Evangelicals and Barth

Two books have recently appeared on the relationship between Barth and evangelicals. One is Engaging with Barth, featuring a piece by Moore College's own Mark Thompson. Another is Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology. Oliver Crisp and Henri Blocher appear in both volumes!

In both books, fair and critical engagement - sometimes sternly critical - is the theme. This is quite an interesting turn: a generation ago, 'Barthian' was a swear word in some evangelical circles. Hopefully, now that this is no longer the case, we can do without the label and enjoy some fruitful reading of Barth's work, without signing off on everything he says.

In KB&ET, Kevin Vanhoozer's essay 'A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation' is a particular stand out, not least for the history of Barth-reception among evangelicals. He explores the frequently expressed accusation that Barth views Scripture as a book that becomes rather than is already God's word. Using terms drawn from Speech-Act Theory to show how the Bible both is and becomes God's Word, he concludes:

...evangelicals and Barth can agree, at the very least, that the Bible is a central ingredient in the economy of God's self-communication. As to ontology, Scripture is divine-human communicative action: the Bible has its being in its locutions and illocutions, yet the Bible becomes what it is when the illuminating Spirit ministers those locutions and illocutions in order to bring about the divinely intended perlocutionary effects. p. 59

Torrance on Ascension

TF Torrance makes a great point about the ascension as really being an intermission between the first and second coming. The two parousias are really the same parousia in two phases... Here's what he says:

The ascension of Christ thus introduces, as it were, an eschatological pause in the heart of the parousia which makes it possible for us to speak of a first advent and a second or final advent of Christ. By withdrawing his bodily presence from contact and sight, that is from historical contact and observation, the ascended Christ holds apart his first advent from his final advent, distinguishing the first advent as his advent in great humility and abasement, and pointing ahead to his final advent in great glory and power, when the eschatological pause will be brought to an end, and we shall see him as we are seen by him... Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 145

 

Vanhoozer on Barth and Evangelicals

Vanhoozer wonders whether he has found a point at which evangelicals can reach somewhat of a rapprochement with Karl Barth, after decades of trench warfare:

...evangelicals and Barth can agree, at the very least, that the Bible is a central ingredient in the economy of God's self-communication. As to ontology, Scripture is divine-human communicative action: the Bible has its being in its locutions and illocutions, yet the Bible becomes what it is when the illuminating Spirit ministers those locutions and illocutions in order to bring about the divinely intended perlocutionary effects. 'A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation' in Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology p. 59

Packer on the failure of contemporary evangelical dogmatics

Since the age of rationalism in the eighteenth century, and of Schleiermacher in the nineteenth century, and more particularly since the work of Kähler, Barth, and Bultmann in the twentieth century, the relation between hermeneutics and biblical authority, and the meaning of each concept in the light of the other, have been constant preoccupations, and the mere mention, with Bultmann, of thinkers like Fuchs and Ebeling will assure us that this state of affairs is likely to continue for some time to come. Now, if we are going to join in this debate to any purpose, we must address ourselves seriously to the problem round which it revolves; otherwise, nothing we say will appear to be ad rem. One reason why the theology of men like Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich (to say nothing of J. A. T. Robinson!) has rung a bell in modern Protestant discussion, in a way no contemporary evangelical dogmatics has done, is that their systems are explicitly conceived and set forth as answers to the hermeneutical question - the question, that is, of how the real and essential message of the Bible may be grasped by the man of today. One reason why evangelical theology fails to impress other Protestants as having more than a tangential relevance to the ongoing theological debate of which we have spoken is that it does not appear to them to have tuned in on this wavelength of interest. That the interest itself is a proper one for evangelicals will not be denied, and it is not to our advantage when we appear to be neglecting it.

 

Interesting stuff! Written in 1975 but still a challenge.

Irenaeus on the Atonement

The most important work of Irenaeus was his Adversus Haereses, written in Greek and translated into Latin. We have already had the chance to speak of his distinctive doctrine of recapitulation. Christ comes to undo the damage done to humanity by Adam. Taking Romans 5 as his starting-point, he speaks of Christ reversing the disobedience which took place on the tree by that obedience which was accomplished on a tree. Jesus both sums up and restores humanity. Two elements of his atonement theology are noteworthy:

1 – he speaks of the atonement as a ransom paid to persuade the devil to release those he holds in bondage.

The Word of God, mighty in all things, and not lacking in His justice, acted justly even against the Apostasy itself, redeeming from it those things which are not His own, not by force, as the Apostasy gained possession of us at the beginning, insatiably seizing what was not its own, but by persuasion, even as it was fit that God should by persuasion and without employing force receive what He wished; so that neither the law of justice should be broken, not the ancient creation of God perish. (V.1.1)

2 – he speaks of the necessity of both divine and human natures in Christ in order to effect an atonement.

He united therefore, as we said before, man to God. For unless man had vanquished the adversary of man, the enemy would not have been justly vanquished; and again, unless God had granted us salvation we should not have had it securely, and unless man had been united to God, he could not have been a partaker of incorruption. (III.18.7)

Calvin does atonement – Institutes II.16

Strange to say, many of the complaints about Calvin's doctrine of the atonement are actually pre-empted in his writing on it in the Institutes. So, for example, he establishes that God's wrath and God's love are not incompatible; and that the willing obedience of the Son is involved (not the abused innocent child of modern caricature).

Two nice sections from him:

 

This is our acquittal: the guilt that held us liable for punishment has been transferred to the head of the Son of God. We must above all remember this substitution, lest we tremble and remain anxious throughout life – as if God's righteous vengeance, which the Son of God has taken upon himself, still hung over us. Institutes II.16.v

Later, commenting on the cry of dereliction, he writes:

...we do not suggest that God was ever inimical or angry toward him. How could he be angry toward his beloved Son...? How could Christ by his intercession appease the Father toward others, if he were himself hateful to God? This is what we are saying: he bore the weight of divine severity, since he was 'stricken and afflicted' by God's hand and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging God. II.16.xi

Schleiermacher on the Atonement

Influenced by the philosophy of Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, Schleiermacher was ordained in the German Reformed Church in 1794. He defined religion as the “feeling of absolute dependence”, Christianity being the highest although not the only true religion. His thoughts on the atonement of Christ are found in The Christian Faith, p. 100-105.

Schleiermacher reacted against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and argued that religion was a matter of the heart, not the head. He speaks of God as the object of our sense of god-consciousness, yet with almost no stress on his personal nature. Sin is spoken of as the struggle between man’s lower consciousness, the natural impulses belonging to this life of senses, and his god-consciousness.

Under this scheme, redemption becomes the liberation of our god-consciousness from its oppression by our lower consciousness. This is accomplished not by the substitutionary sacrifice of the God-man, but by Jesus the archetypal man. Jesus was the man who embodied this god-consciousness. He was not supernatural but his example transcends common humanity.
The Redeemer them is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of his god-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him.

Though enormously influential, Schleiermacher’s view is biblically inadequate, not distinctively Christian and depends in fact on a kind of pantheism. Talk of forgiveness of sins is quite remote to Schleiermacher...

Barth on the atonement

Barth's extended discussion of "atonement" or "reconciliation" is all the more remarkable given the thoroughly liberal cast of his education. The central section in his Church Dogmatics IV.1 is entitled "The Judge Judged in Our Place". The entire section is imbued with the language of guilt, judgement and forgiveness. On the cross we see God exercising a rightful judgement on sinful humanity. The cross itself exposes human self-delusions: that human beings want to be their own judges.

For Barth, the cross of Christ represents the locus in which the righteous judge makes known his judgement of sinful humanity and simultaneously takes that judgement upon himself:

What took place is that the Son of God fulfilled the righteous judgement on us human beings by himself taking our place as a human being and in our place undergoing the judgement under which we had passed…Because God willed to execute his judgement on us in his Son, it all took place in his person, as his accusation and condemnation and destruction. He judged, and it was the judge who was judged, who allowed himself to be judged…Why did God become a human being? So that God as a human being might do and accomplish and achieve and complete all this for us wrongdoers, in order that in this way there might be brought about by him our reconciliation with him, and our conversion to him.

This is strongly substitutionary of course. God exercises his righteous judgement by exposing our sin, by taking it upon himself, and thus by neutralising its power.

Moltmann and the Atonement

Theodicy in one sense drives Moltmann's doctrine of the atonement. Our theology of the atonement (he says) should in some sense justify God if it is to have any relevance in a post-Auschwitz world:

To return today to the theology of the cross means avoiding one-sided presentations of it in its tradition, and comprehending the crucified Christ in the light and context of his resurrection, and therefore of freedom and hope.

To take up the theology of the cross today is to o beyond the limits of the doctrine of salvation and to inquire into the revolution needed in the concept of God. Who is God in the cross of Christ who is abandoned by God?

To take the theology of the cross further at the present day means to go beyond a concern for personal salvation and to inquire about the liberation of man and his new relationship to the reality of the demonic crisis in his society. Who is the true man in the sight of the Son of Man who was rejected and rose again in the freedom of God?

Finally to realise the theology of the cross at the present day is to take seriously the claims of Reformation theology to criticize and reform and to develop it beyond a criticism of the church into a criticism of society. What does it mean to recall the God who was crucified in a society whose official creed is optimism. and which is knee-deep in blood? (The Crucified God, p.4)

Moltmann argues that it is the cross which puts God right in the midst of suffering, indeed the atonement is primarily an event in the Trinitarian history of God. On the cross both the Father and the Son suffer (God is at enmity with God) in a way that brings solidarity with the oppressed and victims of suffering in our world. Moltmann's version of the atonement is powerful and strikingly relevant. You could almost call The Crucified God an evangelistic work. The cruci-centric emphasis of his work is admirable; and he takes seriously the Godward aspect of the atonement. Perhaps we could quibble that he neglects various NT emphases and is selective in his treatment of the texts (neglecting Romans 5, 2 Corinthians 5 and 1 John 2 for example). Further, we need to ask whether Moltmann has presented more an identification of God with suffering rather than an atonement per se. And yet Moltmann's presentation, despite these shortcomings, is a breathtaking account of the cross for our bloody times.

Christus Victor: the lie exposed

The victory on the cross was against a force whose primary tactic is that of the lie. Jesus submits to the lie – the old lie – and so exposes it to the truth. In the wilderness and in Gethsemane, he refuses the temptations of the Satan to follow an alternate path. He combats the lies of Satan with truth-telling. It is almost as if, on the cross, Jesus allows the lie an apparent victory, but by the manner of his dying, shows how corrupt it always was. He also exposes the untruth of the human conspiracy against him. Against his accusers, he is actually proved innocent.


Is this, properly speaking, a victory? I think it ought to be construed as such... Jesus himself speaks about binding up Satan (Mark 3). Satan is the primeval liar, the 'Father of lies'. To defeat him is to expose his lies to the truth - to unmask him. John 8 is a fascinating interchange in which Jesus links these themes, and also indicates that his cross ('when you have lifted up the son of Man') will be the moment of his vindication and triumph.

One of the points I have been trying to make (in Doc 2) is that the use of these metaphors for the atonement radically changes our whole perspective on the original terms. If 'this is victory' as the song says, then it says a lot about how God wins victories. Truth-telling is ultimately the way to defeat the chief of liars...

Right but Repulsive?

At various times debates on this blog and elsewhere have focussed on the issue of the rudeness or otherwise of evangelical speech. Rudeness has its advocates, it has to be said. I remain unconvinced. Stephen Holmes puts it thus:

...it is vital that we (evangelicals) do not become like Cromwell's followers as they are described in the classic humorous telling of English history 1066 and All That...There, Sellar and Yeatman describe the roundheads as 'right but repulsive'. This has been a constant danger for us evangelicals. We know that we hold to the truth about Jesus, and so we can sometimes become smug or aggressive or unpleasant towards those who do not understand the truth. But the truth about the Saviour Jesus is never unpleasant or repulsive; it is beautiful, winsome and attractive, alluring and arresting. And so must our theology- and particularly our preaching – be beautiful, winsome, and alluring and the rest. We are called to live in cheerful, self-deprecating hopefulness. Zealous for truth, yes, but always remembering that God can look after his own interests and doesn't really need our help...

...truth matters, but truth without love is so far from anything Christian that it has ceased to be truth. Christian theologians can never be 'right but repulsive': if they are repulsive, they are so far from Jesus and his gospel as to be just plain wrong. p. 10-11

I guess you have to allow room for the fact that people find the truth offensive because it convicts them. But it is the truth that is offensive, not the truth-speaker...

Penal Substitution and Polemics

 

One of the things I noticed during my time in England is the way in which English evangelicals cannot stop alluding to and referencing the work of Jesus in terms of the penal substitutionary model. Even when a text does not teach this view of the atonement, they will tend to smuggle it in somehow – which is not a problem necessarily: preachers ought to show how texts connect with the whole of theology. The PSA has been a matter of great controversy amongst English evangelicals of late, and I couldn't help thinking that there was some over-reacting going both ways. That is, the depictions of the PSA by the opponents (Chalke and Mann, Joel Green) were pathetic caricatures of PSA as it is explained by the likes of Stott and Packer. But, then again, if the emphasis in hymns, preaching, service leading and prayers is anything to go by, then this model of the atonement, whatever one might say about its centrality and indispensability, was being over-emphasised to the point of cliché.

And what is more, a point of intra-church dispute has an effect on evangelism. One of the reasons that the critics of PSA have come forward is their concern that this depiction of the atonement has lost traction in terms of mission; that it was nonsensical and irrelevant in terms of contemporary western (and other cultures). The response? Well, conservatives ONLY evangelise in terms of PSA – figuring I guess that the manifest errors of our critics mean that the opposite of what they say must be all the more true.

So, I was intrigued to read this in Packer's essay 'What did the cross achieve?' -

…constricted in interest by the preoccupations of controversy, and absorbed in the task of proclaiming the one vital truth about the cross which others disregarded or denied, 'upholders of the penal theory have sometimes so stressed the thought that Christ bore our penalty that they have found room for nothing else. Rarely have they in theory denied the value of other theories, but sometimes they have in practice ignored them.(citing Leon Morris). p. 26

My experience indicates that this tendency is still in evidence, alas…

BB Warfield, from The Person and Work of Christ

 

It is absurd we are told – nay wicked – blasphemous with awful blasphemy – to speak of propitiating such a God as this, of reconciling Him, of making satisfaction to Him. Love needs no satisfying..

Well certainly, God is Love. And we praise Him that we have better authority for telling our souls this glorious truth than the passionate assertion of these somewhat crass theorizers. God is Love! But it does not in the least follow that He is nothing but love. God is Love: but Love is not God and the formula 'Love' must therefore ever be inadequate to express God. (p. 384)

God is Love does not, as Warfield explains, negate the need for an atonement which references both human sin and the divine wrath against it... In fact, I would go so far to say, that the love and the wrath are not contrary or alternate impulses within the divine personality, but are coherently connected within it. As Warfield puts it, (and couldn't he write some prose!):

The love of God cannot be apprehended in its length and breadth and height and depth – all of which pass knowledge – save as it is apprehended as the love of a God who turns from the sight of sin with inexpressible abhorrence, and burns against it with unquenchable indignation. (p. 386)

However hard a circle this may be to square, the gospel of the cross of Christ demands it...

Barrett on love, and other things

CK Barrett comments on 1 Corinthians 13

We see but 'through a glass darkly':

Even in the Gospel man does not fully know God, and he ought not to deceive himself into thinking that he does; but God knows him, and this is the all-important truth, for when God knows, recognizes, man, he acts on our behalf...Man's knowledge is not only dependent on God's gracious initiative, it is at best partial.

But that, of course, doesn't reckon with faith, hope and love, which overcome imperfect knowledge. Barrett makes the interesting point that love is superior to faith and hope because God himself never needs to have faith or hope: these are human responses to divine words and acts. It is otherwise with love:

Love is an activity, the essential activity, of God himself, and when men love either him or their fellow-men they are doing (however imperfectly) what God does. (p. 311)

Leon Morris - The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross

Leon Morris's work is of ongoing service to evangelical theology, though he wrote his best stuff in the 1960s or even earlier. Meticulous, diligent, unpolemical, he was not cowed by the latest scholarly opinion delivered down from on great height by the likes of C.H. Dodd and co, but rather got to work again on the text of scripture: what does it actually say? In The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955) he insisted that the biblical metaphor of 'blood' was more often used in reference to violent death than to 'life' (as had been suggested). He defended the idea of propitiation 'because there is a tendency to think that those scholars who have equated the Greek term with expiation have said the last word...the Bible has a great deal to say about the wrath of God, and ...it leaves us in no doubt as to the fact that, although God is a God of love, yet He does not regard sin complacently, as something which does not matter greatly. On the contrary, sin calls forth the implacable hostility of His holy nature, and until something is done about it this puts the sinner in an unenviable position...' (p. 277) Furthermore, he defends the idea of substitution as thoroughly biblical and demanded by the major biblical atonement metaphor. Substitution when we speak of Christ's death, as Morris puts it, 'is not the substitution of a casual stranger, but of one who stands in the closest possible relationship with those for whom He died.' (p. 279)

Stephen Holmes on Penal Substition

Some great stuff from The Wondrous Cross:

...we should not try to understand the cross of Christ through thinking about sacrifice, or love, or anything else in the world; rather, we should understand sacrifice, and love, and every other human reality by thinking about the cross of Christ. And if we take the view that only one of the stories of salvation is true, we end up denying this. (p. 78)

It seems to me that the key insight of any account of penal subsitution is precisely this: God takes the due punishment on himself...We cannot tell stories about an angry God and a loving saviour without being false to the Scripture and the gospel. The story that must be told is that punishment is due, and that the holy loving God takes it upon himself. (p. 95)

In being born as one of us, in baptism in the Jordan, in being made sin for us, God the Son identifies with us, so much so that, without injustice, he may bear our guilt and we may enjoy his blessedness. It is a marvellous exchange, which we cannot explain fully, but which we can begin to glimpse the possibility of. (p. 98)

Pneumatikon in 1 Cor 12:1

What are the 'spirituals' that Paul is talking about in 1 Cor 12? Usually the translators expand the word as 'spiritual gifts' (ie, NIV): but the 'gifts' is implied, and since what follows is actually about the unity of the believers in the spirit and the single source of the different gifts... well, it seems peremportory to translate this word 'spiritual gifts' in my view... the charismata come in further down the paragraph, as a matter of fact.

JI Packer on the atonement

Packer's classic 1973 essay 'What did the cross achieve?' is a terrific corrective to what he calls 'rationalistic' versions of atonement theology of both conservative and non-conservative types. Some of the most interesting stuff comes at the beginning of the essay when he puts out some methodological insights...

Thus:

Here as elsewhere methodological rationalism became in the seventeenth century a worm in the Reformed bud, leading in the next two centuries to a large-scale withering of its theological flower. p. 5

Packer asks 'what sort of knowledge of God's actuon in Christ's death may we have?' (p. 6)

The answer.. is faith-knowledge: by faith we know that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Yes, indeed, but what sort of knowledge is faith-knowledge? It is a kind of knowledge of which God is both giver and content. It is a Spirit-given acquaintance with divine realities, given through acquaintance with God's word. ....it is a unique kind of knowledge which, though real, is not full; it is knowledge of what is discernible within a circle of light against the background of a larger darkness; it is, in short, knowledge of a mystery, the mystery of the living God at work.

the theological significance of the life of Jesus Christ

Given the fact of the incarnation, what is the theological significance of the life of Jesus Christ? Is his life merely a prelude to his passion?

“How can anyone say that the rest of Jesus’ life is not substantially for our redemption? In that case what would be its significance? A mere superfluous narrative?" (K.Barth Dogmatics in Outline p.101)

“It is curious that evangelicals often link the substitutionary act of Christ only with his death, and not with his incarnate person and life – that is dynamite for them! They thereby undermine the radical nature of substitution, what the New Testament calls katallage, Christ in our place and Christ for us in every respect. (T.F.Torrance Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking p.30)

“We affirm that Christ’s saving work included both his life and his death o our behalf. We declare that faith in the perfect obedience of Christ by which he fulfilled all the demands of the Law of God on our behalf is essential to the Gospel. We deny that out salvation was achieved merely or exclusively by the death of Christ without reference to his life of perfect righteousness.” (The Committee for Evangelical Unity in the Gospel incl. Packer, Carson, Sproul, Woodbridge, Christianity Today 43, 1999)

Marr on Henson

I have now read David Marr's book The Henson Case. As always, Marr shows his gift for lucid narrative and readable prose - the gift which makes him one of Australia's best journalists. Having read quite a lot of his work, I am familiar with his techniques of scene-setting and so on now - it is amusing to see them coming! But they work.

A couple of things are interesting: one is that the Henson case was by and large not driven by religious groups but by an almost entirely secular form of outrage. Marr tries to say that is the 'old Christian fear of nakedness', and he mentions the police commissioner's faith at key points. But he fails to mention that other protagonists in the story - who take as far as Marr is concerned more positive roles in it - have religious convictions too. Malcolm Turnbull comes rather well.

But it is true that the moral panic about the depiction of children in art has not come from the traditional sort of moral crusader - your Rev Fred Nile, or a bishop or two. It comes from somewhere else. I am still trying to grasp where.

The book is rather light on analysis and strong on narrative. We never find what Marr himself really thinks about the art works themselves... though he does admit that many of Henson's own fans find these images disturbing and ambiguous. But one moment of insight that Marr comes to is this:

One wet afternoon in Canberra a senior policeman put into words something I'd never quite grasped: that Australians are not satisfied with just expressing disapproval. We want action. The law, he said, sorts art, film and books into three categories: those free to be published; those that need to be classified; and those that must be prosecuted. But Australians tend to jumble the categories. When we disapprove of something we want governments to leap into action. Many who deeply disliked the Henson picture weren't content to express their disapproval and leave it at that. They want something done about them. What made the Henson case rare in the history of these rows was that familiar demands for action so swiftly collapsed. The politicians were brought to order by their own officials...Australia seems caught in these confusions: of personal taste with public danger; of passionate difference and pleas f0r punishment; of decent concern and bullying restrictions. p. 135

I think at this point I concur. It comes from a sense of moral dispowerment - that there is no way to speak effectively into the public sphere about this deep sense of unease that many of us felt at Henson's art (and having glimpsed some of the photos in Marr's book my sense of unease is confirmed). Partly, secular liberalism is itself to blame for this disempowerment, because it challenges many of these expressions of moral sentiment as illegitimate for public discussion; and because it has promoted instead a 'what works for you' ethic which satisfies no-one, actually. The resort to law, or at least to tabloid media, is a mark of our immaturity as a culture: that we can't actually decide together that (say) Henson's art does not contribute positively to our society and is deeply insensitive to the context in which we live, and just ignore him.