Indicative of Grace – Imperative of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Eberhard Jüngel in his 80th Year 9780567659644

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To Eberhard Jüngel habentes autem eundem spiritum fidei sicut scriptum est credidi propter quod locutus sum et nos credimus propter quod et loquimur – Second Corinthians 4:13

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editor acknowledges several individuals without whose help and support the present endeavour would not have been possible. David Ford, Wolf Krötke, Mark Mattes, Bruce McCormack, George Newlands, Paul Nimmo and Geoffrey Wainwright each offered suggestions during the developmental stages of the project. Among the contributors, David Congdon, Hans-Anton Drewes, Paul Hinlicky, Derek Nelson, Arnold Neufeldt-Fast and Phil Ziegler deserve special mention for invaluable conversations along the way. John Webster passed along editorial wisdom gained from his experience spearheading a collection for Jüngel two decades ago. Piotr Małysz has been a fount of encouragement throughout the lifetime of this volume, and laboured to prepare the fine bibliography herein. Finally, I am grateful to Anna Turton and Miriam Cantwell of T&T Clark for their enthusiasm, editorial support and patience.

A NOTE ON TRANSLATION English quotations in the following essays that refer to German, French and Spanish sources are translations. Any quotation that references an existing English translation is from that edition unless otherwise stated.

Contributors André Birmelé is professor of dogmatic theology in the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Strasbourg, and a pastor in the Lutheran Church of Alsace-Lorraine. For four decades, he has served on the research staff of the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. An internationally recognized expert in ecumenical theology and a participant in numerous dialogues, he is the author of several books, including Le salut en Jésus Christ dans les dialogues œcuméniques (Cerf, 1986), La communion ecclésiale. Progrès œcuméniques et enjeux méthodologiques (Cerf, 2000) and L’horizon de la grâce. La foi chrétienne (Cerf, 2013). David W. Congdon is associate editor at IVP Academic. His doctoral research at Princeton Theological Seminary was on Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth. He is the co-editor, with W. Travis McMaken, of Karl Barth in Conversation (Pickwick,  2014)  and the author of The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology (Fortress, 2015) and God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cascade, 2016). Ivor J. Davidson is professor of systematic and historical theology at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of numerous publications in the areas of Christian doctrine and the history of theology. While his interests are wide-ranging, he made a number of distinct contributions in the field of Patristic theology and its modern interpretations. Paul J. DeHart is professor of theology at Vanderbilt University. His books include Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and Philosophy in the Thought of Eberhard Jüngel (Oxford University Press, 2000); The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006) and Aquinas and Radical Orthodoxy: A Critical Inquiry (Routledge, 2014). Hans-Anton Drewes pursued theological studies at the Universities of Bonn, Zürich, Basel and Tübingen. He was a doctoral student at Tübingen under Professor Eberhard Jüngel, and served as a staff member of Jüngel’s chair and of the Institute for Hermeneutics of the Faculty of Protestant Theology. The editor of several volumes of Karl Barth’s Gesamtausgabe, he was, for many years, Director of the Karl Barth-Archive, Basel (emeritus since 2012). Paul R. Hinlicky is Tise Professor of Lutheran Studies at Roanoke College in Virginia, Docent of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, and professor of systematic theology at the Institute of Lutheran Theology. He is author of Paths Not Taken: Fates of Theology from Luther through Leibniz (Eerdmans, 2009), Luther and the Beloved Community (Eerdmans,

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2010), Divine Complexity: The Rise of Creedal Christianity (Fortress Press, 2010), Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism (Cascade, 2013), and (with Brent Adkins) Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze: A New Cartography (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). A systematic theology, Beloved Community: Critical Dogmatics after Christendom, will be published by Eerdmans in 2015. Christopher R. J. Holmes is senior lecturer in systematic theology, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, and an Anglican Priest. He is the author of Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes: In Dialogue with Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel, and Wolf Krötke (Peter Lang, 2007), Ethics in the Presence of Christ (Continuum T&T Clark, 2012) and The Holy Spirit (Zondervan Academic, 2015). He has also published many articles and book chapters, focussing on the theology of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as on theology proper. George Hunsinger is Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is president of the Karl Barth Society of North America, and was the 2010 recipient of the Karl Barth Prize awarded by the Union of Evangelical Churches in Germany. His books include How to Read Karl Barth (Oxford University Press, 1991), The Eucharist and Ecumenism (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and The Beatitudes (Paulist Press, 2014). Werner G. Jeanrond is master of St Benet’s Hall and professor of theology in the University of Oxford. He previously taught systematic theology at Trinity College Dublin, Lund University and the University of Glasgow. His books and articles in theology and hermeneutics (including Theological Hermeneutics [Crossroad, 1991] and A Theology of Love [Continuum T&T Clark, 2010]) have been translated into many languages. Piotr J. Małysz earned a ThD at Harvard University and teaches the history of Christian thought and systematic theology at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of Trinity, Freedom, and Love: An Engagement with the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012). He has also published articles on Luther, Hegel and Barth, as well as a chapter on doctrinal reception in the Lutheran Reformation in the Oxford Handbook to the Reception History of Christian Theology. Derek R. Nelson is associate professor of religion at Wabash College and director of the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program. He is the author of What’s Wrong with Sin (2009) and Sin: A Guide for the Perplexed (2011), both published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark. He is currently writing an intellectual biography of Martin Luther. R. David Nelson is acquisitions editor for Baker Academic and Brazos Press. He is the author of several works on the theology of Eberhard Jüngel, including The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God’s Relation to the World (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013) and Eberhard Jüngel: A Guide for the

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Perplexed (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016). He is also editing and co-translating a third volume of Jüngel’s Theological Essays (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). Arnold Neufeldt-Fast is associate professor of theology and associate academic dean at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Ontario. He studied in Tübingen in 1988–89, and completed a doctoral dissertation on Jüngel’s anthropology at the University of Toronto. He translated the contents of the volume Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays II, edited by John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995). Steven D. Paulson is professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. His PhD dissertation, which concerns Eberhard Jüngel’s critique of Luther on God’s hiddenness, is titled, ‘Analogy and Proclamation: The Struggle over God’s Hiddenness in the Theology of Martin Luther and Eberhard Juengel’ (ThD dissertation, Chicago, IL: The Lutheran School of Theology, 1992). Roland Spjuth is associate professor of systematic theology at Örebro School of Theology and Lund University. His publications include Creation, Contingency and Divine Presence in the Theologies of Thomas F. Torrance and Eberhard Jüngel (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995). Markus Thane has studied theology at the Seminary of Elstal (Germany) and George A. Truett Seminary, Baylor University. He is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Divinity – New College, at the University of Edinburgh, where he is studying Systematic Theology and Church History. His dissertation topic is ‘Karl Barth’s Theology of Time’. John B. Webster is professor of divinity at the University of St. Andrews. He has written widely on dogmatics and the history of modern theology, including an introduction to Eberhard Jüngel’s theology, and has translated a number of Jüngel’s works into English. Philip G. Ziegler is senior lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen. Researching and writing widely in the field of modern Christian theology, he is the author of Doing Theology When God is Forgotten: The Theological Achievement of Wolf Krötke (2007). His translation of Eberhard Jüngel’s ‘Theses On the Relation of the Essence, Existence and Attributes of God’, appeared in the Toronto Journal of Theology17:1 (2001).

Preface R. David Nelson Eberhard Jüngel needs no formal introduction and will not receive one here. Rather, these prefatory remarks serve as a summary of a common denominator that marks the following essays, namely, a shared affection for our jubilarian. The discerning reader will swiftly note significant differences that exist among these celebratory pieces. The contributors find Jüngel and his work to be interesting and important for a wide variety of reasons. We interpret his work differently, often strikingly so. Some of us are convinced by the main thrust of his theological programme, others not so much. But what has drawn us together to honour Jüngel’s life and legacy in this collection is a  mutual appreciation for and admiration of a career dedicated to the rigorous exposition and creative explication of the gospel of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is Jüngel’s abiding faithfulness to this task – indeed, this joyful duty of the theologian – that sets him far apart from most other theologians and scholars of religion of his generation. We contributors are grateful for his example. ‘Just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with Scripture – “I believed, and so I spoke”  – we also believe, and so we speak.  .  .  .’ In our dedicatory passage from Second Corinthians, Paul, in the midst of an extended reflection upon the character of his own ministry, goes straight to the heart of the matter by formulating his vocatio, with the help of the Psalmist, in an equation: faith = speaking. For Paul, God’s gracious and reconciling ‘Yes’ to the world in Jesus Christ demands corresponding human words from those who believe; words of confession, of prayer, of praise and of proclamation. Jüngel has described his own theological career by pointing to this Pauline compulsion to speak faithfully in response to the gospel. But he adds the important qualification that ‘the necessity to speak of [the] Lord is not a force which enslaves, but the compelling power of liberating truth’.1 All faithful speech about God – and this, for Jüngel, is true especially of theology conscripted into the service of God  – occurs when the speaker is liberated by the truth of the gospel and joyfully compelled to speak the same truth thoughtfully, responsibly and in love. To put it into another formula: indicative 1. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘“My Theology”  – A Short Summary’, in Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 5.

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of grace  – imperative of freedom. Our title, which is taken from the fourth volume of Jüngel’s collected essays in his native German,2 echoes his careerlong commitment to this vision of theology as human speech that, in gracious freedom, corresponds to the word of the gospel. May the theologizing herein reflect this same spirit of faith. Ash Wednesday 2014

2. Jüngel, Indikative der Gnade – Imperative der Freiheit. Theologische Erörterungen IV (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). As Jüngel explains in the volume’s forward, the titular plurals direct the reader to what we might shorthand as the means of grace and the ethics of justification. Our use of the singulars for the present collection suits the theme of the indicative of the gospel that precedes the imperative of free, faithful and Christian talk of God.

Chapter 1 E BERHAR D J ÜNGE L AND TH E I N T E R NAT IONA L L UTH E R AN– C ATHOLIC D IA LO GU E 1 André Birmelé

For the past 50  years, Lutheran theologian Eberhard Jüngel has followed the international ecumenical dialogues with great interest. Even though he has never been a member of any official dialogue commission, his ongoing, critical commentary on the ecumenical movement has played a decisive role. Two of his contributions in this area receive special emphasis in the present essay.

The Problem of an Ecumenical ‘Basic Difference’ Talk of an ecumenical ‘basic difference’ can be misleading. When this idea appears in the present ecumenical discussions, it does not, as it did in past centuries, have to do with the problem of identifying the issues that justify abiding divisions between the separated churches. Rather, the renewed talk of ‘basic differences’ arises in light of the progress of the dialogues and helps to clarify the great diversity of the differences between the churches. It seeks to answer whether there is some particular context that might help to explain these differences, or at least begin to bring them into connection with one another. For instance, in the dialogues between the churches of the Reformation and the Catholic Church, the question emerges if there is some connection between, on the one hand, the various interpretations of the role of the power of the Magisterium, and, on the other, the diversity of approaches to Mariology or sacramental theology. Or, can the different understandings of office or of the doctrine of the church help to explain the divergent approaches in the area of ethics or Christian morality? The hypothesis that there might be a focal point, or common denominator, that connects all of these differences together and thus helps to clarify them  – namely, a basic difference  – is no matter of mere speculation, but rather a plausible outcome of ecumenical research. 1. A translation of André Birmelé, ‘Eberhard Jüngel und der internationale lutherischkatholische Dialog’, trans. R. David Nelson.

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It is crucial to use the expression ‘basic difference’ in a descriptive sense, for it cannot conceptualize anything beyond the quality of this difference. It is indeed conceivable that a single basic difference might bring to light legitimate differences in one area and ongoing, scandalous differences elsewhere. As such, the term will serve to illuminate the current ecumenical situation and to make a methodological contribution leading to progress in the dialogues. It describes, above all, a phenomenon, and it would be unfortunate to understand it from the outset as a negative concept, as is all too often the case within the ecumenical movement. Nowadays, to speak of a basic difference, and, what is more, to comprehend it, makes sense only in the context of the far-reaching theological consensuses between the churches. Only in this new context can such talk have meaning. Ecumenical research conducted in the 1980s reached the conclusion that there is a common denominator in the area of ecclesiology that encapsulates particular differences. The Catholic theologian and later Cardinal, Walter Kasper, asked already in 1980  ‘whether the holiness of the church is such that it allows her to act in a holy and sanctifying way through her members? Or does the church have this holiness only as a promise or ability?’2 To put it another way, does the church, not on the basis of its own initiative, but, rather, sanctified by the grace of God, perform works which are actions done on behalf of others and which sanctify her members in view of their salvation? It is, generally, beyond dispute that the church is the instrument of God for the salvation of humanity. But the nature of the instrumentality of the church in God’s work of salvation remains a matter of dispute between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran churches. This can be demonstrated from a detailed analysis of the results of the earlier bilateral dialogues.3 The dialogue over ‘The Eucharist’ resulted in a broad consensus and demonstrated that the remaining divergence concerns the Catholic understanding of the sense in which the church presents the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is conceived in Catholicism as more than the church’s sacrifice of peace offerings.4 There is a consensus on the uniqueness of Christ’s sacrifice, but a divergence concerning the church, which, though fully subordinate to Christ, is yet the author of saving action for believers. The problem of the limits of the sanctifying 2. Walter Kasper, ‘Gegebene Einheit – bestehende Schranken – gelebte Gemeinschaft’, in Confessio Augustana Den Glauben bekennen: 450-Jahrfeier des Augsburger Bekenntnisses; Berichte – Referate – Aussprachen, hg. Richard Kolb (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1980), pp. 154–5. 3. See the detailed analysis of this dialogue in André Birmelé, Le Salut en Jésus-Christ dans les dialogues œcuméniques (Paris: Cerf, 1986). 4. Joint Lutheran–Roman Catholic Study Commission, ‘The Eucharist’ (1978), in Growth in Agreement: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, ed. Harding Meyer and Lukas Vischer (Geneva: World Council of Churches and New York: Paulist Press, 1984), pp. 190–214.

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action of the church and of its ministers is the source of the divergence. The same question emerges in view of the church’s offices.5 The consensus is certainly greater than one might first think. The office serves the word and the sacraments in the service of the one mediator, Jesus Christ. Hence, the office is indispensable for the church. However, Catholics contend that the Lutheran office is marked by a defectus sacramenti ordinis, which results not only from the fact that the office is not integrated into the apostolic succession, but also stems from a different understanding of the manner in which the minister is involved in doing God’s work. Protestant theology recognizes a more instrumental participation, whereas Catholic theology recognizes a participation by the ordained minister in the priesthood of Christ.6 For both traditions, the minister is totally subordinate to Christ as the only source of salvation. And yet, in the Catholic understanding, the minister is sanctified in Christ in such a manner that he receives a special character that qualifies him to perform sanctifying acts  – a quality that allows him to preside over the celebration of the Eucharist. This same problem is reflected in the well-known dispute over Scripture and tradition. It would be wrong, of course, to claim that one side – Protestants – does not know tradition, whereas the other – Catholics – the Scriptures. Rather, the divergence concerns the manner in which Scripture is authoritative, and, particularly, the role of the church and her Magisterium in making authorized interpretations of Scripture. Is the church of God holy to the extent that it is able to determine the truth of the word? Two clarifications are necessary in order to eliminate any misunderstanding here. (1)  It is clear that, in Protestant theology, the church is understood as cooperating with God for the salvation of humanity. This cooperation is not only passive and but also instrumental. Nor is the church merely a visible instrument of the invisible work of God. Rather, when the church preaches, baptizes, grants absolution, and celebrates the Eucharist in the name of Christ, God himself is at work. He has determined to work in and through the concrete actions of the church and through the performative agency of the church’s ministers. Nevertheless, he alone remains the author of grace and of all holiness. The action of the church is fundamentally receptive, characterized by the creative passivity of faith and a reflection of the life and work of Christians who are justified by faith alone. Therefore the work of God, the only source of salvation, can shine through any church action. (2)  It is also essential to remember that the differentiation between the primary instrumentality of God and the secondary instrumentality of the church, as well as the preeminence of the God’s unique agency, are central themes in Catholic theology. The French Catholic theologian Bernard Sesboüé puts it this way: ‘the church is the subject of the saving action of God in Christ, not in the sense that she possesses a causality of the same kind as that of God, nor in the sense that 5. See, for example, Joint Lutheran–Roman Catholic Study Commission, ‘The Ministry of the Church’ (1981), in Growth in Agreement, pp. 248–75. 6. LG §10, and PO §2.

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she can intervene apart from divine action, but insofar as she performs an instrumental causality that is stamped by the primary causality; meaning, then, that she acts by grace’.7 It is not easy to grasp precisely what is at stake in the unanswered questions. For both traditions, the instrumentality of the church is secondary in relation to God’s primary instrumentality, and the church’s mediation must never be placed on the same level as the primary mediation of Jesus Christ. The dispute concerns the significance placed upon God’s primary instrumentality and the secondary instrumentality of the church and her ministers within the Christian mystery. Only the use of a comparative allows us to elaborate the difference. In Catholicism, the church takes centre stage and her instrumentality is conceived as being more effective than what is granted in the Reformation traditions, in which the church and her instrumentality are seen as being less primary, though not secondary. At the invitation of the Lutheran World Federation’s Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, Eberhard Jüngel addressed this very question at a meeting between the Institute faculty and Spanish theologians in Salamanca in the fall of 1982. In order to reach a better understanding of this issue, in 1983 Jüngel raised the question of the sinfulness of the church.8 He did not intend to identify this problem as the source of a permanent dissensus. Rather, the question of the sinfulness of the church, he contended, helps to clarify the difference between two understandings of the church’s instrumentality. For the churches of the Reformation, the statement of the sinfulness of the church already means that the church is, in the economy of salvation, never on the side of God over against the sinner, but always on the side of the sinner in relation to God and his word. The church’s holiness consists of the fact that, as the community of the faithful, it receives the grace of God, to which it gives testimony and for which it serves as a vessel for carrying the message of salvation to the world. ‘And so prayer for the forgiveness of its own sins is the criterion by which we decide whether, in representing and presenting the sacramental event, “mother church” understands itself secundum dicentem deum or whether it misunderstands itself as self-representation’.9 The idea that the church prays for the remission of sins, not only for its members, but also for itself, is difficult to understand in light of the sacramental understanding of the mystery of the church that marks Catholic theology. The question of the sinfulness of the church appears to be a better example for the identification of the different approaches to the church than that of the church’s saving action. For Lutherans, it is not necessary to define the sinful Christian over against the sinless church, because the true difference is between the church 7. Bernard Sesboüé, ‘Y a-t-il une différence séparatrice entre les ecclésiologies catholique et protestantes?’ NRTh 109 (1987), pp. 10–11. 8. See the essay Eberhard Jüngel, ‘The Church as Sacrament?’, in Theological Essays I, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), pp. 189–91. 9. Ibid., p. 211.

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and the word of God, insofar as the church is always the daughter and never the mother of the word. The only thing infallible in the church is the one word of God. To make this thesis concrete, Luther will say of the church and, in particular, of the councils of the church that they can err and have erred.10 Luther goes even further by stating precisely not only that the church is subject to the risk of error in her councils, but also that the church, in its nature, is not without sin. Rather, the church is sinful because it is a community of believers who are not without sin. He even asserts that there is ‘no greater sinner than the church’.11 The sinful nature of the church is not to be seen as the opposite of her holiness, nor does it prohibit us from calling her the ‘bride of Christ’ – on the contrary! In the economy of salvation, the church has its place not as another Christ alongside of God and over against humanity. Instead, her holiness consists of the fact that she receives the grace of God as a community of believers, and, as a recipient, bears witness to and transmits this grace. Catholic ecclesiology also explains, in turn, that the church is subject to the word of God, but this claim is not marked by the radical opposition of word and church that we find in the theology of the Reformers. The Second Vatican Council indeed rediscovered and confirmed the idea of the church as the people of God or the community of believers,12 though stated also that the mystery of the church cannot be confined to this dimension. The church stands both on the side of God over against believers and on the side of believers over against God. This, the church in all its fullness, is not and cannot be sinner, for, on the contrary, she is, as Pope Pius XII put it in his encyclical Mystici corporis, the pia mater ecclesia who ‘is spotless in her sacraments’.13 The church itself is not able to bear the burden of possible imperfections, but rather believers who continue to sin and thus to remain sinners are alone able to do so. This ecclesiological approach entails a different understanding of the nature of the instrumentality of the church. In the celebration of the Eucharist, the church manifests a sanctifying holiness, which, even though it is subordinate to the primary causality of God, has a real and effective dimension that is not recognized by the Reformation churches. The problem of the sinfulness or infallibility of the church is not the final challenge for the dialogue between the two traditions, but, rather, serves as example insofar as it clarifies the difference between two understandings of the instrumentality of the church, and the relation of its secondary causality to the pre-eminence of the saving activity of God in Christ. At Jüngel’s urging, the international dialogue has taken up this theological debate. In its final report, ‘Church and Justification’ (1994), it demonstrates that 10. Luther, Disputatio de potestatee concilii (1536), WA 39 I, p. 189, no. 29; and p. 190, no. 24. See also Luther, ‘On the Councils and the Church’ (1539), LW 41, pp. 3–178. 11. M. Luther, Sermon zum Ostersonntag (1531), in WA 34 I, p. 276. 12. See, for example, the second chapter of LG (paragraphs 9–17). 13. Pius XII, ‘Mystici Corporis Christi: Encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ; June  29,  1943’, in The Papal Encyclicals, 1939–1958, ed. Claudia Carlen Ihm (Beloit, KS: McGrath, 1981), p. 50, §66.

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the question of the sinfulness of the church is legitimate as a yardstick for the question of the nature of the instrumentality of the church in God’s work of salvation. Indeed, the Lutheran participants asked how: . . . the understanding of the church as ‘sacrament’ relate(s) to that of the church as holy and sinful. Differently from baptism and the Lord’s Supper which exist wholly in their instrumentality and sign character, the church is instrument and sign of salvation as the community of those who receive salvation. In other words, the church is instrument and sign as the community of believers who as people justified by God are at the same time holy and sinful. Lutherans point out that Catholic references to the church as ‘sacrament’ must not contradict the fact that the church is at the same time holy and sinful.14

The dialogue on this question has brought to the fore numerous convergences: the common confession of the holiness of the church and the constant need for church reform, because ‘the church in its concrete form always includes good and evil people, believers and unbelievers, true and false teachers’.15 But Lutherans question the Catholic conception of: . . . where the God-given indestructible holiness of the church and God’s promise that the church will abide in the truth are so objectivized in specific ecclesial components that they appear to be exempt from critical questioning. Above all this Lutheran query is directed at ecclesial offices and decisions which serve people’s salvation and sanctification. The question arises when the Holy Spirit’s aid is attributed to them in such a way that, as such, they appear to be immune from the human capacity for error and sinfulness, and therefore from needing to be examined . . . Similar questions are also directed at the institution of the canonization of saints.16

The question posed by the problem of sin is very much directed to the ‘where’ of the Church as the mediator of salvation: are certain aspects of the church in the Roman tradition not so holy that they themselves become sinless starting points of holy acts? The Catholic participants determined that these: .  .  .  queries touch directly on the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church at a decisive point . . . The Catholic Church belie(ves) that the truth can be articulated in propositions and can lead to forms of expressing the gospel 14. Joint Lutheran–Roman Catholic Study Commission, ‘Church and Justification’ (1993), in Growth and Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982–1998, ed. Jeffrey Gros, FSC, Harding Meyer and William G. Rusch (Geneva: WCC Publications and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 2000), pp. 518–9, §129. 15. Ibid., p. 523, §154. See also idem, p. 494, §28; p. 499, §51 and p. 517, §124. 16. Ibid., pp. 524–5, §160. Emphasis added.

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which are inerrant and infallible. Further it believes that there are abiding, established ecclesial offices which are willed by God’s providence. Also that the saints perfected by God are not all anonymous, but are named, by canonization, as those who may be addressed as the perfected of God.17

Precisely by provoking such deliberations, Jüngel’s emphatic course of inquiry has marked the wider international Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue.

The Message of Justification In October 1999 in Augsburg, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification18 was signed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity of the Vatican. In the lead-up to the signing, a number of German theologians – not least among them Eberhard Jüngel  – participated in lively debates concerning the document. Many nontheological issues played roles in this dispute; it was about power and vanity, mutual ad hominem attacks, and insults. The secular press, and in particular the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, even engaged in a smear campaign in the hope of preventing the signing of the JDDJ. Such matters should not concern us here. Rather, we will limit ourselves to the central theological arguments, which were developed not least by Jüngel. The vast majority of critics of the JDDJ found fault with particular matters of content. They questioned whether the seven items identified by the document as the issues at stake in the historical doctrinal condemnations pronounced in the sixteenth century, mainly by Catholics against Lutherans, are indeed no longer ingredient to the current teachings of these churches, and, consequently, whether a consensus in the understanding of the doctrine of justification might actually exist. In their eyes, the JDDJ yields the false conclusion that there exists a ‘differentiated consensus’ in the understanding of justification, necessitating the lifting of the doctrinal condemnations. This criticism led to the creation of a manifesto which was signed by more than 150 German theologians, who then asked the Lutheran churches to sign as well. Jüngel did not sign this manifesto, as his criticism of the JDDJ was much more sophisticated. He drew attention to a profound problem in the dialogue which has yet to be sufficiently clarified. He initially agrees to the three interconnected steps taken in the JDDJ to describe ‘differentiated consensus’: (1) the Official Common Statement on justification;19 (2) the examination of the agreement reached in the dialogue and 17. Ibid., p. 525, §162–3. 18. The Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000). Hereafter, JDDJ. 19. JDDJ, pp. 41–2.

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expressed in the Official Common Statement in light of those particular issues that previously gave way to mutual doctrinal condemnations (though the theological accents are different, this difference remains legitimate so long as it does not undercut the basic thrust of the first step) and (3) the cancellation of the doctrinal condemnations, insofar as the condemnations of the past no longer apply to the current doctrinal positions of communities that were formerly condemned. But Jüngel introduces a broader set of issues to this description of ‘differentiated consensus’ and formulates a rather interesting and important theological argument against the Official Common Statement. Jüngel wants to add a fourth step, which will address the ecclesiological consequences of ‘differentiated consensus’, particularly in regard to the celebration of the Eucharist. He complains that the consensus reached in the dialogue does not identify its consequences for the doctrine of the church.20 According to Jüngel, because Lutheranism holds justification to be the criterion for all matters of church doctrine and practice, rather than merely one teaching among others, it is not possible in his eyes to claim a consensus on justification if the immediate ecclesiological consequences remain unstated. Just so, Jüngel does not absolutely oppose the understanding of consensus presented in the Joint Declaration. But he considers it incomplete, absent the ecclesiological consequences of the evolving relations between Lutherans and Catholics. One cannot claim a consensus, he argues, so long as this additional threshold remains uncrossed. Put differently, if the ecclesiological consequences are omitted, one cannot truly speak of a differentiated consensus in the understanding of justification. The Lutheran churches in Germany adopted this argument, and, consequently, declared the claims of the JDDJ to be indicative of a ‘convergence’ rather than a ‘consensus’. Additionally, the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen, to which Jüngel belongs, adopted and published, on 17 February 1998, a precise and nuanced position statement which incorporated Jüngel’s criticism.21 The statement recommends the repeal of the doctrinal condemnations and summarizes the essential theological critiques raised in response to the JDDJ. The statement refuses to see the Joint Declaration as the expression of ‘a consensus on the basic truths of the doctrine of justification’, but, rather, welcomes it as the first important step towards a common understanding of the message of justification. Jüngel’s criticism thus points to the double function of justification in Lutheranism. On the one hand, justification has a specific location in the context of the doctrine of salvation. In terms of this narrow view of the doctrine of justification, 20. See Jüngel, ‘Um Gottes willen – Klarheit! Kritische Bemerkungen zur Verharmlosung der kriteriologischen Funktion des Rechtfertigungsartikels – aus Anlass einer ökumenischen »gemeinsamen Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre«’, ZThK 94 (1997), pp. 394–406. 21. ‘No Consensus on the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”. A Critical Evaluation by Professors of Protestant Theology’, trans. Oliver K. Olson, LuthQu 12:2 (1998), pp. 193–6.

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there exists today a broad consensus between Rome and Wittenberg. But such a consensus cannot be established if justification is situated within a wider context. Hence, if justification refers specifically to the Pauline doctrine of salvation, then this doctrine is only one teaching among others. Moreover, other Biblical authors use different terms to speak of salvation. Consequently, the Lutheran claim that the message of justification is ‘ruler and judge over all other Christian doctrines’22 transcends a narrowly defined doctrine of justification.23 In order to clarify this, in 1998 Jüngel published a theological treatise titled, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith.24 Jüngel also deals with Karl Barth in the volume. He accuses the Basel theologian of neglecting the actual core – the message of justification, while nevertheless affirming that the confession of Jesus Christ is the centre of the gospel.25 The authors of the JDDJ were, of course, aware of this problem. The difficulty emerged during the drafting of Article 18 of JDDJ. The final version of this article states: Therefore the doctrine of justification, which takes up this message and explicates it, is more than just one part of Christian doctrine. It stands in an essential relation to all truths of faith, which are to be seen as internally related to each other. It is an indispensable criterion that constantly serves to orient all the teaching and practice of our churches to Christ. When Lutherans emphasize the unique significance of this criterion, they do not deny the interrelation and significance of all truths of faith. When Catholics see themselves as bound by several criteria, they do not deny the special function of the message of justification. Lutherans and Catholics share the goal of confessing Christ in all things, who alone is to be trusted above all things as the one Mediator (1 Tim 2:5f) through whom God in the Holy Spirit gives himself and pours out his renewing gifts.26

In his examination of this article, Jüngel speaks of a ‘theological fog’.27 In his eyes, one can speak of the criteriological function of the message of justification only if it has as its target the hermeneutical integration of all of the truths of the 22. JDDJ, p. 9, paragraph 1; citing Luther (WA 39 I, p. 205). 23. See Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: A Commentary by the Institute for Ecumenical Research, Strasbourg (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, Office for Communication Services, 1997), pp.  29–33. Hereafter, Commentary. This section of the Commentary already states the matter in dispute long before the debate in Germany over this point erupted. 24. Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001). 25. See ibid., pp. 15–31. 26. JDDJ, p. 16, paragraph 18. 27. Jüngel, ‘Um Gottes willen – Klarheit!’, p. 395.

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faith. Hence, the doctrine of justification has the role of ‘aligning the structured whole of the Christian faith according to the faith that justifies and thus to emphasize the (objective) truth of the gospel as the truth of the justification of the sinner’. Therefore, all of the teachings of the church must be subject to this criterion.28 The Catholic addition of the qualifier ‘essential’ is, for Jüngel, eyewash, ‘for the notion that this criterion, if it is indeed possible, is necessary and thus indispensable . . . has never been in dispute . . . But who is “obliged to see” by dispensable criteria? The reasoning itself leads to an ad absurdum’.29 According to Jüngel, the claim that there might be other criteria is extremely dangerous. For instance, what about the infallibility of the Pope? Is it an indispensable criterion, which would have the same value as the doctrine of justification, or, otherwise, a superfluous criterion? Because he refuses to limit the doctrine of justification to the Pauline statements alone, Jüngel explains that the centre of Scripture and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is identical to the articulus justificationis.30 Jüngel concludes from this fact that, if we are obliged to see what is expressed in the doctrine of justification by other criteria, then there is ‘no consensus with Reformation doctrine’,31 and, hence, there is no consensus on the fundamental truths of the faith. Jüngel’s criticism here emphasizes the difficulties that have faced the Lutheran–Catholic dialogue concerning this issue since the ‘Malta Report’ of 1972.32 The authors of the JDDJ were well aware of these difficulties, and Article 18 acknowledges that the place of the doctrine of justification within Christian doctrine as a whole has never been the same in the two traditions. Jüngel’s article, however, suggests that it is possible to locate the place of the dispute. If there is to be an agreement reached on a more comprehensive understanding of ‘justification’, this paragraph, for the reasons already mentioned, represents a genuine step forward. However, the fundamental problem of the place at which each tradition locates this message tarries, and this difficulty has yet to be sufficiently resolved.33 For this reason, the JDDJ is extremely cautious in stating ecclesiological entailments. It proposes to treat them later34 and even states in a footnote that it uses the word ‘church’ ‘without intending to resolve all the ecclesiological issues related to this term’.35 One can certainly add that a repeal of the doctrinal condemnations by the Vatican has a significant ecclesiological meaning, because it expresses a 28. Ibid., p. 404. 29. Ibid., pp. 399–400. 30. See ibid., pp. 401–2. 31. Ibid., p. 405. 32. See the exposition of the so-called ‘Malta Report’ in Birmelé, Le Salut en JésusChrist. 33. Commentary, p. 31. 34. JDDJ, pp. 26–7, paragraph 43. 35. JDDJ, pp. 10–1n9.

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particular reading of the religious character of Lutheranism, but this note does not weaken Jüngel’s argument. The drafters of the JDDJ would have preferred, of course, that the declaration of consensus includes the immediate ecclesiological consequences, as was the case with the declarations of church communion between the churches of the Reformation. But they proceeded without stating these, knowing that the Lutheran–Catholic dialogue had yet to reach a position. It appeared to be immediately possible to declare an intermediate position. This seemed realistic to them at the time. If one only can speak at present of a consensus concerning justification if the questions of the sacraments and offices have been clarified, then one must postpone any such approach until a future that will probably never arrive in this world. The JDDJ thus preferred to clarify the consensus on the article of justification even though the ecclesiological consequences remain undetermined. It was able to separate the view of the consensus concerning justification from the ecclesiological consequences. Whether such ecclesiological entailments, and, specifically, a consensus concerning the understanding of the Eucharist are, in fact, urgently needed and indeed belong to the consensus concerning justification (as Jüngel urges) was and remains beyond dispute. But the JDDJ assumes that there are unsatisfactory interim stages, and that it is not necessary to adopt an ‘all or nothing’ strategy in order to proceed along the ecumenical path. The JDDJ claims a consensus specifically on the doctrine of justification. With regard to the further understanding of the message of justification, the document goes as far as to see this message as a decisive criterion for the entire Christian life and all of the church’s teachings, but not as the criterion. As such, no full agreement can be achieved at this point. At any rate, for Jüngel, to claim a consensus on the doctrine of justification is unacceptable. He considers the already-achieved consensus to be incomplete, because the criteriological function of the message remains unclear in the ecumenical relations between Lutherans and Catholics. Jüngel has, however, expressed the opinion that this first step is an important one. His aforementioned arguments vis-à-vis the JDDJ are and remain theologically convincing. At this point, it is worthwhile to reflect upon the Marburg Colloquy. By 1529, Luther and Zwingli had reached a common understanding of justification. But this consensus did not give way to the requisite ecclesiological consequences, but rather to a serious dispute over the Lord’s Supper, which made a common celebration of the Eucharist by Lutherans and the Reformed impossible. A more detailed analysis of the Marburg Colloquy reveals a double consensus in the understanding of the article of justification: first, to a consensus limited to the particular doctrine of justification which goes further, secondly, to the shared belief that this article is to be understood as the basic principle of all statements of faith as they are connected together. Still, this did not in Marburg lead to church communion (to use a modern term), which was hindered by the dissensus over the Lord’s Supper. Despite this double consensus, reciprocal recognition does not take the place of authentic expressions of the one church of Jesus Christ. According to Marburg, there are to be developed two exclusively authentic ways to be the church. Since this is the case, can one speak of a consensus in the understanding of

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justification, or righteousness before God? But even though they could not agree over the interpretation of the Lord’s Supper, Luther and Zwingli acknowledged a consensus in the understanding of the righteousness of the believer before God. The consensus on justification demanded further consequences. But the desired result was not possible in Marburg at that time. The fact that Rome was well aware of this issue can be seen in the Vatican’s response to the JDDJ, which mentions the criteriological problem as a second point to be clarified. The document calls for the integration of the message of justification into ‘the fundamental criterion of the “regula fidei”, that is, the confession of the one God in three persons, christologically centered and rooted in the living Church and its sacramental life’.36 In the winter of 1998/99, a short ‘Annex’ to the JDDJ was developed and adopted by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation.37 This document, which Jüngel welcomed as a significant breakthrough,38 corrected, in a definitive way, the obvious weaknesses of the JDDJ. In his response to the ‘Annex’, Jüngel does not mention the criteriological argument. Rather, he confines his remarks to the fact that progress has been made in regard to the narrow understanding of the doctrine of justification, upon which the two sides are now able to agree. He thus mentions, for instance, the Reformation sola fide, which is discussed in the ‘Annex’, as well as the Roman Catholic adoption of the idea of simul justus et peccator, even if this formula is employed not to refer to the true renewal of those who are justified, but rather to say that even the justified are not immune from the power of sin, and must ask for forgiveness daily. It remains a fact that the ‘Annex’ adds nothing new concerning the criteriological meaning of the message of justification. Thus, following the adoption of the JDDJ, the question tarries: can we truly speak of a consensus on the justification so long as Catholics and Lutherans have yet to completely agree on the hermeneutical function of this message? The clarification of this issue, towards which, as we have seen, Jüngel has done much to contribute with his persistent criticisms, remains a necessary task for the international Lutheran– Roman Catholic dialogue.

36. ‘Official Response of the Catholic Church to the Joint Declaration of the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation on the Doctrine of Justification’, PE 7:4 (1998), p. 399, §2. 37. ‘Annex to the Common Statement’, in JDDJ, pp. 43–7. 38. Jüngel, ‘Ein wichtiger Schritt. Durch einen »Anhang« haben Katholiken und Lutheraner ihre umstrittene Gemeinsame Erklärung verbessert’, in Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt 4 (June 1999), p. 25.

Chapter 2 T HE S PIR IT OF F R E E D OM : E BE RHA RD J ÜNGE L’S   T H E OLO GY OF T H E T H IR D A RTIC LE David W. Congdon

I The occasion of Eberhard Jüngel’s eightieth birthday provides an opportunity to look back at a remark by Karl Barth from 1964, the year of Jüngel’s thirtieth birthday. On March 2, Barth met a group of students from Tübingen at the Bruderholz Restaurant for another one of his famous conversations. During the course of the discussion, an unknown student raised the topic of Jüngel’s recent interpretation of Barth’s analogia fidei.1 The student wished to know whether Jüngel’s understanding accorded with Barth’s own. Barth responded by saying that he had read the essay but no longer remembered the details. He instead changed the topic to address Jüngel himself as an interpreter of his theology: I know only one thing that I remember for sure: Jüngel is one of those – and really not one of the worst, but rather a good representative of those who are terribly eager to learn the essentials from me . . . and then comes an ‘and’! With him it is the ‘and’ of Ernst Fuchs. It’s well known that one can also say: Barth ‘and’ Bultmann. Here in Switzerland we have [Gerhard] Ebeling, so that one can also say: Barth ‘and’ Ebeling. I like to compare this theology to a garden of paradise, at the entrance to which stand, on the left and the right, two heraldic stone lions that bear these names. . . . There are many contemporaries in search of such combinations.2

Apart from his dubious recommendation to avoid all ‘such combinations’,3 Barth was not at all wrong in this evaluation of Jüngel. We see the ‘and’ in many of 1. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie: Eine Untersuchung zum Analogieverständnis Karl Barths [1962]’, in BarthStudien (Zürich-Köln: Benziger Verlag, 1982), pp. 210–32. 2. Karl Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968, ed. Eberhard Busch, Gesamtausgabe 4 (Zürich: TVZ, 1971), p. 86. The first ellipsis is in the original. 3. Later in the conversation, he then asked the students: ‘Do you seriously believe that the way into paradise actually goes through this gate?  .  .  .  Beware of what you’re doing!

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his writings. It appears, for example, in his exegetical mediation in the dispute over Romans 5,4 in his claim that ‘analogy itself is in an eminent sense a speech-event’,5 and most famously in Gottes Sein ist im Werden, where he proposes unifying Barth and Rudolf Bultmann around the notion of responsible God-talk.6 In almost every case, the ‘and’ is also a ‘beyond’, and this is particularly evident in his recent development of a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Towards the end of his career, Barth reflected on the possibility of a ‘theology of the third article’, that is, a theology of the Holy Spirit. He first proposed this idea in a 1952 letter to Bultmann as the condition under which he could understand his old friend and adversary.7 He returned to the notion repeatedly in the years following. In 1957, he applied the notion to nineteenth-century theology in general; in October 1962, he discussed the idea with the editors of Evangelische Theologie and in 1968, he suggested it as a way to interpret Schleiermacher.8 Despite these suggestions, we find the following remark in his Table Talk: ‘I personally think that a theology of the Spirit might be all right after 2000 ad, but now we are still too close to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is still too difficult to distinguish between God’s Spirit and man’s spirit!’9 I would really advise everyone: choose! It is better to choose! Then go this one way consistently to the end! And see which way to the end is worth it! But not through these eternal mediations, the eternal “both-and”, “yes-but”. Rather go through it [on one side]! Even at the risk that it will perhaps become a little one-sided, whether one chooses one way or the other!’ (ibid., p. 124). Is it really preferable to be ‘a little one-sided’ in error, rather than to carve out a mediating position between alternatives? Even if this were sage advice, it is somewhat ironic that Barth of all people should be making such a recommendation, since he changed his mind repeatedly; he rarely followed anything consistently to the end, and he frequently opposed any strict method that would constrain the freedom of God and theology to hear the subject–matter of the gospel anew. It thus seems as if Barth’s advice is really about gaining clarity regarding who is on his side and who is on Bultmann’s side – a game that Jüngel (rightly) refused to play. 4. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Das Gesetz zwischen Adam und Christus: Eine theologische Studie zu Röm 5,12–21  [1963]’, in Unterwegs zur Sache: Theologische Bemerkungen (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1972), pp. 145–72. 5. Eberhard Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt: Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977), p. 395. 6. Eberhard Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden: Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth: Eine Paraphrase, 4th edn (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986), pp. 23n34, 33–4. 7. Karl Barth to Rudolf Bultmann, 24 December 1952, in Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, Briefwechsel 1911–1966, ed. Bernd Jaspert, 2nd edn, Gesamtausgabe 5 (Zürich: TVZ, 1994), p. 197. 8. See Karl Barth, Evangelische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert, Theologische Studien 49 (Zollikon-Zürich: TVZ, 1957), p. 16; Karl Barth, Gespräche 1959–1962, ed. Eberhard Busch, Gesamtausgabe 4 (Zürich: TVZ, 1995), pp. 395–8; Karl Barth, ‘Nachwort’, in S­ chleiermacherAuswahl (München: Siebenstern Taschenbuch, 1968), p. 311. 9. Karl Barth, Karl Barth’s Table Talk, ed. John D. Godsey (Richmond: John Knox, 1963), p. 28.

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Jüngel did not wait until 2000 to supply a theology of the third article. Over the last 30 years, he has published three sets of theses on the Spirit that reinterpret soteriology from the perspective of pneumatology: ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, ‘Der Geist der Liebe als Gemeinschaftsgeist’ and ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes’ – hereafter referred to as Geist I, II and III.10 These essays look at the Spirit in terms of truth, love and hope,11 respectively, all under the rubric of a ‘theology of freedom’. The last of these is explicitly in dialogue with Barth and Bultmann, as we will see. This pneumatological development in his theology is particularly interesting given that Jüngel is not generally associated with a theology of the third article. Indeed, in his highly regarded introduction, John Webster says that ‘if there is a weakness to be detected in Jüngel’s account, it is in the area of the doctrine of the Spirit’.12 If that might have been true in 1986, it is no longer the case.13 While a thorough study of Jüngel’s pneumatology will have to wait, in this 10. See Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist: Thesen’, in Die Mitte des Neuen Testaments: Einheit und Vielfalt neutestamentlicher Theologie, ed. Ulrich Luz and Hans Weder (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), pp.  97–118; Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Liebe als Gemeinschaftsgeist: Zur pneumatologischen Begründung der christlichen Kirche’, in Weg und Weite: Festschrift für Karl Lehmann, ed. Albert Raffelt (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), pp. 549–62; Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes: Thesen zur Begründung des eschatologischen Lehrstücks vom Reich der Freiheit’, in Ganz werden. Theologische Erörterungen V (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 306–22. 11. According to Geist II, each mode of the Spirit relates the present moment to a different temporal mode – past, present and future: ‘Just as the Spirit of truth relates the prevailing present to the historically identifiable history of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of hope and consolation relates the prevailing present to the future of the Christ who is coming again and the reign of God, so the Spirit of love relates the prevailing present to itself ’ (Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Liebe als Gemeinschaftsgeist’, p. 549, thesis 1.211). 12. John B. Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 76. 13. It is questionable whether it was ever true. In a sense, the Bultmannian doctrine of the kerygmatic Christ that Jüngel learned from Ernst Fuchs and develops in his own work is the doctrine of the Spirit, given that, according to this school of thought, the Paraclete in John’s Gospel is simply the abiding presence of Jesus himself within the community. Seen in this light, the division between christology and pneumatology proves to be a misleading one. But pneumatology appears explicitly in Jüngel’s work in other ways as well. The most notable instance is at the conclusion to Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, where he proposes the radical idea of God as an ‘event of the Spirit’ (§24). According to Jüngel, the death of Jesus forced a differentiation ‘between God and God’, between Father and Son. But God, who is the unity of life and death in favour of life, relates to God anew, and this new relation between God and God ‘is called, christologically, resurrection from the dead and, ontologically, the being of love itself ’. Or put in more traditional dogmatic terms: ‘the Holy Spirit’ (Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 513). In other words, the doctrine of resurrection and the doctrine of the Spirit are two aspects of the same event, the event that ‘constitutes . . . the unity of the divine being’ (ibid.). Jüngel concludes by presenting his account of God’s being-in-coming, wherein God’s being is the event of God’s coming-to-Godself

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essay we (a) compare his theology of the third article to Barth’s theology of the second article in the fourth volume of Die kirchliche Dogmatik, (b) briefly examine the eschatology of embarrassment that he presents in Geist III as it pertains to the Barth–Bultmann relationship and (c) offer some concluding remarks about how this pneumatology advances and augments his larger interest in an excentric theology that frees the church for ever new ways of bearing faithful witness to Jesus Christ.

II It is evident already in 1983 that Jüngel understands himself to be developing not merely a doctrine of the Holy Spirit but an entire theology of the third article. Thesis 10 in Geist I states as much: ‘The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is essentially a theology of freedom’.14 Jüngel grounds this thesis textually in 2 Corinthians 3.17: ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’.15 According to thesis 9, this theology of freedom takes the form of a threefold Lehrstück (‘teaching’): ‘a Lehrstück of the liberating [befreienden] God’ (9.01), ‘a Lehrstück of liberated [befreiten] human beings’ (9.02) and ‘a Lehrstück of the reign of freedom [Freiheit]’ (9.03).16 These three Lehrstücke correspond to Geist I, II and III, respectively. Moreover, as these theses indicate, Jüngel’s pneumatology is actually a soteriology, and he makes this explicit at the start of Geist III, where he speaks of ‘soteriology (pneumatology)’ and then recasts these three Lehrstücke as a threefold soteriology.17 Freedom within this (Zu-sich-selbst-Kommens). Translated into trinitarian terms, God is the one who comes from God (Father), to God (Son), and as God (Spirit). Regarding this third point, he says that the fact ‘that God therefore remains related to Godself as origin and goal, as Father and Son, and thereby does not cease coming from God to God – in short, that God is mediation in Godself – is God’s third mode of being, God the Holy Spirit’ (ibid., p. 531). One could thus argue that Jüngel’s entire theology is a theology of the third article, in the sense that the third article brings to expression the essence and unity of God’s very being. 14. Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, p. 104. 15. Ibid., p. 103, thesis 8.53. 16. Ibid., pp. 103–4. Or ‘reign of liberty’, to stay within the same family of words. One could, conversely, use ‘freeing’ and ‘freed’ for befreiend and befreit, respectively. 17. Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes’, p. 306, thesis 1. For example, ‘As the Lehrstück of the liberating God, soteriology is the doctrine of the Spirit of truth’ (ibid., thesis 1.1). Jüngel, of course, is not advocating that the Spirit has a saving work additional to the work of Christ. His theology of the third article does not complete or compete with a theology of the second article. Instead, given the unity of theology, the third article sees the same event of reconciliation from a different perspective. This is finally what Barth meant in suggesting that Bultmann or Schleiermacher should be understood as theologians of the third article, and there is certainly an element of truth in this claim. Bultmann and Schleiermacher do indeed see the work of Christ from the perspective of its effective operation in the life of the individual human person, which is where Barth locates the work

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theology of the third article is a property of God that God then graciously shares with the creature as part of God’s saving work. Or as Jüngel puts it in Geist I, ‘freedom is a communicable attribute of God’.18 By the time he gets to Geist III, Jüngel has expanded this to include every attribute of God. God is essentially a self-communicating God whose very being is communicable.19 As we have already indicated, Jüngel connects the three Lehrstücke to truth, love and hope. These constitute the three articles within his pneumatocentric reconstruction of Christian theology. Along with freedom, he grounds each of these in the biblical text. In Geist I, Jüngel pairs the Pauline notion of the Spirit of freedom with the Johannine notion of the ‘Spirit of truth’: ‘As a divine attribute, truth is appropriated in a special way to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit’s mode of being and acting: the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (John 14.17; 16.13)’.20 He supports the connection between the Spirit and love in Geist II with reference to Romans 5.5, where Paul says that ‘the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit’.21 In Geist III, he cites Galatians 5.5 and Romans 15.13 as the basis for understanding the Spirit as the agent of hope and consolation.22 Jüngel is thus able to flesh out a complete theology of the third article, which considers the freedom of God, humanity and the world under the terms of truth, love and hope. He lays out his project in nuce in theses 9.1–9.3 of Geist I: 9.1 The Lehrstück of the liberating God discusses 9.11 the Spirit as the liberating Spirit of truth, 9.12 the truth of God as the truth of faith, 9.13 the word of God as the word of truth, 9.14 sin as the untruth, unbelief and speechlessness of human beings, 9.15 the justification of the sinner by faith alone. 9.2 The Lehrstück of the liberated human person discusses 9.21 the Spirit given in the human heart as the Holy Spirit of love, 9.22 the sanctification of the human person through the holiness of love, 9.23 the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as creatura verbi [‘creature of the word’], 9.24 sin as the spiritlessness, lovelessness and bondage [Unfreiheit] of human beings, 9.25 baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the two celebrations of one sacrament. of the Spirit. The element of untruth, however, is that Bultmann and Schleiermacher see their work as genuine theologies of the second article, since they do not share Barth’s strict distinction between the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ dimensions of soteriology. 18. Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, p. 105, thesis 10.41. 19. ‘Eternity and immortality – like all divine attributes – are communicable attributes. Just as God in God’s trinitarian self-relation is a communicable essence, so also is God in God’s relation to us’ (Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes’, p. 317, thesis 4.752). 20. Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, p. 105, thesis 10.6. 21. Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Liebe als Gemeinschaftsgeist’, p. 550, thesis 1.24. 22. Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes’, p. 308, thesis 2.4.

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9.3 The Lehrstück of the reign of freedom discusses 9.31 the Creator Spirit who consummates all of God’s works and redeems the creature of God as the Spirit of consolation and hope, 9.32 the assurance of the Christian as hope for the glory of God, 9.33 the future polis as the judgement and goal of world history, 9.34 sin as the self-realization, anarchy and hopelessness of human beings, 9.35 the glory of God’s reign as eternal life.23 To fully appreciate the scope and scale of Jüngel’s project, we can compare this outline to the one that Jüngel presents in Barth-Studien as an overview of KD 4.1–4.324: Dogmatics

KD 4.1

KD 4.2

KD 4.3

Christology: Person:

The Lord as servant: vere deus

The servant as Lord: vere homo

The true witness

Office:

The judge judged in our place: the obedience of the Son of God = munus sacerdotale

The royal human person: the exaltation of the Son of Man = munus regale

Jesus is victor: the glory of the mediator = munus propheticum

State/Way:

The way of the Son of God into the far country = status exinanitionis

The homecoming of the Son of Man = status exaltationis

The light of life = the unity of both states

Hamartiology: Sin as:

Pride and fall

Sloth and misery

Falsehood and condemnation

Soteriology:

The judgement of God as the justification of humanity

The direction of God as the sanctification of humanity

The promise of God as the vocation of humanity

Pneumatology: The Work of the Holy Spirit in the community: in the individual:

Gathering the community: Faith

Up-building of the community: Love

Sending of the community: Hope

Ethics: KD 4.4 The Christian Life as an Invocation of God

Baptism – with water – as the foundation of the Christian life in prayer for the Holy Spirit

The Lord’s Prayer – Our Father – as (instruction in) the fulfilment of the Christian life

(The Lord’s Supper – Eucharist – as the renewal of the Christian life in thanksgiving

23. Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, p. 104. 24. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Einführung in Leben und Werk Karl Barths [1981]’, in BarthStudien (Zürich, Köln: Benziger and Mohn: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1982), p. 55.

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Barth’s unfinished fourth volume of Die kirchliche Dogmatik reorganizes the entirety of Christian theology within the elegant architectonic of a christocentric dogmatics, in which the entirety of the Christian life is interpreted and ordered according to the doctrine of Christ’s reconciling work. While Jüngel has helped many readers of Barth over the years to make sense of Barth’s mature theology, it has largely escaped notice that Jüngel has developed a similar architectonic for a pneumatocentric dogmatics. We can organize the earlier theses from Geist I into the following table: Dogmatics

Geist I

Geist II

Geist III

Pneumatology: Person:

The Spirit of truth as the Spirit of the liberating God The truth of faith

The Spirit of love as the Spirit of the liberated human being Sanctification through the holiness of love

Work (in the community):

The word of truth

Hamartiology: Sin as:

Untruth, unbelief, speechlessness

The one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as the creatura verbi Spiritlessness, lovelessness, bondage

Soteriology/ Ethics:

Justification of the sinner by faith alone

Baptism and Lord’s Supper

The Spirit of hope as the Creator Spirit of the reign of freedom Certain hope in the consummation of God’s glory The future polis as the judgement and goal of world history Self-realization, anarchy, hopelessness Eternal life

Work (in the individual):

I have taken the liberty of providing the dogmatic categories in order to make sense of Jüngel’s theses. Even if some categories prove to be mislabelled, it is immediately clear that Jüngel’s theology of the third article bears a striking resemblance to Barth’s theology of the second article. Like Barth, Jüngel develops each doctrine from different vantage points, which gives the resulting theology a kind of three-dimensional or layered effect. It is also gives the sense of being dynamic and unfinalized. Such a theology bears witness in its form to the true nature of Christian theology as theologia in via. According to my interpretation, Jüngel also follows Barth in differentiating between two works of the Spirit at the levels of individual and community. Like Barth, he defines the primary work of the Spirit according to the Pauline triad of faith (i.e. truth),25 love and hope (1 Cor 13.13). This translates into a corresponding ecclesiology–eschatology, that is to say, the Spirit’s communal work. Since Jüngel does not have the Chalcedonian logic of vere deus/vere homo at his disposal,26 the way Barth does in his theology 25. ‘The essence of Christian faith can only be understood if the correlation of truth and faith is understood’. Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, p. 110, thesis 13.1. 26. Jüngel, like Barth, certainly does not have anything remotely like Reinhard Hütter’s notion that the ‘core practices’ of the church ‘subsist enhypostatically in the Spirit’.

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of the second article, the Pauline triad becomes the logic ordering the entire dogmatics. Certain aspects of Jüngel’s theses demand comment. The individual and communal works of the Spirit under Geist I are conspicuously dissimilar to their counterparts in Geist II and III. Given that he identifies sanctification and assurance as the individual works of the Spirit under Geist II and III, one might expect him to place justification alongside them in Geist I. But he instead places justification in the final category, which I have named soteriology or ethics (i.e. the application or effect of the Spirit’s work), alongside the sacraments and eternal life. In doing so Jüngel identifies justification as the benefit that human beings receive from the Spirit’s work, rather than the work itself, which is faith. As he states in thesis 13, ‘the Spirit of truth produces faith as the event that corresponds to the truth’.27 Jüngel clarifies the operation of the Spirit in thesis 10.7 of Geist I: 10.7 The Holy Spirit acting as the Spirit of truth 10.71 effects faith in the sinful human person, 10.72 speaks the word of truth in human words, 10.73 convicts the person of sin and uncovers this sin as untruth, unbelief and speechlessness, 10.74 accomplishes the sinner’s justification by faith alone.28 This overview of his pneumatology in Geist I gives a better sense of how Jüngel understands his theology of the third article. The individual work of the Spirit, at least within this first article, is faith, while the communal work is the declaration of the word of God – presumably through scripture and church proclamation – that provides the occasion for the event of faith.29 Within this pneumatic event, the Spirit both judges and justifies the sinner, revealing one’s dire condition while simultaneously declaring that person holy before God. In this way, Jüngel sustains Barth’s priority of gospel before law. Justification is thus the final outcome of the Spirit’s work of truth within Geist I, the practical payoff, so to speak. The same goes for Geist II and III, where the Spirit’s work of love and hope reaches its conclusion in the ecclesial practices and eternal life, respectively. If there is a place for criticism of Jüngel, it would have to be in the lack of attention to the missionary work of the Spirit as the agent that sends the disciples into the world as ambassadors of Christ. Given his explicit attention to the Johannine See Reinhard Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 133. Cf. Bruce McCormack, ‘Witness to the Word: A Barthian Engagement with Reinhard Hütter’s Ontology of the Church’, ZDTh, Supplement Series 5 (2011), pp. 59–77. 27. Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, p. 110. 28. Ibid., p. 105. 29. Unfortunately, Jüngel only develops the person (‘the Spirit of truth’) and individual work (‘the truth of faith’) within the theses of Geist I, leaving the other doctrinal categories unexplored, including the communal work (‘the word of truth’).

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identification of the Spirit as the agent of truth, this is an especially conspicuous oversight, since the actual sending of the Holy Spirit in John 20.22 is immediately preceded by Jesus telling his followers: ‘As the Father has sent [πέσταλκέν] me, so I send [πέμπω] you’ (John 20.21). Since Barth spends so much energy in the fourth volume of Die kirchliche Dogmatik explicating the life of both the Christian community and the Christian individual in missionary terms, the general absence of this theme in Jüngel’s pneumatology30 is felt all the more strongly.31 In what follows I wish to look at the work of the Spirit in Geist III. In particular, Jüngel makes a striking comment about the expectation for God’s coming reign in which he positions himself against both Barth and Bultmann. The reason he gives illuminates one aspect of what makes his theology of the third article a constructive advance in contemporary Christian dogmatics.

III Geist III represents one of Jüngel’s most extensive discussions of eschatology.32 Due to the work of Barth and Bultmann in the first half of the twentieth century, the second half was dominated by debates over eschatology, ranging from Ernst Käsemann and Walter Kreck to Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Jüngel’s theses on the topic thus have to be read in the context of the disputes over eschatology and apocalyptic that were dominant during his years as a student and young professor. Indeed, his 1962 dissertation, Das Verhältnis der paulinischen Rechtfertigungslehre zur Verkündigung Jesu (published as Paulus und Jesus), addressed this very topic, arguing for a continuity between Jesus’s proclamation and Paul’s doctrine of justification on eschatological grounds.33 30. The theme is not completely absent. Geist II ends with Jüngel’s explication of the four Nicene marks of the church, which obligates him to say something about apostolicity. But this is limited to the notion that the church must remain faithful ‘to its sending [Sendung] and task, which is to proclaim the gospel in thoughts, words, and works, originally expressed in the early Christian apostolate’ (Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Liebe als Gemeinschaftsgeist’, p. 562, thesis 3.5). The rest of the material under this thesis is a Protestant interpretation of apostolic succession and the infallibility of the church. 31. Jüngel lectured on mission on 8 November 1999, around the time he was working on Geist II and III. This lecture draws heavily on the Gospel of John, but it too fails to connect the sending of the Spirit with the mission of the disciples. But Jüngel at least declares that ‘the church cannot exist as the church moved by God’s Spirit if it is not or does not again become a missionary and evangelizing church’. See Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Mission und Evangelisation’, in Ganz werden, pp. 115–36, here p. 116. 32. Another key writing of his on eschatology is Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Die Ewigkeit des ewigen Lebens [2000]’, in Ganz werden, pp. 345–53. 33. See Eberhard Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus: Eine Untersuchung zur Präzisierung der Frage nach dem Ursprung der Christologie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1962), especially the excursus on ‘Eschatologie und Geschichte’ (ibid., pp. 285–9).

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Immediately after providing the overview of his theology of the third article in thesis 1, Jüngel signals to the reader his intention to wade into the old debate over eschatology in thesis 2, where he says that the relation between the ‘already now’ and the ‘not yet’ cannot be understood on the basis of an experience of lack or deficiency [Defizienzerfahrung], but instead on the basis ‘of the promise of future consummation’.34 Eschatology does not reflect ‘the uncertainty of an  .  .  .  ambivalent future, but rather the certainty of a definite future already guaranteed now in the being of Jesus Christ, but still pending’.35 Jüngel thereby declares that true Christian eschatology is based on the content of the gospel itself and not on the historical experience of the delayed parousia. He appears ostensibly to be siding with Barth over Bultmann at this point. Like other New Testament scholars, Bultmann interprets the New Testament documents – particularly their divergent eschatological positions – against the background of the shattered hope in the imminent arrival of Christ in glory. Indeed, ‘the problem of eschatology grew out of the fact that the expected end of the world did not occur’.36 Paul and John solve the problem of the nonoccurrence of the parousia by primarily locating the eschatological event not in the imminent future but in the past and present, namely, in Jesus himself and in the believer’s relation to him.37 Bultmann derives from this the theological conclusion that the kerygma does not intrinsically demand belief in an apocalyptic end of history. Indeed, the kerygma, which Bultmann understands as God’s destabilizing and deworldlizing (Entweltlichung) demand upon our existence, calls such expectations radically into question. By contrast, Barth argues that the parousia of Christ has an inherent threefold form, in terms of Easter, Pentecost and future Advent. So, in addition to the resurrection and the Spirit’s outpouring, the arrival of Christ will take place ‘in another, final form . . . as the coming of Jesus Christ as the goal of the history of the church, the world, and each individual person’.38 Barth consciously does not take the historical situation of the New Testament texts into consideration but seeks to develop his eschatology strictly on the basis of the narrative logic of the biblical witness, precisely what Jüngel seems to commend. The generation after Barth and Bultmann only furthered the divide. Moltmann argued that Barth did not go far enough; the eschatological future is not merely a necessary implication but the very ground of Christian faith.39 Bultmann’s students split between Käsemann, who argued on historical grounds that the early Christian belief in the imminent coming of Christ ‘was the mother of all Christian theology’, while Ernst Fuchs 34. Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes’, p. 306. 35. Ibid., thesis 2.1. 36. Rudolf Bultmann, Geschichte und Eschatologie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1958), p. 44. 37. Ibid., pp. 46–58. 38. Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik, 4 vols (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag A.G., 1932–1970), 4.3:338. 39. See Jürgen Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung: Untersuchungen zur Begründung und zu den Konsequenzen einer christlichen Eschatologie (München: C. Kaiser, 1964).

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and Gerhard Ebeling defended Bultmann’s position on eschatology, namely that apocalyptic expectations belonged to the world-picture of that time but are in no way ingredient in the kerygma itself.40 While it would initially appear that Jüngel sides with Barth in this case, subsequent theses in Geist III indicate otherwise. Thesis 4 sets forth the general claim that he will then problematize: ‘In that the Christian community proclaims the death of Jesus Christ in the power of his resurrection from the dead, it hopes and prays for his renewed coming in glory on the day of the Lord’.41 In theses 4.1–2 he develops this in terms of the ‘passion’ (Leidenschaft) of hope, which makes the Christian ‘excentric’ and brings her into solidarity with those in suffering (Leiden) and bondage (Unfreiheit).42 Thesis 4.3 then turns to the question of the parousia, since ‘the passion of hope leads with material necessity to the expectation [Erwartung] that the arrival of Jesus Christ in glory  .  .  .  is near at hand’.43 The claim that expectation of Christ’s imminent arrival is necessary seems ostensibly to be in agreement with someone like Barth, and yet Jüngel immediately follows this by carving out a theological space against and beyond not only Barth and Bultmann, but also virtually everyone else in the contemporary conversation on eschatology: 4.31 The negative explanation of early Christian imminent expectation [Naherwartung] (cf. 1 Thess 4.15; 1 Cor 15.51; Rom 13.11f.; Mark 13.24ff.; Matt 24.3, etc.) as a mistake discrediting all future eschatology misses the essence of imminent expectation just as much as any positive explanation of the delay of the parousia (cf. 2 Pet 3.4ff.; Matt 25.5; Luke 12.45; 1 Clem 23.3; 2 Clem 11.2f.), which eliminates, through the positivity of its explanation, the embarrassment that the problem of imminent expectation poses and must pose. . . .  4.322 In contrast to a negative (Rudolf Bultmann) or positive (Karl Barth) way of explaining the problem of imminent expectation and the delay of the parousia, it is dogmatically essential to keep alive the theological embarrassment that is given with this problem and to put into perspective the passion of hope that generates this problem with material necessity.44 Jüngel argues for the ongoing necessity of the church’s imminent expectation of Christ’s arrival, not because this gives the community a certain hope regarding 40. See Ernst Käsemann, ‘Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie’, ZThK 57 (1960), pp.  162–85, here p.  180; Gerhard Ebeling, ‘Der Grund christlicher Theologie’, ZThK 58 (1961), pp. 227–44; Ernst Fuchs, ‘Über die Aufgabe einer christlichen Theologie’, ZThK 58 (1961), pp. 245–67. 41. Jüngel, ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes’, p. 311. 42. Ibid., pp. 311–12. 43. Ibid., p. 312. 44. Ibid., pp. 312–13.

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the future that could serve as the basis for its present faith and existence. On the contrary, this expectation is necessary precisely because of the embarrassment it engenders in light of Christ’s nonarrival. In a sense, then, the parousia’s delay, rather than the parousia itself, is the essence of the early church’s imminent expectation.45 The attempt to solve the problem by either denying the imminence in favour of a present eschatology (Bultmann) or pushing the consummation into an indefinite future (Barth) ends up domesticating the arrival of Christ.46 Jüngel declares instead that the problem of imminent expectation ‘must  .  .  .  remain a living embarrassment, which has the liveliness of hope in the living Lord as its criterion’.47

IV Jüngel says very little about the Holy Spirit in this section of Geist III, but given the larger context of his remarks, we can draw some tentative pneumatological conclusions. If ‘Christian hope is an experience of the future made possible by the Spirit of hope and consolation’,48 and if this hope is what sustains the experience of eschatological embarrassment, then it follows that the Spirit of freedom is the Spirit of embarrassment: the Spirit who liberates the creature is the Spirit who embarrasses the community of faith, and who thereby continually interrupts the church from becoming a stable worldly institution. Jüngel’s pneumatology thus supports his larger theological thesis regarding the excentricity of Christian faith. Faith in the word of God is a destabilizing faith, precisely because ‘the truth of the divine word . . . interrupts human beings and calls them outside themselves’.49 The certainty of faith (Glaubensgewißheit) is the very opposite of Cartesian certainty in the individual ‘I think’. Since it is 45. According to Jüngel, the non-occurrence that historical scholars, such as Käsemann, argue was the death of early Christian eschatology was actually essential to it. This is because Jüngel sees a qualitative distinction between Jewish and Christian eschatology: ‘In contrast to the imminent expectation attested in Old Testament prophecy and in Jewish apocalyptic and the question raised by them, . . . early Christian imminent expectation presents a case that is sui generis, since it does not expect an unprecedented new thing, but rather the new coming of the one who has already come’ (ibid., p. 313, thesis 4.32). 46. ‘Every chronological fixing of the . . . nonobjectifiable nearness of the reign of freedom existentially perverts imminent expectation into a remote expectation [Fernerwartung]’ (ibid., thesis 4.324). 47. Ibid. (thesis 4.323). 48. Ibid., p. 308, thesis 2.5. 49.  Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Die Wahrheit des Mythos und die Notwendigkeit der Entmythologisierung’, in Indikative der Gnade  – Imperative der Freiheit: Theologische Erörterungen 4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp. 40–57, here p. 55.

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the certainty of God (Gottesgewißheit), faith is always drawn outside of itself (extra nos). In a 1979 essay on this theme, Jüngel says that ‘the certainty of God is always the human person’s being-outside-of-oneself [Außer-sich-Sein]’.50 Or as he says in Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, the certainty of faith is at the same time the complete ‘desecuring’ (Entsicherung) of ourselves.51 It is only appropriate, then, that he explicitly connects this excentric certainty to the work of the Holy Spirit. The being-outside-of-oneself that constitutes the certainty of God occurs, he says, through the ‘elemental interruption’ (elementar Unterbrechung) of one’s life, in which the event of God’s advent ‘is experienced’ at the core of one’s existence. This existential interruption is precisely what it means to speak of the Spirit of God: ‘Biblical and dogmatic talk of the πνεμα θεο means that the hitherto familiar continuity of a person’s life is elementally interrupted’.52 The Spirit of freedom and embarrassment is the agent of each person’s desecuring – and for this reason, the agent of the church’s desecuring. In a way, Jüngel’s pneumatology and eschatology of embarrassment accomplishes dogmatically what Käsemann’s analysis of 2 Peter accomplishes historically and exegetically. In a 1952 article, Käsemann describes this widely ignored epistle as an ‘apologia for early Christian eschatology’, which goes about defending the primitive Christian apocalypticism by way of assertions that are not only illogical but also spiritually pernicious – dispatching heretics through ad hominem attacks (2 Pet 2.10–15) and effectively binding the Holy Spirit to the institutional office of the church (2 Pet 1.19–21).53 The ‘disconnected’ and contradictory claims indicate that ‘the doctrine of last things has already placed the church in an emergency situation, and its apologia is actually evidence of an aporia’. Käsemann then adds that this internal aporia ‘betrays embarrassment [Verlegenheit] rather than force’, an embarrassment that the author of 2 Peter tries to avoid or dispel.54 But Käsemann demands that his readers look honestly and intently at this embarrassment and what it means for the church. He concludes his article by asking the following questions: What have we to say about an eschatology, which knows hope only for the triumphant march of believers into the eternal kingdom and the annihilation of the godless? . . . What have we to say about a church that is so concerned 50. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Gottesgewißheit [1979]’, in Entsprechungen: Gott-Wahrheit-Mensch. Theologische Erörterungen II (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 252–64, here p. 260. 51. Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p.  227. The similarity to Entmythologisierung (‘demythologizing’) is hardly accidental. 52. Jüngel, ‘Gottesgewißheit’, p. 260. 53. Ernst Käsemann, ‘Eine Apologie der urchristlichen Eschatologie’, in Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, 2 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960–1965), pp. 135–57, here pp. 152–5. 54. Ibid., p. 157.

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Indicative of Grace – Imperative of Freedom with fending off heretics that it no longer differentiates between spirit and letter, which identifies the gospel with its tradition and indeed with a religious worldview, which regulates the interpretation of scripture through doctrinal law [Lehrgesetz] and makes faith into an assent [Jasagen] to the dogmas of orthodoxy?55

Read in light of Käsemann, Jüngel’s call for a pneumatic eschatology that embraces embarrassment is in fact the pursuit of a theology and church that does precisely what Käsemann says the author of 2 Peter fails to do. A theology of the third article in this sense will differentiate between spirit and letter, between gospel and tradition, between scripture and doctrine and between faith and orthodoxy. Jüngel states as much at the start of Geist I, where he says that ‘the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the doctrine of the differentiation of the spirits’, since ‘the Holy Spirit differentiates itself as the “Spirit from God” from the “spirit of the world.”’56 ‘In the differentiation of Spirit and flesh, the differentiation of God and world becomes concrete’.57 A genuinely pneumatocentric theology will demonstrate that it is truly a ‘theology of freedom’ by refusing to operate out of the fear of heresy. It will instead explore new possibilities for thinking and speaking faithfully of God. This makes the emphasis on embarrassment all the more appropriate. In Paulus und Jesus, Jüngel refers to the minutes from a meeting of the old Marburgers, in which Bultmann argued that the embarrassment regarding the delay of the parousia ‘was the agent for the development of christology’.58 By constantly keeping the eschatological embarrassment of the church existentially alive, the Holy Spirit is the agent of ongoing doctrinal development. The Spirit sustains a space of freedom for new possibilities of appropriate God-talk. But not only God-talk, of course, since the freedom of faith is a truly practical freedom. If, as Jüngel says, ‘the nearness of the reign of God appears as the nearness of the neighbor’,59 then the Spirit who sustains this situation of embarrassed expectation also propels the community of faith into solidarity with the neighbours in their midst. *  * 

*

Let me conclude on a personal note. I owe my theological existence to Eberhard Jüngel. After completing my undergraduate degree in English literature, I spent a year working at a local bookstore. During that time I stumbled upon translations of his essays. Reading those for the first time was a moment of near pentecostal significance: it was as if a tongue of fire had settled on me and ignited my mind. The next year I went off to study theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. I remember very little of what I read in my courses during that first year, but I 55. Ibid. 56. Jüngel, ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’, p. 97, theses 1.2–3. 57. Ibid., p. 98, thesis 1.33. 58. Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus, p. 79n2. 59. Ibid., p. 195.

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remember very well what I read outside of class. That fall semester I spent every day after class reading and annotating my copy of the 1983 translation of Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Jüngel was (and in many respects, remains) my most formative theological teacher, and I am entirely in his debt. In honouring his eightieth birthday, I honour the man who, in his own fidelity to the Spirit of freedom, was the occasion for the liberation of my own mind and tongue in service to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 3 T H E C RUCIF IE D O N E Ivor J. Davidson

To think of Eberhard Jüngel as a Lutheran theologian simpliciter is, of course, inadequate. For one thing, it is to trivialize his creativity as reader of Luther and interpreter of the range of theological, philosophical and political influences, Lutheran and otherwise, in which he was schooled in the later 1950s. The Lutheranism of Jüngel’s formation was itself distinctive. He has often acknowledged the significant impact of Gerhard Ebeling’s magisterial interpretation of Luther, with its strong concern to integrate historical and textual construal with the tasks of proclamation and situational witness. From his Doktorvater, Ernst Fuchs, Jüngel learned a yet more developed version of existentialist Lutheranism nach Heidegger and Bultmann. Jüngel’s lifelong engagement with the classic Lutheran question of freedom has also been profoundly affected by the diverse socio-political circumstances in which his theology has been forged. There was the background first of the Stalinist DDR, where militant atheism brought oppression but also deserved serious intellectual analysis (assisted by a formative period of study in the West). Then there were the contexts of Zürich and Tübingen, where the cultural evolutions of the 1960s and beyond posed questions of human dignity and purpose in different terms again. In his commitment to thinking with theological rigour about the nature of liberty, and to speaking truth in context, Jüngel has inevitably sought much of his wisdom in Luther and his heirs, but he has drawn upon many other resources besides. To confine his theology to a single confessional perspective is to ignore his insistence that he never has anchored himself too firmly to one tradition. For him, the truth of Christian theology is necessarily – and wonderfully – richer than any of its contingent schools of thought, for its disciples are but practitioners of theologia viatorum, only on their way towards the ‘heart of the matter’ of knowing God according to the gospel.1 The pervasive significance of Luther for Jüngel is undeniable all the same. Interpreters have been exercised over how to characterize his Lutheranism, and 1. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, CCe 108 (1991), pp. 228–33.

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whether his readings of Hegel, his engagements with Heidegger and – above all – his debts to Barth generate significant tensions in his appropriation of Luther and Lutheran tradition. For some, these tensions simply distort classical concerns by introducing philosophical preoccupations and theological agendas far removed from the purview of Luther himself. For others, Jüngel’s capacity to straddle the worlds of dogmatics, exegesis and philosophy, to parse post-Bultmannian questions of temporality, language and agency via an essentially Barthian account of interruptive revelation, yields a remarkable repackaging of Lutheran theology for a modern age. A nuanced approach may well suggest that Jüngel’s work as a whole is not explicable save in light of a certain kind of debate within German Lutheranism from the late 1920s onwards over the nature of divine presence in the world, the nature of faith in encountering that presence and the nature of the church and churchly agency in human society. The roots of that debate lie far back in the intellectual challenges which Kant and Hegel bequeathed, and their fruits were many. In Jüngel’s case, the approach to a Lutheran construal of divine reality after the death of theological idealism was indelibly affected by his encounter with Barth, first in Basel and then through close engagement with Barth’s writings in his early labours in teaching dogmatics. The results of the conjunction were striking indeed. Jüngel brilliantly discerned the vital moves in Barth’s logic regarding the sheer distinctiveness, integrity and reach of Christian theology, the unsubstitutability of its doctrine of the triune God and his prevenient significance for all things. Jüngel’s Luther would forever be affected in some sense by Jüngel’s Barth. Even that confluence is resistant to tidy depiction, however. Jüngel has gone far beyond Barth as well, directing Barth’s concentration upon the centrality of trinitarian and incarnational revelation towards a more sustained  – and still in no sense anxious – engagement with the cultural circumstances of modernity. In particular, Jüngel has felt it necessary from early on to press further than Barth in addressing modernity’s radical critiques of the thinkability and speakability of God; its arguments that the Destruktion of Western metaphysics leaves us in a situation variously liberating or – as Heidegger warns – tragic in its vulnerability. For Jüngel, the impetus to venture beyond Barth in these regards is assuredly not an apologetic one, for he learned well from Barth himself the acute dangers of any attempt to uphold some notion of deity in general as a supposed cultural bulwark. That kind of God, he agrees, is in no small measure the reason, not the answer, for modernity’s confusions. Cartesian subjectivity rendered divinity’s existence contingent upon the activity of the thinking self; that cognitive strategy naturally collapsed into atheism, for all along it had posited the human subject as primary rather than as secured only by that which comes to it from beyond itself. The God who is but guarantor of the continuity of the doubting ego is the God for whom there is at last no need. Nonetheless, Jüngel’s pursuit of questions of freedom and ‘unfreedom’ in human existence is shaped by a particular kind of interest in the anthropological and cultural consequences of the demise of metaphysical theism. As the subtitle to his magnum opus, God as the Mystery of the World, conveys, the controversy

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between theism and atheism is the motivating context for his identification of the mystery of God in the Crucified One.2 There and elsewhere, the concern is to generate an account of human dignity governed neither by foundationalism, the supposed ‘necessity’ of God, nor by self-realization, the quest to fashion one’s own meaning in a world from which God has disappeared, but sheerly by the revealing and justifying word that is Jesus Christ.3 The fruits of Jüngel’s particular approach do not always sit happily with a theology disciplined by Barth’s concerns, and for some it may be that Barth himself offers, in the end, a better-proportioned portrayal of human historical being and action in light of God and God’s ways with the world. But whatever the case, Barth powerfully affects Jüngel’s reading of Luther; Barth does not always have the last word. In much of Jüngel’s work, especially from the early 1980s onwards, the respective influences of Luther and Barth jostle a fair bit, with two rather different accounts of human ethical agency seemingly in view: one which majors forcefully on human passivity and something closely akin to a theology of ‘two kingdoms’, and another which continues to envisage a self-consciously political theology as grounded in the divine reconciling work that establishes the human agent as creaturely correspondent to divine activity in the world. Jüngel himself is sometimes quite frank about these diverse impulses, and at times sees himself as mediating between two independently coherent approaches.4 In that cause, he adduces an indicative theology of grace whose central emphases emerge overall as Lutheran in cast. Jüngel does not let go of Barth when he heads to Luther; it is only that, when push comes to shove, Luther often wins. The Luther in question is typically a figure quite different from the ‘catholic’ one to whom many contemporary Lutherans are inclined. Yet in that too the results are also – while a long way from Barth in some of their idiom, and much less enthusiastic regarding the prospects of a theology of action rather than political critique – closer to Barth than to some other voices in modern Lutheranism. Deeply concerned by the anxious moralizing which so often supplants the apostolic evangel, Jüngel refuses the sorts of accounts of churchly practices and embodied ecumenism which variously slide into ecclesial hypertrophy or fold the church’s witness back into the business of earnest political 2. Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983). 3. See Paul DeHart, Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and Philosophy in the Thought of Eberhard Jüngel (Atlanta, CA: Scholars Press, 1999). 4. See, for example, Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Gospel and Law’, in Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, trans. Garrett E. Paul (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1986), pp. 105–26; and idem, Christ, Justice and Peace: Toward a Theology of the State, in Dialogue with the Barmen Declaration (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), pp. 37ff. For discussion, see esp. John Webster, ‘Justification, Analogy and Action: Passivity and Activity in Jüngel’s Anthropology’, in John Webster (ed.), The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in his Sixtieth Year (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), pp. 106–42.

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endeavour. In either of those fates, Barth would readily have agreed, evangelical dogmatics survives only at a serious discount. In truth, Jüngel’s theology resists facile characterization because it has, like Barth’s, diverged from many of the pervasive interests of contemporary European divinity. In his insistence that modernity’s context, while thoroughly real, is not a fate with which positive dogmatics must reach an uneasy truce, and in his concern to avoid the reduction of truth to the perceived urgencies of moral activism (especially when talking of church and politics), Jüngel has been well aware of his isolation from some of the most cherished instincts of his times. His thought has certainly come to be much more widely appreciated in the past 25 years, and has now attracted more than one generation of sharp-sighted interpreter in English. It also continues to puzzle as well as to stimulate, and that not only for the obvious demands it makes upon students habituated to taking their food in smaller bites. Translations have helped to broaden its influence, but much remains to be rendered more widely accessible. Although Jüngel can in fact often write quite beautifully, reading him in any language is frequently very hard work. Yet the effort to honour him in the present volume, as in others before it, is indicative of a realization that the boldness of his vision – and the acutely textured readings of Aristotle, Luther, Descartes, Hegel, Fichte, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Barth, Bonhoeffer and other sources which undergird it – offers immense instruction for those who will give it their attention. I have not forgotten what it was to encounter for the first time, as a graduate student, God as the Mystery of the World. It was like nothing else I had come upon. To go on re-reading that text, and of course the rest of Jüngel’s oeuvre, well over two decades later, is to continue to experience such sentiments: as an exercise in grand-scale intellectual analysis and constructive theology all at once, Jüngel’s performance still has few if any rivals. Of some things, his highly ambitious vision there and elsewhere has, I confess, never remotely persuaded me; but it has also, beyond doubt, stimulated and rewarded as few other theologies since Barth have succeeded in doing.5 More than most Protestant theologians of the past generation, Jüngel has been concerned to probe with consistent seriousness the lesson which Luther and Barth, in their different ways, both teach: theology is first and foremost about God, and only so is it also, very properly, about the nature of the world, and the beings whom this God creates and redeems. Rather than labouring the question of how to classify Jüngel’s Lutheranism as such, what I want to do here is to think again, very briefly, about one area of Jüngel’s thought in which Luther’s influence has been both fundamental and lasting: his understanding of the cross of Jesus Christ. As everywhere, the influence is that of Luther in the company of diverse others, whose inputs (Hegel’s and Barth’s above all) produce various effects, not all of them necessarily helpful. My interest is not, however, in guessing at what all this means for how one might ‘label’ Jüngel  – an impulse we do well to avoid, especially in a Festschrift  – but in assessing in 5. Jüngel may not mind too much, I hope, if Robert Jenson is recorded as a further exception, another – though exceedingly different – product of the confluence of Luther and Barth with other voices.

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more straightforward dogmatic terms Jüngel’s attempt to deploy his version of a Lutheran theologia crucis in pursuit of a theology governed by the evangel yet free from ‘the dictatorship of metaphysics’.6 Jüngel is after a theological ontology of a different order from the one assumed by Western metaphysical tradition and subverted by modern atheism, but he seeks it in a manner far removed from the preferred options of theological liberalism. If the answers lie, for him, in a Lutheran historicist Christology as the enduring basis for a Christianly specific account of God and humanity, how effective is he in making that case?7

Context The critical, and in various ways dangerous8 as well as liberating, declaration that is ‘the word of the cross’ (1 Cor. 1:18) assumed a vital significance in Jüngel’s work early in his career. In Paulus und Jesus,9 he argued that Paul’s eschatological kerygma of justification is of a piece with Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom. The emphasis there is upon Pauline theology as centred in the word of justification rather than in the actions of the passion of Jesus as such. In this as in other respects, Jüngel’s method in his doctoral project risks an abstraction of the New Testament’s narratival flow into the restrictive categories of ‘speech-events’, and his account concentrates heavily on the synoptic parables in particular. But it is also important to his understanding that Sprachgeschichte brings historical happenings and their eschatological significance to present ontological reality; the interruptive Pauline gospel of justification is, accordingly, not differentiable from the person and work of the One whose achievement it conveys. While much would be refined in later writing on revelation, analogy, metaphor and proclamation, there is already for the early Jüngel neither a possible separation of language and content nor the dissolution of the gospel’s objectivity into a general Christusprinzip. There is the history of Jesus Christ, set forth as an irreducible, intrusive reality, apprehended in faith which the Word itself uniquely generates. The debts are not only to Fuchs’s overtly Heideggerian application of Luther, but also to Barth, who furnishes Jüngel with one essential strand of his determination that the gospel of justification is grounded in the primacy of the Word that is Jesus Christ. The concreteness of the history of that Word, and its radical significance for all theology, is taken considerably further in Jüngel’s work from the later 1960s 6. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 39 (Jüngel’s emphasis); cf. also p. 184. 7. I published some much earlier reflections on this theme in ‘Crux Probat Omnia: Eberhard Jüngel and the Theology of the Crucified One’, SJT 50 (1997), pp. 157–90. The editors of the journal kindly granted permission to reproduce that study here, though what follows differs quite a bit, and seeks to reflect diverse developments in the intervening period. 8. Ibid., pp. 310–1. 9. Eberhard Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus – Eine Untersuchung zur Präzisierung der Frage nach dem Ursprung der Christologie, 6. unveränderte Auflage, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 2, hgs. Gerhard Ebeling, Ernst Fuchs, and Manfred Mezger (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1986).

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onwards: first in his outstanding Barth Paraphrase, Gottes Sein ist im Werden (1965, 4th edn, 1986; ET 2001),10 then in a number of essays, particularly ‘Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes. Ein Plakat’ (1968)11 and ‘Das dunkle Wort vom “Tode Gottes”’ (1969).12 In these and other writings of the same period, including the little work Tod (1971, ET 1975)13 and some seminal papers on the doctrine of God, revelation and theological method (such as ‘Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos’, 1972),14 Jüngel laid the bases for the major dogmatic moves of his masterpiece, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt (1977, ET 1983). Barth’s seminal place in all this is impossible to ignore, for it affords Jüngel the means to craft, in his Barth exegesis especially, a magisterial account of the relationship between God’s eternal freedom and his readiness for humanity. Under Barth’s inspiration, Jüngel’s construal of the structure of the divine life is resistant alike to the collapse of transcendence into immanence and to the segregation of God’s being for himself in a sphere remote from worldly history. The events of Jesus’s career are what they are in revelatory and soteriological terms in so far as they are nothing less than the place where God enacts his being in the world.15 Whether this means that Jüngel is quite on the way to the radical historicization of God’s essence which some wish to draw from the mature Barth remains moot. It is not clear that Jüngel proposes the kind of relationship of election and essence that Bruce McCormack and others have come to advocate in revision of classical trinitarian metaphysics (though  – not least perhaps because of his debts to existentialist hermeneutics – Jüngel’s ‘Hegeling’ goes further than Barth’s).16 In any event, the becoming which is proper to God’s being is indeed, for Jüngel, God’s commitment to the path which climaxes in Calvary; divine freedom is not to be 10. Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth  – A Paraphrase, trans. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001). 11. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes. Ein Plakat’, in Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Bemerkungen. Theologische Erörterungen I, 3. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp. 105–25. 12. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Das dunkle Wort vom “Tode Gottes”’, EK 2 (1969), pp.  133–8, 198–202. 13. Eberhard Jüngel, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, trans. Iain Nicol and Ute Nicol (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976). 14. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos. Eine Kurzformel der Lehre vom verborgenen Gott – Anschluß an Luther interpretiert’, in Entsprechungen: Gott – Wahrheit – Mensch. Theologische Erörtungen II. 3. Auflage um Register erweitert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 202–51. 15. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, passim, but esp. pt. III. 16. See Bruce L. McCormack, ‘God Is His Decision: The Jüngel–Gollwitzer “Debate” Revisited’, in Theology as Conversation: The Significance of Dialogue in Historical and Contemporary Theology. A Festschrift for Daniel L. Migliore, ed. Bruce L. McCormack and Kimlyn J. Bender (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 48–66; cf. also McCormack, ‘Participation in God, Yes, Deification, No: Two Modern Protestant Responses to an

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thought of in opposition to the unfolding of God’s primal decision to live his life in identity with the history of Jesus. Over against less nuanced accounts of divine objectivity in a Barthian mould,17 Jüngel is insistent that God’s aseity must not be rendered in such abstract terms that the enactment of God’s will in history is potentially at odds with God’s essence: that way, he rightly points out, we have no ultimately trustworthy revelation at all, and are cast back upon the very theologies of human subjectivity against which Barth’s stress on divine freedom is meant to provide a vital check. No: God’s freedom takes form in his love for us; on the basis of that, we must say that he is, primordially, free to be pro nobis in se. Jüngel has of course developed numerous elaborations of these foundational themes over the past 40  years. Some of the commentary on his work has been rather inattentive to the work of the 1980s and beyond, as if Jüngel had said all that mattered in his earlier period regarding the centrality of Christology to the doctrine of God. He has in fact significantly sharpened and nuanced his representations of the anthropological, moral and linguistic consequences of the divine selfidentification in Jesus Christ, and has written with great range and acuity on what it means for Christian faith to worship, serve and wait for the God whose ontology is specified in the darkness of the cross. In all this work, the primary influences of Luther, Barth, Hegel and Heidegger have, however, seldom disappeared. Jüngel has reflected on Luther’s legacy especially in light of the implosions of the nineteenth century, summoning his readers again and again not only to repudiate an ahistoric metaphysic but also to resist any philosophical or ecclesial theology which presumes to speak of human being and action in detachment from the prevenient objectivity of the God who elects to enter into fellowship with us. For all his affinities with Hegel, Jüngel has continued to refuse any crass identification of divinity with worldly process in general, or any treatment of the death of God as a mere experience in cultural or intellectual history. Luther’s Christology, read via Barth’s tutelage on the possibilities of divine becoming, has continued to present him with a more radical claim, which can address yet  also resist modernity’s domestications. Jüngel’s efforts to go on taking Luther seriously have yielded, inter alia, various issues of his 1978 study of Luther on freedom (ET 1988);18 a steady stream of original (and by many contemporary Lutheran standards decidedly tough-minded) exercises in eschatology, ecclesiology, sacramental theology,19 language, practical reason and ethics and, more recently, a continuing insistence upon the non-negotiability of the Reformation’s evangelical solus (over against Ancient Question’, in Denkwürdiges Geheimnis: Beiträge zur Gotteslehre. Festschrift für Eberhard Jüngel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Ingolf U. Dalferth, Johannes Fischer and HansPeter Großhans (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pp. 347–74. 17. Helmut Gollwitzer is of course his target in God’s Being Is in Becoming. 18. Eberhard Jüngel, The Freedom of a Christian: Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988). 19. For analysis, see now R. David Nelson, The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God’s Relation to the World (London & New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013).

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allegedly more woolly criteria of catholicism) in a feisty and also constructive book on justification (1998, ET 2001).20 Through all this, however, a good deal in the earlier Jüngel’s appropriation of Luther has, in truth, remained pretty stable. While many thematic concerns have dominated, and it would be inappropriate to suppose that the vast fruit of Jüngel’s thought can be reduced to any simple framework, there has been an enduring assumption that the history of Jesus Christ, and chiefly his passion, lies at the heart of all true confession concerning God, world, humanity and church. Although Jüngel’s writings on Christology have remained in essay – rather than monograph – form, the centrality of Christ and the significance of his cross have been highly determinative of almost everything in his work. The truth of the cross, as Jüngel envisions it, must be thought and declared in each situation, but its decisiveness is unaffected by the vicissitudes of culture: it indeed confronts these directly, insisting that the constitutive reality which it declares cannot be dissolved into any human project. Theology in a late-modern context may face fresh temptations to treat the reality of Jesus’s death in less than ontologically serious terms,21 or to substitute political–ethical good works for the primacy of God’s being-in-act. Against such tendencies, Jüngel has ceaselessly called for vigilance. Basic to the logic, unsurprisingly, has been the great classic of theologia crucis, Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of April 1518.22 For Jüngel, as for the early Luther, responsible dogmatic thinking has a clear positum, a concrete starting point. In the cross, Jüngel argues, faith discerns God’s identification of himself in and with the crucified man Jesus, and learns something of what this means for thought and speech about the mystery of God and God’s commitment to humanity. There simply is no other God than he who declares himself to be God in identification with the one who suffered and died on Calvary. Of this, the only revealed God, theology not only may but also must speak.23 Its task, accordingly, is to take with 20. Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey Cayzer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001); see also Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 23–55. ‘Constructive’ is arguably a description Jüngel would himself eschew. 21. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘The Cross after Postmodernity’, in One Incarnate Truth, ed. Uwe Siemon-Netto (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 2002), pp. 109–14. 22. Luther, WA 1, pp. 353–74. The literature is of course vast; see, for example, Alister E. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough, 2nd edn (Oxford & Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 201–32; Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997); Philip Ruge-Jones, Cross in Tensions: Luther’s Theology of the Cross as Theologico-Social Critique (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2008); on Barth’s engagement, see also Rosalene Bradbury, Cross Theology: The Classical Theologia Crucis and Karl Barth’s Modern Theology of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011). Jüngel refers to the text less often and less explicitly than do some other exponents of a Kreuzestheologie, especially Moltmann, but its formative role in his thinking is obvious. 23. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, p. 1.

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full seriousness the reality that God – God – is not ‘aloof from the wretchedness of this death’.24 ‘For responsible Christian usage of the word “God”, the Crucified One is as it were the material definition of what is meant by the word “God”’.25 Quite simply, ‘Christian theology is essentially theologia crucifixi’.26

God as Event For the early Luther, Calvary is the place where God is truly known to faith. Luther does not reject the possibility of a natural knowledge of God, but he does dispute the worth of such knowledge in a soteriological context – the only context which really matters for sinners. It is not, for Luther, a matter of special revelation making good the deficiencies of ratiocination; the very principle of speculative enquiry in the matter of God is soteriologically fatal, for it ignores the character of God’s actual dealings with humanity. The theologian of the cross, unlike the theologian of glory, has jettisoned all preconceived ideas of the manner in which God ought to be revealed. She apprehends God through faith alone, sub contrario: not in power, majesty and glory, but in the ignominy, suffering and death of Jesus. This approach is the very antithesis to the self-righteousness of natural religion, and to potentially abusive claims to knowledge of God as possession of a spiritual elite. For Luther, there is socio-political as well as theological polemic here, and the ideological critique ought not to be missed;27 however, his argument is not reducible to a political agenda any more than it is explicable merely as an adaptation of medieval mystical convention. As far as Luther is concerned, the cross makes radical demands upon both the formal and the material content of Christian theology, for it requires the theologian to recognize – at cost – God himself in this event. From an early stage in his thinking, Jüngel casts this insight in yet sharper light. God, determined by nothing and no one other than himself, freely chooses to come to himself in union with humanity, to suffer and to die, to exist in the midst of the contradiction and struggle between being and non-being.28 The matter is sovereign, governed by God’s aseity, and occurs on his terms; at the same time, the cross is the place where God indeed determines to have his being, to ‘happen’ as God, for humanity: ‘. . . [I]n this death God himself was the event 24. Jüngel, Death, p. 113. 25. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 13; cf. p. 184; ‘Das Sein Jesu Christi als Ereignis der Versöhnung Gottes mit einer gottlosen Welt. Die Hingabe des Gekreuzigten’, in Entsprechungen, pp. 276–84: ‘God is completely defined in the crucified Jesus of Nazareth’, p. 276 (thesis 1.14). 26. Jüngel, ‘Das Sein Jesu Christi als Ereignis der Versöhnung Gottes mit einer gottlosen Welt. Die Hingabe des Gekreuzigten’, in Entsprechungen, p. 278 (thesis 2.5). 27. Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London: SCM, 1974), pp. 72–3; also p. 217 on Jüngel. 28. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 37.

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which happened’. 29 God’s commitment to humanity is, genuinely, the execution of his divinity. Jüngel finds in Barth’s account of God’s vital correspondence ad extra to his being ad intra a way of resisting a false dichotomy between God’s being for himself and his being for us; in that God is found to have his being in becoming, and supremely the becoming that is the death of the cross, the divine essence itself is identical with its existence. God’s very being is a se in nihilum ek-sistere.30 Participation in history is not an ontological challenge to God’s majesty, nor does it need to be established by the dismissal of divine objectivity, for it is grounded in God’s inner relational freedom to determine himself this way. With the aid of Barth, but with a Christology that is Lutheran rather than Reformed, Jüngel presses Luther’s logic of revelation with real boldness: to discern God in the cross is to discover that the subject of the suffering and death undergone by the human being Jesus is divine. There is an ontological communicatio idiomatum: it is God who suffers and dies.31 ‘In and with the man Jesus, God himself has suffered and died’.32 There is no access to this save on the basis of God’s self-revelatory action, but what that action affords us is indeed the reality of who God is in his inner life. God is not constituting himself in history, for he is who he is; but history is no affront to his being. Crucially, the history of Jesus is unique: it is not simply an intensification or (pace Hegel) a special instantiation of a general commitment of God to temporality. The event of the cross is of exclusive, ontologically determinate effect for creatures because here God enacts his being as nowhere else. Jüngel works all this out in a Christology which has strong resemblances to Luther’s but develops traditional terminology in distinctive ways. The meaning of the death of Jesus is revealed in his resurrection; faith that he is raised is primarily the recognition that, at the cross, God identifies himself with the crucified. God not only identifies himself with him, but is also, in a crucial sense, identical to him. ‘The living God and the dead man are identical’.33 In articulating what this might mean, Jüngel recasts the classical categories of an- and en-hypostasis. In Luther, this rubric refers, conventionally, to the fact that the humanity of Jesus has no hypostasis, no personal centre of subsistence, of its own yet receives its hypostatic identity, its concrete reality, in the person of the divine Word. For Jüngel, it is a way of emphasizing the fact that the hypostatic union is a history, to be understood out of its particular sequence; it is not merely a statement about ostensibly static ‘natures’, but a confession about the manner in which the divine self-identification with and in Jesus occurs. The anhypostasia says that Jesus does not live and die for himself, but exists in total commitment to the kingdom of God he proclaims; the 29. Ibid., p. 363; cf. Jüngel, ‘Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes’, pp. 120, 123–4. 30. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 223–4. 31. Jüngel, ‘Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes’, pp. 111–6. 32. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Thesen zur Grundlegung der Christologie’, in Unterwegs zur Sache, pp. 274–95, at p. 283. 33. Jüngel, Death, p. 108.

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resurrection reveals the enhypostasia, the reason why he is able to exist that way: his humanity has its ontological foundation in the divine Word.34 The relation of Jesus to God as his Father is what it is because Jesus has his being in the Word. Only the resurrection discloses this; but what it discloses is that the man Jesus lives and acts as he does in consequence of the self-humbling of the eternal Word.35 Out of this Christology of historical identification, Jüngel develops an expressly trinitarian account of the cross. The God of metaphysical theism, like the God projected by Luther’s theologian of glory, is supra nos, absolute, apathetic and immutable. Over against this, resurrection faith finds in the cross the God who elects to expose himself to vulnerability, suffering and death. He does so, Jüngel insists with Barth, not as a matter of fate, for such would render God at the mercy of (or in need of) history, rather than the Lord of its contingency. God has his being in a becoming that is uniquely his own, and is able to do whatever we find him doing in Jesus Christ; the cross declares that he is able to suffer and die as human. God’s self-identification with the crucified Jesus defines God’s ontology: ‘God is love’ (1 Jn. 4:8, 16). Theology’s responsibility is to think that ontology; this means the doctrine of the Trinity. Instinctively alert to Feuerbach, Jüngel is careful not to deduce his theology of the Trinity from the logic of love as such. He recognizes that the word ‘love’ in reference to God undoubtedly has some resonances with ‘love’ as creatures experience it; a pre-understanding of love as self-surrender and self-giving thus has a certain heuristic place. However, divine love cannot be arrived at by projection from human experience; it is defined for us in ways which necessarily challenge our intuitions and mark out the uniqueness of the love that God is.36 For God does not simply act lovingly: he is love in his being. What the cross reveals is that God is naturally able, as love, to give himself and relate to himself all at once. God’s selfidentification thus involves his self-differentiation, the distinction of God from God. God enacts his being as love in the event of ‘the union of life and death in 34. See, for example, Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Jesu Wort und Jesus als Wort Gottes: Ein hermeneutischer Beitrag zum christologischen Problem’, a 1966 essay reprinted in Unterwegs zur Sache, pp. 126–44. 35. An- and en-hypostasis also provide Jüngel with a way of stating the essential relationship between the kerygma of the risen Jesus Christ and the life of Jesus, whose history can only be interpreted appropriately in light of its overall effectiveness as faithevoking ‘saving event’  – on which see ‘The Effectiveness of Christ Withdrawn: On the Process of Historical Understanding as an Introduction to Christology’, in Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays I, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), pp. 214–31. 36. Consonant with his refusal of any attempt to establish the doctrine of the Trinity on a basis other than the human career of Jesus, Jüngel endorses a long-standing criticism of Barth’s approach in CD I/1 as over-determined by the logic of revelation as such (‘God reveals himself as Lord’, and thus is – must be – subject, predicate, object). He sees Barth’s method in CD IV/2 as altogether more promising: there, the human history of Jesus is the starting-point: Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 351–2n.22.

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favour of life’;37 in the loving identification of God with the God-forsakenness of Jesus, we see ‘an ever-greater selflessness within such great self-relatedness’.38 God knows no contradiction within himself, no self-abandonment in self-surrender; rather, God corresponds to himself even as he, the Living One, takes to himself the contradiction that is death. This language of correspondence-in-differentiation is for Jüngel a way of talking of trinitarian relations. There is God who makes alive (Father); there is the dead man Jesus (Son); and there is – in Augustinian parlance – the bond of love between the Father and the Son, the one who maintains their unity even in the event of their most severe ‘separation’ (Spirit). In consequence of the Spirit’s action, the living God remains God even as he ‘bears’ death.39 The death of God is not his negation, for he can involve himself in nothingness yet not be annihilated by it. God is able to bring positive ontological results out of the very perishability or transience which metaphysics has regarded in purely negative terms. Just as Luther’s theologian of glory balks at God’s revelation in hiddenness, his nearness in withdrawal, so the theist can only conceive of God as ‘absolute presence’  – and at that the atheist duly protests. The cross, however, tells it differently: God is present in God-forsakenness. The omnipresent one allows himself, in Bonhoeffer’s famous phrase, to be ‘pushed out of the world’; just so does he relate to the world with saving effect.40 If this is what God’s hiddenness in the cross is all about, there is  – and here Jüngel distances himself from the Luther of The Bondage of the Will – no possibility of a Deus absconditus behind the back of Jesus Christ: even in the darkness of Calvary, the light of divine grace is at work. In the concealment of God’s primary, majestic hiddenness in the secondary hiddenness of the flesh and blood and suffering of Jesus, God himself is revealed. ‘The very particular hiddenness of God in the darkness of the crucifixion of Jesus is not a 37. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. x, 222, 299–300, 344, and generally pp.  314–30; idem, ‘Das Verhältnis von »ökonomischer« und »immanenter« Trinität. Erwägungen über eine biblische Begründung der Trinitätslehre – im Anschluß an und in Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Rahners Lehre vom dreifaltigen Gott als transzendentem Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte’, Entsprechungen, p. 270; idem, ‘The Truth of Life: Observations on Truth as the Interruption of the Continuity of Life’, Creation, Christ and Culture: Essays in Honour of T. F. Torrance, in ed. Richard W. A. McKinney (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976), pp. 231–6, at p. 236. 38. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 298, 300, 317ff, 358, 369, 374–5; idem, ‘Das Verhältnis von »ökonomischer« und »immanenter« Trinität’, p.  270; and idem, ‘What does it mean to say “God is Love”?’, in Trevor Hart and Daniel Thimell (eds), Christ in Our Place: The Humanity of God in Christ for the Reconciliation of the World. Essays Presented to Professor James Torrance (Exeter: Paternoster/Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1989), pp. 294–312. 39. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 343–4. 40. Ibid., pp. 60–1; citing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM), p. 360.

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contradiction of the divinity of the God who is himself light and in whom there is no darkness’.41 Essential to Jüngel’s understanding of the dynamics of the divine movement is its constitutive character for us. In several important essays in the 1980s he fiercely repudiates the construal of the suffering and death of Jesus in exemplarist terms, where the cross is seen primarily as inspiration for our moral efforts. On the contrary, in its uniqueness it is divine action for us, substitutionary in character and complete in itself, revolutionary of our human identity.42 These convictions pervade Jüngel’s writings on church and sacraments, in which there is a continual refusal of any theology which turns the business of salvation and its proclamation into a story of mere moral imperatives. Human morality, properly ordered, derives from and testifies to the history of Jesus; it does not complete, embody or extend it.43 In Jüngel’s vision, God comes to himself as he does in time because eternally he is a ‘being-in-coming’: in his very essence, his being is his coming to himself. The cross is the enactment of that coming for us, his happening in history. Calvary’s God is the one who all the while comes from God (Father) to God (Son) as God (Spirit).44 Once again, Jüngel is concerned to emphasize God’s freedom: God comes from God to God as God, ‘determined by nobody and nothing other than by himself ’. But God’s self-determining freedom is his determination ‘to be God not without man’: ‘God’s humanity belongs to his divinity’.45 The consequences of this are immense, for God’s humanity involves his taking to himself the relationlessness that is human death, and so dealing with that which finally separates humanity from him. This does not mean, for Jüngel, that humans are delivered from their finitude, or afforded personal survival beyond death; rather, they are assured that at the end of life God is there, and that he takes human life in all its smallness into his own eternity.46 41. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God: A Contribution to the Protestant Understanding of the Hiddenness of Divine Action’, in Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 120–44, at p. 130. 42. See, for example, Eberhard Jüngel, ‘The Mystery of Substitution: A Dogmatic Conversation with Heinrich Vogel’, in Theological Essays II, pp.  145–62; and idem, ‘The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ as Sacrament and Example’, in Theological Essays II, pp. 163–90. 43. See, for example, Eberhard Jüngel, ‘The Church as Sacrament?’, in Theological Essays I, pp. 189–213; see also idem, ‘Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe. Ein Hinweis auf ihre Probleme’, in Jüngel, Barth–Studien (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1982), pp. 246–314. 44. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 380–9. 45. Ibid., p. 37. 46. For some samples of the argument, see Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Grenzen des Menschseins’, in Entsprechungen, pp. 355–61; idem, ‘Lob der Grenze’, in Entsprechungen, pp. 371–7; idem, ‘The Last Judgement as an Act of Grace’, LS 14 (1990), pp. 389–405 and idem, ‘Life after Death? A Response to Theology’s Silence about Eternal Life’, WW 11 (1991), pp. 5–8.

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Reflections Of the creativity and range of Jüngel’s deployment of a Lutheran Christology, there can be no doubt. In his major exegetical and dogmatic moves, Jüngel sketches a theology that is strikingly distinctive. In framing his arguments in the context of metaphysical theism and its atheistic shadow, Jüngel presents a fierce challenge to many of modernity’s most cherished approaches to the theological task. If his reading of the tradition is on such a scale that it risks grandiosity of claims, it provides for all that an immensely stimulating case, based at its best on close reading of texts and a willingness to face up to challenges which theology must confront. One key aspect of his response, his theopaschitism, is not, however, developed out of theodicial concerns, or a desire to render God’s presence culturally relevant or even pastorally inspiring (it is notable, indeed, how little Jüngel has to say about the potential intellectual, moral and spiritual implications of divine suffering, and how limited also are his attempts to engage with the arguments for impassibility). His resistance to any domestication of God as necessary or useful in these or other terms is fundamental: more than necessary, God is free to be present to us on his own terms, and refuses to be the idolatrous product of human wishes and needs. In his insistence that the being of God precedes all of the conditions of our enquiry after him, and is known by us only as he moves towards us in gracious self-bestowal, Jüngel holds firmly to Barth’s pervasive conviction that the possibilities of theology are, at their core, determined for us: the theologian’s responsibility is but to pay diligent heed.47 The intellectual ascesis of that vocation is a matter of which Jüngel has shown keen awareness. But he also celebrates revelation’s wonder: to encounter the true God is to be liberated from the oppressions of the false, and the attendant obligations they place upon us to secure ourselves, either in terror of an inscrutable absolute or in a feverish bid to deal with our finitude in some other way that is not nihilism. The theological homo faber knows no peace; nor, in reality, does the anti-theologian who remains obligated to fashion himself some other way. The scandal of the cross is catastrophic for our conceits, and also, as Luther recognized, for our busyness: we are freed from the hopelessness and self-destruction to which poiesis inevitably leads. To ask what ‘works’ and does not ‘work’ in Jüngel’s theology would be an ironic ineptitude in reference to one who has persistently rejected a reduction of serious theological thought to pragmatism. Within the terms or criteria which Jüngel himself sets up, however, we may legitimately ask about the strength of his achievement in seeking to trace all things from the history of Jesus Christ. Some might object to his Christocentrism at a fundamental level, arguing that Jüngel risks collapsing all doctrines into one, and thus eliding many other things which theology crucially needs to say, not least about the ways in which the presence 47. See, for example, Eberhard Jüngel, ‘“My Theology” – A Short Summary’, in Theological Essays II, pp. 1–19.

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and power of Jesus are mediated to and attested by his followers, and about the relationship between the universal significance of Jesus Christ and the status and authenticity of the natural order independently of him. In particular, Jüngel may be deemed simply to shear off major questions to which a theology of the Holy Spirit, or a more cohesive theology of creation, or a more elaborate narrative of sin and salvation is needed to provide essential doctrinal input. Whether this is fair or not will depend to some extent on how one reads Jüngel’s treatment of Christology as, variously, both starting point and interpretative key. On the former reckoning, theology will need to say much besides what it says explicitly about Jesus; on the latter, it is never able to leave the history of Jesus Christ behind, whatever the subject. Jüngel is insistent that the latter is true, but he does not, I think, wish to suggest that Christology says everything  – only that coherence with Christological confession must for Christian faith serve as the litmus test of all that is said. There is no question that Jüngel is right to treat the person and work of Christ as central and determinative for Christian theology. If there is a weakness in his approach to working that out in exegetical terms, it is that he potentially treats the Pauline word of the cross in somewhat monolithic fashion – not a ‘formula’ as such, admittedly, deployed to the exclusion of all the other soteriological material in the New Testament, but certainly as summative, in effect, of the entirety of the Christological narrative. In New Testament perspective, the death and resurrection of Jesus are indubitably the climax of the drama, but they are set within a narratival history, which also has a past in Jesus’s life, words and actions, and a future in his exaltation, his heavenly ministry as ascended, his earthly presence with his own, his coming reign. It could be argued that all of that history is only read aright, according to its biblical witnesses, when it is viewed against other pasts: God’s covenantal history with the patriarchs and Israel, and behind that the determinate resolve of the God who elects, creates and is not thwarted from his good purposes by the intrusion of creaturely evil. The background to all things in the drama, in other words, is God’s inner life. Rather than working towards the doctrine of the Trinity by starting with the divine economy, we might well in fact proceed the other way around, with the antecedent being of the God whose self-resolve gives the economy all of the revelatory and saving energy it knows. That is not a route Jüngel for the most part wishes to take, his debts to Barth notwithstanding. The actualistic ontology he proposes is indeed a reiteration of eternal relations in time, and its character, as we have noted, confirms the vital reality that God’s aseity is not at odds with but in a true sense freely ordered towards his historical existence. But Jüngel is in general more interested in God’s correspondence to himself in time than he is in the antecedent purpose of God to happen in that sphere. This point may not be unrelated to the relative spareness with which Jüngel fills in the details of his soteriology: if the plan which lies behind the cross remains somewhat marginal, the consequences of the cross may well in turn be drawn less vividly than they deserve. The Pauline word of the cross is spoken of by Jüngel often in summary rather than in substantive terms – more

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a shorthand description of the story of the death of Jesus than an account of atonement as such. It would be entirely consonant with Jüngel’s emphasis upon continuity in the preaching of and about Jesus to offer a more expansive account, and to see the events of Jesus’s passion in the context of an overall biblical narrative of God’s will to create, reconcile and perfect. It would accordingly also be helpful to substitute for Jüngel’s abstract talk of Jesus’s ‘effective’ history a richer account of personal agency in encounter with Jesus and his deeds: to speak of the role of the risen Jesus Christ in making himself known by the Spirit; the roles of believers in re-narrating, also by the Spirit’s enabling, his story in word, deed, community and symbol. There are, of course, assumptions here which militate rather strongly against Jüngel’s existentialism, but the suggestion is that his vision of the inseparability of God and Jesus would be enhanced by a more explicit location of the cross and its experienced reality within the overall purposes of God in worldly history. We encounter the reality of the cross via the resurrection. For Jüngel, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is overwhelmingly epistemic in its force. It does not reverse Jesus’s suffering and death; it discloses what his suffering and death are all about. Its power is not, it should be noted, to ‘explain’ the mystery of the cross, for mystery that remains; but the resurrection is, as the obverse side of the same mystery, the exposition of that event in all its wonder. In so far as the resurrection of Jesus is a message about his death, its nature as an event in itself remains obscure. It is no accident that Jüngel largely fails to find in Jesus’s resurrection, the basis for a remotely specific account of the resurrection of creatures. He wishes to stress the continuity between the man Jesus and the Christ of Easter faith, but says little about what it is that his resurrection as such consists in for Jesus. The emphases are mainly negative: the resurrection does not cancel what occurred in Jesus’s death, and – significantly – belief in the historical fact of the resurrection is not (pace Pannenberg) the ‘ground’ of Christian faith. The confinement of the primary significance of the resurrection to the noetic is plainly a truncated approach in New Testament terms. If we ask what the resurrection reveals, we are told that it declares the enhypostasia. There are dangers of misunderstanding here. Viewed one way, it might seem as if there is a divine incognito of unqualified proportions prior to that point. The divine identification with Jesus reaches back into the totality of Jesus’s life, but occurs only at the end – or indeed after the end, as it were. It is not, as such, to be found in his baptism, in his signs, in his transfiguration or in his teaching. Whence, then, Jesus’s capacity to call forth faith in any deep sense during his earthly life? However, Jüngel’s point in subsuming everything from birth to cross under the anhypostasia is not to deny the possibility of divine revelation by the earthly Jesus, or his ability to elicit faith – Jesus’s entire life is indeed a being in the act of the kingdom of God, and thus of unique moment. Rather, what Jüngel wishes to stress is that it is the resurrection alone which reveals the basis of this unique existence, the grounds of Jesus’s capacity to live, act and speak humanly as he does. ‘. . . Jesus is the Son of God precisely in his humanity – not apart from his humanity! – and . . . the Son of God is the human Jesus precisely in the operation

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of his divine essence – and not in suspension of it!’.48 Once again, it may be that a more operative pneumatology would help: it is as Jesus Christ lives by the Spirit that the Son’s existence in his life and death takes the shape it does; it is by the Spirit’s action that the identity of the risen Jesus Christ is apprehended, and faith responds to him, at any point. Without such appeal to the Spirit’s role, it is in fact difficult to specify how the resurrection itself does its revelatory work for us. We need God to tell us that it is God who identifies himself with the crucified Jesus. Jüngel’s somewhat shifting discourse of divine identification with Jesus and divine identity to him has attracted some critical attention.49 There are various possible ways of reading the matter. One (improbable) approach is to assume that Jüngel is simply careless, and fails to see that ‘identification with’ and ‘identity to’ are not necessarily the same thing. The second approach is to suppose that he is unable to give adequate exposition of his usual preference, ‘identification with’, and thus vaguely equivocates between that and a stronger claim, ‘identity to’. The third option is that Jüngel is in fact highly aware of the subtlety of what he is reaching after: pure identity might mean either monophysitism or docetism, or (by contrast) a very radical divine kenosis of a kind Jüngel wishes to avoid; identification simpliciter might suggest mere solidarity with or moral support for a purely human subject. Jüngel is seeking to say both that God the Son is the same subject as Jesus, and that Jesus is genuinely human – without falling, in turn, into Nestorianism. Jüngel is also trying to articulate this alongside his account of the enhypostasia as disclosed in the divine identification, the retrospective key to an anhypostatic existence. In shunning a Christology of two natures, and indeed for the most part avoiding the language of ‘incarnation’ altogether, Jüngel is endeavouring to reframe classical terms to say how it can be that God’s being is genuinely actualized in time as human. In that task of conceptual translation, there are, at the least, challenges, and it remains uncertain that the concept of identification in particular yet offers sufficient precision. For some, the metaphysics of substance, understood in dynamic conjunction with an emphasis on divine presence as indeed a history, not a static state, may do the necessary work at least as well. Whether or not Jüngel’s depiction of the cross as triune event is persuasive depends much on one’s assessment of its avoidance of a compromise of divine freedom, or, more precisely, too close an identification of the being of God with history. It is basic to Jüngel’s case that there is no ontological gap between God’s essential relationality and the enactment of that relationality in the cross. Contrary 48. Jüngel, ‘The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus’, in Theological Essays II, pp. 82–119, at p. 115. 49. See, for example, John B. Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to his Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp.  33–4, 145 n. 54; idem, ‘Jesus in Modernity: Reflections on Jüngel’s Christology’, in Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), pp. 151–90, at p. 176; also Alister E. McGrath, The Making of Modern German Christology: From the Enlightenment to Pannenberg (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 195.

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to some influential voices in modern trinitarian theology, Jüngel does not simply trade away the immanent Trinity; however, it remains for him the ‘summarizing concept’ of the economic Trinity; God’s capacity to be in history is the historicity of his being in coming, which is the freedom of his love.50 It is quite mistaken to accuse Jüngel of a sort of Hegelianism which dissolves God into worldly process, renders his being identical with some general principle of flux or sacrifices the concrete particularity of Jesus Christ. Vitally, Jüngel insists that the movement in which God has his being in time is a matter of the freedom of God’s love, not any sort of need, even an inner necessity. Nevertheless, Jüngel can also say that in the identification of God with the man Jesus, the divine being realizes itself.51 The aim here is of course to stress God’s predeterminate readiness to enact his being ad extra, but the danger is that this readiness is arrived at by extrapolation from the death of God, rather than from a theology of election. In working back to the immanent Trinity from the economic, does Jüngel risk compromising something which others have traditionally been highly keen to maintain: the primacy of God’s triunity and plenitude in himself regardless of any world? If so, once again historical actualism comes at a heavy price. Jüngel in fact seeks to safeguard the eternity of God’s nature as love by stressing that God does not become love at the cross, but ‘happens’ as the love he always is. In so far as that is emphasized, and God’s enacted love and freedom are not turned into a supposition that God for some reason must happen in history because he does so happen, the price may be offset; but here, at the edges of the thinkable and sayable, vigilance is ever necessary. Jüngel expresses well the unity of God’s life in the event of death. There is in this account no crude talk of stasis in God, or of the Father’s loss of his Fatherhood, or other such mistakes. God does not cease to be the one God he always has been. At the same time, Jüngel does not scruple to press the language of ‘separation’ between the Father and the Son, and posits a self-differentiation that is evidently of fathomless ontological depth. If such an account is to avoid the charge that it substantially overstates the ontological force of the cry of dereliction, it needs to say more about what is and is not in view. There is for Jüngel no change in God’s substance; yet God does take something, experientially, into himself in the relationlessness of death. Aside from the possible observation that a doctrine of coinherence might profitably be brought into the conversation, a stronger account of the role of the Holy Spirit in particular is needed if we would say what it might conceivably mean to posit that God can die yet remain alive. Jüngel’s treatment of the Spirit as vinculum caritatis is his way of talking of the fact that God’s being remains in coming, that the divine life is not ultimately interrupted by death. He is careful 50. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 346; see also idem ‘Das Verhältnis von »ökonomischer« und »immanenter« Trinität’. This essay is summarized as Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, TD 24 (1976), pp. 179–84. 51. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 191.

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to emphasize also that the love between the Father and the Son is open to the world, since it is the Spirit who binds us to God as well as binding the Father and the Son together. What is less successful, arguably, is Jüngel’s specification of the Spirit’s action in all this as personal in a manner cognate to the personal identities and actions of the Father and the Son. If what we describe is ‘the relation of the relations who constitutes the being of love as event’,52 we may talk of the intensity of the relationship of the Father and the Son, but we risk speaking of a state of affairs, not of a personal agent.53 What, finally, does the cross secure for creatures? This is a question which Jüngel answers robustly at one level, in his firm demand that the death of Jesus cannot be regarded as a mere example, but must be recognized as an action with determinate effects. Those effects are ontological, restoring us to our true humanity. They are not, however, a theology of atonement in any classical sense. For Luther, on the one hand, the cross is the locus of moral reckoning, the site where sin is judged and forgiveness is made possible. For Jüngel, on the other hand, it is the place where God and the human are found together, and true humanity is revealed to consist in human correspondence to God. The benefits of Christ, as Jüngel presents them, are about human definition, not human reconciliation as conventionally conceived: we find out what we are, and what we thus are called to be as those who receive their freedom from God in relationship to God. This definition reaches us in the interruptive Word of address that is the gospel; we are summoned existentially into recognizing the authenticity of our humanity as defined for us in Jesus Christ. What all this lacks is any serious account of sin and judgement. We are freed from self-realization more than we are acquitted of our culpa as sinners. Sin is seen, in the end, as little more than an ontic problem, manifesting itself in the human drive to secure oneself and thus to reject one’s already-established ontology; the effects are essentially privative, a demeaning of the self, a descent into relationlessness which culminates in death. At this level, we can deny our humanity. What we cannot do, it seems, is reject our ontological determination in Christ. Justification by faith is the realization, the reception, of our true status in correspondence to God. Aside from the issues this raises about human freedom, it is highly questionable if it says nearly enough about the work that is wrought ephapax in the darkness, and about what it means to respond to that at the level of Christian obedience, with all its ebbs and flows. The Jüngel of the later 1980s and 1990s is undoubtedly much firmer on some of this, writing with great sensitivity on what it means for creatures to become truly human and to ‘live out of righteousness’, experiencing the disruptive effects of God-given newness, the overwhelming and astonishment opened up by the possibilities of life in Christ. Even so, in so far as he remains highly critical of any account of moral selfhood in which the human as agent is the dominant note, 52. Ibid., p. 375. 53. So Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology, p. 77.

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there still remains a sense that the evocative aspects of Christ (including even his suffering, perhaps) are downplayed in preference for an account of constitutive salvation in which our personhood is defined for us, never realized by us. Much about this is, I think, absolutely right: any soteriology which fails to major on determinate divine action is theologically disastrous; personhood and freedom are only rightly discerned also in the context of grace and gift. If the reasoning still falls short, it does so in its failure to venture more than an outline version of the possible content of Christian obedience consequential upon the experience of grace. The theology of justification is utterly robust; the theology of sanctification remains rather slender. Further soteriological critiques might be developed. For example, it is not clear that it is remotely adequate, according to classical Christian confession, to reduce Christian hope to a matter of having our finitude confirmed for us in death. If that confirmed finitude at last means (only) being known by God rather than consciously knowing God, and if the final resurrection of the body itself, or a physical eschaton for creatures generally, remain highly opaque as a prospect, this is some way removed from the future hope of which the church has traditionally spoken. Running through almost everything in Jüngel’s thought, arguably, is his endless puzzling over the nature of freedom and how to say it. What does it mean for God to be free, what does it mean for creatures and what is the relationship between the two? Jüngel’s repeated conclusion, at its simplest, is that human freedom has its sole basis in God’s freedom, which meets us in his justifying act. If the gospel declares our freedom, it does so first by declaring God’s freedom not to be absolute, remote or incapable of enacting his being in the creature’s space. His movement to free us is a movement to bring us into fellowship with the freedom that is primordially his; in such participation, we reach our intended ends, in creaturely correspondence to God. What Jüngel is after, then, first and foremost, is an account of God’s freedom that can hold together his sovereign transcendence of contingency, his lack of need of the world, with his genuinely eternal determination also to commit himself to the world for its good. As we have seen, there is reason to conclude that Jüngel’s way of reading Barth on aseity and election offers him a way of saying both things: God can be for us in time because he is free to be for us in eternity; creaturely history is not an alien realm, a territory into which God’s being cannot come, but the place to which God does – and thus can – determine to commit himself, choosing to live his Godness with and for us. In the end, Jüngel’s way of saying this goes beyond Barth, and not necessarily always for the best. To my mind, the vestigia of Hegel are more in evidence than they might optimally be, and more could be done to clarify the relationship between God’s non-necessity and his selfdetermination. The differences between the actualizing and the realizing of God’s being are not always as clear-cut as they might be. Such is the Lutheran path. But Jüngel’s account of freedom is also simultaneously an account of love – the freedom of the God who establishes freedom for us in the enactment of his being as love; the freedom of humans realized in their return of love to God, which includes their

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love for God’s world. Jüngel’s attempt to correlate freedom and love is by no means always successful, and the challenges spill over into questions of how well such a theology may speak of human vocation, of the projects of human obedience and of policy formation in ethical and political action.54 Many issues remain for further deliberation, and the particular manner in which Jüngel mediates all at once classic Lutheranism, a Barthian analogy of grace and an existentialist preoccupation with ‘authenticity’ is, unsurprisingly, both strength and weakness. The endeavour is pretty remarkable all the same.

crux probat omnia In a paper first delivered in 1977, on ‘Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology’,55 Jüngel acknowledges that he learned from Luther the proper distinction between God and humanity for humanity’s good. It is a lesson he has ceaselessly pressed upon his own readers. Like Luther, Jüngel has consistently seen the history of Jesus Christ, especially his cross, as the supreme authority for that axiom. Arrested by the Word, faith makes claims of the most staggering reach imaginable: about the inner nature of God, about the enactment of his being in our time and space and about all things else in light of that wonder. The business of theology is thought and speech born of unending astonishment. As Luther insisted, theology also involves suffering, self-abnegation, the cry for help to the God who has himself cried out upon the cross, and in that has changed everything. But: The first and last task of proper theology is . . . not that of articulating our story of suffering, but that of bringing the story of Christ’s passion to speech as gospel. Yet in everything it has constantly asserted one thing and one thing only: that the God who was denounced and crucified by his human creatures has said to us and so also to himself once and for all Yes (2 Cor. 1.19f.). And ‘my theology’ can be and seeks to be nothing other than the reflective attempt to spell out this divine Yes. Quod Deus bene vertat!56

The theologian who discerns things thus deserves our enduring attention, and our honour.

54. See esp. Piotr J. Małysz, Trinity, Freedom, and Love: An Engagement with the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel (London & New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012); Małysz’s assessment adduces some significant criticisms of Jüngel’s success in holding independence and determinateness together, and proposes some possible correctives. 55. Jüngel, The Freedom of a Christian, pp. 15–27. 56. Jüngel, ‘“My Theology” – A Summary’, p. 19.

Chapter 4 O N T H E C ONTR ARY: T HOM I ST IC S EC OND T HOUGH T S ON A NA LO G Y A N D T R INIT Y IN E BE R HARD J Ü NGEL Paul J. DeHart

Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich . . .1 – Ludwig Wittgenstein Les theologies moderne de la Parole sont nées de cette réduction: Dieu est le moyen de sa revelation.2 – Christian Duquoc Upon reflection, I find myself opposed to myself. That is to say, to an earlier version of myself. For some time, I have been more and more drawn to the precision and elasticity of the Christian metaphysical theism of Thomas Aquinas and its characteristic readings of the ancient ecclesial traditions (on negative theology, sacramental ecclesiology, God as ipsum esse, and creation ex nihilo). But my current conviction is that his vision offers the most promising orienting point for constructing a reasonably defensible and encompassing articulation of the Christian gospel has brought with it an uncomfortable corollary: I have fallen quite out of sympathy with at least some of the convictions of the author of my first book.3 This shift would be trivial in itself, merely autobiographical; what makes 1.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Frankfurt/M, Suhrkamp), §6.522. 2. Christian Duquoc, ‘Le théologie naturelle. Son enjeu dans le débat ouvert par la Réforme’, Lumiere et Vie 32 (1983), p. 80. 3. Paul DeHart, Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and Philosophy in the Thought of Eberhard Jüngel, American Academy of Religion: Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion, ed. Mary McClintock Fulkerson, no.  15 (Atlanta, CA: Scholars Press, 1999). David Burrell’s curt response to that work (see his short notice in ThSt 62 (2001), p.  207), a skeptical shrug in face of a certain style of

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it embarrassing is that it also necessitates a public demurral from some of the most basic affirmations of Eberhard Jüngel, one of the truly formidable theological intellects of our time, whose writings were critical to my own education and remain objects of my special esteem. How do I properly honour Jüngel in spite of that bafflement in face of his brilliantly conceived central project which has gradually and unintentionally emerged in me? Unable to shake off the awareness that my own contributions can only be dwarfed by the stature of his achievement, I will nonetheless remain his student even here by trying to follow his example, for Jüngel has consistently reserved the dignity of explicit detailed contradiction for those opponents he deems most worthy of respect, calmly laying out the precise points at issue with all due care. One such honoured opponent of Jüngel’s has in fact been Thomas Aquinas himself, and what follows is accordingly one sort of rejoinder from a position inspired by the latter. The constructive scheme laid out in Jüngel’s great work, God as the Mystery of the World,4 at its heart demands the explicit rejection of two theses embraced by Aquinas: on the one hand, Jüngel’s book develops an account of language and revelation intended to counter any claim that ‘the Deity, therefore, is ineffable and incomprehensible’5; on the other hand, it culminates in a cruciform interpretation of the triune divine being that, in his words, ‘has destroyed the axiom of absoluteness, the axiom of apathy, and the axiom of immutability’.6 Au contraire, says the Thomist. No more can be done here than to register some almost telegraphically brief defensive objections, raising questions about his revisionary rejections of these classical formulations pursuant to more detailed discussions in the future. The first section will deal with his critique of Aquinas on analogy and negative theology, while the third section will concern itself with his theistic (or anti-theistic!) reconstruction of the divine triunity. The second section, shorter and more tentative, will serve as a hinge between the main sections, hinting at some probable submerged Christological and ecclesiological biases that, respectively, inform both Jüngel’s stances on revelation and Trinity as well as the outlined alternatives proffered in the spirit of Aquinas. The final section will conclude with some broader historical reflections upon this clash of theological conceptions and its implications. What follows covers much ground in haste, and would need extended development before it could lay claim to the title of an argument with Jüngel; it merely reflects a set of concerns and hesitations prompted by a stance, some contours of which are quite unsystematically noted, more sympathetic to the ancient tradition than his own. theological thinking and argumentation characterizing both the book and its hero, now strikes me as strangely prophetic of my future trajectory. 4. Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983). 5. Ibid., p. 232. 6. Ibid., p. 373.

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Language against Language References to Aquinas can be found scattered throughout Jüngel’s writings; sometimes approving, sometimes not, they confirm the status of Aquinas in Jüngel’s mind as one of those crucial moments within the Western tradition (an ‘epochale Umbruch’) that serve as abiding points of reference for his own thinking.7 The seriousness with which Jüngel enters into his critical dialogue with tradition is one of his more appealing qualities, but in Aquinas’s case only once has it expanded into a substantive discussion, namely in the treatment of ineffability and analogy within the chapter on divine ‘speakability’ in God as the Mystery of the World. This discussion forms the centrepiece of a larger argument that indicts the entire tradition of negative theology for the crime of suppressing the linguistic mode of God’s presence in the saving proclamation of the gospel. As Jüngel narrates it, Aquinas, maintaining the tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius, offers a doctrine of analogous naming of God’s attributes that must finally undermine the believer’s confidence in God’s nature and identity. For Jüngel, in the Christ-event God has entered the world of the human, the speaking animal, by graciously annexing its fundamental capacity, language itself. But Aquinas speaks for those who, refusing this most intimate conjunction of divine selfutterance and human proclamation, insist instead on a God finally incompatible with speech. How can this fail to result, generally, in a divine hostility to language perhaps tipping over into an enmity (decried by Nietszche) to the human as such? More particularly, under the conditions of modernity the faceless and silenced God of negative theology must confront the human search for meaning with an ‘unbearably sinister riddle’,8 eventually dissolving any significance of God for a humanity come of age. In response it should be said that Jüngel’s description of analogy in Aquinas’s own writings displays for the most part his usual sensitivity, but strikes two or three false notes as well. These in turn skew the evaluative conclusions he draws from the discussion, for the careful reader of Aquinas will have difficulty recognizing the dire results Jüngel insists upon as in any way necessitated by the foregoing account itself. Two sorts of consideration need to be raised in order to understand what is questionable in Jüngel’s diagnosis. The first is that Jüngel seems to be working with an unwarrantedly flattened notion of cognition, one that fails to recognize the modes and limits of Aquinas’s traditional agnosticism. Second, Jüngel can only delineate the modern consequences of analogic naming in such grim terms because he sees it against the background of his own contestable understanding of what divine revelation should entail. 7. Jüngel, ‘Das Entstehen von Neuem’, in Wertlose Wahrheit – Zur Identität und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens. Theologische Erörterungen III, 2. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), p. 135. Quoting Karl Rahner, SJ, and Bernhard Welte. 8. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 277.

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One approach to the first point can be made by simply pointing to a strange feature of Jüngel’s discussion of analogy: after an admirable summation of Aquinas on the matter (marred mainly by a misbegotten attempt to uncover a secret dependence upon the analogy of proportionality),9 he begins his critique of analogy by turning not to Aquinas’s version, but to that of Immanuel Kant.10 Indeed, Jüngel can even promote Kant to a sort of spokesman for the negative theological tradition.11 This simply will not do, for as Jüngel himself rightly concludes, the whole thrust of Kant’s position on analogy is utterly to seal God off from any cognitive access by playing off our possible grasp of a divine relation to the world against the sheer unknowability of God, the ‘x’ at one term of that relation.12 Thus God’s ‘love’ for Kant amounts to no more than the assertion of an infinitely superior, and hence unknown, causal efficacy. But this flat-footed result is only compelling once one accepts the relevant Kantian definitions of cognition and of belief, which Aquinas certainly does not. Jüngel’s discussion of analogy shows no sign of being aware of these distinctions. Unlike for Kant, ‘knowledge’ in Aquinas is itself an analogical term. The fact that humans can have no knowledge of God’s essence in this life means that they can neither grasp nor name ‘what’ God is as they can name finite material objects by discerning their causes and defining their quiddities vis-à-vis other finite things. But humans can cognitively and truthfully assert the reality of an infinite ground of all things; they can know the authentic presence of goodness, wisdom and love within that ground in a grade of perfection which transcends all earthly experiences, and finally, through the revelation in Christ, they can come, through growth in relationship, to know the eternal coinherence of Word and Spirit within the divine identity. Of course, God remains sheerly mysterious to the categorizing and defining intellect, but the fragmentary glimpses of this mystery are such as to invite the believer further and further in, drawn by the affective touch of faithful desire coaxing her out always beyond, but never against, what she can know within the zone illuminated by reason. The role of analogy is crucial here because it informs our willing with the knowledge that the direction of its reach is indeed along an unlimited extension rooted in, though expanding beyond, the goodness and love we concretely experience in this world. This ‘agnosticism’ of Aquinas operates in a dialectical fashion, whereby the repeated denial of the modal adequacy of our own affirmations of divine wisdom and benevolence in no way simply negates the authentic content of those affirmations, but rather draws us willingly to grow up into that content beyond 9. See ibid., p. 276. 10. Ibid., p. 262. The wrongheadedness of this attempt at assimilating Kant to Aquinas has already been pointed out by John Milbank in The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 7ff. Although the details of his account of Aquinas are quite problematic, Milbank’s overall point is well-taken. 11. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 279. 12. Ibid., p. 265.

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our cognitive limits. Jüngel, however, insists on seeing here a kind of zero-sum game where negation simply trumps and frustrates every affirmation, such that God as revealed is even ‘more’ unknown.13 He evidently does not believe Aquinas’s assurances that revelation decidedly increases our assimilation of saving truth. This is completely in line with his conjoined reading of Pseudo-Dionysius, where Jüngel fails to note the epistemic dynamism involved in the fact that for Dionysius even our negations of the divine names are themselves endlessly negated in our living engagement with the mystery itself. Instead, the picture Jüngel offers of negative theology is that of a machine that perfectly immobilizes itself. Empty negativity always has the last word. Since he does not sufficiently appreciate in this whole tradition the living interplay in faith between a cognitive affirmation and negation that are themselves embedded in a larger existential progression involving will and feeling, Jüngel regards with apparent surprise Aquinas’s incorporation of transcendent perfections in his discourse of God’s attributes, as if this involved a ‘reversal’ based solely on scriptural necessity that is at odds with the way of negation.14 But Aquinas’s notion of faith involves a more flexible and multivalent understanding of what can constitute knowing than Jüngel’s account, apparently keyed to that of Kant, can countenance. Jüngel’s conclusion, then, on the entire negative theological tradition is that it ends up in a sterile opposition between God’s existence, a naturally available but nugatory thesis, and God’s essence, admitted as utterly superior but empty of all cognitive content.15 Whatever role such a debased scholastic inheritance may have played in mediating the hidden atheism of early modern thought, it cannot pass for a satisfactory reading of Aquinas. But an insufficiently nuanced appreciation of the role of knowledge in negative theology is not the only factor at work in Jüngel’s sharp disapproval of Aquinas’s position. The second element is a presupposed notion of what a saving revelation of God is or should be. Reading Paul in such a way that justifying faith means our being assured of the personal ‘acknowledgement’ of our person by the divine person,16 Jüngel construes God’s revelation primarily in terms of an act of self-identification. Only in Jesus Christ, in other words, are human beings first confronted with ‘who’ God really is. A similar understanding pervades his interpretation of Paul’s discourse of the cross, where Jüngel, guided by a particular reading of the Johannine utterance that ‘God is love’, makes the inference that for Paul the event of the crucifixion is the defining disclosure of the divine identity, and that identity in turn is equivalent to the divine essence. This moves quickly into a host of detailed exegetical matters that cannot be resolved here, but it can at least be signalled that this reading of the New Testament data is eminently debatable. On the one hand, the God revealed in 13. Ibid., p. 243. 14. Ibid., p. 244. 15. Ibid., p. 235. 16. Ibid., p. 231.

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Jesus the Son was not a previously unknown God, but was none other than the creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of the law and the prophets and the covenant people. Paul knew ‘who’ God was before the Damascus road experience. For this reason, is it really correct to see in Paul’s theology of the cross the answer to the question ‘Who is God?’ Should we not reverse Jüngel’s judgement, and admit that it is more proper to say that Paul confessed God’s presence in Christ crucified on the basis of his prior confession of Israel’s creator God, rather than vice versa?17 That God has spoken definitively and climactically in Christ presupposes the confession of Israel, it does not retroactively ground it. On the other hand, what are the warrants for understanding the crucifixion of the word made flesh as God’s self-definition, as Jüngel is wont to do? At any rate, the famous Johannine equivalence of theos and agape is hardly, taken in context, to be understood as a definition of the divine essence, nor does it demand the sort of exclusive connection with Paul’s ‘word of the cross’ that Jüngel gives it. Given the different roles played by ‘essence’ in their respective schemes, Jüngel and Aquinas are talking at cross purposes. The point is that Aquinas’s strictures against our knowledge of God’s essence call forth such vigorous opposition from Jüngel because he already relies upon an understanding of God’s revelation in Christ precisely as the articulation in language of the divine essence itself. As Jüngel reads the New Testament, the good news is not so much the announcement of God’s ultimate saving gesture in Jesus as rather in some way itself identical with that saving gesture, as God’s informing humanity ‘Here is who I am!’, thereby grounding anew their own identities. This is a powerful interpretation, but neither a necessary nor an unproblematic one, especially when literalized and made the master model for what revelation must mean. In summary, a Thomist will be inclined to see the discussion of Aquinas in God as the Mystery of the World as tendentious: the doctrine of analogy expounded by Aquinas is both misunderstood on its own terms, and wrongly construed as an ‘unbearable’ concealment of God when juxtaposed against the assumption of revelation as God’s essential self-disclosure. If analogy in the tradition of negative theology is nothing more than the self-negating deployment of language against itself, without remainder, then the silencing of revelation as Jüngel conceives it is indeed the only result. All language is condemned to inauthenticity, and God is defined as the negative opposite of the linguistic animal until modern atheism justifiably ushers this God off the stage. But first, even if all language is finally inadequate to the divine being it by no means follows that silence about God is the only authentic way to be faithful. Language is used against language, not to neutralize language entirely, but to show by the very shape of its inadequacy its genuine residual possibility as an element within worshipful existence. It is just in this way, second, that the upshot of analogical naming in the manner of Aquinas could never be, as 17. See ibid., p. 218.

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Jüngel accuses, the mutual exclusion of the divine and human natures.18 Just the opposite: human nature could never be defined in opposition to God precisely because the protocols of analogical speech concerning ultimate mystery prevent God and any created nature inhabiting a common logical space, within which such exclusion is alone possible. Finally, as to revelation, perhaps God in the gospel has not so much defined himself into our speech as he has initiated a worldly event of real divine presence around and through which, as a series of embodied experiences, a persistent communal sign of final mystery can take historical shape. If so, then language must undergo a therapy in which all its genuine advances as the articulation of our thinking of God are repeatedly brought up against the constitutive limits of thought itself. The hopeful result is not a barren muteness, but the incorporation of language into a totality of experience now freed to grow beyond itself. That is why the words of the 1215 Lateran Council so often and ominously quoted by Jüngel find their better interpreter in Przywara, in spite of the former’s criticism.19 That every affirmed similitude of God and creature must trigger an awareness of even greater dissimilitude signals not a peculiar impoverishment of language but a peculiar richness of possible experience. In revelation, the eternal utterance, because unutterable in human words, personally arrives. ‘There is, to be sure, what cannot be said. It shows itself. . . .’20

Body against Body Just a word or two more about this arrival, this showing, is in order to illuminate the rather different conception of revelation Jüngel seems to work with, the pressures it is responding to, and some insights it possibly occludes. The Christian doctrine of revelation must balance different tendencies. On the one hand, there is the majesty of what takes place: the divine itself, resident within the house of creation; on the other hand, there is the feebleness and unworthiness of the human hands which must somehow receive this immense gift. The Christian tradition has been united in proclaiming the necessity of the gracious descent of the divine spirit itself in order to mobilize and direct the receptive human capacities in order that revelation, the genuine transferral of divine word into human hearing, succeeds at all. But there are different ways of conceiving how this happens. Jüngel’s own account of the matter is fascinating, but raises some concerns. He renders his scheme briskly in God’s Being Is in Becoming.21 Indeed God as the Mystery of the World, though written later, can in some ways be regarded as an 18. Ibid., p. 280. 19. Ibid., p. 285. 20. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, §6.522. 21. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase, trans. John B. Webster (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).

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immense historical and philosophical prologue to that earlier book, situating its trinitarian argument within an account of the story of God’s lingering cultural death over the course of modern intellectual development. In fact, it might be suggested that the particular theological construal of revelation that Jüngel presents in the early work makes most sense when it is seen as also attempting to provide the answer to a question put by the unfolding of modernity as dealt with in the later book. Put most succinctly, the affirmation of human objectification, the cognitive control exerted by the knowing subject upon every datum which purports to obtain human meaning, can be understood both as the indispensable founding charter of the modern world, as well as the most disastrous efflorescence of humanity’s perennial perverted self-assertion. Granting this view of things, Jüngel supports an understanding of revelation in which the saving disclosure of the divine presence is cast as the perfect riposte to human objectification: a perfected knowledge event in which God utterly controls, at every stage, his appearance within the horizon of human cognition. Never objectified by us, God instead must ever anew objectivize himself, and thus remain the inviolable subject of his givenness. But what sort of ‘givenness’ is this? There are grounds for suspicion that the incarnation of the Word has here become so hedged about with caveats, so ‘protected’ from any entry into the causal interchanges of historical human agency (lest it become a ‘predicate of history’) that anything like a human presence of God has become volatilized and evanescent. One is tempted at this point to recall Hegel’s acute observations on the logic of Protestantism as recounted by Jüngel himself.22 Since Reformation faith ‘avoids, for the sake of God’s infinity, the finite perception of God in the institutions of finitude’, the believer ‘desires the grief of not being able to have God’ for if the subject ‘had God, then the infinite would be dissolved into objectivity’. It is at least arguable that the picture of the revelatory event that Jüngel recounts in God’s Being Is in Becoming, where the saving truth of God in Christ takes objective form in human consciousness ultimately not via the subjective and intersubjective agency of human cognition itself but via a kind of repeated ‘vertical’ invasion of divine agency (the Holy Spirit), does not really diverge from the course outlined by Hegel. Much more would have to be said here to substantiate such suspicions, but the issue is raised at this point in order to indicate two kinds of consequence for Jüngel’s theology. If revelation is the inexorably triumphant sort of event imagined in this account, and any truly humanly constructed objectivity is denied to it, then, first, any extension of the event of revelation on the plane of historical causation becomes problematic. In particular, what becomes of the entire traditional understanding of the ‘whole Christ’, where the very bodily presence of Godhead is, through the gift of the Spirit, continued in the material availability of the Word in the Eucharist and in the living bodily society of believers that historically both perpetuates and is perpetuated by that fleshly memory? It would seem that an ‘actualist’ account like Jüngel’s runs the danger of 22. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 72.

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resulting in an ‘occasionalist’ repetition of revelation where events of disclosure tend to harmonize with certain human actions but no real interlock of creaturely and creative agency occurs. Second, if God cannot truly give himself in Christ in such as a way as to be received on genuinely human terms, what becomes of the claim, so central to Jüngel, that in revelation God truly identifies himself, truly gives himself to be known? The answer, as will be seen in the next section, lies in his particular understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. For, it looks like revelation for him is less fittingly imagined (along more patristic and Thomist lines) as a self-communicating divine agency taking authentically creaturely shape as an organic event within the world’s temporal order than it is a self-enclosed pattern of giving and receiving that mirrors an eternally prior event of divine self-constitution; it hovers, so to speak, in the intermittent consciousness of some yet remains somehow spooky, never quite attaining worldly status. Is this an unfair reading? Even if one-sided, the characterization hopefully brings out an alternative construal of revelation which places the accents somewhat differently. The worry is that an account like Jüngel’s is missing the fleshly heft of revelation, the divine utterance as the living human body of Jesus, an historical force with its own impetus, aggregating the community of Eucharistic prayer that carries it forward. The body of the whole Christ pressing against the body of the world: this is a different sort of vision of achieved revelation than a punctuated series of perfectly controlled receptions of a divine self-objectification. To be sure, this is not the whole of Jüngel’s doctrine of revelation, but it is uncomfortably central.

God against God Jüngel’s concern to protect the act of divine self-disclosure from exposure to the objectifying processes of human history, as well as his insistence that what takes place in revelation is the self-identification in language of the divine essence, not only present certain problems in themselves but also play a crucial role in a series of interpretative decisions he makes concerning God’s triunity. The resulting affirmations are troublesome not just for those working from a Thomist perspective, but for any theologian broadly committed to the ancient and medieval heritage of Christian thought. The matter is highly complex, but three distinct moves in Jüngel’s argumentation can be tentatively identified. (1) In an important paper, Ralf Stolina has shown the peculiarly modern circumstances under which arose the opposition between a so-called immanent and an economic Trinity, an opposition which, pace Jüngel, does not correspond to the ancient distinction of theologia and oikonomia.23 The paired concepts only 23. Ralf Stolina, ‘“Ökonomische” und “immanente” Trinität? Zur Problematik einer trinitätstheologischen Denkfigur’, ZThK, 105 (2008), pp. 170–216. On Jüngel, see p. 171.

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secured a continuing role in theological discussion as a result of the controversies in the wake of Schleiermacher over the eternal status, apart from creation, of the personal distinctions of Father, Son and Spirit. As the terminology stabilized, so too did the relatively new way of thinking about the relationship between Trinity and revelation associated with it. This thinking attempted to answer the question, become urgent in a context both modern and Protestant, about the epistemic ground of our assurance of God’s eternal triune distinction in light of the acknowledged absence of an explicit scriptural teaching (or natural disclosure to reason). The answer runs like this. The New Testament tells a story in which God is disclosed through the interplay of three agents accorded divine status (Jesus, the Spirit inspiring believers in him and the one Jesus named Father), and we may name this interplay the ‘revealed’ or economic Trinity. If this narrative is supposed to constitute the definitive revelation of God, indeed the self-disclosure of the absolute truth of divinity, then its threefold character cannot be an arbitrary instrument but must itself reflect perfectly God’s eternal life. Hence, if revelation is truly God’s self-revelation, there must be in the eternal being of God a corresponding triunity that must serve as the ground of possibility for both the self-revelatory character of the revealed one and the freedom of the act itself. That the earlier account will strike many theological readers as natural and obvious, indeed perennial, is a testimony to how deeply its assumptions have pervaded theology since the mid-nineteenth century, particularly the key presupposition that the doctrine of the Trinity must be fashioned as the solution to a certain kind of epistemological problem. At any rate, simplifying a bit one can say that, by way of contrast, the original emergence of the classical doctrine of the Trinity fixed at the great councils was driven by the necessity of reconciling the exclusive claim to divine status of Israel’s God, creator of heaven and earth, with the salvifically ultimate status of the living Jesus and the communal sharing of his body. The economy here is not triune in itself, but is the twofold sending into the world by the Creator of the Son and Spirit. The sendings or ‘missions’ are identical with created complexes of events, one personal and the other collective, but the divine modalities they present to faith are eternal and integral to the divine identity. The central trinitarian problematic therefore becomes the discernment of how the created divine ‘sendings’ are radically grounded in their divine source (Jesus’s ‘father’) precisely as real participations of timeless or uncreated ‘proceedings’ grounded in the eternal Father, the source of their shared divine essence. Whatever the difficulties involved in laying out the trinitarian problem in this traditional way, it has definite advantages from a more classical or Thomist perspective. For one thing, it places front and centre as a basic datum of all Trinitarian thinking the foundational commitment to God as creator ex nihilo of all that is not God, with the resulting conditioning of all our God concepts (dialectically elaborated in classical fashion by Aquinas’s conclusions concerning the divine essence). In particular, this installs strict conceptual safeguards within any discourse that combines creature and creator, time and the time transcendent

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(i.e. eternal), a great need given the tendency of trinitarian constructions to veer off into mythology or divine ‘psychology’. Another advantage of the more classical approach is that it does not attempt to construct a ‘created trinity’ by differentiating God’s causal agency in the world into three distinct centres. It is presumably because he supports something like the latter that Jüngel denounces the axiom that ‘the works of the Trinity outside God are undivided’, suggesting that it leads to the separation of trinity and economy and eventuates in practical monotheism.24 It can be said in reply that even though vis-à-vis the created order as such the triune God’s causal agency is always and only directed to the unified act of founding and maintaining the total world event, the effect of this one act within the created order can be and is the constitution of two centres of creaturely agency that reflect, indeed coincide perfectly with, the eternal roles of particular intra-divine persons. In other words, the Son and Spirit are ‘sent’ into creation (‘missions’) not as distinct divine efficient causes but as quasi-formal causes assuming patterns of created agency in self-presenting ways (though different ways in Jesus and in the Church, respectively). Finally, this way of arguing avoids the entire epistemic resort to an inference (Rückschluss) back from a supposedly available ‘economic trinity’ to a logically prior ‘immanent’ ground of possibility that replicates it. Such a way of thinking not only is deeply woven into Jüngel’s argument, but also as Stolina shows, has entered widely into current theological discussion. Unfortunately, it generates two trinities, resulting in endless discussions as to how to reunite them; perhaps, the intractability of the question is a sign that it has been hopelessly framed. For Aquinas as for all before him, the issue cannot arise: there are not two Trinities. (2) With superb insight, Herbert McCabe suggested the image of ‘projection’ as fruitful for conceiving the missions, especially the incarnation.25 That is, the eternal relation of origin and reception/reflection between Father and Son is thrown onto the created and sinful human world as onto a screen. The timeless relation of Son to Father, now reconfigured as that of Jesus to God, takes a particular worldly and human shape, even to the point where the Son’s total receiving and expression of the given divinity of the Paternal source inevitably plays out on the screen of sinful human history as a path of obedience descending into alienation and execution. The essential point of this is to maintain the genuine entry of the divine Word into the world without assuming that this involves any alteration or development on God’s part. In incarnation, that is, the world is creatively manoeuvred into the field of intra-divine personal relations; the point of intersection is marked

24. Jüngel, ‘Das Verhältnis von »ökonomischer« und »immanenter« Trinität. Erwägungen über eine biblische Begründung der Trinitätslehre  – im Anschluß and und in Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Rahners Lehre vom dreifaltigen Gott also transzendentem Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte’, in Entsprechungen: Gott – Wahrheit – Mensch. Theologische Erörtungen II, 3. Auflage um Register erweitert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), p. 268. 25. Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987), pp. 48f.

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by the temporal unfolding of those very relations, the presence of the creaturely counterparts bearing the identity of the divine persons (Son and Spirit). This avoids any sort of fairytale version of the matter, such as was narrated by Milton, where there is imagined a kind of celestial board meeting of the three persons before all creation, where the Father commissions the Son to be incarnate and the Son heroically agrees. In particular, the obedience and suffering which define the existence of Jesus are the created analogous expression, the worldly ‘projection’ of the eternal relation of Father and Son, and should not be thought of as literal transcriptions of intra-divine realities. It is remarkable, however, that Jüngel has a tendency to speak in ways suggestive of just this kind of pre-temporal scenario. This is partly due to his understanding of the divine freedom in self-revealing, partly due to his questionable elevation of the crucifixion itself as the defining disclosive moment of the divine essence, rendered (in a conspicuously non-analogical way) in terms of a human psychology of love. The result is that the ‘projection’ is, in effect, allowed to ‘rebound’ into the divine being, so to speak. The humiliation and death of Jesus here come to be retrojected into the divinity as eternal moments, connected with a choice or ‘election’ of the Son to become identified with fallen humanity. The questions which must arise at this point are legion; I will limit myself to two. First, does this not open the door in Jüngel’s discussion of God to a problematically enthusiastic interpolation of the speculative discourse of negation? Thus we hear, on the one hand, that the ‘nothing’ from which God creates is a kind of internalized death moment eternally being overcome, so that the divine being ‘ek-sists’ into nothingness in what looks like a blown-up version of the being-toward-death of Dasein.26 In addition, we are told in several places that God must say ‘no’ to himself in order to create ‘space’ for creation, a recrudescence of cabbalistic mythology that rests on an unaccountably competitive view of divine and created being.27 Second, is it not astonishing how within a theological position so suspicious of natural theology because of its putative ‘anthropocentric’ extrapolation of God from distorted human self-understanding that the saving communion of God and humanity effected in Jesus must be read back into an eternally prior position as a primal partnership chosen, to be sure, by God but nonetheless defining his very identity? These are profound issues, but it is initially hard to see how this does not amount to a kind of back-door enthronement of humanity as the meaning of 26. See Jüngel, ‘Die Welt als Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit. Zum ontologischen Ansatz der Rechtfertigungslehre’, in Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Erörterungen I, 3. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp.  220–1; and idem, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 223–4. 27. See Jüngel, ‘Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes. Ein Plakat’, in Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Erörterungen I, 3. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), p. 120; and idem, ‘»Meine Theologie« – kurz gefaßt’, in Wertlose Wahrheit, p. 8.

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reality as such, a move that is in no way rendered innocuous by insisting that it is freely ‘elected’ by God, nor is the intoxicating whiff of this backhanded human exaltation really dispelled by initially confining it to the humanity of Jesus. All of this, it can be suggested, is allowed in by the basic assumption that God must somehow ‘get into position’ to be incarnate and crucified, meaning that the trinitarian persons must as it were define themselves vis-à-vis one another in specific ways determined by the elected covenant with the fallen creature.28 On a more Thomist ‘projective’ understanding, the Son does not need to choose or do anything to ‘prepare’ to be incarnate; Jesus (living and dying) just is what the Son looks like when the Son is a human creature in a world distorted by sin. Aquinas is taxed in some circles with being ‘speculative’ and insufficiently ‘biblical’. Here, although, he not only comes off looking remarkably sober in comparison with this remarkable ‘retrojective’ tendency of Jüngel’s, but also needs fear no embarrassment at the hands of the exegetes. He might be forgiven for asking: does a theological reading of the New Testament witness in any way necessitate this extravaganza? (3) Once the Trinity is deployed to block any human objectifying initiative in revelation, with the events constituting God’s disclosure seen as withdrawn from creaturely determination by an exercise of perfect divine control, the path is opened to seeing those events as ‘really’ taking place within the divine being itself. Jüngel exploits this vigorously. After all, in accord with the logic of the ‘Rückschluss’, if God really communicates himself in revelation then what prevents its very historical character, its status as event, from being read back into God? If God is to be the subject of his being known in a truly radical way, how better to insure this then to conceive him as subject of his being tout court? This in turn nicely converges with the ‘retrojection’ of Good Friday into the divine identity as one of its constitutive moments. Jüngel’s master concept for integrating these moves is, as already suggested, love (again illustrating the determination to read John as providing a definition of the divine essence). But love here is explicated (in unproblematized reliance on human relationships) in a highly characteristic and dialectical way, as intensity of self-relation only via an even greater intensity of other relation or selflessness, or as the unity of death and life for the sake of life. So God is an event, and God is the event of love, demanding the incorporation of a fundamental moment of self-abandonment. As eternally elected, God’s presence in the life and death of Jesus is itself somehow the actual occurrence of his divinity itself. Jüngel’s ultimate move, then, is to recover the primal and absolute status of divinity, which might seem to be threatened by the inclusion within God’s identity of this identification with the creature, by stressing the radical ‘decision’ character of all this. God’s love, in 28. Equally obscure is the related implication that God’s elective decision somehow determines or even concretizes God’s being (see Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 35ff.). How could the infinite fullness of being be abstract?

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which his covenant with humanity even unto death in some way determines his being, is nonetheless sovereignly free, because God’s being is always already an event of divine choosing. So the divine self-identification that takes place in revelation is, for Jüngel, grounded in an understanding of divine being as itself an act of eternal selfdefinition. The triune divine existence is ever and anew the event of deciding about the divine being. This is an exhilarating display of speculative imagination, but from the alternative perspective which is here assumed it is cause for considerable bewilderment. Two issues need to be highlighted. First, what understanding of freedom is at work here, and how coherently can it be maintained? Initially, what sense can be made of radical freedom as self-defining being, which seems to fall into logical conundrums similar to those of the concept of self-causality? The power of will is exercised as anteriorly situated within the existent whose capacity it is; no amount of stressing the will’s ‘radicality’ in the divine case would seem to allow it to get back behind itself, as it were. God cannot choose to be God ‘in some way’ without already being God in some more fundamental way. But even more strangely, it seems that divine freedom is here being defined solely in terms of choice or decision. There is nothing inevitable about this. Willing, on Aquinas’s understanding, is primordially dynamic impetus towards the good understood, a good desired as sought when absent but desired equally in fulfilment, as determined possession. Choice or decision is a derivative moment of willing which only comes into play in face of multiple paths towards a desired end, and God’s being itself, as always already the ultimate concentration of all perfection, cannot provide God with a field for decision. Only the endless alternative orders of creation bring election into play. The second issue concerns what happens to the divine triunity when it is understood as an eternal love event defined on Jüngel’s dialectical terms. In trying to think the relations between the three divine modes of being as a logic of selfdefinition or auto-election, Jüngel sees the moment of suffering obedience or selfsacrifice instanced in Jesus’s crucifixion as the expression, indeed the execution, of an intra-trinitarian interplay between the Father and the Son of positing (selfrelation) and negation (selflessness), both of which are preserved while their opposition is overcome in the event of divine unity (the Holy Spirit). Jüngel can even speak of the way in which the Son, as the necessarily moment of opposition or negation, hereby serves to ‘mediate’ the divine being to itself.29 A Thomist will have to question the need, indeed the wisdom, of the venture undertaken by Jüngel here. It is no longer just a matter of trinity against trinity (economic versus immanent), but has become a kind of crisis within the divine being: God against God. What can be said to this? At this point, Aquinas and Jüngel seem to exhibit a clash of fundamental visions of the divine, each so encompassing that detailed adjudication (based, say, on direct scriptural appeal) is hardly possible. For Aquinas, God is not on a journey, but is the point of arrival of all journeys. For 29. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 381–1.

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Aquinas, God’s being is not self-mediated, because that which is the end of all ends can never be a means, even to itself. To use language from the opening quote from Christian Duquoc, Jüngel’s splendidly consistent but drastic exercise in a theology of the word has God’s being itself made to play the role of medium of revelation by construing it as an eternal self-mediation. From the more traditional perspective, this can only be called what Duquoc calls it: a reduction of the divine being.30

Conclusion: The School of Peterson and the Protest of Kierkegaard Rückschluss, retrojection, réduction. The puzzle presented to Thomist eyes by Jüngel’s trinitarian experiment, indeed by his entire theology of revelation, has only been sketched earlier. Much of what has been said stands in need of further elaboration and explanation, to say nothing of actual argumentation. Such arguments, in fact, are already underway, albeit directed more to Jüngel’s prime predecessor.31 Many readers will have wondered how I could get this far without even mentioning Karl Barth and, of course, Barth is the huge figure behind Jüngel, inspiring so much of the overall approach of Jüngel already outlined, even if not all its development in detail. Much that has been said here in response to Jüngel could be applied to Barth as well. It was Barth, it could be argued, who first commandeered the doctrine of the Trinity and yoked it to a unique and radical departure in reconceiving revelation (a re-conception so consciously anti-modern as to be perversely defined by modernity). In this Barth nonetheless, though somewhat in spite of himself, perpetuated elements of the long tradition of German Protestantism (including the de rigeur opposition to the twin bogies, ‘mysticism’ and ‘metaphysics’). But what of the even older tradition: the ancient creeds, the great Fathers and scholastics, that Barth also did so much, in his way, to reinstall as contemporary dialogue partners in Protestant theology? His achievement here is laudable, and marks Jüngel as well. Yet the burden of the discussion earlier has been to emphasize how that ancient consensus is nonetheless undermined in crucial ways by the Barthian project (and Jüngel’s sometimes scathing criticism of ancient and medieval theological decisions intimate that this was not unintentional). The question is currently being asked, and rightly so, as to just how traditional Barth’s trinitarianism, say, really is, in spite of his respect for ancient formulae. Is it even Nicene?32 Without attempting a definitive answer, the 30. Christian Duquoc, ‘Le théologie naturelle’, p. 80. 31. See the interesting discussions in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic–Protestant Dialogue, ed. Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, OP (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013). 32. It is a great service of Bruce McCormack’s ‘strong’ position on Trinity and election in Barth that it has engendered a wide-ranging discussion in which these issues are being aired. See, for examples, the essays contained in the volume Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008).

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nature of the opposition between a more classically oriented approach like that of Aquinas and this more recent development can be captured, maybe, by playfully inverting the title of an essay by Jüngel treating Barth’s beginnings. Jüngel spoke of the ‘school’ of Kierkegaard and the ‘protest’ (Einspruch) of Erik Peterson.33 I certainly would not suggest that Barth attended the wrong school in learning from Kierkegaard (though I would question his connected judgement that the wise theologian will also grow up and move on from the Dane). But perhaps a spell in the school of Peterson would have been salutary as well, for it was Peterson who strove to rescue dialectical theology from an excessively ‘idealistic’ view of revelation by rooting theological practice in a heartily non-docetic realism of God’s presence in history. The theologian is properly defined as one incorporated into that body of the Word that continues, through its ecclesial and dogmatic extension in the present, to press up against the body of every worldly institution.34 A flirtation with idealism, I have suggested, characterizes Barth’s position on revelation (as recounted by Jüngel) even in its mature expression, and slants his reconstruction of the doctrine of the Trinity in distinctive ways. As for Kierkegaard, Barth learned much from his stark opposition between faith and offence, his refusal of any access to God’s reconciling presence, whether in history or feeling or knowledge, unmediated by creaturely self-divestment in faith. God is revealed to us only in decision. But Barth’s suspicion ultimately was that Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology led to a ‘philosophical’ analysis of faith as a purely human possibility. Jüngel rightly questioned this suspicion, but in turn complained that the Kierkegaardian ‘paradox’ of the God in time must mean that God in becoming human ‘contradicts himself ’.35 This is doubtful in two ways. First, it misinterprets the paradox of the incarnation as involving a logical contradiction when it points instead to an aporia of the existentially situated human intellect. (Something similar occurs when Jüngel opposes Kierkegaard to Aquinas on the continued possibility of the past; this forgets that the lingering possibility of the actualized is not, for Kierkegaard, a metaphysical demotion of actuality but a quality of purely human historicity).36 Second, Jüngel’s reading of paradox literalizes Kierkegaard’s essentially poetic account of the God ‘becoming’ human. Everything turns on how one properly reads Kierkegaard’s line about God’s ‘eternal essence’ being ‘conjugated into the dialectical determinations of 33. Jüngel, ‘Von der Dialektik zur Analogie: Die Schule Kierkegaards und der Einspruch Petersons’, in Barth-Studien (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1982), pp. 127–79. 34. Erik Peterson, ‘What is Theology?’, in Theological Tractates, ed. Michael J. Hollerich (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 1–14. 35. Jüngel, ‘» . . . Du redest wie ein Buch . . . « Zum Verständnis der »Philosophischen Brocken« des J. Climacus, herausgegeben von Sören Kierkegaard (1813–55)’, in Wertlose Wahrheit, pp. 87ff. 36. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 215.

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becoming’.37 While Jüngel quotes this in support of his own position, it seems rather that he has reversed the direction of the movement, transferring the determinations of becoming into the eternal essence in a way Kierkegaard would never have approved. What Jüngel does not seem to hear is the ‘protest’ or ‘veto’ (Einspruch) registered by Kierkegaard that limits theological concept formation in the name of God’s eternity, the utter transcendence of temporality. While Jüngel, following Barth, tries to play down the time-eternity opposition and its paradoxical opacity that conditions every attempt to penetrate the unity of God and humanity in thought (a repeated injunction of Jüngel’s), it is arguable that Kierkegaard’s entire scheme pivots on it. Where Jüngel sees a stark opposition between a soteriological (concrete) and a metaphysical (abstract) distinction of God and world, Kierkegaard’s paradoxical understanding of the eternal moment in temporal human existence is a resolute attempt to distinguish and unite creator and creature through a metaphysics of freedom towards God.38 Kierkegaard, in other words, might well be closer to a ‘traditional’ figure like Aquinas than either Barth or Jüngel suspects. On the larger issue of the Barthian stance towards tradition, it hardly requires a reactionary outlook to greet with some skepticism Jüngel’s reading of theological history, in which the supposedly fundamental truth that God’s eternal identity is uniquely defined by the crucifixion has in effect been suppressed or misunderstood by virtually every theologian in history save for Luther, Hegel and Barth.39 Indeed, this supposedly Pauline truth (but is it?) was scarcely recognized in most of the New Testament! That Jüngel in defining God as the unity of identity and non-identity,40 or as the eternal overcoming of an eternal negativity,41 has drunk deeply from Schelling and Hegel would be obvious even apart from his repeated praise especially of the latter. But is it so clear that this is an advance over the ‘Greek’ instincts infusing the Fathers and Scholastics? As for Luther, Jüngel’s fealty is expressed in almost every one of his writings. But here, beyond the obvious question of whether Luther quite warrants the overwhelming stature in theology which the Germanic tradition has tended to grant him, there is the more subtle matter of Luther’s own alliances with the catholic tradition broadly speaking, highlighted by Jüngel’s contrastively selective retrieval of him. Even a Thomist can plead for a reading more appreciative than Jüngel’s of Luther’s affirmation of the hiddenness of the divine essence in abiding tension with, and not absolved by, election and revelation.42 And while Luther’s 37. Ibid., p. 225. 38. I have argued these claims about Kierkegaard and eternity in some detail in an article: ‘“The passage from mind to heart is so long . . . ” The riddle of “repetition” and Kierkegaard’s ontology of agency’, in Modern Theology (forthcoming). 39. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 39–40. 40. Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming, p. 36, fn. 98. Quoting Barth. 41. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 222f. 42. Ibid., pp. 197–8.

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fierce opposition to the ‘theologians of glory’ can perhaps be turned into a blanket opposition to natural theology along Barth’s lines, there is also his equally determined defence of the fleshly availability of God in the eucharist, a note of true divine ‘givenness’ that followers of Barth should reckon with more sympathetically. Less Heidelberg, more Marburg! At this point, before offering a concluding reflection I feel an urgency to reaffirm that none of the critical concerns raised in this paper around revelation and the divine essence and triunity mean that we have somehow dispensed with Jüngel or his constructive masterpiece (which, to echo his own assessment of Przywara’s Analogia entis, likewise a book he wished to resist, ‘cannot be admired enough’).43 In fact there is so much to praise even in his wider oeuvre, the sermons, the many rich and beautifully crafted essays, and of course that little masterpiece of exposition God’s Being Is in Becoming, which even as it seemingly ventriloquizes Barth slyly arranges to undercut Barthian repudiations of the Bultmannian legacy by revealing their secret kinship. Even the sympathizer with Aquinas will continue to find more than enough to learn from and savour. Wonderful moments abound, such as his trenchant remarks on theological ‘relevance’,44 his fascinating suggestions on eschatology,45 his powerful synthetic reflections on the historical Jesus and many more.46 Especially remarkable are the pleas, at once eloquent and exasperated, against the tired invocation of Pascal and in favour of a theology that intimately joins faith to the rigors of thought, in the closest critical conversation with philosophy’s history and concepts.47 D’accord, says the Thomist. Even more than the content of his writings, what is irreplaceable is the space they have afforded in theology for such a cultured and deeply humane voice. But the questions remain. I wish to query Jüngel’s reliance upon a Barthian doctrine of revelation, which amounts basically to a translation of Luther’s extreme position on justification by faith into epistemological terms, prompted by an exaggerated allergy to human objectivizing. In its place I would commend a more radical ‘giving over’ of the Word’s knowledge into the bodily jostle of history, where the divine self-utterance is really borne by the church in all its sinful misery and hypocrisy, its truth protected from failure (‘infallible’) not so much by a unique epistemic mechanism as by the continual cunning of providence. On the Trinity, I am wondering at the irony of a development whereby the Barthian theological approach which initially provided the greatest impetus for 43. Ibid., p. 262, fn. 1. 44. Ibid., pp. 4–5. 45. Ibid., p. 215. 46. Jüngel, ‘The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus’, in Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 82–119. 47. See Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 48; idem, God’s Being Is in Becoming, pp. 128–9.

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the Protestant recovery of the Nicene doctrine has at Jüngel’s hands somehow come close to that deconstruction of the patristic trinitarian heritage in the name of the Reformation called for by Friedrich Schleiermacher.48 For in the end I am convinced by Aquinas’s reception of the classical faith that God even as triune is more happily conceived as the unimaginably simple and sheerly actual than as an event defining itself through its own self-alienation. ‘Nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse’ was the tagline for much of Jüngel’s more daring speculation on this issue.49 In my first encounter with Jüngel I was taken with this radically decisionist view that rendered the divine being a freely elected achievement, a triumph over a necessarily internalized principle of negativity. Doesn’t this mean that the living God is the one who, more than we, truly undergoes death, perfectly and eternally?50 It was one theologian who (rhetorically) asked that question then; it is the same yet another who thinks he should now answer, ‘No’. In his stirring conclusion to The Problem of Pain, in lines which beautifully encapsulate Aquinas’s vision of deity, C. S. Lewis says it: the God ‘who could never have been otherwise’ can only be the God who ‘has no opposite’.51 Source of all necessity (and hence of all freedom), no countervailing principle is possible, not even an internalized one. In other words, and in reply to Jüngel (and the final line of my book on him), I would venture to say: Nullum contrarium dei, ne ipse quidem.

48. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 371. 49. See especially ibid., pp.  363f. and idem, ‘Nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse. Zum Verhältnis von theologia crucis und Trinitätslehre’, in Ganz Werden, pp. 231–52. 50. DeHart, Beyond the Necessary God, p. 177. 51. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1943), p. 142.

Chapter 5 ‘ T HE M YSTE RY T HAT G OD AN D M A N S HA R E’ : P ETE R L OM BAR D, S ENTENCE S, L I B E R I , D ISTINC TIO 1 7 1 Hans-Anton Drewes

It is one of the major merits of the Jubilarian’s principal work2 that, in the aptly called ‘study book’, God as the mystery of the world,3 a modus loquendi theologicus4 is practised that does not favour questions and answers designed freehand. Rather, questions are realized as the answers are developed in fervent confrontation with the tradition and therefore in truly free responsibility. This modus loquendi accommodates the rule (that, in the arbitrariness of overlooking and skipping, is only more strictly effective) that, in whatever we try to think, we think ‘in the scope of the tradition’.5 At the same time, this modus loquendi 1. What I present here is a relatively early echo upon the reading of God as the Mystery of the World that I contributed in a German version to a collection of essays, Freude an der Wahrheit, that Wilhelm Hüffmeier edited in 1984. Since Jüngel’s masterpiece is still attracting readers to an enjoyable extent, this unassuming echo might be of some interest even after 30 years time. Yet – ceteris imparibus – here too the famous series of conclusions is valid: ‘I have no reason to write everything anew. . . .’ I could only try to cast the considerations into an English mould. Inasmuch as I have been successful, I have to thank Patricia Rich for her most valuable help. 2. Cf. Walter Kern, ‘Theologie des Glaubens, vorgestellt anhand von Eberhard Jüngel’, ZKTh 105 (1982), pp. 129–46, here 131. 3. Eberhard Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977); English translation: God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983). 4. Cf. Ibid., p. xii. 5. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz der Identität, in: idem, Identität und Differenz, Gesamtausgabe, sect. I, vol. 11 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2006), pp. 31–50, here p. 50.

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is of great importance for the recovery of a common theological language, without which progress in theology  – which is something different from the encroachment of theologies: now this, now that – will not be achievable. However, what is, according to the ratio essendi, the fundamental part of the volume, the chapter on ‘the humanity of God’,6 alters this thought and speech form. There are good reasons for this! But they are not imperative, in the sense that they do exclude the attempt to trace differently an aspect of the subject developed in that part, namely love as ‘the mystery that God and man share’.7 By ‘to trace differently’, I mean in conversation with an ever memorable text of the theological tradition. As I dare to present some introductory remarks on the much discussed distinctio 17 in the first book of the Sentences of Peter Lombard  – preliminary thoughts that are surely reliant on lectores benevoli and a benigna interpretatio of which the Master of the Sentences himself was fond8 – I am hoping to possibly motivate the Jubilarian to pick up in a different context the distinctio that he did not want to include in his comprehensive work.

I The d.17,9 the systematic significance of which will be outlined here, complies entirely with the doctrine of God which, in the First Book of the Sentences, is exposed, in whole and in detail, as specifically Trinitarian. The rule of this correspondence appears most clearly when we begin with the inner-trinitarian relations and their logic, just as the Lombard himself did.10 They are treated 6. Cf. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. xii. 7. Cf. ibid., pp. 392, 395. 8. I am hesitant in this sense also because I can submit only a part of a larger set of considerations. Here especially a description of the background of the text and almost any explicit reference to the literature are lacking. But I would like to make grateful mention of Johann Schupp, Die Gnadenlehre des Petrus Lombardus, Freiburger theologischen Studien 35 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1932); Artur Michael Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte der Frühscholastik, Erster Teil: Die Gnadenlehre, Bd. I (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1952). 9. The aggregation of chapters into ‘distinctions’ does not go back to Peter himself. Yet it was introduced early and has since been in general use. So I indicate also the quotations with l(iber), d(istinctio), c(apitulum), n(umerus), and occasionally I add, for individual phrases, page and line numbers (without further particulars) according to the relevant edition: Magistri Petri Lombardi Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, Editio tertia, SpicBon IV; Tomus I, Pars I: Prolegomena (Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae Ad Claras Aquas, 1971); Tomus I, Pars II: Liber I et II (Grottaferrata 1971); Tomus II: Liber III et IV (Grottaferrata, 1981). On the origin of the (not always neat) division into distinctions, see: Prolegomena, pp. 143f*. 10. It is appropriate to use here a rather cumbersome expression, which may help us to avoid the seriously consequential misunderstanding as if the processio of the Son were with

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at the beginning of the doctrine of God, and they articulate its first main part: the generation of the Son (d.4–7 [and 9]) and the procession of the Holy Spirit (d.10–8).11 The strikingly larger size of the section De Spiritu Sancto is conditioned by the fact, among others, that, within this section  – following the presentation of the eternal processio of the Spirit (d.10–3) – the concept of the mission of the Son is developed in exact conjunction with the missio of the Spirit (d.14–8). This is worth a closer look. What Peter inculcates at first in d.14 is that the procession of the Holy Spirit is twofold (quod est gemina processio Spiritus Sancti): aeterna videlicet, quae ineffabilis est, qua a Patre et Filio ab aeterno processit, et temporalis, qua a Patre et Filio ad sanctificandam creaturam procedit (c.1, n.1). For our consideration, the argument which the Lombard attaches in c.1, n.2 from a homily of the Venerable Bede12 in order to assure first of all the notion of a ‘temporal egression’ of a ‘mission’ of the Spirit is of considerable importance. Yet Bede’s statement shows, at the same moment, that this ‘mission’ of the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son – as the processio aeterna: ‘When the grace of the Spirit is given to man, the Spirit is sent from the Father, is sent also from the Son – this is quite certain: he proceeds from the Father; he proceeds also from the Son  – for his mission is also this procession’.13 We should not take this interweaving of the (eternal) processio and the (temporal) missio as a matter of course, as has become almost traditional. We have to observe that thus, by a simple absolute (not just an ‘appropriating’) ‘is’, the immanent Trinity is opening up into the economic Trinity. Not least because the problem was one of the controversial topics of the school, we have to presuppose that the Lombard did not take up the argument arbitrarily. At one extreme, a strange accentuation of this ‘is’ accounts for the controversy. It is reported by the Magister Martinus.14 He remembers having heard from that of the Spirit in the same genus in another than in this very formal sense (‘grounds of relationships’). 11. Standing between these two parts, d.8 takes up de veritate sive proprietate et incommunicabilitate atque simplicitate divinae naturae vel substantiae sive essentiae (d.8, c.1, n.1). 12. Homelia II, 16, Z. pp. 18–20, CChr.SL pp. 122, 290–300, 290f. 13. More clearly in Bede by the postscript: (. . .  processio est) qua ex patre procedit et filio (Z.20f). The presumed sources of the Lombard, Abelard or the Summa Sententiarum (cf. PL 178, 1082 and 171 D, 1078 A, 176, 52 B), render the quotation in this more complete form, as Peter himself does in his anterior Tractatus de Filii et Spiritus Sancti Procession (Prolegomena, 90*, l.15 to 91*, l.1). The Lombard shortened the quote in the sentences probably to avoid an unsupported accentuation. 14. The text of the summa questionum theologie is rendered by Johannes Schneider, Die  Lehre vom dreieinigen Gott in der Schule des Petrus Lombardus, Münchener theologische Studien 2.22 (München: M. Hueber, 1961), p.  97, Anm. 19a (the orthography corresponds to the template). As to Magister Martinus, see especially Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode. Nach gedruckten und

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certain people – these may still have been contemporaries of the Lombard! – unam dumtaxat Spiritus sancti esse processionem, videlicet eternam. This one eternal proceeding and the procession of the Holy Spirit in time are together completely one procession (tamen eadem est prorsus processio). To illustrate this thesis, Martin’s quidam used a peculiar parable: ‘In the past, a source’s spring flowed a thousand years, and there was no vessel in which it streamed. Now a barrel has been set up, in which and from which emanates the water. Is the water’s flow other than it was previously? Certainly not; it is entirely the same. The same applies to that inexpressible proceeding’ – which can be differentiated into an eternal procession and a procession in time, insofar as one processio is, in the latter case, a procession in a creature (in creatura) and through it. This is obviously how the imagery has to be understood in its context. As far as we can see, however, this interpretation of the unity of procession and mission as oneness is an isolated position. At the other extreme, this unity is questioned in the premise by those who say, Spiritum Sanctum ipsum Deum non dari, sed dona eius. The Master gives a lecture on this interpretation of ‘some’ who insinuate that Bede held the same opinion (d.14, c.2, n.1), and he argues against their doctrine with the authorities Ambrose and Augustine (c.2, n.2–6). The view of these aliqui is intelligible, at least as a response to the statements, about which Martin reported, in which the emphasis on the unity of procession and mission even goes so far as to render the unity as ‘numerically’ one process. If this were so, the mission would fall out of the indivisible opera Trinitatis ad extra – it would be, as unified with the eternal procession, an act of the Father and the Son in relation to the Spirit. This impossible consequence compels us to inquire more precisely into the reasons for and the limitations of the unity under discussion.

II As mentioned, Peter prepares a response in the chapters of d.15 and d.16 by outlining the mission of the Son and the sending of the Spirit, one after the other. Here, the hermeneutical emphasis is on the parallel between mission and sending. We therefore ask first whether this parallel is valid also in view of the relationship between the generation (generatio, processio [cf. d.13, c.2]) and the mission (missio) of the Son, so that it is conceived as a unity in the same sense as the unity between processio and missio in the doctrine of the Spirit. The Lombard addresses the inner nexus of the generation and mission of the Son after l.I, d.15, c.9, and more specifically in l.III, d.1, c.1. With the demonstration of three rationes, he answers the question: Quare Filius carnem assumpsit, non Pater vel Spiritus Sanctus.15 It happened (first) in any case ordine congruo that ungedruckten Quellen, 2. Bd. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1911 [= Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1957]), pp. 524–30. 15. The column heading thus formulates the issue in question.

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God, who had created the world in his wisdom (Ps 103 [104], 24), in the same wisdom restored what is in heaven and on earth (Eph 1:10) (l.III, d.1, c.1, n.2). It is (secondly) more coherent (congruentius) when this one is sent whose being as such is already coming from another: ‘but the Son is from the Father, but the Father is from none other’ (n.3). Thirdly, and from the same point of view is to be understood the mission of the Spirit, who is from the Father and from the Son. However, only the Son, not the Spirit, is sent in the flesh: Quod ideo factum est, ut qui erat in divinitate Dei Filius, in humanitate fieret hominis filius – ne alius in divinitate esset Filius, alius in humanitate (n.4). Peter deepens this thought by a consideration from the Liber ecclesiasticorum dogmatum of Gennadius of Marseilles, who had conceived the crucial basis for the Christological unity (expressed with the provisions of Ephesus and Chalcedon) in the Incarnation of the Son and only of the Son. Since the Son took on flesh, the incarnate bears in utraque Nativitate filii nomen nascendo: nascendo  – non adoptione, non appellatione! He is true God and true man, in real unity one Son. That is why he is called unigenitus. So the enduringly twofold constitution, the unmixed ‘natures’ do not abolish the real unity, the unity of the Son. As Peter completes the quotation from the ‘Church dogmas’ of Gennadius with the phrase: Ecce habes quare Filius, non Pater vel Spiritus Sanctus, carnem assumpserit (n.4), it seems clear that his argument is not just about avoiding a confusion of nomenclatural. The reasoning of Gennadius, which the Lombard adopts here seemingly as his own, has a broader scope and a deeper basis. It aims at the core Christological problem, namely, how can we conceive, in the existence of Jesus Christ, the difference in unity and unity in difference of God and man. This real unity in perpetual difference is ground in the particularity of the second person, as it is the Son of God who became man as the son of Mary. Specifically in this ‘analogous sonship’, which means a pure correspondence between processio (generatio) and missio – and that is what matters to us here – is given the condition and the facilitation of the hypostatic union in which God and man are together one. The issue – as we look at it in regard to the Lombard’s reference to Gennadius in order to understand it dogmatically – may remind us of Plato’s answer to the question of how God created the world in its unity as one (κατὰ τὴν μόνωσιν) and perfect, and yet with a variety which seems contradictory to this one universe (εἷς ὅδε μονογενὴς οὐρανός).16 Plato’s thought is well known: God joined together the body of the universe out of the elementary tension of fire (light: ὁρατόν) and earth (being opposed: στερεόν, ἁπτόν). But – δύο δὲ μόνω καλῶς συνίστασθαι τρίτου χωρὶς οὐ δυνατόν – it is impossible for two realities as themselves, without a third, to co-inhere, that is, to bring about their unity. Plato follows up with a peculiarly precise oxymoron, a strange and yet compelling claim, namely, a belt in the middle that must become the unity of the two (δεσμὸν γὰρ ἐν μέσῳ δεῖ τινα ἀμφοῖν συναγωγὸν γίγνεσθαι). But how? – if two as such (μόνω δύο) can, at most, 16. Timaeus 31 a 2–31 c 4.

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be placed in a connection, but cannot become one, will not, a fortiori, the δεσμὸς ἐν μέσῳ, required for the unity, as yet a third, abolish the unity? Will not the belt be only the indicator of a connection that is not a unity? How are we to think of this: a belt whose loop does not connect from outside as usual, but unites from the inside and in the interior (ἐν μέσῳ)? Plato answers: That belt which binds above all is that which most makes itself and the other one. To accomplish this most beautifully is the very nature of the correspondence (δεσμῶν δὲ κάλλιστος ὃς ἂν αὑτὸν καὶ τὰ συνδούμενα ὅτι μάλιστα ἓν ποιῇ͵ τοῦτο δὲ πέφυκεν ἀναλογία κάλλιστα ἀποτελεῖν). The phrase is often used to explain the phenomenon and the concept of analogy. Here it is about something else, (1) Plato’s assertion that a correspondence is needed for the unity of the μονογενὴς οὐρανός and (2) that his statement may lead us to understand the unity in the existence of the one, of the μονογενὴς υἱός, in view of an analogy. The Christological unity cannot be constituted appellatione or adoptione, nor must it be constituted confusione or commixtione (cf. Liber ecclesiasticorum dogmatum, c.2; l.III, d.1, c.1, n 4). It is true unity in enduring difference due to an analogy, due to the correlation between the proceeding ab alio of the Logos and the existence ab alio of man. The hypostatic union in the contrast of natures is based on the fact – so lastly we can say very simply – that Jesus Christ is truly Son of God and son of Mary.

III Perhaps it seems as if we have moved too far from the question of the reality of the Holy Spirit. Yet we have laid the groundwork to understand it. But, before we debate it, it is necessary to make a confession and to introduce an objection. At first, it must be acknowledged that our previous considerations have indeed moved within the space opened up by Peter, and that the Lombard, in contrast, only outlined this space, but did not himself enter into it. On the contrary, in a seemingly exact preservation of the assertion of the complete ‘equality’ of the Trinitarian ‘persons’ which only just misses its meaning,17 he restricted himself to the arguments of adequacy and congruity, and, in the following chapter (l.III,  d.1, c.2), he asserts, et potuisse olim et nunc [!] posse carnem sumere et hominem fieri tam Patrem quam Spiritum Sanctum. But the intention of a text is never just to mark the path that the author himself took, but also to open up a space for the various paths of its readers, a space which is greater than the author himself may have known. This is what our essay is all about. But, precisely for this reason, an objection emerges which is directed against our previous result. As we came to the thesis that the unity of the different natures 17. See Karl Rahner, SJ, Über den Begriff des Geheimnisses in der katholischen Theologie, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 12 (Freiburg, Basel, Wien: Herder, 2005), pp. 101–35, here p. 134.

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in the one Jesus Christ is based on the correlation of the ab-alio-esse in which the eternal Son of God as the son of Mary have their being, the question arises whether this reasoning fails, since the being ab alio is a predicate of the Holy Spirit as well. Peter refers to the problem briefly – as we saw – at the beginning of his ‘third reason’ (l.III, d.1, c.1, n.4). According to the premise that that one will be sent who is, in his being, inherently ab alio – thus not the eternal Father: ‘first the Son is sent who is only from the Father, then the Holy Spirit who is from the Father and from the Son’. This is plausible, despite consequences that are not so simple. However, the explanations for ensuring that only the Son was sent in carne, non Spiritus Sanctus, sicut nec Father, are confined to linguistic considerations, without adding thoughts referring to the subject that only could give those considerations weight. Hence, neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit was incarnate, ne alius in divinitate esset Filius, alius in humanitate, et ne idem esset pater et filius, si Deus Pater de homine nasceretur. Only the first half of the explanation relates to the Holy Spirit, and it is an explanation only if ‘son’ is understood as an expression for the ab-alio-esse. As such, this being-from-another can also be said about the Holy Spirit. So we have to question the difference between the ab-alio-being of the Son and the ab-alio-being of the Holy Spirit, which is not shown here in the response of the Lombard. However, elsewhere (l.I, d.10, c.2, n.3) Peter gives us a decisive hint by quoting Augustine (De Trinitate XV, 17,31). According to 1 John 4:7f, we must say that love is God from God (Deus ex Deo est dilectio). But – since both are Deus ex Deo – is the Son or is the Holy Spirit this love? The response (admittedly: maiore studio to be sought18) is seen when we take together 1 John 4:13 and 1 John 4:11f in a syllogism: Sanctus [. . .] Spiritus, de quo dedit nobis, facit nos in Deo manere et ipsum in nobis (1 John 4:13); hoc autem facit dilectio (1 John 4:12); ipse est igitur Deus dilectio. God the Holy Spirit is ‘God the love’. Petrus Lombardus is fond of using Augustine’s impressively bold expression in its various contexts, and occasionally he uses it even in places where the Augustinian original is slightly different.19 What is meant by ‘God the love’? The information that Peter provides in the following (n.5), with reference to De Trinitate VI, 4f, 6f is based, in the end, on Eph. 4:3, that is, on the word of the unity of the Spirit preserved in vinculo pacis. With Augustine (and an old [Western] tradition), the Lombard understands the word of the Apostle (also) as a statement about the immanent Trinity: the unity between Father and Son is ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’, because the Holy Spirit is as the bond of peace that unity. It is palpable – this is the argument – that the unity of Father and Son cannot have its ground in one of the two thus united (manifestum est quod non est aliquis duorum quo uterque coniungitur), nor can it be in virtue of a participation, but it has to be in virtue of the nature of the two, not indebted 18. De Trinitate XV, 17, 27. 19. Cf. l.I, d.17, c.4, n2 (De Trinitate XV, 18, 32).

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to the gift of some higher than the two, but in virtue of themselves.20 ‘Unity’ and ‘peace’ between Father and Son, therefore, cannot exist due to the one or the other or both, because then that peace would be an event to follow up the existence and the nature of the two united in that peace. But they are one, not as participating in a principle or in an idea of peace that they not are themselves, that rather standing ‘above’ Father and Son would subsequently unite them (non participatione [ . . . ] neque dono superioris alicuius). They are originally one (essentia sua). Their unity, however, is not simply an aspect of the one simple divine being, since the peace (for the essence of which we are asking) refers to an opposition of relations (oppositio relationis),21 an opposition of a relationship ‘inside’ the elsewise one and the same essentia Dei. This opposition can therefore be peace only in the mutually shared foundation of the Spirit of unity. That is to say, because this relation of unity or love22 is actually the opposition of the ‘persons’ of ‘Father’ and ‘Son’, it is itself necessarily – in Trinitate omnia sunt unum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio – a ‘distinct mode of being’ of the one God, just as ‘God the love’. We cannot explain further the scope of this consideration as we cannot track the problems that arise here.23 We can only summarize: the Lombard distinguishes the (ab-alio-) esse of the Son from that of the Spirit in that he determines the being of the Spirit as the (ab-alio-et-alio-) esse of a relationship. Thus, the possibility emerges that we might understand more precisely the two missions that follow the distinguished procession in difference and similarity. We will see more clearly that we are pondering in the space of analogies. The procession of the word corresponds to the procession of the Spirit; to these two processions pertain, in turn, the missions: to be specific, both as missio duobus modis, two modes that give measure to each other, so that the visible mission takes place in conformity with the invisible and vice versa. But if the mission of the Son as well as the mission of the Spirit come about visibiliter et invisibiliter, and if, as we have tried to show, we can declare, at least about the visible mission of the Son, that the reality, as which – not in or through which! – the Son in time and history is to be ‘seen’ corresponds to his own eternal reality, then we ought to pose the question of whether and to what extent we have to make a similar statement about the mission of the Spirit. Thus the central question for the following considerations has been outlined, with which we start once more at l.I, d.14, c.1. 20. [. . .] neque dono superioris alicuius, sed suo proprio. In l.I, d.32, c.1, n.1 und n.2, clarifies the statement: suo Dono proprio. So it makes the reference to the donum Patris et Filii clear (vgl. l.I, d.l8, c.2, n.3f). 21. See the treatise of Anselm of Canterbury De processione Spiritus Sancti, c.I, Opera omnia, ed. Friedrich S. Schmitt, vol. II (Rome: self-published by the editor, 1940 [= StuttgartBad Canstatt: Frommann Holzboog, 1968]), pp. 177–85, esp. pp. 180f. 22. De Trinitate VI, 5, 7: Sive enim sit unitas amborum [. . .] sive charitas [. . .]. 23. In particular, the modifications are to be considered in the concept of relation, arising from the fact that, here, the intermediate between subsisting relations (‘Father’, ‘Son’) is itself to be thought of as a subsisting relation.

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IV Following the quotation from the homily of Bede the Venerable discussed at the outset, Peter interprets in c.1, n.2 the processio temporalis of the Spirit by referring to a few sentences from De Trinitate. Augustine explains in XV, 26,46, why ‘Jesus the Lord after the resurrection twice donated the Holy Spirit: once on earth (John 20:22), because of the love of neighbor, and once again from heaven (Acts 2,3f), because of the love of God; for by the Spirit, the gift, love is poured out in our hearts in which we love God and the neighbor’ (cf. Rom 5:5). The appeal to the testimony of Augustine is, at this point, simply in order to support the thesis that there is a temporal procession of the Holy Spirit, and that this ‘is nothing other than the gift or the donation of this same Spirit’ (127,5f). But these thoughts lead further: the two ways of the temporal procession is already touched upon, and especially the topic is already present here which then reaches its development in the chapters of d.17 – the mission, that is, the proceeding of the Holy Spirit in time, is the diffusion of the love in which we love God in heaven and the people next to us. We will briefly review the breakdown and the content of the chapters d.14–7, and then turn our attention entirely to the thesis of the d.17. After a few necessary preliminary clarifications – that is, God the Holy Spirit himself is given, not only ‘gifts’, not just the ‘grace’ of the Spirit (d.14, c.2); people, even if they were viri sancti praelati Ecclesiae (129,9), cannot give the Holy Spirit (d.14, c.3);24 in regard to the divine ubiquity it is indispensable to say about the missions that illuc ergo missus est Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, ubi erant (d.15, c.1, n.4)25 – Peter comes to the main theme of the chapter, formulated in the rubric to d.15, c.2: Quomodo intelligenda sit missio utriusque (scil. Filii et Spiritus Sancti). The first principal part examines de Filio [. . .] quomodo missus (132.16). This discussion includes, in d.15, c.10, the assertion that ecce ostensum est quae sit missio Filii et quibus modis mittatur (137,29f). Thus, the internal structure of the treatise is already given. The first part in c.2–4  – as a summary in c.4, n.3 lists – clarifies entirely that ‘the Son was sent by the Father and the Holy Spirit (c.2f) and by himself (c.4), and what this mission is, namely the Incarnation, i.e. that he became man, whereby he appeared visibly which is the common work of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. Likewise, the Master of the Sentences epitomizes the second section (c.6–8) in a final sentence (136.32 to 137.2): ‘From the foregoing, it is evident that  – apart from the inexpressible generation – the Son is sent in two ways, namely, as he appeared visibly, and as he is received invisibly by the soul’ (invisibiliter percipitur mente). To both parts, 24. Even an Apostle did not have a potestas et auctoritas dandi Spiritum, but a ‘ministry’ – praedicandi fidem Christi, in quo dabatur a Deo Spiritus Sanctus, namely, recipientibus fidem (130,12f.21f). 25. See d.17, c.4, n.1 and accompanying note; also Prolegomena, 91*, l.1–4.

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a discussion of objections and concerns is attached, which could have been raised by the explanation (c.5 and c.9, respectively). By the way, a striking incongruity should be noted here. The first piece equates the mission of the Son with his Incarnation, which, according to the second piece, represents only one of the two forms of mission. Historically, one can explain the situation like this: as a preliminary form of the treatise on mission in the Sentences (the tractatus primitivus de processione et missione Filii et Spiritus Sancti,26 originally belonging to the Glossatura on Rom. 11:36) shows, the Lombard unfolded only very late his teaching of the twofold mode of the parousia27 of the Son as well of the Holy Spirit. In that earlier presentation, the tractatus primitivus, Peter highlights only the double procession (eternal and temporal) and obviously regards the Incarnation as the one temporalis processio Filii. One of the four manuscripts, which attest to this early form of the Lombard’s doctrine, adds in a Glossa volatilis the quotation from De Trinitate cited in our sentences in l.I, d.15, c.7. So it represents a first approach to the teaching of the missio duplex in its mature form.28 From this history of our text, and also simply from the trajectory of the Incarnation theology in the quotations from Augustine and Ambrose in d.15, c.2–4, the particular imbalance between the summatim sentence in d.15, c.4, n.3 and the following becomes clear. Furthermore, a dogmatic reflection will take it as a prompt to understand in what sense the esse homo (the missio semel visibiliter facta) is not the generic term, but the always presupposed reference point for the being of the Son cum homine (the missio saepe et quotidie invisibiliter facta), that is, to what extent the Incarnation is actually given as ‘space’ and ‘movement’ for the invisible mission of the Logos. Then the dogmatic reflection will probably go on to ask: how should we determine the inner relationship between the two processiones of the Spirit – whether it is not vice versa here so that the visible is originally related to the invisible mission. Yet with this open question we have already arrived at the subjects of the other main piece (d.16–d.18, c.1). The subject of the second principal part is, according to the rubric of d.16, c.1, n.1, de Sancti Spiritus missione quae fit duobus modis, visibiliter et invisibiliter. The indicated dichotomy – d.16, c.1, n.2: de illo missionis modo qui fit visibili specie (138,14); d.17 (and d.18, c.1: the chapter originally counted with d.17): Spiritus Sancti de missione qua invisibiliter mittitur (141,25) – is only complemented by an insertion that investigates the question of why the Son secundum missionem qua in forma creata apparuit is named lower (minor) than the Father, but not the Holy Spirit in the same way, cum in forma creata apparuerit (d.16, c.1, n.3). The question may seem irrelevant – but the answer is not. It has to concern us especially because it formulates a distinction in terms of the mission of the Son and of the Spirit, by which we come closer to questions about the difference in 26. See l.I, 134f, footnote accompanying c.5; Prolegomena, 90*–3*. 27. With this keyword (CD IV/3!), I point to a complex of ideas as I wager that it would probably be worthwhile to keep it in a critical conversation with the lesson of the Lombard discussed here. 28. See Prolegomena, 93*.

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the processions  – and, in turn, about the existence of the Son and Spirit. On the assumption of creation, the mission of the Son and the mission of the Spirit differ as follows: the Son assumed the created being per unionem, ut fieret homo. But the Holy Spirit assumed it not per unionem, and then not, ut fieret columba, flatus, ignis (c.1, n.5). Later, a ‘substantial’ and an ‘accidental’ visible mission were distinguished accordingly. Thus the Holy Spirit did ‘not make this dove or that wind or that fire divine and did not connect them with himself in the unity of a person eternally’. The beautiful word of Augustine (De Trinitate, II, 6,11), with which Peter concludes his argument (ibid.) conversely lets the man Jesus, for all the eternity of God, be united with the Logos, that is, be one. What, in contrast (stated positively), is the nature of the assumptio creaturae in the (visible) sending of the Spirit? Is it and, if so, how is it in correspondence with the processio, with the (ab-alio-et-alio-) esse of the Spirit, on one hand, and its invisible mission, on the other? We saw that the Logos is the man Jesus. But the Holy Spirit is not the fire, the wind or the dove. So one can (only in this regard!) say of the Son: minor est Patre – and this only of the Son, and not of the Spirit who unites with this or that creaturely appearance, though not in such a way that he would be in them to a greater extent (magis) than in others, sed ad aliud (c.1, n.2). What redefinition must happen to the everlasting ubiquity of God29 when, in the visible mission of the Spirit, a creature becomes a place of God’s presence in new sense, a presence for another specific purpose, ad aliud? It means a lot to the Lombard to make Augustine’s answer more precise: ut exterioribus visis corda hominum commota, a temporali manifestatione venientis ad occultam aeternitatem semper praesentis converterentur. He even wants to correct it  – a rare instance in his almost 1,000 references to the egregius doctor (l.I, d.1, c.1, n.1)! The appearance of the Spirit is not just a (perhaps more pressing) reminder to turn to God as this reminder actually emanates from every created reality (l.I, d.1!). Here, rather, by an occurrence in time (temporalis motus), ‘the spiritual and invisible infusion of the Holy Spirit’ is indicated (significata est). The third person does not enter into a hypostatic union. The Spirit, rather, unites with a certain created being, now this, now that, to create a specific event, which is a single epiphany of the Spirit in that it receives a special meaning (in addition to the general meaning of all creatures): the meaning of an indication of the inner infusion of Spirit. ‘And in order to express it even more clearly: by the corporal mission of the Holy Spirit the spiritual and internal mission of the Holy Spirit or the bestowal is shown (monstrata est) which we now have to elaborate on’ (l.I, d.16, c.1, n.2). Before we get to this treatise, we will try  – and the Lombard himself here parenthesizes an excursus also – to formulate a summary in a systematic fashion: 1. The terminus of the visible mission of the Son is the Incarnation. To it the invisible mission of the Son is always related, specifically as the donation of 29. See c.1, n.2 (138,25).

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the ability to conceive and to apprehend with soul and mind the Logos, who is the Incarnatus.30 2. Just the opposite is true for the mission of the Spirit. The terminus of the visible mission is not a hypostatic union. The visible mission is always, by showing and indicating, related to the invisible mission of the Spirit. 3. From there we can possibly conceive that it would be wrong, guided by a mistaken notion about the ‘equality’ of the three ‘persons’, to claim a fundamental possibility of the Incarnation of the Spirit as well. The differences in the termini of the visible missions as well as in the relationship between the visible and invisible missions are caused by, or, to be more cautious and more precise repeat a difference in the inner-trinitarian processions. The Father expresses himself in his word and thus begets the Son (generatio). The Spirit is the breath of love and peace between Father and Son (spiratio).31 This means, briefly and perhaps misleadingly, that the Son is subsisting in relations (gigni, spirare), while the Spirit is the (subsisting) relation (of the relations) of Father and Son (Patris et Filii spiramen). 4. If we can presuppose the notion (which can be reached in other ways as well) that God is three times the same, not per se, but with the difference just indicated, then we can now (and not without keeping the doctrine of the trinitarian perichoresis present that is meaningful only in this context32) say that the hypostatic union corresponds to the Son as relational subsistence: the Incarnation, his visible mission whose noetic correlate is his invisible mission. The hypostatic union with a created being does not correspond to the Spirit as a subsisting relation. Where he is present in the visible mission in the form of a created being, this event is to be understood as a noetic correlate of his invisible mission. But what is the mission of the Holy Spirit, in which he is sent invisibly into the hearts of believers (see d.17, c.1, n.1; 141.26 f)?

V Among the references anticipating the thesis of d.1733 is one which concludes the section discussed earlier, l.I, d.10, c.2, n.3: ‘With these words, Augustine

30. I am of the opinion that this applies, perhaps not comprehensively to the meaning of Augustine’s words listed in d.15, c. 7–9, but rather to the explanation of the Lombard. One should compare especially the keywords cognoscere and percipere in the earlier chapters. 31. For the historical problems of this term, see Tome I, 219, note 2. What is meant is encapsulated by Michael Schmaus in the beautiful phrase, ‘God as subsisting love talk’, even if our definition of the term should probably go further than with Schmaus (Katholische Dogmatik, 1. Bd., 6th edn [München: Hueber, 1960], pp. 611f). 32. The Lombard alludes to the topic (via a quotation from Augustine) in d.17, c.4, n.2 (145,27). 33. See already l.I, d.1, c.3, n.10.

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says clearly that the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son, and he has even gone so far in his explanation, that he seems to have said, the Holy Spirit is not only the love of the Father and of the Son, in which they love each other mutually and love us, but also the love with which we love God. Yet whether the Holy Spirit is the love with which we love God will be explained in the following’. ‘Mutually each other and us!’ It is well worth noting the boldness with which Peter interprets the dilectio Patris et Filii as the one love in which they love mutually each other and us. The thesis goes beyond a simple presentation of Augustine’s sentence. It remains remarkable – even if it can be regarded as an accentuation of related dicta of the fathers. As we shall see, the Master of the Sentences – here to be named so without any colloquialism – consciously dared to state this. On the other hand, when he speaks here of human love exclusively in the sense of the love with which we love God, it seems as if he falls short of Augustine’s testimony. This is not his intention, however, as d.17 can show. Chapters  60–6, composed as the (original) d.17,34 are divided in a theticdogmatic (d.17, c.1–4 [= c.60–3]) and an apologetic-polemical part (d.17, c.5-d.18, c.1 [= c.64–6]). While the second part, in accordance with its task, divides into the discussion of different types of objections, the first part appears in its composition as an expression of one thought. It is ingredient to Peter’s careful construction that the task be formulated and justified once more (c.1, n.1), and that then, in n.2, be articulated initially as a premise of the required statement: ‘It is said above and demonstrated with sacred texts’ testimony that the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son with which they love each other mutually and love us. But it has to be added that this same Holy Spirit is the love (amor) and the dedication (caritas) with which we love God and neighbor’. From this it follows that, ‘if this devotion is so within us, that it makes us love God and neighbor, then you say, the Holy Spirit is sent or he is given to us’. The final sentence of the section, on the one hand, states something implied in the premise and, on the other, renders more precisely the suppositum locutionis of the argument. It is not about two given acts – even if they are simultaneous: the love of God and love of neighbour. Rather, ‘whoever loves the love itself, with which he loves his neighbor, loves therein God, because this love is God, that is, the Holy Spirit’. Let us note that, neither in this corollary nor in the following statement, does the Lombard exploit the whole argument of Augustine. In Augustine, we find a twofold basis – biblical-exegetical and existential-ontological. In each concrete love relationship love itself is also meant implicitly, and love as such is loved implicitly. Here as well, if without qualifying a particular object love per se is loved, it is, at any rate, always loved as loving love: Non enim amo amorem, nisi amentem amem; nam non est amor, ubi nihil amatur (De Trinitate IX, 2,2; see VIII, 8,12). For it is the concept and essence of love to love something, as it belongs to the nature and reality of the word to point to something. Even if the word points to itself, it shows just this: that it points away from itself towards something else. Likewise, any love 34. See Tomus I, 152, note accompanying d.18.

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implies an objective reference, even the love that is loved as such. Its object is, admittedly, vague and unstated. But this unexpressed object of any love is nothing other than what we (otherwise) love by love – at first, ut a proximo provehamur, the brother, the brother per se. In the unnamed vastness of this per se, we face the unspecified object of the beloved loving love itself. So rises an understanding of the conclusion that results from the interpretation of 1 John 4: ‘Without a doubt, whoever loves love loves God’ (cf. De Trinitate VIII, 8,1235). Peter refers only to the exegetical side of the Augustinian argument, perhaps out of reluctance to speculate too deeply, but, more likely because his own thesis, as his statement shows, should reflect a different tendency. Peter explains the premise of his thesis in two steps, already adumbrated at the end of the sentence n.2: ipsa dilectio Deus est, id est Spiritus Sanctus (142,14). First, then, love is God. Peter proves the statement twice, first for the issue as raised in the premise, ‘the love with which we love God and neighbor’ (c.1, n.4; cf. 142,10f with 143,1f), and then for the fraterna dilectio, which is not a separate genus, but a particular aspect of love that the corollary had discussed already separately (c.1, n.4; see 142,13f). In c.2 Augustine’s words show more accurately that God the Holy Spirit is love. Before the Lombard changes over to the development of the thesis, he discusses (in c.4) an objection that had suggested itself to Augustine from the observation of usual biblical language: is it not said per expressionem causae, that is, in a kind of ‘mythological metonymy’, that God is love? When the person praying in Ps 70(71):5 calls God patientia mea, God in his essence is not being identified with the patience of the Psalmist, but rather is God indicated as the source from which this patience originates. Peter counters this consideration with Augustine (De Trinitate XV, 17,27f) that the disputed statement Deus caritas est is not to be seen in a row with Deus patientia mea and similar sentences, but rather with the Johannine cardinal sentence, Deus spiritus est (John 4:24), so that he can state at end of the explanation of the thesis that, ‘from the foregoing, what has been said illuminates that the Holy Spirit is the love with which we love God and our neighbor; from there it is (now) easier for us to show how the Holy Spirit is sent or given to us’. After the earlier analysis, it goes without saying that there is only one invisible mission, as there is, after all, only one gift of the Spirit, one endowment of the Spirit, and this mission happens ‘when the Holy Spirit is in us to let us love God and neighbor, whereby we remain in God and God in us’ (c.4, n.1), that is, when the Holy Spirit ‘is given to someone, i.e. he has his being in someone to make him a person who loves God and neighbor (ut eum faciat Dei et proximi amatorem). If he does so, then it is said that he is given or sent to someone, and then about the latter it is said that, in the proper sense, he has the Holy Spirit’ (c.4, n.3).

35. See also Michael Schmaus, Die psychologische Trinitätslehre des Heiligen Augustinus, Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie 11, 2nd edn (Münster [Westf.]: Aschendorff, 1967), esp. pp. 225–9.

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With this summa the first, dogmatic part is complete. What follows is a review of individual issues as the school discussed them subsequent to the treatise. I would like to report one of these discussions at the end because it can help us to integrate our results in view of the theme that has really mattered to us here, namely, ‘the mystery shared by God and man’. Prior to this I will try to give an overview of the problems of this second part of d.17.

VI Peter marks the beginning of d.17, c.5, n.1f with the problem of whether one might conclude, as a consequence of the topics presented, first, that love, the Holy Spirit himself, increases and diminishes in a person, and secondly, that he is given to one who already has the Spirit (ut plenius habeat) as well as to one who does not (ut habeat). Would those conclusions not be in contradiction in the first instance with the immutability of God and in the second instance with his ubiquity, in which he is ubique et in omnibus creaturis totus? (n.1f). The responsio ad primam quaestionem also contains the outline of the second response: ‘The Holy Spirit or the love is entirely immutable, he does neither increase nor diminish in himself, nor does he allow of a more or less, but in the person, or rather to the person he increases or diminishes and more or less he is given (to her or to him) or is held (more or less by her or by him)’ (n.3). In d.17, c.6 (perhaps with d.18, c.1) we have an even more vivid, probably an almost direct image of the school discussion of the sixth decade. This reflects not only the text itself, with the partially spontaneous back and forth of obiectio and responsio or determinatio, but also the history of the text, which suggests that the Master added d.17, c.6, n.9 and d.18, c.1 in a later edition and inserted d.17, c.6, n.8 subsequently.36 This last insertion (at not quite so skillful a location37) is of great fundamental theological and soteriological significance. It states, namely, along with a fundamental distinction, also an original order between love, on one hand, and faith and hope, on the other, by declaring in response to a corresponding objection that ‘the love, that is the Holy Spirit . . .  causes the other acts and actions of (“theological”) virtues  .  .  .  with the mediation of the virtues’, to which they belong: the faith fide media, the hope media spe. Diligendi vero actum per se tantum, sine alicuius virtutis medio operatur, id est diligere (151,24 to 152,1). D.18, c.1 explains how one can indeed say that per donum (Dei) quod est Spiritus Sanctus dantur dona (cf. 152,19.18.16; 153,5). The chapter thus refers to a very similar phrase in d.17, c.6, n.9 (152,9f), a section that belongs as a conclusion to the discussion of n.6f that revolves around the question of how the ‘immutable and uncreated’ Holy Spirit should be ‘love’, namely, as ‘movement 36. See Tomus I, 151, apparatus, and the note accompanying n.8. 37. N.9 refers to the quotation of Rom 8:38f in n.6, so it probably belonged together with the responsio n.7.

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of the soul’ and ‘mental excitement’ (n.6; 150,32.30f). Of course one can speak of caritas in this way. But then – and here is an expressio causae (cf. d.17, c.3; 144,10) – non quod ipsa sit motus vel affectio vel virtus animi, sed quia per eam, quasi esset virtus, afficitur mens et movetur (d.17, c.6, n.7; 151,18f). ‘As if it were itself a virtue’ – yet note that here love is not understood in a row with the virtues in general, but, rather, it is seen as acting as the cause of the virtues, transcending any category. This highly meaningful delimitation of caritas (namely, of the Holy Spirit) from the ‘virtues’ can also be found in n.5. The Lombard here has to answer two objections: first, if love is the Holy Spirit and if it emanates from him as well, so also the Holy Spirit would be a se ipso (150,21). But, of course, this is only a seeming contradiction  – for not in the immanent Trinity, where the statement would in fact be erroneous, but, in the economic Trinity, the Holy Spirit is ab ipso as he is given to us (namely, as caritas) a se ipso (150,22f.24). The answer to the other objection, then, is to be understood again from the fundamental distinction between caritas and the virtues. ‘Faith [. . .] is from the Holy Spirit, but it is not the Holy Spirit, because it is solely gift or donation, not the endowing God himself ’ (150,25–7). We can only indicate the far-reaching systematic significance of these decisions here. It must suffice to conclude with the most extensive discussion reported in the chapter (c.6, n.1). Again, we must refrain from going into details. But the bottom line may be sketched in a few sentences. All members of the universal religion (omnes Catholici) confess that the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and of the Son, ‘but that the very same (Holy Spirit) is the love in which we love God and neighbour, is rejected by most. They say that, if the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and of the Son and of us, then it is the same love with which God loves us and we love him. But that seems to deny the authoritative statements of the saints’ (c.6, n.1). After it has been shown with the words of De spiritu et littera and of De Trinitate, that Augustine apparently ‘distinguishes clearly the love with which we love God from the one with which he loves us’ (n.2), the Master of the Sentences once again lets the majority opinion speak on the basis of Augustine’s guiding words: ‘they say that if the Holy Spirit is the love in which God loves and in which we love, then he is an equivocal love, and he is even two opposites  – which is absurd and far from the truth. So he is not the love in which we love, but the one in which God alone loves’ (n.3). The responsio that follows was not suitable to dispel the concerns. This also explains the inclusion of the d.17 in the articuli, in quibus Magister sententiarum non tenetur communiter.38 Still, we view the Master’s reply as daring, and we ask ourselves why the Master took the risk. His answer is meant also to give a correct 38. See Henrich Denifle  – Émile Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, Tomus I (Paris: Delalain Frères, 1889), p. 220f (n.194); Bonaventura, In secundum librum sententiarum, Prooemium, Opera omnia, Tomus II (Quaracchi: Typographia Collegiae S. Bonaventurae, 1885), pp. 1–3, esp. p. 2.

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determination of the meaning of the words borrowed from Augustine, and these two ‘determinations’ follow in the second half of n.4. The responsio is that, in the words quoted ‘it is not separated and it is not presented as separate the love with which God loves and the one with which we love, but rather it is demonstrated, that, because it is one and the same love and because it (as this one) is called love of God, it is named for various reasons and in various respects in Scripture “love of God”’. The Holy Spirit: one and the same love? Does it not seem as if we ultimately shuffle together, under a logically misunderstood word, heaven and earth, God and man? True, there are many very different places where God, who is love, is present – as different as the relations which the bond of unity is linking for peace. That love, according to Peter, is one and only as one does not make void the fundamental distinctiveness of the circumstances in which it is unity and peace. But nevertheless, it is one Spirit who enacts this miracle, and even is this miracle: love  – that is his presence. Peter does not admit that, in his thesis, two different realities are mixed, only because the language sums them up from different perspectives in one word. It is a reality, the one being of the Spirit, of love. The problem that requires explanation is rather that the love which is the Spirit, even where it is human love, is called plainly God’s love. It is ordinary men who should love God and people. If this love of men is nonetheless called the love of God (and rightly so!), then it must not be understood as if the human does not really love, nor must it reversely be attenuated as if God alone brings about the (otherwise human) love, so that it would be named caritas Dei only in a metonymy. On the contrary, it is the human who loves, and that is the love that is God. Just as the eternal Son entered into humanity and thus (salvis proprietatibus) made it his own, so that both Ecce homo! and Hic est filius meus dilectus! apply, so also God the Spirit, as the bond of peace, as a relation, joins human relationships by making them (salvis proprietatibus) his own place, a place of love that he is himself. Therein the invisible mission of the Spirit corresponds to the visible mission of the Son. Even that is in accordance with corresponding Christological statements that human love remains as such caritas Dei: quia nos ea diligere facit, because it is the presence of God, of the Spirit, which frees man to love. Accordingly, one can, in fact, identify, in the one love, that which makes it recognizable as God’s love, namely, because God loves in that love (himself and us) or because God makes it (himself) our love (to him and to the neighbour). Especially in these differentiations love appears, though, once again, as one – as the one mystery which is God communicating himself to the world. We must refrain from even outlining the lively discussion that the d.17 of the First Book unleashed again and again, except to say that, apparently, almost everyone failed to grasp the idea of the invisible mission of the Spirit insofar as love was understood  – against the expressed caveat of the Lombard  – as a virtus of a person and not as the ‘in between’ of a relationship. If love, certainly inappropriate for the phenomenon, is, in principle, conceived as virtus, even as

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virtus gratuita, it is, of course, impossible to identify it with the reality of God the Holy Spirit. This remark is no more than a hint. But even the foregoing as a whole is to be understood only as an indication, or rather an invitation. For – to return to the beginning and conclude in the words of Peter Lombard: Haec autem sine assertionis supercilio et maioris intelligentiae praeiudicio dicimus, malentes in apertione tam clausorum sermonum peritiores audire quam aliquid aliis influere (l.I, d.31, c.5).

Chapter 6 M ETAPHOR ICAL T RUTH A N D T H E L ANGUAGE OF C H R ISTIA N T H E OLO GY Paul R. Hinlicky

I ‘With what can we compare the rise of metaphor in recent theology, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like the kudzu plant, which begins as one sprout among many, but ends up hiding everything under its smothering embrace’.1 So R. Kendall Soulen, with the help of Mark 4: 30–2, parodies contemporary flights of theological fancy stemming from what was once a genuine insight into the language of the New Testament. According to Soulen’s critique, there are several elements involved in this unhappy mimicry of the New Testament’s way of ‘bringing God to language’. First, there is the basic decision to interpret metaphor as simile, indeed, all the more emphatically for lacking the comparative particles ‘like’ or ‘as’. Metaphor is taken as strong simile. Second, strong simile is said to speak the unfamiliar God in terms of the familiar Jesus; hence we may classify the evangelical narrative on the whole as an extended similitude: Jesus shows us what God is like. Third, this supposed Biblical precedent authorizes ‘revisionist’ theologians today ‘to devise new metaphors for God in keeping with contemporary insight and experience . . . [replacing] worn-out metaphor that has been killed by over-use’.2 Imitating the putative pattern of New Testament talk about God by way of a human similitude, Jesus, not presenting the person, Jesus Christ, as the Father’s Son given for us, is the Biblical basis for much that goes by the name today of ‘metaphorical theology’. For Soulen, the problem with such ‘progressive claims on behalf of metaphor’ is that they drastically over-reach in supposing that the theory of metaphor as strong simile ‘says everything that is important and true’ about bringing the Biblical God to contemporary voice. In fact, he argues, it does not. ‘As Thomas Aquinas recognized, the Tetragrammaton does not name God “from below”, as metaphors [taken as 1. R. Kendall Soulen, The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity: Distinguishing the Voices, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), p. 238. 2. Ibid., p. 239.

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similes] do, but rather serves to fix the ultimate referent of biblical discourse, while leaving other forms of speech (metaphors, narratives, analogical discourse, etc.) free to speak about that referent in the terms most appropriate to them’.3 Thus, according to Soulen, the referential function of the holy, and so incomparable, Tetragrammaton, qualifies the plentitude of metaphors as articulation of a divine reality that is not reducible to its relations to creatures. This crucial affirmation of the substantiality of God in relation to creatures can be obscured, however, when we take metaphor (understood as strong simile) categorically as the Biblical way of speaking about God; in fact, the kaleidoscope of inventiveness displayed by today’s metaphorical theologians actually comes to supplant the facet of Biblical discourse affirming the named God as holy and thus the incomparable referent to which all similitudes apply and by which, presumably, they might be governed. In his programmatic 1974 essay, ‘Metaphorical Truth’, however, Eberhard Jüngel marshalled an impressive case for the thesis that ‘the language of faith is metaphorical through and through’ because, over and above the tautological and non-metaphorical statement, ‘God is God’, Biblical metaphor specifies ‘in what way God is …’ God, apart from which there is ‘no proper talk of God’.4 That is to say, Jüngel did not quite agree with Soulen’s Aquinas (let  alone with today’s ‘metaphorical theologians’). The way in which God concretely exists for us is as the Father speaking the Son in the Holy Spirit to us; God is specifically for us, then, not as irreducible divine substance but in addressing us as such in the event of Jesus Christ the Son of God. In specifying by the metaphor, ‘Jesus who was crucified is the Christ, the Son of God’,5 Jüngel claims, the way is given in which the tautology, God is God, ‘properly’ holds in relation to creatures, namely, as the Father addressing through the Son in the Spirit. Moreover, to make this claim, Jüngel did not and could not take the metaphor in question, without further ado, as simile. If the term, metaphor, denotes a translatio, a transference or an exchange, of meaning in language, it can only be understood as making a ‘discovery’ of something in the world, that is, as making a reference that is its meaning:6 ‘Metaphorical language is neither non-literal nor equivocal language, but a peculiar mode of literal 3. Ibid., p. 240. 4. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Metaphorical Truth: Reflections on the Theological Relevance of Metaphor as a Contribution to the Hermeneutics of Narrative Theology’, in Theological Essays I, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), p. 58. 5. ‘This story of salvation is gathered in kerygmatic and homological metaphors (as clusters of time and eternity) whose root metaphor is the identification of the risen one with the crucified man Jesus’. Jüngel, ‘Metaphorical Truth’, p. 67. 6. Ibid., pp. 45–6. Cf. Janet Soskice’s splendid illustration to that effect that if you disregard the warning not to touch the ‘live wire’ because it is not literally alive but only metaphorically alive, you will not be metaphorically but literally electrocuted. The metaphor, alive, has reference to the wire through which deadly voltage runs and this is literally referenced by means of the metaphor, ‘live wire’. Janet Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1987), p. 70.

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speech and in a particular way language which specifies’.7 Furthermore, alongside the understanding of metaphor as simile there is an important, additional and distinct sense of metaphorical transference or exchange apropos a ‘hermeneutical emergency, in a situation in which normal language does not represent a particular state of affairs by a verbum proprium’.8 Just here, metaphor appears as theologically indispensible. Jüngel, in accord with other theorists like Janet Soskice, identified the invention here of a new word by metaphor to fill an emergency void in the lexicon by exchange or transference of the meanings of familiar words as catachresis. ‘The strong metaphor [= catachresis] does not prompt the routine renaming of aspects otherwise identifiable [as in simile], but suggests new categories of interpretation and hypothesizes new entities, states of affairs, and causal relations’.9 Indeed, Jüngel claimed that such ‘metaphorical catachresis is enough to call into question the entire traditional theory of metaphor’ as ornamental or inspirational decoration added to literal, that is, non-metaphorical speech – the notion on which today’s ‘metaphorical theologians’ depend in thinking to ascend by fresh images towards the literally true, but empty and unknowable tautology, ‘God is God’.10 Decisively and affirmatively for contemporary metaphorical theologians, then, all similitudes are equally true and equally false. There is and can be no literal speech of God that can tell us anything specific about the way God is in the world and as such serve to govern ‘responsible speech’ about God. Thus Jüngel’s oft-repeated mandate for theological science as ‘responsible speech about God’ is evacuated; what we have is the free play of self-expressive imaginations of the divine, checking and balancing one another to keep the peace and maintain the equilibrium of our liberal order. Quite in contrast, theological metaphors for Jüngel refer to God as something specific in the world and in referring they sometimes create new words for new realities of God that come about by the way of God in the world. If, then, his analysis of metaphor as having reference applies to speech about God, and if a distinction between metaphor as simile and metaphor as catachresis holds up, the problem of theological language will not be only or chiefly, as Soulen thinks with St. Thomas, to avoid the reduction of God to His relations with creatures, as seems to happen in the free play of imagination of today’s metaphorical theology. To be sure, to this extent Jüngel is with Soulen and Thomas and was already in 1974 expressly opposing the ‘dreadful nonsense’ of ‘some of the recent theological literature’ in its ‘boundless lack of taste’.11 Nevertheless, by Jüngel’s lights the problem of theological language is to articulate the coming of   7. Jüngel, ‘Metaphorical Truth’, p. 67.   8. Ibid., p. 62.   9. Soskice, p. 62. 10. Jüngel, ‘Metaphorical Truth’, p. 47. 11. Ibid., p. 40.

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God to creatures: in the creation of a world other than God, in the Incarnation and in the final ecstasy of the Beloved Community. To express this coming of God to creatures, metaphor in the disruptive sense of catachresis is needed, for there is no existing verbum proprium to tell of it. ‘Thus God’s difference from the world is not merely to be negatively declared and defined [as supposed by today’s metaphorical theologians], but rather trusted in as a positive state of affairs; and this can only happen if God is the one who comes to speech [Luther: metaphora/ translatio verborum] in the same way that he is the one who comes to the world [Luther: metaphora/translatio rerum]. This coming to speech is then narrated in language, a language which would be, as it were, a priori metaphorical language. In such language God allows himself to be discovered as the one who comes’.12 To articulate the coming of God is the fundamental burden of an evangelical theory of theological language. It is as the One who comes and must thus be ‘discovered’ that God is not reducible to His relations with creatures; yet as the One who comes, God is known, not only or chiefly as the Irreducible, but also as the One who as such chooses to dwell with creatures, full of grace and truth (John 1: 14) and indeed, according to Jüngel, has done so.13 It is not then the case in the New Testament that the familiar Jesus tells us what the unfamiliar God is like (or rather, provides us a precedent and pattern by which to familiarize God); rather, in narrating Jesus on the way to the cross as the ‘Son of God’s coming into the far country’ (Barth), Jesus comes now to ‘break into the strong man’s house and bind him up in order to plunder his goods’ (Mark 3: 27). In this specific way, the Father speaks His Son in the Spirit also to us today.

II Without doubt, the discovery of catachresis with the luminosity it offers for understanding the coming of God as language in the New Testament marks the great insight and advance of Jüngel’s 1974 essay. Yet in this essay, Jüngel at times seems to hover between a view of catachrestic metaphor as similitude and a view of it as paradox (my terms, shortly to be explained) that begs for clarification and amplification. He argued at one point, for instance, that ‘unlike God, all states of affairs named by metaphorical catachresis belong to the world and as such are more or less known to the one who wishes to name them. Indeed, it is only on 12. Ibid., pp. 62–3. The insertion of the Luther references is my own. 13. Ibid., p. 67. The gospel ‘tells of the possibility of non-being not simply as that which can only be overcome by God but as that which has been overcome by God’. I have reservations about this too realized eschatology in which Jüngel shows himself to be too dependent on a certain line of thought in Barth’s theology. But this does not undermine the point being made, that God is to be known as irreducibly God precisely in His free coming to bless and embrace the creature. As Jüngel often puts it, ‘God comes from God’.

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this basis that we can name them by comparison. God, however, is to be named in his difference from the world, as the one who is absolutely unknown on a worldly basis’. This formulation seems confused, even though Jüngel went on brilliantly to develop the catachrestical metaphor, not as an isolated word or term, but as shorthand of the fulsome statement of a narration, ‘in which the meaning of the grammatical subject and of the metaphorical predicate collide, forcing one of two words to change in meaning’.14 Consequently, as the narration unfolds that is required to identify the grammatical subject – Jesus who was crucified, it collides with the predication  – the Christ of God  – in the statement, ‘Crucified Jesus is the Messiah’. This collision of a plain-sense contradiction in terms either collapses into nonsense or somehow produces a new meaning in the world concerning a new reality that has come about, telling in what way Jesus is the Son of God, namely, in His Gethsemane obedience to His Father’s uncanny will. Jüngel rightly, then, infers from such a theological resolution of the apparent catachrestical contradiction that, ‘as metaphor clarifies the way in which being is, it indicates that being is historical’.15 Surely that is right. God is the One who comes, according to the gospel, in the person of His obedient Son on His way ‘to death, even death on a cross’ (Philippians 2: 8). But this much does not yet tell us how this theological resolution, as opposed to the ‘natural man’s’ (1 Corinthians 2: 14) reception of the word of Messiah’s cross as folly, comes about, equally historically. More on the question of the theological subject will follow shortly. For the present, if this insight from the application of catachrestical metaphor into the historicity of God who comes is so, indeed if just this telling of God’s coming is what the theory of catachrestic metaphor makes lucid, how was it apt in the earlier formulation cited earlier to characterize the catachrestical ‘collision’ as but a ‘comparison’ immanent to the system of beings organized as a cosmos, as mere similitude based on what a worldling already knows in reasoning from the better known to the lesser known? Must not the worldling conclude by this light of nature that speech of a ‘Christ crucified’ is nonsense, ‘folly’ (1 Corinthians 1: 18), nothing but a contradiction in terms? If nonsense in not intended here, have we not to do precisely with something that is not already ‘more or less known’ to its auditor? Furthermore, if it is so that God is the One who comes according to the gospel of the Christ crucified, why should it be thought necessary in advance to name God ‘as the one who is absolutely unknown on a worldly basis?’ It is as if a strange similarity (namely, that God is like an unknown something in the world) yields by means of extended simile to an all-the-greater dissimilarity (God is an ‘absolute’ unknown in the world). Because of such aporia, I reckon the unfortunate phrasing in cited passage, and the untoward implications it bears, as but a dying ember fallen out from the traditional Western doctrine of the analogy of being; it ill suits the overall argument that Jüngel is making though it does serve to illustrate the sympathy, 14. Ibid., p. 60. 15. Ibid., p. 61.

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though not full agreement, with Soulen and St. Thomas noted earlier. A few pages later, Jüngel articulates his actual point with the affirmation that ‘familiarity with God has first to be established’ by God before the true difference between God and the world can be rightly known, even though as a result we ‘find ourselves in a circle:’ ‘a making known of God, which must in addition always state the difference between God and the world, can only take place in metaphorical speech’.16 True enough.

III I propose now to try to straighten this circle by sorting out the understandings of metaphorical transfer, both in words and in things, as similitude on the one hand and as paradox on the other.17 By ‘simile’ or ‘similitude’, I mean the comparison of a lesser known with a greater known that illuminates the lesser known by displaying analogical relationships within the system of beings ordered as a cosmos. This happens by way of the extended simile of analogical comparison: as ‘A is to B, so C is to D’. For theological example, as a son is to a father so Jesus is to God. By ‘paradox’ I mean the assertion of an apparent contradiction that reduces to nonsense if it does not become lucid as catechresis, that is, as the creation of a new word referencing a new reality emerging from or coming upon the system of beings ordered as a cosmos. This happens by way of literal contradiction: as ‘A is not-A’, for theological example, as used already and to which we will again recur: ‘Christ crucified’. This iteration must be nonsense if not somehow expressing a new and unanticipated sense of A. But this too may be taken in several ways, namely, that somehow either A includes not-A or A acquires not-A. If we take the catachrestic metaphor as disclosing somehow that A antecedently includes not-A in its own ‘natural’ state, we convert the catachresis back to simile. If we take the catachrestic metaphor, however, as indicating the acquisition and appropriation of not-A by A, we take it as reflecting and reiterating an event in A’s history resulting in a Novum. In the latter case, the new perspective itself  – of one who understands the catachrestic metaphor as reiterating the acquisition by A of not-A – derives from the coming about, not only of A’s new reality by acquisition of not-A, but also with it and through it of a corresponding new subjectivity of the one who also historically comes to understand this event ‘pro me’. For theological example, this occurs when Christ crucified is heard to promise, ‘I am yours and you are mine’ (Luke 23: 43). Christ acquires the sinner by His cross and the sinner acquires Christ by virtue of Christ’s resurrection and contemporaneous promissory address 16. Ibid., p. 62. 17. I have attended to this distinction at some length in Brent Adkins and Paul R. Hinlicky, Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze: A New Cartography (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), pp. 143–59.

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precisely as the One who has acquired him. Together, these correlative events alter the system of beings ordered as a cosmos. This alteration occurs in a disruptive but ultimately salutary fashion. In the former case of simile, or the extended simile of analogy, by contrast, the new insight of one who understands a comparison penetrates our existing reality more deeply by discovering hitherto obscured relations or connections in the cosmic order and with the understanding subject. Nothing changes but that which now becomes better understood. Obviously, the choices here make a great difference for the fundamental doctrine of theological language at which Jüngel aimed in his great essay. The choice for metaphor as a disclosure event within understanding, revealing Being as beings would be a choice for philosophy. The choice for metaphor as causal initiative in the world for understanding beings as claimed and redeemed by the coming reign of the God of Israel would be theology. The choice here between disclosure and causation is a choice between revelation as immanent to the system of being (as Heidegger understood truth, aletheia, as the unveiling of beings in the world) on the one side, and as the advent of something ‘more than necessary’,18 that is, the advent of a new ordering of reality, as the sense of the theological word, God, on the other. Taking into consideration Jüngel’s theological legacy as a whole, there can be little doubt that with ‘the coming of God as language’ he intends to prioritize the latter – the ‘interruptive’ Word, as R. David Nelson has shown, of the God of the gospel.19 Yet Jüngel also wishes, rightly enough, to secure a redemptive relation between this coming of God in the paradoxical event of gospel language and the immanent order of beings as cosmos as known by similitude. But his negotiation of this relationship between paradox and similitude in ‘discovering God’ is not wholly clear in the 1974 essay, as argued earlier. ‘God is a discovery which teaches us to see everything with new eyes’, yet this possibility, he is quick to add, could be ‘full of terror’; and yet, even more quickly, he repudiates this possibility of terror: ‘For the sake of God, this must not be said’.20 That is to say, ‘Christ crucified’, could teach us to see everything under the wrath of God. Yet, Jüngel demurs, this conclusion of terror must not be drawn; it is as if God must be protected from the ambiguity of His own self-revelation. Jüngel’s reasoning for declining to say this, however, seems weak, though surely his motive is sound. Is the mere fact that God so addresses us as the Christ crucified the grace that makes for trust? Apart from the Spirit who raised Christ crucified to vindicate His way in the world, and in the same way remakes the human auditor, must not word of Messiah’s cross indeed terrify? I leave these questions dangling for a moment to suggest that Jüngel struggled in this essay to decide between the two Martins that were his sources: Martin 18. Jüngel, ‘Metaphorical Truth’, p. 65. 19. R. David Nelson, The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God’s Relation to the World (London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013). 20. Jüngel, ‘Metaphorical Truth’, p. 63.

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Luther and Martin Heidegger. While Luther arguably prevails  – ‘the cross of Jesus Christ is the ground and measure of the formation of metaphors which are appropriate to God21  – ambiguity persists in that Jüngel concluded by arguing that the metaphor brings about a ‘gain to being’ that ‘expands the horizon of the world in such a way that we may speak of the renewal of the world’.22 In this formulation, we may sense an attempted synthesis of paradox and simile as the discourses of redemption and creation, respectively. The synthesis is motivated, as indicated earlier, by Jüngel’s entirely proper desire to secure a redemptive relationship of the interruptive Word with the world in which we live. Jüngel argued accordingly that a test of theological language is whether the order of beings is expanded by the advent of the new such that the cosmos is now seen in a new and renewing light, that is, the world fallen into godlessness is now seen as the blessed creature of God on the way to righteousness, life and peace. The apparent contradiction of this world by the paradox of the cross yields to a new affirmation of the world, vindicating the simile of creation: as the potter to the clay, so the One who vindicated crucified Jesus is to the world that crucified Him. ‘Behold, I make all things new!’ Yet once more, as if in haste, Jüngel qualifies this final formulation, without any previous preparation for it in the essay, with the ubi et quando Deo visum est of Augsburg Confession V: ‘A theological metaphor can only have this effect, however, because of the renewing power of the Spirit of God’.23 Let us grant, then, that – at least in the hands of the Spirit! – the paradox of contradiction effecting the salutary slaying the old Adam yields to the similitude of the new born child of God and that this new birth is an expansion of being, indeed, nothing less than renewal of the world, new creation. Just so, we have all the more to ask, ‘Which is it?’ Is it the Word working on its own, so to say, as an event in language asking us to regard things differently, as a consistently forensic theory would require? Or is it the Spirit working through the Word, that is, not only a translatio in words but also a valid verbal predication because first of all a translatio of things? So Luther against Latomus: ‘Et in hac translatione non solum est verborum, sed et rerum metaphora. Nam vere peccata nostra a nobis translata sunt a posita super ipsum, ut omnis qui hoc credit, vere nulla peccata habeat, sed translata super Christum, absorpta in ipso, eum amplius non damnent’. (‘And in this transference [that Christ was made to be sin] it is not only a metaphor of words but of things. For truly our sins are transferred from us and placed on Him, so that all who believe Him truly have no sins but they are transferred onto Him, absorbed in Him, no longer damning him’.)24 To be sure, for Luther, the exchange of things 21. Ibid., p. 65. 22. Ibid., p. 71. 23. Ibid. 24. WA 8, p.  87; cf. LW 32, p.  200. See here the compelling analysis of Anna Vind, ‘Christus factus est peccatum metaphorice: Űber die theologische Verwendung rhetorischer Figuren bei Luther unter Einbeziehung Quintilians’, in Creator est creatura: Luthers

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concerns Christ, not the believer: Christ who comes as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. Only so, however, can this Word incarnate say and regard the auditor as forgiven and freed as a matter of truth, no matter how she feels one way or another. So we may set aside the allergic fear of Osiander in our considerations at this juncture. If it is clear, then, that the metaphora rerum concerns Christ who comes to the sinner, the question now is whether the power to become the child of God can it have ‘this effect’ in the believer merely by saying so, ‘abracadabra’, that is, apart from the ‘translating’ power, if I may so put it, of the Spirit of God? To be sure, this is none other than the Spirit of Jesus Christ, whom the Son breathes upon the auditor, that is, the Spirit who sheds the love of God abroad in human hearts that have been convicted concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgement, so that in the Spirit-given reality of faith sin is yielded to Christ and in turn His righteousness is assumed? Isn’t just this Spirit-given translatio rerum of the human subject the faith that justifies in its own specific way of being corresponding to the specific way of being that is told by the metaphor, Christ crucified? Clearly the Word, according to Jüngel, works as metaphor in an ordered sequence that passes from paradox to simile, from contradiction to similitude, from the death of the sinner to the newborn child of God; it is Luther’s crucial purpose clause, ‘God kills in order to make alive’. Another way to pose the question about how Jüngel thinks this movement to occur is to ask, ‘Can the metaphor fail in this progression, e.g., can it blind and harden (Mark 4: 11–2) as well as enlighten and redeem?’ Arguably, it can fail in the sequence Jüngel, following Luther, intends, precisely if and when the disruptive metaphor of paradox is thought to work ‘on its own’, so to speak. It is thought to work on its own when the dissonance of paradox is muted by defanging the catachrestic metaphor by turning it into mere simile. Just so, the intended progression through contradiction to similitude is obscured. In this case, if not taken in the Spirit by faith as the contradiction in terms, ‘Christ crucified’, this kerygma has to be taken out of the Spirit, in bad faith, disclosing something like, ‘To be Christ Christologie als Lehre von der Idiomenkommunikation, ed. Oswald Bayer and Benjamin Gleede (Berlin & New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2007), pp. 95–124. Her conclusion about Luther on metaphor comports with my own conclusion about Jüngel’s effort (which she mentions in this connection) in the present essay. ‘Der Begriff der Metapher is zu eng, um den Inhalt sowohl der kontroversen Textstelle aus dem Antilatomus als auch der Schrift Vom Abendmahl Christi sowie der Disputationen wiederzugeben. Das Wesentliche ist nicht bloss der Metapher, sondern es ist die Bereichung der Sprache überhaupt, die die Erneuerung durch den Schmuck der Rede, durch den ornatus, bewirkt . . . es bei Luther um etwas geht, was ausserhalb von Quintilians Horizont liegt’ (p. 123), namely, the non solum est verborum, sed et rerum metaphora. In the same volume, see my treatment of Luther on metaphor, ‘Luther’s Anti-Docetism in the Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi (1540)’, pp. 147–66. In his 1974 essay, Jüngel drew on all of the Luther texts that Vind mentions.

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is to be victim’, or ‘The victims of the world are Christ’. Not a little contemporary theology, right and left, views the matter in just this way. But it is important to see why we may come to such perverse theology that divinizes victimization or victimizes the divine – and justly offends alike those who struggle against victimization and those who hope in God’s vindication of victims. We mute the paradox in this way, making it into an illuminating disclosure of some supposedly deeper truth of our world, because we take ourselves, the human auditors of this strange announcement, as having by nature epistemic access and aptitude to process this information in comparison to, and thus as part of, all that we already know. We have access and acquire aptitude as members of a system of beings ordered as cosmos who regularly learn the lesser known in terms of what is already familiar. We presume to learn accordingly what it is to be Christ crucified by our all too familiar experience of victimization. ‘Christ crucified’ – for good or ill, victimization is the deepest truth of our world. Self-hatred, as the history of popular Christianity amply documents, becomes the religious work that brings us close to the divine, while for elite culture ‘pleasure is in the perception of a momentary radiance, before the door of disappointment is finally shut on us’.25 The alternative to this perverse theology – and the reason why the mature Luther left behind the easily misunderstood rhetoric of his early ‘theology of the cross’ to learn to speak the Crucified in the Spirit as truly His Father’s victory for us who are victimizers as well as victims – is that the Word works as metaphor in progressing through contradiction to similitude. This is the redemptive connection that Jüngel was rightly seeking and in fact indicated in the last, hasty afterthought of the 1974 essay regarding the coming of the Spirit of Pentecost effectively to proclaim Christ the crucified as deliverance from the guilt and the power of sin. This connection is forged by something other than, though essentially related to, the Word. Indeed, as the Word concerns ‘Spirit-anointed’ Jesus, that is to say, Jesus as ‘the Christ’ who was crucified (Acts 10: 38–9), it likewise ‘anoints’ the auditors (Acts 10: 44) with the same Spirit, so that the faith to receive this Gift is itself gift. In that case the coming of God as an event in language is not and cannot only be an event in language, all too easily co-opted in the existing order of beings as cosmos to valorize victimization. Ironically, such non-trinitarian ‘Word alone’ theology is too readily co-opted precisely on account of the proper desire to establish its redemptive relationship to our world sore oppressed by structures of malice and injustice. But ‘no one can say, “Jesus is Lord”, except by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 12: 3). This coming of the Spirit must be understood, as Paul and Augustine and Luther understood, as a causal infusion of the love of God into the hearts of auditors (Romans 5: 5) that actually reorganizes affects, realigns wayward desire and so transforms the person that the Word may effect in them what it says about them. 25. Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 145.

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IV If the Word as the Father’s speaking of the Son to us is impotent apart from the Spirit (and, as well, if the Holy Spirit mute apart from the Word incarnate, 1 John 4: 1–2), ‘responsible speech about God’ is not finally in the control of the preacher or theologian. Rather the theologically responsible preacher is finally responsible in ceding responsibility to the Holy Spirit, whose promised coming to call, convict, persuade, enlighten and so on can be trusted but not presumed upon, let  alone confected by the hocus-pocus of a theory of performative language. In this case, preacher and theologian let the contradiction in terms, ‘Christ crucified’ work as the jarring paradox that it is, as offence. Bultmann understood this much well. ‘The question thrust upon’ Saul of Tarsus ‘by the kerygma was whether he was willing to regard the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, whom the kerygma asserted to have risen from the dead, as the expected Messiah’.26 If this demand of the kerygma, moreover, is not to be taken as asserting perverse nonsense by way of simile, it must be resolved, as Jüngel underscored throughout his essay, as literal reference, as presenting the new reality in the world, along the lines of Mark 10: 45: ‘the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and lay down His life a ransom for many’. It can present this new reality of Jesus Christ by the language of metaphor because the translatio in question is also a ‘metaphor of things’, not only of words (Luther), but also of the Spirit’s coming who first ‘drove’ (Mark 1: 12) Jesus to take this responsibility for us upon Himself. Just so and only so the Spirit can and does still open the auditor of the gospel to the translatio rerum that Luther called the ‘joyful exchange’. Of course, Biblical language for God is surfeit with the routine similes of creaturely life. But so is all other language, as Jüngel cogently argued. That is not the crucial differentiation. Language is at its heart metaphorical, a vast and everevolving system of translations from known to unknown to better known that works with a variety of tropes, though simile is central to the immanent work of contrasting and comparing things within any given order of beings as cosmos. Consequently, it is not particularly insightful to observe that Biblical language for God is metaphorical. I can say of my spouse of many years, ‘She has been my rock’, and I can likewise say of the faithful God, ‘The LORD is my rock’, and there is absolutely no logical difference here in the metaphorical form of language. But Jüngel was not thinking on the plane of making empirical generalization about what the Bible says about God, as if such ransacking and cataloguing were in any serious sense theology, that is to say, knowledge of God. He was thinking theologically about how the Biblical word concerning the crucified Jesus as the Son of God can take hold and form the theological subject. This latter transformation of the person can only occur when the stunning contradiction contained in the kerygma, or narrative, or confession of ‘Christ crucified’ becomes lucid as the 26. Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, Complete in One Volume, trans. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), p. 187.

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purpose clause expressed in Mark 10: 45. This Christological Novum becomes lucid, as Jüngel tried somewhat less successfully to explain,27 in ‘faith’, where faith comes as a biographical event, taking the ‘for many’ of the kerygma as also valid ‘for me’, thus transforming the subjectivity of the one who in just this way comes to faith at the Spirit’s persuasion. Other scholars have called to our attention a certain ‘Pneumatological deficit’ in Jüngel’s account of the theology of the Word.28 I have sought in this contribution to honour of one our time’s premier theologians by pointing to a resource among Jüngel’s own resources for articulating a fuller Trinitarian dialectic of the Word and the Spirit, the Spirit and the Word, that also clarifies certain ambiguities attending his important discovery of the ‘metaphorical truth’ of the gospel.

27. That is to say, in this 1974 essay. But even in Jüngel’s splendid Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburg: T&T Clark, 2001)  one notes the Gnesio-Lutheran anxiety about the Augustinian ‘imperfection’ (p.  74) without a corresponding Lutheran self-critique of its Pneumatological ‘imperfection’, even though, in my view, Jüngel’s account of the ecstatic existence of the Christian in The Freedom of a Christian: Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988) cries out for such pneumatological articulation. 28. Thus, following Webster, Nelson, The Interruptive Word, p. 139.

Chapter 7 EBER HAR D JÜNGE L’S SOTERIOLO GIC A LLY MINDED D O CTRINE OF T H E T R I N I T Y: S OME C OM M E NDATIONS AND RE SE RVAT IONS Christopher R. J. Holmes

I Eberhard Jüngel has much to teach contemporary students of theology. I think that this comes to the fore in what is, arguably, his most sophisticated and provocative work, God as the Mystery of the World. What makes it such a deeply stimulating work is his conviction that the dogma of the Trinity is to be sought in soteriology, more specifically ‘the Crucified One . . . as the criterion for any possible concept of God’.1 Although I have far more reservations about this move than I did when I first started reading Jüngel over a decade ago, Jüngel’s thesis remains the most trenchant contemporary presentation of a soteriological approach to the doctrine. This chapter is an attempt to work through what remains compelling about Jüngel’s account although not always profitable in his attempt to establish ‘the trinitarian concept of God through a theology of the Crucified’.2 In what follows I offers an account of what is gained and what is lost by Jüngel’s account of the Trinity. I take as my starting point the programmatic statement: ‘a material dogmatics has to narrate the being of God as history and this history as a mystery of the world’.3 First, I provide a brief account of Jüngel’s efforts to think God’s being and existence as united ‘with the existence of Jesus the man’.4 Second, I reflect on the positive gains of such a move, especially its eschewal of modern metaphysics ‘negative . . . evaluation of perishability’.5 Third and last, I offer some reflections on what is lost when the missions of 1. Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 184. 2. Ibid., p. 180. 3. Ibid., p. 390. 4. Ibid., p. 209. 5. Ibid., p. 203.

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Son and Spirit become the theoretical basis upon which the doctrine of the Trinity is grounded. Accordingly, what is short-changed is any recourse to the immanent processions of Son and Spirit as the ground of their missions and so that it qualifies them to act as they do in the economy of salvation.

II Jüngel has only but disdain for accounts that would distinguish God’s existence and essence. He would much rather ‘talk about the being of God’.6 The language of ‘divine being’ secures, Jüngel argues, our gaze upon the man Jesus, for in him not only is God thinkable but also God’s existence, the existence of the divine ‘being  .  .  .  realized’.7 God has revealed himself to be united with the man Jesus. Accordingly, ‘faith takes God’s existence as his being’.8 Indeed, the Christian understanding of God recognizes that God is on the cross, thinks God according to such an event. Jüngel’s question, assuming God’s essence ‘as being absolutely identical with his existence, is, Who is God, if he is in such a way that he exists in this struggle [between possibility and nothingness]?’9 In putting the question this way, Jüngel is seeking to release the doctrine of the Trinity from some of its classical shackles. Following the lead of Reinhold Seeberg’s presentation, Jüngel argues that what is ‘actually trinitarian’ cannot be restricted to God’s inner life.10 Hence Jüngel’s antipathy towards the classical affirmation of the indivisibility of the works of the Trinity outwards: it encourages us to confine trinitarian discourse to a realm above us. Instead, Jüngel, taking up a kind of Bonhoefferian manner of speaking, would have us see that ‘God is rather the one who exists for others . . . From all eternity, God is in and of himself in such a way that he is for man’.11 The upshot: ‘This going out is his essence’.12 God occurs as himself in all that he does. Trinitarian discourse is only to concern itself with the event of God. One might think, at first glance anyhow, that this sounds rather like Barth. In actuality, there are some quite subtle and not insignificant differences between Jüngel and Barth on the doctrine of God. While this is not the place to pursue   6. Ibid., p. 209.   7. Ibid., p. 191.   8. Ibid., p. 192.   9. Ibid., p. 217. 10. Ibid., p. 371. 11. Ibid., pp. 219, 221. As regards Bonhoeffer, see his ‘Lectures on Christology’, Part 1. The Present Christ – The pro me. Therein Bonhoeffer comments, ‘I can never think of Jesus Christ in his being-in-himself, but only in his relatedness to me’. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, ed. Victoria J. Barnett and Barbara Wojhoski, vol. 12, Berlin 1932–1933 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), p. 314. 12. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 223.

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the Barth/Jüngel relationship in any detail, it is worth noting something of what happens in Jüngel’s account to Barth’s language of ‘The One who loves in freedom’. To think God as one whose being is for others is ‘to think God’s love as [emphasis mine] freedom’.13 This is in keeping with Jüngel’s efforts to think essence as existence, to focus on being. Whereas Barth would want to distinguish without separating God’s love and freedom when it comes to describing God, freedom being something of a comment on the utterly prevenient character of God’s love, Jüngel conflates them. ‘Love as freedom’ denotes complete identity.14 Barth’s doctrine of God, deeply Reformed as it is, experiences, in Jüngel’s hands, a kind of Lutheran re-working. The asymmetry Barth thinks is necessary so as to honour the free and sovereign character of the love of God, descriptively speaking, affirms in his thought so as to affirm that God remains the one he has always been in reconciling the world to himself in Jesus Christ. Accordingly, Jüngel’s ‘material dogmatics’ has less patience than does Barth’s ‘Church dogmatics’ when it comes to the theme of the aseity of God.15 In Jüngel’s mind, the doctrine of the Trinity indicates ‘God’s being is in coming’, whereas Barth’s doctrine indicates, as Jüngel’s masterful presentation reveals, God as one whose ‘Being Is in Becoming’.16 Barth, more so than Jüngel, is happy to acknowledge that discourse on the immanent life of God is necessary to secure God’s freedom to be the one he always is in the new thing God does in Jesus Christ for the life of the world. Brief reference to Barth illuminates the economic force and cruciform orientation of Jüngel’s trinitarianism. However, Jüngel is not a crass kind of Hegelian who makes history intrinsic to God’s being. Rather, with Barth, Jüngel is adamant that God is eternally triune; nonetheless, with a different accent than Barth, Jüngel emphasizes that God’s triunity is secured ‘in eternal originality’ inasmuch as ‘he [God] affirms his own deity in the crucified Jesus Christ in that he confirms the being of the man Jesus’.17 Barth, too, is happy to say that God’s revelation is self-revelation, but more so than Jüngel ties that self-revelation to the whole counsel of God, to the grand canvas of Israel and Jesus’s history, and not so tightly to the cross. In summary, the establishment of a ‘trinitarian concept of God through a theology of the Crucified’ is Jüngel’s solution to what he calls ‘the exegetical problem’.18 That problem is solved by the cross. It is the cross, and ‘not the meager trinitarian formulas of the New Testament’, that is ‘the most trenchant 13. Ibid., p. 221. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., p. 380. 16. See Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth, trans. John Webster (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001); and idem, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 380. 17. Ibid., p. 385. 18. Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, TD 24:24 (1976), p. 180.

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expression of the Trinity’.19 In the cross of Jesus, the ‘superabundance’ of God’s being is revealed.20 Accordingly, God does not become the one God is in relation to Jesus’s cross. For Jüngel, ‘God aims in himself at what is other. God aims in his divine eternal becoming toward the incarnation of man, toward the becoming of the world. God aims in his eternal begetting toward creation’.21 God is the sole originator of God’s being, and God is also his own goal, the goal of his own being. What Jüngel would have us believe is that God’s being is historical in nature. To be sure, no one or no thing outside of God makes God the one he eternally is. Nonetheless, God’s being cannot be conceived without the world, specifically the cross of Jesus wherein God acts in unfathomable selflessness ‘for man’s benefit’, not because the world is necessary to God but rather because God’s being is more than necessary to the world.22

III Having offered a very brief sketch of why Jüngel is averse to using the language of essence and existence in relation to God by thinking God in relationship to his identity with the crucified one, I want to reflect for a moment on what I think is gained. Three things come to mind. First, Jüngel helpfully encourages us to think that the Creator/creature distinction need not demand that God be held ‘far away from man and from man’s history’.23 Second, Jüngel is to be applauded for pointing out the extent to which ‘the metaphysically postulated essence of God’ contradicts ‘the true deity of God’.24 Third, Jüngel appreciates the need to expound Trinitarian theology exegetically. I will now (briefly) develop these points. First, a faithful and true account of the Creator/creature distinction established in Jesus Christ cannot assume a competitive relationship between the two. To assume that each need be held to be apart from the other in order to be, shortchanges the very real sense in which, on the basis of the Scriptural narrative, God is free to be the one he eternally is sub contrario. Unbaptized conceptions of what it is for God to be God are thus unsettled by a God who is divine and eternal in such a way that he can also be temporal. God is indeed free to be in ‘the context of this world and its perishability’.25 This, it seems to me, is a basic insight which, while possible to unfold in ways that are not profitable, is, as it stands, salutary. The Christian understanding of God does not champion a doctrine of God that is inimical ‘to perishability and to the negating reality of death’, but rather one that 19. Ibid., p. 180. 20. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 193. 21. Ibid., p. 384. 22. Ibid., p. 385. 23. Ibid., p. 195. 24. Ibid., p. 203. 25. Ibid., p. 204.

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appreciates God’s freedom to be in that which is the very antithesis of what a socalled supreme being is said to be capable of.26 Having commended Jüngel’s willingness to allow God’s activity to inform an account of God’s being if you will, the obvious rejoinder must be acknowledged. Very much over and against Robert W. Jenson, John Webster argues, following Thomas, that ‘God’s outer works are not real relations between himself and creatures, but the overflow of God’s wholly realized life as Father, Son and Spirit’.27 Accordingly, ‘the dramatic personae who come into this history’ do so ‘without coming to themselves for the first time in its execution’.28 While this point is directed towards Jenson’s doctrine of God, it can be read so as to apply in part to Jüngel, for he too understands the outer words of God to denote real relations.29 However, insofar as I understand Jüngel, he would have us appreciate that God does indeed come to God in the event of the cross without coming to himself ‘for the first time’.30 Throughout God as the Mystery of the World, Jüngel affirms that an ‘inner-divine self-relationship’ is that which is expressed in ‘this going out [which] is his essence’.31 Jüngel’s efforts to think God in such a way that God is for humankind, that God is in what would seem to be beneath God – for example, dying an ignominious death in the man Jesus – are not immediately subject to all of Webster’s criticisms of Jenson. This is because Jüngel does not think that the persons come to themselves ‘for the first time’ in coming to the world.32 Without getting into matters too technical for such a piece as this, I do think Jüngel is to be applauded for reminding us that the content of the word God is not self-evident. While his articulation of what it means for God to be is, as I will argue in the next section, tied too closely to the economy, there is something deeply important in his efforts to free accounts of God’s being from false oppositions, and from that sense that God is incapable of being the majestic and sovereign one he eternally is sub contrario for our sake and for our salvation. Jüngel’s enemy in God as the Mystery of the World is modern metaphysics, ‘the metaphysical concept of God’.33 What Fichte and his heirs encourage us to do is to 26. Ibid., p. 184. 27. John Webster, ‘Principles of Systematic Theology’, in The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London: T&T Clark, 2012), p. 143. 28. John Webster, ‘Perfection and Participation’, in The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God, ed. Thomas Joseph White, OP (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), p. 385. 29. See, for example, Robert W. Jenson: ‘History occurs not only in him but as his being’. Systematic Theology, vol. 1, The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 221. 30. Webster, ‘Perfection and Participation’, p. 385. 31. Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, p. 182; and idem, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 223. 32. Webster, ‘Perfection and Participation’, p. 385. 33. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 206.

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conceive God as supra nos.34 What renders a metaphysical account so irresponsible in relationship to the biblical testimony is its inability to grant God the freedom to be in a deficient, that is, a perishable way. Hence the second dimension of Jüngel’s project I deem to be salutary: Jüngel relentlessly emphasizes the particularity of God on the basis of God’s self-disclosure. God, following Descartes, Fichte, and so on, exists above the struggle, above (be)coming as one who is independent, as so as one who cannot be conceived of as giving up his life. Accordingly, such a metaphysical account of God lacks any ‘existential relevance’ or rigorous attention to the particularities of the biblical narrative.35 Jüngel is right not to isolate or bifurcate essence and existence, indeed to unmask the God of Descartes, Fichte, Nietzsche, and so on as something of a brute caricature of the God we encounter in Christ by the Spirit. ‘In Jesus Christ, indeed, God has become addressable as God and we have become addressable as his earthly children. But in the Holy Spirit, God has become expressible as God’.36 This cannot be said of again Nietzsche’s God, for example, for he God can only conceive of such involvement with perishing creatures as abhorrent. The critical rejoinder that could be raised at this point is that Jüngel, his undoubted brilliance notwithstanding, does not give what is an extremely complex and multivalent tradition its due.37 Jüngel’s severe criticisms of modern metaphysical approaches’ thinking God in advance to the divine act of the cross are certainly justified. Jüngel’s opposition to those modern approaches that assume the content of God-talk to be self-evident is fair and necessary; but whether ‘classical teaching about the Trinity’ is as in need of a new foundation as Jüngel thinks it is, is open to serious questioning.38 I do believe, following Webster, that ‘the office of metaphysics is ministerial’.39 Metaphysics performs its ministerial function insofar as it unfolds the fullness of the triune being of God ‘in its interior and exterior aspects – as the fullness of God in himself before creation – [as being of] pervasive importance’.40 Jüngel does not conceive of metaphysics in these 34. Ibid., p. 187. For an expansion of this point, see Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos. Eine Kurzformel der Lehre vom verborgenen Gott – im Anschluß an Luther interpretiert’, in Entsprechungen: Gott – Wahrheit – Mensch. Theologische Erörtungen II. 3. Auflage um Register erweitert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 202–51. 35. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 371. 36. Ibid., p. 387. 37. For a sophisticated although not entirely unproblematic defence of ‘classical metaphysics’ in the face of those who would want to claim a suffering God, and all that in a way that seeks to demonstrate how classical convictions regarding God’s immutability, transcendence, power and so on are not as always tradition specific as one might assume, see David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, and Bliss (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). 38. Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, p. 180. 39. Webster, ‘Perfection and Participation’, p. 389. 40. Ibid., p. 389, 390.

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terms so much, and so I think that he for the most part would be sympathetic to Webster’s alternative construal of metaphysics along Trinitarian lines. However, Jüngel would not be so convinced as is Webster of the material importance of an account of God’s fullness and plenitude prior to creation; nonetheless, Jüngel would, I think, grant that God’s plentitude is the condition for their being an economy in the first place. If so, then, metaphysics can be a more serviceable term than Jüngel understands it to be inasmuch as its ministerial office, as Webster envisages it, is in the service of slaying those metaphysical concepts of God that Jüngel so rightly and rigorously opposes so as to draw our attention to the one true God, the God who ‘reveals himself as the non-proceeding unoriginated Father through the self-disclosing Son’ and the Spirit ‘whose hypostasis consists in the fact that Father and Son are united in love and realize themselves as lovingly receiving each other’.41 Third and last, what I think is gained in Jüngel’s approach is a fresh appreciation of the need for the doctrine of the Trinity to be rooted in a ‘theologically interested’ reading of Scripture.42 Jüngel acknowledges the doctrine to be exegetically determined. The question is how best to allow Scripture to determine. As we saw in Section II, the most fruitful way, Jüngel argues, is ‘to establish the trinitarian concept of God [is] through a theology of the Crucified’.43 One of Jüngel’s preferred New Testament texts is Matthew 10:39: ‘Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it’. Since this is ‘true of God’ insofar as God gains his life by losing it, a trinitarian ontology appropriate to the gospels will not shy away, argues Jüngel, from ‘a heightening, an expansion, even an overflowing of the divine being, when it considers God as the total surrender of himself for all men in the death of Jesus’.44 The freedom of God to expand and heighten his own being is a function of God’s such ‘great self-relatedness’ out of which the overflow of his life is generated.45 This, Jüngel argues, is what New Testament teaching on ‘God is love’ compels us to say. The God who is love, following John 1:1, is, in this Word, ‘knowable, speakable, perceivable, as God’.46 Accordingly, the exegetical problem for Jüngel is not so much of a problem if one recognizes that New Testament trinitarian formulas are not the basis for the doctrine per se but rather history – history as narrated for us in the New Testament (and Old). Thus Jüngel’s account is to be commended as he expands our sense of what an exegetical basis for the doctrine might look like. It means, in short, that events such as Christ’s birth, the proclamation and embodiment of the Kingdom 41. Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, p. 183. 42. Webster, ‘Witness to the Word: Karl Barth’s lectures on the Gospel of John’, in The Domain of the Word, p. 77. 43. Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, p. 180. 44. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 368. 45. Ibid., p. 369. 46. Ibid., p. 386.

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throughout his life, his death, his resurrection, ascension and session are said to be ‘self-movements of the divine being’.47 Thus the doctrine, biblically speaking, understands events to be that by which God’s being is narrated, events to be the means by which ‘the exegetical problem’ is re-contextualized by drawing attention away from ‘meager’ trinitarian formulas.48 Jüngel is very subtle in that, once again, he does not understand God to be one who comes to be on the basis of revelation. Revelation, although it is that in which God is fully present as the one he eternally is, is nonetheless God expressed  – revelation as God’s self-expression. Events  – most especially the cross  – denote self-movements. For Jüngel, the doctrine of the Trinity is not a construction but rather a synthetic account of what is to be received through exposition of the biblical account ‘of the missions of the Son and the Spirit’.49 Were someone to argue that Jüngel assigns ontological weight to events that cannot possibly bear it, that is to misunderstand what Jüngel is trying to do. What Jüngel treasures about, for example, Paul’s thinking is that, following Nietzsche, Jüngel recognizes that Paul has ‘created a God, a new God: “deus, qualem Pauus creavit . . .”’50 This is a God whose power is perfected in weakness (2 Corinthians 13:4). So, the potential objection that Jüngel’s reading invests the New Testament witness with categories alien to is misses the mark insofar as ‘the “God” allegedly created by Paul is a God who “. . . confounds the wisdom of this world”’.51 A biblical account of God is one which glosses Paul’s speech about ‘the word of the cross, which do[es] in fact think together God and perishability in the person of the Son of God who has become man’.52 The upshot of Jüngel’s reading of Paul is that a new understanding of God comes about, ‘the suffering God’.53 Although I think Jüngel’s reading of Paul would benefit from a greater trinitarian specificity insofar as it is the Son of God who in the man Jesus assumes flesh and dies, there is to be sure a salutary intuition at work in Jüngel. That intuition is simply to unfold how incompatible are many modern metaphysically motivated accounts of ‘God’ in relation to the one true God. To conclude this section, there are an immense amount of profitable gestures in Jüngel’s work. I have but alluded to a few. Jüngel is, first, to be commended for honing in on the utter specificity and particularly of discourse on God, for the need for it to always be baptized in light of the history by which God wills to be known as God. Second, Jüngel performs an important apologetic service by being a good dogmatician. Talk of God on this side of Descartes, he reminds us, is not so much talk of the God we meet in Jesus, but rather so often talk of another God whose chief characteristic is his being supra nos. Third and last, Jüngel’s project is continually pressured, exegetically speaking, by biblical events. He understands 47. Ibid., p. 390. 48. Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, p. 180. 49. Ibid., p. 184. 50. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 205. 51. Ibid., p. 206. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid.

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these events – especially the cross – to be what found the doctrine of the Trinity and thus overturns the assumption that the New Testament witness is anything but meager, trinitarianly speaking. In the next section, I reflect on how some of Jüngel’s most salutary impulses are hamstrung by some of his less than salutary impulses, especially in regards to a lack of attention to the processions by which the three come to eternally be and which are expressed in the missions of Son and Spirit among us.

IV Three doctrinal impulses merit commentary in this section. It is not a question of simply laying them out but rather of seeking to discern what is good in them and to comment on how that is hamstrung by other commitments of Jüngel’s. First, Jüngel is after the doctrine of the Trinity’s ‘existential relevance’.54 Such relevance is compatible with the sole purpose, says Jüngel, of God as the Mystery of the World, which ‘was to serve the founding of a material dogmatics’.55 A material dogmatics is a concrete dogmatics, one oriented to events, events that are pregnant with ontological weight, and which therefore also carry hefty existential weight. More specifically, what Jüngel means by ‘existential’ is the shape of life that exists in correspondence to God as the mystery of the World. The mystery itself births children who live as those who are continually addressed by it, who understand that address to have far-reaching ‘anthropological consequences’.56 When it comes to the specifics of those consequences, of the moral particulars, Jüngel does not say too much in God as Mystery. That I do not understand to be a weakness. He is offering, rather, something of a moral ontology, not an account of moral particulars. That is what he thinks a material dogmatics ought to do: its narration of ‘the being of God as history’ understands that history to shape a life, indeed the life of the Christian community so as to be a life in correspondence to that history.57 Whether classical portraits of the Trinity are not existentially minded, or unconcerned with ‘anthropological consequences’, assumes a particular genealogy of the doctrine that is, I think, unfounded.58 Suffice it to say, my own recent study of Augustine and Thomas’s commentaries on the Fourth Gospel and of the presence of their commentaries in their treatises on the Trinity has alerted me afresh to something of the pastoral import of their treatises, metaphysically sophisticated though they be.59 Although Augustine and Thomas do not set out to establish the 54. Ibid., p. 371. 55. Ibid., p. 380. 56. Ibid., p. 390. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. See Christopher R. J. Holmes, The Holy Spirit, vol. 1 of New Studies in Dogmatics, ed. R. Michael Allen and Scott Swain (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2015), especially chapters 3 and 5.

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doctrine’s existential import – that is not their language – they do understand that presentation of the truth of the matter – God’s triune being – serves the people of God by protecting them from error, among other things. To protect from error is to provide God’s people with a clear and responsible presentation of what kind of God the Scriptures would have God’s people know and love. Such a presentation is a crucial pastoral task, and is undoubtedly existentially relevant. Jüngel’s reminder of the doctrine’s existence relevance, following as it does in part upon Barth and Rahner’s great twentieth-century re-inhabitations of the doctrine, is that in narrating God’s being  – the God given in the cross  – we are at the same time narrating something of the form of life that arises in response, indeed in agreement with God’s alienation of death and perishing in the crucified one. To understand theology proper – the doctrine of God’s being – as having ‘anthropological consequences’ is the truth of the matter.60 However, I wonder whether Jüngel’s aversion to approaches to the doctrine of the Trinity not rooted in soteriology is as existentially irrelevant as Jüngel might envisage them to be. While again a short chapter in a Festschrift such as this is not the place to launch an extended comparison with, for example, Augustine or Thomas, Jüngel’s assumption that the classical presentations of the doctrine are largely immune to existential concerns is mistaken. As Gilles Emery says of Thomas in his magisterial study, Trinitarian treatise ‘constitutes a spiritual exercise in the authentic meaning of the term: a contemplative and speculative exercise on the part of the theologian who seeks to grasp “something of the truth” in order to disclose the faith “for the consolation of believers”’.61 Were Jüngel more disposed towards classical presentations (i.e., pre-modern), he would see that his concerns for ‘existential relevance’ are present too, albeit in language that is somewhat different of course than his own. Thomas again in qq. 27–43 of ST I articulates the doctrine’s intelligibility ‘by distinguishing it from error’.62 That is a terribly ‘relevant thing’ to do, and equally demonstrative of the doctrine’s existential and pastoral function. As concerns this first reservation, then, I think it fair to say that Jüngel own existential Luther tradition is not alone in terms of wanting to honour the doctrine’s ‘relevance’. That Descartes and his inheritors set the context for much of Jüngel’s reflection, while not problematic in itself, does lead Jüngel to think that what he is after is something to which the pre-modern tradition has been largely indifferent is not the case. The ‘exegetical problem’, as Jüngel calls it, is one to which the classical tradition is undoubtedly alert.63 In the case of Thomas, for example, his commentary on the Fourth Gospel undergirds much of his more synthetic 60. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 390. 61. Gilles Emery, OP, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 418. 62. Ibid. 63. Jüngel, ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, p. 180.

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treatment as found in qq. 27–43 of ST I, one might argue even surpasses it in depth and sophistication. That both Thomas and Augustine write their synthetic works largely on the back on the Fourth Gospel is highly suggestive, and questions the extent to which ‘a theology of the Crucified’ is the best platform for ‘the trinitarian concept of God’.64 Indeed, I suspect that the classical tradition’s tradition  – in the hands of Augustine and Thomas, anyhow – of moving from commentary to synthesis evidences a more nuanced picture of how classical teaching came to be more of ‘a contemplative and speculative exercise’ than perhaps Jüngel would envisage.65 Second, and closely related, where I think reservations with respect to Jüngel’s account need to be most strongly expressed is in regards to the paucity of the language of the processions of Son and Spirit. So far as I can tell, it is only the ‘biblical account of the missions of the Son and Spirit’ that seems to carry weight doctrinal weight.66 In the theses with which Jüngel concludes his important article on the ‘“Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, no mention is made of the processions as the focus is entirely on ‘the saving and believing experience of Jesus and his Spirit in us’.67 To be sure, the missions, as Jüngel understands them, pertain to the Trinity. Strangely, however, there is not any discussion of the processions, the originating relations expressed by them, and the three which follow. Hence the immanent grounding and qualification of what the Son and Spirit actually do in the economy of salvation is left unattended. As Augustine writes of the Son’s mission, it is to express his procession as the only begotten of the Father.68 But in Jüngel, because the emphasis is so very much economic, the ‘backward reference’ is eclipsed, as is talk of God’s perfect life as one of rest and movement which overflows in the economy of grace.69 Such a classical tract of dogmatic teaching on the Trinity is not allowed to do any work as it were in Jüngel’s account, largely because he assumes such tracts of teaching to be above us rather than of material consequence. Whereas in Thomas, for example, his account of the processions, while beginning with the action of the three in the economy, functions so as to enable us ‘to come round to that action anew’.70 Put somewhat differently, for Thomas the study of the ‘Trinity in itself . . . elucidates 64. Ibid. 65. Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 418. 66. Jüngel, ‘Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’, p. 184. 67. Ibid., p. 183. 68. ‘For he [the Son] was not sent in virtue of some disparity of power or substance or anything in him that was not equal to the Father, but in virtue of the Son being from the Father, not the Father being from the Son’. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, OP (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), IV.5. 69. Webster, ‘Principles of Systematic Theology’, p. 143. 70. Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 416. Hence Thomas’s last question (q. 43) in his Trinitarian treatise is that of the missions.

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the Trinitarian economy by the eternal being of God’.71 The economy and thus the missions’ principle of intelligibility is triune being, a being which is by virtue of the processions as they give rise to (four) relatively opposed relations of origin and in turn three persons. The essence of the three is neither behind nor in front of them but is inasmuch as the three are. The missions express origins, and Jüngel’s lack of attention to that dimension of the classical doctrine shortchanges, I think, his attempt to expound the mystery in a way that does justice the fullness of the missions themselves. The third reservation I would like to express is with respect to the focus on the cross. In good Lutheran fashion, the cross is the moment of the Christ-event that does nearly all the work, on which nearly all the focus lies. Soteriology is understood by Jüngel very nearly with exclusive reference to the cross. The privileging of the cross is not as salutary as I once thought, given that other equally important moments of the Christ-event are left unattended, most especially the resurrection. Jüngel’s indebtedness to Thesis 20 of the Heidelberg Disputation is certainly evident here.72 It is not that one wants to circumvent the cross – God forbid! Rather, it is a matter of recognizing that the gospel writers write of one who was born, lived and died as one who was raised on the third day by his Father and their Spirit. A theology of the Crucified is also a theology of that one as raised, as ascended and glorified, as seated at the right hand of the Father interceding on behalf of all the saints. In summary, does the history of God as the Mystery of the World, insofar as Jüngel describes it, encourages us to, as Jüngel indeed does, yield to one dimension of an event whose intelligibility also demands, I would argue, at least equal consideration being given to others, most especially his being raised from the dead?

V To conclude, Jüngel is to be applauded for insisting with great rigor and sophistication that the Christian doctrine of God not be understood to be immune from the event wherein God alienates death and perishing for humanity’s benefit: the cross. There is not another living theologian who has fomented concentration on that event as has Jüngel as the source for trinitarian discourse on God. While the outcome of Jüngel’s reflections I do not find as compelling as I once did, his dogged insistence in articulating a Trinitarian ontology appropriate to this event is one for which I am grateful. Accordingly, 71. Ibid., p. 415. 72. ‘For this reason true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ, as it is also stated in John 10  [John 14:6]’. See ‘The Heidelberg Disputation’, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, 2nd edn (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 47ff.

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Jüngel’s eschewing of essence and existence language in favour of being is salutary inasmuch as it promotes thinking  – limitations notwithstanding  – about ‘God in the way he has revealed himself is his identity with the man Jesus’.73 Jüngel has challenged and provoked us to appreciate that suffering and death do not detract from God’s divinity but rather become the sight at which ‘the divine being is realized’ once and for all.74

73. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 187. 74. Ibid., p. 191.

Chapter 8 A R EFOR M E D T H E OLO GY OF J U ST I FIC AT ION 1 George Hunsinger

According to the new ecumenical consensus, as expressed in the Joint Declaration on Justification, justification by faith is a doctrine indispensable to the Gospel.2 Agreement about what the doctrine might mean is therefore of the highest importance. Over the past 15  years a significant degree of agreement has been eked out by the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans and the Methodists. In 1999, after many years of painstaking dialogue, the Joint Declaration was signed by the Catholics and the Lutherans. It was then ratified by the Methodists in 2006. What was once the flashpoint of the Reformation has settled into relative concord. The mutual anathemas of the sixteenth century, while still accepted as salutary warnings, have been laid aside as not applying to the present. The Reformed Churches, however, have yet to join in this ecumenical accord. They have not yet officially endorsed the Joint Declaration. If they were to do so, they would be permitted to attach a signing statement, as the Methodists have already done. They would explain the doctrine from their distinctive vantage point. They would appreciate the great gains that have been made while still pointing to areas in need of further clarification and expression. They would affirm, enrich and challenge the existing degree of consensus. In this essay, I will set forth the doctrine of justification from a Reformed perspective. I will not only explain its positive meaning in Reformed terms, but also try to dispel various distortions and misunderstandings. Some of these have arisen among those outside the Reformed tradition, but others have crept into the tradition itself.

1. A paper presented at the 2012 session of the Reformed-Roman Catholic international dialogue. 2. The Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000).

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Forensic Justification One significant misunderstanding clusters around the very idea of ‘forensic justification’. ‘Justification’ is, of course, by definition a forensic term. As used in the New Testament, and especially by Paul, it suggests a courtroom drama in three parts in which a ‘divine lawsuit’ has been brought against the sinner: ●●

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In the first part, a doomed prisoner (the sinner) stands accused and condemned before the holy throne of God (in foro Dei). The prisoner seems entirely without hope. The drama comes to a spectacular conclusion in the third part, however, with the prisoner being acquitted and set free. Despite the prisoner’s desperate and even infinite guilt before the Lord God, the condemnation is not carried out but averted. Indeed it is more than averted, for the prisoner ends up being elevated and adopted as God’s child into eternal life. Doctrinal confusion arises, however, about what actually happens in part two, the part on which the whole drama turns. What makes it possible for the utter hopelessness portrayed in part one to be reversed so dramatically in part three?

According to one account, part two is still entirely (or at least mostly) forensic. The prisoner is acquitted, because the Divine Judge exercises a surprising prerogative in pronouncing the prisoner ‘not guilty’. It turns out that the prisoner has faith in Christ. The punishment deserved by the prisoner – eternal death in the form of separation from God – was already carried out on the cross. It was borne by Christ out of love so that the sinner might in turn be spared. Although the prisoner is completely guilty and unrighteous before God, Christ himself is completely innocent and righteous. The Divine Judge decides to regard the punishment borne by Christ  – the Judge and Christ both love the prisoner  – as sufficient for granting an acquittal. In fact, when the Judge pronounces the prisoner to be innocent or ‘not guilty’, the prisoner is actually made to be ‘righteous’ before God ‘on account of ’ the righteousness of Christ. Christ’s righteousness is communicated to the prisoner by grace through faith. The righteousness of Christ is thus said to be ‘imputed’ to the prisoner or sinner, and the imputation takes place precisely by way of the divine judicial pronouncement. Just as there is light when the Lord God says, ‘Let there be light’, so the sinner is made to be righteous (by the righteousness of Christ) when the Divine Judge declares the sinner to be not to be guilty. ‘Imputation’ is thus thought to occur by virtue of the judicial declaration.3 The sinner’s faith is 3. A recent example of this view can be found in Eberhard Jüngel: ‘They [those who are justified] are righteous purely and simply because they are pronounced righteous’. See Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), p. 206 (emphasis original).

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counted as ‘righteousness’, and the sinner is justified or acquitted ‘for the sake of Christ’ (propter Christum), in whom the sinner trusts with his whole being. The dramatic reversal in part three depends on the imputation of righteousness in part two. There are several problems with this account, but two in particular stand out. First, within the logic of the forensic metaphor, it is impossible to see how the guilt of the sinner can be transferred to another who is innocent. From a legal point of view, justice would seem to be violated if an innocent person is punished in the place of someone else who is actually guilty. Second, and from a theological point of view perhaps more seriously, it not easy to see how the sinner can be turned into his opposite and become righteous simply by virtue of the divine declaration. In one standard ‘forensic’ account, not only is the accused treated as innocent without really being innocent, but also the accused still remains inherently a sinner even after having been declared righteous.4 It is understandable that against this version of the forensic account, two standard objections have arisen. First, the righteousness of the sinner has been rejected for being a ‘legal fiction’, since this righteousness seems merely nominal. Second, ‘forensic justification’ has been dismissed as mere ‘extrinsicism’, because the sinner’s righteousness, though declared, does not seem to make the sinner cease to be a sinner from within. The guilty party not only has been declared righteous without really being righteous, but still also remains a sinner in himself. These problems arguably arise because the forensic metaphor is being made to do too much work. Other biblical concepts and metaphors – especially those that are cultic, mystical and apocalyptic – have been marginalized. Only a richer, more complex account can do justice to the drama of justification. Part two of the drama requires more conceptual tools than the forensic toolbox has to offer.

Imputation Presupposes Union with Christ Another account of ‘forensic justification’ has prevailed in the Reformed tradition. Although the previous version is sometimes regarded as Reformed, it has historically been more characteristic of the Lutherans. According to Matthias Schneckenburger, a nineteenth-century historian of doctrine, a significant difference about the doctrine of justification arose between the Lutherans and the Reformed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He writes: ‘Unlike the Lutherans, who saw unio mystica as the effect and consequence of justification, the Reformed saw union with Christ as justification’s prior condition’.5 In other words, a difference existed about the ordo salutis. 4. Jüngel deals with these problems in his own way in Justification, pp. 208–11. 5. See Matthias Schneckenburger, Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und reformierten Lehrbegriffs (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler’schen, 1855), p. 195.

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For the Lutherans, one had first to be made righteous before one could enter into union with Christ. One was made righteous by imputation. The imputation (or transferral) of Christ’s righteousness to faith took place ‘forensically’. It took place, that is, by virtue of God’s judicial declaration of acquittal. One became righteous as one was ‘declared’ righteous, and on that basis one entered into union with Christ by faith.6 For the Reformed, ‘union with Christ’ was the context in which the believer became righteous before God. This union was presupposed by the doctrine of justification, because the imputation of Christ’s righteousness did not take place without it. For Calvin the chief work of the Holy Spirit was faith (Inst. III.1.4), and the chief effect of faith was to bring believers into union with Christ (III.1.3). Union with Christ was the source of all Christ’s saving benefits (III.1.1). This union was far more spiritual or mystical in status than it was legal or forensic. For the Reformed (e.g. Calvin, Owen, Turretin, Torrance), we are not righteous because we are declared righteous. We are declared righteous because in Christ we are righteous. Our righteousness before God is most emphatically not a ‘legal fiction’, nor is it something merely ‘extrinsic’. It arises ‘mystically’, so to speak, for faith through our union with Christ in the Spirit.7 For the Reformed mystical union with Christ constitutes, in effect, ‘part two’ in the drama of justification, because it is there that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to faith is understood to occur. Union with Christ introduces a decidedly non-forensic element into the story-line, in between ‘part one’ (condemnation) and ‘part three’ (acquittal). The Reformed narrative is thus one of condemnation, union with Christ, and acquittal. The phrase unio mystica, which is found only twice in Calvin’s Institutes, makes one of its appearances in his discussion of justification (Inst. III.11.10). At this point, Calvin may be alluding to a striking passage from Luther. In his great 1520 treatise ‘The Freedom of a Christian’, Luther uses the traditional mystical imagery of the bridegroom and the bride. He writes: The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom . . . Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sin, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life and salvation will be the soul’s. For if Christ is the bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which belong to his bride and bestow upon her the things that are his. If 6. Note that this was seen as a logical not a temporal progression. 7. ‘It is particularly significant’, writes Thomas F. Torrance, ‘that Calvin’s doctrine of justification through union with Christ and participation in his obedient Sonship was deeply indebted to Cyril of Alexandria in contrast to Luther’s conception of justification which was heavily influenced by Augustine’. See Torrance, ‘Karl Barth and Patristic Theology’, in Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), p. 188.

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he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?8

This act of taking away the negative and bestowing the positive is what Reformers meant by ‘imputation’. In the mystical union of the bridegroom and the bride, as described by Luther, Christ takes all the sins, death and damnation of the believing soul to himself. He bears its plight of sin and death in order to bear it away. At the same time, he also gives himself to the believing soul, as a bridegroom gives himself to his bride. In his self-giving, the bridegroom bestows grace, life and salvation upon the believing soul, or more precisely, on the community of all faithful people. In short, sin is imputed to Christ even as his righteousness is imputed to us. Imputation involves a real transfer of predicates in two different directions. It is a movement from sinners to Christ and from Christ to sinners. Our plight of sin and death is transferred to him, even as his attributes of righteousness and life are transferred to us, that is, to those joined with him through faith. This is the great and saving exchange (admirable commercium), or what Luther called the ‘joyous exchange’. On the cross Christ has taken our sin and death to himself, and in rising again from the dead he gives us his righteousness and life. While this exchange is clearly mysterious, there is nothing fictional or extrinsic about it. It is no less real than the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter day. Nor is it something less than integral to both parties concerned, for it is no less integral than the wounds that disfigured Christ’s body and the new unending life that he gloriously bestows on those raised with him from the dead.

The Saving Exchange as the Paschal Mystery For the Reformation, this saving exchange is what constitutes the Paschal mystery – a point that has not always been well understood. Its scriptural basis is essentially more priestly and cultic than it is mystical or forensic. In the sacrificial religion of Israel – as epitomized and fulfilled by Passover – the sins of the people are really removed (expiated) by being transferred (imputation) to the spotless, innocent lamb that is slain in their place (substitution). In the Paschal meal, the lamb in turn becomes the source of new life (participation). Again, as in the metaphor of the mystical union, we have the elements of exchange, substitution and participation, but this time more tragically, we might say, in the context of a bloody sacrifice. In the New Testament, these Paschal elements arguably constitute the essential background for understanding both the Cross and the Eucharist. The great 8. LW 31, p. 351.

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exchange, with its elements of participation and substitution, emerges as the context for imputation. Our sin and death are transferred (imputed) to Christ in our place (substitution), who removes them by his blood (expiation), in order for him to bestow upon us, in turn, his perfect righteousness (imputation) and eternal life (participatio Christi). These are the gifts we are understood to receive through faith in the Word of God and through partaking in the Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.9 Although much more would need to be said, I want to lift up one main point. The mystery of imputation is the mystery of the great exchange. Its inner logic is finally more ‘cultic’ than it is ‘mystical’ or ‘forensic’. Without appreciating this Paschal and cultic background, imputation cannot be understood. Indeed, when imputation is set forth in merely forensic terms, its logic  – already very difficult – is obscured nearly to the vanishing point. In the Old and New Testaments, imputation, participation and substitution have far more to do with expiation (a cultic category) than they do with punishment (a forensic category). It would make no sense to say, for example, that a sacrificial animal like the Paschal Lamb is ‘punished’ for the sins of the people. Imputation, participation and substitution are, on the negative side, not a matter of punishment but of removal (expiation). Sin and death are removed in Christ by being taken into his person and destroyed. (In the New Testament, the element of destruction is drastically intensified through the use of apocalyptic motifs.) On the positive side, they are a matter of Christ’s communicating his saving benefits (bestowal). He conveys his benefits of righteousness and life to those who in themselves are completely lost and unworthy. Christ bestows (imputes) his benefits of righteousness and life as he gives himself to believing souls in their union with him. There is no imputation without the happy exchange, and no exchange without substitution and participation. Substitution involves the great reversal that puts Christ in our place (of disgrace) and us in his place (of glory) before God. Participation involves the mystery of Christ in us and of us in him  – not only passively (the objective aspect) but also actively (the subjective aspect). We are objectively included in his death and resurrection in a way that comes to fulfilment as we receive him subjectively by faith. All these categories – exchange, substitution, participation and imputation – need to be held together, and not split apart. Their defining context within the Paschal mystery is essentially sacrificial and cultic. These categories are commonly split apart, however, and distorted not only in ‘forensic’ accounts of justification, but also almost universally in modern Protestant theology. The Paschal mystery can only be thrown into confusion when moral and forensic categories become predominant. 9. I discuss these points more fully in The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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Christ Bestows His Perfect Righteousness For the Reformation, the central affirmation of the New Testament was not, as is commonly supposed, Rom. 1:17, where it is written that ‘The just shall live by faith’ (quoting Hab. 2:4). The central affirmation was rather 1 Cor. 1:30, where Paul affirms (among other things) that Jesus Christ is our righteousness.10 Of course, for the Reformation the two ideas could not be separated. There was no justifying faith without Christ, and no Christ who justified without faith. But the emphasis, especially for the Reformed tradition, fell not on faith as the human act of reception, but rather on Christ as our righteousness. If Christ is our righteousness, two questions immediately follow. What is meant by ‘righteousness’ and in what sense does Christ’s righteousness become ‘ours’? These questions will be considered in turn. ‘Righteousness’ is a contested term in contemporary theology and exegesis. Nevertheless, it is agreed that it pertains first of all to God. Sometimes, the question runs like this: is righteousness a divine attribute, or does it pertain only to divine actions? Some would say it describes only divine actions. Others would narrow the term even further so that it pertains only to God’s saving actions. God’s righteousness would then describe only the actions by which God deals with us graciously or by which God makes us righteous (courtroom drama, part 2) in order that we might be justified and saved (courtroom drama, part 3). In my view – and more generally for the historic Reformed tradition – these are false options. If we accept Karl Barth’s insight that God’s being is always in act, then divine actions cannot be separated from divine attributes. God acts righteously because God’s being is righteous in itself. What God does is always an expression of who God is. God’s actions are grounded in God’s being, and God’s being is revealed in God’s actions. Divine grace, furthermore, cannot be separated from divine judgement. Again following Barth, there is no grace without judgement, and no judgement without grace. God’s righteousness encompasses them both. Cutting through many complexities, we may say that God would cease to be righteous if God did not condemn everything that enters into contradiction to God, everything hostile to God’s love and justice, everything determined and corrupted by sin, evil and death. God’s righteousness includes an element of severe condemnation (divine wrath). Nevertheless, there is no contradiction between God’s righteousness and God’s saving mercy. In Jesus Christ, God removes and destroys everything that God condemns (Good Friday) while at the same time restoring and exalting everything that God embraces in love (Easter). God’s righteousness includes mercy, and by grace God’s No is made to serve God’s Yes. 10. Martin Brecht makes this point several times over the course of his massive threevolume biography of Luther. See Brecht, Martin Luther, 3 vols (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1985–93).

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In short, God’s righteousness is the integrity of God’s being in act as revealed to the world in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the righteousness of God in action for our sakes. God’s righteousness in both judgement and grace is what Christ reveals, what he mediates, what he undergoes and what he enacts. He does all this through his perfect obedience. It is a perfect or sinless obedience whose forms are both active and passive. In his active obedience, Christ perfectly fulfils the law of God through his life of love towards others (towards God and human beings), especially towards those in dire need. Christ does this in our place and for our sakes, because this life of love is precisely the life that we as sinners fail most grievously to live. Yet without such a perfect life of unfallen integrity, no one can be acceptable to God. At the same time, Jesus Christ’s obedience is passive. It is passive in the sense that he consents to suffer the consequences of sin that would otherwise befall us. By consenting to God’s just condemnation, Christ again fulfils the just requirements of the law through his perfect love. Our sin is condemned in his flesh (Rom. 8:3). ‘Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins’ (Heb. 9:22). Without the cross of Christ – where sin is destroyed through sin, and death trampled out by death – we could not be saved. ‘God made him to be sin who knew no sin that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5:21). The Reformed tradition has always understood this verse in terms of the great exchange. Our sin is transferred to the one who knew no sin in order that his righteousness might be transferred to us. This twoway transfer defines the mystery of imputation. It is also a matter of substitution. Christ takes our place as sinners in order that his place might also become ours before God. It is also, furthermore, a matter of participation. Christ enters into our sorry plight in order that we might participate in the Paschal mystery by which he passes through suffering and death to new and unending life with God. Jesus Christ is therefore our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30). By the integrity of his love, he has fulfilled the law of God in every relevant aspect for our sakes. The perfect righteousness that we otherwise so seriously lack is the righteousness we receive in him. Without this righteousness, we could not be accepted by God. Nevertheless, we in fact receive the righteousness we lack as a free gift by grace through faith. ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God’ (Eph. 2:8). ‘In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace’ (Eph. 1:7). By the logic of the Paschal mystery, Christ is our righteousness and life. It is a strange logic, a cultic logic, a logic that makes no sense on any terms other than its own. It is the logic of the great exchange, with its morally and legally perplexing elements of substitution, participation and imputation. Nevertheless, by divine appointment, it represents the deep structure of the logic of grace. It is the astonishing logic of the God who became incarnate for our salvation in Christ.

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The Ground of Our Righteousness in Christ We will never have any other righteousness before God than the righteousness we have in Jesus Christ. It is, paradoxically, a righteousness that we can possess only by not possessing it. It is never our personal achievement and never something we possess on our own. It can be had only as a free and perpetual gift. Imputation takes place as both a once-for-all and an ongoing event. Christ’s perfect righteousness is once-and-for-all ours only as it is first of all his, but as his it is also completely ours, and becomes ours again and again each day. It is the grace that is new every morning. According to Reformed understanding, Christ gives us his righteousness by giving us himself, and in giving us himself he gives us his perfect righteousness. Only by participation in Christ are we made to be righteous before God (e.g. Inst. III.11.8). Christ’s person and his benefits are one. He does not give his benefits without giving himself, and in giving himself he gives us everything. Union with Christ is therefore the context within which the benefit of his righteousness is bestowed. It is bestowed freely by grace through faith. In virtue of this perfect, bestowed righteousness, we are justified before the judgement seat of God. For Calvin and the Reformed tradition, the righteousness bestowed by Christ is grounded, as already suggested, in his perfect obedience. His obedience is seen, as noted, as both active and passive, as an obedience that took place for our sakes and in our place. By his active obedience he perfectly fulfilled the law of love in all its dimensions, while through his passive obedience he perfectly bore, in his passion and death, the just penalty of the law against sin in order that we might be spared. Therefore, the ground of our righteousness is not to be found in us (in nobis) but outside of ourselves in Christ (extra nos). We will never be righteous before God except by a righteousness not our own. We will never be righteous, in other words, except through an imputatio alienae iustitia, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. The righteousness by which we are justified is an alien righteousness. It is a righteousness accomplished apart from us and that we receive in Christ as a free gift.

How Christ’s Righteousness is Given and Received According to Reformed understanding, Christ’s righteousness is not conveyed in bits and pieces but rather comes to us whole and entire. It is bestowed instantaneously by grace to faith. It is faith that unites us with Christ and that makes us members incorporate in his mystical body, the church (totus Christus). Christ’s perfect righteousness is communicated (imputed) to faith. It is communicated once for all and then perpetually forevermore. The selfcommunication of Christ and his righteousness is mediated and confirmed through baptism, which is unrepeatable and once for all. It is then perpetuated in a kind of daily baptism that is ongoing and ever new.

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The perfect righteousness that we receive from Christ – and by which we are justified – is not gradually limited or replaced by a righteousness that takes shape within us and to which we contribute with the assistance of grace. Although we are called to grow in righteousness, this growth is a consequence of the perfect and justifying righteousness that is already freely ours in Christ. As we gradually become more righteous in ourselves, we become more fully who we are in Christ. We become righteous in ourselves, however, only on the basis of our already being righteous in him. As those who are helpless sinners, we do nothing to contribute to, or to constitute, the righteousness by which we are justified. We cooperate with this righteousness by receiving it, but not by causing it. This righteousness is always a free gift, first objectively in Christ, and then subjectively in ourselves. We are conformed to Christ and his righteousness by the grace of the Holy Spirit as it works within us. The righteousness that takes shape within us is also entirely a free gift. We are therefore passive with respect to this righteousness in important respects, though not in every respect. The righteousness by which we are justified is constituted not by our own obedience but rather by the obedience of another. It is constituted by Christ’s obedience apart from us (extra nos) and then appropriated as a free gift within us (in nobis). The righteousness by which we are justified is the righteousness of Christ. Christ’s righteousness is therefore the ‘formal cause’ of our justification.

Justification and Works of Love As we receive this free gift, we are also called to conform to it. We are passive with respect to constituting the righteousness we receive, but not with respect to appropriating it. We appropriate it by cooperating with grace, but even this cooperation is a free gift. Works of love are a consequence, not a cause of the righteousness by which we are justified. They are not a cause, because Christ himself and Christ alone is at once the sufficient cause and yet also content of the righteousness by which we are justified. Works of love are a necessary consequence, however, because when they are absent, faith is dead and Christ’s justifying righteousness has not been received. Thus the ground of our justification is not to be found in any works of love we might perform, but in Christ’s perfect, vicarious obedience and in particular in his death on the cross, so that we are justified not by works but ‘by his blood’ (Rom. 5:9).

Justification and the Eschatology of Righteousness We are more perfectly in Christ than he is in us (Vermigli). We are already in Christ what we will be, but we are not yet what we will be in ourselves. Our righteousness,

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like our life, is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). Our perfect righteousness in Christ is therefore something real, hidden and yet to come. It is not a ‘legal fiction’, but an eschatological reality. Nor is it an ‘extrinsic’ attribute, but the essence of our true identity in Christ. Our righteousness in Christ is already real in one sense while still being yet to come in another. This righteousness cannot be understood apart from a Christ-centred eschatology of participation. The reality of our righteousness in Christ is thoroughly eschatological. We have it here and now only in the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’. We have it, that is, only in the tension between what has already been bestowed on us and what has yet to be actualized and revealed in us. Therefore, perhaps the two most important elements in the Reformed understanding of justification are the cultic and the eschatological. The cultic element gives us the mysteries of exchange, substitution, participatio Christi and imputation. The eschatological element gives us the no less indispensable mysteries of the already and the not yet. Without the cultic and the eschatological elements, it is understandable that the doctrine of imputation should be mistaken not only as fictional rather than real, but also as extrinsic rather than completely transformational.

Justification and the Eschatology of Sin In the time between the times, our status as sinners is also thoroughly eschatological. Although the power of sin is broken so that sin no longer has dominion over us, we are still truly sinners who must pray for forgiveness every day. The gift of righteousness in Christ covers all our sins, past, present and future, even though our sinfulness, taken in itself, would make us worthy of divine condemnation, not only before baptism but also after it. In Christ, we are already what we will be (righteous) even as we have ceased to be what we still are (sinful). In the time between the times, we are therefore simul iustus et peccator (Luther). This formula is also essentially eschatological. On the one hand, in Christ and because of Christ, we are already completely righteous in God’s sight, being clothed in his perfect righteousness. Yet on the other hand, because sin still clings so closely, we are not yet what we will be, but remain sinners in ourselves. If so, then we are sinners not partially but totally, because sin is essentially not a matter of degree but is rather categorical.

Sin and Righteousness are Essentially Categorical Although sin and righteousness admit of degrees, they are essentially categorical before God and are therefore mutually exclusive. Their overlap in the time between the times, as determining factors of our spiritual lives, is an eschatological

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mystery. They do not exist together on the same plane, like coloured water in a glass tube, as if to have more of the one would be to have less of the other. They co-exist, rather, as mutually exclusive and antagonistic forces. Although some sins are worse than others (and some are worse to a very great degree), for the Reformers all sin is mortal sin, and all sin therefore falls under divine condemnation. You can drown in a few feet of water or you can drown at the bottom of the ocean, but if your head is not above water, you drown. Venial sin is no less worthy of condemnation than mortal sin. Nevertheless, since there is more grace in God than sin in us, sin does not have the last word. The tension in this life between sin and righteousness will be resolved at last when Christ appears in glory. We will be revealed as being like him – righteous as he is righteous, alive in glory as he is alive – because we shall see him as he is, and ourselves as he has made us to be in union and communion with him (1 John 3:2; 1 Cor. 15:52; Phil. 3:21). Christ will then be as perfectly in us as we are in him. Throughout this life, however, even our best works are tainted. Being tainted by sin, none of them can be pleasing in themselves in God’s sight. ‘But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags’ (Isa. 54:6). Our deeds can be made acceptable by God’s mercy alone, through which they are justified and sanctified by grace. Apart from grace even our best works would have nothing to commend them. The justification of works depends on the justification of the person. Our best works are as nothing unless justified and made acceptable by the grace of Christ. But by grace they are indeed made to surpass what they otherwise are.

Justification and the Holy Spirit According to Reformed understanding, the principal work of the Holy Spirit is to give us the gift of faith by bringing Christ to us (objectively) and us to Christ (subjectively) in order to make us one with him (Calvin). It is therefore in and through the Holy Spirit that we are in Christ by Christ, because the Holy Spirit is always in the Son and does not operate without him (Athanasius). There is no Son without the Holy Spirit, and no Holy Spirit without the Son. The Son may be said to represent the objective aspect of our salvation, whereas the Holy Spirit represents its subjective aspect. Along these lines, the Holy Spirit may be described, more particularly, as the ‘subjective possibility’ of justification, even as Jesus Christ may be described as the ‘objective possibility’ of justification. From this point of view, on the one hand, justification’s ‘objective possibility’ would be what makes justification objectively possible apart from (or prior to) our reception of it. Jesus Christ would thus be justification’s ‘objective possibility’, in the sense that without his vicarious obedience and saving death apart from us (extra nos), we could have no righteousness before God and would be eternally lost. Christ would also then be justification’s ‘objective

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reality’, because in and through his vicarious obedience what he has made possible has also become objectively real. Our justification can take place, and has taken place, objectively in him. He is in this sense our righteousness. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, would from this perspective be justification’s ‘subjective possibility’, because without the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives (in nobis) through Word and Sacrament, the grace of justification could be neither known nor received. The Holy Spirit would also be justification’s ‘subjective reality’, because in and through the Spirit, again by means of Word and Sacrament, the ‘objective reality’ of justification  – as accomplished apart from us by Christ alone – is communicated to faith and received as a finished work. In short, we cannot by our own power or understanding believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, or come to him, except by the working of the Spirit, who inspires faith in us, and empowers us for good works, as he wills (Luther). As the Spirit brings us to Christ we are also brought to faith. We are brought to faith, in other words, as the Spirit brings Christ to us by means of Word and Sacrament. As we are joined in union with Christ, his righteousness is made to be ours through the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. The Holy Spirit adds nothing to the content of Christ’s finished work or to his saving righteousness. The Spirit rather ‘applies’ it  – or better, ‘re-presents’ (noetically) and ‘actualizes’ (ontically) it  – to faith by grace. The Holy Spirit actualizes and re-presents Christ’s saving righteousness here and now in three main ways: (1) once for all, (2) again and again, (3) more and more: ●●

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Once for all. The Spirit actualizes and re-presents Christ’s saving righteousness ‘once for all’, because Christ’s perfect righteousness, whole and entire, is given to faith as a gift in a way that is irrevocable, unrepeatable and binding. This ‘once for all’ aspect corresponds to baptism – through which justification is effectively signified, sealed, mediated and fulfilled – because baptism is also something irrevocable, unrepeatable and binding. Again and again. Moreover, the Spirit actualizes and re-presents Christ’s saving righteousness ‘again and again’, because the Spirit encounters, teaches and encourages us in a way that is new each morning. This ‘again and again’ aspect corresponds to our dying and rising with Christ as whole persons each day. More and more. Finally, the Holy Spirit actualizes and re-presents Christ’s saving righteousness by grace ‘more and more’, because over the course of time the Spirit makes us to increase and abound in love. The perfect righteousness that we acknowledge, that we receive, and in which we participate by the Spirit is a righteousness that gradually takes shape within us as we are drawn more and more by the Spirit into conformity with Christ.

The ‘once for all’ and the ‘again and again’ aspects each pertain especially (if not exclusively) to justification, because they concern the gift of Christ’s perfect

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righteousness as something given to faith freely and sufficiently apart from any merit or good works. The ‘more and more’ aspect pertains especially (if not exclusively) to sanctification, because it concerns the Spirit’s work of gradual renewal through which we learn to perform deeds of repentance, justice and love. All three aspects – and each in its own way – arise from the Spirit’s inestimable gift of making us one with Christ by grace through faith.

Justification and Sanctification The entire life of faith is a life of continual repentance. In repentance we turn again each day from the old self that was put to death with Christ (peccator) to the new self that has been raised up with him (iustus). As we turn from the old to the new, Christ sanctifies us through the gift of his Spirit. Sanctification takes place mainly in two ways: first through works of love and justice (vivificatio) and second through acts of confession, contrition and rectification (mortificatio) (Calvin). Through sanctification we are brought into conformity with Christ, who died on the cross for all in order that the faithful might live no longer for themselves but for him, and therefore for the world that he loves (2 Cor. 5:15). Sanctification like justification is entirely a gift of grace. The sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit in our lives belongs entirely to God and not to us. Grace moves us to act in such a way that we are brought into conformity with Christ. Being sanctified by Christ means becoming conformed to Christ on the basis of participation in Christ. Justification and sanctification are of equal significance. From one point of view, justification is the ground of which sanctification serves as the consequence. In this sense, the priority belongs to justification. At the same time, from another point of view, sanctification is the telos for which justification serves as the precondition. In this teleological sense, the emphasis falls on sanctification. Justification without sanctification would be a mere torso, while sanctification without justification would be an impossible dream.

Justification and Eternal Life Justification and eternal life are inseparable gifts. We do not have the one without the other. The gift of eternal life is given immediately to faith in union with Christ, in and with baptism, through the bestowal of Christ’s perfect righteousness, and so through the gift of our justification before God. Eternal life is not something that can be merited in any way, for, like our justification, it is solely the free gift of grace. Eternal life is given freely by grace through faith, in and with baptism, not only to those who in themselves are unworthy, but even more to those who have deserved God’s just condemnation (iustificatio impii).

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God rewards our works of love and acts of repentance as his gifts. Nevertheless, this reward pertains only to degrees of glory, and not to the free gift of eternal life itself (1 Cor. 15:40–1). Eternal life and justification are both given together, and given freely, by grace to faith. Eternal life does not need to be earned. We are not loved by God because we are worthy. We are worthy because God loves us (Luther). The motivation for doing good works, whether works of love or acts of repentance, is not to attain eternal life. What motivates good works is simply gratitude for the inestimable gift of God’s free and unmerited grace. Works of love are either gratuitous, seeking nothing in return, or else they are not works of love. Likewise, acts of repentance are either undertaken freely for their own sakes, in love and obedience to God, with no ulterior motives, or else they are not acts of repentance. Grace removes us from the realm of necessity and into the realm of freedom, from the realm of compulsion and fear into the realm of permission and joy. Human love and obedience in Christ are a free response to a grace freely given.

Assurance of Faith, Perseverance and Adoption Assurance of faith. The gifts and promises of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). The gift of faith includes the assurance of salvation so that faith without assurance would be deficient or confused. Assurance is not based primarily on anything in ourselves – whether faith, works or evidences of the Holy Spirit – but on Christ and the promises of God. If, on the one hand, the faithful were to dwell upon their sins as they persist after baptism, they would only despair. If, on the other hand, they were to place excessive confidence in their good works or their untroubled consciences, they might easily fall into the sins of pride and presumption. It is therefore incumbent upon the faithful, as part of their ongoing repentance and sanctification, that they should look continually away from themselves to Christ, clinging solely to his promises and to him. Perseverance of the faithful. The grace of justification includes the gift of perseverance. The perseverance of the faithful is grounded objectively in their eternal election in Christ and subjectively in their confidence that the God who has begun a good work in them will not fail to bring it to completion (Eph. 1:4, Phil. 1:6). If anyone should fall away from Christ into apostasy or dissolute living, making a shipwreck of their faith, it would seem that such a person did not have faith to begin with (1 Tim. 1:19). Lapses into sin, even serious sin, are not beyond the infinite mercy of Christ, whose grace restores the fallen by moving them to contrition and repentance. Those who persevere to the end, and who call upon the name of the Lord, will be saved, not by their own power but by the grace of God working within them (Matt. 24:13, Acts 2:21, Col. 1:10–2). Adoption as God’s children. By the grace of justification, God not only puts our sins behind us but also confers on us the blessing of adoption. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God by nature, many are made to be heirs as God’s sons and daughters by grace. Dying and rising with Christ,

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they receive, along with their justification, the gift of eternal life. Eternal life is the inheritance given freely to God’s children in Christ. Many Reformed themes developed in this essay are apparent in a remark once made by Calvin about adoption. With this remark, we may sum up much that has gone before. Calvin wrote: This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons [and daughters] of God with him; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness.11

Justification and Justice I conclude with a brief reflection about how justification is related to social justice, a theme of paramount importance to many Reformed churches today. Justification means the removal of injustice, the prevailing of mercy, the restitution of the sinner and the imperative to seek justice for the oppressed. It means that all our disorders are rectified and that the world is reconciled to God. It means that in the time between the times, the church, in love and witness to Christ, is called to stand against all social disorders, and for justice, freedom and peace in the world. Most especially, it means solidarity with the victims of social disorder and opposition to systems of social and economic injustice. It means the inclusion of the excluded, the acceptance of the rejected and the embracing of the humiliated and the marginalized. We cannot be conformed to Christ, whose heart was moved to look upon our sin as our misery, without seeking to alleviate the misery of those most in need at the bottom of society. To establish justice on earth for the poor, the excluded and the oppressed, God always stands on this and only on this side, always against the exalted and for the lowly, always against those who already have rights and for those from whom they are robbed and taken away (Barth).

11. Calvin, Institutes, III.4.17.

Chapter 9 L OVE A ND D E ATH : C H R ISTIAN E S C HATOLO GY IN AN I NTE R R E LIGIOU S C ON T E XT Werner G. Jeanrond

We human beings share with all other living beings that we are born and that we die. However, only we humans seem to be fully conscious about being conditioned by time, space and language and that in one way or another we must relate to these conditions of our existence. Some expressions of existential philosophy tended to attribute more significance to the fact that each human being must die her or his individual death than to the fact that we also have been born and thus invited to live together in this universe in some form of relationship or community with others. While it is part of the duties of philosophers and theologians to reflect on death, in Western culture death has disappeared more and more from public and collective consciousness. If at all, death is seen as an unfortunate event whose disruptive nature ought to be overcome as soon as possible by scientific means. Moreover, the ever more mediatised approach to all aspects of our existence presents us now with the illusion of having some sort of power over death: by remote control we can switch off the respective platform on which death is being staged, celebrated or painted in the most graphic terms before our eyes. Electronic games provide their players with multiple lives. Thus, death after all may not be as real as once feared. Today many people consider death to be an unfortunate accident or the result of medical failure, if they are willing at all to entertain the prospect of their own mortality – and not only of the mortality of their neighbours. Human attitudes to death have always been shaped by cultural, religious, social, political, economic and scientific patterns.1 In this sense, ‘death’ has a rich and varied history. For example, a thousand years ago, Christians prayed for the grace to be spared from sudden death so as to order their relationships with

1. See, for example, Marianne Gronemeyer, Das Leben als letzte Gelegenheit: Sicherheitsbedürfnisse und Zeitknappheit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993).

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others and with God once and for all at the end of their life, shortly before facing their creator and judge. Nowadays even Christians pray for the gift of a sudden death. Many people, following Epicurus, prefer to be absent when death becomes present.2 Our culture seems rather reluctant to deal with death. Nevertheless, there is an increasing tendency among contemporaries, including Christians, to organize their own funeral services in the most detailed fashion. This seems paradoxical, however only initially: deep down such people would like to exert some power even beyond their death and thus organize to some extent even how others affected by their departure ought to remember them. In contemporary Western culture one finds it hard to let go of life, to die. Moreover, the increasing concern, even among Christians, to defend the right to determine the hour of their own death when life threatens to become unbearable and to claim this to be a human right points to this ongoing power struggle. Who owns my death if not me? My death is mine. I am the master over my own death. At least that! Eberhard Jüngel’s celebrated book on death of 1971 culminates in the phrase: ‘The essential nature of death is relationlessness’.3 Jüngel invites the reader to consider the new relation which only God can create when we are unable to relate anymore at all: Death must be reduced to that limit which no man can set, for no man can abolish it. Death must be and must become what Jesus Christ has made it: the limit to man which is set by God alone, who, in our total powerlessness, never abuses his power. For when there is nothing we can do, he is there on our behalf. His purposes are wonderful and his power great.4

Benefiting from Jüngel’s insights into human death and the implications of these insights for a human life, I wish to discuss the relationship between death and love more closely, that is, between death, understood here as the total absence of relationships, and love and its potential for eternal relationships. I shall approach love and death in the light of the increasingly multireligious context of Christian theology today and offer some reflections on the potential of love to enable eternal relationships. In critical conversation with Jüngel, I argue that love prompts us to consider human death in general and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in particular within a much wider religious and interreligious horizon. 2. Eberhard Jüngel, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, trans. Iain Nicol and Ute Nicol (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1975), p.  10, quoting Epicurus: ‘Death, the most terrifying evil, does not concern us. For as long as we are, death is not there; when it is, we are not’. German original: Tod, Themen der Theologie 8, 3rd edn (Stuttgart/Berlin: Kreuz Verlag, 1973 [1971]), p. 18. 3. Ibid., p. 135 (Tod, p. 171). 4. Ibid., p. 136 (Tod, p. 171).

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Towards a Theology of Death We are indebted to Jüngel for his attempts to guide Christian thinking towards a more responsive and responsible theology of death for our time. In a number of publications, he has approached death as a mystery.5 We are able to talk about the process of dying and we can speak about the dead, yet we cannot grasp the phenomenon of death itself. Jüngel reminds us of the difference between a riddle and a mystery. The latter differs from a riddle by becoming more mysterious and more interesting the more one deepens oneself in its contemplation.6 Therefore, we ought to look at life rather than at what is dead in order to enter more deeply into the mystery of death and its impact on life.7 One of the difficulties when approaching the phenomenon of our death is our human inability to find an appropriate language. Our death remains foreign (fremd) to us, although it concerns us all so dramatically.8 Our death has the character of something that happens to us, something we experience passively.9 We don’t like to become victims for our death and to suffer the concomitant destruction of our lives. We may even go as far as to hate our death, as Jüngel puts it, when he presents us with a number of reflections on what such an appropriate hatred of death might entail.10 Jüngel reconsiders the mystery of death both in the light of the Christian experience with Jesus Christ and his painful death on the cross and in the light of the Pauline emphasis on the word of the cross (1 Cor 1:18).11 We experience our human death as the ultimate threat to all of our relationships  – our relationships to our fellow human beings, to the universe, to God and to our own emerging selves. Death implies the breakdown of all of these relationships at once. ‘Death is the entrance into, the event of total relationlessness’.12 Death can be the result not only of mere biological limitation, but also of a sinful drive towards relationlessness. Here, Jüngel moves his theology of death into the horizon of human sinfulness.13   5. In addition to Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, see especially, ‘Der Tod als Geheimnis des Lebens’, in Jüngel, Entsprechungen: Gott-Wahrheit-Mensch. Theologische Erörterungen II (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 327–54. All translations of this article are mine.   6. See Jüngel, ‘Der Tod als Geheimnis des Lebens’, p. 330.   7. Cf. ibid., p. 331.   8. Cf. ibid., p. 333.   9. Cf. ibid., p. 344. 10. Cf. ibid., pp. 349–51. 11. Jüngel, Death, p. 28 (Tod, p. 41) – All biblical citations are taken from The Holy Bible. NRSV (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 12. Jüngel, ‘Der Tod als Geheimnis des Lebens’, p. 340. Ibid: ‘The drive into relationlessness is the drive towards death. And death itself is the result of this drive into relationlessness: the occasion in which even the last relationship collapses – my relationship with my own self ’. 13. Ibid., pp. 340–1.

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Who would not wish to agree with Jüngel that any sinful drive towards relationlessness leads to some form of death? Hence, it seems wise to distinguish between death as a result of sin and death as the biological or natural end of our life in order to appreciate better the wider spectrum of the phenomenon of death – social death, psychological death, political death, media death and biological death. All forms of death threaten the foundations of human life, but not all have been ordained by God.14 Before entering into a closer discussion with Jüngel’s christological approach to human death, it might be advisable to dwell a bit longer on the phenomenon of death as one of the boundaries of human life willed and created by God. Human life is more than mere life on its way to death, Sein zum Tode (Martin Heidegger); it is life empowered to become a life in relationship precisely because of its boundaries. Our life is a life which does not owe itself to itself.15 It comes to us as ‘given’ (or ‘gift’) and as a challenge, at times, even as a burden. Human life has a beginning and an end, and it would be inappropriate to consider its potential only from the perspective of its ending, from death, and not from the perspective of its beginning, from birth. Both birth and death ultimately remain mysteries to us, yet both present themselves as ‘gifts’. These ‘gifts’ include clear boundaries and an invitation at once: an invitation to enter into the network of relationships available to us here and now, a network which is dynamic and temporal; it will come to an end in our death. Hence, assessing the possibility and the development of this dynamic network of relationships into which we are born opens up the potential of love. ‘For love is strong as death’ (Song of Solomon 8:6). If death represents the ultimate breakdown of our human network of relationships, and love represents the God-given potential of relationality, then we need to explore more closely how love and death relate to each other.

Towards a Theology of Love It is not easy to talk about love in our time when discourses on love have been reduced so much to the level of romanticizing and sentimentalizing. However, when we attempt to free our perspective on love from the constraints of mere emotion, mere feeling and mere paradise-like sentiments in order to appreciate the work of love, that is, the work of relating to the other as other with respect, 14. For a more detailed discussion of Christian approaches to death from the perspective of sin and original sin, see Werner G. Jeanrond, Call and Response: The Challenge of Christian Life (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan and New York: Crossroad, 1995), pp. 51–9. 15. See also Jüngel, ‘Recht auf Leben – Recht auf Sterben’, in Entsprechungen, pp. 322–26, here p. 323: ‘The humanity of the human life has its criterion in the freedom through which human beings affirm their own affirmation through God as a blessing which limits them. The human being is only a human being within limits’ (my translation).

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attention and the desire to enter into a mutually challenging union with others, then we might be able to discover the transformative potential of love. The other to whom I am invited to relate may be the human other, God the radical other or even the otherness of my own emerging self. Exploring the genuine otherness of the other is not necessarily a happy experience. Moreover, as Thomas Aquinas reminds us, we must not confuse loving with liking, for the otherness we see in love we may not really always like. Thus, nobody can force us to like our enemies. The commandment to love them aims at a much deeper encounter with otherness. In trying to love our enemies, we make the effort to relate to them beyond what they have done to us; we make the effort to relate to their own divine vocation as human beings. Like us they carry God’s image. Their human dignity transcends their failures and sins.16 Thus, loving the other relates more deeply to the divinely ordained dignity of the other, to the mystery of the other. The commandment to love the other, including the mysterious self as other, opens a new horizon for human relationship. The Christian gospels confirm the biblical commandment to love as well as the biblical insights into the potential of love. The gospels do not introduce a different or new kind of love; rather they show how Jesus of Nazareth remained utterly faithful to this challenge of love throughout his life, ministry, death and resurrection.17 Jesus remained totally committed to love and in this way totally at one with God’s own nature, so concisely described in 1 John as love (1 Jn 4:8 and 16). Therefore, in the way Jesus related to his fellow humans, friends and foes alike, he powerfully explored the depth of love and its transformative potential for humankind – beyond, though never apart from his own Jewish people and religious tradition. It must be one of the most tragic misunderstandings of Christian theology ever to reduce this God-given virtue of love to an inner Christian doctrine. When, for instance, Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Anders Nygren and Eberhard Jüngel (however differently) speak of ‘Christian love’, they are reducing the power of love to a merely Christian horizon instead of appreciating the capacity of all genuine love to enlarge any human horizon.18 However, once we have freed love again from the status of a right doctrine to the appreciation of a transformative praxis in which the mystery of the human being and of God can be seriously explored, love will be empowered afresh to demonstrate its true potential to change all relationships for the better. Love thus approached becomes significant for all occasions of human encounter and relationships. It also precedes interreligious dialogue by inviting people of different religious traditions to relate to each other in a mutually respectful search for the best point of entry into an ever deeper exploration of the human and divine 16. Cf. Werner G. Jeanrond, A Theology of Love (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), p. 80. 17. Cf. ibid., pp. 29–30. 18. See my discussions of these and other theologians of ‘Christian love’ in the respective sections of A Theology of Love.

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mystery.19 A deepened praxis of love may well be the result of an actual encounter between people from different religions and between their mutually constructive and critical understanding of the other’s as well as their own traditions. Here, a hermeneutics of love is needed. Hence, I do not wish to limit interreligious hermeneutics only to the dialogue between well-defined traditions, but to take this reflection further into the direction of a more radical exploration of human possibilities of meeting self and other. Thus, it is unnecessary to negotiate any multireligious doctrine of love prior to the actual encounter and ensuing praxis of love. Rather accepting the challenge of love will steer ecumenical and interreligious meetings and deliberations into a very different and, I argue, much more promising horizon. However, the reflection on the actual and possible praxis of love may well help to support any critical and self-critical exploration of love. Love is the God-given horizon through which people, cultures and religious traditions can be encountered, understood, explored, assessed and transformed. Criteria of truth within and between traditions must, of course, be developed, however not without reference to human communication and love, but on the basis of both.20 A critical and self-critical hermeneutics of love might be able to liberate approaches to religion and religious self and otherness from constructing religious identities at the expense of religious others, at times assumed to be totally other and for an in-depth encounter and relational exploration of a shared conversation of love. In loving conversations, differences do not pose a threat, but open new possibilities. Differences and even conflicts are the very occasions with which love deals and through which love can flourish. Love does not need harmony, but mutual understanding of otherness. Love cannot wait until the eschaton when all differences are overcome – if indeed they would need to be overcome at all. Rather love is the eschatological force par excellence and this insight encourages us to face real difference and conflict without fear.21

Towards a Theology of Love and Death Jüngel has retrieved the Old Testament insight into the important difference between death as the natural end of our life, on the one hand, and untimely death as a curse, on the other.22 Moreover, as we have seen earlier, he has reminded us of the biblical view of the possible relationship between death and sin. ‘Sin drives us into relationlessness. It renders us relationless. Death now is the result of this drive 19. Werner G. Jeanrond, ‘Toward an Interreligious Hermeneutics of Love’, in Interreligious Hermeneutics, ed. Catherine Cornille and Christopher Conway, Interreligious Dialogue Series, vol. 2 (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010), pp. 44–60. 20. Ibid., pp. 59–60. 21. Cf. ibid., p. 60. 22. Jüngel, Death, p. 76 (Tod, p. 97).

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toward relationlessness. From the anthropological point of view then, death to this extent is not merely and not primarily an event at life’s end; rather it is constantly present as an active possibility in this drive toward relationlessness’.23 Therefore, with regard to Old Testament approaches to death, Jüngel distinguishes between two concepts of death: a natural death that could be the fulfilment of a successful life in God’s presence and a hopeless death marked by the absence of relationships and the absence of God.24 In contrast to Old Testament approaches to death, Jüngel sees in the history of Jesus Christ a new struggle with death, namely God’s own struggle with death. According to the New Testament, ‘what death is all about is something which is decided by the death of Jesus Christ. In turn, what was decided in the death of Jesus Christ is disclosed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’.25 Jüngel offers an in-depth meditation on the presence of God in Jesus of Nazareth’s life, death and resurrection. ‘In surrendering himself as a man to men Jesus demonstrated the nearness of God. Jesus’ conduct no less than his proclamation was a parable of God’s nearness’.26 Victory over death was won ‘when God identified himself with the dead Jesus’.27 Here, out of the midst of the earthly relationlessness of death there emerges a new relationship between God and human beings.28 Jüngel is right to identify this new divine beginning as intimately related to God’s very being as love. ‘When all relationships have been broken, only love can create new ones’.29 Thus, the resurrection of Jesus is the result of God’s creative and transformative love. In the death of Jesus Christ, God has revealed the extent of his love for each and every human being.30 The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ represent for Jüngel a radically new point of departure: ‘a beginning out of nothing not only as it was in the beginning (Gen 1:1), but a new beginning out of the destructive nothingness of death, a new beginning in the midst of that total relationlessness, which must count as the result of a self-destructing life. Christian faith proclaims this new beginning as resurrection from the dead’.31 But is it right to speak in this context of a new relationship between God and his creation? Is not rather the resurrection of Jesus Christ a wonderful act of God who is love and who has been revealing his loving attention to humanity through Israel’s history and beyond all along? Jüngel is certainly right in arguing that love alone can open new relationships where all relationships have been ended 23. Ibid, p. 78, translation amended (Tod, p. 99). 24. Cf. ibid., p. 79 (Tod, p. 101). 25. Ibid., p. 81 (Tod, p. 104). 26. Ibid, p. 100, translation amended (Tod, p. 127). Emphasis in original. 27. Ibid., p. 109 (Tod, p. 138). 28. Ibid. (Tod, p. 139). 29. Ibid., p. 110 (Tod, p. 139). 30. Cf. Jüngel, ‘Der Tod als Geheimnis des Lebens’, p. 352. 31. Ibid., p. 347.

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or broken down. God, who is love, loves endlessly so that the resurrection of his faithful servant Jesus Christ flows consistently out of this love. Moreover, the incarnation of God in Christ is such a mysterious manifestation of God’s love as is God’s continuing presence in the Spirit. However, Jüngel tries to construct christological newness in the revelation of God’s love which conflicts with the testimony to God’s love and its known and yet unknown expressions throughout the history of creation and the particular history and faith of Israel. As I have shown elsewhere, Jüngel’s theology of love remains subordinated to his christological doctrine and does not account for the broader and pluralistic spectrum of biblical reflections on love.32 Rather it centres on the Johannine community’s identification of God and love without discussing this particular community’s obsession with Christ’s sacrificial self-giving as the ultimate qualification of authentic love. Jüngel does not enter into the discussion of selfhood, subjectivity, justice and mutuality. Who is this human self that is to grow into self-giving or self-surrender? How do self-relationality and self-giving relate? Is the ideal of human love to correspond to divine love in terms of a full self-giving (kenosis)?33 These questions lead us back to christology and particularly to Jüngel’s approach to the death of Jesus Christ. Jüngel is, of course, right in highlighting that in the Christ-event God’s love is made manifest in a powerful way. But God’s love is not new, rather this incarnate expression adds significantly to the human insight and faith in the God who is love. This connection between the manifold expressions of God’s love is strangely absent in Jüngel’s theology. The Jewish roots of any Christian concept of love are cut off here. Also, approaches to love in other (religious) traditions never enter Jüngel’s theological focus.34 Nor do the created universe and its ecological challenges come into Jüngel’s thinking on the extent of love in any significant way.35 However, we ought to be grateful to Jüngel’s reminder of how closely love and death are related and pursue this trajectory with a somewhat different appreciation 32. Jeanrond, A Theology of Love, p. 131. 33. Cf. ibid. See in this context also the critical comments by John B. Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to his Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1986]), pp. 90–2. 34. Cf. ibid., p. 132. 35. Cf. the perceptive comment by George Newlands, ‘The Love of God and the Future of Theology: A Personal Engagement with Jüngel’s Work’, in The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in His Sixtieth Year, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), pp. 190–205, here p. 204: ‘Jüngel’s profound emphasis on the freedom of the Christian, based on Luther’s understanding of justification by faith, needs to be widened and applied directly to the whole created order as a reminder of the unconditional love of God which undergirds and invites to fulfilment all that is. This is not enthusiasm but eschatological realism. The Reformation stress on justification needs to be directed outwards towards the service of others’.

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of both otherness and radical otherness even in a Christian praxis of love. Thus, although love is not Christian, Christian discipleship of Jesus will always be committed to the gift and challenges of love. That commitment, however, obliges Christian disciples to take the challenge of otherness and of God’s radical otherness very seriously indeed. Rather than blindly following Jesus or copying his particular way of love, his disciples must discern always afresh what the course of love, critically and self-critically, might entail in their situation. Hence, christology at best is a reflection on God’s love, but God’s love is never exhausted by christology.36

Love and Death in an Age of Interreligious Encounter The Johannine community saw very clearly the interconnection between love for the brothers (and sisters) of this particular community, on the one hand, and love for God, on the other hand. However, their overall inward-looking mentality defined the horizon of their love in very narrow terms with regard to their own embattled group (1 Jn 4:20–1). Today, however, we should have learned that all men, women and children are our brothers and sisters. The horizon of our love has been enlarged at the same time as the world has become a global village for us. All human beings are our neighbours.37 We cannot face up to God’s radical otherness if we are not prepared to face up to the respective otherness of women, men and children. Remaining faithful to the biblical love commandment leads the Christian disciple unavoidably into the much wider network of human communities in and beyond any narrowly defined Christian horizon or identity construction. The works of love today comprise attention to, respect for and struggle with the otherness of all of our neighbours irrespective of traditional doctrinal exclusions. Even in this respect, Jesus of Nazareth left us with some clear markers and a lively encouragement to embark on the eschatological course of love (e.g. Lk. 10:25–37). Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then, does not offer an invitation to see a new love of God, rather it witnesses to God’s love where human destruction has seen only death and the breakdown of all relationships. God’s love created new life in this son of God according to God’s measure: beyond our experiences of space, time and language. Jesus Christ was resurrected into God’s eternity  – into the divine network of eternal relations, that is, relations that no longer can break down. 36. For Jüngel, christology provides the exclusive perspective on God’s love. See Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans and Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983), p. 329. 37. This is far from arguing for an uncritical appreciation of globalization. For a critical discussion, see, among others, Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).

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Empowered by this faith in God’s eternal love relations, Christians can well embark on a praxis of love that reaches out to all the arenas of death in our universe: war, oppression, exploitation, slavery, illness, neglect, discrimination, suffering of all kinds, hunger and so on.

The Depth of Death and the Intensity of Love Time is the measure of human life and eternity is the measure of divine love. Through participating in the divinely inspired praxis of love, we human beings are invited to participate in God’s eternal relations – however, on God’s terms. Jüngel has stressed the importance of such realism about human death when he writes that the importance of the fact of the uniqueness of each human being’s life should not be misunderstood. We should not imagine that because of this our life is of infinite importance or that for the same reason our life can never end. The fact that it is a moment of God’s history with all human beings makes it of unique importance to the infinite God. But that our life is regarded as uniquely important by the infinite God gives us no reason to conclude that our life is of infinite importance or indeed that human life can never end.38 Our human life is limited. Even the experience of being related to God, the radical other, does not open a way out of our lives which are limited by space, time and language. We cannot transcend these conditions in the sense of overcoming them as long as we live. Moreover, removing the limitations of human life would involve the dissolution of human personhood.39 We can, however, transcend them in the sense of seeing our groundedness in the love of God  – but precisely as human beings and not as God. This means that our death is final. ‘It is as finite that man’s finite life is made eternal. Not by endless extension – there is no immortality of the soul – but through participation in the very life of God. Our life is hidden in his life’.40 Jüngel therefore recommends accepting human death as what it is: our natural boundary which no human being can remove.41 Moreover, he calls for protest against any attempt to claim the right to set temporal limits to human life. ‘No human being, no institution, no legal administration has the right to mark out the temporal boundaries of the finite life of human beings. The Christian has the duty to oppose actively every effort to gain control of death’.42 Death has to be taken at what it does: it terminates all human relationships, all human power, all human strategies. Yet, precisely because of its nature of limiting everything we are and do, it opens the perspective of God’s radical love. 38. Death, pp. 118–9, translation amended (Tod, p. 149). Emphasis in original. 39. Cf. ibid., p. 119 (Tod, pp. 150–1). 40. Ibid., p. 120 (Tod, p. 152). Emphasis in original. 41. Cf. ibid., p. 136 (Tod, p. 171). 42. Ibid., p. 133, translation amended (Tod, p. 168). Emphasis original.

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However, we need to go beyond Jüngel’s perspective on the death and love of the individual Christian and retrieve the horizon of larger bodies of love. Of course, it is true that nobody can love in my place. There is no vicarious love. But much grace and help is needed so that I can remain faithful in committed and mutual love to my partner, my family, my friends, my communities and to the body of Christ and through this body to God and God’s universal project of creation and reconciliation. My love is always already part of this universal love story initiated by God. As part of the transformative eschatological force, every love is dialectically related to this larger development. It requires much prayer and contemplation to stay on course. The love that makes our love possible has also inspired the development of structures and institutions of love for the purpose of supporting this love.43 Our love benefits from these structures and, at the same time, contributes to their ongoing transformation. Every occasion of love thus has both a personal and a communal dimension.44 Our post-modern Western culture has concentrated on the love of the person and often neglected the communal dimension of love. This imbalance must be corrected and more adequate Christian approaches to a culture of love ought to be developed with a view of struggling more intimately with the wider religious and secular challenges of otherness. Finally, if we are serious about our desire to love God, the radical other, ever more intimately, this desire will direct us to all the women, men and children whom God intimately loves and to God’s universal creative and reconciling project. Freed to respect death for what it is, we can dedicate ourselves fully to the challenge of mutual and transformative love and thus enter ever more deeply into the mystery of God’s eternal project as long as we are alive.

43. For a detailed discussion of institutions of love see Jeanrond, A Theology of Love, pp. 173–204. 44. The communal dimension of love remains underdeveloped in Jüngel’s theology. See Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), p. 174.

Chapter 10 T HE R E SUR R E CTION AS D IV I N E O PE N N E SS Piotr J. Małysz

The Cross and the Resurrection Eberhard Jüngel’s theology, broad as it is in its interests and scope of engagement, is an uncompromisingly staurocentric theology. Its unapologetic focus on the cross is constituted by an intersection of four sets of concerns. The first centres on the fate of the thought of God, of the very possibility of thinking God, within the trajectory of Western metaphysics, particularly in modernity. Here the decisive watershed, Jüngel argues, was Descartes’s discovery of a self-grounding subject. Thereafter, the metaphysical, theistic notion of God came increasingly under suspicion. On the one hand, it was shown to be little more than an idea reflective of the architectonic of human rationality; on the other, given the explanatory capacity of modern science, it became progressively irrelevant, an unnecessary hypothesis (Laplace). The theistic trajectory culminated, in the philosophy of Kant and Fichte, in the removal of God beyond all thought, ostensibly for the sake of God.1 A well-intentioned theism thus performed a salto mortale and became indistinguishable from its opposite, atheism. Through a retrieval of Hegel and Bonhoeffer, Jüngel looks to the cross as the event of God’s coming to speech through identification with the crucified Jesus of Nazareth.2 The second tributary that feeds into Jüngel’s staurocentric focus is his indebtedness to the thought of Martin Luther, who already at the dawn of the Reformation warned against the treacherousness of attempting to discern ‘the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible’ in world events and structures. Luther insisted

1. Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983), pp.  105–52; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt: Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977), pp. 138–203. 2. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 55–104; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, pp. 72–137.

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instead that ‘the visible and manifest things of God must rather be seen through suffering and the cross’.3 But for Jüngel, more than polemic and doctrinal allegiance are at play. He also points to the cross as the locale which attests to the very identity of God, as this identity is articulated in the church’s scriptures: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). In the death of Jesus of Nazareth, God deploys His divine self by identifying with the Crucified One. In this identification God, as Father, comes to stand over against God the Crucified One in such a manner that their mutual dissimilarity is overcome by God the Spirit, binding together the Father and his human – yet because of this bond also divine – Son.4 This descent of God into the depths of human mortality is a confirmation and execution of His divinity in which God remains true to Himself. The importance of this scripture-centred understanding of God’s identity becomes clear in light of the problematic trajectory of modern theism. As an event of God’s love, the cross makes it impossible to separate God’s essence from God’s existence. What the cross pre-empts, therefore, is the Cartesian insertion of the thinking ego between the humanly posited divine essence and the likewise humanly adjudicated divine existence. The cross not only contradicts the metaphysical idea of God, but also, as the self-expression of God in act, subverts any kind of notion of a self-evident idea of God. The cross is the event of divine love in which God Himself articulates God’s own vigorously personal being. The fourth, and most important, source of the centrality of the cross in Jüngel’s theology (already alluded to) is the early Christian proclamation (kerygma) of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God. Now, to the early Christian kerygma belongs not only the cross but also the resurrection of the Crucified One. The resurrection is in fact the sine qua non of the kerygma: Jesus, the proclaimer of the impending reign of God, becomes the one proclaimed as the inauguration of God’s eschatological reign.5 Jüngel recognizes this essential role of the resurrection in Christian proclamation and its indispensability to any theology of the cross. ‘Jesus’s death and God’s resurrection of Jesus from the dead’ are ‘the event [singular] apart from which the entire New Testament would never have been written’.6 In fact, the resurrection is, for Jüngel, the christologically richer 3. Martin Luther, ‘Heidelberg Disputation’ (1518), LW 31, pp.  52–3; cf. WA 1, pp. 361–2. Compare to Luther’s statement in The Bondage of the Will (1525): ‘God so orders this corporeal world in its external affairs that if you respect and follow the judgment of human reason, you are bound to say either that there is no God or that God is unjust’ (LW 33, p. 291; cf. WA 18, p. 784). 4. See Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 374; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p.  513. And further: ‘In unity with the man Jesus, God differentiates himself from himself, without ceasing to be the one God in this self-differentiation’ (idem, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 220; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 300). 5. For an overview which emphasizes the inalienable cosmic dimension of Jesus’s resurrection in the witness of the New Testament, see Stefan Alkier, The Reality of the Resurrection, trans. Leroy A. Huizenga (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013). 6. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 314; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 430.

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category which ‘discovers its own origin in the Christological poverty of the earthly existence of Jesus’.7 This means, on the one hand, the resurrection is the condition of the proclamation of the cross as the event of God’s love, and hence as an event of enduring significance which, precisely on account of the resurrection, becomes the ground of faith. By contrast, the life of Jesus, even his death, though necessary to the Easter proclamation, ‘would basically not affect faith in God if God himself had not come to the world in this human life and death’. It is ‘the Easter confession . . . [which] presupposes both the end of this man’s life and the new way in which he is present’, in that, as an expression of faith, ‘it sees God coming to the world in the life and death of this man’. The resurrection gives christological significance to the life of Jesus. On the other hand, what is known of Jesus’s historical existence is still ‘only a scanty remainder of his life’. Yet it has given rise to ‘a new literary genre about him alone which sees its role to be that of portraying the whole of his historical existence: the gospels’.8 From the perspective of the impact of the risen Christ, the gospels seek not so much ‘to say everything about him’, as ‘to understand him as a unity. . . . The important point was to show that the whole of his existence, by which certainty of salvation was effected, is a saving event’.9 It is thus out of the wealth of the resurrection that Jesus’s existence is framed not only with an end but also with a beginning. The resurrection gives unity, texture and meaning to Jesus’s life. For Jüngel, the resurrection is inextricably bound with the event of the cross and is the basis of faith that God has decisively come to the world in Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it is not without impact on the identity of God. The resurrection is not a mere vindication by God of the unjustly crucified proclaimer of God’s coming justice, nor is it merely the announcement of a new eschatological humanity, already available in the being of Jesus. If the event of the cross is indeed God’s execution and hence self-disclosure of God’s being, then the resurrection of the Crucified One by the Father not only gives eternal significance to his death but also makes his death of eternal significance for the being of God.10 The goal of the following is to examine this aspect of the resurrection in Jüngel’s theology in light of this theology’s staurocentric commitment. I will argue, in particular, that the resurrection is what, given   7. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 349; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 479.   8. Jüngel, ‘The Effectiveness of Christ Withdrawn: On the Process of Historical Understanding as an Introduction to Christology’, Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays I, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), p. 227.   9. Jüngel, ‘The Effectiveness of Christ Withdrawn’, p. 228. 10. In light of the staurocentric commitments outlined earlier, especially the dead-ended trajectory of Western theism, Jüngel rejects the concept of divine absoluteness which has dominated also Christian theology thus reducing the thought ‘of the christological identity of God with the crucified Jesus [as] at best . . . only . . . a paradox which bursts all thought apart’ (Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 40; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 51).

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Jüngel’s view of love, constitutes divine openness to the new humanity, to human agency in correspondence to God.

The Cross as the Event of Divine Love In the identification of God with the crucified Jesus, as we have indicated, God determines and defines His being. ‘This eternally new relationship of God to God is called, christologically, resurrection from the dead, and is ontologically the being of love itself ’.11 This very dense statement requires some explication. I have argued elsewhere that Jüngel’s location of God’s self-determination  – as the Father loving the Son in the bond of the Holy Spirit – may not be taken to mean that God constitutes God’s self as triune only at the cross. God’s being (Jüngel strongly implies, without quite developing it) is tri-polar in an eternally primordial way, though this tri-polarity can be established noetically, as God’s originary triunity, from the event of God’s revelation alone. It has the form of the Spirit’s procession from the Father but only through the Son. Only this kind of being, sufficient, yet primordially oriented towards otherness, can renew humanity. What is the renewed humanity? It is humanity that has been ‘elementally interrupted’ and thus brought into correspondence with God.12 When faith grasps God-in-Christ, one is, as it were, taken out of oneself and hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). This explodes one’s compulsive drive towards oneself, manifested in the attempt to secure one’s vulnerable self from the world and simultaneously to secure the world for one’s vulnerable self. The human in correspondence to God is thus also a tri-polar being: freed from the triviality and tyranny of a mere self-relation, one looks at one’s own actions and experiences from the vantage point of humanity’s eschatological rest in God. This opens up hitherto unforeseen possibilities, in that one’s present is no longer determined by the causal chain of past actions, but becomes open to the future of God. All this is to say that what God’s act in the cross gives rise to is, therefore, not divine triunity but a new set of trinitarian relations.13 In this eternally new set of relations, God discloses His concern for humanity, a concern for which He has 11. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 374; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 513 (emphasis added). 12. For example, ‘Value-Free Truth: The Christian Experience of Truth in the Struggle Against the “Tyranny of Values”’, Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 206. 13. Piotr J. Małysz, Trinity, Freedom, and Love: An Engagement with the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 18 (London: T&T Clark/ Continuum, 2012). I argue that only by positing this new set of trinitarian relations can Jüngel’s doctrine of God be rescued from incoherence, given that he seeks to do justice, on the one hand, to divine spontaneity and creativity, and on the other hand, to God’s love as a relation of reciprocity. More on this later.

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determined Himself in His very being. He simultaneously discloses humanity, which He has determined to be of eternal significance for Himself. These divine relations, as eternally new, exist simultaneously alongside the eternally originary tri-polarity, which they disclose. In His tri-polarity, God is an eternally creative being. To God alone belongs the power to initiate, to bring the new. God not only does so where a reverberating, mind-numbing triviality is concerned, manifested in actions that only live up to, or live down, other actions but also brings the new into nothingness, which extinguishes even the deadly selfrelation. To God’s originary tri-polarity belongs the power to prevail over death by being able to enclose it within God’s own being and to turn it into perishability that makes room into the constantly new and creative possibilities that flow from the divine being.14 What then is manifested and takes place in God’s realization (Vollziehung)15 of His originary triunity in the event of the cross, which manifests an eternally new relation of God to God? Ontologically, as we have already noted, this is ‘the being of love itself ’. ‘To think God as love is the task of theology’, Jüngel insists.16 Now, to affirm that God is love can be done only on the basis of the New Testament proclamation of the cross. Yet, importantly, God’s identification with the dead man Jesus discloses that God’s ‘being as subject in a trinitarian way’17 coincides with what humans know as the essence of love. More than that, it gives further specificity to our essential understanding, particularly when we consider that, while humans love, God is love. Jüngel warns that theology, in its task of thinking God as love, must, on the one hand, make sure that the essence of love is preserved: as love is predicated of God, it ‘may not contradict what people experience as love’.18 On the other hand, even in this coincidence and especially because of it, it is necessary to distinguish between the event of God’s love and human love, with a view to doing justice to God’s ontological subjectivity. Both in his discussion of love as such, and in his interpretation of the kerygma, Jüngel is careful to point out not only selflessness but also other regard where those concern the beloved; he is especially interested in the subject of love, God. Where the lover is concerned, Jüngel observes, love is not wholly 14. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 184–225; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, pp. 248–306. 15. ‘In this existence of God with the man Jesus, the divine being realizes itself [vollzieht sich]’ (Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 191, translation altered; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 259). 16. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 315; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 430. 17. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 316; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 433. 18. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 315; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 431.

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devoid of a relation to oneself. But it is a self-relation of a particular sort. Love involves both estrangement from, and newness to, oneself. As one relates to the beloved, one surrenders oneself to the beloved, and receives one’s being from the beloved – and only in this way does one relate to oneself. ‘I am united with myself in a new way in that . . . the beloved Thou, coming closer to me than I am able to be to myself, brings me close to myself in a new way’, asserts Jüngel.19 Significantly enough, when Jüngel speaks of the beloved coming closer to me than I am able to come to myself, this is not a mere trope. He suggests rather that love inevitably involves a self-differentiation – not only in the case of God but also in humans. ‘Self-differentiation as the implication of identification with another is . . . the expression of the fact that that other profoundly defines my own being from outside of myself. That other one steps between me and me, so to speak’.20 Love consists in allowing room for the other – for the beloved – within one’s own being. All this can be summarized up in Jüngel’s structural, formal definition of love ‘as a still greater selflessness in the midst of a great (and justifiably so) self-relatedness, and accordingly as a self-relation that, in freedom over itself, goes out of itself, shares itself and gifts itself ’.21 In material terms, love, declares Jüngel, is ‘the event of the unity of life and death for the sake of life’.22 It is important to consider what Jüngel means by death here. In anthropological terms, death has to do with the radical change that love brings with itself, a complete change of one’s way of being-in-the-world. In love one relates to the beloved, in order unreservedly to give oneself, more than that, to surrender oneself to the beloved Thou. One thus dies to one’s old self.23 One receives oneself, as we have observed, as a new, self-differentiated being: one is ‘constituted from outside the self ’.24 But, crucially, the dimension of death seems to linger. There is an apparent vulnerability that comes with love as such: ‘The existence from the other is an existence which is burdened with the potential of [the lover’s] own nonbeing’.25 19. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 324; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 444. 20. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 363; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 498. 21. ‘Das Verhältnis von »ökonomischer« und »immanenter« Trinität’, Eberhard Jüngel, Entsprechungen: Gott  – Wahrheit  – Mensch. Theologische Erörterungen II, p.  3. Auflage um Register erweitert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), p. 270. See also Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 317; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 434. 22. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 317; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 434. 23. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 323; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 442. 24. Eberhard Jüngel, The Freedom of a Christian: Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988), p. 61. 25. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 324; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 443.

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In the case of God, this ontological being of love is what, according to Jüngel, is deepened christologically and referred to as resurrection from the dead. The identification of God with the crucified Jesus  – disclosed as God’s eternal selfdetermination in the resurrection of the Crucified One – constitutes the loving openness of God to the other, with all the radicalness that love entails. But is it really as radical as Jüngel hopes? To be sure, already where Jesus is concerned, one may speak of God’s openness to having His being expressed by the other. The beloved, when embraced, impacts the being of God in God’s triune selfdifferentiation. God thus makes room for death itself in His triune being.26 But in the end, it is not God who receives His being in vulnerable openness to the other. Rather, it is the vulnerable other on whom being is bestowed. ‘[T]he eschatological event of the identification of God with the Crucified One’ had retroactive ontic effects: ‘it became an integral part of the life of Jesus as it was lived’. In other words, Jesus was made into who he had always been: the Son of God.27 The resurrection then ascribed eternal future to Jesus’s life as a whole.28 ‘Jesus is exalted and revealed as Lord’.29 All this shows Jüngel’s concern to demonstrate the spontaneity and creativity of God’s being. God is able to involve Himself with the utter lovelessness of a particular man, with the very inimical force – nothingness – that has rendered this man loveless beyond all hope. In that desperate situation, against all odds, divine love prevails over death. Still, it must be pointed out that, as Jüngel develops it, God’s identification with Jesus remains an exclusive self-determination. At no point does God’s existence seem like an ‘existence from the other . . . burdened with the potential of [God’s] own nonbeing’, whereby ‘the other profoundly defines [God’s] own being from outside of [God’s] self ’. All this despite the fact that Jüngel does wish to do justice, in addition to God’s creative initiative, also to the essence of love, which, he claims, God’s historical self-determination exhibits. He actually appears to speak of God’s death with the full force that notion has in the essential definition of love. He posits a self-surrender (Selbstpreisgabe), even a self-sacrifice (Selbsthingabe) on God’s part.30 God, he writes, ‘allowed the continuity of his own life to be interrupted through the death of Jesus Christ. 26. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 364; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 498. 27. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 302; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 413. Jüngel adopts the notion of a retroactive, eschatologically grounded ontology from Ernst Fuchs and Wolfhart Pannenberg (see Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 363; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, pp. 497–8). 28. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 301; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 441. 29. Jüngel, ‘Humanity in Correspondence to God: Remarks on the Image of God as a Basic Concept in Theological Anthropology’, in Theological Essays I, p. 143. 30. Jüngel, ‘Value-Free Truth’, p. 209. In God as the Mystery of the World, Jüngel speaks also of God’s ‘Dahingabe’ (p. 369; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 505).

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For the cross of Jesus Christ is that event through which the living and eternally alive God accepted death for himself ’.31 Although Jüngel is generally reluctant to use the notion of risk, especially when it is applied to God’s being,32 Jüngel does, nonetheless, affirm it. He writes: ‘God . . . lets himself be interrupted in an elemental way by humanity threatened by the possibility of non-being . . . risks himself for them [sich  .  .  .  für diesen Menschen einsetzt]’.33 But this remains conceptually undeveloped and, in consequence, Jüngel’s exposition depicts God’s love as by all means relational, but it is doubtful whether this relation is one of ‘a still greater selflessness in the midst of a great (and justifiably so) selfrelatedness’, or rather of a still greater self-relatedness in the midst of a great selflessness.

The Beloved Community The earlier conclusion is far from a foregone one, however, if we think again through the foundations of Jüngel’s theology of the cross. God identifies God’s self with Jesus only in Jesus’s death, in order to do justice to the otherness of the other, to the other’s human agency.34 This is well and good. Now, the fact that Jesus is dead and only in his death raised, as the crucified Son of God, into the livingness of God does seems, on the face of it, to foreclose the possibility of God’s receiving Himself from the other. This, however, need not follow. The resurrection of the Crucified One eternalizes the new set of trinitarian relations and thus establishes divine openness to the other as belonging eternally to God’s self-determination. Who is this other? ‘In God the Son, God has now expressed himself in such a way that he has become speakable for us’, writes Jüngel with a somewhat Athanasian flavour.35 For Athanasius, one of the purposes of the incarnation, of God’s coming in human flesh, is to enable the grasping of God by means of the senses and thus to make possible the knowledge of God by humans, who have, as it were, tumbled 31. Jüngel, ‘The Truth of Life: Observations on Truth as the Interruption of the Continuity of Life’, Creation, Christ, and Culture: Studies in Honour of T. F. Torrance, ed. Richard W. A. McKinney (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976), pp. 235–6. 32. Hans Jonas speaks of ‘an endangered God, a God who runs a risk’ (‘The Concept of God after Auschwitz’, JR 67:1 [January 1987], p. 8). For Jüngel’s trinitarian, anti-kenotic critique, see ‘Gottes ursprüngliches Anfangen’, Eberhard Jüngel, Wertlose Wahrheit. Zur Identität und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens. Theologische Erörterungen III, 2. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), p. 157. 33. Jüngel, ‘Value-Free Truth’, p. 209 (emphasis added). 34. This is in contradistinction to Karl Barth’s trinitarian understanding of Jesus; see Małysz, Trinity, Freedom, and Love, pp. 69–81. 35. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 386; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 530.

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down into the depths of the sensory world and lost their original vision of their Creator.36 Jüngel expresses very much the same thought from a language-centred perspective. He emphasizes the self-expression of God in the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, whose aim is the possibility of God’s being grasped by human speech (proclamation) and thus also human thought. The proclamation is now what makes God present as the Absent One: not as a ‘god’ who is given with the world but as God who comes to humanity in the Word of the cross and thus ‘bring[s] us to himself ’.37 ‘God’s being is in coming’.38 In His being, God thus addresses the problem of human inability to speak and to think God and, in doing so, addresses humanity about itself. He addresses humanity in and with the humanity of Christ. The resurrection, Jüngel claims further, defines the life of the Christian. To proclaim the resurrection is to communicate ‘that which took place in Jesus’s death’. But in its power elementally to interrupt human self-securing, proclamation of the resurrection enables our participation in ‘that which took place in Jesus’s death’.39 What this means, first of all, is that ‘Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is nothing other than the honoring of him in his death by God the Father, and in this, the eschatological raising of humanity as God’s image’.40 Jesus’s death and resurrection, in faith, makes us analogous to God, so that like Jesus and through his power we might be parables of God’s nearness.41 This is, Jüngel explains, ‘what faith in the Holy Spirit means, taken to its ultimate consequence: that God allows the negation suffered in the death of Jesus Christ to be perfected in our mortal bodies, our earthly life, as the victorious power of love, in that he makes a place for us to live within his own being’.42 The resurrection is not only that which establishes our identity, or, to put it better, our identity, which the resurrection establishes, is not some metaphysical endowment but also the concreteness of Christ-like being in act. The resurrection is a call to action in the world in the name of Jesus. This active presence in the world and on its behalf is essential, when one considers that ‘Jesus’s effectiveness consists in his death, in his withdrawal, which faith in his resurrection does not 36. Athanasius, De incarnatione, pp. 11–17; ET: On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), pp. 73–87. 37. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 155; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 207. 38. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 380; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 521 et passim. 39. Eberhard Jüngel, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, trans. Iain Nicol and Ute Nicol (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1974), pp. 95, 103. 40. Jüngel, ‘Humanity in Correspondence to God’, p. 143 (emphasis added). 41. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 386; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 529. See also idem, Death, p. 100. 42. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 389; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 534.

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reverse but rather confirm’.43 God entrusts to us His Christ-formed presence in the world. What faith perceives, Jüngel notes, is that Jesus’s life has been saved – not in the sense that Jesus has been saved out of this life but rather that his life has now been gathered into a believing community – the body of Christ – and so made eternal and made manifest.44 In this light, God’s openness, constituted by the raising of the Crucified One from the dead as God’s Son, means not that God is at risk of non-existence, but rather that God’s presence in the world depends on us as the bearers, in a human way, of this presence and as witnesses to the power of God’s being love. As the faithful community, Christians are the harbingers of God’s kingdom. This idea of our Christ-formed vocation is not new. Luther’s explanation of the petition, ‘Thy kingdom come’, in the Lord’s Prayer comes close to it. The reformer writes: ‘God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us’. Luther speaks also of faith’s power to create divinity (fides creatrix divinitatis), ‘not in the substance of God but in us. For without faith God loses His glory, wisdom, righteousness, truthfulness, mercy, etc., in us; in short, God has none of His majesty or divinity where faith is absent’.45 Jüngel’s contribution here lies in the clarity with which he shows that Jesus’s resurrection is ‘ontologically the being of love itself ’, whereby the dead Son, taken up into the livingness of God, makes alive many sons and daughters who in their being both are and demonstrate the livingness of God to the world. In the world, they already are members of God’s eschatological kingdom. They are called, as persons free from the tyranny of the ego, to courage to oppose the world’s lovelessness with deeds of love, called to turn the world’s apparent godforsakenness, despite the world’s wise opinions, into the presence of God to the world. The resurrection, in brief, is God’s self-determination for reciprocity from the community He loves.46

Conclusion The foregoing has sought constructively to develop Jüngel’s view of the resurrection as the impact of the cross on the divine being. As Jüngel himself notes, ‘In the resurrection of Jesus, the issue is not only one of a divine 43. Jüngel, ‘The Effectiveness of Christ Withdrawn’, p. 231. 44. Cf. Jüngel, Death, pp. 120–1. To the notion of the believing community as the location of Jesus’s post-resurrection bodily presence, see Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1: The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 205–6. 45. Luther, Lectures on Galatians, LW 26, p. 227; WA 40, p. 360. 46. I develop the notion of divine–human reciprocity in considerably more detail in Małysz, Trinity, Freedom, and Love, pp. 185–98.

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action, but of the divine being itself ’.47 Although he lays the groundwork for a strong understanding of divine–human reciprocity in the world, rooted in the withdrawal of the resurrected Crucified One, he shies away from its full implications. He does so in the interest of maintaining God’s creative initiative. But this initiative, if grounded in the originary tri-polarity of God’s being, need not be at odds with interpreting the resurrection of Jesus as God’s radical openness to His creation.

47. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 364; cf. idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, p. 499.

Chapter 11 T HE C AUTIONS OF J USTICE : E BE RHA RD J Ü NGE L’S E NG AG EM E NT  W ITH P OLITICS A N D T H E S TATE Derek R. Nelson

Some aspects of Eberhard Jüngel’s wide-ranging and profound theological writings have received their due of attention from scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. One thinks especially of his doctrine of God in and against modernity, or more recently of his defence of a kind of Gnesio-Lutheran take on justification. But as far as I know, there is no comparable engagement with Jüngel’s writings on justice which actually occupies dozens of Jüngel’s essays and books.1 Partly this lack of engagement is understandable. On closer inspection we see that, in fact, Jüngel does not seem to have a concept of justice! Despite works with titles such as Christ, Justice and Peace, or Speaking for the City: On the Relationship between Christian Community and Civil Community, I detect in Jüngel no defence of any particular conception of justice, be it divine or human. What we have instead in these and other writings is something perhaps even more useful. What Jüngel presents is a series of warnings for escaping theological missteps in approaching justice, rather than an articulation of any particular notion of earthly justice. In fact, a wide variety of such notions is providentially possible, and part of the value of Jüngel’s approach to this issue is to affirm the goodness of human reason which makes possible creative and timely concepts of justice. In other words, Jüngel has helped secure the freedom of theology by decoupling it from conceptions of secular justice that might try to determine a properly theological subject matter. This freedom in turn gets directed towards political involvement, but not in ways that undo the freedom Jesus Christ has secured for us. 1. For example, neither John B. Webster’s nor Paul DeHart’s excellent introductions to Jüngel’s thought discuss ‘justice’ in a significant way. Cf. Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and DeHart, Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and Philosophy in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Volker Spangenberg’s introduction to Jüngel’s thought includes extensive reflection on ‘freedom’ as a theological matter, but not in a way tied to the Christian’s political existence. Cf. Volker Spangenberg, ‘Eberhard Jüngel’, in A New Handbook of Christian Theologians, ed. Donald W. Musser and Joseph Price (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997), pp. 244–52.

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Jüngel has much to say to us on this matter even today, and it may well be the case that his writings on freedom and political theology end up being a leading edge of his theological program in coming years. Many of the theological disputes that the secondary literature on Jüngel does focus on seem, frankly, to have dried up in their interest for mainstream theology. On the one hand, how to mediate between Barthian and Bultmannian options in theology, for example, or how to connect ‘Christ as proclaimer’ with ‘Christ as the proclaimed One’, are not exactly the stuff of present-day dissertations.2 On the other hand, what to do with the still-regnant-but-now-waning Enlightenment notion of justice, and how to relate the Christian gospel to political authority in an increasingly pluralized world seem very much on the minds of contemporary theologians. After considering some of the debates Jüngel’s writings on justice have provoked, this essay looks in turn at three sets of warnings: the dangers of a ‘natural theology’ of justice and the benefits of a ‘more natural theology’, his articulation and defence of a version of the ‘two kingdoms’ doctrine and his reflections on freedom in the political existence of the Christian.

Objections to Jüngel on Justice Natalie Watson speaks for many feminist theologians in criticizing Jüngel’s supposed inattentiveness to injustice by virtue of his writings on the doctrine of justification. ‘Jüngel describes the drama of salvation as one set in a courtroom in which human beings are accused of having fallen for the deception of sin, yet in which they are, by God’s sacrifice of his own son, declared justified’. This conception presents ‘a God who is experienced by many women as self-righteous judge without compassion’. What is worse, ‘the courtroom for many women is not a space in which they experience justice’. The idea behind this line of critique of Jüngel is that he has collapsed justification and justice, such that the way in which we think of God’s forgiveness of sin is the only way to think about civil justice, and therefore that some combination of blame, punishment and pardon form the only basis for justice and peace in our communities. Further, Watson writes, ‘Is the emphasis on sin and being fallen, and therefore being in need of the atoning blood of Christ, a form of God-talk that speaks to the women who out of economic necessity are driven into prostitution?’3 2. These are the subjects of Jüngel’s works God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase, trans. John B. Webster (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001)  and idem, Paulus und Jesus: Eine Untersuchung zur Präziserung der Frage nach dem Ursprung der Christologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1962). 3. Natalie K. Watson, ‘Theologia Incurvata in se Ipse? One Feminist Theologian’s Reading of Eberhard Jüngel’s Theology’, RIRT 9:3 (June 2002), pp. 201–2.

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The earlier accusation seems off the mark for many reasons, not least of which is the obvious response that, had the world more universal access to courtrooms with wise judges, the kinds of injustice liberation theology decries might well be lessened. But Jüngel’s own doctrine of sin, one which relies heavily on the image of ‘relationlessness’, in fact speaks powerfully against injustice. Jüngel understands sin to be, partially, the drive towards relationlessness. In his early book Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, Jüngel identified relationlessness with death.4 What we fear most about dying is that it deprives us (we suppose) of the chance to have meaningful relationships with our loved ones, with ourselves and most acutely with God. We therefore try too hard to actualize ourselves, to become our own lords, and this has the effect of cutting us off from our life-giving relationships. He writes, ‘Not to be one’s own master does not imply some anthropological lack. It is rather an indication that man can live only in relationships, that since he stands at a distance from himself, he cannot be related to himself without at the same time standing in a relationship with God’.5 We cut ourselves off from these relationships at our peril. Lost in all the activity of self-fulfilment is the recognition that God has already acted in us, and that at every moment God is relating to us and fulfilling us. Any actions that we perform should be viewed not as fulfilment per se, but rather as the natural response to a prevenient, fulfilling grace which allows for our action. The cutting off of relationships seems to me to speak powerfully to the ills that liberation theology has rightly termed ‘structural sin’. I pretend that I do not know, or at least am able to ignore, that my actions as a consumer in the first world harm those I cannot see, through structures invisible to me. But in truth, I really do have a relationship with the faceless masses who labour under awful conditions to produce goods I purchase, or who transport or sell those goods to me. By acting as though such products magically come into my possession, without any environmental impact, without perpetuating enforced global poverty, I contribute to injustice. The evil of this injustice seems precisely related to the sinfulness of relationlessness which is its presupposition. Therefore Jüngel’s analysis of the human condition would seem, contrary to Watson’s objections, to have much to offer a contemporary theology of liberation. Another form of objection to Jüngel’s way of thinking about justice comes from Helmut Gollwitzer and Dorothy Soelle. Jüngel is critical of soteriologies that follow the lines of Gollwitzer and Soelle (and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for that matter) in emphasizing ‘substitution’ as a general category. Substitution means, especially for Soelle, encumbering oneself with the burdens caused by the sins of others. It becomes, then, a general human responsibility to which Jesus was called as a human being and to which he, in turn, calls us. This burden-bearing must be done, of course, in the political world, by offering one’s hand to those harmed by 4. Eberhard Jüngel, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, trans. Iain Nicol and Ute Nicol (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1974). 5. Ibid., p. 63.

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injustice. So, the idea goes, a Christology of this sort leads to ‘justice’ by invoking Christ’s substitutionary action as the example and inspiration for our own action. Jüngel objects, saying that Christ does not do something that we ourselves could do just as well, but rather that he does something that we cannot do, and further that we do not need to do, since he has accomplished it.6 The church ‘must narrate or proclaim the death of its Lord, his passion story, not its own passion story’.7 The kind of political action Soelle et  al. recommend is an unfunded mandate, which is in fact no mandate at all because it is not a sustainable model for justice. Political action is possible, even necessary, for Jüngel, but it cannot be funded by a soteriology which makes too much of human agency. Jüngel’s remarks about his experiences in South Africa add a personal element here: ‘The immeasurable shame that I felt as a white person in South African townships has completely persuaded me that the Christian is permitted, indeed commanded, to work against an unjust system, not only with thoughts and words but even with deeds. To be sure, the person of faith must assume individual responsibility for that decision’.8 Christ may, in some cases, function as ‘example’ for us when we work against injustice, but only after we have received Christ as ‘gift’ and therefore as sacrament.9 Jüngel occasionally connects justice with the doctrine of justification. This is a common move in much of neo-orthodox theology. When this strategy is employed by itself, theological ethics becomes too strongly determined by an analysis of individual human actions. The only question becomes, does one ‘live out of righteousness’ or does one continue with sin as a basis for one’s actions?10 Obviously this approach to justice needs to be complemented with other perspectives, such as those that analyse whole social systems and cultural   6. Later in his writings, Jüngel will identify this as a critique more of Lutheran– Roman Catholic theology than political theology. He was concerned that the once-for-all feature of the sacrifice of Christ was obscured in that dialogue. See Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey Cayzer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), pp.  157–62 and idem ‘Um Gottes willen  – Klarheit! Kritische Bemerkungen zur Verharmlosung der kriteriologischen Funktion des Rechtfertigungsartikels – aus Anlass einer ökumenischen »gemeinsamen Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre«’, ZThK 94 (1997), pp. 405–6.   7. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Das Opfer Christi als sacramentum et exemplum’, in Wertlose Wahrheit – Zur Identität und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens. Theologische Erörterungen III, 2. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), p.  280, cited in John B. Webster (ed.), ‘Justification, Analogy and Action’, in The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in His Sixtieth Year (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), p. 112.   8. Jüngel, ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, CCe 108 (1991), pp. 229–30.   9. Jüngel, ‘Das Geheimnis der Stellvertretung. Ein dogmatisches Gespräch mit Heinrich Vogel’, in Wertlose Wahrheit, pp. 249–50. 10. See, for example, Jüngel, ‘Living Out of Righteousness’, in Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 241–63.

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arrangements. But Jüngel is not committed to approaching justice solely from the doctrine of justification. His caution in engaging political theologies is not that they engage social realities, but that in ranging far and wide through sociological territory, they lose their bearings and thus lose their distinctively Christian flavour.

The Dangers of a Natural Theology of the State The problem with many political theologies is, in Jüngel’s thought, their reliance on a kind of uncritical natural theology. The two most important European voices in the twentieth-century conversation on political theology are Jürgen Moltmann and Johann Baptist Metz. Their political theologies are rooted in reflection on secular reality. For Metz and Moltmann, Christianity should not directly oppose the secular realm, ‘since secularity – emerging out of the hopeful Enlightenment promises of autonomy, maturity, and responsibility  – is a human affirmation of God’s creation and the incarnation of God. Secularization thus frees the world from theo-political control of the church and religious control of politics’.11 This strategy has had some success, such as the development of theories of basic human equality and universal human rights. However, in other contexts, this approach has been co-opted by a baptism of the status quo, legitimated by calls to a ‘natural order of things’. The justification of apartheid in South Africa by appeal to a Reformed doctrine of the ‘orders of creation’ is only one example of the ‘dead ends’ to which natural theology can lead in churchly reflection on civil realities. Instead of this natural theological approach, Jüngel offers what he calls a more natural theology. That is, rather than focusing on the interplay between institutions of governments and churches, the relationship of the gospel to each individual Christian forms the centre of Jüngel’s argument. But it is a generative centre that leads away from the self and pushes the self into society as a free person, free (and also commanded) to respond with mercy and work for justice. The nature of the gospel is, for Jüngel, the indication of the forgiveness of sins. Calling political activity, however praiseworthy it may be, anything but the free response to God’s life-giving grace results in a distortion of the gospel, and therefore a betrayal of the church. ‘The totalitarian claims of other lords [such as the state] demand the whole person without first being able to grant wholeness. And, consequently, in so far as they demand the whole person, they place hopelessly excessive demands on the person in reality’.12 The significance of theological confessions such as the Barmen Declaration ‘consist[s] in the fact that it can preserve the church from replacing the 11. M. Douglas Meeks, ‘Political Theology’, in A New Handbook of Christian Theology, p. 365. 12. Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace: Toward a Theology of the State in Dialogue with the Barmen Declaration, trans. Alan J. Torrance and D. Bruce Hamill (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), pp. 34–5.

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apostolic preaching of the gospel with an epistle of morality – with all its demands and unattainable obligations’.13 The form of justice towards which Christians ought to work in their political existence is not determined by theology. Nor is the form of mercy to be rendered. Rather, human reason ought to be employed and related in an ad hoc way to the particular needs of the time. Human reason is enlightened by revelation. It knows more than it would about the natural world (‘natural’ here includes also ‘social arrangements’) and thus is a more natural theology than ‘political’ theologies. Consider this lengthy quotation from Jüngel’s reflections on Barmen: It is not at all impossible, coming from the one Word of God (to which alone the church has to listen, and which alone the church has to recognize as the source of its proclamation), to outline a more natural theology than so-called natural theology: a natural theology which knows Jesus Christ as the one who has reconciled both human beings and the world (2 Cor. 5:19). He is the one who, together with the prayers of Christians, also hears the groaning of the creation and who leads the children of God with the waiting creation to the redeeming apokalypsis (Rom. 8:19–23). It is a more natural theology therefore, which, along with the recognition of Jesus Christ as the savior of human beings, is learning to think anew the old notions of the salvation of phenomena. Here new ways open up: ways which give to each man and woman their own responsible ‘political theology’.14

Partly, this is a kind of Barthian move. It helps us to understand the totality of creation as a set of contingent phenomena ‘which should not be deified or made the basis for a knowledge of God’.15 Knowing something about the revealed God from his Word will orient our eyes to see a kind of penultimacy in our social institutions, communities and even in the political order as such. Yet Jüngel goes beyond Barth, as well. He criticizes far more strongly than Barth ever did the use of nuclear weapons. He has even raised serious questions about the threat and use of war, though he stops just short of endorsing pacifism.16 A ‘more natural theology’ than that of the Enlightenment does more than remind us of the contingency of earthly justice. It places Christ at the centre and thus creates periphery. This helps orient us more accurately towards ‘nature’ than many so-called natural theologies. As Jüngel writes, ‘These new ways . . . move out from this one Word of God to the world, ways to nature and to history – ways of 13. Ibid., p. 33. 14. Ibid., pp. 26–7. 15. John Thompson, ‘Jüngel on Barth’, in The Possibilities of Theology, pp. 187. 16. His rhetoric on this front seems evasive; all indications point to the embrace of pacifism, yet Jüngel will only ‘ask the question’ rather than offer an answer. See Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace, pp. 81–92.

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knowledge and life which lead ever more deeply into this world as God’s creation. Deeper into its needs and difficulties, but also deeper into its hidden glories! Deeper therefore into compassionate solidarity with those who cry de profundis for God – who indeed perhaps may not even be able to cry at all in their misery. But even deeper into the joy of the unanswered mystery of the fact that we are actually here’.17

Two Kingdoms, One Gospel For reasons that many readers of this book will know, the Lutheran emphasis on ‘two kingdoms’ – the temporal kingdom of this world and the eternal kingdom of God on Earth – fell on very hard times during the early years of Jüngel’s career, especially in Protestant circles in Germany. Did the distinction between the two not devolve into a separation? Once total governance over the temporal sphere was ceded to the Nazis, was not the only option to watch in horror as its evil unfolded? There are two surprising elements, then, about Jüngel’s writings on this matter. First is that he was able to affirm the two kingdoms doctrine at all, given its supposed failure and tendency to quietism. Secondly, Jüngel actually identifies Barth’s contributions to the Barmen Declaration as a continuation of the two kingdoms doctrine! Given how publicly Barth denounced Luther and many Lutherans on this matter, Jüngel’s insistence that ‘Barth’s definition of the relationship between the Christian community and the civil community is a development of the Two-Kingdom-doctrine of the Reformers  – albeit a highly original one’ comes as quite a surprise.18 Jüngel’s own position on the two kingdoms doctrine (which is not unlike what he takes Barth’s mature position to be) is cast in the contrast between Athens and Jerusalem. That is, it is a version of the difference between faith and reason. What faith can know of justice (in other words, ‘Jerusalem’ as Tertullian thought of it) might well overlap with what reason (Athens) can know of justice.19 Yet, when faith thinks of justice, it will use concepts such as ‘shalom’, forgiveness and yearning for ever-greater justice, whereas reason may well use concepts such as coercion, punishment and satisfaction. The justice of faith should not necessarily prescribe the justice of reason. That is, Christian faith does not insist that the justice of reason is ‘more Christian’ when it makes punishment peripheral and 17. Ibid., p. 28. 18. Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace, p. 37. Jüngel outlines the way that Barmen V fits into the rest of Barth’s political writings in his essay ‘Zum Verhältnis von Kirche und Staat nach Karl Barth’, in Ganz Werden. Theologische Erörterungen V (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 174–230. 19. On this point, see Jüngel, ‘Zwei Schwerter – Zwei Reiche: Die Trennung der Mächte in der Reformation’, in Ganz Werden, pp. 137–57.

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forgiveness central. There may be a time when Jerusalem can tell Athens that, but then again, such matters should remain open and public.20 By contrast, what the church must tell the state, because otherwise reason would not know it, is that ‘the state’s existence is not an end in itself. It has no significance and no worth in itself. The state exists because and only because it has a task by virtue of divine appointment’.21 That divine appointment is to secure justice and peace. Although the state may and sometimes must threaten and use force to ensure that end, the church, especially its members, must be ever watchful that the force employed not lead to a totalizing theory of the powers and aim of the state. The church thus has a negating role as ‘watchdog’, but it has another, more affirmative role as well. As Alan Torrance points out, Jüngel ‘emphasizes the affirmative nature of the gospel, stressing the fact that negations have no meaning or function independently of God’s “Yes”. Where the church can find it easier, and believe it to be more relevant, to engage in negations – negative exhortations and condemnations – Jüngel stresses the extent to which Barmen had something far more important to say than mere “No”, Rather its primary concern was to affirm the “Yes” which has already been spoken by God in Jesus Christ’.22 This was the experience Jüngel had in the church growing up in East Germany, where the church was ‘the one place where one could speak the truth without being penalized’.23 Whatever the political commitments of the Christian church must be, its focus on the truth of the liberating gospel must always be kept in focus. ‘Without the pursuit of “evangelical truth”, the church would lose its character, it would degenerate into a characterless club for the cultivation of religion or into a no less characterless institution of clerical and administrative self-preoccupation’.24 The existence of the state, and especially its tendencies to overreach its divine ordinance and creep ever more into the private lives of its people and make ever more demands on its people, thus helps the church remember its obligations and particular callings, even as the church reminds the state to do the same. While this seems like a banal point to those accustomed to such forms of thinking, in my experience it comes as a kind of shock to those who are not familiar with the two kingdoms distinction. Their thinking usually goes something like this: just as corporations should try to take over more and more market share, just as individual people should try to control more and more elements of their lives and surroundings, so too should the church try to do more, be more and reach further. When civil events look more like church services (such as by having prayers), and when God language is introduced in more and more contexts, then the church is doing its political job. In marked contrast to this, Jüngel writes, ‘The Christian faith is, in its center, political – or 20. Ibid., pp. 150–4. 21. Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace, p. 46. 22. Alan Torrance, ‘Introductory Essay’, in Christ, Justice and Peace, p. xiv. 23. Jüngel, ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, p. 229. 24. Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace, p. 6.

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not at all. It is political when it declares its allegiance to the Crucified as Lord of the world and in his name proclaims the justification of sinners. . . . The political relevance of the Christian hope shows itself primarily and fundamentally where in it is no way at all a question of what we have to do. Before all activity, faith is political in that it takes seriously the person as distinct from his or her deeds’.25 Jüngel’s suggestions here might help Americans think through a particularly pressing political problem today. Consider, for example, the brokenness of the American criminal justice system. My government incarcerates a greater proportion of our population than almost any other society in the history of the world. It is incredibly expensive, racially unjust and largely ineffective at doing what we say we want it to do.26 Some of the Christian responses to this crisis have insisted that the form of justice that the state should render must reflect more directly and concretely the responders’ own Christian values. Thus, for instance, the Quaker position has insisted on more possibilities for rehabilitation, penitence and peacemaking.27 As Brad Stoddard has recently shown, ‘faith-based’ prisons are on the rise across the United States, despite general consensus that they are ineffective at best, and at worst represent a total abdication of the state’s responsibilities.28 There is confusion over what justice should mean to Christians concerned about evident injustice. The two kingdoms doctrine as Jüngel interprets it can contribute powerfully to civil discourse about justice, especially criminal justice. It frees the state to use reason judiciously in operating its affairs, and reminds the church of its own particular calling in the world. It does not expect too much of the church, and does not allow the state to expect too little of itself.29 The German title of the book cited earlier on the Barmen Declaration is Mit Frieden Staat zu Machen. Literally it is ‘Making the State with Peace’. There is a hint of ambiguity as to what that means. On the one hand, it means seeing the state as the means to peace. One uses the coercive power of the state to insist on a peace that is stronger than the violence it must temporarily employ. On the other hand, it also means settling for the kind 25. Jüngel, ‘Zukunft und Hoffnung: Zur politischen Funktion christlicher Theologie’, in Müssen Christen Sozialisten Sin?, ed. Wolfgang Teichert (Hamburg: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1976), pp. 19–20, quoted in Webster, ‘Justification, Analogy and Action’, p. 133. 26. Of the hundreds of books that might be cited here, one of the very best is William Stuntz, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011). 27. See, for example, Harmon Wray and Lauraet Magnani, Beyond Prisons? A New Interreligious Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2006). 28. Brad Stoddard, ‘Faith-Based Prisons: More Religion Equals Less Crime?’, in Sightings (Chicago, IL: Martin Marty Center, University of Chicago Divinity School, 19 December 2013). 29. This approach informs the recent Social Statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America titled, ‘The Church and Criminal Justice: Hearing the Cries’.

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of justice that the state can produce  – in a sense, making peace with the state. Christians will always know that no state is perfect, no political arrangement fully just. This is something that we simply have to live with and to make peace with. Consider an example of the kind of thinking that emphasizes the second of these senses  – the Christian dissatisfaction with, yet affirmation of, the kind of peace that the state can promote. The mother of a murdered man was recently interviewed after the killer of her son was convicted and sentenced to death. She was asked the typically banal question, ‘How do you feel following this conviction?’ Her measured response was, ‘Well, justice has been done. So I guess I should feel satisfied’. The implication was very strong that, even though the prosecution and defence had done their jobs, the evidence had been considered, and a correct judgement rendered, still something was missing. That ‘something’ is the justice of the gospel, which the justice of the law can never deliver. The justice of the gospel is righteousness. It has little to do with the assignment of blame, the imposition of a sanction or the use of force.30 It is, in a word, grace, which punishes and coerces only in the sense that it overwhelms sinners with love. The two kingdoms doctrine does have its problems, but it helps us not to confuse the forms of justice appropriate to each kingdom, and thus to keep the integrity of both.

Freedom and the ‘Political Existence’ of the Christian We have seen that Jüngel’s theology helps us to avoid the pitfalls of an unredeemed ‘natural theology’, and it protects the divine ordinations of church and state in their distinct but related callings. Then, Jüngel also vindicates freedom in the political existence of the Christian. Freedom delights in possibilities, and what Jüngel seeks to affirm in his political theology is the multiple possibilities of justice on earth. He offers little in the way of specific directives on which possibilities ought to be made actual, and thus has been frustrating to critics looking for more direction from him on matters of justice. Critics might say that Jüngel’s writings on justice give insufficient direction to Christians who wish to involve themselves in political action. He gives no advice on which policies we ought to enact. Indeed, no less an interpreter than John Webster finds all of this to be much too unsatisfying. Jüngel says that Christians should act in the political sphere, but has no concrete agenda for them to follow.31 I am less inclined to see this as a problem. What Jüngel insists that we have instead is freedom. Not just political freedom, but freedom for politics. The 30. See Jüngel, ‘Living Out of Righteousness: God’s Action  – Human Agency’, in Theological Essays II, pp. 241–63. 31. Webster, ‘Justification, Analogy and Action’, in The Possibilities of Theology, pp. 140–1.

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Christian entering the public square every day knowing that God has his/her future in his hands, has claimed his/her as his own, secured his/her existence and blessed his/her with his gifts and has offered the same for all people he/she will ever meet will have his/her action simply different. Such a Christian will be ‘more natural’ because he/she will be inspired by the liberating Word that stands at the centre of nature. Of course this tells us neither whom to vote for, nor which economic policy to enact. But it provides a kind of ‘character’ for political action, a direction for political existence that may well be lacking in more ‘prescriptive’ forms of political theology. Webster worries that ‘Jüngel thinks of his theology of politics as an attempt to broker a conversation between Luther’s “two kingdoms” doctrine and Barth’s “political theology”.… If one posed the question, “Is the state a divine given or the product of human historical action?”, Luther falls nearer to the first and Barth nearer to the second, with Jüngel trying to occupy, not wholly successfully, a mediating position’.32 But it seems to me that what Jüngel is trying to do instead is something different. He wants to invite Christians to act creatively and ad hoc in the political world, firm in Christian convictions but open to learning from secular reason. Consider again the issue of criminal justice, especially for prisoners. Jüngel thinks that Christians ought to care deeply about the plight of the incarcerated, not because of a general Enlightenment view of the need to be nice to people, even unsavoury people, but because the gospel forbids the identity of agent and act. That is, the prisoner is not simply the sum of his deeds. He is also the beloved of God. While Jüngel does not suggest a broad programme for reform, his theology is deeply empowering and moving for those who want to get involved. Jüngel criticizes our attitudes towards the incarcerated that avoid ‘a human handshake and the beginning of some human bridge-building from the outside into this eerie other world . . . Will we as justified sinners support [efforts at reform]? Do we fear getting our hands dirty? Do we prefer that the law which condemns and punishes retains the last world and that those who are unjust remain unjust? If so, then certainly we ourselves are living neither in a worldly nor in a spiritual way out of the righteousness of God’.33 The doctrine of justification tells us that we are all sinful no matter which side of the prison bars we live on. God sees past that fact to view us in Christ. This frees us from concern with the ‘status’ we have in society and frees us for a rewarding life in mutual recognition of our need for grace. Jüngel also applies this reasoning to the elderly. What good news it is that the value of a person is not simply their capabilities to do work. He even applies it to those in the upper echelons of society; a disgraced politician still has worth in God’s eyes, and thus ought to in our eyes, too.34 Americans will quickly see how different this is from, say, Stanley Hauerwas’s 32. Ibid., p. 133. 33. Jüngel, ‘Living Out of Righteousness’, p. 257. 34. Ibid., pp. 258–9.

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position on the church needing to be the church so that the world can know that it is the world. Both are interested in maintaining the integrity of the Christian community, so that it does not become confused with ‘the world’.35 But Jüngel’s understanding of political theology – his commitment to a ‘more natural’ theology, his use of the two kingdoms distinction of the Reformers and his understanding of freedom – mandates political activity, whereas Hauerwas’s theology practically forbids it. *  *  * I hope that I have suggested some ways forward for thinking about justice, the state and ‘political theology’ in new ways that build on insights from Jüngel. Freedom will always be experienced by us as a burden, just like any other ‘imperative’. But Jüngel helps us to see ways that our freedom can make the justice that is possible more likely to become actual. He reminds us of the possibilities of justice that can only come from the gospel of Christ. In this time of political pluralism and global conflict about what counts as ‘just arrangements’, this is good news, indeed.

35. The best place to see how different Jüngel’s understanding of what Hauerwas calls ‘the world’ is his essay ‘Das Salz der Erde: Zum Verhältnis von Christengemeinde und Bürgergemeinde’, in Ganz Werden, pp. 158–73.

Chapter 12 E BERHAR D J ÜNGE L ON B AP T I SM A N D T H E L ORD’S  S UPPE R : T OWAR DS A H E RM E N E U T IC F OR  R E ADING TH E T E XT S 1 R. David Nelson

A survey of English-language literature on the theology of Eberhard Jüngel reveals that Anglo-American theologians have typically been preoccupied with one or both of two major themes that mark his writings, namely, the doctrines of God and justification.2 Whether this fact results from or is a cause of the prominence of these themes among those of his works that have been translated into English3 is a chicken-and-egg question which, while

1. A revised and expanded edition of chapter 10 of R. David Nelson, The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God’s Relation to the World, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 24, ed. John B. Webster, Ian A. McFarland and Ivor Davidson (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013). 2. For example, Paul J. DeHart, Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and Philosophy in the Thought of Eberhard Jüngel, American Academy of Religion: Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion, ed. Mary McClintock Fulkerson, no.  15 (Atlanta, CA: Scholars Press, 1999); Christopher R. J. Holmes, Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes: In Dialogue with Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel, and Wolf Krötke (New York: Peter Lang, 2007); Piotr J. Małysz, Trinity, Freedom, and Love: An Engagement with the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 18, ed. John B. Webster, Ian A. McFarland and Ivor Davidson (London: T&T Clark International, 2012); Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology, Lutheran Quarterly Books, ed. Paul Rorem (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 23–55 and Roland Spjuth, Creation, Contingency and Divine Presence in the Theologies of Thomas F. Torrance and Eberhard Jüngel, Studia Theologica Ludensia 51 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995). 3. Many of the short pieces translated and published in the two Theological Essays collections available at the time of this writing are on one or both of these themes. See Jüngel, Theological Essays I, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989); and idem,

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perhaps worthy of a good pondering, takes us quite beyond the scope of the present essay. It will suffice to state, simply, that British and North American readers who are new to Jüngel’s theology may, on the basis of what is available in their native tongue, immediately develop the false impression that he has rather little to say beyond these (albeit important) issues. As many of the contributions to the present collection suggest, nothing could be further from the truth. In this essay, we examine Jüngel’s sacramental theology which, we suggest here at the outset, is a theme of considerable significance in his thought that, nevertheless, has, until only recently,4 received relatively little attention from his interpreters. What is more, most of the critical appraisals of this topic produced thus far were published right around the mid-point of Jüngel’s career,5 and thus, we contend, fall far short of being sufficient in terms of both methodology and breadth of engagement, especially in light of the fact that Jüngel himself devoted a number of pieces to the problem of sacrament during the late-fourth and fifth decades of his professional life. Indeed, one of our major concerns in the present analysis is to counterbalance the evident tilt in the literature by offering an up-to-date exposition of Jüngel’s writings on this theme and their contextual situations within the course of his literary output. But, as we shall demonstrate in full detail, such an agenda quickly runs into a dilemma that has not been competently addressed by any of Jüngel’s interpreters, Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995). It is certainly worth noting that the three of Jüngel’s four major monographs available in translation are, by and large, on these themes (Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase, trans. John B. Webster (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001); idem, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983) and idem, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001)). While this fact affirms the centrality of the doctrines of God and justification in Jüngel’s thought, we should not take it as an indication that his significance for contemporary theology is limited to these areas. 4. See our own study: R. David Nelson, The Interruptive Word. 5. For examples, see Geoffrey Wainwright, ‘Church and Sacrament(s)’, in The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in his Sixtieth Year, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), pp.  90–105; Spjuth, Creation, Contingency and Divine Presence; and, for a rare Continental study on this theme in Jüngel’s theology, Henry Mottu, ‘Les Sacrements selon Karl Barth et Eberhard Jüngel’, FV 88:2 (1989), pp.  33–55. Kurt Anders Richardson’s comments in Reading Karl Barth: New Directions for North American Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), pp.  176–208, also fall into this category, since, even though the volume was published a decade later than our other examples, the author  – as we contend, to the injury of his analysis  – restricts his investigation to two of Jüngel’s texts from the late 1960s, situating them as representative of a career-spanning (anti-) sacramental theology.

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namely, the question of the continuity among and between the texts on sacrament. To point to one iteration of this problem, several studies on Jüngel’s sacramental theology pivot on the suggestion that Barth’s later doctrine of baptism, articulated by him most extensively in the fragmentary volume IV/4 of the Church Dogmatics,6 is paradigmatic of Jüngel’s approach to the ontological entailments and liturgical practices of water baptism.7 According to this reading, then, in the fragment Barth furnishes for Jüngel the basic components of a robust (anti-) sacramental theology. But, we do well to ask, are all of the texts on such issues so evidently indicative of Barth’s influence? If not, which ones are and which ones are not, and when and why were those in each category written? Do all of the writings on water baptism from Jüngel’s career qualify as anti-sacramental readings of the rite? For that matter, can one even discern a monolithic doctrine of water baptism in Jüngel’s theological works? When we approach the texts with such critical questions as a guide, we discover that we are, in fact, faced with the complex literary dilemma of continuity. Without having at hand a hermeneutic well suited to the task of untying this knot, we risk misinterpreting the texts themselves and, by consequence, the broad contours of Jüngel’s sacramental theology. This being the case, the goal of the present essay is to trace this nexus of problems through Jüngel’s writings, and, in the course of doing so, to set forth interpretative proposals with which subsequent investigations into this theme must reckon.

A Taxonomy of the Texts on Sacrament For the purpose of developing our hermeneutic, we can roughly divide Jüngel’s writings on baptism and the Lord’s Supper into five groups. We should 6. The problem of Barth’s own development in regard to the doctrine of baptism transcends the parameters of the present analysis. Here we simply acknowledge Barth’s late turn away from a sacramental reading of the liturgical rite of baptism. We direct the interested reader to what we consider to be the best summary of Barth’s development in this area: John B. Webster, Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 116–73. For a very different reading of Barth, see the compelling recent study by W. Travis McMaken titled The Sign of the Gospel: Toward an Evangelical Doctrine of Infant Baptism after Karl Barth, Emerging Scholars (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013). 7. As we will continue to observe, Richardson’s argument in Reading Karl Barth serves as a thoroughgoing example of this interpretative trend. See also John B. Webster, ‘Justification, Analogy and Action: Barth and Luther in Jüngel’s Anthropology’, in Barth’s Moral Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 188–203. Among the studies of this issue, Mottu alone, in ‘Les Sacrements selon Karl Barth et Eberhard Jüngel’, wrestles with the question of the extent to which Barth and Jüngel diverge on the theology of baptism. We largely concur with Mottu’s conclusions, though, as we shall note, we regard his analysis as wanting in one significant respect.

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emphasize that, in doing so, we do not intend to suggest that these texts tidily or unproblematically fit into any classification system that we might impose upon them. Still, and as we shall see, certain thematic elements stand out among the texts of each of our groups when they are set alongside each other. The first group, which we designate (a), consists of Jüngel’s thorough examination of Barth’s fragment on baptism that is found in the pamphlet titled Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe. Ein Hinweis auf ihre Probleme (1968),8 and the abridged versions of this text that were published as ‘Thesen zu Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe’ (1971)9 and the short review of the fragment in German in Lutherische Rundschau (1969),10 which was translated into English and appeared the same year in Literature Survey.11 Group (b) comprises two texts written during the same period as those on the Barth fragment: ‘Das Sakrament – was ist das? Versuch einer Antwort’, which was originally published sans subtitle in 1966 in Evangelische Theologie12 and later appeared in revised and expanded form in Jüngel and Rahner, Was ist ein Sakrament? Vorstöße zur Verständigung (1971)13 and the essay ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, which was delivered in 1969 at an assembly of the Landessynode der Evangelischen Landeskirche in Baden, published the same year with other texts from the synod,14 and appeared later in expanded form together with the 1971 ‘Thesen . . .’ in a volume of critical engagements with Barth’s fragment.15 For reasons explained later, we can also group   8. Jüngel, Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe. Ein Hinweis auf ihre Probleme (Zürich: EVZ-Verlag, 1968). In the following analysis, translated quotations are from the reprint of this pamphlet in idem, Barth-Studien (Zürich, Köln: Benziger and Mohn: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1982), pp. 246–88.   9. Jüngel, ‘Thesen zu Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe’, in Zu Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe, ed. Fritz Viering (Mohn: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1971), pp. 161–4. Translated quotations from this text in the present essay are cited from edition of these theses published in idem, Barth-Studien, pp. 291–4. 10. Jüngel, ‘Rezension: Karl Barth, KD IV/4 Fragment (Zürich: EVZ, 1967)’, LR 19:1 (1969), pp. 100–6. 11. Jüngel, Rev. of Karl Barth, CD IV/4 Fragment, Literature Survey 1 (1969), pp. 78–83. 12. Jüngel, ‘Das Sakrament – Was ist das?’, EvTh 26 (1966), pp. 320–36. 13. Jüngel, ‘Das Sakrament – Was ist das? Versuch einer Antwort’, in Eberhard Jüngel and Karl Rahner, SJ, Was ist ein Sakrament? Vorstöße zur Verständigung, Ökumenische Forschungen. Ergänzende Abteilung. Kleine ökumenische Schriften 6 (Freiburg: Herder, 1971), pp. 9–61. All translated quotations from ‘Das Sakrament . . .’ in the present essay are from this edition of the text. 14. Jüngel, ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, in Verhandlungen der Landessynode der Evagelischen Landeskirch in Baden, Ordentliche Tagung vom April 1969 (Karlsruhe: Evangelischen Oberkirchenrat, 1969), pp. 34–45. 15. Jüngel, ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, in Zu Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe, pp. 25–43. Quotations from this text are cited from the reprint in idem, Barth-Studien, pp. 295–331.

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the important essay ‘The Church as Sacrament?’ (1983),16 which contains lengthy comments on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, with these earlier texts. In group (c) we have two texts on the phenomenology of worship in which Jüngel makes some interesting remarks on the relation of divine and human agency in baptism and the Lord’s Supper: ‘Der Gottesdienst als Fest der Freiheit. Der theologische Ort des Gottesdienstes nach Friedrich Schleiermacher’ (1984)17 and ‘Der evangelisch verstandene Gottesdienst’ (1990).18 The fourth group (d) consists of two texts that appeared in the wake of the intense ecumenical controversy that erupted in Germany over the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: ‘Auf dem Weg zur Eucharistiegemeinschaft’ (1999),19 which has been reprinted and/or slightly altered on numerous occasions,20 and ‘Sakrament und Repräsentation. Wesen und Funktion der sakramentalen Handlung’ (2001),21 which is the German edition of an essay that was delivered and published in Spanish.22 Finally, what we designate as group (e) is the series of papers, originally presented in German in 2005 at the Pontificio Ateneo Sant’Anselmo as the Vaggagini Lectures, that compose the volume El Ser Sacramental.23 In this essay, we are particularly interested in the 16. Jüngel, ‘The Church as Sacrament?’, in Theological Essays I, pp. 189–91. 17. Jüngel, ‘Der Gottesdienst als Fest der Freiheit  – Der theologische Ort des Gottesdienstes nach Friedrich Schleiermacher’, in Indikative der Gnade  – Imperative der Freiheit. Theologische Erörterungen IV (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp. 330–50. 18. Jüngel, ‘Der evangelisch verstandene Gottesdienst’, in Wertlose Wahrheit  – Zur Identität und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens. Theologische Erörterungen III, 2. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 283–310. 19. Jüngel, ‘Auf dem Weg zur Eucharistiegemeinschaft’, in ‘Gebt Zeugnis von eurer Hoffnung’. 93. Katholikentag 10.-14.6.1998 in Mainz. Dokumentation, ed. Zentralkommitee der Deutschen Katholiken (Kevelear: Butzon & Brecker, 1999), pp. 83–93. 20. Jüngel, ‘Alle sollen eins sein. Die Kirchen auf dem Weg zur Eucharistiegemeinschaft’, in Kirche in unserer Zeit, ed. Stephan Pauly (Stuttgart, Berlin, and Köln: Kohlhammer, 1999), pp.  79–93. Idem, ‘Auf dem Weg zur Abendmahlsgemeinschaft’, in Evangelischen Kirchengemeinden Ulm, Texte zum Neujahrsempfang (Ulm: Evangelischen Kirchengemeinden, 2001), pp.  13–25. Idem, ‘Esultanza eucaristica. In cammino verso la communione nella Cena del Signore’, Protestantismo 59:1 (2004), pp. 3–16. Idem, ‘Church Unity is Already Happening’. In the following analysis, we take our citations from the English translation of this text. 21. Jüngel, ‘Sakrament und Repräsentation. Wesen und Funktion der sakramentalen Handlung’, in Ganz werden. Theologische Erörterungen V (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 274–87. 22. Jüngel, ‘Sacramento e rappresentazione. Essenza e funzione dell’azione sacramentale’, in Il mondo del sacramento. Teologia e filosofia a confronto, ed. Nicola Reali (Mailand: Paoline, 2001), pp. 223–38. 23. Jüngel, El Ser Sacramental: En Perspectiva Evangélica, trans. Constantino RuizGarrido (Salamanca: Ediciones Ségueme, 2007). An Italian edition of this text also exists as Essere sacramentale in prospettiva evangelica. Testo tedesco a fronte, trans. A. De Santis

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lecture on ‘Baptism and the Eucharist as the two celebrations of Jesus Christ the one sacrament’.24 The three versions of Jüngel’s analysis of CD IV/4 that constitute our group (a) consist of generally appreciative engagements with Barth’s later doctrine of baptism.25 Jüngel spends a good bit of each of these texts reiterating and summarizing Barth’s proposals. While it is not necessary to reproduce his exposition in its entirety in the present essay, it is worth noting which aspects of Barth’s approach to the problem of baptism Jüngel finds to be the most interesting. He reports that Barth’s central axiom in the fragment is ‘the tenet that in Jesus Christ God is man’, which does not make ‘the distinction . . . between God and man untrue, but rather all the more true’. According to Jüngel’s reading, Barth’s identification of Jesus Christ as the humanity of God posits a ‘correspondence between God and man which distinguishes them in relating them to one another’. Moreover, and critical for the theology of baptism, this ‘correspondence-distinction between God and man manifests itself as a correspondence-distinction between divine and human action’.26 The doctrine of baptism that follows from this analogical relation of divine and human agency, which itself emerges as an entailment of the ontological claim that ‘“God is God” and “man is man”’, includes a strict distinction drawn between the divine action of baptism with the Holy Spirit and the human action of baptism with water. To risk a tautology, these baptisms correspond to one another, simply, insofar as they are both baptisms. They differ insofar as the former is an exclusively divine act carried out by a divine agent, while the latter is an exclusively human act carried out by human agents.27 Baptism with water and also the Lord’s Supper (though the latter is mentioned only briefly in the fragment and in Jüngel’s analysis) are, by consequence of this distinction, to be ‘understood ethically’, that is, ‘as human action-answer(s) to God’s act of grace and word of grace’.28 In baptism with the Holy Spirit, ‘Jesus Christ is at work as the one and only sacrament of the church’, whereas, on the contrary, ‘baptism with water corresponding to baptism with the Spirit is anything but a sacrament’, since ‘it exercises no divine functions at all, but “exhausts” itself in being a human action’.29 Consequently, ‘infant baptism can only be rejected as “a profoundly confused (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 2006). While the Italian edition appeared prior to El Ser Sacramental, both texts are translations from Jüngel’s German lecture notes. Citations in the present essay are my translations of the Spanish edition. 24. Jüngel, El Ser Sacramental, pp. 77–97. 25. It will become clear in our analysis that ‘generally appreciative’ in no way means that Jüngel considers all of Barth’s starting points and conclusions to be legitimate options for constructive sacramental theologies. 26. Jüngel, Rev. of Karl Barth, CD IV/4 Fragment, p. 79. 27. Ibid. On this theme, see also the extended discussion in Jüngel, ‘Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe’. 28. Jüngel, Rev. of Karl Barth, CD IV/4 Fragment, p. 79. 29. Ibid.

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baptismal practice”. For in baptism man with his own decision concedes to God that he (God) is right’.30 As we have already mentioned, Jüngel expresses in all three texts of group (a) his appreciation for the fragment, suggesting that Barth’s later doctrine of baptism ‘has the incomparable advantage of at last presenting an evangelical theology of baptism which is worth disputing about in place of mere theologoumena on baptism’.31 However, it is critical to note that, while Jüngel does continue well beyond these texts to maintain with Barth both a strict differentiation between divine and human action in baptism and an identification of Jesus Christ as the one sacrament of God for the world, he does not in any of his other texts on sacrament, including those written during the same period as his reviews of the fragment, retain Barth’s heavy investment in the distinction of Spirit and water baptisms.32 More significantly, these are Jüngel’s only statements on the problem of sacrament in which he refrains from discussing, potentially as a Lutheran countermove to Barth, the fundamental passivity of the human agent in the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. To be precise, while throughout his writings Jüngel at least tacitly agrees with Barth that sacramental agency is somehow to be conceived as human action that corresponds to God’s gracious self-giving action in the gospel, he usually describes this as receptive action, action that is ontically ground in the passive human reception of God’s justifying and self-presenting act.33 We see this theme already in the texts of group (b), two of which, it is important to observe once again, were published during the same period as the analyses of the CD IV/4 fragment. In ‘Das Sakrament – was ist das?’ which is, in fact, Jüngel’s earliest statement on the problem of sacrament, he concludes his generally skeptical reading of the divergent traditions of sacramental theology with two axioms that, he believes, are crucial for the development of a responsible conception of sacrament, namely, that ‘Jesus Christ is the one sacrament of the church’ and that ‘baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the two celebrations of the one sacrament of the church’.34 Significantly, in spite of his refusal here to identify water baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments (at one point in the text he even refers to them as the so-called sacraments35), it is clear that he conceives of Jesus Christ as the primary agent in the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper whose self-presentation is passively received in faith by the believer. Jüngel thus argues that Jesus Christ, ‘in his self-activity as the word of God that effects faith . . . publically interrupts the world in baptism [and] secretly interrupts the world in the Lord’s Supper’, and, by 30. Ibid., p. 81. 31. Ibid., p. 81. 32. While he does briefly discuss this distinction in El Ser Sacramental, p.  82, his remarks are tangential and, correspondingly, the relation of Spirit and water baptism has no significant bearing on the approach to sacramental theology he takes in the text. 33. See our extended commentary on these themes in Nelson, The Interruptive Word, pp. 197–205. 34. Jüngel, ‘Das Sakrament – Was ist das?’, p. 36. Emphasis added. 35. Ibid., p. 48.

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doing so, ‘calls and gathers the world’36 to himself through these actions. What the church passively ‘celebrates’ in the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper is that Jesus Christ is active and effective in these events,37 and that his agency and effectiveness is the ontic basis of the church’s corresponding actions. As he later puts it, water baptism and the Lord’s Supper ‘impart the being of Jesus Christ’ to the believer and, by consequence, ‘open’ the believer to participate in the life of faith and to hope for the eschatological table.38 We therefore discover in this text, which, we must keep in mind, was written in the same period as the interlocutions with CD IV/4, an account of baptism and the Lord’s Supper that maintains Barth’s Christological determination of the concept of sacrament, but differs from the fragment insofar as the description of the human action in the celebrations of water baptism and the Lord’s Supper here consists of the passive reception of the effective action of God that occurs interruptedly through these celebrations.39 This account of receptive sacramental action recurs in more or less the same conceptual form in ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, and much later in ‘The Church as Sacrament?’ The title of the former essay suggests that Jüngel intends to distance his own position from a ‘sacramental understanding’ of the sacraments. It is both unfortunate and surprising, then, that, in the course of the essay, Jüngel neither identifies nor describes the ‘sacramental’ perspective on baptism that he is critiquing. As in ‘Das Sakrament . . .’ he is hesitant to identify baptism as a sacrament. Additionally, in one of the only instances to be found in his writings, he explicitly argues that the liturgical practice of baptism should be reserved for believers alone.40 And yet he contends that: While man commits himself in baptism, he yet remains passive. The active subject is the one in whose name we are baptized: Jesus Christ. But the man who commits himself (in baptism) is also the subject of baptism under the sign of passivity. Man is indeed already passive insofar as he believes. But his faith makes him active as one who is passive. Baptism corresponds structurally to the event of faith – but only under the prerequisite of this event, that is, so to speak, chiastically: the believer commits himself in baptism to the passivity of faith in such a way that this passivity must be directly the origin of the Christian act.41

Jesus Christ is here conceived as the ‘active subject’ of water baptism (and not of baptism with the Holy Spirit, which is not mentioned in the text) and, implicitly, the Lord’s Supper. The believer is active only as the passive recipient 36. Ibid., p. 37, Thesis 10. 37. Ibid., p. 38, Theses 14 and 15. 38. Ibid., p. 61. 39. We do well to reiterate that, in this important early essay, Jüngel does not appear to be interested at all in Barth’s distinction between the baptisms of the Holy Spirit and water. 40. Jüngel, ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, p. 309. 41. Ibid., p. 311. Emphasis added.

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of the prior action of Jesus Christ. In contrast to the Barth of the fragment, Jüngel contends that water baptism is a nexus of divine and human subjective agency, occurring in correspondence to one another in a chiastic structure. The analogy to literary chiasm is pivotal, as it suggests that Jüngel conceives of water baptism as consisting of parallel actions (divine and human) and acting subjects (God and the believer). The contrast with Barth cannot be more clear, since Jüngel understands this chiastic relationship of divine and human action as characteristic of the liturgical event of water baptism, and not of the two baptisms of the Holy Spirit and water. But why, we must ask, is this not a sacramental understanding of baptism? Or better, if this is not a sacramental understanding of baptism, what is? Answers to such questions begin to become transparent in the ‘The Church as Sacrament?’ Here, Jüngel retains the strict distinction between the sacramental being of Jesus Christ and the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, such that these events are not identified as sacraments alongside Christ, but rather as celebrations of Christ the one sacrament.42 As in the earlier texts that we have already considered, Jüngel proposes that this distinction between sacrament and celebration does not entail that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are exclusively human actions evacuated of divine presence and salvific efficacy. On the contrary, he asserts that ‘Jesus Christ represents and presents himself in human words and in the celebration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper’, and in doing so ‘unites us to his body’.43 He does this, Jüngel insists, by speaking in and as the verbum visibile of the sacrament. Just so, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, according to Jüngel, word-events in the occurrences of which the resurrected and ascended Christ draws near to the church as it hears and creatively receives the action-inspeech of Jesus Christ.44 Jüngel therefore employs the distinction of sacrament and celebration in this essay in order to secure the unique and pre-eminent position of Jesus Christ as the one who, as the sacrament of God, effects salvation. Although he does contend that Christ communicates and effects salvation in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, he nevertheless appears wary in ‘The Church as Sacrament?’ of explicitly attributing sacramentality to these liturgical actions, lest by doing so the unique sacramentality of Jesus Christ might be compromised. They are, rather, events during and through which Christ acts as speaker. The two texts in our group (c) on the phenomenology of worship suggest that Jüngel discovered, through a close reading of Schleiermacher’s theology of Christian living and practice, a conceptual key for describing the difference between opus dei and opus hominum in the actions of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, namely, the differentiation of effective actions and representative actions.45 According to Jüngel’s reading, Schleiermacher draws this distinction between 42. See the entirety of our argument in Nelson, The Interruptive Word. 43. Jüngel, ‘The Church as Sacrament?’, p. 212, Thesis 3. 44. On this point, see Jüngel’s discussion in ‘The Church as Sacrament?’, pp. 204–6. 45. On what follows, see ‘Der Gottesdienst als Fest der Freiheit’, pp. 341–6.

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two types of human liturgical action, and thus his concern is to demonstrate what type of human action occurs in Christian worship. Effective human actions are purposeful actions that are carried out in order to cause or to produce some effect. On the other hand, representative human actions are spontaneous actions in the occurrences of which participants act out that which they can by no means produce themselves. As Jüngel says elsewhere, representative actions are actions ‘of the Sabbath, by which we are unburdened of ourselves’.46 Jüngel thus conscripts Schleiermacher’s distinction in order to conceptualize the difference between the productive actions of ordinary human existence and the creatively passive actions of Christian worship. As actors in the events of worship, believers do not produce anything themselves, but rather represent, or act out, that which has been done once and for all in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We thus see that, by employing the idea of representative action, Jüngel is able to craft a strongly sacramental reading of the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper without compromising the thesis that Jesus Christ himself is, strictly speaking, the one sacrament of God for the world. Accordingly, in the second of these two texts on worship, the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which Jüngel describes as representative liturgical actions, are explicitly designated as ‘sacramental celebrations’.47 So, while, in the texts of group (b), Jüngel draws a sharp distinction between the concepts of sacrament and celebration, here he identifies the celebrations as sacramental. Baptism is the ‘sacrament’ in the event of which ‘the new breaks into the world of the old age and the old man commits himself to his new being’, and through which ‘Jesus Christ puts away for us the future so that we can put away (εν Χριστώ) the past’.48 The Lord’s Supper is the ‘sacrament of provisions for the journey’, in the event of which ‘the way breaks into the world of the old age and the assembly of believers becomes the body of Christ’, and through which ‘the wandering people of God visually represent the salvific past of Jesus Christ and proclaim his death until he comes’.49 This text marks the first occasion in Jüngel’s writings on the problem of sacrament in which he explicitly invokes sacramental language for describing baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We reiterate that here Jesus Christ is still conceived as the one sacrament of God for the world.50 Additionally, we find the same emphasis on receptive liturgical action that appeared in latent form in the texts from group (b) and that received conceptual clarification in ‘Der Gottesdienst als Fest der Freiheit’. Why, though, does Jüngel now appear so willing to refer to baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments, when earlier he strongly objected to this designation on the basis of a strict differentiation drawn between the concepts of sacrament and celebration? We will return to this question shortly. 46. Jüngel, ‘Church Unity is Already Happening’, p. 33. 47. Jüngel, ‘Der evangelisch verstandene Gottesdienst’, p.  309, Thesis 6.1. Emphasis added. 48. Ibid., p. 309, Thesis 6.11. 49. Ibid., p. 309, Thesis 6.12. 50. Ibid., p. 307, Thesis 4, cf. p. 309, Thesis 6.

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We may survey our last two groups, (d) and (e), more succinctly. The texts from the former group contain extensive reflections on the idea of representative action that are oriented specifically to the problem of the phenomenology of the liturgical events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.51 As elsewhere, Jüngel asserts that Jesus Christ is the one sacrament, and that the agency of Christ in the sacramental celebrations must be strictly differentiated from the fundamentally passive actions of the hearing church. With a nod to Schleiermacher, Jüngel proposes that the sacramental events of worship are interruptive word-events in the occurrences of which Christ represents and presents himself to his believing people. As in ‘Der evangelisch verstandene Gottesdienst’, he is not at all uncomfortable with identifying baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments, so long as Jesus Christ is conceived as ‘the primary actor . . . the actual agent in the sacramental events’.52 The texts in group (d), we might say in summary, exhibit Jüngel’s attempt to clarify the implications of his phenomenology of liturgical action for a robust and responsible sacramental theology. In El Ser Sacramental, the lectures of which we have called group (e), Jüngel retains the emphases on the sacramental primacy of Jesus Christ and on the receptivity of the representative actions of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. However, in the text, Jüngel employs especially muscular sacramental terminology for describing baptism and the Lord’s Supper, claiming, for instance, that the former event communicates grace and seals the believer for God in the truth of the gospel53 and ‘unites the one who is baptized with Jesus Christ and intensifies that union’,54 and that the latter event ‘produces an unsurpassable proximity in which Jesus, who makes himself present in bread and wine, is nearer to the believer than her or she can be to his or herself ’.55 He even proposes an appreciative conception of infant baptism, with the qualification that: .  .  .  parents and godparents [of the baptized infant], in the same way as the community, assume responsibility for the Christian life that is opened up to the one who receives baptism, and . . . provide the presuppositions for the growth of faith, for the freedom of a personal confession of faith, for the joy of life in the church and in the community, and for participation in the same.56

Finally, we note that, throughout El Ser Sacramental, Jüngel largely abandons his customary emphasis on the interruptive character of the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper vis-à-vis creaturely time in order to develop a more robust account 51. For a full exposition of these texts and the issue of representative action, see Nelson, The Interruptive Word, pp. 197–205. 52. Jüngel, ‘Sakrament und Repräsentation’, p. 283. 53. Jüngel, El Ser Sacramental, p. 80. 54. Ibid., p. 84. 55. Ibid., p. 92. 56. Ibid., pp. 83–4.

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of the temporality of the eschatological time of the sacraments. In particular, he invokes the image of the ‘wandering people of God’, which he mentions only in passing in the earlier text, ‘Der evangelisch verstandene Gottesdienst’, in order to explain how the sacraments relate to the lifetime of the believer and to the church’s journey through time to the coming city of God. This feature of El Ser Sacramental puts the text into sharp relief vis-à-vis Jüngel’s earlier writings on sacrament.

Some Hermeneutical Proposals What emerges from the preceding taxonomical survey of the texts is a threefold question of continuity that must be taken into account in any thoroughgoing interlocution with Jüngel’s sacramental theology. (1) The texts in group (a), which consist of Jüngel’s appreciative descriptive accounts of Barth’s late doctrine of baptism, differ from all of the other texts insofar as here we do not find the emphasis, which plays a significant role elsewhere, on the fundamental passivity of the human person in the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. (2) While groups (b) through (e) have in common both this emphasis on human passivity and the identification of Jesus Christ as the unique and pre-eminent sacramental being who himself is the primal agent in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the earlier texts in group (b) exhibit a hesitancy, if not an outright refusal, to designate baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments, while, in the latter texts (groups  (c) through  (e)), Jüngel appears increasingly comfortable with employing classical sacramental terminology for describing baptism and the Lord’s Supper, provided that certain qualifications are met in the course of argumentation that serves to secure the thesis of the uniqueness and preeminence of the sacramentality of Jesus Christ. (3) In groups (b) through (d), Jüngel describes the character of sacramental time by persistently appealing to the category of interruption. However, while he does mention this category on a few occasions in El Ser Sacramental, in the chapter from this volume on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, we discover an unprecedented emphasis (at least when set alongside what we find in the earlier texts) on the chronological aspects of sacramental time. In what follows we tackle, in turn, this threefold question of continuity. (1) We propose that the apparent discontinuity between the texts on Barth’s fragment and the other writings on baptism and the Lord’s Supper is rather easy to rectify. We must remember that these texts are, generally speaking, descriptive analyses of the doctrine of baptism published in CD IV/4. As we discussed earlier, in these texts we find Jüngel expressing his appreciation of certain aspects of Barth’s later account of baptism (particularly Barth’s thesis that a responsible doctrine of baptism will clarify the necessary differentiation of divine and human agency in the event of baptism). But he in no place claims or even suggests that the fragment is paradigmatic for his own understanding either of baptism in particular or of

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the category of sacrament in general.57 What sets our proposal apart from other interpretations of the extent of Barth’s influence on Jüngel in the area of sacramental theology is our observation, discussed at length earlier, that two of the texts from group (b) were published during the same period as the Barth analyses. This fact, we contend, demonstrates that Jüngel’s earliest attempts to construct a theology of sacrament diverge from Barth’s late doctrine in a number of important ways.58 Most significantly, in these texts that appeared roughly contemporaneously to the 57. This point in particular sets our analysis apart from other interpretations of these texts, especially those set forth by Webster, Spjuth and Richardson. Webster (Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 106–9) and Spjuth (Creation, Contingency and Divine Presence, pp. 132–6) both assert that Jüngel, to put it in the former’s terms, wholly concedes ‘Barth’s firm distinction between Spirit- and water-baptism as paradigmatic of a proper relation between God and the Christian in which human action does not usurp the divine and divine action does not obliterate the authentically human’ (Webster, Eberhard Jüngel, p. 107). But no commentator acknowledges that this distinction holds little weight in Jüngel’s other writings on sacrament. Additionally, Webster and Spjuth fail to note that, in texts contemporaneous to the analyses of the fragment, Jüngel counters Barth by emphasizing the fundamental passivity of faith that serves as the ontological ground of liturgical action. We reiterate that, for Jüngel, the dialectic of faith and agency, of passivity and activity, occurs in the event of water baptism, rather than in the corresponding baptisms of the Holy Spirit and water.   Richardson (Reading Karl Barth, especially pp.  176–83) argues along similar lines, though, unfortunately, he colours his analysis with bombastic and occasionally unwarranted rhetoric. For instance, he makes the preposterous insinuation that the cottage industry of Jüngel translation has been governed by a posture of ‘obscurantism’, and consequently implies that scholars have concertedly avoided translating the early analyses of the fragment that putatively prove that Jüngel’s sacramental theology is ‘rooted in a profound embrace of Barth’s doctrine’ (p. 177). The flaw encapsulated in this assertion directly results from a formal defect, namely, a woefully unsophisticated hermeneutic for approaching the primary sources. Richardson deals almost exclusively with the two texts on the Barth fragment, interpreting them not within their original contexts, but rather as components of Barth-Studien, the collection published in the early 1980s but containing pieces written as far back as two decades prior. Reading these early reviews in light of their inclusion within the compilation does indeed reinforce the false impression that Jüngel borrows heavily from Barth for his own development of a Protestant sacramental theology. But, to the contrary and as we are in the course of demonstrating, an accurate documentary chronology reveals that Jüngel is not nearly as convinced by Barth’s synthesis as Richardson and other interpreters insist. 58. We thus concur in large measure with Mottu’s analysis in ‘Les Sacrements selon Karl Barth et Eberhard Jüngel’. Mottu shows that Jüngel works with a much more robust concept of sacramental mediation than what we find expressed by Barth in the fragment. Mottu does not, however, wed this idea of mediation to the motif of passive liturgical action, which, as we have demonstrated, functions significantly in Jüngel’s sacramental theology.

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Barth reviews, Jüngel emphasizes the primary agency of Jesus Christ in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and thus charts a set of proposals that differs considerably from Barth’s thesis that water baptism is an exclusively human act and should thus be strictly differentiated in an ontological sense from the baptism with the Holy Spirit. A matter of additional importance is that we do not find even a quotation from the fragment in any of the texts in our groups (b) through (e). All of this suggests that we should not, as others have, it would seem, erroneously demanded, read the texts from group (a) as indicative of Jüngel’s emerging theology of sacrament. They are, rather, best read as generally affirmative presentations of Barth’s challenge to traditional approaches to the problem of sacrament, from the details of which Jüngel elsewhere departs. (2) A more difficult problem to resolve is the apparent discontinuity between the three texts from our group (b) and the essays on sacrament that compose groups (c) through (e). We have shown that Jüngel asserts in all of these texts that Jesus Christ alone is the mystery of God’s gracious ‘yes’ to humanity, and is, precisely so, the one sacrament of God for the world. Additionally, in every one of these texts, Jesus Christ is identified as the primary agent in the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, while the believer who participates in these celebrations acts only on the basis of the fundamental passivity that marks humanity’s situation before the justifying God. Nevertheless, in spite of such consistencies among these texts, there emerges also a sharp divergence between, on the one hand, the essays in group (b), which exhibit a tacit rejection of traditional sacramental terminology for describing baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and, on the other, the essays in groups (c) through (e), in which Jüngel identifies baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments. The clue to the resolution of this dilemma, we propose, lies in the fact that the first occasion upon which Jüngel explicitly categorizes baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments is found in the text ‘Der evangelisch verstandene Gottesdienst’, in which he constructs a phenomenology of worship based at least in part upon Schleiermacher’s distinction of human effective and representative actions. The idea of representative action is absent from the two early texts from group (b). In those essays, Jüngel posits a sharp distinction between the category of sacrament and the idea of celebration, asserting that, as Jesus Christ alone deserves to be called the sacrament of God for the world, baptism and the Lord’s Supper can only be conceived as the church’s celebrations of the sacramental being of Christ. While Jesus Christ, the one sacrament, is conceived as in fact acting in these celebrations, Jüngel draws a sharp differentiation between the divine actions of Christ and the human actions of the celebrant that arise from the fundamental passivity of justification.59 Such manoeuvres serve as evidence that, in these early texts, Jüngel is suspicious that the designation of baptism 59. For a more substantial treatment of this theme, we once again point the reader to the analysis in Nelson, The Interruptive Word, pp. 197–205.

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and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments might encroach upon the thesis of the unique and pre-eminent sacramentality of Jesus Christ. This same suspicion marks Jüngel’s proposals in ‘The Church as Sacrament?’ even though, as we mentioned, we find there at least an incipient form of the idea of representative action. The two essays on worship in group (c), however, constitute a step forward of sorts, since here, in conversation with Schleiermacher, Jüngel works out an account of sacramental action that is conceptually more cogent than the bare distinctions of divine and human agency and human activity and passivity that we find in the earlier texts. To be precise, what the idea of representative action furnishes for Jüngel is a way to describe the real presence of Christ as actor in the celebrations of baptism and the Lord’s Supper without, in doing so, blurring the distinction between divine and human action in these events. In the text of ‘Sakrament und Repräsentation’, for example, Jüngel proposes that both Jesus Christ and the church act, though in very different ways, in the representative actions of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Christ is the primary actor and actual agent in these events insofar as he represents and presents himself in the midst of the gathered congregation. The church’s liturgical action is secondary to Christ’s self-representative action, as it produces nothing in and of itself, but rather participates, in a fundamentally passive way, in the salvifically effective death and resurrection of Christ. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, then, are nexuses of Christ’s interruptive self-representation and self-presentation and the church’s creatively and actively passive reception of the interruptive drawing near of Christ. Precisely in this sense does Jüngel describe them as sacramental celebrations. (3) It is not immediately evident why, in the text of the fourth chapter of El Ser Sacramental, we find Jüngel deemphasizing the interruptive character of the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper in favour of a more chronologically temporal approach to the problem of sacramental eschatology. Jüngel does not explain this adjustment in the text, nor does he spell out nor even acknowledge his awareness of the differences between this approach and that which marks his earlier writings. Additionally, this strongly continuous description of the relation of the sacrament to time does not mark the other chapters of El Ser Sacramental, but rather appears only in the chapter on baptism and the Lord’s Supper.60 Moreover, a survey of Jüngel’s theological writings published since the turn of the millennium demonstrates that the remarkably positive account of the relation of God and his actions to creaturely continuities found in the chapter in El Ser Sacrament on baptism and the Lord’s Supper does not reflect a general trend in Jüngel’s recent theology. Indeed, the interruption/continuity of life (Unterbrechung/Lebenszu sammenhang) metaphor for describing God’s relation to the temporality of the 60. See the entirety of our discussion of the fourth chapter in El Ser Sacramental in ibid., pp. 206–26.

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world appears in numerous texts from this period of Jüngel’s career,61 and even in a handful of places elsewhere in El Ser Sacramental.62 All of this suggests that Jüngel’s employment of different metaphors for describing sacramental time in the chapter in El Ser Sacramental on baptism and the Lord’s Supper is anomalous visà-vis his other recent theological writings. We propose that the most plausible explanation for this shift in metaphors for sacramental time emerges from the fact that, in our chapter in El Ser Sacramental, Jüngel devotes his attention to a set of issues that is completely absent from his earlier analyses of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. On the whole, in the texts in our groups (a) and (b) we find Jüngel preoccupied with the problem of sacramentum in genere, that is, with the abstract question of what does and does not constitute a sacrament. In the writings in groups (c) and (d), Jüngel analyses baptism and the Lord’s Supper as phenomena of worship. In these texts, he places great emphasis upon the sacraments as events and also upon the related issue of the intersection of divine and human agency in the sacraments. By contrast, in the chapter in El Ser Sacramental on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Jüngel is interested primarily in the roles that these sacraments play in the Christian life and in the ongoing existence of the church. While the themes from the earlier texts do recur in El Ser Sacramental, his main purpose in the fourth chapter appears to be to situate baptism and the Lord’s Supper within both the lifetime of the believer and the pilgrimage of the church to the coming city of God. We suggest that this shift in thematic scope compels Jüngel to deviate from his customary emphasis on sacramental time as the interruption of the chronologically continuous. Returning to the hermeneutical question of the continuity of Jüngel’s theology of sacrament, we assert that the employment in El Ser Sacramental of new metaphors for the relation between the sacramental celebrations and time is not exhibitive of a real change of mind concerning this nexus of issues. Indeed, we have noted that the theme of the interruptive structure of God’s relation to creaturely continuities rises to the surface on several occasions during the course of El Ser Sacramental. Moreover, additional themes which appear concomitantly with the category of interruption elsewhere in Jüngel’s writings are in fact found in the Spanish volume (e.g. the definition of mystery as being ‘an event of the world, but one which surpasses the world and which, precisely in this manner, arrives at the foundation of the world’,63 an emphasis 61. For example, Jüngel, ‘Sakrament und Rapräsentation’; idem, ‘Neu–Alt–Neu: Theologische Aphorismen’, in Erfahrungen mit der Erfahrung, pp.  21–7; and idem, ‘Das Wunder des Glaubens’, in Beziehungsreich: Perspektiven des Glaubens (Stuttgart: RADIUSVerlag, 2001), pp. 135–6. 62. See Jüngel, El Ser Sacramental, pp. 18, 64, 97. 63. Jüngel, El Ser Sacramental, p. 17.

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on the event character of Christian worship,64 the description of the church’s ‘sacramental being’65 in light of the unique and pre-eminent sacramentality of Jesus Christ,66 etc.).67 Must we not therefore conclude that El Ser Sacramental exhibits a somewhat incoherent account of the relation between the sacrament and time? That is to say, does not Jüngel’s employment of new metaphors for baptism and the Lord’s Supper that illustrate the implications of these sacramental celebrations for the believer and for the church as they tarry through time undercut his persistent appeal, even in the very same text, to the category of interruption to describe the ontological structure of God’s sacramental relation to the world? We are convinced, rather, that the chapter on baptism and the Lord’s Supper in El Ser Sacramental in fact represents an advance within a generally continuous theology of sacrament. What we find in El Ser Sacramental, particularly in Jüngel’s exposition of the sacramental celebrations, is the groundwork for a theology of sacrament according to which sacramental being is both interruptive of and continuous with the world. For Jüngel, the sacramental celebrations indeed shatter the sham existence of the sinner, who otherwise would continue living in the face of death, tarrying through the present with the baggage of the past and on the way towards a future of abject, absolute relationlessness, the cause of which is the selfjustifying posture of the uninterrupted homo faber. But these same sacraments initiate, nourish and equip the believer for a lifetime lived in the course of the world and in harmony with God, the other and the self. The church, too, is not just interrupted by the word-events of preaching, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but is also strengthened for a journey, ineluctably carried out in time, towards the eschatological city of God.

Concluding Remarks In summary, our hermeneutic for reading these groups of Jüngel’s writings on baptism and the Lord’s Supper suggests, first of all, that we do not understand the differences that emerge in the texts as evidence of a fundamental incongruity in his sacramental theology. On the whole, the broad lines of Jüngel’s theology of sacrament have remained remarkably consistent throughout his career, and thus we do not find any fundamental change of mind that underlies the subtle differences between his writings as we have classified them. Rather, for instance, 64. See especially ibid., pp. 43–54. 65. Ibid., p. 76. 66. See ibid., pp. 70–6. 67. We point the reader to our review of El Ser Sacramental within the course of our entire analysis in Nelson, The Interruptive Word, especially pp. 206–26.

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by re-conceptualizing and therefore clarifying the problem of divine and human action in dialogue with Schleiermacher, Jüngel is able to sustain in his later texts a more lucid reading of what occurs and who acts in the events of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. However, we might conceive the shift towards the worldly continuous character of sacramental events in the fourth chapter of El Ser Sacramental, in the text this development appears to be completely consonant with the major themes found throughout Jüngel’s sacramental theology. In short, the course of Jüngel’s writings on the problem of sacrament is not marked by sharp changes in thought, but by conceptual adjustments and advances within a generally consistent set of commitments. Second, it is important to reiterate, especially in light of the secondary literature on Jüngel’s doctrines of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, most of the examples of which were produced during the first three decades of his career and thus written without the full corpus at hand, that the early analyses of Barth’s fragment on baptism do not appear to be indicative or paradigmatic of Jüngel’s emerging sacramental theology.68 While it is certainly the case that Barth and Jüngel share a set of convictions on the concept of sacrament, Jüngel deviates from Barth in numerous ways and does not, in his other writings on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, find it necessary to critically engage with Barth’s later remarks. Most significantly, Jüngel’s other texts on sacramental agency exhibit a heavy investment in the notion that the celebrant is active as passive in water baptism. Just so, Jüngel diverges from Barth by locating the dialectic of divine and human sacramental agency in the event of the liturgical celebration of water baptism, and not in the baptisms of the Holy Spirit and water as they correspond to each other. Third, and along lines similar to the second point, our hermeneutic suggests the Jüngel’s later texts are more indicative of what we might call his normative approach to the theology of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This is especially important to keep in mind when considering the question of whether, for Jüngel, baptism and the Eucharist are or are not sacraments. While he appears wary of this designation in the early texts, in later writings and on the basis of a more robust account of liturgical action, he is quite comfortable with the traditional sacramental terminology. Also, if our reading of the texts on baptism and the Lord’s Supper is accurate, future interlocutions with Jüngel in this area would do well to include ample critical interaction with El Ser Sacramental, which, again, is his most recent and comprehensive attempt to articulate a theology of sacrament. In the end, whether or not any of our particular conclusions stand the test of time, the form of our analysis will, we believe, set the stage for future studies of this and other themes in Jüngel’s thought. To phrase the matter as an imperative, we contend that any serious engagement with Jüngel’s theology must, to some 68. This, we again note, sets apart our reading of Jüngel’s sacramental theology from those set forth by Webster, Spjuth and Richardson.

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extent at least, consist of a literary and textual exposition of his writings. We have demonstrated that such an exposition is an absolutely necessary component in a correct evaluation of his sacramental theology. It is our hope that this essay and other studies of the sort on additional themes will encourage the fresh reception of Jüngel’s work among English-speaking scholars and reinforce the significance of his thought for contemporary theology.

Chapter 13 M ARTIN H E IDE GGE R: A N ST O ß FOR E BE R HAR D J ÜNGE L’S T H E OLO GY 1 Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

During his year of study outside of the German Democratic Republic, Jüngel took a short train ride monthly from Switzerland to Freiburg (in the Federal Republic of Germany) to hear Heidegger lecture on ‘The Nature of Language’.2 Although he never connected with Heidegger on a personal level (his ‘personality was really somewhat odd’3), Heidegger was nevertheless the ‘genius’,4 ‘the profound thinker’ 5 and ‘the teacher’ who taught us ‘to think in the struggle with metaphysics’.6 But even more so for Jüngel, Heidegger was the Anstoß7  – that 1. The present essay is a considerably revised edition of material that first appeared in my unpublished doctoral dissertation, titled: ‘Eberhard Jüngel’s Theological Anthropology in Light of his Christology’ (Toronto: University of St. Michael’s College, 1996). 2. Martin Heidegger, ‘Das Wesen der Sprache’, in Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen, 1959). The paper was delivered in three lectures at the University of Freiburg on 14 and 18 December 1957 and 7 February 1958. 3. Eberhard Jüngel, Die Leidenschaft, Gott zu denken. Ein Gespräch über Denk- und Lebenserfahrungen, ed. Fulvio Ferrario (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2009), p. 22. 4. Ibid., p. 22. 5. Jüngel, ‘Geleitwort’, in Rudolf Butlmann/Martin Heidegger Briefwechsel 1925–1975, ed. Andreas Großmann and Christof Landmesser (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann and Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), p. VII. 6. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 153n1. 7. Cf. Jüngel (with Michael Trowitzsch), ‘Provozierendes Denken. Bemerkungen zur theologischen Anstößigkeit der Denkwege Martin Heideggers’, Neue Hefte für Philosophie 23 (1984), p. 59. Jüngel can also speak of Heidegger as ‘impetus’ who ‘proved helpful’ for several key theological decisions (idem, ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, CCe 108 [1991], p.  232). This was also confirmed in a personal interview with Jüngel (Tübingen, 13 July 1995).While Mark Mattes’s summary of the relationship between Heidegger and Jüngel (‘Toward Divine Relationality: Eberhard Jüngel’s New Trinitarian, Postmetaphysical

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is, both impulse and offence – for a recognition of the dangers of metaphysics, and who provoked Jüngel to think theology from its own ground, that is, ‘to think God’, 8 to think faith and the being of humanity without beginning with the self-grounding subject of metaphysics. ‘Heidegger’s thought is an event of philosophy’, and Jüngel recommends that theology as theology does well not to evade Heidegger, but should ‘learn what may be learned from [this] philosophy’.9 In Jüngel’s own words, the encounter with Heidegger proved ‘to be of enduring significance’.10 This essay explores Jüngel’s masterful theological engagement of Heidegger’s thought and its contribution towards a contemporary post-modern Christian theology; the focus will be on nothingness, temporality and death.

Heidegger – The Witness to Nothing Jüngel has praised Heidegger as the ‘witness to nothing’.11 As metaphysics sought to secure existence in human self-reflection, an awareness of the possibility of nothing emerged, according to Heidegger. It is this nothingness which compels the basic question of metaphysics, that ‘last despairing question’ as articulated by Schelling: ‘Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not nothing? . . . If I cannot answer this last question, then everything else sinks for me into the abyss of bottomless nothingness’.12 Approach’ [PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1995]) is helpful, his judgement is incorrect when he suggests that the bearing of Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics on Jüngel’s thought is ‘unthematized’ (p. 310) and that Jüngel is inclined to see Heidegger’s response to the crisis of modernity as ‘superficial’ (p. 269); moreover, Mattes is certainly overstating the case when he proposes that ‘[t]he point of Jüngel’s critique of ontotheology’ is ‘to turn Heidegger’s view on its head’ (p. 318).   8. ‘The Passion to Think God’  – this is the English translation of title of Jüngel’s autobiographical reflections: Die Leidenschaft, Gott zu denken.   9. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 153 n.1. 10. Jüngel, ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, p. 232. 11. Jüngel (–Trowitzsch), ‘Provozierendes Denken’, pp. 60, 61. 12. Friedrich Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, in Sämmtliche Werke II/3, ed. Karl Schelling (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1858), pp. 7f. See Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics?’, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Ferrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 112. Jüngel cites this passage frequently: for example, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. ix, 31, 246; idem, The Freedom of a Christian: Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988), p.  44; idem, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, trans. Iain Nicol and Ute Nicol (Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1975), p. 61; idem, Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 122, 209, 223 and idem, ‘The Christian Understanding of Suffering’, JTSA 65 (1988), p. 3.

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In his early work, Heidegger sought to project a variety of modes of human being in his attempt to get behind the human penchant for metaphysics, in particular those questions of ‘whatness’, the idea or mental representation by which we propose to ourselves what a thing is.13 Following Kierkegaard, Heidegger explored anxiety as a mood over which humans have no control yet which offers ‘one of the most far-reaching and most primordial possibilities of disclosure’.14 Heidegger showed how anxiety shocks us out of our metaphysical securities and domestic familiarities, and plunges us into a state in which we are made to feel not at home. In anxiety, referential contexts become inoperative and all beings within the world are ‘nothing and nowhere’ (i.e. without ground). What remains is the nothingness into which one is thrown. For Heidegger, this ‘transcendence’ into nothing does not lead to God as the infinite origin of all beings or to Descartes’ subject upon which a whole world of objects can be secured. In view of the possibility of nothingness, Heidegger points to the ontological structure intrinsic to human finitude as Dasein [There-being] – that being which is concerned with its being (and non-being) and is this being. In anxiety, Dasein – which always finds itself in the midst of ‘the totality of beings’ – experiences that and how ‘the totality of beings’ sinks into indifference and offers no support to Dasein.15 For Jüngel as with Heidegger, it is precisely this thrownness16 and ‘descent’ into nothing that involves the surrender of one’s role as a grounded subject which has grasped its own ground and also provides the ground for other objects. This is the case because the nothing into which Dasein ‘transcends’ is not at its disposal, but it comes upon Dasein in anxiety – in the vague dread of nothing. Thus for Heidegger, ‘nothing’ is not an object or even a logical negation of beings as a whole, but more a ‘hovering’.17 It is particularly the later Heidegger’s work that explores nothing’s role in ‘giving’ Dasein  – from which beings-as-awhole slips away in anxiety – an original openness to beings ‘as such’.18 This phase of Heidegger’s work is most significant for Jüngel’s account of thinking. Heidegger shows that it is the experience of nothing that unveils beings in their being, that is, the surprising fact that there are really beings at all. ‘Only because the nothing is manifest in the ground of Dasein can the total strangeness of beings overwhelm us.  .  .  .  Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the 13. Cf. Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 94. 14. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 226; also ‘What is Metaphysics?’, pp. 102ff. 15. Cf. Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics’, pp. 100ff. 16. Cf. Jüngel, ‘Meine Zeit steht in Deinen Händen (Psalm 31,16): Zur Würde des befristeten Menschenlebens’, in Indikative der Gnade – Imperative der Freiheit (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2000), pp. 63f. 17. Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics’, p. 103. 18. Ibid., p. 105.

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nothing’.19 Existence is revealed as ‘irruption’ [Einbruch] into the totality of beings, by reason of which these beings as beings become manifest.20 Thus Heidegger can say that in Dasein the essential ground on the basis of which humans are able to ‘ek-sist’ (i.e. stand outside of themselves in freedom) is preserved.21 Without the ‘original revelation of the nothing’, Dasein ‘could never be related to beings nor even to itself . . . no selfhood, and no freedom’.22 Thus Dasein is revealed not as self-possession, but fundamentally as ‘being held out into the nothing’.23 It is not that consciousness brings objects before it, reducing reality to the subject’s picture, forcing nature into the shape given it by humanity; rather beings as a whole ‘come to themselves’ ‘[o]nly in the nothing of Dasein’.24 This ‘hovering’ of nothing which preserves Dasein’s ek-sistence is extremely important for understanding Heidegger’s and Jüngel’s distinction between fundamental ontology and (metaphysical) anthropology. It is in the experience of nothing that one exists (or ek-sists), according to Jüngel as ‘transcendence abounding in and surpassing toward possibilities’, as ‘a creature of distance. Only through primordial distances . . . does a true nearness to things flourish in him’.25 As such the essence of Dasein is essentially a coming-to-pass, the ontological structure of humanity which is prior to humanity, which grounds the finitude of humanity. ‘[M]ore original than the human person is the finitude of Dasein in the person’,26 for it is as a creature of distance that one can first come into true nearness to things and to oneself. In other words, Dasein is not a (ontic) possession or property of the person (e.g. intellect); it is an attempt to think humanity not determined by the distinction between subject and object. Following Heidegger’s account of nothing, Jüngel notes that in anthropology – rightly understood – ‘one speaks of ontological structures as opposed to ontic structures, for one’s Dasein always implies a relationship to its (and not only to its) being’.27 It is along this path that Jüngel’s theological thought as tutored by Heidegger tries to execute a reversal from metaphysical representing to a no-longermetaphysical thinking. ‘What characterizes metaphysical thinking which 19. Ibid., p. 111. 20. Ibid., p. 97. 21. Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Truth’, Basic Writings, p. 128. 22. Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics?’, p. 106. 23. Ibid., p. 105. 24. Ibid., p. 110. 25. Heidegger, The Essence of Reasons, trans. Terrence Malick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 133; cited in Jüngel, ‘On Becoming Truly Human’, in Theological Essays II, p. 235. 26. Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, 2nd edn (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1951), p. 207. 27. Jüngel, ‘Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie’, in idem, Barth-Studien (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1982), p. 216; Jüngel refers here to Heidegger, Being and Time, §4, pp. 3–35.

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grounds the ground for beings is the fact that metaphysical thinking departs from what is present in its presence, and thus represents it in terms of its ground as something grounded’.28 In order to overcome this metaphysical distance, Jüngel (with Heidegger) seeks to ‘take a “step backward”, allowing us to enter into that which is to be mastered and to overcome it’.29 Expressed differently, ‘[t] hinking does not overcome metaphysics by climbing still higher, surmounting it, transcending it somehow or other; thinking overcomes metaphysics by climbing back down into the nearness of the nearest. . . . The descent leads to the poverty of the ek-sistence of the homo humanus’.30 Here, the nothing no longer emerges as nothing but, in Heidegger’s terms, Being dawns. With this move towards the granting of Being, an emphasis on language as an event of truth appears in Heidegger’s work; and it is at this point that Heidegger’s influence on Jüngel is most intense. In the non-objectifying thought that ‘steps back’ into a true nearness to things, transcendental questioning (e.g. of the conditions of the possibility of experience) ceases and – in terms used by both Heidegger and Jüngel  – becomes a ‘listening correspondence’. Here thought does not originate from the thinker, but rather ‘springs forth’, as it were, from the encounter with Being and in correspondence to Being as such.31 In this way, thinking ‘lets itself be claimed by Being’ so that ‘Being comes to language. Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells’.32 This became decisive for Jüngel’s later theology: ‘I came to understand something decisive for my life: above all this, that in thinking, listening has priority over questioning’.33 Stated differently, language is not a transcendental power above Being (that would be conceived metaphysically), nor primarily a means of objectifying and mastering  reality; rather it is a ‘word’ which first opens up the difference between Being and beings, a prevailing which ‘relates, maintains, proffers, and 28. Heidegger, ‘The End of Philosophy’, in On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 56. 29. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 153 n.1. 30. Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’ in Basic Writings, p.  231; cited by Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p.  208; also in idem, ‘Der Schritt zurück: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Heidegger Deutung Heinrich Otts’, ZThK 58 [1961], p. 111; idem, ‘Gott entsprechendes schweigen? Theologie in der Nachbarschaft des Denkens von Martin Heidegger’, in Martin Heidegger. Fragen an sein Werk. Ein Symposion [Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982], pp. 44f; idem (–Trowitzsch), ‘Provozierendes Denken’, pp. 71f. 31. Cf. Heidegger’s 1949 introduction to ‘What is Metaphysics’ (1929) in Was ist Metaphysik?, 13th edn (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1986), p. 10; cited by Jüngel, ‘Der Schritt zurück’, p. 111. Cf. also idem, ‘Zum Ursprung der Analogie bei Parmenides und Heraklit’, in Entsprechungen: Gott – Wahrheit – Mensch, Theologische Erörterungen II, 2nd edn (Munich: Kaiser, 1986), pp. 69f. 32. Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, pp.  194, 193. Cf. Jüngel, ‘Der Schritt zurück’, p. 122. 33. Jüngel, Die Leidenschaft, Gott zu denken, p. 22.

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enriches the face-to-face encounter’.34 Most importantly for Jüngel, the subject is decentred and the ‘person addressed in such a case is included [einbezogen] in the word event’35 which enables original co-respondence [Ent-sprechung]. This word brings about an existential distancing of the ego that first truly grants an ‘abode’ for the being of mortals in-the-world; the thinking of language in this respect ‘accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man’.36 Many years later, Jüngel wrote that ‘in Freiburg I heard the following statement from Heidegger: “Language speaks [spricht]. The human co-responds [entspricht] to language”. That was something I wanted to pursue’.37 The later Heidegger understood the human being as that open region (Da) which stands open to beings within which beings – with regard to what they are and how they are – can take their stand and become capable of being said. Jüngel’s anthropology develops this lingual ‘essence’ (not as ‘whatness’ but as ‘lingering’ or ‘prevailing’ which opens up paths) of humanity, that is, the existential distancing of the ego by language, in which a new qualification of the person’s state of beingpresent results. Out of the primordial event of address, Jüngel can state generally: ‘Man is the creature whose being is not in immediate correspondence with itself but is capable of being interrupted at any moment by other things that exist, and in fact is always being so interrupted. . . . Human life, therefore, is the interruption of the continuity of created life by the occurrence of truth’.38 Jüngel speaks frequently of this lingual interruption as an Ereignis [event] of truth, that is, a word which intervenes and penetrates the everyday continuities of life such that one comes to oneself outside oneself in a new way. Jüngel points to poetry, a judge’s judgement, a declaration of love or a word of repudiation as examples which effect one’s self-relation and hence one’s being.39 In these 34. Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1966), p. 107. 35. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 10; cf. also idem, ‘“Even the beautiful must die” – Beauty in the Light of Truth. Theological Observations on the Aesthetic Relation’, in Theological Essays II, pp. 65f. Jüngel found motifs of Heidegger, Luther and Barth converging in Fuchs’s concept of being swept into [Einkehr] the Word or text with one’s own present. ‘This legacy continues to influence me. I have pursued it, not simply out of obligation, but because it was so perspicuous to me’ (Jüngel, Die Leidenschaft, Gott zu denken, p. 27). 36. Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, p. 193. 37. Jüngel, Die Leidenschaft, Gott zu denken, p. 26; cf. all of Heidegger, Language, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper, 1971), pp. 187–211. 38. Jüngel, ‘The Truth of Life: Observations on Truth as the Interruption of the Continuity of Life’, in Creation, Christ and Culture. Studies in Honour of T. F. Torrance, ed. Richard W. A. MacKinney (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976), pp. 232f; cf. also Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 170ff. 39. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 10ff. Cf. also idem, ‘Metaphorical Truth. Reflections on Theological Metaphor as a Contribution to a Hermeneutics of Narrative

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Sprachereignisse or language-events, the entire person is drawn out of themselves into the word. Ereignen is the verb that names the appropriating by which there can be a meaningful mutual entrusting and belonging (correspondence = analogy).40 Thus ereignen comes to mean the process by which beings are able to come into the light and clearing of truth, such that each exists in its own truth; moreover, ereignen implies an existing in appropriation of and to each other; here Being is revealed as being-together (rather than substance).41 In this respect, Jüngel’s work is deeply informed by Heidegger’s observation that the lingual event of being is the essence of truth42 – this openness as a domain of relatedness (co-respondence) which precedes and makes possible truth as correctness, that is, the correspondence of mind and thing, adaequatio intellectus et rei. Being [Sein] is understood as a verbal noun [Wesen], in the sense of arriving, coming to reside, taking place (which goes beyond the alternative of presence or absence), an event as a ‘disclosure of appropriation’43 and domain of relatedness, which first makes truth as correctness possible. ‘But if the correctness (truth) of statements becomes possible only through this openness of comportment, then what first makes correctness possible must with more original right be taken as the essence of truth’.44 At this point, the profound significance of Heidegger’s work on truth for Jüngel’s theology, especially his anthropology, becomes clearer. If, however, man wants to make his self-correspondence so secure that he can no longer be interrupted (i.e. metaphysics), the result is both the suppression of Theology’, in Theological Essays I, ed. and trans. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), p. 52. 40. Jüngel adopts the following understanding of language from Ernst Fuchs: ‘Language is not an abbreviatur of thought, but rather thinking is an abbreviatur of language. Language is gift. It appropriates and dedicates in occurring [sie eignet zu und an, indem sie ereignet].… I consider the Johannine ego eimi as that language-event in which, very simply, God as Word, as Yes, expressed himself ’ (Ernst Fuchs, ‘What is a “Language-Event”? A Letter, 1960’, in Studies of the Historical Jesus, trans. Andrew Scobie [London: SCM, 1964], p. 210 [trans. altered]; cited by Jüngel, ‘Der Schritt zurück’, p. 120, n.4). 41. This of course calls into question the priority of the distinction between the knowing subject and object. In this respect, Jüngel argues that Heidegger’s thought can have crucial implications for the relationship of humans to their environment. ‘We must learn to conceive of being as a being-together instead of as substance. Then and only then will the usurped Imperium become once again the Dominium terrae that the Creator entrusted to his creation’ (Jüngel, ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, p. 232); with Heidegger, Jüngel refers to humans as ‘shepherds of Being’ (‘Menschwerdung des Menschen’, Evangelische Kommentare 17 [1984], p. 448). Cf. also idem, ‘Even the beautiful must die’, pp. 80–1. 42. Jüngel, Die Leidenschaft, Gott zu denken, p. 56. 43. Hofstadter, ‘Introduction’, in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. xxi. 44. Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Truth’, pp. 124f; cf. also Jüngel, ‘Even the beautiful must die’, pp. 69ff.

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truth itself (as an occurrence which intervenes in and interrupts the continuity of life) and the restriction of the occurrence of truth to the sphere of the correctness of a particular correspondence.45 In other words, this experience of interruption (or ‘ontological shock’) not only is more original than the experience of an object by a subject (that is, actuality) but also, as Jüngel argues with Heidegger, enhances one’s being (as being-together); it makes one ‘true’. In this event one ‘has a qualitatively new experience with one’s being. I call it an experience with experience, because in it not only every experience already had, but experience itself is experienced anew’.46 This proposal is a massive attack on the self-understanding of moderns which is intent on securing its own self-certainty. Jüngel argues that what is ontologically distinct about human beings is that they are beings who can be interrupted and enhanced; and since this happens, the human being can have a relationship to self, and thus relate to his or her own existence. Thus in the event of the word as a disclosure of appropriation, the reality of the individual is enhanced – in Jüngel’s terms – made true. Jüngel identifies this point not only as the centre of Heidegger’s thought, but also as the place where one finds a ‘hidden relationship’ to theology47 in extreme tension. At this point, I can only indicate that beyond Heidegger, Jüngel suggests that this ‘experience with experience’ can unfold not only from anxiety as developed earlier, but also as the sheer gratitude or joy when being is experienced as creation out of non-being.48 Where this is evoked through interruption and is assimilated, according to Jüngel, there emerges an ‘enhancing’ of life.49 Moreover, it is not the call of Being, but for the theologian it is the listening correspondence (=analogy) in encounter with the Word of God in which the essence of humanity springs forth. For Jüngel, the Word of God as Sprachereignis ‘brings God and the addressed person together lingually. In the event of the Word, God is in our midst – not existing over us or as inconceivable – but as the one who draws us into this event’.50 For Jüngel, Jesus Christ as the Word of God is that nearing by which God and humanity are gathered in a play of appropriating and self-appropriating in which God and humanity belong together. Jüngel can write that it was his encounter with Heidegger that prevented him ‘from an anthropomorphism’ in the doctrine of creation. ‘I made a mental note of his statement: “Philosophy perishes when it has become anthropology”. Mutatis mutandis, the same holds true for theology. We human beings must learn to conceive of being as a being45. Jüngel, ‘The Truth of Life’, p. 234. 46. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 32 [trans. altered]. 47. Cf. Jüngel, ‘Der Schritt zurück’, pp.  111, 122; cf. also idem, ‘Zum Ursprung der Analogie bei Parmenides und Heraklit’, in Entsprechungen, pp. 52–3. 48. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 32. 49. Cf. Jüngel, ‘The Truth of Life’, p. 234. 50. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 12.

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together instead of as substance’.51 Nonetheless, in these regards Jüngel argues that ‘the speaking of Being and the proclamation of the cross apparently speak fundamentally different languages’.52 It is precisely at the points of closest proximity to Heidegger  – which is crucial for an appreciation of Jüngel’s theological anthropology – that Jüngel’s theological anthropology distinguishes itself from Heidegger’s fundamental ontology as well. For Jüngel, there can be no ‘mixophilosophicotheologia’.53 On the one hand, the greater the influence, the more adamant is Jüngel’s claim that theology will ‘have to go its own direction, and it cannot simply be identical with the intellectual path of the philosopher’.54 Yet, on the other hand, philosophy and theology remain two ‘dissimilar sisters’ who are bound by ‘too much common history, too many common burdens [but] . . . also common promises’. To this extent, they will continue to live together – ‘critically but neighbourly’ – for some time yet in the house of academia.55 Much more could be developed in detail on the centrality of non-being, language as an event of truth, experience with experience and correspondence in Jüngel’s strictly theological anthropology. The earlier should suffice, however, to show in some detail the relationship between nothing (as ontological shock) and the thought of human being (as a creature of distance) that moves beyond the metaphysical question: ‘What is humanity?’ If Jüngel’s theology can do without the Nichts, as Ernstpeter Maurer suggests,56 then, contra Maurer, Jüngel’s theological anthropology is of little significance. In either case, the earlier framework does 51. Jüngel, ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, p.  232  [trans. altered]; cf. Heidegger, ‘Überwindung der Metaphysik’, Vorträge und Aufsätze I, 3rd edn (Pfullingen: Neske, 1967), p. 79; for notion of ‘Being-with’, cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, §26, pp. 153ff. 52. Jüngel, ‘Der Schritt zurück’, p.  115; cf. also idem, ‘Provozierendes Denken’, p.  69, and idem, ‘Gott entsprechendes Schweigen’, p. 41; with reference to Barth, Jüngel speaks of the theological possibility of correspondence as analogy of faith. Cf. esp. Jüngel, ‘Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie’, pp. 210–32. 53. Jüngel, ‘Geleitwort’, p. VII; cf. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 153n1. 54. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p.  153n1. Jüngel can be much clearer in distinguishing himself from Heidegger when it is suggested that the philosopher (Heidegger) and theologians are participating in the same search: ‘Is the dialogue between theology and philosophy really carried out as a common search [suzetein]? Is the manner of questioning in theology not one that is totally different than in philosophy? And, for example, does not the problem of existence in both come to speech  – even as a problem  – in a totally different manner? Has not the problem which determines every theology come to speech in such a manner that binds theology precisely to the speech-events that characterize the New Testament?’ (idem, ‘Der Schritt zurück’, pp. 114f; cf. also idem, ‘Gott entsprechendes schweigen?’, pp. 37–45). 55. Jüngel, ‘Vorwort’, Entsprechungen, p. 8. 56. Ernstpeter Maurer, ‘Tendenzen neuer Trinitätslehre’, Verkündigung und Forschung 39 (1994), p. 12.

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indicate at least how Heidegger’s thought has provoked Jüngel to develop his theological anthropology independent not only of metaphysics, but also of Heidegger’s own fundamental ontology. On the basis of this work we now look at one other area of significant influence, namely Jüngel’s reflections on the relationship between death and time.

Temporality and Death Jüngel’s account of truth – parallel to Heidegger’s – proposes a new understanding of the historicality of human being. In this section, we will profile and show how Jüngel’s account of time in view of non-being follows Heidegger’s lead in thinking the essence of time more originally than the tradition from Aristotle to Hegel. Jüngel notes that, for Aristotle, time is ‘the number of motion in respect of “before” and “after”’.57 The measured ‘how long’ of the duration comprises the essence of Aristotelian time: if something moved passes through two successive points of magnitude, the being of time is experienced. This definition of time is dependent on space, and is indifferent towards any and every content. Both Heidegger and Jüngel suggest that this representation of time as a distance from the now of a subject became decisive for modernity.58 However, the problem is that ‘obtaining the measurement, we forget, as it were, what has been measured as such, so that nothing is to be found except a number and a stretch’.59 In contrast, Heidegger attempts to uncover a more primary experience of time from which the chronological measurement of time then also originates. Heidegger abandons the orientation of time to the here and now of the existing subject, and tries to understand time ‘qualitatively’, that is, as a condition of the possibility of human Dasein as that which understands Being. Rather than seeing the now as determinative of the past (i.e. as the now that was) and future (the now which will  be), Jüngel with Heidegger attempts to show the now as derivative of an 57. Aristotle, Physics IV, 11, 219b 1f, in The Complete Works of Aristotle I, ed. Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 372; cited by Jüngel, ‘The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus’, and ‘The Emergence of the New’, in Theological Essays II, pp. 104f and 54. 58. Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus. Eine Untersuchung zur Präzisierung der Frage nach dem Ursprung der Christologie, 6th edn (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1986), p.  140, citing Heidegger, ‘Das Wesen der Sprache’, p. 209. In this context, it is important to note the significance of Ernst Fuchs’s work on Jesus’s understanding of time in mediating Heidegger’s thinking on time to Jüngel. Cf. esp. Fuchs, ‘Jesus’ Understanding of Time’, in idem, Studies of the Historical Jesus, pp. 104–66; also Johannes Baptist Brantschen, Zeit zu verstehen. Wege und Umwege heutiger Theologie. Zu einer Ortsbestimmung der Theologie von Ernst Fuchs (Freiburg/Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1974). 59. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 471, cited in Jüngel, ‘The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus’, p. 105.

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‘authentic present’ of the ‘moment’ in which ‘time is then experienced as “time for . . .”’.60 In order to understand this move, we must examine the role of death or ‘the end’ of human existence in the work of Heidegger and Jüngel. For Heidegger, it is not the past that is most important for human Dasein, rather the anticipation of what is not yet in being but which nevertheless concerns and influences me, in this case, my death. In Being and Time, Dasein’s anticipation of death is experienced existentially as being-toward-death.61 It is only because Dasein can anticipate and as such is oriented to the future, that it can return to what has been and retain it. Here Heidegger turns around the normal concept of time as moving forward, as it were, from past to present and into the future. ‘Only so far as it is futural can Dasein be authentically as having been. The character of “having been” arises, in a certain way, from the future’.62 In contrast, when one’s ability-to-be is comprehended in terms of the object of concern which lies before it in the present, Dasein temporalizes itself inauthentically, forfeiting itself to the object of concern. Authentic temporalization, however, temporalizes itself directly in terms of the future which Heidegger makes clear in the moods of fear and anxiety. He suggests that it is through this anticipation of the end (anticipatory resoluteness63) that a Situation is disclosed in which Dasein ‘is not only brought back from distraction with the objects of one’s closest concern, but it gets held in the future and in having been. That Present which is held in authentic temporality and which thus is authentic itself, we call the “moment of vision” [Augenblick]’.64 Thus, in contrast to an understanding of ‘now’ as that in which something arises or passes away, the Augenblick ‘permits us to encounter for the first time what can be “in a time” as ready-to-hand or presentat-hand’.65 The moment is not a point on a temporal series (oriented in terms of a subject), but the manner in which Dasein is opened up to what gives itself to be encountered. Heidegger’s understanding of time  – which does not unfold from the perspective of the subject – breaks decisively with the metaphysical sense of time which emphasized the standing presence of being (ousia). For Heidegger time is a ‘con-temporaneity’ in which three dimensions of time are involved in a mutual interplay, both passing into one another, and holding one another apart, yielding a (disruptive) opening in the contemporary world with new and surprising possibilities and directions. It is especially in his later works that Heidegger speaks of the event of truth, that is, the opening up or revealing 60. Jüngel, ‘The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus’, p. 105. 61. Cf. Jüngel, Death, p. 15; cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, §§46–53, pp. 235–67. 62. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 373. 63. Ent-schlossenheit suggests disclosedness and opening, versus a purely voluntaristic understanding of resolution. 64. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 387. 65. Ibid., p. 388.

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of the Being of beings from the emergence of nothing, as that which first opens up a world, gives time and space and first makes people historical. ‘By opening up of a world, all things gain their lingering and hastening’  – that is, they become historical  – and space is made ‘for spaciousness’: ‘“To make space for” means here especially to liberate the free space of the open region and to establish it in its structure’.66 Again Heidegger writes that ‘[h]istory begins only when beings themselves are expressly drawn up into their unconcealment and conserved in it . . . they occur together in a “time” which, itself unmeasurable, first opens up the open region for every measure’.67 The event of truth which ‘makes space for . . .’ is the place of human wholeness: it gathers its world and also gathers my existence out of its actual scattering to a point that promises wholeness.68 Jüngel’s understanding of time rests heavily on both Heidegger’s early and later work. Jüngel affirms that death as the end of humanity is not simply a naked fact, or a phenomenon of transience. Rather death ‘shapes man’s life at its most fundamental level and determines him in the most human of his relationships’.69 In keeping with the later Heidegger, Jüngel can say that when the ego is addressed about something which is Not-Here-Now, the ego ‘is removed here and now into either the past or the future . . . It is out of that distance from oneself that the person approaches himself. Thus he has time. Thus he is man’.70 According to Jüngel, this general anthropological content ‘is of the greatest theological significance’, because ‘man is addressed by God about God, a total distancing of the ego takes place over against its being-here and being-now, and accordingly a completely new qualification of man’s state of being present results, which one could call eschatological spiritual presence’.71 Consequently, it is in this space of this total distancing that the human addressed about God is gathered and brought into a new, ultimate nearness to him- or herself, in other words, is made whole.72 Jüngel points to the Christian proclamation of God’s love in and through ‘the possibility of one’s own non-being (in Pauline terms: of death as the wages of one’s sin), and thereby also of the possibility of non-being in general (in 66. Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, pp.  170f; cf. also pp.  168, 181. Many parallels can be found in Jüngel’s very Heidegger-ian masterpiece, ‘Even the beautiful must die’, pp. 59–81. 67. Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Truth’, p. 129. 68. Cf. Heidegger: Nietzsche I, trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 195ff; also Jüngel, ‘Even the beautiful must die’, p. 66. 69. Jüngel, Death, p. 5. 70. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 173. 71. Ibid., p. 174. 72. ‘For before truth descends to be the conformity of the mind and object (adaequatio intellectus et rei) that is, as epistemological correctness, it is most fundamentally a matter of this: that which is becomes present to itself. To be true means: to be present to oneself and precisely thereby to be lucid’ (Jüngel, ‘Even the beautiful must die’, p. 72).

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apocalyptic terms: of the end of the world)’73 which breaks through our present, judges the dominance of our past and grants us the new time and space of the kingdom.74 The nearing of the kingdom of God teaches one to understand the ‘now’ from its future, or its end, and thereby from its essence. Here, future is not understood as a distance from the ‘now’, according to Jüngel, but as coming into the present which qualifies the present actuality of the person, and making historical existence possible.75 Earlier, we have attempted to sketch Jüngel’s argument from the eschatological coming of God that Christian faith sees the world against the horizon of a new history which is more original than the Aristotelian notion of time.76 In partial dependence on Heidegger’s thinking on time, Jüngel makes the wholeness of humanity thematic as an event occurring in a history constituted by the Word of God.77 But more specifically, the influence of Heidegger on Jüngel’s notion of time has become obvious, specifically the recognition that the present is originally accompanied by future (and past), that is, with possibilities beyond the fleeting moment. Both Jüngel and Heidegger, the theologian as theologian, and the philosopher, are concerned to take leave of a notion of time whose coherence is guaranteed by the subject of temporal experience.

Jüngel and Heidegger – Summary Remarks In this chapter, we have attempted to show the significance of Heidegger’s philosophy in clarifying for Jüngel the dangers of modern metaphysics and for provoking Jüngel to think theology from its own ground. The parallel concerns of Heidegger and Jüngel shown earlier provide a crucial framework for understanding and evaluating, in particular, Jüngel’s theological anthropology. Jüngel, with Heidegger, is primarily interested in the possibility of our enhancement as linguistic beings who exist in a certain withdrawal from ourselves. Jüngel’s account of truth, parallel to Heidegger’s, proposes a new understanding of the historicality of human existence. Here truth is related primarily to being and only secondarily to knowledge; this is ‘the where’ of human wholeness. According to 73. Jüngel, ‘Value-Free Truth’, in Theological Essays II, p. 208. For Jüngel, God’s love is defined in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as ‘the unity of life and death in favour of life’ (God as the Mystery of the World, passim). 74. Cf. Jüngel, ‘The Emergence of the New’, pp. 54f. 75. Cf. Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus, pp. 154, 159, 169; also idem, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 300ff. 76. Jüngel, Death, p. 86; Jüngel, ‘The Effectiveness of Christ Withdrawn. On the Process of Historical Understanding as an Introduction to Christology’, in Theological Essays I, p. 224. 77. Jüngel, ‘The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification’, in Theological Essays I, p. 113.

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both Heidegger and Jüngel, this ontological structure is prior to our actuality, that is, to that which we make of ourselves. This study has also shown clearly the fundamental difference between Heidegger’s thought of Being and Jüngel’s own theological work. Whereas Heidegger sought to indicate the essence of humanity as the place in which the Being of beings reveals and gives itself, Jüngel makes the case that the being of humanity be thought out of the event of God’s coming to humanity in the human Jesus (God’s Word). Jüngel hears a different word than the philosopher, and has a uniquely theological basis for exploring humanity as a linguistic, ek-static being. Yet precisely in this way Jüngel does not think God as the highest being or highest good, but he ‘steps back’ into the ‘nearness of the nearest’ to think the being of God, humanity and the world in the Ereignis of encounter. This approach meets Nietzsche’s demand (though for different reasons) to encounter reality as it is, without preconceptions that would determine the encounter  – in other words, free from the ‘Babylonian captivity’ of metaphysics. This non-metaphysical, nonfoundational thinking allows Jüngel to argue that one can be human without God; God is not a necessary function for the securing of humanity, the world or morality; but according to Jüngel’s understanding of truth as interruption and enhancement, God is ‘more’ than necessary for us. Perhaps, the most one can say about Heidegger’s work in relation to Jüngel is that the latter finds it is profoundly ‘interesting’ in so far as ‘it provokes theology to be nothing other than simply theology’.78 It is in this way that Heidegger’s thought is an Anstoß for Jüngel’s, both as impulse and offence. On the one hand, Heidegger has taught Jüngel how to think (i.e. to overcome metaphysical reflection), and Heidegger’s thought furnishes some of the elementary insights and tools which Jüngel employs to develop an eschatological ontology, that is, one in which the revelation of God has universally binding anthropological relevance. Yet, on the other hand, because Jüngel’s is an eschatological anthropology, he is forced to say that the manner of questioning in theology is totally different than in philosophy, and even the problem of existence comes up in a totally different way.79 Hence, Jüngel can say ‘every statement in theological anthropology must be formulated in such a way that, without “God” being mentioned, that statement is understandable, meaningful and profitable’.80 Thus the claims that we exist in a certain withdrawal from ourselves, that we are dependent upon being addressed, that we and our world are able to be increased – are all genuinely eschatological insights (though without content) which, Jüngel argues, can be generally appreciated apart from God, even though they remain ‘ambivalent’.81 Overall, Jüngel’s use of Heidegger’s philosophy may be ad hoc; in other words, he only uses the insights gleaned from philosophy in so far as they help 78. Jüngel (–M. Trowitzsch), ‘Provozierendes Denken’, p. 69. 79. Jüngel, ‘Der Schritt zurück’, p. 115. 80. Jüngel, ‘Extra Christum nulla salus – A Principle of Natural Theology?’, p. 186. 81. Ibid.

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communicate the view of humanity coming from the event of God becoming human in Christ.82 At one level, Jüngel and Heidegger work with very different presuppositions; at another level, Jüngel’s use of Heidegger’s work is pervasive and even systematic (e.g. much more so than Karl Barth’s use of philosophy). On the whole, however, it can be said that Jüngel’s theological work on truth and the essence of humanity cannot be understood fully or appreciated without a careful examination of his relationship to Heidegger. It is this intimate knowledge of Heidegger’s thought that has allowed Jüngel to elucidate, clarify and reconstruct the affirmations of Christian faith in a manner that addresses the issues of contemporary experience in a way that is publically accessible and meaningful. While Heidegger’s ‘intellectual eros’ did not seek disciples, he did demand rigorous, independent thought from his students83  – and in this regard Jüngel was a model student who demonstrates not only to theologians that Heidegger cannot be evaded. It is precisely Jüngel’s Christological starting point that makes his reception of Heidegger’s philosophical perspective both unique and of lasting significance for theology.84

82. Cf. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 48. A most successful example of this approach is Jüngel’s essay on art: ‘Even the beautiful must die’. 83. Jüngel, ‘Geleitwort’, p. VII. 84. The argument that Jüngel’s reception of Heidegger’s thought is ‘uncritical’ (cf. Wilfried Härle and Eilert Herms, ‘Hermeneutische Theologie’ in Verkündigung und Forschung 28 [1983], p. 26) misses the heart of Jüngel’s theology; any serious criticism will have to be directed at Jüngel’s Christology.

Chapter 14 L UTH E R’S D ANGE ROUS A C C OU N T OF D IVINE   H IDDE N N E SS Steven D. Paulson

God speaks! So we speak of God. I have long found this to be the great contribution of Eberhard Jüngel. That God speaks is not necessary; God is free and could have remained silent, but has not. So when God speaks it is ‘more than necessary’. It is fecund. We might say that God speaking is an accident, but a fortunate one for us – otherwise, we seem to have no way of answering what Jüngel calls the ultimate, ‘despairing question of our human experience: why does anything exist at all? Why not nothing?’1 Yet my fascination with Jüngel’s theology began with the answer to another question from human experience, ‘Why would God hide?’ To this question, Jüngel attaches stern warnings about dealing with the hiddenness of God  – it can ‘offer shelter to all sorts of ideas’.2 Apparently some of those ideas can be very dangerous, especially when one follows Luther too closely, since the matter of God hiding cuts to the quick of a person’s life. Even the bare question, ‘Why would God hide?’, involves great risk since divine hiddenness is not a neutral concept, but an experience we suffer and so is a matter of life or death  – to be or not to be. Jüngel simply calls it ‘the experience of evil’,3 which forces out Schelling’s purely abstract question: ‘Why does anything exist at all? Why not nothing?’ Such is the experience of an absolute God. Jüngel further warns that the question of God’s hiddenness is often used as a ‘foil for other theological concepts’.4 So Karl Rahner claimed that the mystery of deus absconditus fulfils humans,5 while Luther said deus absconditus destroys 1. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God’, in Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh, T&T Clark), p. 122. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., p. 123. 5. ‘The deus absconditus is the source of truth for man, which is freely bestowed upon him and determines his identity’. Karl Rahner, SJ, ‘The Hiddenness of God’, in Theological Investigations XVI, trans. David Morland (New York: Crossroad, 1979), p. 238.

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humans: ‘From this absolute God everyone should flee who does not want to perish, because human nature and the absolute God  .  .  .  are the bitterest of enemies. Human weakness cannot help being crushed by such majesty, as Scripture reminds us over and over’.6 What shall we make of this conflict? Rahner’s use of the hidden God as the goal of desire led directly to his principle equating economic and immanent trinity that has won the day in modern theology. Indeed, the rule’s attempt is noble, and seems to echo Luther’s own parable: having Christ in the word of promise, you also have the hidden God. So the conclusion seems irresistible: ‘The hiddenness of God under its opposite, as Luther called it, cannot however mean that in this particular hiddenness God contradicts himself, but rather must mean that God corresponds to himself in this hiddenness’.7 While it is true that having Christ in his word you also have the hidden God, it is not true that the two correspond so as to absorb the difference in a greater unity. For Luther, at least, this assurance for faith (having come through a true experience with evil) is not the equation of economic work and immanent being of the trinity. Nor is it a correspondence of God with God that overcomes hiddenness with revelation. It is rather the one and only true end of God opposing or contradicting God. The end of the absolute God is absolution. Nothing else will do. If there is any theology hiding behind this description, it is none other than the ability to distinguish the law and gospel, which happens not in abstract thought, but in the preached word given to a sinner experiencing the hidden God. The question forced out of a person in contact with deus absconditus is not the abstract ‘Why is there anything, why not nothing?’ but the life-and-death question, ‘What does God think of me, in particular?’ So here I seek to honour Professor Jüngel with an exploration of why Luther took a different path than the theologians of Barth’s Trinitarian revival on this matter of God’s hiddenness – not an incidental matter!

Two Kinds of Hiddenness Most theologians agree that there are at least two ‘modes’ of God’s hiddenness. One is absolute God, a mystery, in which God in some fashion is not revealed. In the other, God is revealed, but paradoxically remains hidden. Christ crucified is God revealed, but not in the way we expected, so that hiddenness somehow remains. Typically, these two are put on an axis whose poles are ‘infinite’ and ‘finite’. The problem in this way of thinking occurs when one experiences ‘finitude’ and has no way of bridging the chasm to become infinite. The finite wants to become infinite, but cannot accomplish it. This strikes the finite subject as ‘evil’, which is synonymous with inescapable death. The worst form of evil is unrighteous 6. Martin Luther, Commentary on Psalm 51, LW 12, p. 312. 7. Jüngel, ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God’, p. 130.

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suffering that cannot be aligned with any law or reasonable punishment. What is worse, unjust suffering is not merely the experience of several unfortunate individuals, but is universal for finite creatures. The solution is for God to come down, that is, for the infinite to become finite, and so the actual must somehow open into the infinite possible. This process makes God’s hiddenness into two corresponding movements of God’s special being in becoming. Either hiddenness is an epistemological matter in which the limit of human knowing (the experience of evil) is overcome by a greater motion that opens to the mystery of the divine. Or hiddenness is something of an ontological matter by which God’s being changes so that human beings can change too: the finite can become infinite in some way, thus overcoming death by making the finite infinite. What Luther proposed was neither epistemological nor ontological in this way, but verbal. The real distinction concerning God hiding is not that between infinite and finite, it is between God preached and not preached, and so deliverance for the bound depends upon getting a preacher. But before we get to Luther we should note that the secret of the best theology produced at the end of the twentieth century was the rediscovery and repurposing of Martin Luther’s deus absconditus under the sign of its opposite, or simply the cross of Jesus Christ. Compared to what preceded in liberal Protestantism, this was quite a rich discovery. The cross was the moment when God hid most deeply so as not to be desired – a scandalous, crucified man – which marked a great contradiction in the normal theology of glory. At the same time, this cross was no less than God, so that we truly have a crucified God under a sign contradicting all things divine. This crucified God was repurposed, however, unleashing the soteriological assumption that God ‘for us’ cannot be other than God ‘in and for himself ’. Thus a bridge, or ladder, was built to move from one to the other. The Christological assumption followed that God is never without Christ, especially in the supralapsarian election or the infinite future. Like falling dominoes the theological assumption then followed that freedom of will is the essence of God, and such a divine will never contradict itself but correspond to itself – it does not change. Even the contradiction of the cross serves the greater correspondence of God. Essence and existence are the same for God, and so the Trinitarian assumption also followed: the economic trinity is the immanent trinity, and vice versa. This conclusion serves as the high-water mark of the twentiethcentury theology that we know today as ‘Rahner’s rule’. History became divine, not as mere progress towards a goal but as a great contradiction in the cross that is overcome by a greater correspondence of God’s being in becoming. The unchangeable essence of the divine served as the bedrock assurance of salvation, and that essence is a decision before all time for Christ or the inevitable infinite of that decision. Would such rules be kept! But the problem is that we cannot impose Rahner’s rule, epistemologically or ontologically, outside preaching. The attempt fails because sinners will not do it – they insist upon securing their assurance that there

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is not some other Marcionite God out there (which they strongly suspect), by reason’s correspondence with reality. They call it ‘faith seeking understanding’. But sinners on the way to security end up dividing God into a good God who rewards, and an evil one who allows or applies unjust suffering. Luther’s distinction of preached and unpreached does not so divide God according to the dream of a sinner, and after all it is with such sinners, not neutral beings, that we have to deal in theology. That means Luther is not pursuing a theology of faith seeking understanding. Such a pursuit reduces hiddenness to epistemology: a matter of how much knowledge can be added to faith in order to let us see the beauty of God’s glory. So, the matter of God’s hiddenness marks a divide in modern theology. One can follow Luther in the dangerous distinction between God as preached or not preached; or one can make a daring decision to take up the question of evil only after affirming that God is love, the unknown possible over the known actual. Modern theology has chosen the latter, and its primary mark is the word ‘evil’. Evil has substituted for sin as the basic dilemma in life, especially in its purest sense of innocent, unjust suffering. Innocent suffering is not ‘I the sinner’, but the cry of righteousness against God who either does it, or allows it (the difference between those finally dissolving into insignificance). The innocent sufferer is left to conclude that God either cannot overcome evil (Manichaeism), or that God is evil. Against these, theology must then throw up a rampart or reason would drive one to atheism: ‘Why do I suffer? That is the rock of atheism’.8 Justification may continue to be the central proposition of theology in this situation, but it ceases being the justification of the sinner before God, and becomes the justification of God before the sufferer, or theodicy. When the hiddenness of God is taken up as theodicy, it displaces Luther’s discussion of preaching with a discussion of faith seeking understanding. That is, in order to stave off the inevitable atheism that comes from innocent suffering, faith must find its certainty not in the preached word, but in the a priori assurance of God’s essence as love. Otherwise, when evil arrives (as it always does), and the innocent suffer (as they always do) they will have no ground for faith. They will not be able to distinguish between God and evil, and end up like Job teetering upon the atheist’s decision to curse God and die. Of course, the consequence is great for theology. Evil cannot then really be, it must be a mistaken category, a non-being. Only God really is, and so only love has being. God’s hate is not, though it certainly has dire consequences for those who believe in it rather than God’s love. Consequently, the cross of Christ is repurposed as God absorbing suffering. The Friday of the cross must then actually become a speculative Good Friday. That cannot be done simply by the humanity of Jesus, or even the person of Christ, but the whole trinity is needed, and so patripassionism is the result. The Father, too, must suffer. Evil in the finite world is finally 8. Jüngel, ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God’, p.  143 quoting Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death, trans. Howard Brenton and Jane Margaret Fry (London, 1982), p. 43.

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conquered by the infinite God absorbing it – but not being overcome by it. This is love. Therefore, only the certainty that ‘God is love’ serving as an ontological, a priori, assertion, ‘enables us to endure the question of evil as an unanswerable question  .  .  .’9 It is not sin that is taken upon the cross, but suffering. That may seem like a small adjustment on Paul’s crucial word, ‘that the one who knew no sin, became sin’, but the result is quite dramatic: ‘the one who knew no suffering, absorbed suffering’. Then it is not actually the death of Christ that matters, but His suffering. Furthermore, that suffering is not over. Consequently, preaching is delivered to sufferers rather than sinners  – the innocent rather than the guilty, since the conundrum of faith is unjust suffering at the core. So it seems that people must be brought to a ‘point of decision’, between affirming God as love in the midst of evil suffering (which makes love triumph over evil), or to allow evil to overtake God’s love, in which case there is only hatred of fate: ‘After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth’ (Job 3:1). The moment of decision is only created by the preacher when the sufferer is offered a picture of God as someone desirable so that the decision can possibly favour rather than despise God. So the enticing picture must be absolute, it must be beyond doubt, and secured as ‘certain’. Yet the only certainty lies outside the world of finite suffering, outside time, in the infinite world where there is no suffering. So, time and history themselves have become metaphors for suffering. When innocent suffering is the problem, the solution is not to remove the innocence, but the suffering. There must be a correspondence not only between God and God, humans and God, but also between the law and gospel. Innocence cannot be defeated by this injustice; it must be rewarded, if not in this life, then in the next. Suffering ends not only by its cessation, but also by its compensation. The law must actually be fulfilled, not only in Christ, but also in all the sufferers of the world. In this way possibility emerges, in the wake of Bultmann, as greater than actuality since only possibility allows decisions between alternative choices. In the end, the means left at the disposal of a preacher is metaphor. Metaphor creates possibilities that did not previously exist, and so makes room for a decision where previously (in the midst of suffering like Job’s) one could only end up cursing God for evil. For this reason, ‘pleading ought to be the constitutive element of proclamation’.10 Modern theology is nothing if not chaste. In the end we do not get an answer to the question of evil, since it is an unanswerable question by its, or God’s, nature. But ‘the certainty that “God is love” enables us to endure the question of evil as an unanswerable question . . .’11   9. Jüngel, ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God’, p. 143. 10. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification’, in Theological Essays I, trans. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), p. 120. 11. Jüngel, ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God’, p. 143.

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This sweep of modern theology demands us to say ‘no’ to Luther on the hidden God. His distinction is odious because it seems to give us not two Gods, as is often erroneously suggested, but one God who uses the instrument of evil. How can we get to the assertion ‘God is love’ (not only as a possibility, but also as a certainty) from there? Luther, it seems, does not address the malady of modern humanity – innocent suffering, and leaves us with Job and no way out. It is true that with Luther the basic human problem is not innocent suffering, though he is fully aware of such, since the Psalms are full of the cries, ‘I am innocent’. He is also fully aware of the need for certainty; faith is not a mix of trust and doubt, but absolute assurance. But where is this certainty found? Not in the daring decision of the theologian that ‘God is love’. That is one matter to believe when you are not suffering and quite another when you are on trial before God without a defender in damnation and death. Luther would seem to be left behind in the march of modern theology towards theodicy, and even a dangerous darkness that must be avoided lest we reproduce the mistakes of German theology in the twentieth century  – that there is a hidden God who must be believed and obeyed apart from the preached God in the promise of Christ. To the contrary, for Luther the hidden God apart from preaching must be worshipped by fleeing, not by seeking or obeying.

Luther’s Hidden God But for Luther, preachers cannot make God desirable for the will’s decisions. Knowing that should actually free them, since convincing people that ‘God is Love’ is a notable failure inside Christendom and out. So what does Luther mean by God hiding? Luther concludes that God does not correspond with God, but that God conflicts with God. Likewise, God’s hiddenness is not the fulfilment of humans, but their death. This, in turn, means that while a possibility is indeed greater than an actuality (in contrast to Aristotle and the common sense), a promise is more than  – and even opposed to  – a possibility that opens space for faith seeking understanding. It is not only an increase of being that happens in faith, but also a real contradiction, a real death before the new creation. So new creation is more than ‘space for God’ in this world; preaching is more than pleading that demands. To understand what Luther is saying, let us take the case of Jacob, since this plays an important role in the preaching of Christ and Paul. There is a contradiction at the core of the story of the amazing transference of Primogeniture. Earlier Rebecca had received the strange word, ‘the elder shall serve the younger’ (Genesis 25:23), which she understood not as metaphor seeking understanding, but as a promise seeking its moment of application. Its time came when Isaac had grown old, and Rebecca heard him preparing Esau for the blessing of Primogeniture as demanded by law, whence she turned to

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Jacob and announced, ‘Now therefore, my son, obey my word as I command you’ (Genesis 27:8). Luther called this a ‘the faithful deceit’. The fact that it was deceit has occupied all the prior exegetes who asked, ‘Did Rebecca and Jacob have the right to lie?’ But this is a place and time where the ‘universal law’ was punctured, and God moved against God so as to become preached rather than unpreached. Such a moment is always marked by the end of a law, and a giving of a promise given precisely to the ungodly rather than the innocent sufferer. Therefore, it is important that Jacob and Rebecca are unworthy. But it is more important to say that faith follows the Word, not the rule, when these two inevitably conflict. Specifically, the particular word that faith follows is the word of promise which stands necessarily outside the law and in direct contradiction to it. Now, persons who have power in the world – Isaac in this case – try to rule over the Word itself (and so over the Holy Spirit). They want the promise to go where – and to whom – they intend it to go, according to their own mechanism of desire, even when their desire is the summum bonum like the love or law of God. So we come upon the distinction between the ‘Rule and Exception’. Isaac clings only to the Rule (Primogeniture – which is to say the material cause); Rebecca clings only to the Promise (the Exception) who is Jacob, not Esau (i.e. the formal cause). At that moment, the Promise is contrary and must be trusted and followed despite its opposition to the Rule. So the great conclusion is reached: ‘Therefore Rebecca gave thought to how she might be able to deceive her husband Isaac, her son Esau, and all who were in the house’; ‘for now she is not obeying the rule or the law. Now she is obeying God! – Who transfers and dispenses contrary to the rule. Therefore she did not sin’.12 Lying to get the blessing was a sin under the unpreached God, but not the preached. This is different than merely the impossible becoming possible. It has a contradiction in it that is never merely a ‘moment’ sublated for something that unites the principle and its contradiction. It has to do with what is happening to the law itself. The first table of the commandments concerning God usually ‘embraces’ the second concerning such things as obedience to parents. But when the second table comes into opposition to the first, it must yield – as in Christ’s, ‘If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple’ (Luke 14:26). Why can they not be disciples? Since they would be following the law, not God. They hold to the rule, not the exception, and it is the exception alone that makes one righteous. The exception is the promise of forgiveness that is never merely opening possibility, but is a new creation. So it is more than actuality, and more than possibility. In this amazing transference of Primogeniture, God abrogates the law. 12. LW 5, p. 114.

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Understanding does not grasp this, only the outstanding faith of Rebecca upholds her frightened son at the moment of the deception: ‘His mother said to him, “Upon me be your curse, my son; only obey my word, and go, fetch them to me”’ (Genesis 27:13). Faith alone devours the sin and such foolish plans of the saints, not understanding that empowers a hearer to make a right decision. At the moment the plan was to be spoiled, we are taught the power of faith, ‘that to him who believes all things are possible. For faith causes that which does not exist to exist, and makes possible everything that is impossible’.13 Here is the great truth of possibility being more than, and greater than, actuality. Faith creates ex nihilo. But the common mistake is to think of faith as an inner power, or something extended into the future by thought, since faith precisely has nothing to cling to: ‘the possible, the unfulfilled, is only an outline, a guess at what might have been’.14 This was Bultmann’s mistake. But faith creates a blessing where there is only a curse, not without a Word, but by clinging to a Word as Rebecca did. Moreover, the word is not a metaphor. It is a specific promise. It doesn’t make up its own word, but it hangs upon the Word given by God’s proclamation, and there makes a blessing where there was none – in fact where there was only blessing’s opposite in a curse. This is the power of faith: ‘he who has the Word of God should consider himself blessed and should turn his eyes away from present things to those that lie in the future and are invisible’.15 Only faith takes us from the present of a graspable promise that comes by hearing with faith to the hidden future. The feeling of the present curse is set aside for the promised future. This is not without worldly metaphor, even though it is not itself a metaphor: If I give you a $100 bill, you look away from the present, which is that you have been given a simple set of pictures on a thin piece of paper. But you look away from that present reality to the future promise signed on the paper by the secretary of the Treasury which says, ‘We will stand behind this’. This lets you purchase some material thing that you need  – food or clothing  – even though you don’t see them yet. You trust that these will come from grasping this piece of paper. So Luther continued, ‘Faith attaches itself to a thing that is still an utter nothing and waits until everything comes about’. This Christian meditatio is unlike all other disciplines of knowledge that are based on syllogisms, inductions and experiments. Those, Luther noted, do not begin with what is nothing – especially not the unseen, impossible, absurd and foolish. But faith is that ‘which takes hold of the promise, fixes the heart on what is altogether absurd, impossible, and contained in the Word and God’s promise’. It is the last phrase of the sentence to which we turn for the second matter of hiddenness: ‘For whatever faith dictates and the Word promises must be done, because God is the Word and the Word is God (John 1:1). He who has the Word 13. Ibid., p. 127. 14. Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weimar (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 187. Quoted in Jüngel, ‘The World as Possibility and Actuality’, p. 122. 15. LW 5, 128.

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has the power of God (Rom 1:16)’. Spirit works this way, giving ‘no one faith through mere speculations. No, He gives it through the Word’. So the great battle of Spirit and flesh is this: the ‘things of the Holy Spirit are not apparent, everything seems hostile and dead. But when the heart takes hold of the Word, then the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit follows, and the power and might to do amazing things’. 16 This is not a case of the love of God overcoming the Omnipotence of God, but the key is ‘so he blessed him’ which is ‘definite and given’ so that it is now ‘unalterable and confirmed . . . for the Holy Spirit does not revoke His operations’. Omnipotence and love here kiss, and Luther underlined the point with Malachi 3:6 ‘God does not change’, and Romans 11:29: ‘The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable’. When God has rendered a verdict, He does not change or retract it, like humans are used to doing. ‘So he blessed him: that is, it had happened’. Here we have to distinguish two kinds of blessings. An ordinary blessing says: ‘“would that you were well and in full possession of your strength!” but the sickness remains’. A real blessing, however, ‘is not merely imprecative, but indicative and constitutive, the thing itself which it says it really [re, not spe] gives and brings’.17 In the real blessing the indicative neither yields merely the actual, nor even the imperative possibility, but a truly new creation. If I had said to you merely, ‘I would your sins were forgiven you’. Or, ‘I wish you grace, mercy, the eternal kingdom and deliverance from your sins’, this could be called a blessing of love [charitatis benedictio], says Luther, but ‘the blessing of a promise, of faith, and of a gift that is at hand [Sed benedictio promissionis et fidei et praesentis doni haec est] is this: I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; that is, I reconcile your soul to God, remove from you God’s wrath and displeasure, put you in His grace, and give you the inheritance of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven . . . Accordingly they are not blessings that express wishes; they are blessings that have the power to bestow [Non igitur benedictiones imprecativae sunt, sed collativae]’.18 There is the greatest difference between the hidden and revealed God when it comes to the blessing (Word or Promise). So great is the contradiction that virtue itself is opposed with a deceitful faith that devours sin as well as the law. In the amazing transference of Primogeniture, Rebecca and Esau mark the contradiction between God with his word and God without, preached and not preached, and so the contradiction between the Rule and the Exception. With this, we turn to the next great matter of divine hiddenness, in what way this promise that takes you from the hidden God also gives that hidden God to you in what is an important alternative to Rahner’s Rule in Luther’s parable: If you have Christ, then you have the hidden God also. 16. Ibid., p. 133. 17. In scriptura sancta autem sunt reales benedictiones, non imprecativae tantum, sed indicativae et constitutivae, quae hoc ipsum, quod sonat re ipsa largiuntur et adferunt. WA 43, p. 525.3–5, cf. LW 5, p. 140. 18. WA 43, p. 525:11–7.

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Christ and the Hidden God Luther is adamant: ‘Apart from this Word all life is condemned’,19 there is a contradiction between the law and law, between the law and gospel and indeed between God and God, and so God hides from Jacob so as not to be found in his absoluteness but only in his word. But Luther knows there is at least a correspondence, or better, ‘having’, that exists between Christ and the hidden God. This is hiddenness under the sign of his opposite in which having the revealed Christ is at once having the hidden God. How is it that we ‘have’ the hidden God when we have the revealed, since these are opposed? The word is not a mirror or window that opens unto the divine as if it were a starting point or launching pad for the speculation that rises above the word. So Luther liked to recall that ‘a certain hermit in The Lives of the Fathers advises his hearers against speculations of this kind’. He says: ‘If you see that someone has put his foot in heaven, pull him back. For this is how saintly neophytes are wont to think about God apart from Christ’. There is no bridge between economic and immanent like that. But in fact, there is no need to move from economic to immanent for ‘if you have Him, then you also have the hidden God together with Him who has been revealed’. That is the only way, the truth and the life (cf. John 14:6). Apart from it, you will find nothing but destruction and death.20 So it is that the story of Jacob continues so that Isaac had not only given the blessing, but also now added a wish at his son’s departure: ‘God almighty bless you and make you fruitful . . .’ (Genesis 28:3). This allowed Luther to mark the difference between two ways of dealing with the future and its possibility. One is through prayer/wish/‘plea’, and the other is through a proclamation/blessing. Only the latter can deal with the hidden God, since the blessing, ‘is the very thing that has been handed over and given forthwith’. Just as Baptism and forgiveness of sins are handed over and given forthwith: ‘for I do not hope for the remission of sins, but I have it forthwith’, it is not that Christ will suffer for me, but has. It is not merely possibility over actuality (though it is certainly that), but now something even greater has emerged to move us into the future than possibility. But reason does not grasp this distinction. It cannot. This is the constant course of the church and its saints: ‘that promises are made and that then those who believe the promises are treated in such a way that they are compelled to wait for things that are hidden, to believe what they do not see, and to hope for what does not appear’.21 So Jacob took his blessing along with the prayer of his father on his journey towards Haran and dreamt of the ladder into heaven with angels ascending and descending, a dream interpreted by Christ in John 1 simply as: ‘God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’. 19. LW 5, p. 71. 20. Ibid., p. 47. 21. Ibid., p. 202.

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Why the ascent and descent? Luther answered, ‘that in one and the same Person there is true GOD and man . . . of such a kind that not only the humanity has been assumed, but that which humanity has been made liable and subject to death and hell yet in that humiliation has devoured the devil, hell, and all things in itself. This is the communicatio idiomatum’. So Luther concluded: ‘This, therefore, is the article by which the whole world, reason, and Satan are offended. For in the same Person there are things that are to the highest degree contrary’.22 But this is admittedly a new kind of contrariness than Jacob had met before. It stands under the sign of its opposite that actually gave him the hidden God  – hiddenly. Only faith grasps this in Jacob or us, because it is only and always grasping the Word of promise: that ‘He did this all for us . . . ascended and descended into heaven’.23 It is no longer a possibility, but a proclaimed thing, which is nothing less than a new creation. So ‘having’ the hidden God in the Word is not a result of an ontological assertion that God is love; it is an eschatological and verbal way to have the future. It is a preached God that does not depend upon an assertion of either being or becoming but who creates out of nothing. It is not a makeable future, but a made one.24 So, ‘Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I did not know it”’ (Genesis 28:16). Faith holds all of God in the word, and seeks nothing outside it. It has its surety that there is nothing more of God that lies hidden, or that is not given, because God’s word is the power of life, and this depends upon his omnipotence and faithfulness: ‘Now, when God speaks, he does not lie’; ‘For he spoke and it came to be’ (Ps. 33:9). The same thing happens to us when we are absolved from sins. It is ‘founded and stands firm on the promises of God’, even though we experience the opposite as Jacob did. Therefore, faith is the greatest of things, there is nowhere to go from there  – especially not to understanding. Instead, we learn ‘what a great thing faith is, that it is not a cold and lazy quality . . .’25 Here we can nevertheless acknowledge that for faith there is a great addition, something that is clearly ‘more than necessary’ than the actuality we see. Yet, it is not thought and possibility, but the word put into things. In the word, there is no hidden God that faith does not have except that apart from the word itself (which faith abandons entirely). So the ‘addition’ faith makes to the old reality and its necessity of things according to the law is the promise itself to which it clings. So Luther warns that we not fall into the hole of thinking that the Word ‘is an empty sound. . . . It is a great honor and majesty’, however, when one says: ‘This is the Word of God’. I hear a man’s voice. I see human gestures. The bread and the wine in the Supper are physical things. At ordination the hands of carnal men are imposed. 22. Ibid., p. 218. 23. Ibid., p. 221. 24. Jüngel, ‘The World as Possibility and Actuality’, p. 115. 25. LW 5, p. 235.

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In Baptism ‘water is water’, but then, ‘look at that addition of the spiritual eyes to what the flesh sees’.26 What is the spiritual ‘addition’ if it is not thinking that is added to faith, or a plea added to a blessing, or becoming to being, or even possibility added to actuality? Flesh sees the word in a thing, and excludes God. The word is then a ‘mere sound’. It tries to determine how infinite and finite can mix, or how the innocent can suffer. But the spirit hears ‘the Word of God, and God in the water’. That is, not an empty sound but ‘the Word of the Creator of heaven and earth’. What is being added by the Creator is not merely possibility to the old actuality, but a truly new creation. In the promise you also have the hidden God because ‘God fulfills his promises’ [in you] with definite means.27 So now Romans 8:30 can be understood, ‘Those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified’. God does not want to fulfil the promises without means, but exactly through created means, in divine words, not outside. God does this only there, not as a general rule that economic is the immanent, but certainly at this point Luther’s parable is true, that ‘if you have Christ then you also have the hidden God together with Him who has been revealed’.28 But it is also true that apart from having of Christ in the media of the words preached ‘all life is condemned’.29 This is nothing less than the difference between God preached and not preached.

The Trial Jacob’s story does not end there either, but when he has the blessing and in future years returns to face Esau, he prays his great prayer of deliverance: ‘Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and slay us all, the mothers with the children. But thou didst say, “I will do you good, and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude”’ (Genesis 32:11–2). Luther calls Jacob’s prayer ‘great’ because it names the God of the fathers, claims in faith that he is my Lord and reminds God of his promise: You said it! God’s faithfulness must rescue, not his own faith. Luther adds that ‘such prayers which are poured out in extreme despair and the greatest dangers are very pleasing to God’.30 In light of this great prayer, the trial of Jacob had only begun: ‘and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day’ (Genesis 32). Here is where Luther explicitly finds the limit of reason in relation to faith, the hiddenness of God outside Christ, precisely so that faith alone remains the place 26. Ibid., p. 249. 27. Ibid., p. 256. 28. Ibid., p. 48. 29. Ibid., p. 71. 30. LW 6, p. 108.

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where God hides inside Christ. So it is not faith seeking understanding, but faith seeking only faith. This happens in trial or the struggle that follows the promise: ‘Reason, wisdom, righteousness of the flesh, and this light of the sun God regards as dark and misty, but here the Word comes forward like a little flame shining in the midst of darkness and scattering its rays through its doctrine and the sacraments; these rays God orders to be apprehended. If we embrace them, God is no longer hidden to us in the spirit but only in the flesh’.31 Luther admitted this was the contrary ‘play’ of God, as a father teases a child about an apple in order for the child to come to the father and receive it again. Such play from God’s perspective is to increase faith, but it is felt in every way as most serious and deadly. Temptation is none other than to receive the hidden God in the promise of Christ, only to proceed directly to leave it in grasping something that seems greater and more sure. Naturally no place seems surer than the possibility presented by thought which tries to secure a promise outside the promise itself. But Jacob teaches us that we go only by the Word: If an angel came down and said, ‘Do not believe these promises!’ I would reject him, saying: ‘Depart from me, Satan. . . . Or, if God Himself appeared to me in His majesty’ and said: ‘You are not worthy of My grace; I will change My plan and not keep My promise to you’, I would not have to yield to Him, but it would be necessary to fight most vehemently against God Himself. . . . If He should cast me into the depths of hell and place me in the midst of devils, I would still believe that I would be saved because I have been baptized, I have been absolved, I have received the pledge of my salvation, the body and blood of the Lord in the Supper . . . Therefore I want to see and hear nothing else, but I shall live and die in this faith, whether God or an angel or the devil says the contrary.32

So neither the real question of faith is ‘Why is there something and not nothing?’ nor is it the modern question, ‘Why is there unjust suffering?’ But in faith’s trial, Has God become a liar? Will He not keep His promises? The answer can be put in an exhortation: Do not let your thoughts throw away an actual Word from God. Jacob felt God stood opposed to him. His faith was assailed, but he hung onto this: I have the promise. Luther calls this the fight of faith against unfaith which cannot depend upon reason, and so he verbalized the fight in a theological dialog: ‘You must perish!’ ‘No! That is not God’s will. I shall not perish.  .  .  .  Yes and no there assailed each other very sharply and violently. . . . Even though God kills me, well, let Him kill me, but I shall still live’. Yes and no opposed each other, and though only the ‘no’ was felt, the ‘yes’ is believed. No doubt there are dangers exploring such hiddenness outside Christ and his word, even when this is done so that these two are the only places in which God 31. Ibid., p. 148. 32. Ibid., p. 131.

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is grasped by faith instead of thought. But the dangers of not doing so are greater yet, since adding this thought to faith removes faith from the thing in which the word is put. As Luther noted, no one can ‘adequately express in words what his [Jacob’s] thoughts were on this occasion. But such thoughts as these undoubtedly occurred to him . . . What if God has changed His viewpoint, rejected me, and received my brother into favor?’33 But, such thoughts, and they are only thoughts, cannot become conclusions, or ‘axioms that are fixed and speak the final word’.34 Unjust suffering makes people desperate, but Jacob did not discard his faith for some other sure foundation. Jacob’s faith is assailed, attacked, tried so that there is no other conclusion than that the very God who gave him the promise is now opposed to him. Still faith says, ‘I have the promise’ in the same way that Jacob got his blessing from Isaac. This means a struggle against God that must indeed conquer God. God not preached is defeated by the preached God in a pitched battle that only faith dares enter, and from which only faith can emerge again. So Luther enjoined: Even if He hides Himself in a room in the house and does not want access to be given to anyone, do not draw back but follow. If He does not want to listen, knock at the door of the room; raise a shout! For this is the highest sacrifice, not to cease praying and seeking until we conquer Him. He has already surrendered Himself to us so that we may be certain of victory, for He has bound Himself to HIS promises and pledged His faithfulness with an oath, saying (John 16:23): ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you in My name . . . These are hidden and wonderful things and known only to those who have the promises, in which they are vexed and humbled. Nevertheless, in that humiliation they come forth as victors even over God Himself ’.35

Here God is hidden in a contradiction which is not resolved by a correspondence, but a defeat. The same had happened at the point of the sacrifice of Isaac, where Luther concluded: ‘This trial cannot be overcome and is far too great to be understood by us. For there is a contradiction with which God contradicts Himself. It is impossible for the flesh to understand this; for it inevitably concludes either that God is lying – and this is blasphemy, or that God hates me – and this leads to despair’.36 Just as Christ is hidden in God under the sign of his opposite so the church, with its promises of baptism, keys and Lord’s Supper is hidden again in God as Jacob found at the Jabbok. So we conclude, ‘God is the One who is hidden. This is His peculiar property. He is really hidden, and yet He is not hidden’.37 This is none 33. Ibid., p. 133. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., pp. 140–3. 36. LW 4, p. 93. 37. LW 6, p. 148.

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other than the necessary distinction of all theology: God not preached, and God preached. Experience alone has the distinction forced upon it; meanwhile thought struggles to make a different distinction between omnipotence and love. But an experience with experience, such as faith is, concludes that God hidden in his word conquers and ‘has’ God hidden outside that word. Thus, a preacher’s declaration of God’s promise makes a new world by which the dead rise – there is no other way, no escape. God speaks and it is finally a promise, not only a possibility, that is made.

Chapter 15 M YST ERY OR S ACR AM E NT? AN A S SE S SM E N T OF E BERHAR D J ÜNGE L’S C RUCIFORM O N TOLO G Y 1 Roland Spjuth

One of the most stimulating and inspiring books written in the second part of the twentieth century is Jüngel’s God as the Mystery of the World2 (1983, originally published in German 1977). More than 30  years later, it is now possible to ask whether it is also a classic. Was it just an inspiration for a particular time? Or can one still claim to encounter a truly significant book that transcends its obvious timeliness in that it provokes one’s present horizon with the feeling that something else might be the case?3 There are obvious reasons that Jüngel’s book now might be out of date. Jüngel seems to belong to a time past when the important theologian was a German-speaking professor, often Protestant, struggling to secure the still importance of a seemingly absent God within a deeply secular culture. The theological centre has long since moved from German-speaking Europe. In the new international context, it is increasingly common to describe the present situation as post-secular. In such a context, many theologians rather have the ambitions to reclaim the world as a place for divine glory. Such efforts can be found in the ressourcement within Orthodox and Catholic theologies, in the ambitious metaphysical project of theologians clustered around the so-called Radical Orthodoxy movement, and lately even in some Evangelical theology. Of course, theologians as different as, for example, Alexander Schmemann, Henri de Lubac, John Milbank, James K. Smith and Hans Boersma cannot be identified as one movement. Still, Boersma summarizes a common ambition when he argues that it is time to reject modern secularism by insisting that creation participates in the life of God. The world 1. Parts of this article have been published before as ‘Redemption without Actuality:A Critical Interrelation between Eberhard Jüngel’s and John Milbank’s Ontological Endeavors’, MoTh 14:4 (1998), pp. 505–22, and is here reused by permission from John Wiley & Sons. 2. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983). 3. I borrow this definition from David Tracy, Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (London: SCM, 1981), pp. 101–7.

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is ‘a sacramental tapestry’ and it is time ‘for a re-sacramentalized Christian Ontology’.4 In this essay, I want to discuss whether Jüngel’s ontological endeavour still has relevance in a post-secular context or whether it is now time to reclaim the secular world for a sacramental reading of all thing existent. Is God the mystery in a secular world or is the world a sacrament that proclaims the glory of its Creator and Redeemer?5 My argument will first of all present Jüngel’s theological endeavour with special emphasis on his theology of the Word and then assess his position in relation to the theologies of a sacramental tapestry. The aim of the argument is to maintain that in spite of its shortcomings, Jüngel’s position still has something important to say in the present context.

Eberhard Jüngel’s Linguistic Constitution of Being A recurrent theme in Eberhard Jüngel’s theology has been the claim that a Christocentric theology does not disrespect the ontological questions of being, but rather face them all more rigorously. Such basic ontological implications are already clarified in an impressive article written in 1969.6 In this article, he argues that the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith implies that we cannot answer the question of being – who we are – from the perspective of what we do. Justification is an external verdict about our being that is motivated solely by divine love and received as a pure gift in the passivity of faith. The ‘Mystery of the World’ is, thus, that the truth of our being is found in the divine love that is radically different from normal patterns of evaluating our existence. Such a transformation of normal interpretations of being must have wide-ranging ontological implications. First, Jüngel claims that justification implies a powerful attack on Western ontology which, since Aristotle, has celebrated the primacy of actuality and works. Such an understanding of being means a world enclosed within its present actuality and potential. In contrast, Jüngel emphasizes that justification by faith implies that the world lives by possibilities which actuality does not possess and which it can only receive as an external gift. From this perspective, the fundamental horizon of being is not actuality and human making but divine creativity that brings new possibilities into being ex nihilo. Jüngel strongly reinforces the disruption between present actuality and divine possibility by stressing that justification always happens as a divine judgement or annihilation of previous attempts to enclose being in actuality and production. Thus, a Christian reading of being accentuates that the world depends solely on what God gives to the world; a potentia aliena 4. Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), p. 20. 5. Of course, it is theological inaccurate to place “mystery” and “sacrament” over against each other. I use them only as catchwords for two different theological constructions. 6. The article is translated by John B. Webster as Jüngel, ‘The World is Actuality and Possibility’, in Theological Essays I, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), pp. 95–123.

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that comes to the world as an interruptive approach that breaks every human tendency towards self-grounding and self-enclosure. Jüngel’s ontological position thus presupposes a consistent distinction between actuality, human activity and dominion on the one hand and possibility, divine creation ex nihilo and human passivity on the other. It is only in the second horizon that the power which defines created being occurs. Secondly, Jüngel needs to clarify how new possibilities can be a real event in the world. He finds the clue to an answer in the thinking of his Doktorvater Ernst Fuchs, who attempted to interpret the later Heidegger in a way that for theology proved fruitful.7 For Fuchs, reality is not an established and solid order (Ding an sich). Rather, what reality is, is very much contested. The fundamental explanation for this view is that we only have access to the world as we linguistically interact with it. Fuchs therefore strongly emphasizes the interdependence of reality and language in such a manner that reality can only be that which is brought into presence by language. What language will bring into presence is indeed contested. However, this interrelation also makes possible a dynamic view of reality whereby something more can be given. According to Fuchs’s ontology, one can still speak of being as ontically prior to language, yet the ontological priority must be given to language since it is in that dimension that reality will be determined; or, as Fuchs stresses, justified. At the same time, it needs to be noted that the ontological priority of language does not suggest that Fuchs claims that the world is a human construction. He speaks rather of language coming before the person, so that the address creates the space which makes human living possible. From this ontological perspective, Fuchs then affirms the language-event (Sprachereignis) as the place where God acts to determine human reality. Fuchs’s ontology demonstrates convincingly for Jüngel how closely the dimension of possibility is connected with language and that justification is to be interpreted as a divine Word that determines being. Yet, this presupposes a fundamental distinction in the comprehension of language. Language is not just a set of statements, since a statement reduces the multitude of possibilities through its definitions. The possibility must happen in another linguistic dimension which, with reference to Fuchs, is defined as the language-event. Jüngel specifies this linguistic horizon as a parabolic word-event. The parable is not a mere rhetorical ornament that explains the kingdom of God by comparing it to something we already know. To equate the kingdom of God with something, that is, means that the world and the kingdom would remain in their old state; nothing new could happen and theology would remain within the detested analogia entis. By contrast, a word-event collects the narrative elements of the parable in an event where something unexpected happens that, in a most basic sense, interrupts what was before (elementare Unterbrechung). Surely such an interruptive event happens 7. For Fuchs’s view of reality and language, see ‘Das Problem der theologischen Hermeneutik’, in Gesammelte Aufsätze 1. Zum hermeneutische Problem in der Theologie. Die existentiale Interpretation (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1959), pp. 124–31; idem, Hermeneutik, 4. Auflage (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1960), pp.  126–34 and idem, Marburger Hermeneutik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1968), pp. 227–45.

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in some analogy to a previous worldly relation; otherwise one cannot understand it, yet not in such a way that the old context determines it. Instead, Jüngel develops an analogy of advent in which the new reality, the kingdom of God, determines what it will make of the old context through a playful and free use of it. When the kingdom uses the old context as a parable for the kingdom, then the old creation will be new. Thus, it is the parabolic or metaphorical language which affirms the priority of the possible over against the actual. Metaphorical and parabolic language, Jüngel asserts, is ‘the absolutely new way of dealing with what exists’.8 The doctrine of justification, for Jüngel, singles out language as the place where God constitutes created being. However, a linguistic constitution of being also presupposes that being is read as an open temporality. The being of creation is a historical existence that occurs through its interrelation with the coming of God. Being is in-coming as a temporality that is constituted anew through divine interruptions. As in Heidegger’s philosophy, human temporality is thus not identical with the everyday understanding of time as a series of punctual ‘now’. It is only when a punctual Now is interrupted and related to what is beyond the here and now, to past and present, that a truly present or spiritual existence is given to being. ‘It is out of that distance from oneself that the person approaches himself. Thus he has time. Thus he is man’.9 Jüngel then emphasizes that the power to create spiritual presence through distancing resides solely in the linguistic address. It is the word-event which discloses a spiritual presence (Geistesgegenwart) and which creates being-in-coming. For Jüngel, human existence is thus a temporal gift that is open to the word-event that has the power to determine the character of the temporality of being. From this linguistic and temporal definition of being, it is a short step to the theological claim that a person is constituted by God’s justifying Word. The divine address is an eschatological interruption that creates an eschatological and spiritual presence. When it brings the self before God (coram Deo), it means a total distancing that creates an eschatological outdistancing surpassing all of one’s previous relations in the world. This interruption does not annihilate the person’s life in the world, but rather ‘discloses to the ego a new way of being present, it discloses to it worldly presence as presence defined by God, as eschatological presence’.10

Cruciform Phronesis Jüngel has developed a consistent ontology that presents the world as a living togetherness of all things (Zusammensein)11 which constantly happens in a 8. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 290. 9. Ibid., p. 173. See further, pp. 170–4. 10. Ibid., pp. 174f. 11. See Jüngel’s ontological claims that all created existence is togetherness in Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburg: T&T Clark, 2001), p. 104.

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temporal becoming  – a being that is in-coming (Sein-ist-im-Kommen)  – and which privileges the possible over the actual. He also agrees with a more general philosophical anthropology that language is constitutive for human existence and that this linguistic-metaphorical perspective is paradigmatic for understanding the ontological construction of life.12 Jüngel’s theology about God’s justifying Word thus implies a reading of the world as a dynamic field interrelated with the eternal coming of the triune God. It is noteworthy that Jüngel’s ontological endeavour in many respects seems similar to today’s representatives of what I called ‘a sacramental ontology’. In the cluster around Radical Orthodoxy, for example, several persons reconsider the ‘the new vitalist’ moment in contemporary thought that opposes the reduction of all life to naturalism and biologism (‘the primacy of the actual’), defines existence as a historical movement that happens in an analogical mediation between the actual and the transcendent Other, and the linguistic-rhetorical character of this creative process.13 Yet, there is one principal difference between such metaphysical endeavours and Jüngel’s ontology. The ‘sacramental ontology’ emphasizes the notion of participation and that the Christian-platonic metaphysics of participation can contest the modern, secular worldview. In contrast, Jüngel asserts a ‘productiveness of distance’ in God’s relationship to the world. God’s presence must also include divine absence or apartness (Entzogenheit) since only a God who is most radically apart from us can be the One who comes most close as a constitutive word-event. ‘In the word, God is present as the absent one’.14 According to Jüngel, this sentence is an explication of the divine love revealed in the cross of Jesus Christ. ‘The concept of the omnipresence of God must pass through the eye of the needle of the properly understood concept of the death of God’.15 The divine love that comes to the world must be understood as kenosis, which comes to creation only in selfdistance and self-surrender. In contrast with a sacramental ontology, Jüngel emphasizes that the Creator upholds a created history that is radically different from its creator. Thus, his ontology aims at a ‘rehabilitation of perishable reality’ that counters all platonic, apocalyptic and metaphysical ontologies that judged perishability as a negative phenomenon in relation to the eternal and the transcendent. Rather, God’s coming makes the world even more worldly, nature even more natural and humanity even more human. Yet, for Jüngel, worldliness does not make God’s coming superfluous. With reference to the fragmentary thoughts of Bonhoeffer,16 he counters that God’s 12. See Jüngel, ‘Humanity in Correspondence to God: Remarks on the Image of God as a Basic Concept in Theological Anthropology’, in Theological Essays I, p. 145. 13. For two recent examples, see Radical Orthodoxy: Annual Review 1, ed. Neil Turnbull (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012)  and Catherine Pickstock, Repetition and Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 14. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 182. 15. Ibid., p. 63. 16. For Jüngel’s analysis of Bonhoeffer, see ibid., pp. 57–63.

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coming rather discloses that ‘the worldly existent world’, or ‘the world as coming of age’, must be grounded in a relationship coram deo. It is only beyond the world, in the event of being addressed by the divine Other, that the world comes to exist as worldly or secular (Entweltlichung) and is restored to its true place as the sphere of human action. In the tradition of Karl Barth, Jüngel can surely expound a Christocentric and soteriological understanding of existence. Everything existent is determined by God’s Yes to creation in Jesus Christ. Thus creation becomes togetherness, history, possibilities and language-event. Yet, there is no self-evident, created response to the divine Yes that secures a concrete, ontic-existential realization. God’s Yes to the world in Jesus Christ is no irresistible force that determines the concrete shape of life. It is rather a Yes that creates a space for human activities in which humans may construct their history in different manners. Thus there is no self-evident testimony based in a harmonious analogy of being. Jüngel’s criticism of natural theology is, however, also argued in the name of God’s freedom. In natural theology, he claims, theology became a slave under ‘the tyranny of the self-evident’.17 The coming of God must rather be seen as a crisis of the self-evident, in order to enhance what the world might be. Thus, the world always remains an ambivalent history. In itself it has no secure, analogical constitution that can function as a sacramental sign to its participation in the divine life. Jüngel’s main challenge in relation to ‘sacramental ontologies’ is his assertion that God is not necessary in the modern world. God’s Yes to creation rather implies that humans can be fully human without believing in God as well as politics and science functions well (and perhaps even better) without the hypothesis of a divine being. Jüngel rightly stresses that theology has to integrate this modern experience and to do so neither as something alien (Fremdkörper) that is accepted with resent nor as something that makes faith in God superfluous. It must be incorporated in theology as an important truth both regarding the nature of creation and the being of God. The scandal of the cross means that the perishable existence continues as an ambivalent history and the divine coming is no self-evident reality. In contrast especially with the Radical Orthodoxy’s attempt to reclaim a secular world within a sacred hierarchy, it implies that Jüngel strongly oppose any theological ambition to Christianize politics and science. The God who rules in the Crucified One makes Christians vulnerable, acknowledging the radical difference between the Creator and creation. Theology doesn’t have to know how God rules. It is only 17. For Jüngel’s criticism of natural theology, see ‘Extra Christum nulla salus  – a Principle of Natural Theology? Protestant Reflections on the ‘Anonymity’ of the Christian’, in Theological Essays I, pp. 173–88; and idem, ‘Das Dilemma der natürlichen Theologie und die Wahrheit ihres Problems. Überlegungen für ein Gespräch mit Wolfhart Pannenberg’, in Entsprechungen: Gott – Wahrheit – Mensch. Theologische Erörtungen II. 3. Auflage um Register erweitert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 158–77.

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from a position without power – in the weakness of the cross – that theology can give testimonies to its Lord. Theology can only be a cruciformed phronesis.18

Action as a Gateway to Transcendence In a pluralistic and ambiguous world, Jüngel offers a promising proposal for a soteriologically defined ontology that at the same time respects the modern experience of divine non-necessity. However, in this final section I would claim that Jüngel’s consistent focus on justification as a linguistic event, as well as his distinction between being and act also indicate theological limitations. There are various reasons that a proper Trinitarian construal of divine coming ought not just to speak of the ontological determination of being by the divine Logos. It also needs to underscore that the Spirit generates a creative response to the coming of the Son from within history. The biblical text is not only about the divine Address that judges and justifies humans and constitutes being but also, and primarily, about a narration that tells the story of specific peoples within the history from Abraham and Moses, to Christ, and further on into the Church. Certainly, Jüngel conviction that ‘God’s being is in becoming’ necessitates a narrative structure. It is a story to be told. The problem, however, is that Jüngel always stresses that justification is a divine constitution of being and not a human act. Thus, the Christian story can never incorporate the notion that the Spirit works an analogical correspondence to the divine-being-in-becoming in and through human activities. His consistent distinction between being and act hinders any attempts to specify the divine newness in the realm of activities, that is, within the realm of body and society. For Jüngel, the Christian story is a kerygma that addresses human being, and not a triune story that appropriates human activities and communion within the divine coming to creation. Jüngel’s ontological distinction between being and act is closely interrelated with his interpretation of Christian existence as ‘a being addressed’ (AnsprechbarSein). This linguistic understanding of Christian existence corresponds with an ecclesiology where the primary task of the church is to proclaim the Gospel. The church becomes a place where participants are addressed by a word and then, when they have been renewed by this word-event, they go out into the world in order to serve their neighbours. Jüngel thus makes a fundamental distinction in his understanding of the correspondence between divine and human love. If there were an immediate correspondence, then, Jüngel argues, divine love and human love would be equalized, with the effect that human action would co-operate in redemption (synergism). Thus, he needs to differentiate between the act in which God’s love determines the human being – this act corresponds with the passive reception of faith – and the action where the human person then acts in order to love his or her neighbour with a similar love. 18. The notion comes from my friend Carl-Magnus Carlstein.

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Jüngel explicates this ‘double correspondence’ through a de-sacramental interpretation of all ecclesial activities.19 It is only in the first relation, where the divine Word acts and the believer receives in the passivity of faith, that we can speak of a sacrament. This is solely God’s act. Secondly, this sacramental act works as a formative power, as an exemplum, that releases free, human activity for the benefit of others. Yet, this realm of activities is not sacramental. It is the sphere of human freedom where the believers are to seek proper correspondences with God’s love. Jüngel’s de-sacramental interpretation of human and ecclesial activities means that he rejects any active participation by the believer in Christ’s redemptive work, and any active mediation of redemption through the life of the church. Jüngel’s distinction between divine act and human passivity, between being and act and between faith and love is motivated by his consistent protest over/against of the ontological priority of the actual. Yet, the price he pays is the failure to locate divine creativity somewhere other than in the disruptive transformations of the individual’s existence in the world. Jüngel’s theology is in this aspect different from Barth’s. For Barth, God’s redemptive grace not only corresponds with a human passivity but also includes and creates a human activity towards God. Hence, it includes both the gift from the Father as well as the gift to the Father, justification and sanctification, gospel and law (Nachfolge) and the Spirit’s giving of Christ’s body as well as the offer of thanksgiving, within the one movement of grace.20 Jüngel’s distinction is also connected to the prominence he always gives to the theology of the cross. His Lutheran theology of the cross down-plays the other Christological topics that describe divine transformation of human nature as it happens in incarnation and resurrection. The life of Jesus Christ is not just the death of the Messiah; it is also the Spirit’s appropriation of a human being in a real transformation of fallen existence. If my diagnosis is correct, then the main weakness of Jüngel’s theology is the refusal to include the Spirit’s appropriation of creation within the divine newness. The apparent risk with a Trinitarian theology that down-plays the Spirit’s appropriation of creation from within is that it leaves the actuality of ordinary life too much as it is. As long as its interruptions are seen as occurrences beyond actuality, it seems impossible to speak of a divine coming that intrinsically challenges the present state of a world fallen into sin. This turns out to be the great ethical and political danger with Jüngel’s ontology. 19. For Jüngel’s de-sacramental interpretation of human and ecclesial activities, see, for example, Jüngel, ‘Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe. Ein Hinweis auf ihre Probleme’, in BarthStudien (Zürich, Köln: Benziger; and Mohn: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1982), pp. 246–88; idem, ‘Thesen zu Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe’, in Barth-Studien, pp. 291–4; idem, ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, in Barth-Studien, pp.  295–331 and idem, ‘The Church as Sacrament?’, in Theological Essays I, pp. 189–213. 20. See Barth, CV IV.2, §66, ‘The Sanctification of Man’. For a critique of Jüngel’s interpretation of Barth in this regard, see my book, Roland Spjuth, Creation, Contingency, and Divine Presence in the Theologies of Thomas F. Torrance and Eberhard Jüngel, Studia Theologica Ludensia 51 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995), pp. 136–40.

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Jüngel’s refusal to interconnect new being with activities seems connected with a strong tradition that separates the question of being from modern, technological activities.21 Especially, Jüngel seems close to Heidegger’s demarcation between the threat of technological activity (Gestell), which is only the will to mastery and control, and the bringing forth of truth in the call of Being. The hope is no longer of any human counter-activity but of our dwelling poetically upon earth. It is through thinking and creating with words that humanity can be a guardian of the manifestation of Being.22 Without identifying Jüngel too closely with Heidegger, it must be said that he also strongly insists that ‘technological existence’ must be interrupted, but not by another social practice. Christianity has no possibility, Jüngel maintains, of cancelling the fact that humanity must continue to construct the future. What is possible, however, is to change our attitude (Einstellung) to this expansion. As Jüngel’s ontological endeavour now stands, it surely attempts a rejection of Aristotle’s priority of actuality, but it never questions the definition of actuality as the realm of human production and intentional making. I will thus argue that it is more fruitful not to polarize activity and passivity in general, but rather to distinguish between different kinds of actions. For Jüngel, actions always become identified with the subject’s intentional making (dominion), that is, with the modern idea of an autonomous and powerful subject that forms his or her world. From that perspective, it seems consistent that divine action must correspond with human passivity.23 Here I find more resources within ‘a sacramental tapestry’. John Milbank, for example, provides such a differentiated understanding of actions in his book Theology and Social Theory. In this book, Milbank defines action as an inherently heterogeneous phenomenon over which the subject does not have control.24 To act is first of all ‘to lose oneself, to place what is most ours – much more so than any inviolable inwardness – at a total risk’. Further, action is restriction, since it involves one course rather than all other possibilities. Finally, in acting we grope towards a future that never was ‘originally intended by us, but only ‘occurs’ to us out of the 21. For Jüngel’s opposition between technical world and interruptive word-event, see, for example, ‘Die Bedeutung der Rechtfertigungslehre für das Verstandnis des Menschen’, Luther 62 (1991), pp.  110–26, here pp.  122–6 and idem, Anfechtung und Gewissheit des Glaubens oder wie die Kirche wieder zu ihrer Sache kommt, Kaiser-Traktate no. 23 (München: Kaiser, 1976), pp. 64–8. 22. See Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 287–317, here pp. 315–7. Thus, Heidegger’s path seems to become rather individualistic, while practical intelligence (phronesis) for Aristotle was inseparable from membership in a polis. 23. Compare, however, Jüngel’s notion of ‘sabbatical action’ in Justification, p. 235. 24. See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (London: Blackwell Publishing, 1993), pp.  210–9. Maurice Blondel plays a crucial role in Milbank’s interpretation of actions: ‘Blondel’s concept of a self-dispossessing action points the way to a postmodern social theology’ (p. 209).

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future plenitude of being’.25 Thus, to act in a proper sense is to renounce living for oneself (kenosis). The fullness of being only happens in the letting go of the self as something to be possessed and clung to, in favour of an ecstatic being. It is through such actions that an individual person makes oneself bodily available and exposed to others and to the future over which one has no control. Instead of interpreting actions as the realm of the subject’s dominion, Milbank focuses on actions as a dying together into being. Such a different interpretation of action and being opens the possibility that one form of actions may be seen as ‘the gateway to transcendence’.26 ‘All creation is kenosis, a self-emptying mediation’.27 When creation is pictured as kenotic acts, then actuality cannot be seen as a defined realm under human dominion. Since everything happens through participation in divine creativity, any univocal grasp of actuality is excluded. Created being becomes an open and dynamic actuality that ultimately is beyond human comprehension. The contrast between Jüngel and Milbank does not concern whether God is free or not, but how this divine otherness is enacted in relationship to human activities. Milbank’s interpretation of being and act suggests a social and bodily interpretation of divine freedom and enactment. This possibility is implicit in an interpretation of act as kenotic. Since such an act is to offer oneself as a gift to others, the enactment of divine freedom can be seen as happening in the life together  – in the body  – where members renounce self-control in favour of a ‘being together in the Spirit’ that no part of the body can control. Redemption becomes both the gift of divine kenosis (the Son) and the appropriation of this gift in persons who surrender themselves to God and to fellow humans in a new coming together in Christ (the work of the Spirit). Thus, the divine act of redemption is not only an event over against human activities that happens in a spiritual realm (an address) but also participation in the works of the Spirit that is transmitted in and through human actions and community (a story).28 In spite of this criticism of Jüngel’s lack of the Spirit’s appropriation of created actions within the coming of the Triune God, it might be argued that his theology still may be a fruitful challenge to a sacramental tapestry. Even a doctrine of the Spirits appropriation of created activities needs to pass the eye of the needle of a properly understood concept of the death of God and to incorporate ‘divine apartness’ that always comes as a playful interruption of present actuality and as a crisis of the self-evident. God as Spirit is beyond human control and puts a firm limit to human as well as to churchly ambitions to control its own fate. Thus, appropriation of redemption within creation must take kenotic form. As 25. Ibid., p. 214. 26. Ibid., pp. 12, 218. 27. Ibid., p. 215. 28. In contrast to Jüngel, it is noteworthy that Barth speaks of human actions as ‘responsible cooperation’ and as ‘concursus’. For Barth, it is ‘very proper’ for God ‘to let his action be codetermined by his children’. See Barth CD IV.4, pp. 101–4.

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Jüngel insists, a human being is a bodily existence circumscribed in time, space and power who lives in an ambiguous world. The Church is no exception. All God’s creatures must accept living within inevitable ambiguities. That is because the Church needs to acknowledge not only its sinfulness but also part of ‘the rehabilitation of perishable reality’. The church is called to testify to the beauty of a perishable world that due to the divine mystery can become ‘even more worldly’. So even in the midst of its weaknesses, Jüngel’s cruciform theology stimulates and provokes theology also in a post-secular context. Thus, his masterpiece God as Mystery of the World might deserve to be called a classic.

Chapter 16 E BERHAR D J ÜNGE L ON TH E C OM PAT I BI LI T Y OF E DUCATION AND T H E OLO GY 1 Markus Thane

Introduction The writer of this essay is convinced that Eberhard Jüngel would have himself enjoyed the adventure and challenge of investigating the theme of the ‘compatibility of theology and education’. During his academic career, he never wrote a piece dealing directly and specifically with the relation of theology and education, which is the subject of the present essay. However, though this is the case, we do well to take note that the numerous articles, essays and books that form Jüngel’s legacy serve as a foundation upon which we, the next generation of theologians, may build. By doing so, we are able to see what a theologian of Jüngel’s caliber would say to us on this important issue. Such is precisely what this essay is trying to do, namely, to compile the relevant sources and to integrate them in such a way that we are able to construe what one of the twentieth century’s most outstanding theologians would have voiced. In order to do so effectively, this essay will go beyond the mere tasks of compilation and reconstruction, which, though perhaps helpful, runs the danger of missing Jüngel’s unique approach and style as a theologian. Therefore, in honour and respect for Professor Jüngel, this essay attempts, at various places, to imitate his unique style from a German theological perspective for an English-speaking audience. Jüngel would likely feel compelled to give an immediate response when it comes to the subject of theology and education. He would likely, in accord with his own unique style, assert something like ‘ein Theologe im Hause der Bildung und der Wissenschaften geht in Ordnung’ – ‘a theologian who finds him- or herself in the house of university education and human sciences is perfectly acceptable’.2 This being said, it does not imply that theology and education should be combined to 1. This essay was first presented as a paper at the Society for the Study of Theology Annual Conference, from 8 to 10 April 2013 in Nottingham, England. The Conference theme was ‘Theology and Education’. 2. We should point out that Jüngel was, from 1969 to 2003, a member of the University of Tübingen’s renowned Faculty of Protestant Theology, which makes him a part of the

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form a Mixoeducatiotheologia, which would imply that the kernel of theological investigation can be distilled to the nature and relation of theology and education. Jüngel would question whether ‘theology’ and ‘education’ are in fact compatible, as appears to be suggested or indicated through the conjunction ‘and’. Furthermore, he would likely ask critically about the nature of this symbiosis, combination or relation. Is it ‘theology’ because it has been placed first, or is it rather ‘education’? If it is ‘education’ that qualifies the relation, then we may be urged to change the order and call it ‘education and theology’. Or does the conjunction ‘and’ between ‘theology and education’ separate the two words not only linguistically, but also interpretatively, thus indicating that theology and education are incompatible, and, therefore, exclusive and irreconcilable with each other? Such a construal might compel us to replace the conjunction ‘and’ with ‘or’, which would appear to be logically more appropriate, and would then expresses the relation as ‘theology or education’. Such questions point to the underlying issue of whether and to what extent ‘theology’ and ‘education’ are interrelated. Jüngel would likely direct us to three of his theological essays and a short section of one of his books in order to help us gain a focused and coherent understanding of this vast topic. The first essay ‘Meine Theologie – kurz gefaßt’, which is also available in English in Theological Essays II as ‘My Theology  – A Short Summary’, provides Jüngel’s basic definition of theology.3 The other two essays can be found in the collection titled Entsprechungen: Gott – Wahrheit – Mensch, published in 1980.4 The second of our three essays, ‘Gott – um seiner selbst willen interessant. Plädoyer für eine natürlichere Theologie’, can be translated into English as ‘God is Interesting because of God’s Self: Pleading for a More Natural Theology’, and clarifies the irreversibility of the truth claims made by a Christ-centred theology.5 The third essay carries established and institutionalized education system. This fact does not mean that Jüngel feels compelled to mix education and theology, just as, as he has also previously pointed out, with theology and philosophy. Therefore, this essay assumes a parallelism between Jüngel’s description of theology and philosophy and that of theology and education. See, for example, Prof. Dr.  Eberhard Jüngel, Selbstcharakterisierung, accessed 28 February 2014, http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/philosophische-fakultaet/fachbereiche/ philosophie-rhetorik-medien/philosophisches-seminar/seminar/die-burse/die-lehrenden/ philosophische-selbstcharakterisierungen/prof-dr-eberhard-juengel.html. 3. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Meine Theologie – kurz gefasst’, in Wertlose Wahrheit: Zur Identität und Relevanz des Christlichen Glaubens, Theologische Erörterungen III, 2nd edn (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp.  1–15; cf. idem, ‘My Theology  – A Short Summary’, in Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 1–19. 4. Unfortunately, these two articles are not included in the two English essay collections edited by Webster: Jüngel, Theological Essays I, ed. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989); and idem, Theological Essays II. 5. Jüngel, ‘Gott  – um seiner selbst willen interessant. Plädoyer für eine natürlichere Theologie’, in Entsprechungen: Gott  – Wahrheit  – Mensch. Theologische Erörtungen II. 3. Auflage um Register erweitert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 193–7.

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the title ‘Theologie in der Spannung zwischen Wissenschaft und Bekenntnis’, which can be translated as ‘Theology in Tension between Science and Confession’, and treats, as the title indicates, the relation of science and education on the one hand, and the confessional character of theology on the other.6 Finally, we have pages 93–8 of Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, which is also available in English.7 For the sake of clarity, the present essay will engage solely with Jüngel’s texts in their original German editions, rather than with the translations, though the citations will include the locations where the quoted passages can be found in the English editions. In addition, while these four sources compose the centrepiece of the engagement, this essay will draw as well from other primary and secondary sources in order to make sure that Jüngel’s theological viewpoint is presented correctly.

The Exposition of Jüngel’s Essays and His Plea for an Even ‘More Natural Theology’ As has been mentioned in the previous section, Jüngel offers a definition of theology in his essay ‘Meine Theologie – kurz gefaßt’. In this piece, Jüngel extrapolates the three pillars that form the premise of theology. First, theology is: (a) ‘Rede von Gott’, the ‘speech of God’ which is made possible through (b) the ‘Glauben an Gott’  – in English, ‘faith in God’.8 Both speech and faith condition each other, insofar as the speech of God is not possible without faith, and vice versa. The reason why in this essay Jüngel favours ‘speech’ over ‘talk’, as the word has been rendered in Webster’s translation, is because, in German, talking about God does not require faith, whereas ‘speech’ emphasizes that the speech-event opens up the dimension of a new, and in this case, ultimate reality. Second, the kernel of theology is, therefore, faith in God and the speech of God who has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ.9 This makes Christology the centrepiece that, correspondingly, holds together divine revelation visà-vis human faith.10 Jüngel is here emphasizing one of the core insights of the   6. Jüngel, ‘Theologie in der Spannung zwischen Wissenschaft und Bekenntnis’, in Entsprechungen, pp. 37–51.   7. Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt: Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus, 7th edn (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 2001), pp. 93–8. Translated in English as idem, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 7–74.   8. Webster translates the German word ‘Rede’ with the English word ‘talk’, rather than with ‘speech’. ‘Talk’ does not completely capture the transformational connotation of the German ‘Rede’. See Jüngel, ‘Meine Theologie’, p. 1; cf. idem, ‘My Theology’, p. 1.   9. Jüngel, ‘Meine Theologie’, p. 3; idem, ‘My Theology’, p. 4. 10. Jüngel, ‘Meine Theologie’, p. 3; idem, ‘My Theology’, p. 4. See also John B. Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 18, 55–8.

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Reformation era, namely, the use of the exclusive particle sola in such instances as sola Christus and sola fide, which makes Christology the starting point and epistemological centre for every systematic dogmatic investigation.11 Third, following this train of thought leads, consequently, to the ultimate insight that theology – in Jüngel’s theological framework, at least – cannot choose what it is or wants to be, but rather has to take its assigned task of speaking and believing responsibly of God incarnate.12 In short, Jüngel’s theology seeks to think behind God and to spell out the divine ‘Yes’ (2. Cor 1:19f): quod Deus bene vertat!13 From this brief overview of theology, the following important conclusions can be drawn. First, we note that Jüngel feels compelled to correct the title of the essay because the possessive pronoun ‘mine’, or ‘my’, that is given in the essay title could lead to the impression that theology is a private matter in his possession or open to private definition.14 This is exactly what Jüngel is opposing when he asserts that theology is set by God, who defines its contents, width and depth through the Christ-event, and governs its methodology by way of faith. Second, it is pivotal to keep in mind that the starting and focal point of Jüngel’s theo-epistemology is exclusively Christocentric, which has important ramifications and repercussions, as will become clear in our interaction with his essay ‘Gott – um seiner selbst willen interessant’. In this theological essay, Jüngel asserts that, today, Protestant theology follows in the footsteps of natural theology, an undertaking which would have once been considered impossible.15 He continues by citing Barth, who states in Church Dogmatics II/1 that ‘what speaks here is not one of the many heresies. It is the one heresy which is necessary by its very nature’.16 Furthermore, Barth observes that this form of theology has an incredible ‘vitality’.17 Barth writes: Natural theology is not in any sense the partner of a theology of the Word of God which has a true understanding of itself. From the point of view of this theology, it quietly drops away as superfluous.18 11. Jüngel, ‘Meine Theologie’, p. 3; idem, ‘My Theology’, p. 4. See also idem, ‘Thesen zur Grundlegung der Christologie’, Unterwegs zur Sache: Theologische Bemerkungen (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1972), p. 276, Thesis 3.42. 12. This is summarized in theses 1, 1.2, 2.1 and 2.2 in Jüngel, ‘Thesen zur Grundlegung der Christologie’, pp. 274–5. 13. Jüngel, ‘Meine Theologie’, p. 15; idem, ‘My Theology’, p. 19. 14. Jüngel, ‘Meine Theologie’, p. 1; idem, ‘My Theology’, p. 1. 15. Jüngel, ‘Gott – um seiner selbst willen interessant’, p. 193. 16. Ibid., cf. CD II/1, p. 141. 17. The Barth quote in full: ‘The vitality of natural theology is the vitality of man as such. In the sphere of man as such his own vitality is the phenomenon controlling the whole field of vision’ (CD II/1, p. 165). 18. Ibid., p. 168.

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After having presented Barth’s position and his strong rejection, Jüngel goes one step further by pointing to an innate problem of natural theology. Jüngel asks why the phenomenon of natural theology  – despite its doctrinal error  – continues to reappear on the theological agenda.19 He claims that even most of Barth’s followers failed to identify the reversal of truth which requires our highest theological attention.20 According to Jüngel, the dilemma of natural theology does not point us to the underlying problem of its truth.21 He asks rhetorically, ‘what is this truth, and what is this truth’s complete reversal?’22 He then answers that the problem of natural theology lies in its claim that the special event of the word of God is made universally true and perceptible for everyone.23 The universality of the claim of natural theology subordinates the special and unique event of the word of God – that is, the Christ-event.24 In other words, what Jüngel is saying is that the perversion of the truth that occurs in a natural theological approach is that the word of God, in its direct way, as given through Jesus Christ, becomes flattened and equated with universal presuppositions of what can be said anyway about God. A theology that is willing to correct this mistake is (here Jüngel refers to the term that Barth has coined for this correction) an ‘even more natural theology’, because it corrects what should be self-evident. These insights are paramount for the ongoing discussion about the compatibility of theology and education because they point to the very heart of the matter. The first essay asserts that a theo-centrically shaped epistemology is inductive in its nature, insofar as the believer experiences God in faith which from thereon allows him or her, through the faith experience, to articulate general principles and rules. The second essay highlights the exact opposite, namely, that natural theology is deductive in its epistemological–methodological approach. The point that Jüngel is trying to make is that the reversibility of the process formulated on the basis of cosmological rules and principles which deduces phenomena and appearances is logically impossible to reconcile with Christ and theology because their origin is outside and not a part of our general cosmological experience. This insight also has ramifications for education, as will become apparent in the following section.

An Attempt to Define Education At this point, Webster’s reminder will help us to bear in mind that Jüngel’s theology – and this will be even more so the case in regard to education – is written 19. Jüngel, ‘Gott – um seiner selbst willen interessant’, p. 194. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid.

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exclusively for a German context and simultaneously exhibits scant awareness for the theological discussions taking place in English-speaking countries.25 While cultural differences certainly play a role, the major problem that we face here is the difference in language. In English, the word typically used to translate the German ‘Bildung’ is ‘education’. However, ‘Bildung’ has a variety of meanings in German, such as training, and schooling in general versus an academic education.26 In German, it refers also to culture and manners, breeding and the refinement of knowledge.27 In addition, ‘Bildung’ can denote human commitment, human intellectualism and personal development and formation.28 The TRE (Theologische Realenzyklopädie) points out that ‘Bildung’ is, in the strictest sense, not a philosophical term and therefore not clearly definable.29 Granting the fact that ‘education’, in a German context, is not altogether clear and has a fluidity of different meanings, it can be said at least that the word can either mean a process or an end result.30 Its Latin origins – ‘erudire’, ‘educare’, ‘formare’, ‘excolere’ and ‘perodire’ – always suppose an emptiness or a less-organized state at the beginning which undergoes a change.31 In Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, Jüngel refers to the Hegelian attempt to incorporate ‘Bildung’ into the philosophical system.32 According to Hegel, ‘Bildung’ is a mere historical and cultural appearance of reality.33 These various cultural dimensions of life are then transcended by some unspecified philosophies in order to build a form of metaphysics which sets the totality of all dimensions as absolute and elaborates them as a system.34 The most problematic aspect of this approach is that it seeks eternity but confuses it with its own subjectivity.35 According to Hegel, an incident during which this took place was the time when the Enlightenment was considered to be the endpoint and fulfilment of human history, leading not to the hoped-for idealism, but to the terror of the French Revolution.36 Therefore, a philosophy that is built upon such a subjective foundation becomes only a position 25. See Webster, Eberhard Jüngel, p. 1. 26. Otto Springer (ed.), Encyclopaedic German Dictionary German–English ‘Der Große Muret Sanders’, Volume 1: A-K, 5th edn (Berlin: Langenscheidt, 1990), pp. 284–5. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Rudolf Lennert, ‘Bildung I: Zur Begriffs- und Wirkungsgeschichte’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Band V, ed. Horst Balz et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1979), p. 569; and this explains why ‘Bildung’ is not even mentioned in Handwörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Wulff D. Rehfus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 568–82. 30. TRE, ‘Bildung I: Zur Begriffs- und Wirkungsgeschichte’, p. 569. 31. Ibid. 32. This is discussed in the section, Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, pp. 93–8. 33. Ibid., p. 93. 34. Ibid., 35. Ibid., p. 95. 36. Koen Boey, ‘Bildung’, in Hegel-Lexikon, ed. Paul Cobben (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006), p. 168.

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among other positions and nothing more.37 On the contrary, true philosophy in the Hegelian sense has the predicate that it is able to distinguish between finite and infinite through language and the spirit of ‘Zerissenheit’, translated as ‘disunion’. Such an experience and feeling of disunion liberates, through its negativity and from the subjectivity of absolutes, by simultaneously keeping the real truth.38 This definition of Hegelian ‘Bildung’ offered by Jüngel is consistent with how ‘Bildung’ understands itself.39 As it has been pointed out, the innate problem of ‘Bildung’ is that it stays and remains an immanent historical and cultural phenomenon. However, with the beginning of the Enlightenment, this immanence became transcended by the essence of the enlightened human will, striving for individual perfection, ready to change the word  – an understanding and claim that is still valid today.40 An example of such an understanding is the definition given by Hugo Staudinger: The purpose and goal of ‘Bildung’ is the individual human being at its center, who strives for a right relationship [. . .], to other people, and to the world; so that he or she will gain a posture from which his or her life and deeds will do justice to the reality for the sake of his or her own self-realization and selfcompletion.41

This definition reflects the fact that the understanding of education became more and more religiously interpreted, in the sense that the educated human being was seen as capable, through his or her own improved perfection, of perfecting the whole world – an interpretation that must collide with the exclusive salvific knowledge given though Jesus Christ.42 Not surprisingly then, Karl Barth opposed such claims made under the rubric of education by saying ‘that there has never been an educated human being, except Jesus Christ’.43 In order to conclude this section, it is essential to take a brief look at some of the essential insights that unite the Reformers Luther and Zwingli. Both of them are, in their own time, undoubtedly some of the strongest advocates and champions 37. Eberhard Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis, p. 96. 38. Ibid., p. 97 and Koen Boey, ‘Bildung’, pp. 167–8. 39. See, for examples, Fritz Blättner, Geschichte der Pädagogik, 14th edn (Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer, 1973), pp. 148–9 and Elisabeth Blochmann., ‘Die Pädagogik Herbarts’, Kleine Pädagogische Texte, Band 25, 4th edn (Weinheim: Julius Beltz, 1962), pp. XII– XIII, 37. 40. Lennert, ‘Bildung I’, p. 576. 41. Hugo Staudinger, ‘Bildung’, in Evangelisches Lexikon für Theologie und Gemeinde Vol  1, ed. Helmut Burkhard and Uwe Swarat (Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus Verlag, 1992), p. 275. 42. Rudolf Lennert, ‘Bildung I’, pp. 576–7. 43. Ibid., p. 580.

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for the teaching and schooling of children and clergy. This, if nothing else, affirms that Christianity is not hostile to education per se.44 However, this being the case does not mean that both were confusing this with ‘Bildung’ as it came to be defined in an enlightenment sense. German Lutheranism carefully avoids the very word ‘Bildung’ and uses instead the words ‘Unterricht’ and ‘Katechetik’, best translated as ‘instruction’, ‘lesson’ and ‘catechetic’.45 This usage should not be considered to be a display of linguistic acrobatics, but is rather very clearly drawing a line of demarcation between education and faith. It connotes that, while believers can be instructed on and about the faith, they cannot be taught to believe, since faith is and remains an exclusive gift bestowed gift by God.

Conclusion: The Relationship of Theology and Education Our expositions of the definition of theology, the irreversibility of Christocentric truth claims, the difference between education and ‘Bildung’, the innate subjectivity of ‘Bildung’, and the immanent grounding of ‘Bildung’ in history and culture  – we are now in position to conclude and synthesize the given information. The section ‘The Exposition of Jüngel’s Essays and His Plea for an Even “More Natural Theology”’ has shown clearly that theology that stays true to its own subject lives from the faith and speech of God, and that this faith and speech condition each other. Such a theology is theo-epistemic and has Jesus Christ at its centre. This unique form of knowledge cannot be determined by science, education or humanity, but is given as an axiom through the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is not possible to talk about God without faith because such an approach results, according to Jüngel’s understanding, in an emptied and speechless conversation in which humanity talks only to itself. Jüngel has shown that theoepistemology is inductive, which means that the human person, in the act of faith, has an ‘Erfahrung mit der Erfahrung’, an experience with our cosmologically based experience. The opposite approach based on a cosmological experience is deductive in nature. This leads to the conclusion that, on the basis of these two juxtaposed epistemologies, the knowledge of Christ cannot be inferred by natural theology. Therefore, and Jüngel’s point is well taken, it is impossible that these mutually exclusive epistemological concepts have room for the inter-changeability and compatibility of their respective truth claims. The section ‘An Attempt to Define Education’ clarified and affirmed that ‘Bildung’ is a cosmological and historical–cultural phenomenon. In light of what 44. See Henry Eyster Jacobs, Martin Luther: The Hero of the Reformation (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1898), p.  233 and Herbert G. Haile, Luther: An Experiment in Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 87, 243. 45. Martin Brecht, ‘Martin Luther’, Die Erhaltung der Kirche 1532–1546, Band 3 (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1987), p. 448.

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was said in the first section ‘The Exposition of Jüngel’s Essays and His Plea for an Even “More Natural Theology”’, this means that ‘Bildung’, by its very nature, is incompatible with the truth claims made by theology. Jüngel’s exegesis of Hegel augments to this argument that, because of the finitude and limitation of ‘Bildung’, it can neither be aligned nor be reconciled with the infinity of God. This does not even mention the fact that the presupposition of self-sufficiency and salvific connotation of ‘Bildung’, both of which overestimate our human capacities, are positions to which theology must not compromise. This observation of the self-sufficiency of education has been taken in some Christian pietistic circles as justifiable reason for the advocation of the abolition and rejection of any form of education, for both ministers and laypeople. However, such an advocacy is not in the interest of theology, since, as Jüngel points out in his article ‘Theologie in der Spannung zwischen Wissenschaft und Bekenntnis’, best translated as ‘theology in tension between science and confession’, this abandonment and of the tacit understanding of our faith as a vacuum will inevitably lead to the replacement of faith by superstition.46 This leaves open the question of this existing paradox, the incompatibility of theology and education. Jüngel asserts in a small paragraph on heresy in his article on ‘theology in tension between science and confession’ that this paradox is not supposed to be solved, but, rather, is part of the solution.47 Heresy results in a similar paradox, since, even though the orthodox position cannot and is not supposed to be reconciled with the heretical standpoint, false doctrine still belongs practically to the solution of the problem, because false doctrines point and identify certain problems of Christian dogma that need to be carefully considered. The interrelation between ‘theology and education’, which is also a concern of orthodoxy, is analogous to this.48 Consequently, education cannot be resolved with or made compatible to theology, but must remain, as it has been herein described, a heretical paradox. In its incompatibility to theology, education assists and augments the very nature of theology. In the words of Jüngel, this means that theology can become even more theological. It would be a mistake to strive in our educational and pedagogical efforts to attract people by making God an interesting subject. As Jüngel puts it, whenever theology grasps that God does not have to be made interesting but, rather, is interesting in and of God’s self, then the result is an even more natural theology.49 To put it another way, what theology is, is defined by what theology is not. Such an even more natural theology is incompatible with education. But, imitating Jüngel again, the more theology stresses its demarcation from and incompatibly to education, the more educated it becomes. Or, vice versa, the more education strives for its incompatibility with theology, the more theological theology becomes. 46. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Theologie in der Spannung’, p. 40. 47. Ibid., p. 49. 48. Ibid. 49. Jüngel, ‘Gott – um seiner selbst willen interessant’, p. 196.

Chapter 17 G OD, T H E OLO GY, U NI V E RSI T I E S 1 John B. Webster

I Christian faith talks about the nature of theological intelligence, about universities and about the place of theology in universities by talking about God. Its understanding of theology and universities is an extension of its knowledge that the founding and encompassing reality for all creaturely acts and forms of life is the triune God in his outer works. The activities of theological intelligence and the university as a form of common intellectual endeavour are both to be understood in relation to God’s creative, providential, reconciling and perfecting acts, and to the accompanying divine instruction by which these acts are illuminated. In these acts, God brings into being and maintains intelligent fellowship with Adam’s race, restoring and completing that fellowship after creatures betray their vocation and cast themselves into guilt, estrangement, misery and ignorance. Theology and universities are elements in the unfinished history of the redemption of human intelligence. Accordingly, determining the place of theology in the university is not an exercise in correlating two quite separate spheres of reality, one sacred, one profane. Correlation assumes that the institution of the university falls outside the realm where theological description is entitled to operate, and forgets the scope of the intelligence of faith, whose compass includes all things sub ratione Dei. Reflection upon the place of theology in the university requires biblical– theological description, that is, a theology of theology, and a theology of the cultural acts and institutions of the civitas terrena. Theological inquiry into these two realities  – the movement of theological intelligence and the movement of human intellectual association in the university – understands both as creaturely. To inquire into a creaturely reality is not only to describe its phenomenal properties but also to attempt to penetrate its depth, its reference to the source 1. This essay originally appeared in German as ‘Sub ratione Dei. Zum Verhältnis von Theologie von Theologie und Universität’, IKaZ 42 (2013), pp. 151–69. English translation provided by the author.

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of its being, its motive power and its end beyond itself. Theology asks: By what divine intention and movement are these creaturely movements of mine and society moved? In what ways do these creaturely movements correspond to the good purpose of the creator and to their given natures? In what measure do they enact or frustrate that nature? How may their imperfections be repaired; how may their flourishing be secured? By seeing the natures and ends of theological intelligence and universities in relation to God’s history with creatures, theology undertakes analysis by principles, attempting to discover natures and ends by penetrating to the principia of creaturely forms of life and activity. This, because created things cannot be grasped in se and per se, but only in relation to God, the causa universalis totius esse.2 Principal analysis of human acts and institutions has fallen from favour, sometimes considered merely utopian, sometimes repudiated as a denial of the self-originality of those acts and institutions and so liable to impede their adaptability. The opposite is rather the case. Analysis by principles inhibits thinking about intellectual life and its social forms in contracted and uncritical ways, taking currently ascendant, politically commanding, arrangements as given and perennial. Thought may be released from enchantment and quickened by placing elements of practice and experience in the deeper setting of their principia: to become aware of extrinsic causes and ends is to acquire liberty to judge present circumstances.3

II What is Christian theology? Here is one answer  – contestable, but not without well-established antecedents in the Christian tradition. (a) Christian theology is a work of created intelligence in the domain of the abundant grace of Christ; under the impress of divine instruction, chastening and sanctification, it devotes itself to the study of God and all things in God. Theology is directly and properly a work of religion, that is, an undertaking in relation to God: ‘we ought to be bound to God as to our unfailing principle; we must unceasingly choose him as our last end; and if we lose through the heedlessness of sin, we 2. Aquinas, Summa theologiae Ia.45.2 resp. See Kenneth L. Schmitz, ‘Analysis by Principles and Analysis by Elements’, in The Texture of Being. Essays in First Philosophy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), pp. 21–36. On the importance of inquiry into first principles in thinking about the university, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University. A Re-Examination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 22–31. 3. A corollary task, not attempted here, is that of historical analysis which, conducted well, liberates thought by memory. For two impressive recent accounts of the history of the place of theology in the university which resist secular fatalism, see Mike Higton, A Theology of Higher Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp.  13–140 and Thomas A. Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

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ought to recover by believing and professing our faith’.4 Christian theology is not simply about the Christian religion; it is itself a work of religion. More closely, theology as religion is an act of intellectual justice by which intelligent creatures give due honour to God in his surpassing excellence, and it is an act of holiness, for it is ‘by sanctity that the human mind applies itself and its acts to God’.5 Christian theology is a work of latria and sanctitas.6 Theology’s principal act is well-tempered studiousness, the close application of intelligence to fitting objects, in fitting ways and for fitting ends. This act of intelligence can be portrayed in terms of its object, its cognitive principles, its setting and its ends. (b) The object of theology is God and all things in God. Theology is chiefly concerned with God the Holy Trinity, first in his inner works, his supremely abundant and perfect life as Father, Son and Spirit, and then in his outer works, the missions of the Son and the Spirit as they effect the Father’s purpose. Derivatively, theology is concerned with created things, those realities to whom God has given the gift of life. Its interest in created things is not simply with their natural properties but with their relation to God – the grounds of that relation in God’s purposeful love, its temporal course in the works of nature and grace which culminate in the reconciling and perfecting works of Christ and the Spirit, its consummation in the restoration of the complete fellowship of creator and creature. Theology is thus at once a most particular and a most comprehensive science: intelligence devoted to the study of the one from whom all things derive and on whom all things depend. (c) The cognitive principles of theology are God’s supreme intelligence by which he has unrestricted knowledge of himself and all things, and finite creaturely intelligence which comes to know as it is moved by divine teaching. God’s knowledge is theology’s primary cognitive principle. This knowledge is unencompassed and simple, a single act of intuition in which there is no comingto-know; this divine knowledge is the principle of theological science. Theology thus has its primary cognitive centre outside itself in divine omniscience, not in any existing knowledge to which the creature can pretend or in any capacity which the creature may possess. Theology arises out of the fact that things are known by God, and does not rest on achieved or anticipated acquisition of knowledge by creatures. This reference to antecedent, infinite divine knowledge means that theology is an odd sort of science  – a subaltern or subordinate science, whose cognitive principle is both extrinsic to itself and indemonstrable (modern regimes of knowledge generally judge this as a fatal weakness). In theology, the causal order of the ontological dependence of creatures on the creator is mirrored in the order of knowing: to know is to be caused by God to know something which 4. Aquinas, Summa theologiae IIaIIae.81.1 resp. 5. Ibid., IIaIIae.81.8 resp. (ET altered). 6. On the coinherence of intellect and ascesis, see Anna N. Williams, The Divine Sense. The Intellect in Patristic Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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is antecedently and fully known by him. Theological intelligence is not cause but effect. Further, God’s intellectual nature is transitive or communicative. In boundless charity, God instructs creatures, drawing them to know, and therefore to love, the one by whom they are known and loved. This he does in the revelatory missions of his Word and Spirit. ‘The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory’ gives ‘a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know …’ (Eph. 1.17f). These missions are served by creaturely assistants: chiefly by the prophetic and apostolic writing in which divine teaching takes scriptural form, derivatively by those charged to instruct the community of faith by repeating and applying divine doctrine. Revelation is accompanied by illumination, the work in which God the Spirit quickens creaturely intelligence and makes it capable of receiving and appropriating divine instruction. Creaturely intelligence, the subjective cognitive principle of theology, is creaturely: a set of capacities bestowed by God, through the exercise of which intelligent fellowship with God becomes possible on the side of the creature. These capacities are, indeed, to be exercised; creaturely intelligence is not merely sheer receptivity or the absence of any hindrance. Yet as creaturely powers, their necessary exercise is not wholly spontaneous; it is kept mobile and effective by an anterior divine movement. The Spirit moves creaturely intelligence to become an active coordinate to the omnipotent, omnipresent radiance of God. (d) The setting of theology is the economy of grace, in which God conducts creatures to fulfilment. Theology is not simply one element in the natural history of human inquiry. It is an element in the domain of redemption: of gospel, church, baptism, sanctification, invocation of God. Due to this, theology participates in the passage from alienation to fellowship with God which is the primary note of created history and activity caught up by God’s reconciling purpose. Estrangement from God brings with it the corruption and weakening of natural gifts of intelligence, from which come ignorance of God and idolatry, and a vain confidence that the examination of natural properties and movements is sufficient for knowledge of created things. In the domain of redemption, estrangement is overcome: objectively in the incarnation and the paschal mystery, applicatively in the regeneration and sanctification of creatures by the Spirit, of which theological intelligence is an instance. (e) The ends of theology are contemplative and practical. Its principal end is contemplation of God, because such contemplation is the end of intelligent creatures: ‘We shall see him as he is’ (1 Jn. 3.2). In all its inquiries  – textual, historical, dogmatic, moral  – theology moves towards that final end as an act of contemplative intelligence. This does not make theology any less a labour of intellect, or dispense theologians from strenuous practices of study; rather, it directs those practices beyond simple accumulation of textual, historical, dogmatic or moral knowledge. Such knowledge is delightful to theological intelligence, furnishing a great array of matters for the mind and the spiritual affections, whose acquisition is an occasion for joy. But, once acquired, this

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knowledge is not the termination of the work of theological intelligence. It is interim and dispositive, and its proper use lies in forming and directing the mind in its contemplative approach to God, the beginning and end of all things. In contemplatione principium, quod Deus est, quaeritur.7 Contemplation impels and orders practice. The practical end of theology is threefold. First, right conduct in relation to God (in the works of religion, both interior devotion and external reverence), and in relation to our fellows (in the works of charity and justice). Theological intelligence is inseparable from ascetic and moral formation, or it is self-deception (Jas. 1.22). Second, instruction, for the theologian is set within the body of baptized, where gifts given to one are to be communicated, ‘for the common good’ (I Cor. 12.7). Third, testimony, for the theologian is also set among those not yet in the company of believers, sharing with them the graces and burdens of creatureliness, and obliged by charity to apostolic commendation of the good things of the gospel.

III Theology is a work of pious intelligence whose foundation and first moving cause is God’s loving communication of knowledge of himself to the saints, and whose end is the vision of God. Since it is an academic discipline only per accidens, it may seem that its pursuit is fitting only in religious studia. This conclusion is premature. Sequestration of the earthly from the heavenly city may satisfy the desire to make purity visible in present practice, but does so at the price of impatience with the incomplete, mixed character of history. Further, it quickly condemns provisional forms of natural life to secularity, failing to inquire into the ways in which they may anticipate  – not simply frustrate – the Kingdom of God. What is needed is a theology of the university, which can serve to differentiate between forms of university life which are conducive to, and those which inhibit, the flourishing of creaturely intelligence and the pursuit of its proper ends as understood by Christian faith. For theology as a work of religion, this entails that neither principled belonging to, nor principled withdrawal from, the universities are required, but rather the exercise of prudence, of well-formed discrimination and discernment of occasion and opportunity. How may the university be understood? Created intelligence is a very great good; it is that which specifies the way in which human creatures relate to God and to the rest of creation. Created intelligence is discursive; we acquire knowledge over time, not by intuition. Knowing involves coming-to-know, and this, in turn, involves work. The operations of created intelligence take place in relation to the volitional, affective and bodily elements of human nature. Intelligence properly superintends these other elements, so that they serve the good of reason. But 7. Gregory, Moralia in Iob VI.61.

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this superintendence is neither a natural condition nor instinctual; it occurs only deliberately, by the exercise of superintendence. This is rendered laborious by our fall into unrighteousness, for the right order of the elements of human nature is disturbed, and passion and bodily need can slip the leash. Intelligence, too, is injured by sin, its operation is impaired, and it falls into sins of excess (curiosity) or sins of defect (sluggishness). Unrighteousness is not, however, the last word: along with all the elements of created nature, intelligence is gathered up by God’s restoring work. A Christian theological account of human nature includes a soteriology of intelligence, one which is confident that, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, our ruined intellectual nature is under repair. The formation and exercise of restored intelligence is causally complex. Its primary author is the Holy Spirit, who realizes God’s reconciling work in the elements of creaturely nature. Its secondary authors are, first, the individual: the Spirit moves created intelligence to move itself. This creaturely motion is properly and inalienably the work of the individual, for no one can come to know for me. But though the work of intelligence is proper to the individual, it is not purely solitary, because it is necessarily embedded in forms of social relation. Such forms include tradition (stocks of learning, well-tried habits of inquiry), modes of instruction or the exemplification of intellectual virtue: in all of these, intelligence operates in the society of others. This social element may assume institutional form as a school or studium, a formal association of persons in pursuit of the life of intelligence. Of this, the university is an instance. The life of the university as studium may be schematized into three elements: study, instruction and formation. Study is the contemplative element of the university. Study is ‘close mental application to something’;8 it is not necessarily close mental application to something new. Study is not co-terminous with research, which has to do with the acquisition of new knowledge. Study may be the application of intelligence to the absorption of what has been known, that is, to the inhabitation of tradition. Study of this kind is far from passive conformity; it is a ‘performance’ of tradition, neither wholly spontaneous and original nor wholly devoid of appropriation. Such study forms the powers of understanding and judgement which in turn serve discovery of the new. Only derivatively and secondarily is study directed to the purpose of bodily welfare. This is not to subscribe to the view that the acquisition of any knowledge whatsoever, however ‘useless’, needs no justification beyond itself: this is not well-tempered studiousness but vain and disordered curiosity (the temptations of which universities have not always resisted). It is, rather, to restrain the desire for visible impact in or applicability to the material realm as the only register of the utility of study. Christianly understood, study of the arts and sciences is ‘natural contemplation’, the attempt to understand natural and cultural realities by discerning their relation to their underlying principles, and so to know creata 8. Aquinas, Summa theologiae IIaIIae.166.1 resp.

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as ‘divine effects’.9 The primary end of study – all study – is contemplation of the creator of all, and in it ‘there should no exercise of vain and perishing curiosity, but a step should be taken toward immortal things that abide for ever’.10 Instruction is the active element of the university. The art of contemplation, though it draws upon natural capacities, is perfected through instruction, which forms, exercises and extends those capacities in the relation of master and apprentices, doctor and incipients. The task of the master is to conduct the apprentice into a tradition of inquiry so that the apprentice may become an active, reflective participant in that tradition, knowledgeable about its substance, able to exercise the habits of mind which it requires and eventually able to extend its common store. In this way, instruction is a particular form of fellowship, one which intends the communication of goods and the cultivation of intellectual and moral excellences. Instruction takes place in the shadow of the fall, and so it involves correction, arduous to master and apprentice alike, and sometimes attended by conflict and resentment. ‘Education’, Barth remarked to his students in his lectures on ethics, ‘means that someone wants more or less skilfully to take from me one of the many horns that I invisibly carry on my forehead, and of which I am as proud as a stag, and to put some kind of strange hat in its place’.11 All the more reason, therefore, for the university to strive for peace in its common life, since the unhindered operation of intelligence requires tranquillity. Formation in justice is the moral element of the university. In its work of instruction, we saw, the university serves in the shaping of persons in whom created intelligence is edged closer to perfection. This is itself a good, but not an exclusive good; when it becomes exclusive – in the form of intellectual self-perfection – it discounts the common element of the human good. Like other institutions, the university serves this common good by the formation of just citizens, whose intelligence perceives what is required for the good of all and directs practical life in its pursuit. In all its undertakings, the university trains in, exemplifies and commends the virtue of justice, the right direction of dealings between persons so that the common good is enacted with constancy and defended against the unrighteousness by which it is harried. The comprehensive setting for the contemplative, active and moral life of the university is divine creation, providence and redemption. The university draws upon, and is an arena for the exercise of, those powers which are bestowed upon creatures by the creator and sustained by his providence, which suffer the depredations unleashed by the fall, and which are the objects of God’s renewing   9. Ibid., IIaIIae.180.4 resp.; on natural contemplation in patristic theology, see Paul M. Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy. Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 315–35. 10. Augustine, On True Religion, in Augustine. Earlier Writings, ed. John H. S. Burleigh (London: SCM Press, 1953), p. XXIX. 11. Karl Barth, Ethics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), p. 365.

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grace. As the university does its work, it necessarily participates in that history with and under God, sometimes consenting, sometimes resisting and nearly always in the absence of reflective awareness. The final questions to be asked are: to what extent does any particular set of institutional arrangements and self-definitions in the modern university enact or resist its vocation? Under what conditions may theology as an exercise of religious intelligence be pursued within these varied institutional settings?

IV There is, of course, no such singular entity as ‘the modern university’: better to think of a heterogeneous set of institutions, widely divergent in geographical, political and economic context, internal history, professed and implicit ideals and much else. What follows is shaped chiefly by the recent history of universities in Britain, though analogies with what is happening in some continental European and North American settings would not be hard to find. Much recent literature on the state of universities is censorious and nostalgic by turns. There are, undoubtedly, things to censure or lament. But both rhetorics can be seductive, stultifying reasoned judgement and reinforcing discontent and discouragement. A theology which sets the university within the history of providence and regeneration has good reason to avoid intemperance, and will seek rather to illuminate both the inhibitions suffered and the opportunities enjoyed by the institution in its present settings. The inhibitions to the university’s fulfilment of its vocation are of two kinds. One, an immediately pressing set of constraints which is the object of much exasperated comment, concerns the erosion of the corporate character of the university under a variety of pressures: bureaucratization and managerialism; a culture of performance assessment; the dominance of a narrow conception of utility; neglect of la longue durée in favour of rapid adaptability to circumstance. The pressures derive largely from political intrusion into university life; the rapidity with which they have reordered the culture of university institutions and the ready compliance with which they often have been greeted by some university leaders are both remarkable. Under such constraints, it has not proved easy for universities, and especially for the humanities, to retain confidence in their contemplative, active and moral vocation. A second set of inhibitions is of much longer standing, and requires a much more sophisticated historical and theological analysis than can be attempted here. These inhibitions may be gathered together under the concept of the naturalization of scientia which has embedded itself deep within the self-understanding of the research university for at least the last two centuries. By ‘naturalization’ is meant the elimination (explicit or tacit) of the category of ‘creatureliness’ in defining the objects, procedures, agents and ends of intellectual inquiry and its institutional forms. Naturalized inquiry concerns itself with the elements of nature and culture, not with their underlying principles, their unity or their capacity to signify

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a transcendent order of being and causality. Intelligence concerns itself with disparate phenomena, and does not attempt to ‘reduce’ them (i.e. to trace them back) to a unifying first cause.12 This naturalism or phenomenalism engenders in theological intelligence an uneasiness about its standing in the university. Indeed, the fate of theology is a primary indicator of the naturalization of scholarly inquiry, as could readily be seen in the disputes about the admissibility of theology to the new University of Berlin. A principal consequence of this naturalism has been that theology’s inclusion in the university’s curriculum has brought with it a requirement to assimilate theological inquiry to the concept of scientia espoused by the (to use older parlance) philosophical faculty, thereby pressing sacra doctrina to regularize itself as an academic discipline. Theology, that is, finds itself cajoled or invited to move away from being a positive science integrally related to a confessional–ecclesial setting, to detach itself from ascetical and religious practices and to become the historical–cultural science of religious objects and activities. The virtues required to pursue theology so understood are simply those of unassisted natural intellect; the term of theological inquiry is knowledge of the natural phenomena (history, texts, practices, etc.) of religion. Phenomenalism is a defection of created intelligence from its calling, and opposition to the rule of Christ and the Spirit in the intellectual order. It has proved remarkably alluring, especially to the biblical and historical subdisciplines of theology which can more easily be conformed to critical–historical investigation of the natural objects of religion. Its appropriation affords theology the satisfactions of finding itself in the inner circle of a culturally prestigious institution, releasing theology from the dishonour of pursuing sacra doctrina in a setting committed to a quite different set of virtues from those required of the intelligence of faith. Prestige comes at a price, however, the conversion of theology into analysis of natural elements, the uncoupling of scientia from religio. Those who consider the price excessive suggest that, in present circumstances, theology risks too much when undertaken in the university: fuga mundi is a necessary condition for the pursuit of theology as an act of religion.13 This view of things ought not to be dismissed too briskly. It is undoubtedly the case that to take with full seriousness the ascetical demands of the theological vocation is to feel the tug of withdrawal from the world and its institutions. Theology which has ceased to register this pull may well have settled down, forgetting its exiled state and the persistence of disorder in intellectual institutions. Yet there may be a troubling perfectionism about the isolation of theology, one which quickly extracts the civitas terrena from God’s dealings with creatures, maximizing its 12. See here John Milbank, ‘The Conflict of the Faculties. Theology and the Economy of the Sciences’, in Faithfulness and Fortitude. In Conversation with the Theological Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas, ed. Mark Nation and Samuel Wells (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), pp. 39–57. 13. See, for example, Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square. Church, Academy and Nation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).

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fallenness, liable to overlook signs of preserving grace, and so, in the end, leaving undisturbed the university’s secular self-definitions. By way of contrast, what might be involved in a free, discriminating association of theology with the university? The freedom with which theology may associate itself with the university derives from the fact that theological intelligence is an already-established actuality in advance of any possible validation of its scientific character which the university might furnish. Theological intelligence exists and operates by virtue of God’s loving communication of himself, teaching, illuminating and empowering the redeemed mind. Recognition by the academy is a purely contingent matter; the possibility and reality of theology is secured by its relation to divine intelligence and instruction: ‘Thou hast taught me’ (Ps. 119.102). Although theology may benefit greatly from some form of association with the university, the university is not necessary for its flourishing (one need only bring to mind how much of the most compelling theology of the last century emerged, not from universities, but from religious houses). Further, theology determines the nature, limits and possibilities of an association with the university on the basis of its understanding of the university as an element in the firmly established but still imperfect regnum gratiae, variously subject to both the judgement and the promise of the gospel. As an institution of the earthly city, the university bears all the marks of hostility to God’s end for human life and intellect. But such hostility, however grievous, cannot restrict the infinite scope of God’s ‘Yes’ to creation in the gospel. All human life takes place in the evangelical condition which exposes and nullifies that which seeks to oppose it, and which includes a gift of capacity to creatures. This gift embraces human institutions, which, even in their limitation, ambiguity, ingratitude in face of the divine generosity, wasting of divine goods and liability to judgement may nevertheless signify, and in fragmentary ways anticipate, the righteous order of created life: ‘just as the royalty of Christ dominates the order of nature and the order of society, so also it dominates the order of the intelligence’.14 As theologians try to discern the extent and limits of association with any particular set of institutional arrangements for the intellectual life, they have need of prudence, ‘the knowledge of what is to be sought and avoided’.15 Prudence applies right reason to action in human affairs where positive law provides no simple determination of when and how to act or refrain from action: theologians must never lie, but whether they undertake their work in a university setting is a contingent matter. Exercising prudence involves both knowledge of universal principles (natures, ends and laws) and clear-sighted cognizance of singularia,16 14. Étienne Gilson, ‘The Intelligence in the Service of Christ the King’, in A Gilson Reader, ed. Anton Pegis (New York: Image Books, 1957), p. 35. 15. Augustine, On Free Will, in Augustine. Earlier Writings I.xiii. 16. Aquinas, Summa theologiae IIaIIae.47.3.

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that is, of the elements of a particular situation – the opportunities and obstacles which that situation presents, the strengths of mind and character for which it calls. Prudence is a good deal more than natural self-protective shrewdness, because it is a part of goodness, concerned with devising fitting ways to obtain good ends, and so it rests upon the shaping of understanding, will and affections by the Spirit. Exercising prudence in the matter of association with the university, theology asks, on the one hand: What signs of divine goodness and creaturely gratitude can be discerned in the university? What openness to intellectual variety and to the unity of truth? What expectancy that theological intelligence can extend and enrich the life of the university? What occasions for charity in teaching and testimony might present themselves? What possibilities for fruitful exchange and common work might lie open? What opportunities may there be for renewed contemplative engagement with theology’s proper res? What curbs to theology’s retreat into self-absorption, formulaic repetition, laziness or loss of intellectual appetite? Theology asks, on the other hand: Will association with the university limit theology’s pursuit of its proper ends by excessive oversight? Will theology find itself in some measure compelled to conform its ends and modes of inquiry to those of disciplines which the university holds in greater honour? Will regimes of funding and patronage press theology to pursue certain avenues of study and set others aside? Will theology be directed, gently or brusquely, to set its love on something other than its good? Theology also brings wider principles to bear upon this kind of consideration of particulars. Some of the principles are of the most comprehensive sort, concerned with the ways in which all believers relate to the world: fidelity to the Christian profession, seeking the will of God before all things, disdain for worldly prestige and advancement, keeping oneself unstained from the world. Alongside these, and more specifically, the exercise of prudence in this matter requires a well-formed, coherent and operative sense of theology’s identity, integrity, vocation and ends, for two reasons. First, this prevents theology from allowing its sense of its own dignity to be contingent on the university’s conferral of approval: whatever justification and worth theology has is in the last analysis conferred by God. Second, more practically, it enables theology to make discriminations about institutional arrangements and modes of intellectual inquiry based on their coherence or otherwise with its given object and calling. Theology will be more confident in resisting the enticements of naturalized literary–historical methods, for example, if it is able to judge that they do not promote the ends to which its work is directed. Prudence is ‘engaged with doing things for sake of an end’.17 Its deep causes are, objectively, the Spirit’s gift of counsel, and, subjectively, love of God. Prudence involves inquisitio rationis,18 reason’s deliberate inquiry into contingent 17. Ibid., IIaIIae.52.2 s.c. 18. Ibid., IIaIIae.52.1 resp.

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circumstances in order to command action well. But for this to happen, created powers of mind, damaged by the fall, may not be self-reliant; they must be moved and taught by the Spirit. So ‘inasmuch as their minds are quickened and instructed by the Spirit about what to do . . . the sons of God are endowed with the gift of counsel’.19 Further, prudence is directed by love. In it, Augustine says, we see ‘love making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what might hinder it’.20 Without love’s adherence to good ends, prudence becomes merely the cunning needed to survive (succumbing to this vice is entirely possible for the theologian). If theology does determine that its end is served by some kind of association with the university, it then will need to consider what virtues and practices are required to sustain its well-being. Theology will need to exercise those virtues which are especially pertinent to Christian action in a mixed, imperfect setting and which enable discernment of the proper mean of commitment to, and detachment from, civil institutions. Such virtues include fidelity to Christ’s kingship in the order of intelligence; hope in the form of expectancy that, such is Christ’s rule, the university will betray signs of divine goodness and afford occasions to fulfil theology’s vocation; magnanimity in which we extend ourselves to great things and refuse to be cramped by circumstances; charity in the form of benevolence and beneficence towards those with whom we are set in association; vigilance about possible incursions upon theological integrity (‘it is the part of prudence to keep watch with anxious vigilance, lest any evil influence should stealthily creep in upon us’21); readiness for lack of recognition and for a measure of dishonour; longanimity in face of the delay of a fully satisfying setting for theological work; perseverance and patience arising from dedication to Christ’s call to serve in a particular place. Such virtues are bound up with the practice of religion, which is intrinsic to theological intelligence, not a mere external accompaniment.22 Most generally, this involves the devotion of theological intelligence to ready fulfilment of all that concerns the service of God. More specifically, it entails the inseparability of theological work from those activities in which we take from God the communications of his grace in Word and sacrament in the fellowship of the church, through which the life of faith is nourished, as well as its inseparability from those activities in which we subject ourselves to mortification so that sin may be chastened and the Spirit’s quickening power made more fully manifest. Most of all, the survival of theological intelligence in the university – or in any

19. Ibid., IIaIIae.52.1 ad 3. 20. Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church, in Augustine, The Writings Against the Manichaeans and Against the Donatists (Peabody: Hendrikson, 2004), p. XV. 21. Ibid., XXIV. 22. See here Higton, A Theology of Higher Education, pp. 143–69; D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square, pp. 112–43.

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other setting  – necessitates prayer, in which we confess creaturely need, turn to God as the author of all good, and ‘submit . . . the mind to [God] through reverence’.23

V Having a clear view of its nature and calling in the divine economy, fortified by divine gifts of virtue and by devotion, theological intelligence may venture a free association with the university. What gifts does it bring? What benefits accrue to the university by its inclusion? Much indeed: theology offers a metaphysics and morals of human intelligence. First, by way of metaphysics, theology articulates and governs its own activity by a unified account of intelligence and its institutions, of schools, scholars and scholarship. Theology ‘alone can teach us what is the last end of nature and intelligence’.24 Theology, that is, prompts the university to consider that there is such a thing as the universe, not simply indeterminate variety, and so to consider that, by consequence, there is the possibility of a unified enterprise of human understanding of natural, social and cultural reality. Theology offers this view of things by engaging in ‘evangelical clarification’,25 inquiring into gospel instruction about how temporal realities are to be understood sub ratione Dei, in accordance with their unified first cause and final end. To attend to the gospel is to attend to the ‘one God, the Father from whom are all things and from whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist’ (I Cor. 8.6). That to which particular acts of inquiry direct themselves is not some chance aggregation of topics assembled in one institution by mere artifice, but a set of created realities constituting an ordered unity. The university’s inquiries are governed by the fact that ‘the reigning order in things established by God’s creation manifests the unity of the cosmos. This is because of the single plan ordering some things to others. For all things coming from God have a relation to one another and to him’.26 The university is, among other things, a social exploration of the integrity of truth. Modern universities are rarely informed by any such conviction: phenomenalism is inherently fissiparious. If, therefore, theology is to indicate an underlying unity in face of widespread disavowals, it must exercise considerable metaphysical ambition, tempered by recognition that, in its affirmation of a unified order of things, it remains in the incomplete realm of the ectypal, so that the order which it confesses it may not necessarily be able directly to perceive or describe. Yet, without metaphysical ambition, a primary element of theology’s vocation will 23. Aquinas, Summa theologiae IIaIIae.83.3 ad 3. 24. Gilson, ‘The Intelligence in the Service of Christ the King’, p. 44. 25. Cornelius Ernst, ‘The Significant Life of a Dominican House of Studies’, in Multiple Echo. Explorations in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979), p. 152. 26. Aquinas, Summa theologiae Ia.47.3 resp.

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be left undone.27 The public vocation of theology in the university includes the sharing of a divine gift of wisdom, that ability ‘to judge and set in order all things by God’s rules’.28 Second, by way of morals, theology exemplifies and commends the right ordering of the contemplative, active and formative tasks of the common intellectual enterprise. It does this, for example, by promoting studiousness and resisting curiosity, by witnessing against the promiscuity and dissipation of intelligence. Again, it does this by promoting the priority of contemplation over utility. Or again, it does this by pursuing charity and justice in the activities of teaching and governance. The presence of theology in the university ought to include the presence of human goodness in its affairs. For theology to be able to fulfil this public vocation, it needs confidence in the possibility of art and science outside the confession of faith, and confidence in theology’s capacity to enrich the university by giving an account of this possibility out of theology’s own resources. The condition for theology making its contribution to the university, in other words, is that it remains theology; the condition for theology remaining theology is the existence of sanctified theologians; the condition for the existence of sanctified theologians is the Spirit’s grace.

27. Justifications of theology’s inclusion in the university on pluralist grounds entail the retraction of its metaphysical scope. See, for example, Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘The Travail of Theology in the Modern Academy’, in The Future of Theology. Essays in Honour Jürgen Moltmann, ed. Miroslav Volf, Carmen Krieg and Thomas Kucharz (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), pp.  35–46, or George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Similarly, the account of the university offered in David Ford, ‘An Interdisciplinary Wisdom. Knowledge, Formation and Collegiality in the Negotiable University’, in Christian Wisdom. Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp.  304–49, advances no first principles of intelligence; the ‘wisdom’ which theology provides is not the Spirit’s gift of setting all things in order under divine instruction, but, at best, a resonant vocabulary of terms of value and a commendation of collegial practices, most of all, conversation. 28. Aquinas, Summa theologiae IIaIIae.45.1 resp.

Chapter 18 S OME R E M AR K S ON C H R IST IA N F RE E D OM Philip G. Ziegler

. . . from the exile of our own sins into the kingdom of his righteousness. This is faith, this is the gospel, this is Christ. – Martin Luther1

I The theme of freedom features prominently in the work of Eberhard Jüngel. Reflecting on his own theological existence in mid-career, Jüngel characterized his work as a theology of freedom, indeed a theology of liberation.2 It is this because it thinks and speaks out of an encounter with the truth of God in which the continuity of all that has come before is ruptured by an ‘incomparably new’ experience of ‘Jesus Christ as the truth of God that liberates’. Faith comes of this arresting disclosure of God’s love, a love that seeks us out, seizes and holds us in its free and sovereign mercy. Just as faith arises and lives from this liberating gift, theology also sets out from it and directs itself towards it. The theologian’s charter is to think and speak responsibly of the God whose determinate coming in Christ brings freedom from sin and wins us for a corresponding life of freedom animated by his coming reign of freedom ‘which already now casts its light in advance’.3 Theology’s first concern is to own the freedom it has received as its very element and – precisely as evangelical thinking – to labour to better acknowledge its reality, understand its truth and domicile human life, human speech and human thought within it. From first to last, Protestant theology is

1. Martin Luther, ‘The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows (1521)’, in LW 44, p. 287. 2. Eberhard Jüngel, ‘“My Theology” – A Short Summary’, in Theological Essays II, ed. John B. Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 6. 3. Jüngel, ‘“My Theology” – A Short Summary’, pp. 4–5.

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committed to the explication of ‘that freedom to which the Son frees us, and which as His gift, is the one real human freedom’.4 Convicted by this account of the theological task, in what follows I venture some remarks on the character of Christian freedom in the form of a brief theological gloss on Galatians 5:1. I look to elucidate the central role such freedom plays in characterizing the gospel, and so also the life of Christian faith and discipleship. The concept of freedom proves essential to conceiving that life’s deep origins in God himself, its proximate origins in the redeeming work of Christ, as well as its own proper form and ends. Reflection on these things leads to specific consideration of its spiritual character and worldly consequences. The co-incidence of Christian freedom with the living exercise of the lordship of Christ and the Spirit ensures that the world neither is nor can be insulated against the implications of the freedom of the gospel which marks the lives of Christians and their communities.

II It is an arresting fact that Paul should have commandeered the language of ‘freedom’ from the discourses of the Greco-Roman world and made it central to his testimony to the gospel of Israel’s God. Its earliest linguistic and conceptual context is distinctively political, where it names the condition of those not subject to tyranny, external subjugation or slavery, and so of those who share in the legislation of the polis.5 Ancient philosophical traditions transpose these meanings into the idea of independent self-control and self-determination thereby construing the human self as a kind of microcosm of the conflicted socio-political sphere. In Paul’s hands, the concept of freedom undergoes another radical redefinition. For the apostle, the meaning of freedom is decisively shaped by contrast with the reality of sin and, more fully, by the reality of Christ and his saving work. The great antithesis is that between the freedom that faith knows in Christ and the slavery out of which it has been won. Evangelical freedom is thus always liberation unto liberty, that is, a release from the oppressive constraints and entanglements which constitute our manifold captivity in, by and to sin. 4. Karl Barth, ‘Introduction to Theology: Questions and Discussion with Dr. Karl Barth’, Criterion 2:1 (Winter 1963), p. 24. 5. See Heinrich Schlier, ‘ἐλευθερος’, in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 2 (Grand  Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), pp.  487–502, esp.  488; cf. Religion Past and Present,  s.v. ‘Freedom’ (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Gerhard Ebeling characterizes this seizure of the concept of ‘freedom’ as ‘one of the most amazing accomplishments of Pauline theology’ which had ‘quite unforeseen consequences’ (Ebeling, The Truth of the Gospel: An Exposition of Galatians, trans. David Green (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), p. 242).

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This ‘negative’ characterization of freedom as liberation ‘from the present evil age’ (Gal 1:4, 3:26–8) is indelibly ingredient in it.6 Knitted together with it is a corresponding ‘positive’ characterization of freedom as, paradoxically, ‘slavery to Christ’ in the shared life of the Christian congregation. Thus reminted as a theological category, freedom names ‘the condition given by God in the realm of deliverance from slavery, the space God has created by calling the church into being’, and so ‘sums up the Christian’s situation before God as well as in this world’.7 Paul in fact represents freedom as the fundamental gift and power of the gospel itself: the ‘freedom which we have in Christ Jesus’ is the very ‘truth of the gospel’ which must be defended and preserved (Gal 2:4–5). Hence, to reflect upon this freedom is necessarily to contemplate the whence, whither and substance of salvation, and thereby the constitution and form of Christian existence as such.8 This concept of freedom underlies the whole of Paul’s testimony and argument in Galatians.9 At its pivot stands the declaration and injunction: ‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Gal 5:1). Paul’s burning conviction that freedom is the heart of the matter finds expression in the ‘puzzled anguish and irritation of his abrupt cry’ at this juncture.10 The opening clause – τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἡμᾶς Χριστὸς ἠλευθέρωσεν – is a theological claim of immense compression. Here the essence of Christ’s saving work is identified as liberation. The telos of this same work is likewise identified as freedom: freedom names the very purpose of the salvation   6. Dieter Lührmann reminds us that for Paul freedom ‘is absolutely a “freedom from”, namely, from the law and thus also from sin and death. Freedom is the opposite of a dependence on the law and is defined not by dependence but by liberation’ (Lührmann, Galatians, trans. O. C. Dean (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992), p. 95).   7. J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p.  447, cf. pp.  219–20; Hans-Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1979), p. 25.   8. Ernst Käsemann provides a typically penetrating and provocative study of Christian freedom as the ‘covert theme’ of the entire epistle, see ‘Galatians 1:1–2:20: The Freedom of the Apostle’, in On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene, ed. Rudolf Landau, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 72–83. Martinus de Boer notes that the definite article – ‘the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus’ – emphasizes the particularity of what Paul is minded to call ‘freedom’ (de Boer, Galatians [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2011], p. 309).   9. See Betz, Galatians, p. 255. 10. James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p.  99. De Boer observes that this verse is widely acknowledged to ‘represent the ultimate goal’ of the letter as a whole, standing as the epitome of the primary message of the letter as a whole. See de Boer, Galatians, pp. 308–9.

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that has overtaken the Galatians, as Paul confirms when he subsequently claims that Christians are ‘called to freedom’ (Gal 5:13).11 Finally, here as in Paul’s wider witness, the saving work of Christ is recognized as a sovereign work of God’s gracious freedom. In short, God in Christ works freely to set enslaved creatures free for the sake of their entry into freedom. We consider each of these elements in turn. First, the redemption that is the source and substance of the Christian life originates in the freedom of the divine life itself. Indeed, the ‘freedom of God as it is expressed in His being, word and deed is the content of the Gospel’.12 Paul proclaims the salvation accomplished by Christ’s self-giving the outworking of the very ‘will of our God and Father’ (Gal 1:4). A theologically adequate conception of the electing divine involves an understanding of divine freedom which comprises self-determination in opposition to both alien determination and indeterminateness: God determines himself and God determines himself. 13 Luther’s programmatic claim – learned in the school of Paul and embraced also by Jüngel – that ‘true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ’ can honour the full compass of divine freedom so understood.14 Jüngel’s own work in theology pursues a responsible exposition of this axiom by developing both elements of divine freedom: ‘God does indeed come from God and only from God, and he is determined by nobody and nothing other than by himself; however, he determines himself to God not without man’.15 Under no circumstances can the latter claim be understood in a manner that corrodes the former, that is, by making humanity in any sense necessary for God. Rather, as Barth avers, precisely because faith encounters and knows God’s freedom as his ‘freedom to be a partisan for man’ it is led to confirm that ‘God’s freedom is His very own’, a ‘sovereign grace wherein God chooses to commit Himself to man’.16 Not only does the work of salvation originate in divine freedom, but God’s freedom also always remains its medium and manner. As Bonhoeffer put the point, the relationship of Creator and creature is from the first, ‘conditioned by 11. The dative case here is commonly understood as a dative of determination, purpose and/or aim, hence ‘to or for or unto freedom’. 12. Barth, ‘The Gift of Freedom: Foundation of Evangelical Ethics’, in The Humanity of God, trans. Thomas Wieser and J. Newton Thomas (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1960), pp. 73. 13. Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 36. 14. Martin Luther, ‘The Heidelberg Disputation’, in Selected Writings of Martin Luther 1517–1520, ed. Theodore G. Tappert, trans. William A. Lambert as revised by Harold J. Grimm, vol. 2 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), p. 79 (proof to thesis 20). 15. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 37. 16. Barth, ‘The Gift of Freedom’, pp. 69–70. The doctrine of election thus provides the necessary reflexive prolegomenon to any dogmatic account of the work of Christ.

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nothing except freedom’, which means that it is and remains ‘unconditioned’.17 One of the abiding functions of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is to signal that creaturely reality as such is coordinated exclusively with God’s freedom, and not only at the point of its sheer beginning. For the continuing relation of creatures to their God is also constituted by the reality of divine freedom: ‘God is never in the world in any other way that as one who is utterly beyond it. God is, as the word, in the world, because God is the one who is utterly beyond, and God is utterly beyond the world, because God is in the world in the word’.18 The outworking of divine love is the outworking of divine freedom, and rigorous affirmation of divine transcendence is required of any account of salvation that would do justice to the graciousness of grace. This truth is one for which Jüngel has creatively fought, not least by way his uncommon suggestion that the God of the gospel of love is not necessary but rather ‘more than necessary’ for humanity because divine love ‘bursts apart the relationship of necessity by surpassing it’.19 The same concern is also at stake in the doctrine of justification, where creaturely reception of grace is rightly understood to be itself an act of divine grace – it is on account of grace and by grace that human beings receive grace. No act of human willing supplies the link between the old and new self; on the contrary, divine grace alone freely affects the transit from the old slavery to the new freedom.20 Rampant in Christ Jesus to save, it is God’s own freedom to love that ‘keeps on emancipating those who trust him’.21 In other words, the sole avenue of our redemption is the gracious movement of the God of the gospel, the One who loves in freedom. Second, the redemptive character of Christ’s saving work is set forth in particularly sharp relief in Galatians: Christ liberates from slavery. Intrinsic to faith is the astonished and trusting recognition of having been released from the otherwise inescapable sway of the triumvirate of Sin, Death and the Law’s curse. In keeping with his apocalyptic understanding of reality, Paul conceives of this salvation as an exchange of lordships, an act of redemption by which the Christ separates Christians from the hold of tyrannical and enslaving powers and makes them ‘his possession, a special people whose identity comes in union with their liberator Jesus Christ’.22 Salvation is, once more, an exodus, a deliverance and recreation of the ‘Israel of God’ (Gal 6:16). 17. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, ed. John de Gruchy, trans. Douglas S. Bax, vol. 3 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), p. 32. 18. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, p. 41. 19. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 38. 20. On this see Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburg: T&T Clark, 2001), pp. 188–9. 21. Leander Keck, ‘The Son Who Creates Freedom’, in Jesus Christ and Human Freedom, ed. Edward Schillebeeckz and Bas van Iersel (London: McGraw-Hill, 1974), p. 82. 22. Charles B. Cousar, Galatians (Atlanta, CA: John Knox, 1982), p. 107. Cf. Martyn, Galatians, pp. 446–7.

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The list of those ‘task masters’ from whose grip Christians are set free is long, encompassing primary captors and their proxy agents: sin, death, the flesh, the law’s curse, the ‘elemental powers’ of the cosmos, as well as superstition, ignorance of God, social oppression and religio-cultural discrimination.23 At the outset of his letter, Paul comprehends all of these under the single rubric of the present αἰών of evil (Gal 1:4); at its conclusion, he gathers them together in the designation κόσμος (Gal 6:14). The radical character of Christ’s liberation finds bold expression in the claim that by the work of his cross, Christ has rendered this world dead  – that is, ineffectual, powerless and finally of no account  – to the Christian, and the Christian to the world. The separation of the Christian from this world of bondage is as sharp and total as death, as dramatic, humbling and disorienting as ‘crucifixion’.24 To be wrested and delivered from such an enslavement is a miraculous work of God, nothing less than the advent of a ‘new creation’ (Gal 6:15). The collective force of Paul’s apocalyptic theology of the cross makes clear that the freedom of which he is an advocate is incomparable; it is not in any way inherent in the present scheme of things. The liberation Christ brings comes upon that scheme from beyond as an act of the Son sealed in the Spirit, and hence as an eschatological event.25 Properly understood, this is what we mean when we speak of Christian freedom as a spiritual reality – more of this given later. Third and finally, freedom designates the very point and purpose of that liberated life which arises from the miracle of salvation. The sphere of Christ’s lordship into which the Christian is delivered by grace is a sphere of freedom, a ‘wide place for my steps’ in which ‘my feet do not slip’ (Ps 18:36). It affords space in which to live humanly once again, and an open horizon which is no longer foreclosed or obscured by the power of sin and death.26 Freedom thus comes upon Christians as ‘a reality into which they are called and in which they participate’.27 The sinner is not liberated into an indeterminate state but rather into a situation newly determined by Christ, indeed into a ‘servitude to Christ’ which is coextensive with the positive meaning of freedom. We should thus think of freedom in this 23. See Betz, Galatians, p. 256 for the catena of relevant verses here. Luther writes of how ‘once and for all this freedom of Christ certainly swallows up and abolishes a whole heap of evils . . .’ (‘Galatians [1535]’, in LW 27, p. 5). 24. For illuminating comment, see Martyn, Galatians, pp. 564–74. 25. See Keck, ‘The Son Who Creates Freedom’, p. 73. 26. See Wolf Krötke, ‘Das christliche Verständnis der Freiheit: Seine Bedeutung im Streit um die Willensfreiheit des Menschen’, http://wolf-kroetke.de/vortraege/ansicht/eintrag/71. html. 27. Cousar, Galatians, p.  109. The aorist verb in 5:1a  – ‘Christ liberated us’  – and paralleled in 3:13, 4:4–5, is taken to emphasize the singular past event which establishes the reality. This point is stressed also by Hans Weder, ‘Die Normativität der Freiheit: Eine Überlegung zu Gal 5,1. 13–25’, in Paulus, Apostel Jesu Christi: Festschrift für Günter Klein zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Trowitzsch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), pp. 130–1.

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sense as a substantive, determinative relation created by Christ’s victory and persistently realized by the Spirit.28 What makes this new determination the true experience of freedom is that is given by Jesus Christ, whose claim on the whole of life corresponds to his own limitless self-giving to save. The meaning of Christian freedom may therefore not be hollowed out into a formal anthropological notion  – for example, of ‘openness to the future’  – or constricted by too ready an identification with forms of worldly, penultimate freedom. As bequeathed to the church and theology by the apostolic witness, freedom is simply ‘a term for the earthly reality of Christ’s lordship’.29 If this be true, then the freedom of Christian disciples to attest and act on the basis of Christ’s reign amidst the roiling of earthly powers must ultimately be owed to ‘the freedom of God in his witnesses’.30 This is why Christian freedom can and should also be expounded as the continuing victory of the Spirit in the lives of believers (Gal 5:13, 16), leading them into the truth of their salvation and forging a new community of mutual service and liberated agency. As Martyn argues, the Spirit is not invoked by Paul as a reward on condition of service, or a ‘resource’ for struggling believers, but rather always remains ‘the primary actor’ in the ecclesia militans where such freedom is enacted.31 In summary, the reality of Christian freedom is owed entirely to the relentless salutary activity of the God of the gospel which constitutes the Christian life; to speak of such freedom is to speak indirectly of the active lordship of Christ and the persistent creative labour of the Holy Spirit. Again, when we characterize this freedom as spiritual we aim to honour this fact. This last claim requires further explanation. For, it pushes against our tendency to think of the qualification ‘spiritual’ as a constriction of the scope of Christian freedom to the merely inward, subjective sphere of our existence. At first glance, Luther’s classic expositions of the theme might be taken to amount just such a view.32 The reformer is adamant that Christian freedom not be confused with 28. Weder opts for the term ‘Freiraum’ to express this reality, see ‘Die Normativität der Freiheit’, p. 145. For a suggestive examination of the full range of soteriological meanings that attend the metaphor of ‘slave to Christ’, see Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 29. Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. Goeffrey W. Bromiley (London: SCM, 1980), p. 236. 30. Ernst Käsemann, ‘Galatians 1:1–2:20: The Freedom of the Apostle’, p. 77 (emphasis added). 31. See Martyn, ‘Epilogue: An Essay in Pauline Meta-ethics’, in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, ed. John M. G. Barclay and Simon Gathercole (London: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2007), pp. 180–3. Cf. Martyn, Galatians, p. 535. Weder similarly argues that Christian freedom in Paul’s view must not be ‘instrumentalized’ in the service of some other end, but rather names the relation into which Christians are placed by their experience of salvation – ‘Die Normativität der Freiheit’, p. 130. 32. John Calvin also offers a paradigmatic rendering of the spiritual character of Christian freedom in Book IV.xix of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559).

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others kinds of worldly liberty – it is strictly incomparable, a ‘freedom of another kind’.33 He explains: This is the freedom with which Christ has set us free, not from some human slavery or tyrannical authority but from the eternal wrath of God. Where? In the conscience. This is where our freedom comes to a halt; it goes no further. For Christ has set us free, not for a political freedom or a freedom of the flesh but for a theological or spiritual freedom, that is, to make our conscience free and joyful, unafraid of the wrath to come (Matt 3:7). This is the most genuine freedom; it is immeasurable.34

Sin, the curse of the law, death, even demonic powers are then said to lie ‘conquered in our conscience through this freedom of the Spirit’.35 The realm of Christian freedom here seems to be tightly delimited to the inwardness where accusation, terror and sorrow are suffered, a mental realm where doubt, fear and the misery of the law’s burden wage war against the conscience. Prima facie this would seem to authorize what Herbert Marcuse well-known charge that Luther’s view renders people helpless and listless in the face of a public world of vicious un-freedom which is and remains undisturbed by the comforting machinations of conscience.36 The extended argument required fully to demonstrate otherwise is beyond the scope of this essay. Yet, brief reflection on features of Luther’s 1520 tract, The Freedom of a Christian, can quickly expose its main lines.37 The thought that Christian freedom is quarantined within our psychic dispositions is confounded by the paradox expressed in both the Galatians commentary  – which invokes Romans 6:20, 22 as a heuristic key – and the famous thesis of the tract: ‘A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none; a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all’.38 As Jüngel has convincingly shown, 33. Luther, ‘Galatians (1535)’, p. 4. For a summary analysis of Luther’s 1519 exegesis, see Roy A. Harrisville, ‘Galatians 5:1’, Interpretation 37:3 (1983), pp. 288–93. 34. Luther, ‘Galatians (1535)’, p.  4, emphasis added. These claims expand upon the terse explanation that ‘it is a spiritual freedom, to be preserved in the spirit’ in the earlier commentary of 1519, LW 27, p. 325. 35. Luther, ‘Galatians (1535)’, p. 5. Emphasis added. 36. Herbert Marcuse, ‘A Study on Authority: Luther, Calvin and Kant’, in The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers, ed. Eduardo Mendieta (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 123. 37. See Martin Luther, ‘The Freedom of a Christian’, in Selected Writings of Martin Luther 1520–1523, 2, pp. 3–53. 38. Luther, ‘The Freedom of a Christian’, p.  20. Rom 6:20, 22 reads, ‘When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness . . . But now you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God’. Luther presents these claims in the form of small chart at the head of his exposition of Gal 5:1 in the 1519 edition (Luther, ‘Galatians (1519)’, p. 325).

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Luther’s exposition of this thesis breaks with the traditional understanding of the dichotomies of the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ man: refusing to map spirit/flesh and freedom/bondage onto the pairing of inner/outer, Luther instead conceives of the ‘inner man’ as ‘nothing but flesh’ – in the Pauline sense  – and thus as the object of both divine judgement and, in the power of the Word, also the object of God’s active rectifying grace and so the locus of passive righteousness and faith.39 Reconceived concretely on the grounds of Christian soteriology, Luther expounds the spiritual freedom of ‘inner man’ in close parallel to the spiritual character of Christ’s lordship. In neither case is the qualification ‘spiritual’ meant to mitigate or delimit. Rather, its force in both instances is rather to specify and call out the form and scope of their reality.40 As regards the quality of Christian freedom, the meaning of ‘spiritual’ is finally less contrastive than it is simply theological. We ought, in fact, to acknowledge that the living Spirit and risen Christ are the real substantives here; the donation of creaturely freedom is but a contingent and gracious predicate of their salutary presence and action. Paul makes this truth explicit when he confesses that ‘it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20) and again observes that, ‘we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit’ (Gal 5:25). The freedom believers receive and exercise ‘in Christ’ is the Spirit’s empowerment to live and remain in the sphere of God’s redemptive power and direction, that is, that power by which they may in fact ‘through love be servants one to another’ (Gal 5:13).41 The emergence and reality of such freedom among women and men heralds the present sovereign and effective work of Word and Spirit; as such it is ‘spiritual’.42 The free selfgiving of Christians in lives of loving service is but a banner raised in the midst of the world to signal the ‘coup d’etat of the old age which Christ achieves’.43 While no outward thing makes for Christian freedom, the liberation of the ‘inner man’ from sin irrepressibly pushes outward.

39. Jüngel, The Freedom of a Christian. Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988), p. 65. The core of this part of the exposition is found at pp. 56f. 40. For concise discussion of this crucial parallel, see Philip G. Ziegler, ‘The Love of God is a Sovereign Thing: The Witness of Romans 8:31–39 and the Royal Office of Jesus Christ’ in Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8, ed. Beverly Gaventa (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013), pp. 115–6. 41. Martinus de Boer, Galatians, p. 113. 42. So, Leander Keck, ‘The Son Who Creates Freedom’, p. 75: ‘Freedom is not autonomy or autarchy; rather, persons are free where Jesus is Lord, God is Father and the Spirit is the power of love’. Cf. Lührmann, Galatians, p. 95: ‘. . . freedom is one of the signs of the new world defined by Christ, faith, righteousness, life and blessing’. See also Weder, ‘Die Normativität der Freiheit’, pp. 131–2. 43. Cousar, Galatians, p. 109.

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III Crucially, Paul understands Christians to be liberated from enslavement to the world in the midst of the world. They are not evacuated from the world as such. The freedom for which Christ sets free is given and enacted in the teeth of the passing age, ever harassed and threatened by it as the argument of Galatians shows.44 Indeed, Paul writes directly of how ‘the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God’ (Gal 2:20). This is why the reality of the gift of freedom enjoins the task of freedom: ‘therefore, stand firm’ (Gal 5:1b).45 Although not abolished, the world is genuinely disrupted as it is overtaken by bridgeheads of evangelical freedom. The exercise of such freedom relativizes standing orders and issues a writ of adiaphora – with apocalyptic rather than stoic warrant – upon the continuing powers and principalities that would yet claim to govern life in the time that remains.46 As Leander Keck observes, the spiritual and eschatological character of Christian freedom entails that ‘it exists by faith and is an on-going process of daring to be free in the name of God’s kingdom’, involving not least a salutary iconoclasm as regards the ‘idolatrous expectations of the relative freedoms which can won through human struggle’.47 The kind of selfless service Luther has in view when he speaks of the Christian as ‘the dutiful servant of all, subject to all’ is the work of Christian love whose logic runs: ‘as God is free for us, so we are free for one another; but only inasmuch as God is for us’.48 Possessed, as it were, by Christ’s own freedom to love, the Christian in faith is set free from the curse of the law so now ‘to possess the law, to hurl it against the neighbour’s need out of a joyful heart’.49 Hence, we do not ‘leave freedom behind’ when we think upon the pattern, purpose and direction of the Christian life for others. On the contrary, to speak of these things is to explicate the substance of freedom, for love is the supremely free – and so truly human – act. Impelled by the God who first and freely loves us and weds us to himself, Christian service arises ‘without interest, intention, or goal; the spontaneous self-giving of the one to the other just because the other is there and confronts him’.50 44. One of the rhetorical strengths of Martyn’s emphasis upon the apocalyptic idiom of ‘invasive grace’ and the church as a ‘beachhead’ in the progress of God’s reclamation of the usurped world is to make the plain the anti-gnostic character of Paul’s talk of deliverance and militant Christian freedom. Käsemann’s favoured idiom operates similarly, a fact well in evidence in the essays collected in On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene. 45. Betz, Galatians, p. 256. 46. Martyn, Galatians, p. 219, fn. 62, and pp. 570–4. 47. Keck, ‘The Son Who Creates Freedom’, p. 80. 48. Barth, CD III/1, p.  195; a point made with reference to Bonhoeffer’s analysis of Gen 1–3 in Creation and Fall. 49. Harrisville, ‘Galatians 5:1’, p. 293. 50. Barth, CD IV/2, p. 752. Luther writes of the ‘wedding ring of faith’ as the instrument of Christ’s effective union with Christians. See Luther, ‘The Freedom of a Christian’, pp. 27–8.

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Its origins lie deep in God’s own freedom, its character is uniquely spiritual and its horizon overreaches the transient political and social spheres of everyday life, yet precisely thus is Christian freedom real in this world of ours. The world is not insulated from the potent consequences of the eruption of Christian freedom within it because Christians ‘may and can also be a Christian even in our world’.51 The relation of Christian freedom and penultimate, worldly freedoms is never one of direct identity, yet it is a real and consequential relation. As Jüngel explains: You can in fact be free before God, even when you are robbed of your freedom in the world. But you cannot accept lack of freedom in the world if you are free before God. No, as someone set free by God and free before God, you will quite naturally (Luther used to say ‘spontaneously’ and ‘joyfully’) fight for worldly freedom ..  .  .  The doctrine of justification .  .  .  is an enemy to all enemies of freedom.52

We find these insights consolidated in the second article of the Barmen Declaration when it testifies that through Christ there ‘comes to us joyful liberation from the godless ties of this world for free, grateful service to his creatures’ such that there are no ‘areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords’.53 In terms that explicitly echo the idioms of Paul and Luther, this article unmistakably connects the unhindered scope of Christ’s lordship with the radical impulse and claim of Christian freedom within the world. In doing so, it lays bare the foundations of a genuinely evangelical social and political ethic of the Christian life.54 It is the present pressure of their eschatological freedom impels Christians into the service of freedom for others. As Heino Falcke observed in a famous address to the leadership of the churches in East Germany in 1972, ‘Christ Liberates: Therefore, the Church for Others’. ‘The task of fighting lack of freedom 51. Otto Weber, ‘Freiheit in unserer Welt’, in Die Treue Gottes und die Kontinuität der menschlichen Existenz. Gesammelte Aufsätze I (Neukirchener: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967), p. 139 (my translation). Cf. Jüngel, The Freedom of a Christian, pp. 72–3. 52. Jüngel, Justification, p. 44. 53. Article 2 of ‘The Barmen Theological Declaration’ in the translation of Douglas S. Bax, reprinted in Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace: Toward a Theology of the State in Dialogue with the Barmen Declaration, trans. D. Bruce Hamill and Alan J. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), pp. xxiv–xxv. 54. See Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace, pp. 35–6, and 73, where he remarks that ‘the power of the Gospel to liberate from godless bonds sheds light upon the political realm’. For analysis of these motifs, see Krötke, ‘Gottes Anspruch und menschliche Verantwortung: Auslegung der II. These der Barmer Theologischen Erklärung’, reprinted in Freiheit im Leben mit Gott: Texte zur Tradition evangelischer Ethik, Theologische Bücherei 86, ed. Hans Ulrich (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1993), pp. 399–412. Cf. Wolfgang Huber, Folgen christlicher Freiheit. Ethik und Theorie der Kirche im Horizont der Barmer Theologischen Erklärung (Neukirchener: Neukirchener Verlag, 1983), pp. 113–27.

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and injustice in our society remains because our history stands under the sign of the cross. This task makes sense, however, because history also stands under the promise of the liberating Christ’.55 The mainspring of the Christian life is the reality of evangelical freedom: a freedom to love without reckoning in obedience to Christ by the Spirit’s power; a freedom which even now anticipates that ‘glorious freedom of the children of God’ (Rom 8:21) which is the substance of all Christian hope. As noted at the outset, evangelical theology must make this freedom one or its cardinal themes. In doing so, it must recognize this gracious freedom to be its own element and very condition of possibility. This is a lesson contemporary Protestant theologians may continue to learn from Eberhard Jüngel’s vibrant and fruitful theological existence which has over many years faithfully demonstrated that ‘theology’s freedom is but the freedom of Christian existence realised in the responsibility of thinking’.56

55. Heino Falcke, ‘Christ Liberates – Therefore, the Church for Others’, ER 56:2 (2004), p. 178. 56. Jüngel, ‘Die Freiheit der Theologie (1967)’, in Entsprechungen: Gott  – Wahrheit  – Mensch. Theologische Erörtungen II. 3. Auflage um Register erweitert (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), p. 30.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Compiled by Piotr J. Małysz

Eberhard Jüngel’s Works A bibliography of Jüngel’s writings, appended to his 2004 Festschrift, takes up 45 pages and comprises 581 items, though included in that number are also reprints, revisions and translations. The following list contains Jüngel’s monographs, essay and sermon collections, as well as important essays and articles published in journals and edited volumes. Those essays which were eventually collected in the five volumes of Jüngel’s Theologische Erörterungen are, with a few exceptions, listed only as part of those volumes, with the original publication date alone included in parentheses. English translations are cross-referenced, with ‘G=’ denoting a reference to the German edition. In German 1962

Paulus und Jesus: eine Untersuchung zur Präzisierung der Frage nach dem Ursprung der Christologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 7th ed., 2004).

1964

Zum Ursprung der Analogie bei Parmenides und Heraklit (Berlin: de Gruyter) [=1980 no. 3].

1965

Gottes Sein ist im Werden: Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth. Eine Paraphrase (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 4th ed., 1986).

1968

Predigten. Mit einem Anhang: Was hat die Predigt mit dem Text zu tun? (München: Kaiser) [=2003/d].

1971/a

‘Das Sakrament – Was ist das? Versuch einer Antwort’, Eberhard Jüngel und Karl Rahner, SJ, Was ist ein Sakrament? Vorstöße zur Verständigung (Freiburg: Herder), pp. 7–61.

1971/b

Tod. Themen der Theologie 8 (Stuttgart, Kreuz Verlag, 4th ed., Gütersloh: Mohn, 1990).

1972/a

Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Erörterungen I (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 3rd ed., 2000).

268

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1974/a

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1974/b

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1976/a

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1976/c

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1976/d

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1977/a

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1977/b

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1977/c

Der Wahrheit zum Recht verhelfen (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag). ‘Zu dieser Schrift’, pp. 7–12; ‘Mit unserer Macht ist nichts getan’, pp. 13–25; ‘Liebe zur Wahrheit’, pp. 26–39;

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1978/b

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1978/c

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1979

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1980

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1982

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1983/b

‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist. Thesen’, Ulrich Luz and Hans Weder (eds), Die Mitte des Neuen Testaments: Einheit und Vielfalt neutestamentlicher Theologie: Festschrift für Eduard Schweizer zum siebzigsten Geburtstag (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), pp. 97–118.

1984

(with Michael Trowitzsch) ‘Provozierendes Denken: Bemerkungen zur theologischen Anstößigkeit der Denkwege Martin Heideggers’, Neue Hefte für Philosophie 23, pp. 59–74.

1986

‘»Jedermann sei untertan der Obrigkeit … «: Eine Bibelarbeit über Römer 13, 1–7’, Eberhard Jüngel, Roman Herzog und Helmut Simon, Evangelische Christen in unserer Demokratie: Beiträge aus der Synode der Evangelischen Kirche (Gütersloh: Verlagshaus Mohn), pp. 8–37.

1987

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1989/a

‘Nihil divinitatis, ubi non fides. Ist christliche Dogmatik in rein theoretischer Perspektive möglich? Bemerkungen zu einem theologischen Entwurf von Rang’, ZThK 86, pp. 204–35.

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1989/c

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1990/a

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1990/b

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‘Die Freiheit eines Christenmenschen: Freiheit als Summe des Christentums’, Michael Beintker, Eberhard Jüngel and Wolf Krötke (eds), Wege zum Einverständnis. Festschrift für Christoph Demke (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt), pp. 118–37.

1997/b

‘Um Gottes willen – Klarheit! Kritische Bemerkungen zur Verharmlosung der kriteriologischen Funktion des Rechtfertigungsartikels – aus Anlaß einer ökumenischen‚ »Gemeinsamen Erklärung zur Rechtfertigungslehre«’, ZThK 94, pp. 394–406.

1998/a

‘Amica Exegesis einer römischen Note’, ZThK, Beiheft 10, pp. 252– 79.

1998/b

Das Evangelium von der Rechtfertigung des Gottlosen als Zentrum des christlichen Glaubens. Eine theologische Studie in ökumenischer Absicht (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 5th ed., 2006).

1998/c

‘Zum Gewissen’, CV 40:1, pp. 33–43.

1998– 2007

(with Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning and Bernd Janowski, eds) Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 4th ed., 9 vols).

1999/a

‘Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen: Ein Brief von Eberhard Jüngel zum Rechtfertigungsstreit’, HerKorr 53:3, pp. 154–7.

1999/b

‘Hoffnung: Bemerkungen zum christlichen Verständnis des Begriffs’, Edith-Stein-Jahrbuch 5, pp. 55–62.

1999/c

‘Kardinale Probleme’, StZ 217:11 (November 1999), pp. 727–35.

1999/d

‘Die Theologie als Narr im Haus der Wissenschaften’, Johann Reikerstorfer (ed.), Zum gesellschaftlichen Schicksal der Theologie. Ein Wiener Symposium zu Ehren von Johann Baptist Metz (Münster: Lit), pp. 60–72.

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2000/b

‘Das Amt in der Kirche nach evangelischem Verständnis’, Konrad Raiser and Dorothea Sattler (eds), Ökumene vor neuen Zeiten. Festschrift für Theodor Schneider zum 70. Geburtstag (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), pp. 267–74.

2000/c

‘Paradoxe Ökumene: Ende der Höflichkeiten bei wachsender Nahe’, Zeitzeichen 1:11, pp. 1–6.

2001/a

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2001/c

(with Richard Schröder) ‘Macht – Wissen – Vergewisserung’, Christian Drägert (ed.), Medienethik: Freiheit und Verantwortung. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Manfred Kock (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 2001), pp. 347–61.

2002/a

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2002/b

‘Credere in ecclesiam: eine ökumenische Besinnung’, ZThK 99, pp. 177–95.

2002/c

‘Ökumenische Anläufe’, StZ 220:10 (October 2002), pp. 662–70.

2003/a

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2003/b

‘Besinnung auf 50 Jahre theologische Existenz’, ThLZ 128:5, pp. 471–84.

2003/c

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2003/e

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2003/f

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2003/g

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2004/a

‘Der Mensch – im Schnittpunkt von Wissen, Glauben, Tun und Hoffen: Die theologische Fakultät im Streit mit der durch Immanuel Kant repräsentierten philosophischen Fakultät’, ZThK 101, pp. 315– 45.

2004/b

Zum Staunen geboren. Predigten 6 (Stuttgart: Radius-Verlag).

2005/a

‘Man reibt sich die Augen: Ökumene in Deutschland. Ein Gespräch mit dem Tübinger Theologen Eberhard Jüngel’, Zeitzeichen 6:1, pp. 40–2.

2005/b

‘Der Mensch in der beziehungsvollen Einheit von Leib, Seele und Geist: Thesen’, Michael Bergunder and Daniel Cyranka (eds), Esoterik und Christentum: Religionsgeschichtliche und theologische Perspektiven (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt), pp. 231–6.

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2005/c

‘Provozierende Theologie: zur theologischen Existenz Karl Barths (1921–1935)’, Michael Beintker, Christian Link and Michael Trowitzsch (eds), Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935): Aufbruch – Klärung – Widerstand [Beiträge zum Internationalen Symposion vom 1. bis 4. Mai 2003 in der Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek Emden] (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag), pp. 41–55.

2005/d

‘Religion, Zivilreligion und christlicher Glaube: das Christentum in einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft’, Burkhard Kämper (ed.), Religionen in Deutschland und das Staatskirchenrecht (Münster: Aschendorff), pp. 53–100.

2005/e

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2005/f

‘Die schöpferische Kraft des Wortes’, Gerhard Gläde (ed.), Hören – Glauben – Denken. Festschrift für Peter Knauer S. J. zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebensjahres (Münster: Lit), pp. 7–24 [=2011 no. 3].

2005/f

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2006/a

‘Caritas fide formata: die erste Enzyklika Benedikt XVI – gelesen mit den Augen eines evangelischen Christenmenschen’, IKaZ 35:6 (November/December 2006), pp. 595–614.

2006/b

‘Gott selbst im Ereignis seiner Offenbarung: Thesen zur trinitarischen Fassung der christlichen Rede von Gott’, Michael Welker and Miroslav Volf (eds), Der lebendige Gott als Trinität: Jürgen Moltmann zum 80. Geburtstag (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus), pp. 23–33.

2008/a

Erfahrungen mit der Erfahrung. Unterwegs bemerkt (Stuttgart: Radius-Verlag). ‘Die wunderbaren Kraftakte des Jesus von Nazareth’, pp. 13–20; ‘Neu – Alt – Neu. Theologische Aphorismen’, pp. 21–7; ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden. Zum 400. Geburtstag von Paul Gerhard’, pp. 28–41; ‘Erwachen’, pp. 42–8; ‘Licht in der Finsternis’, pp. 49–53; ‘Böse – was ist das? Versuch einer theologischer Begriffsbestimmung’, pp. 54–86; ‘Gibt es den gerechten Krieg?’ pp. 87–94;

Bibliography

279

‘Wertlose Würde – Gewissenhafte Gewissenlosigkeit. Eine Erinnerung an den fortwirkenden christlichen Ursprung lebensorientierender Begriffe’, pp. 95–103; ‘Passagen’, pp. 104–8; ‘Das Staunen bleibt’, pp. 109–14. 2008/b

‘Glaube und Vernunft’, George Augustin and Klaus Krämer (eds), Gott denken und bezeugen. Festschrift für Kardinal Walter Kasper zum 75. Geburtstag (Freiburg: Herder), pp. 15–32.

2008/c

‘»Was ist er inwerds?«’ ZThK 105, pp. 443–55.

2008/d

‘Zur Verankerung der Menschenrechte im christlichen Glauben’, Günter Nooke, Georg Lohmann and Gerhard Wahlers (eds), Gelten Menschenrechte universal? Begründungen und Infragestellungen (Freiburg: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung), pp. 166–79 [=2011 no. 8].

2009/a

Allerneuende Klarheit. Predigten 7 (Stuttgart: Radius-Verlag).

2009/b

Die Leidenschaft Gott zu denken: Ein Gespräch über Denk- und Lebenserfahrungen (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag).

2011

Außer sich. Theologische Texte (Stuttgart: Radius-Verlag). ‘Mensch, wo bist Du? Glauben und Freiheit als Ortsbestimmungen des Christenmenschen’, pp. 13–40; ‘Außer sich. Zu 2. Korinther 5,17–21’, pp. 41–50; ‘Die schöpferische Kraft des Wortes’ (2005), pp. 51–82 [=2005/f]; ‘Stille Nacht’ (2009), pp. 83–7; ‘Ja. Vorbehaltlos, eindeutig, uneingeschränkt’ (2010), pp. 88–91; ‘Sprachlose Freude? Eine Erinnerung an Schleiermachers Weihnachtsfeier’ (2009), pp. 92–8; ‘Wirkung durch Entzug. Eine theologische Anmerkung zum Begriff der Wirkungsgeschichte’ (2008), pp. 99–123; ‘Zur Verankerung der Menschenrechte im christlichen Glauben’ (2008), pp. 124–38 [=2008/d]; ‘Arbeit in biblischem Verständnis’ (2006), pp. 139–47; ‘Hoffnung für das Alter’ (2010), pp. 148–67; ‘Was hat des Menschen Glück mit seiner Seligkeit zu tun’, pp. 168–98; ‘Nichts erzählen’ (2010), pp. 199–201; ‘Letzte Worte?’ (2008), pp. 202–4.

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In English 1969/a

‘Four Preliminary Considerations on the Concept of Authority’, ER 21:2 (April 1969), pp. 150–66 [G=1972/a10].

1969/b

‘Review of CD IV/4 Fragment, by Karl Barth’, Literature Survey: A Review of Recent Theological Publications 1, pp. 78–83.

1971

‘God – as a Word of Our Language’, Frederick Herzog (ed.), Theology of the Liberating Word (Nashville: Abingdon), pp. 24–45 [G=1972/a5].

1974

Death: The Riddle and the Mystery, trans. Iain Nicol and Ute Nicol (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press; Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1975) [G=1971/b].

1976/a

‘The Relationship between ‘Economic’ and ‘Immanent’ Trinity’, TD 24, pp. 179–84 [G=1980 no. 11, summarized].

1976/b

‘The Truth of Life: Observations on Truth as the Interruption of the Continuity of Life’, Richard W. A. McKinney (ed.), Creation, Christ, and Culture: Studies in Honour of T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), pp. 231–6.

1983

God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark) [G=1977/a].

1986

Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, trans. Garrett E. Paul (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster) [G=1982]. ‘Introduction’, pp. 11–5 [G=1982 no. 1, edited]; ‘Karl Barth: A Tribute at Death’, pp. 16–21 [G=1982 no. 2]; ‘Barth’s Life and Work’, pp. 22–52 [G=1982 no. 3]; ‘Barth’s Theological Beginnings’, pp. 53–104 [G=1982 no. 4]; ‘Gospel and Law: The Relationship of Dogmatics to Ethics’, pp. 105–26 [G=1982 no. 6]; ‘The Royal Man. A Christological Reflection on Human Dignity in Barth’s Theology’, pp. 127–38 [G=1982 no. 8].

1988/a

‘The Christian Understanding of Suffering’, JTSA 65, pp. 3–13.

1988/b

The Freedom of a Christian: Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg) [G=1978/b; 2000/a5].

1989/a

‘Response to Josef Blank’, Hans Kung and David Tracy (eds), Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), pp. 297–304.

1989/b

Theological Essays I, trans. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).

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281

‘Metaphorical Truth. Reflections on Theological Metaphor as a Contribution to a Hermeneutics of Narrative Theology’, pp. 16–71 [G= 1980 no. 4]; ‘Anthropomorphism: A Fundamental Problem in Modern Hermeneutics’, pp. 72–94 [G=1990/b5]; ‘The World as Possibility and Actuality. The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification’, pp. 95–123 [G=1972/a12]; ‘Humanity in Correspondence to God. Remarks on the Image of God as a Basic Concept in Theological Anthropology’, pp. 124–53 [G=1980 no. 14]; ‘Invocation of God as the Ethical Ground of Christian Action. Introductory Remarks on the Posthumous Fragments of Karl Barth’s Ethics of the Doctrine of Reconciliation’, pp. 154–72 [G=1982 no. 12]; ‘Extra Christum nulla salus – A Principle of Natural Theology? Protestant Reflections on the “Anonymity” of the Christian’, pp. 173–88 [G=1980 no. 6]; ‘The Church as Sacrament?’ pp. 189–213 [G=1990/b15]; ‘The Effectiveness of Christ Withdrawn. On the Process of Historical Understanding as an Introduction to Christology’, pp. 214–31 [G=1978/a]. 1989/c

‘What does it mean to say, “God is love”?’ T. Hart and D. Thimell (eds), Christ in Our Place: The Humanity of God in Christ for the Reconciliation of the World. Essays Presented to Prof. James Torrance (Exeter, UK: Paternoster), pp. 294–312.

1990

‘The Last Judgment as an Act of Grace’, LS 14, pp. 389–405 [G=2003/a2].

1991/a

‘Life after Death? A Response to Theology’s Silence about Eternal Life’, WW 11, pp. 5–8.

1991/b

‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’, CCe 108:7 (February 27, 1991), pp. 228–33.

1992

Christ, Justice and Peace: Toward a Theology of the State in Dialogue with the Barmen Declaration, trans. D. Bruce Hamill and Alan J. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark) [G=2000/a6].

1993

‘The Gospel and the Protestant Churches of Europe: Christian Responsibility for Europe from a Protestant Perspective’, RSS 21:2, pp. 137–49.

1994

Theological Essays II, ed. John Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark). ‘“My theology” – A Short Summary’, pp. 1–19 [G=1990/b1]; ‘“… You talk like a book …” Toward an Understanding of Philosophical Fragments by J. Climacus, edited by Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855)’, pp. 20–34 [G=1990/b3];

282

Bibliography

‘The emergence of the new’, pp. 35–58 [G=1990/b6]; ‘“Even the beautiful must die” – Beauty in the Light of Truth. Theological Observations on the Aesthetic Relation’, pp. 59–81 [G=1990/b19]; ‘The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus’, pp. 82–119 [G=1990/b11]; ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God. A Contribution to the Protestant Understanding of the Hiddenness of Divine Action’, pp. 120–44 [G=1990/b8]; ‘The Mystery of Substitution. A Dogmatic Conversation with Heinrich Vogel’, pp. 145–62 [G=1990/b12]; ‘The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ as Sacrament and Example’, pp. 163–90 [G=1990/b13]; ‘Value-Free Truth: The Christian Experience of Truth in the Struggle against the “Tyranny of Values”’, pp. 191–215 [G=1990/b4]; ‘On Becoming Truly Human. The Significance of the Reformation Distinction between Person and Works for the Self-Understanding of Modern Humanity’, pp. 216–40 [G=1990/b10]; ‘Living out of Righteousness: God’s Action – Human Agency’, pp. 241–63 [G=1990/b17]. 1998

‘Trinitarian Prayers for Christian Worship’, WW 18 (Summer 1998), pp. 244–53.

1999

‘On the Doctrine of Justification’, IJST 1:1 (March 1999), pp. 24–52.

2000

‘To Tell the World about God: The Task for the Mission of the Church on the Threshold of the Third Millennium’, IRM (April 30, 2000), pp. 203–15.

2001/a

God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth – A Paraphrase, trans. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark); previously translated as The Doctrine of the Trinity, trans. Horton Harris (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976) [G=1965].

2001/b

Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark) [G=1998/b].

2001/c

‘Theses on the Relation of the Existence, Essence and Attributes of God’, TJT, 17:1 (Summer 2001), pp. 55–74 [G=2003/c11].

2002/a

‘The Cross After Postmodernity’, Uwe Siemon-Netto (ed.), One Incarnate Truth: Christianity’s Answer to Spiritual Chaos (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House).

2002/b

‘Sermon on Matthew 25:1–12’, TJT 18:1 (Spring 2002), pp. 13–9.

Bibliography

283

2005

‘Church Unity is Already Happening: The Path Toward Eucharistic Community’, Dialog 44:1 (Spring 2005), pp. 30–7 [G=2003/c13].

2006

‘Theses on the Eternality of Eternal Life’, TJT 22:2 (Fall 2006), pp. 163–9 [G=2003/c16].

2007–13 (with Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning and Bernd Janowski, eds) Religion Past and Present: Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion, 14 vols (Leiden/Boston: Brill) [G=1998–2007].

Select Secondary Literature on Jüngel Listed here are monographs and articles that have Jüngel’s theology as their focus, as well as a variety of publications that contain substantive engagement with Jüngel’s thought: Barth, Ulrich, ‘Zur Barth-Deutung Eberhard Jüngels’, TZ 40 (1984), vol. 3, pp. 296–320; and vol. 4, pp. 394–415. Case, Jonathan P., ‘The Death of Jesus and the Truth of the Triune God in Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel’, JCTR 9 (2004), pp. 1–13. Dalferth, Ingolf U., Johannes Fischer, and Hans-Peter Grosshans (eds), Denkwürdiges Geheimnis: Beiträge zur Gotteslehre. Festschrift für Eberhard Jüngel zum 70. Geburtstag (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). 1. Hans-Christoph Askani, ‘Gott ohne Neid?’ pp. 1–21; 2. Michael Beintker, ‘“… es ist moralisch nothwendig, das Dasein Gottes anzunehmen”: einige Erwägungen zu Kants moralischem Gottesbeweis’, pp. 23–39; 3. Rüdiger Bubner, ‘Descartes’ Gottesbeweis’, pp. 41–50; 4. Ingolf U. Dalferth, ‘Gott für uns: die Bedeutung des christologischen Dogmas für die christliche Theologie’, pp. 51–75; 5. Reinhard Feldmeier, ‘Θεός ζῳοποιῶν: die paulinische Rede von der Unvergänglichkeit in ihrem religionsgeschichtlichen Kontext’, pp. 77–91; 6. Johannes Fischer, ‘Gott im Spannungsfeld zwischen Glaube und Wissen’, pp. 93–112; 7. David F. Ford, ‘The God of Blessing Who Loves in Wisdom’, pp. 113–26; 8. Hans-Peter Großhans, ‘Selbsterkenntnis als Gotteserkenntnis? Zum Verhältnis von schlechthinnigem Abhängigkeitsgefühl und schlechthinniger Ursächlichkeit bei Friedrich Schleiermacher’, pp. 127–44; 9. Martin Hengel, ‘Abba, Maranatha, Hosanna und die Anfänge der Christologie’, pp. 145–83; 10. Hans-Jürgen Hermisson, ‘Von Zorn und Leiden Gottes’, pp. 185–207; 11. Bernd Jochen Hilberath, ‘Sender – Empfänger – Botschaft: der Heilige Geist als Kommunikator zwischen Gott und Welt’, pp. 209–23; 12. Otfried Hofius, ‘“Gott war in Christus”: sprachliche und theologische Erwägungen zu der Versöhnungsaussage 2Kor 5,19a’, pp. 225–36; 13. Wilhelm Hüffmeier, ‘Deus providebit? Eine Zwischenbilanz zur Kritik der Lehre von Gottes Vorsehung’, pp. 237–58; 14. J. Christine Janowski, ‘Cur deus homo crucifixus: zu René Girards kritischer Apologie des Christentums’, pp. 259–89;

284

Bibliography

15. Walter Kasper, ‘Ökumenisch von Gott sprechen?’ pp. 291–302; 16. Wolf Krötke, ‘Nicht “auf Ebenteuer” beten: zur Frage der inter- und multireligiösen Anrufung Gottes’, pp. 303–19; 17. Hans Küng, ‘Christlicher Glaube und Weltreligionen’, pp. 321–9; 18. Karl Lehmann, ‘Karl Rahner und die Ökumene’, pp. 331–46; 19. Bruce McCormack, ‘Participation in God, Yes, Deification, No: Two Modern Protestant Responses to An Ancient Question’, pp. 347–74; 20. Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Von Angesicht zu Angesicht: eine Meditation über die Gottesschau zu Ehren des Tübinger “Mystikers mit offenen Augen”’, pp. 375–86; 21. Michael Moxter, ‘Gott als Künstler: Anmerkungen zu einer Metapher Schleiermachers’, pp. 387–404; 22. Helmut Obst, ‘Trinität? Zur Gotteslehre christlicher Sondergemeinschaften’ (Mormonen, Christian Science, Zeugen Jehovas), pp. 405–16; 23. Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Der eine Gott als der wahrhaft Unendliche und die Trinitätslehre’, pp. 417–26; 24. Trutz Rendtorff, ‘Vom Misston zur Polyphonie? Theologiehistorische Beobachtungen im Vorfeld der Gotteslehre’, pp. 427–42; 25. Jan Rohls, ‘Der Gott Spinozas’, pp. 443–64; 26. Dietrich Rössler, ‘Moral statt Metaphysik: Anmerkungen zur Bedeutung der theologischen Gotteslehre für die Perikopenpredigt’, pp. 465–77; 27. Richard Schröder, ‘“Du hast die Welt nach Maß, Zahl und Gewicht geordnet”: über einen Konsens im astronomischen Weltbildstreit des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts’, pp. 479–506; 28. Rudolf Smend, ‘Vom Ende der Gottesbilder: Predigt über Exodus 20, 1–6 am 29. Oktober 1972 in der Universitätskirche St. Nikolai in Göttingen’, pp. 507–13; 29. Volker Spangenberg, ‘Der Gott, der mich sieht: zum Predigtwerk von Albrecht Goes’, pp. 515–37; 30. John B. Webster, ‘The immensity and ubiquity of God’, pp. 539–56; 31. Hans Weder, ‘Komparative und ein parataktisches kai: eine neutestamentlich orientierte Skizze zur transzendierten Notwendigkeit’, pp. 557–81; 32. Folkart Wittekind, ‘Gott – die alles bestimmende Wirklichkeit? Zum Verständnis von Bultmanns Deutung der Gottesvorstellung Jesu’, pp. 583–604; 33. ‘Bibliographie Eberhard Jüngels’, pp. 605–49. Davidson, Ivor J., ‘Crux probat omnia: Eberhard Jüngel and the Theology of the Crucified One’, SJT 50:2 (1997), pp. 157–90. DeHart, Paul, ‘Eberhard Jüngel on the Structure of Theology’, ThSt 57 (1996), pp. 46–64. —, Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and Philosophy in the Thought of Eberhard Jüngel [AAR Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion] (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1999). —, ‘The Ambiguous Infinite: Jungel, Marion, and the God of Descartes’, JR 82:1 (January 2002), pp. 75–96. Dvorak, Rainer, Gott ist Liebe: Eine Studie zur Grundlegung der Trinitätslehre bei Eberhard Jüngel (Würzburg: Echter, 1999). Ellis, Daryl, ‘God’s Hiddenness as Trinitarian Grace and Miracle: A Response to Christopher R. J. Holmes’s Critique of Eberhard Jüngel’s Conception of Divine Hiddenness’, NZSThR 52:1 (2010), pp. 82–101. Fekete, David J., ‘Ancient echoes in modern halls: the recent erotic spirituality of Vatican II, David Matzko McCarthy, Karl Barth, and Eberhard Jüngel’, A Rhapsody of Love and Spirituality (New York: Algora, 2003), pp. 237–66.

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Fiddes, Paul S., The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Fuchs, Frank, Konkretionen des Narrativen: am Beispiel von Eberhard Jüngels Theologie und Predigten unter Einbeziehung der Hermeneutik Paul Ricoeurs sowie der Textlinguistik Klaus Brinkers (Münster: Lit, 2004). Goebel, Hans Theodor, Vom freien Wählen Gottes und des Menschen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1990). Haudel, Matthias, Die Selbsterschliessung des dreieinigen Gottes: Grundlage eines ökumenischen Offenbarungs-, Gottes- und Kirchenverständnisses (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). Herbst, Christoph, Freiheit aus Glauben: Studien zum Verständnis eines soteriologischen Leitmotivs bei Wilhelm Hermann, Rudolf Bultmann, und Eberhard Jüngel [Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 157] (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012). Holmes, Christopher, ‘Disclosure without Reservation: Re-evaluating Divine Hiddenness’, NZSThR 48:3 (2006), pp. 367–79. —, ‘The Glory of God in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel’, IJST 8:4 (October 2006), pp. 342–55. —, Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes: In Dialogue With Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel, and Wolf Krötke (Bern: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006). Huber, Wolfgang, ‘“Theologie und Kirchenleitung” – Vortrag zu Ehren von Eberhard Jüngel, Tübingen’ (2005), available on website of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, www.ekd.de/vortraege/huber/050204_huber_Ehrung_juengel.html (accessed: 8 February 2014). Kelsey, David H., ‘Two Theologies of Death: Anthropological Gleanings’, MoTh 13:3 (July 1997), pp. 347–70. Klimek, Nicolaus, Der Gott, der Liebe ist: zur trinitarischen Auslegung des Begriffs ’Liebe’ bei Eberhard Jüngel (Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1986). Koppehl, Thomas, ‘Die Christologie I. A. Dorners im Vergleich zu der E. Jüngels’, Die Wissenschaftliche Standpunkt der Theologie Isaak August Dorners [Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 78] (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997), pp. 290–326. Korthaus, Michael, Kreuzestheologie: Geschichte und Gehalt eines Programmbegriffs in der evangelischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). Küng, Hans, The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel’s Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology (1970; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987). Macken, John, S. J., The Autonomy Theme in the Church Dogmatics: Karl Barth and His Critics (1984; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Małysz, Piotr J., Trinity, Freedom, and Love: An Engagement with the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel [T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 18] (London: T&T Clark/ Continuum, 2012). Mattes, Mark C., Toward Divine Relationality: Eberhard Jüngel’s New Trinitarian, Postmetaphysical Approach, unpublished PhD dissertation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1995). —, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). McCormack, Bruce, ‘God Is His Decision: The Jüngel-Gollwitzer ‘Debate’ Revisited’, Bruce L. McCormack and Kimlyn J. Bender (eds), Theology as Conversation: The Significance of Dialogue in Historical and Contemporary Theology. A Festschrift for Daniel L. Migliore (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 48–66. —, ‘Election and the Trinity: Theses in response to George Hunsinger’, SJT 63:2 (2010), pp. 203–24. Molnar, Paul D., Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity (London: T&T Clark, 2002).

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Mottu, Henry, ‘Les sacrements selon Karl Barth et Eberhard Jüngel’, FV 88:2 (April 1989), pp. 33–55. Murrmann-Kahl, Michael, ‘Mysterium trinitatis’? Fallstudien zur Trinitätslehre in der evangelischen Dogmatik des 20. Jahrhunderts [Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 79] (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997). Nelson, Derek, ‘The Indicative of Grace and the Imperative of Freedom: An Invitation to the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel’, Dialog 44:2 (Summer 2005), pp. 164–80. Nelson, R. David, The Interruptive Word: Eberhard Jüngel on the Sacramental Structure of God’s Relation to the World [T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 24] (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013). Neufeldt-Fast, Arnold V., Eberhard Jüngel’s Theological Anthropology in Light of His Christology, unpublished PhD dissertation (Toronto: University of St. Michael’s College, 1996). O’Donovan, Leo J., SJ, ‘The Mystery of God as a History of Love: Eberhard Jüngel’s Doctrine of God’, ThSt 42 (1981), pp. 251–71. Palakeel, Joseph, The Use of Analogy in Theological Discourse: An Investigation in Ecumenical Perspective (Rome: Gregorian University, 1995). Pambrun, James R., ‘Eberhard Jüngel’s Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. An Interpretation’, ÉeT 15 (1984), pp. 321–46. Paulson, Steven D., Analogy and Proclamation: The Struggle over God’s Hiddenness in the Theology of Martin Luther and Eberhard Juengel, unpublished ThD dissertation (Chicago, IL: Lutheran School of Theology, 1992). Paulus, Engelbert, Liebe, das Geheimnis der Welt: formale und materiale Aspekte der Theologie Eberhard Jüngels (Würzburg: Echter, 1990). Rohls, Jan, ‘Ist Gott notwendig? – Zu einer These von E. Jüngels’, NZSThR 22 (1980), pp. 282–96. Rolnick, Philip A., Analogical Possibilities: How Words Refer to God (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993). Royon, Claude, Dieu, l’homme et la croix: Stanislas Breton et Eberhard Jüngel (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998). Schott, Faye E., ‘Comparing Eberhard Jüngel and Wolfhart Pannenberg on Theological Method and Religious Pluralism’, Dialog 31:2 (Spring 1992), pp. 129–35. Schulz, Michael, Sein und Trinität: systematische Erörterungen zur Religionsphilosophie G. W. F. Hegels im ontologiegeschichtlichen Rückblick auf J. Duns Scotus und I. Kant und die Hegel-Rezeption in der Seinsauslegung und Trinitätstheologie bei W. Pannenberg, E. Jüngel, K. Rahner und H. U. v. Balthasar (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1997). Spjuth, Roland, Creation, contingency and divine presence in the theologies of Thomas F. Torrance and Eberhard Juengel, unpublished ThD dissertation (Sweden: Lunds Universitet, 1995). —, ‘Redemption without Actuality: A Critical Interrelation between Eberhard Jüngel’s and John Milbank’s Ontological Endeavours’, MoTh 14:4 (October 1998), pp. 505–22. Stolina, Ralf, ‘Eberhard Jüngels Kritik negativer Theologie’, Niemand hat Gott je gesehen: Traktat über negative Theologie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000). —, ‘Gott – Geheimnis – Kreuz’, ZThK 101:2 (Juni 2004), pp. 175–97. —, ‘»Ökonomische« und »immanente Trinität«? Zur Problematik einer trinitätstheologischen Denkfigur’, ZThK 105 (2008), pp. 170–94. Thiele, Martin H., Gott – Allmacht – Zeit: Ein theologisches Gespräch mit Johann Baptist Metz und Eberhard Jüngel (Münster: Aschendorff, 2009).

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Watts, Graham John, Revelation and the Spirit: A Comparative Study of the Relationship between the Doctrine of Revelation and Pneumatology in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Milton Keynes, UK; Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster, 2005). Webster, John B., ‘Eberhard Jüngel: The Humanity of God and the Humanity of Man’, Evangel (Spring 1984), pp. 4–6. —, ‘Eberhard Jüngel on the Language of Faith’, MoTh 1:3 (July 1985), pp. 253–76. —, ‘Bibliography: The Theology of Eberhard Jungel’, MC 28:3 (1986), pp. 41–4. —, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). — (ed.), The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in his Sixtieth Year (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994). 1. John B. Webster, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–6; 2. Colin Gunton, ‘The being and attributes of God: Eberhard Jüngel’s dispute with the classical philosophical tradition’, pp. 7–22; 3. David F. Ford, ‘Hosting a dialogue: Jüngel and Lévinas on God, self and language’, pp. 23–59; 4. George O. Mazur, ‘On Jüngel’s four-fold appropriation of Friedrich Nietzsche’, pp. 60–9; 5. Werner Jeanrond, ‘The problem of the starting-point of theological thinking’, pp. 70–89; 6. Geoffrey Wainwright, ‘Church and sacrament(s)’, pp. 90–105; 7. John B. Webster, ‘Justification, analogy and action: passivity and activity in Jüngel’s anthropology’, pp. 106–42; 8. John Thompson, ‘Jüngel on Barth’, pp. 143–89; 9. George Newlands, ‘The love of God and the future of theology: a personal engagement with Jüngel’s work’, pp. 190–205; 10. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, ‘Eberhard Jüngel: a bibliography’, pp. 206–41. —, ‘Jesus’ Speech, God’s Word: An introduction to Eberhard Jüngel (I)’, CCe 112:35 (December 6, 1995), pp. 1174–8. —, ‘Who God Is, Who We Are: An introduction to Eberhard Jüngel (II)’, CCe 112:36 (December 13, 1995), pp. 1217–20. —, ‘Jesus in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel’, CTJ 32:1 (April 1997), pp. 43–71. —, ‘Jesus in Modernity: Reflections on Jüngel’s Christology’, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), pp. 151–90 [=1997]. Wigley, Stephen D., ‘Karl Barth on St Anselm: The Influence of Anselm’s “Theological Scheme” on T. F. Torrance and Eberhard Jüngel’, SJT 46:1 (February 1993), pp. 79–97. Winzeler, Peter, ‘“Ökumenische Theologie” ohne Sozialismus: kritische Anmerkungen zu Eberhard Jüngels Barth-Studien’, EvTh 44:3 (May–June 1984), pp. 305–12. Zeitz, James V., ‘God’s mystery in Christ: reflections on Erich Przywara and Eberhard Jüngel’, ICR 12 (Summer 1985), pp. 158–72. Zimany, Roland D., Vehicle for God: The Metaphorical Theology of Eberhard Jüngel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1994).

Subject and Author Index Adkins, Brent  94n. 17 Alkier, Stefan  144n. 5 analogy  13–14, 51–69, 89–100, 221–2 Anselm of Canterbury  78n. 21 apostolicity, apostolic succession  3, 21n. 30 Aristotle  32, 196 Athanasius  151 atheism  30–3, 143–5 Augustine  77–8, 79–81, 82n.30, 83–4, 86, 111, 247, 250, 252 Barmen Declaration  159–60, 161–4, 265 Barth, Karl  9, 13–14, 16–17n. 17, 18–19, 21–4, 30–2, 33, 35, 38, 39n. 36, 65–9, 80n. 27, 92n. 13, 102–3, 121, 150n. 34, 156, 160, 161, 169, 170, 172–5, 178–81, 184, 201, 224, 226, 228n. 28, 234–5, 247, 256, 258, 264 Bauman, Zygmunt  139n. 37 Bede  73–4 Betz, Hans-Dieter  9, 257nn. 7, 260n. 23, 264 Birmelé, André  2n. 3, 10n. 32 Blättner, Fritz  237n. 39 Blochmann, Elisabeth  237n. 39 Blowers, Paul M.  247n. 9 Boersma, Hans  219–20 Boey, Koen  236, 237 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich  32, 40, 102, 102n. 11, 143, 157, 259 Bradbury, Rosalene  36n. 22 Brecht, Martin  121n. 10, 238 Bultmann, Rudolf  13–14, 16–17n.17, 21–4, 29, 99, 156, 207 Burrell, David  51–2n. 3 Calvin, John  118, 130, 261n. 32 Carlstein, Carl-Magnus  225n. 18 Catholicism, The Catholic Church  1–12, 158n. 6

Christology, Jesus Christ  21–4, 74–6, 81–2, 115–30, 143–53, 205–8 Confessio Augustana  96 Cousar, Charles  259, 260, 263 creation  43, 104–5 crucifixion, theologia crucis  29–49, 103–4, 136–8, 143–53, 158 Davidson, Ivor J.  33n. 7 D’Costa, Gavin  249n. 13 de Boer, Martinus  257n. 10, 257n. 8, 263 de Lubac, Henri  219 death  131–41, 151, 196–9 Dehart, Paul  31n. 3, 51–2, 69, 155n. 1, 167n. 2 Descartes, René  32, 105–6, 108, 143 divine and human action  2–7, 156–9, 167–85, 225–9 doctrine of God, Trinitarian theology  13–27, 34–5, 42–9, 51–69, 71–88, 101–13, 143–53, 167–8, 203–17, 258–9 Dunn, James D. G.  257 Duquoc, Christian  51, 65 Ebeling, Gerhard  13, 22–3, 29, 256n. 5 ecclesiology, church  1–12, 225–9 ecumenism  1–12, 158n. 6 Emery, Gilles, OP  110–11 Epicurus  132n. 2 Ernst, Cornelius  253 eschatology  21–4, 124–5, 158, 196–9 faith  24–5 Falcke, Heino  266 Feuerbach, Ludwig  32, 39 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb  32, 105–6, 143 Ford, David  254n. 27 Forde, Gerhard O.  36n. 22 freedom  16, 25, 164–86, 255–66 Fuchs, Ernst  13, 15n. 13, 22–3, 29, 33, 149n. 27, 193n. 40, 196n. 58, 221–2

290

Subject and Author Index

Gennadius  75–6 Gilson, Étienne  250, 253 Gollwitzer, Helmut  157 Grabman, Martin  73–4n. 14 Gregory  245 Gronemeyer, Marianne  131n. 1 Haile, Herbert G.  238n. 44 Härle, Wilfried  201n. 84 Harrisville, Roy  262n. 33, 264 Hart, David Bentley  106n. 37 Hegel, G.W.F.  30, 32, 35, 58, 67, 143, 236–7 Heidegger, Martin  29–30, 32, 35, 71n. 5, 96, 134, 187–201, 221–2, 227 Herms, Eilert  201n. 84 Higton, Mike  242n. 3, 252n. 22 Hinlicky, Paul  87n. 24, 94n. 17 Holmes, Christopher R. J.  109n. 59, 167n. 2 Howard, Thomas A.  242n. 3 Huber, Wolfgang  265n. 54 Hunsinger, George  120n. 9 Hütter, Reinhard  19–20n. 26 interreligious dialogue  139–40 interruption  24–5, 95, 181–5, 194, 221–2 Jacobs, Henry Eyster  238n. 44 Jeanrond, Werner G.  17–18, 134n. 14, 135nn. 16, 136, 138, 141n. 43 Jenson, Robert W.  32n. 5, 105, 152n. 44 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification  7–12, 115 Jonas, Hans  150n. 32 justification  7–12, 20, 115–30, 156–9, 167–8 Kant, Immanuel  30, 54, 143 Käsemann, Ernst  21, 22–3, 25–6, 257n. 8, 261, 264n. 44 Kasper, Walter Cardinal  2 Keck, Leander  259, 260n. 25, 263n. 42, 264 Kermode, Frank  98 Kern, Walter  71n. 2 Kierkegaard, Søren  65–9 Kreck, Walter  21 Krötke, Wolf  260n. 26, 265n. 54

Landgraf, Artur Michael  72n. 8 Lennert, Rudolf  236, 237 Lewis, C. S.  69 love  131–41 Lührmann, Dieter  257n. 6, 263n. 42 Luther, Martin  5, 11–12, 29–49, 67, 92, 96, 112, 117–19, 138n. 35, 143–4, 152, 203–17, 255, 258, 262 Lutheranism, Lutheran Theology  1–12, 29–49, 112, 117–19, 155, 158n. 6, 161, 229, 238 McCabe, Herbert  61 McCormack, Bruce  19–20n.26, 34–5, 65n. 32 McGrath, Alister  36n. 22, 45n. 49 McMaken, Travis  169n. 6 Magister Martinus  73–4 Magnani, Lauraet  163n. 27 Małysz, Piotr  49n. 54, 146n. 13, 150n. 34, 152n. 46, 167n. 2 Mann, Thomas  210 Marcuse, Herbert  262 Marsden, George  254n. 27 Martin, Dale B.  261n. 28 Martyn, J. Louis  257, 259n. 22, 260n. 24, 261n. 31, 264n. 44 Mattes, Mark  36n. 20, 167n. 2, 187–8n. 7 Maurer, Ernstpeter  195 Meeks, M. Douglas  159 metaphor  89–100, 207, 221–2 Metz, Johann Baptist  159 Milbank, John  54n. 10, 159, 219, 227–9, 249 Moltmann, Jürgen  21, 22, 37n. 27 Mottu, Henry  168n. 5, 169n. 7, 179n. 58 natural theology  159–61, 232–5 Nelson, R. David  35n. 19, 95, 100, 167n. 1, 168n. 4, 172n. 33, 175n. 42, 177n. 51, 180n. 59, 183n. 67 Neufeldt-Fast, Arnold  187n. 1 Newlands, George  138n. 35 Nietzsche, Friedrich  32, 105–6 ontology  187–206, 219–29 Owen, John  118

Subject and Author Index Pannenberg, Wolfhart  21, 44, 149n. 27 Paul  xvi, 17, 55–6, 108, 255–66 Pelikan, Jaroslav  242n. 2 Peter Lombard  71–88 Peterson, Erik  65–9 Pickstock, Catherine  222n. 13 Pius XII  5 Plato  75–6 pneumatology, Holy Spirit  13–27, 43, 46–7, 72, 76–82, 83–8, 96–8, 100, 126–8, 228–9 political theology, politics  155–86 Pseudo-Dionysius  55 Rahner, Karl, SJ  53n. 7, 76n. 17, 203 Reformed theology  115–30 Richardson, Kurt Anders  168n. 5, 169n. 7, 179n. 57, 184n. 68 Ruge-Jones, Philip  36n. 22 sacraments, sacramental theology  2–3, 8, 11–12, 167–85, 214, 219–29 Schelling, Friedrich  188, 203 Schleiermacher, F. D. E.  14, 16–17n. 17, 60, 175–6, 180–1 Schlier, Heinrich  256n. 5 Schmaus, Michael  82n. 31, 84n. 35 Schmemann, Alexander  219 Schmitz, Kenneth  242n. 2 Schneckenburger, Matthias  117n. 5 Schupp, Johann  72n. 8 Sesboüe, Bernard  3–4 sin  4–7, 125–6, 136–7, 157, 165 Smith, James K. A.  219 Soelle, Dorothy  157–8 Soskice, Janet  90n. 6, 91 soteriology  2–7, 29–49, 157–8, 255–66 Soulen, R. Kendall  89–90, 94 Spangenberg, Volker  155n. 1 Spjuth, Roland  167n. 2, 168n. 5, 179n. 57, 184n. 68, 219n. 1, 226n. 20

291

Springer, Otto  236 Staudinger, Hugo  237 Stoddard, Brad  163 Stolina, Ralf  59 Stuntz, William  163n. 26 Tertullian  161 theological education  231–9, 241–54 theology  89–100, 231–9, 241–54 Thomas Aquinas  51–69, 90, 91, 94, 111n. 70, 242–3, 246–7, 250–4 Thompson, John  160 Torrance, Alan  162 Torrance, Thomas F.  118 Tracy, David  219n. 3 Turretin, Francis  118 Vermigli, Peter Martyr  124 Vind, Anna  96–7n. 24 Wainwright, Geoffrey  168n. 5 Watson, Natalie K.  156, 157 Weber, Otto  265 Webster, John B.  7, 10, 15, 31n. 4, 45n. 49, 47n. 53, 105, 107, 111, 138n. 33, 155n. 1, 158n. 7, 164–5, 169nn. 6, 179n. 57, 184n. 68, 233nn. 8, 236n. 25, 241n. 1 Weder, Hans  260n. 27, 261nn. 28,31, 263n. 42 Welte, Bernhard  53n. 7 Williams, Anna N.  243n. 6 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  51, 57 Wolterstorff, Nicholas  254n. 27 word of God  33–4, 94–100, 194, 212–14, 259 Wray, Harmon  163n. 27 Ziegler, Philip G.  263n. 40 Zwingli, Huldrych  11–12

INDEX OF WORKS by Eberhard Jüngel  Anfechtung und Gewissheit des Glaubens oder wie die Kirche weider zu ihrer Sache kommt  227n. 21 Christ Justice and Peace  31n. 4, 155, 159, 160n. 16, 161, 162, 265n. 54 ‘The Christian Understanding of Suffering’  188n. 12 ‘The Church as Sacrament?’  4, 41n. 43, 171, 175, 226n. 19 ‘Church Unity Is Already Happening’  171, 176 ‘The Cross after Postmodernity’  36n. 21 ‘Das Dilemma der natürlichen Theologie und die Wahrheit ihres Problems’  224n. 17 ‘Das dunkle Wort vom “Tode Gottes”’  34 ‘Das Entstehen von Neuem’  53 ‘Das Geheimnis der Stellbertretung’  158 ‘Das Gesetz zwischen Adam und Christus’  14 ‘Das Sakrament – Was ist das?’  170 ‘Das Sein Jesu Christi als Ereignis der Versöhnung Gottes mit einer gottlosen Welt’  37n. 25 ‘Das Wunder des Glaubens’  182n. 61 Death  34, 38, 132–3, 136–8, 140, 151, 151n. 41, 152n. 44, 157, 188n. 12, 197n. 61, 198, 199 ‘Der evangelisch verstandene Gottesdienst’  176 ‘Der Geist der Hoffnung und des Trostes’  13–27 ‘Der Geist der Liebe als Gemeinschaftsgeist’  13–27 ‘Der Gottesdienst als Fest der Freiheit’  171, 175–6

‘Der Schritt zurück’  191n. 30, 194n. 47, 195, 200 ‘Der Tod als Geheimnis des Lebens’  133, 133n. 12 ‘Die Bedeutung der Rechtfertigungslehre für das Verstandnis des Menschen’  227n. 21 ‘Die Ewigkeit des ewigen Lebens’  21n. 32 ‘Die Freiheit der Theologie’  266 Die Leidenschaft, Gott zu denken  187, 191, 193 ‘Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie’  13, 190, 195n. 52 ‘Die Wahrheit des Mythos und die Notwendigkeit der Entmythologisierung’  24n. 49 ‘The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus’  45, 68, 196n. 57, 197 ‘The Effectiveness of Christ Withdrawn’  39n. 35, 145, 152, 199n. 76 ‘Ein wichtiger Schritt’  12 ‘Einführung in Leben und Werk Karl Barths’  18 El Ser Sacramental  171–2, 173n.32, 177–8, 181–3, 184–5 ‘The Emergence of the New’  196n. 57, 199n. 74 ‘“Even the beautiful must die”’  192n. 35, 198n. 72, 201n. 82 ‘Extra Christum nulla salus’  200, 224n. 17 The Freedom of a Christian  35n. 18, 49, 100n. 27, 148, 188n. 12, 263, 265n. 51

294

Index of Works

God as the Mystery of the World  14, 15–16n. 13, 25, 27, 30–3, 37–8, 40, 41, 46–7, 52–9, 63–5, 67–9, 71–2, 101–13, 139n. 36, 143–53, 167–8n. 3, 187, 188, 191, 192, 194, 198, 201, 219, 219, 223, 229, 233, 236, 237, 258, 259 God’s Being Is in Becoming  14, 34, 36, 103n. 16, 156, 167–8n. 3 ‘Gospel and Law’  31n. 4 ‘Gott entsprechendes schweigen?’  191n. 30, 195n. 52 ‘Gott – um seiner selbst willen interessant’  232, 235, 239 ‘Gottes ursprüngliches Anfangen’  150n. 32 ‘Gottesgewißheit’  25 ‘Grenzen des Menschseins’  41n. 46 ‘Humanity in Correspondence to God’  149, 151, 223n. 12 ‘Jesu Wort und Jesus als Wort Gottes’  39n. 34 Justification  9, 36n. 20, 100n. 27, 116n. 3, 117n. 4, 141n. 44, 158n. 6, 167–8n. 3, 222n. 11, 227n. 23, 259n. 20, 265 ‘Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe’  41n. 43, 170, 172–4, 178–80, 226n. 19 ‘The Last Judgment as an Act of Grace’  41n. 46 ‘Life after Death?’  41n. 46 ‘Living Out of Righteousness’  158n. 10, 164n. 30, 165 ‘Lob der Grenze’  41n. 46 ‘Meine Zeit steht in Deinen Händen (Psalm 31, 16)’  189n. 16 ‘Metaphorical Truth’  90–6, 192–3n. 39 ‘Mission und Evangelisation’  21n. 31 ‘My Theology – A Short Summary’  42n. 47, 49, 232–4, 255 ‘The Mystery of Substitution’  41n. 42 ‘Nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse’  69n. 49 ‘Neu-Alt-Neu’  182n. 61 ‘On Becoming Truly Human’  190n. 25

Paulus und Jesus  21, 26, 33, 156, 196, 199n. 75 ‘Provozierendes Denken’ (mit M. Trowitzsch)  187, 195n. 52, 200 ‘Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos’  34, 106n. 34 ‘Recht auf Leben – Recht auf Sterben’  134n. 15 ‘The Relationship between “Economic” and “Immanent” Trinity’  40, 46, 61, 103–4, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110–11, 148 ‘The Revelation of the Hiddenness of God’  41, 203–8 ‘Review of Karl Barth, CD IV/4 Fragment’  170, 172–4, 178–80 ‘The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ as Sacrament and Example’  41n. 42, 158 ‘Sakrament und Repräesentation’  171, 177, 181, 182 ‘Sas Salz der Erde’  166n. 35 ‘Theologie in der Spannung zwischen Wissenschaft und Bekenntnis’  233, 239 ‘Thesen zur Grundlegung der Christologie’  38, 234nn. 11–12 ‘Thesen zur Karl Barths Lehre von der Taufe’  170, 172–4, 178–80, 226n. 19 ‘Toward the Heart of the Matter’  29, 158, 162, 187n. 7, 188, 195 ‘The Truth of Life’  40, 150, 192, 194 ‘Um Gottes willen – Klarheit!’  8–10, 158n. 6 ‘Value-Free Truth’  146n. 12, 149, 150, 199 ‘Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes’  34, 37–8, 62n. 27 ‘Von der Dialektik zur Analogie’  66 ‘What does it mean to say “God is Love”?’  40 ‘The World as Possibility and Actuality’  62, 199, 207, 210n. 14, 220

Index of Works ‘“. . . You Talk Like a Book . . .”’  66 ‘Zukunft und Hoffnung’  163 ‘Zum Ursprung der Analogie bei Parmenides und Heraklit’  191n. 31

295

‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’  170, 174–5, 226n. 19 ‘Zur Lehre vom heiligen Geist’  13–27 ‘Zwei Schwerter – Zwei Reiche’  161n. 19