Fully Alive: The Glory of God and the Human Creature in Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Theological Exegesis of Scripture 9780567659439, 9780567662255, 9780567659446

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Fully Alive The Glory of God and the Human ­Creature in Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar and ­Theological Exegesis of Scripture

Fully Alive The Glory of God and the Human C ­ reature in Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar and ­Theological Exegesis of Scripture Jason A. Fout

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Jason A. Fout, 2015 Jason A. Fout has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-567-65943-9 PB: 978-0-567-67204-9 ePDF: 978-0-567-65944-6 ePub: 978-0-567-65945-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fout, Jason A. Fully alive: the glory of God and the human creature in Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and theological exegesis of scripture / by Jason A. Fout. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-567-65943-9 (hbk) – ISBN 978-0-567-65944-6 (epdf) – ISBN 978-0-567-65945-3 (epub) 1. Glory of God–Christianity. 2. Glory of God–Biblical teaching. 3. Barth, Karl, 1886-1968. 4. Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 1905-1988. 5. Bible–Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. BT180.G6F68 2015 231’.4–dc23 2014038601

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Contents Acknowledgments

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Introduction: The Glory of God and Human Agency: An Introduction and Overview

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1 2 3 4 5

The Glory of God and Human Agency: Initial Considerations

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The Glory of God according to Karl Barth (1)

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The Glory of God according to Karl Barth (2)

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Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Glory of God

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The Glory of God in Scripture: A Theological Engagement with Exodus, 2 Corinthians and the Gospel of John

145

Bibliography Scripture Index Index

193 205 209

Acknowledgments Life is such that we constantly incur obligations to others. Indeed, that is a part of the character of life as a gift. We are not ‘self-made’. Obligations are not a hindrance or embarrassment, but the very conditions of our life and work. I gladly owe debts of gratitude to a wide range of people, including to many, no doubt, of whom I am unaware. Yet the following people and institutions are those which contributed to my work in this project and my formation as a theologian in the four years I was in Cambridge, and I would be remiss for not mentioning them specifically. (It should go without saying that any inaccuracies, infelicities or omissions which remain are strictly down to me.) First, I would like to thank my parents, Glenn and Janice Fout, my parentsin-law, Lawrence and Julie Gurga, and my extended family, who believed in the work I intended to do and did so much to support our moving and working abroad. My wife, Kristen, has been a constant source of love, encouragement, security, inspiration and support. We have always imagined that the work I was doing was, in some sense, ‘our work’, whether during my time in seminary, or in postgraduate work at Cambridge. A better ‘co-worker’ (as well as spouse) no one could find. Likewise, my daughters, Alexandra and Samantha, have been continuous sources of life and energy for me. Friendships are critical and always contribute heavily to one’s work, not least in theology. Particularly in this regard I am indebted to two groups: Tom Greggs, Paul Nimmo and Simeon Zahl, the three best friends and theologians one could wish for. And the group of theologians and postgraduate students at St. Mark’s Church, especially Elizabeth Powell, Jacob Sherman-Holsinger, Andreas Nordlander and Samuel Kimbriel, all of whom are beyond compare – estimable theologians, each, and great friends besides. Alongside these stand many others, good friends and theologians all, especially Travis Ables, Jacob Goodson, Craig Hovey, Ryan Reeves, Kevin Taylor and Giles Waller. Many of them gave me specific feedback on earlier drafts and concepts with which I was wrestling. Later, in the stage leading to publication, my colleague Ellen Wondra offered me a great deal of encouragement and help.

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I owe a debt of gratitude to Peter Williams, Elizabeth Magba and Tyndale House, who allowed me as a theologian to sojourn among biblical scholars for a time, to my great benefit – and hopefully to theirs as well. Likewise, Bexley Seabury Seminary Federation, where I now teach, was supportive of my efforts to complete the dissertation which lies behind this book, submitted amid the stress and strain of first-year teaching; I particularly owe thanks to Interim Dean William Doubleday and his firm support of my work and vocation as a scholar. As ever, I am in debt to the Cambridge 1405s. What more can I say? Early in the project, Philip McCosker provided some helpfully incisive remarks on an early draft. Kevin Taylor gave detailed feedback and proofreading to Chapters 1 and 4; likewise, Henriette Guthauser on Chapters 2 and 3 and Elizabeth Powell and Samuel Kimbriel on Chapter 5. Barry Danylak, Rebecca Idestom and Kyle Wells gave specific feedback on what eventually became Chapter 5, improving it immeasurably in the process. Anastasia Philippa Scrutton likewise made some helpful remarks on a paper at SST which found its way into the substance of Chapter 5. Eugene Rogers, Jr., was quite generous with his time early in the dissertation, making a number of very helpful suggestions. David S. Cunningham was, as ever, a source of encouragement, wit, goodnatured insult – and sustaining friendship. T&T Clark/Bloomsbury Publishing was crucial to this manuscript seeing the light of day. In particular, editor Anna Turton was a help and an encouragement from the beginning. Likewise, Miriam Cantwell helped guide this new author through some of the important hoops. A number of the faculty at Cambridge were generous with their time and supportive of my work, especially Ben Quash (now at King’s College, London), who gave very helpful feedback in my first-year research exercise, as well as being generous with his time as the work went along. Sarah Coakley was also helpful in thinking about obedience; Joe Kennedy and Anna Williams were also helpfully supportive of my work. I am quite grateful to my two readers, Janet Soskice and R. W. L. Moberly, who struck what seems to me the ideal combination for examiners: supportive of the work I was doing, and (as a result) unwavering in their critique, in order to make it better. The time they spent with my dissertation and with me in the viva was a gift: thank you. Finally, at Cambridge the relationship with one’s supervisor is central to the dissertation. I had been encouraged to apply to Cambridge in order to work

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with David F. Ford, and in the event, he proved to be superlative: supportive, encouraging, willing to ‘go to bat’ for me when necessary, yet also willing to ask hard, searching questions and make sure the work was coming along as needed. Having David as a supervisor was a Godsend, a gift during a difficult time, and I am certain that our time together has profoundly influenced me and the way I approach theology. Yet no less influential for me was the time with my initial supervisor at Cambridge, Daniel W. Hardy, who died in the autumn of 2007. He and his wife Perrin welcomed my family and me to Cambridge, hosted us, befriended us, and helped us to be at home. Dan’s patience and generosity seemingly knew no limits, as we would meet fortnightly for sessions of 2–3 hours, exploring what I had done to that point. He encouraged me never to ‘settle’, never to fight shy, never to apologize for wanting to make a first order statement about God and God’s ways with the world. To say that his influence on me was profound risks understatement: his words still echo in my mind, and I believe he remains with me in ways I have only begun to realize. It was an honour to have been one of his two last students. I am proud to be a part of that wide swathe of theologians whose lives he touched, endlessly enriched from conversation with him, and it is to him that I dedicate this book.

Introduction The Glory of God and Human Agency: An Introduction and Overview

The basic intuition which I elaborate in all that follows begins with the notion that the glory of God ‘overflows’ from God, from among the Three of the Trinity, into the creation. Karl Barth talks about this glory as an overflow of joy; Hans Urs von Balthasar talks about it as an overflow of self-giving love; alongside these, I lift up the notion of God’s glory as an overflow of praiseworthiness and honour. I take it that divine and human agency are not in competition in any way, and so God’s ‘overflow’ does not require the bracketing out of any human agency. Rather, the fullness of the overflow of God’s glory correlates with an analogous ‘overflow’ in human agency, when God’s glory is encountered most fully. Barth and von Balthasar, despite getting much right about the glory of God, seem not to follow out their intuition about the ‘overflow’ of God’s glory, neglecting to suggest that this glory creates analogous ‘overflow’ of human agency (a human agency itself constituted and enabled by God). This then raises questions about the adequacy of the ‘obedience’ each recommends as the proper form of human life and agency in light of the glory of God: the typical sense of obedience is not congruent with ‘overflow’. More broadly, accounts of human agency as being bracketed out by God’s agency are called into question, inasmuch as heteronomy (as I spell it out) does not comport with ‘overflow’. Over against this, I recommend not the ‘autonomy’ of the human agent, but rather, with Paul Ricoeur, a ‘non-heteronomous dependence’ of the human agent on God which allows for excess, abundance and overflow in human agency, which is nevertheless dependent on God for creation, salvation, agency and flourishing. As an overflow of praiseworthiness and honour which itself transforms the creature, ‘from glory to glory’ (2 Cor. 3.18), the glory of God elaborates itself in glorification: glory begets glory. This glorification in turn gives rise to further praise, creating an ongoing, expanding spiral of honouring, praising and glorifying. Moreover, this glorifying establishes human creatures as agents as well as constituting them in a particular sociality, in accord with

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the glory of God. Before anticipating the shape of the case I shall make, I shall discuss several notions which figure prominently in what follows. In both Barth and von Balthasar, the glory of God is considered an ‘overflow’ from God, either a superabundance of the joy at the heart of God’s Trinitarian relations communicating God’s perfections to the world (Barth) or a gratuitous spilling over of the relations of self-giving love at the heart of God’s Trinitarian relations drawing in human creatures to those relations (von Balthasar). And yet in both cases, the shape of human life in light of this glory is obedience: joyful obedience, loving obedience, free obedience. But nevertheless, the relation of the human creature to the superabundant, gracious, glorious God is, for both, obedience. Indeed, it becomes clear for both of them that, on the basis of what are essentially ‘divine command’ accounts of ethics, the primary metaphor for redeemed human agency before God is commandment and obedience. Both make an effort, in different ways, to guard against an obvious heteronomy in this: not that they would affirm human autonomy, but something more like theonomy. But in my terms, their concepts are nevertheless heteronomous. Hetero­nomy on my account is less about ‘where’ the command comes from (‘outside’ one’s self or ‘inside’), and more about the form of that command. Does the command elicit conversational, creative response or shut it down in favour of precise (including blind or absolute) obedience? Does the command admit of the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’ or not? Does the command allow the human creature to exercise discernment about the genuineness of the command and its source, thought as to its exact meaning, and judgment and creativity as to its faithful performance, or does the command demand acceptance of itself (perhaps through real or veiled force), forbid thinking about it, and override consideration of how it is to be carried out? Although Barth and von Balthasar do not explicitly affirm the latter option in these starkly presented pairs (at least not in so many terms), it becomes clear that their thinking on the matter proceeds along these lines. Both Barth and von Balthasar are keen to rethink theological commonplaces in light of the actual revelation of God, and to do this particularly in a Christological direction. While obedience has traditionally been considered a large part of the Church’s interpretation of Jesus’ work and mission, these two theologians take this theme into their work wholeheartedly and with little of their usual critical querying or careful specification of terms. The account of obedience which results is what I call ‘straight-line’ obedience: a (perspicuous) command is given, to which precisely the commanded deed is the only proper response. This obedience is ‘straight-line’ because there is a direct line of agency from the one commanding through the one commanded to the performance of the command.

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Further thinking and discernment of what is, in itself, utterly clear and presently demanded may only be perverse delay; performance of a deed not identical to that commanded may only be culpable disobedience. The result is that human faculties of agency such as critical thinking and discernment, or creativity and imagination, the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’, as well as considerations of performance – the best way to enact or embody what has been commanded – are excluded, as if these forms of human agency were problematic or sinful in themselves. Similarly excluded is the possibility that, in accord with God’s wisdom, at least some divine commands may be underdetermined, specifically to allow the engagement of human creativity and non-identical repetition. Over against this, I mean to argue that the fullness of human agency is made possible through the overflow of joy, love, honour, gift and grace that is God’s glory. This fullness of agency may be characterized by discernment, judgment, ‘faithful questioning’, exploration of meanings and consideration of faithful means of performance; it will be marked by excess, overflow, creativity, eagerness and boldness. It is always aware of its own contingency and grateful for God’s grace and gift, yet is not content in passivity or self-bracketing. Although human agency and being are radically contingent on God’s prior and simultaneous gift and grace, this human agency in the light of God’s glory may be considered dialogical, as God allows for creaturely response, leading to something like conversation with the creation.1 This is fully consistent with Kathryn Tanner’s point that God’s ‘complex creative intention’ may be said to include divinity ‘determining itself to be determined by the creature in certain respects’.2 Thus for God to choose to ‘converse’ with the creation is in itself neither demanding an illegitimate place for the creation nor diminishing God’s agency as God. God and the human may enjoy a relationship of ‘fellows’ or ‘friends’, but it is because God establishes and sustains this relationship, not because, ontologically speaking, God and the human creation are in any sense ‘equals’. The broader account of divine and human agency which lies behind this project agrees with the perspective put forward by theologians such as Tanner, Herbert McCabe and William Placher, as well as biblical scholar John Barclay.3 1 2

3

For example, Gen. 15.1-21; Gen. 18.22-33; Exod. 3.4-22; Exod. 33.1-34.8; Isa. 6.5-13; Lk. 1.26-38. Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1988), p. 96. Along with Tanner, see Herbert McCabe, ‘Creation’, in God Matters (London: Mowbray, 2000); William Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking About God Went Wrong (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996); and John M. G. Barclay’s introduction to ‘Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul’, in John M. G. Barclay and Simon Gathercole (eds.), Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment (Library of New Testament Studies, 335; London: T&T Clark, 2006), pp. 1–8.

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In Tanner’s terms, this is a model of ‘non-contrastive transcendence’.4 As Barclay writes, in this model ‘God’s sovereignty does not limit or reduce human freedom, but is precisely what grounds and enables it. The two agencies thus stand in direct, and not inverse, proportion: the more the human agent is operative, the more (not the less) may be attributed to God.’5 Importantly, this model also insists that divine agency and human agency are non-identical; God and the human creature do not act within ‘the same order of being or in the same causal nexus’.6 Two corollaries are implicit in this agential non-identity: first, God and humanity are not competitors for a scarce good known as ‘agency’. God’s acting does not diminish human acting, and vice versa. Second, the two agents remain distinct from each other, and hence one’s agency can never be reduced down to the other’s. As Barclay summarizes, created, human freedom which may be ‘horizontally’ independent of other created agencies, stands in a ‘vertical’ relationship of absolute dependence on divine agency. Other agents may affect human agency, but it is God who effects it, who constitutes its effectiveness as an agent. Hence, if God is everything, humanity is nothing without God – but may be both powerful and effective as a created agent in dependence on God.7

This account of divine and human agency dovetails with the notion of the human existing in a relation of non-heteronomous dependence on God, consistent with and formed by God’s glory, as I set out in Chapter 1. Alongside these senses of obedience and agency, the notion of bracketing out human agency also plays a large role in the case I am making. I use this phrase, bracketing out, to mean simply the evacuation or denial of human agency. Rather importantly, this has two senses which I mean to invoke throughout. First, human agency can be evacuated in the sense of being overawed, overpowered, brought to nought. In this sense, if divine glory in relation to the human either paralysed the human or caused her to disappear, then, in my terms, it would bracket out human agency. There is a second sense of ‘bracketing out’ which I mean just as seriously, though: in human talk about divine glory and the creature, human agency can be removed from consideration, and rendered null, as of no significance. In at least some cases, this denial is a reflection of theological scruples. These two senses are distinct, in that each has its own subject: in the first sense, God ‘brackets out’ human agency; in the second, humans do it. The 4 5 6 7

Tanner, God and Creation, p. 46. Barclay, ‘Introduction’, p. 7. Barclay, ‘Introduction’, p. 7. Barcley, ‘Introduction’, p. 7.

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case I am making here is that the former sense – God doing the ­bracketing – does not obtain: God’s glory is fully consistent with the fullness of human agency and flourishing, in accord with the shape of that glory. My suspicion, therefore, is that the latter sense – humans doing the bracketing – does obtain, in at least some theologians and ecclesial settings, with the result that the reality of human agency (as well as divine glory) is veiled. The upshot of this is that these theologians give heteronomous accounts of divine glory, and divine agency in general, frustrate human tasks such as ‘learning about learning’ (which I explore in more detail in Chapter 1) and curtail creaturely agency in general. I have chosen Barth and von Balthasar as the major contemporary conversation partners for the book simply because they seem to understand, in broad terms, the account of divine agency which I allude to here (chiefly in insisting on God’s freedom, a major emphasis for both). Further, they give detailed accounts of God’s glory which play important roles in their overall theological construction. They also each discuss the shape of human life in light of this divine glory. Disappointingly, as I have already indicated, they explore this shape primarily in terms of ‘straight-line’ obedience, although their accounts of obedience differ from each other. Yet I have taken time to engage with them here because, alongside this lacuna, they give generally satisfying descriptions of the glory of God. In addition, Barth and von Balthasar knew and respected each other, and von Balthasar in particular has been shown recently to have written much of The Glory of the Lord explicitly in response to Barth.8 So the use of these two theologians flows from more than their recognition of the importance of an account of divine glory to systematic theology; it also arises from the history of engagement these two theologians shared, and the concomitant agreements and disagreements which this history produced. Having described in brief form the elemental intuition which informs this work, and set out several key terms and understandings, I now turn to a brief overview of each subsequent chapter.

Chapter 1: The glory of God and human agency: Initial considerations Divine glory has been depicted by certain contemporary theologians as intrin­ sically overwhelming to or competitive with human agency. This construction of 8

Stephen D. Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 87.

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the doctrine is interrogated along two closely related lines. First, following Rowan Williams, it appears that this complete bracketing out of human agency defeats the morally serious task of learning about how humans learn their theological language, a human self-reflection on the reality of God and God’s ways with the world which nevertheless does not reduce the divine to human terms. If divine glory is present in the creation in an enduring way, yet brackets out human agency, then this defeats human enquiry into both that glory and creation. Second, drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s writing on the hermeneutics of revelation, it becomes clear that this way of presenting the doctrine (as well as the doctrine presented) is heteronomous, ‘opaque’ and ‘authoritarian’. Following Ricoeur, it is suggested that the doctrine of divine glory should not take the form of affirming human autonomy as such, but should instead display a pattern of non-heteronomous dependence, establishing and constituting humans in their agency (and in this way, glorifying humans) as those who may glorify God. Thus, it is suggested that divine glory should be seen as intrinsically relational and as begetting a sociality which allows for a transformed human agency in accord with this glory.

Chapter 2: The glory of God according to Karl Barth (1) In order to explore more fully how God’s glory might accord with this account of human agency I turn to Karl Barth’s account of divine glory, beginning with Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD) II.1. Here, he returns glory to a leading concept among God’s perfections. Although he places it under the heading of the perfections of God’s freedom, he also associates it with the other major heading of God’s perfections, Love. In this way, Barth lets glory become (in ways) an encompassing term to describe the One who loves in freedom; this term describes God’s acts in, with and for the creation; further, God’s glory is found at the greatest ‘depths’ in God, and is particularly identified with the overflow of the divine joy in the divine identity into the creation. In this volume of the CD, Barth explores God’s glory particularly through the lenses of freedom, love, honour, light and beauty. For the task of exploring Barth’s construction in greater detail and beginning to consider the question of the place of the human in the glory of God, I propose the hypothesis that, for Barth, the glory of God begets glory in the creation. We find that this is clearly the case with freedom: that the freedom of God frees the creature for God, and so it might be said that the glory of God, in begetting glory in creation, generates a correspondence of complementarity (but not similarity)

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to God among creatures. Turning to the glory of God expressed in love, though, we find that Barth does not seem to follow his best intuitions on this count, for in God’s glory God loves, but creatures are commanded and permitted to respond with ‘life-obedience’. In considering glory as honour, Barth indicates that God’s honour does beget an honouring (of God) within the creation, but we also see that, perhaps because of a theological scruple, Barth was unable to affirm that God’s honour itself honours the creation, either through being witness to God’s honour or through participation in the honouring of God. On the topic of glory in terms of light, we see that God’s glory shines as a light in creation, and the creature is allowed to become a witness, reflecting and testifying to this light. Yet although the creature’s glorification of God is made God’s own, the creature’s glorification is seen primarily as a ‘reflection’ or ‘echo’, with no genuine creaturely mediation. Lastly, turning to beauty, Barth much more clearly affirms my hypothesis here, affirming that as God’s glory is the overflow of God’s joy, so also it gives joy and enjoyment of God to creatures. At this point, it appears that Barth gives only a qualified assent to the notion that God glorifies the creation in accord with God’s glory, establishing and constituting it in its agency in nonheteronomous dependence and an overflow of its agency congruent with the gift and grace which express God’s glory.

Chapter 3: The glory of God according to Karl Barth (2) Turning to CD, Volume IV.3.1, we find that Barth, in talking about the glory of the Mediator, lays a greater emphasis on the image of light shining forth as an exposition of God’s glory. Moreover, this declaration and revelation of Jesus Christ as the Mediator, whose glory is as light, also constitutes Jesus in his office as prophet. This agrees with Barth’s accentuating the essentially declarative nature of God’s revelation, expressed in the indicative and imperative. It is also, however, a somewhat surprising decision, given the three biblical themes related to glory which he has expounded. Why would not the glory of the Mediator, as the God-man, and indeed, as the archetypal human, be conveyed through a social and relational term such as honour, which would allow for more straightforward human inhabitation and engagement? And what is the proper role for the human in the face of this glory of the Mediator? I first interrogate the prophetic nature of this declarative outshining, turning to the work of R. W. L. Moberly, who observes the need for discernment of prophecy, a need which is admitted throughout Scripture, even by Jesus himself.

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Thus prophecy is not a declaration which brackets out human agency, but instead requires human agency in discernment of its genuineness. Moreover, prophetic speech is ‘response-seeking speech’, and so even after it is discerned as genuine, human agency is involved in this response. Thus the glory of the Mediator, considered as prophetic declaration and outshining, still requires human engagement, in discernment and response. But even this declarative character of revelation may be interrogated. Barth is keen to maintain that revelation occurs in the indicative and imperative moods. This in turn implies a completeness and perspicuity in God’s revelation, such that human engagement or desire to plumb revelation’s depths appears insolent. Against this, I raise the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’. Rather than positing faith and doubt as exclusive opposites, I see doubt as (potentially) underwritten by faith – not as scepticism or a human demand for certainty, but rather a human doubting of oneself, querying of revelation, or enquiring after possibilities which seem opened up. ‘Faithful questioning’ also draws in hermeneutic concerns, not ruling out what God might reveal or establishing ‘universal’ conditions for understanding, but instead asking after meaning in particular cases. ‘Faithful questioning’ constitutes another form of human agency in the light of God’s glory. I then turn to Barth’s insistence that revelation is in the indicative and imperative. Drawing on the work of David Ford on the (grammatical) moods of the cries of faith, I extend this notion into the question: why may not God reveal in the whole range of linguistic moods, including the optative (of desire) and the subjunctive (opening possibilities)? This fuller range also suggests, along with numerous biblical stories, the possibility of a ‘conversational’ character to the relation of human and divine agencies, while not sacrificing its asymmetrical nature. In light of what has been said to this point about revelation, prophecy, and command, I interrogate Barth’s notion of obedience as the human response to God’s act. I find that he espouses a strongly ‘straight-line’ notion of obedience. Although Barth writes in terms of the creature being made God’s ‘partner in creation’ and similar roles, in the final analysis the account of obedience (and hence, human agency) which he provides brackets out human agency considered as discernment or ‘faithful questioning’, and therefore does not do full justice to God’s glory as an ‘overflow’. The final section turns to Barth’s account of glory and glorifying, looking at the ways in which the creation is permitted to glorify God and the possibility that God might be said to glorify the creation. Although he approaches seeing the relation of human agency to divine as a situation of non-heteronomous dependence, he

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ends affirming humanity as merely an ‘echoing wall’ for God’s glory, and the fullness of human agency as being a hearing and obeying of God’s command.

Chapter 4: Hans Urs von Balthasar on the glory of God Given his biographical and conceptual convergences with Barth, von Balthasar’s account of divine glory is a natural conversation partner. Turning to his elaboration of God’s glory, we find that von Balthasar presents it as the momentum of the inner relations of self-giving love of the Three of the Trinity, expressed in time as the Son of the Father going to the cross in a dynamic of selfimpoverishment. This is quite compatible with my suggestion that the glory of God has the characteristic of an ‘overflow’ from God to the creation. Thus there is, in von Balthasar, a greater concentration on the cross, and a closer connection with obedience, self-emptying and love. The result is an account of divine glory which is at once more focused (on the cross as its greatest expression) and more encompassing (as incorporating even cross, death and Sheol). Returning to the hypothesis that the glory of God begets a glory of the creation, we find that, for von Balthasar, the love of God begets a loving response in the creature; furthermore, with Barth, von Balthasar avers that the glory of God, as it expresses God’s freedom, also frees the creature. Turning to the threefold biblical images of light, honour and beauty, von Balthasar programmatically favours the image of beauty, allowing it to inform the entire seven volumes of The Glory of the Lord. Moreover, he affirms that, in the encounter with Christ, the beauty of Christ becomes the beauty of the Christian, as she becomes conformed to the image of Christ by the Spirit. Turning to the more specific consideration of human agency and divine glory, I examine von Balthasar’s account of human obedience to God. This is focused through his presentation of the obedience of Christ as his obedient and complete self-donation to the Father, which is intended to elicit a responding giving from humans as well as serving as a pattern for this giving. This theme of self-dispossession and the related theme of indifference as the ‘active pursuit of God’s will’ grow out of von Balthasar’s engagement with the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola. This engagement and his use of these notions raises the question for me, though, of human agency, whether human agency is bracketed out (by the human actively working to do so) in a nearly hyperbolic sense of self-dispossession. Furthermore, one begins to discern a certain limited account

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of sin, whether as ‘Promethean’ pride or else as ‘refusal’ of God’s love which then enjoins a turn ‘away from self ’ as the proper remedy. Flowing out of this account of Jesus’ obedience and his Ignatian emphasis, von Balthasar places obedience in a prominent place in his account of human agency. This obedience is relational and loving, as the human creature responds to God’s self-giving with her own self-dispossession and embrace of God’s mission. Yet there is a troubling tendency in von Balthasar’s account to portray the encounter with another as requiring one to ‘make room’ in oneself for the other, which is a kind of withdrawal, a bracketing of one’s own agency. The human agent’s humility seems to risk her disappearance. This seems to reflect an either-or bind in von Balthasar’s thought when it comes to human agency: in an I-Thou encounter, either the I obliterates or controls the other, or else withdraws to allow the Thou to remain other: there seems to be no cooperative middle ground in which both agents may engage, allowing the other to be other (even contributing positively to that identity), both participating in each other’s social-constituting activity. When the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’ are divine and human, this tendency becomes even more deeply problematic, as it suggests that human agency itself threatens divine agency and must be curtailed so that divine agency may be operative. The dynamic of self-dispossession which undergirds this double bind is underwritten in part by von Balthasar’s notion of the Marian form of the Church. He finds in Mary’s acceding to God’s plan (told in the annunciation story) a Christian model of self-dispossession and ‘making room’ for Christ. In accord with Ignatian spirituality, the Marian form is not – not quite – passive, but actively receptive of God’s mission; but it is only receptive. This Marian form is shaped by von Balthasar in certain ways, though, and most telling is his reduction of Mary to her ultimate response to God (behold your servant, may it be done), omitting any mention of the surprisingly conversational nature of her encounter with the angel. Rather than being a tidy tale of self-renunciation and ‘straight-line’ obedience, this is instead an example of ‘faithful questioning’. This opens up the possibility of seeing in Mary instead one example of surprising overflow of human agency in light of the glory of God.

Chapter 5: The glory of God in scripture: A theological engage­ment with Exodus, 2 Corinthians and the Gospel of John To show more positively the possibility that the fullness of God’s glory is not incompatible with a fullness of human agency, and thus of opening up these

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(otherwise mostly promising) accounts of divine glory to unbracketed human agency, I provide a constructive theological engagement with Scripture in the final chapter. This section focuses on Moses’ encounter with God’s glory in Exodus 33 and 34, Paul’s references to glory and human honour in 2 Corinthians, and the presentation of the glory ‘of an only son’, who calls his disciples friends rather than slaves in the Gospel of John. My engagement with these texts is not strictly along the lines of historical-critical or literary-critical engagements of the Biblical guild, although I draw on the guild’s work in making my case. Rather, I approach the text from the perspective of theological interpretation of Scripture, a perspective on the text which ‘is characterized by a governing interest in God, the word and works of God, and by a governing intention to engage in [what might be called] “theological criticism”’.9 As my work makes clear in that chapter, such an engagement is not apart from history and textual exegesis, but as a ‘theological’ engagement its interests are somewhat different than those of much of the biblical studies guild, and is intended as a substantial theological engagement with the issues through the lens of Scripture. My overarching point in Chapter 5 is that, while glory may be understood in terms of beauty and splendour or declarative light, a more encompassing understanding of God’s glory would be God’s honour, praiseworthiness or (richly described) identity. This honour of God is worked out in a rather specific direction: the honour of God is expressed in honouring the creation, as can be seen in the Moses story. Moreover, Moses’ relationship with God, although dependent entirely on God, can sustain ‘faithful questioning’ and seemingly conversational exchange. This is not an honour which simply overwhelms the servant, but dignifies him as a conversation partner. Moreover, this honour/glory also glorifies the servant, as his face shines, and is further expressed in the constitution of the sociality of the covenant. Turning to Paul, we see that he engages in a dynamic rhetoric of ‘how much more’, of overflow and excess, when talking about Jesus Christ. He compares the new covenant’s glory with the old covenant’s, recognizing there a greater, overflowing glory, a glory which is beheld on the face of Jesus Christ, into whose image we are being transformed, from glory to glory, through the Spirit – not just eschatologically, but presently. Again, here we see a glory which is worked out in glorifying, as ‘we all’ are transformed to be reflections of the glory of God to each

9

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Introduction: What is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?’, in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005), p. 22.

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other and to the world around. First, in describing and enacting his relationship with the Corinthians, he is attempting to help the Corinthians recognize his genuineness and authority – he is enabling their agency, not browbeating them and demanding (straight-line) obedience. Second, in inviting the Corinthians to follow through on their giving to the collection, he is sparing them shame but also stirring up their generosity. In this, in particular, we see a social dynamic of ‘paying forward’ that queries his contemporary practices of reciprocity, as well as an overflow and excess in human agency which is in accord with the overflowing glory of God. In John, we see glory as an intrinsically honour-related term, focused on the relationship of Father and Son, a relationship characterized by mutual glorification. But particularly in the farewell discourse, we find talk about the disciples glorifying God, about God giving the Paraclete, who will lead the disciples into ‘all truth’ (16.13), about the disciples doing ‘greater works than these’ (14.12), being constituted as beloved who love (15.9, 10), who are commanded (in an underdetermined fashion) to love (15.12) and as ‘friends’ (not slaves) of the Son (15.15). Particularly as friends, the disciples are established in a relationship of non-heteronomous dependence on God: in the Paraclete, through the Son, with the Father. Their agency is established and constituted by God, with the capacity to think and act, to discern, question and perform, while also being transformed in accord with the glory of God, a glory and honour which glorifies and honours others, and is able, in turn, to receive others’ honour and glory as well. Thus divine glory does not bracket out or overwhelm human agency; rather, the fullness of God’s agency is consistent with the fullness of human agency and flourishing.

1

The Glory of God and Human Agency: Initial Considerations

Rowan Williams on revelation and divine agency In the essay ‘Trinity and Revelation’, Rowan Williams raises the question of how language about God is authorized. The Church has made theological claims for millennia; given that these claims may not be ‘verified’ in a crudely literal sense as one might verify a claim about an obviously empirical entity – say, the pavement, or a plant – then how might such claims be authorized? Traditionally, the response has been that revelation authorizes these claims. Yet, as Williams maintains, ‘[if] revelation is seen as the delivery of non-worldly truth to human beings in pretty well unambiguous terms, discourse about God cannot be said to have roots in the ordinary events on which we depend for the “authorising” of our usual speech.’1 On this view of revelation, it is, in effect, removed from history and abstracted from human processes of coming to understand. The end result of these processes is then presented as a fait accompli, delivered whole and static; the product is presented without means of tracing its formation or rethinking the decisions and processes of understanding which went into it. In short, this model of revelation is heteronomous: human authorization to speak of God ‘simply becomes an appeal to unchallengeable authority’.2 There is only a short distance between  such an  appeal and mere power or force. Such authorization is put beyond deliberation or interrogation; one is simply subject to it and obedient to it. Williams is particularly concerned about this question in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity and how one might say meaningfully of God that there is 1

2

Rowan Williams, ‘Trinity and Revelation’, in On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), p. 131. Williams, ‘Trinity’, p. 131.

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both threeness and oneness.3 ‘Learning about learning’ involves careful attention to the way that doctrinal affirmations are developed, not apart from but within ‘historical process and decision’.4 To learn about how doctrinal formulations have arisen in their particular ways requires attending to the actual shaping of them by humans at certain times and places; there can be no illusion of a ‘pure moment’ in which they are delivered whole, finished, and unambiguous – heteronomy is a potential problem in both revelation and doctrinal ruminations which are based on it. This point interrogates not merely a view of the Bible as abstracted from historical process and human understanding, but also a view of the councils and formularies of the Church as standing free of historical process and human understanding, as well as a view of reflection on genuine humanity and the ‘true message’ about it lying ‘behind’ the Bible as unaffected by historical process and human understanding. This is not intended to rule out the possibility of divine involvement in any or all of these processes, but simply to point out that while divine involvement is not self-evident or unambiguous, the human process is widely well-attested. Nor does this render null and void such elements of theology as the Bible, the touchstones of ecclesial tradition or the depths of human life; to cast these aside simply because they are implicated in contingent human processes would be reductionistic. The difficult task is specifying how these might all be implicated in the human and at the same time how they might also be seen as revelatory; how one might fully recognize the historical and contingent processes which went into human reception and human understanding of them, without reducing them to only these processes – and rendering them either superfluous or subject to cynical manipulation. Indeed, inherent in the notion of revelation is the idea that it is not something merely self-constructed, or something discovered: it is given, as a gift. As Williams puts it, in revelation ‘before we speak, we are addressed or called’.5 At the same time revelation is not some isolable element apart from the human or the historical. This book does not take up the ‘difficult task’ of resolving this issue, but takes seriously the tension present in the notion of the given and revealed within human history, understanding, and contingency. The two can neither be reduced to one or the other, nor meaningfully separated. If this tension is important for revelation

3 4 5

Williams, ‘Trinity’, p. 132. Williams, ‘Trinity’, p. 132. Williams, ‘Trinity’, p. 133.

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and doctrinal formulation generally, then it will be central for an account of divine glory and human agency as well. Williams’ concern for authority in speaking to concrete historical circum­ stances is a deeply theological one. If the question of how the Church’s language is learnt is neglected, then the Church’s authorization – authority – in speaking such language ‘simply becomes an appeal to unchallengeable authority, and theological language is thought of as essentially heteronomous, determined from an elusive “elsewhere”’.6 Williams proceeds to show that this heteronomy is a feature of more than one type of theology, yet within the essay he does not probe more deeply into just why this heteronomy might be a problem. I would like to suggest three specific ethical and theological elaborations on this theme, with a view towards showing why a heteronomous account of divine glory and human agency is problematic. First, if authority becomes unaware of the means of its being constituted then this forgetfulness amounts to a lie, presenting authority and its forms as that which they are not. In the case of the Church, this authority has been taken, at times, to be self-evident and indisputable, particularly in the face of questions and challenges. This forgetfulness then allows the power – of whatever shape – associated with authority to be bent towards preserving and defending the authority itself. This is deeply problematic theologically, as defensiveness and self-preservation militate against the Church’s dependence on God for its existence, and against the Church’s embodying a loving service to the world. Second, because of the Church’s theological account of humanity it is crucial that the process of authorization of claims be acknowledged rather than allowing claims to be presented simply as delivered whole and finished. The Church holds that all are touched by sin, even those within the Church itself. Claims of any kind, particularly claims which are not straightforwardly verifiable, may be used to mask and promote one’s self-interest at the expense of others and thus to legitimize sin. This sort of manipulation – whether from cynical exploitation or ignorant naïveté – reduces the Church and its message to an instrument of personal advancement, a practice which has been condemned unreservedly as idolatry. Finally, following on from these elaborations, there is the issue of ideology. When heteronomy in terms of doctrine or revelation persists over time and becomes a regular feature of institutions and communities, then this heteronomy and its deliverances become an ideology, a self-justifying account of reality 6

Williams, ‘Trinity’, p. 131.

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which purports to stand beyond question or reason. This ideology extends and justifies power maintaining power; it further provides abundant opportunity for idolatrous reduction of the Christian faith. But it also reifies the expression of that faith. Williams observes at the conclusion of his study of Arius that, in the wake of Nicaea, ‘the loyal and uncritical repetition of formulae is seen to be inadequate as a means of securing continuity at anything more than a formal level; Scripture and tradition require to be read in a way that brings out their strangeness, their non-obvious and non-contemporary qualities, in order that they may be read both freshly and truthfully from one generation to another.’7 Williams is suggesting that faithfulness to the Church’s witness is not guaranteed by identical repetition, but rather requires innovation for the sake of continuity. If that is true, then ideology and its reifying effects must be held in profound suspicion as factors resisting the interrogation and enquiry which faithfulness requires. It also requires that practitioners become proficient in making judgments about the ‘performance’ of Scripture, tradition and even revelation. If heteronomy ends in ideology and reification which militates against faithful continuity, then as a means it betrays that which it purports to depict. Williams summarizes this well: Theologically speaking, an appeal to the Church’s charter of foundation in the saving act of God, rooted in the eternal act of God, can never be made without the deepest moral ambiguities, unless it involves an awareness of the mode of that saving act as intrinsic to its authoritative quality and as requiring its own kind of obedience. That is to say, the God who works in disponibilité, vulnerability and mortality is not to be ‘obeyed’ by the exercise or the acceptance of an ecclesial authority that pretends to overcome these limits.8

The character of heteronomous theological claims contradicts the character of that which it professes to represent and, again, on these grounds warrants profound suspicion. The elemental conviction here is that the content of revelation shapes the form of its revealing. So heteronomy in theological claims is problematic: it fosters a forgetfulness which is tantamount to a lie; it veils the potential for detecting human sin through manipulation of such claims; and it leads to ideological reification, which betrays the Church’s message in both form and substance, by resisting change undertaken for the sake of continuity and by inadequately conveying 7 8

Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rev. edn, 2007), p. 236. Williams, Arius, p. 239. (Italics original)

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the character of that to which it witnesses. These three theological problems of heteronomy are offered to show what is at stake in this concern, and to show its relevance as an ongoing concern of this study – and if correct, for the rest of theology.9 Given the prevalence of heteronomous notions of revelation – whether biblicist or literalist versions, liberal or ‘experiential-expressivist’ versions, or traditionalist, ‘magisterial’ versions – this remains a live issue. As mentioned above, Williams turns to the work of Paul Ricoeur to construct a nonheteronomous account of revelation, particularly as regards the doctrine of the Trinity. But Ricoeur is an apt conversation partner for this project in other ways as well, being a subtle and dedicated reader of the Bible, and in his hermeneutics and phenomenological work trying to do justice to the shape of human life and contingency. For the purposes of this chapter, it will be helpful to move from Williams’ essay to Ricoeur’s, to deal with his concept in some depth by way of introducing the larger task of this present work.

Paul Ricoeur on revelation and human agency In his essay ‘Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation’, Paul Ricoeur explores the possibility of constructing an adequate notion of revelation.10 To do so, he attempts simultaneously to overcome heteronomous notions of revelation and also the autonomy of the self-constituting subject – or to overcome the twin ‘pretensions’, as he puts it, of both theology and philosophy.11 Ricoeur turns first to the matter of heteronomy in revelation, to critique, as he terms it, ‘the accepted opaque and authoritarian understanding of this concept’.12 To do this, he focuses on what he designates the ‘originary level’ of the notion of revelation, calling it the ‘confession of faith where the lex credendi is not separated from the lex orandi’.13 In this way, he means to move his consideration away from an abstract, context-less, ahistorical sense of revelation, a ‘body of doctrines imposed by the magisterium as the rule of orthodoxy’, which results   9

10

11 12 13

My focus in this section is on the problems of heteronomy in thinking about revelation and in doctrinal formulation; I do not intend thereby to commend its opposite, autonomy, as any less problematic, as will become clear below. Paul Ricoeur, ‘Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation’, in Lewis S. Mudge (ed.), Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 73–118. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 95. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 73. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, pp. 73, 74.

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in a ‘massive and impenetrable concept of “revealed truth”’.14 Abjuring this as essentially heteronomous, he instead moves towards the elemental constituent of theology: in his terms, ‘the believer who seeks to understand himself through a better understanding of the texts of his faith’. This is the realm in which the confession of faith is found and about which theological discourse occupies itself. As such, Ricoeur concentrates on Scripture, both as that with which the believer wrestles, and also as itself a record of this same process of self-understanding of Israel and the early Church. Following this path, Ricoeur’s fundamental insight is that Scripture attests to a pluriform ‘revelation’. He finds that the typical, unchallenged concept of revelation actually draws solely on one such form found in the Bible, that of prophecy. The discourse of prophecy in Scripture is found within the form of narrative (the books of, for example, Isaiah or Jeremiah being more than simply forthtellings in the first person), and takes the form of a dual subject: the ‘I’ of the prophet, the one who is speaking as a messenger, and the ‘I’ speaking by means of the prophet, the one originating the message. Ricoeur holds that this ‘idea of a double author of speech and writing’ has heretofore dominated the concept of revelation in general, such that it ‘leads to the idea of scripture as dictated, as something whispered in someone’s ear’.15 When notions of revelation  – or inspiration – are foreshortened in this way, then other possible forms by which God might be said to reveal are precluded. Ricoeur opens up the possibilities of revelation by turning from prophecy to four other genres from the Bible, each of which are said to constitute revelation as well. He considers, by turns, narrative, prescriptive, wisdom, and hymnic discourses. Narrative, he notes, unlike prophecy, does not focus on the subjectivity of the narrator; indeed, the narrator ‘disappears’, and the ‘events tell themselves’.16 In this way, narrative bears witness to the trace of the acts of God in history, and God is spoken of in the third person rather than being a second ‘I’ manifested ‘behind’ the ‘I’ of the author. Turning to prescriptive discourse – he studiously avoids the term ‘law’ with all its potential pitfalls – Ricoeur maintains that context is crucial for understanding. Prescriptive discourse is not mere heteronomy, 14

15

16

Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 74. I do not take it by using the term ‘magisterium’ that Ricoeur means to interrogate only Roman Catholicism, any more than by using the term ‘orthodoxy’ he intends a brief against orthodox faith as such, but rather heteronomous forms of such faith, as becomes clear below. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, pp. 75, 76. In case this seems a straw figure, consider the following quotation: ‘For every word of the Old Testament, God is the one who spoke (and still speaks) it, although God used human agents to write these words down.’ (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), p. 75). Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 77, quoting Emile Beneviste.

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free-floating imperatives, but is specifically situated in the framework of deliverance and covenant, and as part of a much broader ‘complex of relations’.17 There is, moreover, a historical character to this discourse, particularly in the transformation of the believer who takes up such prescriptions. Revelation, in these terms, ‘is the sense of requirement for perfection that summons the will and makes a claim upon it’.18 Within wisdom literature, unlike the prophet, the sage does not speak in the ‘I’ of God but rather participates in wisdom, which is given by God and always precedes and constitutes the sage.19 Finally, in the hymnic discourses of Scripture, God is spoken of in neither the first-person perspective of prophecy nor the third-person perspective of narrative, but in the second person, through direct address. This literature is revelatory particularly in the sense that ‘the sentiments expressed there are formed by and conform to their object’.20 One of the real strengths of this approach is that it allows the individual components of the Bible to retain their own identity and integrity, without reducing them in their diversity to a series of dictated, ‘doubly authored’ texts, or a treasure-trove of context-less propositions. It would certainly be too hasty to claim that most theology has taken this (‘doubly authored’) route, but it nevertheless allows an admirably clear analysis of the issue of revelation, and through that, heteronomy in doctrine. In this way, Ricoeur is able to show that revelation, considered as primarily an appearing of information or a hierophantic lifting of a veil to disclose a hidden reality, collapses into one of the several forms of revelation of which Scripture speaks (and consists). Even as these genres have their own dynamics and integrity, and are often present in the context of narrative, nevertheless they are not completely dissimilar to prophecy as revelation: Ricoeur is careful to note that in none of them does revelation come from the self, whether of the implicit narrator, the sage, or other textual ‘selves’. Contained within the very idea of revelation is a questioning of autonomy or anything like self-creation; analytic to the notion of revelation is the idea of dependence. Elaborating on the notion that dependence is analytic to revelation, Ricoeur writes: If one thing may be said unequivocally about all the analogical forms of revelation, it is that in none of its modalities may revelation be included in and 17 18 19 20

Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 83. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 85. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 87. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 90.

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dominated by knowledge. In this regard the idea of something secret is the limitidea of revelation. The idea of revelation is a twofold idea. The God who reveals himself is a hidden God and hidden things belong to him. . . . The one who reveals himself is also the one who conceals himself.21

If revelation is always, at bottom, a situation of dependence – specifically, the dependence of humans upon God to reveal – and the God who reveals is both revealed and hidden, in active accord with God’s intentions in revealing, then revelation is not ‘knowledge’. By ‘knowledge’, Ricoeur is not disclaiming the truth of what is revealed, so much as the habit of mind which takes the revealed and transforms it into a context-less proposition which may then be ‘used’ by humans, institutionally or otherwise, with the same status as revelation. ‘[To] say that the God who reveals himself is a hidden God is to confess that revelation can never constitute a body of truths which an institution may boast of or take pride in possessing.’22 The problem lies, in part, with the propensity for the truths or propositions drawn from revelation themselves to replace the revelation of Scripture or, more commonly, become the hermeneutical key to understanding the Bible. A further difficulty is found in the nature of an authoritative body of propositions itself: revelation always entails its own incompletion, in being given by one who both reveals and conceals, and in that implying the dependence of the receivers of the revelation on the revealer. Propositions, on the other hand, particularly considered as a system, can be presented as simply true (and therefore finished), without recourse to the source and origin of the propositions – indeed, such recourse might even be considered illegitimate. Or, to put it succinctly, the problem presented by the reduction of revelation to the propositional is heteronomy. Over against this, Ricoeur means to recommend revelation as a non-violent appeal. After having critiqued and re-examined the notion of revelation in relation to Scripture, Ricoeur turns to philosophy. Although philosophy is typically considered allergic to notions of revelation (in part from concerns about heteronomy), Ricoeur scrutinizes what he describes as the ‘pretentious claim[s]’ of philosophy: ‘the claim to a complete transparency of truth and a total autonomy of thinking’.23 Since the notions he develops in his critique of these ‘pretensions’ will be present throughout my subsequent analysis of divine glory, I shall take some space here to elaborate his case. 21 22 23

Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 93. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 95. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 95.

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By invoking these ‘pretensions’ of philosophy, Ricoeur means no less than calling into question two principles of thought which are widely considered axiomatic: (1) ‘the idea of objective truth as measured by the criteria of empirical verification and falsification’ (the transparency of truth), and (2) ‘the autonomy of the thinking subject inscribed within the idea of a consciousness completely in control of itself ’ (the total autonomy of thinking).24 Yet his intention is not to clear the pitch of philosophy as such, but to nuance its own self-understanding so as to enable a fruitful conversation between the two disciplines, and so to close what is otherwise an ‘unbridgeable canyon’.25 Contrary to his assessment of theology, Ricoeur critiques philosophy for its thorough embrace of its opposite, autonomy, the self-sufficiency of human thinking and the self-constitution of consciousness. His response to both of philosophy’s ‘pretensions’ is the recognition of a greater degree of dependence, both for object and subject. Yet, ironically, it becomes clear that philosophy actually suffers from similar problems as theology and that the insistence on autonomy (apart from any kind of dependence) actually leads to a certain heteronomy.26 Through these two discussions of the ‘pretensions’ of theology and philosophy, Ricoeur has been working to bridge the gap between the two. Looked at in one way, this is a converging of the two from different directions – yet oddly, the problems with both end up looking similar. I mentioned above that this section on philosophy is analogous to his task with theology. This is because, in effect, he also interrogates heteronomy in philosophy: the (dogmatic?) assertions of the transparency of truth and the autonomy of thinking themselves do not allow for interrogation, and foreshorten considerations of actual dependence of both object and subject. In particular, the idea of the total autonomy of the thinking subject is not susceptible to learning about learning: for if that very autonomy were learnt from or received from another then it would not be fully autonomous. Thus we see the profound irony that insistence on total autonomy itself leads to heteronomy, an opacity of authority – even when the authority insists that one think for oneself. In both cases Ricoeur busies himself clearing away acontextual, ahistorical objectifications, and restoring the possibility of a bridging of the chasm between the disciplines (while also never reducing the one to the other). To summarize his major points briefly, Ricoeur suggests a polyphonic and polysemic model of revelation which focuses not on the subjectivity of 24 25 26

Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 97. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 95. Space prohibits more than this brief summary of Ricoeur’s conclusions regarding philosophy.

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the author but on the force of what is said, a poetic character which subverts mere scientific description by positing a possible world. Poetic discourse is revelatory; the text exceeds the author’s intentions and is ‘autonomous’, participating in shaping genres, and intending a world which is beyond itself. Moreover, people are established not as sovereign, autonomous knowing subjects but in non-heteronomous dependence, not making themselves, but given themselves in a certain way, attempting to understand themselves and the world in front of a text. A part of this is seen in the priority of historical testimony over self-understanding. Through these two moves, Ricoeur intends to show what he believes is the genuine character of revelation as non-violent appeal – more a matter of opening one’s imagination than of slavish, rote obedience. Before moving on from Ricoeur, there is another point which must be made which will be salient to the rest of this work. Something happens to the notion of revelation in the course of Ricoeur’s essay: whether or not it is intentional may be left to speculation. The title of the essay mentions the idea of revelation; he claims to want to recover a concept of revelation, and to want to get beyond the ‘opaque and authoritarian understanding of this concept’.27 Throughout, he expresses a concern to remedy a common understanding of revelation as such, that is, the process of revealing, the means by which what is given is given. Yet by broadening the concept of revelation as such into a concept ‘that is pluralistic, polysemic, and at most analogical in form [across the discourses of faith]’,28 Ricoeur also succeeds in showing that what is revealed, revelation’s content, is itself non-heteronomous. Ricoeur contends that heteronomous notions of revelation are opaque and authoritarian, enjoining the simple submission of a will to another. Yet if he is correct to suggest that an inspired writer is moved by the force of what is said – that is, if revelation is not about the subjectivity and psychology of the writer, even considered as a ‘dual author’, but about the object which is created – then consideration of the submission of the will to another is left aside. When this is combined with his assertions about ‘the world of the text’ exceeding and escaping the author’s and initial audience’s intentions (so that even an author’s ‘will’ is not encoded in a text), then it becomes even clearer just how what is revealed may be as little heteronomous as how it is revealed. Or, to repeat the phrase I have already employed: the content of revelation shapes the form of its revealing. 27 28

Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 73. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 75.

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Yet this also demonstrates the same synthesizing activity that Ricoeur performs throughout: if revelation – both revealing and that which is revealed – is nonheteronomous, neither do these two senses contribute to human autonomy in any simple way. For the world of the text eludes the self ’s efforts ‘to set itself up as the final standard of meaning’; the self does not constitute the text, but the text, in part, constitutes the self. This then is a situation of non-heteronomous dependence. As Ricoeur implies, autonomy is itself based on questionable assumptions, assumptions which are themselves in ways heteronomous. Ricoeur’s final synthesis indicates that both autonomy and heteronomy end up having more in common with each other than might initially be thought the case. It is his suggestion of a nonheteronomous dependence, more an ‘imagination that opens itself ’ than a ‘will that submits’, seeking to understand itself ‘in front of the text’, in a possible world opened up by the text, which moves beyond the unhelpful binary dualism of autonomy/heteronomy. I should specify further what I mean by ‘heteronomy’ and ‘autonomy’, and I shall do so by returning to the work of Paul Ricoeur. In his later work on the self, Oneself as Another, in one study in particular he returns to this theme, particularly interrogating the Kantian ethical tradition and the account of the self which arises from it.29 Through this section of the work, Ricoeur explores selfhood in relation to ‘ethical and moral determinations of action’, in order to focus on ‘the dialectic of the same and the other’.30 Anticipating this later section, Ricoeur summarizes, saying, ‘The autonomy of the self will appear then to be tightly bound up with solicitude for one’s neighbour and with justice for each individual.’31 A self-evident ‘I’ whose self-legislation is the basis of morality is thus called into question, as this autonomy is not apart from or prior to one’s relation with the other. Kant indeed employs the language of imperative and obedience, but the imperative – which normally would require a speaker and a hearer – is internalized into the individual, who then commands herself in accord with the good, objective maxim and then obeys or disobeys.32 ‘[W]hen autonomy substitutes for obedience to another obedience to oneself, obedience has lost all character of dependence and submission. True obedience, one could say, is autonomy.’33 29

30 31 32 33

Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (trans. Kathleen Blamey; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). He engages Kant in this way specifically in the eighth and ninth studies. Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 18. Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 18. Italics original. Ricoeur, Oneself, pp. 209, 210. Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 210.

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Following on from suggesting three aporiae within the Kantian account of autonomy, Ricoeur suggests that the opposition between autonomy and heteronomy be rethought and nuanced. In Kant’s rhetoric, heteronomy is likened to a ‘state of tutelage [which] consists in allowing oneself to be under the guidance of others in such a way that one’s own judgment depends on the judgment of others’.34 Autonomy, contrariwise, is then simply ‘responsibility for one’s own judgment’.35 Yet the ‘other’ of heteronomy might be characterized not merely as ‘the dominator, facing the slave’, but also as ‘the master of justice, facing the disciple’.36 This latter sense of autonomy and heteronomy resolves the aporiae present in the former sense. Moreover, rather than an enforced and continued state of ‘tutelage’ or ‘immaturity’ as in the slave’s relation to the dominator, in which the slave is merely the extension of the master’s agency, this latter sense of the ‘other’ facing the one implies teaching, equipping, empowering, readying for properly self-directed action, that is, it is a ‘heteronomy’ which also envisions its own conclusion, in which the disciple takes on a new, fuller identity and role. The relation of master to disciple is one in which the disciple learns to make her own judgments, through the agency of the master. It is this latter sense of autonomy and heteronomy which Ricoeur means to recommend as doing better justice to human identity, showing autonomy as being ‘dependent on heteronomy’ of a certain kind, specifically, dependent on three figures which flow from the abovementioned antinomies: the figure of the law, the figure of respect, and the figure of the penchant towards evil.37 Autonomy in the latter, nuanced sense is thus shown not to be self-sufficient or free of any dependencies or debts. It is dependent on, and indebted to, the other and the prior. Thus ‘heteronomy’, which is not inconsistent with this sense of autonomy, might be seen not as an infantilization or immaturity, a bracketing out or evacuation of one’s judgment in favour of another’s, but rather through the metaphor of (in Ricoeur’s terms) master/disciple. In this way, ‘autonomy’ and ‘heteronomy’ are seen to be mutually compatible, if also asymmetric (the ‘other’ in fact preceding and making possible autonomy). 34

35 36 37

Kant likens this to ‘immaturity’ in his essay ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ saying, ‘Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another.’ (‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Lewis White Beck (ed.), Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, and What is Enlightenment? (trans. Lewis White Beck; The Library of Liberal Arts, 113; New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1959)). Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 275. Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 276. Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 275.

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Heteronomy, autonomy, and divine glory Throughout this work, I am concerned to critique notions of divine glory which are heteronomous to human agency and articulate a construction of divine glory which is not heteronomous in this way. Returning to Ricoeur’s account of heteronomy in Oneself as Another, we see that this is not a simple notion, and we are moved to admit that there is a form of heteronomy at the base of all human agency, that autonomy is (in a sense) only possible within the relationships which constitute humans, can only be ‘received’ in a context already involved in the ‘law’ of ‘the other’; I take it that something like this, particularly in the prevenient gracious acts of God is actually at the heart of God’s glory. And so I wish to make it clear from the start that I am not arguing for a radical autonomy for humans, apart from God or other humans; nor am I arguing against admission of heteronomy (of a certain kind) to considerations of human agency. Rather, to return to the connotations Ricoeur attached to heteronomy in ‘Toward a Hermeneutics of the Idea of Revelation’, I am chiefly concerned with critiquing accounts of divine agency and particularly divine glory which are opaque, impenetrable, ‘magisterial’ in Ricoeur’s sense, and in this way heteronomous. In this earlier essay, Ricoeur seems to prefer the phrase ‘non-heteronomous dependence’ to refer to the sort of heteronomy he admits in his later lectures; it is this earlier use which I adopt here. So for the purposes of this work, I shall use ‘heteronomous’ in a negative sense to refer to those notions of divine glory which are presented as excluding, bracketing out or overwhelming human agency,38 which therefore defeat the attempt to learn about learning.39 Against this, though, I place not ‘autonomy’, but rather ‘non-heteronomous dependence’, a relationality which admits that the individual is not self-constituted but dependent on others (particularly God) yet is constituted as a thinking and acting creature in that non-heteronomous dependence.

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I mean ‘human agency’ quite broadly to include mental acts (such as questioning, discerning, judging and deciding) and more outwardly observable acts such as enacting obedience. Part of my concern about such accounts, as I have indicated above, is not that divine glory actually overwhelms human agency, but that accounts of divine glory which present it as doing so are actually veiling and obscuring the degree to which human agency is in fact at work. One could develop a hermeneutic of suspicion which could be used to analyse such accounts, noting the ways in which – by means of the human agency of rendering an account – they seek to disallow human agency, and particularly the human role in the rendering of such accounts. But this specific task lies outside the bounds of this work.

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I have recounted Williams’ and Ricoeur’s notions at some length because these basic concepts – particularly the problems related to heteronomy and human agency – figure in prominently in what follows. In this project I provide an account of divine glory as it relates to human agency, showing that this interaction is not heteronomous but on the contrary, parallel to Ricoeur’s account of revelation, is a situation of non-heteronomous dependence. Put another way, God’s glory correlates with and constitutes human agency in relation to God and in relation to others. I have chosen glory as it is prominent in first-order discourse about God. It appears throughout Scripture when God is spoken of, particularly in praise of God in the Psalms; it is also spoken of in narrative and epistolary literature. Particularly strikingly, it is often referred to in Scripture in especially intense manifestations of God to people.40 It also figures in the historical worship forms of the Church, in hymns, anthems and canticles.41 It is often mentioned in prayer, both extemporaneous and (especially) liturgical. It seems fair to say, and here I shall borrow Ricoeur’s terms, that the glory of God is an important part of the level of the confession, the originary level of faith – that it is somehow elemental to the ‘believer seek[ing] to understand himself [before] the texts of his faith’.42 Given the prominence of glory at this originary level of the discourse of faith, it is somewhat surprising that it has not figured more widely into second-order discourse, either at the ‘magisterial’ level of discourse, or even at the level of (historically situated) ecclesial dogma or theologizing. Yet when it does figure in at these levels – indeed, at times even when believers give voice to it in first-order discourse – it is often spoken of as opaque and heteronomous.

Four ‘Conventional’ accounts of divine glory One common way in which divine glory may be presented opaquely and hetero­ nomously is by conflating it with power, conventionally construed.43 Prime 40 41 42 43

For example, Exod. 33, 34; Isa. 6; Ezek. 1. For example, Gloria in Excelsis and Te Deum Laudamus. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 75. See, for example, Oleg V. Bychkov, ‘Introduction’, in Oleg Bychkov and James Fodor (eds.), Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. xvi, where he suggests it as a counterfactual: namely, that Barth does not succumb to this (implicitly common) conflation.

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examples of this may be found in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century conservative evangelical reformed theologians such as John Piper, Christopher W. Morgan or Thomas Schreiner.44

Thomas Schreiner and Christopher Morgan Schreiner for example, in discussing the possibility of a central theme of the New Testament, writes: ‘God’s purpose in all he does is to bring honor to himself and to Jesus Christ. The NT is radically God-centered. We could say that the NT is about God magnifying himself in Christ and through the Spirit.’45 Thus Schreiner finds God revealed in the New Testament as the one who above all exercises (justified) self-regard as God’s ultimate end. Self-glorification may therefore be considered as God’s ongoing proper activity. Schreiner and Morgan take analogous perspectives on God’s glory, while Piper approaches from a somewhat different perspective. In elaborating on the shape of God’s glory and self-glorification, Schreiner claims ‘Since God is the creator and the sovereign of all, he demands primacy in the lives of all people. . . . The word “glory” is used broadly to capture the supremacy of God in everything. In other words, human beings exist to obey, believe in, and praise God. . . . God exercises an absolute claim upon the lives of all.’46 It is worth dwelling on the terms Shreiner uses: God is ‘the sovereign’, who ‘demands primacy’, has ‘supremacy in everything’ and ‘exercises an absolute claim’. There is no careful spelling out here of just what such terms mean; the way in which they are heaped up one upon another without elaboration suggests that they are meant in the simplest, most straightforward way. God’s greatness is shown in God’s supremacy, alongside of which ‘God exercises an absolute claim’ upon creation. This supremacy Shreiner glosses as ‘glory’, and what might this supremacy be but power? Ironically, Shreiner’s reliance on 44

45

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John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2nd edn, 1993); John Piper, God’s Passion for his Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006); John Piper, Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006); John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to NT Wright (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007); Christopher W. Morgan, ‘Toward a Theology of the Glory of God’, in Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (eds.), The Glory of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010); Thomas Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008). Schreiner, New Testament, p. 13; he nuances this somewhat by also claiming that ‘the centrality of God in Christ leads to an abstraction if it is not closely related to the history of salvation, to the history of God’s saving promises.’ (p. 14) Schreiner, New Testament, p. 126.

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repetition of images and modifiers associated with conventional domination and power does not ‘magnify’ God, but reduces God to one finite being among others, even if that god is the largest such being. God becomes a competitor with creation for honour and agency; but this is not the god of the Christian theological tradition. Similarly, Christopher Morgan, after acknowledging and examining the multiple aspects of divine glory in Scripture, summarizes God’s glory as an extrinsic manifestation of God’s ‘fullness and sufficiency’. ‘The self-sufficient and independent God creates out of fullness, guides out of fullness, and receives back according to his communicated fullness.’47 Here, God’s glory is set forth not in terms of primacy and supremacy, but God’s absolute character, that God is capable of being God apart from the creation. I would not wish to disclaim the notion that God is ‘sovereign’, ‘prime’, ‘supreme’, ‘self-sufficient’ and so forth, but the shape of the accounts in Scripture, in both Old and New Testaments, makes abundantly clear that these terms are filled out in complex, nuanced ways. Or, to return to Rowan Williams’ earlier quotation, it seems that Shreiner, in his presentation of this (alleged) glory, has neglected the ‘mode’ of God’s saving act, the very foundation of Shreiner’s case. Shreiner seems to fancy that he speaks with an ecclesial authority which has ‘overcome [the] limits’ of ‘disponibilité, vulnerability and mortality’ in which God seems content to work. In Williams’ terms, Shreiner has contradicted the character of what he claims to represent; or in Ricoeur’s terms, Shreiner simply is giving voice to ‘the magisterium’, in the form of a ‘massive and impenetrable concept of “revealed truth”’.48 That is to say, in this essay’s terms, Shreiner is advocating a doctrine of God’s glory which is heteronomous, as well as insufficiently sensitive to the deeper patterns of Scripture. Likewise, Morgan, in emphasizing God’s absolute character, does not do justice to the way in which God’s glory is worked out in Scripture, not simply in God’s being for Godself, or even God’s capability of so being, but in the gift of creation and the gift of salvation. That is, God’s glory is expressed in God’s acts in and for the creation, not merely in being for Godself. Inasmuch as God’s glory is presented as chiefly God’s power, God’s supremacy, or the character of God as self-sufficient and this agency is capable of being

47 48

Morgan, ‘Toward a Theology’, p. 163. Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 74. Indeed, it is clear that Shreiner is a prime latter-day example of the double ‘I’ of the prophetic voice dominating all other genres of Scripture.

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‘threatened’ or diminished through human agency, then godly life – one which gives glory to God – will be presented as evacuated of human agency, will be heteronomous. We can see this at work in Shreiner’s account: obedience (in a simple sense) to an ‘absolute claim’, manifested primarily in terms of power. Against this, I wish to suggest that a life lived within the genuine supremacy and sovereignty of God, in accord with God’s glory, exceeds Shreiner’s simple notion of obedience.

John Piper John Piper’s account of God’s glory bears some similarity to Shreiner’s, although it is somewhat more sophisticated as well. Specifically, Piper connects God’s righteousness with God’s glory, claiming that ‘the righteousness of God consists most basically in God’s unswerving commitment to preserve the honor of his name and display his glory.’49 He makes this claim on the basis of his analysis of numerous Old Testament texts, as well as a reading of Paul’s letters. He states in a later work: [in the literary contexts under consideration] the motivation for God’s ­saving  action is something deeper than covenant faithfulness. It is God’s faithfulness  – his unwavering commitment – to act for the value of his glory. . . . This is part of his nature. It is part of what it means to be God. This is the deeper foundation for covenant-keeping (and all other divine action). Coming from this deepest allegiance of God is what makes a divine action ‘right’ or ‘righteous.’50

There are three concerns which this account raises. First, how does this square with the shame and ignominy of the cross? Or must Piper confess that God is only thus concerned for God’s glory eschatologically, such that God gladly sets aside concern for God’s glory in the present in order that God’s glory might be ‘all in all’ eschatologically? It seems that he would deny this move, and yet he seems then at a loss for how God might actually be committed ‘unswervingly’ to preserving the honour of God’s name and at the same time identify with the creation in various ways (the poor, the lost, the oppressed, etc.), or even being

49 50

Piper, Justification of God, p. 119. Italics original. Piper, Future, p. 65.

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‘counted among the transgressors’. On the other hand, it actually seems that God’s concern for God’s glory is such that God manifests that glory through God’s ‘going out’, God’s loving care for that which is other than God, yet also radically contingent on God for its existence, God’s commitment to seek and save the last, the least and the lost. This is – contra Piper – not a concern for God’s glory in all things in a way which seems to leave creation behind, which is focused on Godself to the exclusion of others. Instead, this glory, this unrivalled worth, praiseworthiness and honour of God is manifested in and known by God’s overflowing love and grace for that which is not God. There is also a problem with the language Piper uses: God has a ‘commitment to preserve the honor of his name’. The implication in all of this is that God’s glory is somehow vulnerable to the creation, and needs jealous guarding and amplification; God needs to protect Godself. Yet as we have seen above with Shreiner this seems to imply that God is one thing among others, that God might be the largest such thing – the ‘greatest’ – still there is (at least potentially) a struggle between the divine and the created for status or power. It is hardly surprising then that the model of righteous human agency which Piper endorses is heteronomous. Thirdly, there is a deeper problem with Piper’s account. He maintains that God’s ‘commitment to maintain the glory and honor of his name is ultimate’.51 Again, he holds that God’s ‘unwavering commitment . . . to act for the value of his glory . . . is part of his nature [and] . . . the deeper foundation for covenantkeeping (and all other divine action)’.52 If this truly is God’s ultimate and unwavering commitment, the foundation of all God’s acts, then presumably God would act in the most efficient means possible to achieve the outcome of those commitments: in which case creating seems a curious act for God to undertake, given that it risks God’s not being properly or sufficiently glorified. Piper’s account of the ‘foundation’ of ‘all’ of God’s acts and ‘ultimate’ and ‘unwavering commitment’ is reductive. God’s acts – creating out of nothing, maintaining and preserving that radically contingent creation (despite its rebellion), calling and creating a covenant people, The Father’s sending of the Only Begotten Son, The Son’s giving of the Spirit, and so forth – reveal not a God who is jealously concerned to act ultimately and only for God’s glory (which could 51 52

Piper, Justification of God, p. 112, emphasis added. Piper, Future, p. 65.

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very much be the case Trinitarianly, apart from the creation). Rather, these acts reveal a God whose glory is expressed in ‘going out’ from Godself in grace and love, a God whose glory may be revealed precisely in its opposite: in the shame of bearing patiently with rebellion, in the shame of calling a covenant people who disobey and neglect the covenant, in the shame of the cross, in the shame of the Church’s failures. In all of this God’s glory is nevertheless expressed, a glory which is not overcome by shame but which may be in the closest proximity to it without being diminished. As New Testament scholar N. T. Wright has put it in response to Piper, the notion that God’s primary concern ‘returns to himself ’ needs to be problematized: the great story of Scripture is not so much God’s concern for Godself, but ‘God’s concern . . . for the flourishing and well-being of everything else’.53 And so the ‘ultimacy’ of God’s glory is entirely consistent with God’s love and God’s covenant-faithfulness, they mutually inform and interpenetrate each other.

Wolfhart Pannenberg and Edmund Schlink A final contemporary example of an account of divine glory being opaque and heteronomous is found in an essay by Wolfhart Pannenberg, drawing on the work of Edmund Schlink.54 However, in this case, the problem is not found in conflating ‘glory’ with ‘power’, as it is in an evacuation of human agency in light of God’s glory. In what is otherwise a fine essay sifting through the issues related to analogical language for God, Pannenberg at one point elaborates on the function of such language saying that its intention is not to provide theoretical definitions of the being of God . . . [rather, it is] charac­ terised throughout by what Schlink has termed a ‘doxological’ structure. They express adoration of God on the basis of his works. All biblical speech about God, to the extent that its intention is to designate something beyond a particular deed, namely, God himself and what he is from eternity to eternity, is rooted in adoration and is in this sense doxological.55 53

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Tom Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), pp. 51, 52. Italics original. Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Analogy and Doxology’, in George H. Kehm (trans.), Basic Questions in Theology (Vol. 1; London: SCM Press, 1970), pp. 211–38; Edmund Schlink, The Coming Christ and the Coming Church (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1967). Pannenberg, ‘Analogy’, p. 215.

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Elaborating on this ‘doxological’ form of theological statements, Schlink says: If in the doxology the divine ‘Thou’ gives way to the ‘he’ the ‘I’ of man who utters the doxology is bound to disappear as well. . . . In doxology [the worshipper] neither asks for anything for himself, nor does he give thanks for God’s dealings with him. He does not pay attention to himself as the person who is offering praise. Neither the ‘I’ of the worshipper nor his act of worshipping is explicitly mentioned in the words of the doxology. Thus both the individual human ‘I’ as well as the ‘we’ of the congregation lose their prominence, though without vanishing altogether. Yet the absence of the ‘I’ . . . indicates utmost devotion. For although the ‘I’ of the worshipper does not occur in the text, it is contained in the actual performance of worship. The ‘I’ is sacrificed in doxology. Thus doxology is always sacrifice of praise.56

There is something deeply right about this, as it acknowledges that speaking of the glory of God, praising God – doxology – has the effect of opening one up to the other, to God, and of giving God a central status and place. Further, there is the potential for ‘learning about learning’, in Williams’ terms, as doxology is connected with the acts of God, and so there is the potential for explaining why God is found to be glorious – God has delivered Israel from slavery to Egypt and given them the promised land, for example. Yet this account of doxology, for all its helpful use in discussing analogy in theological language, critically overlooks one aspect of doxology in Scripture. Schlink is correct in saying that in the language of the Bible, God is praised without reference to the one praising. There is no sense of instrumentality (praising God in order to achieve something other than praising God, whether in terms of merit with God, or some more immanent goal) in Scripture’s doxology, nor is there any sense of status for the one praising,57 and so there is rightly no reference to the worshipper. But if the life of the worshipper beyond this simple act might be more broadly characterized as one of doxology, filled with the praise of God, the matter of the worshipper’s ‘ego’ being absent or sacrificed becomes quite deeply problematic and heteronomous. God’s eminent praiseworthiness becomes necessarily disconnected with the shape of human life, unrelated to human agency. 56 57

Schlink, The Coming Christ, p. 22. In this sense, doxology is deeply egalitarian, as anyone may glorify God without reference to her status or situation in life.

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Yet the reality of the matter in Scripture is more complex than the worshipper’s ‘I’ simply being sacrificed. On the one hand, Schlink is certainly correct to maintain that the ‘I’ is bracketed in a certain way in the direct statements of praise of God. On the other hand, Schlink misses the frequency with which these direct statements are themselves situated in a broader narrative, giving the reader a third-person perspective on the praising. So, for example, Isaiah 6.3 – to take one of the citations provided by Schlink – does indeed constitute doxology, and in this expression of worship the seraphs do not assert their own place or status but only God’s; further, Isaiah himself is shown as overawed by the vision of God in the temple. Yet the reader finds the context as the act of God to call a prophet for God’s people of Israel. Isaiah is not simply overawed and left cowering and despondent: he is purified, given a mission, and sent out. Far from Isaiah’s ‘I’ being absent, this encounter actually constitutes him in a certain way. This is not to say that Isaiah could have anticipated this, or that the doxology was instrumental in any way. Nevertheless there is here a correlation between doxology and human agency, indeed, human flourishing, inasmuch as the human agency constituted by the overflow of divine glory is itself an overflow.58 This is the case in non-narrative examples of doxology as well. To take another example cited in Schlink, Romans 11.36. Here, Paul summarizes  – with a note of surrendering adoration – the acts of God in Jesus Christ. Yet in the very next sentence, 12.1, Paul writes: ‘I appeal to you therefore . . . to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’ If recounting the acts of God has led naturally into doxology, then doxology has led (seemingly every bit as naturally) into discussing the shape of human life in light of that glory. In the broader context, doxology is seen to be related to human flourishing and sociality; it does not completely bracket out the ‘I’ of the worshipper, but constitutes it in a certain way, giving a distinct shape to life. In all this I have begun to show that divine glory – the praiseworthiness glorified in doxology – is not heteronomous as intimated in some accounts but  instead manifests a dynamic of non-heteronomous dependence. The glory  of God decentres the human, moving her out of self-absorption and 58

That I do not intend ‘flourishing’ or ‘overflow’ to mean something like ‘prosperity’, ‘triumph’ or conventionally defined success should be clear by the nature of Isaiah’s mission – to preach and not be heard, to make the mind of Israel dull, and to do so until cities lie waste (6.9-11).

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self-satisfaction: but this is not through ‘de-selfing’ her, removing her ego and insisting on wooden obedience and conformity.59 Rather, the glory of God, far from dispensing with the self, actually constitutes a self that is capable of ­glorifying God, a self which is ‘glorified’ by God in being constituted as an agent. Showing how this is so in a way consistent with a non-heteronomous dependence constitutes the remainder of this work.

59

Nor does the glory of God contradict the fragile and vulnerable character of human creaturely existence, as Kristine A. Culp helpfully establishes. (Kristine Culp, Vulnerability and Glory: A Theological Account (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

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The Glory of God according to Karl Barth (1)

Overview of the glory of God in the Church Dogmatics Karl Barth explored and expounded the glory of God in considerable depth in his magnum opus, the Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD), particularly in Volume II.1 and in Volume IV.3.1.1 Volume II.1 deals specifically with the doctrine of God, with what might be known of God as well as the reality of God. In examining the reality of God, Barth describes God as the ‘One who loves in freedom’. In depicting God, in accordance with the pattern Barth finds in Scripture – termed ‘actualism’ by his interpreters – Barth emphasizes that God is known chiefly in God’s acts, rather than abstractly, thus God is ‘Being in Act’.2 The One these acts reveal loves utterly, and this One is utterly free. Barth then goes on to consider in more detail who God is, turning to what earlier theologians called the ‘attributes’ of God, which Barth terms the ‘perfections’ of God. These perfections are then thematized under two headings, the perfections of divine loving and the perfections of divine freedom. Under each heading he considers three sets of two mutually informing and mutually implied perfections. For divine loving, Barth examines grace and holiness; mercy and righteousness; and patience and wisdom. Under divine freedom, he looks at unity and omnipresence; constancy and omnipotence; and eternity and

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There is relatively little secondary material dealing with Barth’s doctrinal considerations of God’s glory. One of the only journal articles discussing this topic, Christopher Holmes’ ‘The Theological Function of the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes and the Divine Glory, with Special Reference to Karl Barth and His Reading of the Protestant Orthodox’ (Scottish Journal of Theology, 61 (2008), pp. 206–23) simply demonstrates how Barth’s presentation of the glory of God improves upon those ‘Protestant Orthodox’ theologians who went before. As a result, it is essentially uncritical towards Barth’s construal of God’s glory, neither questioning his concepts nor extending it in a new direction, and is of strictly limited use to my study. Most of the secondary literature I shall consider in this and the next chapter will relate to issues concerning human agency such as command, revelation and obedience. George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 30.

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glory. It is this very last section which is most important to this study and will be examined here in depth. In Volume IV.3.1, Barth refines and expands his account of God’s glory through the lens of the doctrine of reconciliation, and particularly the glory of the Mediator, Jesus Christ. In one sense, the whole of Volume IV develops the glory of God through the Mediator, expressed in ‘the glory of God who humbles Himself to man, and also of the man exalted to God’.3 The glory of Jesus Christ, in bringing these two together, is thus ‘the glory of the fulfilled covenant faithfully kept by both God and man’.4 Through the two previous parts of Volume IV, Barth considers Jesus Christ as Mediator: as, on the one hand, ‘The Lord as Servant’, thematizing reconciliation under the heading of the obedience of the Son of God, and on the other hand, ‘The Servant as Lord’, examining reconciliation from the perspective of the exaltation of the Son of Man. These first two parts of Volume IV correspond to the traditional loci of, respectively, justification and sanctification, as well as to two of the traditional ‘offices’ of Christ as priest and king. God’s glory is not apart from the being and act – or, in more traditional language, the person and work – of the Mediator. But in a more specific sense, Barth means to focus the glory of the Mediator in the third part of the fourth volume, which expounds this glory under the heading of the third office of Christ, that of the prophet. This third part synthesizes themes from the first two parts, not by exceeding or replacing them but by bringing them together and capping them off in fulfilment, specifically in the shining out and declaration of the reconciliation set forth in the first two parts. As will be seen more fully in the next chapter, Barth here particularly emphasizes God’s freedom, the image of light, and the way in which prophecy is declaration and revelation. Consideration of this volume will complement and qualify what may be gleaned from Volume II.1. In order to inspect Barth’s account of divine glory from these volumes in detail his account will be considered under several thematic heads, over the course of the following two chapters. In the present chapter, examining CD II.1, the first section considers glory in relation to the other divine perfections, under the headings of love and freedom. This section seeks to contextualize Barth’s concept of God’s glory within his overall account of the perfections of God and also within the larger scope of CD itself. The second section takes into account the primary biblical images upon which Barth draws to depict the glory of the 3

4

CD IV.3.1, p. 48. © Karl Barth, 1970, Church Dogmatics and T&T Clark, by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. CD IV.3.1, p. 48.

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Lord. These images are honour and light; Barth’s discussion of beauty in relation to glory fills out this triad. Within each of these sections it soon becomes clear that – as fits talking about one topic through multiple lenses – all of the facets of the topic are mutually implied, that talking about one aspect of it in complete isolation from the other aspects is artificial and virtually impossible. Barth realizes this as well, and while he means to focus on various facets of glory or, more broadly, specific perfections of God, nevertheless in the light of God’s unity, constancy and eternity, all of these perfections are ultimately the one perfection of the One who loves in freedom.

The glory of God as God’s freedom to love Before making a start it would be good to give an initial brief indication of what Barth means by the ‘glory’ of God. At several points he gives a concise gloss or summary of what he intends. Early in the relevant section in II.1, he summarizes: God’s glory is God Himself in the truth and capacity and act in which He makes Himself known as God. This truth and capacity and act are the triumph, the very core, of His freedom. And at its core it is freedom to love. For at the core of His being, and therefore in His glory, God is the One who seeks and finds fellowship, creating and maintaining and governing (regieren) it.5

In light of this it becomes clear that, for Barth, God’s glory is elemental to who God is (‘at the core of His being’), and not merely a property or attribute; indeed it ‘is God Himself ’, simultaneous with all of God’s perfections. It is also a selfreferentially communicative dynamism, a self-glorification enacted through God’s revealing and making Godself known to creation, although the process is primally present among the Three of the Trinity. Being communicative, God’s glory is also intrinsically relational, not merely seeking ‘fellowship’ with pre-existing others (as within the Trinity) but ‘creating and maintaining and governing’ contingent others to whom God and God’s excellence may be made known. This summary is consistent with those others Barth provides in this section. There are two salient additions to be made. First, as Barth says, ‘God’s glory is not exhausted by what God is in Himself, nor by the fact that from eternity and 5

CD II.1, p. 641.

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to eternity He is not only inward but also outward. God’s glory is also the answer awakened and evoked by God Himself of the worship offered to Him by His creation to the extent that in its utter creatureliness this is the echo of God’s voice.’6 In this, one sees that God’s glory as a self-referential communicative dynamism does not merely ‘speak’ without effect, does not merely create contingent others to witness God’s glory, but also creates response to the communication of God’s glory. The creaturely act of worship – whose centre is Jesus Christ – increases the creature’s sense of God’s glory, although even in its creatureliness this worship is not a purely human act but permitted and structured by God, and the response of God’s glory is an act of God, and not merely a passive effect brought about through the creaturely activity. This expands Barth’s notion of God’s glory by incorporating (certain kinds of) creaturely activity – not as necessary, but as permitted within the economy of divine glory.7 This also illustrates the extent to which, for Barth, divine glory is always about God, with God active at every step. While he is careful to include the creature – seeing a proper and legitimate place for the creaturely as created, constituted, and permitted to respond to God’s glory in a way in which more of the glory is seen – nevertheless one wonders if the emphasis on God’s act throughout does not evacuate the creaturely realm of its genuinely finite and creaturely aspects. This is in no way to argue that creation has any independent existence or dignity apart from God, or that it is anything other than radically contingent or dependent on anything other than God’s grace. Yet the dayto-day existence of the creature, while confessed to be dependent on God, is nevertheless an arena of human deliberation and creation. In this way, Barth seems to do less than full justice to the contingency of human action. Barth’s ruminations on the divine origin of creaturely glorification would seem to be what one would anticipate knowing eschatologically: that, surveying the totality of human endeavour in retrospect (as it were) one would see that all human glorification of God, while creaturely, was also divine. Yet in the creaturely moment of worship, involving deliberation and action, it is not at all as clear what constitutes a faithful ‘echo of the voice of God’. This criticism will be taken up again at various points below. The second and last expansion of the initial defining summary illustrates the extent to which Barth does not intend to give an abstract account of glory. As Barth says, ‘God endures in glory. It is not His being as such, mere abstract being, 6 7

CD II.1, pp. 667, 668. CD II.1, p. 671 for language on God ‘permitting’ worship.

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which is eternal. God has no such being. His being is eternal in glory.’8 Glory is not something added to a merely neutral or abstract ‘being’ of God. Moreover, this glory which God ‘is’, is tied closely with God’s acts in history, and the biblical narrative in particular.9 Barth says that ‘God gives Himself to the creature. This is His glory revealed in Jesus Christ, and this is therefore the sum of the whole doctrine of God.’10 The basis of the glory of God for Barth is not an abstraction or a universal, but is intrinsically related to Jesus Christ and his revelation of God. Christ is the ‘beginning, centre and goal’ of all of God’s works of glory.11 The self-communicative dynamism of God’s glory is expressed through creation, reconciliation and redemption. God effects all of these by means of the Word, the Son: not a faceless instrument by which God acts, but one who himself has a face in Jesus; not (only) an eternal act, but an act which unfolds in a specific place and time; not a philosophical abstraction, but a person whose identity can only be made sense of from within a historical tradition and by a people shaped and informed by that tradition. With these initial points established, the glory of God in Barth’s CD II.1 and IV.3.1 may now be further unpacked through this and the following chapter.

Glory through the perfections of God: Freedom, love and eternity Glory and freedom It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of the freedom of God for the identity of God in Barth’s CD. Freedom constitutes one of the two major categories of divine perfections as Barth outlines them, and while he is careful always to stipulate that God is the One who is free to love, the character of the love is such just in virtue of God being free. Earlier in the same volume of CD, Barth explores God’s freedom in some depth. Talking of God’s living and loving, Barth stipulates that these are God’s living and loving; what distinguishes them from living and loving in general is God’s freedom.12 This freedom is what distinguishes God from all other persons,   8   9 10 11 12

CD II.1, p. 640. CD II.1, p. 260, ‘God is who He is in His works . . . in His works He is revealed as the One He is.’ CD II.1, pp. 643, 671. CD II.1, p. 667. CD II.1, pp. 300, 301.

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a freedom worked out in a ‘creative power’ which creates and sustains all other persons.13 This freedom, which implies this power as well, is what is meant by the sovereignty or lordship of God. To put this concern for God’s freedom in more traditional theological terms, Barth is concerned to affirm God’s aseity.14 Drawing together the various strands of his account of God’s freedom, Barth says that ‘God’s glory is His competence to make use of His omnipotence as the One who is omnipresent, and to exercise lordship in virtue of His ever-present knowledge and will.’15 Further, God’s freedom as ‘sufficiency’ implies not merely one set of perfections distinct from the others, but implies the totality and completeness of all of God’s perfections together.16 All of this is never apart from God’s glory, but is an expression of it. In these terms we begin to see God’s glory as related to God’s freedom as God’s majesty, holiness, lordship, transcendence and pre-eminence.17 Yet Barth has carefully constructed this section of CD so that the reader is reminded that the freedom of God is not apart from the love of God, which may also be said to sum up the divine perfections. God’s glory lies not merely in faceless power or neutral capacity, but in being the One who loves in freedom.18 Barth is keen to specify that God’s freedom is not simply the libertarian freedom of a powerful but neutral and faceless actor who might use freedom to any particular end. Rather, God’s freedom is God’s freedom to live and love as God.19 Both the love of God and God’s freedom are richly specified through narrative instantiation. More specifically, this is not narrative instantiation as such, nor just any narrative, but in Jesus Christ. 20 So while for Barth it is proper to say that God alone is truly free,21 this freedom is not merely a negative condition  – freedom from constraint – nor even, properly speaking, radical autonomy,22 but rather is expressed most fully in God’s decision to be with and for humanity in Jesus Christ. That God has no need, no satisfaction outside Godself, and that God’s works are themselves an overflow of God’s perfections and joy, mean that God’s love for the creation is uncompelled, free, and in that sense pure and complete. Unlike 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

CD II.1, p. 301. CD II.1, p. 306. CD II.1, p. 641. CD II.1, p. 644. CD II.1, p. 302. CD II.1, p. 641. CD II.1, p. 301. CD II.1, p. 320. CD II.1, p. 307. See, for example, CD I.1, p. 307, ‘Godhead in the Bible means freedom, ontic and noetic autonomy.’

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human love, God’s love is not influenced by the need to be loved. Moreover, God’s love is given not because of the worthiness of the creation – which, due to the Fall and sin, is not complete in the way God intended. Therefore, God’s grace may be truly and entirely gracious and gratuitous, the love given extravagantly because given freely, to one who does not deserve or has not earned it. In this way one may see how the glory of God is found in God’s being as the One who loves in freedom, and how this glory is the sum of all the perfections of God. God’s glory is intrinsically and necessarily related to God’s freedom, and in just that way is also intrinsically and necessarily related to God’s love. It might be considered a negative condition to the possibility of God’s glory – that is, God’s acts are glorious in virtue of their not being compelled or coerced. One initial concern might be raised about the prominence of freedom – even as a freedom to love – in Barth’s account. David Ford has considered this matter, noticing that, while each of God’s perfections implies all the others, nevertheless the way in which they are presented exerts profound structural influence on the overall account. Barth understood this, carefully structuring his dogmatics, with close attention to order and placement. Ford finds that ‘there is in Barth’s phrase a bias towards God as will (loving freely) rather than as understanding or intellect (the wisdom that conceives, shapes and directs the willing)’.23 Opposed to mere willing or power, Ford suggests that wisdom, along with blessing as a modifier, might be given greater prominence as a perfection of God, partly as it ties in more closely with several of Barth’s earlier themes, and partly because it allows one to overcome any sense of freedom as mere capacity, blind will or force.24 Ford further notes that the prominence given to freedom in Barth’s account is out of balance with its prominence in Scripture, which further prompts Ford to suggest wisdom as a perfection better attested in Scripture.25 One might object that such freedom in Barth’s account is not mere libertarian freedom, but always qualified by love, and indeed by all of the perfections of God, and that God’s freedom is seen chiefly in God’s freedom to reconcile and redeem in Jesus Christ: a freedom shown in engagement. Certainly it is true that freedom – or any perfection of God – for Barth is never merely a self-evident category, but is always informed and reformed by consideration of God’s act, chiefly in Jesus Christ. Yet one might still ask: if it is the case for all of God’s perfections that each is implied by and also informs all of the others, and that the 23

24 25

David Ford, ‘The God of Blessing Who Loves in Wisdom’, in Shaping Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), p. 206. Ford, ‘The God’, p. 207. Ford, ‘The God’, p. 206.

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content of that perfection is decisively shaped by God’s act, then how might such an account be significantly changed by allowing another suitable term or terms to assume the role of freedom in Barth’s account? As Ford notes, when Barth considers the glory of God as one of God’s perfections, under the heading of freedom, it ‘continually bursts the bounds of what is usually associated with love and freedom’.26 Barth himself seems to acknowledge, at points, that, although he places God’s glory within the category of the perfections of God’s freedom, there is nevertheless something comprehensive about glory, such that it encompasses God’s love and freedom and all the perfections of the one God, expressing the depths of God’s being.27 Although glory occupies the final place of God’s perfections in Barth’s account, in ways serving as a capstone, we are still moved to ask how this account would be reconfigured if glory were given a more (explicitly) structurally determinative position – recognizing at once that ‘glory’ would be a term needing explication by all of the other perfections as well as (particularly) the act of God in Jesus Christ. One further point remains to be made about the relationship of glory and freedom for Barth, a point to which we shall return under the heading of love. In talking of the human in light of God’s glory, Barth avers that God’s glory is not apart from the world, and that this is ‘concretely real wherever God’s glory and therefore the glory of His Son and Word are known’.28 The creature is a ‘new creature’, no longer in darkness owing to God’s light having shined on her, by which she becomes a ‘witness’ to the light and a ‘reflection’ of it.29 Barth then asserts that ‘this creature is free for God’s glory . . . because it has been made free for it by God’s glory itself.’30 The crucial point which I wish to emphasize here is that Barth allows that God’s glory, which is a perfection of God and particularly of God’s freedom, frees the creature. In this respect, God’s glory effects what it is: God is glorious in God’s freedom, and God’s glory begets freedom in the creature. Naturally, this is not a libertarian freedom the creation enjoys, but a freedom and permission to glorify God. This is only to be expected, for God’s freedom is not (strictly speaking) a merely negative capacity, but rather God’s ability to be who God is in God’s revelation. Moreover, the freedom God’s glory begets with the creation 26 27 28 29 30

Ford, ‘The God’, p. 207. CD II.1, pp. 348, 641. CD II.1, p. 669. CD II.1, p. 669. CD II.1, p. 669.

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is not itself the freedom of God, but a freedom for God, a genuinely creaturely freedom, oriented to God. Nevertheless God’s glory still begets freedom, analogously and in creaturely appropriate ways. Perhaps one might venture that, for Barth, glory begets glory. Inasmuch as the creature is made a ‘witness’ and ‘reflection’, we might say that God’s glory begets glory in the creature not just as freedom for God, but also (in a limited way at least) as freedom for other creatures. Yet we must test this hypothesis by turning to Barth’s other major category of God’s perfections, love.

Glory and love While Barth focuses his efforts in this volume on exploring God’s glory under the heading of the perfections of the divine freedom, he is also clear that all the perfections of God, both of God’s freedom and God’s love, hold together. The perfections are inseparable, or in the traditional language, God is simple. Therefore, God’s glory, even if it may be treated formally under the heading of ‘freedom’, cannot be considered apart from God’s love. Indeed, God’s loving in freedom are together ‘the one perfection of God’; as this loving in freedom is ‘lived out’ by God, it is also ‘identical with a multitude of various and distinct types of perfection’.31 It might further be said that God’s love is the ‘manner’ of God’s glory.32 Indeed, Barth mentions in an almost offhand way that ‘whether we are speaking of the love or of the freedom of God, we are concerned with the one God, with the glory of the Lord in its fullness’.33 Along with giving some support to the notion that God’s glory might be considered encompassing of God’s love and freedom – and therefore, potentially, a broader characterization of God than ‘the One who loves in freedom’ – this also connects God’s glory and love in a more than accidental fashion. For Barth, it is critically important that God’s love not simply be related to the contingency of creation, but instead be an expression of the depths of God as God is in Godself, with which God then loves creation freely. Thus, inasmuch as love is intrinsic to God’s glory, the full glory of God is not the glory of a hidden or inscrutable God, much less the glory only of the economic workings of God with the creation. Rather, God’s glory is expressive of God’s very being. ‘It is dangerous and ultimately fatal to faith in God if God is not the Lord of glory, if 31 32 33

CD II.1, p. 322. CD II.1, p. 666. CD II.1, p. 348.

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it is not guaranteed to us that in spite of the analogical nature of the language in which it all has to be expressed God is actually and unreservedly as we encounter Him in His revelation. . . . But attesting to us the glory of God, [Holy Scripture] certifies to us that this Lord of glory is as such the real and true God.’34 God’s glory, as God’s love, is not something added to God only in God’s economy of activity with the creation, nor is that glory unrelated to Godself, but rather flows out of the depths of God’s being, expressed through God’s perfections, known by humans through God’s revelation. Glory, love, all of God’s perfections, are all intrinsically God’s.35 The implication of all of this for an account of God’s glory is that this allows Barth to render a much richer account of God’s identity, as revealed, and that this identity goes ‘all the way down’, as it were. God is in Godself not an impersonal, faceless free power, but One who is powerful and also loves, is just, righteous, holy and so forth. This then allows this power (omnipotence) to be spelled out in very specific ways. Moreover, because Barth maintains that God is known not in abstraction and stasis, but through revelation and, particularly, in God’s acts, then even modifiers such as ‘love’ are spelled out in rich and narratively specific ways: the love of God is known chiefly in God’s Son, Jesus Christ.36 Therefore, when it comes to ‘glory’, the glory of God is not known in any way apart from God’s acts. Moreover, God’s revelation cannot be known abstractly as the ‘glory’ of One who is almighty yet faceless, or who – as has been seen in the work of Thomas Schreiner and John Piper in Chapter 1 – is supreme, of greatest honour, or simply ‘the greatest’ in abstraction from the specific shape of God’s acts, or the quality of God’s love, mercy, joy and so forth. Although glory, in CD, is included under the perfections of God’s freedom rather than the perfections of God’s love, Barth seems clear that the freedom and love of God cannot be understood apart from each other, as if one were God in se and the other God ad extra. For Barth, God’s glory is never an abstract description of a faceless god, but rather the sum of all God’s perfections as present in God’s revelation, including those

34 35

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CD II.1, p. 325. Joseph Mangina summarizes, speaking specifically of joy in the Christian life, ‘It would also be true to say that joy, like gratitude, is a response to the divine love. But glory, which in II/1 is described as a perfection of the divine freedom, brings out more specifically that in God’s loving us he manifests to us his own inner perfection and beauty. And in so doing, God draws us into a participation in his own life.’ God’s glory is the overflowing depths of God’s being for the creature. (Despite this pithy summary, I am not so sure about Barth embracing creaturely ‘participation’ in God, so much as, through God’s act, being made conformable to God in a manner complementary to God’s glory.) Joseph L. Mangina, Karl Barth on the Christian Life: The Practical Knowledge of God (Issues in Systematic Theology, no. 8; New York: Peter Lang, 2001), p. 135. John Webster, Karl Barth (London: Continuum, 2nd edn, 2004b), p. 85.

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perfections which Barth summarizes under the divine freedom and the divine loving, respectively.37 Both freedom and love are intrinsic to the divine glory. The innermost ‘core’ of who God is, is the One who is free to love, and this ‘free love’ ‘seeks and finds fellowship’. 38 In this seeking and finding, a relationship of love is freely established, and this free love in fellowship both expresses God’s glory and is the very core of God’s glory, God’s being. To return to the line of enquiry proposed above: to what extent might it be said that glory begets glory, that the glory of God effects creaturely analogues of itself within and among creatures? We have seen that glory, which expresses God’s freedom, creates freedom for the creature. Yet when we turn to the love of God, as an expression of God’s glory, we find no such analogue. There is nowhere in this section where Barth claims that the creature grows in love through the encounter with God’s glory. The glory of God is not expressed apart from God’s love, to be sure, and God’s loving self-giving is the entire basis upon which the creature may praise God.39 But God’s glory does not create a creaturely response of love, which seems odd on the face of it. God’s glory does create a creaturely response, though: in God’s glory, the creature is free to glorify God, in a creaturely participating in God’s own process of self-glorification. This glorification transpires in the form of thanks, praise and ‘life-obedience’ (Lebensgehorsam).40 Given the overall shape of Barth’s account, it seems natural that God would be portrayed as active, and creation (in regard to God) as passive. Thanks, praise and life-obedience are each, in their own way, an acknowledgment implying a thorough lack on the part of the respondent. Thanks and gratitude are expressed for the reception of what is given as needed – in the case of God, gratitude for creation, reconciliation and redemption. Praise glorifies the greatness of the One who gives, drawing attention to, glorifying that One. Life-obedience is a further act of gratitude and praise as the shape of one’s life is conformed to God.41 In each of these, there is an acknowledgment and admission that one is in no way sufficient or even adequate in herself, that God is the source of life and blessing and righteousness at every turn. There is surely something right about this; I would not seek to bracket out Barth’s affirming creation’s utter dependence on God at each and every moment. 37 38 39 40

41

CD II.1, p. 348. CD II.1, p. 641. CD II.1, p. 672. CD II.1, p. 674 (cf. Die kirchliche Dogmatik (KD), Zurich: Verlag der Evangelischen Buchhandlung, 1940. II.1, p. 760). CD II.1, p. 674.

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For Barth and much of the Christian tradition, in light of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation has no independent standing over against God, no existence or perdurance outside of God, and no value or identity apart from God. Creation is contingent and not necessary; God’s creating is therefore grace, uncompelled and unnecessary. This means that the creation has a gratitude for its existence which is primal and elemental. And yet this also seems less than fully satisfactory, not because what it says is unsatisfying in itself, but because there is surely more than just what Barth affirms: as ‘responses’ these are essentially negative, admitting one’s lack. But why might not God’s glory, expressed in the manner of God’s love, not also beget a positive – although still creaturely and dependent – analogue within and among creatures as well? Creation is unnecessary, and therefore pure gift, with an elemental gratitude: yet even though creation comes from nothing, it is nevertheless something through God. It is right, therefore, that gratitude should take both ‘negative’ (confession of obligation) and ‘positive’ forms (being a certain part of that gifted creation, not merely receiving but capable of giving as well). I shall take up this question in greater detail in the second half of the book through turning to Scripture, yet there are traces even within Barth himself that had he pursued this question further, he might have been able himself to acknowledge this. To return, again, to the three responses of glorification: thanks, praise and life-obedience. Each of these finds its centre on and in another (namely, God). Again, there is surely something right and indispensable about this. And yet when it exhausts the account of the creaturely life lived in the light of God’s glory it serves not merely to decentre the self, but to bracket out the self altogether so that human agency – human thinking and doing – has seemingly no place in such a life. However, if we may allow the self to be decentred but unbracketed, that is, to remain a self without the illusion of sovereignty, then it may become a self-in-community, characterized by both call and response, constituted both by receiving and giving, characterized by the mutual giving and receiving of love. Why may not the permission, ability, necessity and obligation given by God to the creation to glorify God not have a positive element as well as a negative, why may it not be genuinely called loving God, as a creaturely analogue to the love of God expressed in God’s glory? Along these same lines, if we may say that the love of God creates creaturely analogues of love for God, it would seem natural to also include love of neighbour as such a creating as well, and to see this (further) creating within

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the creation to be an expression of and magnification of God’s glory.42 In this way we might descry a connection between the glory of God and human sociality. Surely one may not object that, for Barth, this would be unacceptable since this would allow humanity an autonomous place of activity apart from God, something genuinely to contribute rather than merely a response. This objection will not stand, for Barth acknowledges that God creates a ‘simple but comprehensive autonomy of the creature’, consistent with God’s freedom and sovereignty.43 Moreover, in speaking of the creation, Barth maintains that ‘the creaturely world, the cosmos, the nature given to man in his sphere and the nature of this sphere, has also as such its own lights and truths and therefore its own speech’.44 Creation has this ‘integrity’ simply because of the ‘divine work of creation’, and not because of creation’s independence of God – yet it does have this integrity. This ‘integrity’ or ‘autonomy’ is elaborated most clearly in Jesus Christ, himself the true man, and therefore in complete accord with theonomy.45 Barth is clear that this autonomy is not ‘an independent individuality or autonomy’, for such would be devilish.46 Yet there is nothing in what is being proposed which would infringe on this way of presenting the matter – a positive creaturely analogue of God’s love expressed through God’s glory does not demand an independent autonomy. Moreover, if this proposal engages human agency in positive creaturely loving, this cannot contrast with Barth’s decentring proposals as the difference between human over-assertion and humanly appropriate (non-) assertion, for Barth clearly states that even these decentrings are only possible through God’s agency. If God enables a decentring of the human subject, through gratitude, praise, and obedience, as surely God does, why may not God act in 42

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I mean to be clear that it is not that Barth does not discuss neighbour-love in the CD: he discourses at some length on the human sociality generated by God’s command for humanity to be free in CD III.4, § 54. Rather, I am claiming that Barth makes no connection between God’s glory and neighbour-love (or human sociality considered more broadly). Moreover, he discusses creaturely love of God in CD I/2 in the section beginning on p. 371, under the heading of ‘The Life of the Children of God’, a discussion of humanity as the ‘recipient of revelation, i.e. believing and perceiving man’ (p. 362). But again, Barth makes no explicit connection between this section and the glory of God or the glorifying of God. CD II.2, pp. 177, 178. CD IV.3.1, p. 139. CD II.2, pp. 177, 179; Barth elsewhere deals explicitly with heteronomy and autonomy in terms of dogmatic formulation (in CD I.2, p. 857), in which he presents the sources and norms of dogmatics as heteronomous, but intended to lead to human autonomy within theonomy; as John Macken summarizes, for Barth, ‘The only function of heteronomy is to lead to autonomy, the subjective possibility of grasping the Word of God.’ (The Autonomy Theme in the Church Dogmatic: Karl Barth and his Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 34.) CD II.2, p. 178.

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God’s glory to form a creaturely analogue to God’s love, such that the human may love God and others?47 One might further object to this proposal by saying that such ‘loving’ is implied in ‘life-obedience’. Yet surely human love – even bracketing out emotional or romantic accounts of it, and acknowledging all of its very real difficulties, sin and imperfection – cannot be done justice to by ‘obedience’.48 One loves not in response to a command (commanding obedience), but in response to love, in a manner consistent with the self who may give and receive. It is all the more mysterious that Barth omits any positive account of the possibilities in God of human glorification, because he begins his discussion of the topic by drawing a striking analogy between the glory of God as it is found in God Godself and as it creates a response in humans: ‘[J]ust as the glory of God itself is the superabundance, the overflowing of the perfection of the divine being, so the glorification of God through the creature is in its own way equally an overflowing, an act of freedom and not of force or of a self-evident course of events.’49 In the light of this omission and all that has been said to this point, I am driven to the conclusion that, for all its genuine merits, Barth’s account of God’s glory falls short of the mark when it comes to human agency, and particularly love, failing to fulfil its own promise on its own terms. Moreover, he struggles to articulate human agency in light of God’s glory in a manner which is not heteronomous; as a result, he does not do justice to human love in God, and – not accidentally – omits any serious or extended consideration of the possibility of transfigured human sociality in light of this glory.

Glory through biblical images: Honour, light, beauty We turn now from the initial considerations of themes which correspond to the large-scale structure of CD, to a triad of biblical (and biblically inspired) images which figure in Barth’s account of divine glory in rather more subtle but 47

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This is not to say that Barth nowhere allows for human love to ‘correspond’ to the divine love: he makes the case that the Holy Spirit frees humans to do just that in IV.2, p. 727. But this is unconnected with God’s glory as such. It is perhaps odd that Barth, who so carefully stipulates the meaning of his key terms, anxious that they never be taken as self-evident, does not tease out the meaning of ‘life-obedience’. This mystery is further deepened in the next chapter, where Barth’s notion of obedience comes under consideration. CD II.1, p. 671.

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no less real ways, filling out what has been said to this point. This triad of images consists of honour, light and beauty. As I shall elaborate upon below, the biblical images of God’s glory tend to combine the senses of honour, light and (to a lesser extent) beauty. Barth recognizes this and generally adopts the same usage, parsing out glory in these terms, yet allowing the above considerations of God’s identity in God’s perfections, as seen through the acts of God, to decisively colour just what this ‘honour’, ‘light’ and ‘beauty’ might mean.

Glory and/as honour Barth explores the issue of the honour of God most explicitly at the beginning of his section on the glory of God. He writes, ‘[a]dopting at once the biblical usage, we can say that God’s glory is His dignity and right not only to maintain, but to prove and declare, to denote and almost as it were to make Himself conspicuous and everywhere apparent as the One He is.’50 To speak of God’s ‘dignity’ and ‘right’ in conjunction like this is to speak in the language of social notions of worth, that is, honour. Further, God is ‘pre-eminent among all other beings and excels them absolutely’.51 This is not merely an ontological or metaphysical claim, but implies also a ‘height’ which translates as a dignity which is worthy of honour. Barth elaborates on the New Testament usage of the term dόxa, claiming that the word evolved in its meaning from non-biblical to biblical usage, where it comes to denote the objective conception of honour which a man has in himself and which is therefore his due, the dignity which is his and is therefore accepted by others, the magnificence which he displays because he has a right to it, the splendour which emanates from him because he is resplendent.  .  .  . It refers to the legitimate, effective, and actual self-demonstration, self-expression and selfdeclaration of a being whose self-revelation is subject to no doubt, criticism or reservation.52

Turning to the Old Testament term kabod, Barth continues that it ‘denotes that which constitutes the importance and value of a being, giving it prestige and honour because it belongs to it (as for example, wealth)’.53 Barth is giving an 50 51 52 53

CD II.1, p. 641. CD II.1, p. 646. CD II.1, pp. 641, 642. CD II.1, p. 642.

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exposition of the biblical usage of the terms, yet in doing this he is also setting forth his own understanding, that God’s glory is related to God’s honour, a term which at once implies relation, surpassing worth, as well as claims and recognition of that worth. Yet Barth explicitly disclaims anything like a ‘divine vanity or self-seeking’ in God’s self-glorification.54 He decisively parts company with anyone who would reduce God to the highest term in a hierarchy, the ‘biggest’ agent, yet still one agent among others, competing for the scarce good known as ‘honour’. God’s glory, as an expression of God’s honour, is not to be seen in God’s surpassing height alone, but just as much in God’s condescension.55 There is no hint of narcissistic self-concern here, but rather a profound sense of God’s glory and honour being most fully expressed in Jesus Christ, in condescending to the humility of the incarnation and acceding to the shame of the cross.56 At the same time, this is also an expression of the surpassing and unrivallable worth of God, of God’s clear revelation of Godself and God’s excellence, and in this, a self-glorification. John Webster summarizes well: ‘The telos of the work of God in Christ is not simply God’s self-glorification, but his self-glorification in the glorification of humanity.’57 God does not simply glorify Godself in isolation (to Godself alone, as it were), but expresses God’s honour through creating and redeeming. It becomes clear that, for Barth, God’s honour and glory are unrivalled and therefore unthreatened, and there is thus no tension between God’s selfglorification and God’s acting to save creation. This is the shape of the honour of the One who loves in freedom. Indeed, far from being humanity’s rival for scarce honour, God is ‘glorious in the fullness of His divine being’ and in this ‘has from the very first covered and removed all the shame of our position’.58 Far from being a zero-sum game between God and humanity, God’s honour actually removes shame from creatures. Barth speaks of God in terms congruent with this elaborated notion of honour, that is, in terms of a sociality which recognizes the worth of God, in a ‘hierarchical’ manner, for example, writing of God’s ‘grace’ or ‘mercy’. Yet he does so without God being in competition with humanity for scarce honour, 54 55 56 57 58

CD II.1, p. 642. CD II.1, p. 662. CD III.4, p. 654. Webster, Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 88. CD II.1, p. 645.

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and therefore having no trace of narcissism.59 Barth is able to do this because he allows the perfections of God’s love and freedom to inform – although not determine – the image of God’s glory as God’s honour. Let us return to the hypothesis articulated above, that (divine) glory begets (a certain analogous creaturely) glory. If God’s glory is God’s honour or praiseworthiness, and this is not something hidden but present and declared, and, moreover, if this honour is not apart from but expressed in God’s identity as the One who loves in freedom, particularly in Jesus Christ, then this glory is filled out in specific ways which (because of the incarnation) are able to be embodied or repeated by humans, in ways which are both analogous to God and specific to their creatureliness. Yet we find in Barth’s account a certain ambiguity when it comes to the matter of honour. On the one hand, if humans and God are not actors competing on the same pitch for a scarce good known as ‘honour’ then for humans to be (let us say) ‘transfigured’ in the light of God’s glory would not threaten God’s glory, but would entail their participation in God’s self-glorification. Barth does affirm that the creature may, in being transformed by God, glorify God through such a participation.60 The creature receives ‘real permission’ to ‘thank and serve the glory of God, honouring and praising God’.61 The creature’s thanksgiving and service glorify God’s glory, and honour God in creaturely coexistence with God, becoming a ‘reflection’ of God.62 This honouring of God is worked out in the life-obedience of the creature, articulated in thanks and praise and self-offering to God. And so Barth gladly affirms that God’s honour begets honouring (of God) by creatures as the creaturely complement in faith to God’s act of revealing God’s glory. Yet on the other hand, while what Barth says seems quite correct, there is also an ambiguity present, an ambiguity which may be due to a theological scruple, yet does not seem fully warranted by what he has stated to this point. 59

60 61 62

John C. McDowell, in commenting on CD IV.3.2, explains Barth’s sense of the relation between God and the creation thus: ‘Although Barth claims that God has the right over humans of an owner to his property, this potentially authoritarian form of discourse is clarified when he describes the possession non-competitively. In other words, humanity retains its freedom and individuality as God’s covenant-partner for whom God condescendingly offers, claims and awaits a response.’ (Hope in Barth’s Eschatology: Interrogations and Transformations beyond Tragedy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), p. 188.) These terms, ‘right of ownership’ and ‘condescendingly’ are freighted with honour, with social claims to worth. McDowell thus simultaneously shows the dynamism of divine honour in Barth and shows that this relationship is ‘non-competitive’. CD II.1, p. 674. CD II.1, pp. 670, 671. CD II.1, p. 673.

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In the same way that Barth seemed to shrink from (or at any rate, neglect) the matter of God’s glory (as love) begetting glory (in creatures as love for God and neighbour), so he also neglects to explore fully the way in which God’s glory (as honour) may beget glory (as honouring of creatures, as well as an honouring among creatures). Indeed, Barth states that God’s glory ‘removes shame’ from humans, and even goes so far as to affirm that ‘doxάzein means both to honour, praise, extol and glorify as a creaturely action and also to transfigure as a divine. And doxάzesqai means both the glorification of God by the creature and of the creature by God.’63 But he demurs from developing this any further in these terms. Rather, he seems content for divine honour primarily to beget complementary creaturely honouring of God. Again, I would not wish to mitigate his point in this matter at all, but expand it: why would not God’s honour serve to honour the creation, shining as God’s glory in Jesus Christ and reflected in creation, and why would this honour not beget a transformed sociality among persons and within creation, to God’s glory? One might object that this would risk upsetting the asymmetrical relations of God and creature, that this would risk placing humanity at an unsuitably triumphant pinnacle – that, indeed, it might even risk the very sort of pro­ gressivism and anthropocentric triumphalism which Barth was taking such pains to redress in the first place. To this serious concern I reply with three points. First, as Barth himself seems eager to confirm, human and divine honour are not in competition. Talking about God honouring humans in God’s work of creation and reconciliation can in no way minimize God’s own honour. It might be the case, however, absent further specification of the shape of that honour, that humans honouring humans might distract from God’s honour. Secondly, however, in the event, Barth is careful to specify the shape of God’s honour not in terms of an Ancient Near Eastern monarch, jealous for a scarce resource, but rather quite specifically through the shape of God’s act in Jesus Christ, the greater acting on behalf of the lesser. Thirdly, Barth even explores the reconciliation between God and humanity in Volume IV in terms of the humility of God and the exaltation of the human, and so there is already an implicit, if underdeveloped, account of God ‘honouring’ humans in a way not greatly different than what I mean to suggest here.64 63 64

CD II.1, p. 670. I mean to be clear that any such language of God ‘honouring’ humans is not intended to elevate creation to a status independent of, or equal to, God; the relation of creation and God I take to be one of ongoing radical yet non-heteronomous dependence. Creation only has the honour and dignity – and existence – which God gives it. Yet God does give it.

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If this is the honour of God, then it becomes clearer how human processes of honouring others might themselves be transformed in the light of God’s honour: not as a self-centred competition for a scarce resource, but as a dynamism of sociality in which human agency is constituted relationally both by being honoured and honouring. In such a sociality, the individual self is decentred, constituted and established by others, received as a gift both from God and immanently within creation. This being honoured itself begets (or at least is fulfilled by) honouring others, above all (but not only) God. I shall take up this point in greater detail later in the book; at this point I mean only to indicate how Barth’s account of God’s glory as honour is less than fully satisfying if we are to take seriously the hypothesis that God’s glory begets glory. It does bear mentioning that Barth takes up honour as a topic later on in CD. In Volume III, part 4, paragraph 56, in the ethics of creation, Barth considers the matter of honour, both divine and creaturely, in some detail.65 Here he fits it into the larger doctrine of creation; in this last part of Volume III he considers the command of God and the freedom of the creature as an expression of special ethics. In this section, he several times makes connections similar to what I suggest here, namely that God honours the creation through creating and redeeming it. I shall return to this matter in the next chapter in considering the role of command and obedience in relation to God’s honouring. At this point, it is sufficient to note that, while Barth makes a few references to God’s glory in this section on honour, it is not the primary theme – and when God’s glory is Barth’s primary theme (as in II.1 or IV.3.1), God’s honouring of creation moves into the background.

Glory and/as light In Scripture, God’s glory is in places spoken of as an effulgence or light, which shines forth.66 Barth incorporates this usage into his own discussion of God’s glory in CD II.1, saying that God’s glory is the ‘source and radiance of light’, that God Godself is light to all else as darkness, and that this light permeates the darkness.67 Yet God’s glory is never simply identified as light. In biblical usage, as Barth recognizes, terms implying light and honour are used to describe God’s glory and often qualify or interpret each other. So 65 66 67

CD III.4, pp. 647–85. For example, Isa. 60.19; Lk. 2.32; 2 Cor. 4.6; Rev. 21.23. CD II.1, p. 646.

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God’s glory is not merely the ‘brute fact’ of light, but has a qualitative being: it is a ‘shining forth’, and what shines forth is the excellence and perfection of the divine being. Referring to the Old Testament usage of the Hebrew word kabod, Barth explains that it ‘denotes that which constitutes the importance and value of a being, giving it prestige and honour’, as well as being ‘light, both as source and radiance’.68 Thus, divine honour is not merely content to ‘maintain’ its being in itself, but ‘shines forth’ the identity of God to all that is not God. Barth posits this combination in his gloss of biblical usage of God’s ‘glory’: it is not only God’s ‘dignity and right’ to ‘maintain’ Godself as the One God is– honour language – but equally to ‘prove and declare, to denote and almost as it were to make Himself conspicuous and everywhere apparent as the One he is’ – shining forth language.69 That it is God’s ‘honour’ or perfections which ‘shine forth’ indicate that this ‘light’ and ‘shining’ are not meant purely literally, but also figuratively, as declaration in revelation. While there may be in the narrative of Scripture a certain effulgence or light associated with the presence of God, this can also be used more broadly to indicate God’s communication of Godself to creation, a ‘shining forth’ of the One who God is. Divine glory is thus (1) the source of radiance, and (2) the shining forth of that radiance. It is simultaneously the shining forth as light and the worth which is communicated in that shining forth: in all this, it is in fact God.70 Inasmuch as God’s glory is considered as light, both as its source and its shining forth, it becomes clear that, as with honour, for Barth this glory is filled out in detail through the acts of God (particularly in Jesus Christ), and also expresses again the way in which God is the One who loves in freedom. By this latter statement I mean that God as source and shining forth of glory as light is free – free to be who God is, free to reveal Godself as God is, free to create, reconcile and redeem – and in being the One God is, in creating, reconciling and redeeming, in revealing Godself to creatures, shows Godself as the One who, in freedom, loves. To be glorious (source) and to communicate that glory (shining forth) is itself supremely glorious. As before, this shining forth is not merely a narcissistic self-concern as if God were competing against the creation, as if the darkness could push back against the light. Rather, this source and shining out of the light of glory, while properly called ‘self-glorification’, is an overflowing of God’s ‘indwelling joy’

68 69 70

CD II.1, p. 642. CD II.1, p. 641. CD II.1, p. 643.

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which ‘overflows in its richness, which in its super-abundance is not satisfied with itself but communicates itself ’.71 But in the communication of this glory in the shining forth of God to the creation, in what way might it be said that this glory glorifies the creature? Barth insists that this ‘light’ of God’s glory does not shine in vain: ‘Where there is light and light shines, there is an illuminating and an illumination. This means that another object is illuminated which is not light in itself and which could not be light without being illuminated. Where there is radiance, there is also reflection of radiance.’ This hews closely to Barth’s pattern of asymmetrical complementarity in glorifying, noted above. The light of God does not remain ‘in’ itself but shines and reaches the creature, illuminating her. More than that, the light of God makes the creature to become a ‘reflection’ of this light, and a ‘witness’ to it, a ‘creaturely testimony’ to God.72 In this way, as the creature ‘reflects’ the light of God’s glory and bears witness to it, she becomes a part of God’s ‘shining’ in the world. Although Barth does not use the term, this drawing in of the creature to the shining forth of God’s glory might be said to constitute, in part, a glorification of the creature, as God allows her to participate in God’s self-glorification and in this way confers a kind of dignity upon her. Yet, as the creature becomes a ‘reflection’ of the light and only thus participates in this glorification, it is an open question to what degree this shining forth of glory actually may be said to glorify the creature. True, Barth concedes that God’s Church exists as a ‘supplement’ to the existence of Christ, and that God’s glory ‘makes [the creature’s] glorification its own in all its creatureliness’.73 The creature’s permitted glorification remains creaturely, with all ‘its own inner problems’.74 But even as Barth earlier describes the praise and glorifying of creation as the ‘echo’ of God’s voice,75 so here glorification is a ‘reflection’ of the light of God; both images convey an identical repetition of God’s speaking or shining. In this, there seems to be no consideration of the creature’s particular identity, or any sense that her glorification of God might be partial by design, rather than due to sin and creaturely imperfection. And so while God may make the creature’s praise a part of God’s self-glorification, the glorification of God is not mediated through the creature. That is, there is nothing peculiar to any individual creature – present in the creature in God’s wisdom and economy, 71 72 73 74 75

CD II.1, p. 647. CD II.1, pp. 669, 672. CD II.1, pp. 668, 669. CD II.1, p. 669. CD II.1, p. 668.

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not over against God – which may shape her praise of God in a distinct way. There is thus nothing ‘harmonic’ about praise of God, such that the entire body is needed to make adequate witness to God. Therefore, while God’s glory as light, for Barth, begets glorification of God in the creation, it is apart from the specific features of the creation itself, and thus does not constitute a glorifying of creation. As I shall show in the next chapter, Barth particularly takes up this image of the glory of God as light in Volume IV.3.1, expounding the office of the Mediator as prophet in terms of the shining forth of God’s glory in the life of Jesus Christ as ‘light, name, revelation, truth, Logos’.76 I shall therefore take up further exploration of Barth’s discussion of this image there, particularly as it is developed in terms of ‘shining forth’ and declaration of God’s identity, and shall further consider the question of the relation of human agency to this shining forth throughout that chapter.

Glory and/as beauty Having looked at two biblical images prominent in Barth’s account of God’s glory, I now may segue into a third, extra-biblical category, that of beauty. Barth finds that beauty is a useful and important category for understanding God’s glory, particularly as it draws together God’s honour and God’s shining forth, while further specifying the shape of that honour and effulgence, yet in the end he also feels bound to claim that beauty, in an account of God, has ‘no independent significance’.77 The way in which he spells out what he means by ‘beauty’ allows him to talk about the effectiveness of God’s presence (in God’s glory) in a way eminently consistent with God’s love, and without seeming to reduce that ‘effectiveness’ to mere brute power. If we can and must say that God is beautiful, to say this is to say how He enlightens and convinces and persuades us. It is to describe not merely the naked fact of His revelation or its power, but the shape and form in which it is a fact and is power. . . . [God] has beauty not merely as a fact or a power. . . . He has it as a fact and a power in such a way that He acts as the One who gives pleasure, creates desire and rewards with enjoyment.78 76 77 78

CD IV.3.1, p. 48. CD II.1, p. 666. CD II.1, pp. 650, 651.

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Beauty, for Barth, describes the shape of God’s self-proclamation, God’s self-glorification in and for the creation, in a way which is able to stipulate that this self-declaration does not simply overpower or nullify the creation but ‘enlightens’, ‘convinces’ or ‘persuades’ it. Each of these terms conveys a measure of care consistent with God’s love. Although the creation has no existence or status on its own apart from God, nevertheless God acts in and for the creation ‘as if ’ it were another, dignifying it through treating it as an ‘other’. Although Barth does not use the term, it might not be too much to say here that in this care, God ‘glorifies’ the creation as an element of God’s ongoing self-glorification, caring for it in a manner which conveys that it is something of worth, even if that worth is not itself apart from God. Resorting to more conventional aesthetical terms such as form and content to extend his argument, Barth writes that the beauty of God is not God’s adherence to some other criterion of beauty, nor is it God’s form as such, as if this form were separable from the content. Rather, in God both form and content perfectly coinhere, and thus any ‘form’ of God simply is the ‘content’ of God: ‘the perfection of His form is simply the radiating outwards of the perfection of His content and therefore of God Himself.’79 Barth explores the beauty of God in three specific examples: God’s perfections, the triunity of God’s ‘modes of being’, and (particularly) the incarnation.80 This shining out of God’s ‘content’, the sum total of God’s perfections, is itself God’s glory. This glory shines out in a manner consistent with beauty, not commanding or overpowering, but rather persuading and attracting the creature, and loving the creation ‘as the One who is worthy of love as God’.81 And so the greatest honour and worth of God is expressed in God coming to seek and save the lost creation in the incarnation, which is itself the greatest expression of God’s glorious outshining, of revealing Godself to creation, as well as the fullest (seemingly, the only) revelation of God’s beauty to creation. To return to the hypothesis articulated above, that divine glory may beget an analogous glory in the creation, we find here positive confirmation of this. Specifically, Barth parses out divine glory here (among a number of mutuallyinterpreting ways) as the ‘overflowing self-communicating joy’ of God.82 But this overflowing joy is not ‘spilled’ in vain, for it is also ‘that which gives joy’; it ‘awakens joy and is itself joyful’.83 Although the actual interaction of a subject 79 80 81 82 83

CD II.1, p. 659. CD II.1, pp. 657, 659, 661. CD II.1, p. 651. CD II.1, p. 653. CD II.1, pp. 653, 655.

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with this glory may vary from person to person, nevertheless, the ‘objective meaning of God’s glory is His active grace and mercy and patience, His love’.84 The quality of this love, when recognized as such, is found to have the power ‘of giving pleasure, awaking desire, and creating enjoyment’.85 Here, then, is a clear example of the glory of God, considered from the perspective of beauty, begetting an analogous, creaturely glory in the creation. In this there is a ‘correspondence’ between the creature and God, although it is a correspondence not of similarity, but of complementarity. God’s majesty and condescension are one, expressed in sublimity and holiness, mercy and patience and love, but these are not what are begotten among humans.86 There is, of course, an analogous creaturely answering joy to God’s overflowing joy; in each case, the joy is in God, who God is and what God has done in Christ, rather than a mutual joy. Alongside this joy in the creature is pleasure in God and desire for more. Thus we see that, when it comes to beauty, God’s glory does beget an analogous and properly creaturely, complementary responding glory.

Summary As we have seen, God’s glory figures prominently in Barth’s account of the perfections of God. Inasmuch as God may be glossed as the One who loves in freedom, God’s glory is found in close relationship to each of those (mutuallydefining) encompassing terms. As such, even though glory is delineated as one of God’s perfections (under the heading of a perfection of God’s freedom, correlated with God’s eternity), it also serves as an overarching description of the manner in which all of God’s perfections hold together as the one perfection of the one God. Barth also expounds this glory through the three images of light, honour and beauty. In order to explore Barth’s construction in greater detail and begin to consider the question of the place of the human in the glory of God, I proposed the hypothesis that, for Barth, the glory of God begets glory in the creation. We found that this was clearly the case with freedom, that the freedom of God frees the creature for God, and so it might be said that the glory of God, in begetting glory in creation, generates a correspondence of complementarity (but not similarity) to God among creatures. Turning to the glory of God expressed in love, though, 84 85 86

CD II.1, p. 653. CD II.1, p. 653. CD II.1, p. 665.

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we found that Barth does not seem to follow his best intuitions on this count, for in God’s glory God loves, but creatures are commanded and permitted to respond with ‘life-obedience’. In considering glory as honour, Barth indicates that God’s honour does beget an honouring (of God) within the creation, but we also saw that, perhaps because of a theological scruple, Barth is unable to affirm that God’s honour itself honours the creation, either through being witness to God’s honour or through participation in the honouring of God. On the topic of glory in terms of light, we saw that the creature becomes a reflection of the light, but in such a way that the specific features of the creature are extraneous to that shining. Lastly, turning to beauty, Barth much more clearly affirms my hypothesis, asserting that as God’s glory is the overflow of God’s joy, so also it gives joy and enjoyment of God to creatures. In all of this I have begun exploring the place of the human creature in the glory of God. In the next chapter, I turn to Barth’s treatment (and slight modification) of divine glory in Volume IV.3.1, giving further consideration to issues surrounding revelation and its moods, the possibilities of discernment and faithful questioning, and a deeper probing of the nature of the obedience (and human agency generally) that is consistent with the glory of God.

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The glory of God in Church Dogmatics IV.3.1 Overview In Volume II.1 of the Church Dogmatics (hereafter CD), Barth discussed the glory of God as both one of the perfections of God as well as, in some ways, summing up all of the perfections of God. Thus, in Barth’s account God’s glory is seen as related to both the love and freedom of God as the One who loves in freedom. Similarly, Barth developed his description of the glory of God through recourse to two biblical images, light and honour, so that the glory of God is the shining forth (light) of the One who God is (honour). I have also explored Barth’s construction of the glory of God through other terms prominent in his account, including eternity and beauty, but I mean to draw attention at this point to these two mutually qualifying pairs, which connect Barth’s description of God’s glory to the overall structure of the perfections of God (and hence, his Dogmatics), and to God’s glory in Scripture. In this earlier volume, for each of these pairs – freedom/love, and light/ honour – as Barth develops them there is a favouring of the initial terms. Although he is careful not to exclude the latter terms, he nevertheless expresses a genuine preference. The glory of God, although it comprises in some sense the whole of God’s perfections, is nevertheless elaborated under the major heading of God’s freedom. God’s freedom, as Barth insists, is God’s freedom to love. Yet for glory to be situated structurally within God’s freedom gives glory a specific cast which would be different if it were instead expounded under God’s love, or, indeed, as a heading under which both God’s freedom and love may be comprehended. Further, although the twin biblical themes of radiance of light and honour are  both explored under the heading of God’s glory as a perfection of God’s freedom, this pair is developed in a direction which clearly favours the former over the latter. Elaborating on these terms, Barth claims that the glory of God is

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‘the self-revealing sum of all divine perfections . . . the emerging, self-expressing and self-manifesting reality of all that God is’.1 Moreover, Barth glosses the biblical usage as the ‘truth and power and act of His self-declaration’.2 In this it becomes clear that God’s glory as outshining of light, enlightenment and declaration is preferred over God’s glory as honour. It is hardly accidental, given Barth’s large-scale theological concerns, that these pairs would be resolved in this way when it comes to God’s glory, for both freedom and the outshining of light emphasize God’s agency and centrality as subject, and as well as implying the passivity and (in a certain qualified sense) peripheral nature of creation in relation to God. For Barth, God’s glory (Herrlichkeit) is developed in terms of God as Lord (Herr). Of course, Barth is careful not merely to suppress the other terms of the pairs. For example, at one point he glosses the glory of God as ‘the omnipotent love of God’.3 I am not claiming that love and honour drop out of view altogether; but Barth does allow them to become minor counterpoints rather than controlling themes in terms of God’s glory. It is worth noting that the two less-favoured terms love and honour are both relational, less expressing God in isolation as subject than God engaged with an other. Although both love and honour may be conceived as intra-trinitarian dynamisms in eternity and therefore prior to creation, they are also terms which may allow creation to be seen as an agent in its own right – not to say an equal or self-existent agent. Perhaps this is not coincidental, as Barth wants to emphasize throughout CD the agency of God and the inability of humanity to approach God on its own terms. This conviction of his lies behind his rejection of natural theology and the analogy of being, among other things. It therefore would make sense that Barth would have a scruple about contemplating creation being an agent in this way in connection with the glory of God.4 Yet it is particularly striking that, as Barth moves from considering the perfections of God as God to exploring the glory of the work of the Mediator, the God-man, at the meetingplace of God and creation, the emphasis shifts to aspects of God’s glory which are less relational. Alongside wanting to call attention to the implications of this tendency to favour one term of each of these pairs for the shape of Barth’s account of God’s glory as such, these reflections are particularly germane to his 1 2 3 4

CD II.1, p. 643. CD II.1, p. 646. CD IV.3.1, p. 163. Again, I mean to be clear that elsewhere Barth does allow that the human may, through the Holy Spirit, grow in a love which ‘corresponds’ to the divine love (CD IV.2, p. 727) – but he does not associate this with God’s glory.

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description of the glory of the Mediator in Volume IV.3.1, where he continues and deepens this pattern. As I mentioned above, in one sense the whole of Volume IV of CD is about the glory of God. The glory of God is seen in that God the Son would make his way into the ‘far country’, to be judged in humanity’s place, thus showing the humility of God, The Lord as Servant; that God the Son would further, in his humanity, as Son of Man, be welcomed home, crowned, even exalted, by God, as the Servant as Lord; and further that the Mediator would shine forth the identity of God as the light of life – all of this must be, to some extent, considered the glory of God as a whole. And yet it is worth underlining this phrase ‘to some extent’, for Barth’s emphasis on the glory of God falls most heavily and explicitly on the third part of the volume, the glory of the Mediator as the shining forth of God’s selfdeclaration.5 As John Webster summarizes, it is not quite correct to suggest that Barth has much greater interest in the prophetic than in the priestly and kingly offices, for what is said in Dogmatics IV/3 must always be related to what already has been said in IV/1 and IV/2. . . . However, it is certainly true that Barth uses the concept of a prophetic office not simply to present Jesus’ teaching ministry but to set forth the entirety of Jesus’ reconciling work in its self-manifesting character.6

The whole of God’s reconciling act reveals the whole of God’s glory, yet, as we shall see, because of the declarative character of this reconciliation and this glory, it is fitting that it be concentrated in this third part of Volume IV. The three parts of this volume on reconciliation are thematized under the three traditional offices of Christ, as priest, king and prophet, respectively. Thus, while God’s glory is not apart from God’s reconciling work seen in Christ’s offices as priest and king, it is chiefly a matter of God’s revelation and declaration, seen through the lens of Christ as prophet. And so while in Volume II.1 glory is seen as both a particular perfection of God as well as the sum of all such perfections, thus manifesting an expansive and synthesizing character, in Volume IV.3.1, this account is much more sharply focused on the revelation and self-declaration of God in the Mediator and his work of reconciliation. Considering God’s glory as particularly the shining forth of God’s selfdeclaration, expounded under the rubric of Christ in his office as prophet, 5 6

CD IV.3.1, p. 280. John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 130.

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further implies accounts of prophecy, declaration and revelation. These will be examined under two major headings, one considering prophecy, and a second examining declaration and revelation. Further major headings examine the related yet broader questions of heteronomy and autonomy in CD, as well as obedience and glorification.

Glory in prophecy The primary theme through Volume IV.3.1 is Jesus Christ the Mediator, which Barth consistently unpacks under the form of Christ as prophet. He is not simply one prophet in the line of Old Testament prophets, but ‘transcends’ them in the sense that (1) his prophetic office is not subsequent to his person, but entirely coincident with it; (2) he addresses not merely Israel, but humanity as a whole; (3) he speaks in the light of God’s kingdom coming; and (4) he is, in fact, the Mediator between God and humanity, not merely an anticipatory witness.7 Jesus is thus both a prophet and something genuinely new, not a natural outworking of the Old Testament office of prophet, nor adequately contained within the category as one prophet among others. Barth has consistently maintained that the glory of God is to be found revealed chiefly in the act of God in Jesus Christ, as opposed to any mere abstract ‘being’ of God. While in Volume II.1 he explored God’s glory through the lens of God’s perfections, this was for thematic and structural reasons, and hence, while there are developments (and even inconsistencies) between the two volumes, his focus on the glory of the Mediator in Volume IV is not, in itself, intended as a retraction or substantial qualification of what he has said earlier. He has also maintained that a significant aspect of God’s glory is its declarative character, that God’s glory is God’s ‘dignity and right . . . to prove and declare, to denote . . . the One He is’.8 Therefore, that God’s glory implies a strongly communicative character is not new for Barth. What is new, however, is the strong – almost single-minded  – emphasis on glory’s indicative, declarative, communicative, transparent and (in this transparent declaration) nearly overwhelming character; as well as the drawing together of all this particularly in connection with prophecy. This means that, given Barth’s construal of prophecy, glory will be shown to be connected necessarily with revelation. Through this section 7 8

CD IV.3.1, pp. 49–52. CD II.1, p. 641.

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I shall be developing a line of enquiry which takes issue with this account of prophecy and its supposed declarative mode, particularly in its implications for human agency and divine glory. In a manner complementing his presentation of Jesus Christ as fulfilling and surpassing the Old Testament offices of priest and king earlier in Volume IV, Barth portrays the Mediator as the true prophet of God. For Barth, this naturally lends itself to an account of the glory of the Mediator, inasmuch as God’s glory is God’s ‘shining forth’ of who God is, and this identity is chiefly revealed in Jesus Christ. Meditating on Jesus as the One who lives, Barth spells out this life in five terms arising from his reflection on Scripture: light, name (or declaration), history (or revelation), truth and Word.9 Each of these terms is characterized by Barth as being self-attesting and self-interpreting in straightforward ways. (It might not be immediately obvious how ‘history’ might be so; Barth here means the self-attesting character of the act of Christ in history, so that the history of salvation becomes the history of revelation. Thus history ‘is a question which gives its own answer, a puzzle which contains its own solution’.)10 In these five elaborations on the confession that Jesus is the One who lives, and the One who is glorious, is revealed Jesus’ office as prophet.11 In all of this it is worth noting that this entirely excludes the possibility of ambiguity – even intentional or studied ambiguity – or the need for interpretation. In fact, throughout this section Barth seems, perhaps more than usual, anxious to remove human agency from the picture. In resisting a hypothetical query from Feuerbach, Barth insists that if we ourselves put the question about ‘the right and basis of our presupposition and assertion about the life of Jesus Christ’ being as he characterizes it, then we ‘deny that His life is light, His work truth, His history revelation, His act the Word of God’.12 Barth is suspicious that any such questioning must necessarily result in us only giving Jesus the amount of authority, majesty or glory which we are prepared to do – thus nullifying the revelation as coming from beyond us, or Christ’s Lordship as being over against us, as we are then (he contends) the final authority. Against this, Barth holds that such questions must be silenced, that this is the ‘Word of God which is spoken to us from above, which we cannot then say to ourselves, which we can only receive and repeat.’13   9 10 11 12 13

CD IV.3.1, pp. 46, 47. CD IV.3.1, pp. 46, 47. CD IV.3.1, p. 48. CD IV.3.1, pp. 72, 73. CD IV.3.1, pp. 72, 73; cf. pp. 48, 80, 243, 289.

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There is something in this which is surely right: revelation, and prophecy in particular, if it is revelation, does not come from ourselves, and is not subject to our control. It is not created by, nor does it originate in the human – and if it did, the implications for cynical manipulation and massive heteronomy are obvious. And yet, what can Barth’s notion of prophecy presented here be but ‘opaque and authoritarian’, to use Ricoeur’s terminology? Barth presents prophecy, and revelation more broadly, as a declaration ‘from nowhere’, which ‘lands’ in the creation, demanding acceptance. Most crucially, since Barth holds that revelation must be accepted on its own terms, and may not be understood or appraised in light of anything else, this means that prophecy and revelation remove any need for question, doubt, exploration or discernment. Indeed, he removes understanding from the human and places it in the message itself, which is then simply received by the human, to be obeyed. I shall say more about obedience below; for now I shall limit myself to issues of understanding and thinking, noting that Barth entirely brackets these out as not merely unnecessary to prophecy and revelation, but positively damaging. In this sense, Barth’s account ends up being heteronomous to human agency, and frustrates the task of learning about how Christian language and concepts are learnt. But the problem with Barth’s account of God’s glory as the outshining of Christ in his prophetic office (and therefore in the manner of a declarative revelation) is not merely its heteronomy and opacity: he also seriously misunderstands prophecy on its own terms. To show in more detail just how, it is worth noting briefly the way in which Barth elaborates on this notion of the life of Jesus Christ as prophecy and glory. In exploring the ‘presupposition and assertion’ of the life of Christ as such as ‘light, truth, revelation, Word and glory’, he posits the unity of Christian theory and practice in responding adequately to any Feuerbachian queries.14 He asserts that the starting point for any such response is that in the life of Christ ‘we deal, not with an indeterminate happening, but with that of the presence and action of God. It is for this reason that we say that His life is light, truth, revelation, Word, glory; that it not merely might be, but is; that we not merely suppose that it is, but it is indisputably.’15 Barth intensifies this claim, saying that ‘Where God is present as active Subject; where He lives, as is the case in the life of Jesus Christ, life is not just possibly or secondarily but definitely and primarily declaration, and therefore light, truth, Word and glory.’16 He further outlines the distinguishing features of the prophecy of Jesus Christ, ‘and 14 15 16

CD IV.3.1, pp. 78, 79. CD IV.3.1, p. 79. CD IV.3.1, p. 79, emphasis added.

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therefore the truth of God, is distinguished (1) by the fact that it is completely binding, (2) by its unity and totality, and (3) by its irrevocable finality’.17 The prophetic word spoken through the Mediator in his office as prophet is thus an unambiguous, oracular declaration which is absolute, total and irrevocable. It is self-interpreting and purely declarative. Yet this gets prophecy badly wrong, specifically on Scriptural grounds. While Barth’s methodology does not constitute a simple exegetical theology, he is seeking to be responsive to Scripture and its rhythms. But one finds that prophecy – human speech on behalf of God – in Scripture is a richer, more complex phenomenon than Barth seems to recognize. R. W. L. Moberly takes up this question in his book Prophecy and Discernment.18 His primary occupation through the volume is the exploration of Scripture’s presentation of prophecy and particularly how genuine prophecy may be discerned from false. Throughout the book he examines Old Testament prophets as well as New Testament texts with an eye towards gleaning the sort of criteria for prophecy and discernment presented there. This twin concern, for both prophecy and discernment, begins to suggest how Barth has gone astray: prophecy is not simply a matter of irrevocable, self-interpreting, oracular declaration, to which human agency, in response, is superfluous. First, in considering Jeremiah 18.1-10, Moberly notices that this prophecy emphasizes God’s power, claim, right and sovereignty (‘Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done [viz., if spoiled, rework it into something else]? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the Potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O House of Israel.’ v. 6, 7). Yet this does not preclude it also containing ‘a strong statement of divine responsiveness to human attitude and action’ (‘if that nation . . . turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring upon it.’ v. 8).19 If, as Moberly contends, these two may be held together in prophecy in the closest way without limiting God’s freedom, then prophecy ceases to be a mere foretelling of what is inevitable, or a hierophantic revealing of otherworldly truths. God is free not merely to reveal, but also to bind Godself; God’s ‘sovereignty is not exercised arbitrarily, but responsibly and responsively, taking into account the moral, or immoral actions of human beings’.20 From this, Moberly discerns a twofold ‘fundamental 17 18

19 20

CD IV.3.1, p. 154. R. W. L. Moberly, Prophecy and Discernment (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Moberly, Prophecy, p. 51. Moberly, Prophecy, p. 51.

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axiom’ about prophecy: that ‘human attitude and action are integral to the divine unfolding of history’, and further, that ‘what a prophet says on behalf of God seeks a particular kind of response’.21 As Moberly aphoristically summarizes, ‘prophetic speech is response-seeking speech’.22 On the basis of this analysis, Moberly shows that prophecy is thus not simply a straightforward message  – from nowhere, as it were – to which human response is superfluous: on the contrary, human response is ingredient to the outworking of prophecy. But more than this, prophetic speech is also not simply something which must be yielded to, to which the response of critical thinking and discernment (as human agency) may be put only as insolence. On the contrary, human discernment is critical to the reception of prophecy. Scripture is keenly aware of the phenomenon of false prophets, people speaking in their own name and for their own ends while purporting to be sent by God. Indeed, various criteria for discernment are touched on in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as well as by Paul in 2 Corinthians, the writer of 1 John and the Gospel of John. Even Jesus himself (for example, in Mt. 7.15-23) is presented as providing criteria for the discrimination of true versus false prophets, of discerning the genuineness of their messages as coming from God.23 To summarize very briefly across these citations, the criteria for discernment have to do with the character of the prophet, whether she embodies the ‘character’ of God in her integrity and disposition and whether her message reflects God’s priorities and draws others into ‘unreserved engagement with God’.24 By providing these criteria, the prophets, apostles and Jesus give their hearers agency (the ability to think, respond and act) in discerning their message, as well as equipping them to be properly discerning in future. If God’s speech in prophecy is response-seeking speech, then this is far richer than simply a word dropping from heaven, and necessarily involves human discernment and human response (or failure to respond). This need not sacrifice God’s priority. By working faithfully to discern true speech by God through prophecy, that speech is not reduced simply to ‘our control’, giving God only the glory which we are prepared to do, any more than working to understand a conversation partner through the conventions of a common language fully determine in advance what that speaker may say. On the contrary, this shows God as knowable in the present through the prophetic speech God gives as well as human discernment of that speech and human response to it. 21 22 23 24

Moberly, Prophecy, p. 52. Moberly, Prophecy, p. 52. Moberly, Prophecy, p. 151. Moberly, Prophecy, pp. 225, 233.

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More broadly, it points out the possibility of God’s using human mediation and human agency in relation to revelation. In this way, for the human, God’s speech is not simply ‘self-grounding’ but may be discerned as such by the character of the one mediating it, as itself reflecting God. Prophets are discerned by the quality of their lives. What is discerned in the prophet is not the truth or falsity of her message per se, as if humans could determine God’s speaking. Rather, God exhibits a genuine initiative in revelation which is beyond human control, yet which invites human agency in the form of discernment and response. Yet Barth would insist that Jesus’ prophethood is not one example of a general species of office.25 Jesus is ‘the Revealer’ by his very existence; he speaks to all, not just Israel; he proclaims the Kingdom of God as present rather than coming; and he himself is the Mediator who removes the opposition between God and humanity.26 No Old Testament prophet is a type of Jesus, although the history of Israel as a whole is ‘comparable’ to Jesus in its prophetic character, by which Barth means that, as Messianic prophecy, it is ‘a declaration of the divine wisdom controlling it, it is fore-telling’.27 Does suggesting that discernment and response belong to prophecy, even the prophecy of Jesus, risk reducing the Mediator to a merely human prophet like others? If the Church’s confession of Christ as God incarnate is to be taken seriously, his office as prophet may not be reduced to simply one instance of a general tendency: he both fulfils and exceeds all previous prophets. Moreover, Barth considers him as priest and king as well, and so his office as prophet cannot be thought of in isolation apart from these other offices. Further, although there might conceivably be a question about whether the prophecy of (say) Jeremiah might be genuine, it would be an odd thing indeed to question the Mediator himself whether or not he was a false prophet. But this misses the point of discernment. The practice of discernment never establishes a person as a genuine prophet: it distinguishes for the hearers between true and false prophets. This allows for humans to lend their ears properly to the one who genuinely speaks for God, to mend their lives appropriately and to follow faithfully. Discernment does not establish or ratify an actual prophet, whether of the Old Testament, an apostle of the New Testament, or Jesus Christ himself (although it does disconfirm those who are not genuine prophets). Indeed, Jesus in the Gospel of John (10.31-38) is portrayed as providing criteria by which the genuineness of his status as Son of God might be tested and shown 25 26 27

CD IV.3.1, p. 52. CD IV.3.1, pp. 49–52. CD IV.3.1, p. 65.

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to be genuine, namely, continuity with Scripture and the performing of his Father’s work.28 This does not raise the question of whether or not Jesus actually is the Son of God, nor does it make his status as Son grounded in something else prior to him. Discernment and response, when it comes to Jesus, and by extension, the glory of God in the Mediator, is not a matter of reducing Christ to one member of the larger set of prophets any more than it dictates to God what may be revealed by the prophets. Before moving on to consider glory in relation to declaration and revelation, I would like to return to the question of discernment and human agency. Moberly suggests that human discernment and response are essential parts of prophecy, that is, to human speech on behalf of God, and thus that human agency is not evacuated in face of God’s ‘speaking’ but warranted and possible. In this case, human discernment is considered primarily in terms of determining that the prophet in question is not false. Once a prophet is discerned to be a true prophet, response is considered intrinsic to the prophecy, yet also a straightforward matter of obedience. It is still possible, in this, to consider the obedience rendered as heteronomous: human agency is engaged in the first instance to confirm the genuineness of the prophet, yet as soon as his status is discerned human thinking and discerning seemingly becomes extraneous: the prophecy is simply heard and straightforwardly obeyed (or disobeyed) in response. But what if discernment and response are ongoing, so that a human not only discerns the genuineness of the prophet, but also may wonder, imagine, discern the shape of a proper response, and may even find that response itself to be a matter of surprise, its shape not, perhaps, being analytic to the prophetic words uttered? Perhaps this ‘open’ sort of response might be anticipated by the prophet or revealer, found in (say) an intentionally underdetermined message? To return to Ricoeur, this could be a manner of speaking of the way in which prophecy itself, while never originating within humans, is not simply addressed to ‘a will that submits’ but ‘an imagination that opens itself ’.29 Or, turning to Ricoeur’s related image, that of master and disciple (as opposed to master and slave), a dependence on the other which is at the heart of ‘autonomy’.30 Again, we may 28

29

30

The context has Jesus saying this to ‘the Jews’ who were rejecting him, with the seeming implication that he actually met those criteria and they should see him for who he is. The evangelist no doubt includes this – whether confabulation or true remembrance I leave to one side – for the gospel’s readers to entertain as well as criteria to discern Jesus’ identity. Paul Ricoeur, ‘Toward a Hermeneutic of Revelation’, in Lewis S. Mudge (ed.), Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), p. 117. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (trans. Kathleen Blamey; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 276.

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affirm that prophecy originates not in humans but in God – and is, in this very limited sense heteronomous (in the way that any relationship with an other or even, in Ricoeur’s sense, the self, is heteronomous). Yet it does not evacuate human agency in its response but is the very precondition for it, establishing and constituting it in itself, in its sociality with other humans, and in its relationship to God. This anticipates much of what will be said below, under the heading of obedience. For now, I merely wish to add that when I hold open the possibility of imagination or surprise in human response to God’s speaking (in prophecy) I do not intend to claim that this human imagining might exceed God’s imagination, or that human performance might ‘surprise’ God. Nor do I mean to suggest that these responses are in any way ‘apart’ from God, as if humanity had independent existence ‘over against’ God. Indeed, if the pattern suggested above (of prophecy and revelation not originating in humanity, but given to and through humanity and establishing it in its agency) may be extrapolated, then nothing that the utterly contingent creation might do is ever ‘apart’ from God. Yet if human imaginings do not exceed God’s, and the possibilities of human response never surprise God, nevertheless the fullness of God’s imaginings and anticipations are not available for independent human scrutiny. Moreover, human agency ‘in’ God is seen at times as susceptible of ‘overflow’, a gratuitousness in accord with the grace and gift of God. This overflow, imagination and surprise are not apart from human agency, but may be a ‘positive’ form of the gratitude which is complement to God’s love and glory.31 At this point, considered from a human perspective, I merely wish to affirm that human response to God’s gracious giving of genuine prophecy does not mean that human thinking and doing, including creativity and imagination, fall away. Rather they are established, constituted and engaged by God’s agency – and this becomes a means of beholding, in partial ways, the glory of God.

Glory, declaration and revelation The discussion of the glory of the Mediator as prophet suggests a broader but closely related issue, namely, the overwhelmingly declarative nature of the revelation of God in the sections of CD under consideration. The importance and centrality of revelation in CD can hardly be understated; I shall focus in this 31

See Chapter 2.

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section particularly upon revelation as it bears on the glory of God which shines out from Christ. Turning to the question of the possibility of providing grounds for the presupposition and assertion of Jesus Christ as the Mediator and prophet, particularly as light, truth, Word and glory, Barth asserts that the ‘starting point’ for answering this question is ‘the fact’ that in Jesus Christ we are dealing indisputably not with humanity but with ‘the presence and action of God’.32 Barth makes this claim on the basis that ‘in this life God Himself is present as acting Subject’, and where ‘God is present as active Subject; where he lives, as is the case in the life of Jesus Christ, life is . . . definitely and primarily declaration, and therefore light, truth, Word and glory.’33 Moreover, Barth goes on to specify that Jesus as the one Word of God ‘means first that he is the total and complete declaration of God concerning Himself and the men whom he addresses in His Word’.34 Barth is unambiguous that the presence of God in revelation and reconciliation gives a purely declarative quality to the prophetic office of the Mediator; it is a shining forth of God’s self-declaration. If there were any doubt about this declarative character, Barth makes it abundantly clear in a section in which he discusses the three resisting elements in humanity which futilely oppose the completed victory of Christ and, hence, the grace of God and the shining forth of God’s glory. He describes them in terms of a progressively insidious sequence, starting with humanity’s penchant to ignore God’s Word, moving on to the making of God’s grace innocuous through reducing it to a ‘world view’, and concluding with the most subtle opposition of all, which makes of grace something religious and hence domesticated.35 This latter form, the most pernicious of all, has the greatest likeness to genuine Christian faith. Barth continues, ‘everything will still sound great and august and holy. But it will no longer be the indicative and imperative which impinge incisively upon the present. It will no longer give offence. It will no longer be engaged in attack. It will wound no one, and therefore it will not really help anyone. It will no longer spread unrest, and therefore no longer give rest.’36 This form of opposition of humanity to God is the ‘most cunning’, as it domesticates the Word of grace. And so, for Barth, a principal mark of God’s revelation is its character not merely as declaration, but that it takes this form 32 33 34 35 36

CD IV.3.1, p. 79. CD IV.3.1, p. 79. CD IV.3.1, p. 99. CD IV.3.1, pp. 253–60. CD IV.3.1, p. 259.

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in the indicative and imperative and nothing else. Any other form would be, ipso facto, strong evidence of humanity’s perverse penchant to replace God’s Word with its own. This is a serious point and I would not want to deny that God may and does make declarations, and God’s Word may be and is in the indicative and imperative. But others have also raised serious questions about Barth’s doctrine of revelation. Rowan Williams, for example, writes that ‘Barth’s account of revelation is by no means as “neutral” as it purports to be. A powerful ideological motive – the need to assert the infallibility and irresistibility of God’s selfcommunication – underlies all that is said about the revealing event.’37 Since he has abjured any form of natural theology, Barth’s emphasis on revelation is single-minded: God reveals God through God’s Word. God comes to humanity and reveals Godself graciously, but humanity is, through sin and the fallenness of creation, completely incapable of any perception of knowledge about or relationship with God. Therefore, God’s revelation – in order to preserve the (appearance of) faithfulness of dogmatics as listening to revelation – must be assured, as ‘infallible’ and ‘irresistible’. Therefore, in revelation, God must be active and humanity passive, simply receiving and obeying, corresponding to the indicative and imperative forms of revelation. But as Williams has pointed out, ‘an emphasis upon the compelling, irresistible character of revealed truth leaves almost no room for a conception of free, creative, and distinctive human response.’38 If revelation, as being indicative and imperative, may only declare and command obedience, then human thinking (discernment, judgment, imagination) as well as performance (apart from precise obedience in identical repetition) are ruled out. The proper response to revelation, of obedience, is not a response which engages the human as human, but is a simple, passive repetition of what is commanded. Williams continues in his analysis, writing of the sense of language which Barth relies upon in this notion of revelation (as ‘self-expressive utterance’): ‘Man has no word with which to reply [to God], because he has no subsistence of his own, no truth of his own; all he can do is hear and obey the Word, allow himself to be brought into the single divine act of the expression of divine truth, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the miracle of faith.’39 Williams is not seeking to establish humanity as somehow ‘over against’ God, in some sort of 37

38 39

Rowan Williams, ‘Barth on the Triune God’, in Mike Higton (ed.), Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 115. Williams, ‘Barth on the Triune God’, p. 140, italics original. Williams, ‘Barth on the Triune God’, p. 137.

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quasi-independent existence. Yet he insists, on the terms set by Barth himself, that since God eternally and freely elects the man Jesus, God is in some sense, eternally exposed to the suffering of his creature Jesus, to the ‘negation’ involved in his own judgement upon the fallen creation. Eternally and in himself he meets and contains and overcomes the possibility of negation . . . [thus] revelation includes, at least, tension, perhaps even conflict, between ‘Utterer’ and ‘Uttered’, so that the hearing of the Word cannot be conceived simply as the reception of a clear and unambiguous utterance, revealed in what might be called a ‘linear’ fashion. To put it metaphorically: it is not that we are simply addressed by a speaker; we are drawn into a conversation.40

I have dwelt on Williams’ critique in order to begin to open a space to interrogate Barth on revelation, particularly regarding glory and human agency. Further, in light of what I have already said above about prophecy seeking human response, there is room opened for divine revelation which is not only indicative or imperative. If genuine prophetic speech truly seeks a creaturely response, then this ‘speaking’ by God is much richer than either ‘this is the case’. (indicative) or ‘do this!’ (imperative). Into the gap opened by this initial question I mean to raise two broader questions about the declarative nature of prophecy as exercised by Christ and revelation as a whole, on the way towards a fuller consideration of human agency in the light of the glory of God. First, if the mood of God’s revelation is always and everywhere either indicative or imperative, then does this imply a completeness and perspicuity of God’s revelation such that any questioning or plumbing of its depths constitutes human insolence and disobedience? I shall argue that this constitutes a major difficulty with Barth’s account of revelation in relation to God’s glory, because it precludes a certain kind of human agency in face of revelation – namely, the possibility of what I shall term ‘faithful questioning’. Secondly, on the heels of this consideration, I ask if God might not use – according to God’s wisdom, as God decides – other linguistic ‘moods’ in revealing? I shall argue that this is eminently suitable, in part because it does better justice to the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’.

Glory, revelation, and the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’ For Barth, since reconciliation happens and is completed in Christ in God’s eternal election, revelation of this reconciliation is then its temporal complement.41 The 40 41

Williams, ‘Barth on the Triune God’, pp. 132, 133. CD IV.3.1, p. 323.

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primary distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian is therefore their knowledge of Jesus Christ, and not their status vis-à-vis reconciliation: this is a matter of revelation, in which there is neither defect nor incompleteness.42 Barth is also keen to emphasize that God’s revelation is self-interpreting, seemingly removing any need for human agency in understanding or in obedience. Indeed, Barth makes clear that the imperfection of Christians’ knowledge of Jesus Christ, of their self-knowledge as creatures reconciled to God, of the freedom in which they actually move and express and reveal themselves as justified before God and sanctified for Him, of the certainty of their steps on the way marked out on both sides by the conditions valid and effective in that central sphere of ours’,

is only their own fault.43 It ‘signifies a tarrying in or regression to the situation and mode of existence of the non-Christian’.44 Earlier in the same volume, Barth inquires into ‘the right and basis of our presupposition and assertion that the life of Jesus Christ as such has and is this light.’45 However, he ultimately declares that ‘we should realize that we cannot ascribe to ourselves any competence to raise such questions. Immunity against the type of answer given by Feuerbach to his own questions begins with the recognition that these are not our questions and we are quite unfitted to play the role of questioners.’46 Barth presents the alternative starkly: either one has faith or no faith, belief or unbelief, unquestioning credence or Feuerbach. Such is the declarative nature of the glory revealed in and through the Mediator. Barth seems to hold that God’s glory as God’s self-revelation and selfglorification is simply declarative and not in itself susceptible of doubt, except perversely. This stance must surely be attributable in part to Barth’s abjuring of any philosophical pre-commitments, an absolute refusal to allow any ‘human’ commitments to prejudice or predetermine the content of revelation. He is unwilling to discuss in any general preliminary way human processes of understanding as if they could condition God and God’s acting. When it comes specifically to moral and ethical thinking, John Webster describes Barth’s position starkly: [I]n ethical terms, Barth’s discussion seems to point towards an alienation of Christian action from its natural human conditions. The core of the issue is 42 43 44 45 46

CD IV.3.1, p. 341. CD IV.3.1, p. 341. CD IV.3.1, p. 341. CD IV.3.1, p. 72. CD IV.3.1, p. 73.

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I think that this plain way of presenting the options helps to get at my concern, for the only possibilities, seemingly, are either an anthropocentric prejudice or a single focus on the incarnation and redemption in Christ. The latter, favoured option seems to evacuate human agency from the picture, for there is only command and the call to obedience. Earlier in the same book, Webster notes Barth’s dogged interrogation of the received Enlightenment piety in regard to moral thought: ‘More than anything else, Barth strives to displace the deliberative consciousness from its sovereign place as the moral fundamental.’48 I would not seek to defend, in so many words, a ‘sovereign’, ‘deliberative consciousness’. Yet even if deliberation is not considered as sovereign or prior to revelation, one is still moved to ask if deliberative consciousness may play any role at all. Or is the only genuine alternative to ‘post-Enlightenment moral thought in the West’ and the claim of human over-assertion the complete bracketing out of human moral deliberation and agency?49 Even if theology does begin with Christ, it still remains the human task of seeking faithfully to understand God and God’s ways with the world; even if it begins with God’s revealing and not with strictly human possibilities, revelation is still received with the attempt to understand it by humans, within human structures of meaning and understanding. Even if hermeneutics is not placed as a general science at the head of dogmatics to determine in advance what may be said or understood, nevertheless questions of meaning or understanding or reception might arise in the wake of revelation. Yet this possibility of what I shall call ‘faithful questioning’, considered particularly as a form of responding human agency, seems ruled out by Barth. In contrast, however, I have shown how Scripture enjoins discernment of the genuineness of prophecy, and so draws in human agency as critical, responsive,

47

48 49

John Webster, Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 68, 69. Webster, Barth’s Ethics, p. 54. Webster, Barth’s Ethics, p. 54.

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and following, while also admitting the priority of divine agency as well as the need of divine agency in discernment. Now I must elaborate further on this point in a different direction: Barth presents faith and doubt as being exclusive opposites. Yet this appears too hasty. On the contrary, it seems rather that faith may itself engender a certain kind of doubt or questioning – not necessarily doubt in the sense of scepticism, or the demand for certainty before lending credence, nor a doubt which renders faith null or meaningless. Instead, I mean a doubt which the self-knowledge which comes from faith may provide: the possibility of a self-doubt which originates in one’s knowledge of one’s own sin, the potential for self-deception, and the possibility of systemically distorting wickedness. This is a doubt which is inspired by faith, but from which revelation – inasmuch as a human receives it – is not bracketed out, although it may be queried, at least in the sense that one’s understanding, grasp or reception of it may be queried. In this way, this doubting or questioning is made possible by the prior presence of faith in God, and as with discernment of prophecy, may even be a ‘positive’ aspect of gratitude. For Barth our knowledge of God comes through the analogia fidei, the human complement to God’s revelation. Since revelation is perspicuous, and God’s Word is efficacious, faith simply receives, a reception which engenders belief, and the means by which we may predicate things of God. Speaking of the manner in which God’s Word gives itself to be received in creation through the shining forth in the prophecy of Jesus, Barth writes that ‘in true and reasonable reception of the Word of God, those who receive it achieve an absolute confidence grounded in its own finality.’50 Yet I suspect that there is a naivety in Barth on this matter, for he appears not to realize that it might be faith itself which engenders in us doubting and selfinterrogation. ‘How do I know that Jesus Christ is the Word of God?’ or ‘How do I know that there is a God who reveals Godself, and in just this way?’ may be a question put by the cynic or sceptic; it may also arise not against faith, but within it, as one sits in the shadow of the Scriptures, before the face of God, fully cognisant of one’s capacity for self-deception. In the same way that discernment of the genuineness of prophecy does not determine the content of prophecy, this ‘faithful questioning’ does not demand certainty, apart from which faith will be withheld, or a foundation for belief, apart from which all else must be jettisoned. Such a questioning would most likely be ad hoc and occasionalistic. It is not human hubris demanding control of revelation, it is humble questioning 50

CD IV.3.1, p. 161.

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in faith, and a questioning only genuinely possible within faith. It might thus be reckoned a ‘responding’ questioning. My point with Barth is that the analogia fidei cannot account for this: if we are given this knowledge in faith, then how can he account for ‘good-faith’ interrogation or even doubt of it? Can Barth account for a saint’s ‘dark night of the soul’? Or an ordinary believer’s good-faith questions, raised in the wake of an encounter with another? I suspect not, and his claim that any ‘qualification’ of the Christian’s knowledge may be placed squarely at the feet of the (less-thanfully) believing Christian rings hollow. Moreover, John Webster characterizes the ‘manner’ of Barth’s theology in regard to human enquiry as ‘a mode of theology which, rooted in the affirmation that “the revelation of God vouches for its uniqueness as it does for itself as such”, lacks anxieties about foundations or justification for its enterprise.’51 As Webster recognizes, Barth seems to be able to envision human thinking interacting with divine revelation only as a function of a (sinful) impulse to found, ground, systematize, control that which is given in revelation. Any ‘anxiety’ about this (admittedly) circular construction from within or as a function of faith is not considered. This neglect, and Barth’s way of putting the matter, are attenuations of human agency, as well as (oddly) the agency and omnicompetence of God to use something like ‘faithful questioning’ or even the feeling of abandonment by God for God’s own glorious ends. This matter of the possibility of faithful questioning may be extended. If revelation is to be properly received by humans, then the process of learning must be susceptible of analysis; as I have stated in the first chapter, Rowan Williams’ question about learning about our learning is morally serious and cannot be put off; to do so constitutes, in his terms, an ‘ideological shortcut’.52 And yet, for Barth, God’s revelation is itself complete and self-unpacking. No interpretation is needed, it is self-evident and self-proclaiming, ‘self-expressive speech’, in Williams’ terms.53 Moreover, it does not admit of any further probing, because revelation is, in accord with Barth’s actualism, always in the moment and not a human possession over time. In this sense, revelation is not only momentary, but, seemingly, not susceptible to further plumbing, not containing depths which may only open up through further consideration, time and growth. Yet, human beings often experience these ‘moments’ of revelation as so rich and filled with meaning that one may return to them again and again – not as something which is itself a human product, but as a gift of incomparable depth and richness which 51 52 53

Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology, p. 138, quoting CD IV.3, p. 104. See Chapter 1; Williams, ‘Trinity and Revelation’, p. 133. Williams, ‘Barth on the Triune God’, p. 137.

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continues to give – realizing more fully what was present within that moment. This is surely related to the human herself growing through the time-distance between the present moment and the remembered event, but why might God not be present and active in the ongoing meditation on that event, as well as in that initial revealing? And if there are aspects or depths of that initial revelation which are not grasped in their fullness or clarity at first, does it mean that – owing to it not being entirely grasped at first – due to its only partial effectiveness it was not, in fact, revelation? I do not suggest that any of this, whether the initial revelation, ongoing growth, or greater plumbing of depths, is apart from God; on the contrary, I mean to suggest that this human agency, from the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’ (one form of which is the question of ‘learning about learning’) to the deeper exploration of what God gives, is itself given by God in what might be considered glorifying creation, and that at the same time it is to and for God’s glory.

The ‘moods’ of revelation In order to spell out one way that the notion of revelation might be nuanced to see this possibility better, I turn in this section to consider David Ford’s account of ‘the moods of faith’. Ford develops this notion in the context of considering Christian wisdom, and particularly the shape of a wisdom-influenced theology which responds to ‘cries’.54 He introduces the notion of ‘moods’ (used as a grammatical term in the parsing of verbs rather than an emotional sense) in order to explore the shape of human, Christian faith. I shall expand his notion of ‘moods’, transposing it into a metaphor for the shape of God’s revealing; put succinctly, I mean to raise the question of why God’s revelation should be thought of as only occurring in the indicative and imperative moods and nothing else. But first I shall briefly return to Barth. We have seen above that, for Barth, God’s glory shining forth in Jesus Christ is essentially declarative, as well as that he holds that demurral from the indicative and imperative (seen as Christ’s ‘attack’, and also ‘victory’) is a sign of human perversity and domestication of the genuine glory of Christ. If God’s glory is considered essentially as God’s shining forth, God’s self-declaration, given through revelation, then this describes a situation of address, rather like being spoken to; in this, Barth especially emphasizes clarity and completeness. 54

David Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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Moreover, although Barth does not hold that Scripture is a matter of ‘dictation’, and has a properly human element to it so that it is not identical with revelation, nevertheless for Barth revelation itself is dictation, that is, using the model of straightforward speech from God to creation, particularly in the indicative and imperative moods. In this way, in Ricoeur’s terms, he conflates revelation as such with prophetic speaking – and while he resists the ‘neutralisation’ of revelation into propositions which lie ‘behind’ the revelation, he nevertheless reduces revelation itself to the one, essentially oracular, model. This naturally suggests obedience as the human complement to being addressed. The sort of perspicuity Barth seems to envision here attends both to the ‘speaking’, the revealing itself, and to the ‘hearing’, the receiving by the human of this revelation. Missing is a sense of mediation55 in the ‘speaking’, the giving of revelation; also missing is a sense of the need for human engagement and understanding of the revelation in ‘hearing’. Instead, the only human faculty involved is bare volition: the human will either (joyfully, thankfully) to obey or (perversely, ‘impossibly’) to disobey. Indeed, even then, ‘wilfulness’ is the presence of a resisting will in humanity; obedience would seem to imply not the human willing thus and such but instead relinquishing the ‘fullness’ of will in order to obey. Human agency is therefore bracketed out; to the extent that God’s glory is only this shining forth (specifically of the Mediator) declaratively, limited to the indicative and imperative, it is therefore heteronomous to humans. If we were to query the suggestion from Barth that revelation is properly considered in the indicative and imperative forms, we might then turn to a range of alternative expressions which also come from grammatical discourse which could fill out the ‘modes of expression’ of revelation, without denying that revelation may also be given in indicative and imperative forms as well. David Ford has explored the significance of grammatical ‘moods’ for theology, and it is to his account which I turn. Ford suggests that faith may be explored in terms of five ‘moods’ rooted in cries: the indicative that affirms or denies; the imperative of command and obedience; the interrogative that questions, probes, suspects and tests; the subjunctive exploring possibilities of what may or might be, alert to surprises; and the optative of desire.  .  .  . The theological wisdom of faith is grounded in being affirmed, being commanded, 55

Of course, Barth allows that revelation is found in Scripture and in the preaching of the Church, and is in that sense mediated, but consistent with what has been termed Barth’s ‘actualism’, revelation never ‘inhabits’ these media, is never identified with them in a way in which the media themselves become significant for our further consideration or seeking to understand.

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being questioned and searched, being surprised and open to new possibilities, and being desired and loved.56

These ‘moods’ for Ford are analogies for the modes of expression of faith, drawing from the way such moods function grammatically.57 Noticing that Christian faith has been seen typically ‘in terms of indicatives (“This is the good news”) and the imperative (“Do this”)’, Ford suggests that these are not the only appropriate expressions, and that all five moods he proposes are not only all significant for understanding and the life of faith, but that the five may form a ‘larger ecology of moods’ in which no one mood is dispensable.58 Ford makes this suggestion specifically in terms of human thinking about the (human) cries of faith; I mean to take this scheme of various ‘moods’ of faith and transpose it into revelation. Barth is willing to talk in terms of the indicative and imperative specifically in relation to revelation. He also admits the interrogative, after a fashion; when humans confess God, they are interrogated whether they are in practice those ‘in whose lives [God] has expressed and shown Himself as Revealer, Prophet and Mediator’.59 Barth is speaking figuratively here, not intending to reduce revelation merely to statements which might be expressed as indicatives, interrogatives, and so forth, and I mean to do the same. Nevertheless, we have seen that the overwhelmingly declarative nature of revelation for Barth suggests a controlling metaphor of spoken address. This is not to deny the truth of what Barth has said about these three ‘moods’ in terms of revelation: God may and does reveal in indicative and imperative ‘moods’, and may and does interrogate humanity. However, his account seems attenuated. For Barth, God is the One who loves in freedom; why might not God then reveal in various ‘moods’, analogous to language, so that revelation might be, say, an opening up of a possibility (from a human perspective), in a subjunctive ‘mood’? God’s freedom to be who God is is complete, and thus God is free to use whatever means God elects for the loving ends God has determined. God’s revealing in multiple ‘moods’ need not imply imperfection on God’s part, but might simply reveal God’s competence to achieve God’s ends in a way consistent with God’s identity. It might not even be too much to suggest the possibility not only of various ‘moods’ in revelation, but even a certain kind of ‘conversational’ aspect to it. 56 57 58 59

Ford, Wisdom, p. 5. Ford, Wisdom, p. 45. Ford, Wisdom, pp. 46, 47. CD IV.3.1, p. 77.

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I do not mean to suggest in any way that this would be a conversation between equals, but rather that God’s ‘speaking’ or ‘revealing’ might not only take the form of indicative ‘statements’ complete in themselves without response. Moberly’s point, referred to above that prophetic speech in particular is ‘response-seeking speech’ is one way of approaching this. He suggests that God, in declaring God’s own counsel to the creation, binds Godself to humanity in a certain way.60 This is a much richer image than simply ‘speaking’ in the indicative and imperative; there is a conversational (or at least a responsive) aspect to this. We might go beyond this. Could it be that God uses not only God’s own interrogation of humanity, but even human questioning of God? Biblical stories such as Abraham’s discussion with God of the fate of Sodom (Gen. 18.16-33) or Moses’ request to see God’s glory (Exod. 33.12-34.9) suggest that there may well exist, in accord with God’s wisdom, conversation or faithful questioning which is revelatory. In other places Scripture ‘speaks’, in various literary genres, in other moods as well, beyond the merely indicative and imperative.61 This need not sacrifice God’s priority or freedom. But it might be said, in anticipation of a later section and echoing what has been said above, that God’s ability and willingness to ‘converse’ with creation, as the infinite approaches the finite and establishes it as a ‘conversation partner’, is a ‘glorifying’ of creation by God, and that this itself is an expression of God’s glory. One may object, perhaps, that humanity’s sin and perversity demand that God reveal in the indicative and imperative, for nothing else would be effective. But this surely cannot stand, at least not for Barth. He maintains absolutely that God is free to be who God is, and that therefore the creature cannot condition God, and this very real limitation to God’s agency would make sin a ‘problem’ for God, an obstacle for God, rather than being a problem for humanity, and would thus compromise God’s freedom. Alternatively, one might point out that Scripture is not for Barth revelation as such, but is one of the two primary means by which revelation is given. 60 61

Moberly, Prophecy, p. 51. For example, the optative: Jesus says he ‘eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you [i.e. the disciples] before I suffer’ (Lk. 22.15), or Paul’s expression of desire to the Corinthians, ‘I do not want what is yours but you.’ (2 Cor. 12.14). As Ford indicates (p. 48), the subjunctive mood, ‘in which possibilities are imagined and decisions made’, is less often explicitly present in the biblical text, but the dynamic (particularly as he puts it, of surprise by the Kingdom and agency of God) is not far from much of what is present particularly in the form of Jesus’ parables, or, for example, the Song of Mary. It might also be detected implicitly in those responses of excess or overflow in response to God – for example, Paul’s recounting the ‘abundant joy’ and ‘wealth of generosity’ of the Macedonians, even during a ‘severe ordeal of affliction’ and ‘extreme poverty’ (2 Cor. 8.2). It is certainly present in Jesus’ initial interactions with those who became his disciples in John: ‘What are you looking for?’ and ‘Come and see.’ (1.38,39)

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Against this I would like to observe that it seems like nothing so much as special pleading to stipulate that revelation takes place through Scripture, but as such stands entirely free from the actual concrete form of Scripture. Returning to Paul Ricoeur’s work strengthens this point: even if we hold, with Barth, that Scripture is not identical with revelation, nevertheless Scripture is not unrelated to revelation and Scripture itself is allowed to speak with multiple genres and voices, these genres and voices not being reduced to inessential forms which cloak a single genre ‘behind’ the text, consisting of propositions, or even being used in revelation. In other words, as Ricoeur abjures ‘neutralising’ the text of  Scripture, so also we might be cautious about ‘neutralising’ the revelation of God.62 What I am suggesting instead is that it is just this ‘eloquence’ and competence to ‘speak’ in various ‘moods’ in revelation in which is seen God’s glory, such that God might be said not merely to reveal God’s glory to the creation in a manner which overwhelms and brackets out human agency. It is God’s glory – God’s praiseworthiness, honour and even the streaming light of God’s declaration – that God also glorifies the creation, constituting and establishing human agency, and that this is – to return to Ricoeur – as much a matter of an imagination called upon to open itself as it is a will called upon to submit, and more congruent with the master of justice facing the disciple, than the master facing the slave.

Glory and the obedience of the creature Given Barth’s notion of revelation, and its critical, elemental role in his overall theology, and particularly its fundamentally declarative character, worked out in indicatives and imperatives; and further given the character of God’s glory as seen in the reconciliation brought by Christ shining forth to the creation in a manner best likened to the declarative force of prophetic utterance, which summons and commands humanity, it becomes quite clear that the obedience of the creature is of singular importance for Barth. Given the importance and prominence of obedience and its connection with glory, it is important to examine just what Barth means by obedience, particularly to elucidate its implications for human agency in the light of God’s glory. Relatively early on in CD, when Barth is discussing the theonomous nature of dogmatic formulation, he claims that the Word of God itself makes of humanity 62

Ricoeur, ‘Toward’, p. 91.

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an ‘absolute requirement of obedience’.63 Indeed, there seems to be a strongly noetic element to obedience for Barth: ‘The content of the knowledge of God as bound to the Word of God is the existence of Him whom we must fear above all things because we may love Him above all things. . . . Knowledge of God is obedience to God.’64 Of course, Barth is careful not to reduce obedience to a noetic element: this obedience is connected with loving God, and is characterized as seeing (not blind) and free (not coerced), so it is also strongly affective, moral and relational.65 These are not discrete characteristics, but together characterize the relationship of the creature to God. This relationality of obedience and its association with knowledge – or more broadly, human agency such as questioning, searching and discerning – is manifest in what Barth says about the human attempt to resist the thrust of Feuerbach’s interrogation of Christianity, which asks about the ground and right of Christians ascribing glory to Jesus Christ.66 In due course, Barth turns this questioning on its head, allowing not that Christians may query Christ, but that he queries them: when we confess Christ, he asks of us, whether we will be obedient. Humanity ‘must not and may not raise [the question of truth] demanding and seeking other confirmations and thus being disobedient to the voice which he hears’.67 In this, we see that, for Barth, disobedience is correlated with the human agency of questing after foundations and seeking out certitude; on the contrary, Jesus’ glory is manifested by ‘obedience to the voice of Christ’.68 Does Barth’s definition of obedience exclude the sort of ‘faithful questioning’ which I have set forth as a possibility above, since it does not withhold credence, but instead raises questions from within faith? One can assume such a notion would be disallowed by Barth on the grounds of disobedience, simply because the very ones he imagines as asking ‘the question of Pilate’ about truth are themselves Christians seeking to respond to Feuerbach’s queries. In light of this, it would seem that any potential ‘faithful questioning’ in the shadow of the Scriptures or before the face of God would be excluded as disobedience. Thus obedience is best understood as bracketing out the possibility of human agency, at least considered in terms of discernment or questioning within faith.

63 64 65 66 67 68

CD I.2, p. 859. CD II.1, p. 36. CD II.1, pp. 33, 36. CD IV.3.1, p. 72. CD IV.3.1, p. 78. CD IV.3.1, p. 78.

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Moreover, Barth is clear that creaturely obedience is a straightforward affair. In light of the effectiveness of revelation and God’s command, strictly speaking there is no need for consideration of the best manner of performing this obedience. Proper obedience is a matter of precise and identical performance of what is commanded, nothing more and nothing less.69 Regarding the revealed glory of the Mediator, Barth writes that in face of the fact that Jesus lives there can be no question on man’s part of anything but hearing, obedience and discipleship. He can only participate in a repetition in which he has nothing of his own to utter or express or produce but can only discharge the debt of response to what comes upon him in this encounter.70

This statement is quite in line with what Barth says earlier in his account of God’s glory as one of God’s perfections, ‘This, then, is how we must describe what the creature can do. It serves God’s self-glorification in the same way as an echoing wall can serve only to repeat and broadcast the voice which the echo “answers”.’71 Again, Barth maintains that there is no need for consideration of performance, no possibility for ‘overflow’, no real place for human agency in either thought or action. The creature simply obeys precisely as commanded, or else is disobedient. This may be intensified if we turn to another of Barth’s volumes on the character of the Mediator, in which he discusses the call to discipleship as part of the sanctification of humanity by God through Christ. In a passage worth quoting at length, he spells out the character of human obedience: Bonhoeffer is ten times right when he inveighs sharply against a theological interpretation of the given command and the required obedience which is to the effect that the call of Jesus is to be heard but His command may be taken to mean that the obedience required will not necessarily take the form of the act which is obviously demanded but may in certain cases consist in the neglect of this act and the performance of others which are quite different. . . . Bonhoeffer’s commentary on this line of thought and its result is as follows (Nachfolge, p. 35): ‘Where orders are given in other spheres, there can be no doubt how matters stand. A father says to his child: Go to bed, and the child knows what has to be done. But a child versed in this pseudo-theology might 69 70 71

CD II.2, p. 664. CD, IV.3.1, p. 45. CD, II.1, p. 670.

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argue as follows. My father says: Go to bed. He means that I am tired. He does not want me to be tired. But I can dissipate my tiredness by going out to play. Therefore, when my father says: Go to bed, he really means: Go out to play. If this were the way in which children reasoned in relation to their fathers, or citizens in relation to the state, they would soon meet with a language that cannot be misunderstood  – that of punishment. It is only in relation to the command of Jesus that things are supposed to be different.’ The ghost of this interpretation [Barth continues, agreeing with Bonhoeffer] cannot be too quickly laid. The commanding grace of God, and therefore salvation as Jesus’ call to discipleship, never come into the life of a man in such a way that he is given leave to consider why and how he may best follow the command given. The command given is recognisable as the command of Jesus by the fact that it is quite unambiguous. It requires to be fulfilled by him only as it is given – and his reception or non-reception of salvation depends upon whether this is done or not.72

The first thing worth noting about this passage is its oddity. It seems quite uncharacteristic for Barth to hold up an example from everyday life – such as a father telling his child to go to bed – and then use it straightforwardly as a significant key to understanding the ways of God with the world. (Although the figure is quoted from Bonhoeffer, Barth holds it up – ‘ten times right’ – for approval.) Unlike his practice of specifying concepts such as freedom, humanity and so forth through starting with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, here Barth starts with common human reality and undialectically relates it to human relation to God: obedience to Jesus is like the straightforward obedience that the child ought to render to his father, and any pondering of what it might mean or non-identical performance is like a silly, wilful child acting out. It lies beyond the ken of this project to establish why, at this point in particular, Barth would fall back on a theological method he elsewhere abjures. But it is worth noting that what he says here about obedience is consistent with what he says elsewhere in CD about it, that creaturely obedience to the command of God is straightforward and simple, and performance of the command is identical with the content of the command. Yet it is worth circling back to the figure of the father and son, somewhat apart from Barth and Bonhoeffer’s use of it. Relating it to Ricoeur’s images of master and slave or master and disciple, it is more like the latter than the former. There is a relationship between father and son which is much more complex than master 72

CD, IV.2, pp. 541, 542.

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and slave. The father does not merely command for his own ends and good, but for the good of the son: sleep at the proper time, in the right amount, will help the son to flourish. The son is commanded to sleep out of care, and not only for the good of the father. Obedience to the father, in the way commanded, brings about flourishing, and hence the agency of the son is safeguarded and enhanced by the father’s command and the son’s obedience. To this we might add that the sort of interpretation Barth and Bonhoeffer are resisting, which makes following ‘the command of Jesus’ into doing whatever one wants on other grounds (for example, claiming that a command to sell all you have and give to the poor actually refers to an ‘inward liberation’ and that an ‘obedient’ response to the command might actually entail acquiring more), is genuinely worrisome and an obvious occasion for ideology to hide the true nature of human evasion.73 This practice of interpretation, I contend, defeats the task of learning about our learning just as much as the heteronomy of simple or ‘straight-line’ obedience. Yet we might also ask whether the son might not engage in faithful questioning of his father. He might ask the father to repeat himself, if the son was not certain he heard correctly, to discern the command. Rather than simply following the command without thinking, he might also think and ask why he needs to sleep, and why now? This might be an obvious stalling tactic, but it might also be genuine querying – the character of it is known in the encounter and shaped by the parent, it is not self-evidently wilful. This might then be an opportunity for the father: not to order the son to stop thinking and asking questions and just do it, but rather patiently to explain the son’s need for sleep and the father’s hope for the son’s flourishing; he might even explain that when the son flourishes, the father does as well. This form of ‘faithful questioning’ – which could take numerous other forms, but is here adapted to the figure of father and son approved by Barth – is not a wilful avoidance of the command, not apart from trust in and love of the father, but is an engagement with the command in order better to inhabit and perform it. With other, less well-determined commands by the father (‘tell the truth’, to use an example that Bonhoeffer himself specifies with great nuance in another context),74 it is 73 74

CD IV.2, p. 541. See the essay ‘What is Meant by “Telling the Truth”’, in Eberhard Bethge (ed.), Ethics (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 326–34. Of course, Bonhoeffer intends to nuance ‘telling the truth’ in relation to human communication, not divine-human. Yet this is just the point: Barth and Bonhoeffer draw on a very specific human, interpersonal communication to explicate the relation of human hearing and obeying of God – but if they are willing to do so, why this (conventional father-son) form and not another?

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just this sort of agency in the face of the command which is needed to perform it faithfully.75 Because Barth cannot imagine a querying of the divine command in accordance with ‘faithful questioning’ which does not amount to perverse avoidance, he is left with an account of obedience which is ‘straight-line’: humanity ‘is never given leave to consider why and how he may best follow the command given’.76 ‘[There] is no place for any further waiting for a developing situation or suitable moment, nor for any further consideration, appraisal or selection of different possibilities, but only for instant obedience. In obedience we are not about to leap. We are already leaping.’77 His use of the father-son figure in the way he does, although it admits of relational aspects, is best understood not as analogous to Ricoeur’s figure of the master of justice and disciple, but rather located somewhere on a continuum between this figure of Ricoeur’s and his other, the master and slave. This therefore might be likened to what I call ‘straight-line’ obedience: a perspicuous command is given, to which precisely the commanded deed is the only proper response. Further thinking and discernment of what is, in itself, utterly clear and understood may only be perverse delay; performance of a deed not identical to that commanded can only amount to culpable disobedience. The result is that human faculties of agency such as critical thinking and discernment, or creativity and imagination, the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’, as well as considerations of performance – the best way to enact or embody what has been commanded – are excluded. (Similarly discounted is the possibility that God may command perspicuously, but the command may be intentionally underdetermined, opening the possibility of human non-identical performance, to God’s glory.) Seemingly, the only human agency which is engaged is the bodily carrying out of the deed. However, John Webster contends that from the beginning of the ethics of reconciliation, it is clear that Barth is seriously at odds with a theory of human action which would make what 75

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It might be countered that, Bonhoeffer’s essay on truth-telling aside, Barth’s use of Bonhoeffer’s father-son figure might reflect the accepted cultural norms of early to middle twentieth-century Germany, whereas the possibility I hold open reflects Anglo-American norms of the early twentyfirst century. Fair enough, but this only points up the oddness, for Barth, of making a point which is seemingly intended as a transcultural theological point on the basis of a highly specific cultural manifestation of human behaviour, rather than specifying it in a way which flows out of the acts of God in Christ and which may query and confront those cultural notions. CD IV.2, p. 542. CD IV.2, p. 542.

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human beings do a mere extension, emanation or even mediation of what God does: ethical docetism is ruled out of order, and the place of the acting person secured.78

Indeed, Webster is correct about this, and this point reflects the degree to which ‘Barth seeks to exclude sole causality on the part of either God or the human agent, proposing instead that the moral field is a diverse pattern of correspondences or analogies, of similarities and dissimilarities, between the actions of God and human actions.’79 Yet even though Barth is concerned to affirm two agencies and not just one, his notion of human obedience, which rules out human acts such as discernment, faithful questioning, imagination, judgment and so forth shows that while it might not be God performing the acts, the shape of the act is entirely and perspicuously given by God and the only legitimate human agency is identical performance and repetition. There are indeed two agencies, but one – the human – is seemingly only fulfilled in its evacuation. Webster is therefore only partially correct when he says the language of command is best understood not as simply about heteronomy, but as about focus or positivity, not as about the imposition of an alien will on the human agent but as about the specific character accorded to Christian ethics by virtue of its orientation to a personal divine reality which at once transcends and evokes the agency of the human person.80

The human is made free in God: free to be a partner in creation, free to become who she is meant to be by God, free to embrace life, free to obey God her creator and redeemer. This is all only possible in and through God, who establishes and evokes the human in her agency. But the agency evoked by God, in the face of revelation, is strictly limited: aspects of genuinely human agency such as discernment, questioning and so forth are bracketed out by ‘straight-line’ obedience as the only proper response to commandment. This is made even clearer when Barth writes in Volume II.2 about the command of God and its reception by the human. On the one hand, the divine command is never identical to or to be confused with a human command; on the other hand, the divine command always ‘wears the garment’ of another command, whether of logical necessity, human command, or numerous other 78 79 80

Webster, Moral Theology, p. 169. Webster, Moral Theology, p. 177. Webster, Moral Theology, p. 159.

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forms.81 But the form of the divine command is always permission, ‘the granting of a very definite freedom’.82 ‘The command of God sets man free.’83 As Colin Gunton summarizes, defending Barth against the charge of ‘Kantianising’, ‘it is one thing to obey power exerted absolutely and impersonally, quite another to obey the kind of personal authority with which we have to do in the gospel.’84 Gunton continues that there is, for Barth, ‘a distinction in kind drawn between obedience to God and obedience to all other commands . . . all other obedience is servile’.85 This is a sensible distinction, and in accord with what I have observed above about Barth’s approval of the father and son image of obedience: he is not enjoining pure heteronomy. This obedience is in accord with God’s love and grace for the creature, and might even be considered a heteronomy which founds autonomy, in the sense that it is God’s acting for the creature’s freedom, the creature’s agency.86 Yet, as Barth concedes – and Gunton fails to note in his essay – the human always encounters this command in the ‘garment’ of some mediation, and so there would seem to be an ongoing need for discernment. Just because the human does not encounter the command of God apart from such mediation – whether the mediation of the command of another person, a logical necessity, or whatever form it may take – nor does the human receive it apart from mediation – pondering it inwardly, ensuring it is understood, raising the question of whether it is not simply what one wants to hear, faithful questioning – it would seem that human agency cannot be bracketed out, and that obedience to this command cannot be simple. Yet, Barth disparages the possibility of the human coming back to herself, to her ‘function of judging between good and evil’: this is the mark of ‘all other commands’, not God’s.87 But if, as Barth maintains, the divine command 81

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CD II.2, p. 584; after disparaging the human propensity for regarding one of many forms of other command as God’s command, Barth continues: ‘It is indeed the case that – without prejudice to its particular form – the claim of God’s command always wears the garment of another claim of this kind.’ CD II.2, p. 585. CD II.2, p. 586. Colin Gunton, ‘The triune God and the freedom of the creature’, in S. W. Sykes (ed.), Karl Barth: Centenary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 52. Gunton, ‘triune God’, p. 52 At this point it would be worth recalling that the way in which I have spelled out my concern about heteronomy in Chapter 1 owes more to Ricoeur than Kant, and therefore it is not important to me to present them as an either-or relationship or as a zero-sum game. Indeed, as Barth uses the terms – chiefly early on, in his discussion of the task of dogmatics – they are mutually implicated, in a way which approaches what I have called, after Ricoeur, non-heteronomous dependence. I fully concede that there may be a heteronomy which founds, establishes, or constitutes autonomy. My concern lies not so much with the way Barth spells out heteronomy within his work, but rather with the way in which his account becomes heteronomous in my terms, that is, as bracketing out human agency in the light of God’s glory in favour of a straight-line notion of obedience, and, relatedly, in frustrating the task of learning about learning. CD II.2, p. 595. The negative sense of ‘judging between good and evil’ refers particularly to Adam’s presumption in the Garden – see p. 594.

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is not apart from these other forms of command, even human command, and at the same time is never identical with such command, the task of discernment must be engaged throughout, and this would seem to demand human agency – not ‘determining’ good and evil but discerning it. But perhaps we might get around this by making a maxim of God’s permission and freedom, as if to say ‘whatever commands are considered, that which most contributes to freedom, that which restricts least, is to be considered the divine command.’ Alas, this will not do. This is because, for Barth, the shape of the freedom and permission granted by God to human beings are always positive and not merely negative and formless. And so any particular enquiry into a command must discern among positive shapes of freedom, and not merely the absence of restraint. Even if the form of God’s command is freedom and permission, Barth still disparages the human task of discernment and possibility of faithful questioning, and styles this obedience (despite the mediated character of the command) as, in my terms, essentially ‘straight-line’. Drawing to a close his critique of Barth’s account of the Triune God and revelation, Rowan Williams contends that in the relation of God and humanity, ‘power, lordship, the master-slave relationship, all play an uncomfortably large part in Barth’s system.’88 In light of Barth’s account of creaturely obedience, it is hard to conclude otherwise. However the above must, of course, be understood in the context of Barth’s overall project in CD. I readily concede that at times he speaks in the most winsome fashion: humanity is the ‘friend’ of God,89 the ‘partner’ with God in creation and the kingdom,90 as enjoying ‘fellowship’ with God,91 and God as having ‘fellowship’ with Christians92 – indeed, in seeming direct contradiction of Williams’ point (and Ricoeur’s figures), Barth even writes that the human is a ‘child and not a slave’.93 Therefore, it must be admitted that, in the scope of CD, it is somewhat more complex than a relationship of domination – yet there is also something correct in what Williams says. It is true that (as Paul Nimmo summarizes well) for Barth, obedience is to be free, repentant, thankful and joyful.94 We might even allow that, as Barth avers, the command to obey is permission 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Williams, ‘Barth on the Triune God’, p. 140. CD II.2, p. 745. CD III.4, p. 649; CD IV.3.1, p. 228. CD II.1, p. 673. CD IV.3.1, p. 278. CD II.1, pp. 36, 219. Paul Nimmo, Being in Action: The Theological Shape of Barth’s Ethical Vision (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 146.

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and  not  obligation, the summons to obey showing humanity ‘as such one who is honoured and magnified and respected by God’.95 These notes of thankfulness, freedom, joy and repentance suffuse CD; they spell out Barth’s ‘straight-line’ account of obedience. Obedience is not joyless, it is not slavery, and it is thankful. Nevertheless there is no point at which human agency in its freedom and contingency, and particularly human thinking in terms of questioning, discernment, judgment and performance, is allowed by God’s commandment. Indeed, it would be natural to conclude that any such agency can only be a distraction or evasion of obedience, rather than intrinsically related to its human reception and performance.96 This seems all the more odd in light of the characteristic ‘overflow’ of divine glory which Barth likens to the abundance of God’s inner joy. Human obedience to the command of God frees the creature, allows her to be who she is meant by God to be, and permits her to glorify God. It is in discussing glory and glorification of God that Barth speaks most winsomely of the ‘overflow’ of the divine life and comes closest to admitting of overflow in human agency; he almost goes so far as allowing for the possibility of human agency as non-identical repetition or improvisation: ‘Just as the glory of God itself is the superabundance, the overflowing of the perfection of the divine being, so the glorification of God through the creature is in its own way equally an overflowing, an act of freedom and not of force or of a self-evident course of events.’97 Or, later, in discussing the determination of the elect in God, Barth writes it is evident, though, that the blessedness of the elect, as his participation in God’s own blessedness, is badly understood if it is understood only as receiving, acceptance and possession; if his condition of blessedness as such and in itself is understood, so to speak, as a blind alley in which the overflowing of the inner perfection and joy of God comes to a standstill; if it is thought that the electing God is satisfied with the achievement of this blessedness for the elect. Certainly God’s own glory is the essence of this love in which He never ceases and never tires of revealing and declaring Himself, of expressing and communicating Himself, of securing for Himself recognition . . . as the glory of Israel and the Church, [the glory of God and Christ] is not a possession which exhausts its goodness in the enjoyment which it produces for this people. . . . How can it be a participation in His life, a fulfilment of the covenant fellowship secured for 95 96

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CD, III.4, p. 649. It also, therefore, raises a question about the extent to which, for Barth, God may truly be said to constitute the human as a ‘friend’ or ‘partner’ in ‘fellowship’. CD II.1, p. 671.

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men by Him if it is not active participation in His love, His act, His work, if man remains only an object of the glory of God and not a subject?98

Barth admits that the glory of God is a dynamic of overflowing of God’s freedom and love, and that this glory which blesses the elect does not end with her but continues out into the world, not apart from the elect but with the elect as subject. Taken in isolation, this seems ripe with possibility of the fullness of human agency participating in surprising ways in God’s glory, even in non-identical repetition and improvisational performance of God’s commands in a manner consistent with the overflow of God’s glory. And yet all of this must be understood in the context of Barth’s account of ‘straight-line’ obedience as the form of human freedom, a human identical repetition of the command given, shorn of the human agency of discerning, questioning, judging and performing, which is, in the final analysis, a rather constricted conception of human subjectivity.

Glory and glorification An ongoing theme throughout these two chapters on Barth has been the question of glorification. Barth maintains that God’s glory is not glorious in isolation but ‘comes near’ to creation in Jesus Christ as an expression of God’s glory. God’s self-manifestation in Christ is itself God’s self-glorification, making manifest to the creation the excellence of God’s perfections. And so the glory of God may be said, for Barth, to glorify (God) in glory. In this section I shall explore glorification in glory, turning first to God’s self-glorification, then to the way in which the creation itself is permitted to glorify God, and may be said to inhabit or reflect the glory of God, and then finally to raise the question of whether it might be said that God glorifies the creation. Given the extent to which these questions straddle the two volumes of CD under consideration, this section will draw from both, as well as other relevant sections.

God’s self-glorification Inasmuch as the divine revelation is the revelation to the creation of the being of the One who loves in freedom in all God’s perfections, and this is declared chiefly through the glorious Mediator, Jesus Christ, and that these perfections 98

CD II.2, pp. 412, 413.

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and this identity are God’s glory, then this revelation of God, in making God’s glory manifest, is properly considered a glorification of God by God. God is thus self-glorifying in all God’s acts and works. This self-glorification takes place purely intra-Trinitarianly from eternity to eternity, among the three of the Trinity. God does not need the glorification of creation. Ruminating on God’s glory as the ‘outshining’ and ‘self-declaration’ of God, Barth claims that God’s act of creating is itself an overflow of the joy present at the heart of God, a self-communicating superabundance, and therefore all creatures ‘take part in the movement of God’s self-glorification and the communication of His joy’.99 The entire created sphere is thus an expression of God’s glory, existing in the divine self-glorification, as well as being called and permitted to participate in this self-glorification.100 The creation may participate in God’s self-glorification as a ‘sounding-wall’ as well being constituted by God as the ‘theatrum gloriae Dei’.101 God’s self-glorifying invites and involves participants. Barth avers that ‘[it] belongs to the essence of the glory of God not to be gloria alone but to become glorificatio.’102 God’s glory implies glorification, as God reveals and declares Godself eminently honourable and praiseworthy, God’s perfections shining out. Indeed, the glory of Jesus Christ, the God-man, ‘embraces both the gloria of God and the human glorificatio which it deserves and exacts’.103 Thus, the Mediator is at once the fullest expression of the glory of God and the fullest expression of the creature’s glorification of God. And so God invites the creaturely response of glorification – of which Christ’s glorification of God is the ‘normative original’ and ‘prototype’.104 Glorification in accord with divine glory is, then, in at least this limited sense, relational, something which takes place not within (or towards) an isolated monad, but among the three of the Trinity, and which gladly reaches out and invites further participants in the divine self-glorification. It is at this point, considering God’s glory as this ‘shining forth’, a declaration which is itself a self-glorification, that we might consider a further feature of divine glory as light, and in this way return to the question of the human and human agency. We have seen how Barth implies that the glory of God in the image of light combines elements of both honour and shining forth, and then how he tends to resolve this matter in favour of glory as light, in Volume IV.3.1. CD II.1, pp. 646, 647. CD II.1, pp. 648, 670. 101 CD II.1, pp. 668, 674; CD IV.3.1, p. 151. 102 CD II.1, p. 667. 103 CD IV.3.1, p. 48. 104 CD IV.3.1, p. 48.   99 100

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Moreover, we have seen how this shining forth implies light both as source and as shining, and that these are both actually God. This light as declaration and shining forth of God’s glory is also a battle against the darkness in creation, and also a declaration of complete victory by the Mediator.105 But if light shines forth, it may also be said not merely to scatter the darkness but also to illumine what is present.106 As Barth puts it in his fourfold exposition of the outshining of God’s glory, God’s glory is revealed when God is not present in vain, when the distinction and worth of His person are not merely immanent but are recognized and acknowledged as such, when to that extent they reach over to us. Where there is light and light shines, there is an illuminating and an illumination. . . . Where there is radiance there is also reflection of the radiance.107

Barth claims that the creature which reflects God’s glory is itself ‘dark’, at least in contrast to God, yet is itself to be understood as a work of God’s inner, overflowing superabundance, as ‘the coming into being of light outside Him on the basis of the light inside Him, which is Himself ’.108 And so the light within God creates light other than God, the light illumines that which (in contrast to its source) is dark, and both the creating and the shining are joyous overflows of the life of God in Godself. We see then that it might be said on these grounds that glory (in God) begets glory (reflected in the creation), although, to be sure, the creature is made as a creature and, even when the light falls on her, remains a creature.109 The light of God falls on her, illumining her, but the light is external, reflected, and a complement to God’s glory rather than something which Barth contemplates as touching human agency.

Creation is permitted to glorify God Barth seems clear that the honour of God, expressed in God’s glory, evokes in  the  creature the complement and response of honouring and glorifying of God.110 This response is made possible and permitted by God, although in a limited sense it is an ‘ability, obligation and necessity’ of the creature.111 It is CD IV.3.1, p. 263. CD III.4, p. 664. 107 CD II.1, p. 647. 108 CD II.1, p. 647. 109 CD II.1, p. 669. 110 CD II.1, p. 670. 111 CD II.1, p. 671. 105 106

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limited, because it is made possible by the mercy of God. Further, it is secondary and not primary, because it is an ‘overflowing’ response by the creature in Godgiven freedom to the ‘superabundance’ of God’s grace.112 It does not obey a strictly quid-pro-quo economic exchange. Nor is it ‘demanded’ in any primary or undialectical sense: it is ‘permitted’ (although this permission comes in the form of a command). Thus Barth presents God’s honour as evoking and making possible honouring in the creature for God. This follows a logic of gracious overflow rather than demand and obligation – hence continuing to fill out the meaning of honour-related terms in light of the One who loves in freedom. It is an honour which makes possible the creaturely complement of honouring God.113 This glorifying of God by the creature maintains its creaturely nature, and is imperfect and partial, and yet God makes it God’s own ‘in all its creatureliness’, this is a genuine participation in the chorus of ‘voices’ in creation glorifying God (and therefore also a participation in God’s glory), as well as taking part in God’s self-glorification through creation.114 As we have noted above, a major component of the interaction between the human and God’s glory is freedom: God is glorious in God’s being as the one who is free to love, and the human is made free for God – indeed, the creature is made free for God’s glory, and made free by God’s glory.115 Yet in this freedom for God, the human ‘serves God’s self-glorification in the same way as an echoing wall can serve only to repeat and broadcast the voice which the echo “answers”’.116 The human is grateful, free and permitted to respond to God, yet in this the creature exists fundamentally as a reflection: ‘The whole point of creation is that God should have a reflection in which He reflects Himself and in which the image of God as the Creator is revealed, so that through it God is attested, confirmed and proclaimed.’117 God is glorified, then, in the creature through her reflecting, following, imitating and corresponding to God in the life-obedience (Lebensgehorsam) of her total existence.118 This takes place explicitly in the form of the Church: ‘proclamation, faith, confession, theology, prayer’.119 CD II.1, p. 671. CD III.4, p. 651. CD II.1, pp. 668, 669, 672. 115 CD II.1, p. 669. 116 CD II.1, p. 672. 117 CD II.1, p. 673. 118 CD II.1, p. 674. 119 CD II.1, p. 676. 112 113 114

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While it might seem on the surface an entirely heteronomous account, there is actually an ambiguity present in what Barth says. On the one hand, he is keen to emphasize that the human does not contribute to or expand God’s glory: consistent with Barth’s entire account, God does not need creation or creation’s glorification. Moreover, the creation cannot do anything on its own, apart from God, and even with God, will not on its own contribute to God’s (already complete and perfect) glory, nor somehow in its glorifying that glory exceed what is warranted, expected, demanded. The creature’s glorification will not and cannot ‘surprise’ God. Therefore, since there will be nothing ‘new’ in the creature’s glorification, and it cannot exceed God’s eliciting and permitting God’s glorification, this act of glorifying God may be best considered ‘obedience’: the creature can do no more than simply glorify in gratitude in the way she is commanded and this might be best considered ‘identical repetition’. Yet, on the other hand, there is also an underdetermined character to what Barth says here. Even if it is granted that human glorification or any creaturely agency cannot ‘surprise’ or make an actual ‘contribution’ to God, it is still not given in explicit detail precisely what the shape of this glorification might be, and this invites human agency’s participation, in discernment and performance of specific acts, and the specific shape of creaturely life which will glorify God. This need not imply an independence from God, nor any form of creaturely autonomy from God. Rather, I would contend, because the actual shape of God’s glory is not known exhaustively or in its entirety yet, all the possible specific shapes of glorifying are not known yet either.120 Thus it might be said that, owing to the unplumbed-depths of the glory of God, the exact shape of human glorifying as an ‘echo’ of that glory may well be surprising to humans, and may be genuinely engaged in human agency – thought, discernment, questioning, action – as a matter of performance and therefore non-identical repetition. It might therefore be considered ‘obedience’, but the obedience of non-heteronomous dependence, an agency constituted and established by God, which may well take surprising shape, in accordance with the overflowing superabundance of grace and love at the heart of God, in which humanity is created. Perhaps this question of the shape of glorifying is left underdetermined by Barth for just this reason. 120

For example, the earliest Church wrestled with the question of whether God may be glorified in the life of a Gentile who did not follow the law: did they need first to accept the Mosaic Law and only then accept Christ? In the event, Luke presents a council meeting in Jerusalem, deciding that such Gentiles did not need to follow the Law given to Israel, but only that given to aliens among the Israelites. (Acts 15.22-29) Interestingly, subsequent to this the Church almost universally resolved that even these restrictions were not necessary in order properly to glorify God, as, for example, there remains no general injunction against eating ‘what is strangled and from blood.’ (15.20)

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However, this suggestion almost certainly reads too much into Barth at this point. It seems much more likely that the account he renders is underdetermined not because he thinks human agency in God might be surprising in some sense, but because he is keen, above all, to avoid determining in advance what God might command. Barth is concerned not to give hostages to fortune – by trying to circumvent what he sees as the usual human shaping of theology, so that God’s possibilities are determined by human possibilities, he is not now, in considering moral theology, going to return by that way. He might be prepared to admit that obedient humans might well do surprising things in hearing and obeying God’s command, but that is not from anything surprising in human agency as such, but only because of the sort of God who created and redeemed them. Yet as I have explored at some length, it is at just this point that I think Barth truncates human agency, considered (not least) biblically, as engaged in discernment of prophecy, revelation and commandment. I have further tried to show that Barth’s notion of revelation, at least when it comes to God’s glory, is foreshortened, precluding the possibility of faithful questioning (which is attested in Scripture and the life of the Church) and appearing only in the moods of the indicative and imperative. Further, Barth’s notion of human obedience seems at odds with the dynamic of overflow in God’s glory – it is free, repentant, thankful, joyful, but it is also ‘straight-line’ and identical, just where one might expect this dynamic of overflow to create a creaturely analogue or complement. It is joyful, but only by renouncing certain forms of (faithful) human agency. Through all of this, the implication has been that this truncated view of human agency (only met by indicatives and imperatives, or at its fullest only in ‘straightline’ obedience, for example) also implies a truncated view of divine agency. For Barth the creature is permitted and commanded to act as a ‘sounding wall’ for God’s glory, to echo God’s glory as a glorification of God, but it becomes clear that the excellence of a ‘sounding wall’ is its featurelessness, for sound echoes more effectively the fewer details there are.

God glorifies creation Turning to Barth’s discussion of God’s glory in conjunction with creation, we again find intimations of ‘more’ than his account explicitly renders. For example, when God’s glory is spoken of together with creation, which is radically contingent and dependent on God, Barth says that God’s glory seeks and finds fellowship. This ‘fellowship’ which God sets out to ‘seek and find’ is not a fellowship of ‘fellows’, of equals who may maintain their respective duties

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and commitments of fellowship under their own power. Rather the ‘core’ of God’s glory and being is God’s coming to the finite, dependent, fallen creation and nevertheless establishing it in fellowship – a fellowship which God creates, maintains and governs.121 Expressing it in rather more conventional doctrinal language, Barth elaborates, saying ‘God’s glory is God’s love. It is the justification and the sanctification of us sinners, out of pure, irresistible grace.’122 To go somewhat beyond Barth’s terminology, God’s creation of a ‘fellowship’ between the greater and lesser – between the infinite and the finite – dignifies the creation, elevating it to a place it would not have apart from God’s establishing it in fellowship. Thus, God’s glory, God’s honour, is expressed not narcissistically, demanding glorification and honour, but in permitting (and, yes, commanding) human glorifying and honouring of God and also – in a certain way – glorifying and honouring the creation. Nevertheless, this relationship with the creation is also properly called a ‘self-glorification’ as God communicates Godself to that which is not Godself.123 There is a gratuity and overflow, consistent with graciousness, to God’s glory: God’s glory is the indwelling joy of His divine being which as such shines out from Him, which overflows in its richness, which in its super-abundance is not satisfied with itself but communicates itself. All God’s works must be understood also and decisively from this point of view. All together and without exception they take part in the movement of God’s self-glorification and the communication of his joy.124

All of God’s acts, inasmuch as they express God’s being, communicate God’s glory; as such they constitute self-glorification. This self-glorification is not grim or self-concerned, but found as overflowing superabundant joy. Indeed, for the creation, the ‘objective meaning of God’s glory is His active grace and mercy and patience, His love. In itself and as such it is worthy of love.’125 Again, it is clearly shown that God’s glory is not the communication simply of ‘greatness’ or ‘supremacy’; it is a worth and honour expressed through love, care, mercy and joy – although subjectively the creature may experience it either as that which gives joy or terror.126 CD II.1, p. 641; I translate ‘regieren’ (KD) as ‘govern’ rather than ‘control’ (as in ET) to mitigate the English-language connotation of ‘micromanagement’ present in the term ‘control’. 122 CD II.1, p. 645. 123 CD II.1, p. 647. 124 CD II.1, p. 647. 125 CD II.1, p. 653. 126 CD II.1, p. 653. 121

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This self-glorification of God which communicates God’s glory and does not overwhelm the creature also actually serves to constitute and establish the creature as an agent, namely, as a covenant partner of God’s. Barth specifically mentions this in discussing the history of the prophetic work of Jesus as light shining in darkness, and therefore as victor. He insists that this work of positing this history as such is a work of the divine freedom, the freedom of God to be who God is. ‘It is in virtue of this free and basic kindness that He is the God who makes Himself the Partner of man, and man His partner, in this covenant and conversation, even though He does not owe him this. . . . It is the gift to which there can correspond only the gratitude of man’ in respect to this election. 127 Moreover, this being made a covenant partner of God’s, as an expression of God’s overarching glory, might even be called a ‘glorification’ of the creature by God. For example, Barth writes that ‘the being and existence of creation itself are glorified rather than destroyed by the events of which it is ordained to be the theatre, so its words and truths, far from being contradicted or given the lie, acquire in this context and in harmony with God’s definitive Word a similar final force and value and significance.’128 Indeed, in discussing the glory of God as one of God’s perfections, Barth even concedes that ‘doxάzein means both to honour, praise, extol and glorify as a creaturely action and also to transfigure as a divine. And doxάzesqai means both the glorification of God by the creature and of the creature by God.’129 And so the overall shape of God’s acts, which constitute God’s self-glorification, may also be said to constitute a glorification of creation, and in this glorification the creation receives its ‘significance’: even, perhaps, its own glory. We may continue along these lines and notice (as we have above) the manner in which God’s glory ‘shines forth’ from the Mediator, illuminating that which is, by comparison, ‘dark’, which is itself a function of God’s light shining forth in the exuberant abundance which is found at the heart of God. This falling of light on what is other than God illumines what is present and calls attention to it. Shining light, either as the light itself or the streaming forth, does not call attention to itself (except perhaps in gratitude for its presence) but illumines what is other than it, focusing attention on the illumined as worthy, honoured. In this is the glorification of the creature by God. Here we begin to see a dynamic of non-heteronomous dependence of humans on God, suffused with God’s glory as constituting and establishing them CD IV.3.1, p. 228. CD IV.3.1, p. 164. 129 CD II.1, p. 670, although, as I note above this is a muted note, not further developed. 127 128

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as agents – and yet Barth does not quite go so far as to say just this. While he is willing to say, in places, that God glorifies the creature (or creation), there is still very much a ‘closed’ sense to the shape of this glorification, as the creature is seen as responding only in straight-line obedience, in which human agency is bracketed out, serving as a ‘reflecting wall’ for God’s self-glorification. While Barth talks about the human as God’s covenant partner, it becomes clear that this partner’s agency is fulfilled only as an extension of God’s: not that God evacuates human agency (rebellion and disobedience are always possibilities for Barth), but that the only proper human agency is a hearing which results in precise performance and identical repetition of a commandment. Unconsidered is the possibility of discernment, faithful questioning, judgment or performance.

Summary In this chapter I have undertaken to provide a closer examination of the glory of God in Barth’s CD, particularly in IV.3.1, especially as this is related to human agency. As a part of this process, I have shown that Barth’s emphasis on the purely declarative and commanding nature of God’s revelation of God’s glory through the Mediator is inconsistent with the practice of discernment in Scripture, does not do justice to the possibility of ‘faithful questioning’ before God, and closes off the possibility of God using other ‘moods’ or modes of expression in revealing, thus limiting God’s agency as well as truncating the creature’s. I have further shown that Barth’s notion of creaturely obedience to God’s command results in bracketing out human agency in a manner which is heteronomous. Finally, we have seen that God’s glory enlists creatures in the task of God’s selfglorification, and that there are ways in which God, in God’s glory, glorifies the creation and here, as elsewhere, begins to intimate the possibility of a creaturely non-heteronomous dependence on God in such a way that humans, while never apart from God, nevertheless are engaged in the fullness of their agency, such that obedience may take the form of non-identical repetition of conformity to Christ and improvisational faithful response to commands. But while this is an implication of some of what Barth writes, it is never a possibility he embraces or endorses as it would be incongruent with his notion of revelation and the ‘straight-line’ obedience I have observed in his account. God in the revelation of God’s glory in God’s act of reconciliation founds, establishes and constitutes human agency – but this is an agency realized in ‘straight-line’ obedience, apart from the possibility of discernment, faithful

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questioning, judgment or consideration of performance. It is true that God gives to the creature freedom, and that this freedom has a positive character of engendering obedience to God, and that this obedience is free, repentant, thankful and joyful – this is not quite the relationship of master-slave. But to return to my observation about Ricoeur’s examination of the hermeneutics of revelation: in considering the possibility of heteronomy, it is not merely the content which must be scrutinized, but also the manner in which it is revealed. In Barth’s account, what is revealed is the possibility of human agency within God, an agency (in part) transfigured by God’s glory, being freed to obey. However, not the whole of human agency is so engaged: the possibilities of faithful questioning, discernment and non-identical performance are omitted, seemingly unwelcome as aspects of the creature. And so what is revealed as God’s glory is partially heteronomous. But more than this the manner of revealing appears to be entirely heteronomous, expressed only as indicative and imperative, declaration and command, and in such a way that it is not susceptible to human thinking, again, as discernment (and so forth). And so while Barth gets around a great many of the problems of modern accounts of God’s glory as being entirely heteronomous and bracketing out human agency, and does so particularly by spelling out the shape of God’s glory in close consideration of the shape of God’s acts, in the final analysis he gives an account which is partially heteronomous in content and profoundly heteronomous in form. It is widely noted that Barth’s ethics, while extended throughout his dogmatics, in no way provides foundations for an ethical system.130 This is quite in line with Barth’s intention. But even if we grant Barth’s point, that the human construction of an ethical system is always only ‘adequate’ and done at (at least) one step removed from God’s acts, and even if we then decide to allow that God’s command is the basis of moral and ethical behaviour, there is still the problem that this command brackets out human agency (at least in terms of responsive acts such as discernment, judgment or faithful questioning). This agency does not flow from a systematizing impulse, nor from avoidance of the command or desire to reduce or control it – it comes from the impulse to understand it, to ensure one has heard correctly (from God and not merely one’s own compulsions), and the desire to act faithfully in the world. Deliberation, analysis, criticism, discernment, judgment, questioning, as human agency, might be considered human acts done apart from God, in isolation from God, on a ‘given’ artefact 130

See, e.g., Nigel Biggar, The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth’s Ethics (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 19–25.

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of God, a commandment, which itself is not God. But of course, they are not done ‘apart’ from God, as if God speaks and leaves, and so this sense of isolation and human responsibility to take God’s ‘utterances’ and systematize them is actually based on a misunderstanding, and potentially, a will to control God (i.e. idolatry). Yet this does not address my concern, for this characterization of human agency need not be the case at all: why might not this human agency of faithful questioning, discernment, judgment and so forth be done specifically and intentionally in God, not apart from God but before the face of God and in the shadow of Scripture? And – most importantly for my case – why must God’s glory and the glorification of God only be seen as bracketing out this agency and not truly establishing it, not responding in a manner that accords with the overflow of God’s glory? With this question in mind, I now turn to the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar on divine glory.

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Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Glory of God

Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar Many have remarked on the personal relationship between Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar.1 As Stephen Wigley puts it, ‘theirs was more than an intellectual engagement . . . it was a relationship which grew out of a personal meeting and life-long friendship’.2 Given a choice between taking up a teaching post in Rome and working with a student ministry in Basel, in Switzerland, von Balthasar chose the latter, and in the event he spent a good deal of time sitting in on lectures delivered by the great Protestant dogmatician, as well as delivering a few himself on Barth’s thought, eventually producing a book exploring Barth’s theology from a Catholic perspective.3 The relationship was important to both of them, and the influence of Barth on von Balthasar is unmistakeable. In fact, when von Balthasar sat in on a seminar Barth was giving on the Council of Trent and mounted ‘no really impressive counterattack’, Barth mused that ‘perhaps he had been reading my Dogmatics too much (he dragged around II/1 especially, in his briefcase, like a cat carrying a kitten).’4 It will not be missed that this volume to which von Balthasar found himself so attached is Barth’s account of the divine perfections with which we have occupied ourselves in the second chapter. 1

2 3

4

For example, Fergus Kerr, ‘Foreword: Assessing this “Giddy Synthesis”’, Lucy Gardner, David Moss, Ben Quash and Graham Ward (eds.), Balthasar at the End of Modernity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), pp. 1–14; John Thompson, ‘Barth and Balthasar: An Ecumenical Dialogue’, in Bede McGregor, OP, and Thomas Norris (eds.), The Beauty of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), pp. 171–92; John Webster, ‘Balthasar and Karl Barth’, in Edward Oakes, SJ, and David Moss (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004a), pp. 241–55; Stephen D. Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement (London: T&T Clark, 2007). Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar, p. 1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992). Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (London: SCM Press, 1975), p. 302.

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The connection between Barth and von Balthasar is interesting and worth noting; so also is, on the heels of this last observation, the very specific relationship between what Barth has to say about divine glory, and particularly divine beauty, and the first part of von Balthasar’s trilogy, entitled Herrlichkeit, and translated ‘The Glory of the Lord’ in English translation.5 Von Balthasar’s monumental theological trilogy looks to recast theology along the lines of beauty (The Glory of the Lord), action (Theo-Drama), and truth (Theo-Logic), conveying that seeing the glory of God leads to performing or participating in it, and then understanding it. In order to understand how von Balthasar treats God’s glory, I shall examine primarily Volumes I and VII of the Glory of the Lord. In these volumes, von Balthasar presents his clearest vision of how God’s glory is present in the world and history, culminating in the New Testament and the person of Christ (and particularly in the Johannine presentation of Christ).6 Noel O’Donaghue boldly states that ‘Herrlichkeit is in some ways a rewriting of Barth’s Church Dogmatics, and a lot of the excitement of the book comes from the tension between the Barthian theology of discontinuity (and the total Otherness of God in Christ) and that Platonic and Aristotelian strand in Catholic theology which sees nature and grace as somehow continuous, and so defends the basic goodness and beauty of human life.’7 Even if this sense of ‘rewriting’ – as if there were no other prominent influences on The Glory of the Lord – might be somewhat overdrawn, there is no doubt of Barth’s influence on von Balthasar. They are in broad agreement on both the importance and centrality of divine glory, and von Balthasar recognizes the genuine contribution which Barth has made to theology, in terms of restoring beauty to consideration in a manner hitherto unknown in Protestant dogmatics.8 In the final volume of The Glory of the Lord, after sketching out Barth’s account of divine glory and beauty in summary form, von Balthasar says that he has done so ‘not only because it agrees with our overall plan, especially in regard to the relationship between glory and beauty, but also because it offers at the beginning an overview that we ourselves can approach only slowly’.9 5

6 7

8 9

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord (Vols. 1–7; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982–91). (Hereafter GL) GL VI, p. 20. Noel O’Donaghue, ‘A Theology of Beauty’, in John Riches (ed.), The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), p. 3. Stephen Wigley argues more modestly that ‘the structure and form of The Glory of the Lord are in large part due to the thrust of von Balthasar’s engagement with the theology of Karl Barth.’ (Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar, p. 86.) GL I, p. 56. GL VII, p. 23.

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Given this relationship between these two theologians and particularly the closeness of their concepts of divine glory, in this chapter I shall undertake to set out von Balthasar’s notion of the glory of God, particularly in conversation with Barth’s perspective and through the conceptual lenses which I set out in Chapter 2. I shall then interrogate von Balthasar’s work in the same manner in which I interrogated Barth’s notion of divine glory in relation to human agency in Chapter 3. I do this because, given the connection between the two and particularly given the way in which von Balthasar seized on – yet modified – what Barth had to say about divine glory, this would seem a fruitful avenue to pursue in order to see one possible way that Barth’s account might be nuanced to be more satisfactory in regard to human agency.

Barth and von Balthasar on glory In order to look in greater detail at von Balthasar on glory and his contrasts with Barth, let us return briefly to Barth’s gloss of God’s glory: God’s glory is God Himself in the truth and capacity and act in which He makes Himself known as God. This truth and capacity and act are the triumph, the very core, of His freedom. And at its core it is freedom to love. For at the core of His being, and therefore in His glory, God is the One who seeks and finds fellowship, creating and maintaining and governing (regieren) it.10

In this we can see that God’s glory is, in the first instance, about God, about who God is and what God does (truth and capacity and act) in an abstract sense. Although Barth does not mean for these to ever stand apart from God as God is revealed in God’s acts, as if they could be deduced through natural-theological means or philosophical a prioris, neither does he engage particular acts of God (such as the cross) in particular detail to expound God’s glory. Von Balthasar, on the other hand, in exploring God’s glory, focuses more than does Barth on specific acts of God as recorded in Scripture. As von Balthasar puts it, in his exposition of glory, he begins from the ‘true centre’, the ‘selfinterpretation’ of the ‘momentum shown in God’s act in Jesus’, the ‘event of salvation itself ’.11 This can allow glory to have continuity with what has gone 10 11

CD II.1, p. 641. GL VII, pp. 240, 241; see also 203, 204.

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before, yet also allows this event in Christ to give glory a decisive shape and valence, and that through God’s acts in Christ. In filling out this notion of glory from the New Testament, von Balthasar notes three points. First, ‘glory’ when seen most fully in Jesus will nevertheless have continuity with contemporary (NT) usage, and particularly in the way it refers to God.12 Second, glory, as present in God and all of God’s acts is an encompassing term, incorporating even Sheol, even while it might shine out more brightly at some points than others.13 This is particularly the case as von Balthasar draws a closer connection between Christ’s mission (including his cross and descent into Hell) and God’s glory. It is in ‘Jesus’ increasing poverty and self-abandonment in the Passion and Resurrection, when Jesus submits his destiny to the Father’ that the ‘brilliance of the glory’ is fully seen.14 Indeed, this is von Balthasar’s third consideration, which he terms ‘genuinely decisive’: ‘What God’s glory in its good truth is, was to be revealed in Jesus Christ, and ultimately in his absolute obedience of Cross and Hell.’15 This ‘final self-revelation of God in history’ thus norms all else which might claim to be glorious, since it shows God’s glory present even in utter Godabandonment.16 There is thus a concentration of God’s glory in Christ’s cross, death and descent into Hell (along with his resurrection) which expresses the comprehensiveness of that glory, incorporating even seeming contradiction.17 We also see von Balthasar’s focusing God’s glory on obedience, self-emptying and love, themes to which I shall return below. Further, each of these three points qualify Barth’s account. Von Balthasar is more willing to admit continuity of historical usage of the terms for glory than seemingly does Barth; while its application to God is paradigmatic and decisive, there are resonances and connections with contextual meanings too. Moreover, the explicit comprehensiveness of von Balthasar’s notion of glory, incorporating even seeming contradiction, and its more specific connection with what von Balthasar takes to be particular acts of God in the event of salvation distinguish him from Barth, whose sense of the comprehensiveness of God’s glory is present but more implicit. Finally, von Balthasar’s interpretation of the cross, as Christ’s obedience and abandonment 12 13 14 15

16 17

GL VII, p. 241. GL VII, p. 242. GL VII, p. 161. GL VII, p. 243. (‘Was Gottes Herrlichkeit in ihrer (guten) Wahrheit ist, das sollte in Jesus Christus, zuletzt in seinem absoluten Kreuzes- und Höllengehorsam offenbar warden.’ Herrlichkeit band III, 2.) GL VII, p. 243. GL VII, p. 233.

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being supremely expressive of God’s glory further specifies the shape of God’s glory in a manner different from Barth. All of this allows for a fuller, more comprehensive rendering of God’s glory, as encompassing even emptying, poverty and (seeming) loss, as well as stretching the concept of glory to be more adequate to this God. God’s glory thus encompasses God’s ‘hiddenness just as much as the expression of his manifestation, possessing dimensions enough to make itself known in Cross and death just as much as in Resurrection and “return in glory”.’18 Thus ‘glory’ is a fully comprehensive term describing all of God’s acts. On these grounds, glory might be considered a ‘theological transcendental’, ‘present in all phases and layers’ of the divine revelation’.19 Von Balthasar talks about the ‘absolute momentum’ of the kabod of God. This is realized particularly in a momentum of the cross, to which the glory of God in the Old Testament points. This momentum of glory – the combination of movement (in act) and the weightiness of kabod – carries along the Word of God to wordlessness in an ongoing movement of self-dispossession, as the Son is obedient to the Father, going to the cross and death.20 Further, this glory is not only realized through momentum, but also through the radiance (‘light’) of revelation. Drawing on the Gospel of John as the ‘final interpretation of dόxa in the New Testament’, von Balthasar explores this momentum of the cross in three mutually implied ways: the momentum is realized through the Father, through the Spirit, and through the Church.21 These are three aspects of the one movement of glorifying the Son in his utter self-dispossession and obedient offering to the Father. ‘Δόxa signifies, not various realities, but one single reality in different aspects. This single reality is disclosed, in the final interpretation by John, as the eternal Trinitarian love that has come into the world.’22 This threefold elaboration stakes out ‘the entire horizon of the meaning of the cipher dόxa in the New Testament’.23 For von Balthasar, then, the glory of God is a fully Trinitarian movement into the world through the ‘momentum’ of the cross, the response of which is the glorifying of the Son through Father, Spirit and Church. In this way, then, God’s glory is both comprehensive, encompassing all of God’s acts and revelation, and also present in a concentrated manner within the contradiction found in the self-emptying and abandonment of the cross. 18 19 20 21 22 23

GL VII, p. 242. GL VII, p. 261. GL VII, p. 161. GL VII, p. 244. GL VII, p. 260. GL VII, p. 260.

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So  God’s glory, for von Balthasar, might be glossed as the ‘Godness’ of God, which is both expressed in a form, yet also transcending every worldly form.24 Von Balthasar thus sets out God’s glory in a manner which is both consistent (in ways) with Barth’s priorities in theologizing and yet also very differently elaborated than Barth. He depicts God’s glory as being simultaneously more comprehensive than as depicted by Barth, encompassing contradictions such as Christ’s cross and death, as well as being a ‘transcendental’ to God’s revelation, present at every level, including in absence, hiddenness and abandonment, and also as more specifically focused than Barth, on the obedience of the Son in his movement of dispossession towards the cross and death, and particularly in the way in which this mission reveals the scope of God’s love.

Love and freedom This last observation about love raises the question of the role of love in von Balthasar’s account relative to Barth’s. We recall from earlier chapters that for Barth, God’s glory serves, in some ways, to summarize the perfections of God, thematized under the perfections of love and freedom, depicting God as the One who loves in freedom. Nevertheless, Barth placed God’s glory as one of the perfections of God’s freedom, and although God’s freedom is not apart from God’s love, we have also seen how this pair tended to be resolved in favour of God’s freedom when discussion of divine glory was focused on the Mediator. As Barth does, von Balthasar maintains God’s love and freedom as important to the identity of the Christian God. Von Balthasar also draws a connection between glory and freedom which is broadly similar to Barth’s. He writes: [A]s the one who lives and is free, [God] is present in his creatures and gifts in such a way that he distances himself from them in order to leave them a space of freedom. . . . It is precisely this interplay of the immanence of God’s power and wisdom in all that exists in the world, and his transcendence over the creatures (as the free creator who remains free), who thereby receive a space for their own existence and freedom, that is the foundation of the biblical dόxa.25

Thus for von Balthasar the glory of God, particularly as seen in Scripture, is expressed in God’s freedom, and this freedom correlates with a creaturely 24 25

GL VII, p. 265, bearing in mind Gestalt as von Balthasar’s German behind the English ‘form’. GL VII, p. 268.

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appropriate freedom. In the terms I set above, God’s glory (in God’s freedom) begets glory (in the creature’s freedom). The shape of this created freedom is slightly different between Barth and von Balthasar, however. For Barth, the creature is given a freedom and permission to glorify God, whereas for von Balthasar the creature is given the freedom of her own space, a space in which to respond to God. As Rodney Howsare has observed, von Balthasar’s account of the finite freedom of the creature in no way threatens the infinite freedom of God; this is particularly the case as creaturely freedom is worked out through creaturely obedience to the mission of God.26 I shall return to the topic of creaturely freedom in von Balthasar below; at this point I wish merely to point out the similarities and distinctions between the two accounts of creaturely freedom begotten in God’s glory. Von Balthasar’s tendency, though, is to emphasize God’s love more than God’s freedom.27 Thus, talking about God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, von Balthasar writes, ‘what seems to us to be “the accidental truth of history” is the revelation of his absolute freedom, as this is in God himself, the freedom of eternal self-giving out of unfathomable love.’28 This is, of course, very close to Barth and is more a matter of emphasis than absolute differentiation, yet it is a real difference, and can be seen particularly in von Balthasar’s theme of love expressed above all in self-giving and self-emptying. Von Balthasar expresses this clearly when he continues later in the abovecited passage: This absolute freedom of the love within the Godhead is poured out over the entire form (Gestalt) of revelation, gives it its being and structure, and is present in it. From this point, we may sense anew – indeed, in reality we may sense for the first time, after all our preliminary labours, what ultimately the divine glory is, what ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’ is (2 Cor. 4.6).29

For Barth God’s glory has a more declarative character, it is ‘God Himself in the truth and capacity and act in which He makes Himself known as God’, which is at its core ‘the freedom to love’.30 Von Balthasar nuances this somewhat; where 26 27

28 29 30

Rodney Howsare, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Protestantism (London: T&T Clark, 2005), pp. 148, 149. I do not mean to imply that von Balthasar shirks away from affirming God’s freedom in the strongest terms. For example, in GL 1, 429f. or in GL VII, he writes: ‘Nothing can be more free than the Logos of God, since God is his own freely ruling norm both in himself and in his self-revelation’ (p. 316). GL VII, p. 17. GL VII, pp. 17, 18. CD II.1, p. 641.

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for Barth, the core of God’s glory is God’s freedom to love, for von Balthasar, it is a love which is free. Again, this is a subtle rather than drastic difference, but von Balthasar seems to hold that love is the more basic term, characterized by an absolute freedom, whereas Barth emphasizes God’s freedom, which is eternally worked out in love. While this is a slight distinction, it results in substantial differences at other points in the doctrine. Furthermore, when Barth uses language of overflow in connection with God’s glory, it is God’s immanent joy which ‘shines out’ and ‘overflows in its richness’.31 For von Balthasar, on the other hand, it is the love present in and among the Three of the Trinity which overflows in expressions of God’s glory, a love which is more than a declaration, a love which touches and draws in the creation to the Trinitarian relations. Moreover, this love has a particular shape which flows out of von Balthasar’s interpretation of Christ and his mission. For von Balthasar the specific shape of God’s love is expressed through the self-giving and self-emptying of Christ on the cross. In this we can also see his greater emphasis on the kenosis, the self-emptying, of the Son, which von Balthasar particularly presents not in terms of the self-emptying of the divine taking on human form (Gestalt), but in terms of the Son’s ‘surrender’ and ‘absolute obedience’ to the mission given to him by the Father, in solidarity with sinful humanity.32 To nuance this ‘obedience’ a bit it should be said that, for von Balthasar, ‘obedience’ in God is only analogous to the obedience of the creature to the creator, flowing from the dependence of the creature on the creator. An ‘obedience’ between persons of the Trinity is not meant to imply subordination or multiple wills.33 Gerald O’Hanlon summarizes von Balthasar plainly on this point, writing ‘there is no creaturely obedience in any univocal sense within God.’34 The ‘obedience’ in God may be likened to a ‘filial attitude’ in humans, indicating the utterly self-giving nature of God’s love, first among the Three, and then into the creation.35 Thus, for von Balthasar, the glory of God is an overflow of the divine Trinitarian self-love into the world, expressed above all through the mission of Christ, which is a way of self-emptying love for the creature. 31 32 33

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CD II.1, p. 647. GL VII, pp. 212–14. Nicholas J. Healy, The Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Being as Communion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 107. Gerald F. O’Hanlon, The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 44. O’Hanlon, Immutability of God, p. 45.

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Glory begets glory: Love and freedom In Chapter 2, I advanced the hypothesis that, for Barth, the glory of God begets glory in the creation (so, for example, God is glorious in God’s freedom, and God acts to free God’s creature with a freedom to glorify God). We saw there that this possibility is not followed out when it comes to God being glorious in God’s love, for Barth does not say (in explicit connection with God’s glory) that God’s glorious love for the creature begets a complementary love for God. What if we return to this hypothesis for von Balthasar? With von Balthasar’s emphasis on the divine self-giving and self-emptying, there is greater correlative emphasis on the way in which this love begets a similar responding love, making an explicit connection between the ‘selfabandonment of Jesus’ and discipleship considered as imitation of Jesus.36 This imitation, made possible by the Holy Spirit, is a twofold obedience: ‘the obedience of faith, allowing what is possible only to Christ to be bestowed and impressed on the believer by God’ as well as an ‘attempt at an “ethical” obedience of imitation, which in the confidence of faith in Christ “abandons” or “hates” everything and one’s own self ’.37 Von Balthasar locates this ‘paradox of Christ’ in both exaltation (being made judge of all) and abasement (giving totally of self) within the Trinitarian relations, showing that this dynamism of self-giving is not merely a function of the economic Trinity but of the immanent Trinity as well. He concludes: ‘This points to a self-giving so divine and absolute that it can be answered from the side of the creature only with the perfect fiat of the “handmaid of the Lord” (as the basic attitude of the Church), whereby man lets God be what he will to be and allows himself to receive from God and be formed by him, as God wills and as much as he wills.’38 So we see that with von Balthasar, the glory of the Lord, expressed chiefly in the sacrificial self-giving love of Christ in his mission, explicitly begets a responding, self-giving love of the creature, in a specifically Marian form. (We shall return to this Marian form below, under considerations of human agency in God’s glory.) Thus we might say that for von Balthasar, unlike Barth, the specific shape of God’s glory as love creates among creatures a responding love in accord with the shape of that glory.

36 37 38

GL VII, p. 159. GL VII, p. 160. GL VII, p. 161.

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We might also notice that, as with Barth, for von Balthasar the glory of God, which expresses God’s freedom, also frees the creature.39 Speaking generally of the creature, von Balthasar explains that her ‘form’ (Gestalt) is the identity of her life, which gives it its meaning, freeing her from anxiety and self-concern, freeing her for her highest possibilities.40 Further, in being conformed to Christ, the believer is empowered to become the ‘form (Gestalt) which has been willed and instituted by Christ’.41 It is in embracing this form that the creature becomes who she is most deeply meant by God to become. Von Balthasar elaborates that ‘the flight away from self to God is not a “forgetting of self ” (Phil. 3.13) in the sense that man thereby loses himself. Rather, in the experience of the Spirit there is bestowed on man the deepest possible experience of himself: for the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of revelation which illuminates the human spirit, in which it is immanent, by telling man what he is.’42 Mark McIntosh summarizes this dynamic well, saying ‘obedience to the call of God not only turns out to make that calling present in the world but is the means by which the respondents become fully the true persons they were created to be.’43 This form of self-giving and self-emptying expressed by Christ as the highest height of the glory of God becomes an inhabitable form for believers, through the work of the Holy Spirit, and this allows the creature to become who she may be in God; that is to say, it is through this glory-expressing conformity that she is made free. There is another avenue of convergence with Barth here, within von Balthasar’s affirmations about both love and freedom. For Barth, the creature in the face of God’s glory responds with her ‘life-obedience’. For von Balthasar, the creature responds to God’s loving self-giving with a similar self-giving to the mission given her by God, in which she inhabits the ‘form’ God sets forth in Christ. Since von Balthasar sets out the mission of Christ primarily in terms of self-dispossession (in the manner of a metaphorical ‘impoverishment’) and obedience, the complement to God’s glory which is begotten in creatures is a ‘life-obedience’ of a rather specific shape, decentred and expressive of self-giving love. This is a response to God’s prior self-giving, a response enabled by the Holy Spirit, more than a response to a ‘command’. Furthermore, this creaturely analogue of God’s glory also creates a sociality, as the service which it stirs up in creatures is expressed in love for God and love for neighbours. There 39 40 41 42 43

GL VII, p. 305. GL I, pp. 23, 24. GL I, p. 28. GL I, p. 231. Mark McIntosh, ‘Christology’, in Edward Oakes, SJ, and David Moss (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 26.

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is much here that satisfies, as it can be considered as an expansion of Barth’s account of God’s love and glory. Yet, as I explore below, this is also essentially a ‘straight-line’ obedience, involving hyperbolic self-dispossession, a contestable characterization of sin and an attenuated notion of sociality. And so while von Balthasar explicitly says more here than Barth in terms of God’s glory begetting love and freedom in the creature, von Balthasar does not actually go as far as it would seem.

Honour, light, beauty We have seen how Barth explores divine glory under the three biblicallyderived headings of honour, light and beauty. He exhibits a further tendency to resolve these three images, particularly when it comes to the Mediator, in favour of light, as a declaration of the glory of God to the creation as a function of God’s self-revelation. Further, of the three, he tends to place less emphasis on beauty, not allowing it to take on an ‘independent significance’.44 Nevertheless, as von Balthasar recognizes, Barth does far more to restore beauty as a serious theological category than has any other Protestant theologian, and represents a ‘decisive breakthrough’.45 It is at this point in particular that von Balthasar’s project greatly diverges from Barth’s (although, characteristically, it is also inspired by Barth at this very point of divergence).46 Although von Balthasar is not intending to contradict Barth entirely here and grant beauty ‘independent significance’, nevertheless he is willing to explore beauty at great length in order to articulate a theological aesthetics as a means of perceiving the glory of the Lord in the world. In fact, beauty is revelatory: in Christ and his mission, ‘God himself appears as expressive in his very nature.’ Because of this expressiveness, ‘the aesthetic form (Gestalt) . . . lies at the heart of the Christian mystery: it reveals substantially and definitively.’47 This is a decisive break with Barth’s scruples about worldly beauty (a break made possible in part by von Balthasar’s recourse to the analogy of being). Despite this departure, von Balthasar’s work continues to show a family resemblance to Barth’s manner of theologizing in terms of maintaining christocentricity. Indeed, it is clear that for von Balthasar this is 44 45 46

47

CD II.1, p. 666. GL I, p. 56. Christopher Steck, SJ, The Ethical thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Herder and Herder, 2001), p. 82. GL IV, p. 33.

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a christocentrically focused analogy of being and not a general philosophical principle adopted before particular theological considerations. A further similarity between Barth and von Balthasar on beauty is found in von Balthasar’s desire to hew closely to revelation to inform his notion of beauty, as opposed to drawing (primarily) on commonly accepted definitions. Writing retrospectively about The Glory of the Lord, von Balthasar says, ‘what is involved there is primarily not “beauty” in the modern or even in the philosophical (transcendental) sense, but the surpassing of beauty in “glory” in the sense of the splendour of the divinity of God himself as manifested in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and reflected, according to Paul, in Christians who look upon their Lord.’48 Here as elsewhere von Balthasar works to norm his concepts in light of God, attempting to hold other discourses at arm’s length and filling these concepts out with that which he finds in God.49 In this movement, he explicitly works to place the self-emptying of Christ on the cross and in death at the core of this beauty: ‘[N]o logic can be more necessary than the absolute Logos, since every logic has its origin in him. Therefore, God’s self-revelation, precisely at the point where it goes into the Cross and Hell, must knock down before itself all inner-worldly concepts of the beautiful, and then, by transcending them in a sovereign manner, give them norm and fulfilment.’50 We see here, then, von Balthasar’s Christological concentration and his allowance for terms to be redefined in light of what he takes to be divine revelation, in ways congruent with Barth. This does not mean that he takes manifestations of earthly or natural beauty as illegitimate or insignificant or totally discontinuous with the beauty of God, but one finds that for von Balthasar divine beauty – which is glory – is more comprehensive.51 This desire to start with God and God’s revelation is why von Balthasar starts his theology with aesthetics: Only such a stance can perceive the divine as such, without obscuring it beforehand by a theological relationship to the cosmos . . . or to man. The first desideratum for seeing objectively is the ‘letting be’ of God’s self-revelation, even if the latter is also ‘his eternal love for me’. This first step is not to master the materials of perception by imposing our own categories on them, but an attitude 48

49 50 51

Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘Another Ten Years – 1975’, in John Riches (ed.), The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994a), p. 224. See also, for example, GL I, p. 432. GL VII, p. 316. Oliver Davies, ‘The Theological Aesthetics’, in Edward T. Oakes, SJ, and David Moss (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 136.

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of service to the object. . . . In The Glory of the Lord the Ignatian ad majorem Dei gloriam . . . is opened up to the Johannine interpretation of the total biblical unity kabod- dόxa -gloria and this to the final form of revelation’s own selfinterpretation.52

This is rather different than Barth’s working to understand God solely in terms of God’s self-declaration. Nevertheless, von Balthasar and Barth described their projects as desiring to see God as God is, without human concepts determining in advance who God may be. Further, both are keen on seeing revelation as ‘selfinterpreting’; the difference here is whether this ‘self-interpreting’ revelation of God’s glory is mediated through a worldly, created beauty as a reflection of the divine glory or not. Intriguingly, for both of them, since this revelation is ‘self-interpreting’ it does not engage human agency in terms of interpretation or understanding (beyond hearing). We may also notice here a theme we shall pick up below, under considerations of human agency, and that is the influence of Ignatius of Loyola, specifically in regard to von Balthasar’s Christology and his resulting account of the human in God.53 Self-dispossession and obedience have already loomed large in von Balthasar’s account, both of the glory of God in Christ and the human engagement with that ‘form’. To this is added an Ignatian indifference as von Balthasar explicitly brackets out what other theologians call God pro me, trying instead to start with God Godself, a ‘letting be’, God in God’s self-revelation without consideration for (while also not denying the truth of) God’s love for oneself. To return to von Balthasar’s account of beauty in relation to glory, again, like Barth, he is careful to draw on what he takes to be God’s self-revelation in Christ. But because he holds that the incarnation founds an analogy of being, he also talks in metaphysical categories, such as being (and Being), and this has implications for his account of beauty and glory (differentiating it greatly from Barth’s). Drawing on Romans 1, von Balthasar avers that the creation is itself a manifestation of God as creator, and therefore ‘it follows that this manifestation takes its form (Gestalt) from the form (Gestalt) of the world itself. It is the Being of things – and not something alongside it or behind it – which is the revelation of God’s eternal and omnipotent Being.’54 Although the likeness between God 52

53

54

Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘In Retrospect’, in John Riches (ed.), The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994b), pp. 213, 214. Mark A. McIntosh, Christology from Within: Spirituality and the Incarnation in Hans Urs von Balthasar (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), p. 23. GL I, p. 430.

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and creatures is situated within an ‘ever-greater difference’, this is still a true ‘seeing’: ‘the “vision” of the invisible God through the mediation of creatures allows us to “grasp” his divine Being, different though it is from all creatures, and his eternal might, which is revealed in his act of creation.’55 The divinity of God which is mediated through God’s creatures is what is called glory. Although this revelation through creation is not simply continued in the revelation in Christ, they are consonant with each other, rather than contradictory: the world’s ‘form’ which was expressive of God’s glory as creator is restored, crowned and perfected by the appearing of Christ.56 The upshot of this is that von Balthasar can talk much more freely about human participation and transformation in God.57 As von Balthasar states, the [created] spirit’s horizon is not confined to worldly being (ens univocum), but extends to absolute Being (ens analogum), and only in this light can it think, will, and love. . . . Being itself here unveils its final countenance, which for us receives the name of Trinitarian love; only with this final mystery does light fall at last on that other mystery: why there is Being at all and why it enters our horizon as light and truth and goodness and beauty.58

It is this move which allows von Balthasar to speak more fully in terms of the glory of God begetting glory in the creature, in the form of love.

Glory begets glory: Beauty To return to the hypothesis entertained earlier, whether the glory of God begets a glory within the creation, we might ask what the effects are on the creation of this divine glory which makes its appearance in beauty. This section will anticipate some matters taken up in the next section on human agency. A major focus of Volume I is the development of a ‘theory of rapture’, which considers ‘the incarnation of God’s glory and the consequent elevation of man to participate in that glory’.59 Von Balthasar characterizes this as a ‘double and reciprocal ekstasis – God’s “venturing forth” to man and man’s to God’, found in God’s revelation to humanity and human faith in God, which describe ‘man’s participation in God’.60 This ‘participation’ in God by the human through faith 55 56 57 58 59 60

GL I, p. 431. GL I, pp. 431, 432. GL I, p. 157. GL I, p. 158. GL I, p. 125. GL I, pp. 125, 126.

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involves growth in the form set by Christ. This compelling form ‘snatches up’ the beholder in the way that they might be ‘transported’ by natural beauty.61 In this experience is a twofold simultaneous movement of being expropriated out of one’s own life and into the Triune relations and taking the message of life with God to oneself.62 As the Christian becomes this form, ‘the exterior of this form must express and reflect its interior to the world in a credible manner, and the interior must be confirmed, justified, and made love-worthy in its radiant beauty through the truth of the exterior that manifests it.’63 Through this conformity, ‘Christian form (Gestalt) is the most beautiful thing that may be found in the human realm.’64 So we may see that, in the encounter with God’s glory in Christ, von Balthasar holds that the beauty of Christ becomes the beauty of the Christian, as she conforms to Christ’s form through participation in God through the Holy Spirit. For von Balthasar, the human engagement with the glory of God is primarily through aesthetic form in the world, and therefore in terms of beauty – a beauty decisively shaped by the form of Christ and his mission. Thus, beauty remains his primary emphasis in exploring God’s glory, more so than the other biblical categories engaged by Barth, of light and honour. Compared with beauty, he says relatively less about the other two images as central to divine glory.65 Having surveyed von Balthasar on divine glory through the lenses set by the previous two chapters, we have seen how he retains numerous Barth-inspired distinctives in his account, yet is able to go beyond it to talk more fully about human agency ‘participating’ in divine glory, in being drawn into the Trinitarian relations and inhabiting the form of God’s glory revealed in and set by Jesus Christ. Unlike Barth, von Balthasar is able to think about glory in such a manner that, in a certain way, it also glorifies the creation, begetting among creatures the love and freedom which God’s glory expresses, as well as the encompassing, selfemptying beauty of the form of Christ. As a way of summarizing von Balthasar’s teaching on God’s glory, we might notice that at each step along the way so far in this chapter there has been a confluence of four terms: glory, love, beauty – and obedience. It is to this latter term that we must now turn. 61 62 63 64 65

GL I, p. 33. GL VII, pp. 399, 400. GL I, p. 28. GL I, p. 28. Not to say that von Balthasar says nothing on these topics: for example, he often speaks of the way in which aesthetic form (Gestalt) ‘shines forth’ (GL I, p. 420), and he implicitly mentions the honour of God and explicitly commends the renouncing of ‘one’s own honour’ (GL I, p. 135).

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Human agency in the face of God’s glory Obedience, for von Balthasar, plays a prominent role in the human interface with the glory of God. Although it does for Barth as well, it is spoken of more often in The Glory of the Lord, and figures in more centrally to von Balthasar’s account of humans in relation to divine glory, owing in part to von Balthasar’s greater willingness to discuss the human in God, as opposed to Barth’s stronger focus on God Godself in discussing divine glory. This greater emphasis on obedience flows naturally from (as we have seen) von Balthasar’s (1) interpreting Christ’s mission largely in terms of self-dispossession and selfemptying; (2) stating God’s glory in more encompassing terms as incorporating this kenotic movement of Christ, with this glory tied more closely to specific moments in Scripture and the life of Christ; and (3) asserting that believers are drawn into the Triune relations of complete mutual self-giving and receiving, as well as growing in the form of God’s glory set by Christ. Coupled with von Balthasar’s emphasis on sin as prideful self-assertion (as we shall see), all this contributes to a scheme in which the human is called on to obey God in what is essentially a straight-line manner. Despite von Balthasar’s attempts to avoid heteronomy and assert a divinely dependent autonomy (approaching a ‘nonheteronomous dependence’, in my terms), the weight he gives to self-emptying and the manner in which he spells out the Marian form of the Church and the ‘active receptivity’66 involved in beholding the other, he still gives what is, in the final analysis, a heteronomous account of human agency in the light of divine glory, beholden to ‘straight-line’ obedience, and bracketing out human thinking and acting. We shall explore this matter in four sections, recalling the terms set out in Chapter 3. First, we shall turn to consider the obedience of Christ and its importance as a criterion for human obedience and agency. Then, we shall examine von Balthasar’s use of categories from Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Third, the nature of human obedience and agency in von Balthasar will be considered, with a particular concern for the ‘Marian’ nature of the Church. Finally, I raise the question of the possibility of discernment and faithful questioning for von Balthasar. 66

The German verb empfangen can mean ‘to receive’, ‘to welcome’ and ‘to conceive (a child)’. These three meanings continually arise in von Balthasar’s discussion of human ‘receiving’ and ‘receptivity’. (Lucy Gardner and David Moss, ‘Something like Time; Something like the Sexes – an essay in reception’, in Lucy Gardner, David Moss, Ben Quash and Graham Ward (eds.), Balthasar at the End of Modernity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), p. 70).

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The obedience of Christ A clear and central focus of von Balthasar’s articulation of God’s glory in Jesus Christ is Christ’s self-abasement, self-surrender and emptying (kenosis). Although Barth could talk about Christ abasing himself, in terms of going ‘into the far country’ on behalf of humanity for their salvation, he did not make it such a centrepiece in his overall scheme as von Balthasar, nor did he hold it up as a form for human imitation, nor did he locate it as explicitly within God’s glory.67 For von Balthasar, the kenosis of Christ in the self-impoverishment and renunciation of any obvious worldly ‘glory’ in going to the cross is both the expression of the true glory of God and also an act of absolute obedience and self-giving of Son to Father, in which the Son entrusts his ‘glory’ entirely to the Father. The connection between God’s glory, love, beauty (form) and obedience is pervasive and unmistakeable for von Balthasar: ‘[T]he glorification of the Son by the Father is understood as the proof brought by the Father that every glorious fruit that has resulted from the mission of the Son has its final foundation in the perfect, absolute obedience, and gives glory to this obedience too as the perfected revelation of the eternal love of the Son.’68 Furthermore, the Father glorifies the Son ‘by accomplishing and revealing the identity of obedience and eternal love, of Cross and Resurrection; the Spirit does this, by instituting in the Church . . . the unity of love between Father and Son that was lived out in the distance of the Passion for the sake of the world – for he himself is this unity of love.’69 This Trinitarian love, which is the ‘truth’ of God’s glory, ‘is a radiance that has its source only in the momentum of the obedience on the Cross. . . . [A] love that is decisively Christian (and ultimately divine and Trinitarian) if it is love out of obedience to Christ, and so love as a participation in the accomplishing of the obedience of Christ’.70 It is also an obedience anticipated by the mediators between God and humanity found in the old covenant.71 This gives rise to a Church which embodies the loving, self-giving form of Christ for one another, glorifying Christ through their obedience. Mark McIntosh summarizes this movement within Christ’s life well, writing that this theme of the relentless momentum of self-abandon, in which each level of indifference is sacrificed to an even deeper self-surrender, bears significant 67 68 69 70 71

CD IV.1, pp. 157–210 for Barth on the Son going into the ‘Far Country’. GL VII, p. 250. GL VII, p. 255. GL VII, p. 256. GL VI, p. 191.

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fruit in von Balthasar’s interpretation of Jesus’ earthly ministry: Christ is forced to give over each of his accomplishments, until finally, all his teaching and healing, his mission itself, is surrendered in apparent failure, and in Gethsemane even his capacity to surrender to God’s will seems shaken and nearly stripped from him.72

Thus is set a pattern of complete self-donation of the Son to the Father in ‘indifference’, a pattern which is intrinsic to the form of Christ projected into the world and inhabited in the Church, in loving obedience. This self-giving provides the criterion for all Christian love and obedience and naturally raises the question whether this is, in my terms, a ‘straightline’ obedience or not. But before turning to this, we will examine the note of indifference present in von Balthasar’s writing on obedience, a note borrowed from Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, who exerted a profound influence on von Balthasar’s theology.

Ignatian indifference, self-dispossession Von Balthasar often speaks in terms of an ‘active receptivity’ of the human in God, about ‘availability’ to God, as well as talking about the ‘indifference’ of the believer to herself in relation to God’s call (an indifference that is able even to embrace martyrdom as God’s call). These terms reflect a specific debt that von Balthasar owes to Ignatius of Loyola. Writing about Ignatius and indifference, von Balthasar holds that Loyola went beyond previous medieval mystics in being able to see that indifference does not mean ‘the inevitable annihilation of man’s own being and will’.73 On the contrary, ‘the particular will of God, which is to be actively grasped and carried out, must also be actively pursued.’74 This pursuit is undertaken in ‘co-operation’ with God, in the form of the creature’s ‘abandonment, surrender, service’.75 Although von Balthasar clearly wants to affirm a creaturely activity here (and elsewhere)76 we also begin to detect a tension which approaches a problematic self-alienation, a bracketing out of one’s own agency: although the

72 73 74 75 76

McIntosh, Christology, pp. 62, 63. GL V, p. 104. GL V, p. 105. GL V, p. 105. For example, ‘Movement Toward God’, in Explorations in Theology 3: Creator Spirit. (et passim.) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 45.

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human is active, the human activity seems to be primarily one of keeping one’s own agency in check.77 This theme (and tension) is present throughout The Glory of the Lord. Writing on the experience of faith, von Balthasar makes an explicit connection between the ‘disposition’ of Christ and the ‘disposition’ of the human expropriated for God. He writes: ‘[W]hen [a Christian] begins to come to grips with his expropriation, he can only marvel at how his most intimate condition and disposition have in fact been transposed to a sphere which to him is unknown and unaccustomed.’78 The depths of the Christian are now only understood ‘in light of the dogma of God’s Incarnation’.79 ‘But this dogma is precisely not an external “other” over against the Christian; the Christian has been incorporated into the dogma down to the very foundation of his self and in every fibre and vibration of his sensibility: to be sure, it is “he” who still lives, but he is no longer an autonomous ego since Christ has begun to live in him. And, of course, this holds not merely for his total disposition, but just as much for his acts of knowing and willing.’80 While it is certainly true here that von Balthasar (and Ignatius) are not intending to recommend a passive, quietist attitude towards the following of God’s will, it is telling that human knowing, willing and acting are ‘transposed’ into another sphere. Is the assumption that they must be so transposed because they are not only all touched by sin, but that there is nothing in their present disposition which is redeemable (or beloved) as is? What notion of sin would underwrite this? One final quotation might serve to point up how pervasive is this tendency. Writing earlier in Volume I on the experience of faith, von Balthasar states that ‘In faith and through it . . . I am made open and dispossessed of self. . . . The important thing is the movement away from myself, the preference of what is other and greater, and precisely the person who has been expropriated for God does not want to become fully secure with regard to this Other and Greater.’ He elaborates, saying that ‘Christian experience can mean only progressive growth of one’s own existence into Christ’s existence, on the basis of Christ’s continuing action in taking shape in the believer.’81 Again we encounter the ongoing theme of movement ‘away from self ’, as though self were entirely the problem, the sole and unique locus of sin and godlessness. 77

78 79 80 81

GL I, p. 451: ‘before [infinite Freedom] created reason must persevere in an attitude of primary obedience that is beyond all demands, longings, enterprises.’ GL I, p. 254, citing Ignatius’ autobiography. GL I, p. 254. GL I, p. 254. GL I, p. 224.

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To be sure, there is a tension at this point in von Balthasar, for he also wants to assert that in this process of expropriation for God and conformity to Christ, the Christian does not ‘lose’ herself, but rather the Spirit gives her ‘the deepest possible experience’ of herself.82 McIntosh reinforces this, writing that von Balthasar holds that Ignatian indifference and availability to God never in the least causes one to cease being ‘a spontaneous and free human subject’. (quoting GL V, p. 106).  .  .  . Self-surrender to the divinely given mission (Sendung) renders the human being ‘transparent’ to the ‘Sender’. It does not undermine human freedom but installs it within a greater freedom, and draws it into a new and more complete unity with the very source of personhood.83

I fully concede that this is von Balthasar’s intention, to hold self-abandonment and self-receiving together; indeed, he believes that he observes just this pattern within the Three of the Trinity, particularly in the Son’s total self-donation to the Father, which the Father ‘returns’ to the Son. Yet I also think that he does not entirely succeed on this count, either, for three reasons: first, although von Balthasar means to affirm human agency in rather specific terms, even preserving ‘human autonomy’, the almost hyperbolic sense of complete self-abandonment and self-dispossession seems to bracket out any human thinking, doing, or even identity in continuity from one state to another. Second, by strong implication from what has been said to this point, von Balthasar subscribes to one rather specific notion of what constitutes sin, and this serves as a stricture on what he can say. Last – and I shall explore this point in greater detail in the next section, on human obedience – von Balthasar seems incapable of thinking simultaneous (as opposed to sequential) mutual constitution. Returning to the first point, the lack of continuity of personhood implied by his notion of self-dispossession, McIntosh explores the notion of Christian indifference which von Balthasar takes up, saying that he is particularly taken with Eckhart’s position that true indifference requires one to hand self over to God so completely that God ‘takes over care and responsi­ bility for him,’ even ‘takes over his suffering, which comes to him only by way of God and in that way is transfigured by God.’ What is important for our purposes here is the theme of indifference as a means of divine presence in the believer.84 82 83 84

GL I, pp. 230, 231. McIntosh, Christology, p. 66. McIntosh, Christology, p. 63.

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Yet I am suspicious of the way that this indifference, along with self-abandonment and self-dispossession, brackets out human agency. First of all, it seems to imply that God is not involved with the self prior to this moment of ‘handing over’, that there is a decisive break which enables God’s agency with the human self. Second, it implies that the ‘self ’ is a problem, something which must be left behind (even if it is received back), rather than an acting agent led and inspired by the Spirit. Third, it suggests that human agency, human thinking and doing, are not involved following this ‘handing over’, that prior to this self-dispossession there may have been human critical and discerning faculties but following it, even with a self received back from God, the mode of being is obedience, which continues to be worked out in self-donation. To be clear, what I mean to recommend over against this is not a free selfsubsistent autonomous subject. As Christopher Steck notices of von Balthasar, ‘relationality is basic to human existence. The human person does not exist primarily in herself and only occasionally and accidentally in the act of communication (i.e. offering herself, revealing herself) to a subject.’85 I entirely agree, and would affirm a self in God who can be decentred, existing as a selffor-others – but truly as a self, constituted by God in a non-heteronomous dependence, and living with others in that same manner, accepting their existence (and its form and content) as a gift, and involved in that same gifting (and receiving) process with others. This is slightly distinct from the opinion of von Balthasar who, while holding this process of giving and self-donation to be crucial, intends self-donation to the other to be total, with the self received back from the other. However, I intend it as a situation in which the self is already received and enabled as a gifted self, to give back to others. I shall elaborate further on this in the following section, with closer attention to obedience. To return to Ignatius and anticipate a later section on faithful questioning, one aspect of his thought which appealed to von Balthasar was that Ignatius put self-abandonment at the beginning of the process of spiritual formation, rather than at the end.86 Over against this, I would want to see this process as present (in a dialectical fashion) throughout the process of spiritual growth. One does not give oneself a call or commission from God. But in accepting a commission from God, it is still a self-continuous self which accepts the commission. This self is in the process of being transformed by God; but it is also a self which has (prior to the commission) been created and constituted 85 86

Steck, Ethical Thought, p. 21. McIntosh, Christology, p. 76.

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as a person and – I take it – saved by God. God is at work throughout. At the same time, these gifts from God and reflection on these gifts also instil a sense of one’s own incompleteness and finitude and can also give a (healthy) suspicion of one’s motives and desires. Within this healthy suspicion, one also becomes aware of not fully grasping the extent to which these motives and desires are themselves from God, or may be congruent with God’s desires. But this not-knowing and this gentle suspicion implies that there must be an ongoing human agency throughout the process of formation, ever discerning, ever hearing, for the human seeking and trusting God is still a human doing so, with the gift of both the desire and the ability to do so from God. We may grow and deepen in our trust and discernment, but our agency in God remains human, our agency, not something which is purely divine, unassailable as to motive, unsusceptible to querying from others, self-evident in its holiness. This process of growth and formation in God is undertaken in complete trust in God, yet with a keen awareness of our capacity for self-deception and sin, and the impossibility of (in this life) a trust in God which is shorn of one’s humanity. Turning to my second query, about the particular account of sin upon which von Balthasar relies, Ben Quash has explored this matter in his treatment of von Balthasar’s dramatic view of history. Reflecting on what Barth and von Balthasar take as the human creature’s characteristic form of sin, he writes that the latter takes the fairly conventional line that Prometheanism – overreaching pride – is the problem. . . . von Balthasar’s diagnosis of sin generally remains content with this one (admittedly momentous) symptom. Indeed the relatively uniform character of the problem for von Balthasar will be what permits his comprehensive advocacy of a single remedy (a remedy which  .  .  . is clearly identifiable as a modulation of ‘indifference’).87

Over against this, he places Barth, who provides a much more nuanced account of sin, including pride, falsehood, and sloth; the latter form of sin finds humanity not as a heroic rebel – think Prometheus or Lucifer – but as ‘a lazy-bones, a sluggard, a good-for-nothing, a slow coach and a loafer’.88 87

88

Ben Quash, Theology and the Drama of History (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 156. CD IV.2, p. 404.

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‘So  then, while von Balthasar laments self-assertion (a kind of illegitimate attempt at freedom), Barth in this case condemns the refusal of freedom.’89 We shall return to Quash’s analysis of von Balthasar and Barth on freedom and obedience in the next section. McIntosh presents von Balthasar’s general notion of sin differently, though. He writes that ‘in its most fundamental form [sin] is in [von Balthasar’s] eyes always the “terrible possibility and reality – finite freedom rejecting infinite love.”’90 Sin is thus found concretely in ‘actual human choices against the offer of God’s love and companionship’.91 This notion is broader than simply ‘pride’, but still involves humanity ‘doing something’, namely rejecting God’s love, turning away from God, to which von Balthasar’s sense of remedy is a movement away from self.92 Appropriate human agency in God, for von Balthasar, is not variously engaged but occupied primarily in self-dispossession for the sake of communion with God and engagement in one’s God-given mission. If the character of sin were (essentially) human self-assertion, this makes sense.93 But if sin might be considered in more encompassing terms to include sloth – perhaps along the lines of ‘humanity being curved in on itself ’94 – then this becomes a strangely attenuated account of human agency in the light of God’s glory, one which is repeated in von Balthasar’s treatment of human obedience to God, particularly as seen in the Marian form of the Church, topics to which we now turn.

89 90

91 92 93

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Quash, Drama, p. 156. McIntosh, Christology, p. 168, n. 7, quoting Hans Urs von Balthasar, Does Jesus Know Us – Do We Know Him? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1980), p. 33). McIntosh, Christology, p. 168, n. 7. GL VI, p. 216. It is surely telling that in von Balthasar’s first major book, drawing on his doctoral work Apokalypse der deutchen Seele (3 vols. Salzburg: A Pustet, 1937–9), he identifies two equally problematic approaches to ‘the riddle that is existence’, the ‘Promethean’ and the ‘Dionysian’. In Promethean solutions, the ‘human “I” exalts itself in self-affirmation, seizing fire from heaven . . . aiming at total mastery of existence’. The Dionysian perspective, on the other hand, is more tragic, featuring humanity’s attempt to overcome its finite limits; rather than relying on reason, the human creature in this case flies ‘towards the unnameable heights of whatever lies behind everyday existence’, followed by a disenchanted falling back ‘into a sense of the absurdity of everything’. (Nichols, The Word, p. xi.) The fatal error in both of these tendencies is the disregard for Christian revelation. Most important to my point here, however, is the fact that both of these problematic movements towards self-transcendence share the characteristic of self-assertion and aspiration. For further exploration of this theme, from various perspectives, see for example Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in se (London: T&T Clark, 2007); as well as Alistair McFadyen, Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). (especially chapter 7); Christine M. Smith, ‘Sin and Evil in Feminist Thought’, Theology Today, 50 (1993), pp. 208–19.

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Human obedience to God I remarked above that for von Balthasar the concepts of glory, love, beauty and obedience are closely connected.95 Although this section focuses on obedience, it soon becomes clear that the other three concepts are close at hand. To these four, we may add a fifth, also mentioned above: freedom. For von Balthasar, freedom is particularly joined to obedience. Indeed, as Quash observes, ‘there can be no doubt that both Barth and von Balthasar order freedom to obedience. They both . . . have an “Augustinian” concept of freedom.’96 That is, both speak of freedom in terms that are positive (freedom to or freedom for) rather than negative or libertarian (freedom from), as well as holding that freedom is in some sense derivative (a gift of God rather than an inalienable possession of the creature). Both Barth and von Balthasar hold that the creature’s engagement with freedom takes on a specific shape, rather than merely being the absence of constraint or hindrance (‘Hercules at a crossroad’, as Barth disparaged). One becomes free as one takes up the Christian life. While they give broadly similar accounts of freedom, it is also the case that von Balthasar makes more of the creature’s freedom in a way that Barth seems not to. As mentioned above, Barth and von Balthasar differ somewhat on the positive shape of this freedom: for Barth, it is freedom and permission to thank God; for von Balthasar, it is the space of created freedom in which to respond to God, and the form of this response for human is self-surrender and electing God’s choice.97 For von Balthasar, given the way that he parses out the love and freedom of God, it is important that there be this created space in which the human creature might respond to God’s love in the form of Christ, hence herself growing in love for God, and in that way becoming free. This is not to hedge on von Balthasar’s account of freedom being essentially positive (rather than libertarian, as if any response the creature offers in this created ‘space’ would be free), but to specify the God-created ‘space’ which constitutes the possibility of this free response of love.98 So freedom is oriented to love. 95

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Although there are several secondary sources which discuss von Balthasar’s ethics and Christology in broad terms, there is none which discusses obedience in explicit connection with God’s glory. Nevertheless, the work of McIntosh (Christology from Within) and Steck (The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar) are helpful in analysing obedience through the sweep of von Balthasar’s writings. Quash (Theology and the Drama of History) looks in detail at von Balthasar on freedom and obedience through the Theo-Drama. These sources provide an analysis in a broader scope which is compatible with von Balthasar’s teaching on obedience in The Glory of the Lord. Quash, Drama, p. 158, citing von Balthasar, Karl Barth, p. 129; although Howsare in particular wants to point out von Balthasar’s allergy to any sense of ‘determinism’ which might be found in Augustine. (von Balthasar and Protestantism, p. 149.) GL V, p. 105. GL VII, p. 268.

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Yet as Quash notes, freedom is also ordered to obedience. This positive freedom to respond is, for von Balthasar, enacted in creaturely self-surrender and obedience. McIntosh notices that, for von Balthasar, obedience ‘always includes a divine gift of interior freedom and energy, and it is always a response of love’.99 Thus the response of obedience is itself made possible by the freedom and energy given by God, and the character of this obedience is loving. In fact, McIntosh states that, for von Balthasar, ‘obedience is only true .  .  . when it is undertaken not out of fear or servitude but in joyful response to the Beloved.’100 In exploring the process of glorification of the Father by the Son in the Gospel of John, von Balthasar depicts John as nearly equating love and obedience, saying ‘this law – obedience as the sole and sufficient proof of love – is continually impressed on the disciples.’101 It becomes clear that, for von Balthasar, love and obedience are closely linked; their correspondence is the ‘central concern of a theological aesthetics’.102 Indeed, in Christ they are said to be ‘identical’.103 It might even be said that for creatures, love is the internal basis of obedience and obedience is the external form of love.104 Von Balthasar connects beauty with obedience as well. Holding that beauty rises into prominence throughout the exposition of God’s glory, he also maintains that this beauty norms – in fact ‘must knock down’ – all mundane concepts of beauty.105 Beauty here has more to do with fittingness, with the effective success of God in presenting Godself as just and justifying God’s creatures, and this in a way in which God’s Law arises in the redeemed person internally, rather than as an external imposition. He elaborates: ‘[T]hrough the obedience of the Son and the obedience of faith which was brought about thereby, through this double total self-yielding to God, it became possible for God to insert his law of eternal life in the heart of the realm of death and desolation, and to make out of death the resurrection of the dead.’106 By this means comes the eschatologically complete expression of God’s glory.107 Clearly, obedience is a critical term for von Balthasar, uniting together love, freedom, beauty and glory in Christ.108 But in light of the tensions and difficulties mentioned above with regard to his notion of self-emptying and McIntosh, Christology, p. 76. McIntosh, Christology, p. 77. 101 GL VII, pp. 249, 250. 102 GL VII, p. 261. 103 GL VII, p. 249. cf. GL VII, pp. 381 and 385. 104 I am deliberately echoing the language of Barth on Covenant and Creation. 105 GL VII, pp. 315, 316. 106 GL VII, p. 317; von Balthasar earlier connects faith and obedience as well (GL VII, pp. 304, 305). 107 GL VII, p. 317. 108 Nichols, The Word, p. 40.   99 100

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self-dispossession, it is worth asking about the nature of this obedience that he envisions, and the account of the human creature in God that it implies. But first we might return to Quash’s observation above, that both Barth and von Balthasar order freedom to obedience. He elaborates: [T]here is a fine but important difference in how they do it, and what they bring to the discussion in terms of presuppositions and concerns. The difference between them can, I think, be suggested in a kind of formula. Barth wants in the creature the obedient embrace of freedom – he says ‘obedience’ in order then to be able to say ‘freedom’. Von Balthasar, on the other hand (and inasmuch as the relative freedom and autonomy of the creature permits it) wants the free embrace of obedience, obedience seeming at times to be what has the last word.109

This seems quite right to me, according to The Glory of the Lord. It implies that, more than for Barth, for von Balthasar the life of the Christian is ultimately one of obedience rather than freedom. Nevertheless, it is clear from what has been said to this point that von Balthasar intends to present this obedience as consistent with joy, motivated by love, and leading to the creature’s embrace of her true personhood and vocation.110 As McIntosh has summarized of von Balthasar on obedience generally, ‘[f]ormally at least, [he] is clear enough: by speaking of love as the inner commitment and drive which bind someone to obedience, he intends to interpret obedience as that which does not diminish human selfhood, but is the strongest expression of its own ability to choose freely, to love.’111 Von Balthasar clearly means to affirm something like, in my terms, a non-heteronomous dependence between the human creature and God when it comes to the interaction of divine glory and human agency. And yet, despite his best intentions, questions can be raised about whether he genuinely fulfils this promise, on two counts. First, there is the question of whether or not he gets love right: is the love which is internal to obedience properly formulated, or subject to distortion under the force of a hyperbolic account of self-dispossession? Second, his notion of the shape of human agency, also under pressure from his account of indifference and related to his account of love, seems focused primarily on the agent holding at bay his own agency. This leads directly into a critique of his notion of the Marian shape of the Church. Quash, Drama, p. 158. McIntosh, Christology, p. 87. 111 McIntosh, Christology, p. 78. 109 110

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Love figures prominently in von Balthasar’s account of theological aesthetics, and for von Balthasar love is expressed paradigmatically and overwhelmingly in terms of self-giving. Prior to any human self-giving, of course, is God’s selfgiving, an ‘absolute’ self-giving, demonstrated in the cross, yet present even more deeply in the divine identity in the mutual self-giving of the Trinity.112 McIntosh outlines the relation of divine and human self-giving in obedience thus: For von Balthasar, Jesus’ human obedience is by no means to be taken as merely an example for humans, and a possibly oppressive one at that. Rather, all human understandings of obedience are to be tested and measured against the joyful and abiding freedom which is the ground of Christ’s own obedience. An obedience, no matter how costly, that does not spring from a free desire to bestow upon another the gift of one’s love and labor would not be an obedience commensurate with Christ’s. Moreover, Jesus’ obedience is always a free response to the costly and prior self-giving of his Father. . . . In other words, Jesus’ obedience is not simply a historical form of the Son’s eternal obedience, it is the historical form of the Father’s self-giving, which it is the Son’s mission eternally to express. So every human obedience must also be tested for the presence of an ‘ever-greater’ self-giving on the part of the one to whom obedience would be offered; and absent such a prior and continual self-giving on the part of the ‘superior’, any call for obedience would be liable to grave questions of legitimacy.113

And so, while for von Balthasar self-giving begins in God, it is not a form which human creatures are meant to inhabit by force, but rather freely, joyfully and in love. Again, von Balthasar provides an account which approaches nonheteronomous dependence: obedience is not simply dictatorially demanded of the human from an alien authority, but is made possible in freedom, with energy given by God, and is only properly inhabited in joy and love. Yet there is a clear tendency in von Balthasar’s language of love and selfgiving towards a bracketing out of the human creature’s agency, flowing out of a hyperbolic sense of self-dispossession, which therefore militates against a genuinely non-heteronomous dependence. For example, in writing about the envisioned relationship of the brethren in the Gospel of John, von Balthasar notes that ‘the “laying down of one’s life for the brethren” is wholly in accordance with the law of the self-giving of the Son.  .  .  . This self-giving can and must include martyrdom as the limit of the confession.’114 He carries on: ‘Here belongs GL VII, pp. 160, 161. McIntosh, Christology, p. 85. 114 GL VII, p. 257. 112 113

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too the qualitative difference of the love and the brethren from that which in the world receives this name or a similar name: this is the opening of the inmost heart for the brother, not in words but in deeds (1 Jn 3.17), and thus the attempt at total self-renunciation, at dying to all self-will.’115 But one can clearly affirm that ‘no greater love’ is expressed than through ‘laying down one’s life’ for another, without taking this to actually entail ‘total self-renunciation’ and ‘dying to all self-will’.116 As I have indicated above, this seems to imply that the ‘self ’ is intrinsically a problem, somehow having been formed entirely apart from God, rather than being genuinely and thoroughly sinful yet also a good part of God’s good creation. Moreover, as I have also indicated, it implies a certain uniform account of sin which is questionable. But perhaps more than this, it indicates a problem with von Balthasar’s sense of human agency. Whether the other is God or another creature, the only way in which the human creature may engage with that other is through withdrawal. In an essay discussing the relationship between earthly beauty and  divine glory, von Balthasar writes of the Grunewald ‘Crucifixion’ in Colmar that Here is highest skill (art is skill) in the service of deepest horror, which strangely enough makes – in contrast to other horror-evoking depictions of the crucifixion – the humility of the painter evident: he disappears behind the unique masterwork of God. And this Christian virtue permits – through the ghastliness of the crucified, the seeming absence of all beauty – the breakthrough of the flaming mystery of the glory of love – fulget crucis mysterium. This is achieved rarely, but it can be done. 117

What he claims here of artistic agency, he also holds of human agency in general: that it is through the ‘humility’ of the agent ‘disappearing’ that the divine glory may show forth. The philosopher Yves de Maeseneer notes as much in his review of Christopher Steck’s book on von Balthasar’s ethics. Focusing on von Balthasar, he observes the ‘possible desubjectivizing tendency of kenotic love’. Maeseneer notes a ‘disquieting hypothesis’ which von Balthasar’s account suggests, ‘. . . the possibility that exactly Balthasar’s most original contribution to Ignatian spirituality, i.e. the introduction of the aesthetic/dramatic model to imagine Christian love, hinders 115 116 117

GL VII, p. 257. Italics added. Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘Earthly Beauty and Divine Glory’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 10, 3 (1983), p. 206. (Italics in English added.)

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any clear affirmation of the subject.’118 As I have observed above in regard to indifference, von Balthasar’s emphasis on self-dispossession threatens to overwhelm the human agent. Maeseneer further notes, in relation to Balthasar’s notion of ‘attunement’ (Stimmung) that ‘the believer is explicitly described as an “echo” of Christ, and never as a “voice” (Stimme)’.119 This latter observation dovetails with an observation I made in Chapter 3, that for Barth the human is permitted to serve as a ‘sounding wall’ for God’s glory, echoing it into the creation, but making no actual contribution to it as an individual creature. All of this begins to indicate the way in which von Balthasar’s account of human agency is problematic. Specifically, he presents the human creature caught in an either-or bind with regard to others: either the human asserts herself and obliterates or controls the other, or the human surrenders herself in self-dispossession in order to ‘make room’ for the other. Importantly, either option respects the human creature as active, for she is either actively (though wrongly) manipulating or obliterating others or actively (and properly) reigning in her agency and emptying herself for the other. This bind is found in von Balthasar’s aesthetics, for beauty is said not merely to ‘de-centre’ the agent but to ‘snatch up’ the agent, expropriating her. As Christopher Steck writes, von Balthasar wants to argue that the subject’s perception of the object is neither a matter of an active and controlling glance at it (vision) nor a passive receiving of its self-statement (hearing). Rather it is an active receiving (vision and hearing) in which the agent freely allows herself to be claimed by the object and receive the gift of its self-expression. In order to experience the object, the agent must freely, actively enter into ‘its spell and radiant space’. This idea of active receptivity is key to von Balthasar’s understanding of human agency.120

Yet despite von Balthasar’s stated intention, it is hard to differentiate this from an account which is essentially passive (von Balthasar’s approaches an ‘active passivity’).121 The creature’s engagement with the object is entirely a ‘making Yves de Maeseneer, review of Christopher W. Steck, SJ, The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Crossroad, 2001) and Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar, An Irenaean Retrieval (New York: Crossroad, 2002) in Modern Theology, 20 (2004), p. 478. 119 Maeseneer, p. 478. 120 Steck, pp. 21, 22. 121 Moss and Gardner contend that, in the case of Mary, von Balthasar’s account threatens to remove both the ‘hope and promise’ which the immaculate conception and annunciation are presented as offering, bracketing out Mary’s agency. (‘Difference – The Immaculate Concept? The Laws of Sexual Difference in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Modern Theology, 14 (1998), p. 392.) I take this as a paradigmatic example of the tension in von Balthasar between his intuitions of human and divine agency, resolved (with Ignatius) in an ‘active receptivity’, but which (in my terms) becomes an ‘active passivity’. 118

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room’, an activity to bracket out one’s self, rather than a cooperation of subject and object in which the subject expresses herself while the object also expresses itself (‘giving itself ’ in a phenomenological sense). In von Balthasar’s account, the subject is ‘claimed’ in order to ‘receive’; the agent must ‘freely and actively’ move into the ‘spell’ of the object.122 But might there not also be an expression of the subject herself in that encounter with the object, an expression which is non-dominating, noncontrolling, and thus an activity which is not merely a curbing of the creature’s own agency but a real engagement of subject and object in a manner analogous to a conversation? This might be considered an act which constitutes the object as worthy of attention, and in that way be a glorification. Steck summarizes this active receiving, particularly with reference to interpersonal relations: The active receptivity demanded here is a type of obedience, because it requires a suspension of one’s own self-assertion. In the alien realm of the ‘not-I’, the individual encounters creatures whose immanent dignity and ‘weight’ prohibit their unilateral appropriation by her in service to her cause. The beauty that appears in them calls forth an obedient response wherein the agent lets them be: lets them be what or who they are before her. In a sense, the agent obeys their claim to her attention and in doing so surrenders her claim to mastery of all. She lets herself be formed and molded by this object’s claim to intrinsic worth and value. Yet this renunciation is not self-annihilation. The giftedness of the other awakens love. The movement to express self to the other now unfolds in the context of mutual love. Only in the act where freedom and obedience converge does an adequate, inner-worldly manifestation (i.e. a form) of the dialogue of human freedoms appear. This form represents an obedience to the other’s claim and a free expression of the agent’s own identity.123

This clearly shows that Steck agrees with the estimation that von Balthasar embraces the notion of human sin as essentially hubris, prideful overreaching. The only mode of ‘self-assertion’ contemplated is mastery and use; but this is contestable. Ironically, von Balthasar’s aesthetics tend actually to privilege the subject, even though he constantly stresses the objectivity of aesthetics, that beauty resides within objects and human seeing must be opened to this external beauty. But by emphasizing the subject as needing to ‘make space’ for the other through self-dispossession, he seems to privilege the subject and her activity. This need not be the case if he laid greater stress on the way in which the human creature is always already involved in manifold relationships which constitute her as a person who can interact with objects, both receiving and giving in interaction. 123 Steck, p. 28. 122

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More than this, to return to the observed either-or bind in von Balthasar, there is a clear progression in his thought as presented: first, there is an encounter of two, and then the subject suspends his own self-assertion to make room for the other. Yet this falls apart in light of the following consideration: if both parties follow this, then they will both be renouncing their own self-assertion, with the result that there will be no ‘object’ to be received, both persons being effectively ‘effaced’ in the process of self-suspension.124 Moreover, the human creature is constantly and continuously engaged with multiple ‘others’, whether in physical proximity, in memory, communicated through media, or simply enduringly present, as God. If the creature were to ‘suspend’ his self-assertion in each of these, then his self would be effaced, his agency bracketed out. Even if we were to say that the creature’s ‘making room’ for the other and self-dispossession – at least in the encounter with God – is the occasion for the creature to allow ‘himself to receive himself from God and be formed by him, as God wills and as much as he wills’, then it is still the case that this self received from God is suspended in encounter with the other.125 Over against this, I would suggest a dynamic in which self-assertion is not (necessarily) prideful over-assertion, manipulation and control, but rather a human presence, in accord with God, which may give and receive. This would be a dynamism of mutual constitution which allows for a simultaneous assertion of both subject and object, both of whom have been mutually constituted in this relationship (and multiple other simultaneous relationships), both of whom may make room for the other, and both of whom have been constituted by (and have constituted) others in past. As mentioned above, this would be analogous to a conversation which only exists with multiple agents, and only flourishes when each agent involved foregoes a totalizing control of the conversation, yet freely participates in both giving and receiving in it. The conversation fails if one agent seeks either to dominate it or withdraw from it; the conversation is constituted by each individual participant, but not by her alone. Moreover, each creaturely agent has been established and constituted by God primally in creation and salvation. More broadly, this might be characterized as a dynamic of glorification, in which God glorifies the creature, through creatio ex nihilo and redemption, and in which the human subject The term of ‘effacement’ has been used by Jean-Luc Marion and others; I do not mean it in a technical sense, but merely use it to suggest the way in which the renunciation of self-assertion by both parties in an encounter would actually frustrate that encounter by ‘removing’ each person’s ‘face’, their personal expression. 125 GL VII, p. 161. 124

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glorifies God and others in a way which recognizes the agency of all involved as being complexly mutually constituted and extended through time.126 This glorification would further dovetail with holiness. The holiness of God is such that God is able to maintain the intensity of the divine identity in the closest possible relation with human creatures, without the loss of God’s own identity. For a theological account of humanity to recognize this dynamic of mutual constitution among humans in glorification would indicate one way in which humans inhabit a (creaturely analogous) holiness in glorifying others, not through an active curbing and bracketing out of one’s agency (as in von Balthasar) but in actively allowing one’s agency to be involved in the dynamism of mutual constitution.127 As I have shown, von Balthasar provides an account of obedience to God which approaches non-heteronomous dependence: obedience is not simply dictatorially demanded of the human from an alien authority, but is made possible in freedom, with strength given by God, and is only properly inhabited in joy and love. Von Balthasar’s account certainly complicates the charge of heteronomy. But it is not finally satisfactory, as the creaturely agent’s agency is focused on bracketing out her own agency, making room for the other and in indifference and self-dispossession acceding to the command of God. There is seemingly no room for faithful questioning or creative contribution to performance of the command. The structure of von Balthasar’s account, in the final analysis, reflects a straight-line obedience: either the creature freely and joyfully submits, emptying her own agency and doing precisely what is given, or else she is disobedient. This structure is aided by an overly uniform account of the nature of sin, a hyperbolic sense of self-dispossession (and therefore a vision of love which, while it fairly encompasses the depths of self-giving seems not to do justice to the ‘self ’ who loves), which leads to a truncated sense of sociality. We have seen in this sociality a certain dynamic: rather than allowing oneself to be engaged and engage others, von Balthasar talks in terms of selfdispossession and movement away from the self for the sake of the other. Indeed, von Balthasar seems to hold that glorification must involve self-dispossession: ‘In all glorification, the glory is both the presupposition of present existence and the goal which is aimed at; but the church never becomes a sphere for this glory by “appropriating” this in her structure or her existence, but only by handing over herself in consecration to the glorification of God’ (GL VII, p. 506). 127 This also allows one to get around the problem of an infelicitously uniform account of sin as essentially prideful self-assertion, for this asserts that one’s agency is intrinsically involved in a godly sociality (‘actively allowing one’s agency to be involved’) yet not in such a way as to control or obliterate others (as it is specifically a ‘dynamism of mutual constitution’). 126

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He draws this dynamic into an iconic form through his engagement with Mary and what he terms the ‘Marian form of the Church’.

The Marian form of the Church It would be hard to overstate, at least relative to Barth’s work, the importance and centrality of Mary for von Balthasar, particularly in regard to human agency in relation to God. Yet, even if Mary is central, some commentators have remarked that his Marian theme can be ‘difficult to follow’, with direct and extended consideration found only in ‘a relatively small number of texts and sections of text’.128 Nevertheless, in The Glory of the Lord Mary appears prominently as archetype of the Church and (as such) a model of obedience as ‘the most perfectly receptive of all Christians’, to be imitated by the faithful.129 Although Mary is an archetype for all Christians, this does not mean that she is to be imitated in a crude sense: von Balthasar holds that God gives each person a specific vocation to which they are to be obedient; it is particularly in the person’s receptivity and obedience that they grow in the Marian form.130 Von Balthasar particularly focuses on the annunciation as the iconic representation of Mary’s active receptivity in obedience. As Lucy Gardner explains, ‘In her faithful response at the annunciation, Mary represents the individual Christian and the contemplative aspect of Christian life which Balthasar so prizes. In the simplicity of Mary’s (eventual) answer and acceptance . . . Balthasar sees mirrored all that each one of us has to say and do in response to God.’131 Still, as Gardner also observes, von Balthasar’s thinking on the annunciation ‘tend[s] to begin from Mary’s response’.132 This is highly suggestive, a point to which I shall return below. But what this means in context is that, for von Balthasar, the truly significant aspect of Mary in the annunciation is her response to the angel, found in Luke 1.38a: ‘Then Mary said, “here am I, Lucy Gardner, ‘Balthasar and the Figure of Mary’, Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, p. 65. 129 GL I, pp. 362–5, 564; Quash, Drama, p. 160. 130 Von Balthasar talks about this variance as having an overarching unity, which is a harmony. For example, in exploring the (all rather different) accounts of divine glory found in the dozen different accounts of ‘theological style’ in Volume II and III of GL, he ‘does not aim to bring these twelve theologies into any sort of systematic unity by treating them as building blocks for a synthesis larger than themselves. But he does expect us to grasp their harmonies . . . [as a] symphony of theologies’ (Aidan Nichols, ‘Balthasar’s Aims in the “Theological Aesthetics”’, in Ed Block (ed.), Glory, Grace and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005), p. 116. 131 Gardner, ‘Mary’, p. 70. 132 Gardner, ‘Mary’, p. 70. 128

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the  servant of the Lord:  let  it be with me according to your word.”’ Mary’s response is often abbreviated in von Balthasar either as ‘Ecce ancilla’ or ‘fiat’, drawing on the Latin for, respectively, ‘behold (here am I) the servant’ or ‘may it be/ let it be done’, both of which as summaries emphasize Mary’s ‘making room’, self-dispossession, and ‘emptying’, allowing God to act. Indeed, one author finds in the figure of Mary as von Balthasar depicts her, not least in the annunciation, a co-involvement in redemption that extends no further than ‘the receptivity of faith’; ‘Mary cannot really do anything. She can only let it happen.’133 In this emphasis on receptivity, there is a certain ‘shaping’ of Marian form which transpires. As von Balthasar writes on the subject of the Marian form of Christian experience, Mary’s whole experience, as it develops from its earliest beginnings, is an experience for others – for all. It is an expropriated experience for the benefit of all, the experience not only of being dispossessed of her Child (beginning when he was twelve years old, continuing through his public life, and culminating in his Passion and in the founding of the Church), but of being dispossessed of experience itself, as if the Mother must increasingly renounce everything vitally personal to her for the sake of the Church, in the end to be left like a plundered tree with nothing but her naked faith (‘Behold, there is your son!’). Progressively, every shade of personal intimacy is taken from her, to be increasingly applied to the good of the Church and of Christians, to be bestowed on those together with the grace of Christ, a grace which is both human and divine and which is, therefore, replete with Christ’s human experiences of God.134

Following on from her fiat in the annunciation, her dispossession is very much at the fore. And this dispossession (and the related indifference)135 is communicated to the baptized as well, as they participate in the archetypal experience of Mary which is theirs by grace. He says further, ‘If this applies to all the baptized, then especially so to those who, in imitation of the Mother of the Lord, have placed their lives as vessels exclusively at the disposal of the Word of God.’136 It becomes clear, then, that the Marian form is shaped in very specific ways, with an emphasis on her receptivity, indifference and obedience: these are the particular aspects of the Marian story which become the Marian form for von Balthasar, and hence the form of faithful Christian living. John O’Donnell, SJ, Hans Urs von Balthasar (ed. Brian Davies, OP, Outstanding Christian Thinkers series; London: Continuum, 1991), p. 123. 134 GL I, p. 340. 135 cf. GL I, p. 451 on ‘the indifference of the Ecce ancilla’. 136 GL I, p. 341. 133

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Turning to the Christian growth into the Marian form, von Balthasar continues to emphasize the receptivity of faith. ‘Without a womb to receive him, there is no Incarnation of God, and without a faith to receive it, there is no basin to catch the waters of God’s truth as this pours itself out.’137 This faith is itself a gift from God, ‘which cannot say anything more than fiat’.138 Consistent with what has been set out above, the human is not merely – not quite – passive, but is engaged in an active receptivity; but it is only receptivity.139 Von Balthasar explores human agency and Marian receptivity in terms of Paul’s image of metamorphosis into the image of Christ, explaining that this is above all assumption of form, the receiving of Christ’s form (Gestalt) in us (Gal. 4.19), the character and the impress in us of the only valid image of God. This occurs the more im-pressively, in the literal sense, the less resistance the impress of the image encounters. Mary’s Ecce Ancilla is the supreme instance. For this reason the Christ-form attains here the greatest splendour within the greatest simplicity and hiddenness. Mary keeps all the words in her heart and ponders them (Lk. 2.19,51), not as something foreign to her but as what ‘happens to her’ (fiat mihi, Lk. 1.38). She also undergoes a judgement which will lead her to the Cross itself, and these are things disposed and decided upon by the one form. Allowing the Word its way in me is not an action, and is not, therefore, an accomplishment and a work; it is contemplative obedience that of its own passes over into the Passion in accordance with the law of the image which leaves its impress on it.140

Thus human agency, in receptivity, does not even engage in an ‘action’ but merely ‘allows’ the impress of the image of God upon us. Citing Mary’s fiat, von Balthasar claims that the ‘truth that affirms the human person and takes possession of him requires that one be ready to be taken hold of and to give up control over oneself to another.’141 This is a dynamic of handing oneself over: the more ‘receptive’, because ‘indifferent’ and self-dispossessed, the more one ‘lets things happen’ to oneself, the less “resistance” is offered, and the more one receives of the im-press of the form. It is not an action, a work, or a response, but ‘the pure submission . . . of faith’.142 While it may be von Balthasar’s intention to GL VII, p. 385. GL VII, p. 385. It is surely significant that von Balthasar chooses to represent the Marian form through specific attention to her speech with the angel; and yet, I suspect it is also significant that fiat is the passive form of the verb (3rd person subjunctive, passive present tense). 140 GL I, pp. 485, 486. 141 GL VII, p. 400. 142 GL VII, p. 306. 137 138 139

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affirm an active reception within the human agent in reference to God’s act, given his account of Marian obedience it is difficult to differentiate this from a passive reception – except, perhaps, as I have noted above, in the case of the human creature actively working to bracket out her own agency. Or, to put it differently: Mary’s response is oddly attenuated to include only her fiat (Lk. 1.38), but not her faithful question, ‘How can this be?’ (Lk. 1.34).

Faithful questioning, discernment and straight-line obedience As I said above, the Marian form is ‘shaped’ by von Balthasar in a certain way, to appear as the free complement of the complete self-giving and humility of Jesus. She is presented as the ‘prototype’ of what God may make with humanity.143 This form dovetails precisely with von Balthasar’s account of Christ’s obedience and self-dispossession, Ignatius-influenced indifference, the mutually implied obedience and love of the disciple alongside the problematic bracketing out of the self in relation with others.144 Mary is presented as the archetype of loving obedience, active receptivity and self-renunciation (in order to receive herself back from God in whatever form God gives). Further, she is the archetype of the Church as a whole. Yet, as Gardner noted, this begins from Mary’s acceptance. But in the story of the annunciation, the angel first appears to Mary with an announcement of greetings, and she responded with perplexity and wonder (Lk. 1.29). The angel reassures her not to be afraid and then announces the conceiving of Jesus. However, her immediate response is not Ecce ancilla nor fiat, but ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ (Lk. 1.34).145 The angel responds to this in terms of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Most High, and bringing good tidings about Mary’s relative as well (Lk. 1.35-37). Then Mary responds ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ (Lk. 1.38). Clearly, there is an accession on the part of Mary to God’s plan, but it is far GL I, p. 564. ‘[T]he Marian Ecce ancilla Domini points to the distance between Lord and Handmaid, a distance expressed in the fact that in all things it is the Lord who commands and the Handmaid who obeys. This creaturely and Christian obedience characterises all existence: it embraces even death, indeed death on the cross; it renounces all private ideas and objections in order to accept the entire workplan from the Lord’s hands and to place all one’s own energies, both bodily and spiritual, at its disposal. . . . Since this attitude does not disrupt or intrude its own designs, plans, or well-meant ideas, it is also the indispensable prerequisite of human matter’s (which here includes all active powers of the spirit, the will, and the imagination) truly being able to receive the image of the form (Gestalt).’ GL I, pp. 563, 564. 145 Surely it must be significant that, in roughly 3,300 scriptural references in Volume VII of GL there is not one to Luke 1.34, or indeed in any of the other six volumes. 143 144

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too tidy to paint this as an example of self-renunciation and unquestioning, ‘straight-line’ obedience. In fact, this is an example of what I termed in Chapter 3 ‘faithful questioning’. The angel’s speech is in the indicative, but it does not simply declare without the possibility of response; on the contrary, there is actually something approaching a ‘conversational’ structure to the exchange between the angel and Mary. The angel does not merely speak but seems to welcome response, even expanding the announcement to include the other good news about Elizabeth. Mary for her part is perplexed and ponderous, but does not shrink and cower: she responds and questions, discerns and wonders. And after her assent to the angel (and God) the gospel presents her as travelling to her relative Elizabeth (1.39, 40), and speaking out what in later tradition became the Magnificat. Indeed, as Rachel Muers has indicated, even Mary’s seeming ‘silence’ through the rest of the gospel may be indicative not of self-renouncing pure receptivity, but may be a mark of her agency: as a ‘significant silence’, a ‘“treasuring” [Lk. 2.19] of the [shepherds’] words as open-ended’.146 Here in Mary, whom von Balthasar reckons as the ‘prototype’ of Christian faith for the Church, we find humble questioning in faith, rather than selfless assent and consent; contrary to von Balthasar’s Ignatian impulse, Mary does not put self-abandonment before all spiritual ‘receptivity’ or ‘conception’ (Empfänglichkeit). Yet for von Balthasar, such faithful questioning is not included in the Marian form as enjoined upon believers; for von Balthasar, as with Barth, faith and doubt are opposites.147 The implication is that von Balthasar needs to originate the Marian form with her acceptance, rather than with her faithful questioning.148 But in this faithful questioning Mary is not dictating the terms on which God might act, although she does seem to engage in something like ‘discernment’, in perplexity pondering what the angelic greeting might mean. Furthermore, Rachel Muers, ‘The Mute Cannot Keep Silent: Barth, von Balthasar, and Irigiray’, in Susan Frank Parsons (ed.), Challenging Women’s Orthodoxies in the Context of Faith in Heythrop Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, Religion and Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 119. 147 Ben Quash, in querying von Balthasar’s tendency to resolve drama into either epic or lyric forms (rather than remaining genuinely dramatic), makes a parallel point: ‘The bringing of the works of God into the present should provoke that internal imaginative wrestling which seeks to find the appropriate response, the right interpretation and form of obedience.’ (‘Drama and the Ends of Modernity’, in Gardner, Moss, Quash and Ward, Modernity, p. 169.) This matches well with my notion of ‘faithful questioning’. 148 As he has written elsewhere in GL, God’s word ‘is pure objectivity, which finds a foothold neither in the hearer’s desires nor in his fears, and this objectivity quite simply expects only one single answer from the hearer: assent and obedience’ (GL VI, p. 58). Nevertheless, von Balthasar is quick to stipulate that the hearer freely assents and obeys. Moss and Gardner recognize this implication in von Balthasar’s presentation of Mary as well (‘Difference’, p. 391). 146

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when presented with an announcement of God’s plan – ‘you will conceive’ – she responds with a question – ‘how can that be?’ The doubt which seems present in this, at least as a hypothetical, is not inconsistent with a responsive faith: she does not declare ‘no, God does not act in this manner’, but neither does she behave in a purely self-dispossessive manner, as if responding or questioning were ruled out. The angel, for its part, seems content to spell out what was meant, and even to expand the announcement of good news. In this message the angel communicates the beginning of God’s act to restore God’s covenant people (Lk. 1.32,33), an act which would make no sense apart from God’s great love for God’s creation: and yet the messenger and the message respond to Mary’s perplexity and questions without demanding ‘straight-line’ obedience. This is much richer than Mary simply ‘giv[ing] up control over’ herself, more complex than unalloyed receptivity. Which is to say that the nature of obedience which is compatible with love may not only voice the fiat, but may also respond with perplexity issuing in discernment and faithful questions such as ‘how can this be’? This obedience even includes doubt which grows from faith and issues in discernment and attends to questions of learning about learning. In this creative, responsive obedience lies the possibility of a non-heteronomous dependence of humans on God, the possibility of learning about learning  – and  the possibility of humans knowing the glory of God within life and the world.

Summary We have seen that von Balthasar constructed his doctrine of the glory of God in the wake of what he found promising in Barth’s Volume II.1 of the Church Dogmatics. Although there are great similarities between the two accounts, von Balthasar also departed from Barth at several crucial points. Among these points are his embrace of the analogia entis, which allowed him to talk about a closer (if still analogous) connection between earthly beauty and divine glory, which seemed to promise the possibility of human contact (of some sort) with divine glory in the world. Along the same lines, von Balthasar emphasized much more than Barth the importance of beauty as a way of understanding the way in which divine glory is manifest in creation. Further, although both Barth and von Balthasar see God’s glory as expressing the identity of God, particularly conveyed by God’s (mutually implied) freedom and love, we saw that von Balthasar tends to resolve this pair in favour of love, whereas Barth

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tended to favour freedom. Interestingly, von Balthasar does tend to depict God’s glory as (more fully engaged in) glorifying the creation, in the sense that God’s glory as God’s freedom and love beget God’s freedom and love within the creation. Similarly with beauty, he allows it to play a much larger role in his conception than Barth did, and in a way which blesses the creation, the divine glory creating beauty among and within creatures. Yet for all of this promise, drawing on the strength of Barth’s notion of God’s glory and going still further, providing an account of glory which is simultaneously more encompassing and more closely tied to the actual historical events of Christ’s life than Barth’s, von Balthasar disappoints when it comes to human agency. The form begotten by God’s glory in the world is the form of Jesus Christ, which von Balthasar fills out in terms of self-emptying, self-dispossession and obedience. The human archetype of response to this self-emptying love is Mary, whom von Balthasar presents rather one-sidedly in terms only of her response of Ecce ancilla and fiat. Partly owing to a somewhat restricted account of sin as (essentially) human assertion and (therefore) disobedience and partly owing to an account of obedient response to God as primarily engaged (actively, not passively) in curtailing one’s agency in ‘making room’ for the other, von Balthasar offers an account of humanity in relation to God’s glory which brackets out human agency, enjoins a straight-line obedience, frustrates the task of learning about learning and is, in the end, heteronomous. It remains in the final chapter to turn to the Bible, the primary source for Christian theology, for the possibility of opening up these (mostly promising) accounts of divine glory to unbracketed human agency, in part through a greater emphasis on God’s glory as God’s honour and praiseworthiness, thus to show that the fullness of God’s glory is not incompatible with a fullness of human agency.

5

The Glory of God in Scripture: A Theological Engagement with Exodus, 2 Corinthians and the Gospel of John

Having looked at the accounts of divine glory in Barth and von Balthasar and found their accounts of human agency in light of that glory to be wanting, I now turn to Scripture, the fountainhead of Christian theology, in order to construct an alternative account. As I mentioned in the introduction, I approach these texts theologically, through the lens of what has come to be known as theological exegesis of Scripture. Thus, although it quickly becomes clear that linguistics, history and textual exegesis are important to my case, this chapter’s strategy lies at some variance with the typical concerns of the biblical studies guild. This is not, in itself, intended as a critique; I draw on numerous representatives of that guild. It is simply describing the orientation of what follows in this chapter. The overall case that I am making is that the glory of God does not overwhelm human agency, but rather constitutes and establishes it in a manner consistent with the character of that glory: beholding the glory of God, people become capable of glorifying God and honouring others. This is a relationship of nonheteronomous dependence of the creature on God. Further, as God’s glory is an ‘overflow’, so also is human agency transformed in light of that glory an overflow; in this way, the obedience of faith is not best considered a ‘straight-line’ obedience which brackets out human agency, but rather a responsive and creative obedience which engages human agency in discernment, judgment, learning about learning, ‘faithful questioning’ and performance. Subsidiary to this is the claim that God’s glory itself glorifies others. Divine glory is elaborated in glorification among the Three of the Trinity. But God’s glory also ‘glorifies’ the creation (which is seen implicitly in Scripture, if not directly stated). This ‘glorifying’ of creation is a process which involves humans, both in terms of being glorified and glorifying others; humans glorify God and glorify other creatures in a transformed sociality.

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Alongside expounding these claims in conversation with Scripture, this chapter also sets out to show that God’s glory is more a matter of God’s honour, praiseworthiness and (richly specified) identity than beauty and splendour (von Balthasar) or declarative light (Barth); this is not to say divine glory is exclusive of beauty or light, but that honour ends up being a more encompassing term. I make this case on the basis of the evolution of the use of the Koine Greek term dόxa in translating kabod, as well as on the basis of a theological reading of Exodus 33 and 34, 2 Corinthians and the Gospel of John. At several points in the chapter, I also query Barth and von Balthasar’s engagement with the biblical texts on which I am focusing, although my primary concern here is with the constructive possibilities of the texts themselves, rather than making a case about Barth or von Balthasar as exegetes.

Glory as honour: The transformation of a term We have seen how Barth explores the biblical notion of glory in terms of honour, light and beauty, and tends to emphasize glory as declarative light. We have also seen how von Balthasar concedes each of these senses of the biblical term glory, and tends to underline glory as beauty and splendour. While I concur with them that the biblical term contains and implies each of these three senses (which are mutually implied), I wish to set out the glory of the Lord as it is found in Scripture as being more encompassingly about God’s presence and identity, richly described, specifically through God’s acts and covenant-commitments. Thus, God’s glory is not merely one ‘attribute’ of God alongside others, but is a ‘summary attribute’ which describes God’s presence and identity holistically. In this way, God’s glory conveys the ‘Godness’ of God: not only a ‘bare’ identity (as a name might function for a person), but a ‘rich’ identity. In Christian theology, God is not merely present, but always present as God, present therefore as loving, just, holy and altogether glorious. God’s glory therefore involves aesthetic categories (inasmuch as it is ‘beheld’ or the presence is ‘noticeable’), as well as light (inasmuch as God’s presence does not remain in itself but ‘shines forth’ God). But alongside beauty or light, God’s glory implies God’s honour, God’s (good) reputation and praiseworthiness; these describe not merely one ‘aspect’ of God or one ‘attribute’ but the whole of God’s acts and identity. This emphasis on honour is borne out by the development of the term dόxa in biblical usage.

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In Ancient Greek, prior to the composing of the Septuagint, the word dόxa exhibited a wide range of meaning. The roots of the noun are most likely found in the verb dokέw, according to Kittel.1 This verb itself attracted a variety of meanings, determined by context. It could variously mean ‘to seem’, ‘to count for something’, or ‘to believe or think’. The verb exhibits both objective and subjective senses. It could be used to mean I ‘think’, ‘suppose’, or ‘imagine’; used of an object, it could be mean it ‘seems’, or it ‘appears’. This latter, ‘objective’ sense could be used to indicate a variance from reality, but it is not limited to this counterfactual usage.2 The term dόxa thus became a nominal form of this verb, exhibiting the same basic semantic range, and was used in authors such as Homer and Herodotus to refer to ‘belief ’, ‘thought’, or ‘what one thinks’. Broadly, it might be interpreted ‘opinion’.3 As with the verb, the noun dόxa further possesses subjective and objective senses, for it might refer to either ‘what I think’, or ‘what one thinks of me’. When used in this latter mode, it typically displays a positive connotation, so it might be translated as ‘[good] reputation’ or ‘renown’, but only quite rarely as ‘infamy’ or ‘notoriety’.4 This development of the term in the direction of a good reputation anticipates but does not exhaust usage of the term in the Bible. As the Tanakh was translated to serve the needs of Greek-speaking Jews, dόxa was used to translate 25 different Hebrew words, of which the most commonly translated was the Hebrew word kabod, which it stands in for 181 times.5 The other Hebrew terms which dόxa was used to translate tend to cluster around the broad category of honour, renown, splendour and majesty.6 As Gerhard Von Rad explains, kabod itself displayed a range of meanings. Used of humans, it would denote their weight, honour, gravitas, or importance,7 as well as to describe abundance or riches.8 When used of God, kabod assumes a more expansive meaning, referring to God’s ‘presence’, ‘splendour’, or ‘that which makes God impressive to’ humanity, or ‘the force 1

2 3

4 5 6 7 8

Gerhard Kittle and Gerhard Freidrich (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Vol. 2; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), p. 232; Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott (eds.), A GreekEnglish Lexicon with a Revised Supplement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 9th edn, 1996), p. 444. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English, p. 442. Kittel and Freidrich, Theological Dictionary, p. 232; Liddell supports Kittel, finding no such usage outside of Biblical texts, Greek-English, p. 444. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English, p. 444. GL VI, p. 52. GL VI, p. 52. Kittel and Freidrich, Theological Dictionary, p. 238. Francis Brown, The New Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon: With an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), p. 458.

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of [God’s] self-manifestation’.9 This is a fuller usage than when applied to humans, but functions analogously; it suggests something simultaneously like God’s presence, as well as importance, ‘weight’ or impressiveness.10 Carey Newman suggests that dόxa was chosen to translate kabod because within the two distinct ranges of meanings there was nevertheless a single significant overlap: namely, they could each be used to mean ‘honour’. Further, they possessed a similarity of structure: dόxa possesses both subjective and objective senses, while kabod may refer either to the honour of a person, or the honour which is due that person. Thirdly, both had been used in similar extrabiblical contexts. Finally, Newman explains dόxa kuriou was particularly fit for use in rendering kabod Yahweh because dόxa belongs to a larger semantic field which could be used for a range of objects including ‘light’ and ‘epiphany’, but unlike other terms in that field, dόxa was not also used to speak of appearances of pagan deities (unlike, say, ‘epiphany’).11 This likely reconstruction suggests that the translators used dόxa to translate kabod so as to make clear that the glory spoken of is the Lord’s – not some general quality common to various deities, but specific to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and later the Father of Jesus: dόxa implies the identity of God, richly described, specifically through God’s covenant-commitments and God’s acts. Moreover, the limited semantic overlap between the two terms suggests that the notion of the ‘honour’ of the Lord is near the heart of God’s glory. Although the kabod is spoken of at times as having an observable manifestation, in light, cloud, fire, or thick darkness, and as moving or observable (filling the temple, for example), the use of dόxa for God’s presence implies that that presence cannot be reduced to the physical manifestation.12 Newman suggests, mediating the positions of Adolf Deissmann and Gerhard Kittel, that dόxa came to mean the revealed, ‘visible, divine presence’13 when used as the translation of kabod in the Septuagint, as kabod itself meant the ‘visible and mobile presence’ of God.14 But given the theological exposition set out above, this ‘presence’ cannot be apart from God’s ‘identity’.15 These usages imply a convergence of the sense of   9

10

11 12 13 14 15

Kittel and Freidrich, Greek-English, p. 238; Carey Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric (Supplement to Novum Testamentum, no. 69; Leiden: Brill, 1992), p. 24. Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology, p. 24; G. B. Caird, ‘The Glory of God in the Fourth Gospel’, New Testament Studies, 15 (1969), p. 267. Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology, pp. 150–2. Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology, p. 147. Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology, p. 137. Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology, p. 24. Christopher W. Morgan, ‘Toward a Theology of the Glory of God’, in Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (eds.), The Glory of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), p. 160.

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‘matter’ (i.e. presence) and ‘form’ (i.e. specific shape of this one who is present). This might be resolved into talk of God’s identity, but – in order to preserve the fullness and positive valence of this identity – I prefer to see it in terms of God’s honour or praiseworthiness, the goodness of God shining out (light) and attracting the creation (beauty). Used of God, this honour is analogous to ‘honour’ when used of humans, but also, of course, relevantly different. Since honour becomes something of a key term in what follows, I shall briefly gloss the term as it applied to humans in New Testament times. Bruce Malina explains that, in the biblical world, honour was ‘a claim to worth that was publicly acknowledged’.16 Shame, on the other hand, was ‘a claim to worth that is publicly denied and repudiated’.17 It is a social term, concerned with claims to worth and identity. In the ancient Mediterranean world, during the time of the New Testament’s composition, this public or social identity would have been quite important. The desire to maintain honour and avoid shame would have been a key factor in determining one’s behaviour.18 Thus social groups reinforced prohibitions and prescriptions by ascribing honour to those who acted in a way to embody society’s ideals, and dishonour to those who transgressed them. As David DeSilva summarizes, ‘“honour” becomes the umbrella that extends over the set of behaviours, commitments, and attitudes that preserve a given culture and society; individuals raised with a desire for honour will seek the good of the larger group, willingly embodying the group’s values as the path to selffulfilment’.19 Honour expresses one’s group membership, as well as one’s claim to worth as shaped by that group membership. Thus, honour in human terms expresses a contextually and socially determined praiseworthiness. Over against this, divine honour is not agonistic: God has worth and praiseworthiness without needing to ‘take’ this from humans (whereas humans, in some cases, challenge others in order to ‘gain’ honour).20 Thus, God’s identity and praiseworthiness do not rely on humans losing identity and foreswearing praiseworthiness.21 Moreover, Christians confess that God is the One of surpassing 16

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19 20

21

Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: WJK, 3rd edn, 2001), p. 29. Joseph Plevnik, ‘Honor and Shame’, in John J. Pilch and Bruce Malina (eds.), Biblical Social Values and Their Meaning: A Handbook (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), pp. 95, 96. David DeSilva, The Hope of Glory: Honor Discourse and New Testament Interpretation (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999), p. 2. DeSilva, Hope, p. 3. David A. DeSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 27. This is not to suggest that whatever honour or identity humans have might not be a problem for humans in perceiving the fullness of God’s glory, or that all possible arrangements of human honour or identity are fully consonant with God’s glory.

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honour and glory; although there are objective and subjective aspects of the ‘honour’ of God as well, the ordering of the two is reversed. That is, in human honouring, if a publicly made claim to worth is denied or repudiated (subjective), then that person is considered not to have honour (objective), causing problems for the one shamed. But Christianity presents God as having the fullness of honour: glory is intrinsic to God. Thus, if God’s eminent praiseworthiness is denied or ignored, then this does not actually jeopardize God’s actual honour. Indeed, God is presented in Scripture as capable of creating praise for Godself in its absence (Lk. 19.37-40). Subjective assessment of God’s honour does not establish or create the objectivity of God’s honour. Nevertheless, there is still a vulnerability associated with God’s honour, in that a negative human estimation might cause God’s honour to be missed – not at a cost to God, but at a cost to humanity, the cost (at least) of neglecting the One of surpassing honour and worth. Thus when honour is transposed into talk about God, the ‘subjective’ comes into its fullness through ever-increasing engagement with the ‘objective’. Finally, although the honour of God is engaged humanly through particular cultures at particular times (with various notions of what constitutes honour), God’s praiseworthiness bears a particular shape which is not reducible to that culture’s pre-existing concept of honour, nor the views of honour prevalent at the time of Scripture’s composition. Showing how God’s glory glorifies and God’s honour honours the creation, being worked out in the process of establishing and constituting human creatures as agents, remains the burden of the remainder of this chapter. Von Balthasar at points in The Glory of the Lord welcomes dόxa as ‘honour’, particularly in discussing the Deuterocanonical writing of Ben Sirach, where he concedes that drawing together what he terms the ‘biblical’ meaning of dόxa (=kabod) and the ‘profane Greek’ meaning (=timή) allows ‘the union of dόxa and cariV . . . for dόxa is nothing other than the making present of God’s salvation in his world, and thus precisely grace’.22 He even permits that the profane meaning of cariV is ‘transfigured’ in light of the biblical use of dόxa.23 But he seems not to recognize how ‘grace’ is nevertheless still an honourrelated term (even if transformed in light of the specific shape of God’s honour). Earlier in the same volume, von Balthasar scorns the scholastic exposition of dόxa, saying ‘Scholasticism quite carelessly interprets the biblical kabod with the pagan philosophical concept of Gloria in the sense of honour, praise, fame, 22 23

GL VI, p. 350. GL VI, p. 350.

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renown. . . . But all of this, for one thing, reduces the biblical kabod to the element of “honour” or “fame,” and secondly the concept of “glory” becomes univocally applicable to both God and creature, so that the theological principle nowhere emerges.’24 Oddly, in the next volume he admits that the Gospel of John’s use of dόxa exhibits an eliding of what he terms the ‘Old Testament kabod and the . . . hellenistic [sic] concept of “opinion, praise, glory”’, and John does so in a way that actually brings them ‘to a unity in his theological vision in which the New Testament is, as it were, concluded’.25 Thus the theological vision which for von Balthasar serves as the culmination of the New Testament itself incorporates honour into glory in the closest way. Nevertheless, on the whole von Balthasar tends to resist holding up honour as a primary meaning of kabod and dόxa in a programmatic manner, preferring the aesthetic terms ‘beauty’ or ‘splendour’. While I do not intend to defend the scholastic definition, nor contest ‘splendour’ as contained within the concept ‘glory’, I do mean to recommend honour as central to glory. In my defence against von Balthasar, therefore, I must say that I do not mean to reduce kabod or dόxa to honour; glory is a rich term, in accord with the rich (i.e. simple and yet fathomless) identity of the Lord. I intend to highlight it as elemental to the identity of God. Further, the ‘honour’ of God as God’s glory is filled out by God’s acts and commitments, not decisively by preexistent meanings. I have already made a specific connection between honour and identity, above. Finally, in light of my previous statements, it becomes clear that this ‘honour’ of God is strictly analogous to human honouring; while there are similarities, these are situated within an ever-greater dissimilarity. Therefore despite von Balthasar’s scruple, I shall nevertheless continue to develop glory along these lines, and in the process interrogate the case made by both him and Barth on the glory of God and its relation to human agency. Next, we turn to consider the glory of God as it is presented in Exodus 33 and 34, partly as a particularly rich Old Testament presentation of God’s glory, and partly as a preparation for looking at the glory and honour of God in 2 Corinthians.

Exodus 33 and 34 The story told in Exodus 33 and 34 has attracted much attention through the years since its first composition and still remains interesting as a passage 24 25

GL VI, p. 26. GL VII, pp. 75, 375.

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of ‘great theological weight’,26 containing ‘the most extended treatment of the issue of God’s presence in the Old Testament’.27 Within Exodus, the encounter of Moses with God in 33.12-34.9 forms a crucial bridge between chapter 32, which deals with the idolatry of the golden calf and the breaking of the covenant with God, and chapter 34, in which the covenant is renewed; at the heart of God’s appearing to Moses is the human question of sin and forgiveness or, from another perspective, the holiness and presence of God.28 The text also contains features which hearken back to another theologically potent and rich passage, Exodus 3.14; furthermore, the New Testament draws on it as well (in particular, 2 Cor. 3.7-18, which I shall make recourse to further on).29 It is particularly in this last regard that we now turn to a brief consideration of Moses and God in this passage.

God and Moses: Exodus 33 and 34 The story begins in the wake of the Israelites fashioning a golden calf to worship (32.1-6) instead of the Lord, and Moses coming down from Mount Sinai and angrily destroying the first tablets of the Law and demolishing the calf (32.19, 20). After rebuking the Israelites in God’s name (32.33, 33.5), Moses converses with the Lord in the tent of meeting, asking God not to abandon God’s people, asking for a sign that he (i.e. Moses) will not be alone (33.12-16). Moses concludes this conversation by asking to see God’s glory (kabod) (33.18). The Lord responds and says to Moses to come up on Mount Sinai, where God’s goodness (tub) will pass by Moses and the covenant will be renewed (33.19-34.28).30 Coming down from the mountain with the two tablets of the Law, Moses’ face shone ‘because he had 26

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James C. M. Plastaras, The God of Exodus: The Theology of the Exodus Narratives (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1966), p. 241. R. W. L. Moberly, At the Mountain of God: Story and Theology in Exodus 32-34 (JSOT supplement series, 22; Sheffield: University of Sheffield Press, 1983), p. 62. See also Walter Brueggemann, ‘The Crisis and Promise of Presence in Israel’, Horizons in Biblical Theology, 1 (1979), p. 48. For the history of attention to this section of Exodus (with a focus on the golden calf), see Scott M. Langston, Exodus through the Centuries (Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 231–3. Brueggemann, ‘The Crisis’, p. 48. Moberly, At the Mountain of God, p. 78; Brevard S. Childs, Exodus: A Commentary (London: SCM Press, 1974), p. 596. The Hebrew tub could mean goodness, wealth, beauty or splendour, showing the way in which the categories of honour and beauty elide into one another. Although tub could mean something more straightforwardly visual, such as beauty, in the event Moses hears God pronounce God’s name and expound on God’s identity, which is (metaphorically) beautiful, but more properly related to honour, reputation and identity. (See Childs, Exodus, p. 596, and William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19-40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Bible; New York: Doubleday, 2006), p. 607.) It can be hardly considered accidental that von Balthasar resolves tub in the direction of beauty (GL VI, p. 41).

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been speaking with God’ (34.29). The shining of his face scared the Israelites, and so Moses placed a veil on his face whenever he was done conveying the Lord’s commandments, removing it again only when he went in to speak with God in the tent of meeting (34.30-35). In the tent of meeting, there is a striking intimacy between God and Moses; ‘Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.’ Although those bound are not equals – their conversation is characterized as friendly by a simile – there is a surprising amount of give and take in the exchange.31 Analysing the text from the perspective of dialogue studies, Karla Suomala observes features that point to an imbalance of power between Moses and God, yet also ‘reflect qualities that are generally not apparent in superiorsubordinate relationships’.32 Indeed, these exchanges are not at all what one might expect in a dialogue between Creator and creature. Suomala elaborates, saying ‘these conversational events highlight the unique relationship between Moses and God, showing their willingness to hear each other out, to negotiate, and even to concede to the demands and concerns of the other’.33 Focusing in on the dialogue in 33.12-23, this sense of surprising intimacy is heightened, as Moses initiates each of the ‘adjacency pairs’, which allows ‘Moses to . . . set the agenda and establish the tone of the conversation.’34 In verse 12, Moses reminds God of God’s words, (‘You have said, ‘I know you by name’); as Suomala observes, ‘Moses is asking here for a kind of reciprocity – God knows him by name, he now wants to know God by name – which implies a deep level of intimacy.’35 This further intensifies the sense of intimacy between God and Moses, for this expression is unique across the Old Testament.36 But beginning at verse 18, there is a shift in tone away from the conver­ sational.37 Moses asks ‘show me your glory, I pray’ (18). The Lord responds to Moses: ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, “The Lord”; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy’ (19, 20). God responds 31

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Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary from Teaching and Preaching; Louisville: John Knox Press, 1991), pp. 296, 297. Contrast this with Propp, who, while admitting a certain kind of intimacy between Moses and the Lord, still writes that ‘To my ear at least, there is a tone of overfamiliarity in Moses’ words, even disrespect.’ Propp, Exodus, p. 602. Karla R. Suomala, Moses and God in Dialogue: Exodus 32-34 in Postbiblical Literature (ed. Hemchand Gossai, Studies in Biblical Literature, vol. 61; New York: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 35, 36. Suomala, Moses and God in Dialogue, p. 1. Suomala, Moses and God in Dialogue, p. 29; an ‘adjacency pair’ is a technical term for a completed verbal unit in a conversation. (Suomala, p. 11.) Suomala, Moses and God in Dialogue, p. 30. Moberly, At the Mountain of God, p. 70; Suomala, Moses and God in Dialogue, p. 42, fn. 46. Moberly, At the Mountain of God, p. 76; Suomala, Moses and God in Dialogue, p. 32.

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to a request to see God’s glory with the presence of God’s goodness, the proclamation of God’s name, and a description of God’s acts. The way in which God grants this request connects the sense of glory as a visible manifestation and glory as God’s honour or praiseworthiness, as Moses is allowed to ‘see’ (and will hear) God’s goodness and God’s grace: an elaboration of God’s glory as praiseworthiness.38 The request to see God’s glory may also be interpreted as a request to behold the Lord Godself.39 And in response, God not only grants Moses to have all of the Lord’s goodness pass before Moses, but God also pronounces God’s name (‘the Lord’, YHWH). For God to say God’s name, which was thought to ‘connote one’s character and nature, the totality of personality’, would be quite revealing to God’s servant.40 Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that this revelation is found alongside concealment, too, for even though Moses may hear God’s name, he may not see God’s face (33.20, 23).41 This knowing of names is now mutual, as the Lord also knows Moses ‘by name’ (17). If, as many commentators maintain, the relationship of the Lord to Moses might be best understood as a sovereign king to a servant, then for Moses to be a ‘named’ servant instead of one of the faceless crowd of servants, grants Moses social status with the Lord.42 Yet even this ‘status’ in relation to God would not provide an adequate social basis for a servant making of a king the sort of request which Moses makes here. But far from being insulted that God’s servant would dare to make such a request, the Lord honours Moses by showing Moses the Lord’s honour.43 God’s honour is not insulted or offended by the request, but shown in its fullness in its being shown to God’s servant. God does not merely allow Moses to see God’s goodness, and to hear God’s name, but also proclaims Godself to Moses through describing God’s acts: ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy’ (19b; cf. 34.6,7). 38

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Johan Ferreira, Johannine Ecclesiology (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement, Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1998), p. 141. cf. von Balthasar in GL VI, who depicts this as God refusing Moses’ request (p. 38). Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary, Exodus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), p. 213; Fretheim, Exodus, p. 299. Sarna, Exodus, p. 214. Walter Brueggemann, ‘The Crisis’, pp. 47–86, 58. Propp, Exodus 19-40, p. 602. The story is rather underdetermined in ways: there is no hint that God was insulted or angry to be asked to show God’s glory to Moses, or that God is reluctant to do so, and these would have been the most likely expected responses in the culture of the day. On the other hand, there is little detail at all about these sorts of questions, so it would say too much to say that God was ‘happy’ to do this, or that God ‘resents’ doing so. There is simply not that sort of detail present.

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Some commentators have likened this self-description to God revealing God’s ‘attributes’.44 But this seems too extrinsic, too propositional, as if certain properties of God could be known in isolation from God, or as if revelation were simply about passing along information. It seems rather that this third manifestation – along with God’s goodness passing and God pronouncing God’s name – is better understood as God revealing Godself to Moses, and that all three of these are actually different facets of the same thing, that is, the glory of God; or more fully, the Lord’s presence and identity, richly described.45 Thus, God’s glory is the identity of God as known particularly through God’s acts (having mercy, being gracious, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving sin but not clearing the guilty, and so forth), which are good, wise and just and therefore praiseworthy. Moses does as instructed, bringing two more tablets for the Law to Mount Sinai, where the Lord ‘passes by’ and in doing so proclaims God’s identity, gives the Law and makes a covenant with Israel. In passing by, the Lord shows God’s glory, in the intimacy and patience with God’s servant, but also in God’s freedom to be intimate and patient, and in elaborating on God’s name as one who is – in a fundamental way – merciful and gracious and just. Further, this elicits – and is fulfilled in – worship (34.8) and makes possible an entire way of life in the renewing of the covenant with a ‘stiff-necked people’ (34.9). In the literary flow of the Torah, this episode is tremendously generative, opening up new possibilities to the Israelites which they themselves had closed off through their idolatry, and being an occasion that the Lord Godself used to elaborate on God’s name and show mercy to God’s servant. Three more brief points remain to be made. First, God’s glory in this passage is presented primarily in terms of honour, reputation and identity, which are worked out in a certain way. It is true that, at one level, ‘glory’ eludes easy categorization: in particular, there are distinct elements of beauty and splendour. But the ‘name’, the ‘goodness’ (tub), God’s proclamation of mercy, grace and justice as the Lord, all express the good reputation, the praiseworthiness of the One who covenants with Israel. They are an expression of the identity of the Lord which invites honour, esteem, praise and following, from Moses (who bows and worships, 34.9), Israel (who enjoy the renewed covenant), and by extension, all who read Exodus.46 44 45 46

Sarna, Exodus, p. 214; Propp, Exodus 19-40, p. 607. Fretheim, Exodus, pp. 299, 300; Plastaras, The God of Exodus, p. 243. Suomala, Moses, p. 21, makes the point that the dialogue (and narrative) form allow readers and hearers a rather different perspective on this event than if it were more abstractly communicated.

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This honour, however, is not elaborated only in terms of invitation to honour God. It is also expressed through God’s honouring of God’s servant Moses as well as Israel. In the conversation of Moses and the Lord, Moses is allowed to take the lead, to ask questions of God, even to make demands to receive assurance from God. There is a high degree of reciprocity throughout the exchange, and we have seen that God and Moses may be seen in terms analogous to king and servant (respectively). If this is all so, then this entire episode is shot through with honour language. Specifically, this honour is articulated in terms of the God and Creator attending to, hearkening to, regarding God’s servant. This is not an honour or glory which is threatened by the other, but which establishes and constitutes the other as a partner, through creation and salvation (here, in the specific form of the Sinaitic covenant).47 As honour, this glory is essentially relational; the expression of God’s glory also creates sociality, in the form of the renewed covenant. In this way, the glory of God is intrinsically related to love and grace. God’s honour and glory is worked out through honouring and glorifying. Secondly, this glory which glorifies also has specific (‘transfiguring’) effects on the human creature. When Moses returns from Mount Sinai to tell Israel all that God said, ‘the skin of his face shone’, and the Israelites ‘were afraid to come near him’ (34.29, 30). As R. W. L. Moberly writes, ‘the implication is that the Israelites see the glory of Yahweh in the face of Moses’.48 There is a distributed character to this glory; while it always refers (ultimately) to the Lord (it was a reflection of the Lord’s glory, not something inherent to Moses), it is not afraid to be present in the creation and to allow the creation to inhabit it, either in exceptional ‘direct’ forms, such as Moses, or in the sociality created by glory. Yet it does not bracket out Moses’ agency either, for he is still recognizable as Moses; he is neither overwhelmed by the glory, nor left unchanged. Through this, we might say the glory of God which glorifies does so not as an ‘alien glory’ which overawes the human creature, but glorifies in transforming the person, constituting him as an agent in sociality.49 Finally, this entire episode demonstrates the possibility of faithful questioning. The honour of God is not sacrificed or offended by being engaged in dialogue 47

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This also shows that God’s glory is not a mere abstract glory, but as a human notion is specifically shaped through God’s acts and being; I am in deep agreement with both Barth and von Balthasar on this point. Moberly, At the Mountain of God, p. 106. See also Fretheim, Exodus, p. 311. Barth does not comment on these verses in CD; von Balthasar takes the conventional line that God’s glory or splendour is reflected on the face of Moses (GL VI, pp. 19, 39), but does not develop it in the way I suggest.

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with or being questioned by God’s servant Moses. For all appearances, God willingly plays conversation partner, allowing a measure of give and take. Even if God does not entirely accede to Moses’ request to see God’s glory – and there is no implicit sense that God must – God goes so far as to offer a reason (no one shall see God’s face and live, 33.20). While it is true that Moses does not continue the conversation after God agrees to cause God’s goodness to pass before him, and later expresses a more conventional form of submission, bowing to and worshipping God (34.9), there is no sense in the text that Moses’ exchange with God was disobedient, mistaken, sinful, or at odds with the sociality constituted by the covenant God gives. Indeed, Moses’ intimate, ‘conversational’ relationship with God, while presented as unique, is nevertheless held up as impressive and noteworthy (33.11). Thus we see that, within the story of God and Moses and the renewing of the covenant in Exodus 33 and 34, God’s glory is presented in terms (primarily) of honour, a social term filled out by the shape of God’s acts, an honour not threatened by others but instead an honour which honours, a glory which glorifies, constituting others as agents; further, God’s glorifying glory has transfiguring effects on Moses, and (rather differently) on the covenant people through inhabiting the sociality of the Law; and finally, the fullest revelation of God’s glory is consistent with a faithful questioning and, more broadly, a responsive, creative obedience. From this point we turn to examining a New Testament text which appropriates this story in order to set forth Christ’s glory, 2 Corinthians – but first, a brief detour is needed in order to set out this text in proper theological perspective.

Qal wa-homer and Paul Ricoeur In rabbinic hermeneutics, one of the commonly used forms of reasoning is called qal wa-homer, ‘the light and the weighty’.50 An argument which uses qal wa-homer reasons a fortiori; the form found in the Old and New Testaments proceeds by arguing de minore ad maius, from the lesser to the greater.51 This sort of reasoning is characterized by the phrase ‘how much more’ – if A has X, 50

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David Daube, ‘Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric’, Hebrew Union College Annual, XXII (1949), p. 251. Louis Jacobs, ‘The Aristotelean Syllogism and the Qal Wa-homer’, The Journal of Jewish Studies, 4  (1953), p. 154. Jacobs delineates two forms of qal wa-homer, the simple and the complex; the simple form is found in Scripture, but the complex is a later development, and so my focus here is limited to the simple.

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then how much more will B have X? Arguments of this sort are found in both testaments, and Jesus himself is presented as using it (for example, Mt. 12.9-14; Lk. 13.14-17; Jn 7.16-24). It is this pattern of reasoning which catches the attention of Paul Ricoeur in his essay entitled ‘The Logic of Jesus, the Logic of God’.52 Focusing on the Apostle Paul, he works to ‘understand something about the divine logic that lies behind [the apostle’s] rhetoric’.53 In Romans chapter 5, Paul four times uses the phrase ‘how much more’ (or variations – the NRSV prefers ‘much more surely’): verses 9, 10, 15, and 17. What strikes Ricoeur about these uses of this argument is that in all these cases they escape the logic of straight tit-for-tat punishment (and, he later adds, conventional economic exchange), and instead suggest ‘a logic of superabundance’.54 In order to understand Paul’s reasoning better, Ricoeur turns to Jesus, particularly to his Sermon on the Mount, noticing there the same logic at work, although on a different scale. Ricoeur argues that Jesus’ teaching as it is presented in the Sermon is not intended to be the basis of ethical casuistry, but rather extreme and disorienting responses intended to suggest a ‘whole pattern of behaviour which pervades [the hearer’s] life’.55 Consistent with what we have already seen above, in Chapter 1, Ricoeur claims that this serves to reorient a person: not so much her will, but her imagination.56 The specific pattern addressed to the imagination through these specific extreme cases given in the Sermon is that of excess, generosity and overflow. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, Ricoeur avers, the logic which Jesus puts forth for daily life is transposed into the ultimate question of the destination of humanity, and again ‘the logic of superabundance bursts the logic of equivalence’.57 Jesus Christ himself expresses the logic of superabundance in an ultimate fashion, he ‘is himself the “how much more of God”’.58 Thus, Ricoeur finds in this usage of a certain form of reasoning with reference to Christ a testimony to the ‘overflow’ which God’s agency brings, a superabundance and superfluity which are themselves marks of grace. Of special significance is Ricoeur’s implication that this ‘fullness’ of God’s agency is consistent with a 52

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Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Logic of Jesus, the Logic of God’, in Mark I. Wallace (ed.), Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995b), pp. 279–83. Ricoeur, ‘Logic’, p. 279. Ricoeur, ‘Logic’, p. 279. Ricoeur, ‘Logic’, p. 281, quoting Robert Tannehill, The Sword of His Mouth (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), p. 71. Ricoeur, ‘Logic’, p. 281. Ricoeur, ‘Logic’, p. 282. Ricoeur, ‘Logic’, p. 282.

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‘fullness’ of human agency. This overflow reorients the person’s imagination, allowing for possible human agency in thought and action (such as discernment, faithful questioning and performance) fostering a creative and responsive obedience, rather than merely addressing the will, calling for submission and straight-line obedience. This theological exposition of a rhetorical trope is of particular relevance here for two reasons. First, Paul engages this trope again in 2 Corinthians, and particularly in reference to divine glory as found in Jesus Christ. Second, as we shall see, this dynamic of overflow and grace also describes the human agent transfigured by the glory of God, expressed particularly in 2 Corinthians in terms of honour. It is only natural to find a confluence of overflow and glory, as both Barth and von Balthasar contend; it will be recalled that they each specifically explore God’s glory in terms of ‘overflow’: for Barth, it is the overflow of God’s inner joy, which communicates God to the world, while von Balthasar sees it as more closely related to the overflow of the intra-trinitarian love. Without wanting to deny that God’s glory is the overflow of God’s love and joy into the creation, I intend to show through the rest of this chapter that it is every bit as much the overflow of God’s honour into the creation, both communicating an analogous honour to the creation and, in the process, honouring it. Furthermore, God’s overflowing honour to the creation also constitutes the creature as an agent who may honour others and God in a way consistent with the character of God’s overflowing glory.

The glory of God in 2 Corinthians59 Honour is one of the major themes running through the Corinthian correspondence. Particularly in 2 Corinthians, Paul is arguing in a certain way for his own status as an apostle, over against a group he calls the ‘super apostles’. I shall return to specific consideration of Paul’s writing about these people below. For now, it is worth turning to one specific passage in this epistle in order better to explore the glory of God and its interface with human agency.

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There are numerous source hypotheses about the document which is labelled ‘2 Corinthians’, most agreeing that it is composed of at least two documents which were originally distinct (chapters 1–9 and chapters 10–13). Although I draw from the whole of the letter in making my case, this is in no way dependent on any particular documentary hypothesis, but rather on the unity of authorship: Paul is making these sorts of points for these reasons, whether it is over the course of one, two, four or more letters to the Church at Corinth.

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The glory of God, overflow and transformation: 2 Cor. 3.7-18 In this section Paul works to defend the character of his ministry and distinguish it from the ‘super apostles’. He claims both that his ‘competence is from God, not himself ’ (v. 5) and that because of the hope that comes from that reliance on God, he has boldness/ free speech (parrhsίa). In the terms I have been working with, this suggests a dynamic of non-heteronomous dependence: Paul is constituted in his apostleship (and his personhood) by God, and yet this does not bracket out his agency, which is able to be bold, forthright, unveiled. His thinking, acting and identity are nothing apart from God, yet they are not overwhelmed by God either. Instead, because of God’s act, Paul exhibits a sort of ‘overflow’ in his own agency (in parrhsίa). We shall return to this below, particularly in reference to the agency of Paul and the Corinthians. Paul contrasts what he calls ‘the ministry of death’ and ‘the ministry of the Spirit’ using the ‘qal wa-homer’ form of comparative (‘how much more?’) argument described above.60 If the giving of the Law, on stone tablets, made Moses’ face to shine with glory, then how much more the ministry of the Spirit? (v. 8)61 If there was glory in condemnation, how much more is there in justification? (v. 9) If what was set aside came in glory, how much more has the permanent come in glory? (v. 11) Paul uses these to explain the goodness and praiseworthiness of the new covenant in Christ. He is not denying the worthiness of the old covenant per se; indeed, an affirmation of its praiseworthiness is implicit in the form of argument.62 The glory of God shone in Moses’ face, yet Moses veiled his face to obscure its fading glory (v. 13).63 In contrast, ‘all of us’ see God’s glory reflected in one another (v.  18a), an unfading glory which does not need hiding and which we do behold, unlike those who beheld the glory in Moses’ face (v. 7), who were repelled by fear

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Margaret E. Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Vol. I, Introduction and Commentary on II Corinthians I-VII (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), p. 239. Francis Watson indicates that Paul is most likely associating the glory not just with Moses’ face, but with the tablets that Moses has been given; this would not substantially change my point here. (Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 287. C. J. A. Hickling, ‘The Sequence of Thought in II Corinthians, Chapter Three’, New Testament Studies, 21 (1979), p. 393. Interestingly, although the biblical story in Exodus does not indicate that the glory shining on Moses’ face ever faded, Linda Belleville indicates that there is a later ‘line of interpretation that suggests the Moses’ glory experienced some deterioration, or that it was lost either during his lifetime or at death. . . . This suggests that Paul was not an innovator at this point.’ Linda L. Belleville, Reflections of Glory: Paul’s Polemical Use of the Moses-Doxa Tradition in 2 Corinthians 3.1-18 (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, no. 52; Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1991), p. 77. See also Watson (Hermeneutics, p. 293), who shows convincingly that Paul’s reading is based firmly in questions that the Exodus text itself raises.

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(Exod. 34.30).64 In this image, Paul likens all Christians both to Moses and the covenant people, for ‘all of us’ behold God’s glory in such a fashion that God’s glory is reflected on ‘our’ faces, as on Moses’ face, as well as also being able to behold the glory: there is no ‘veil’ for those of the new covenant, either to hide their own glory, nor to protect them from beholding the glory in others. There is, it seems, an intimacy and constancy of engagement between Christians and God which matches or exceeds Moses’, who ‘used to speak to God face to face’ (Exod. 33.11). This is a glory which overflows, shining and being reflected not by a single person, but by ‘all of us’.65 Moreover, those of the new covenant are transformed through the Spirit into ‘the same image’, that is, Christ.66 The ‘beholding’ of the glory cannot be dispassionate, neutral, disengaged: the one who sees is transformed; the one who is transformed allows others to see (and be transformed).67 This transformation is ‘from glory to glory’ (apό dόxhV eiV dόxan) or, ‘from one degree of glory to another’ as the NRSV translates it, in a dynamic of ever-greater increase given by God.68 Clearly, this closely parallels Paul’s line of argument in Romans as Ricoeur has set it out. The apostle’s point seems to be that, even as God’s glory was present in the covenant before, in the giving of the Law which constituted Israel as the covenant people yet brought condemnation and was set aside, so also, in yet greater overflowing abundance, is God’s glory present in the ministry of the Spirit which brings life and justification, and is permanent. This ‘greater glory’ itself creates a sociality in accord with glory, as we shall see below. Accepting Paul’s terms at face value, the giving of the Law at Sinai was a ministry of condemnation and death (v. 7, 9).69 Even if we concede that, as I have suggested, the story of Moses and God in the tent of meeting and on Mount Sinai shows God’s glory as an honour which honours, which transforms its beholders, 64

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Wright, N. T., ‘Reflected Glory: 2 Corinthians 3:18’, in L. D. Hurst and N. T. Wright (eds.), The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 145. Wright, ‘Reflected’, p. 146. C. K. Barrett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Black’s New Testament Commentaries; London: A&C Black, 1973), p. 125. Although in the Church Dogmatics, Barth comments little on the passage in question, he does affirm a ‘real’ though provisional change in the Christian’s life in light of 2 Cor. 3.18. (CD II.1, p. 514). Barrett, Second Epistle, p. 125; Belleville, Reflections of Glory, p. 289; Thrall, Second Epistle, p. 286; Wright, ‘Reflected’, p. 147. Thrall indicates that the context suggests that Paul and his hearers would have agreed on this negative assessment; Watson points out that the condemnation and death belong together with the glory, and that in fact the condemnation and death are seen not as an eschatological judgment but in the text itself, namely, in the death of 3,000 Israelites in the wake of the golden calf incident in Exodus 32. (Thrall, Second Epistle, p. 240; Watson, Hermeneutics, pp. 288, 289.)

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and which accepts ‘faithful questioning’, nevertheless, extrapolating from Ricoeur’s and the apostle’s terms, that covenant with God betrayed a measure of ‘the logic of equivalence’, at least in its execution. But in Christ is found ‘the logic of abundance’, which brings transformation of ever-greater increase (from glory to glory). Focusing on verse 18, Ricoeur observes that it is to this reinterpretation of the glory of God figured through the person of Christ that Paul grafted the extraordinary theme of the transformation of the Christian into this same image. In this way he forged the central metaphor of the Christian self as christomorphic, that is, the image of the image par excellence. A chain of glory, it we may put it this way – of descending glory, it must be added – is created in this way: God’s glory, that of Christ, that of the Christian. At the far end of this chain, if the mediation goes back to the origin, the christomorphic self is both fully dependent and fully upstanding: an image ‘always more glorious,’ according to the apostle.70

We return again to the self who is constituted by God in non-heteronomous dependence, christomorphically shaped to reflect God’s glory, in turn reflecting that glory to others who themselves behold God’s reflected glory. In this human agency is not overwhelmed or bracketed out but made possible by God. Indeed, this ‘spread’ of glory through the new covenant – the initial beholding and subsequent transformation – is not divorced from human agency, as the means by which the Corinthians encounter this new covenant is Paul (who is trying to defend the status of his ministry against the ‘super apostles’). The gracious change brought by God to those who behold the glory of the Lord – and those who allow others to behold the glory which they reflect – strongly suggests a divine glory which glorifies others. This glory is not diminished by being shared, but rather in glorifying makes glorifying of God (the subjective recognition of objective honour and praiseworthiness) possible and more extensive. As Paul indicates, this glory is consistent with bold, open speech (parrhsίa), permanence, freedom, life and justification. Yet while the Spirit brings this transformation, the glory or honour is not fully continuous with worldly honour. First of all, it is not about self-promotion, or one’s identity over others. Rather, as Paul says, this boldness is about the proclamation of Jesus Christ and about service of others (4.5). This is fully consistent with a transforming honour which honours others: if the ‘image’ beheld is the honour of God which honours 70

Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Summoned Subject in the School of the Narratives of the Prophetic Vocation’, in Mark I. Wallace (ed.), Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1995a), p. 268.

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others, and ‘we all’71 are being transformed into the ‘same image’, then to truly ‘reflect’ this glory implies honouring others. Moreover, this honour is not to be equated with the self ’s own competence, strength, power or even, seemingly, success. As Paul avers, God makes ‘us’ competent (3.5), and the reflected glory is had ‘in clay jars’ (4.7); indeed, the nature of Paul’s later ‘boasting’ about the character of his ministry makes it clear that he abjures conventional marks of honour (10.12-12.13). This is because this honour and glory of God is neither the honour and glory of the world nor of a faceless general deity. On the contrary, this honour and glory is focused very specifically on a face, ‘for it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’. There is an irreducible particularity to the glory of God expressed there. The effect of this, for Paul, is that glory is not to be found in conventional strength or success, but ‘shines through suffering’.72 Given the reality of Christ’s crucifixion, ‘suffering and persecution do not pose question marks against his apostolic claims, but on the contrary vindicate them. It is enough that the servant be like the master.’73 Thus power and weakness, indeed all of glory and honour, are ‘reinterpreted through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ’.74 Thus at least part of this christomorphic transformation is revaluation, in Ricoeur’s terms, a reorientation of the imagination. This sense of God’s communicative honour and glory constituting human creatures in non-heteronomous dependence is extended by the ruminations of Frances Young and David Ford on 4.6. They write, For the God who said ‘Out of darkness light will shine . . .’ is a decisive statement of God’s prevenience and freedom as creator. In seeing God as speaker it allows us to think of God’s relationship with creation as linguistic, structured with the possibility of address and response. And in conceiving light shining out of darkness it sees the order of crucifixion and resurrection reflected in the dynamic of creation. The next clause, ‘is the one who has shone in our hearts’, is about the transformation of subjectivity that is needed to participate in knowing God, involving active receptivity and mutuality, in a freedom (as described in 3.17-18) which is inseparable from the initiative and capacitating of God.75 71 72 73 74

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That is, all believers (Thrall, Second Epistle, p. 282). Wright, ‘Reflected’, p. 149. Wright, ‘Reflected’, p. 149. Frances M. Young and David F. Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (Biblical Foundations in Theology; London: SPCK, 1987), pp. 240, 244. Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth, p. 249.

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This transformation exceeds the usual boundaries of identity set by individualism (and, by extension, autonomy), as the reflected glory of God forms persons into a community.76 Young and Ford pick up this theme particularly as it relates to the face of Christ in 4.6, which constitutes identity in a new way, through being part of God’s sharing of his own glory. This changes the very idea of the boundaries of self in favour of concepts such as coinherence, exchange, mutual indwelling and living for others. Above all, the new identity is summed up in the face, which is at once the mark of unique personality and the embodiment of receptivity to others. The welcome of the face is not a threat to other selves but is the supreme sign of the possibility that we can live in free, non-competitive mutuality. Yet this is a freedom that is in its very essence responsible, because it only exists face to face with the other who continually puts the self in questions and calls us to live responsively.77

As Young and Ford recognize, the glory of God decentres the person, yet without denying her agency. The human creature transformed by the glory of God is capable, through the Spirit, of a certain quality of life in community, ‘living for others’ but not in a way which brackets out the self. This is the ideal of a ‘self-incommunity’, in which being in intimate proximity with others does not mean sacrificing one’s own self, or ‘colonising’ others. In this transformed subjectivity, receptivity and responsibility are co-inherent, as one is involved simultaneously in being constituted by others (and above all, by God), while also being a responsible agent in this reception and in the constitution of others. Compare this reading of 2 Corinthians 3.18, though, with von Balthasar’s. He states that ‘believers are assimilated to Christ . . . in their existence as persons who are sent’, an existence which bears the ‘eschatological splendour to the world and its history’.78 Yet believers reflect the glory of Christ to the world ‘in their pure transparency’.79 Moreover, given that Christ is the image of God and that God’s glory shines on his face, ‘the Christian who is turned to the Lord can transmit an “image” of the being of Christ for the world only to the extent that he reflects Christ and does not spread abroad the radiance of his own self.’80 Further, the Church is being conformed to Christ, from ‘glory to glory’, but this 76 77 78 79 80

Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth, p. 259. Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth, pp. 251, 252. GL VII, p. 521. GL VII, p. 521. GL VII, p. 521.

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is only ‘to the extent that Christians look away from themselves and see the glory of the Lord’.81 There is for von Balthasar, here as elsewhere, a strict either-or logic: either the disciple or Christ, and only Christ as the disciple becomes ‘transparent’, looks away from herself, becomes ‘caught up’ or withdraws in order to ensure that her own ‘radiance’ is not spread abroad. While it is true that glorification is not about being focused on oneself, nevertheless one is transformed in the glory of Christ: not by disappearing, but by being changed. Von Balthasar’s move here specifically brackets out the human’s agency (beyond the task of ‘becoming transparent’). While von Balthasar agrees that 2 Cor. 3.18 is best understood as saying that we all ‘reflect’ the glory of God (rather than ‘beholding’ it),82 he seems to hold that ‘we’ can only do this through withdrawal. Yet the very logic of the passage seems to imply that the glory of Christ is seen on the faces of disciples, analogously to the glory of God being seen on the face of Moses: yet Moses’ identity was not effaced through such shining. While the verse does say that we are being ‘transformed into the same image’, this need not be taken to mean that it is only in humanity’s receding that the glory of Christ may be seen. This reading is sponsored by von Balthasar’s insistence that God’s glory is, at bottom, God’s splendour. But my suggestion is that God’s glory is better understood as God’s honour and praiseworthiness, filled out by the shape of God’s acts. This allows the glory of God to be seen in the unveiled face of the other, not through transparency, bracketing out the creature’s agency, but in a certain sort of engagement with her agency, as she analogously, non-identically repeats the shape of God’s acts in her life – loving others, giving sacrificially, honouring others – through the Spirit, in a process of ever-greater inhabiting of the ‘image’ of Christ. As elsewhere, von Balthasar’s reading of this verse seems decisively shaped by his larger theological, philosophical and ethical commitments. To return to the verse in question, this transformation from glory to glory is itself the dynamism of grace and gift (both cariV), which are intrinsically honour-laden terms. This naturally leads to the form of human agency and sociality which God creates through glory and honour, in which the human is, as Ricoeur states, ‘fully dependent and fully upstanding’.83 In this glory and honour, God glorifies and honours the creature, constituting an agency that, like the glory which begets it, displays a dynamic of overflow, and constituting 81 82 83

GL VII, p. 459, see also pp. 24, 25. GL VII, p. 520. Ricoeur, ‘The Summoned Subject’, p. 268.

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a transformed sociality that like the shape of honour which creates it, shines forth in superabundance. Through all of this, God’s glory and honour are shown to open the human in her relations with others, establishing her agency and the possibility of her giving and receiving, and thus to encounter the human, again to echo Ricoeur, more in an invitation to open her imagination than in a demand for submission of the will. To indicate more of how this might be so, I turn in the next section to Paul’s discussion of giving and receiving, particularly as it pertains to the collection for the saints, finding in it an account of honour which accords with what Paul writes about God’s transformation of the human ‘from glory to glory’.

Gift-giving, honour and glory As I mentioned above, honour in Paul’s day was a publicly acknowledged claim to worth, shaped by and reflective of one’s social grouping. As such, honour rendered a person’s identity within sociality, connecting the identities of individuals and groups. Giving, often conceived in terms of patronage and benefaction, was a primary means by which honour and identity – of both persons and groups – was established, maintained and reinforced, and was also an expression of that sociality. The way honour was usually conceived in Paul’s day was intrinsically agonistic. Honour was considered a scarce resource in the Ancient Near East, such that claims of honour were conceived of as being in competition with each other. Thus, to push the conventions of honour in the biblical world to their conclusions, every social interaction, among those who had honour, was a potential conflict or contest to win honour from the other, or else to lose it.84 Paul seems to have something other than the conventional wisdom in mind in what he says about gift-giving, honour and honouring in 2 Corinthians. This is particularly significant because people in the first century Mediterranean world were keenly aware of the ‘politics’ of honour and gift-giving – to the extent, in some cases, of setting out manuals on them.85 Even apart from such writings, most people from most walks of life – and not merely the literate or those interested in social climbing – would have had at least tacit knowledge of the social conventions associated with honour and gift-giving. Speaking generally, 84 85

See, for example, Malina, The New Testament World, pp. 36, 106. See, for example, Seneca, De beneficiis, on the matter of patronal relationships. DeSilva points out the preponderance of both Greek and Jewish collections of advice designating certain actions as honourable or shameful. (The Hope of Glory, p. 3, 28 fn. 2)

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the conventions surrounding giving and the relationships it gave rise to were regulated by a duty of reciprocity. James Harrison observes that ‘Reciprocity – or the return of favour for acts of generosity by benefactors – created networks of obligation that were a matter of honour for benefactor and beneficiary alike.’86 Within this system of gift exchange, there are three distinct but related obligations: (1) a duty to give, (2) a duty to receive, and (3) a duty to reciprocate.87 There is an obligation to give, and thus express one’s honour publicly; honour unexpressed is honour unrecognized – in short, it is not honour. In response to the giving, there is an obligation then to receive the gift given; to refuse a gift would be an open insult and a public contesting of the claim to honour which the gift represents. Finally, upon receiving a gift there is a duty to reciprocate; as Marcel Mauss perceived in his seminal work on gift exchange, ‘The unreciprocated gift . . . makes the person who has accepted it inferior, particularly when it has been accepted with no thought of returning it.’88 To accept from another what amounts to his own claim to honour, but to fail to respond with one’s own claim to honour through giving is tantamount to admitting one has no such honour, no such claim to worth. This would have been broadly accepted among Paul’s original readers. This exchange of gifts maintains relationships and expresses the identity of the givers and receivers, whether individuals or communities. This means that a gift is never simply an object, but an exchange within a larger social context. Indeed, since the obligation to reciprocate becomes itself an act of giving which elicits a duty to reciprocate, this describes an ongoing process of exchange. Thus, giving, receiving, and reciprocating are practices which establish, express, and reinforce social relationships, against a background of honour. Paul willingly employs these common notions. In addition to what he says about the glory of God (and, by implication, God’s honour and praiseworthiness), he elsewhere draws repeatedly on the language of honour, social standing, and gift.89 He shows awareness of these sorts of social conventions and expectations, and in certain ways these are paralleled in what he says. So he writes in terms of honour, reputation, giving, grace and so forth – he does not merely set these 86

87

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James R. Harrison, Paul’s Language of Grace in its Graeco-Roman Context (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 2003), p. 1. John Barclay, ‘Manna and the Circulation of Grace: A Study of 2 Corinthians 8:1-15’, in J. Ross Wagner, C. Kavin Rowe and A. Katherine Grieb (eds.), The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 422. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 83. For example, 2 Cor. 4.7, 8.9, 9.15, 12.14 as well as all the language of cariV, with the latter expressing notions of both ‘grace’ and ‘gift’.

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terms aside. Yet Paul does not just reinforce this knowledge. Indeed, we find that Paul’s teaching on grace ‘ultimately subverts the patronal system . . . by subjecting everyone to a common Master who outshines all’.90 Paul does not engage in explicitly ‘re-imagining’ honour in 2 Corinthians, but does do some of this in 1 Corinthians 12, where he portrays the Church as a differentiated unity in which honour is given to those parts considered ‘less honourable’ (v.  22). Even as God has ‘arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member’ (v.  24) so also the ‘members may have the same care for one another’ (v. 25). This cuts against the usual societal notion of the time, subverting notions of ‘worth’ and patronage, instead constituting all as agents of care through God’s grace.91 In 2 Corinthians, Paul’s teaching relies on an implicit account of honour, in continuity with what he has said earlier in 1 Corinthians. This account is particularly focused through the lens of gift and grace, which Paul believes is transformed in the light of the glory of God.92 Although Paul subverts common notions of gift, he still recognizes giftedness – but this is before all else the primal gift of God in creation and redemption through Christ. This primal, prevenient gift establishes and constitutes humans as agents, creating an obligation: but one that must be ‘paid forward’, rather than paid back.93 As I mentioned above, in 2 Corinthians, on the face of it Paul seems concerned about his reputation, his honour, and seeks to counter inroads into the Corinthian Church made by others (whom he styles ‘super apostles’). Further, he is concerned for the Corinthians to be involved with the offering to the saints in Jerusalem. These matters are distinct in the letter, but both are related to honour and the gift, and the manner of Paul’s addressing them shows his sense of human honour transformed by the glory of God, specifically through the way he constitutes and respects the agency of the Corinthians. Turning first to Paul’s defence of his ministry, from the text of his letter, we can ascertain that these ‘super apostles’ dealt in terms of the conventional honour of the day. In those terms, they gave gifts to the Corinthians, even if the gifts were themselves and their eloquent presence, and these ‘gifts’ expressed the honour 90 91

92 93

Harrison, Paul’s language, p. 322. Harrison, Paul’s Language, p. 322; see also John M. G. Barclay, ‘“By the Grace of God I am what I am”: Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul’, in John M. G. Barclay and Simon Gathercole (eds.), Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment (Library of New Testament Studies, no. 335; London: T&T Clark, 2006a), p. 157. Barclay, ‘Manna’, p. 419. The expression ‘paid forward’ is my own, but is also used, independently, by John Barclay in ‘Manna’, p. 420.

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of the ‘super apostles’ themselves, a claim to honour which the Corinthians themselves received (thus honouring the ‘super apostles’) and reciprocated through payment and writing letters of recommendation (3.1). In response to this, as David DeSilva writes, ‘Paul’s overarching goal is to teach the Corinthians about the true basis for honour.  .  .  . [Paul] expends much effort to defend his honour while at the same time maintaining the new definitions of what constitute honour in the eyes of God,’ definitions which flow out of the glory of God in Christ and the transformation this brings.94 Rather than counter the ‘super apostles’ by simply making opposite counter claims (as if to say ‘Do not listen to them, listen to me!’) Paul instead sets out criteria by which the Corinthians themselves may judge and discern the truth of what he is saying and the nature of his ministry.95 By providing these criteria, Paul honours the Corinthians, giving them agency (in the ability to think, respond and act) in discerning the authenticity of his apostolicity, as well as equipping them to be properly discerning in future. Paul obviously intended for the Corinthians to recognize his genuineness and authority, but in equipping and allowing them to decide, he also became vulnerable to them, for they might very well choose the ‘super apostles’. This very vulnerability, however, was fully consistent with the glory of God, which is focused most sharply on the face of Christ, who himself embraced vulnerability in his mission (2 Cor. 13.4). It is this image which Paul claims ‘we all’ behold; it is this image into which we are being transformed; it is this image which decisively reconfigures the conventions of honouring. As part of the evidence Paul offers to support his claim, he points to his relationship with the Corinthians. In contrast to the ‘super apostles’, Paul does not bear conventional signs of honour, does not boast in himself (except ironically), but rather glorifies Christ and boasts in the Corinthians (1.14, 7.14, 9.2), letting them serve as his ‘letter of recommendation’ (3.2). Paul’s honour is not found in himself, in conventional, human terms – or as he styles it, ‘according to the flesh’ – and he does not labour to build up his honour on these grounds, nor does he view others on these grounds (5.16, 11.18). Rather, his reputation comes from Christ and finds its fruition in the Corinthians. His honour is established in honouring others, rather than in being honoured. Paul’s honour is found in God and in those he serves (3.2, 3). There is thus

94 95

DeSilva, The Hope of Glory, p. 121. R. W. L. Moberly, Prophecy and Discernment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 182, 183.

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a decentring of the self as Paul lives and works ‘for’ others,96 but without bracketing out Paul’s agency. If the Corinthians may be said to be sinning by disregarding Paul and not properly honouring him or recognizing God’s appeal through him, nevertheless Paul’s remedy is not browbeating them and insisting on ‘straightline’ obedience. If Paul had relied on the conventional wisdom regarding honour, he could have naturally insisted on just this: he had come to them, he had honoured them prior to the ‘super apostles’, he had already given them the gift of his attention in preaching, he even likens himself to their ‘parent’ (12.14, an intrinsically social and honour-laden word). He could easily insist on the reciprocation of his ‘gift’ by the Corinthians, or else decry them as dishonourable, even shameful, for their failing to reciprocate. But he eschews this, instead constituting the Corinthians as agents, allowing them to respond to him in ways he could not anticipate or control. He does this because it is the gift of God, not of Paul, which constitutes them (and Paul) and which they are obliged – and free – to receive and reciprocate, through ‘paying it forward’ to others. For the Corinthians to live in accord with God’s glory, receiving and giving honour, it is necessary for them to be constituted as agents, agents who are established by God in the primal honour accorded to them through creation and redemption in Christ, but also agents who are able to discern properly (rather than merely being obedient in a ‘straight-line’ fashion), and agents who are able to give and receive in a manner consistent with the glory of Christ, into whose image they are being transformed. My argument is that Paul is able to do this for the Corinthians because this is the nature of God’s grace which Paul found in Christ, a grace which reveals a logic of overflow and superabundance, rather than of equivalence.97 Moreover, this constitutes a sociality among humans in accord with the glory of God. There is thus a ‘primal gift/grace’ of God (in creation and salvation) which establishes the agencies of Paul and the Corinthians, and this gift/grace is a matter of excess and overflow. Remembering that gift/grace are both terms implicated in the discourse of honour, this then extends the notion of God’s glory as God’s honour (worth, praiseworthiness), and that this ‘honouring’ of

96

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Paul repeatedly emphasizes the way in which his work is ‘for’ the Corinthians or others: 1.24; 2.10; 4.5; 4.15; 5.13; 11.7; 12.19. James R. Harrison likewise sees a transformation of patterns of benefaction, and highlights the ways in which this also constitutes a reconfiguration and subversion of imperial conventions surrounding honour. Harrison, ‘The Brothers as “The Glory of Christ” (2. Cor. 8:23): Paul’s Doxa Terminology in Its Ancient Benefaction Context’, Novum Testamentum, 52 (2010), p. 186.

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the creation is an overflow of God’s glory. It also makes possible a return, as Stephen Webb maintains; [D]ivine gift giving is both excessive and reciprocal, or rather, it is reciprocal precisely because it is excessive  .  .  . [the doctrine of God’s transcendence] should be taken to mean that God’s giving is an abundance, an excessive giving that initiates, sustains, and solicits a response from the one to whom God gives. . . . True gifts create return gifts, but it does not follow that giving therefore is always controlled by a logic of equivalence, of measuring this for that. For the return response to be solicited, the gift itself must be excessive, wonderful, unexpected. My governing insight, then, is the following: divine excess begets reciprocity.98

This reciprocity, I believe, is chiefly expressed in honouring and glorifying God for God’s praiseworthiness and goodness, and in ‘paying forward’ the gift to others in accord with the overflowing grace of God (and in receiving others’ gifts). Thus, the glory of God glorifies the creation, so that the creation may ‘pay forward’ that glory, as well as respond in glorification of God. I maintain that Paul’s allowing the Corinthians the space of response to him, in discernment, is one example of ‘paying it forward’. Another example of ‘paying it forward’ is found in Paul’s presentation of the collection for the saints in Jerusalem (which is itself called a ‘cariV’). Giving to and supporting others (in the relationship of patrons and clients) implied an entire relational structure of honour. Yet, as before, Paul allows the honourconventions of his time to be transformed in light of God’s glory in Christ. Particularly in chapters eight and nine, Paul is revisiting the matter of giving to the Jerusalem collection with the Corinthians (8.4, 9.1). This gift is to be given according to the Corinthians’ ability (9.12-15), and out of gratitude to God and for God’s glory (4.15). Paul invites the Corinthians to be not patrons of his (and therefore having a status above him), nor clients of his (and therefore having a status below him), but to share in ‘this grace/gift’ (8.7)99 or more specifically, ‘this ministry to the saints’ (8.4). Paul’s honouring of the Corinthians is not for the sake of his own honour (so that he can be built up) nor even purely for the honour of the Corinthians (so that they are built up only for themselves) but 98

99

Stephen Webb, The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 90, italics original. Here and elsewhere, the NRSV consistently translates this usage as ‘this generous undertaking’, gaining clarity at the expense of losing the analogy between this gift/‘grace’ (cariV) and the grace (cariV) of God.

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instead is intended to be worked out in the honouring of yet others, for the honour and glory of God. As John Barclay summarizes, ‘[t]he Corinthians are being invited not just to imitate God’s dynamic of grace toward the world but to embody it, to continue and extend it in their own giving to meet the needs of others.’100 The Corinthians are to participate actively in this dynamic of grace and giving. Paul is not demanding the gift, not browbeating or coercing them; as in the discernment of the genuineness of his ministry, he is giving them space to respond. This is not in strict accord with the conventions of the day. Indeed, as Barclay observes, for Paul ‘the language of debt and obligation is completely absent here, and in its place is a system for the mutual sharing of surplus: the Corinthians will, at the present time, give from their surplus to meet the needs of the “saints”, so that the “saints” from their surplus will meet the needs of the Corinthians (8.14).’101 This hiatus allowing for response, and the sense of surplus and abundance has the effect of transforming the usual honour-based system of patronage, which is based on reciprocity and equivalence, into a dynamism more in keeping with the overflow and abundance found in the ‘logic of Jesus’.102 Because there is an abundant, prior gift of grace, a ‘primal honouring’ by God, the Corinthians are freed from debt and obligation to Paul and the saints in Jerusalem; but because of that same gift, they are also constituted as agents and enabled to respond in ways which are congruent with the abundance of God’s gift and may give to the collection, perhaps even responding in surprising ways.103 It is striking how often Paul uses the word ‘overflow’ and its cognates in this letter.104 In each case, it describes the effect of the gift and grace of God on humans in relational ways: through Christ, consolation for others overflows in the face of suffering; encountering God’s grace causes thanksgiving to overflow to God’s glory; the grace of God causes the Macedonians to overflow in joy in the face of hardship, an overflowing which is accompanied by generosity; the Corinthians’ giving to the saints does not merely meet their needs but occasions the overflow of many thanks to God. This logic of overflow in human response to God’s grace is one of excess; the response is not readily containable. It thus Barclay, ‘Manna’, p. 420. Barclay, ‘Manna’, pp. 422, 423, italics original. See also Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth, p. 172. 102 Harrison, Paul’s Language, p. 322. 103 Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth, p. 173. 104 In 1.5, 4.15, 8.2 and 9.12, more than in any other book of the New Testament. Along the same lines, we must consider ‘eagerness’ (προθυμια, 8.11,12, 19; 9.2), as well as ‘boldness’ (παρρησια, 3.12; 10.1, 2, 12; 11.21). 100 101

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cannot simply be a matter of ‘straight-line’ obedience to a command, in which the precise result is anticipated in the directive. On the contrary, the Macedonians’ response to Paul and Paul’s counsel to the Corinthians reveals a different sort of possibility, one more in accord with a sociality of honouring transformed in the light of the glory of God. In talking of the opportunity for the Corinthians to give to the collection for Jerusalem, continuing the commitment they made earlier, Paul specifically denies this is a command. Rather, it is a ‘test’ (8.8). Moreover, the Macedonians, in accepting Paul’s request, gave ‘not merely as we expected’ (8.5). They gave more than a simple answer to a command: their response was excessive, overflowing, embracing the possibilities that were present to them and surprising Paul and his companions in the process. Paul’s gift – that is to say, God’s gift, which Paul was a part of ‘paying forward’ – established the Corinthians and others as able to respond, and this response was not an identical repetition, not simple submission and obedience to a command. This gift does not overwhelm the recipient, does not bracket out the ‘I’, but empowers her to respond and is the very condition of that response. This is not heteronomy, as it genuinely enables the person’s agency with no sense of the self being bracketed out. But neither is it autonomy, as it acknowledges that human agency is radically dependent on the prior act of God, and recognizes the human as decentred in a certain way. Rather, it is a non-heteronomous dependence in which the human is established by another, and in which human flourishing is never self-focused but social, established in a sociality of honouring others and being honoured. Moreover, the one who God ‘gifts’ in grace and establishes in this way as one who is empowered by the Spirit to respond in thanks, love and honouring of others, is constituted thus as a self who may act in accord with God’s glory (8.9), who may act teleologically for God’s glory (1.20, 4.15, 8.19), and who may grow from glory to glory (3.18), in a manner characterized by the very excess, overflow, and gratuity of God’s glory.105 For Paul, the glory of God (expressed in grace/gift as God’s ‘honour’, a manifestation of God’s praiseworthiness) does not overwhelm human agency, but is the very condition of genuinely fulfilled human agency, transforming not only individuals in accord with God’s glory, but also begetting a transformed human sociality – one in accord with the sociality of God, as John makes clear. 105

Although Paul strikes a more eschatological note at times in speaking of God’s glory (e.g. 1 Cor. 15.43; 2 Cor. 4.17), there is little sense of such reservation in the passages under consideration here.

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The glory of God in the Gospel of John It is commonplace to note contrasts between the Pauline epistles and the Johannine  literature. My aim in this section is to set out divine glory and glorification as they are found in John, exploring John’s notion of glory through the lens of honour and praiseworthiness, and setting forth his account of this glory as being elemental to who God is in the relation of Father and Son. Although there are distinctions between John and 2 Corinthians, there is nevertheless wide agreement in what they say on this topic, with John serving to expand and deepen what Paul sets forth. In particular, John uses honour language to expound the glory of God in Jesus Christ, depicting this as intrinsically relational, focused on and flowing from the relation of Father and Son (particularly in mutual glorifying), hence constituting a sociality of glorifying/honouring ‘within’ God. Further, this glory is ‘given’ (17.22) to the disciples, who are themselves honoured, and transformed from ‘servants’ to ‘friends’ (15.15). I have suggested above that dόxa refers to the honour and praiseworthiness of God, as well as God’s presence (and hence, God’s identity). What might seem like an eliding of meanings is justified in light of the theological affirmation of God’s simplicity: that God’s presence is not a ‘bare presence’, but one which displays the full goodness which is God’s. Moreover this praiseworthiness and honour are given shape by the acts of God (in creation, covenant and incarnation). This does not rule out God’s ‘dόxa’ referring to visible manifestations, nor to light (Barth) nor beauty and splendour (von Balthasar); but to consider God’s ‘dόxa’ as chiefly God’s praiseworthiness, honour and (richly specified) identity contextualizes light, beauty and splendour, drawing them together and filling out their meanings in light of God’s ways with the world. Yet commentators weigh in variously on how ‘dόxa’ should be understood in John. Marianne Meye Thompson, drawing on Carey Newman’s work, avers that glory refers ‘to the manifestation or presence of God in Jesus’.106 More specifically, Jesus’ glory is not an ‘attribute’ of his, a possession, but rather comes from the unity of Father and Son so that the Father’s glory is embodied and visible in the incarnate Son.107 D. Moody Smith concurs, suggesting that God’s glory in John is ‘God’s reality, his real presence, as it is manifest to humankind’.108 While there is a relational aspect to Thompson’s suggestion, both her and 106 107 108

Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 123. Thompson, The God, p. 123. D. Moody Smith, The Theology of the Gospel of John (New Testament Theology Series; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 122.

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Smith’s definitions are unhelpfully underdetermined, as if glory might denote a ‘bare’ ontological presence, apart from God’s specific identity (and omitting comment on the honour-laden terms ‘father’ and ‘son’). One of the most striking things about John’s account of Jesus’ glory is that he sets it out in honour-laden relational terms (and not in strict terms of light or splendour). It is a mistake to miss the way in which the glory of the Word in 1.14 is set out in the context of a relationship (a ‘unique’ or ‘only’ son of a father) which, in the evangelist’s time, would have been laden with considerations of honour.109 A number of other suggestions are more promising, however. Johan Ferreira connects glory with the ‘saving ministry of Jesus’ and the Johannine comm­unity’s  experience of the revelation of ‘God’s salvation in the life of the community.’ Glory is, for Ferreira, ‘a soteriological concept and not an ontological one’, which thus rules out ‘any metaphysical or abstract interpreta­ tion of the concept’.110 Ferreira provides a more satisfactory definition  – satisfactory because it is more closely tied to God’s acts – yet still does not allow the shape of those acts to fill out the term properly. Dorothy Lee, in describing what she sees as a central Johannine theme, proposes that ‘glory unfolds the divine being as radically loving, self-giving and life-giving. Where the divine glory is manifest, there flourish love, friendship, truth, freedom, unity, joy, and peace.’111 Glory in John is deeply christological, according to Lee: ‘Jesus himself is the revelation of the glory because the same radiance, that majestic yet intimate presence, is manifested fully in him, in his preexistence as well as his incarnation.’112 I certainly appreciate that, for Lee, glory in John has certain particular effects on creatures – the flourishing of love and so forth – as well as being christological in its shape. Yet she still misses the way in which the glory of the Son is not just expounded in terms of Jesus being radiant (even with the radiance of God), but in terms of Jesus being the only Son of the Father. Most satisfying on this count is Richard Bauckham, who writes on John’s use of dόxazw, that it ‘can mean “to honour” and in that sense points to the same Johannine paradox of the cross. Just as Jesus’ humiliation is at the same time his exaltation, so his rejection, his shaming and disgrace in this peculiarly shameful form of death is paradoxically his honouring by God,

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-science Commentary on the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), p. 33. 110 Ferreira, Johannine Ecclesiology, p. 161. 111 Dorothy Lee, Flesh and Glory: Symbol, Gender, and Theology in the Gospel of John (New York: Crossroad, 2002), p. 35. 112 Lee, Flesh and Glory, p. 35. 109

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in which he honours God and God also is honoured in him.’113 Bauckham continues, noting that this term can also relate to heavenly splendour which attends to ‘the appearance of God, the manifestation of God’s being’.114 In this way, the expected eschatological glory of God is revealed to the world early, in the death of Jesus. This then is the Johannine paradox as Bauckham describes it: that the humiliation of Jesus is God’s exaltation of him.115 In this, Bauckham presents glory as intrinsically relational and honour-laden, as well as filled out by the specific shape of God’s acts, namely by Jesus’ death on the cross. This is a particular honour (reputation, praiseworthiness, goodness) of a particular God, expressed through seeming contradiction and paradox. Glory is not simply the ‘presence’ of God, but God’s particular, praiseworthy, relational identity. In John, this is seen paradigmatically in the incarnation and cross of Jesus, undertaken on behalf of the world by the ‘only son of a father’.

The glory of an only son This relationship of Father and Son is central to John’s portrait of the Word made flesh. Glory (dόxa) for the evangelist serves as a key term in setting forth the identity of Jesus.116 The verb dόxazein is similarly important. This verse, 1.14, is John’s first mention of the glory of the Word of God. He first sets out that this Word is life and light (bearing on all people), and the one through whom all things came into being (1.3); John brings this Word into the closest possible identification with God throughout the prologue to the gospel. But in expounding the glory of this Word, John does not make recourse to light imagery (which he has used extensively to this point), or even to divinity in general, but to a filial relationship: the monogenήV of a father. Any child bears the identity of its parents in a distributed fashion, and this would have particularly been the case at the time: one’s family determines one’s honour and station in society.117 To be a ‘unique’, ‘only’ or ‘only begotten’ child concentrates the distributed identity of the parent in that offspring alone. So there is an extended identity (with difference) between father and only son (such that, to honour one honours the other, Jn 5.23). The honour and praiseworthiness of the father is uniquely represented Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (The Didsbury Lecture Series, Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), p. 66. 114 Bauckham, God Crucified, p. 66. 115 Bauckham, God Crucified, p. 67. 116 C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text (London: SPCK, 2nd edn, 1978), p. 166. 117 Malina, The New Testament World, p. 29. 113

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and elaborated by the son; the son’s honour and praiseworthiness is established by the father’s. Thus John sets out the glory of Jesus not in abstract or cosmic terms, but in a relationship, one which, in the context of the time, is intrinsically bound up with honour.118 As John makes clear in verse 18, however, while the glory of the Word become flesh may be analogous to the glory of a father’s only son, this figure also describes the actual relationship of the Word and God: ‘God the only Son’ and his ‘Father’.119 Thus while the glory of the Word, who is Jesus Christ (v. 17), may be set forth in this analogy, there is also something actual about God which attracts Father-Son language, without being reduced to the contemporary usage without remainder. This suggests that the glory of Christ is honour-laden and intrinsically relational; while it is something ‘public’ and ‘seen’ (v.  14), it is not primarily ‘majestic splendour and power’ apart from praiseworthiness or relationality.120 This relationship of Father and Son is crucial for John’s presentation of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. John’s locating of Jesus’ glory in the relationship of Father and Son also allows for a tension to develop, as humans – who ‘came into being’ through the Word (v. 3) – fail to recognize the identity and honour of the Son; nevertheless, because the primary locus of this honour is between Father and Son, human failure on this account does not therefore jeopardize the Son’s glory.121 Although Barrett (John, p. 166) disallows seeing this figure in verse 14 in ‘general terms’ because these terms are ‘too theological in use’, Malina (John, p. 33) is more persuasive here that, although this is a distinctive term for John, John uses it ‘to indicate Jesus’ honorific status’. I fully concede that this is a theological term for John, but maintain that this theological content is not apart from the analogy with contemporary usage (although neither is it simply identical with it). See also Craig Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2nd edn, 2003), p. 269 on parents, children and honour. 119 The evangelist’s expounding of this relationship in the intrinsically honour-laden figure of ‘an only son’ is left strikingly unremarked in both Barth and von Balthasar, despite each of them making extensive observations on the passage (1.14). Both focus on other elements in the verse, including, for Barth, at one point nearly 50 pages in CD I.2 on ‘the Word became flesh’. In an earlier work Barth commented in greater exegetical detail on this verse – yet resolves the meaning of dόxa in 118



the idea of light, of perfect radiance, of total brightness, such as proceeds from God’s mighty working and ruling, or simply from his presence. Δόxa differs from joV in vv 4f., if I am right, in the fact that it does not denote God’s divine self-manifestation as such but the qualities of God that are at work in it, or may be seen where he reveals himself, being also and primarily proper to God as such.

(Witness to the Word: A Commentary on John 1 by Karl Barth; Lectures at Munster in 1925 and at Bonn in 1933 (ed. Walther Furst, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 97.) 120 Contra E. C. Hoskyns and Francis Davey, The Fourth Gospel (London: Faber and Faber limited, 1940), p. 145. 121 This does not imply that the Son – and the Father through the Son – does not make himself vulnerable to that human failure, chiefly through the cross.

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Throughout John, this relationship of Father and Son is expounded in terms of glorification, underscoring the relationality and honour implicit in glory; the dynamic of glorification in God both displays a ‘logic of abundance’ and shares a logic with Paul’s teaching on honour and giving in 2 Corinthians. Further, John maintains that glorification is not inward-looking or self-focused, but expansive, drawing in others. Finally, it becomes clear that the process of glorifying or giving glory decentres and gives place to another, while not de-selving the giver. I shall examine each of these in turn. First, glorification takes place between persons. The Father glorifies the Son. (8.54) The Son glorifies the Father. (17.1, 4) The Spirit, mediated through human agency, glorifies the Father through the Son. (14.13) Glorification is thus a process between persons in relation. It is not a mechanical or automatic process, but involves an agent’s will, mind, affections. It also manifests an interpersonal character: no one in John (legitimately) glorifies him or herself but glorifies someone else. This also means that no one is said to be glorious in isolation from others: for example, Jesus, in 17.24, requests from the Father that those given to Jesus may see Jesus’ glory where he is, a glory given by the Father out of love. Here, Jesus’ glory flows out of the relation of Father and Son (the Father’s love for the Son), as well as being the prayed-for basis of the relation of disciples and Son (in being beheld). Further, as Jesus leaves his disciples in the world, he has given them the glory which the Father gave him (17.22), an intimacy of Father and Son which is meant to create an analogous unity of love among the disciples as the Father and Son themselves enjoy (v. 23). This process of glorification thus requires at least two: one to glorify and one to be glorified. There is revealed in this interpersonal process, chiefly and paradigmatically between Father and Son, a dynamic of glorification, a process of donation (glorifying) and reception (being glorified). As the story in the Gospel of John unfolds there is a narrated sequence of glorifying. Within this narrative, the Son is said to have laid down the glory he had before the beginning of the world, a glory which he relies on the Father to restore. (17.5) This seems to open an ‘interval’ of glory for the Son: the preexistent glory is laid down for a time and then received again from the Father. During this ‘interval’ the Son is glorifying the Father by doing the work the Father gave the Son to do, work which the gospel itself narrates. (17.4) So there is here a moment of loving donation without concern for return as the Son wholeheartedly, unreservedly glorifies the Father. This is also a moment of deep trust, as the Son asks the Father to glorify the Son (17.1, 5), and speaks in the future tense of the Father glorifying the Son. (13.32; 16.14) This sequence of

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laying down, loving donation and trusting to receive again are three ‘moments’ of glorifying in John.122 A fourth ‘moment’ of being glorified, a moment of reception (and reciprocal glorification) is present as well in John. It is clearest in chapter 13.31, 32: ‘Jesus said “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.”’ As the Father is glorified by the Son, the Father also glorifies the Son. This reception and reciprocal action is also seen in John 17, although reversed: the Son petitions the Father ‘glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.’ (v. 1) The latter three moments of the process of glorifying ‘in’ God map onto the three practices associated with exchange in human society. For the first moment of ‘laying down’ there is no strict equivalent among humans: commentators suggest that this ‘glory’ which is laid aside is a ‘heavenly’, ‘eternal’, or ‘supratemporal’ glory.123 But the donation, acceptance and return of glory in the process of glorification between Father and Son is analogous with giving, receiving and reciprocating as present in the transformed process of honouring implicit in Paul in 2 Corinthians. Even as, among humans, giving expresses identity, social relationship and honour, so the process of mutual glorifying between Father and Son expresses the identity of each, the social relationship of both, and the glory of God. In this dynamic of giving in God, what is given is glory. The giving of glory glorifies the other while also expressing the glory of the giver. But in reciprocation, the one glorified may glorify the initial giver in a manner which also expresses the praiseworthiness of the initial receiver (now acting to reciprocate). Thus ‘within’ God for John there is a dynamism of reciprocity to which human processes of giving and receiving are analogous. Yet if the Father and the Son are themselves completely praiseworthy, then this ‘glorifying’, this praise, would seem not to add to the glory of either; it is gratuitous, superfluous. David Ford and Daniel Hardy identify a logic which is intrinsic to praise, claiming that ‘praise perfects perfection’.124 Describing praise among humans, they write that to ‘recognize worth and to respond to it with praise is to create a new relationship. This new mutual delight is itself I say ‘moments’ in scare quotes because they are not discrete events that the text occupies itself with retelling: there is a sense, even in the story, that they are simultaneous. Yet they are capable of being narrated inasmuch as these three ‘moments’ can be a description of the entire life and ministry of Jesus. 123 Barrett, John, p. 504; Westcott, John, p. 241. 124 David F. Ford and Daniel W. Hardy, Living in Praise: Worshipping and Knowing God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2nd edn, 2005), p. 8. 122

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something of worth, an enhancement of what was already valued.’125 Praise can thus create an unending ‘spiral of free response’, in which the expression of praise in a relationship is ‘intrinsic to its quality, and is also a measure of all behaviour within it’.126 Similarly, the logic of thanks is that it ‘completes what is completed’, it is a ‘mode of praise directed to past events’ which allows that which is being thanked ‘to overflow into the present and the future’.127 If God’s glory is God’s honour, God’s praiseworthiness, then something like this logic may be located in the praise and mutual glorification of Father and Son. In completing what is completed, gratitude flows over to gratuity: the logic of God glorifying God’s glory is not only completeness and perfection, but abounding completeness and exceeding perfection, not content to remain isolated and self-focused but seeking out others. Thus the praise of praiseworthiness, and the honouring of honour within God is seen to be a dynamic of overflow and abundance. Honouring and glorifying between the Father and the Son do not obey a strict, zero-sum ‘logic of equivalence’. There is something more going on here. Ricoeur identifies the logic at work in the teaching of Jesus, and the teaching of the Apostle Paul about Jesus as a ‘logic of abundance’ which exceeds the usual human ‘logic of equivalence’.128 But in this dynamic of mutual glorifying found in John it becomes clear that this logic of ‘how much more’ is not found only in Jesus but may be read back into the very heart of God, the relation of the Father and the Son. Thus glory is seen as an overflowing of the praiseworthiness and honour of God into the creation. Second, if this dynamic of mutual glorification is characteristic of the glory of Father and Son, for John this glorification of God by God does not remain immanent to God, but seeks also the maximal good of what is around it. For example, Jesus’ being glorified, being ‘lifted up’, will draw all to himself (Jn 12.23, 24, 32, 33). The implication is that the truly glorious one is not the one who remains in splendid isolation as an object to be admired, but one who is in relation with others, seeking and acting for their good, elevating and glorifying them as well. So, inasmuch as being truly glorified implies receiving the donation of glorification and acting in accord with that glorification, it gives rise to the one glorified also glorifying others who are themselves appropriately considered praiseworthy. Moreover, inasmuch as Jesus’ being lifted up encompasses the Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, p. 8. Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, p. 8. Ford and Hardy, Living in Praise, p. 10. 128 Ricoeur, ‘Logic’, p. 282. 125 126 127

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cross, in which Jesus’ glorification includes pain, loss, rejection and death (in conventional terms, the opposite of glory), the ‘logic of abundance’ comes clearly into view, as destruction of the source of light and life becomes the means of new life and light for the creation. The ‘logic of God’ is seen in that this ‘glorification’ is interpreted in terms of love for friends, rather than shame and loss (17.13). The abundance of God’s glory, God’s praiseworthiness, shines through in this glorifying of Jesus, in which God gives honour (in the form of new life) to those who were dishonourable (by loving darkness, missing the glory of the Son, and being complicit in his death). To return to the relations of Father and Son, we then see that as the Son glorifies the Father, so also the Father glorifies the Son in accord with true praiseworthiness – not as a failure to receive the Son’s glorification, but as a manifestation of it. Moreover, the Father glorifying the Son leads to the Son glorifying the Father as, again, a sign of genuine praiseworthiness. So we can see a mutual process of glorifying and being glorified, of donation and reception and return. This is an elemental process in God which precedes all human processes of giving. Yet this is not unlike what I have shown is present in Paul’s teaching on glory and honour among persons in light of Christ in 2 Corinthians. Finally, another relevant feature of glorification in John is that glorifying decentres the self, allowing place for another. As seen in the process of mutual glorification of Father and Son, the focus of glorifying is on the other who is deemed praiseworthy, and the glorification is undertaken for the sake of commending and highlighting – revealing the glory – of the other. As I have already indicated, this ‘praising of the praiseworthiness’ is gratuitous, overflowing to the creation, abounding to its blessing. Thus while Father and Son each make room for the other, being decentred in glorification of the other, this dynamic of glorification abounds to the creation as well. This glorification is undertaken for its own sake, not as something merely instrumental (and thus dispensable, substitutable), and yet by its very nature, in being undertaken for its own sake, there are nevertheless blessings for the beloved creation. So in this it might be said that this process decentres the ‘self ’ (while not being ‘de-selved’ – there is not quite the sense of self-dispossession that von Balthasar locates here).129 The Father glorifies the Son and in doing so the Son is exalted in such a way that the whole world is drawn to him. (Jn 12.27) The 129

The scare quotes indicate that it is not evident to me that God might have a self (or be a self) in the way that humans might imagine themselves; the point in relation to God is that the ‘persons’ of the Trinity may be most fully who they are, yet in the closest proximity to the others of the Three; each is decentred, yet not bracketed out.

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Son glorifies the Father on earth through the work the Son was given to do, thus both drawing focus to the Father (through glorifying him) and in doing that work giving eternal life to all those who have been given to him. (17.2, 4) The Spirit glorifies the Son in humans by taking what is the Son’s (which is also the Father’s) and declaring it to them. (16.14) Jesus announces that the Father is glorified in the Son’s acts which he does in his authority at the request of the disciples. (14.13) In each of these the one glorifies the other and blessedness accrues to a third. It follows then that any description of God’s concern for God’s glory as an essentially ‘selfish’ act simply does not hold up. God glorifies Godself and in so doing the creation is blessed and invited to participate in this process of divine glorification. This also means that as humans begin to participate in this process of glorification they are decentred, focusing on another in love, with blessings for others. This is not far from the affirmations of Barth and von Balthasar on glory, as (respectively) the overflowing of God’s joy and the overflowing of God’s love; indeed, I would want to maintain that God’s praiseworthiness encompasses God’s joy in God’s self, as well as God’s immanent love. Where we part company is in the area of this glory’s effects on the creation, and creation’s subsequent relationship with God; describing these effects begins with the Paraclete, to which I return below. But first, while the dominant mode of exposition of God’s glory for John is in the honour-laden relationship of Father and Son and their processes of glorification, he also resorts to the theme of light at points in the gospel. Jesus proclaims in three separate places that he is the light of the world, or light in the world (8.12; 9.5; 12.46). The image intimates divine glory, which is manifested in various other places in Scripture as light (see, for example, Gen. 15.17, Lk. 2.32 and 9.31, Rev. 21.23). Elsewhere (Isa. 60.1-3), the divine light of glory is set in opposition to darkness, as John sets Jesus as light in opposition to darkness. Just what does this light do? The light is life (Jn 1.4), it is ‘coming into the world’ and enlightens every person (1.9) yet is capable of being resisted or rejected (1.10, 11). The ‘shining’ of the light upon the creature, and giving her life and offering her new life constitutes a glorification of the creature by God. It is certainly the case that the creature may fail to live up to this honour, may sin, may embrace darkness, may reject light and life, but this does not mitigate the grace of God’s honouring her in the first place. For those who do accept this light, who believe in the Son, he gives power to ‘become children of God’ (1.12, using ‘tekna’, an intrinsically honour-laden term of relation, although with fewer status connotations than ‘υίόϚ’.) Following

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Jesus, people may leave the darkness (12.46), will have the light of life (8.12), and are (with Christ) enabled to do the works of the Father (9.4, 5). This ‘lightening’ of the creature with light constitutes within her the capacity for life, the true life of the children of God. Thus the light which is life gives life and opposes darkness: it begets in the creation that which it is. Contrary to what Barth suggests, although this light always exists from and in relation to God (it is not presented as an inalienable possession of the creature), it is not merely a ‘reflected’ or ‘echoed’ light, not only a bearing witness to Christ, but it is a light which transforms the bearer in accord with the glory of God. Indeed, as life, the light is the creature’s very vitality, the primal gift at the core of her existence.

I have called you friends To this point, this section on John has been occupied with the glory of the Father and the Son, and the mutual glorification between them: glory within God. I now turn to the transforming effects of this glory on the creature, and specifically those who have been given to Jesus (10.29). In order to explore this matter, I shall first have to set out John’s distinctive teaching on the Paraclete, which then moves us to the question of the nature of human agency in light of the glory of the Son. The Paraclete is a distinct way of referring to the Spirit in Jesus’ farewell discourse in John. This Spirit is said to rest or remain on Jesus (1.32), and the ministry of the Paraclete is closely related to the earthly ministry of Jesus. Raymond Brown in particular has noticed a close correlation between what is said of the Son and what is said of the Paraclete.130 Thus, as Robert Crump observes, in John ‘the Spirit continues the earthly ministry begun by the Son’, only unencumbered by the spatial-temporal restraints of incarnation.131 Yet this is not the same as reducing the Paraclete’s work to the work of Jesus, as Jesus himself is doing the work of his Father (5.35, 14.10).132 Thus, each of the three may be said to be enacting the one mission of God. In the four passages in the farewell discourse where Jesus refers to the Paraclete, the Spirit’s work is set out. In 14.16, 17 the Spirit of Truth ‘abides’ with ‘The Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel’, New Testament Studies, 13 (1967), p. 126. David Crump, ‘Re-examining the Johannine Trinity: perichoresis or deification?’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 59 (2006), p. 406. 132 Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John (Sacra Pagina Series; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1998a), p. 442, and pace Barrett, John, p. 90. 130 131

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the disciples (in a manner similar to the way the Spirit ‘remained’ on Jesus: compare this verse with 1.32, in which John testifies to the descent of the Spirit onto Jesus, using the same verb as in 14.17, mέnein). As with Jesus (1.11), the world cannot receive the Spirit (14.17), just as it will reject the disciples (15.18; 16.2; cf. 13.20). Further, the Paraclete will teach the disciples ‘everything’, and remind them of all that Jesus has said (14.26); there is thus a retrospective aspect to the ministry of the Spirit (reminding) and a prospective aspect (teaching everything). Some have interpreted this ‘teaching’ restrictively, as (for example) being fulfilled ‘in the interpretation of the true character of Christ’.133 But I see no reason why being taught ‘all things’ by the Spirit (or, in 16.13: being ‘guide[d] . . . into all the truth’) must be so bounded: even if the Spirit teaches about Christ, Christ is equated with the Logos, the one through whom all things were made (1.3), and so to be taught more about Christ itself implies an expansive and unbounded knowledge. Thirdly, the Paraclete will testify on behalf of Jesus in his absence, and the disciples are to testify as well (15.26, 27). Finally, the Paraclete will ‘prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement’ (16.8). As Barrett observes, these, along with the Spirit declaring ‘the things that are to come’ (16.13) are anticipatorily eschatological, placing ‘the world in the position which it will occupy at the last judgement’.134 Thus, the work of the Paraclete is an extension of the mission of God in the world, one which carries on the work of Christ in different contexts, and which empowers the disciples (teaching them, testifying alongside them, leading them into all truth), remaining with them constantly. In the words of Crump, the Paraclete ‘engages the world head-on and does not look back’.135 In this work of the Spirit, one may descry Ricoeur’s logic of Jesus, a logic of overflow. Jesus must depart for the Spirit to come (16.7), and in his departure Jesus is taken from the disciples and killed (although, in the logic of God, even this abounds to the believer’s life). Yet the ministry of the Spirit, while closely tied to the ministry of the Son (and hence the Father), also exceeds this ministry in a number of aspects: notably, Jesus must depart, but the Spirit remains; Jesus is present at one time and place, the Spirit is not so bounded; Jesus had a fixed teaching ministry (which the Spirit serves) and yet the Spirit also teaches the disciples ‘all things’ and leads them into ‘all truth’.136 Further, the Spirit will Westcott, John, p. 209. Barrett, John, p. 90. 135 Crump, ‘Re-examining’, p. 409. 136 Not that this truth supersedes the teaching of Jesus, but rather must be considered a further unfolding of the logic of the cosmic Logos. 133 134

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complete the work of Christ in bringing forward the eschatological judgment to the world. Finally, the Spirit will glorify Christ through declaring to the disciples all that is the Son’s (which is also the Father’s, 16.14, 15): in this way, the Spirit enables the disciples to glorify the Son (in that way empowering them to do what Jesus says of the Father, but never of himself, 8.54).137 At this point, then, we might turn to the disciples, the ones whom the Paraclete remains ‘in’ or ‘among’ (14.17), whom the Paraclete teaches ‘all things’ (14.26). Along with being given the Paraclete, who reflects the ‘how much more’ of divine agency, after Jesus’ departure, Jesus also makes some remarkable statements about the disciples prior to his departure: I shall indicate three in particular which reflect human agency transformed in accord with the overflowing glory of God. First, Jesus says of the disciples that they will do ‘the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father’ (14.12). To be sure, Jesus sees this as a continuation of the ministry the Father has begun in Jesus (14.10), a ministry whose power grows out of the relationship of Father and Son (14.13). Yet it is clear that, although this is a continuation of the Father’s ministry, it is not a precise repetition of what Jesus has done. Indeed, there seems an analogy: just as the Spirit will lead the disciples into ‘all the truth’ (16.13) in Jesus’ absence, so also will the disciples do ‘greater works than these’ (14.12) in Jesus’ absence. This ministry is not to be considered simply an identical repetition of what Jesus did and said, nor what is recorded in the gospel: it is an ongoing work of the disciples dwelling in the love of Christ, and relying on the ongoing relationship with him. They act as the Son’s ‘representatives’ in the world, and in that way, they act also to glorify the Father in the Son (14.13, 14).138 By being given status and identity as disciples and being included in the mission of God in the world, by Jesus’ commitment to them and their being allowed to glorify the Father in the Son, Jesus honours his followers. In being honoured this way, and particularly being allowed to do ‘greater works than these’, works which become an intrinsic part of the dynamism of glorifying within God, the disciples’ human agency is transformed, overflowing in a manner akin to the overflowing of God’s glory. 137 138

Crump, ‘Re-examining’, p. 403. Malina and Rohrbaugh, John, p. 248. This constitutes another example of the dynamic of honour in John: the disciples bear the honour – the public claim to worth – of their master, Jesus, who himself as the Son bears the honour of the Father, and intends that the Father be glorified (honoured) in the Son as the Son does what the disciples ask. Yet – almost inevitably – since this is the honour of Jesus, it is simultaneously unsurpassable and yet neglected and denied by the world; at the same time, since this is the honour of Jesus, it as a praiseworthiness and claim to worth which is elaborated in the form of gracious love.

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Secondly, as the disciples remain (or abide) in Christ, and he in them (15.4), they bear much fruit in the world, glorifying the Father (15.8). They remain in Christ’s love – the same love the Father has for the Son (15.9) – by loving with the love that he loves them. In this way, the Father’s love is made known in the world, in the mediated relationship through the Son and the disciples, to the Father’s glory. Jesus’ charge to his disciples is given in the form of a commandment: to love one another as I have loved you (15.12). B. F. Westcott discerns a pattern in the sequence of love-commandment sayings by Jesus in the farewell discourse. Noting verses 15 and 21 in chapter 14, and verse 10 in chapter 15, he concludes: ‘At a first reading it might be easy to miss the advance from obedience resting on love to progressive knowledge, and then to a divine certainty of life. When the relation of the three connected texts is seen, it is difficult not to feel that what appears to be repetition is a vital movement.’139 As John sets out Jesus’ teaching here, there is an unfolding of ever-greater trust, disclosure and love. This is indicative of a certain quality of relationship, to which I return below. But in this progression of commandments the agency of the disciples, as ones who are honoured by Jesus and who glorify God, is not the agency of straight-line obedience, the obedience demanded by heteronomy. Rather, here it begins to become clear that the disciples exist in a relationship of non-heteronomous dependence upon the Son: apart from him they can do nothing (15.5), yet in him they will do his works and greater than these (14.12).140 This non-heteronomous dependence becomes yet clearer when the content of Jesus’ commandment, to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (15.12), is examined. As Craig Koester states, The Johannine commandments make comprehensive claims on the lives of Jesus’ followers with an almost unparalleled simplicity. They give basic directives rather than detailed instructions, providing coordinates by which to navigate rather than a map of the entire route.141 Westcott, John, p. lxiv. In commenting on this passage, von Balthasar holds it up as an example of ‘apostolic fruitfulness of Christ’s love in the love of the Church’ (GL VII, p. 258); moreover, he holds it open as obedience, without which no fruit may be derived, and even more tellingly, that the principle of Christian fruitfulness, typified in laying down one’s life for a brother, is ‘the opening of the inmost heart for the brother . . . and thus the attempt at total self-renunciation, at dying to all self-will’ (GL VII, p. 257). While I would not wish to qualify this fruitfulness as love, or as self-giving, or as obedience per se, I certainly want to nuance this obedience as more than simple self-renunciation or dying to self-will. There is more going on here – not the construction of the opposite, an autonomous, self-willed self, but a self-in-community, an interdependent body of selves who are capable of bearing constructive, self-giving relationships with others. 141 Koester, Symbolism, p. 265. 139 140

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Jesus’ commandment to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ is distinct, and yet underdetermined. It is fixed on love, which rules out hatred and spite, yet does not determine the shape of the expression of that love in advance. Faithfully following this commandment (and therefore glorifying God through Christ) may engage the disciple’s agency at all levels: creative devising of new possibilities to express love, judgment of the best concrete means of loving another (appropriate to context), faithful questioning of alternatives (as well as of oneself), and enacting the performance of love. In giving this commandment to his disciples, Jesus provided the thrust of faithful living to glorify God, and at the same time constituted his disciples as agents (and in that way, granting them an honour which flows out of their relationship with him).142 At the same time, Jesus expresses his love at the uttermost distance of selfgiving, in dying for his friends (which in John is closely tied to his ‘being glorified’, 7.39; 12.16; 12.23), so there is no conceivable shape which this love may not take. What is required – and what is given – is not a ‘straightline’ obedience which brackets out human agency, but a creative, responsive obedience which engages human agency and allows it to overflow in accord with the glory of God. Before moving on, it is worth returning to a point taken up in Chapter 2, about Barth failing to note that God’s glory begets a responding love from the creation. This text clearly attests that as the Son represents the Father and bears the Father’s glory or honour as the only Son (1.14), and that as the Father loves the Son so the Son loves the disciples (15.9), and that as the disciples love Jesus, so they are to love one another, abide in Jesus’ love (14.23, 15.12), and therefore glorify the Father (15.8), so the glory of God, expressed in the mission of the Son, not only expresses God’s love but also begets love, both for God and among creatures. Rather specifically in the matter of love, glory begets glory, contra Barth. Yet, even though Christ’s sacrifice describes the uttermost distance of selfgiving love, nevertheless Christ does not command his disciples give their lives in all cases (even if it is always present as a dark, yet real possibility: (Jn 21.19)). Instead, he commands the disciples to love, an underdetermined command which necessarily calls forth a creative, discerning response in the creature. This command does not require only hearing and straight-line performance, but engages the creature’s agency (in thinking and doing) on multiple levels. 142

It is telling the when von Balthasar comments on this verse, his emphasis is strictly on obedience (GL VII, p. 256).

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And so, contra von Balthasar, while the glory of God does create a responding and creative love among creatures, this is more than a matter of straight-line obedience. Finally, Jesus constituting the disciples as agents is realized in a very specific sort of relationship. In 15.13-15 Jesus spells this out: not slaves (doύloi) but friends (jίloi). The relationship of a master and slave would have been oneway: the master commands, the slave performs; the relationship is entirely asymmetrical.143 The relationship of master and slave is the paradigmatic case  of ‘straight-line’ obedience: the master orders, the slave performs. The slave’s agency (as a human rather than an instrument of the master) is bracketed out.144 Although the disciples were never actually called ‘slaves’ in the Gospel of John, nevertheless Jesus stipulates that they are not slaves but his friends, a very different sort of relationship. Moreover this relationship with Jesus is meant to abound to the disciples’ other relationships as well, as they are commanded to love one another (and thus show their love of Jesus). In the New Testament context, to call someone a friend was quite significant. As Malina and Rohrbaugh explain, the term friend ‘implied mutual obligations of a high order. Note that what is intended here is fictive kinship, not political friendship. . . . The mutual obligation of this type of friendship involved willingness to defend family integrity.’145 Friendship here signifies a loving intimacy, but also a shared honour as identities are drawn together.146 At the same time, this friendship is not a relation of pure equals, as he reminds the disciples that he chose them, they did not choose him; further, while they are friends, their friendship is enacted in the following of Jesus’ command (to love), and not any of the disciples’ commands.147 Yet this friendship confirms and deepens Westcott’s observation about the command to love, that is, that it moves from an obedience to a relationship involving disclosure. John spells out the difference between a slave and a friend in these terms: the disciples are Jesus’ friends because he has not withheld anything of what he has heard from the Father (15.15).148 This disclosure constitutes the disciples as friends Malina and Rohrbaugh, John, p. 235. It is striking that Barth comments not at all on John 15.15, and that both his citations of 15.16 (in CD I.2 and IV.3.2) comment on Jesus’ saying ‘You have not chosen me but I have chosen you,’ leaving the phrase about the disciples bearing fruit unremarked. 145 Malina and Rohrbaugh, John, p. 235. 146 Francis J. Moloney, Glory not Dishonour: Reading John 13-21 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998b), pp. 65, 66. 147 Koester, Symbolism, p. 268. 148 Barrett, John, p. 477. 143 144

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of the Son: even if not precisely equals, they are nevertheless constituted in a relationship of intimacy and mutual love with Jesus. The obedience of the disciples grows out of this relationship. Unlike a master-slave relationship, as friends the disciples’ human agency and capacity are respected, and a creative, dialogical obedience is possible. This relationship is, in essence, a relationship of non-heteronomous dependence. The movement of disclosure by Jesus to the disciples, his loving them and ‘befriending’ them cuts against any sense of opaque and heteronomous demands for obedience. On the contrary, the Son and the Paraclete constitute the disciples as agents, capable of using discernment, faithful questioning, judgment, and performance in the new life they are given as followers of Christ. Yet this agency is made possible by and carried out in relationship: through the Paraclete, to the Son, and through the Son, to the Father. There is no sense of the disciples ever functioning in isolation from this vital relationship of light and life: this relationship is non-heteronomous, yet it is still a situation of dependence. As in Paul, the glory of God creates a sociality which reflects the quality of God’s glory, specifically the shape of God’s honour and praiseworthiness. But John locates the source of that creaturely sociality in a prior, elemental sociality of glorifying within God, namely, between the Father and the Son. The glory of God and the process of glorifying is thus, for John, a relational dynamism intrinsic to God. Moreover, this dynamism reflects a certain logic of exchange: the Son glorifies the Father, and the Father glorifies the Son; each gives, receives and reciprocates. The disciples are brought into this process; through Jesus’ command to love one another, being commissioned to do ‘greater things than these’ (14.12), and being given the Paraclete who will ‘teach [them] all things’ (14.26) and ‘guide [them] into all truth’ (16.13), they are drawn into this process of glorifying (14.13; 15.8; 16.14). Their agency is transformed, overflowing in a manner analogous to the overflowing of God’s glory. Or to put it another way, with the Paraclete and as friends of Jesus, it is made possible for the disciples to inhabit the logic of God, in mutual glorification. Finally, as the disciples are drawn into this relationship of intimacy with Jesus, they are decentred, since to obey Jesus’ command to love requires a focus on another rather than oneself. This raises the possibility of ‘paying forward’ to others the love that one has already received from God. This is analogous to the mutual glorification of Father and Son, in which neither glorifies himself, but glorifies the other. Yet while the disciple is decentred, she is not de-selved;

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bookmark not simply fade into the background, lose her identity or become overwhelmed in her agency, any more than Father or Son ‘disappear’ in the process of mutual glorification in God.

Conclusion There are some differences of emphasis between Paul and John when it comes to the glory of God: Paul makes implicit connections between God’s glory and a transformed process of honouring among humans; John connects glorifying God in accord with God’s glory with a humanity transformed into friends of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit, and loving others as Jesus loves. Paul finds the glory of God focused most intensely in the ‘face’ of Jesus, whereas John locates God’s glory just as intensely in the relationship between Father and Son. But on the whole, it becomes clear that, on the topic of the glory of God and its relation to Jesus’ followers, there is broad convergence between the two. Both affirm the possibility of encountering the glory of God in the present age, and not only eschatologically in the age to come. Both maintain that God’s glory effects change in the disciple in a manner consistent with the character of that glory, and that this transformation is not only for the individual but creates a larger sociality which itself reflects the shape of that glory. Both expound the shape of the glory of God as flowing from the very identity of God, which implies God’s praiseworthiness and honour (encompassing and exceeding God’s declarative light and attractive splendour). This glory goes beyond the contemporary, contextual meaning of ‘glory’ for both Paul and John to be filled out decisively by the ‘shape’ of God’s acts in and for the creation, encompassing even the (conventionally) shameful death of Jesus on the cross. Both insist that the glory of God is inseparable from God, and therefore that humans may inhabit or reflect that glory only in relationship with God, a relationship (and a glory) which is, at bottom, purely God’s grace. Both intimate that the glory of God does not overwhelm or bracket out human agency, but rather constitutes it in a certain way; for both writers, there is no contradiction between the fullness of God’s agency and a fullness of human agency. Both also reflect Ricoeur’s ‘logic of God’ and a dynamic of overflow in transformed human agency. Moreover, both Paul and John (and Exodus) query Barth’s and von Balthasar’s accounts of divine glory and particularly their relationship with

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human agency. Glory is presented encompassingly and primarily in terms of honour; God’s glory is God’s richly specified identity, which implies God’s goodness, praiseworthiness and ‘reputation’. This qualifies Barth’s preference for glory as self-declarative light and von Balthasar’s emphasis on splendour and beauty – not that these are wrong, or unattested by Scripture, but that they ought to be contextualized by God’s glory as honour and praiseworthiness. Further, this glory is not in isolation, but is an honour which honours, a glory which glorifies. We find that the content of glory not only shapes the form of its revealing, but effects in creation what it is. Both Barth and von Balthasar were reluctant at points to affirm that God’s glory begets an analogous glory in creation. What is more, particularly in 2 Corinthians and John, specific forms of human sociality are seen as consistent with the glory of God in Jesus Christ: in 2 Corinthians, Paul discusses human processes of honouring (for those who know the primal grace of God) as being transformed in the light of the glory of God in Christ; in John the evangelist presents the mutual glorifying of Father and Son as elemental to God, a process into which the Paraclete draws the disciples. Such considerations are left to one side by both Barth and von Balthasar. Finally, divine glory is shown as being consistent with a fullness of human agency rather than overwhelming it or bracketing it out. In Exodus, Moses is allowed to request to see God’s glory without being rebuffed; in 2 Corinthians, believers behold the glory of Christ in each other’s faces, and are transformed to honour others in accord with that glory; in John, disciples are not ‘slaves’ but ‘friends’, commanded to love but entrusted to discern the proper shape of that love and empowered to continue the work of Christ and do ‘greater things than these’. Barth and von Balthasar, despite their extensive interaction with Scripture and generally satisfactory accounts of divine glory, do not take sufficient or satisfying note of these significant passages and their features. Further, they provide accounts of human agency whose fullness in God is, at base, ‘straight-line’ obedience; von Balthasar in particular seems to suggest that the only way humans may follow Christ is through actively bracketing out one’s own agency. Neither of them affirm a role for human discernment, judgment, faithful questioning, learning about learning or performance in God’s glory. Yet in these theological explorations of Scripture I have shown that, on the contrary, human agency in light of God’s glory is not ‘straight-line’ obedience but responsive and creative; that humanity before God’s glory is not de-selved but constituted to act in accord with God’s glory; and that human agency, in God, is transformed according to the logic of God,

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to overflow in love, honouring and glorifying others to the glory of God, and this in a relationship of non-heteronomous dependence on God. Through this, one sees that divine and human agency are non-competitive, and the fullness of divine agency is fully consistent with human agency and flourishing: or, as Irenaeus put it, ‘the glory of God is the living human, and the life of the human is the vision of God.’149

149

Irenaeus, Against the Heresies (trans. Dominic Unger; Ancient Christian Writers, 55; New York: Paulist Press, 2012), book IV, ch. 20, para. 7.

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Scripture Index OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 15.17 18.16–33

182 82

Exodus 152, 160n. 63, 190 3.14 152 32 152, 161n. 69 32.1–6 152 32.19 152 32.20 152 32.33 152 33 11, 146, 151–2, 157 33.5 152 33.11 157, 161 33.12 153 33.12–16 152 33.12–23 153 33.12–34.9 82, 152 33.17 154 33.18 152, 153 33.19 153 33.19–34.28 152 33.19b 154 33.20 153, 154, 157 33.23 154 34 11, 146, 151–2, 157 34.6 154 34.7 154 34.8 155 34.9 155, 157 34.29 153, 156 34.30 156, 161 34.30–35 153 Psalms

26

Isaiah 6.3 6.9–11 60.1–3

33 33 182

Jeremiah 18.1–10

68 67

Ezekiel 68 NEW TESTAMENT Matthew 7.15–23 12.9–14

68 258

Luke 1.29 1.32 1.33 1.34 1.35–37 1.38 1.38a 1.39 1.40 2.19 2.32 2.51 9.31 13.14–17 22.15

140 142 142 140 140 139, 140 137 141 141 139, 141 182 139 182 258 82n. 61

John 11, 12, 68, 106, 109, 129, 131, 146, 151, 174, 175–6, 178, 179, 188, 190, 191 1.3 176, 177, 184 1.4 182 1.4f 177n. 119 1.9 182 1.10 182 1.11 182, 184 1.12 182 1.14 175, 176, 177, 187

206

Scripture Index

1.17 177 1.18 177 1.32 183, 184 1.38 82n. 61 1.39 82n. 61 5.23 176 5.35 183 7.16–24 158 7.39 187 8.12 182, 183 8.54 178, 185 9.4 183 9.5 182, 183 10.29 183 10.31–38 69 12.16 187 12.23 180, 187 12.24 180 12.27 181 12.32 180 12.33 180 12.46 182, 183 13.20 184 13.31 179 13.32 178, 179 14.10 183, 185 14.12 12, 185, 186, 189 14.13 178, 182, 185, 189 14.14 185 14.15 186 14.16 183 14.17 183, 184, 185 14.21 186 14.23 187 14.26 184, 185, 189 15.4 186 15.5 186 15.8 186, 187, 189 15.9 12, 186, 187 15.10 12, 186 15.12 12, 186, 187 15.13–15 188 15.15 12, 174, 188 15.16 188n. 144 15.18 184 15.26 184 15.27 184

16.2 184 16.7 184 16.8 184 16.13 12, 184, 185, 189 16.14 178, 182, 185, 189 16.15 185 17 179 17.1 178, 179 17.2 182 17.4 178, 182 17.5 178 17.13 181 17.22 174, 178 17.23 178 17.24 178 19.37–40 150 21.19 187 Acts 15.20 15.22–29

97 97

Romans 5.9 5.10 5.15 5.17 11.36 12.1

158, 161 158 158 158 158 33 33

1 Corinthians 12 12.22 12.24 12.25 15.43

168 168 168 168 173n. 105

2 Corinthians 11, 68, 146, 151, 157, 159, 166, 168, 174, 178, 181, 191 1.5 172n. 104 1.14 169 1.20 173 1.24 170n. 97 2.10 170n. 97 3.1 169

Scripture Index 3.2 169 3.3 169 3.5 160, 163 3.7 160, 161 3.7–18 152, 160–6 3.8 160 3.9 160, 161 3.11 160 3.12 172n. 104 3.13 160 3.18 1, 161n. 67, 162, 164–5, 173 3.18a 160 4.5 162, 170n. 97 4.6 163–4 4.7 163, 167n. 89 4.15 170n. 97, 171, 172n. 104, 173 4.17 173n. 105 5.13 170n. 97 5.16 169 7.14 169 8.2 82, 172n. 104 8.4 171 8.5 173 8.7 171 8.8 173 8.9 167n. 89, 173 8.11 172n. 104 8.12 172n. 104 8.14 172

207

8.19 172n. 104, 173 9–10 159n. 59 9.1 171 9.2 169, 172n. 104 9.2–15 171 9.12 172n. 104 9.15 167n. 89 10–13 159n. 59 10.1 172n. 104 10.2 172n. 104 10.12 172n. 104 10.12–12.13 163 11.7 170n. 97 11.18 169 11.21 172n. 104 12.14 82n. 61, 167n. 89, 170 12.19 170n. 97 13.4 169 Galatians 4.19

139

1 John 3.17

68 132

Revelation 21.23

182

APOCRYPHA Ben Sirach

150

Index Abraham  82 Adam  90n. 87 agency see under God; humanity Augustine  128 authority  15, 28 autonomy see under humanity Balthasar, Hans Urs von  5, 146, 164–5, 177n. 119, 188, 191 aesthetics  115–16, 131, 133, 134n. 122 analogy of being (analogia entis)  117, 142 annunciation  133n. 121, 137, 138, 140 see also Mary attunement  133 and Barth  5, 105–12, 114, 115–17, 119, 120, 126–7, 128, 130, 133, 142–3 beauty  9, 106, 115–16, 117, 119, 121, 128, 129, 133, 134n. 122, 142, 146, 152n. 30, 191 Christology (see Jesus Christ) Church  19, 109, 120, 121, 130, 137–40, 164, 186n. 140 see also Mary creation  111, 114, 115, 117–18, 119, 128, 130, 142–3 cross  9, 108, 109, 112, 116, 121, 132 disciple  113, 140, 165 ethics  128n. 95, 132 faith  123, 139 Father (God)  109, 121–2, 124, 131 form (Gestalt)  110n. 24, 111, 112, 115, 117, 118–19, 120, 122, 138, 140, 143 freedom  111, 114, 115, 128–30, 134, 136 God  9, 125–6, 129, 135 agency  107–9, 125, 133n. 121, 156n. 47 being  117, 118, 156n. 47 freedom  110, 112, 114

glory  5, 9, 106, 107–11, 113–16, 118, 119, 121, 128, 132, 136, 137n. 130, 142–3, 146, 151, 156n. 49, 159, 165, 182, 190 grace  106, 138, 150 honour  119, 150–1 light  119 love  108, 110, 112, 113, 118, 121, 128, 142, 182 overflow  1, 2, 159, 182 self-emptying  108–9, 112, 113, 114, 131, 181 splendour  116, 139, 146, 151, 165, 174, 191 heteronomy  136 history  126 Holy Spirit  109, 113, 114, 121, 124 human agency  9, 10, 107, 118, 120, 122–3, 124, 125, 127, 130, 132–5, 137, 139–40, 143, 165, 191 indifference  122, 124–5, 136, 138 I-Thou  10 Jesus Christ  9, 106, 107–9, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 119, 123, 124, 128n. 95, 129, 143, 165 image  139, 164–5 see also Balthasar, Hans Urs von: form incarnation  117, 123 kenosis  112, 121 obedience  108, 114, 121, 131, 140 passion  116 self-emptying  114, 116, 120, 121–2, 131, 140, 143 Son of God  109, 124 love  122, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132 Mary  10, 120, 130, 133n. 121, 137–40, 143 see also annunciation; Church master  134 New Testament  106, 108, 109

210

Index

obedience  9, 10, 113, 119, 120, 122, 123n. 77, 124, 127, 128–38, 140, 141n. 148, 143, 186n. 140, 187 Old Testament  109 participation  118–19 rapture  118–19 receptivity  120n. 66, 122, 124, 133–4, 137, 138–40 revelation  116–17, 118, 127n. 93 self-emptying  123–5, 129–30, 131, 133, 135, 136, 138, 186n. 140 sin  10, 120, 124, 126–7, 132, 134, 136 sociality  114, 134, 135, 136 Trinity  2, 9, 109, 112, 113, 119, 120, 124, 131, 159 truth  106 Barclay, John  2, 4, 172 Barrett, C. K.  177n. 118, 184 Barth, Karl  5, 146, 156n. 49, 161n. 67, 177n. 119, 188n. 144, 191 actualism  35, 38, 54, 80n. 55 analogia fidei  77, 78 autonomy  47n. 45, 64 beauty  7 command  85–92, 98, 102 creation  6–7, 8, 38, 42, 43, 44n. 35, 45–7, 50–2, 53, 55–8, 59, 62, 82, 84–5, 91, 94–7, 98, 99–101, 111, 113, 187 disciple  85 doubt  75, 77 ethics  53, 88–9, 102 faith  75, 77 friendship  91, 92n. 96 God  6–7, 8, 35 agency  62, 73, 89–90, 98, 156n. 47 beauty  56–8, 59, 115 being  38–9, 44, 99, 156n. 47 freedom  6, 36, 39–43, 44–5, 51, 58, 61, 81, 82, 91, 93, 96, 100, 110–12, 143 glory  5, 6–7, 8, 35n. 1, 36–45, 49, 50–3, 55–9, 61–3, 65, 66, 75, 79, 85, 92–7, 98, 99–101, 102, 106, 107, 110, 111–12, 113, 115, 146, 159, 182, 187, 190, 191 see also doxa; kabod grace  41, 46, 72, 96–7 honour  49, 50–4, 59, 61–2, 95–6

joy  44n. 35, 159, 182 light  53–6, 59, 61, 95, 100, 115, 146, 177n. 119, 183, 191 love  35, 39, 40–1, 43, 44–5, 46–8, 51–2, 58–9, 61, 99, 110–12, 113 overflow  1, 2, 8, 159, 182 perfections (attributes)  35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 57, 58, 61, 85, 105, 109 power  44, 56 self-declaration (see Barth, Karl: revelation) wisdom  41 heteronomy  47n. 45, 48, 64, 66, 89–90, 97 Holy Spirit  48n. 47, 62n. 4 human agency  8, 9, 38, 46, 47, 48, 51, 53, 62n. 4, 65, 66, 73, 74, 75–6, 77, 78, 80, 84, 89–90, 92–3, 94, 96–8, 100–1, 102, 107, 133 Jesus Christ  36, 39, 40, 41, 50, 51, 63, 65, 72, 74, 79, 84, 93 incarnation  57 king  63 Mediator  7, 36, 56, 62, 63, 65–7, 69, 72, 85, 93, 94, 100 priest  63 prophet  63, 65, 69, 72 Son of God  63 joy  57 mediation  80 obedience  7, 8, 45, 46, 47–8, 51, 59, 73, 80, 83–7, 89–93, 97–8, 101, 114 praise  45, 46, 51 prophecy  64–71, 74, 80 reconciliation  36, 63, 74–5, 83 revelation  8, 44, 63–4, 66, 71, 73, 74–5, 78, 79–80, 81, 83, 93–4, 98, 117 Scripture  41, 80, 82 sin  126–7 sociality  47, 53 thanksgiving  45, 46, 51 Trinity  2, 37, 57, 94 Word of God  65–6, 72–3, 77 Bauckham, Richard  175–6 beauty  152n. 30 Belleville, Linda  160n. 63 Bible see Scripture Bonhoeffer, Dietrich  85, 86, 87, 88n. 75 Brown, Raymond  183

Index Church  14, 15, 16, 141, 168 command  87–8, 90–1, 186–7 conversation  8, 11, 74, 82, 135, 141, 153, 156, 157 Corinthians  12, 160, 168–73 Crump, Robert  183, 184 Culp, Kristine  34 Deissmann, Adolf  148 dependence see non-heteronomous dependence DeSilva, David  149, 166, 169 discernment  67–70, 77, 88, 90–1, 101, 102–3, 120, 141, 189, 191 disciple  11, 12, 24, 70, 86, 88, 174, 178, 182, 184–9, 190 see also master doctrine  14, 17, 19, 21 doubt  8, 77, 142 doxa  49, 109, 110, 117, 146–8, 150–1, 161, 174, 175, 176, 177n. 119 see also God: glory; kabod doxology  31–2 Eckhart, Meister  124 effacement  135n. 124 Elizabeth  141 epistolary literature  26 ethics  2, 23 faith  8, 26, 77, 80, 81 see also moods of faith faithful questioning  2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 74, 76–9, 82, 84, 87–8, 90–1, 98, 101, 102–3, 120, 141, 156, 157, 162, 189, 191 farewell discourse (John)  12, 183, 186 Father (God)  12, 174, 175, 176–83, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191 Ferreira, Johan  175 Feuerbach, Ludwig  65, 66, 75, 84 Ford, David  8, 41–2, 79–81, 82n. 61, 163–4, 179 friendship  3, 11, 12, 153, 174, 188–9, 190, 191 Gardner, Lucy  133n. 121, 137, 140, 141n. 148 gift exchange  167, 168, 171–2

211

God  68, 71, 82, 102, 153, 168 agency  1, 3, 4, 12, 25, 29, 30–1, 71, 77, 101, 148, 155, 157, 175, 190, 192 attributes  155 covenant  148, 155, 160, 161–2 creation  3, 6, 28, 30, 82, 83, 135, 159, 171, 182 freedom  67, 82 gift  170–3 glory  1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30–1, 32, 33, 34, 53, 83, 97, 102–3, 135–6, 143, 145–6, 148, 150–1, 152, 153–5, 157, 159–66, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178–83, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192 see also doxa; kabod; see also under Balthasar, Hans Urs von; Barth, Karl grace  3, 159, 165, 168, 170, 171n. 99, 172 holiness  136 honour  11, 12, 28, 30, 146, 149–51, 154, 155–6, 157, 159, 161, 163, 165–6, 170, 173, 174, 175, 178, 180–1, 187, 190, 91 identity  146, 148–9, 151, 155, 174, 176, 191 language about  13, 15, 31 light  53 love  31, 142 name  154, 155 overflow  145, 158, 159, 161, 173, 180, 184 power  29 praiseworthiness  149–50, 154, 165, 174, 180–2, 190, 191 presence  146, 148, 152, 155 righteousness  29 salvation  135 sovereignty  27, 28, 29, 67 splendour  11, 147, 155, 176, 177 golden calf  152, 161 Grunewald Crucifixion  132 Gunton, Colin  90 Hardy, Daniel  179 Harrison, James  167, 170n. 97 hermeneutics  6, 17, 76, 157 Herodotus  147

212

Index

heteronomy  1, 2, 4, 6, 13–18, 19, 20, 21, 22–5, 26, 28, 30, 31, 33, 70–1, 90n. 86, 102, 143, 173 see also non-heteronomous dependence Holy Spirit  161, 162, 164, 178, 184–5, 190 see also Paraclete Homer  147 honour  148, 152n. 30, 166–70, 171–3, 176, 179, 185, 191 Howsare, Rodney  111, 128n. 96 humanity agency  3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 25, 26, 29, 31, 33, 34, 67–9, 70–1, 76, 79, 80, 83, 91, 97, 101–3, 126, 135–6, 143, 145, 159, 162, 164, 165–6, 168, 170, 173, 185, 186–8, 189, 190, 191, 192 bracketing  1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 25, 46, 76, 84, 89, 90, 102–3, 120, 122–3, 125, 131, 133n. 121, 134, 136, 143, 145, 156, 160, 162, 165, 187, 191 overflow  1, 2, 12, 33, 71, 92, 98, 145, 160, 165, 185, 192 autonomy  6, 17, 21, 23–4, 25, 97, 173 glory  4, 5, 6, 156, 157, 162, 182, 183, 192 hymnic discourse  19 ideology  15–16 immaturity  24 Irenaeus  192 Israel  152, 155, 156, 161 Jerusalem collection  171–3 Jesus Christ  11, 70n. 28, 158, 159, 162–4, 169, 174, 175, 177, 178–89, 190, 191 crucifixion  163 Mediator  8 Son of God  12, 70, 174, 175, 177–9, 181, 187, 189, 191 Word  175, 176–7, 184 kabod  49, 54, 109, 117, 146, 147–8, 150–1, 152 see also doxa; God: glory Kant, Immanuel  23–4, 90 Kittel, Gerhard  147, 148 knowledge  20 Koester, Craig  186

Law, Mosaic  97n. 120, 152, 155, 157, 160, 161 Lee, Dorothy  175 light  182–3 Loyola, Ignatius  9, 10, 117, 120, 122 McCabe, Herbert  2 McDowell, John  51n. 59 McIntosh, Mark  114, 121, 124, 127, 128n. 95, 129, 130, 131 Maeseneer, Yves de  132–3 magisterium  17, 18n. 14, 25, 26, 28 Magnificat  141 Malina, Bruce  149, 177n. 118, 188 Mangina, Joseph  44n. 35 Marion, Jean Luc  135n. 124 Mary  141, 142 see also under Balthasar, Hans Urs von master  24, 70, 83, 86, 88, 91, 102, 185n. 138, 188–9 see also disciple, slave Mauss, Marcel  167 mediation  7, 55, 69, 80, 90 Moberly, R. W. L.  7, 67–8, 70, 82, 156 moods of faith  79–83, 101 Morgan, Christopher  27, 28 Moses  11, 82, 152–7, 160–1, 165 Moss, David  133n. 121, 141n. 148 Muers, Rachel  141 narrative  18, 26 Newman, Carey  148, 174 New Testament  27, 49, 149, 151, 152, 157, 188 Nimmo, Paul  91 non-competitive agency  4, 51n. 59, 192 non-heteronomous dependence  19–20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 33, 34, 52n. 64, 90n. 86, 97, 100, 101, 125, 130, 131, 136, 142, 145, 160, 162, 163, 186, 189, 192 non-identical repetition  3, 92–3, 97, 101, 102, 165 obedience  2, 22, 29, 70, 90, 97, 102, 157, 159, 189 straight-line  2, 5, 8, 10, 12, 88, 90n. 86, 91–3, 98, 101, 115, 120, 136, 141, 142, 143, 159, 170, 173, 186, 187, 188, 191

Index O’Donaghue, Noel  106 O’Hanlon, Gerald  112 Old Testament  29, 49, 54, 151–2, 153, 157 see also Tanakh overflow  172 glory  1, 9, 170, 171 joy  1 Pannenberg, Wolfhart  31 Paraclete  12, 183–5, 189, 191 see also Holy Spirit Paul, Apostle  11, 12, 158, 159–63, 166–73, 179, 180, 181, 190, 191 paying forward  168, 170, 171, 189 philosophy  20–1 Piper, John  27, 29–31 Placher, William  2 power  26–7, 31 praise  1, 32–3, 179–80 see also worship prayer  26 prescriptive discourse  18 prophecy  8, 18, 28n. 48, 67–8, 70–1, 76, 77, 82 Propp, William H. C.  153n. 31 qal wa-homer  157–9, 160 Quash, Ben  126–7, 128, 129, 130, 141n. 147 receptivity  164 reciprocity  167, 170, 172, 179 revelation  8, 13–14, 16, 17–20, 21–3, 69, 71, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83 Ricoeur, Paul  1, 6, 17–24, 25–6, 28, 66, 70, 71, 80, 83, 86, 88, 90n. 86, 102, 157–8, 161, 162, 165, 180, 184, 190 Rohrbaugh, Richard  188 Schlink, Edmund  31–3 Schreiner, Thomas  27–8

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Scripture  11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 26, 28, 32–3, 53, 67, 68, 76, 83, 143, 145, 146, 147, 150, 191 self-renunciation  141, 142 Septuagint  147 Sermon on the Mount  158 shame  149 sin  82 slave  11, 24, 70, 83, 86–8, 91, 102, 188–9, 191 see also master Smith, D. Moody  174–5 sociality  156, 164, 165–6, 170, 172, 173, 191 Steck, Christopher  125, 128n. 95, 132, 133, 134 Suomala, Karla  153, 155n. 46 Tanakh  147 see also Old Testament Tanner, Kathryn  3, 4 theological exegesis  145 Thompson, Marianne Meye  174–5 Thrall, Margaret E.  161n. 69 Torah  155 Trinity  1, 13–14, 181n. 129 tub  152, 155 Von Rad, Gerhard  147 Watson, Francis  160n. 61, 160n. 63, 161n. 69 Webb, Stephen  171 Webster, John  50, 63, 75, 76, 78, 88–9 Westcott, B. F.  186, 188 Wigley, Stephen  105 Williams, Rowan  6, 13–17, 26, 28, 32, 73–4, 78 wisdom  79 wisdom literature  19 worship  26, 32–3, 155 see also praise Wright, N. T.  31 Young, Frances  163–4