely, the goal is not to say everything that can or should be said about the various doctrinal loci classici to be discussed, but rather only to show what a “theology of the manifest” would have to say about this or that theological issue once the dualisms of the catholic tradition are rejected. Special emphasis is therefore placed on those points where there will be a disagreement between the catholic theological tradition and the “theology of the manifest.” Many points of real agreement and consonance between the two visions for Christian theology will inevitably go unmentioned, the discovery of these being left to the imagination of the discerning reader. The discussion of the book will take place in the following order. The first two chapters are dedicated to broadly prolegomenal matters. The remaining four address the substantive theological questions of the nature of God, of Jesus, of the church, and of the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. The first chapter addresses the question of method. It argues that the goal of reasoned discourse (logos) is to attain to knowledge in the sense of consciously truthful thought or speech about a thing (§1); that the attainment of knowledge so defined presupposes both a phenomenological method and the onto-epistemological principle that appearance and being are strictly correlated (§2); and that the denial of this pair of method and principle leads discourse into a fallacious “logic of the inaccessible” that reasons by means of non sequitur and petitio principii (§3). To the extent that “theology” is defined as reasoned discourse (logos) about God (theos) and all things as seen in relation to God, it follows that it must be a “theology of the manifest.” The second chapter addresses the question of theological onto-epistemology. It notes that the catholic tradition of Christian theology is committed to a “closed” theological onto-epistemology that maintains that the things of Christian theology are not antecedently accessible to human beings in the sphere of the manifest made accessible to them by their natural endowments

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and capacities. They rather belong to a non-manifest sphere of reality. This not only leads catholic theology into the fallacies of the “logic of the inaccessible,” as illustrated by the examples of Vincent of Lérins and Thomas Aquinas (§4), but also makes theological knowledge impossible altogether, as can be shown by a critical discussion of the special theological epistemology of Kevin Diller (§5). The alternative is that Christian theology must adopt an “open” theological onto-epistemology; (i.e., it must be a “theology of the manifest” that situates its subject matter within the sphere of the manifest). The chapter concludes by elucidating the transcendental structure of this manifest sphere as divided into the two domains of Life and the World (§6). The third chapter addresses the question of God. Drawing from Thomas Aquinas and Michel Henry, it is possible first to give a purely formal definition of God that is neutral with respect to the option for an “open” or “closed” theological onto-epistemology and then to argue that something must exist which satisfies this definition (§7). After this, it reinterprets the nature of God, in keeping with the phenomenological commitments of an “open” theological onto-epistemology, as absolute Life whose “body” or visible exterior image of his inner life is the phenomenological World itself (§8). This “panentheistic” or “qualified monistic” understanding of God is both a development of that of Henry as well as highly consonant with the opinion of Zwingli. The chapter also responds to a version of the evidential argument from evil which insists that God’s existence is improbable given the apparent gratuity of certain evils that take place in the World (§9). The fourth chapter addresses the person and work of Jesus. It argues that the New Testament’s controversial interpretation of various Old Testament passages with reference to Jesus can be made intelligible by appeal to an attested religious experience that can be called the phenomenon of the third voice (§10). Going further, the work of Jesus is interpreted in light of the biblical conception of the relationship between human beings and God (§11). As created in his image, human beings are the collaborators of God in the project of caring for the created world, as well as his friends and guests. Jesus is the savior in the sense that he accomplishes the reharmonization of this relationship between human beings and God. As for the relationship between Jesus and his Father, it is not easy to prove things one way or another (§12). But it is possible to propose an understanding that should be agreeable to Nicene and non-Nicene Christians alike, namely that of Jesus as the “face” of God in the World for human beings. This is to say that Jesus, as mediator between God and human beings, is for Christian faith the privileged visible expression of God’s inner life in the World. The fifth chapter addresses the nature of the church. The argument is made that what makes the church to be the church is the fact that Jesus claims some number of persons as his own (§13). To try to define the church in terms of

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Introduction

qualities inhering in it, whether in terms of its teaching or institutional structure, is to fall into the “logic of the inaccessible.” But Jesus dies for all people and thus makes a claim on them all. Therefore, in a purely objective sense, all people are in the church as ekklēsia, as those persons for whom Jesus died and whom he “calls out” of their lives of sin to reconcile with God. Even so, it is possible to distinguish between Christian and non-Christians. There is consequently a further sense of the church as congregatio fidelium, the community of believers (§14). It is argued that the “belief” that makes a person to be a Christian should be understood as belief-in Jesus, which is to say an exclusive commitment to him and an entrusting of oneself and one’s life to him. Finally, the relationship between scripture and ecclesial tradition should be understood as one of mutual or reciprocal priority (§15). Ecclesial tradition is prior to scripture in a formal and phenomenological sense, whereas scripture is materially and theologically prior to every ecclesial tradition. The sixth chapter addresses the meaning of the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. The preference for an “open” theological onto-epistemology entails rejecting every “metaphysical” interpretation of the operation and effect of the sacraments. Baptism should instead be understood as the ritual entry into a new life as a Christian in the fellowship of the church as congregatio fidelium (§16). It is argued that this is the understanding of Justin Martyr and Zwingli alike. The Eucharist likewise should be understood as a memorial meal in which the person and work of Jesus are ritually celebrated and personally (re-)appropriated through the symbolic use of bread and wine. This makes better sense of the biblical language than does the Real Presence alternative (§17). Finally, the option for a symbolic interpretation opens the possibility of eucharistic communion between Christians of even radically divergent theological convictions (§18). This is because the true unity of Christians is their shared belief-in Jesus, and the symbolic interpretation of the eucharistic elements undermines the need for a member of the institutional hierarchy of the church to serve as an assurance that the bread and wine really have changed into Christ’s body and blood. Any gathering of persons who believe-in Jesus can celebrate the Eucharist together in principle. NOTES 1. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 2. This last distinction is called the “Christian Distinction” by Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995).

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3. See George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984). 4. See David W. Congdon, The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015). 5. Emmanuel Falque, “Is There a Flesh without a Body?” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 24, no. 1 (2016), 139–66. 6. Joseph Rivera, The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry: A Phenomenological Theology (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2015). 7. Dominique Janicaud, Jean-François Courtine, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, and Paul Ricœur, Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000).

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Copyright © 2023 by Lexington Books. Not for distribution.

Chapter 1

Method

Theology can be defined as reasoned discourse (logos) about God (theos) and about all things as seen in relation to God. This is more or less the definition given by Thomas Aquinas at Summa Theologiae I, q. 1, art. 7: “In sacred science, all things are treated of under the aspect of God: either because they are God Himself or because they refer to God as their beginning and end.”1 It has also been offered in the modern day by Wolfhart Pannenberg and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen.2 This definition seems agreeable and will be taken for granted here. The thesis to be argued below is that theology must follow a phenomenological method and so be a “theology of the manifest.” The argument is as follows. (§1) Reasoned discourse (logos) is a matter of trying to think and speak truthfully about a thing. Truth itself is defined by Aristotle as a relation of adequacy between an opinion and the thing itself to which the opinion refers. It is to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not. Because it is not a matter of play or rolling dice, the goal of reasoned discourse as an intentional activity is therefore to achieve an awareness that one is thinking or speaking about a thing as it is. Such conscious truthfulness of thought or speech is otherwise called knowledge. (§2) The achievement of knowledge in this sense presupposes both a phenomenological method and onto-epistemology. Methodologically, the assurance that one is thinking or speaking truthfully about a thing requires that one turn to that thing itself in experience and allow it to dictate as far as is possible the terms in which it is understood. Onto-epistemologically, this turning to the thing itself in experience requires the supposition that appearance and being are strictly correlated. A thing must appear as it is and be as it appears. Only thus can the experience of a thing serve the purpose of securing knowledge about it, since knowledge is concerned with truth and being. (§3) Denying the strict correlation between appearance and being means falling into a compromised “logic of the inaccessible” which founds reasoned discourse on the twin fallacies of non sequitur and petitio principii. 9

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Chapter 1

The dialectic between the phenomenological tradition and the alternative representationalist conception of consciousness provides an illustration of this. Thus, the very survival and success of theology as reasoned discourse depends upon its adoption of a phenomenological method and onto-epistemology. It must be a “theology of the manifest.” §1 REASONED DISCOURSE AND KNOWLEDGE Reasoned discourse (logos) is a distinct way of speaking. It differs from deception and bullshitting in that it is concerned to be truthful. As Harry Frankfurt would write, deception consists in intentionally affirming falsehoods, whereas bullshitting consists in being totally indifferent to the truth of what one says altogether.3 By way of contrast, reasoned discourse instead strives to be truthful. Yet it is not “creative” or “proclamatory” in the sense that it does not make what it says to be true merely by saying it.4 The priest who declares a man and woman to be husband and wife makes it so by saying it, just as the president or congress of some nation actualizes a state of war with another nation precisely by declaring war. This is not what is happening in the case of logos. Reasoned discourse is not a matter of creating the truth or effectuating it but is rather concerned with uncovering a truth independent of one’s speech and bringing it into the light. Martin Heidegger expressed this by saying that logos is apophainesthai: “showing forth” or “displaying.” It is a matter of using words for the sake of “letting the manifest in itself be seen in itself and indeed . . . from itself.”5 One could then say that reasoned discourse is speech that tries to be truthful. It tries to be truthful and thus is concerned with the truth, unlike deception and bullshit. But it is also a matter specifically of trying or striving to be truthful. Put another way, it is an intentional effort. This means that there is the possibility of failure, unlike in the case of “creative” pronouncements of marriage or war. Reasoned discourse tries to tell a truth that is what it is independently of the effort to engage in logos. This clarification serves to raise the prior question of Pilate: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). In this matter, Aristotle gives definitions that can hardly be improved. He says in Metaphysics 1011b25: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, whereas to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true.”6 So also, he says in Nicomachean Ethics 1142b11 that “truth” (alētheia) is “correctness of opinion” (doxēs orthotēs).7 This pair of definitions can be summarized as follows. “Truth” is a relation of adequacy between what is thought or said about a thing and that thing itself. This is to say that a person thinks or speaks truthfully when he or she thinks

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or speaks about a thing as it is, whereas falsehood is a matter of thinking or speaking otherwise than it is. This “Aristotelian” definition of truth seems agreeable and will be taken for granted in the rest of this work. There are also two aspects of it that merit discussing in further detail. First, the Aristotelian definition of truth makes it possible to distinguish between truth and falsehood only by situating thought or speech and being in distinct “spheres” of reality. These spheres are not essentially correlated to each other, and falsehood consists precisely in their failure to correlate. What someone thinks or says need not correspond to the way things are and vice versa. So also, one must always distinguish between the thing itself and what someone thinks or says about a thing. Only thus is falsehood possible. It would be impossible to think or speak falsely if things always were the way one thought or spoke about them, since every attempted description of things would succeed. Of course, one might wonder whether it is impossible to think or speak truthfully, but this hypothetical scenario seems contradictory. If it were true to think or say that no one can think or speak about things as they are, then one would have succeeded in doing precisely what one presumed to be impossible: namely, to have thought or spoken about things as they are. In other words, if this thesis of the impossibility of truth were true, then it would be false. For this reason, it is not possible that no thought or speech be true. The more interesting and significant fact is rather that falsehood is possible. This possibility reveals that thought or speech and being are distinct spheres with no necessary correlation to each other. Second, the Aristotelian definition accords a definitive and asymmetrical privilege to the sphere of being in matters of truth. What makes an opinion to be true is always and only the thing itself to which the opinion refers. This is because every opinion simply as such is an opinion about some thing or other; every opinion “aims” at something. An opinion is more specifically an attempt at thinking or speaking about some particular thing as it is, and the success or failure of this attempt is therefore determined only by that thing itself. This means that other considerations having to do either with the opinion itself or else with the person to whom it belongs must be considered strictly irrelevant with respect to truth. An opinion may be true even if the person to whom it belongs is otherwise objectionable or untrustworthy, indeed even if it is logically incompatible with other opinions a person or community of persons hold dear for whatever reason. Pannenberg appeals to the discovery of heliocentrism to show that an opinion can be true even if every relevant authority at some time disagrees with it.8 Inversely, an opinion may be false even if it is affirmed by some notable persons, indeed even if it is implied by other opinions a person may hold dear for whatever reason. Thus, because thought or speech and being are distinct spheres with no essential

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Chapter 1

correlation to one another, one does not arrive at the truth by multiplying opinions or witnesses to one’s ideas. One’s opinion can be false even if it can be shown to follow from other opinions and even if everyone in the world accepts it. Only the thing itself can give the truth. Recall, then, that reasoned discourse (logos) was defined as the attempt to think or speak truthfully about a thing. Given the Aristotelian definition of truth, this means that reasoned discourse is the attempt to think or speak about a thing as it is. But it is also worth noting that the person who engages in reasoned discourse is typically not satisfied merely to have thought or spoken truthfully about a thing by chance. Reasoned discourse is an intentional activity; it is not something people do by accident or as play. The goal is not only to happen to think or speak about a thing as it is but also to be aware that one is doing so. One could say that the telos of logos is conscious truthfulness, an awareness of the truthfulness of one’s own thinking or speaking. But to be aware that one is in the possession of the truth is to know. After all, what else could one call that experience in which a person is aware that his or her thinking or speaking accords with the thing itself about which he or she thinks or speaks? One can thus conclude that the goal of reasoned discourse is knowledge understood as consciously truthful thought or speech about a thing. §2 KNOWLEDGE AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD The definition of knowledge as the awareness of the truth of one’s thinking or speaking about a thing is philosophically significant. It suggests both a method for the acquisition of knowledge and an onto-epistemological presupposition of its success. The method is phenomenological: one must strive to think and speak about a thing precisely as it shows itself in experience and thus to allow the self-disclosure of the thing itself to dictate the terms in which it is understood. The onto-epistemological presupposition is also phenomenological: appearance and being are strictly correlated, so that things appear as they are and are as they appear. Hence it follows that reasoned discourse must be phenomenological if it is to attain to its goal of knowledge. These points can be explained in order. To speak of knowledge as the awareness of the truthfulness of one’s opinion about a thing is to define it as an experience. Being aware of something is an experience. Yet truth is also defined as a relation that obtains between an opinion and the thing itself to which the opinion refers. Knowledge is therefore the awareness of this relation. But it is impossible to become aware of a relation between two things unless both relata are presented in experience. For example, one cannot see that one cat is fatter than another unless both

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cats are given in some way, whether “in person” and “in the flesh” or else by means of a reliable photographic representation. Neither can one see that x > 100 unless the value of x is given. This is because one comes to an awareness of a relation by comparing at least two things, and comparison is only possible if one is in fact presented with the comparanda; one cannot compare what is not given. Thus, the awareness of the adequacy of one’s opinion about a thing to that thing itself requires that one be presented with the thing itself in experience, since only in this way can one compare one’s thinking or speaking about a thing with that thing itself. It is true that there are very many things one might presume to know which are not susceptible to strict confirmation in this way. For example, it is not possible to travel into the past in order to determine whether one’s historical opinions are adequate to the things themselves. Yet it should be understood that this conception of knowledge stipulates the ideal case. All striving after knowledge is a matter of trying to see the truth of one’s judgments about things. Of course, many persons are satisfied to think their opinions are true so long as the data they have at their disposal does not obviously contradict what they think or say. There is also an ordinary sense of the word “knowledge” which effectively amounts to having an opinion which seems to oneself and to others likely to be true in the sense of having some apparent foundation in or consistency with the given facts. Even so, it must be insisted that this is not knowledge in the strict sense; it tends towards the ideal while not reaching it. It is one thing for the facts to allow for one’s opinion or even to suggest it “probabilistically” as judged according to some prior conception of what reality must be like, and it is quite another thing altogether for one’s opinion to be true to the thing itself to which it refers. Presumably, if one’s opinion were true to the thing itself, then it would generally appear consistent with the given facts. But an opinion can also appear consistent with the given facts while not being true to the thing itself. For example, it might be consistent with the evidence or even “probabilistically” suggested by it that some actually innocent person should have committed a crime. In this case, the opinion is both consistent with the evidence and “probabilistically” suggested by it, and yet it is false. There should consequently not be any controversy in saying that most people may not actually know the things they take themselves to know. The alternative would be an unjustified dogmatism and a refusal to admit the possibility that one be mistaken. Knowledge is thus a way of experiencing things, namely as conforming to one’s opinions about them. But the Aristotelian definition accords supreme onto-epistemological privilege to the sphere of being. One’s opinion is not true because one has this or that distinguishing quality, nor because it is implied by other ideas, whatever these may be and whoever may endorse them. The thing itself alone is what makes it true. From this there consequently follows

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Chapter 1

a clear method for the acquisition of knowledge: if one wishes to know, one should turn “to the thing itself” and to conform one’s thinking and speaking about it as far as is possible to the way the thing shows itself in experience. Only the thing itself can give the truth, and since reasoned discourse is a striving for knowledge, it must therefore proceed as far as is possible from the thing itself it wishes to speak about and to know. One might say that the thing itself is magister, “teacher,” and the one who would know it is discipulus, “student.” To strive for knowledge by measuring one’s thought and speech about a thing as far as is possible by the self-disclosure of that thing itself in experience: this is the essential meaning of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological method for philosophy. There is naturally very much one could say about the historical development of phenomenology, both in Husserl’s lifetime and afterwards,9 and there is not the space here to do this. Yet the idea is still a simple one. It is adequately summarized in the call to return “to the things themselves,” as Heidegger appreciated.10 The centrality of the thing itself for Husserl’s understanding of rational inquiry is nicely summarized in his essay “Philosophy as Rigorous Science”: “The true method follows the nature of the things to be investigated and not our prejudices and preconceptions.”11 And the understanding of knowledge as a kind of consciousness of truthfulness is also summarized as follows: “Every type of object that is to be the object of a rational proposition, of a prescientific and then of a scientific cognition, must manifest itself in knowledge, thus in consciousness itself, and it must permit being brought to givenness, in accord with the sense of all knowledge.”12 In this way, one can say that the phenomenological method follows from a “magisterial” conception of the thing itself as the canon of truth together with the conception of knowledge as a way of experiencing the things one knows. This method also presupposes a certain “onto-epistemology,” which is to say a certain conception of what is real and how it is known. Reasoned discourse is the attempt to think and speak about things as they are. The goal of the person engaging in logos is to achieve knowledge in the sense of coming to an awareness of the truthfulness of his or her opinions about a thing. Because only the thing itself can give the truth, and because one comes into contact with things outside oneself through experience, reasoned discourse must therefore strive to be founded as far as is possible in the way the thing shows itself in experience. As Heidegger wrote: “In discourse, to the extent that it is genuine, what is said should be drawn from . . . what is talked about, so that discursive communication in its content, in what it says, makes manifest what it is about and makes it accessible.”13 But truth is a relation between thought or speech and being. The truth of one’s opinion about a thing can only be appreciated through an experience of the thing itself, and an experience of

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a thing is a matter of that thing’s appearing. The phenomenological method therefore also presupposes that appearance and being are strictly correlated. Things always appear as they are and always are as they appear; only thus can the way a thing shows itself in experience (appearance) serve as the canon of the truth of one’s opinions about what it is (being). However, this supposition of a strict correlation between appearance and being is philosophically controversial. Indeed, there is a notable “representationalist” tradition that denies it. This view maintains that what appears in experience is a “representation” which may or may not correspond to anything real. Experience is not first and foremost a matter of being presented with real things themselves but rather with something like a “film” that is projected by the brain and central nervous system on the basis of its strictly pre-experiential interactions with its physical environment.14 Robert Sokolowski summarizes this view as follows: Consciousness is taken to be like a bubble or an enclosed cabinet; the mind comes in a box. Impressions and concepts occur in this enclosed space, in this circle of ideas and experience, and our awareness is directed toward them, not directly toward the things “outside.” We can try to get outside by making inferences: we may reason that our ideas must have been caused by something outside us, and we may construct hypotheses or models of what those things must be like, but we are not in direct contact with them. We get to things only by reasoning from our mental impressions, not by having them presented to us.15

Sokolowski goes on to note that this is the perspective inherited in the present day from modern philosophical traditions like Cartesianism, Hobbesianism, and Lockeanism. René Descartes, for example, supposed that all his sense perceptions and even his intuition of a priori truths like those of mathematics could be illusions caused by an evil demon.16 He thus distinguished sharply between what is presented to him in conscious experience and what is real. In this way, the representationalist perspective distinguishes itself from the phenomenological by denying the essential correlation between appearance and being. What appears might not correspond to anything that is, and what is might not be experientially represented by anything that appears. The most significant argument brought against this perspective by the phenomenological tradition is that it inevitably leads to skepticism, indeed to what may be called an “egocentric predicament.”17 Recall that knowledge is the awareness that one’s opinion about a thing is adequate to that thing itself as it is. One could say that it is the consciousness of the correlation between one’s thought or speech about a thing and the being of that thing. But awareness implies appearance, since one can only be aware of something that appears in some way or other; and awareness of the relation of adequacy

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between one’s opinion about a thing and that thing itself demands that the thing itself must appear as it is. Yet the representationalist denies that there is any essential correlation between appearance and being. What appears is not being, not “the things themselves,” but rather a representation which may or may not correspond to anything real. Moreover, it is impossible to step outside of the subjective theater of one’s consciousness in order to determine the adequacy of these representations to reality. This is therefore how knowledge becomes impossible. Knowledge requires truth, and only the thing itself can give truth, but representationalism makes the thing itself inaccessible as a matter of principle. One has only representations, the adequacy of which can never itself be made manifest. It therefore excludes the possibility of knowledge. This is the “egocentric predicament.” As Sokolowski says: “We do not know how to show that our contact with the ‘real world’ is not an illusion, not a mere subjective projection.”18 Even so, the representationalist has a response to this objection. It says that one can become aware of the adequacy of one’s opinions with the things themselves when they are accompanied by a “feeling of certainty” or “feeling of evidence.” These feelings occur within the immanent sphere of experience, but they are also signs that one’s thinking or speaking about a real thing is true. One could say that they serve as apparent “signals” indicating the correlation between the sphere of appearance and the sphere of being. As Heidegger writes: “It is something like a sign which wells up at times in the soul and announces that the psychic process with which it is associated is true. To some extent, it is as if a psychic datum announces that there is something real outside which corresponds to [one’s representation].”19 To this point, however, there is a convincing rejoinder from the phenomenological side. Dan Zahavi says: “One can have feelings of certainty about virtually everything, and for that reason any reference to them is useless as a criterion or even definition of truth.”20 It is possible, for example, to feel convinced first in favor of an opinion and then against it even while the actual truth of the matter cannot have changed in the meantime. This happens whenever one changes one’s mind in matters of permanent and enduring truth such as metaphysics, ethics, or history. One may go from feeling convinced of the Principle of Sufficient Reason to feeling convinced against it, yet the principle itself cannot have gone from true to false in that span of time. Likewise, one may feel sure that a certain course of action is correct and right at one point, only to come later to the confident opinion that is in fact wrong, but presumably the actual ethical fact of the matter has always been whatever it is. So also, one may first be convinced that a certain person committed a crime and later be convinced that he or she is in fact innocent, but the truths of history are what they are unchangeably. These examples serve to illustrate the point that a “feeling of certainty” or “feeling of evidence” cannot serve as

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a reliable signal of the adequacy of one’s opinions to the things themselves. There is no necessary connection between what one feels in conjunction with an opinion and the adequacy of that opinion to the things themselves. It therefore seems that the representationalist has no way out of trouble. Knowledge as the awareness of the truthfulness of one’s thinking about a thing requires that the thing itself appear, but the denial that appearance and being are strictly correlated makes it impossible to determine that this has ever happened. By making it impossible to compare one’s opinions with the things themselves to which the opinions refer, representationalism also makes knowledge itself to be impossible. It takes away the thing itself which alone can give truth and thus takes away knowledge as well. One might nevertheless suppose that the representationalist has an independent argument to make in favor of his or her opinion. The best such argument would seem to be that sometimes things appear otherwise than as they are. A coiled rope can appear to be a snake, or a pencil of uniform size when placed in a half-full glass of water may appear thicker at one end than at the other. Someone could therefore point to such purported false appearances in defense of the representationalist perspective; appearance and being cannot be strictly correlated if things sometimes appear otherwise than as they are. But this argument is not actually convincing. Two things may be said by way of response. First, the argument assumes that what appears is first and foremost an individual thing such as a coiled rope or a pencil. This is in fact false. In experience one is always presented with a multiplicity of objects, and the appearance of any one of these many objects is not only a result of what it is itself but is also at least in part affected by the way everything else is. One could even say that everything appears, oneself included, and all at once. Once one takes into consideration the total conditions in which an appearance takes place, it becomes possible to see that everything is always such as to appear to one in precisely the way it does. The coiled rope is in fact such as to resemble a snake when it is perceived foggily and obscurely in conditions of low lighting where one might expect to find a snake, such as in a garage or one’s backyard. What appears is not just the coiled rope but also the darkness of the room, the climate in which one lives, one’s own sense of sight and inattentiveness, one’s expectations regarding what one might find in certain places, and so on. As for the coiled rope itself, it is obvious that there is no other way it can look in precisely those conditions. So also, the pencil is such as to appear thicker at one end when it is placed in a half-full glass and perceived by one from the outside. But what appears is not just the pencil but also the glass, the water within it, the light in the room, the operation of one’s own sense of sight, and so on. Each of these items affects the appearance of all the rest in some way, and as for the pencil, there is no other way it can look

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in precisely those conditions. In this way, purportedly false appearances of particular things can be appreciated as actually true if they are seen in light of the context in which they take place. Everything is always such as to appear the way it does in the conditions in which its appearance takes place. Second, a distinction must be made between false appearances and false judgments. In general, all judgments are founded upon appearances. People judge things as they “see” them, so to speak. But a thing may appear one way in certain conditions and another way in others. Every appearance is true in the sense that a thing always is such as to appear the way it does in the conditions in which one experiences it, but a thing may strongly resemble something it is not if the conditions of appearance are not favorable for distinguishing them. This is how judgments formed on the basis of experiences taking place in suboptimal conditions can ultimately be false even though the appearances themselves are true. One judges falsely on the basis of a true but misleading appearance. The thing is such as to look that way at that time, while it is not such as to continue looking that way in other, more favorable conditions. This is why it is better to see a thing in a variety of different circumstances. One could even say that the multiplication of appearances can give one a better grasp of what the thing is, although this point clearly only holds if appearance and being are strongly correlated, if a thing appears as it is and is as it appears. These reflections show the way in which reasoned discourse (logos) demands both a phenomenological method and the onto-epistemological presupposition of the strict correlation of appearance and being. The goal of reasoned discourse is knowledge, which is understood as awareness of the truth of one’s thought or speech. But truth is a relation between what is thought or said about a thing and that thing itself. Knowledge would therefore be a matter of becoming aware of this relation. The method for attaining to knowledge of this sort is simple: one should turn to the thing itself in experience and conform one’s thinking and speaking about it as far as is possible to the way it shows itself. But the way a thing shows itself is the way it appears, and one’s opinions about a thing are true only if they are adequate to what the thing is. Knowledge as consciously truthful thought or speech is consequently only possible if appearance is strictly correlated with being. One must say that things appear as they are and are as they appear. §3 THE LOGIC OF THE INACCESSIBLE The dialectic noted above brings to light a certain “logic of the inaccessible” which the representationalist perspective seems to follow. Here is how this “logic” operates. A distinction is made between two spheres, one sphere being

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accessible and “default,” where one “starts,” while the other is inaccessible. These spheres have no essential correlation with one another, in that the state of the accessible sphere does not necessarily indicate anything about the state of the inaccessible sphere. At the same time, one has a concern to be in possession of knowledge of things in the inaccessible sphere. One therefore posits certain accessible phenomena as “signals of the inaccessible” which indicate a correlation between the accessible and inaccessible spheres. This logic can be found in the dialectic between phenomenology and representationalism. For the representationalist, the sphere of appearance is accessible and the sphere of being is inaccessible. One begins with appearances and not with being. These spheres have no essential correlation between them; what appears might not also be and what is might not also appear. Yet one is concerned to know things as they are. As a response to this problem, the representationalist therefore posits “feelings of certainty” or “feelings of evidence.” These are accessible phenomena insofar as they belong to the sphere of appearance, but they are also taken as signals indicating the correlation between the accessible sphere and the inaccessible. Yet this “logic of the inaccessible” is critically unstable. It falls victim to what can be called the “instability of the signal.” This instability makes the “logic of the inaccessible” to devolve into two improper forms of argumentation: non sequitur and petitio principii. This point can be explained as follows. Begin with the non sequitur. The distinction between an accessible and inaccessible sphere implies that there is no essential correlation between their states. Nothing in the accessible sphere, simply as accessible, has any necessary connection or relation to anything within the inaccessible sphere. But the posited signal of the inaccessible has to belong to the accessible sphere, since an inaccessible signal would be useless. Yet the accessible signal precisely as accessible would have no essential connection to anything in the inaccessible sphere, as has already been said. For this reason, the inference from accessible signal to inaccessible reality will always be a strict non sequitur. This non sequitur was clearly seen in the discussion about representationalism. The representationalist posits “feelings of certainty” or “feelings of evidence” as signals of the truth of his or her own opinion. But these feelings belong to the realm of appearance, which bears no essential or necessary relation to the realm of being. This becomes evident when one considers how one can go from feeling certain in favor of some opinion to feeling certain against it, even though the truth of the matter cannot itself have changed in the meantime. Thus, the inference from feeling to truth of judgment is a non sequitur. It is also possible to see the problem of the non sequitur from the following angle. In order for the inference from accessible signal to inaccessible reality to be a reliable one, the accessible and inaccessible spheres must operate according to a law which stipulates the precise conditions in which they are

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correlated. One must be able to say: when the accessible sphere is like this, the inaccessible sphere is like that. But if both spheres are subject to one and the same law, then they are no longer distinct spheres of reality with no essential correlation to one another; they are rather one and the same sphere, the states of which can be reliably summarized in a law. Yet the purpose of the signal was precisely to overcome the prior assumption of the independence of the two spheres. Therefore, either the two spheres are not in fact distinct and independent, or else the inference from accessible signal to inaccessible reality is a non sequitur. There is also the problem of the petitio principii. There is no essential or necessary correlation between the accessible and inaccessible spheres by definition. There is nothing about the accessible phenomenon, simply as accessible, which demands that it be a signal of the inaccessible. Its functioning as a signal must therefore be grounded in the inaccessible sphere. One might say that the inaccessible sphere in some way “uses” the accessible phenomenon in order to signal its current state or condition. But to propose that any particular accessible phenomenon is functioning as a signal of the state of the inaccessible realm is to presume that one already has knowledge of how the inaccessible sphere operates. Likewise, the particular accessible phenomena proposed as signals of the inaccessible will inevitably have some connection with one’s presumed knowledge. Yet it will always be possible to ask why these particular accessible phenomena should be taken as signals rather than others, and insofar as the two spheres are not essentially correlated, there will be nothing about the accessible phenomena simply as accessible which demands that they be interpreted as signals of the inaccessible. Thus, nothing is left to found the interpretation of the accessible phenomenon as a signal of the inaccessible except the fact that it is connected in some way with an opinion which one is concerned to establish as knowledge. This is consequently how the “logic of the inaccessible” also commits a petitio principii. The “logic of the inaccessible” therefore falls victim to the “instability of the signal.” A distinction is made between two spheres, one accessible and the other inaccessible. These spheres have no necessary correlation with one another ex hypothesi. Nevertheless, one proposes that certain phenomena belonging to the accessible sphere can function as signals indicating the state or condition of the inaccessible sphere. But these signals are fatally unstable. Because there is no necessary correlation between them, the inference from the accessible signal to the inaccessible reality will inevitably be a non sequitur. And because there is nothing about the accessible phenomena simply as such that demands that they be interpreted as signals of the inaccessible, they will inevitably have been selected for this purpose simply because they happen to be associated with the opinions one wishes to establish as knowledge, thus committing a petitio principii.

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The elucidation of this “logic of the inaccessible” is significant. Wherever a distinction between an accessible and an inaccessible sphere is posited, the “logic of the inaccessible” and the corresponding problems of the “instability of the signal” will also likely follow. The argument of the next chapter will be that such a distinction is even foundational to the catholic tradition of Christian theology. This means that the catholic tradition’s argumentation in favor of its positions at the fundamental level will also suffer from the dual fallacies of non sequitur and petitio principii. The only way to avoid these problems is therefore to reject the dualism of spheres. There is only one sphere of reality, and the appearance of things is strictly correlated to their being; things appear as they are and are as they appear, so that there is only the sphere of the manifest. This is a necessary presupposition of the success of all logos or reasoned discourse, including theology. Christian theology must therefore be a “theology of the manifest.” The consequences of this idea will be made explicit in the chapters that follow. NOTES 1. All subsequent citations from Thomas’s works will be taken from http:​//​aquinas​ .cc​/. 2. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 4–5; Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christ and Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), ch. 1. 3. See Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 4. See the classic discussion in J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). 5. Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 84. 6. Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2016). 7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 8. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 11–12. 9. See, for example, Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Routledge, 2000) for a philosophical and historical introduction to phenomenological philosophy. For discussions of the significance of Husserl’s phenomenology in later theological thinking and philosophy of religion, see also Edward Baring, Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019); and Steven DeLay, Phenomenology in France: A Philosophical and Theological Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2019). 10. Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, 75–88.

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11. Edmund Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 71–148. 12. Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 90. 13. Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, 84. 14. See the discussion in Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Legacy: Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 187–99. 15. Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 9. 16. René Descartes, Meditation 1, in Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 59–63. 17. Cf. D. C. Schindler, The Catholicity of Reason (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 6. 18. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 10. 19. Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, 50. 20. Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 32.

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Chapter 2

Onto-Epistemology

This chapter addresses the question of theological onto-epistemology. An onto-epistemology is a conception of what is real and how it is known. The problem of theological onto-epistemology can be summarized in this inquiry: What are the things of Christian theology and how are they known? As it was defined in the previous chapter, theology is reasoned discourse about God and about all things as seen in relation to God. Two possibilities therefore present themselves. One could posit that the things of theology are to be found within the sphere of manifestation made accessible by the powers and endowments constitutive of human beings by nature. This can be called an “open” theological onto-epistemology insofar as it supposes that the way to the things of Christian theology is in principle “open” to human beings such as they are by nature. Alternatively, one could posit that the things of theology are to be found within a distinct, non-manifest sphere of reality antecedently inaccessible to human beings. This can be called a “closed” theological ontoepistemology insofar as it asserts the way to the things of Christian theology is “closed” in principle to human beings such as they are by nature. It would also be possible to call this a “dualist” paradigm to the extent that it divides all of reality into two distinct and independent spheres: the manifest and the non-manifest. The “theology of the manifest” clearly presupposes the “open” paradigm, since it says that there is only the sphere of the manifest. The catholic tradition of theology, on the other hand, as much in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as also in certain more traditional forms of Protestantism, has come over time to understand itself according to the “closed” paradigm. I have argued this point in some detail elsewhere, though I will also return to it in the chapters that follow.1 The distinction between nature and grace, the speculations of trinitarian and christological reasoning, the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, the infallibility of the church and of its teaching office by providential guidance—in all 23

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these ways, catholic theology situates the principal objects of its faith and inquiry beyond the sphere of the manifest. They are not known and cannot be known by means of the natural powers of human reason but only by special revelation. The argument of the present chapter will be that Christian theology must reject the “closed” paradigm in favor of the “open.” It must reject a supposition of an onto-epistemological sphere beyond that of the manifest. This is another way of arguing for the same conclusion reached earlier (§2). If Christian theology as reasoned discourse is to succeed in attaining its goal of knowledge understood as consciously truthful thought or speech, it must be a “theology of the manifest.” The chapter also concludes with an elaboration of the transcendental structure of that sphere of the manifest. The argument will unfold as follows. (§4) It will be noted that the catholic theological tradition falls into the “logic of the inaccessible” as a result of its commitment to the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm. This can be shown by appeal to Vincent of Lérins and Thomas Aquinas. (§5) An argument will also be given that the “closed” paradigm makes theological knowledge to be impossible in principle. This point will be supported through a critical discussion of the special theological epistemology of Kevin Diller. (§6) Finally, the transcendental structure of the sphere of the manifest will be elucidated through a simple phenomenological inquiry. It will be explained, following Michel Henry, how the sphere of the manifest is divided into the two domains of Life and the World. And once the prolegomenal matters of these first two chapters will have been addressed with sufficient detail and rigor, it will be possible to move on to proper theological questions in the rest of the present work. §4 CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL ONTO-EPISTEMOLOGY Catholic theology generally understands its task as reasoned discourse about non-manifest realities the existence and presence of which is indicated by certain manifest signals occurring within the world of experience. The argument to be made here is that the catholic theological tradition falls into the “logic of the inaccessible” and commits the twin fallacies of non sequitur and petitio principii. This is because it is committed to a “closed” theological onto-epistemology according to which the things of Christian theology are to be found in an antecedently inaccessible sphere of the non-manifest. The only way out is therefore to reject the “closed” paradigm in favor of the “open.” As a first example, the catholic theological tradition follows a “logic of the inaccessible” in the process by which it distinguishes between orthodox and heretical ideas. This instantiation of the “logic of the inaccessible” in

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the catholic tradition can be discerned in the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lérins.2 According to Thomas Guarino, Vincent writes against the background of “several . . . controversies roiling in the ancient church” of his time.3 His concern is that of proposing a rule by which one may “distinguish the truth of catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity” (catholicae fidei veritatem ab haereticae pravitatis falsitate discernere; Commonitorium §4). Vincent admits that Scripture is “complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient” (§5). At the same time, the “very depth” of Scripture (ipsa sua altitudine) makes it multiply interpretable, so much so that “it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters.” Consequently, the ambiguity of Scripture must be overcome by “the standard of ecclesiastical and catholic interpretation” (ecclesiastici et catholici sensus normam). This standard is expressed in the simple rule that “all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all” (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est; §6). This is the triple rule of “universality, antiquity, and consent” (universitatem, antiquitatem, consensionem). First, the rule of universality is met “if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses” (tota per orbem terrarum confitetur ecclesia). Second, the rule of antiquity is met “if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers” (sanctos majores ac patres nostros). And third, the rule of consent is met if “in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors” (omnium vel certe paene omnium sacerdotum pariter et magistrorum). By these principles, then, Vincent maintains that the distinction between the catholic truth and heretical falsehood should become clear. It ought to be clear enough at this point that Vincent is following the “logic of the inaccessible.” He admits that Scripture is more than sufficient for communicating the saving truth, yet its meaning is at the same time unclear because it is interpretable in a number of ways. One might say that Scripture is materially sufficient but formally inadequate; it has all the truth in it, but it is not easy to get at its truth. The inaccessibility of the truth in Scripture must therefore be overcome by discerning the signals of the presence of this truth as indicated by the rule of ubique, semper et ab omnibus. One can rest assured in one’s possession of the inaccessible orthodox truth wherever one has confirmed these verifiable conditions. But if Vincent follows the “logic of the inaccessible,” he will also fall victim to the instability of the sign. In other words, he will be committing a non sequitur and a petitio principii. And this is evidently what happens, as can be seen.

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Chapter 2

The rule of ubiquity identifies the truth with the faith of “the whole Church throughout the world.” But this only raises the prior question of determining who is and who is not included in the borders of the “church.” If one opts for as neutral a definition as possible, for example anyone who considers him- or herself to be a follower of Jesus, then the rule of ubiquity will seem not to yield very many particular theological opinions of much substance. Such a definition certainly would not yield Vincent’s own particular conclusions. To attempt to derive one’s own preferred theological opinion on this basis would therefore be a non sequitur. But if one opts for a definition of the church that includes one but excludes one’s theological enemies or opponents, then one has stacked the deck ahead of time. One would be establishing the catholic truth of one’s opinion by defining the church in terms of those who agree with one’s opinions, which is a petitio principii. Likewise, the rule of antiquity bids one “in no wise [to] depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers.” But this only raises the prior question of who counts as a holy ancestor and father. To call a person a “holy ancestor” and “father” implies that one finds their theological convictions acceptable; they would not be granted such titles otherwise. Every “father” is only a “father” within the context of some tradition that claims allegiance to him. To establish the catholic truth of one’s opinion by appeal to the fathers of one’s own tradition is thus a petitio principii. On the other hand, if one does not exclude “heretical” figures a priori, then the inference to one’s preferred opinion will be a non sequitur. There will be some significant number of persons within the tradition who do not accept it, so that it cannot claim to be catholic. Finally, the rule of consent bids one to admit only “the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.” But this only raises the prior question of why the opinions of these persons in particular should be accorded particular consideration. Vincent’s criterion grants a special privilege in theology to the hierarchy of the church conceived of as an institution. Yet what makes an opinion true is not the ecclesial position of the person who holds it, but only whether the opinion accords with the thing itself. For example, Huldrych Zwingli makes this same point in arguing that the perpetual virginity of Mary cannot be established merely by papal decrees: “For unless she were a virgin in her own quality, they could not make her a virgin by their decrees. Her virginity is based on the fact, not on the decrees of men.”4 Vincent has therefore proposed a simple non sequitur. A thing is not true because it accords with the consentient definitions and determinations of all or at least almost all the doctors of the church. Speech of the sort involved in theology as rational discourse about God is independent of and subordinate to being. So also, to the extent that Vincent has chosen these

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authorities because his own opinion can be justified thereby and not that of his opponent, he has therefore also committed a petitio principii. It should consequently be clear that Vincent follows the “logic of the inaccessible” and falls victim to the instability of the signal. He claims to be proposing a rule for distinguishing between catholic truth and heretical falsity. Even so, according to the definition of Aristotle, what makes the difference between true and false opinion is only the thing itself to which the opinion refers. Only the thing itself gives the truth. Vincent’s rule, however, does not give the thing itself but only further commentators on the thing interpreted as signs and indicators of an inaccessible truth. He does not give res ipsa but only opiniones de re. This is a non sequitur in the sense that one cannot reach the sphere of being merely by multiplying instances within the sphere of speech, and it is also a petitio principii in the sense that the sources proposed by Vincent have been selectively chosen because they are connected to his preferred theological opinion in some way. A second example of the “logic of the inaccessible” in the catholic tradition can be found in Thomas Aquinas. In his case, it is paired with a more or less explicit statement of the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm. By way of contrast with Vincent, for Thomas the problem is that of justifying the necessity of sacred doctrine in addition to the philosophical disciplines. In Summa Theologiae I, q. 1, art. 1, Thomas poses the question of whether it is necessary to have any science beyond the “philosophical disciplines” (philosophicas disciplinas). These are disciplines discovered by human reason (secundum rationem humanam inventae) and which are as such concerned with what is naturally accessible to reason (ea quae rationi subduntur), as the sed contra and first objection make clear. In the respondeo, Thomas maintains that sacred doctrine, understood as a specially revealed teaching, is “necessary for man’s salvation” (necessarium . . . ad humanam salutem) because “man is directed to God as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason” (ad quendam finem qui comprehensionem rationis excedit). So also, in Summa Contra Gentiles I, cap. 1 he distinguishes between those truths about God known on the basis of reason and those which “wholly surpass the capability of human reason” (omnem facultatem humanae rationis excedit). There is therefore the sphere of naturally accessible things, on the one hand, and the distinct sphere of things which pertain to the salvation of the human being, on the other. As he makes clear in ST I, q. 1, art. 2, the science of the things in the sphere of the naturally accessible is founded upon principles known “by the natural light of human intelligence” (ex principiis notis lumine naturali intellectus). By way of contrast, sacred doctrine as the science of the things in the latter sphere of salvation is founded upon “principles known by the light of a higher science” (ex principiis notis lumine superioris scientiae). More specifically, it is founded upon the knowledge of these principles by

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God and the blessed (scientia Dei et beatorum). Its access to these principles is founded upon testimony: “Just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred doctrine is established on principles revealed by God.” Thomas therefore proposes a “closed” theological onto-epistemology, which is to say that he specifies both the nature of the things of theology and the way by which they are known in keeping with the definition of the “closed” paradigm above. These theological things are of such a sort as to be beyond the grasp of human reason such as it is by nature. In this sense, they belong to a sphere of the inaccessible. Being inaccessible by default, they are therefore known by means of the testimony of God himself, to whom they are naturally accessible. But insofar as he distinguishes an accessible sphere from an inaccessible one and claims to have come into possession of knowledge of some items from within the latter, one would expect him to follow the “logic of the inaccessible” in order to justify this pretense—and this is in fact what happens. Thomas maintains in SCG I, cap. 5 that is “fitting” (conveniens) that things beyond the capacity of human reason to investigate should nevertheless be proposed as objects of faith. This is because the Christian religion as he understands it promises “spiritual and eternal goods” (bona spiritualia et aeterna) which are not achievable in human life given its present condition (aliquid quod totum praesentis vitae excedit). The proposal of truths beyond the grasp of natural reason consequently serves the purpose of orienting a person toward that sphere. At the same time, he also insists that it is “not a matter of levity” (non est levitatis) to assent to such things. By denying the accusation of “levity,” Thomas would seem to have in mind the point that such assent is not rationally objectionable. The reason he gives is that the testimony to these things was accompanied by various signs which indicate its credibility: For divine wisdom himself, who knows all things fully, deigned to reveal the secrets of God’s wisdom, and by suitable arguments proves his presence, and the truth of his doctrine and inspiration, by performing works surpassing the capability of the whole of nature, namely, the wondrous healing of the sick, the raising of the dead to life, a marvelous control over the heavenly bodies, and, what excites yet more wonder, the inspiration of human minds, so that unlettered and simple persons are filled with the Holy Spirit, and in one instant are endowed with the most sublime wisdom and eloquence (SCG I, cap. 6).

He also maintains that it was “after considering these arguments” and “being convinced of the strength of the proof” that “a countless crowd of not only simple but also the wisest men, embraced the Christian faith, which

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inculcates things surpassing all human understanding, curbs the pleasures of the flesh, and teaches contempt of all worldly things.” Thomas proposes these phenomena as signals that the Christian religion, such as he understands it, possesses the truth in its proclamation of things lying beyond the access and grasp of human reason according to nature. Thomas therefore not only proposes a “closed” theological ontoepistemology but also confirms the suspicion that he will justify the pretense to theological knowledge on the basis of the “logic of the inaccessible.” As a result, he will be seen to fall victim to the instability of the signal and be committing a non sequitur and a petitio principii. First, it must be granted that there is no strict logical connection between the occurrence of a miracle and the truth of what is said by a person in whose presence it takes place. On the one hand, it is possible to interpret miraculous events “naturalistically” as the exercises of unique or rare powers which are absent or otherwise latent and unactualized in most persons. Thomas takes for granted that the miracles performed by Christ were “works surpassing the capability of the whole of nature” (SCG I, cap. 6). This is to interpret Christ’s works as though the natural and supernatural spheres were both operative and correlated in them, but this is circular. One might just as well propose that Christ’s works were accomplished by means of a very rare but totally natural power. He therefore proposes both a non sequitur and a petitio principii. Alternatively, even if one grants that Christ’s works were supernatural, it still does not follow that Thomas’s conception of what the Christian religion teaches is true. After all, other traditions within Christianity also claim such miracles and signs. Neither is Christianity the only religion which spread relatively rapidly among the educated and less educated together with the inspiration of radically changed lifestyles among persons of diverse backgrounds. For example, Buddhism enjoyed a similar history in south Asia.5 Indeed, its positive impact is what motivates comments like these from Richard Gombrich: “I think that [the Buddha’s] ideas should form part of the education of every child, the world over, and that this would help to make the world a more civilized place, both gentler and more intelligent.”6 And by way of miracles, one could appeal to the example of Thích Quảng Đức. After he had famously self himself on fire in protest of anti-Buddhist policies enacted in South Vietnam by the Roman Catholic president Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963, his heart had remained intact. Even after his body was re-cremated during his funeral, his heart nevertheless did not burn.7 It was therefore saved and displayed as a relic. The appeal to miracles to justify the pretense to knowledge of something inaccessible to human reason by nature is therefore a non sequitur. Some philosophers also argue that a fair-minded evaluation of the claims and experiences (whether miraculous or ethical or of whatever nature), such

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as they are retold by the members of other world religions, can yield the conclusion that all or at least many of them in some way or another are in “contact” with the ultimate divine reality. They all have something of the truth, even while perhaps none of them possesses the whole of it. This is the perspective of John Hick.8 He says: “I have to record that my own inevitably limited experience . . . has led me to think that the spiritual and moral fruits of these faiths, although different, are more or less on a par with the fruits of Christianity.”9 One could rejoin that the claims of these other religions are not credible in comparison to the claims of Christianity, but this would appear difficult to establish in any neutral and convincing way. What is credible is often a function of what one already believes. Alternatively, one could argue that the miraculous and other such phenomena as encountered in other religions constitute a concession and accommodation on the part of God; he acts kindly to those whose religion is false but whose imperfect fellowship with him might still be preserved or encouraged in spite of their errors. But an adherent of another faith could make exactly the same argument about Christianity itself. Any group can take itself as a standard and claim about other groups that they are merely imperfect imitations of what it offers. Consequently, the appeal to miracles in order to justify the claim to know something beyond the sphere of the manifest is a non sequitur. There is always the alternative pluralist hypothesis. At the same time, it is also possible to propose a more radical critique of Thomas. He writes that those who took up the Christian faith in response to the miracles and signs that accompanied its first proclamation preoccupied themselves with things that surpass all human understanding, curbed the pleasures of the flesh, and adopted a contempt of all worldly things. One might first note the fact that Marcionites, Neo-Platonists like Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as the saddhus and ascetics of Vedānta also do such things. But it can also be argued that such phenomena as Thomas mentions can only be impressive to a person who is already inclined to accept his conception of things according to which these are good changes. One might just as well object that the preoccupation with things surpassing human reason is a fool’s errand, that the curbing of the pleasures of the flesh is entirely unnecessary, and that adopting contempt for all worldly things is foolish or even offensive. Put another way, what Thomas takes as signs of the truth of Christian faith could just as easily be taken as evidence that it is in fact an illness. Such was roughly the critique of Christian morality proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche.10 Thus, the phenomena to which Thomas appeals as signals of the credibility of his understanding of Christian teaching can only be convincing to a person already inclined to accept it. In this way, he commits a petitio principii. These arguments consequently serve to illustrate the essential problem of the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm and the “logic of the

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inaccessible.” The decision to distinguish between an accessible sphere and an inaccessible one, together with the pretense to possess knowledge of things from the latter, puts one in the position of positing accessible signals of the inaccessible by which the pretense can be justified. One cannot give the thing itself, so one must give something else that is lying at one’s disposal. But because the two spheres are distinct and without essential correlation, every such signal will inevitably fail to signal reliably (whence the non sequitur) and will have been selectively and self-servingly chosen without an adequate basis because of its association with one’s presumed knowledge (whence the petitio principii). One cannot cross from the sphere of speech into the sphere of being by multiplying testimonies, just as one cannot cross from the sphere of representation into the sphere of being by multiplying representations. In the same way, one cannot cross from the sphere of the historical into the sphere of the eternal by multiplying events in history. The claim to know is the claim to possess the truth, and nothing but the thing itself can give the truth. The problem with the “logic of the inaccessible” and with the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm is that they do not give the thing itself in principle. §5 AGAINST THE “CLOSED” PARADIGM It has been shown that the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm leads to the “logic of the inaccessible.” What will now be argued is that this “closed” paradigm makes theological knowledge impossible. This case can be made by a consideration of Kevin Diller’s proposal in his Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma.11 Diller begins his treatment by noting an epistemological dilemma afflicting Christian theology. He says that the Christian theologian must maintain not only the possibility but even the actuality of robust theological knowledge, and yet he or she must also insist on the inability of human beings to secure this knowledge for themselves by means of their natural endowments. Neither does Diller have any patience for those who would deny one or the other horn of the dilemma. For him, denying the possibility of robust theological knowledge makes theology “impotent and largely irrelevant,” whereas affirming the prior accessibility of such knowledge for human beings is “intellectually naïve” and would “threaten to abandon and distort the very object of theology.”12 At this point, it should be evident that in so speaking, Diller assumes, much like Thomas did, that “sacred doctrine” is not and indeed cannot be a “theology of the manifest.” Its “very object” is not manifest. Christian theology for Diller is rather concerned with non-manifest and inaccessible realities

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as a matter of course. The very terms of his proposed dilemma therefore demand the adoption of a “closed” theological onto-epistemology. But how is theological knowledge possible? The question is how the human being can come to possess that which lies beyond his or her power to obtain. There is an obvious answer: such knowledge is received as a gift, even if it is originally inaccessible to human beings. This essentially and succinctly summarizes the substance of Diller’s response to the epistemological dilemma, and he draws from Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga in order to develop this thought further. From Barth, Diller gleams the insight that knowledge of theological things is gained in a different way than knowledge of natural things. That is because God himself, as the principal object of theology, is utterly different than all natural things which manifest themselves to human beings.13 A special theological epistemology therefore follows from the uniqueness of the being of its object. Moreover, because God is naturally inaccessible to human beings, he gives himself to be known however and to whom he pleases. As Barth says: “The God of faith is neither ‘demonstrable’ reality nor is he merely a possibility . . . He is known only where he reveals his life; and where and to whom he reveals it is his concern.”14 From Plantinga, Diller adopts an analytic-epistemological framework by which to understand the process of the reception of this gift of theological knowledge. He especially appeals to Plantinga’s notion of “doxastic experience” as a rational basis for belief. This term refers to a purported form of experience in which what appears to one is not a perceptible concrete reality, such as a cat or a dog or another person, but rather a proposition or a belief. In such experiences, as Plantinga describes them, the belief in question seems right, acceptable, natural; it forces itself upon you; it seems inevitable (the right words are hard to find). The belief feels right, acceptable, and natural; it feels different from what you think is a false belief.15

Doxastic experience can thus be understood as a kind of “sense” or “feeling” that a belief is true. Plantinga supposes that memorial beliefs and a priori beliefs are founded in such purely propositional experiences; this is how they can be rational even if they lack a basis in an experience of concrete realities or are unassociated with “sensuous imagery” as other beliefs might be. One believes that one attended the sixth grade, even if this belief is not founded on the basis of any particularly vivid memorial experiences; the proposition is seen to be true from itself, even apart from the experience of the thing to which it refers. And from Plantinga, also, Diller draws the notion of the “internal instigation of the Holy Spirit.” This is proposed as the non-manifest cause of certain doxastic experiences. Specifically, for Diller as for Plantinga,

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the work of the Holy Spirit is that of bringing about a “doxastic experience” whereby “a person comes to grasp the truth” of some theological proposition.16 Diller writes: “The principal cognitive work of the Spirit . . . is to give a perception of the truth of Christian belief.”17 And Plantinga: “In giving us faith, the Holy Spirit enables us to see the truth of the Christian gospel as set forth in Scripture.”18 What is this “doxastic experience” in which a person is given “a perception of the truth of Christian belief”? Diller explains that when the Holy Spirit gives the gift of faith, he “makes the truth evident, not on the basis of propositional evidence, but with the immediacy that characterizes self-evident truths or the deliverances of our memory.”19 This is to say that the Holy Spirit does not enable a person to see the truth of Christian teaching on the basis of its logical or argumentative derivation from certain other truths. Rather, he simply presents a person with the Christian proposition itself and makes one capable of “seeing” that it is true; it is in this sense a purely doxastic experience. Diller continues: “The evidentiality of the truth [in such cases] does not have the kind of phenomenology attending sense experience, but it is nevertheless rightly considered a real perceiving.”20 This is to say that one comes to see the truth of some Christian teaching wholly apart from the concrete, experiential presentation of the things to which that teaching refers. For example, in sense experience, one is presented with a concrete object that appears in the world. For Diller, on the other hand, one does not come to see the truth of the belief that Jesus rose from the dead because Jesus himself is presented to one “in the flesh.” To the contrary, all that is presented is the proposition itself, and one is specially enabled by the Holy Spirit to “see” that it is true, even in the experiential absence of its concrete referent, namely Jesus himself. This is therefore how Diller’s special theological epistemology functions: by the direct perception of the truth of theological propositions. What can be said by way of response? In spite of his argumentation, it seems that such a form of “propositional perception” as Diller puts forth is not in fact possible. In this respect, it will be useful to return to the argument of the previous chapter. Recall that truth is not a “monadic” property like the shape or size of a cat. The perception of a monadic property requires only that one be presented with the one thing to which the property belongs. Thus, to perceive the shape or size of a cat, it is enough to be presented with the cat on its own. One could say that the shape of a thing “belongs” to it alone. By way of contrast, truth is a relation which obtains between a proposition and something else, specifically the purported reality to which it refers. It is a relation of adequacy obtaining between what is thought or said about a thing and that thing itself. And once more, it is clearly impossible to perceive a relation in the absence of one of the relata. One cannot see that one cat is fatter than another unless both are present, neither can one see that x > 100 unless

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the value of x is disclosed. This is because the perception of a relation is a matter of comparing two items, and all comparing presupposes one’s being presented with objects of comparison. For these same reasons, one cannot see that a proposition accurately describes a reality unless that reality itself is given. But Diller’s notion of “propositional perception” stipulates that the truth of a proposition can be perceived apart from the presence of the thing itself to which it refers. His proposal is therefore impossible. It cannot serve the purpose of justifying the claim to possess robust knowledge of inaccessible theological reality, because nothing can be known in the way he proposes. For these reasons, too, Plantinga’s notion of “doxastic experience” must be rejected as phenomenologically confused. A belief cannot “seem right and acceptable” so long as the thing about which one believes something or other is not itself presented. Put another way, if “rightness” and “acceptability” are ways of referring to truth, then one must say that a belief cannot seem true if the thing to which it refers is not given. Plantinga seems to be ascribing to the belief under consideration a quality that sooner resides in him; it is not that the belief seems true or false, but rather that he is strongly disposed to (dis)believe it. Consider how a person might struggle greatly to lift a certain object and eventually deem it “unliftable.” It would be more accurate for such a person to say that he or she is incapable of lifting it. It is not as if the object itself is truly unliftable, since someone with a much stronger body or the appropriate machinery could lift it without trouble. Rather, what such a person has experienced in the struggle with the object is not the object’s “unliftability” but rather his or her own inability to lift it. It just happens that this felt inability is inappropriately projected ad extra onto the object as though it were a property of it. So also with Plantinga. What is manifest to him in such a moment of introspection is not the truth or falsity of a proposition in the experiential absence of the purported reality to which it refers, but rather his own (in)disposition to believe it. Perhaps this is a result of a dimly intuited connection that such a proposition has with other things he is inclined to believe. There could be any number of possible explanations for why he feels the way he does about such a proposition, but in no sense is he perceiving its truth stricto sensu. By appealing to Plantinga’s notion of “doxastic experience,” one might say that Diller has done no more than to posit the “feelings of certainty” or “feelings of evidence” of the representationalist mentioned in the last chapter. He supposes that the feeling of the “rightness” or “acceptability” of a theological belief is grounds enough for describing such an experience as a perception of the truth. He too follows a “logic of the inaccessible,” so that he also falls victim to the instability of the signal. In fact, any proposition can seem “right, acceptable, natural.” One can feel this way about a proposition on one day

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and then feel the same way about its negation on the next, even though the truth of the matter cannot itself have changed in the meantime. His epistemological proposal is therefore fundamentally compromised. The inadequacy of Diller’s proposal for a “special” theological epistemology also shows the inevitable failure of the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm altogether. This is the final and most important point of all to be made. Recall that this “closed” framework distinguishes between the sphere of the manifest and the sphere in which the things of Christian theology are to be found. In brief, the sphere of the manifest includes all those items knowable to human beings on the basis of their natural powers and endowments. To say that the things of Christian theology do not belong to the sphere of the manifest is therefore to say that they are not known through bodily perception, nor by means of rational argumentation that builds upon what is given in such perception, nor even by means of phenomenological reflection upon the essential conditions of experience as such. But if all these avenues of possible knowledge are cut off in principle, what other option is left for the proponent of the “closed” paradigm except Diller’s? Put another way, how else could the inaccessible things of theology be known except on the basis of a purportedly inspired direct vision of the truth of certain theological statements describing them? And yet such a form of knowing is impossible; things cannot be known in that way. It would consequently seem that the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm, not merely in Diller’s iteration but simply as such, makes theological knowledge impossible. There can be no special theological epistemology. Once more, the conclusion is clear: if Christian theology as reasoned discourse is to survive and to succeed in its task, it will have to be as a “theology of the manifest.” §6 THE SPHERE OF THE MANIFEST The task of the remainder of this chapter is the elucidation of the transcendental structure of the sphere of the manifest. Christian theology must be a “theology of the manifest,” but it must be made clear what exactly constitutes “the manifest.” This can be done by proposing a phenomenological analysis in response to the question: What appears? The first thing that might come to mind is some particular object. One can say, for example, that what appears is a cat. This coheres with what Edmund Husserl says when he writes that “the concept of experience in the broad sense” is “the self-evidence of individual objects.”21 Experience most generally understood, in other words, is a matter of the appearing of individual objects that show themselves or make themselves evident. These objects of

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whatever sort can be called “external world-objects,” since the object that appears to one in an experience is other than or “external to” oneself. Yet a moment’s reflection will also reveal that no object ever appears by itself and simply through itself. This point was also noted earlier (§2). What is presented to one in experience is always rather a plurality of objects, each of which affects the appearance of the others. It is true that only one of these items ever “stands out” as the particular focus of one’s attention. This object-directedness of consciousness is called “intentionality” in the phenomenological tradition.22 But it is also true that the appearance of any one such object is never merely a matter of what it is considered by itself. This point can be seen as follows. One cannot claim simply to see a cat, as though that were the whole story. Rather, one sees a cat lying on the floor of one’s apartment next to one’s bookshelf, shadows being cast on her fur in stripes as the late-afternoon sun casts a hazy red light into the room through a transparent window behind half-closed blinds. Strictness requires one to admit that this whole network of objects is what appears and not just the cat alone. And it is further obvious that the appearance of the cat and indeed of the whole scene would be quite different if any of these other items were different in some way. If the cat were seated rather than stretched across the floor, its belly would not be visible; if it were midday rather than late-afternoon, the colors of one’s furniture would be more striking; if one’s bookshelf were in a different part of the room, the electrical plug in the wall would be visible; if the blinds were entirely closed, one might not be able to see very much at all. What appears is therefore never just a single object but always a multiplicity of external world-objects, of which one in particular stands out as the focus of one’s attention. There is, however, a further aspect to note here. To say that external objects are “world-objects” is to say that they appear in the “World.” This point must be understood precisely. The term “World” in the phenomenological sense does not refer to the planet Earth or even to the physical cosmos as a whole. It is rather phenomenologically defined as the total “environment” in which objects present themselves.23 There are more things that appear in the “World,” phenomenologically understood, than embodied things like the cat. Examples include idealities like the Pythagorean theorem and other truths of geometry, mathematics, and logic; all these truths can also be considered world-objects, as Michel Henry writes.24 They too are individual things other than oneself, of which one can become aware in experience. For example, these things become apparent when one is thinking about geometry, mathematics, or logic. They naturally do not manifest themselves in the same way as bodily objects like cats and bookshelves, but what these all have in common is the fact that they appear as objects or “targets” of one’s focus, being other than the one to whom they

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appear. In this sense, they have a shared mode of appearing as “external world-objects.” One can also go further and say that the items that appear in the world are not even all actual. For example, possibilities also manifest themselves. Danger provides an intuitive example of this. In “perceiving the danger of a situation” one becomes aware of the possibility for imminent harm. Danger refers to this possibility and not to an actuality; nothing is actually happening so long as one is merely “in danger.” Danger in the strict sense is the occurrent possibility that something bad actually happen. The experience of the perception of danger thus provides an example of an item or object that shows itself in the World as a possibility rather than an actuality. Indeed, one might even suggest that impossibilities are also manifest within the World. For example, there is the impossibility that a thing be and not be in the same sense and at the same time, as well as that the interior angles of a triangle fail to add up to 180º. These are consequently further instances of non-concrete objects that appear in the World. Concrete realities, idealities, actualities, possibilities, and impossibilities: all of these are items that show themselves on this itself-apparent shared “stage” or milieu of manifestation which in the phenomenological tradition is called the “World.” This “World” is like the “screen” or “stage” on which all individual items of whatever nature make their appearance and offer themselves as objects to the attentive gaze of consciousness. In a word, it is the environment of all possible objective manifestation. External world-objects of whatever nature thus appear by manifesting themselves in the World, and in this way they make themselves available to the awareness of a person. And yet this is not the whole story of manifestation, for there are still further factors beyond the plurality of external world-objects appearing in the World which also contribute to the appearance of things in experience. These are the perceptual-hermeneutical powers of the human being. First, there are certain perceptual powers which constitute what phenomenologists have called the “lived body.”25 Its contribution to experience can be neatly summarized as follows. The body one lives in affects the appearances of things according to its various qualities and powers of perception. For example, the apparent cat mentioned earlier might appear blurry, not because the cat itself is blurry but rather because one has poor eyesight and is not wearing glasses; it likewise shows the colors that it does because one has a human being’s sense of sight and not that of some other animal; its internal body temperature is not readily apparent to sight because one does not have a sense for that sort of thing. It appears small, not because it is itself small but rather because its body is smaller than one’s own body; the cat could well appear massive if one were the size of a mouse, or else be entirely

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imperceptible if one were the size of an atom or of an entire galaxy. It is thus evident that all these actualities and possible variations of appearance do not arise simply from the being of the cat itself, but also from the actualities and possible variations of one’s lived body. This illustrates how the lived body is a further contributor to the appearance of things. In addition to this, however, there are also the human being’s hermeneutical powers. These are what a person uses to make sense of things and assign a meaning to what appears in order to understand it in a certain way. The contribution of these powers is informed by a person’s prior knowledge and habitual ways of thinking about things or interpreting what is happening. Their contribution to manifestation is admittedly more subtle, but they are nonetheless critically important and always operative. For example, the cat in one’s apartment might appear very differently if one were allergic to cats, or if one had been looking for it for hours and suddenly saw it, or had thought it dead, or if one did not own a cat at all. And still other examples can also be given to illustrate the contribution of these hermeneutical powers to appearances. Consider how a woman might experience her parents quite differently upon learning that she was adopted. This difference in their appearance to her would not owe to a difference in them as visible objects, nor to a difference in her perceptual powers, but rather to a change at the level of her interpretation of things. She once thought them to be her natural parents whereas now she understands them to be her adopted parents; she comes to learn that she does not have a connection with them which she previously believed was there, and this change in the meaning she assigns to them affects how she experiences them. Likewise, a particularly sensitive or insecure man may similarly be hurt by the words of another. This is not because there is anything inherently offensive about the way they sound, nor because of his sense of hearing, but rather because such a person is in the habit of thinking that others are waiting to pounce upon any show of imperfection on his part; it is his own interpretive disposition as an aspect of his power to make sense of things that appear in the World that accounts for the way he experiences the other’s words. And there is also the more general fact that one and the same thing can go from being frightful and intimidating or even exciting and life-giving to banal once a person becomes familiar with it. These examples from ordinary experience serve to illustrate the way in which one’s power to interpret and make sense of things contributes to appearances. External world-objects thus appear, and the perceptual-hermeneutical powers of the human being also make their own contributions to appearances. However, even this is not saying enough, because every appearance is not only an appearance of something but also an appearance to someone. It would not make sense to say simply that the cat appears. The earlier discussion already intimated at times that the cat appears precisely to one as one sees it.

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It is therefore possible to say, together with Robert Sokolowski, that every person to whom things appear is a “dative of manifestation,” the “to-whom” of appearances.26 What is more, it is also clear that nothing can appear clearly to a person except by means of his or her perceptual-hermeneutical powers. There is no intelligible experience at all apart from the possession of a set of powers and capacities of perception together with the ability to interpret what appears in some way or other and to assign it a meaning of some sort. One can therefore visually summarize the transcendental structure of experience in this way: self « perceptual-hermeneutical powers + one among many world-objects

This “formula” should be interpreted as follows. What appears in any particular experience is one among many external world-objects such as these are made apparent to a person by means of his or her perceptual-hermeneutical powers. These world-objects all appear within the horizon of the “World,” this term being understood phenomenologically as the manifest horizon or milieu of all possible objective manifestation. To call this the “transcendental” structure of experience is to say that each of these factors is always operative in ordinary experiences. The left-pointing arrows («) indicates that the self is the “to-whom” of appearances. What appears to the self is everything to the right of the arrows. These items to the right of the arrow are enumerated in ascending order of the ordinary evidence or obviousness with which they contribute to appearances. The contribution of one’s perceptualhermeneutical powers is thus less obvious, whereas the contribution of one particular external world-object among many is most obvious. One point made just earlier was that the appearances of external world-objects are all coordinated; the way any one world-object appears is a result not only of the way it is, but also of the way every other world-object is. The cat appears the way it does because of everything else that appears in the World: the half-closed blinds, the position of the sky in the sun, the atmospheric conditions of the earth, and so on. But it was also said that all these objects appear in one and the same World, this term being understood phenomenologically as the manifest “stage” or horizon of all objective manifestation. The World and the world-object both share the property of being manifest; indeed, the world-object only ever appears within the World while the World can appear without the particular world-object. World-objects differ from another with respect to the way they appear, but they have the quality of being apparent in common with one another and with the World itself. The distinction between World and world-object is only in the mode of appearing, not in the fact of appearing, and distinctions are normally only made where there is a difference in quality. One thing is distinguished from

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another because this one has a quality that the other one doesn’t. One can therefore say that there is only one appearing “thing” in the strict sense: the World-whole. The appearance of any world-object would consequently be understood as an aspect or modification of the appearance of the World; it is a way in which the World can appear. The relation between World and world-object is akin to that between substance and accident, e.g., the way the greenness of a cactus relates to the cactus itself or the way one’s fist relates to one’s body. Therefore, one should perhaps “reformulate” the transcendental structure of experience as follows: self « perceptual-hermeneutical powers + World of objects

Every experience is thus an experience of the World as mediated by one’s perceptual-hermeneutical powers. The various objects one encounters in this World are simply aspects or modifications of the World’s appearance, relating to it as accident to substance. This reformulated conception of things will be taken for granted going forward. There is still something more that must be said at this point. It was noted earlier that the self is the “to-whom” of appearances. Everything that appears is apparent to someone. But one might also wonder about the nature and condition of that self to whom things appear. What is this self? Is it anything beyond being the “to-whom” of appearances? David Hume famously rejected the idea of a “self” as meaningless. For him this meant that it is an idea that does not trace back to an “impression,” which is to say that it has no grounding in an experience (Treatise of Human Nature I, 4, 6).27 It is certainly true that the self never becomes an object for itself. As Henry appreciates, even to speak of an “object” is to speak of something apart from the self that stands “opposite” the self by appearing in the World.28 This point is therefore well taken, even if one disagrees with Hume about the meaningfulness of the idea of a self. Presumably one must specify the conditions in which the self appears and on the basis of which appearance one speaks about it if one is to say something about the self at all. An answer can be given to this question by considering more carefully a difference in the way in which external world-objects appear as compared to the perceptual-hermeneutical powers of the living self. The present argument will strive to follow the substance of the philosophy of Michel Henry in this matter, even despite certain divergences in terminology.29 It was mentioned earlier that world-objects appear as other than the one to whom they appear. A cat appears to one as distinct from oneself to whom it appears. Henry would say that they appear in the public and great “Outside,” otherwise known as the phenomenological World; what is outside oneself is other than oneself. But this cat that appears in the World is not accessed in

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experience in a direct and unmediated manner. One has access to the cat on the basis of one’s perceptual and hermeneutical powers. The cat is visible to one because one has a sense of sight and audible because one has a sense of hearing; it would not be experienceable in those specific modalities without such faculties of perception. The cat similarly can be appreciated specifically as a being and as a cat because one possesses an intellect. The possession of intellect is what makes it possible for one to focus one’s attention on this or that appearing thing in particular and assign to it the meaning of being a cat; one could never appreciate the cat as a cat if one had no such power of thought. The appearing of what is perceptible and intelligible thus presupposes something which can perceive and understand.30 At the same time, these perceptual-hermeneutical powers do not manifest themselves in the same way as external world-objects. A cat appears by showing itself in the horizon of the “Outside” of the World; this is a precondition of one’s seeing the cat. It is also true that one only sees the cat in virtue of the possession of a power to see.31 Yet one’s power of sight is not itself a further thing one sees in the World. Henry asks rhetorically: “Who has ever seen his own vision?”32 But how then does one’s own vision it manifest itself so that one has become aware of it? The answer is obvious but significant: one’s power of sight manifests itself to one because one experiences oneself as seeing. This is to say that the “intentional” relation to the cat one sees can only be appreciated because one is non-intentionally aware of oneself as seeing. As Michael Kelly summarizes the point, “intentionality presupposes selfawareness.”33 One can only say “I see a cat” because one can experience oneself immediately as the subject of this seeing. The power of sight is thus made manifest because one feels or experiences oneself as seeing. On this follows the insight that one is oneself constituted by one’s power of sight, as well as by all the other various powers and capacities for experience by which one is opened up to the world of things. One’s perceptual-hermeneutical powers are not further world-objects but rather precisely what one is, and the operation of these powers is manifest, not because it shows itself as a world-object, but rather because it is felt immediately and directly in one’s experience of oneself. Yet to experience oneself and to affect oneself in these ways is precisely what it means to be alive. Henry notes: “The mode of revelation proper to life consists in the fact of experiencing oneself.”34 And elsewhere, he writes that “life is nothing other than that: what gives itself to itself or what is given to itself, what experiences itself through itself.”35 There are therefore two domains of manifestation: the “Outside” and the “Inside.”36 On the one hand, there is the “Outside” of the World in which things present themselves as distinct from oneself and make themselves available to be the objects of one’s focus. On the other hand, there is the “Inside” of Life where one experiences oneself in a variety of modes.

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This is why the self is not simply a pure “to-whom” of appearances but rather a “flesh.” Henry explains the notion as follows: Every sensed body presupposes another body that senses it; every body that is seen presupposes a power of vision and the implementation, operation, or, as we would say, performance of this power . . . So we are inevitably referred from a sensible, worldly body, which is an object of the world, to a body of another order entirely: a transcendental body endowed with the fundamental powers of seeing, sensing, touching, hearing, moving, and being moved—and defined by these powers . . . A subjective, transcendental body, giving and sensing the body given and sensed by it—every worldly, objective body.37

Henry’s preferred term for referring to this transcendental body that sees, feels, hears, etc., and in general affects itself is “flesh.” He writes that “flesh is nothing other than what feels itself, suffers itself, undergoes itself and bears itself, and thus enjoys itself according to impressions that are always reborn.”38 The living self to whom the world appears and which simply as living constantly experiences itself is therefore defined as a flesh. It is a thing that experiences itself in a variety of modalities according to the various powers by which it is constituted: as a seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking thing. These remarks should suffice by way of a summary presentation of the general structure of the sphere of the manifest. This sphere includes all such objects of whatever nature as are experientially accessible to human beings through the perceptual-hermeneutical powers by which they are constituted as living selves or flesh. One could thus say that the sphere of the manifest is the sphere of the “natural” inasmuch as it is accessible to human beings given their natural and normal endowments. Yet it was also seen that manifestation takes place in two different domains. There is first that mode of manifestation typical of world-objects. They appear in the Outside, (i.e., in the World understood phenomenologically as the milieu of all possible objective manifestation). And each world-object’s appearance can be understood as an aspect or modification of the appearance of the world-whole. But there is also that domain of manifestation called Life. This is understood phenomenologically as the Inside, (i.e., as self-experience). In Life each living self experiences itself. One can therefore summarize the ideas of this chapter as follows. The “closed” theological onto-epistemology leads to the “logic of the inaccessible” and even makes theological knowledge to be impossible. It will therefore be necessary for Christian theology to situate its objects within this sphere of the manifest in accordance with the “open” paradigm. The transcendental structure of this sphere of the manifest has been elucidated here as consisting in the appearance of the World of objects to a living self by means of its

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perceptual-hermeneutical powers, these latter powers being manifest to the living self as constituting it through its experience of itself, which is called “life.” There is thus an “Outside” and an “Inside” to manifestation. With this prolegomenal work out of the way, the remaining chapters of the present work will attempt to situate the things of Christian theology within this sphere of the manifest. NOTES 1. Steven Nemes, Orthodoxy and Heresy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), chs. 3, 5. 2. Translated by C.A. Heurtley. In Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 11 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894). 3. Thomas G. Guarino, Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), xxviii. 4. Ulrich Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson and Clarence Nevin Heller (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 114. 5. See Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Ann Heirman and Stephan Peter Bumbacher, eds., The Spread of Buddhism (Boston: Brill, 2007); Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 6. Richard Gombrich, What the Buddha Taught (London: Equinox, 2009), 1. 7. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 297. 8. See John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (London: Macmillan Press, 1989), especially ch. 14. 9. John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions: The Rainbow of Faiths (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 13–14. 10. See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Dietche (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 11. Kevin Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma: How Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga Provide a Unified Response (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2014). See also Steven Nemes, “Claritas Scripturae, Theological Epistemology, and the Phenomenology of Christian Faith,” Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (2019): 199–218; Orthodoxy and Heresy, 50–54. 12. Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, 17. 13. Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, 74–79. 14. Karl Barth, “The Principles of Dogmatics According to Wilhelm Hermann,” in Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, trans. Louis Pettibone Smith (Harper & Row, 1962), 243. 15. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 110–11.

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16. Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, 148; emphasis removed. 17. Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, 162. 18. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 206. 19. Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, 149. 20. Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, 149. 21. Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 27. 22. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 8. 23. Cf. Michel Henry, Words of Christ, trans. Christina M. Gschwandtner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 70; Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 43. 24. Henry, Words of Christ, 70–71. 25. The classic phenomenological discussion of the lived body is found in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A. Landes (New York: Routledge, 2014). See also Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999), ch. 6. 26. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 44. 27. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, vol. 1: Texts, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). 28. Michel Henry, I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, trans. Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 17. 29. See Steven Nemes, “The Life-Idealism of Michel Henry,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 29, nos. 1–2 (2021): 87–108. See also Michel Henry, Words of Christ; I Am the Truth; Incarnation: A Philosophy of Flesh, trans. Karl Hefty (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015); and the essays in The Michel Henry Reader, ed. Frédéric Seyler and Scott Davidson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019). 30. Cf. Henry, Incarnation, 110. 31. Henry, Incarnation, 110. 32. Henry, Incarnation, 36. 33. Michael Kelly, “Dispossession: On the Untenability of Michel Henry’s Theory of Self-Awareness,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 35, no. 3 (2004): 261–82, 278. 34. Henry, I Am the Truth, 199. 35. Michel Henry, “Christianity: A Phenomenological Approach?” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2018): 91–103, 95. 36. Compare Michel Henry, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky, trans. Scott Davidson (New York: Continuum, 2009), 5–11. 37. Henry, Incarnation, 110. 38. Henry, Incarnation, 4.

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Chapter 3

God

The very idea of a doctrine of God for a “theology of the manifest” is bound to seem controverted. Dominique Janicaud famously argued that there can be no such marriage of phenomenology and theology, since the former is concerned with what is manifest whereas the latter is concerned with what is non-manifest by definition.1 So also, in Ideas I, §58 Edmund Husserl maintained that the sort of focus upon appearance considered purely as such to which the phenomenological method calls excludes the very possibility of inquiry into God, insofar as he is understood as an “extraworldly and divine being” who is accessed only by means of inferences from purported real facts about the natural world.2 Janicaud’s argument clearly presupposes that theology is essentially wedded to a “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm, though he can hardly be blamed for that inasmuch as this is the way the catholic tradition has come to understand itself in time. But in spite of the protestations of Janicaud, the phenomenological investigation into theological subject matters not only has not abated since but has actually increased in popularity.3 At the same time, it is also true that some phenomenologists with theological predilections take his critical point for granted, such as Robert Sokolowski and Joseph Rivera. They accept that the things of theology as such are never made manifest, so that, as far as these thinkers are concerned, phenomenology sooner offers concepts and tools by which one can better understand certain essential religious attitudes and commitments.4 Indeed, Sokolowski is especially insistent on the sharp “Christian distinction” between God and the world which is manifest to human beings in experience.5 But it was argued earlier that appearance and being are essentially correlated (§2). It has also been argued that the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm makes theological knowledge impossible. One could therefore think that God must also appear if he is to be said to exist, which is to say that he must be found somewhere in the sphere of the manifest. For his part, Husserl excludes this possibility only because he cannot conceive of God in any other way 45

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than as an unapparent, superworldly reality. The task of the present chapter is consequently to show the possibility of conceiving of God otherwise. A “theology of the manifest” understands God to be given in this sphere of the manifest made accessible to human beings given their natural capacities and endowments. Two challenges for this project immediately present themselves. First, if appearance and being are correlated, then God must appear as he is. This is to say that the apparent “item” to be identified with God must be appropriate for the sort of “thing” that God is thought to be. Second, whatever it is within the sphere of the manifest that is identified as God must be recognizable as such to a person who already believes in him even apart from a “theology of the manifest.” Consider, by way of analogy, how the advent of modern chemistry neither changed anything in the nature of water, nor denied the human interaction with water, but only led to a better understanding of the nature of the thing itself. In this sense, the “theology of the manifest” is not intended as a replacement for Christian faith altogether, neither does it deny the true grasp of these things by faith. It only proposes to clarify by reinterpretation the things with which Christian theology has always been concerned. This must hold true in the case of God as well. These challenges can be met as follows. (§7) A purely formal definition of God will be proposed which is neutral with respect to the choice between an “open” or a “closed” theological onto-epistemology. This can be done by means of a comparison of the natural theologies of Thomas Aquinas and Michel Henry. Then it will be argued that it is formally necessary that something exists which satisfies this definition. This is how it is shown that God exists, whatever else might be said about him. (§8) The nature and being of God will then be interpreted in keeping with the philosophical commitments of the “open” theological onto-epistemological paradigm. God is to be understood as absolute Life whose “body” or visible exterior image is the phenomenological World. He is a self-subsistent ultimate reality which brings about other things by acting upon himself in order to share his life and being with them. He can even be called the “ontophenomenological context” within which all living experience takes place. God is the greater and infinite reality within which and as a dimension of which every particular and finite reality is encountered, including oneself. This is not only a natural development of the notion of God in Henry, but also can be shown to be the conception of God proposed by Huldrych Zwingli. (§9) The discussion will terminate with a brief consideration of a version of the evidential argument from evil against the existence of God. The response given to this argument will address the possibility of understanding the meaning of historical events in light of the conception of the World as God’s body.6 To say that the World is God’s “body” is to say that any statement about

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what appears in the World implies a statement about God’s inner life. The unknowability of the meaning of historical events, including whether or not the evils that occur within the World are gratuitous, is therefore another way of speaking about the intrinsic privacy and unknowability of God’s inner life to human beings. §7 THE FORMAL NECESSITY OF GOD One finds in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Michel Henry arguments for the existence of God that are formally very similar, even despite the radical material differences between their respective conceptions of God’s nature. This fact makes it possible to present a purely formal definition of God that is neutral with respect to the preference for an “open” or “closed” theological onto-epistemology, as well as to formulate what has elsewhere been called a “pre-ontological” argument for his existence.7 Both Thomas and Henry essentially agree upon a certain number of formal philosophical principles that inform their argumentation. They first distinguish between two fundamental ways in which a thing can possess a quality. One can say that a thing possesses a quality “originally” if it possesses it in virtue of what it is itself, whereas it possesses it “derivatively” if it possesses it by the assistance of something else. Thomas formulates more or less this principle explicitly in De Ente et Essentia cap. 4: “Everything that pertains to a thing, however, is either caused by the principles of its own nature . . . or else comes from some extrinsic principle.” Henry does not himself formulate such a principle explicitly, but it will become obvious later that he takes it or something like it for granted. This principle is very reasonable. Consider how human beings possess the capacity to learn language in an original way, simply given what they are, assuming that their development is normal and nothing gets in the way. Even so, the actual speaking knowledge of English can only be possessed in a derivative way, namely through the education one receives from one’s parents, friends, teachers, and so on. The sun is originally luminous, whereas the moon is only luminous to the extent that it becomes so through the help of the sun. A tree can block the passage of light simply in virtue of what it is as a material body, whereas it only actually produces shade to the extent that the sun is shining on it. The principle proposed by Thomas (and presupposed by Henry, as will be shown later) thus seems correct. Thomas and Henry also both posit that there is a certain quality a thing possesses which is more basic than all the others, the possession of which quality makes the very possession and utilization of other qualities to be possible in the first place. This can be called the “fundamental ontological condition”

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insofar as it is what makes a thing not to be nothing.8 For Thomas, this fundamental ontological condition is objective being, esse, actus essendi.9 For Henry, this is life, understood phenomenologically as self-experience.10 The more precise significance of this difference will be explained later, so that it suffices for now merely to mention it. Thomas and Henry admittedly do disagree with respect to the interpretation of the fundamental ontological condition, but they nevertheless agree that there is such a thing. Both Thomas and Henry maintain that the fundamental ontological condition is in a sense prior to and therefore distinct from the thing that possesses it even if they are not strictly separable. John F. X. Knasas writes: “Aquinas says that something is called a being [ens] in virtue of possessing its [own] esse or actus essendi.”11 The being of a thing is therefore akin to an accident, like the whiteness of a cat. Each thing is in virtue of possessing its own act of being. At the same time, whereas accidents are typically logically posterior to their substances, esse presents a unique case. The possession of whiteness presupposes that there is a cat there to be white, but there is no thing at all without a thing’s already having being or esse. A thing’s possession of its proper actus essendi is consequently the precondition of everything else it can do, as well as of everything one can say about it. Knasas explains this by saying that esse is an accident that is prior to the substance that possesses it.12 On this basis, Thomas will consequently argue that the existence of a thing cannot be a result of the principles of its nature, since otherwise the thing would be its own efficient cause (De Ente cap. 4). These principles of a thing’s nature can only accomplish something if they already belong to an existing thing, so that the thing’s existence cannot trace back to them. A similar point also holds for Henry. Life is for him an active thing: According to Christianity there exists only one Life, the unique essence of all that lives. This does not mean an unchanging essence or an ideal archetype, like that of a Circle that is present in all things, but rather an active essence, deploying itself with invincible force, a source of power, the power of engendering . . . immanent in anything that lives and unceasingly gives it life.13

It is this active essence that is Life which brings about the living self and gives it to itself. Henry can thus say elsewhere: “It is not the person who says: ‘I am, I exist, I see,’ who has brought him- or herself into the marvelous condition of being alive. Quite the contrary: he or she must already be in life in order to be in a position to formulate for him- or herself any proposition of the sort we have cited.”14 The possession of life is in this way prior to the particular enactment of one’s life. One can therefore say that Thomas and Henry are committed to the following formal principles. First, a thing possesses its various qualities either

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originally or derivatively, i.e., either in virtue of what it is or else through the assistance of something else. Second, there is a certain quality which is more basic than all the others a thing might have as the condition of the possibility of their possession and utilization; this is called the “fundamental ontological condition.” Third, the fundamental ontological condition is in an important sense prior to and distinct from the thing that possesses it. Thomas and Henry argue from such principles for the existence of God, this latter term being understood as referring to that which possesses the fundamental ontological condition in an original way. Yet they also differ with respect to the interpretation of this fundamental ontological condition. This naturally translates into different conceptions of God. For example, Thomas argues for a conception of God understood as pure being or esse tantum: Everything that pertains to a thing, however, either is caused by the principles of its own nature, as risibility in man, or else comes from some extrinsic principle, as light in the air from the influence of the sun. Now, it cannot be that existence itself is caused by the very form or quiddity of the thing (I mean as by an efficient cause), because then the thing would be its own efficient cause, and the thing would produce itself in existence, which is impossible. Therefore, everything the existence of which is other than its own nature has its existence from another. And since everything that is through another is reduced to that which is through itself as to a first cause, there is something that is the cause of existence in all things in that this thing is existence only (esse tantum). Otherwise, we would have to go to infinity in causes, for everything that is not existence alone (esse tantum) has a cause of its existence, as was said above. It is clear, therefore, that the intelligences are form and existence and have existence from the first being, which is existence alone (a primo ente quod est esse tantum), and this is the first cause, which is God (De Ente cap. 4).

God for Thomas is therefore pure being, “existence alone,” esse tantum. For his part, Henry gives a very similar argument for the understanding of God as the absolute Life of all living selves: We can nevertheless not forget [the] distinction . . . which separates a finite life like ours from the infinite Life which is that of God. A finite life is a life incapable of giving life to itself, of bringing itself into the marvelous condition of being a living being. Our life is not grounded in itself. We have seen how, living from a finite life, our flesh is marked by lack, decimated by needs and desires which perpetually recur. No water stills our thirst. A yawning question arises: How can what is in itself deprived of the power of living nevertheless live? Left to itself, a finite life is impossible. Precisely because it does not carry in itself the power to live, our life can only live in the infinite Life which does not cease to give it life. No finite life can be separated from this all-powerful Life in which it gives: it collapses into nothingness.15

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God for Henry is thus absolute or infinite Life. The analogy between the two philosophers’ arguments should consequently be obvious enough. The derivative possession of being or esse as the fundamental ontological condition leads Thomas to a notion of God understood as pure being or esse tantum, just as the derivative possession of life as the fundamental ontological condition leads Henry to a notion of God understood as infinite or absolute Life. It also becomes evident, as was mentioned earlier, that both Thomas and Henry agree in general that the derivative possession of the fundamental ontological condition on the part of any particular thing ultimately presupposes the original possession of that condition by something else. With this discussion in place, it is now possible both to propose a purely formal definition of God which is neutral with respect to the option between an “open” or a “closed” theological onto-epistemology, as well as to argue that there must be something so defined. “God” can be understood as that which possesses the fundamental ontological condition in an original way, i.e., simply in virtue of what he is. The formal necessity that something exists which satisfies this definition is argued as follows: 1.  A thing possesses its qualities either originally or derivatively. 2.  At least one thing possesses the fundamental ontological condition. 3.  Therefore, this thing possesses the fundamental ontological condition either originally or derivatively. 4.  If it possesses it originally, then God exists. 5.  If it possesses it derivatively, then it must do so on the basis of something else that possesses it originally. 6.  Therefore, God exists. It would be well briefly to discuss the logic of the argument. Premise (1) seems to make a safe assertion. The suggestion that a thing can only possess a quality in an original or derivative way seems intuitive enough. The idea of a thing possessing a quality neither originally nor derivatively would apparently imply something come from nothing, since nothing at all would account for the quality’s being possessed by that thing. Premise (2) also makes a very safe assertion. The fundamental ontological condition is by definition whatever it is that ultimately makes a thing not to be nothing. There would not be anything at all if nothing possessed the fundamental ontological condition, which is obviously false. What is more, the denial that there is any such most fundamental quality to be predicated of individual things has been dealt with capably by others, notably William Vallicella.16 Premise (3) follows from the earlier two premises. Premise (4) is unassailable because “God” was defined earlier as that which possesses the fundamental ontological condition in an original rather than derivative way. Premise (5) asserts that the original

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possession of a quality is the prior condition of its derivative possession. This is to say that there cannot be an infinite regress of derivative possessors of some quality. The conclusion (6) therefore follows logically. There is no other way for a thing to possess the fundamental ontological condition except originally or derivatively. The derivative possession of a quality by one thing presupposes its original possession by something else. There must therefore be something which possesses the fundamental ontological condition in an original way—quod omnes dicunt Deum, as Thomas says. The most obvious objection to this argument is aimed at premise (5). Why couldn’t there be an infinite regress of derivative possessors of the fundamental ontological condition? The answer is that the derivative possession of a quality by one thing is only possible on the basis of the original possession of that quality (or at least of the power to actualize that quality) by something else. This point can be shown by means of a few different examples, as others have tried to do.17 Suppose that one were presented with the following equations: a = b + 1; b = c + 1; c = d +1; and so on, all the way to z = a + 1. Each variable in this set possesses its value in a derivative manner by being defined in relation to another variable. But suppose there were no variable that possessed its value in an original way. No variable is given a value that does not make reference to the value of another variable. In that case, none of the variables of the set have a value. There would be no answering the question of the value of a, for example, not because one is incapable of determining it on the basis of what is given, but rather because no variable in this set actually possesses a value at all. The variables do not have a meaning in the first place if they are only defined with reference to each other. Thus, even the infinite multiplication of variables, each defined solely with reference to other variables, would not actually provide a determinate value. This example thus shows how the derivative possession of value on the part of one variable is only possible on the basis of the original possession of value on the part of another. Consider also the following example. The moon is luminous at night, but it does not produce light of itself. It possesses the quality of being luminous in a derivative way, namely in virtue of the sun. But suppose the sun were not luminous in an original way. In that case, it would not be a “sun” stricto sensu but only one more moon, and it is obvious that one cannot make the moon luminous by multiplying moons ad infinitum. The derivative possession of luminousness on the part of the moon therefore presupposes the original possession of this quality by the sun. One can also appreciate the point with respect to the earlier discussion about the distinction between the sphere of speech and the sphere of being. Suppose that one is given a proposition P. Assume, too, for the sake of an easy example, that this proposition does not refer to itself. It could in principle

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be true, as far as one knows, but one wishes to determine whether it is also actually so. It is clear that one could not determine the truth of P simply on the basis of its being an implication of another proposition Q. After all, to say that Q implies P is to say that if Q were true, P would be also, and yet this only raises the further question of whether Q itself is true. In this way, it becomes evident that the truth of a proposition is a kind of derivative quality. One cannot establish the truth of P which refers to something beyond itself simply by multiplying propositions. Truth is a relation of adequacy that obtains between what is thought or said about a thing and that thing itself about which something is thought or said; the truth of a proposition is a matter of its being adequate to its object. It is thus necessary for discovering the truth that one go beyond the sphere of propositions altogether and find something which possesses truth in an original way. This is the sphere of being, in which each thing is without fail exactly what it is. The derivative possession of truth on the part of a proposition is consequently conditioned upon the original possession of truth (in a somewhat different but related sense) on the part of the thing to which the proposition refers; the original possession of truth by an object is the power to make propositions about it to be derivatively true in their own sense. There would be no derivatively true propositions that refer to beings without originally true beings to which they refer. One could also understand the point about original and derivative possession of a quality through the analogy of the “spheres” from the earlier two chapters. When considered in itself, anything that possesses a quality in a derivative way is only a possible or potential possessor of that quality, and one cannot get from the potential possession of a quality to its actual possession merely by multiplying its potential possessors. The “logic of the inaccessible” thus falls victim to the “instability of the signal” precisely because the sphere of the accessible, considered in itself, is only possibly or potentially correlated with the inaccessible. Aristotle admits that an opinion considered in itself is possibly or potentially true, but there is nothing about an opinion simply as such that demands that it is actually true. So also, the representationalist admits that an appearance considered in itself is possibly or potentially adequate to some reality, but there is nothing about an appearance simply as such that demands it has an actual correlation with real being. This is the reason why one will never reach the sphere of the inaccessible by multiplying instances within the sphere of the accessible. One cannot arrive at truth by multiplying opinions ad infinitum, just as one does not arrive at being by multiplying mere appearances ad infinitum. For the same reason, one can never account for the actual possession of a quality by something by multiplying things which, considered strictly in themselves, are merely its

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possible or potential possessors. There must be some original possessor in order for there to be a derivative possessor. These considerations illustrate the insight that the derivative possession of a quality by one thing presupposes its original possession by something else; an infinite regress of purely derivative possession of a quality is not possible. Importantly, this is a purely formal truth which applies in a multiplicity of domains, whether it be a matter of the value of variables in a set of equations or the luminousness of physical bodies or the truth of propositions; it is a rule that describes the structure of the sphere of the manifest as such. Consequently, this principle will apply anywhere it is a matter of one thing being derivatively thus or so. There must therefore also be something which possesses the fundamental ontological condition in an original way. But “God” is defined in purely formal terms as that which possesses the fundamental ontological condition in an original way. It thus follows that God must exist. §8 SELF, WORLD, AND GOD God possesses the fundamental ontological condition in an original way. It has been shown that there is, indeed must be, such a thing. It must now be specified exactly what this fundamental ontological condition is according to an “open” theological onto-epistemology. It will also be necessary to specify the way in which God, as the original possessor of the fundamental ontological condition, relates to all finite things as derivative possessors of the same. Two stipulations of the methodological commitments of the present work must be met. First, this fundamental ontological condition must be specified in a manner consistent with the phenomenological presupposition of the present work, namely that appearance and being are strictly correlated. Second, God must be identifiable within the sphere of the manifest in keeping with the stipulation of an “open” theological onto-epistemology. These stipulations can be met by proposing a “panentheistic” or “qualified monistic” understanding of God as absolute Life whose “body” or visible exterior image of his inner life is the phenomenological World. Consider once more how Henry argues for the existence of God. The living self lives. This is what makes it possible for things to appear to it, that is, for it to have an experience of the World of objects. But Henry notes that the finite living self is not itself responsible for the fact that it lives: “It is not the person who says: ‘I am, I exist, I see,’ who has brought him- or herself into the marvelous condition of being alive.”18 Indeed: “Precisely because it does not carry in itself the power to live, our life can only live in the infinite Life which does not cease to give it life.”19 No one who lives did anything to make

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him- or herself live, neither is there anything a person can do to secure even a moment’s life more. The possession of life is the precondition of action, so that life cannot be secured by some action; one can only act if one is already alive. And elsewhere he clarifies a further dimension of this fact: The singular Self that I am experiences itself only within the movement by which Life is cast into itself and enjoys itself in the eternal process of its absolute self-affecting . . . This Self self-affects itself only inasmuch as absolute Life is self-affected in this Self. It is Life, in its self-giving, which gives the Self to itself.20

Henry thus argues that the living self only lives to the extent that it is engendered in the absolute Life of God. The human being comes into life because God “is self-affected in this Self,” that is, because he acts upon himself to bring about the finite living self as a modification of his own absolute Life. There is thus a difference between the finite self and the absolute Life of God which falls short of being a distinction between two utterly separate and independent things. It is a difference in mode of living without an absolute ontological distance. Henry also insists that his definition of God as absolute Life is significant for theological epistemology. He writes: Christ says to humans: you are the sons of God, “you have only one Father.” Where is the referent of this assertion? In us. We are sons of God. God is Life and we are living beings. Are there living beings somewhere who do not carry life in themselves, who would not be carried by it? This is not a philosophical or speculative thesis. We feel and experience life in us as that in which we live, even when we feel and experience that we have not given this life to ourselves.21

God is thus not merely a theoretical postulate but the very life in which one feels oneself to live and which gives one to oneself. He is very close to everyone. Christ’s teaching that the human being is a son of God is consequently not something that has to be taken by “faith,” as if it did not correspond to anything manifest. Its truth is rather founded in something that every person constantly experiences for him- or herself: the fact that one does not possess life in an original way, but instead is constantly being engendered in the absolute Life of God. And from this it follows that one knows God: Yet, if God is life . . . we know what God is. We know it not via our thinking, according to the shaky reasons of an understanding which undertakes to reflect on God without knowing why and, trying to grasp some aspect of him, sees precisely nothing. We know it because we are living beings and because living beings are only living if they carry Life in themselves not as a secret unknown

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to them but as that itself which they experience without cease, as that in which they experience themselves, as their own essence and very reality. If God is Life, then, as Meister Eckhart will say, the human being—this living being which we each are—is “a human being that knows God” (ein Gott wissender mensch).22

Nothing is closer to a person than the Life by which he or she lives, and this Life is God, the absolute Life. The point of “contact” between the human being and God is thus in the feeling of total passivity and receptivity each person has toward the fact of his or her possession of life. One can therefore say that every human being knows God. He is constantly manifest to every person at every moment. This is how Henry explains how it is that God is manifest in the domain of Life, as well as how he relates to the finite self. Henry distinguishes between Life and the World as two distinct domains of manifestation. At the same time, he only defines God with reference to Life. This is admittedly a shortcoming on Henry’s part. There are nevertheless two considerations drawn from Henry’s philosophy itself which make it possible to expand his thought on God in a direction he does not himself take. These can be explained as follows. First, Henry appreciates that the living self that one is also manifests itself in the World. The self is a flesh. It is flesh in the sense that it is a living self that constantly experiences itself in a diversity of modes. Yet this very same flesh that one is also manifests itself in the World as a body like other bodies. Henry therefore writes: Our body offers us the crucial experience in which the duality of appearing is decisively confirmed. This alone allows us to understand how the body truly is a double reality, manifesting itself on the outside, in the outside itself of the world, and lived internally by us, on the other, in Life’s pathos-filled self-revelation.23

He also says that “the objective body” is “the aspect in which our invisible flesh seems to appear” in the World.24 And elsewhere: “Any visible appearance is paired with an invisible reality.”25 One is thus manifest to oneself as a living flesh that constantly experiences itself in a diversity of modes while at the same time appearing to others in the World as a visible body.26 Indeed, one’s life is only made accessible to others distinct from oneself in the same way that the life of these others is made manifest to oneself: namely, as the varied manifestation of a body that appears in the World, whether through its countenance or the sounds it makes in speech or body language or whatever. What one feels on the Inside is sadness, while what others see on the Outside is a saddened countenance; what one feels is excitement, while what others see is a smile and agitated movements of the body. One can therefore say that the body that appears in the World is the “visible exterior image” of

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one’s invisible flesh. It is how one’s flesh appears to someone else, and the World itself is the medium by which living selves can communicate with one another. Second, the body that appears in the World and indeed the World itself are alike manifest, though not in the same way. They share the quality of being apparent, but they differ with respect to the mode in which they appear. Any body is only apparent to the extent that it appears within the World. One might say that the derivative possession of the quality of being manifest on the part of some body is founded upon the original possession of the quality of being manifest on the part of the World. Only the World is manifest of itself as that through which objects are made manifest. It was also noted in the earlier chapter (§6) that the appearance of the world-object should even be understood as a modification or aspect of the appearing of the World. The World itself is the one appearing thing stricto sensu; the World manifests itself through the object-phenomenon that appears within it. The relationship between the World and world-object is thus akin to the relationship between substance and accident, for example between a cactus and its greenness or one’s body and one’s fist. It is consequently one of derivative possession of the quality of appearing and therefore analogous to the relationship between the living self and absolute Life. There is in both cases a modal differentiation without absolute ontological distance. These two points make it possible to propose a further development of Henry’s conception of God as absolute Life. One is a living self whose life is derivative on being engendered by God within his own absolute Life. As a living self, one is a modification or aspect of God’s life that he brings about in himself. But this very living self which one is also appears in the World under the form of a body. The appearance of one’s body in the World is the visible exterior image of one’s inner life. Likewise, one’s body’s appearing in the world derives from the fact that the World itself appears. One should even say that the body that appears in the World is a modification or aspect of the appearance of the World-whole itself. These insights therefore motivate the conclusion that the World itself is the body or visible exterior image of the inner life of God. Put another way, the appearance of things in the World is an image of the condition of God’s absolute Life. This would be the ultimate consequence of Henry’s proposal that “[a]ny visible appearance is paired with an invisible reality.”27 Every state of the World is the visible exterior image of some inner state of God. This is therefore the doctrine of God for a “theology of the manifest.” It is a kind of “panentheism” or “qualified monism.” God is absolute Life and the World is his “body,” which phrase in the present context means that it is the visible exterior image of his inner life. Just as one’s inner life is made manifest to others to some extent through the varied appearance of the body in the

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World, so also the total appearance of the World itself is the way in which God’s inner life is made manifest to others. Just as one’s body that appears in the World is the “Outside” of one’s inner life, (i.e., the visible manifestation to others of what and how one is), so also the World itself is the “Outside” of God’s inner life.28 The matter can be visualized as follows: Life World finite living self » empirical body in the World absolute Life of God » phenomenological World itself The right-pointing arrows (») can be interpreted to mean “manifests to others as.” The finite living self manifests itself to others in the World as an empirical body, and the absolute Life of God manifests itself to others as the phenomenological World itself. One could thus say that one is engendered in God’s Life because he wants one to live, just as others appear to one in the World because God wants them to live and one to share his Life with them as well. Henry emphasized the way in which God is constantly present and manifest as that absolute Life in which one always lives. It is now possible to say, going further and beyond Henry himself, that God is constantly present and manifest to one as the phenomenological World itself. He is constantly given in both the Inside and the Outside, and he gives himself to be seen in such a way that his appearance corresponds with his being. He is felt from the Inside as that Life in which one lives and which gives one to oneself, and he is seen from the Outside in his body, which is not reducible to any particular world-object but is rather the World-whole itself, the all-encompassing horizon within which all world-objects are found. Notably, this “panentheistic” or “qualified monistic” understanding of God is very similar to the conception of Huldrych Zwingli as explicated in his Commentary on True and False Religion and On the Providence of God.29 Indeed, August Neander said of Zwingli’s doctrine of providence that “There is an approach in it to Pantheism.”30 So also, Emil Brunner writes that Zwingli’s doctrine proposes an “evident Pantheism,”31 and B. A. Gerrish mentions Zwingli briefly in connection with pantheistic themes in traditional Christian theology.32 Although it may be better to speak of him as a “panentheist” or “qualified monist,” this point will still be worth showing at some length. His doctrine on this point will also be seen to be highly consonant with that of Henry. Zwingli writes that “the first thing in acquiring knowledge of God is to know that He is he who is by nature, who Himself is, and who receives being from none other.”33 God for Zwingli thus possesses being as the fundamental ontological condition in an original way, whereas everything else possesses

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it derivatively through God. Moreover, Zwingli not only gives philosophical arguments for the existence of God so conceived, but he also thinks that this is the conception of deity proposed by the Bible. He takes note of the name that God shares with Moses: “I am that I am”(Exod. 3:14). Admittedly, this is not the interpretation which modern biblical scholarship prefers, but in any case, from this reading Zwingli understands that God must exist of himself, whereas everything else exists in and through him. Otherwise, his name would be tautologous, and he would not have distinguished himself from anything else that exists.34 This conception of God is thus, for Zwingli at least, both philosophically and biblically justifiable. Zwingli also insists that God is in some way what one might call the “ontological context” for all finite and particular things. All things exist “in” and “through” him. He even expresses this point in strikingly provocative terms. The following is a first example: If, now, all the things which He has made are exceeding good even in His own judgment [Gen 1:31], and nevertheless none is good save God alone [Luke 18:19], it follows that the things which are are in Him and through Him. For since all the things which are are good, and yet God alone is good, all the things which are are God [omnia quae sunt deus sint]; i.e., the reason they exist is because God exists and is their essence.35

His reasoning is simple. All things are good, yet only God is good. Thus, all things must be God in the sense that he “is their being and essence.” They all exist “in” and “through” him, indeed they even “are” him. Here too is another argument from divine infinity: Now since the infinite, as a fact, is so-called just because it is infinite in essence and existence, it is clear that outside of this infinite there can be no existence. For whatever such you grant, where this outside existence is, there the infinite will not be, and, therefore, it will not be infinite. Since, therefore, there is but one infinite, nothing can exist outside of it [praeter hoc nihil esse]. And from this it follows that whatever is, is in it, nay, what is and exists comes from it, and since it does not come from it in the sense that its being and existence is different from its own, it is certain that as far as being and existence are concerned, there is nothing which is not of the Deity [nihil sit quod non numen sit]. For it is the being of all things [id enim est rerum universarum esse].36

The infinity of God thus implies that all things exist in him. If something existed outside of God, his being would not be infinite but would rather have a limit; this limit would be located precisely where the existence of this other thing begins. Yet this is impossible if God is infinite. Consequently, nothing can exist “outside” of or “beyond” or even “except” (praeter) God: “There

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is nothing which is not of the Deity.” Another way of translating the same phrase: “There is nothing which is not the Deity.” This God of Zwingli’s is understood as “the being of all things.” Zwingli sometimes uses quasi-materialistic language to express the relation between God and all other things. Incidentally, this is why, contrary to Reinhold Seeberg37 and Gottfried Locher,38 Zwingli’s conception of God is not Thomistic, which perspective does not allow one to speak of God in these ways. Consider how it has been said in the present work that the things that appear in the World are aspects or dimensions of the World itself. Zwingli also says that God is “the being (esse) of all things” in the sense of being “a sort of stuff” (tanquam materiam aliquam) from which they are constituted.39 And he says elsewhere: “From God, therefore, as from a fountain source and (if one may speak so) substance matter [materia universa], all things come forth into existence [emergunt, ut sint].”40 Zwingli insists that the existence of other things is also the existence of God. He says that God “took from Himself this existence which he [sic] gave to His works and creatures,” with the result that “the existence of created beings [is not] so utterly different from that of the Deity, but of the same kind, from the same source and parent.”41 And from this it follows that “everything that is, is in Him and through Him and a part of Him.” One might note that Samuel Macauley Jackson’s translation of this passage is less provocative than Zwingli’s original: quaecunque sunt, ipsum sunt, in ipso sunt, per ipsum sunt. This can be translated as follows: “Whatsoever things there are, are him, are in him, are through him.” The sense may be the same, but Zwingli’s expression is certainly more striking. So also, Zwingli elsewhere writes: Yet this so-called created power, since all power is the power of the deity,—for there is nothing which is not from that, in that and through that Deity, nay is not a part of Himself,—this power is said to have been created, I say, because it is a manifestation of general, all-embracing power in a new individual form.42

Jackson translates Zwingli as saying that nothing is “not a part of Himself.” What Zwingli actually writes is: imo illud [numen] sit. This can be translated as saying that there is nothing that is “not itself that Deity.” The sense is once more roughly the same, since Zwingli does not deny that there is some kind of a distinction to be drawn between God, who exists of himself, and all other things, which exist because of God. Even so, he nevertheless speaks about created things and calls them “God.” He even says that created powers are only called “created” in the sense that they are new and individuated manifestations of the universal or general power of God (in novo subiecto et nova specie universalis aut generalis ista virtus [Dei] exhibetur).

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Zwingli further insists that God is not the being and essence of all things in such a sense as not to possess an inner life of his own. To the contrary, he maintains that God is “not a thing idle or inert, so as to lie torpid and motionless, moving neither itself nor other things.”43 He is rather that “perfect, efficient, and consummating power, which, since it is perfect, will never cease, never rest, never waver, but continually so keep, direct, and govern everything that in all things made or done no fault can intervene able either to impede its power or to defeat its purpose.”44 Nothing is unknown to him or hidden from him, so that he has total providential control over everything whatsoever.45 The Swiss reformer admittedly does not provide in these works any very precise analogy or metaphor by which to understand how God brings about created things, but at least one such metaphor does suggest itself in the light of what he says. He says that all things exist in God, through him, and even are him. He also says that they exist by God’s will and that he brings them into being by sharing his own being with them. Consider, then, how one can bring about a fist by clenching one’s hands and flexing one’s muscles. The fist is “in” one, “through” one, and can even be said to “be” one. In the same way, therefore, the infinite and self-subsistent reality that is God can be understood to bring about finite and particular beings such as are found in the World by acting upon himself and affecting himself. God “flexes” his creative power and brings about the diversity of things within himself, and these things too can be said to be “in” him and “through” him and even to “be” him (ipsum sunt, in ipso sunt, per ipsum sunt) because there is a modal difference without an ontological distance between God and the finite thing. Consider also how one’s fist only exists for as long as one keeps one’s muscles flexed. Zwingli similarly insists that, apart from God’s continual preservation, “[a]ll substances, all bodies, stars, earth and seas, in short, the whole structure of the universe would collapse in an instant, and be reduced to nothing.”46 Finally, consider how one’s fist is a visible reflection of a state of one’s inner life. The fist that appears in the World is typically an expression at least of one’s intention to form a fist (whether for reasons of anger or whatever). The same can be said of God: all things exist “in” him and “through” him; they only have their being insofar as God acts upon himself to share his being with them by bringing them about within himself. He exercises total providential control over everything. He is the ontological context of all things that exist, and they only exist because he wills them to do so. In this sense, then, the world of things that one can encounter in experience is thus the visible exterior image of God’s inner life. It is the “outside” of his “inside.” God shows himself to others by means of the way things are in the World.

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This conception of things is very consonant with that of Henry. Zwingli’s description of God as a “perfect and consummating” force is reminiscent of the passage cited earlier from Henry: According to Christianity there exists only one Life, the unique essence of all that lives. This does not mean an unchanging essence or an ideal archetype, like that of a Circle that is present in all Circles, but rather an active essence, deploying itself with an invincible force, a source of power, the power of engendering that is immanent in anything that lives and unceasingly gives it life.47

Note also how Henry emphasizes that the absolute Life of God is “immanent in anything that lives.” This agrees with Zwingli’s own insistence that God is the life and motion of all things. Because God is “the essence and constitution of all things,” Zwingli concludes that through [Him] and in [Him] all things are contained and live and move . . . Since, therefore, all that moves or lives lives and moves because it has being (for unless it had being it could not move or live, and in that it has being has it in God and through God), it may be most clearly inferred that, as God is being and existence to all things, so He is the life and motion of all things that live and move.48

Zwingli thus says something very much like Henry’s statement that “there exists only one Life, the unique essence of all that lives.”49 At the same time, Zwingli also passes back and forth between saying that all things are God and that all things exist in God and depend on him for their being. He admits a closeness between God and finite things as well as a differentiation at the same time. This tension is also found in Henry: Life’s immanence in every living being thus does not mean that the reality of the human being is dissolved at the same time as its individuality . . . [A] Self belongs to every living being; every living being is built up in the manner of an “individual.”50

Just as for Henry immanence of absolute Life in each living self does not eradicate the distinction between each particular self and the Life that is God, so also the fact that all things are and are good only insofar as they are God does not for Zwingli erase the distinction between God who is of himself (a se) and all other things which are only through him (per ipsum). It is therefore clear that there are very many significant and perhaps surprising points of convergence between Zwingli and Henry on the question of the nature of God. They both appear to be trying to say that God and the finite being or living self are as close as possible to one another without collapsing

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into each other. They are so close that the finite being or living self cannot be or live except by sharing in God’s own being and Life, and yet the finite being and living self specifically shares in the proper being and Life of God and so is not just God tout court. There is difference without ontological distance. By way of summary, then: Zwingli understands God as an infinite and self-subsistent reality that brings about distinct realities within himself by causing them to share in his own being precisely by acting upon himself. He is the concrete ontological context of all things. All created beings are manifestations of God’s own power and can even be said to be God in the sense of sharing in his being and goodness; God is the greater and infinite being within which and as a dimension of which every particular and finite being including oneself is encountered. God’s infinite being relates to finite things the way that one’s body relates to one’s fist.51 Yet God also possesses an inner life of his own which is made manifest by what appears in the World. He brings things into his own being by acting upon himself and affecting himself, just as one forms a fist by intentionally flexing one’s muscles. This conception of things has numerous convergences with Henry’s understanding of God. It is also the same picture of things that is being proposed here, even if in different words and from a slightly different angle, and even if Zwingli’s argument that it has a basis in the divine name is less than convincing in the present day. God is not utterly distinct from things as in Robert Sokolowski’s “Christian distinction.”52 He is rather that absolute Life on which one depends for one’s own life and in which one is engendered and given to oneself as a distinct living self. The World is his body in the sense of being the visible exterior image of his inner life, and in both Life and the World there is modal differentiation without absolute ontological distance between God and the finite thing. Even if Zwingli’s appeal to the divine name does not convince, it can be argued that such a proposal for the doctrine of God nevertheless resonates nicely with certain aspects of the depiction of God in the Bible. Zwingli himself notes that “the whole Scripture of the Old Testament views everything as done by the providence of God.”53 Thus, the Psalmist interprets his deliverance from his enemies as the answer of God to his prayers (Ps. 18). The Lord is likewise said to have opened and closed the wombs of women (cf. 1 Sam. 1:5–6). He is responsible for whether a person succeeds in getting pregnant; every person comes into Life because God wills him or her to live. God is also said to be the one who alone “frustrates the omens of liars, and makes fools of diviners; who turns back the wise, and makes their knowledge foolish” (Isa. 44:25). How else are the omens of liars frustrated if not by World showing itself otherwise than they predicted? This also is how the purported knowledge of the wise is shown to be foolishness: through its inadequacy to what shows itself in the World. In all these ways, therefore, what shows itself in the Outside of the World is taken by the biblical authors to be the image of

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the inner life of God. It is enough for a thing to happen in the World and the biblical authors and figures see the will and intention of God being presented, even if this cannot be perfectly understood. This resonates nicely with the notion that the World is the “body” of God in the sense of being the visible exterior image of his invisible inner life. This “panentheistic” or “qualified monistic” conception of things also resonates with the biblical idea of omnipresence of God. The Psalmist writes: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” (Ps. 139:7–8). The transcendental structure of experience remains the same no matter where a person is: God is omnipresent and inescapable, just as the psalmist says, insofar as he is the all-encompassing onto-phenomenological “context” in which every experience whatsoever takes place. He is given both visibly in every experience as the World and felt as that Life in virtue of which every experience is possible. One could even say that all experience is simply a matter of God giving himself to be seen and felt by someone. At the same time, he always exceeds every world-object given in experience. Although the phenomenological World is his body, he is not to be confused with any particular thing that may show itself within the World. The World always exceeds every object that appears within it, and every individual thing that appears in the World is simply a modification or aspect of the appearance of the World-whole itself. Solomon therefore prays at the dedication of the Temple: “But will God indeed reside with mortals on earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built!” (2 Chr. 6:18). This is why God cannot be contained: precisely because he contains all things, and all things are in him. The “panentheism” or “qualified monism” of the present chapter suggests a way of understanding this eminently biblical idea that is compatible with the “open” theological onto-epistemological paradigm that was argued for in the previous chapter. God is thus absolute Life and the World is his body. He is a self-subsistent reality that causes the reality of everything else by acting upon himself so to allow other things to share in his own reality. He is the Life that brings one into life, and the World which always presents itself to one in its various modifications and aspects is his “body,” specifically in the sense of being the visible image of his inner life. This conception of God satisfies the stipulations of an “open” theological onto-epistemology because it identifies God within the limits of the realm of the manifest. It also resonates with the biblical conception of God, at least from the point of view of the biblical doctrine of providence and of the notion of God’s omnipresence. Finally, it is arguably present, albeit in different terms, in Zwingli’s description of God in his Commentary on True and False Religion and On the Providence of God.

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As a final point, it is worth noting that understanding God in this way on the basis of Henry’s distinction between Life and the World also makes it possible to see not only how Thomas’s conception of God as pure being or esse tantum is only partially true, but also how his misunderstanding of God motivates the error of the “closed” theological onto-epistemology. This suggestion can be explained as follows. Thomas thinks of God as pure being because of a distinction he notes between essence and existence (De Ente cap. 4). Every essence grasped by the intellect is a particular way things can be. The essence of humanity as rational animality constitutes a possible way for a thing to exist, just as the essence of a phoenix is a possible way a thing can be. At the same time, one can grasp a possibility of being without thereby knowing if it is actualized in anything. The fact that one can be appreciated without the other consequently implies a distinction between essence and existence. Yet God as the original possessor of the fundamental ontological condition must possess existence of himself; he cannot be defined in such a way as would require that there be something else which gives him existence. He is rather “something whose quiddity is its very own existence” (aliqua res cuius quiditas sit ipsum esse), and only in this way can he be “one and primary” (una et prima). Every thing or ens exists in a derivative way because of the distinction between essence and existence. But this is because each such thing does not exist purely and simply, but only in a particular way. Only pure being or esse tantum is simply of itself. From this, it follows straightaway that God as esse tantum is not something that exists in any particular way. If he were to exist in any particular way, then there would be more to his essence than pure being; the divine essence would be a particular way of being, with the result that there would be a distinction between his essence and his existence. God therefore does not exist in any particular way, but rather is simply pure being. However, one should note that to say that God does not exist in any particular way is to say that his essence cannot be intellectually grasped at all. In other words, one cannot know what he is. As Denys Turner comments, we could not properly know what it is that we are speaking of when we speak of God, for the creator of every manner and kind of thing cannot itself be a kind of thing, or an instance of anything . . . Having no proper concept of God, we possess no account of the kind of thing God is; hence, we have no way of identifying God as an instance of any kind.54

Here one is presented with what Henry was referring to above, when he wrote of “the shaky reasons of an understanding which undertakes to reflect on God without knowing why and, trying to grasp some aspect of him, sees precisely nothing.”55 This is the apophatic “darkness” of the conception of God as pure

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being, the “darkness” which follows upon defining God precisely in terms of what provides no intelligible content to the intellect at all.56 As John of Damascus would write: “It is clear that God exists, but what He is in essence and nature is unknown and beyond all understanding” (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith I, 8).57 Thomas reaches here the point of weakness of the intellect while remaining nevertheless within the limitations imposed by the guiding concept of “being.” He thereby understandably supposes that there is need of some further revelation of the pure being of God for the sake of man’s salvation. It is therefore in the apophatic exigencies of his natural theological conception of God that one finds the origin of the proposal of a “closed” theological onto-epistemology and the supposition of a further sphere of being beyond that of the manifest. From the point of view of a “theology of the manifest,” the dialectic by which this point was reached should be reinterpreted through a phenomenological lens in such a manner as to do away with the necessity of the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm altogether. This can be done as follows. First, the distinction between essence and existence. Phenomenologically understood, things are called “beings” because they show themselves in the Outside of the World. Henry writes: what is . . . “is” only inasmuch as it shows itself, precisely as a phenomenon . . . A thing exists for us only if it shows itself to us as a phenomenon. And it shows itself to us only in that primordial “outsideness” that is the world.58

Otherwise put, the sphere of being is the sphere of objective appearance. Things “are” in the sense that they appear in the World. One says that the cat on the table is or exists, for example, because it shows itself. In the same way, phenomenologically understood, to speak of the essence of a thing as a possibility of being is to refer to the spectrum of possible ways it can show itself in the World while remaining itself. Thus, being is appearing and essence is the spectrum of possible appearances a thing can take. But it is obvious that one can grasp the possible ways a thing could show itself without something thereby actually appearing in the World in those ways. A distinction can therefore be made between the thing considered in itself as a possible spectrum of appearances, on the one hand, and the actual being of the thing, i.e., its actually or concretely showing itself in the World in the appropriate modality, on the other. This is the phenomenological corollary of the distinction between essence and existence. Things are because they show themselves, and each thing, considered in itself as a world-object, is only a continuous spectrum of possible appearances. It is something else altogether for this thing actually to show itself. But

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in contradistinction to world-objects, one can also note that something that does appear simply as such: the phenomenological World. Appearing belongs to the World by definition, since considered in itself it is simply pure appearing; the World appears of itself, whereas world-objects appear only within the horizon of the “Outside” of the World. In this way, it can now be appreciated that what Thomas had come across in the concept of pure being or esse tantum was in fact the phenomenological notion of the World as the manifest domain of all possible objective manifestation. Thomas spoke of something the essence of which simply is its existence. But from the phenomenological point of view, existing is appearing. This idea thus corresponds to the phenomenological notion of the World, which is the itself-manifest milieu of all possible objective manifestation. Thomas approached everything through the lens of objective being. There was consequently nothing left for him to say about God at the end of his investigations except that he is pure being. The same thing can happen so long as one limits oneself to the category of objective appearing; in that case, there is nothing more to say about the World than that it is the horizon of all possible objective manifestation. Therefore, this is why the insight of Henry into the double-aspect of appearing is so critical. More precisely, he makes it possible to say more about God while not leaving the sphere of the manifest. Henry recognized that things appear in more than one way, one’s own self-experience providing the clearest example of this. One appears to others in the World as a body, but one is manifest to oneself in the domain of Life as a living self or flesh.59 From the fact that one lives, one can appreciate God as the absolute Life in which one lives. Thus, going beyond what Henry himself writes while remaining consistent with the insights of his philosophy, one can say further that the pure appearing of the World is to be understood as the “body” of God, which is to say the visible exterior image of his inner life. This is how the need to posit a further sphere beyond that of the manifest is avoided. And yet even more should be said at this point. The idea that the World is the visible exterior image of the inner life of God does make it possible to say more about God than that he is pure being, but that is not the whole story. Thomas was right to say that God is unknowable in a sense. There is also a critical way in which this doctrine of God for the “theology of the manifest” also secures the truth that God is unknowable and mysterious, yet this specific form of unknowability and mystery does not also raise the necessity of positing a distinct sphere of reality beyond that of the manifest. It does not imply any commitment to the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm. This point can be appreciated as follows. The way a thing appears is the way it is. One can therefore say that the total appearance of one’s body in the World in all its states corresponds strictly

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with what is true in the domain of Life. Henry himself says that if everything appears in a double way, therefore one of these aspects must be “merely an appearance, an image, a copy of reality, but not that reality itself.”60 Even so, it might be better to say that the appearance of a thing to another in the Outside of the World corresponds precisely with the manifestation of that thing to itself in the domain of Life. In the domain of Life one feels sadness, and this sadness manifests itself in the World through a saddened countenance as a state of one’s body. In the domain of Life one feels desire, and this desire also manifests itself through the condition of one’s body in the World in various ways. What appears in the World correlates strictly to what is found in Life. And yet it is also clear that the whole truth of oneself is not always revealed clearly and plainly in the World. Incidentally, this is a lesson Henry himself learned well in his personal experience as a part of the French Resistance during the Second World War, a lesson which undoubtedly influenced the development of his thought.61 He often had to hide what was on the Inside. It is generally a fact of experience that one often cannot tell what another is thinking simply by looking at him or her, neither can others easily know what one is thinking or feeling unless one discloses this inner reality to them in some easily appreciated way, for example by speech or body language. Zwingli also shows an appreciation of this point when he says that “one’s consciousness is closed and unknown to all but one’s self.”62 One’s self-experience cannot itself become an object for someone else in the “Outside” of the World except under the image of a body which must be interpreted, and the interpretation of one’s life by means of the appearance of the body is not always easy. One can see another’s eyes but not directly whether, what, and how this other sees.63 In the same way, a person may say one thing and be thinking another. Living selves are capable of lying and dissimulation, so that a person telling the truth may at times or at least for a time be indistinguishable from a person lying. That is why Henry will say things like that “we see living beings but never their life.”64 In the present context, to say that the World is the “body” of God is to say that every truth about the state of the World implies a statement about the condition of God’s inner life. But it is practically impossible for one perfectly to interpret another’s inner life given only the image of his or her body in the World. Similarly, the World as the body of God does not reveal with perfect clarity everything one might care to know about God’s inner life. This is because one often does not know how to interpret the World. One does not know how properly to describe what appears in the World, nor what to infer about God’s inner life on the basis of this appearance. At the same time, what is needed to remedy this situation is not a further revelation from a sphere of being utterly beyond the sphere of the manifest, as Thomas supposes. This proposal would only serve to introduce all the problems of the “logic of the

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inaccessible” and the instability of the signal. Rather, what is needed is for God himself to tell human beings in their own language what he is thinking, why he has brought them into being, where he is taking them, what he expects from them, what they can expect from him, and so on. In other words, he must himself tell human beings how to interpret the World, which is his body, as the expression of his inner life. Jesus provides an example of this when he teaches: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:44–45). The fact that the good and the evil alike benefit from the light of the sun and the rain that falls on the earth is the visible exterior of God’s love for both categories of persons. Jesus can therefore be understood as teaching his followers how to interpret the World as the expression of God’s inner life, and this does not entail commitment to the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm, even as it preserves a sense of the unknowability of God to human beings through the fact of their inability to make sense of the World’s manifestation. This is therefore the sense in which the “theology of the manifest” understands the unknowability and mystery of God. The World is his body, the visible exterior image of his inner life, the way he looks to others “from the outside.” He is always showing himself to others insofar as he is the ontophenomenological context of all worldly experience whatsoever, but human beings are more than often in a position of ignorance with respect to how to interpret the World. God’s inner life is therefore unknowable to them, not in principle but in fact. One might suspect that this distinction between the privacy of one’s inner life and the manifestation of the body in the World amounts to a distinction between an accessible and inaccessible sphere. Would this not simply raise all the problems of the “logic of the inaccessible” once more? But this is not in fact what is happening. Both spheres are accessible in principle because there is always perfect correlation between them. Whatever appears in the World has a correlate in the sphere of Life. One could even say that Life itself always makes itself known through its bodily appearance in the World. This is evidenced in one’s own self-experience: one feels oneself to be sad but also shows oneself to be sad to others through the appearance of one’s body, e.g., through a saddened countenance. What is in the sphere of Life thus always manifests itself in the World under the form of a body. There is no absolute distinction of spheres but only of modes of appearance.

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§9 EVIL AND DIVINE MYSTERY An argument has been given for the formal necessity of God’s existence. It will also be useful to discuss one of the most popular arguments brought against his existence, namely the argument from evil. This discussion will likewise provide an opportunity to reflect further on the unknowability and mystery of God from the perspective of a “theology of the manifest.” The argument from evil comes in many forms. Begin with the definition of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. Presumably nothing can count as God if it does not satisfy this definition. Now, if God is all-powerful, then it would be within his power in principle to prevent evil things from taking place; if he is all-knowing, then he would also know how to prevent evil; and if he is perfectly good, then he would be disposed to prevent evil from ever taking place. Thus, it seems that if God has the power, the knowledge, and the willingness to prevent evil, then there should not be any evil—and yet there is evil. From this it follows that God so defined does not exist. This is the so-called “logical problem of evil,” proposed by thinkers such as David Hume and J. L. Mackie.65 Although this argument was historically very influential, nevertheless there is an easy response. Specifically, one can contest the implication drawn from God’s perfect goodness. Suppose one says, with Daniel Howard-Snyder, that God’s perfect goodness does not mean that he would be disposed to prevent all evil whatsoever, but rather that he would only allow evil for the sake of a greater good. The contradiction would then be alleviated, and the presence of evil in the world would not demonstrate that God does not exist.66 Yet there are still other arguments the atheist might make. One could distinguish between justified evils and gratuitous evils. An evil is defined as “gratuitous” if it either serves no purpose at all or else is excessive for the purpose it supposedly serves. It may be that the evil of hunger pains is justified for the sake of signaling the bodily need for food; it thus serves a purpose. But suppose being hungry always felt as though one were being stabbed in the stomach. In that case, such an evil would plainly seem unnecessary and unjustified. There is apparently no reason why being hungry should be that painful. One could therefore grant the theoretical possibility of the coexistence of God and evils while nevertheless insisting that the evils which actually obtain in the world are gratuitous as defined here. Yet the perfect goodness of God would seem to preclude the possibility of gratuitous evils.‌‌‌‌‌ Thus, if one has reason to believe that some evils are gratuitous, one also has reason to believe that God does not exist. This would be a version of the socalled “evidential argument from evil” proposed by William Rowe.67

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This version of the argument is probabilistic in nature. The idea is that the existence of God is improbable in proportion to the probability that certain evils in the world are gratuitous as defined above. By way of response, some philosophers deny that the existence of gratuitous evils is actually incompatible with God’s perfect goodness.68 Interesting as that line of argument may be, the present work is sooner concerned with the epistemic status of the judgment that an evil is gratuitous. The position called “skeptical theism” denies that such evaluations of evils can be justified.69 This is also the line of attack to be taken here, although as approached from a specifically phenomenological perspective.70 The question is whether a person can come to a justified judgment that some evil that takes place in the world is gratuitous. It was noted earlier (§2) that a judgment is typically formed on the basis of an appearance; people form judgments as a way of expressing how things seem to them. Someone might therefore propose that certain evils seem gratuitous. Perhaps one just intuitively “sees” that they are gratuitous, or perhaps the reason why they seem gratuitous could be that the concerted effort to discover or to conceive of a justification for them has until now fallen short. Nothing one can see or imagine seems adequate to the task of justifying the evil with which one is presented in the World. Indeed, prolonged reflection on the evils one can find in reality serves for many people only to strengthen the conviction that they are gratuitous. Nothing in fact can make sense of why they happen. It would be one thing if one had an impression only once and under less than certain circumstances; such judgments do not have a firm basis, being founded upon a limited interaction with their object. It is another thing altogether for the same impression to remain after repeated investigation. This line of reasoning may seem persuasive to some, but it can be seen to be phenomenologically confused in light of the earlier elucidated transcendental structure of experience (§6). Simply put, it is not in fact possible for an evil to appear to be gratuitous stricto sensu. To understand this point, consider what Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes: For each object, just as for each painting in an art gallery, there is an optimal distance from which it asks to be seen—an orientation through which it presents more of itself—beneath or beyond which we merely have a confused perception due to excess or lack. Hence, we tend toward the maximum of visibility and we seek, just as when using a microscope, a better focus point, which is obtained through a certain equilibrium between the interior and the exterior horizons.71

As he says, for every object there is an optimal position from which it demands to be seen. It must therefore be specified from what “position” the gratuity of an evil could appear. Consider how to say that an evil is gratuitous

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is to say that it is not justified by anything that comes before it, simultaneously with it, or after it in time. The gratuity of an evil is consequently a relation that it bears (or perhaps rather the lack of a certain sort of relation) to all other events in time. And yet, as was pointed out earlier (§§2, 5), relations cannot appear except through the givenness of the relata. The necessary “position” from which such a quality could appear is therefore an essentially transhistorical one located outside of the flow of time; only thence could all events be given at once. Yet it is obvious that such a perspective is impossible for human beings to assume. The awareness of an evil takes place through the mediation of one’s lived body, which is always subject to the flow of time. This lived body is not an instrument through which one becomes aware of things, but rather what one is; one is this lived body that sees, hears, and feels. There can therefore be no escaping the limitations it imposes on one’s vision of things, since one cannot escape oneself. This is how it is impossible for the gratuity of an evil to appear stricto sensu. Because it is impossible for the gratuity of an evil to appear, this supposed experience of the gratuity of evils must be reinterpreted. The same thing seems to be happening here as in the case of Plantinga’s doxastic experiences mentioned earlier (§5). One’s felt inability to see the meaning or justification of an evil is being projected onto the evil itself as a real property under the name of “gratuity.” One cannot see what good the evil serves or why it is necessary, and this inability to see the justification is interpreted as its nonexistence. And yet these are two different things. Suppose one cannot lift a weight; it does not follow that it is unliftable tout court, but only that it is unliftable-to-one, which is another way of saying that one is unable to lift it. Similarly, from the fact that one is not and cannot be in a position to see the justification of an evil in relation to the rest of history, it does not follow that such a justification does not exist. Indeed, because such a relation is the sort of thing one could never see in principle, given the inhibiting limitations of one’s lived body subject to the flow of time, it becomes clear that what is appearing in such experiences is not actually the gratuity of the evil but only one’s inability to make sense of it. One is “running into” the limitations of one’s sight. There is also an additional point to make here. Suppose per impossibile that one were to assume the necessary transhistorical position from which the relation of any particular evil event to all other events in time could be seen. Even if one were inclined to think under such circumstances that the particular evil is gratuitous, the conclusion of the argument from evil still would not follow. After all, the purpose of the argument was not to show that things occur which the atheist or skeptical person would have prevented, but rather that evils takes place which God himself, being perfectly good, would have prevented, and it cannot be assumed ahead of time that one’s way of thinking

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about things or evaluating them is comparable to God’s. To make a statement about what God would or would not permit to happen is to presume at least an understanding of perfect goodness, just as to make a statement about what a competent speaker of English would say is to presume competency in the English language. Earlier it was a matter of the limitations imposed by one’s lived body, but here it is a matter of the limitations imposed by one’s hermeneutical powers. It is circular to assume that one’s thinking and habits of moral evaluation are sufficiently close to the “ideal” that one could take one’s own judgment about things to be indicative of how God would judge the same things to be. Neither is it obvious by what method or form of argument one could show this to be the case unless God himself were to make his thinking known explicitly. But God’s thinking is not known a priori any more than one can know a priori what another human being is thinking; there is no innate knowledge of what moral perfection would look like. One must rather begin with the self-disclosure of the thing itself as it shows itself in the World. Consequently, for all one knows, if one were to think like God, one would no longer see the evils that take place in the World as gratuitous. Indeed, the very fact that these things occur in the World can itself be evidence that God must not consider them gratuitous, whatever his reasons may be for permitting them. This is therefore one further reason for which the argument fails. The consequences of these reflections are significant. Consider that the meaning of an event is a relation that it bears to other events in history. Just as the appearance of any particular world-object at a particular moment in time is a result of the way everything else at that appears, so also the meaning of an event as an aspect of its appearing is a result of the meaning or appearance of every other event. Consider how the meaning of a world-object changes as it is put into relation with other things. A tree considered by itself is a vegetal organism; in relation with the heat of the sun and an animal needing to cool down, it is a source of shade; and in relation to a particular group with a certain culture, it can be a representation of their ancestors. So also, the total meaning of an historical event depends on everything else that comes before it, with it, and after it in time. What may seem insignificant by itself can turn out to have been the beginning of something quite important, so long as the right things happen afterwards. Yet human beings are incapable of discovering this meaning in any substantial way. They are themselves subject to the flow of time and cannot step out of this flow and themselves in order to get a clearer picture of the direction of things through a comprehensive vision of the entire context of history. It is also true that events in history are things that manifest themselves in the World, and the World is God’s body, the visible exterior image of his inner life (§8). The unknowability of the meaning of events in history is therefore another way of speaking about the inability of human beings to discern the inner life of God. Put very simply: they do

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not know what God is doing. This is memorably expressed in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8–9). This is how the “theology of the manifest” understands the divine unknowability and mystery. Of course, despite all evil, the reality of God as the source of everything seen and unseen is never doubted or called into question in the Bible; yet the inner life of God and specifically his intentions and purposes in history are not easily discerned. This is not to say that they belong to an utterly distinct and independent onto-epistemological sphere, since this inner life is constantly making itself manifest under the image of what appears in the World. But just as one generally cannot know what another is thinking unless he or she makes this explicit, so also human beings are generally in the dark as to God’s inner life unless he should speak to them and reveal it more clearly. This includes what God means to accomplish by the evils that he allows. NOTES 1. Janicaud et al., Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn.” 2. Edmund Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014), 107. 3. See the discussions in Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba, eds., Words of Life: New Theological Turns in French Phenomenology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010); J. Aaron Simmons and Bruce Ellis Benson, The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013); DeLay, Phenomenology in France. 4. See Rivera, Contemplative Self after Michel Henry; Robert Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, ch. 8; Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology of Disclosure (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 7ff.; Christian Faith and Human Understanding: Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006); “The Theology of Disclosure,” Nova et Vetera 14, no. 2 (2016): 409–23. 5. Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, chs. 3–4. 6. An anonymous reviewer questioned the use of this “body” analogy by suggesting that the Bible also describes the relationship between God and his people as something of a “marriage.” Why then should one analogy be preferred to the other? By way of response, I would say that I am not privileging one metaphor over another, but simply deploying them in different contexts. The idea of the World as God’s “body” is relevant when it is a question of discerning God’s intentions by means of what appears in the world. The idea of a “wedding” between God and his people is sooner

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an eschatological and soteriological notion, the context of which would be a different sort of a discussion. 7. Cf. Steven Nemes, “Two Ways to God in Thomas Aquinas and Michel Henry,” Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion 3, no. 2 (2021): 164–87. For the discussion of the idea of God in Thomas, see especially Gaven Kerr, Aquinas’s Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); and John F. X. Knasas, Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019). For the discussion of Michel Henry, see Rivera, Contemplative Self after Michel Henry; Michael O’Sullivan, Michel Henry: Incarnation, Barbarism and Belief (New York: Peter Lang, 2006); and John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: Prologue to Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), chs. 6–7. See also Nemes, “Life-Idealism of Michel Henry.” 8. See William F. Vallicella, A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated (Boston: Kluwer, 2002). 9. Kerr, Aquinas’s Way to God, 59; cf. Knasas, Thomistic Existentialism, 33. 10. Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, trans. Scott Davidson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 3. 11. Knasas, Thomistic Existentialism, 33. 12. Knasas, Thomistic Existentialism, 36–38. 13. Henry, I Am the Truth, 54. 14. Henry, Words of Christ, 109. 15. Henry, Words of Christ, 82–83; emphasis removed. 16. See Vallicella, Paradigm Theory of Existence. 17. Cf. Caleb Cohoe, “There Must Be A First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite, Essentially Ordered, Causal Series,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21, no. 5 (2013): 838–56. 18. Henry, Words of Christ, 109. 19. Henry, Words of Christ, 83. 20. Henry, I Am the Truth, 107. 21. Henry, Words of Christ, 119; emphasis removed. 22. Henry, Words of Christ, 82; emphasis removed. 23. Henry, Incarnation, 151. 24. Henry, Incarnation, 196. 25. Henry, I Am the Truth, 258. 26. Henry, I Am the Truth, 195. 27. Henry, I Am the Truth, 258. 28. An anonymous reviewer objected that this perspective of things seems to make even the evil that shows itself in the World a manifestation of God’s inner life. Is God therefore supposed to be the source of both good and evil? By way of response, one can note that this is exactly what the prophet Isaiah wrote: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things. Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord

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have created it” (Isa. 45:7–8). Of course, whether God intends evil by what he brings about is another matter. This is addressed in §9 below. 29. Ulrich Zwingli, “On the Providence of God,” 128–234, in Ulrich Zwingli, On Providence and Other Essays, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson and William John Hinke (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1999). 30. August Neander, Lectures on the History of Christian Dogmas, vol. 2, trans. Jonathan Edwards Ryland (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858), 667. 31. Emil Brunner, Dogmatics, vol. 1: The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 322. 32. B. A. Gerrish, Continuing the Reformation: Essays on Modern Religious Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 124. 33. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 63. 34. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 62; “On the Providence of God,” 147. 35. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 64. 36. Zwingli, “On the Providence of God,” 143. 37. Reinhold Seeberg, Text-book of the History of Doctrines, trans. Charles E. Hay (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1905), 314. 38. Gottfried Wilhelm Locher, Zwingli’s Thought: New Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 67. 39. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 62, 66. 40. Zwingli, “On the Providence of God,” 148. 41. Zwingli, “On the Providence of God,” 143. 42. Zwingli, “On the Providence of God,” 138. 43. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 64. 44. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 65. 45. Zwingli, “On the Providence of God,” 133, 150. 46. Zwingli, “On the Providence of God,” 147. 47. Henry, I Am the Truth, 54. 48. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 64–65. 49. Henry, I Am the Truth, 54. 50. Henry, Incarnation, 181. 51. An anonymous reviewer asks whether this blurs the distinction between God and creation. By way of response, one should recall that it was noted at the start that a sharp creator-creature distinction is characteristic of the dualism of the catholic tradition which this work is trying to overcome. The answer to the reviewer’s question is therefore: Yes, perhaps, in a sense, but this is not a bad thing. 52. Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, chs. 3–4. 53. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 68–69; cf. David A. Brondos, Redeeming the Gospel: The Christian Faith Reconsidered (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 8. 54. Denys Turner, “How to be an Atheist,” New Blackfriars 83, nos. 977/978 (2002): 317–35, 321, 323. 55. Henry, Words of Christ, 82. 56. Nemes, “Two Ways to God,” 178–81.

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57. John of Damascus, Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958), 170. 58. Henry, I Am the Truth, 14–15. 59. Henry, I Am the Truth, 195. 60. Henry, I Am the Truth, 195. 61. O’Sullivan, Michel Henry, 16. 62. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 158. 63. Henry, I Am the Truth, 41. 64. Henry, I Am the Truth, 40. 65. See David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion 10.25, in David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion and Other Writings, ed. Dorothy Coleman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 74; J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 150–76. 66. See Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Introduction: The Evidential Argument from Evil,” xii–xiv, in Daniel Howard-Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 67. See William L. Rowe, “The Argument from Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” in Howard-Snyder, Evidential Argument from Evil, 1–11. 68. See the discussions in Klaas Kraay, Jr., “God and Gratuitous Evil (Part I),” Philosophy Compass 11 (2016): 905–12; “God and Gratuitous Evils (Part II),” Philosophy Compass 11 (2016): 913–22. 69. See Trent Dougherty and Justin McBrayer, eds., Skeptical Theism: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 70. See Steven Nemes, “A Phenomenological Approach to Skeptical Theism,” Studia UBB: Philosophia 66, no. 2 (2021): 103–26. 71. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 315–16.

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Chapter 4

Jesus

The significance of Jesus for Christian theology consists in the fact that he mediates between human beings and God in a unique way and in such a manner as to make the inner life of God known to them. As Huldrych Zwingli would write: “We wish to learn out of His own mouth what God is.”1 Jesus for Christian faith provides exactly this. He teaches people who God is, how he feels about them, what he wants from them, what they can expect from him, and so on. By doing all this, he enables a relationship of a certain sort to begin to exist between God and human beings, and God himself testifies to this privilege of Jesus in various ways. This chapter therefore explains exactly how the relationship between God and the human being is the context in which the significance of Jesus for Christian theology is to be understood. The present chapter addresses three dimensions of the doctrine of Christ: the relationship between Jesus and the Old Testament; his work as savior of human beings; and the Christian notion of the relationship between Jesus and God his Father. The following ideas will be argued. (§10) The New Testament claim that God testifies to Jesus through the Old Testament texts should be understood in light of an attested religious experience called the phenomenon of the third voice. This refers to an experience in which a meaning or sense of a text spontaneously presents itself in the consciousness of a reader, yet this sense is at the same time of such a nature as not to be identifiable with the possible intention of the human author, nor to be explicable in terms of the habits of reading and interpretation on the part of the reader. Coming neither from the “voice” of the author, nor from the hermeneutical “voice” of the reader, it is an address uttered by a “third voice” that makes itself heard by using one person’s words to address another person about something else altogether. (§11) The salvation that Jesus brings can be understood as a reharmonization of God and the human being in relationship with one another. Indeed, this divine-human “dialog” is the overarching context within which all of 77

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reality can be understood. More specifically, this salvation is accomplished by means of an interior change in the human being. (§12) The principal conviction of Christian faith is that Jesus, as the mediator between God and humanity, is the “face” of God in the World for human beings. Put another way, Christian faith sees God and Jesus as functionally inseparable for Christian life, whatever else one might wonder about their consubstantiality. §10 JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT The way in which the Old Testament texts are treated in the New Testament is a matter of controversy among biblical scholars.2 G. K. Beale mentions two possible positions commonly taken on the problem. On the one hand, some scholars think that “Jesus and the writers of the NT use noncontextual hermeneutical methods that caused them to miss the meaning of the OT texts that they were trying to interpret.”3 Their interpretations of these veterotestamentary passages do not have an adequate founding in the referenced texts themselves as reasonably understood. On the other hand, others grant that the New Testament authors at times misconstrue the meaning of an Old Testament text, yet they insist that “they were guided in their interpretation by the example of Christ and by the Spirit. Thus, while their interpretative procedure was flawed, the meaning they wrote down was inspired.”4 Particularly important in this debate is the way in which the New Testament authors make use of the Old Testament to support their opinion that Jesus is the Messiah. The accusations of distortion are especially significant in this matter.5 The following reflections are therefore concerned to propose an understanding of how it is that this New Testament hermeneutical practice can make sense. The New Testament claim is that God testifies to Jesus through the Old Testament texts. A first step toward understanding this matter can be taken by considering the discussion of the inspiration of Scripture in Origen’s On First Principles.6 In IV, 1 the Alexandrian theologian lists a number of Old Testament texts which he claims as prophesying the advent of Christ and the conversion of the nations to his teachings. Importantly, he notes that it is through this advent that the inspiration of the texts themselves and their status as prophecy is made evident: For it was not at all possible to bring forward clear arguments concerning the inspiration of the ancient Scriptures before the sojourn of Christ; but the sojourning of Jesus led those who might have suspected the Law and the Prophets not to be divine to the clear conviction that they were composed by heavenly grace. One who reads the prophetic words with care and attention, experiencing from

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the act of reading itself a trace of divine inspiration, will be persuaded, through the things he experiences, that the words believed by us to be of God are not compositions of human beings. And the light contained in the Law of Moses, but hidden by a veil, shone forth at the sojourn of Jesus, when the veil was taken away and the good things, of which the letter had a shadow, came gradually to be known (On First Principles IV, 1, 6).

To say that the Old Testament texts are inspired is to say that God speaks through them, but Origen notes that their quality of communicating divine speech is not obvious. They rather seem like ordinary texts. He therefore maintains that the divinity of the Old Testament texts was only made evident through the coming of Jesus into the world. At the same time, however, he also notes that the Jews whose scriptures constitute this very Old Testament nevertheless did not believe in Christ. This owed to what he considers to be their false expectations regarding the nature of prophetic fulfillment: For the hard-hearted and ignorant of the people of the circumcision have not believed in our Saviour, thinking they follow the language of the prophecies regarding him, and not seeing him visibly proclaiming a release to the captives, nor building up what they consider to be truly a city of God, nor cutting off the chariots from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, nor eating butter and honey, and before knowing or preferring evil, choosing the good; and thinking it was prophesied that the wolf, the four-footed animal, was to feed with the lamb and the leopard to lie down with the kid, . . . —seeing none of these things visibly happening in the sojourn of him believed by us to be Christ, they did not accept our Lord Jesus, but they crucified him as having improperly called himself Christ (IV, 2, 1).

Leaving to the side his unfortunate remarks about “the Jews,” the critical thing to note is this: Origen writes that the non-Christian Jews did not believe because they did not “see these things visibly happening.” He thus considers this expectation of a “literal” fulfillment of the Old Testament to be the principal problem leading to ignorance of Jesus as Christ: The reason, in all the cases mentioned, for the false beliefs and impious or ignorant assertions about God appears to be nothing else than Scripture not being understood according to its spiritual sense, but taken as regarding the bare letter. Therefore, for those who are persuaded that the sacred books are not compositions of human beings, but that they were composed and have come down to us from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the will of the Father of all through Jesus Christ, one must indicate the apparent ways [of understanding Scripture followed] by those who keep the rule of the heavenly Church of Jesus Christ through succession from the apostles (IV, 2, 2).

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Thus, for Origen, both the inspiration of scripture and the status of Jesus as the Messiah can only become evident through the typological or “spiritual” interpretation of the Old Testament with respect to Christ. The Origenian proposal can therefore be summarized as follows: it is by the advent of Jesus in the world that there becomes evident an additional meaning of the vetus testamentum beyond the literal and which refers to him. In this way, Origen connects the divine inspiration of Scripture with the non-literal interpretation of the text, as Henri de Lubac writes.7 But this discussion only serves to raise the further question of why these two things should be connected at all. What do the idea of “scripture” and the non-literal interpretation of the text have to do with one another? This problem can be approached from a phenomenological point of view by asking: What would it be for one to be addressed by God through some text? The reason for calling a text “scripture” is the conviction that God speaks through it (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16). This question of what it would be to be addressed by God would therefore seem to be the fundamental question of the phenomenology of Scripture. And yet it is worth noting that this question has hardly been discussed, even despite the popularity of phenomenological treatments of Christian theological subject matters in general. For example, the majority of the essays included in Adam Wells’s recent volume on the matter do not address it at all.8 These are sooner “phenomenologies of Scripture” in the subjective genitive sense, namely phenomenological interpretations of certain scriptural passages or identifications of proto-phenomenological insights in the biblical texts. What is needed is rather a phenomenology of Scripture in the objective genitive sense. The phenomenological approach to the topic of divine inspiration to be pursued here thus promises to make a valuable contribution both to the phenomenology of religion and the scholarly discussion of the biblical-theological problem of the New Testament authors’ use of the Old in their writings. Three phenomenologists have notably raised the question of what it would be to be addressed by a word from God: Robert Sokolowski, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Michel Henry.9 What they seem to have in common is a “qualitative” approach to the question, which is to say that they understand the experience of divine address to be one characterized by certain qualities. This approach will not prove ultimately satisfactory insofar as the qualities mentioned by them would seem to be possessed by merely human texts as well. Even so, their proposals are still valuable because the critical discussion of them will help to clear a path toward a different and better approach to the problem. Robert Sokolowski begins his treatment of the question by referring to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that the biblical texts have a divine author beyond the plurality of human authors.10 Although he takes for granted

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that God is not himself manifest in the way that human beings can be, nevertheless the status of the scriptures as divinely inspired is proposed by the church in its teaching and the way it makes them of them in the context of worship. He writes: The church’s use of scripture in her teaching and actions makes possible for us a way of life that is coherent because reconciled with God. It is in such situations of prayerful reading, whether in the church’s liturgy and teaching or in the private prayer of believers, that the scriptures most fully come to life. It is there that they serve, not as an object of our curiosity, but as the words through which God speaks to us and we to God. At this point the primary author of the scriptures, God himself, comes to the fore and acts as author, as the one who authorizes and speaks. At this point the human authors, who have finished their word, recede into the background.11

Sokolowski’s proposal is attractive, but it would seem less than adequate for present purposes. He has described very well what it means to treat the Bible as though it were divinely inspired, as well as how the church does this: it consists in reading it and talking about it and treating it as though God speaks through it. Even so, this is not the same as describing what it would be for God to speak to one through the text. Consider how it is one thing to prepare for an anticipated snowstorm, and it is another thing for it actually to be snowing; it is one thing to prepare for a difficult conversation, and it is another thing actually to have it. What Sokolowski describes is the process of preparing for God to speak through the text, but what is missing is a convincing and detailed description of the experience of being addressed by God itself. Jean-Louis Chrétien, for his part, begins his discussion of the divine inspiration of scripture by noting that the reality of scripture is independent of the way it is experienced. He writes that the “reading of a poem, or of a newspaper, or of a missive from the Internal Revenue Service, or of a love letter” may be profound, whereas the reading of scripture may be dry and boring, but these facts nevertheless do not change what such texts fundamentally are.12 Chrétien says that what is needed for the divine inspiration of scripture to come to light is the help of the Holy Spirit. This assistance makes the Bible comes to life as a text like no other, one which “tend[s] to reverse certain habitual aspects of the act of reading.”13 He specifically uses the images of a “letter” and a “mirror.” Scripture becomes a letter in the sense that it shows itself to be unexpectedly relevant to the person reading it, as though it were addressed to him or her specifically in spite of its actual historical origins. Likewise, it becomes a mirror by revealing this person to him- or herself.14 Chrétien summarizes the thought as follows: “It is in the current relevance

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[i.e., contemporary the act of reading] of its declaration that Scripture is recognized as inspired.”15 Chrétien’s treatment of the matter is very good and suggestive. Nevertheless, more would need to be said. The most important objection to make by way of response is that there seems to be nothing about the categories of “letter” and “mirror” which demand the attribution of divine inspiration to the Bible. Merely human texts can also be “letters” in the same sense as scripture to the extent that they address subject matters of enduring relevance for all or at least most persons. Any such text read by a person who is antecedently disposed to accept its truthfulness will seem like a letter, even apart from a disposition to attribute divine inspiration to its composition. In the same way, any text which touches upon deep aspects of the human being and the ethical life can be taken as “mirrors.” These texts reveal one to oneself because they touch upon things that are essentially human. But there is obviously no necessity in taking the epistles of Seneca or the writings of the Buddhist tradition as divinely inspired scripture. Scripture as a mirror in this sense need not be any more inspired than these other texts. Although Chrétien may be correct in saying that it is by the help of the Holy Spirit that the Bible can function in this way for Christians, he has not yet identified that experience in which the distinctly divine aspect of the text comes into clear light. Michel Henry gives an entirely different kind of answer to the question of what it would be to be addressed by God. God for him is absolute Life, and this Life does not make itself seen in the phenomenological World as an object. The address of God to a person does not appear in the World. Rather, the “word” addressed to each human being by God is only “heard” in the domain of Life. It is there that everyone is addressed by God—specifically by being brought into life in a condition of utter passivity and receptivity. He writes: “Christ says to humans: you are the sons of God, ‘you have only one Father.’ Where is the referent of this assertion? In us. We are sons of God. God is Life and we are living beings.”16 The “word” that God speaks is life itself, because God is absolute Life. Henry thus says: The place where someone who comes from God hears the word of God, is the heart. In this place, the hearing of the Word is identical with the generation of the human. There, in the self-revelation of Life in its Word, the self-revelation is accomplished which makes the human being truly human. Hearing the word is thus consubstantial with human nature.17

To hear a word from God, therefore, is to be brought into life by God. From this it follows that the truth to which the scriptures refer as the word or address of God is not something found in the World at all, but only in the domain of life:

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The Scriptures say that we are the Sons [of God]. Relatively to their worldly word, this referent—the condition Son—is external to them. But this referent that is external is what we are as one of the living; this is the essence of the divine Word that begets us in each instant. By saying: “You are the Sons,” the Word of the Scriptures points away from itself and indicates the place where another word speaks.18

The scriptures are thus not themselves the words from God, but rather point to the word from God which is found in the domain of Life. And yet from Henry’s analysis it follows that scripture is only the address of God in exactly the same sense that could apply to his own writings: derivatively, by referring to the “word” of Life which is the engendering of each person in the absolute Life of God. Although the present work is clearly very sympathetic to Henry’s phenomenology in general, it would nevertheless seem that he does not provide a perfectly helpful answer to the question of how God addresses a person through scripture in any unique or special way. Sokolowski, Chrétien, and Henry can all be said to give “qualitative” answers to the phenomenological question of what it would mean to be addressed by God in scripture. They interpret the address of God as being speech of a certain quality. For Sokolowski, this is the immersive and intense experience of the Bible interpreted as God’s word. For Chrétien, this is the experience of scripture as revelatory of and inexplicably relevant to oneself. For Henry, this is the experience of being brought into life. In the end, this approach falls short because it does not say anything about the Bible which could not in principle be said about other truthful but merely human texts. Even so, this shortcoming can nevertheless be remedied by introducing a “quantitative” dimension into the analysis. To be addressed by God by means of a text is for a meaning or sense of the words on the page to suggest itself spontaneously in the consciousness of its reader. This meaning or sense would be of such a nature that it plainly cannot be attributed to the human author of the text itself, nor can its appearance be explained in terms of the normal habits and patterns of interpretation of the reader him- or herself. It rather would seem to come from a “third voice,” which makes itself heard within the phenomenological context of the act of reading by distinguishing what it says from what could have come from the authorial “voice” of the human as well as from the hermeneutical “voice” of the human reader. This voice thus uses one person’s words to address another person about something else altogether. Such an experience can be called “the phenomenon of the third voice.”19 The proposal is therefore that this phenomenon describes what it would be for one to be addressed by God through the text of scripture.

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Such an experience is well known among Christians. A famous example can be found in Augustine’s Confessions VIII.20 He recalls struggling against himself and his own passions over the prospect of adopting a life of clerical celibacy and full conversion to God in the church. In his desperation at his own inability to make a decision, he throws himself under a fig tree and cries. There he hears a child of indeterminate sex singing the now-famous song: tolle lege, tolle lege—pick it up, read it, pick it up, read it. Augustine comments: “I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon” (Confessions VIII, 12, 29). Upon doing so, he finds the following: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:13–14). Augustine recalls that this text imposed itself upon him as the word of God, speaking to him as though it knew of his situation and problem, providing a clear directive as to what he should do. He therefore straightaway takes up the challenge of a life in the church. This example from Augustine’s life illustrates the essential shape of the “phenomenon of the third voice.” To begin, what Augustine hears is not necessarily what Paul meant to say. The apostle did not have the North African theologian in mind when he wrote, neither was he proposing by those exhortations that any person should take up a life of total abstinence and ecclesiastical service. So also, Augustine was surely familiar with the passage in question and would have read it a number of times before. Even so, it is in reading it on this specific occasion that it comes to say something new to him in particular. He understands God to be addressing him by making use of these words of Paul’s in a sense that Paul could not himself have intended, nor Augustine anticipated. God therefore speaks by distinguishing his own voice from the source of his words and his own addressee in this precise way. A more contemporary example can also be found in Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His decision to return from America to Germany in 1939 was apparently preceded by multiple occurrences of such an experience. On one occasion, he read a text from the prophet Isaiah: “The one who believes does not flee” (Isa. 28:16). Bonhoeffer understood this text as condemning his departure from troubled Germany to America.21 A few days later, he found himself similarly compelled by the words of Paul addressed to Timothy: “Do thy diligence to come before winter” (2 Tim. 4:21). The “phenomenon of the third voice” is evident in these examples. Bonhoeffer is presented with a sense or meaning of the text which addresses him personally, telling him that he should return to Germany. Yet at the same time, it is not a sense that could be attributed to the human authors of these texts, who certainly did not have him in mind and did not know anything about him. Neither is it a sense that would arise by means of Bonhoeffer’s normal habits of interpretation. Indeed,

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the hermeneutical oddness of the situation is not lost on Bonhoeffer himself, as he comments in his journal: “‘Come before the winter’—it is not a misuse of the Scripture if I allow this to be said to me. If God gives me the grace for that.”22 What Bonhoeffer hears the text is saying is precisely that he should return to Germany as soon as possible. He thus understands God to be speaking to him by making use of Paul’s words in a sense that Paul himself could not have intended, nor Bonhoeffer anticipated on the basis of his normal habits of interpretation. God makes himself heard by becoming a “third voice” in the “conversation” taking place between reader and text. This is therefore the response given in the present chapter to the question of what it would mean for one to be addressed by God through some text. Such an address takes place by the phenomenon of the third voice. It occurs through the spontaneous suggestion of a sense or meaning of a text in the course of the act of reading, this sense being of such a nature that it cannot be attributed either to the “authorial voice” of the human author or to the “hermeneutical voice” of the human reader. It rather comes from a “third voice,” which makes itself heard by using one person’s words apart from their intended meaning in order to speak to a reader in an unexpected and indeed unexpectable way about something else altogether. Moreover, it is evidently an attested religious experience, which not only Augustine and Bonhoeffer but indeed many Christians have undergone, as John Goldingay mentions.23 Of course, from the fact that a person has undergone the phenomenon of the third voice, it does not follow thereby that God has actually spoken to him or her. But this concession amounts to no more than saying that someone who has seen something that looks like a duck may not have seen a duck. A thing can on occasion look like another thing which it is not. Even so, it is still possible to insist that the phenomenon of the third voice, as being explained here, describes what it would be like for one to be addressed by God through the text of scripture. It is also useful for understanding Origen’s proposal that the divine inspiration of scripture is connected to the “spiritual” or typological sense. God distinguishes his own voice to the one whom he addresses by making use of the words of another person to refer to something else altogether. But the interpretation of certain words in a sense beyond that intended by the author is precisely non-literal, and to use certain words “typically” or as “types” means using them in order to refer to something else by way of an image. This is how the typological interpretation of the Old Testament to refer to Jesus is precisely what makes it possible for God to speak through it in such a way that his voice is clearly heard. It is heard clearly precisely because it says something other than what the human author himself could have meant. At the same time, Origen is correct to emphasize that this divine sense could not be disclosed until Jesus himself had come into the world. One cannot tell

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what in the text counts as a type, nor in what sense is it a type, until the reality itself, of which it is a type, comes to appear on its own. Thus, only when Christ had come into the World could one appreciate that the things in the Old Testament were images of what he would accomplish in his life and in the church. One might explain this point by saying that a text can be a type only if put in relation to something outside of itself, and this relation of typology cannot be perceived in the absence of one of the relata. Thus, the appearance of the “spiritual” or typological sense does not owe merely to the words of the text, nor to the hermeneutical tendencies of the reader, but rather has an origin outside of these in the way Christ shows himself in the World. The typological sense is an instance of the sort of sense or meaning at stake in the phenomenon of the third voice. Much of the controversial use of the Old Testament by the New can be understood fruitfully through the lens of the phenomenon of the third voice. A first example can be found in the episode of the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus. The evangelist John records that “his disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’” (John 2:17; cf. Ps. 69:9). The veterotestamentary passage in question does not posit a messianic prophecy, neither does it seem theologically possible to apply the entirety of the psalm to Christ himself insofar as the psalmist admits that his sins are not unknown to God and that he does not deserve the treatment he is receiving from his enemies (Ps. 69:4–5). Even so, this particular portion of the psalm suggests itself in the consciousness of Jesus’s followers as he is performing the prophetic act. The evangelist writes that they “remembered that it was written” (John 2:17). Jesus was not himself reciting this passage as he went about his business of clearing the tables of the moneychangers, neither was it spoken by a public voice that the Judeans around them might also hear. It rather spontaneously came to the mind of his disciples as describing in some sense what was happening before them. It is therefore possible to propose that the disciples of Jesus had an experience of the phenomenon of the third voice during the episode of the cleansing of the Temple. It explains why they connect this action of his with that verse. Consider also the interpretation of the virginal conception and birth of Jesus as retold by the evangelist Matthew. He writes that “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive a bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’” (Matt. 1:22–23; cf. Isa. 7:14). Matthew likewise sees in the return of Jesus’s family from Egypt a similar “fulfillment” of an Old Testament passage: “When Israel was a child, I loved him; and out of Egypt I called my son” (Matt. 2:13–15; cf. Hos. 11:1). The evangelist’s use of these texts is notoriously controversial. As Craig Evans writes:

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Some commentators have suggested that the various components of the infancy narrative were produced through theological and typological interpretation of the scriptures of Israel. According to this line of thought, early Christian interpreters and apologists combed through the scriptures looking for clarification of the significance of the life, ministry, and death of Jesus. Various texts, or “prophecies,” were identified, which in turn created narratives. Understood this way, the infancy stories of the miraculous conception (Matt. 1:18–25), the birth in Bethlehem and the inquiry of the magi (Matt. 2:1–12), the flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:13–15), and the murder of the infants (Matt. 2:16–18) are not actual events of history but theological and midrashic creations.24

Evans himself rejects this interpretation and proposes a reversed ordering of events: “It is probably better to see the tradition of Mary’s unusual conception and the belief that it was of God’s Spirit as generating an appeal to scripture, not the Scripture generating the story of Mary’s immaculate conception [sic].”25 Evans’s proposal seems strong, and it can be made even stronger by supplementing it with an appeal to the attested religious experience of the phenomenon of the third voice. As a result of what the earliest Christians independently knew to have taken place in the life and personal history of Jesus, the Old Testament texts they would read would spontaneously take on new and unexpected meanings which referred to Christ himself. This meaning is of course beyond what the human author himself could have intended, which is why the meanings proposed by the Christian authors themselves seem so troublesome and “non-contextual” to contemporary commentators. Yet this Christocentric meaning did not arise for them simply because they were antecedently predisposed to reading the biblical texts in that way; it is rather that they underwent the experience of the phenomenon of the third voice, whether this took place as they followed Jesus from place to place or else during their practice of reading scripture after his resurrection and ascension. They consequently left a kind of testimony to this experience in the texts of the New Testament themselves. These reflections make it possible to answer the question of how to understand the New Testament’s claim that the Old Testament testifies to Jesus as Christ. The answer is found in the phenomenologically elucidated phenomenon of the third voice, the general idea of which is found in Origen’s notion of the “spiritual” or typological sense of Scripture. For God to address one by means of a text is for a meaning or sense of the text spontaneously to suggest itself in one’s consciousness as one reads, this sense being of such a nature as not to be attributable to the “voice” of the human author such as his intentions can be discerned, nor explicable with reference to the ordinary habits of reading and interpretation of the human reader. It is rather

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the address of a “third voice” which makes itself heard distinctly precisely by using one person’s words to say something unexpected and unexpectable to someone else. Christians throughout history have attested to the experience of being addressed by God in this manner, from Augustine of Hippo to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and beyond, and the New Testament’s use of the Old with reference to Jesus can be understood as having its origins in experiences of precisely this sort on the part of his disciples and earliest followers. More precisely, God testified to Jesus through the Old Testament text by making use of its words to suggest something to his disciples which the ancient authors themselves could not have meant, nor the disciples come up with on the basis of their own reading habits. One could say, then, that in this way the disciples’ experience of the phenomenon of the third voice is the “hinge” that unites the Old and New Testaments around the person of Jesus. §11 SALVATION AS REHARMONIZATION Jesus is put in connection with the concept of salvation from the very beginning of the New Testament. Joseph is told that Mary will bear a child by the Holy Spirit and is instructed to name him Jesus: “for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). David Turner comments that the Hebrew name Yehoshua or Yeshua was commonly understood to mean “Yahweh saves.”26 Mary likewise sings for joy upon being told that she will bear a child by the Holy Spirit: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46–47). Jesus is also described as “savior of the world” on two occasions in the Johannine literature: once by the Samaritans in the Gospel (John 4:42), and once in the first epistle (1 John 4:14). Jesus is also called the savior sent forth by God in various places (Luke 1:69, 2:11; Acts 5:31, 13:23; Eph. 5:23; Phil. 3:20; 2 Tim. 1:10; Tit. 1:4, 3:6; 2 Pet. 1:1, 2:20, 3:2). One could echo the words of Joseph Ratzinger in summarizing the sentiment as follows: from the designation of the name he is to be given, to his arrival in the world, to the impression that he leaves on others, to the summary of his work and person, Jesus is “sheer salvation.”27 Jesus is indeed salvation, as far as Christian theology is concerned, but it remains to be specified how and in what sense. It will be argued that Jesus accomplishes salvation by means of a “reharmonization” of the relationship between God and the human being. The human being and God are, of course, always in relation of some kind or other; all of human life is in some sense a being in relationship with God. But this relationship does not always function as God intends, and this is because the human being is not such as God wants. Jesus mediates between God and human beings in such a way as to bring about a reconciliation and reharmonization of these estranged parties.

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He saves people by effecting a change on the Inside. They become new persons in relation to themselves, to others, and to God. It would be well to begin by clarifying the nature of the relationship between God and human beings, specifically how it takes place and what makes it possible.28 The point can be summarized briefly by saying that the world of created things serves as the “medium” by which the “dialog” between God and human beings takes place. The narrative of the creation of the world in Genesis is especially helpful for illustrating this point when compared with the creation mythologies of other ancient near eastern societies and cultures. Genesis begins with these words: bereishit bara’ elohim eit hashamayim v’eit ha’aretz. The New Revised Standard Version proposes that this text can be translated in a few different ways, some of which imply a creation ex nihilo and others which do not. Jon Levenson argues that such an idea is not in fact present in the Genesis text.29 Yet it is also clear that the Hebrew Bible contains no story of the origin of God himself. Levenson writes that “the God of Israel has no myth of origin. Not a trace of theogony can be found in the Hebrew Bible.”30 All things are rather said to come from him and indeed to be subject to him. By way of contrast, the Enuma Elish or Epic of Creation presents Marduk creating the world from mangled body of Tiamat after a war of the gods.31 The conception of Genesis is far from this. God does not need to destroy an enemy in order to create; he simply speaks and things appear in obedience to his word. Levenson therefore comments that the “essence of the idea of creation in the Hebrew Bible” can be captured with the word “mastery”: “The creation narratives . . . are best seen as dramatic visualizations of the uncompromised mastery of YHWH, God of Israel, over all else.”32 The penultimate phase of the creation of the world according to the first chapter of Genesis is the creation of the human being. Here too there is a notable contrast between the Hebrew vision of reality and that of other ancient near eastern societies and cultures. The Babylonian Atrahasis myth tells of a labor crisis between two groups of deities: “When the gods instead of man did the work, bore the loads, the gods’ load was too great, the work was too hard, the trouble too much, the great Annunaki made the Igigi carry the workload sevenfold.”33 This toil of caring for the earth is too great, so that the Igigi rebel. They disrupt the Annunaki from their rest. The proposed solution to the problem was the creation of the human being: “Belet-ili the womb-goddess is present—Let her create primeval man so that he may bear the yoke . . . Let man bear the load of the gods!”34 Thus Ilawela, “who had intelligence,” was slaughtered and the human being was created from his flesh and blood mixed with clay.35 But against this conception of things, the Genesis account sees the human brought into being in conditions of peace and harmony. This happens once more through the omnipotent mastery of God’s

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speech: “Let us make humankind [adam] in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Gen. 1:26). There is no need for a slaughter or primordial violence, because God simply speaks and the human being comes into being. Genesis agrees with Atrahasis on one point, namely that the human being is created for the sake of caring for the earth and the things within it. But God does not create human beings only to leave them alone. There is rather a cryptic mention of “the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” (Gen. 3:8). One can wonder what it might be for God to be walking in the garden of Eden, but the theological significance of the image is clear enough, even apart from its metaphysical interpretation. The point is that God does not create the human beings in order to leave them to their task; he rather wishes to remain in their company. One could say that he wants that he be their God and they be his people (cf. Rev. 21:3). It is also worth noting that the nature of the work assigned to the human being is understood in a very different way in Genesis than in Atrahasis. Specifically, it is not said that human beings are brought about so that God might not need to work any longer. The work to which they are called is more dignified and valuable than that. This notion is encapsulated in the specification that the human being is created “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26–27). As J. Richard Middleton comments, the designation of the human being as created ad imaginem Dei means that humanity is dignified with a status and role vis-à-vis the nonhuman creation that is analogous to the status and role of kings in the ancient Near East vis-à-vis their subjects . . . As imago Dei, then, humanity in Genesis 1 is called to be the representative and intermediary of God’s power and blessing on earth.36

The role and purpose of the human being as imago Dei is therefore that of a mediator between God and the world of things. One could even say that human beings have something both of God and of the world in them. Adam is formed “from the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7), but he is also made “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:27), indeed is made to live when God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7). From the point of view of their calling to a certain form of life, human beings can therefore be understood to stand somehow between God and the created world. They are to rule over this world of things with the same benevolence and goodness by which God created them. Genesis thus sees the human being as the collaborator of God in the project of caring for created things.

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It is also possible to say that the world of things stands between God and the human being as the “medium” through which their interactions take place. This insight is especially well put by Dumitru Stăniloae in the first chapter of the first volume of his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology [Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă].37 Here Stăniloae proposes something like a natural theology from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. His argument has been discussed in some detail elsewhere,38 so that it will suffice for present purposes to summarize the ideas. Especially significant for Stăniloae is the “rationality” or intelligibility the cosmos. First, the intelligibility of the cosmos suggests that it is created by a transcendent intelligence who preserves it in being over time by knowing it.39 Second, the intelligibility of the cosmos, which is to say its adequacy to human understanding, is what makes it possible for human beings to learn its principles or causes and thus to make use of it for their purposes, indeed even to make a “home” out of it.40 Third, the intelligibility of the cosmos teaches the human being to find the object of the essentially human desire for something “infinite in being, in love, in beauty” by way of a “relation with an infinite absolute Person,” namely the creator of the intelligible cosmos itself.41 These are therefore ways in which the world of things brought about by God serves as the medium by which God proposes to establish a friendship with human beings. One could say that God reaches out to human beings and invites them to friendship with him by means of the intelligible cosmos. Both conceptions of things resonate nicely with the earlier phenomenological analyses (§§6, 8). There it was said that experience is a matter of God giving himself to be seen and felt by human beings. This takes place through the presentation of the World of objects to the living self by means of its perceptual-hermeneutical powers. The World as God’s body is the visible exterior image of his inner life. Just as human beings communicate with one another through the state of their body, either by means of the sounds they make or through body language, so also God means to communicate with human beings by what appears within the World. Yet the human being him- or herself is also one more thing that appears in the World as having been engendered in the absolute Life of God. And Michel Henry makes clear that Life, in the process commonly called “culture,” expresses itself in the World and seeks its own expansion and growth by making use of the things that appear there. As he says, “culture” is an action that life exerts on itself and through which it transforms itself insofar as life is both transforming and transformed. “Culture” refers to the self-transformation of life, the movement by which it continually changes itself in order to arrive at higher forms of realization and completeness, in order to grow.42

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In this way, from the point of view of the impulse of Life to expand itself and to grow by means of its use of the things that appear in the World, the human being is the collaborator of God. By cultivating themselves and all things together, human beings fulfill this calling from God to be his collaborators. At the same time, from the point of view of the human being’s passivity and receptivity with respect to his or her own living and experiencing, the fact of being brought into Life and presented with the World is an invitation to friendship with God who is absolute Life and whose body or visible exterior image of his inner life is the phenomenological World itself. It is possible to go further and even to suggest a third metaphor. Not only are human beings God’s collaborators and friends, but they are also his guests. After all, they would not be there if it were not for him, and as Genesis suggests and as evolutionary history confirms, human beings are brought onto the scene only after a place is prepared for them in the world. In addition to being God’s collaborators and friends, it is therefore also possible to think of human beings as his guests. Now, this relationship between God and the human being with the World in between them is the context within which the biblical narrative operates. Everything takes place between these three poles: human beings—World— God. One could even say that the Bible is itself the story of “God in search of man,” so to speak,43 this search taking place as much within Life as also through the World. What, then, about Jesus? For Christians, he is the one who “saves his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Sin is what disrupts the relationship between God and humans. It makes things “not the way they’re supposed to be,” as Cornelius Plantinga says.44 The disobedience of Adam and Eve to the commandment of God motivates their expulsion from God’s company in the Garden (Gen. 3:22–24). As God tells Cain while he contemplates murdering his brother: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7). So also, the prophet Samuel emphasizes that the one who sins and has no interest in living in God’s friendship is not accepted by him, even if he or she should bring sacrifices: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obedience to the voice of the Lord? Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15:22). Jesus consequently appears in the World as Savior by stepping in between God and human beings and mediating their reconciliation or reharmonization; the dissonance between them is thereby resolved into a harmony. In light of the metaphors proposed earlier for understanding the relationship between God and human beings, one could say that this reharmonization comes about because Jesus makes people into good collaborators, friends, and guests of God.

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How does Jesus accomplish this transformation? He does this in the most general sense by teaching human beings to love God and one another. That is why he says that the summary of the Law and the prophets is: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12). And he says elsewhere that the greatest commandments on which hang all the Law and the prophets are to love God with all one’s being and to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Matt. 22:34–40). Another way of putting the point is that it is impossible to be a good collaborator, friend, and guest of God if these things are not done. One who does not love God will not obey him or work with him, just as one who does not love others cannot be a good friend or guest of God himself, who loves these others and has brought them into Life in order to be good to them as well. The love of God and of neighbor is consequently the fundamental characterization of the sort of life into which Jesus seeks to lead others. Salvation at the personal level is accomplished when one is inwardly transformed so as to begin to live such a life, as Steven DeLay writes.45 The example of Zacchaeus provides a fine illustration of the understanding of salvation being proposed in the present work. He is described as the “chief tax collector” and “rich” (Luke 19:2). Because he is short of stature, he climbs into a tree in order to be able to see beyond the crowds to Jesus himself as he passes through Jericho (19:3–4). Jesus comes by the place, sees Zacchaeus, and calls him down from the tree, inviting himself to his home, which Zacchaeus welcomes gladly (19:5–6). Those who were witnesses to this exchange begin to grumble and complain that Jesus “has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner” (19:7). But Zacchaeus himself stands there and promises to Jesus that he will give half of his possessions to the poor and pay back fourfold those whom he had defrauded (19:8). At this point Jesus exclaims: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (19:9–10). There is a rich ambiguity in what Jesus tells Zacchaeus. On the one hand, one could say that “salvation has come to this house” in the sense that Jesus himself who is salvation is coming to stay with Zacchaeus. Note too how Jesus defines his mission as the seeking out and saving of the lost. On the other hand, one could also say that “salvation has come to this house” in the sense that Zacchaeus himself has learned and has begun to live as a good collaborator, friend, and guest of God. He makes use of what he has in order to take care of others who appear in the World; he obeys his commands and his teachings as revealed by Jesus; and he recognizes that the things he has are not his own to use as he pleases, but they rather belong to God and are given to him only as a gift. Indeed, it would not seem wrong to say that both senses are true. The arrival of salvation in the house of Zacchaeus is both a matter of

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the arrival of Jesus himself as well as of the reharmonization of Zacchaeus’s relationship with God in whose image he was made. There is also the following provocative passage. Jesus is teaching a crowd and his mother and brothers come to see him. When he is told that they are waiting for him, he responds: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? . . . Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:48–50). The persons who had been listening to Jesus are called his brothers, sisters, and mothers, yet they had not done anything spectacular beyond simply gathering to listen to what Jesus has to teach about God. One could say that they had turned their hearts toward God with an openness to be taught. Jesus’s remark thus suggests that such a turning is sufficient for becoming a member of Jesus’s family; it is the first moment of salvation. Salvation is therefore a matter of the reharmonization of God and the human being. It is accomplished when the human being changes interiorly in such a way as to live as a good collaborator, friend, and guest of God. Salvation is the condition of the human being living in harmony with God and so with others. Although this condition is made permanent in the resurrection, it is something first accomplished in this life through a change on the Inside of the human being through the generation of the right sort of attitude toward God. This attitude is typically called “faith.” It is a matter of love for God and a trust and commitment to him. Thus, as Zwingli writes: “When once there is faith in Him, then salvation is found.”46 If there is a reharmonization on the part of the human being, is there also a similar effort directed toward God himself? Must God’s heart be turned toward human beings in a condition of favor? This is a question of atonement theology. It is therefore worth addressing what a “theology of the manifest” would have to say about the problem of the atonement. The biblical notion is that God has a claim to make against human beings. They have sinned and deserve death (Rom. 6:23). The human being is a guest in God’s Life. God wants things to go well, but human beings sin and ruin his project. If a guest should not behave appropriately, there would seem to be nothing out of place in his or her being “removed” by the host. It does not really matter for present purposes whether this “removal” is a matter of annihilation, or of unending punishment, or whatever. The point is that there is no obligation to suffer rude guests unconditionally. Consequently, so long as a person has not turned from sin and been reconciled to God, they are said to be living under God’s “wrath” (cf. John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; Eph. 2:3). At the same time, God is not presently acting on the claim that he can make against human beings. Quite to the contrary, it seems rather that he is specifically working so as never to need to act upon it. As the apostle Paul says: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them,

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and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Cor. 5:19). Although he could rightly punish human beings, nevertheless God does not hold their sins against them but rather seeks reconciliation with human beings through Jesus. One could thus say that Jesus is God’s outstretched “right hand of fellowship” offered to sinners everywhere (cf. Gal. 2:9). Jesus is also described as “the atoning sacrifice . . . for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Paul says that God put Christ forth as a sacrifice of atonement, referring to his death (Rom. 3:23). The Book of Hebrews writes that Christ offered himself to God as a sacrifice for sin once for all (Heb. 9:28). First Timothy says that Jesus offered himself as a ransom for all (1 Tim. 2:4–6). It must be said that the precise theory of atonement does not matter very much. Insofar as God is the offended party, he can presumably determine for himself what would be acceptable as a basis for forgiving human sin; it is not as if there is an ultimate standard beyond him to which he must be subject. It therefore seems enough to say that Jesus “makes up” for all sin, as far as God is concerned, by dying on behalf of human beings; this is the significance God ascribes to the event of Jesus’s death. And as a result of what Jesus has done, the fact that a human being has committed sin can no longer be taken as an obstacle to his or her reconciliation with God. Zwingli explains the dialectic as follows: God enlightens us, so that we know ourselves. When this happens, we are driven to despair. We flee for refuge to His mercy, but justice frightens us. Here Eternal Wisdom finds a way by which to satisfy His justice—a thing wholly denied to ourselves—and at the same time to enable us, relying on His mercy, to enjoy Him. He sends His Son to satisfy His justice for us, and to be the indubitable pledge of salvation.47

And elsewhere: “Christ, then, is the certainty and pledge of the grace of God.”48 The atonement for the sins of the whole world is thus a fait accompli, and this is what makes it possible to have faith in God through Christ. As Zwingli says, “faith is directed to things that exist before you put faith in them.”49 God is not made favorable to a person because he or she has faith; rather, the favor of God precedes faith and is its basis. It therefore does not seem right to say that God himself must be reharmonized to the human being. It would be more appropriate to say that he makes the persistent effort to set aside every possible obstacle on the part of the human being to reconciliation with him. Although he has every right to do so, God does not hold the sins of human beings against them but instead sends Jesus into the World to call all people back to friendship with him. If they should not know how to live as God’s collaborators, friends, and guests, then Jesus can teach them. So also, Jesus as sent by God offers himself to God as

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a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the whole world. Thus, God himself arranges for the atonement of human sin by means of the self-offering of his own Son. The words of Catherine of Siena addressed to God therefore seem appropriate: “You, deep well of charity, it seems you are so madly in love with your creatures that you could not live without us!” (The Dialogue §25).50 Zwingli summarizes the idea by saying that “God is alike just and merciful, though with a leaning toward mercy.”51 Or as John writes: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). The summary of the story is therefore that God loves human beings and so does not need to be reconciled to them; he rather wants them to be reconciled to him. These reflections make it possible to speak more precisely about the work of Jesus as mediator between God and human beings (cf. 1 Tim. 2:4–6). By his teaching, healing, and pronouncements of forgiveness, he brings the things of God to human beings. As Peter told the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” so that “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). And because he takes the burden of humanity’s sins upon himself and makes atonement for them, one could also say that he offers the things of human beings to God. What God expects from human beings is a certain form of life, one characterized by love of God and of his creation. Although Jesus does not enter the world in conditions of peace and harmony as the first human beings did, he nevertheless succeeds where they failed because he fulfills the expectations of God. He “learns obedience” through what he suffers (cf. Heb. 5:8). Consequently, when Paul writes that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), it is possible to understand him as follows: Jesus succeeds in doing what Adam and Eve failed to do.52 He truly does reflect the goodness and love of God for the world. Therefore, following Thomas Torrance, one can say that precisely as savior Jesus mediates the relationship between God and human beings in both directions.53 Yet it is clear that the mediation of the things of God to human beings is primary. Jesus is himself God’s outstretched right hand of fellowship: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Jesus does mediate the things of human beings to God by making atonement for human sin, but he does this precisely as a gift from God to human beings, as a dimension of his bringing the things of God to human beings. Jesus’s address to God on behalf of human beings is but a dimension of what God does for human beings through Jesus. This discussion raises a further question. Jesus in the New Testament is everywhere connected with the notion of salvation. He mediates the relationship between God and human beings precisely as savior and is the visible

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image of God’s apparently singular concern to reconcile human beings to himself. But if all this is true, then will all persons be saved in the end? This topic seems to have been discussed to the point where nothing new or original remains to be said. The familiar biblical case for the universalist position has been argued by Thomas Talbott as well as by Robin Parry under the pen name Gregory MacDonald.54 Ilaria Ramelli argues that the belief in universal salvation represents a prominent and even majority opinion of important figures in various stages of church history, especially during the patristic era.55 Michael McClymond responds against this point with an alternative retelling of the history.56 David Bentley Hart has proposed a number of theological and philosophical arguments for the conclusion that all will be saved in the end. He draws as much from the moral implications of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo as also from considerations about the nature of human freedom.57 And R. Zachary Manis argues for a conception of hell according to which it is the torturous presence of God to those who have formed themselves in hatred of him.58 The discussion has been approached from seemingly every angle. What else is there to say? Consider the doctrine of the final judgment. From the point of view of the biblical presentation of things, Jesus is appointed by God to be the judge of the world. Peter tells the household of Cornelius: “He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). And Paul tells the Athenian philosophers: “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31). The way of escape from this future judgment is repentance, faith, and baptism in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 2:38). Once more, as Peter tells the household of Cornelius: “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). But the day of judgment will be a day of “wrath and fury” for those who “are self-seeking and who obey not the truth” (Rom. 2:8). Christians wait for Jesus’s return precisely to save them from the “coming wrath” (1 Thess. 1:10). On that day, their enemies and persecutors can only expect to suffer “the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9; cf. Matt. 25:46). As for Christians themselves, the will of God is that “all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6:40). It seems thus that God is singularly preoccupied with the salvation of human beings. He does not count their sins against them and even sends Jesus to make atonement for their sins on their behalf, so that nothing now stands in the way of their turning to God. Yet God has also appointed a day of judgment

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in which those who have accepted his outstretched right hand of fellowship in Jesus will be saved while those who have rejected it will be destroyed. It would therefore be most accurate to say the following. God desires the salvation of all people (1 Tim. 2:4), and he is now working through Jesus and offering to all the opportunity to be reconciled to him. But he has also determined some day in which a line is drawn and the opportunity for reconciliation apparently lost forever. Then God will no longer exercise the same patience with lazy and selfish collaborators, false friends, and unworthy guests; they will instead be cast into the “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12, 22:13, 25:30). Damnation therefore seems to be the expected future proposed for some categories of persons. Yet, as Jürgen Moltmann writes, Jesus is not only the one who judges human beings but also the one who died for them: “So at the Last Judgment we expect on the Judgment seat the One who was crucified for the reconciliation of the world, and no other judge.”59 Moreover, there are also instances in Scripture where it seems that God threatens to destroy people precisely so as to prevent the threat from ever being realized.60 In one instance, after the episode with the golden calf, the preannounced destruction is prevented through the intercession of Moses on behalf of sinners (Exod. 32:11–14). In another, the preannounced destruction is prevented through the repentance “against hope” of the people of Nineveh themselves (Jon. 3:6–10). God likewise tells the prophet Ezekiel that repentance will save a sinner, even if he or she is not given any indication that it will do so: “Again, though I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ yet if they turn from their sin and do what is lawful and right . . . they shall surely live, they shall not die” (Ezek. 33:14–15). So also, it seems obvious that Jesus relates how “On that day many will say to me” (Matt. 7:22) precisely so that no one who hears his words might later find him- or herself in that position. The prior announcement of the threat thus serves the purpose of dissolving the very conditions that would demand its realization. These considerations suggest that universal salvation may still be a possibility, even despite the clearest and most unambiguous threats of damnation. The position to be taken in the present work is therefore the following. Universal salvation is a theoretical possibility that coheres with the understanding of Jesus as “savior of the world” and “sheer salvation.” It is a legitimate object of hope, prayer, and pious desire. At the same time, it must be insisted that dogmatic confidence in this outcome is out of place. Human beings are supposed to be the collaborators of God in the world, and there would be nothing wrong if he were eventually to remove from this world those who persistently and unrepentantly impede the realization of what God means to accomplish in it. This world is God’s; it is not here for sinners to ruin and destroy forever. God wishes to enjoy the company of his guests

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and friends in peace, so that he consequently does not need to permit their enemies and his to persecute them and abuse them ad infinitum. One might even think that otherwise God would himself be a bad host and friend. The real possibility of damnation must also be firmly maintained, in addition to that of universal salvation. This is not necessarily to say that there is not already a fact of the matter about which outcome will obtain, but rather that no one apart from God is presently in a position to know with certainty which of these possibilities will in fact become a reality. What is most certain is only that Jesus is now God’s outstretched right hand of fellowship, that in Jesus God has set aside every possible obstacle to reconciliation with human beings, especially through the atonement for sin made by Jesus’s death, and that he now bids every person to accept his offer of friendship. §12 JESUS, THE FACE OF GOD One of the most important and controversial questions in Christian theology has to do with the identity of Jesus: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matt. 16:13). The right answer was given by Peter: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (16:16). Jesus is to be understood as the Son of God. Indeed, he always puts himself in relation to his Father (cf. John 10:36). But what more can be said about this? How exactly do Father and Son relate? The received answer in the catholic tradition is that the Son is consubstantial with the Father (homoousios tōi Patri). This is not the same as calling Jesus the “Son of God,” as Ratzinger appreciates.61 The angels (Job 38:7), the people of Israel (Exod. 4:22–23; Hos. 11:1), and the king of Israel (Ps. 2:7) are all called the sons of God in the Old Testament. The idea of consubstantiality is something beyond this. The idea of consubstantiality was the answer given at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and which eventually came to be taken for granted in the Christian world, although not right away and not without much controversy in the meantime, as the studies of R. P. C. Hanson, Lewis Ayres, and Khaled Anatolios have shown.62 It plainly was not the antecedently received opinion in very many places of the Christian world, as Vladimir Latinovic has argued.63 How else could “Arianism” have been so popular for so long in so many different places of the empire, given that Arius himself had little to no influence outside of Alexandria? For example, two western bishops named Palladius and Secundianus defended themselves against the charge of “Arianism” at the council of Aquileia in 381 CE by claiming that they did not know who Arius was, nor what he looked like, nor what he said.64 Likewise, there were significant parties of Christians who resisted the Nicene opinion for the reason that it made use of concepts (such

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as ousia) unfamiliar to the masses of Christians and lacking an explicit biblical basis.65 Hart thus writes: In Arius’s own time, it would have been absurd to regard him as a reactionary or a rebel . . . In point of fact, he was in many respects a profoundly and inflexibly conservative theologian, and . . . a much more faithful representative of the older and most respectable school of Trinitarian speculation than were the partisans of the eventual Nicene settlement.66

But even granting all these points, the consubstantiality of Father and Son did eventually come to be taken for granted as the essential to the “catholic faith.” This is expressed memorably in the Quicunque Vult or “Athanasian Creed.”67 This “creed” was not universally received, but it is certainly representative of the catholic mentality. There it is said to be “necessary to eternal salvation” (necessarium est ad aeternam salutem) to believe faithfully in “the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (incarnationem quoque Domini nostri Iesu Christi fideliter credat). Unless one maintains that Jesus is “equal to the Father with respect to divinity” (aequalis Patri secundum divinitatem) and many other related beliefs, one will not possibly be saved (salvus esse non poterit). Although it is now the received opinion in the catholic tradition, the notion that Jesus is consubstantial with the Father and thus equally God is not without its theoretical problems. It just happens that these problems are most often discussed in later theology as though they were puzzles or mysteries, rather than as providing positive reasons for rejecting the Nicene opinion. The discussions concern issues that are biblical, church-historical, theological, and philosophical in nature. The “fundamental problem,” as Richard Cross calls it, is that the doctrine appears contradictory.68 According to the inherited conception of God in this tradition, as John of Damascus says, God is “one principle, without beginning, uncreated, unbegotten, indestructible and immortal, eternal, unlimited, uncompounded, incorporeal, unchanging, unaffected, unchangeable, inalterate, invisible,” and so on (Exact Exposition I, 8). And yet all such things as are denied of God here are posited of Jesus in Scripture. He is born (Luke 2:7); he grows in wisdom, age, and favor from God and human beings alike (2:52); he is tempted and goes hungry (4:1–2); he is empowered by the Holy Spirit to perform miracles and teach (4:14–21); he is given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 11:27, 28:18); he suffers, even learning obedience and being made perfect through his suffering (Heb. 5:8); and he dies (1 Cor. 15:3). One might therefore argue that if the things predicated of Jesus cannot be predicated of God, then it would follow that Jesus is not consubstantial with God.

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The traditional Nicene answer to this line of argumentation is that all such things are predicated of Jesus only with respect to his humanity. Christ has two natures, in virtue of which apparently contradictory predications can be made of him, as Timothy Pawl argues.69 Thus, Gregory of Nazianzus summarizes the rule as follows: “You must predicate the more sublime expressions of the Godhead, of the nature which transcends bodily experiences, and the lowlier ones of the compound, of him who because of you was emptied, became incarnate and (to use equally valid language) was ‘made man’” (Oration 29, 18).70 R. B. Jamieson, following John Behr, calls this “partitive exegesis.”71 The Nicene side also insists that there are such “sublime” predications attributed to Jesus as to justify the conclusion of his consubstantiality with God. Gregory writes: He was begotten—yet he was already begotten—of a woman. Yet she was a virgin. That it was from a woman makes it human, that she was a virgin makes it divine. On earth he has no father, but in heaven no mother. All this is part of his Godhead. He was carried in the womb, but acknowledged by a prophet as yet unborn himself, who leaped for joy at the presence of the Word for whose sake he had been created . . . As man he was baptized, but he absolved sins as God; he needed no purifying rites himself—his purpose was to hallow water. As man he was put to the test, but as God he came through victorious—yes, bids us to be of good cheer, because he has conquered the world. He hungered—yet he fed thousands. He is indeed “living, heavenly bread.” He thirsted—yet he exclaimed: “Whosoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” He was tired— yet he is the “rest” of the weary and the burdened . . . He asks where Lazarus is laid—he was man; yet he raises Lazarus—he was God (Oration 29, 19–20).

The argument from the Nicene tradition is therefore as follows. Things are said of Jesus which are properly said only of God and not of human beings; things are also said of Jesus which are properly said only of human beings and not of God. He therefore has two natures. He is “equal to the Father in His divinity, but inferior to the Father in His humanity,” as the “Athanasian Creed” says. Certain things said of him bring to light the fact that he shares in the divine nature, while other things said of him prove that he also possesses a human nature. Many figures in contemporary biblical scholarship will put forward similar arguments to show that the belief in a “high” Christology belonged to Christian tradition from very early on. (Of course, whether this “high” Christology is also properly Nicene is another matter.) Chris Tilling argues that for the apostle Paul the way a person relates to Christ mirrors in various ways the way a person relates to God.72 Sigurd Grindheim studies the words and actions of Jesus in the Synoptic gospels and comes to the conclusion that “The Jesus who emerges then is a Jesus who said and did what only God

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could say and do.”73 Richard Bauckham argues that Jesus was “included” in the “divine identity” in the sense that things traditionally said of God were interpreted in such a way as to include Jesus.74 And Michael Bird, Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, Charles Hill, and Chris Tilling have together published a volume in which they argue, against Bart Ehrman, that the notion of Jesus as God in some sense belongs to the Christian testimony from the earliest stages.75 At the same time, it must be noted that it seems difficult to prove that Jesus must be consubstantial with the Father simply on the basis of the way the New Testament speaks about him. This is because what could be said of a Jesus with two natures could also be said of a human Jesus who is granted certain privileges by God. In other words, the argument for “high Christology” is invalid, at least as far as the conclusion of consubstantiality is concerned. Consider once more the distinction between the original and the derivative possession of a quality (§7). A thing possesses a quality originally if it possesses it in virtue of what it is whereas it possesses it derivatively if in virtue of something else. The Nicene party assumes that the predications suggesting Jesus’s divinity are made of him originally while the predications suggesting his humanity are made of him derivatively; he is divine simply in himself but human only in virtue of having contingently taken on humanity in the Incarnation. Yet it is also possible to reverse this order. The non-Nicene position could say that divine things are predicated of Jesus derivatively insofar as he is specially used by God for some purpose, whereas the human things are predicated of him originally since in himself he is human. It is an undeniable point in the catholic tradition that divine things can be predicated of human realities in a derivative way. For example, Roman Catholicism teaches that the church is both indefectible and infallible in certain senses, as Francis Sullivan writes.76 These properties clearly only belong to God in an original way, but they are also said of the church in a derivative way. These are not said of the church originally, since the church is not indefectible and infallible simply in virtue of what it is as a human society. They are rather predicated of the church in a derivative way insofar as it possesses these qualities through God’s grace. Scripture likewise is said to be both a human and a divine text. Its humanity is original to it in virtue of being a text; its divinity is derivative on God’s special activity of inspiration which is what makes it to be scripture. These examples illustrate how it is a part of the catholic tradition itself that non-divine things can possess divine qualities in a derivative way on the basis of God’s grace. There are also some scholars like J. R. Daniel Kirk who argue that the notion of an “idealized human being” is in fact an adequate category for understanding at least a significant part of the New Testament discourse about Jesus.77 Indeed, this argument can be justified on the basis of what was mentioned

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earlier. The calling of the human being as imago Dei is to be a mediator and representative of the goodness of God toward the world of created things. Jesus therefore is all the more an “idealized human being” the more he seems to resemble God. The more divine he seems, the more he is actually just a true human being. In the same way, Dale Tuggy has argued in some detail that the earliest evidence does not suggest that Jesus is consubstantial with God at all.78 There are also a number of formulations in the New Testament in which God is said to be the God of Jesus as much as of other human beings. This is often the way the New Testament texts themselves often speak about Jesus. Peter speaks on the Day of Pentecost about “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God” (Acts 2:22). And Paul says that “there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human” (1 Tim. 2:5). There is no mention of consubstantiality here but only of mediation between God and the rest of humankind, in whose number Jesus is explicitly included. Paul likewise often speaks of “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:6; 2 Cor. 1:3; Eph. 1:3). And Jesus tells Mary after his resurrection: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). These formulations and ways of speaking could imply that Jesus is not consubstantial with God. The dialectic can therefore be summarized as follows. Many things are said of Jesus which would seem properly to be said only of God, and there are also a number of things said about Jesus which would seem properly to be said only of human beings. There are two possible ways to account for these facts. One possibility is that Jesus possesses two natures. He is “equal to the Father in His divinity, but inferior to the Father in His humanity.” The divine predications are made of him originally, in virtue of his consubstantiality with the Father, and the human predications are made of him derivatively, in light of the Incarnation. The other possibility is that Jesus is a human being granted certain privileges by God who uses him in special ways. The divine predications are made of him derivatively, in virtue of God helping him and making use of him in various ways, whereas the human predications are made of him originally, since considered on his own he is simply a human being. One might wonder if there is any principled way to decide between these two possibilities. At least one line of argumentation suggests itself. It was said in the earlier chapter that the inner life of God is unknowable to human beings unless he reveals it (§§8–9). It is therefore significant that the New Testament authors consider Christ himself to be the one who reveals God’s inner life in a uniquely authoritative way. Jesus says: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). And John: “No one has ever seen God. It is God

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the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18). Jesus is thus put forth as a privileged revealer of God’s life. This is how he conceives of himself. He makes it possible for people to come to understand who God is, what he wants, what he expects, what he will do, what one can expect from him, and so on. He does not admit the possibility that another could correct him in any respect. As this work has argued (§§1–2) and as Torrance also points out, the knowledge of a thing must proceed from the disclosure of that thing itself.79 Only the thing itself can be the ground of the knowledge one has of it. Christians want to know what and who God is. Zwingli once more: “We wish to learn out of His own mouth what God is.”80 How then can Jesus make God known in a privileged or unique way? How can he presume this about himself? This would be very easy to understand if Jesus were consubstantial with the Father. He would be making God known in a privileged way by making himself known. He would be God disclosing himself just as one person reveals his or her own thoughts to another. But if Jesus were not himself God, then there would be no qualitative difference between his own knowledge of God and that of someone else. Jesus and everyone else would have in common the fact that they relate to God as to an other. This would seem to imply that another person could in principle know God better than Jesus himself does. Any one person’s knowledge of something outside of him- or herself can be corrected by that of another. Someone could in principle come along later to correct Jesus. And even Jesus’s own claim to teach about God with unique authority would be undermined. But admitting this possibility would seem obviously contrary to Christian sentiment toward Jesus. And it is certainly contrary to Jesus’s own self-conception. This would therefore imply that the fundamentally Christian attitude toward Jesus, the attitude that he himself inspires by his words, demands the affirmation that he is not other than God. Jesus himself insists that among his followers no one is to take the title of instructor: “for you have one instructor, the Messiah” (Matt. 23:10). And at the conclusion of the sermon on the mount, the crowds are astonished at Jesus because “he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:29). As Peter and John tell the council: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And Paul speaks of “Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). These texts suggest clearly enough that it is not a Christian way of thinking to suppose that someone else might provide better insight into God than Jesus himself. The faith has been delivered “once for all” to the saints by “our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 3–4). Jesus makes God known in a privileged and uniquely authoritative way. One might therefore think that Jesus himself

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must be consubstantial with the Father. The only way he could teach about God in that way is by not being other than God himself. What sense can be made of the consubstantiality of Father and Son in a “theology of the manifest”? Michel Henry appeals to the dual dynamic of Life itself. For him, Life is “an active essence, deploying itself with an invincible force, a source of power, the power of engendering that is immanent in anything that lives and unceasingly gives it life.”81 Life is a force that moves and produces and acts. At the same time, Life as the condition of living things is also a matter of experiencing oneself, as was made clear at length in the previous chapter (§8). Whatever is living experiences itself and feels itself. Therefore, this force that Life is “generates itself inasmuch as it propels itself into phenomenality in the form of a self-revelation.”82 As simultaneously an active force and a matter of experiencing oneself, Life’s active force brings about a Self that experiences itself as having been brought into Life. Henry thus understands that the absolute Life of God also naturally and necessary brings about a “First Living.”83 And it is on this basis that Henry finds a place for making sense of the consubstantiality of Father and Son: Thus, in its absolute self-generation, Life generates within itself He whose birth is the self-accomplishment of this Life—its self-accomplishment in the form of its self-revelation. The Father—if by this we understand the movement, which nothing precedes and of which nobody knows the name, by which Life is cast into itself in order to experience itself, this Father eternally engenders the Son within himself, if by the latter we understand the First Living in whose original and essential Ipseity the Father experiences himself.84

The Father is therefore the purely active force of self-engendering constitutive of absolute Life while the Son is the First Living Self necessarily and eternally engendered by this Father. They are distinct from one another and yet not separable—which is to say “consubstantial.” At the same time, Jesus himself admits ignorance of certain things. At the end of the Olivet discourse, he says: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matt. 24:36). The logical form of Jesus’s statement is very simple: “No one is F but x.” And any statement of this form can also be restated in other ways: “Only x is F and no one else,” “The F-making conditions in virtue of which x is F obtain in no other case,” and “In whatever sense x is F, nothing else is.” Thus, if no one is the wife of Steven but Rachel, then one can also say that Rachel is the wife of Steven and no one else, that the conditions in virtue of which a person is made Steven’s wife obtain in Rachels’ case and for no one else, and that in whatever sense Rachel is Steven’s wife, no one else is. But notice what follows for the interpretation of Jesus’s statement. If no one knows except the

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Father, then it is also true to say that only the Father knows and no one else, that the conditions in virtue of which the Father possesses knowledge obtain in no one else’s case, and that in whatever sense the Father knows, no one else does. Presumably the Father knows because he is by nature omniscient. As Pawl would say, he knows because he possesses a nature that knows.85 In that case, it would follow that Jesus does not possess that nature in virtue of which the Father is omniscient, so that he is not consubstantial with the Father. It is therefore not without reason that Hanson complains that the pro-Nicene interpretation of this verse was very strained.86 There are also these words from Jesus in the Gospel of John: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me. Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own” (John 7:16–17). If Jesus were consubstantial with God the Father, then there would be no difference between his teaching’s being from God and his speaking on his own. After all, he would be God himself. But Jesus formulates the problem in such a way that his teaching can either come from God or he be speaking on his own, but not both. By speaking in this way, Jesus would seem to rule out the possibility that he is consubstantial with the Father. As he says a little later in the same work, Jesus presents himself as “a human being who has told you the truth that I heard from God” (8:40). These verses provide a striking illustration of Thomas Gaston’s point: “The Gospel of John contains some of the most explicit subordinationist statements in the whole NT.”87 Thus, an argument can be made in favor of something like the Nicene position, but a case can also be made against it. It is true that both divine and human things are said of Jesus in the New Testament. It is also true that it is not initially obvious which category of qualities must be taken as belonging to him originally and which derivatively. An argument can be made that Jesus must be consubstantial with God if he is to be the privileged teacher of human beings about the inner life of God, such as Christian faith takes him to be. This is because all knowledge must ultimately proceed from the self-disclosure of the known thing itself. If Jesus were other than God, then his teaching might someday be improved upon or even replaced by the teaching of someone else. It would be contrary to the “Christocentric” nature of Christian faith to allow this in principle. The very way in which Christian faith accords privilege to Jesus as the teacher about God therefore arguably implies the belief that he is consubstantial with him. And Henry’s phenomenology of Life provides a model for understanding how Father and Son relate to each other, namely as Life to Self. At the same time, Jesus himself admits ignorance of something which only the Father knows, which implies that he cannot possess the same nature as the Father. Likewise, he elsewhere presents himself as a human being who is sharing a teaching that he received

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from God, rather than speaking on his own. This implies, once more, that he does not possess the same nature as the Father and thus is not God. People will naturally disagree on this point. The argumentation in favor of the Nicene perspective is admittedly tentative and not obviously correct. Detractors like Tuggy would also insist that the various problems of trinitarian theorizing do not go away even if one supposes there really to be a strong case for the consubstantiality of Father and Son.88 It therefore seems more important and beneficial to leave these differences behind and make note of a certain critical convergence between the Nicene and non-Nicene position regarding the relationship between Jesus and God. The difference between the Nicene and non-Nicene position can be summarized as follows. The Nicenes say that Jesus is consubstantial with God. The non-Nicenes say that he is uniquely privileged and used by God. These positions differ with respect to the ontological judgment regarding the relationship between Jesus and God. They differ in the matter of determining which predications are made of Jesus originally and which derivatively. But what both have in common is that they see God as inseparable from Jesus. One could even say that both see Jesus as the “face” of God for human beings in the World. Consider how one would typically look toward another’s face to get an indication of what the other is thinking or feeling or saying. The face is also the image by which one feels oneself to be seen by another. Both the Nicenes and the non-Nicenes can therefore agree that Jesus is the “face” of God in the World. This is to say that he is the one who reveals God’s inner life in a uniquely privileged way as the specially chosen mediator of the relationship between God and all other human beings. One therefore cannot go around the back of Jesus to get to God: “No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). God and Jesus are functionally inseparable from one another for Christian life, whatever the more precise nature of their ontological interrelations may be. The present work has provided an argument for the Nicene perspective that Jesus is consubstantial with God, but it also concedes to the non-Nicenes that this belief is far from obvious in Scripture and even that some things Jesus says are positively incompatible with it. Most importantly of all, the present work proposes that the belief in consubstantiality is not essential to Christian faith as such. What is in fact constitutive of Christian faith per se is not the consubstantiality of God and Jesus but rather the conviction of their inseparability for Christian life with God. Christian faith sees Jesus as the “face” of God for human beings. He is the uniquely privileged point of reference within the World for clearly mediating the relationship between God and human beings. This means that the embrace of Jesus is the embrace of God, just as the rejection of Jesus is the rejection of God. But insofar as this

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functional inseparability need not entail consubstantiality, one can therefore propose this as a formula of unity bringing together Nicene and non-Nicene Christians: Jesus as the “face” of God to human beings. One might even suppose that this formula seems closer to the actual express concerns of the New Testament writers than the ontological question of whether Jesus is consubstantial with the Father. This is because Christian faith is not ontological speculation for them. It is about living in fellowship with the Father and his Son and with each other (1 John 1:3). As Zwingli says, Jesus came “to bring back the human heart to God.”89 The Christian faith is about salvation; it is about being made into proper collaborators, friends, and guests of God together by Jesus, and this conception of things can include both Nicene and non-Nicene perspectives. NOTES 1. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 62. 2. G. K. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012). 3. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament, 1. 4. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament, 2. 5. Beale, Handbook on the New Testament, 7–8. 6. Origen, On First Principles, 2 vols., trans. John Behr (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). See also Steven Nemes, “On Aspects of a Proto-Phenomenology of Scripture in Origen,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 60, no. 4 (2018): 499–517. 7. Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 338; cf. James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as it was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 15–19; John Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 128ff. 8. Adam Y. Wells, ed., Phenomenologies of Scripture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). 9. Robert Sokolowski, “God’s Word and Human Speech,” 20–43, in Wells, ed., Phenomenologies of Scripture; Jean-Louis Chrétien, Under the Gaze of the Bible, trans. John Marson Dunaway (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015); Henry, Words of Christ. 10. Sokolowski, “God’s Word and Human Speech,” 21. 11. Sokolowski, “God’s Word and Human Speech,” 26. 12. Chrétien, Under the Gaze of the Bible, 8. 13. Chrétien, Under the Gaze of the Bible, 9. 14. Chrétien, Under the Gaze of the Bible, 13–17. 15. Chrétien, Under the Gaze of the Bible, 17.

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16. Henry, Words of Christ, 119. 17. Henry, Words of Christ, 116–17. 18. Michel Henry, “Speech and Religion: The Word of God,” 263, in Janicaud et al., Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn.” 19. Nemes, “On Aspects of a Proto-Phenomenology.” 20. Augustine, Confessions, in Augustine: Confessions and Enchiridion, ed. and trans. Albert Cook Outler (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995). 21. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theological Education Underground: 1937–1940, ed. Dirk Schulz and Victoria J. Barnett, trans. Claudia D. Bergmann et al., vol. 15, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 230–31. See also Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906–1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance, trans. Isabel Best (New York: T&T Clark, 2012), 227–28. 22. Bonhoeffer, Theological Education Underground, 232. See also Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, ed. Victoria J. Barnett, trans. Betty Ross, Frank Clarke, and William Glen-Doepel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 655–56. Thanks are owed to Joe McGarry for these references. 23. See, for example, John Goldingay, “Hearing God Speak from the First Testament,” 67–69, in Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders, eds., The Voice of God in the Text of Scripture: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016). 24. Craig A. Evans, Matthew (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 63. 25. Evans, Matthew, 63. 26. David L. Turner, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 67. 27. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 2nd ed., trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 205. 28. See Nemes, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 9–12; “Christian apokatastasis: Two Paradigmatic Objections,” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016): 66–86; “Self, World, and God in Michel Henry and Dumitru Stăniloae,” Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion 4, no. 2 (2022): 105–32. 29. Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 5. 30. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 5. 31. Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 254–55. 32. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 3. 33. Dalley, Myths of Mesopotamia, 9. 34. Dalley, Myths of Mesopotamia, 14. 35. Dalley, Myths of Mesopotamia, 15–16. 36. J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005), 121. 37. Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, vol. 1 (București: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune Ortodoxă, 2010). Translations are my own.

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38. See Nemes, “Self, World, and God”; “The Intelligibility of the Cosmos and the Existence of God in Dumitru Stăniloae’s Orthodox Dogmatic Theology,” International Journal of Orthodox Theology 10, no. 1 (2019): 178–90. 39. Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, 10. 40. Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, 11. 41. Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, 14. 42. Michel Henry, Barbarism, trans. Scott Davidson (New York: Continuum, 2012), 5. 43. Cf. Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Harper & Row, 1955). 44. See Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996). 45. DeLay, Phenomenology in France, 225–26. 46. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 123. 47. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 123. 48. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 100. 49. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 251. 50. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, trans. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). 51. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 100. 52. This point is perhaps not contrary but rather supplementary to the interpretation with reference to divine Wisdom proposed by James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 87–90 and Charles H. Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 187. 53. Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 73. 54. Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene: Cascade, 2014); Gregory MacDonald (Robin A. Parry), The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Eugene: Cascade, 2012). 55. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Boston: Brill, 2013). See also Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich (Eugene: Cascade, 2019); and Robin Parry and Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century (Eugene: Cascade, 2019). 56. Michael James McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020). 57. David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). 58. R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 59. Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1996), 250.

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60. See Steven Nemes, “Praying Confidently for the Salvation of All,” Heythrop Journal 61, no. 2 (2020): 285–96. 61. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 160ff. 62. See R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005); Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011). 63. Vladimir Latinovic, “Arius Conservativus? The Question of Arius’ Theological Belonging,” in Markus Vinzent, ed., Studia Patristica, vol. 95 (Bristol: Peeters, 2017), 27–43. See also David Bentley Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022), 112–19. 64. Latinovic, “Arius Conservativus?,” 33. 65. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 158. 66. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 113. 67. Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes, vol. II: The Greek and Latin Creeds, with Translations (Harper & Brothers, 1877), 66ff. 68. Richard Cross, “The Incarnation,” 453, in Thomas P. Flint and Michael Rea, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, 452–75 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 69. See Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) for a contemporary elucidation and defense of this claim. 70. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002). 71. R. B. Jamieson, The Paradox of Sonship: Christology in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021), 31–36; John Behr, The Formation of Christian Theology, vol. 2: The Nicene Faith, part 1 (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 210, 213. 72. Chris Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). 73. Sigurd Grindheim, God’s Equal: What can we Know about Jesus’ Self-Understanding in the Synoptic Gospels? (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 220. 74. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 75. Michael F. Bird, Craig A. Evans, Simon J. Gathercole, Charles E. Hill, and Chris Tilling, How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature—A Response to Bart Ehrman (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014). See also Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperCollins, 2014). 76. Francis A. Sullivan, Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Church (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1983).

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77. J. R. Daniel Kirk, A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016). 78. Dale Tuggy, “On Bauckham’s Bargain,” Theology Today 70, no. 2 (2013): 128–43. See also Dale Tuggy and Christopher M. Date, Is Jesus Human and Not Divine?: A Debate (Apollo: Areopagus Books, 2020). 79. Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (New York: T&T Clark, 1997), 52. 80. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 62. 81. Henry, I Am the Truth, 54. 82. Henry, I Am the Truth, 56. 83. Henry, I Am the Truth, 57. 84. Henry, I Am the Truth, 57. 85. Pawl, Defense of Conciliar Christology, 155–59. 86. Hanson, Search for the Christan Doctrine of God, 107, 454, 496. 87. Thomas E. Gaston, “Does the Gospel of John Have a High Christology?” Horizons in Biblical Theology 36, no. 2 (2014): 133. 88. Dale Tuggy, “The Unfinished Business of Trinitarian Theorizing,” Religious Studies 39, no. 2 (2003): 165–83. 89. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 126.

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Chapter 5

The Church

The church is commonly defined as the congregatio fidelium or community of believers. This definition is acceptable in a certain sense and will be taken for granted here. Yet there are also a number of questions that arise about the nature of this community called the church. The tendency of the catholic tradition is to understand the church in light of the dualism of the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm. It is thought of as a society both human and divine, possessing qualities from either of these distinct and accidentally correlated spheres of reality. But this dualism is problematic, as has already been argued and as will be argued further in what follows. The problems of the “logic of the inaccessible” appear in this discussion as well, at times with greater violence and trouble than elsewhere. It will therefore be necessary to propose a doctrine of the church for the “theology of the manifest” that avoids these problems. The argument of the present chapter is therefore as follows. (§13) The objective being of the church consists in the fact of its election. Attempts to define the church in other ways, whether in terms of its doctrine or institutional structure and history, entail a fall into the “logic of the inaccessible” and ultimately fail. One must say that what makes the church to be the church is that Jesus claims some number of persons as his own. But this claiming takes place through his death, and he died for all persons. All persons are therefore strictly and objectively a part of the church as ekklēsia, as those “called out” of a life of sin to reconciliation with God. (§14) Despite the fact that everyone is in the church as ekklēsia, it is still possible to distinguish Christian from non-Christian. This introduces a second sense of the church as congregatio fidelium or community of believers. Christians are those who respond to the Gospel by believing. At the same time, it is possible to distinguish between belief-that and belief-in. What makes one a Christian is that one believes-in Jesus in the sense committing to him and entrusting oneself and one’s life to him. Christian belief is not 113

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first and foremost a matter of believing this or that particular proposition but rather of relating to God through Jesus in a certain way in oneself. (§15) Finally, the relationship between scripture and ecclesial tradition as sources and authorities for theology must also be clarified. These exist in a relationship of mutual or reciprocal priority. Ecclesial tradition is formally and phenomenologically prior to scripture, whereas scripture retains material and theological priority over every tradition of the later church. §13 ELECTION AND THE CHURCH The question of the definition of the church is pressing because the church is so tightly connected with salvation in the Christian mind. Cyprian of Carthage summarized the sentiment very pithily: “He cannot have God as a father who does not have the Church as a mother” (The Unity of the Catholic Church 6).1 There is no salvation apart from Jesus (Acts 4:12), while the church is itself the “household of God” built upon the foundation of Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets (Eph. 2:19–22). Anyone who has a concern for salvation therefore also has an interest in understanding the definition of the church. And yet it is not easy to come to an agreeable definition of the church. The situation of Christianity in the modern day is one of persistent and deep-seated disagreement on a number of different ideas and doctrines, this disagreement including the question of the nature of the church itself. Very many persons claim to be followers of Jesus and thus members of his church without agreeing on what constitutes the church as such, and they even disagree with one another as to whether they can all be said to be a part of the church of Jesus in the first place. There is consequently a danger here of falling into the “logic of the inaccessible.” Every party involved in this dispute is motivated to come up with some understanding of the church that will include it, yet the persistent disagreement regarding the nature of the church and the impossibility of proposing a conception which satisfies the preoccupations and concerns of every party might motivate a person to conclude that the nature of the church itself is something inaccessible. This leads one to expect to see some figures proposing manifest “signals” by which the inaccessible reality of the church can be identified within the World. But the “logic of the inaccessible” comes with the instability of the signal and argumentation by non sequitur and petitio principii, and this is in fact what happens. For example, John Calvin identified the following “marks” by which the visible church can be recognized: “Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists” (Institutes of

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the Christian Religion IV, 1, 9).2 The problem with this conception is that it blends the manifest and non-manifest spheres together in a problematic way. Preaching and administration of sacraments are manifest phenomena, since one can easily tell where these things are happening. One could simply ask persons in some community whether they take themselves to be doing this or not. Yet it is not easy to tell whether the Word of God is preached and heard “purely,” nor whether the sacraments are administered “according to Christ’s institution.” Christians of differing convictions persistently disagree with each other about these things, so that one community’s purity of doctrine and practice is another community’s heresy. It thus would seem that the “logic of the inaccessible” is to be found here. Suppose one disagrees with others about the nature and borders of the church. How can one justify the pretense that one’s preferred ecclesial community as opposed to another satisfies this definition of the church? One may either appeal to qualities possessed only by one’s own community and not by the other, or else one may appeal to qualities that could otherwise be possessed by both communities together. To take the former option is to commit a petitio principii, since one would be justifying the conclusion that this ecclesial body is the church and not the other with reference to the former’s own ecclesiology. But to take the latter option is to fall into a non sequitur, since both purported ecclesial communities could in principle possess one and the same quality. The fact of the possession of that quality by one therefore would not justify the inference that only that one of them is truly the church. There is an important lesson to be learned here. What makes the church to be the church is nothing subsisting in it per se. The church is only church in relation to Jesus, namely because it is a community of persons claimed by Jesus as his own.3 The doctrine of election is the basis of the doctrine of the church. Jacques Courvoisier explains: “The church is based on God’s promises to man. It follows from this that it is also grounded in God’s election.”4 Consider how a woman may have any number of qualities, yet she is not a certain man’s wife unless he chooses to marry her. Or consider how one person may very much admire another, yet the former is no more than a fan of the latter unless the latter also chooses the former as a friend. These examples illustrate how what makes the church to be the church is that Jesus himself claims some group of persons as his own. There is a biblical argument to be made for this conception of things. The apostles determined the situation of the Gentiles vis-à-vis the church through appeal to election. The Gentiles received the Holy Spirit when the Gospel was preached to them, even apart from becoming Jews and taking up the Law of Moses (Acts 10). The fact that they were accepted by God in this way is what motivated their acceptance into the church on the part of the apostles

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through baptism. As Peter says: “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11:17). Luke Timothy Johnson emphasizes the fact that the apostles were trying to do nothing here but follow the lead of God.5 But there is equal evidence of the reception of the Holy Spirit among Christians who disagree about any number of doctrines thought to be important and “non-negotiable.” It would therefore seem apostolic to reason that the church includes all of them as well, since God has accepted them and chosen them. The being of the church is consequently its election. This point will be developed in greater detail later. The necessity of accepting this conception of the church must for now be further motivated by a consideration of another way the church has been defined in the catholic tradition, namely as an institution with a certain history. Once more, it will be possible to discern the “logic of the inaccessible” at several stages of the argument. Calvin defined the church in terms of the pure preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the sacraments. His notion of the church can be called a “doctrinal” one insofar as the church is defined with reference to what it teaches and believes. But defining the church in this way only serves to raise the further question as to how one can discern proper from improper preaching of the Word and administration of the sacraments. It is common in the Reformed tradition to assert the related notions of the sufficiency and clarity of Scripture in response to this question. One example can be found in the Westminster Confession of Faith.6 It says: “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (I, 6). But it also acknowledges that “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all” (I, 7). Yet even conceding this it insists that “those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them” (I, 7). And a similar position is taken in the Thirty-Nine Articles, which teaches that “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite to salvation” (art. 6). This is a reasonable and plausible approach to take, because Christian faith and theology have founded themselves upon scripture from the earliest days. Jesus explains to the disciples traveling to Emmaus why the Messiah had to die and rise again: “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27). Origen

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of Alexandria also would conclude a discussion of the Incarnation of Christ by saying: If there is anyone who is able to discover something better and to confirm what he says by clearer statements from the holy Scriptures, let those accounts be received rather than mine (On First Principles II, 6, 7).

Augustine would write in a letter to Fortunatianus: Still, we are not obliged to regard the arguments of any writers, however Catholic and estimable they may be, as we do the canonical Scriptures, so that we may not—with all due respect to the deference owed them as men—refute or reject anything we happen to find in their writings wherein their opinions differ from the established truth, or from what has been thought out by others or by us, with divine help (Letter 148).7

And Cyril of Jerusalem: For in regard to the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not even a casual statement should be delivered without the Scriptures, and we must not be drawn aside merely by probabilities and artificial arguments . . . For this saving faith of ours depends not on ingenious reasonings but on proof from the inspired Scriptures (Catechetical Lectures IV, 17).8

The lesson is therefore clear: Christian faith and theology have always had some foundational connection with the texts designated as scriptures. Even so, people who claim to be Christians nevertheless disagree about the interpretation of scripture, and these disagreements do not only pertain to topics of secondary or tertiary importance. Self-proclaimed Christians of equally impressive moral and spiritual qualities and walks of life also disagree with respect to things thought to be essential to the faith. This is why Vincent of Lérins proposed a rule outside of scripture itself for distinguishing truth and error: “because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters” (Commonitorium §5). It was noted earlier that Vincent’s rule made appeal to figures within the ecclesial hierarchy. These are the “holy ancestors and fathers” and “all or at least almost all priests and doctors” (§6). It would therefore be worthwhile further to investigate the supposition of such “institutional” signals of the presence of the church. This vision is more or less what is found in Roman Catholicism and its notion of “apostolic succession.” The Second Vatican Council affirmed that the bishops in the church are understood to be the successors of the apostles

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of Jesus, “shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world” (Lumen Gentium 18).9 And just as Peter was purportedly specially privileged among the apostles with the care of the church and the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:19), so also the bishop of Rome is the “successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the visible Head of the whole Church” (LG 18). The inseparability of Jesus from his apostles translates into the inseparability of the church from the bishops as their successors: “Therefore, the Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who reject them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ” (LG 20). In the same way, “In the bishops . . . Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme High Priest, is present in the midst of those who believe” (LG 21). Critical to this notion of apostolic succession is a particular understanding of the sacramentality of the episcopate. The apostles were enabled to perform their duties in caring for the church “with a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, and they passed on this spiritual gift to their helpers by the imposition of hands,” and so this gift is “transmitted down to us in Episcopal consecration” (LG 21). Therefore, “by means of the imposition of hands and the words of consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is so conferred, and the sacred character is so impressed, that bishops in an eminent and visible way sustain the roles of Christ Himself as Teacher, Shepherd, and High Priest, and that they act in His person” (LG 21). And because it is a matter of a special gift being passed on, “it pertains to the bishops to admit newly elected members into the Episcopal body by means of the sacrament of Orders” (LG 21). Otherwise phrased, bishops are made bishops by other bishops. A special consequence of the sacramental understanding of the episcopate is the conviction that the bishop “offers or causes to be offered” the Eucharist, so that “Every legitimate celebration of the Eucharist is regulated by the bishop, to whom is committed the office of offering the worship of Christian religion to the Divine Majesty and of administering it in accordance with the Lord’s commandments and the Church’s laws” (LG 26). There is no valid Eucharist without a duly consecrated bishop in communion with the church. This special gifting by the Holy Spirit through the consecration to the episcopate translates into the possibility that the bishops of the church sometimes exercise their authority in an infallible way. Individual ordinary bishops “do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility,” and yet “they nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed throughout the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically [i.e., ‘authoritatively’] teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held” (LG 25). The only individual bishop who enjoys the

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prerogative of infallibility is the “the Roman Pontiff, the head of the college of bishops,” who exercises this power “when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, . . . by a definitive act . . . proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals” (LG 25). At the same time, the total body of bishops can teach infallibly “when, gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church, whose definitions must be adhered to with the submission of faith” (LG 25). What can be said? A “logic of the inaccessible” is found here, just as with Calvin. To begin, it is a non sequitur to argue from the authority of a person or community of persons who propose an opinion to the truth of that opinion. Speech and being are distinct spheres, and what makes an opinion true is only the thing itself to which the opinion refers. Because the hierarchs of the church do not speak about themselves but about other things that appear in the World, it is a non sequitur to point to them and their position in order to determine the truth of their opinions. They could all agree with one another, saying the same thing, and yet be wrong. It is also both a non sequitur and a petitio principii to argue, as Avery Cardinal Dulles does, that apart from such an institutional system the saving truths could not be reliably passed down from generation to generation.10 This is a non sequitur because God could have ensured the preservation of the saving truth by making this truth something simple and easily understood; the saving truth could thus have enduring power of itself. But it is also a petitio principii insofar as Dulles’s argument seems to assume that the saving truth must be a precise and complicated system of ontological speculations as in the Roman Catholic teaching to which he subscribes. Yet salvation is not a matter of ontological speculations but of God and the human being living in peace as collaborators and friends; salvation is not a matter of believing certain things about what does not even appear in the Outside, but rather of being oneself changed on the Inside; the domain of salvation is Life. More will be said on this below. It suffices for now to point out that this “institutional” conception of the church is no less subject to the “logic of the inaccessible” and the problems of the instability of the signal than Calvin’s own “doctrinal” conception. At the same time, the “logic of the inaccessible” now operates here with much greater intensity because of the gravity of the things being discussed. The definitive teachings of this catholic tradition are not such as to be easily demonstrated from scripture. The persistence of theological disagreement among Christians from the earliest days is sufficient testimony to this fact. And yet the catholic tradition considers assent to certain very specific, well-defined, and highly contentious doctrinal statements to be essential for salvation. The Quicunque Vult provides an example of this with its exposition of the “catholic faith” to be believed for the sake of salvation as a series of statements about the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as

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well as about the two natures of Christ. Thus, not only are the hierarchs of the institutional church by which such doctrinal statements have come down themselves proposed as signals of the truth, the bishop of Rome being most prominent, but they are even said to be endowed with a certain “charism of infallibility” (cf. LG 25) proportionate to the gravity of the failure to believe what they teach. The bishops must be thought to be infallible because what they teach is simultaneously necessary for salvation and not easily gained apart from them. Thomas Aquinas even argues that it is within the rights of the church to seek the punishment and death of heretics insofar as heresy “corrupts the faith which quickens the soul” (ST II-II, q. 11, art. 3). There is indeed a circle here. Whether it be the doctrines of the Incarnation and Trinity, or the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary, the teachings of these bishops are not easily proven. Ludwig Ott even comments with respect to the promulgation of the Immaculate Conception on the basis of a questionable interpretation of Gen. 3:15 in Ineffabilis Deus that what is infallible in ecclesial statements is “only . . . the dogma as such and not the reasons given as leading up to the dogma.”11 And yet these persons are convinced that these doctrines are necessary for salvation. Everyone who understands them and still disagrees with them therefore must be thought outside of the faith altogether precisely because these doctrines constitute this particular tradition’s conception of the faith itself. And in order to inspire the right sort of commitment to these doctrines, these bishops consequently claim for themselves a gift of infallibility and threaten hellfire for the rejection of their teachings. Most significant of all is the bishop of Rome. The Catechism of St. Pius X gives an example of this mentality when it says (Q59): “God has granted the Pope the gift of infallibility in order that we all may be sure and certain of the truths which the Church teaches.”12 It is hard to be rid of the sense that a play for ecclesial power has been made, indeed that the development of theology in history has followed a path set not by the things themselves but rather by the personal interests of churchmen. This is because there was no notion of episcopal infallibility in the earliest days of the church. Suppose then that later bishops claim this privilege for themselves. This would seem to be because by doing so they can enforce their preferred theological opinions simply on the basis of their position within the ecclesial hierarchy, which is highly objectionable. This point can be argued as follows. The notion of “apostolic succession” in the earliest sources does not resemble that of Roman Catholicism. There is no notion that a bishop may only be made such by another bishop, nor that bishops possess any special gifting of the Holy Spirit to teach in the place of Christ, nor that the presence of a bishop so consecrated is absolutely required for the valid celebration of the Eucharist, nor that bishops ever teach

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infallibly in virtue of a special exercise of their office. But these claims are made about the episcopate in Roman Catholicism in such a way that there is now no going back on them without changing the dogma of the church in a fundamental way. It is therefore both illegitimate and suspect for later bishops to claim these privileges for themselves in the irrevocable and irreversible manner they do. First Clement addresses the removal of certain bishops from their position in the Corinthian churches.13 It teaches that the apostles, “preaching both in the country and in the towns, . . . appointed their first fruits, when they had tested them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons for the future believers” (42:4). They did this knowing that “there would be strife over the bishop’s office” (44:1). For this reason, also, they “afterwards . . . gave the offices a permanent character; that is, if [the newly appointed bishops and deacons] should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry” (44:2). Thus, as far as 1 Clement is concerned, the bishops and the deacons are “successors to the apostles” only in the sense that they continue the work of leading and serving the individual congregations with which the apostles once worked. The necessity of such a succession is practical in nature; there should be a bishop and deacons in the churches because this way the unity of the congregation can be preserved more effectively. But there is no mention that bishops may only be consecrated by other bishops, rather than (say) being elected and appointed to this position by “eminent men” together with the congregation of believers itself (cf. 44:2–3). Neither is there any argument in 1 Clement that the churches in Corinth have invalid and ineffectual sacraments now that the duly consecrated bishops have been deposed. If the later understanding of the bishop were present in this early stage of the history of the church, one would expect to find such arguments here of all places, especially since the hypothetical invalidation of the sacrament would be proof enough that the Corinthians had done wrong. Neither would the Corinthians themselves have deposed bishops from their position and installed themselves as such if everyone knew that no one can be a bishop except by being made such by another bishop. Yet Clement does not raise any such issue with their act, despite the fact that his arguments would have been far stronger for mentioning it. All this suggests that the understanding of the bishop in 1 Clement is very different from what Roman Catholic theology later came to teach. Something similar can be said about other early sources. The Didache contains no notion that the proper celebration of the Eucharist must be administered by a bishop consecrated as such by an apostle or by some other bishop. To the contrary, it contains instructions that the congregations “appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men who are humble and not avaricious and true and approved” (15:1). These persons will “carry out for you the ministry of the prophets and teachers,” so that the congregations

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need not rely on itinerant apostles and prophets whose trustworthiness may at times be in question (11:1–13:7). That such a command must be made implies that these congregations did not already have any bishops or deacons of their own, even despite the fact that they would celebrate the Eucharist. And precisely because in the earliest days it could not be taken for granted that there would be other churches nearby, every congregation of Christians had to be self-sufficient and capable of taking care of itself. Moreover, far from the charism of the episcopate making a person capable of the task of caring for the congregation, the Didache maintains that only persons antecedently worthy of the position are to be appointed. This also follows the pattern established in the New Testament (1 Tim. 3:1–13; Tit. 1:5–9). The same can be also said for Irenaeus in Against Heresies.14 It is especially significant that the first mention of the bishops as the appointed successors to the “place of government” of the apostles simultaneously admits the possibility of episcopal error. Irenaeus writes that the apostles chose their successors carefully because “if they discharged their functions honestly, [they] would be a great boon [to the Church], but if they should fall away, the direst calamity” (Against Heresies III, 3, 1). But if the bishops can fall away, if the episcopate should only be granted to an antecedently trustworthy person, then there is nothing about the position of bishop as such that implies a special gifting. It is also worth noting that “bishops” and “presbyters” are the same persons for Irenaeus. The episcopate is the position occupied by a presbyter.15 One evidence in favor of this proposal is that Irenaeus speaks of certain presbyters who are “believed to be presbyters by many, but serve their own lusts, . . . and are puffed up with the pride of holding the chief seat” (IV, 26, 3). He would not describe the position of the presbyter as “the chief seat” if the position of bishop were higher. Irenaeus also says before this that “it is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles” (IV, 26, 2). But he would be offering a needlessly weak argument if the bishop were the higher position; he should have said instead that it is incumbent to obey the bishops. Thus, his phrasing makes more sense if the position of bishop is the one occupied by a presbyter. Consider then how Irenaeus says just after this that the presbyters “together with the succession of the episcopate [cum successione episcopatus], have received the certain gift of truth [charisma veritatis certum]” (IV, 26, 2). Since the episcopate is the office occupied by the presbyter, the “succession of the episcopate” should be interpreted as something like an objective genitive. It is a succession to the episcopate. Some, like Dulles and J. N. D. Kelly, have proposed that this “certain gift of truth” (charisma veritatis certum) is a special charism of infallibility which makes the bishops or presbyters especially suited to make judgments about doctrine.16 But this reading contradicts

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or at least is significantly undermined by Irenaeus’s earlier admission that bishops can fall into heresy. What is more, Irenaeus also grants that there are presbyters (i.e., bishops) who should not be followed because they live in sin and do not hold to the doctrine of the apostles (IV, 26, 4). There is therefore no notion in Irenaeus that the office of the episcopate implies a special gifting by the Holy Spirit which makes a bishop a worthy object of obedience simply as such. The “certain gift of truth” to which Irenaeus refers should rather be understood as the apostolic teaching which was left in the churches. He insists that anyone who reads the Scriptures “with attention . . . will find in them an account of Christ” (IV, 26, 1). Jesus is the “treasure hidden in the field” of Scripture, which one can find if one knows where to look. He taught his disciples “after the resurrection” how to interpret the Scriptures according to his own person and work. This is therefore the “certain gift of truth,” namely the Christocentric hermeneutic of the disciples of Jesus. As Irenaeus says earlier: “It is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life” (III, 4, 1). And later: “True knowledge is [that which consists in] the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world” (IV, 33, 8). The certain gift of truth thus has nothing to do with a special gifting of the Holy Spirit applying the position of bishop. The appeal to “apostolic succession” in these early figures would therefore seem entirely different from the Roman Catholic conception. There is no argument from a sacramental charism belonging to the office of the episcopate as such; there is only an argument that certain teachings are far more likely to be apostolic because they are propagated in churches the leadership of which can be traced back to an apostle (III, 3, 1). It also goes without mentioning that this is not an argument that can be made in the present day, some two thousand years later. When Irenaeus lists the bishops of the church at Rome (III, 3, 3), he never makes mention of the fact that this person was consecrated by someone else. He only says that first this person was bishop, then another, then another, and so on to his day. He even would have had opportunity to do so, since he notes that Telephorus was “gloriously martyred.” There could have been a break in the “consecrational” chain at that point, and yet Irenaeus does not address this point at all. It is only important for him that it is possible to name all the bishops of this church going back a hundred years to Peter and Paul and that these persons “neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about” (III, 3, 1). This is proof enough for him that the doctrine of the heretics cannot be genuinely apostolic.

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Tertullian does something similar in Prescription against the Heretics.17 He writes that, although the churches being founded in his day may not be able to trace their founding back to an apostle or an apostolic man, yet “since they agree in the same faith they are none the less accounted Apostolical by virtue of close kinship in doctrine” (Prescription 32). If “apostolic succession” were for Tertullian a matter of being sacramentally included into a special class of ecclesial leaders by which the unity of the church is founded, this would have been the place to make such an argument. If the discernment of truly apostolic doctrine had anything to do with the special gifting of the Holy Spirit belonging to the office of the episcopate, an office that can only be passed down by persons already occupying it all the way from the apostles, this would have been the time to mention it. And yet Tertullian does not. He even gives a precisely contradictory line of reasoning: For the Son of God alone was it reserved to continue without fault. What then if a bishop, or a deacon, or a widow, or a virgin, or a doctor, or even a confessor shall have lapsed from the Rule of Faith; are heresies on that account to be regarded as maintaining the Truth? Do we test the Creed by persons or persons by the Creed? No one save a Christian is wise, faithful and high in honour; but no one is a Christian save he who shall have endured to the end (Prescription 3).

Only the Son of God is preserved from falling; any person of any standing, whether a bishop or something else, can fall, and the belief is not judged by the person but rather the person by the belief. Thus, Tertullian does not believe that there is any special charism of infallibility passed on to the bishops. Why do Irenaeus and Tertullian not argue from the consecration of bishops by means of other bishops in their defense of apostolic succesion? There are two possibilities. On the one hand, perhaps it was not a universal practice in their day. It seems not to have been such in the days of 1 Clement and the Didache. On the other hand, even if it were a (near) universal practice, the fact that one is consecrated a bishop by another bishop may have been theologically insignificant to them. It was nothing more than a common practice without a robust theological meaning. But either possibility means that there is nothing about the office of bishop as such that makes a person an authoritative judge in matters of theology; there is no special charism. The idea of apostolic succession in these earliest sources is therefore not what is proposed by later Roman Catholic theology. Going further, one can also argue that the Roman Catholic notion of apostolic succession is contrary to scripture. Consider that Jesus taught against the introduction of hierarchies in the community of his followers toward the beginning of a blistering critique of the Pharisees:

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You are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah (Matt. 23:8–10).

The point is not that a person cannot use certain words or take a certain title, but rather that no one apart from Jesus can teach in a definitive manner in the community of the church.18 Every follower of the Messiah is equal: each one can be corrected by another in principle. Robert Gundry comments that the disciples are in a position of “equality of subjection to Jesus’ didactic authority.”19 Jesus thinks of himself as the only one who can teach infallibly about God: “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). There would consequently be no room for a privileged class of doctrinal expositors and teachers in a community where all are brothers whose sole instructor is the Messiah. And the fact that there is no notion of such a privileged class of teachers with the possibility of teaching infallibly in the earliest postapostolic sources only serves to confirm the point. By way of summary: The “doctrinal” conception of the church proposed by John Calvin only raises the question of how to discern proper and improper teaching and practice. The further “institutional” conception of the church accepted in Roman Catholic theology introduces “apostolic succession” and the notion of a sacramental office of bishop as yet further signals by which the discernment of doctrine can be made. But the Roman Catholic doctrine of the episcopacy includes the pretense to infallibility, which was not there from the beginning. First Clement, the Didache, Irenaeus, and Tertullian do not teach that bishops could only be made such by other bishops, nor that they are specially gifted by the Holy Spirit to be uniquely authoritative in matters of doctrine, nor that they ever can be taken as exercising their authority infallibly. Not only does such a conception of the church pull theology further and further into the “logic of the inaccessible,” forcing it to posit more and more “signals” of inaccessible, indeed not only does such a notion of things seem contrary to Jesus’s egalitarian conception of his followers as equal students of a single teacher, but when later authorities claim for themselves further privileges and rights than the earlier occupants of their seat, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they do so out of a desire to consolidate their power over others. Instead of the adequacy of their opinions to the things themselves serving as the basis for their pretense to authority and being willing to admit defeat if this situation should not materialize, i.e., instead of truth, they point to their position in the hierarchy. This is a non sequitur and a petitio principii. It is a non sequitur because what makes an opinion about a thing true stricto sensu is the thing itself to which it refers, not any quality about the person whose

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opinion it is, and it is a petitio principii because these bishops are only worthy of the position they occupy to the extent that their opinions are independently correct. Therefore, both the “doctrinal” and the “institutional” conceptions of the church should be rejected. But what then is the church? The catholic tradition is correct to understand the church in relation to Jesus. It is his bride (cf. John 3:29; Rev. 19:7), his people, his ekklēsia or “assembly” that was obtained with the price of his own blood (Acts 20:28). But what makes the church to be the church cannot be some quality belonging to it considered by itself. By itself it is just a group of people. If Jesus does not claim any people as his own, then there is no church but only a collection of “Jesus fan clubs” scattered throughout the world. What makes the church to be the church is rather its election by Jesus. And yet Jesus died for all human beings (1 John 2:2). He is the mediator between God and all of humankind (1 Tim. 2:4–6). He made atonement for the sins of the whole world and set aside every possible barrier to reconciliation with God. Indeed, God’s purpose is precisely to bring about a unity that includes all of reality, the center-point of which is Jesus himself (Eph. 1:10).20 Therefore, in a strictly “objective” sense, everyone belongs to the church as ekklēsia or “those called out” because Jesus claims all people as his own. Everyone is “called out” of a life of sin to friendship with God and his Son (1 John 1:3). Only by defining the church with respect to its election can the “logic of the inaccessible” be avoided. Insofar as Jesus makes this claim on all human beings, all must be considered to be in the church as ekklēsia. §14 BELIEF-THAT AND BELIEF-IN The previous section argued that the doctrine of the church must be understood in light of the doctrine of election which applies to everyone. One benefit of this conception of things is that it undoes the salvation-anxiety which can sometimes afflict Christians with differing understandings of the nature of the church. Everyone is in the church, objectively speaking, regardless of the differences in doctrine and practice among them. There is no reason for Christians to worry about who is and who is not in the church. At the same time, there would still be the question of what distinguishes a Christian from a non-Christian. Everyone is a part of the church in the sense of ekklēsia because Jesus makes a claim on all people. But what makes a Christian different from a non-Christian? The answer to this question would seem to be belief. The church is traditionally understood as the congregatio fidelium: the community of believers. A distinction can thus be made between church as ekklēsia and church as congregatio fidelium. The church as ekklēsia

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is objectively defined in terms of election, whereas the church of Christians as congregatio fidelium includes those persons who respond to the claim that Jesus makes on them by believing. Yet this only serves to raise the further question of the nature of that belief that makes a person to be a Christian. There are two senses of belief.21 On the one hand, there is what may be called “belief-that.” The object of this sort of belief is a proposition, a statement about what is the case. A person may believe-that God exists or that Jesus was raised from the dead, and so on. On the other hand, there is also what may be called “belief-in.” The object of this sort of belief is not a proposition but rather a person or community of persons. It is a matter of entrusting oneself and one’s life to another. Children believe-in their parents, patients believe-in their doctors, and soldiers on the battlefield believe-in one another. Thus, by way of summary, belief-that is therefore a way of relating intellectually to a proposition, whereas belief-in is a way of relating volitionally to another person. Belief-that and belief-in cannot be totally separated. Presumably no one can believe-in another without at least believing-that this other means to do good and has his or her best intentions in mind. Yet there are different sorts of beliefs-that, and not all are obviously relevant to belief-in. Belief-in another is connected to the belief-that this other will bring about good in one’s life, so that one expects one’s life to be good in the future as a result of this other whom one believes-in. Friends believe-in one another because they believe-that they can expect good things from one another. At the same time, belief-in does not obviously require beliefs-that about purely “metaphysical” matters which make no difference in the way the World appears. Thus, children do not have particularly robust conceptions of the metaphysics of human beings, yet they are nevertheless perfectly capable of believing-in their parents. Philosophers may disagree with one another about the ontological constitution of human beings, e.g., they may be materialists, or dualists, or idealists, or altogether agnostic on the matter, but this does not stop them from believing-in one another, in friends, in doctors, and so on. One can therefore say that belief-in requires the belief-that the World will show itself a certain way and one’s life will be of a certain quality in the future as a result of the person one believes-in, but it does not require a belief-that pertaining to something that does not make any difference to the appearance of the World or to one’s life at all. Belief-that and belief-in are thus distinct, so that one can ask which conception of belief is involved in the definition of Christians as fideles or believers. The catholic tradition plainly privileges belief-that. It understands Christian belief to consist in certain well-defined beliefs-that concerning the ontological constitution of God and Jesus. This is obvious in the Quicunque Vult or “Athanasian Creed,” which says that whosoever will be saved must

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before all else hold to the “catholic faith” (ante omnia opus est ut teneat catholicam fidem). This “catholic faith” is then elaborated as a series of statements about the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as well as about the two natures of Jesus. Anyone who will have failed to hold this faith “faithfully and firmly” will not possibly be saved (quam nisi quisque fideliter firmiterque crediderit, salvus esse non poterit). By way of contrast, the “theology of the manifest” insists instead on defining Christian belief first and foremost as belief-in Jesus. To be in the church as ekklēsia is to be claimed by Jesus as his own. The Gospel is the message that Jesus has died for the sins of all people and calls everyone to friendship with him and his Father. To be a Christian in the church as congregatio fidelium is consequently to respond to the preaching of this Gospel by committing to Jesus and entrusting oneself and one’s life entirely to him. Karl Barth defines it well: “Faith is the orientation of man on Jesus Christ. It is faith in Him. The man who believes looks to Him, holds to Him, and depends on Him.”22 So also, Huldrych Zwingli defines “religion” or “piety” effectively in terms of “clinging to God . . . with an unshaken trust in Him . . . and with filial dependence to call upon Him as a father.”23 And elsewhere: “The faithful are distinguished from the unfaithful by this mark: the faithful depend upon [God], cling to Him alone, resort to Him alone, draw from Him alone.”24 The “theology of the manifest” consequently follows these figures by proposing that Christian belief is sooner a matter of believing-in Jesus. It is an orientation of the heart toward Jesus the person. Believing-in does mean believing-that the World will show itself in a certain way as a result of the person one believes-in. Thus, one expects as a Christian that Jesus whom one believes-in will save one from judgment and death. Christian belief-in Jesus is simultaneously an orientation toward the future, as David Bentley Hart emphasizes.25 At the same time, it is also possible to believe-in Jesus without having very specific beliefs-that with respect to things that do not appear in the World, e.g., that he is ontologically constituted in this or that way. It thus follows that the consubstantiality of Jesus and God, even if true, is nevertheless not essential to Christian belief as such. It is an idea that has to do with purported dimensions of being that make no difference to the appearance of things in the World. The “theology of the manifest” is therefore not principally concerned with them. Furthermore, one can argue that belief-in should be prioritized, as in the “theology of the manifest,” rather than belief-that, as in the catholic tradition. Suppose one makes belief-that a condition of being Christian. The truth is that all beliefs-that pertaining to things that appear in the World are radically fallible and subject to revision in principle. One therefore cannot be sure that one is a Christian, nor that one is saved, because one cannot be sure

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that one believes-that correctly. But this puts one in a situation of persistent salvation-anxiety, and this salvation-anxiety can lead to the loss of belief or even to violence against others who believe-that differently. The only way out of this predicament, short of abandoning the Christian religion altogether, is therefore to privilege belief-in. What makes one to be a Christian is that one believes-in Jesus, i.e., one commits to him and entrusts oneself and one’s life over to him. A person who does this is a Christian, whatever else he or she might happen to believe.26 The critical premise of this argument is that beliefs-that about things in the World are always radically fallible and subject to revision in principle. This point can be argued on phenomenological grounds as follows. First, the appearance of things that appear in the World is always multiply interpretable. Irrespective of what presents itself in experience as an object, one is always in the position of choosing between two possible interpretations. One can say: “This is an X,” or one can say: “This is something else that only presently resembles an X.” Thus, a person in a crowd may be a friend, or it may be someone else who happens to look like one’s friend. It does sometimes happen that one’s first interpretation of a thing from an initial experience is later disconfirmed by a later experience. The person who first seemed to be a friend later appears in conditions of greater clarity to be someone else, just as what first looked like a snake is later seen to be a coiled rope. Yet even after repeated experiences, one is still in the position of choosing between two possible interpretations: “This is an X” or “This is something else that until now has persistently seemed to be an X.” The multiple interpretability of one appearance thus becomes the multiple interpretability of a series of appearances. The one who now seems to be a stranger may in fact be a friend whose appearance has changed, and the seeming coiled rope may in fact be a snake that only strongly resembles a rope in all the conditions in which one has seen it until now. Because one cannot experience a thing in every possible circumstance so as to get a complete grasp of its possible ways of appearing, it is not possible definitively to confirm one’s interpretation that it is in fact an X. Therefore, any belief-that founded upon particular appearances or a limited series of appearances is always fallible and subject to revision in principle. Second, one does not have direct access to the things that appear in the World but only such access as one is afforded by how one is constituted. It was argued earlier (§6) that every experience of things in the World is simultaneously an experience of oneself. Things look the way they do because their appearance is both made possible and affected by the powers of perception and interpretation by which they are made accessible. Thus, a cat looks the way it does not only because of what it is but also because of one’s sense of sight and way of thinking about things, just as a sentence has its particular meaning not only because of the sentence itself but also because of one’s

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prior habits of interpretation and preconceptions about the possible meanings of words. Experience therefore does not make it possible definitively to say about a thing that appears in the world: “It is an X,” but only: “This thing appears to me such as I am now to be an X.” But to speak about a thing thus—namely, by putting it in relation to oneself—is to admit that the thing can in fact be otherwise; it is to admit the possibility that one’s belief-that about a thing may be mistaken. And because it is impossible to step outside oneself to determine whether one’s grasp of a thing in experience is adequate to the thing itself apart from all experience, this limiting condition cannot be escaped. Therefore, every belief-that founded upon an appearance of a thing in the World to oneself is fallible and subject to revision in principle. It is obvious that everything affirmed by the catholic tradition as essential to the faith is founded ultimately upon an appearance in the World. This can be understood as the appearances of Jesus himself, or else of the testimony to these appearances as contained in the words of the New Testament. There is no avoiding appearance and the World. But because appearance in the World takes place in such conditions as to exclude the possibility of the infallibility of one’s belief-that, it follows that the catholic tradition’s beliefs-that are all fallible and subject to revision in principle. Yet to make such beliefs-that a condition of being a Christian and consequently of salvation is to invite constant salvation-anxiety. One can never be sure that one is a Christian, nor that one is saved, because one can never be sure that one believes-that correctly. This is an uncomfortable situation, in which it is not possible to remain forever. One might therefore in sectarian fashion become more confident in one’s opinions than is actually appropriate, or else one might give up the faith altogether. All this motivates against prioritizing belief-that. The argument can also be made that this salvation-anxiety may even externalize itself as violence toward “heretics.”27 This “violence” can mean not only the corporal harming and killing of theological dissidents that took place in catholic history, but also the odium theologicum and bigotry encountered among believers. Such sentiments arguably arise because the fallibility of belief-that is inconvenient. It is easier to believe things and to take the truth of one’s convictions for granted when everyone around one also agrees with them. The presence of persistent disagreement and opposing points of views can trouble one’s inner equilibrium by bringing to light the actual uncertainty of one’s convictions. The justification traditionally given for acting violently against “heretics” is of course that their ideas lead to damnation, as Thomas argues (ST II-II, q. 11, art. 3). They should be liable to punishment just as murderers and thieves might be. G. R. Evans writes: “As long as it was assumed that there was only one way to heaven, and that a narrow road, the Church’s leaders could not rest while some of the flock were straying from that road and leading others to follow them.”28 But belief-that is fallible. No

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one has such access to the things themselves as to be sure that the “heretics” are wrong, and it might seem especially absurd to justify violence against “heretics” over disagreements about things that do not appear in the World at all, such as the consubstantiality of Father and Son or the interpretation of the metaphysics of the Eucharist. What is more, it is also possible to interpret the situation in such a way as to undermine the pretense to infallibility implicit in the argument for violence against heretics. Perhaps the “orthodox” party becomes violent precisely because the “heretics” unsettle its firmly held convictions about things that cannot be proven to everyone’s satisfaction insofar as they do not appear in the World. Rather than taking seriously its own fallibility and behaving differently, the “orthodox” party instead seeks to destroy those upholding opposing viewpoints in order to restore its own inner peace. Belief-that therefore must be subordinated to belief-in for the sake of avoiding salvation-anxiety as well as the possible violence it fosters. What makes a person to be a Christian is not that he or she believes-that in some way or other, but rather that he or she believes-in Jesus. Beliefs-that may all be wrong, but any person can know whether he or she has this belief-in. As Zwingli writes: “Christian faith is a thing that is felt in the soul of the believer, like health in the body.”29 And elsewhere: “A man, therefore, feels faith within, in his heart; for it is only when a man begins to despair of himself, and to see he must trust in God alone.”30 Zwingli thus defines Christian faith as belief-in God through Jesus and emphasizes that it is not the sort of thing of which a person might be unaware. Just as one who loves knows that he or she loves, so also one who believes-in knows that he or she believes-in. Belief-in therefore does not raise the problem of persistent salvation-anxiety. One can even make the further argument that the radical fallibility of belief-that makes belief-in all the more important. No one can attain to infallible belief-that. One must therefore ultimately set all beliefs-that to the side and believe-in Jesus despite them. Otherwise put, salvation and being a Christian means depending on the grace of Jesus (cf. Acts 15:11). Zwingli emphasizes that the process of coming to salvation begins with a despair at oneself: “God enlightens us, so that we know ourselves. When this happens, we are driven to despair.”31 Here he is specifically referring to despair at one’s sins, but there is also cause for despair over one’s powerlessness to know. Just as one cannot point to any particular moral or spiritual qualities one might possess in order to demand salvation from Jesus, neither can one point to any particular beliefs-that one happens to hold in order to ease one’s conscience and convince oneself that one is a Christian. As Thomas Torrance would write about the relation between faith and grace in the Scottish Reformed tradition: “The stress here is upon the objectivity of grace, not upon faith itself, for in faith we look to Christ and away from ourselves and our own believing . . . It is Christ who holds on to us and saves us even when our faith is so weak.”32

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Thus, as far as the “theology of the manifest” is concerned, one is free to hold whatever beliefs-that one considers to be right. What makes one to be a Christian at the end of the day is that one believes-in Jesus in spite of oneself and one’s own preferred beliefs-that. The inevitable fallibility of the human condition demands this attitude. This prioritization of belief-in might raise a number of questions. It seems to include categories of persons who previously might not have been thought by catholics to be Christians, for example Marcionites, unitarians, or say a Vedāntin who venerates Jesus as the definitive avatar of Vishnu. But this is only a problem to the person committed to thinking of Christian belief as very specific beliefs-that. This preoccupation with beliefs-that has already been excluded as leading inevitably to salvation-anxiety. One’s beliefs-that are generally founded on the way things seem, but the way things seem to one is as much a result of the way one is as of the way everything else is. The way a tree looks is a result of what it is, but also of the way everything else around it is: whether there is much or little sunlight, whether it is a rainy season or drought, whether animals live in it or not, whether a fire has broken out in that area. Yet the tree grows toward the sun all the same, since that is what it is to be a tree. So also, a person may have any number of false or confused beliefs-that for any number of reasons, and these reasons can be discussed and debated. Even so, what makes one to be a Christian is that one believes-in Jesus; one commits to him and entrusts one’s life to him; one “grows toward the Son,” so to speak.33 And there is no obvious reason why a person like this should not be considered a Christian even if he or she is confused or wrong about very many other things. The privileging of belief-in Jesus also makes it possible to distinguish Christians from persons who merely respect Jesus. It is not all the same to think that Jesus is an authoritative moral figure or even prophet of God, and to believe-in him in a Christian sense. A Christian commits to Jesus, in the sense that one entrusts oneself and one’s life to him in an exclusive way. Being a Christian means believing-in God precisely by believing-in Jesus. Christian belief means not seeing God apart from Jesus. A Christian is one who can truthfully say, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism: “I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”34 Or as Zwingli says: “True piety demands, therefore, that one should hang upon the lips of the Lord and not hear or accept the word of any but the bridegroom.”35 And he elsewhere calls the Christian person a “soldier of Christ.”36 A soldier shows exclusive loyalty to only one leader. It is consequently one thing to believe-that Jesus is this or that sort of good person and another thing to believe-in him in this exclusive sense. It is adopting the latter sort of attitude toward Jesus that makes a person to be a Christian, whatever else one might believe about him.

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This conception of the church as congregatio fidelium also accords better with the way the apostles reasoned about the boundaries of the church. Once more, consider how they allowed the Gentiles into the church because they had received the Holy Spirit (Acts 10). These Gentiles did not need to take up the Law which even the Jews themselves could not keep perfectly. Peter even says: “On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (Acts 15:11). The evident reception of the Holy Spirit is what marked them out as accepted of God: “God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us” (Acts 15:8–9). But the Holy Spirit creates in people a devotion and commitment to Jesus. Jesus himself says that the Spirit will glorify him (John 16:14). It is also obvious in the present day that such a belief-in Jesus as the Holy Spirit creates in people is found among persons of diverse beliefs-that. It would therefore seem to be consonant with the logic of the apostles to suppose that belief-in Jesus is more important for understanding the church as congregatio fidelium than belief-that. The church is a community akin to an army or band whose principle of unity is personal loyalty and commitment to a leader, and one might consider this the hard-learned lesson after two millennia of persistent Christian theological antagonism and division. §15 SCRIPTURE AND ECCLESIAL TRADITION Christian belief is primarily belief-in Jesus. Yet it is still true that belief-that is also a concern for Christians, specifically when they are engaged in the task of theology. The final question to be asked here therefore has to do with the relationship between scripture and ecclesial tradition as sources and authorities for Christian theology. This is a point of contention between Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox Christians. What remains to be clarified is what a “theology of the manifest” can contribute to this discussion.37 The emphasis among Protestants tends to lie on the priority of scripture over every tradition of the church. Kevin Vanhoozer says that traditions relate to scripture the way that performances of a play relate to the script.38 Just as some performances may be closer to or further from the intention of the playwright, so also some receptions of the revelation of scripture may be truer to their source than others. Similarly, John Peckham argues that scripture alone is canonical in the sense that it alone is specially commissioned by God to serve as the guide for the community of the church.39 To propose additional canonical entities, such as the tradition of the church or some such, does

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not actually help with the interpretation of scripture but only complicates it by introducing further multiply interpretable elements. In general, then, the Protestant emphasis lies on the priority of scripture over every tradition of the church. The emphasis among Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox tends to lie on the priority of the tradition of the church over scripture. Such authors will emphasize the way in which scripture is an aspect or dimension of tradition. John Breck argues that scripture arose from within the context of the church and its tradition, so that it must be read in that light if it is to be understood properly.40 John Anthony McGuckin says that the Bible is “constitutively within sacred tradition, not apart from it.”41 This basic insight is also shared by Georges Florovsky and Edith Humphrey.42 And Gerald O’Collins writes: “The Bible nowhere declares its autonomy, as if it had supplanted tradition, the very force that brought it into existence.”43 He argues elsewhere that “understood either as the active process (actus tradendi) or as the object handed on (the traditum), tradition [traditio] includes Scripture rather than simply standing alongside it.”44 These perspectives therefore place the emphasis on a certain sense of the priority of ecclesial tradition to scripture. It can be admitted that both of these perspectives have something of the truth, but they are also critically incomplete. A more complete picture of things can be gained by constructively synthesizing them. For example, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox perspective is correct to emphasize the fact that scripture arose from within the prior context of the tradition of the church. The church had been in existence for some time before the first words of the New Testament were written. One could even say that the texts of the New Testament are attempted communications on the part of this church; they are ways by which this church tries to express its life and thought about things. But a person speaks on the basis of the way things appear to him or her, and the appearance of things is at least in part informed by a person’s hermeneutical powers, i.e., his or her habits of interpretation and ways of thinking about things. A person’s way of thinking informs the meaning of his or her words, so that one cannot understand what he or she is trying to say unless one understands the meaning he or she gives to certain words and the way he or she tries to use them to shed light on things appearing in the World. A person’s words therefore should be interpreted as far as is possible in light of his or her way of thinking, if he or she is to be understood on his or her own terms. For the same reason, the New Testament as the attempted communication of the primordial church also has to be read in light of its own way of making sense of things, in other words its tradition. One can therefore say that ecclesial tradition is prior to Scripture in this formal sense: the meaning of the words on the pages of Scripture is determined at least in part by what the tradition of the early church understands by what it says.

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There is also a distinctly phenomenological sense in which tradition is prior to scripture. Intelligible experience is not possible apart from a power to interpret things. One cannot make sense of what appears in the World unless is equipped with a set of concepts and notions by which one interprets appearing things as being this or that. At the same time, human beings are not born with these concepts and notions. Rather, they are gained by means of the education one receives in the company of one’s parents, relatives, friends, teachers, and the general culture in which one is raised. These concepts make it possible to attribute a meaning to the constant flash of appearances by which the World shows itself. The same thing is also true in the case of the interpretation of Scripture. One is not born knowing the meaning of terms like “God,” “Jesus,” “Israel,” “righteousness,” “sin,” “salvation,” “atonement,” and the rest. One must first be provided with definitions of these terms and concepts, as well as with a conception of how they may possibly relate to each other, by others who already possess them. This process of religious education can be called an “initiation” into a tradition. Dumitru Stăniloae writes: If you ask anyone who believes, in what way faith took residence in him, he will respond that it was through the preaching and life of another, if he came to faith at a later age, or else through his parents, if he has believed since childhood. There exists no one who gained faith through nature, through the impersonal visible world.45

Thus, as intelligible experience is not possible without a power to interpret in general, neither is the text of Scripture itself is intelligible apart from a set of prior conceptions about what its words possibly mean and how they can possibly be used. One can say in this way that tradition is also phenomenologically prior to scripture in the sense that one cannot read scripture at all except from the point of view of some tradition or other. Ecclesial tradition is thus prior to Scripture in a formal and phenomenological sense. Scripture itself is the attempted communication of the way of thinking or tradition of the primordial church and thus must be interpreted in light of that tradition. Likewise, it is impossible to read scripture at all unless one is initiated into some tradition or other by which one is equipped with a set of prior notions and preconceptions about the possible meanings and uses of its words. At the same time, these are merely formal and phenomenological senses of priority. They do not yield concrete answers to the question of what scripture actually teaches. From the formal and phenomenological priority of ecclesial tradition to scripture, it does not follow that any particular ecclesial tradition is the “right” one. This is an entirely separate point that has to be proven independently. In this matter, it is important to turn “to the thing itself” rather than be distracted by irrelevancies. The supposed institutional

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continuity between a later ecclesial body and the primordial church by means of apostolic succession, for example, would not prove a theological continuity. The members of an institution at a later point in its history need not think the same way as its earlier members did, since they live at a different time, are themselves different persons, and the World shows itself differently to them. Each individual ecclesial tradition must therefore prove its theological continuity and identity with the primordial tradition of the church by proposing an interpretation of scripture that seems natural enough to have come from the authors themselves. Put another way, the continuity of every later tradition with the primordial tradition must be established on the basis of competitive hermeneutics. Yet the point is not merely to apply one’s preferred tradition to the text in an act of hermeneutical play and to see where that leads. As Hans-Georg Gadamer says, the “first, last, and constant task” of an interpreter is “to let himself be guided by the things themselves” and “to keep one’s gaze fixed on the thing throughout all the constant distractions that originate in the interpreter himself.”46 The point of interpreting scripture is not to make scripture say what one’s tradition teaches, but rather to understand what scripture itself is trying to say. And if one tradition fails in this respect, it can be replaced with another. This consequently illustrates the distinctly material and theological sense in which scripture is prior to every ecclesial tradition: every particular ecclesial tradition must demonstrate its value in comparison to its competitors by providing an interpretation of scripture that seems so natural that it could have come from the authors themselves. The relationship between ecclesial tradition and scripture can be likened to the relationship between perspective and object. Once more Maurice Merleau-Ponty: For each object, just as for each painting in an art gallery, there is an optimal distance from which it asks to be seen—an orientation through which it presents more of itself—beneath or beyond which we merely have a confused perception due to excess or lack. Hence, we tend toward the maximum of visibility and we seek, just as when using a microscope, a better focus point, which is obtained through a certain equilibrium between the interior and exterior horizons.47

There is always some point of view from which a thing becomes most visible. What Merleau-Ponty writes here about objects in general can also be applied to particular aspects of objects. Everything is seen from some perspective or other, but a perspective can both make certain things visible and hide other things, as Robert Elliot notes.48 From one point of view, a person can see the front of a thing but not the back, whereas from yet another, the thing may be hidden altogether. Depending on what it is about the thing that one wishes to see, one may need to reposition oneself or the object or both so as to bring

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that particular aspect to light. There is no “view from nowhere.” The thing is always seen from some perspective or other as a matter of phenomenological necessity. Yet genuinely scientific inquiry, which attempts to understand the thing itself such as it shows itself, is not content merely to take a single point of view, as though there were nothing else to be seen of the object except what could be seen from there. The thing itself is always magister and its researcher always discipulus. One must therefore find that perspective from which the aspect of the object in question with which one is concerned can come to light, and if one perspective fails in this respect, one can take up another. The same holds true for Scripture and ecclesial tradition. Every tradition is like a perspective from which the object of scripture is seen. It is true that it is impossible to see scripture at all except from the point of view of some tradition or other. But the honest interpreter wishes to understand what scripture itself is saying, and if some such tradition should prove inadequate for making sense of what scripture says, then it can be replaced with another. Scripture is thus always magister, while those who would understand it and follow what it teaches are always only discipuli. NOTES 1. St. Cyprian, Treatises, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Sister Angela Elizabeth Keenan, Mary Hannan Mahoney, and Sister George Edward Conway (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958). 2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960). 3. See Steven Nemes, “Theology without Anathemas,” Journal of Analytic Theology 9 (2021): 180–200. 4. Jacques Courvoisier, Zwingli: A Reformed Theologian (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2016), 48 5. See Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), 258–74. 6. The passages cited in this paragraph are taken from Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes, vol. III: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, with Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker House, 1977). 7. Augustine, Letters: Volume III (131–164), trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 235–36. 8. Cyril of Jerusalem, Works, Volume 1, trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968). 9. Documents of Vatican II (Vatican City: Vatican Publishing House, 2014). 10. Avery Cardinal Dulles, Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2017), 4–6. Cf. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Nature and

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Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today’s Debates, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 62, 54. 11. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch (Fort Collins: Roman Catholic Books, 1954), 200. 12. Available online at https:​//​www​.ewtn​.com​/catholicism​/library​/catechism​-of​-st​ -pius​-x​-1286 13. This and other texts from the “apostolic fathers” are cited from Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). 14. In Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Bambaut (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885). 15. Alistair C. Stewart, The Original Bishops: Office and Order in the Original Christian Communities (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014) offers a far more detailed discussion presbyters and bishops in the earliest history of the Church. 16. Dulles, Magisterium, 22–23; J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968), 37. 17. Tertullian, On the Testimony of the Soul and on the “Prescription” against the Heretics, trans. T. Herbert Bindley (London: SPCK, 1914). 18. See Steven Nemes, Theological Authority in the Church: Reconsidering Traditionalism and Hierarchy (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2023). 19. Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 457. 20. Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians, 45. 21. Cf. Nemes, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 3–7. 22. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Part 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (London: T&T Clark, 1956), 743. 23. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 91. 24. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 383. 25. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse. 26. See Nemes, “Theology without Anathemas”; “Against Infallibility,” Criswell Theological Review 19, no. 1 (2021): 27–50. 27. See G. R. Evans, A Brief History of Heresy (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), ch. 7 for a concise overview of the treatment of heretics in Christian history. 28. Evans, Brief History of Heresy, 134. 29. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 130. 30. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 182. 31. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 122–23. 32. Thomas F. Torrance, Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 58. 33. Cf. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 24. 34. In Lyle D. Bierma, The Theology of the Heidelberg Catechism: A Reformation Synthesis (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 13. 35. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 92. 36. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 184.

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37. See Nemes, Orthodoxy and Heresy, ch. 4; “Can Analytic Theology be Phenomenological?” Journal of Analytic Theology 10 (2022): 210–32. 38. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), ch. 5. 39. John C. Peckham, Canonical Theology: The Biblical Canon, Sola Scriptura, and Theological Method (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016). 40. John Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001). 41. John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Malden: Blackwell, 2008), 101. 42. Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Belmont: Norland Publishing Company, 1972); Edith M. Humphrey, Scripture and Tradition: What the Bible Really Says (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013). 43. Gerald O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 198. 44. O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 215; cf. Gerald O’Collins, Tradition: Understanding Christian Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 45. Dumitru Stăniloae, Iisus Hristos sau Restaurarea Omului (Craiova: Editura Omniscop, 1993), 14. Translation is my own. 46. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimmer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 279. 47. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 315–16. 48. Cf. Robert Elliot, “Givenness and Hermeneutics: The Saturated Phenomenon and Historically-Effected Consciousness,” Heythrop Journal 58, no. 4 (2017): 662–77.

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Chapter 6

Baptism and Eucharist

The church as congregatio fidelium has two special practices by which its relationship with God through Jesus is enacted and manifested. These are the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. What remains to be done in the present chapter is an interpretation of these sacraments in keeping with the commitments of a “theology of the manifest.” The argumentation will be as follows. (§16) The rejection of a “closed” theological onto-epistemology and the dualism to which it is committed invites a rejection of “metaphysical” interpretations of the operation and efficacy of the sacraments. Christian faith is not a matter of ontological speculations or metaphysical transformations, so that baptism and Eucharist ought rather to be understood in terms of the personal relationship between God and the human being. Following Justin Martyr and Huldrych Zwingli, baptism is understood as a “rebirth” in the sense of being the ritual beginning of a new life as a new sort of person. It can be said to confer the forgiveness of sins in the sense that it is the means by which one enters into the “world” of the promise of God’s forgiveness. At the same time, it is evident that it does not give the Holy Spirit ex opere operato. (§17) The doctrine of the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of the eucharistic meal is critiqued. Once the necessary philosophical qualifications are made to specify the mode by which Christ’s body and blood are supposed to be present, it is no longer obvious in what sense one is actually eating them. But Christ says that one must eat his flesh (cf. John 6:53). Against the Real Presence tradition, therefore, a superior understanding of what it means to eat Christ’s flesh and how this eating is connected with the Eucharist can be gained by interpreting the bread and the wine of the meal as symbols and the meal itself as a memorial. (§18) The ecumenical potential of a reinterpretation of the Eucharist as a ritual memorial meal and celebration of the salvation accomplished by Jesus is brought to light. Together with the reinterpretation of Christian belief as belief-in Jesus, the rejection of the metaphysical interpretation of the 141

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sacrament disconnects the celebration of the Eucharist from the hierarchy of the institutional church in such a way as to allow Christians of even radically divergent theological perspectives to commemorate the death of Jesus together as a single body. §16 BAPTISM AND METAPHYSICS There is no need to be prolix at this point. Any “metaphysical” interpretation of the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist must be rejected. Once more, “metaphysical” here means an interpretation of the sacraments which understands their operation and effects by reference to realities occupying a nonmanifest sphere of reality. A “metaphysical” interpretation proposes that what is most important about the sacrament is precisely something that does not or at least need not appear either in Life or in the World at all but rather can lay hidden “behind” the screen of manifestation. According to the “metaphysical” perspective, for example, this operation and effect of the sacrament cannot be perceived but rather must be accepted by faith. If something that can be perceived should later appear, it is then understood as an effect of the earlier invisible operation of the sacrament. But such an interpretation of the sacraments implies a commitment to the “closed” theological onto-epistemology and a denial of the strict correlation between appearance and being. This “closed” paradigm not only inevitably leads into a “logic of the inaccessible,” but also makes theological knowledge impossible, as was argued earlier (§§4–5). Indeed, the denial of the strict correlation between appearance and being even makes all knowledge to be impossible (§2). Therefore, the “metaphysical” interpretation of the sacraments so defined must be rejected. The “theology of the manifest” therefore tries to be a Christianity “without metaphysics” in this sense. But can one can even speak of a “sacrament” without “metaphysics”? Zwingli begins his discussion of the sacrament of the Eucharist in his Treatise on the Lord’s Supper with this definition: “A sacrament is a sign of a holy thing.”1 In this respect, he is following Augustine, who in City of God X, 5 defined a “sacrament” as a “sacred sign” (sacrum signum).2 But Zwingli also complains that the “papists all know perfectly well that the word sacrament means a sign and nothing more,” and yet “they have still allowed the common people to be deceived into thinking that it is something strange and unusual, something which they cannot understand and which for that reason they have come to equate with God himself, something . . . holy in that sense.”3 Thus, in On the Body and Blood of the Lord 2 410D, Lanfranc of Bec characterizes the position of Berengarius, who denied that the bread and wine of the eucharistic meal were transformed after the consecration into the body and blood of

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Jesus, as maintaining the bread and wine to be “only sacrament” (solomodo sacramentum), i.e., only sign.4 There is therefore nothing inappropriate about using the term “sacrament” even while denying an operation and effect of these sacraments lying beyond the manifest domains of Life and the World. The notion of “sacrament” does not demand “metaphysics.” Baptism and Eucharist as sacraments are two essential acts of the church as congregatio fidelium. In other words, they are things that Christians do specifically in their capacity as Christians. Baptism is the ritual way this community of Jesus includes another person in its numbers. The Christian community has operated in this way from the very beginning, perhaps drawing this practice from the example of Jesus being baptized by John, as Lars Hartman argues.5 The Eucharist in turn is the way this community remembers and celebrates the person and sacrifice of Jesus as its foundation and origin. One could thus say with Kimberly Hope Belcher that baptism is the beginning of one’s life as a member of the community of Jesus, while the Eucharist is a way of returning to the beginning for the sake of “reappropriating” it.6 However, still more needs to be said about the way these sacraments operate. Baptism is associated in the New Testament with certain effects and promises. Peter tells his listeners on the day of Pentecost: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven (eis aphesin tōn hamartiōn humōn); and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). The forgiveness of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit are in some way connected with baptism “in the name of Jesus Christ” (epi tōi onomati Iēsou Christou). Paul also connects this baptism with the assumption of a new identity and way of life: “In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith” (Gal. 3:26–28). And elsewhere: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3–4). There is also mention at Tit. 3:5 of a “water of rebirth” (loutrou paliggenesias). And Jesus tells Nicodemus: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (mē tis gennēthēi ex hudatos kai pneumatos; John 3:5). Baptism is thus connected with forgiveness of sins, the reception of the Holy Spirit, a new identity and way of life, and even rebirth. Yet the relation between the performance of the sacrament and the reception of these gifts must be problematized. Ludwig Ott writes that in Roman Catholic theology this idea is expressed in the notion that “the Sacraments have an objective efficacy, that is, an efficacy independent of the subjective disposition of the recipient or of the minister.”7 He proposes this Roman Catholic conception as an alternative to the Protestant view according to

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which “the sacraments [are] pledges of the Divine promise of forgiveness of sins by means of the awakening and strengthening of fiducial faith, which alone justifies.”8 In the Roman Catholic scheme, the sacraments function ex opere operato, which is to say “by the power of the completed sacramental rite.”9 The effect is accomplished so long as the sacrament is administered in the appropriate way. This effect is specifically to bring about “sanctifying grace” (gratia sanctificans) or “true justice” (vera iustitia) in the person to whom they are administered.10 The “theology of the manifest” rejects such a conception of things insofar as it has no basis in manifestation. Zwingli argued especially forcefully against this idea on the same basis. He mocks a conception of the sacraments that understands them as if, forsooth, when a man is wet with water something happens in him which he could not possibly have known unless the water had been poured over him at the same time! . . . A man, therefore, feels faith within, in his heart; for it is only when a man begins to despair of himself, and to see that he must trust in God alone . . . What man of faith can be unaware of this?11

The ritual of baptism cannot be said to give the Holy Spirit ex opere operato. The reason is that the effects that it purportedly produces should be manifest, and yet they are not. Zwingli’s argumentation is thus phenomenological in the same manner as the “theology of the manifest.” The argument on both biblical and phenomenological grounds will therefore be that there is no essential or necessary connection between the sacrament of baptism and the forgiveness of sins or reception of the Holy Spirit. Begin with the forgiveness of sins. One can argue that forgiveness in fact precedes the entire work of salvation in history. The words of Paul are noteworthy: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). God was not holding the sins of human beings against them in sending Jesus into the world. It can therefore be said that he has already forgiven their sins in a sense, as Raymond Collins writes.12 And Paul also speaks about the work of Jesus in such a way as to imply that it is now already “efficacious” or “valid” for all people: “The love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died” (2 Cor. 5:14). All have died because Christ has already died for them; as far as God is concerned, they have died with Christ.13 What remains is simply for them to accept this proposed new identity. This “objective” or “actual” understanding of the atonement for sins consequently forms the basis for the invitation to reconcile with God: “He died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Cor. 5:15). God’s forgiveness

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of sins as the refusal to hold them against their perpetrators is thus the prior basis and foundation of God’s reaching out to human beings in Jesus for the sake of reconciling with them. It is well known that Christians from the earliest days did speak of baptism as connected with forgiveness. The Epistle of Barnabas 11:1 speaks of “the baptism that brings forgiveness of sins” (to baptisma to pherōn aphesin harmatiōn). So also the Shepherd of Hermas 31:1 mentions that “there is no other repentance beyond what occurred when we descended into the water and received forgiveness of our previous sins” (eis hudōr katebēmen kai elabomen aphesin harmatiōn hēmōn tōn proterōn). And this might seem to contradict what has been argued here. It might motivate the objection that what is being proposed here is something the absolute earliest generations of Christians apparently did not understand. Either God forgives sins prior to baptism, or else baptism is for the forgiveness of sins, but it is hard to see how both perspectives can be true. Some detractors from the catholic tradition would appear to bite the bullet. Zwingli infamously wrote: “In this matter of baptism—if I may be pardoned for saying it—I can only conclude that all the doctors have been in error from the time of the apostles.”14 But it is not obvious that this is the only possible response. The doctrine of baptism for a “theology of the manifest” can be understood by a close reading and interpretation of the more detailed exposition of the meaning of baptism by Justin Martyr in his First Apology. Moreover, such a close reading will reveal that Justin’s conception of baptism is actually not very far from Zwingli’s own. Justin begins as follows: Lest we be judged unfair in this exposition, we will not fail to explain how we consecrated ourselves to God when we were made new through Christ (anethēkamen heatous tōi Theōi kainopoiēthentes dia tou Christou; Deo consecraverimus per Christum renovati). Those who are convinced and believe what we say and teach is the truth, and pledge themselves to live accordingly, are taught in prayer and fasting to ask God to forgive their pasts sins, while we pray and fast with them. Then we lead them to a place where there is water, and they are reborn (anagenōntai; regenerantur) in the same manner in which we ourselves were reborn (First Apology 61).15

Justin clarifies that baptism is the way by which the church as congregatio fidelium ritually welcomes new persons into its community. A person is not considered a Christian prior to this, nor is he or she permitted to partake of the eucharistic meal except after baptism (First Apology 66; cf. Didache 9:5). Justin thus teaches that baptism is the beginning of one’s public life as a Christian and part of the community of believers-in Jesus. He would here

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seem to agree with Zwingli who says: “Baptism is a sign which pledges us to the Lord Jesus Christ.”16 This process of entering into the community of Jesus is called by Justin a “rebirth” (anagenesis; regeneratio). What this means is interpretable. The general tendency and assumption in the catholic tradition is to interpret such language regarding the operation and effect of the sacrament in a “metaphysical” way. Ott writes: “Baptism . . . effects . . . inner sanctification by the infusion of sanctifying grace, with which the infused theological and moral virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost are always joined.”17 But the “theology of the manifest” rejects such an interpretation because it does not accept the proposal of a non-manifest sphere of reality. It also contests the unfounded assumption that discourse on the sacraments in the absolute earliest Christian writers must be interpreted in metaphysical categories. There is no reason for assuming this, and often a close reading of these earliest sources militates against it.18 The present work rather agrees with the opinion of Michel Henry that “the Church Fathers understood the flesh as both the site of perdition and of salvation.”19 “Flesh” here means what every person is as a living self. Salvation and perdition are manifest conditions of oneself; to be saved and to be lost are to be a certain way in oneself, on the Inside, so that salvation is a manifest change in one’s own condition. Zwingli also agrees with this: “A man, therefore, feels faith within, in his heart; for it is born only when a man begins to despair of himself, and to see that he must trust in God alone.”20 This is also how a “theology of the manifest” would understand the operation of the sacraments. Justin’s language of “rebirth” can be read consistently with the phenomenological commitments of a “theology of the manifest.” Baptism involves a “rebirth” in the sense of being a ritual beginning of a new way of life, lived according to a different identity, founded upon a different conception of reality. L. W. Bernard writes that “it is the beginning of a new life during which a man must strive to make his soul a habitation for the Spirit.”21 It is thus analogous to a wedding. One’s wedding marks the beginning of a new way of life, according to a different identity, founded upon a different conception of reality: one lives together with someone else in close quarters, without the pretense of total independence, as the other’s husband or wife, feeling everything as no longer significant only for one but also for one’s spouse as well. Baptism thus also involves a “rebirth,” although in an even profounder sense. It produces a new person, not metaphysically but at the level of one’s understanding of oneself and one’s relations to God and to others in society, namely a person who assumes a public identity as a believer-in Jesus, who submits to the claim that Jesus makes on him and who thus commits to living in obedience to Jesus’s teachings as passed down by the community of his followers,

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fighting daily to “clothe” him- or herself with the “new self” (cf. Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). This is therefore the sense in which baptism is a “rebirth.” One might wonder whether such a conception of things has any basis in Justin’s text. Contrary to Andrew McGowan, this would in fact seem to be exactly how Justin speaks about things.22 He writes: For Christ said: “Unless you are born again, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Now, it is clear to everyone how impossible it is for those who have been born once to enter their mothers’ wombs again. Isaias the Prophet explained, as we already stated, how those who have sinned and then repented shall be freed of their sins. These are his words: “Wash yourselves, be clean, banish sin from your souls; learn to do well: judge for the fatherless and defend the widow; and then come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. And if your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow. But if you will not hear me, the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” [Isa. 1:16–20]. And this is the reason, taught to us by the Apostles, why we baptize the way we do. We were totally unaware of our first birth, and were born of necessity from fluid seed through the mutual union of our parents, and were trained in wicked and sinful customs. In order that we do not continue as children of necessity and ignorance, but of deliberate choice and knowledge, and in order to obtain in the water the forgiveness of past sins, there is invoked over the one who wishes to be reborn, and who is repentant of his sins, the name of God, the Father and Lord of all (First Apology 61).

Justin introduces the problem by citing Jesus’s teaching that one must be “born again” (anagennēthēte; regenerati fueritis). This teaching clearly cannot be interpreted in a “literal” sense, since no one can reenter the womb. But in explaining Jesus’s teaching positively, Justin says nothing suggestive of a “metaphysical” interpretation of the operation and effect of the sacrament, and it is obvious that the word “rebirth” cannot by itself definitively secure such a reading because it can easily be understood in a non-metaphysical manner. The phenomenological reading thus has a better basis in what Justin actually says. He notes that human beings are born apart from their will and raised without a choice in “wicked and sinful customs.” Baptism is therefore proposed as a way of escaping the condition of “children of necessity and ignorance” in order to become new persons who live “of deliberate choice and knowledge” in a reconciled relationship with God. There is no “metaphysics” here but only discourse about the baptized person’s way of life and of thinking about things. Justin’s remarks in context thus suggest that “rebirth” means the ritual of becoming a new sort of person. Justin also says: “This washing is called illumination (photismos), since they who learn these things become illuminated intellectually” (First Apology 61). But he does not say, as Bernard and McGowan think, that baptism is an

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“illumination” in the sense that its administration confers upon a person a special kind of spiritual insight which would otherwise not be possible for a human being.23 He makes no mention of any such thing. It is rather an “illumination” in the sense that the entire catechetical process which leads to the concrete act of baptism involves a disclosure of the truth of Jesus to a person. Baptism, after all, is only for those “who are convinced and believe what we say and teach is the truth, and pledge themselves to live accordingly.” It is rather an “illumination” in the sense of being a process of “education” which terminates in the ritual entry into a new community and way of life, “since they who learn these things become illuminated intellectually.” Justin would therefore seem to agree with Zwingli that “baptism is a covenant sign which indicates that all those who receive it are willing to amend their lives and to follow Christ. In short, it is an initiation to new life.”24 Going further, this interpretation of the “rebirth” of baptism also makes it possible to understand the question of forgiveness. God forgives all sins in the sense that he does not hold them against human beings prior to the day of judgment. Yet baptism is “for the forgiveness of sins.” God certainly does not presently hold human beings’ sins against them, but neither does he guarantee that this will always be the case for everyone. There is still a day of judgment when unrepentant human beings can expect that God will hold their sins against them. Those who have committed to God in Jesus through baptism will escape this judgment (cf. Acts 10:43; 1 Thess. 1:10). Human beings thus cannot presume now that their sins will be forgiven later simply because Jesus has died for them. They must also take a step toward God, so to speak, and this step is taken in baptism. This important point illustrates the biblical notion that the relationship between the human being and God is reciprocal in nature: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (Jas 4:8). Consider how a man and a woman may love each other, yet the one cannot expect the other to act as a husband or wife until they are married. The beginning of the sort of relationship two such persons would desire to have with each other must be ritually marked in the appropriate manner. So also, God loves human beings and does not now hold their sins against them, yet they cannot simply assume that he will always be a friend to them. They must also take the step of committing to friendship with him by baptism. This is the sense in which baptism confers the forgiveness of sins. God does not now hold human beings’ sins against them before baptism, but by being baptized they enter into such a relationship with God that he will not hold their sins against them in the future judgment, either. There is still more to say. Baptism is a matter of entering into the community of the collaborators, friends, and guests of God in the World. It is a way of being “rescued . . . from the power of darkness and transferred . . . into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the

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forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13–14). One is “reborn” in the sense of becoming a new person in the company of different people than one knew before. It therefore also offers the forgiveness of sins in the further sense that by it one is welcomed into the “world” of forgiveness and a life lived in friendship with God together with other Christians. It is not that God goes from holding a person’s sins against him or her to forgiving them as soon as the baptism has been performed; it is rather that the baptized person enters into a new “world” founded upon the assurance of God’s forgiveness. The term “world” here obviously need not be understood metaphysically. It rather refers to a sphere of experience. Consider how one enters the “world” of marriage by getting married, or the “world” of parenthood by having a child, or the “world” of professional sports by being drafted onto a team. So also, one enters into the “world” of God’s forgiveness by being baptized and joining the community of believers-in Jesus: one begins to live a new life founded upon the premise and promise of God’s forgiveness. A question arises at this point. Is it proper to baptize children? Many in the catholic tradition justified the practice of infant baptism on conviction of the objective efficacy of baptism.25 Augustine taught that “baptism was not only for forgiveness of sins but also addressed a fundamental flaw in the human condition.”26 But the “theology of the manifest” rejects this. As to whether infant baptism represents the earliest practice of the church, McGowan writes that “there is simply no evidence on which to base a definitive judgment.”27 Yet infant baptism may be justifiable on other grounds. The “theology of the manifest” everywhere emphasizes the priority of God’s action. For example, the bringing forth of human beings into life with the predestiny of being God’s collaborators, friends, and guests is not their own doing but God’s; the advent of Jesus in the World to make atonement for human sin and to call all people to be reconciled with God for the sake of a universal unity centered around his person (Eph. 1:10) is God’s eternal doing and decision (1 Pet. 1:20).28 God thus always sets the agenda, while humans are expected to follow his direction. Christians might therefore baptize their children, even apart from their free choice, because children do not belong to themselves any more than anyone else does. Baptizing them is a way of teaching: “You are not your own. For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). This argument admittedly may not be perfectly convincing, and in any case the “theology of the manifest” does not need to take a firm stance, but neither does the practice seem unjustifiable. Thus far the discussion has addressed the relation between baptism and forgiveness. As for the reception of the Holy Spirit, there would seem to be no essential connection between having been baptized in water and possessing the Holy Spirit. The biblical texts themselves suggest this point, as McGowan notes.29

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For example, the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius receive the Holy Spirit when Peter preaches the Gospel to them. As a result, Peter determines that they should also be baptized (Acts 10:44–48).30 The disciples of Jesus likewise may have all been baptized since they also are supposed to have done baptizing of their own (John 4:1–2), yet they receive the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and not when they are baptized. So also, there are also clearly very many people who are baptized yet show no evidence of possessing the Holy Spirit. This is the common story of every person baptized as a child who recounts having a profound experience of conversion to true faith and genuine religion later on in life. Yet the biblical conception maintains that the possession of the Holy Spirit is manifest to oneself. Paul’s inquiry to the disciples in Ephesus implies it: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They replied: “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (Acts 19:2). There would be no sense in asking this question if it were not obvious to a person that he or she has received the Holy Spirit. Neither could one answer Paul’s question to the Galatians if the possession of the Holy Spirit were not something manifest to the person undergoing it: “Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?” (Gal. 3:2). The idea of the non-manifest possession of the Holy Spirit is thus unknown to the biblical authors. Zwingli also insists on this point: For if we become new men, that is to say, if we love God and our neighbor, we shrink from sin, put on Christ and daily grow more and more into the perfect man, are changed by the action of the Holy Spirit. But who would not feel this change?31

Zwingli’s argument is that the operation of the Holy Spirit is manifest both in Life and in the World. The changes wrought by the Holy Spirit are felt on the Inside as changed affections and states and seen on the Outside as a different way of life, yet clearly no such changes inevitably accompany baptism. There is consequently no essential connection between the administration of baptism and the reception of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of baptism for the “theology of the manifest” is therefore as follows. Justin and Zwingli both rightly teach that baptism is a “rebirth” in the sense of a ritual initiation into a new life as a new person. It is for Justin a matter of no longer living as “children of necessity and ignorance” in “wicked and sinful customs” but rather by “deliberate choice and knowledge” in the reality of the “forgiveness of past sins” (First Apology 61). So also, it is for Zwingli “an initiatory sacrament by which those who were going to change their life and ways marked themselves out and were enrolled among the repentant.”32 Although God does not now hold anyone’s sins against him or her, yet by entering through baptism into this “world” of God’s forgiveness

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a person can lay claim to the promise of God not to hold his or her sins against him or her at the judgment either. The “theology of the manifest” rejects a doctrine of baptism according to which it operates ex opere operato. God alone gives the Holy Spirit, and he would seem to do this not through every validly administered baptism but rather and most typically through the preaching of the Gospel and the invitation to live in friendship with him through Jesus. As Zwingli writes: “The inward baptism of the Spirit is the work of teaching which God does in our hearts and the calling with which he comforts and assures our hearts in Christ. And this baptism none can give save God alone.”33 §17 REAL PRESENCE AND EATING CHRIST’S FLESH The catholic tendency to interpret sacramental discourse “metaphysically” is especially prominent in the discussion about the Eucharist. The doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of the eucharistic meal is precisely founded upon the distinction between the manifest sphere and some “deeper,” non-manifest dimension of reality. This doctrine might thus be thought to be the apogee of metaphysical thinking in Christian theology. But this also means that it invites all the problems of the “closed” theological onto-epistemology and the representationalist denial of the strict correlation of appearance and being. It must therefore be rejected and replaced with something else. The Real Presence doctrine of the Eucharist implies a distinction between appearance and being. Cyril of Jerusalem writes: Do not then think of the elements as bare bread and wine; they are, according to the Lord’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Though sense suggests the contrary, let faith be your stay. Instead of judging the matter by taste, let faith give you an unwavering confidence that you have been privileged to receive the Body and Blood of Christ (Mystagogical Lectures IV, 6).34

Later he speaks of “the firm conviction that the bread which is seen (ho phainomenos artos) is not bread, though it is bread to the taste, but the Body of Christ, and that the visible wine is not wine, though taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ” (IV, 9). The apparent bread and wine are in fact something other than what they appear to be. He also defends the possibility of this rupture by appeal to divine omnipotence: “Once at Cana in Galilee He changed water into wine by His sovereign will; is it not credible, then, that He changed wine into blood?” (IV, 2). Cyril thus explicitly exposits what he

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takes to be the proper understanding of the Eucharist in terms of a denial of the strict correlation between appearance and being. So also Lanfranc of Bec in his polemics against Berengarius. Brett Salkeld notes that Berengarius had argued that the bread and the wine must be thought of as truly being bread and wine because this is how they appear.35 Lanfranc insisted to the contrary that the Eucharist ought to be understood in such a way as to divide what appears from what is, while at the same time not inquiring too presumptuously into the way in which this can be: “[W]hat is more secret than to see the appearance of bread and wine, to taste the flavor, to sense the touch, and nevertheless to believe that by God’s wondrous work true flesh is eaten and true blood is drunk?” (On the Body and Blood of the Lord 17 428C). The true catholic position is that the earthly substances, which on the table of the Lord are divinely sanctified by the priestly ministry, are ineffably, incomprehensibly, miraculously converted by the workings of heavenly power into the essence of the Lord’s body. The species and whatever other certain qualities of the earthly substances themselves, however, are preserved, so that those who see it may not be horrified at the sight of flesh and blood, and believers may have a greater reward for faith at the sight. It is, nonetheless, the body of the Lord himself existing in heaven at the right side of the Father, immortal, inviolate, whole, uncontaminated, and unharmed (18 430B-C).

Appearance and being are thus plainly divided. Lanfranc also distinguishes between “the appearance of the bread and the wine” and “the nature of the body of Christ” which is hidden behind them (20 436D). Such a distinction saves from the horror of the visible consumption of flesh, and it provides an opportunity to exercise faith which can later be rewarded, arguments which Thomas Aquinas will also make in his day (ST III, q. 75, art. 5). Thus, despite all appearances to the contrary, “[i]t is his true flesh which we eat, and his true blood which we drink” (23 442D). The doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of the eucharistic meal therefore implies the denial of the strict correlation of appearance and being. What appears (bread and wine) may sometimes be other than what is (the body and blood of Christ). Thomas says: “The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority” (ST III, q. 75, art. 1). Even so, despite the popularity of this opinion in theological history, the “theology of the manifest” straightaway rejects it because it only raises all the problems of skepticism and the “logic of the inaccessible” explained earlier. Zwingli summarizes in a few sentences the perspective of the “theology of the manifest” on the Real Presence: “[H]ow

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can we say that it is flesh when we do not perceive it to be such? If the body were there miraculously, the bread would not be bread, but we should perceive it to be flesh.”36 What appears must be and what is must appear. Someone might say that the disruption of the correlation between appearance and being in the Eucharist is an exceptional case that does not raise worries of skepticism, but in fact it does. Thomas argues that the conversion of bread into the body of Christ has to be possible in principle if God is to accomplish it in the Eucharist (ST III, q. 75, art. 4). This implies that the division of appearance and being is possible in principle. But if the non-correlation of the two spheres is possible in principle, then the spheres are only accidentally and not essentially correlated. The phenomenological critiques therefore apply straightaway. Moreover, there would be no basis for saying that it conveniently only occurs during the Eucharist, since any principle or idea to which one might appeal in support of this idea could be dismissed as a mere appearance, and no appearance simply as such need correlate with being. Gary Macy notes that precisely this argument was made by Robert Holcot in the fourteenth century: It must be said that God is able to do more than the intellect can understand and therefore it is not inappropriate to agree that God could change the entire world and to make it exist under the species of a single mouse . . . Concerning the certitude of experience, I believe that there is no certitude about an individual created thing as it presently exists, since it is able to become false through (this sort of) change, and it would be hidden from me whether it were true or false.37

One can therefore argue that the onto-epistemological presupposition of the doctrine of the Real Presence leads to skepticism. A further argument can also be given. A more systematic treatment of this issue from a biblical, philosophical, theological, and church-historical point of view is taken up elsewhere,38 and it is impossible to go into so much detail here. But it will suffice for present purposes to give the following further objection against the Real Presence tradition. Jesus said: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). And on the night of his betrayal he took bread, gave thanks for it, broke it, and distributed it to his disciples saying: “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matt. 26:26). The Real Presence tradition founds its convictions on these words, together with the catholic assumption that discourse about the sacraments must be interpreted metaphysically. Cyril of Jerusalem thus says: “When the Master himself has explicitly said of the bread: ‘This is my body,’ will anyone still dare to doubt? When He is Himself our warranty, saying, ‘This is my blood,’ who will ever waver and say it is not His blood?” (Mystagogical Lectures IV, 1). So also

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Lanfranc: “It would be a similar madness if you should try to assert that the Church cannot feed on the flesh and blood of its Redeemer . . . since the Lord himself, speaking to his disciples, testified and said: ‘Take and eat, this is my body which is handed over for you’” (On the Body and Blood 17 427D). These figures take it as a matter of course that “is” must refer to real being. Yet the Real Presence tradition denies that Jesus’s body and blood are present in the bread and wine in any manifest way. Thomas once more: “The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority” (ST III, q. 75, art. 1). This requires that the mode of presence of Jesus’s body and blood is purely “substantial” and thus non-local. At ST III, q. 76, art. 5, Thomas puts the point as follows: “Christ’s body is not in this sacrament as in a place, but in the mode of substance” (corpus Christi non est in hoc sacramento sicut in loco, sed per modum substantiae). This point can be explained as follows. Every perceptible body appears in some place or other, whether here or there in relation to oneself and to other bodies appearing in the World. Bodies can become variously manifest or hidden by changing one’s position, but the body and blood of Jesus are not thought present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist in such a way that they could become manifest from any particular point of view. One should expect to find only the appearance of bread and wine irrespective of the conditions in which they are examined, whether by consuming them or studying them under a microscope or whatever. And whatever is in a place appears in space relative to other bodies. Jesus’s mode of presence is therefore purely substantial and non-manifest in that he is not locally present in the bread and wine. He is not “there” where they are. And yet eating is a local process. What does not go into the mouth and down into the stomach is not eaten, since the mouth and the stomach are where eating happens. That is the logic behind the saying that one cannot eat one’s cake and have it in the hands, too; a thing is either eaten, in which case it is in the mouth, or else it is in the hands, where it is not being eaten. But the Real Presence tradition denies that Jesus’s body and blood are locally present where the Eucharist is being celebrated. The bread and the wine, or at least the appearances thereof, may go into the mouth and down into the stomach, but this cannot be said of Jesus’s body and blood insofar as these are not locally present. Therefore, the true body and blood of Jesus are not really being eaten. Far from securing a faithful and adequate interpretation of Jesus’s teaching that one must eat his body and drink his blood, the philosophical statement of the mode of sacramental presence in the Real Presence tradition ironically undermines its insistence on a “literal” reading. The response will be that the “eating” of Jesus’s body and blood should not be understood so literally as this. Lanfranc: “For we eat and drink the

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immolated Christ on earth, in such a way that he always exists whole and alive at the right hand of the Father in heaven” (On the Body and Blood 11 422B). Cyril of Jerusalem himself also admits that the eating is “spiritual” when he comments on the controversy of Jesus’s bread of life discourse at Capernaum: “Not understanding His words spiritually, they ‘were shocked and drew back,’ imagining that He was proposing the eating of human flesh” (Mystagogical Lectures IV, 4). This is an acceptable point, but the concession comes with a price. If the eating is “spiritual,” then the argument can be made that there is no need for the supposition of the Real Presence at all. It serves only to rupture appearance from being, inviting skepticism and necessitating a “closed” theological onto-epistemology, imposing the “logic of the inaccessible” and making theological knowledge impossible. Jesus himself says at the end of the bread of life discourse: “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). When he says: “the flesh is useless,” he cannot be contradicting himself earlier, when he had said: “My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” (v. 55). He must rather be taken as contradicting his audience, who supposed him to be proposing that they really eat his flesh (vv. 52, 60, 66). The flesh is thus “useless” in the sense that it would not help a person any to eat his body in a literal way. As Zwingli says: “He says plainly that the flesh of which they were thinking profiteth nothing, eaten, of course, in the physical way they shrank from.”39 It is rather the spirit that gives life. If Jesus is not to contradict himself, he must be proposing that his flesh is a “spiritual food.” And this is not difficult to understand. The “eating” of Christ’s flesh can be interpreted figuratively and the bread and wine of the Eucharist as symbols. To eat Christ’s flesh and to drink his blood in a “spiritual” way can be understood as finding joy, nourishment, comfort, and edification in the person and work of Jesus. It is a matter of celebrating and rejoicing in who Jesus is and what he has done. He is God’s outstretched “right hand of fellowship” (cf. Gal. 2:9). God shows his love for human beings and his commitment to save them through the fact that Jesus dies to make atonement for their sins (1 John 4:9–10). The very flesh and blood of Jesus, which are a way of referring to his person and sacrifice, are a spiritual joy, nourishment, comfort, and edification for people. They are the food of love. It is a “dietary” metaphor for referring to the believing-in Jesus for salvation which is characteristic of Christian belief as such. As Zwingli writes: “To eat the body of Christ spiritually is equivalent to trusting with heart and soul upon the mercy and goodness of God through Christ.”40And elsewhere: “In this way, then, is Christ the food of the soul, because the soul, seeing that God spared not His only begotten Son but delivered Him to an ignominious death in order to restore us to life, becomes sure of the grace of God and of salvation.”41 To “eat Christ’s

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flesh” (John 6:53) is therefore to “see the Son and believe in Him” (6:40). As McGowan writes, the Johannine discourse “seems to be making a point about faith more than about ritual.”42 And Zwingli thought this was something to which Christian experience testified clearly: “Do we not eat Christ’s body spiritually when we believe that He was slain for us and trust in Him? Are not spirit and life forthwith in us?”43 The bread and the wine of the eucharistic meal are symbols or images of Jesus’s real body and blood, which is to say of his person and sacrifice. This can be appreciated from the very action of Jesus himself. One recognizes a figure or an image when a thing is called by the name of something else which it resembles only in some specific respect. Thus, a man may say to his son: “Your room is a pigsty.” This predication is clearly figurative insofar as the room has no pigs, it is not located on a farm, no farmers come by to feed animals, and so on. So also, a woman may point to a portrait of a relative from years past and say: “This is my great-grandfather,” but it is obvious that she does not mean to suggest that the canvas with paint really is a human being. Likewise, a man recreating the scene of a car accident with materials at his desk may pick up a stapler and say: “This is my car,” but it would be absurd to take him to be speaking metaphysically. Consider therefore that Jesus takes bread and calls it what it does not generally resemble, namely his body. He is therefore clearly proposing the bread as an image or figure of his body, as Tertullian appreciated in Against Marcion IV, 40.44 But images or figures can be signs of sacred things, i.e., sacraments. By offering the bread and calling it his body, Jesus is proposing that his disciples appropriate to themselves his person and sacrifice by means of this symbol. To eat the flesh of Christ “sacramentally” is therefore to celebrate Jesus’s person and work, to find joy in him, in a manner that makes use of the images of bread and wine. As Zwingli also says, when you come to the Lord’s Supper to feed spiritually upon Christ, and when you thank the Lord for his great favour, for the redemption whereby you are delivered from despair, and for the pledge whereby you are assured of eternal salvation, when you join with your brethren in partaking of the bread and wine which are the tokens of the body of Christ, then in the true sense of the word you eat him sacramentally. You do inwardly that which you represent outwardly, your soul being strengthened by the faith which you attest in the tokens.45

It is thus possible to make sense of the eating of Christ’s flesh as well as to specify how this eating takes place in the context of the Eucharist without making appeal to the doctrine of the Real Presence, without introducing a rupture between appearance and being, and without committing oneself to the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm and all the problems

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that flow from it. To eat Christ’s flesh is to find spiritual joy, nourishment, and edification in his person and sacrifice. It is to celebrate him, to be made “full” in spirit by God’s love in Jesus. And this eating takes place sacramentally in the Eucharist insofar as it is occasioned and coordinated with the consumption of bread and wine being used as the images or symbols of Jesus’s body and blood, i.e., his person and sacrifice. Does it follow from the symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist that there is no sense in which Jesus himself is really present among his worshippers apart from or alongside the bread and wine? No. If one thinks that Jesus is consubstantial with God, then he is always present at all times and in every experience, as was argued in the third chapter. God is always really present as absolute Life whose body or visible exterior image of his inner life is the World. As Zwingli proposed, he is the infinite and self-subsistent reality within which each finite and particular thing has being by sharing in his being. He is always and everywhere present and so is always present at every Eucharist. It is therefore wrong to suggest, as Alister McGrath apparently does, that Zwingli’s conception of the Eucharist implies that “Christ is remembered in his absence in the Eucharist.”46 To the contrary, Zwingli insists on Christ’s divine omnipresence: “Even where two or three gather together in his name, he is there in the midst.”47 He would therefore be really present where the Eucharist is celebrated. The bread and wine can be said to mediate his presence in the phenomenological sense that they are used to direct the attention of believers to his person and sacrifice, just as a portrait or a sign makes a thing present by calling one’s attention to the thing it signifies. It is just that he would not be made really present by means of the transformation of the bread and wine into his body and blood. The theologian who accepts Christ’s consubstantiality can therefore agree with Zwingli in maintaining that Christ is really present in the celebration of the Eucharist even while denying that his real presence is accomplished by the transformation of the bread and wine. §18 EUCHARIST AND CHRISTIAN UNITY As was mentioned earlier, baptism and the Eucharist are ceremonial actions of the church understood as congregatio fidelium by which it welcomes others into its ranks and commemorates the person and sacrifice of Jesus. What remains to be shown here is that the rejection of a “metaphysical” understanding of the Eucharist in the “theology of the manifest” is a good thing insofar as it opens the door toward eucharistic unity among Christians. It does this precisely by severing the essential tie between the valid celebration of the Eucharist and the institutional hierarchy of the church.

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The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 defined the Real Presence doctrine as a matter of faith using the word “transubstantiation.” Salkeld clarifies that this term was not used so as to delimit one particular conception of eucharistic presence, but rather to assert the necessity of the Real Presence in a general way.48 The council’s first canon also declares that “surely no one can accomplish this sacrament except a priest who has been rightly ordained according to the keys of the Church which Jesus Christ Himself conceded to the apostles and to their successors.”49 The valid celebration of the Eucharist is thus inseparably connected to the hierarchy of the church. Whoever does not occupy the appropriate position in this hierarchy cannot celebrate a valid Eucharist, and whoever is out of its good graces for whatever reason is excluded. Yet there is a “logic of the inaccessible” evident here. Thomas says that only God can change the non-manifest substances of things into something else (ST III, q. 75, art. 4). The Eucharist is therefore something accomplished by God. But the fact that a person claims to be able to do this by God’s help does not prove that it happens. The bread and wine, even when validly consecrated, are not obviously and apparently the body and blood of Jesus, so that a person limited to appearances could very well be eating bread and drinking wine and deceiving him- or herself about receiving the body and blood of Jesus. Roman Catholic dogma therefore posits a manifest signal by which the inaccessible presence of the substance of the body and blood can be detected, namely the rightly ordained priest. But the instability of the signal applies here as well. That one is a member of the hierarchy of some ecclesial institution does not entail that one’s actions in celebrating a ritual are coordinated with those of God in changing the imperceptible substances of things. Moreover, the nature of the church itself is not intrinsically hierarchical. The church as ekklēsia includes all people equally (§13), and the church as congregatio fidelium is defined in terms of belief-in Jesus, which all Christians have in common (§14). It was also argued above (§17) that the Real Presence tradition fails as an interpretation of the Christ’s language about eating his body and drinking his blood. One is not actually eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood at all on this view, at least not in any sense that obviously demands the supposition of the Real Presence in the first place. Furthermore, that a person possesses a valid ordination to the position of priest is a fact about the way things have appeared in the World. All such facts cannot be known with certainty (§14). Finally, the distinction between appearance and being leads to skepticism (§2). Therefore, on the basis of all these problems, the “theology of the manifest” rejects this entire approach to the matter. It leads to a skeptical dead-end which can only be overcome by the baldly circular self-assertion of some hierarchy as the “true” church. The “theology of the manifest” points in a different direction, one which makes Christian eucharistic unity genuinely possible. It says that the

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sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist are actions of the church and not of God. Indeed, in this respect it is closer to Scripture. The biblical texts never call God the operative agent in the sacraments. As much in baptism as in the Eucharist, the action is performed by the church as congregatio fidelium. “Go [you] therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them” (Matt. 28:19). “Do [you] this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24–25). The disciples are the ones acting. Indeed, the Gospel of John even explicitly denies that Jesus performed water baptisms alongside his disciples (John 4:2). Jesus only baptizes in the Holy Spirit and in fire (cf. Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16). Baptism in water and the Eucharist are therefore not divine actions but human actions; they are performed by the church in obedience to the commandments of Jesus, and do not involve the production of such effects as would require special divine agency. The most significant consequence of this is that, by denying the divine action of the ontological transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, the “theology of the manifest” eliminates the need for some member of the ecclesial hierarchy to function as a signal that the transformation has taken place. And by reinterpreting the bread and wine as symbols, it makes it possible for any Christians to celebrate the Eucharist together in principle. The “theology of the manifest” even does this in a sense by pointing back to the beginnings. The earliest celebrations of the Eucharist included a full and proper meal.50 For example, Paul complains that the Corinthians did not truly gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper since some were getting drunk while others were going hungry (1 Cor. 11:20–21). Such complaints imply a full meal. Likewise, the Didache prescribes eucharistic prayers of thanksgiving to be offered “after you have had enough” (10:1). This implies the Eucharist was a full meal. Now, in addition to being a full meal, the Eucharist is also described in the Didache as a “sacrifice” (14:1–3). Yet this does not mean that it was understood to be propitiatory or expiatory or of such a nature as might be taken to imply the Real Presence. As McGowan notes, “sacrifices had purposes other than the forgiveness of sins” in the ancient world.51 Consider how the title of the ritual is literally a “thanksgiving” (eucharistia). It might therefore seem plausible to interpret the Eucharist as a sort of “thanksgiving” sacrifice, like those described in Lev. 7:11–18. The idea here is not that the Eucharist was explicitly modeled after the Levitical thanksgiving sacrifice, but rather that it was understood to be a sacrifice of thanksgiving, in other words a formal way of saying “thank you” to God for his work, just as those offerings were.52 Jacob Milgrom comments that these Levitical thanksgiving sacrifices were offered “for being rescued from danger.”53 He also cites from the rabbinical literature (Midr. Lev. Rab. 9:1, 7) the teaching that the sacrifice of thanksgiving is never brought in order to make atonement for sins and that only the sacrifice of thanksgiving will not be annulled in the world to

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come.54 Consider then how in the Didache the people of God gather in one place to have a meal and to offer thanks to God for “your holy name, which you have caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality that you have made known to us through Jesus your servant,” for the fact that God gave “food and drink to humans to enjoy, so that they might give you thanks,” but also “spiritual food and drink, and eternal life through your servant” (10:2–3). They further pray that God remember his church, “to deliver it from all evil and to make it perfect in your love; and from the four winds gather the church that has been sanctified into your kingdom, which you have prepared for it” (10:5). One can propose, then, that the Didache sees in the Eucharist a ritual meal by which Christians gather and turn toward God through Jesus to thank him for the fact of their salvation through him, as well as also to look forward to the eschatological completion of his work. In the words of Zwingli, it is a commemoration by which “those who firmly believe that by Christ’s death and blood they have become reconciled with the Father proclaim this life-bringing death, that is, preach it with praise and thanksgiving.”55 It is worth mentioning that there is no explicit notion of the Real Presence in the Didache. The wine and the bread of the meal are never said really to be the body and blood of Jesus. They are at most presented as providing opportunities within the meal to give thanks to God “for the holy vine of David your servant, which you have made known to us through Jesus, your servant” and for “the life and knowledge that you have made known to us through Jesus,” respectively (9:2–3). But this absence is significant. Attributing such memorial and symbolic value to food and giving thanks to God is something that any Christian can do in principle; there is no need to be ordained in order to give thanks and to use things as symbols. In this respect, Ben Witherington writes that “there is no evidence whatsoever that the Lord’s Supper [in the earliest days of the church] required the presence of apostles or other translocal authority figures.”56 Consequently, since the Eucharist is a matter of giving thanks to God and also of treating the bread and wine as symbols, things anyone can do in principle, it follows that any Christians can celebrate the Eucharist together. Some might wonder, with Herbert McCabe, how meaningful a ritual the Eucharist can be if it is “only” a symbol.57 But in fact nothing is “only” a symbol. To say that something is a symbol is already to give it a value greater than it could have on its own, because a thing functions as a symbol only when one does not so much see it as something else beyond it. From this it follows that the value of the symbol is precisely the value of the thing symbolized. As Zwingli writes: “The value of all signs increases according to the value of that which they signify.”58 And Eric Perl explains:

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[T]he very nature of a symbol is such that to know it is to unknow it. To understand a symbol as a symbol is to ignore it, to attend not to the symbol as an object in itself but rather to the meaning it concealingly reveals. Conversely, to attend to a symbol as an object in its own right is to fail to know it as a symbol.59

A wedding ring is not functioning as a symbol when one spins it on its side on the surface of a table, but it is functioning as a symbol when one’s spouse removes it from his or her finger in the middle of an argument. Its symbolic quality comes to light then and not earlier because in such a context one sees “beyond” it to something else. It is not just that a piece of jewelry has been removed from a hand, but rather that one’s spouse has expressed the rejection of the very identity of spouse. So also, a flag is not functioning as a symbol when one sees it waving in the wind, but it does function as a symbol when one takes offense at its burning. Its symbolic quality comes to light then and not earlier because one sees “beyond” it to something else. It is not just that some fabric has been burned, but an entire nation has been treated contemptuously. For all these reasons, then, to say that the bread and wine of the eucharistic meal are symbols is not to make them meaningless. It is rather to make them all the more meaningful. How do these symbols function? It should be noted that the Eucharist is not merely eating and thinking about Jesus. It is rather claiming Jesus to oneself and in a way uniting oneself to him precisely through the consumption of the symbols of the bread and wine. Of course, such a union takes place at the level of the heart, just as one accepts another as a friend by accepting a gift, or as a woman accepts a man as spouse through the acceptance of an engagement ring, or as one honors one’s country and its values and history through the veneration of the flag. Thus also, one claims Jesus’s person and sacrifice for oneself by eating the bread and wine, which are the symbols of his body and blood. A question arises. Can Christians still celebrate the Eucharist together if they do not agree in matters of doctrine? For the “theologian of the manifest,” such disagreement may not matter as much as the catholic tradition has generally thought. What makes the church to be the church is the fact that Christ claims some number of people as his own (§13), and what makes one to be a Christian is the fact that one submits to this claim by believing-in Jesus, i.e., by committing to him and entrusting oneself and one’s life to him (§14). But Jesus in his person and work is God’s outstretched right hand of fellowship offered to all people, and the climax of this outreach is the death of Jesus on the cross to make atonement for the sins of all. Thus, just as in baptism one submits to the claim of Jesus on one by joining the community of those who believe-in him, so also the Eucharist is a return the person and work of Jesus as the foundation of Christian life by means of a memorial meal. Jesus said:

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“Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24–25). The bread and the wine of the Eucharist are the symbols of Jesus’s person and work. Therefore, in celebrating the Eucharist together, Christians are in a sense “shaking hands” with God once more. They are returning “to the thing itself” which made them to be Christians in the first place, re-appropriating Jesus to themselves by the consumption of the symbols just as a woman appropriates a man to herself when she accepts his engagement ring. The ritual is thus in this sense a “sharing” (koinōnia) in his body and blood, as the apostle Paul says (1 Cor. 10:16). To prioritize belief-that, as the catholic tradition has done in history, is to make eucharistic communion with Christians who believe differently undesirable. Thinking of one’s relation to God as founded upon that by which one differs from others means there can be no meaningful celebration of the Eucharist together with them. But differences in opinion about matters of doctrine are inevitable, and opinions founded upon the appearances of things in the World are unavoidably fallible. No one can take refuge in his or her opinions before God; one’s only hope is the goodwill of God himself, from whom come oneself, one’s life, and all things whatsoever. Not belief-that but rather belief-in is the fundamental characterization of the essentially Christian attitude. Therefore, even despite differences of doctrine, a truer and profounder eucharistic unity can be accomplished, or rather brought to life, if all these things are set to the side by all persons for the sake of an intentional attending to the deeper and more fundamental thing which all Christians of diverse opinions have always shared: their commitment to God through Jesus their Savior. Eucharistic communion thus becomes possible, even in spite of differences of opinion among Christians, if one sees that the relation to God is founded upon belief-in Jesus, which persons of even radically divergent theological commitments can have in common. And precisely through its rejection of the “closed” theological onto-epistemological paradigm of the catholic tradition, the “theology of the manifest” uncovers a deeper and more fundamental reality of Christian unity that has always been there from the beginning. It turns attention away from what distinguishes to what unites. NOTES 1. Ulrich Zwingli, “Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” 188, in G. W. Bromiley, ed., Zwingli and Bullinger (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 185–238. 2. Augustine, City of God: Books VII-XVI, trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Grace Monahan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1952), 123. 3. Zwingli, “Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” 188.

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4. Lanfranc of Bec and Guitmund of Aversa, On the Body and Blood of the Lord and On the Truth of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, trans. Mark G. Vaillancourt (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 33. 5. Lars Hartman, “Into the Name of the Lord Jesus”: Baptism in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997); Andrew McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship: Early Church Practices in Social, Historical, and Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), ch. 5 6. Kimberly Hope Belcher, Eucharist and Receptive Ecumenism: From Thanksgiving to Communion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 207. 7. Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 328–29. 8. Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 326. 9. Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 329. 10. Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 332. 11. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 182. 12. Raymond F. Collins, Second Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 122–23. 13. Collins, Second Corinthians, 118–22. 14. Zwingli, “Of Baptism,” 130, in Bromiley, ed., Zwingli and Bullinger, 129–75. 15. In Justin Martyr, The First Apology, The Second Apology, Dialogue with Trypho, Exhortation to the Greeks, Discourse to the Greeks, The Monarchy or The Rule of God, trans. Thomas B. Falls (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), 99–100. Translation slightly modified. 16. Zwingli, “Of Baptism,” 131. 17. Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 154. 18. Consider Steven Nemes, Eating Christ’s Flesh: Eucharist and Memorial, presently unpublished. 19. Michel Henry, “Incarnation,” 56, in Davidson and Seyler, eds., The Michel Henry Reader, 46–57. 20. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 182. 21. L. W. Bernard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 141. 22. Contrary to McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 148–49. 23. Contrary to Bernard, Justin Martyr, 141 and McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 149. 24. Zwingli, “Of Baptism,” 141. 25. Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 354, 360. 26. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 169. 27. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 145. 28. Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians, 47. 29. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 143–44. 30. Cf. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 183. 31. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 182. 32. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 186. 33. Zwingli, “Of Baptism,” 137.

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34. Cyril of Jerusalem, Works, vol. 2, trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1970). 35. Brett Salkeld, Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Church Unity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 64. 36. Zwingli, “On the Lord’s Supper,” 196. 37. Robert Holcot, Questiones super sententias libri quarti (Lyons, 1518), unpaginated, translated by author, as cited in Gary Macy, “The Medieval Inheritance,” 29, in Lee Palmer Wandel, ed., A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation (Boston: Brill, 2014), 15–38. 38. See Nemes, Eating Christs Flesh, currently unpublished manuscript. 39. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 127. 40. Ulrich Zwingli, “An Exposition of the Faith,” 258, in Bromiley, ed., Zwingli and Bullinger, 245–82. 41. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 205. 42. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 45. 43. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 250. 44. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, trans. Ernest Evans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). 45. Zwingli, “An Exposition of the Faith,” 259. 46. Alister McGrath, Reformation Thought, 4th ed. (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 182. 47. Zwingli, “Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” 212. 48. Salkeld, Transubstantiation, 36. 49. Heinrich Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, trans. Roy J. Deferrari (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 1955), 168ff. 50. See Ben Witherington III, Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord’s Supper (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 132; McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, ch. 2. 51. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 32. 52. Cf. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship, 33. 53. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (Doubleday: New York, 1991), 18, 32; cf. 219–20. 54. Milgrom, Leviticus, 413–14. 55. Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, 237. 56. Witherington, Making a Meal of It, 99. 57. Herbert McCabe, “The Eucharist as Language,” Modern Theology 15, no. 2 (1999): 131–41. 58. Zwingli, “An Exposition of the Faith,” 262. 59. Eric D. Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 108.

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Berengarius infamously argued that the bread and the wine of the eucharistic meal remain bread and wine even after their consecration. He apparently denied that the body and blood of Jesus were really present during the meal in the way that some of his contemporaries had imagined. Brett Salkeld relates that one reason he would give in favor of this position is that Jesus’s body and blood are not perceptible there.1 He would twice be brought to Rome and forced to swear an oath recounting his position, once in 1059 under Pope Nicholas II and again in 1079 under Pope Gregory VII. Both times he would return to his home and complain of the way he was treated, retracting his recantation. He would be tried one more time by a synod at Bordeaux in 1080, after which he would retire in silence to an island near Tours and die after some years lived in ascetic solitude.2 Lanfranc of Bec, a rival and critic of Berengarius, wrote a highly polemical treatise against him in which he called Berengarius a “sacrilegious violator” of his oath (On the Body and Blood 1 409C) with “darkened mind,” who “despised the rest of men” and thought that he alone was “wise” (3 412B). He tells Berengarius: “Even if I were lacking authority and reason by which I might defend my faith, I would nevertheless prefer to be a rustic and an illiterate Catholic with the common herd than to be a literate and witty heretic with you” (4 414C). He even goes so far as to say that Berengarius should instead have submitted to a heretic’s death: “Would it not be preferable, if you thought that your faith was the true faith, to end your life by an honest death rather than to perjure yourself, order treachery, and abjure your faith?” (4 414D). For Lanfranc, it is proof enough that “the Church of Christ . . . believes that bread is converted into flesh, and wine is converted into blood” (5 415A). He is not willing to allow theology to be done by means of Berengarius’s dialectical method and appeals to logic, but rather, “since the matter that you will hear and respond to involves a mystery of faith, I prefer that you hear and respond from sacred authors” (7 416D). As Henry Chadwick comments: 165

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“Lanfranc was scornful of Berengar’s resort to dialectic in discussing articles of faith, where the only proper criterion is authority.”3 Anyone with a sympathy for the convictions and spirit of the “theology of the manifest” would likely see this history as absurd and tragic. In a way, Lanfranc can only come off as an arch-villain and an embodiment of everything objectionable about the catholic tradition in his day. It is easy for Lanfranc to call Berengarius dishonorable for being unwilling to submit to a heretic’s death, since his own opinion was not one that put him in any danger of being set on fire. So also, it might appear a distorted conception of the demands of honor and religious fidelity to insist that a person be willing to die a heretic’s death for his or her opinion that what looks and tastes like bread must really be bread. The greater sin is rather in demanding that a person think otherwise. Finally, the notion that theology ought only or principally to function by means of the appeal to certain accepted authorities within a purportedly divinely inspired tradition of thought is the methodological and onto-epistemological “sickness unto death,” as this entire book has argued. This sickness of the catholic tradition is precisely at its worst in this matter of the Eucharist. Berengarius’s response to what happened to him in his life may appear to be the best that one could have hoped for in his time and place: a verbal submission to a position one considers to be irrational, an acquiescence to the demands of unconquerable social authorities, and a retreat into safe and silent privacy where one may finish the course of one’s days alone before God. After all, in the end, this is how every person must live—as an individual, alone in one’s time before God. But the providence of God has not allowed that such a situation persist forever. Arising in a radically different social and historical situation, the “theology of the manifest” invites all persons to a careful reflection on and examination of the things themselves, as well as to a reconsideration of the prejudices and dogmatisms of previous generations. Theology both can and should be done in a different way than it has been done until now. The catholic tradition developed in time in such a way that it came to conceive of the Christian faith as inextricably entangled with a series of tightly interrelated ontological speculations and dogmatic formulas which are not easily proven in separation from the authority of the ecclesial hierarchies who endorse them. This is because these speculations and formulas speak about things lying beyond the “veil” of the manifest World. Dogmatic metaphysics and a hierarchical, authoritarian ecclesiology thus go hand in hand. By way of contrast, the “theology of the manifest” maintains that the substance of the Christian faith is not to be found in a non-manifest sphere of reality, nor in a purportedly irreformable tradition that perpetuates itself by means of an infallible institutional hierarchy, nor in speculative opinions

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about disagreeable and contentious matters. It says that Christian faith is concerned with things that are “here,” where every person is, in the sphere of the manifest. Theological and philosophical discussions about these issues can of course seem complicated, but even so, the picture of things presented by the “theology of the manifest” is a simple one. There is one absolute reality which has existence and reality of itself. This reality is God. He brings about all finite realities by sharing his reality with them. He is the infinite reality and the onto-phenomenological context within which every finite reality appears. He relates to finite things the way one’s body relates to one’s fist, the way finite things relate to their accidents, so that between God and the finite thing there is a difference without an absolute ontological distance. This absolute reality is also given in every experience, but experience is double. There is the domain of Life and the phenomenological World, the Inside and the Outside. God is felt on the Inside as the absolute Life in which one feels oneself to live and which is always giving one life, and he is seen on the Outside as the phenomenological World. This “World” is that horizon of all possible objective manifestation, of which the particular things of whatever nature that show themselves are its modifications or aspects. This World is the visible exterior image of God’s inner life, just as one’s body that appears within the World is the visible exterior image of the invisible life that one is oneself. God is constantly manifesting his inner life through the things that appear in the World. Indeed, one can say that all of human life is necessarily an interaction with God. At the same time, the interpretation of his manifestation of his inner life is not easy for human beings, so that they are more than often in the dark. It is not obvious what he is doing, nor what he expects from human beings. This inability to understand God is thus often a cause of disharmony between God and the human beings whom he has brought into his own life in order that they be his collaborators, friends, and guests. This is where the significance of Jesus for Christian faith comes in. Jesus is the “face” of God in the World, which is to say that he is the place in the World to which one can look in order that the inner life of God be explained more clearly. Jesus teaches human beings what God is, what he wants from them, what he thinks about them, and what they can expect from him. In doing this, he also works to reharmonize human beings to God and brings it about that they believe-in God through him. Jesus even accomplishes atonement for the sins of the human race, so that there is no longer any obstacle to reconciliation with God at all. One can say that Jesus is God’s outstretched hand of fellowship offered to all the human race. God is not now holding the sins of any human beings against them. Rather, he wants all persons to turn to him in friendship and thus all people can be said to belong to him in this sense. All people are in the church in the sense

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of ekklēsia, those “called out” of their lives of sin to assembly before God. At the same time, he has also determined a day on which he will judge all people through Jesus. While he is not presently holding the sins of any against them, he also promises that he will not hold the sins of those who believe-in Jesus and who are baptized in his name against them at the judgment. Baptism is therefore the ritual means by which a person joins the community of those who understand themselves to be reconciled with God through Jesus. This community is the church in the sense of congregatio fidelium, the community of believers. And these same persons also regularly celebrate a memorial meal in which bread and wine are used as symbols for the person and work of Jesus. This meal provides them with an opportunity to give thanks to God for what he has accomplished in Jesus, as well as to claim this Jesus for themselves once more through the consumption of the symbols of his body and blood in the bread. Their belief-in Jesus is reaffirmed and restated through this ritual action. They also cultivate this belief-in together by allowing it to blossom and grow into a life of love for God and for neighbor while they await the return of Jesus. Beyond the philosophical and theological arguments that can and should be made, the “theology of the manifest” therefore has a very simple and clear vision for what it means to be a Christian. Christianity means an encounter in the intimacy of one’s subjectivity with the loving God as the source of one’s own life and the being of all things, an encounter that makes possible a different kind of life in the world that is genuinely joyful. It is a Christianity “without metaphysics,” an “immanent Christianity.” It is a matter of being reconciled with the Whole in which one always finds oneself and all things given apart from one’s will and control. It is a matter of being reconciled with the fact of one’s living and with the World with which one is always presented. This is not a stereotypically Protestant point of view in that it rejects the method and onto-epistemology of the catholic tradition. Indeed, it rejects the metaphysical inclinations of this iteration of Christianity in favor of a phenomenological perspective. In this sense, its philosophical hero is sooner Michel Henry than Thomas Aquinas. But it is plainly a Protestant perspective given its consonance with the thought of Huldrych Zwingli and its general intention to propose a reform of Christian theology and life. Indeed, it sees in the conjunction of Henry and Zwingli a promising new direction for Protestant thinking. One might call it a kind of “post-catholic Protestant theology.” Most importantly of all, it agrees with Zwingli’s elegant summary: “The whole of Christian life and salvation consists in this, that in Jesus Christ God has provided us with the remission of sins and everything else, and that we are to show forth and imitate Jesus Christ in our lives.”4 And it invites every baptized Christian who can agree with this to a meal in which

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this generosity of God toward human beings through his Son Jesus is commemorated and celebrated with thanksgiving. NOTES 1. Salkeld, Transubstantiation, 63. 2. Albert Hauck, “Berengar of Tours,” 57–59, in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. II: Basilica-Chambers, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1952). 3. Henry Chadwick, “Ego Berengarius,” The Journal of Theological Studies 40, no. 2 (1989): 414–45, 427 4. Ulrich Zwingli, “Of Baptism,” 145.

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Index

absolute Life, 46, 49–50, 53–57, 61–63, 66, 82, 91–92, 105, 157, 167. See also God; Henry, Michel apostolic succession: in early church, 120–24; in Roman Catholic theology, 117–20 appearance: as correlated with being, 12–18; as multiply interpretable, 129–30; what appears, 15–17, 35–43, 62, 67, 73, 91, 152–53 Aquinas, Thomas: Eucharist, 152–54, 158; existence of God, 47–53; knowledge of God, 64–68; theological onto-epistemology, 27–31, 64–68 Aristotle, 9–10, 21, 27, 52; conception of truth, 10–12 atonement, 94–96 Atrahasis, 89–90 Augustine of Hippo, 84–85, 88, 117, 142, 149

Beale, G. K., 78 belief: belief-that vs. belief-in, 127–33; as fallible, 128–30 Berengarius, 142, 152, 165–66 Bernard, L. W., 146–47 Bird, Michael F., 102 bishop of Rome, 118–20. See also apostolic succession Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 84–85 Breck, John, 134 Buddhism, 29 bullshit, 10 Bultmann, Rudolf, 3

baptism: forgiveness of sins, 97, 143– 49; infant baptism, 149; regeneration, 143, 146–49. See also Justin Martyr; Zwingli, Huldrych, and doctrine of baptism Barth, Karl, 32, 128 Bauckham, Richard, 102

Calvin, John: doctrinal conception of the Church, 114–16, 125 Chrétien, Jean-Louis, 80–81 church: as congregatio fidelium, 126– 33; doctrinal conception, 116–19; as ekklēsia, 114–26; institutional conception, 117–20. See also Vincent of Lérins circular argument. See petitio principii Courvoisier, Jacques, 115 Cyprian of Carthage, 114 Cyril of Jerusalem: Eucharist, 151, 153, 155; on scripture, 117 deception, 10

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Index

DeLay, Steven, 93 Didache, 121–22, 124–25; Eucharist as sacrifice 145, 159–60 Diller, Kevin, 31–35 doxastic experience, 32–34 dualism, 21, 75, 113, 141 Dulles, Avery, 119, 122 Eastern Orthodoxy, 91, 133–34 election, 114–16, 126–27 Epistle of Barnabas, 145 Ehrman, Bart, 102 esse tantum, 49–50, 64, 66. See also Aquinas, Thomas, and doctrine of God Eucharist, 118, 120–22, 131, 143, 157, 159–60; eucharistic communion, 161–62; and metaphysics, 142, 151– 53; as symbolic, 151–57, 160–61 Evans, Craig, 86–87 Evans, G. R., 130 evil, 68–75, 160; as gratuitous, 69–72 First Clement, 121, 124–25 Florovsky, Georges, 134 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 136 Gathercole, Simon, 102 Genesis, 89–90, 92 God: as absolute Life, 53–57, 82, 92, 157; as formally necessary, 47–53; as speaking in Scripture, 80–88; as unknowable, 66–68 Goldingay, John, 85 Gombrich, Richard, 29 Gregory of Nazianzus, 101 Grindheim, Sigurd, 101–2 Guarino, Thomas, 25 Hart, David Bentley, 97, 100, 128 Hartman, Lars, 143 Heidegger, Martin, 10, 14, 16 Heidelberg Catechism, 132 Henry, Michel: existence of God, 47–54; God as absolute Life, 49–50,

53–57; knowledge of God, 54–55; life and world, 41–42; self as flesh, 42; word of God, 82–83 heretics, 120, 123, 130–31 Hick, John, 30 Hill, Charles, 102 Holcot, Robert, 153 Humphrey, Edith, 134 Husserl, Edmund, 14, 35, 45 imago Dei, 90, 103 “Inside”/“Outside,” 41–43, 55–57, 60, 67, 89, 94, 119, 146, 150, 157. See also Henry, Michel, and life and world Irenaeus of Lyons, 122–25 Janicaud, Dominique, 45 John of Damascus, 65, 100 Justin Martyr: doctrine of baptism, 145–48 Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, 9 Kelly, J. N. D., 122 Kirk, J. R. Daniel, 102 knowledge: as conscious truthfulness, 12–14; as impossible in the “closed” theological onto-epistemology, 31–35 Lanfranc of Bec, 142, 152–55 Latinovic, Vladimir, 99 Levenson, Jon, 89 logic of the inaccessible: in “closed” theological onto-epistemology, 24–31, 34–35; in doctrinal conception of the Church, 114–15; as fallacious, 18–21, 52–53; in institutional conception of the Church, 116–20, 125–26; in Real Presence doctrine, 152–53, 158–59; in representationalism, 18–21; in Aquinas, Thomas, 27–31; in Vincent of Lérins, 24–27 MacDonald, Gregory, 97

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Macy, Gary, 153 Manis, R. Zachary, 97 McClymond, Michael, 97 McGowan, Andrew, 147, 149, 156, 159 McGuckin, John Anthony, 134 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 80, 136 metaphysics, 16, 127, 131; defined, 2–3, 142; in doctrine of baptism, 142–51; in doctrine of Eucharist, 131, 151– 57; in theology generally, 167. See also sickness unto death Middleton, J. Richard, 90 Milgrom, Jacob, 159–60 Moltmann, Jürgen, 98 Nicaea, 99 Nicene and anti-Nicene theology, 99–108 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 30 non sequitur, 19–21. See also logic of the inaccessible O’Collins, Gerald, 134 onto-epistemology, 14, 23–24, 28. See also theological onto-epistemology Origen of Alexandria, 116; spiritual sense of Scripture, 78–80, 85 Ott, Ludwig, 120, 143 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 9, 11 Parry, Robin, 97 Peckham, John C., 133 Perl, Eric, 160–61 petitio principii, 19–21. See also circular argument; logic of the inaccessible phenomenology: as inimical to theology, 3–4, 45; method, 12–14; as necessary for theology, 12–21; onto-epistemology, 14–18; relation to truth, 14. See also Janicaud, Dominique Plantinga, Alvin, 32–34, 71 Plantinga, Cornelius, 92 presbyter, 122

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Quicunque Vult, 100, 119, 127 Ramelli, Ilaria, 97 Ratzinger, Joseph, 88, 99 reasoned discourse, 10–12; in relation to knowledge, 12 representationalism, 15–18; and the logic of the inaccessible, 18–21, 31, 52–53 Roman Catholicism, 23, 102, 117, 120–21 Rowe, William, 69 sacrament, 118, 121, 142–43, 150; ex opere operato, 143–44, 146; sacramental eating, 156–57; spiritual eating, 155–57 Salkeld, Brett, 152, 158, 165 salvation: example of Zacchaeus, 93–94; forgiveness of sins, 144–45; question of universal salvation, 96–99; as reharmonization with God, 88–99 scripture: authority in theology, 116–17; God speaking through, 78–88; in relation to ecclesial tradition, 133–37 sectarianism, 130 Shepherd of Hermas, 145 sickness unto death, 166. See also theological onto-epistemology, and “closed” paradigm skeptical theism, 70 Sokolowski, Robert, 15–16, 39, 45, 62, 80–81, 83 sphere of the manifest, 21, 23–24, 30, 35–43, 45–46, 53, 66–67, 167. See also Henry, Michel, and life and world Stăniloae, Dumitru, 91, 135 symbol, 156, 160–61 Tertullian, 124–25, 156 theological onto-epistemology, 23–24; “closed” paradigm, 24–35; open paradigm, 23–24, 35–43. See also metaphysics

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Thirty-Nine Articles, 116 Tilling, Chris, 101–2 Torrance, Thomas F., 96, 104, 131 Tuggy, Dale, 103, 107 Turner, David, 88 Turner, Denys, 64 unitarianism. See Nicene and antiNicene theology; Tuggy, Dale Vanhoozer, Kevin, 133 Vincent of Lérins: semper, ubique, ab omnibus, 24–27 violence, 90; as justified against heretics, 129–31

Index

Westminster Confession of Faith, 116 Witherington, Ben, 160 World, 35–37; as the “body” of God, 55–57. See also Henry, Michel, and life and world Zahavi, Dan, 16 Zwingli, Huldrych: doctrine of baptism, 144–51; doctrine of God, 57–62; ecclesial decrees, 26; Eucharist, 142, 152–53, 155–57, 160; knowledge of God, 77, 104; nature of faith, 94–95, 128, 131–32, 168; providence of God, 62

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About the Author

Steven Nemes (PhD, Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary) is an academic theologian and an instructor of Latin and Greek at North Phoenix Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of Orthodoxy and Heresy, Cambridge Elements in the Problems of God (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Theological Authority in the Church: Reconsidering Traditionalism and Hierarchy (Cascade Books, 2023). He has also published numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Journal of Analytic Theology, Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion, Heythrop Journal, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, Irish Theological Quarterly, and Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy.

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