"Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed to Abraham. Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." (Heb. 2:14-17)
Seems like this is a key atonement passage. Here, we have shades of substitution, Christus Victor, and the exemplary theories of the atonement.
Showing posts with label Theology - Christology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theology - Christology. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Atonement Theories
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Deserts and Gardens
In the garden, Adam was tempted by the Devil, and that garden withered and died from Adam's sin and turned into a desert.
Many centuries later, the Last Adam appeared and went into that wilderness to be tempted by the Devil in order that by His obedience the desert might become a garden again.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Beating the Future into the Present
A "type" in biblical literature is commonly understood as a kind of "preview." Paul says that Adam was a "type" of Jesus who was to come (Rom. 5:14). These previews can also work as "examples" or "patterns" to follow or learn from: the unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness are examples for Christians to warn them (1 Cor. 10:6), Moses saw the pattern of the tabernacle on the mountain and was to follow it in the construction of the house of God (Acts 7:44, Heb. 8:5)), and Paul will call upon believers to follow his "example" (Phil. 3:17, 2 Thess. 3:9) or commend others for becoming faithful examples (1 Thess. 1:7). A "type" is ultimately a sort of "image" (e.g. Acts 7:43). In this sense, the "image of God" in man is a replication of the "type" of God which comes to fulfillment in Jesus. It points to the origin; it refers to the archtype.
But the word tupos also means "mark" or "blow." It is only used once in the New Testament in this sense and refers to the "mark" of the nails in the hands of Jesus. Thomas says that unless he sees the "mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe" (Jn. 20:25). But the verb form of this word tupto occurs numerous times in the NT and means "beat" or "strike." Jesus is "struck" (Mt. 27:30, Mk. 15:19, Lk. 22:64), later Sosthenes is "beaten" (Acts 18:17), and Paul is beaten (Acts 21:32) and "struck" (Acts 23:2).
This suggests a couple of possible directions to run with this. First, to call people to follow the pattern/example of Jesus or the apostles, is to call them to be "pierced" or "struck" or "beaten" into conformity with the image. Jesus is the perfect image of the invisible God, the type of the image of God that we are striving to be conformed to. Second, this suggests that the "example" of Christ and the apostles and other believers so frequently associated with suffering should perhaps be taken more literally. To be "beaten" for Jesus, to be "struck" for His name is to bear in the body the "marks" of Christ. Paul uses a different word in Galatians 6:17, but the parallel seems unmistakable. The "type" is struck in the believer in so far as their suffering is suffering for good (like Christ) but the "mark" is not merely illustrative, it is also efficacious and transformative. Like a bit of soft wax pressed with the image of the King, the marks of Christ leave an indelible reality of God's Life pressed into the individual who suffers. No wonder the apostles call us to rejoice.
Lastly, and a bit more speculative, it seems like there is a temporal-eschatalogical promise implied in this picture. Given these previous points, "types" seem to function as prophetic signs. "Types" call upon God to fulfill them. Sacraments are the supreme types, but even people, persecution, and various patterns seem to function as invitations for God to interpose the reality into history to which the "type" points. Perhaps more provocatively, types strain forward into the future and at the same time pull the future back into the present. While God does know the end from the beginning and certainly orchestrates all things according to His good counsel, there is nevertheless clearly a mysterious way in which humanity is invited into influencing the course of history. Prophets speak in the divine assembly, and God listens to them. God changes His mind; the future is not fixed in an abstract filing cabinet in heaven. The future is held in the hand of our faithful Father.
This would mean that "pounding" an obedient type into the present is one of the ways that God invites our participation in the future. The imprint, the mark of faithfulness will remain, and more than that, perhaps we have far more impact on the future than we sometimes imagine.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Suffering like God
We frequently point out that God allows us to face various trials and difficulties because he wants to make us more like Himself. He wants us to grow in wisdom, in perseverance. He uses suffering and hardship to conform us more and more to the image of the Son. And that is true, but it puts all the emphasis on the end product, the conclusion, what comes after suffering.
But it's good to remember that suffering itself is not something alien to God. Trials and hardships are not something that God himself is not acquainted with. In fact, the history of the world, following the Fall, is in a sense the story of God's suffering and trials and challenges dealing with fallen humanity, the effects of sin, and death. The history of the world is the story of God's perseverance, his wisdom being displayed, his patient endurance with us. All of our sin, our failures, all the disasters and difficulties that confront us, are fundamentally part of the trial that God faces. And this does not mean that God is any way less than God.
But God allows suffering and trials so that we can enter into his own experience, his patience with evil and sin and death. In other words, becoming like God through suffering is not merely the end product or result at the close of a particularly trying time. Rather, the suffering itself, the difficulty, the challenge, the sorrow, the hurt, it is all itself meant to be godlike. And the promise is that it always is for those who have the Spirit dwelling within them. The Spirit sanctifies our trials, our pain, our confusion, and we share in God's endurance, God's own inter-Trinitarian suffering.
Of course if we had any doubt, it is the life of Christ that displays this with the most certainty. Christ, as the revelation of God, reveals God's life. Christ is the embodiment of God's dealings with humanity in all of time and space. Christ takes up into himself the suffering of God with the faithless generation in the wilderness, the cyclical patterns of idolatry and oppression in the days of the Judges, the wickedness of his people under the kings. And none of this touches on the rest of humanity in all of its ugliness and perversion and the raging of nature in its groaning for the redemption of the sons of God. Christ embodies all that past history, but also takes up into his patient suffering the entire history of the world, the life of the world. He is God come to endure, come to persevere in the midst of sin and death and suffering.
This is how suffering the effects of a fallen world, suffering persecution, suffering under whatever affliction we face is suffering like God. God grants us the privilege of becoming more like him by the actual endurance of trials, hardships, and suffering. And of course we also look forward to the joy of God, the peace of God, the final restoration of all things in God. We have been united to this God, joined to that community in the power of the Spirit, and the promise is the resurrection and joy that awaits us. And in that, is the promise that the ending of our story is the same ending that Christ was given, in that promise we live now knowing that our beginning and middle are just as godlike, just as holy, just as redemptive as we live by faith in the power of the Spirit.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Continual Sacrifice, Eucharist, and Hebrews
"For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect... But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God,from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." (Heb. 10:1, 12-14)
The writer contrasts the sacrifices of the law which are offered continually but cannot make perfect (10:1) with the sacrifice of Christ which perfects forever those who are being sanctified (10:14).
What is striking is that the writer uses the same adjective to describe the continual offerings of the Law and the continual efficacy of Christ's sacrifice (translated 'forever'). In 10:1 the sacrifices are offered dianekes but can never bring to perfection. Likewise in 10:12, Christ has offered one sacrifice for sins dianekes and sat down at the right hand of God. And in 10:14, 'For by one offering he has perfected dianekes those being sanctified.'
The contrast then is most clearly on the number of the sacrifices which the the priests of the Law offered "frequently" (in 10:11 it's a different word than 10:1). Whereas the writer insists that Christ's offering was a single sacrifice (10:10, 12, 14). In 10:10, the offering of the "body of Jesus Christ" is described as ephapax which means once-for-all (cf. Rom. 6:10, Heb. 7:27, 9:12).
The word (dianekes) is used in one other place in Hebrews 7:3 where it describes Christs perpetual ministry as priest.
Of course all of this concerns issues which were significant in the Reformation. The Reformers all insisted that the Roman Mass had obscured the once-for-all character of the sacrifice of Christ. The concern was that the Mass had become a re-sacrifice of Christ which was both abhorrent to the glory of Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father and also because of the kind of meritorious theology that seems to naturally flow from such ideas. If the one offering of Christ on the cross must be re-exhibited, re-offered, re-presented for sins to be forgiven, how does that not undermine the once-for-all sense in which Christ suffered on the tree under Pontius Pilate? How is it not in some sense insufficient for our salvation? It seems to imply that something more must be done. And further, if the Eucharist continually offers Christ as a sacrifice for sin, how are we not back in the same position as the people under the Law?
And yet, it does seem that the common translation of this word in Heb. 10 (as 'forever') may create a more severe contrast than is actually meant by the writer. Whatever the priests' many sacrifices could not do which were offered dianekes is what Christ's one sacrifice now actually accomplishes dianekes.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christ is Born! Glorify Him!
Christmas Eve 2008 Homily
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“The voice of one crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight in the desert; a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted; and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight; and the rough places smooth; the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” Is. 40:3-5
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth.” Jn. 1:14
“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, who He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high...” Heb. 1:1-4
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We are accustomed to describing the act of God in the incarnation as a great act of humility, a great act of condescension, an act which is wonderful and amazing but in some way involves God leaving his glory behind. God as an infant, God as a crying baby in a stable, laid in a manger, what could be more humiliating? What could be more inglorious? Passages like Philippians 2:7 are quoted to describe this act: ‘But he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, coming in the likeness of men.’ Some translations say that he “emptied himself,” and the famous Christmas Carol says “mild, he lays his glory by/ born that man no more may die.” We routinely describe the incarnation with regard to great contrasts. There is what God is in Himself, and then there is what God became in the incarnation. There is the glory and holiness and transcendent being of God enthroned as absolute King of the Cosmos, and then there is Jesus, born of a woman, born in a stable, laid in a manger, no crib for a bed.
Our catechism implies this contrast when we ask the question ‘what is God?’ The answer is that “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” There is no mention here of the incarnation, and the answer implies that the incarnation is something quite different from the way God usually is. God is a Spirit, the answer says, God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable. Those first four attributes would seem to contradict any notion of an incarnation.
And so we describe the great act of the incarnation as this wonderful impossibility that God overcame. How can the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable become the exact opposite of those things? How can the infinite become finite? How can the eternal have a beginning? How can the unchangeable be conceived? We ask these questions with amazement and wonder, and ultimately we worship and adore the God who does this. We worship the God who is able to do this, the God who was willing to do this for us, despite His glory and perfection and honor, overcomes the distance, bridges the chasm, and becomes one of us.
And of course there is truth in all of this. There’s nothing untrue in these descriptions in and of themselves. But there is a danger if this is all that we say. The untruth can begin to creep in if we do not tell the rest of the story. If we stop here, it can serve to obscure a more fundamental fact about the person and character of our God. One of the ways, we catch a glimpse of this is in passages like the ones just read: Isaiah 40, John 1 and Hebrews 1. A common theme running through all of them is the theme of glory, and that glory being revealed. Isaiah says that the glory of the Lord is going to be revealed when God comes to save his people. The prophet doesn’t say that the glory of God will be laid aside or veiled or somewhat hidden or obscured. The prophet says that the Coming One will reveal the glory of the Lord. So too, John insists that the incarnation was fundamentally the revelation of the glory of God. When the incarnation occurred, when we saw Jesus, we finally saw His glory, and not just any glory, we beheld the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Similarly, the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus the Son of God is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. And our tendency is to jump immediately to Trinitarian categories. We’re fine with the Son being the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person, but we don’t tend to think about the incarnation. The baby in Bethlehem, lying in a food trough? That’s the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person? But that seems to be the very thing that the writer is talking about. Immediately after saying that he is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person, he says that he not only upholds all things by the word of His power, but he also purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Hebrews says that the brightness of God’s glory and his express image is evident in both his sovereignty in upholding all things and in purging our sins on the cross. The revelation of God is that God does both of these things.
And this gets back to our prior point. We tend to contrast the God who creates, the God who rules, the God who inhabits eternity with the God who is conceived, the God who is born, the God who dies. We are Christians, and we believe the Bible and so we don’t question these things. But we tend to contrast them nevertheless. We talk about God as God and then we talk about the incarnation as though it were something somewhat different. It’s something amazing and glorious, but we tend to describe the incarnation as though it doesn’t ordinarily fit with the idea of God. We have a notion of God, an idea of deity that pushes the idea of suffering and humility and incarnation to the far side of God-ness. To be God, we think, is to inhabit eternity, is to be a Spirit, is to be infinite, is to be unchangeable, is to be something and someone quite different than our human experience. And again, there is some truth there.
But these Scriptures push against this conception of God. John says that when Jesus was born we finally saw God for who he really is. We finally saw the glory of the Father full of grace and truth when Mary brought forth her Son and laid him in the manger. And when the child grew in wisdom and stature and in grace before God and men, we finally saw what God is like. And when that same carpenter’s Son was mocked and spat upon and despised and afflicted and finally crucified, Hebrews says that we saw the brightness of His glory; the express image of His person was revealed.
Similarly, in John’s first epistle, he says that the eternal life of the Father was manifested, revealed, seen, heard, looked upon, and handled. Whatever our conception of God, it must include this. When we ask ‘what is God?’ the first thing the New Testament writers would point to is the person of Jesus. Who is God? God is the one who revealed himself in Jesus. God is the one who was born of Mary. God is the one who lived as a man, who taught, who healed, who ate and drank with sinners, who was ultimately betrayed and crucified and rose again and ascended into heaven. That is our God. God is not first of all something else. God is not first of all infinite and eternal and unchangeable in a way that is at odds with the incarnation. Rather, the incarnation is the veil finally being torn away. If the ancients thought of God as someone distant and other and infinite and unchangeable they had some excuse for thinking that, although the Jews had plenty of hints that this was not the case. But when Jesus was born, when the incarnation occurred all of those preconceived notions were blown apart.
The incarnation is not something that we must try to fit into our doctrine of God. Rather, the incarnation is the beginning of our doctrine of God. It is the revelation of the glory of Lord, the brightness of His glory, the express image of his person. The incarnation is not merely consistent with the person and character of God; the incarnation shows us the kind of God we actually serve. The incarnation shows us not an aberration from the way God usually is; rather, the incarnation shows us what God is actually like. God is the God who both creates and sustains the worlds and gives himself for sinners. God is the God who both inhabits eternity and freely enters time and space and identifies with his people. God is the one who is both unchangeable, whose Word stands forever and cannot be moved, and He is at the same time always and unalterably free to experience growth and sorrow and love and joy. The God who rules heaven and earth is also the God who is born a child in Bethlehem.
And, as the hymn declares, this really is tidings of comfort and joy. The New Testament has a great deal to say about glory, and as we look at those passages we notice over and over again the association of glory with God’s people. We’ve already pointed out that Jesus is the revelation of God’s glory, but the New Testament writers don’t stop there. Paul says that in the New Covenant we have been given the Spirit, and as we read the Scriptures and hear the gospel proclaimed, we all with unveiled face, behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, and we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:17-18). He says that we glory in tribulations (Rom. 5:3), and while our outward man is perishing and we experience afflictions, these are working in us an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:16-17). Paul’s own tribulations are the glory of the Ephesians (Eph. 2:13). He says that the Thessalonians have suffered like Christ and therefore they are his glory and joy (1 Thess. 2:14-15, 19-20). Peter, likewise says, ‘If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.’ (1 Pet. 4:13). A little later he says that he is a “witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed.” (1 Pet. 5:1).
The reason it is great comfort and joy to know the God who is both sovereign and humble, the God who is both infinite and a child, who is both eternal and born of a woman, is that this same God promises to bestow this glory on us. Partaking of the glory of God, sharing in that glory, means living in this same reality, living as weak and broken people and yet strong and exalted, seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We live as those who have been given eternal life and yet have been born, and who will all die. We have been united to the changeless one, the one will never leave us or forsake us, and yet we grow up, and live, and change, and die and rise again.
In Ephesians Paul prays that the eyes of their understanding might be enlightened, that they might know what are the riches of his glory of His inheritance in the saints (Eph. 2:18). What the Ephesians need, and what we so often need is not for God to show us his glory. That has been revealed to us in Jesus. What we really need is for our eyes to be opened to see the glory right in front of us. We see a child in a manger, and say God has in some way laid his glory aside. But God says, ‘no, no, that is my glory, my wisdom, my infinity, my changelessness, my holiness, my justice, my goodness, my glory. God in the manger is the glory of God revealed. And if God in a manger is the glory of God revealed, then God on the cross is the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8). The glory of God is joy in suffering, peace in upheaval, mercy in justice, exaltation in humility, losing our lives to find them. If the glory of God is revealed in an infant lying in a manger, then why can’t the glory of God be revealed in your family? Why can’t the glory of God be manifest in your fellowship at a table, in your exchanging peace and joy and mercy with one another? Why can’t the glory of God be revealed in the midst of brokenness and confusion? Why can’t the wisdom and power of God be evident in weakness? The answer is that it can be and that it is. And so here we are assembled to proclaim that glory, the glory of the Lord that has been revealed to us and is being revealed in us through the working of the Spirit. Christ is born! Glorify Him! The glory of the Lord has been revealed. The veil is torn away. See the glory.
“O Zion, You who bring good tidings, Get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, You who bring good tidings, Lift up your voice with strength, Lift it up, be not afraid; Say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!” Is. 40:9
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen!
Friday, November 21, 2008
A Sketchy Introduction to Karl Barth (1886-1968) and His Christological Aims
Note: These are notes for a presentation I gave for the New St. Andrew's College graduate program this week.
Pope Pius II called Barth the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas. He was invited to attend Vatican II, and he is widely considered to be one of the most significant contributors to the modern theological world. He wrote on a wide area of subjects, was politically involved during the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. He grew up and studied theology in the milieu of German Nationalism and the modern liberal push in German theology. His break with liberalism with the publishing of his commentary on Romans in 1918 is widely hailed as one of the most significant developments in the theology in the 20th Century. He is loved, hated, denounced, praised, but footnoted prolifically throughout the landscape of modern theology.
Barth’s Christology
In Barth’s theology “there is no Christology as such; on the other hand, it is all Christology.” (Thompson, 1)
“There are, strictly speaking, no Christian themes independent of Christology” (CD II.1).
Speaking of the Apostles’ Creed, we writes, “We could not possibly have given a genuine exposition of the first article without continually interpreting it by means of the second. Indeed, the second article does not just follow the first, nor does it just precede the third; but it is the fount of light by which the other two are lit.” (DO, 65)
“And as for what is involved in the relationship between creation and the reality of existence on the one hand, and on the other hand the Church, redemption, God – that can never be understood from any general truth about our existence, nor from the reality of history of religion; this we can only learn from the relation between Jesus and Christ… That is why Article II, why Christology, is the touchstone of all knowledge of God in the Christian sense, the touchstone of all theology. ‘Tell me how it stands with your Christology, and I shall tell you who you are.’” (DO, 66)
Possible Objections/Criticisms:
Colin Brown suggests that making Jesus Christ the complete center of everything can actually slide into a certain abstraction problem. Jesus Christ ends up functioning as a “Christ-principle.” (Thompson, 5) Whether Barth is susceptible to this criticism or not, he is clearly at war with this sort of thing throughout his writings. H. Volk suggests something similar to Brown. He says that in Barth “Christology is so much a principle (Prinzip) that there is the danger of systematizing over a wide field… the danger of the use of a principle in a forced way is not far distant. For even in Christian theology Christology can be sued as a principle in such a powerful way that it results in a narrowing of the theological basis and contents.” (cited in Thompson, 6)
This criticism has sometimes been called “Christomonism.” The concern was that an overemphasis on the redemptive work of Christ ignored important doctrines such as creation or the work of the Holy Spirit, etc. Barth answered this question directly in an interview:
"In what specific way, Professor Barth, does your theology avoid being Christomonistic?"
Answer: "Sound theology cannot be either dualistic or monistic. The Gospel defies all isms,' including dualism and monism. Sound theology can only be 'unionistic,' uniting God and man. Christomonism (that's an awful catchword!) was invented by an old friend of mine whose name I will not mention. Christomonism would mean that Christ alone is real and that all other men are only apparently real. But that would be in contradiction with what the name of Jesus-Christ means, namely, union between God and man. This union between God and man has not been made only in Jesus Christ but in him as our representative for the benefit of all men. Jesus Christ as God's servant is true God and true man, but at the same time also our servant and the servant of all men. Christomonism is excluded by the very meaning and goal of God's and man's union in Jesus Christ." (http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jul1962/v19-2-article2.htm, accessed 11.18.08)
Robert Letham, while generally appreciative of Barth’s work, concedes that “his vigorous christocentrism is certainly exaggerated, almost to a point of a christomonism. While his overall theology is strongly Trinitarian, he hardly did justice to the consistent emphasis in the New Testament that it is God who chose us and the election is particularly a work of the Father (e.g. Eph. 1:4)” (Letham 54)
But for Barth, Creation, Revelation, Trinity, soteriology, and everything else are summed up in the person of Christ, and therefore all truth is found in and through the living Christ (e.g. Rom. 11:36, Eph. 1:10, Col. 1:20).
One of the ways Barth sought to guard against the Christ-principle and/or christomonistic criticisms was by pushing much of his theology in more dynamic directions. The “being in becoming” language is this movement. Christ as event is another instance of the same, and this comes out in Barth’s discussion of the person and work of Christ.
Person and Work:
“What is needed in this matter is nothing more or less than the removal of the distinction between the two basic sections of classical Christology, or positively, the restoration of the hyphen which always connects them and makes them one in the New Testament. Not to the detriment of either the one or the other… Not to cause the doctrine of the person of Christ to be absorbed or dissolved in that of his work, or vice versa. But to give a proper place to them both.” (IV.1)
“[T]his person does not exist apart from this office, nor this office apart from this person.” (DO, 73)
Barth gets at this connection between person and work when he insists that the “he suffered” of the creed includes the entire earthly life of Jesus from birth to the cross. And this makes more sense as we consider the kind of reception the Creator of the world enjoyed. (DO, 102)
If Christ is the center of Barth’s theology, the cross and resurrection are the center of Christology.
The person of Christ is not first to be established and then his work. Rather, for Barth it is actually the event of the cross that establishes both the who and the what. In particular the doctrine of the two natures of Christ is fundamentally built upon the act of reconciliation and not the other way around. The doctrine of the incarnation is built upon the doctrine of reconciliation. And this seems consistent with the concerns of the early church fathers.
Another way to say this is that what is begun at Christmas is completed at Easter. There is movement in the incarnation. What is established in principle in the Jesus conceived by Mary is moving towards a conclusion. The incarnation is completed in some sense in the cross and resurrection. “[I]ncarnation and atonement enclose, embrace, and interpret each other and are really one though distinguishable” (Thompson, 14).
Another aspect of this discussion is the great lengths which Barth goes through to insist upon the “God-ness” of Christ. Christ is the center of his theology because he is utterly convinced that when we consider Christ, we are dealing with the Triune God. And there are numerous implications for thinking and discussing along these lines.
This means that the incarnation should not be seen as something fundamentally different from the way God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Barth emphasizes this in particular with regard to the roles of the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Son as the one who obeys and submits enacts this reality in the incarnation according to the will of the Father, in the power of the Spirit. (See McCormack on Barth and Kenosis, cf. Phil. 2) More on this below.
Thus Barth insists: “There is no greater depth in God’s being and work than that revealed in these happenings and under this name” (CD II/2, 54). There is not a hidden “remainder” in God that is not revealed or disclosed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
“Who God is and what it is to be divine is something we have to learn where God has revealed himself and his nature, the essence of the divine. And if he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ as the God who does this, it is not for us to be wiser then he and to say that it is in contradiction with the divine essence. We have to be ready to be taught by him that we have been too small and perverted in our thinking about him within the framework of a false idea of God.” We need to “reconstitute” our notions of God “in the light of the fact that he does this [i.e. incarnation].” (CD IV/1, 186)
The cross is not merely a symbolic center reflecting the “limit of human existence.” The death of Jesus is not merely another story about the martyrdom of a religious founder. The story of the cross is the “concrete deed and action of God Himself. God changes himself, God himself comes most near, God thinks it not robbery to be divine, that is, He does not hold on to the booty like a robber, but God parts with Himself. Such is the glory of His Godhead, that He can be “selfless,’ that he can actually forgive Himself something.” (DO, 116) This ability to be selfless, to forgive, to part with Himself is what Barth calls the freedom of God.
Barth insists that our definition, our description of God must be built upon the centrality of the incarnation and not something in tension with it. The incarnation is not an afterthought or something particularly different that God does. “Far from being against himself, or at disunity with himself, he has put into effect the freedom of his divine love, the love, in which he is divinely free. He has therefore done and revealed that which corresponds to his divine nature.” (CD IV/1, 186)
And this means that his attributes must be described and illustrated around the incarnation and not with the incarnation become the list of exceptions to the otherwise neat and tidy categories of deity. God’s immutability must not be understood to be at odds with the incarnation. Rather, the incarnation is itself an expression of God’s changeless love and freedom toward his creation, to take both the form of glory and the form of humility, the form of God and the form of a servant. (CD IV/1, 186)
Likewise, God’s omnipresence is seen in the way God dwells in Christ, descends into the lowest parts of the earth, and ascends into heaven. His omnipotence is displayed in the fact that God displays his power even in weakness. His eternity is revealed the fact that he can enter time and remain eternal. And so on.
Reconciliation & Atonement:
“In the doctrine of reconciliation we come to the heart of the theology of Karl Barth.” (Thompson, 47)
Barth dwells on the parable of the Prodigal Son insisting upon a Christological reading which sees God revealing the kind of God that he is. He is the God who goes “into the far country.” By this, Barth means to picture the identification of God with us. This is the fulfillment of the covenant and election. God becomes our brother and thereby identifies with the prodigal nation of Israel.
Berkouwer says, “Through the man Jesus Christ, God himself is revealed as the divine subject in the work of Christ. This conception brings us to the heart of Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation… For Barth, the truth of the whole of dogmatics rests on this God himself.” (cited in Thompson, 49)
“The way of the Son of God into the far country is the way of obedience… the first and inner moment of the mystery of the deity of Christ.” (CD IV/1)
Again, Barth insists that the humiliation, the suffering, and death of Jesus is the revelation of God, and therefore it rests upon the way the Son submits and obeys the Father in the Spirit. But how does this not slide into some form of subordinationism or modalism? Barth says that ironically both of these errors actually push obedience out of the center of God by their formulations. The former is based upon an actual inferiority while the latter has no differentiation allowing such an economy.
The other heading that Barth uses to describe the atonement is “The Judge judged in our place.” Barth says that a judge is “Basically and decisively ... the one whose concern is for order and peace, who must uphold the right and prevent the wrong, so that his existence and coming and work is not in itself and as such a matter for fear, but something which indicates a favor, the existence of one who brings salvation.” (CD IV/1)
Barth cannot get over the fact that Jesus is not only God with us, but he is supremely God for us. And this comes to the fore in numerous ways, not least the crucifixion and death of Jesus. “In this humiliation, God is supremely God … in this death he is supremely alive,” such that “he has maintained and revealed his deity in the passion of this man as his eternal Son.” (Cited by Thompson, 69)
Several implications:
Kenosis: If Christ is the person who does what God does for us then the act of incarnation is in startling ways a revelation of the way God is in himself. For God the Son to take on flesh, humble himself in obedience to the point of suffering and death, is for God-Father-Son-Holy Spirit to be revealed as he is. The Son who submits to the Father in eternity is the Son who submits to the Father in the flesh.
This answers two extremes: The more orthodox Chalcedonian definition can tend to suggest (though not necessarily) that what happens in the incarnation is fundamentally different from the way God is in eternity. And while orthodoxy insists upon the perfect union of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ, there is still a certain amount of tension which tends to push in heretical directions (e.g. docetism or apollinarianism). Yet what Barth insists that this is the polar opposite of the truth. What God does and who God is in the incarnation is in some sense the supreme expression of who he is and what he does. Likewise the less orthodox modern attempts to reconcile vere deus and vere homo have resulted in displacing attributes of God or man (usually the former).
Barth’s Doctrine of Scripture
The supremely personal nature of the event of the incarnation comes to bear on Barth’s description and understanding of Scripture. A static relation-less “being” of Scripture would be an inaccurate revelation of Christ since that is not the way Christ is. While Barth’s doctrine of Scripture would be less careful than we might prefer, his use and appeal to Scripture clearly indicates that it is the supreme and infallible authority in matters of faith and practice. But they are the supreme and infallible voice of the living and active Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit (Jn. 5:39).
Monday, December 17, 2007
Grace and Christology
My time at Erskine Theological Seminary has been well spent. Several professors have made my experience very worth the time, energy, money, late nights, etc. But easily one of the "surprises" of my time here is Dr. Don Fairbairn. I say surprise only in the fact that I did not know him or of him until I was actually already here and getting ready for classes. Fairbairn is the Patristics professor at Erskine. I confess that I already had a predisposition for liking Greek and Latin and the early Church fathers, but Fairbairn has succeeded in impressing me on numerous occasions with his knowledge of the early church, his grasp of the theological-political terrain, and his ability to present and explain key themes and developments in profoundly understandable ways.
Perhaps one of the great blessings of Fairbairn is his ability to sympathetically present many of the practices, positions, and developments of the early church and yet remain wholly comfortable and thankful for his historic reformed heritage. This is one of the great strengths of all of my favorite professors at Erskine. They have the ability to appreciate, study, discuss, give the benefit of the doubt to, and even borrow from the riches of Christendom throughout the ages without feeling threatened, becoming discontent, and remaining thoroughly committed to serving the brothers and sisters right in front of them.
I've just finished Dr. Fairbairn's doctoral thesis which was published in book form as Grace and Christology in the Early Church published by Oxford University Press. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in early Christian studies and particularly those folks interested in such relevant issues as 'union with Christ', 'participation in God,' as well as the various paradigms for understand the nature of grace and the person of God. There is much here to digest, enjoy, and continue to study.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Fairbairn on Cassian on Christ
Don Fairbairn, in Grace and Christology in the Early Church, cites the church father Cassian's reponse to Nestorious, saying, "If it seems unreasonable to you that Mary could give birth to God who was anterior to her, how will it seem reasonable that God was crucified by men? And yet the same God who was crucified himself predicted, 'Shall a man afflict God, for you afflict me? [Mal. 3:8] If then we may not think that the Lord was born of a virgin because he who was born was anterior to her who bore him, how could we believe that God had blood? And yet it was said to the Ephesian elders, 'Feed the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood' [Acts 20:28]. Finally, how can we think that the Author of life was himself deprived of life? And yet Peter says, 'You have killed the Author of life' [Acts 3:15]. (p. 186)
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