“There can be no Christian truth which does not, from the very first, contain within itself as its basis the fact that from and to all eternity God is the electing God. There can be no tenet of Christian doctrine which, if it is to be a Christian tenet, does not reflect both in form and content this divine electing. … There is no height or depth in which God can be God in any other way” (CD II/2, p. 77).

Karl Barth’s theology defies glib appropriations. One could say, Dr. Shao Kai Tseng’s book, Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology,^[1] highlights how complex and layered Barth’s lapsarian theology really is. Does Tseng really intend on overturning what has been generally accepted as a truism in Barth studies,^[2] namely, that Karl Barth was a Supralapsarian? Dr. Tseng marshals an impressive amount of evidence for this claim (evidence spanning from Romerbrief II through CD IV/1), and even offers a painstaking survey of the Reformed lapsarian debates as he argues that Barth inadvertently went astray at a few key points.

In the following review article I will trace out Tseng’s central argument (that Karl Barth holds to an essentially Infralapsarian view of the object of predestination with Supralapsarian elements) and, in my conclusion, offer an appraisal of the tenability of Tseng’s conclusion. Overall Tseng’s work deserves to be commended. His contribution to the Trinity debate, in Barth scholarship, is interesting to say the least. And while I disagree with some of his moves, I doubt many will find fault with the breadth of Tseng’s research. It is for that reason alone that I believe George Hunsinger may be right that Tseng’s contribution in the present volume will prove to be a lasting one.

Because Tseng’s work is so comprehensive, an adequate summary of the contents of this book would prove to be taxing on the patience of any reader. For that reason I will only offer a detailed summary of few sections, offering a cursory summary of others. I will be looking at chapters 1-2 because they contain the definitions and history necessary to understand the complex discussions that take place in chapters 3-8. I will then conclude with some critical remarks.

Chapter 1: Definitions

This section of the book came as an unexpected treat. Tseng carefully and clearly delineates the differences between the Infralapsarian and Supralapsarian camps in a way that prepares the reader to properly assess Barth’s own read on the tradition. The historiographical work in this chapter will no doubt draw many disparate readers.

The Lapsarian debates of the Reformation and Post-Reformation periods are not always easy to follow. Tseng comments, “The lapsarian controversy was essentially a theodicy inquiry” (Tseng, 47). The question being, how are we to understand God’s relationship to the “eternal decrees of double predestination, creation and permission of the fall” (Ibid.), in light of a commitment to His sovereignty and holiness? The search for an answer among the Reformed and Post-Reformed theologians is exacerbated by the variety of positions held.

To begin with, both Infra and Supralapsarian schools agree “that all humankind’s actual fall in history was eternally decreed by God, thus Adam’s sin was part of God’s eternal plan rather than a surprise to God” (Tseng, 48). The difference between the two positions lay in their placement of the Fall with regards to the decree of election. In other words, for the Supralapsarian “humankind’s fall presupposes election and reprobation” whereas for the Infralapsarian “election and reprobation presuppose the divine decree of the Fall” (Ibid.). So the truly distinguishing aspect of the two camps is their conception how they answer the question, “who is the object of [God’s] predestination [obiectum praedestinationis]?” (Ibid.) For the Infralapsarian, the obiectum is fallen humanity, while for the Supralapsarian the obiectum is unfallen humanity.

Tseng helpfully notes that these definitions (man as obiectum praedestinationis) do not refer to “humans in created actuality” but to “God’s eternal conception of the object of predestination” (Tseng, 53). Therefore, the decree does not come as a response to human sin on the Infralapsarian account. Tseng explains, “God’s foresight, Quodam-modo [in a certain respect], is strictly within God’s eternal predestination. … [Man as fallen] is strictly God’s eternal conception of the object of election-reprobation in God’s mind” (Tseng, 54).

Predictably, the differing conceptions of the object of predestination leads to a different “ordo decretorum” (order of decrees). For the Infralapsarian, the decree to create precedes the decree of the Fall of mankind. For the Supralapsarian, the decrees of election and reprobation precede even the decree to create.

These basic categories are employed throughout the book as Tseng, in meticulous detail, charts Barth’s theological development. Barth’s appropriation of elements from both Infra- and Supralapsarianism is complex and at times difficult to follow, but Tseng serves as a reliable guide, having himself trod the well worn paths of Barth’s major theological works. But he doesn’t stick merely to the old paths—he does seek to make a significant (though not earth shattering) adjustment, arguing that Barth is basically an Infralapsarian. He then attempts to bring this insight to bear in the current debate (which has cooled significantly) over the relationship between Trinity and election in Barth’s theology.

Chapter 2: Barth’s Lapsarian Position Reassessed

Barth’s extended footnote in CD II/2 §33 contains a lengthy engagement with the Reformed lapsarian debates. Tseng summarizes Barth’s position as Supralapsarian with regard to the ordo decretorum, but not with regard to the obiectum, which he conceives to be unfallen (Tseng, 63). He even candidly remarks, “as far as the object of election is concerned, it would be fair to say that he [Barth] is basically though not simply infralapsarian” (Tseng, 62).

While the Supra/infralapsarian controversy may retain some room for conversation within Barth studies, one thing is undisputed: Barth had no place for a decretum absolutum or any decree that is located outside of the decree of God to be for humanity in Christ. But, as is well known, Barth is unwilling to totally jettison the idea of double predestination. The problem with both lapsarian camps, for Barth, was their inchoate natural theology. Barth’s solution is to absorb supralapsarianism and recalibrate it along Christological lines. “In a nutshell, Barth’s mature understanding of double-predestination is that election is in Christ—it is by him and with him” (Tseng, 64).

This leads Barth to adopt a (basically) supralapsarian position (with regards to the ordo), due to the “teleological priority of election-reprobation over all other divine decrees,” that exists at the very center of supralapsarianism (Tseng, 65). In other words, Barth adopts Supralapsarianism (with the intent to recalibrate/purify it) because “[e]lection is the sum of the Gospel” (CD II/2, 3).

Throughout this chapter, Tseng identifies several weak points and inaccuracies in Barth’s understanding of the Reformed lapsarian positions. But most interesting is his handling of John Owen’s own flavor of infralapsarianism. Briefly, Owen holds to a sort of Christological infralapsarianism whereby, “all the decrees are centered on God’s works in Christ [so] that predestination is designed to manifest God’s self-giving glory in the incarnate Son” (Tseng, 73). One of Tseng’s most interesting contributions is his bringing Barth and the English Puritans into conversation with one another.

Tseng also engages contemporary interpretations of Barth, particularly that of Edwin Van Driel who argues that “since election on Barth’s view is God’s decision to become incarnate, Barth’s doctrine of election is also supralapsarian” (Tseng, 75). Van Driel suggests a sort of Christological supralapsarianism in which “God had motives to become incarnate that were not contingent upon sin” (Tseng, 74-75). The problem with this view, according to Tseng, is it fails to yield sufficient attention to the infralapsarian elements of Barth’s theology. In other words, Van Driel’s interpretation is not sufficiently dialectical in that it does not recognize that election in Christ presupposes sin, but sin could not exist apart from God’s decision to elect in Christ (Tseng, 76).

While Tseng wishes to argue vigorously for the basically infralapsarian character of Barth’s doctrine of election, he carefully sets up a couple of provisos: First, Barth’s infralapsarianism is closer to supralapsarianism to the extent that it places an “emphasis on the teleological priority of election-in-Christ is closer to supralapsarianism” (Tseng, 79), and second, “[w]ith regard to the obiectum praedestinationis, Barth is also not simply infralapsarian, because he identifies Christ, who is without sin in himself, as the proper object of election; sinful humanity becomes the object of election only by partaking of Christ” (Tseng, 79). What Tseng is trying to avoid is any undialectical, straightforward assertion that fails to do justice to the complexity of Barth’s dialectical theology.

Chapter 3: Römerbrief II

“This possibility, described with the most paradoxical expression ‘impossible-possibility,’ is conceived as something foreign to the reality of the world, an alien power whose potency can in no way derive from the energy (as the Greeks called reality) of the world; it is indeed impossible within the context of the world” (Jungel, Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, 66).

The second edition of Barth’s Romans commentary was the “clearing away of debris (aufraumungsarbeit)” (McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936, 245) created by the publication of the first edition in 1918. And as anyone who’s ever made an attempt on the Römerbrief knows, Barth’s writing style can be frustrating to follow. Barth’s form was “expressionistic” and “Kierkegaardian,” often “indirect,” not intending “to convince the reader of an argument as it does to clear away obstacles to the Spirit’s work of making her to be a witness to the truth” (McCormack, Critically Realistic, 243).

In this chapter Tseng argues that this stage of Barth’s theological development bears evidence of a lean towards infralapsarianism. While Barth’s doctrine of election could still be described as basically Supralapsarian, the infralapsarian elements are undeniably present. This infralapsarian trajectory is made possible by the “impossible-possiblity” dialectic that holds together the theology of Romans II (Tseng, 86).

To guide the reader, Tsung notes “[s]even impossible possibilities,” human impossibilities which are overcome by the gracious act of God in the “process of Aufhebung^[3]” (Tseng, 87). These impossibilities do not correspond to man’s sin, but to “God and God’s act” (Tseng, 88). It is revelation rendered subjectively impossible by the Fall that must be overcome. Tseng explains, “Given that God has revealed Godself to enable human knowledge of God, what is it that made this impossibility possible?”^[4] (Tseng, 88). That is to say, man as sinner cannot know God. Sin has destroyed the immediacy with God enjoyed by our prelapsarian parents. Sin brought death and death brought time. We have passed from Creation^[5] (unfallen) to world (fallen), and the result was a profound noetic rupture (Tseng, 90).^[6]

But Barth, as we noted earlier, presupposes the possibility of revelation. Or more precisely, he understands revelation not as “an uncritical, straightforward possibility,” but as an “impossible made possible and yet remaining impossible in this world” (Tseng, 89).^[7] Mankind in its unfallen state had no need of revelation because “human knowledge of God was immediate because God was directly intuitable to humanity [emphasis mine]” (Tseng, 90). This state is designated by Barth as “Creation,” which as such is “beyond our observation” (Ibid.). Therefore, revelation, “the event central to which is God’s act of election” necessitates an understanding of mankind as Fallen (Tseng, 89). Now the infralapsarian elements become a bit clearer. The “impossible-possible” dialectic presupposes a fallen world and humanity (Tseng, 91). If revelation presupposes a fallen humanity, and election is at the center of revelation, election for Barth must presuppose (at this phase of his development) a fallen humanity.

Given the thesis of this book, the 7th “impossible-possibility,” namely election, is of particular interest. The decree of election (not a hidden “decretum absolutum”) originates in the freedom of God, so that “an individuals faith or unbelief depends entirely on God’s sovereign decision” (Tseng, 103). But for Barth, election is the overcoming of temporality, not for some, but for all. Double predestination therefore refers to humanity en toto. This means, election is predicated upon the rejection (reprobation) of mankind. Tseng notes, the reprobation/election dialectic corresponds to the faith/unbelief of all mankind. He explains, “[Barth’s] predestinarian thinking on this level is clearly supralapsarian: ‘election in Christ’ precedes ‘the divine predestination of men to destruction,’ and it is for the purpose of election that God predestined the fall” (Tseng, 106). Humanity is, in pre-temporal eternity, rejected (reprobated) for the sake of election. But as Tseng again notes, “Barth’s formulation of double predestination on the present-actualistic level does not fit neatly into any lapsarian theory of Reformed theology, even in the minimalist sense” (Tseng, 107). With this in mind Tseng argues that Barth still had infralapsarian “patterns of thought” (Ibid.) present during this phase of his theological development. These patterns are most clearly manifested in the “impossible-possibility” dialectic, which in and of itself is not enough to overcome the supralapsarian elements.^[8]

Chapter 4: The Göttingen-Münster Period

After the publication of the Römerbrief Barth was called to Göttingen to serve as the professor of Reformed theology, but it is at Göttingen that Barth encountered Reformed orthodoxy and discovered the “pneumatological ordo salutis” as well as the “anhypostatic–enhypostatic” distinctions (Tseng, 114-115). These two breakthroughs had a significant impact on Barth’s doctrine of revelation. The pneumatological insights culled were used to formulate a doctrine of revelation that simultaneously affirms its (revelation’s) possibility with God and impossibility with man. It is a “pneumatologically charged” doctrine of revelation (Tseng, 116.) These Christological and pneumatological discoveries will shape Barth’s understanding of the objective and subjective possibilities of revelation.

During this period, Barth produced a significant work entitled the Göttingen Dogmatics [GD], and while there is sharp discontinuity between the GD and the Römerbrief, there is some continuity as well. This continuity is particularly noticeable, according to Tseng, in the assumption of the givenness of revelation, that is, as an “a posteriori given” (Tseng, 122). In other words, the consideration of the possibility of revelation presupposes the reality of revelation (Ibid.). Tseng explains, “For Barth the central significance of the enhypostatic–anhypostatic union is again epistemological: it is the only way in which revelation is possible” (Tseng, 126). The impossible-possibility dialectic is replaced with the question, how do we encounter God without ceasing to be human (temporal) and how does God reveal Himself without ceasing to be who He is (eternal)? The answer is found in the union of eternity and temporality in the Incarnation. This means, Barth’s Christology at this stage is not “primarily soteriological” (Tseng, 127), but is intended to bridge the “epistemological gap” caused by sin, that exists between God and humankind (Ibid.). This implies that the Incarnation was a response to the Fall. Tseng explains, “God’s decision to become incarnate logically follows God’s decision to reverse the fall, thus his Christology during this period leans very clearly toward infralapsarianism, even more so than in his mature Christocentric doctrine of election, in which he claims that Christ eternally incarnandus is the beginning of all God’s ways and works” (Tseng, 128).

In addition to the retrieval of a two nature Christology, Barth acquired (from Calvin and the Reformed orthodox) the “notion of faith as the Holy Spirit’s work to effect the subjective possibility [of revelation]” (Tseng, 130). This entails an understanding of humanity as fallen and thus incapable of discerning or responding to the Gospel. The inward work (call) of the Holy Spirit, however, makes the saving response of faith and obedience possible. For Barth, this means, the Holy Spirit ensures that revelation is not only objectively possible but subjectively possible as well (Tseng, 131). “A sinner has no choice between faith and unbelief apart from God since unbelief is inherent to fallen humanity” (Tseng, 134). This means, both belief and unbelief are grounded in God’s veiling and unveiling (McCormack, Critically Realistic, 250) and so are only conceivable with reference to God’s free decision to conceal and reveal (Tseng, 135). This move by Barth involves a shift towards an actualistic doctrine of predestination, whereby, God’s decree of election is understood to occur in eternity, with eternity understood as “eternity in actuality” (Tseng, 136). Now this has some import for Tseng’s thesis, in that, Barth’s infralapsarian argument only applies to God’s eternal decretive will insofar as it is “manifested in present actualities” (Tseng, 141); it does not speak to a static (as Barth would understand it) conception of election and reprobation before the foundation of the world” (Ibid.). In other words, God’s will to overcome sin is the sole foundation for the Incarnation, which clearly leans in the direction of infralapsarianism.

Chapter 5: The Bonn Years

In chapter 5 Tseng examines Barth’s Christology and doctrine of predestination in light of Bruce McCormack’s magisterial work, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936. The first half of the chapter includes a brief summary and exposition of McCormack’s thesis^[9] and exposition of Barth’s work, Anselm: Fides Querns Intellectum. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to CD I/1-2. In the first half Tseng argues that Barth’s work on Anselm is “generally unconcerned with the lapsarian question” (Tseng, 149). The second half argues that Barth’s doctrine of election in CDI/1 continues to move in an infralapsarian direction (Tseng, 163).

According to Tseng, CD I/1 “is the opus that best represents Barth’s theology in 1930-1935” for it is during this period that he hones in on “the Word of God itself (rather than the subjective-objective distinction),” which causes Barth’s doctrines of “Christology and predestination” to “become much more closely interwoven” (Tseng, 160). Furthermore, it is in the context of CD I/1 that we see a shift in emphasis for Barth. Now the emphasis lay in answering the question, “How can theology as human talk be truly talk about God?” (Tseng, 163). Barth answers, it is only possible “on the basis of divine election” (Tseng, 164). Election makes this speech possible insofar as “God Himself acts towards men” (Tseng, 165) and so gathers men and women into the Church. The act of election is accomplished by the Holy Spirit when God creates what is lacking in man (a relationship with his creator) via “His own presence in that creature” so that God in man establishes the divine relationship. God is therefore “the life of the creature” (CD I/1, 450; Tseng, 165). This is the work of election. God makes man capable and willing to receive revelation by creating faith in man, closing any gap between revelation and reconciliation (Tseng, 167). Tseng argues that this indicates an infralapsarian leaning in that the word of God itself (revelation/reconciliation) assumes the supposition of man’s sinfulness (Ibid.).

Tseng also appeals to Barth’s famous threefold distinction of the Word of God,^[10] in particular the word as “proclaimed” (Tseng, 167), as additional evidence of a basically infralapsarian orientation. “Proclamation and the church are earthly media that are inherently secular because believers are sinners” (Ibid.). Scripture is indirect and secular, only becoming revelation through God’s gracious act. Revelation is the logos ensarkos (Tseng, 169). Revelation is incarnation for it bridges the gap between God and man, restoring a once-lost immediacy (Ibid.). And so, according to Tseng, Barth’s basically infralapsarian bent surfaces in the form of the “infralapsarian orientation of Barth’s Christology.” He explains, “God’s will to become incarnate presupposes God’s intention to confront humanity’s sin, without which God’s speech to humanity would have been direct, and the Word incarnate would not have been necessary for human knowledge of God” (Tseng, 171).

Chapter 6: Gottes Gnadenwahl

“Gottes Gnadenwahl” (God’s gracious election) was understood by Bruce McCormack to signal the decisive shift^[11] in Barth’s doctrine of election, but as Tseng points out, McCormack adjusts his thesis a bit, indicating the change “was not immediate but gradual” (Tseng, 177). Tseng’s own contribution includes an examination of “the marriage of Christology and predestination in Gottes Gnadenwahl – the decisively new idea – in relation to Barth’s lapsarian treatment of the two doctrines” (Tseng, 179). Basically, Tseng sets forth a very in depth read of Gottes Gnadenwahl in which he argues that reprobation and election must be understood as mutually interdependent ideas, “in election the purpose and rationality of reprobation are fulfilled and preserved” (Tseng, 202).

In short, in this chapter Tseng demonstrates how Barth’s “Christology and doctrine of election converge throughout his treatment of the reprobation and election of all humankind in Christ as a process of Aufhebung” (Tseng, 210). In other words, in the event of the Incarnation, God becomes human without ceasing to be God and endures reprobation vicariously for all humanity so that all may be elect in Christ (Tseng, 211). This is God’s “act of election.” Obviously, this “act of election” presupposes a fallen humanity. Tseng explains, in “speaking of God as being-in-act, [Barth] begins not with the immanent Trinity, but with the particular person and work of Christ as God’s act of election, which mediates and reveals God to sinners, and since this act of election is to take care of the problem of sin, it carries a deeply infralapsarian aspect” (Tseng, 211).

Chapter 7: CD II/2

What becomes increasingly apparent in this important chapter of Tseng’s work, is a motivation of Barth’s that drove his revision of the classical Reformed categories of “infra” and “supralapsarianism.” By applying a radically actualistic Christocentrism to his doctrine of election, Barth is seeking to jettison any vestige of (what he considers) caprice in the counsel of God (Tseng, 234). This is, in part what led Barth to abolish the decretum absolutum^[12] of Reformed orthodoxy in favor of a doctrine of the Incarnation in which God is wholly revealed as being eternally Deus pro nobis, “the One who loves in freedom” (CD II/2, 3).

It is in the second half volume of the Church Dogmatics that Barth finally puts to paper his famous statement that Jesus Christ “is both the electing God and the elected man in One” (CD II/2, 3). Tseng explains, “Since the incarnate one, who is the electing decree of God, is himself the electing God, to know Jesus is to know the God who elects” (Tseng, 215). Not only do we know the electing God solely through Christ, “human beings are united to Christ on the basis of their consubstantiality with Christ” (Ibid.).^[13] But even in His act of election, according to Tseng, God remains in Himself immutably and eternally what He “is in [His] eternal trinitarian act ad intra” (Tseng, 216).

From the outset Tseng has rightly argued that Barth sought to free the love of God from an “arbitrary” hidden decree. Tseng argues that for Barth, God’s love is founded upon His eternal Triunity and aseity. “God’s covenantal love [with mankind] perfectly corresponds to the intratrinitarian love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this love draws the creature into union with God in Christ” (Tseng, 219). In other words, according to Tseng, God’s ability to love the creature in freedom is a possibility only because of His aseity (Tseng, 217), though we have no access to this idea of God in Himself abstracted from His sovereign decision to be for mankind (Tseng, 218). Tseng notes, this understanding of God’s freedom implies a freedom even from aseity (Tseng, 219). This lack of constraint is what allows God to be for mankind. Additionally, it means that even in God’s decision to take the form of a servant, He still remains “utterly free” (Ibid.). So on this understanding, Deus pro nobis is understood as an act of “self-determination” not “self-constitution” (Tseng, 220).

All of these considerations touch upon Barth’s lapsarian thinking to the extent that Barth understood Incarnation to serve “the purpose of God’s will to seek and create fellowship with the creature” (Tseng, 224). At face-value this would seem to be supralapsarian (unfallen humanity as the object of predestination), but there is more: “this seeking and creating of fellowship already began with creation, and the incarnation, which is for the ‘reconciliation of fallen man,’ is not a continuation but a supersession of the work of creation” (Ibid.). The humanity sought by God is fallen, which indicates a lean towards infralapsarianism.

If we’re to follow Barth as he seeks to purge his doctrine of election of any vestige of arbitrariness or abstract speculation, we are to, according to Tseng, understand Christ Himself to be the “loving covenant with humankind” (Tseng, 225). The concrete expression of God’s love for us, and the “immutable decree” that so determines His being that “He could not be God without it” (Tseng, 226). To say it another way, God could not act “apart from Christ the God man-proleptically present in pretemporal eternity by virtue of divine election to be the beginning of all God’s ways and works” (Ibid.). So Christ is the decree of election, but He is also the electing God (Subject) and elected humanity (Object). But the truly revolutionary nature of this formulation is in, according to Tseng, “Barth’s identification of Jesus Christ as electing God” as it applies not only to the Logos asarkos, but to the “Incarnate God-man” (Logos incarnatus) who is “the beginning of all God’s ways and works from and to all eternity” (Tseng, 227).

By using the concept of prolepsis, Tseng (following Hunsinger) argues for an “abiding distinction between Christ’s two natures and thus the subject and object of election in the Person of Christ” (Tseng, 228). And just as Jesus as electing God signaled a significant re-calibration of Reformed Christianity, so does the formulation of Christ as “object of election” represent a dramatic shift as this entails “that the Son of God, and not merely the human Jesus, is the object of election” (Ibid.).

Returning again to the matter of Barth’s lapsarian thinking, Tseng notes that Barth’s Christological formulation reflects a pull towards infralapsarianism with regards to “the logical relations between election and creation” (Ibid.). For election, in this instance, involves the union of humanity with Christ with reference to creation, contra to the supralapsarian position “that election does not presuppose God’s decree of creation” (Tseng, 229). Tseng goes on to argue, along these lines that, “election-in-Christ includes within itself reprobation and judgement” (Tseng, 230). In one sense, Christ is the only reprobate man, but in another sense by way of humanity’s participation in Christ, “the reprobation that Christ alone suffered also applies to all humankind that is in Him” (Tseng, 231). So election was for the purpose of “negating humanity’s sin that negates God” (Tseng, 232). This process of Aufhebung is basically infralapsarian in structure as it envisages humanity’s sin as that which is to be overcome via election. (Ibid.) That said, there is also a supralapsarian aspect present in that “reprobation serves the purpose of election” (Ibid.). To say it another way, “God’s Yes-because it is Aufhebung – presupposes God’s No” (Tseng, 234).

Given this inner tension in Barth’s lapsarian theology, Tseng turns to answer the question: What is meant by “purified” supralapsarianism? (Tseng, 234-235). In short, Barth’s fear is that an “order of decrees” that is composed based on the economy of salvation will leave room for natural theology (Tseng, 235). Tseng contends that Barth mistakenly identified this incipient natural theology in infralapsarianism but not in supralapsarianism which he believed would “[allow] him to seek to know all God’s ways and works as finding their beginning in the election of Jesus Christ” (Ibid.). To say it another way, Barth “purifies” supralapsarianism by re-calibrating it along actualistic Christological lines: “Barth’s solution is that instead of considering election and its object in abstracto as he thinks Reformed orthodoxy does, he insists on treating them in concreto, which for him means in Christo” (Tseng, 237).

Tseng concludes this chapter with an important guiding observation, “Even with regard to the obiectum, however, Barth’s basic lapsarian thesis does not resonate with infralapsarianism in any simple way [emphasis mine]: for him the object of election is first and finally Jesus Christ, who is in himself without sin and became sin for us only by imputation and participation. Sinful humanity is the object of election only by participation in Christ” (Tseng, 240). This sentence is important for a few reasons, but most notably, for its implied hermeneutic. Barth defies formalism. By this I simply mean, Barth defies straightforward categorizations. This is made abundantly clear by Tseng throughout the entirety of his book, and it is in my opinion, one of the great strengths of the work. It presents a forthright argument that seeks to do justice to the complexity and dialectical nature and development of Barth’s theology.

Chapter 8: CD IV/1

“[T]he Trinity-election debate in recent Barth scholarship reflects at least a certain tension in Barth’s own theology.” (Tseng, 280)

For many, chapter 8 will prove to be the most engaging (and frankly enjoyable) section of this book as Tseng has reserved most of his critical remarks of the McCormack proposal for this chapter. Tseng’s approach differs slightly, however, from much of the contemporary secondary literature. Tseng explains, “While much secondary literature has been written on the Christology of §59 [“The Obedience of the Son of God”] in recent years, this chapter focuses instead on §60 in order to gain an understanding of the Christological doctrine of election underlying Barth’s development of the notion of human sin and fallenness” (Tseng, 242-43).

Working from Barth’s Christocentric doctrine of sin, Tseng argues that God’s response to sin “presupposes a basically infralapsarian Christology” (Tseng, 243), but equally as important, Tseng lays out Barth’s understanding of “sin” and “fallen humanity” and why it bears out his claim that Barth leans in a basically infralapsarian direction. He explains, for Barth, knowledge of Christ presupposes knowledge of sin (Ibid.), and our sin can only be understood in light of Christ’s obedience. Quoting R. Scott Rodin, “God did not positively will the fall…, but in His eternal election of Jesus Christ…the Fall is fully assumed as the state of humanity” (Tseng, 244). The infralapsarian contours are obvious. To borrow Barth’s own words, “Access to the knowledge that [man] is a sinner is lacking to man because he is a sinner” (CD IV/1, 360-361). Therefore, knowledge of sin and all that it implies is inextricably Christological (Tseng, 245), if it is to be possible at all. But even more fundamental, with regards to sin itself (according to Barth), is God’s lordship over sin in Christ, whereby God “impressed” sin into His service (while simultaneously rejecting it as an instrument), “contrary to its own nature” so that it “became necessarily an instrument of the divine triumph” (Tseng, 246). Tseng goes on to explain, “Nothingness ‘is not’- it negates God and creation – because God has negated it. Nothingness exists precisely because of God’s absolute rejection and could not have existed apart from God’s ‘nonwilling.’Paradoxically this divine nonwilling becomes the ground whereupon nothingness exists … God rejects nothingness absolutely, and only in rejecting it does God permit it” (Tseng, 246-47; emphasis mine) This understanding of sin as paradoxical and absurd (CD IV/1, 410) undergirds the rest of Barth’s harmartiology. (Tseng, 247) But the question remains, from whence came sin? Barth’s answer, according to Tseng, “It has no basis” or to marshal an earlier concept, it is an “impossible possibility” (Ibid.).^[14]

Returning again to the question of Barth’s lapsarian orientation, it is worth noting that for Barth God is fulfilled in the incarnation, that is, “in His act of choosing to be God with us … in the act of election God has eternally negated humankind’s sin by the incarnation” (Tseng, 248). Tseng explains, “The incarnation fulfills the concept of God because by the incarnation God rejects that which negates God and God’s covenant partner, and remains true to God’s absolute perfection.” (Ibid.) The incarnation, for Barth, was for the purpose of overcoming sin, as the “Aufhebung of reprobation presupposes the sin of all humankind communicated to Christ” (Tsung, 249).^[15]

By the end of the first half of the chapter, Tseng argues that the “Christ-Adam relation is basically infralapsarian in both the Christological and predestinarian senses” (Tseng, 269). That is, election in Christ and the Incarnation as “drawing Adam’s fallen race into participatio Christi” (Ibid.), each point to a basically infralapsarian priority in Barth’s theology.

Tseng asks the question, “How much and which aspects, if any, of traditional substantialist ontology” does Barth retain in his “historicized Christology”? (Tseng, 270). His primary conversation partners in this second half of chapter 8 are Bruce McCormack, George Hunsinger, Paul Nimmo, and Paul Dafyyd Jones. His interactions in this chapter track fairly closely with what has been called the “traditionalist”^[16] camp in Barth studies as he argues that Barth’s “antimetaphysical impulse” did not necessarily lead to the wholesale rejection of the substantialistic metaphysics found in the Chalcedonian Creed (Tseng, 270). He argues instead, with Hunsinger, that Chalcedon served as a regulative framework for Barth as he worked out his Christocentric actualism (Tseng, 271).

Tseng argues that Barth’s continued use of the term “nature”, even as late as CD IV/1, is evidence that he preserved at least certain aspects of substance metaphysics, which in turn even preserves such critical points as the Creator-creature distinction (Tseng, 271-72). Tseng comments, “It would be erroneous to think that Barth would simply reject or redefine everything in substantialist ontology and classical theism in constructing some modern sort of ‘ontology’” (Tseng, 273).^[17]

Tseng turns his attention specifically to McCormack’s proposal that “election-Incarnation constitutes God’s triune being: The Trinity is a function of and logically follows God’s decision to be incarnate” (Tseng, 274). This proposal, according to Tseng, “raises some difficult questions when we take into account what Barth has said about history” (Ibid.). But even more interesting, the difficulties notwithstanding, McCormack’s historicized Christology does seem to lean in an infralapsarian direction as “the incarnation is necessarily bound up with fallen history” (Tseng, 275). So that, “God’s electing grace could not have been apart from or without regard to the Fallen Adamic history that has been taken up into Christ and in which Christ participates” (Tseng, 276).

Tseng admits that those who hold to the “traditionalist” position in the Trinity-election debate may feel the pull of Christological Supralapsarianism (Tseng, 276-77) The problem is, as Tseng again recognizes, “if the covenant partner to whom God has pledged faithfulness, the obiectum praedestinationis, is sinful humankind – homo lapsus – would this not imply that by incarnation God actually took sin into God’s very own being-in-act? Does the incarnation not make the Son of God a sinner and a reprobate?” (Tseng, 277). Tseng finds the solution to this problem in positing a fully self-existent Trinity prior to the act of election, making election a free act (Ibid.). Furthermore, given the amount of evidence amassed in favor of his central thesis, Tseng concludes that election and incarnation must “presuppose the fallenness of humanity” (Tseng, 278).

In the final subsection of this chapter, Tseng offers a response to Paul Dafydd Jones’ work, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. While Tseng finds much to praise in Jones’ work, he does take issue with Jones’ dismissal of the term “nature” in Barth’s mature Christology (Tseng, 282). Tseng agrees with Hunsinger, that the central problem with Jones’ thesis is a historicization of God’s being that leads to the “contingent” properties of God modifying the “non-contingent” along with a historicization of “Christ’s human nature in much the same way as to render the notion of nature completely meaningless on its own apart from the notions of history and act” (Tseng, 283). He then goes on to criticize Jones for not interacting with §60 of the CD “The Pride and Fall of man” (CD IV/1, 358-478) and for failing to strike out a via media between a radically anti-metaphysical Barth and a qualified substantialist Barth (Tseng, 285), but positively, he recognizes that on Jones’ read of Barth, humanity’s sinfulness is presupposed in the act of election (Tseng, 286). Again, the infralapsarian orientation is obvious.

Conclusion

In his conclusion to this fine work, Tseng comments that the lapsarian problem is not some relic of arid scholasticism,^[18] but has profound implications for the life of Christ’s Church as “it struggles with the perplexing reality of humankind’s fallenness in light of God’s universal sovereignty and immutable holiness” (Tseng, 295). This sentiment will likely deeply resonate with many who’re not content with the current state of much of evangelical theology. As a non-Barthian myself, I appreciated this book and the questions it raised. Not simply for the challenges it raises to my reading of Karl Barth, but for the challenges it raises to my understanding of what it means that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:4-5).

This is a densely argued and extremely detailed book. If you’re looking for a guide to help you work through some of Barth’s major works, this book may prove helpful. Tseng’s central thesis is also very interesting and provocative to say the least. And though Tseng does soften it a bit at the outset (Barth’s theology is only basically infralapsarian) the careful distinctions he introduces along the way are helpful in parsing out the trajectory of Barth’s theological development. Additionally this book will be of interest not only to those already invested in the study of Barth’s theology, but also for those who’re interested in the history of the lapidarian debates—they will find much to chew on in the first part of Tseng’s work.

But most interesting, to me at least, is the polemical edge this work has as it is an important foray into the Trinity-election debate in Barth circles. And while I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, particularly as he brings them to bear on the present discussion, he does make some interesting arguments that need to be engaged. While this book may not change the landscape of Barth studies, it will no doubt be a lasting contribution for the simple fact that Tseng is so comprehensive in his exposition of Barth’s theology, and detailed in his outlining of one of the “chief factors” driving Barth’s theological development.

^[1] Shao Kai Tseng, Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology: Origins and Development 1920-1953 (Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2016).

^[2] It is clear from his own historical work in the Church Dogmatics (particularly in CD II/2, 127-145) that Barth had no intention of merely receiving the title “Supralapsarian.”

^[3] The matter of how one ought to translate “Aufhebung” is notoriously difficult. Garrett Green has argued that Aufhebung be rendered as “sublimation” though even that translation brings with it certain difficulties (see Karl Barth, On Religion: The Revelation of God as the Sublimation of Religion, trans. Garret Green [New York: Continuum, 2006] vii-xi, 1-29).

^[4] McCormack in his Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 is particularly helpful. He remarks, “But for God to be known, in the sense that He’s possessable by His revelation, is impossible. For in that moment He would cease to be Lord over His revelation, He would cease to be God. In other words, “Revelation must remain distinct from its medium” (McCormack, 249). Therefore, God can only be known only indirectly (Ibid.). “He hides Himself and remains hidden in the medium of revelation” (Ibid.). The act by which the veil of revelation is lifted is the “impossible possibility.” It is the event of revelation. It is an impossible possibility that the veil (means of concealing) becomes the medium (means of revelation). McCormack explains, “Revelation thus has the character of an event. That the veil is made transparent for faith, that it truly becomes a medium, requires an act of God. God is the Subject of revelation and must always remain so” (Ibid. 250).

^[5] “‘Creation’ denotes this prelapsarian state of humanity, which is its ‘Origin’ (Ursprung) that even today still ‘evokes in us a memory of our habitation with the Lord of heaven and earth’” (Tseng, 90).

^[6] Note the basically Kantian dualism between Creation and World, eternal and temporal.

^[7]The act by which the veil of revelation is lifted is the “impossible possibility.” In other words, the means of concealing (veil) becomes the means of revealing (the medium). The Impossible-possible dialectic is itself “deeply eschatological” (Tseng, 101) due in part to the idea that the eternal (revelation for example) cannot be directly identified with the temporal. Therefore, “revelation is in history, but it is not of history.” See McCormack, Critically Realistic, pp. 241-88.

^[8] Tseng notes that at this phase of Barth’s development, it is impossible to clearly identify his lapsarian position in a straightforward manner given his lack of explicit dogmatic reflection on the Incarnation (Tseng, 110).

^[9] Tseng sums up the basic thrust of McCormack’s thesis nicely: “Part of McCormack’s paradigm is the thesis that Barth’s theology has always remained dialectical even after the so-called turn to analogy, and that the Anselm book with its emphasis on the analogia entis did not give rise to any essentially new methodology or theological material in Barth’s thinking” (Tseng, 150). But as Tseng goes on to argue, “To treat Anselm as a key to understanding the shifts in the methods and contents of Barth’s theology is thus to miss out a crucial aspect of his theological development” (Tseng, 159).

^[10] Preached, written, and revealed (CD I/1, 98-140).

^[11] The shift is Barth’s indentification of Jesus as “electing God” and the “correlation of election and reprobation with the crucifixion of Jesus” (Tseng, 178).

^[12] A decretum absolutum would entail a non-Christological (i.e. natural theological) revelation of God. That is a problem for Barth. Just as understanding humanity as the “obiectum praedestinationis” is to understand humanity in abstracto, and thus non-Christologically (Tseng, 236).

^[13] Tseng is here in agreement with George Hunsinger’s thesis that Barth’s Christology was “basically Chalcedonian.” While he does footnote Bruce McCormack’s essay, “Karl Barth’s Historicized Christology: Just how ‘Chalcedonian’ is it?” See Bruce McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 201-35. He does not spend much time interacting with its central claim that CD II/2 saw Barth discard the Greek metaphysical categories of “person,” “nature” in favor of his actualism and its decidedly anti-metaphysical bent (McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 201-202). Tseng’s detailed critique of McCormack’s proposal appears in chapter 8.

^[14] Though by CD II/1 Barth’s doctrine of sin undergoes a significant revision and is understood as the “paradox of sin” (Tseng, 248).

^[15] The shape of the Incarnation, or the way in which if fulfills the “concept of God” is humility (Tseng, 250). And just as God is fulfilled through the humiliation of Christ, so the very “concept of man” (CD IV/1, 419; Tseng, 248) is contradicted by the pride of sin. There is an absurdity to the “human act of sin” (Tseng, 250). And so we know human pride only in light of Christ’s humility, this is how Barth conceives of the epistemic ground of our knowledge of sin. If Christ negates sin through His humble suffering, it was man’s pride (sin) which made the cross necessary in the first place.

^[16] Briefly, “traditionalist” and “revisionist” are terms coined by George Hunsinger to denote the two main approaches to Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity and election. This distinction has precedence primarily in T.F. Torrance’s differentiation of “evangelical” and “rationalistic” Calvinism with the “traditionalists” falling under the “evangelical calvinist” and the “revisionists” lumped in with the “rationalistic Calvinists.” For Hunsinger, the “traditionalist” approach is more faithful to the “actual textual Barth” while the “revisionist” relies upon deductive reasoning to arrive at conclusions alien to Barth’s dogmatic intent. For a critical review of Hunsinger’s proposal see Matthias Gockel, How to Read Karl Barth with Charity: A Critical Reply to George Hunsinger (Modern Theology 32:2 April 2016, 259–67).

^[17] Whether or not Barth did, in CD IV/1, historicize (or actualize) the category of “nature” is up for debate. But briefly consider the perspective of one of Tseng’s conversation partners, “The ‘essence’ of God therefore is not something that can be spoken of rightly without reference to the divine humiliation which takes place in the history of Jesus Christ. And the “essence” of the human is not something that can be spoken of rightly without reference to the exaltation that takes place in the history of Jesus Christ….God is what God does-and humanity is what Jesus does….And it can be this [the exaltation of humanity in the exaltation of Christ] because what it means to be human has been decided in eternity by means of our election in Jesus Christ [emphasis mine]. We are ‘chosen in Him’ – this is a statement pregnant with ontological significance” (McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 239-40).

^[18] To borrow a term of recent vintage.

The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best. CD II/1, 3

In a recent review of George Hunsinger’s “Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal,”^[1] Phillip Cary commented, “Barth’s Christocentrism is fundamental to the appeal of his theology, and it leads him to make some startling claims.” That is a bit of an understatement. But Cary is absolutely correct, a conception of Jesus is at the very center of all Barth’s theology. Christology is so important to Barth’s Theology that some have gone so far as to assert that Barth has no Christology per se, but that his entire theological project is Christological.^[2] Therefore, one’s appropriation of the place of Barth’s Christology within the framework of his theological project, is critical for how one receives the entirety of Barth’s theology.

In his new work, Hunsinger sets forth a reading of Barth very different from his revisionist opponents; a Barth that is, well, strikingly less radical. Hunsinger arrives at this reading of Barth by using a “hermeneutic of charity,”^[3] a methodological approach to ambiguous texts that seeks alternative interpretive options when faced with apparent contradictions. According to the hermeneutic of charity, the reader should only subject an argument or proposition to criticism after one has sought to resolve the difficulties themselves.^[4] If one cannot resolve the apparent contradiction via a favorable interpretation (i.e. one that does not involve prima facie contradiction), then one is permitted to subject the argument or proposition to criticism. The principle of “charity” is more or less a hermeneutical application of the “Golden Rule.”^[5] As one could probably guess, Hunsinger argues that the revisionists’ interpretation of Barth fails to read Barth charitably; that is, they’re guilty of pitting Barth against himself and through deductive reasoning setting a theological trajectory for his theology that Barth never intended.

Hunsinger cites T.F. Torrance’s^[6] distinction between “evangelical” and “rationalistic” Calvinism as an example of the principle of charity in action.^[7] It is a more or less classic “Calvin and the Calvinists” approach. The “evangelical” Calvinism is allegedly closer to the actual textual Calvin than the logical systemizing of the “rational” Calvinists following Beza. “It judged, according to Torrance, that the filial was prior to the legal, that the personal was prior to the propositional, that the inductive took precedence over the deductive, and that spiritual insight placed constraints on logical reasoning.”^[8]

The rationalistic Calvinists’ approach to Calvin’s writings lead to the allegedly “extreme” doctrines of Limited atonement, supralapsarianism, infralapsarianism and worst of all (for Torrance at least), a “legalistic construal of ‘covenant’ that tended toward synergism.”^[9] For Hunsinger the present debate is no more than an incarnation of the “Calvin and the Calvinists” debate, only this time, it is Barth and the revisionist Barthians.^[10]

A Revisionist Manifesto

Hunsinger cites Bruce McCormack’s “Grace and Being: The Role of God’s Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology”^[11] as an impressive example of a revisionist^[12] reading of Barth. It contains the seminal ideas that will work their way through much of the revisionist literature in one form or another. For example, the use of the word “ontology.” Hunsinger notes that ontology plays a significant role in modern receptions of Barth’s theology,^[13] and that is part of the problem. Hunsinger therefore distinguishes between two types of ontology. First, there is the proper philosophical sense of the word as the study of “being qua being” (ontology₁). Second, there is the looser sense which speaks to a “field of inquiry pertaining to the material covered and the sorts of things and relations one finds in it-to a general area of action, inquiry, or interest”^[14] (ontology₂). According to Hunsinger, the revisionists often fail to distinguish between these two uses of ontology.

Predictably, Barth rejects ontology₁ as a danger to Dogmatic theology. Ontology₁ represents a danger to the Dogmatic theologian in its penchant for imposing overarching systems wherein the Dogmatic theologian is constrained to operate.^[15] While Barth felt free to plunder ontology₁ for useful tools, he would never submit (according to Hunsinger) to the rigors of an independent ontology as presented in ontology_1,^[16] and this includes an “actualistic ontology” such as that argued for by McCormack.

So the solution for Hunsinger is found to be neither post-metaphysical in nature nor within classical essentialist metaphysics; it is, rather, a combination of both.^[17] In other words, the Revisionist has set up a false dilemma against the textual Barth, and that is the rub for Hunsinger.^[18]

“Actualistic ontology” a la Bruce McCormack is a way of describing the being of God as it is “determined” in Jesus Christ and is associated primarily with the “revisionist” reception of Karl Barth.^[19] When worked out to its logical conclusion, an actualistic ontology argues for a pre-temporal non-Trinitarian act (i.e. election) that occurs “in relation to the world” and subsequently constitutes the Trinity. So behind God’s decision to be Triune, is an undifferentiated divine potentiality that is actualized only after God’s self-determination to be for His people in Jesus Christ. For McCormack, any talk of a Triune God prior to the act of election is “speculative.”^[20]

The revisionists will argue that Barth had embraced an essentialist metaphysic prior to Church Dogmatics II/2 (hereafter CD),^[21] and never fully purged it from his thought. The purging therefore has been left up to the revisionists, who took Barth places theologically he never intended to go.

In addition to determining the Divine being, the revisionists seek to explain the “how” of God’s gracious act of election. How can God become man without undergoing any ontological change? Hunsinger offers two answers in response: first, God is free to do whatever he pleases. If you need proof, look no further than the Incarnation. The Incarnation of the Logos can occur only because God is both powerful and free.^[22] Second, Barth had what Hunsinger helpfully refers to as a “doctrine of antecedence,”^[23] which basically asserts that God’s ad extra acts find their “antecedent ground” in God’s own Trinitarian being. The revisionists err, according to Hunsinger, in their removal of the Trinitarian foundation of God’s ad extra act of election. The result is, “What God is eternally in Himself is subsequent to what he determines himself to be relative to the world.”^[24]

But isn’t all this talk of “antecedence” speculative as McCormack asserts? For Barth, speculation is defined by any idea not directly tied to the historic revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Therefore, Hunsinger counters, it [the doctrine of antecedence] is not speculative because knowledge of God in Christ is only possible due to God’s own antecedent self-knowledge. “Far from being speculative, the idea of the eternal Trinity is the ground of all revealed truth.”^[25] The revisionist will reject the doctrine of antecedence because it is not grounded in actualism. They will go even farther and argue that one cannot understand the Incarnation apart from an actualistic ontology (see ontology₁). The problem is, that is the very idea militated against by Barth. So if the revisionists desire to maintain their interpretation, they do so in spite of Barth’s own stated desire not to be bound by an overarching ontology. If we stick with the “Calvin and the Calvinists” example used by Hunsinger in the introduction, we could safely place the revisionist in the “Calvinist” camp. Only in this instance, it’s an example of “Barth and the Barthians.”

One of the major weaknesses of the revisionist movement, according to Hunsinger, is the uncharitable use of deductive reasoning. The revisionists have selectively isolated certain Barthian texts that seem to support their actualistic ontology, and then reasoned deductively from those texts to establish a radically different trajectory for Barth’s theology. “The thesis of this study is that the revisionist position derives, not entirely, but to a large extent, from taking one of Barth’s statements out of context, and turning it into an abstract proposition, and deducing certain conclusions from it that Barth would not have drawn.”^[26]

For example, McCormack argues that the Logos asarkos only becomes the Logos ensarkos after the decision of election. There is no LA apart from Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ (Logos ensarkos) is the subject of election.^[27] McCormack then offers three logical deductions from the above proposition: 1. If Barth wishes to speak of Jesus as the subject of election he must deny any notion of the Logos prior to the decree of election. 2. Barth must deny there is any Logos apart from God’s act of predestination. 3. Only then would it be clear that the Logos ensarkos is the Subject of election and not the Logos asarkos.

The revisionists use a hermeneutic of deductive reasoning that, according to Hunsinger, cuts against the grain of Barth’s actual dogmatic intent. “The inferred Barth is the gold standard against which the actually existing Barth comes up wanting. The deduced entity is used to claim that the textual Barth is inconsistent.”^[28] According to the revisionists, the actual Barth was never able to consistently work out the implications of his own theology or he would have reached a post-metaphysical stage of development.

Throughout this book Hunsinger pursues lengthy, somewhat technical discussions of the more nuanced disagreements between the Barthian traditionalists and revisionists. These sections are helpful due to Hunsinger’s careful delineation of terms and concepts that help one navigate the debate. One such instance is his debate with Bruce McCormack over the “Extra Calvinisticum.”^[29] Briefly, for McCormack there is no Logos asarkos apart from the Logos incarnandus;^[30] the two are identical. Hunsinger explains, “The Logos was always slated to become incarnate, having no other raison d’etre in the Godhead, and once the Logos has become incarnatus (incarnate), it can no longer be asarkos at the same time.”^[31] For McCormack, there is a fundamental identity between the Logos asarkos and the Logos incarnandus, which excludes any notion of a self-determined Logos asarkos behind the act of election. But once the Logos becomes incarnate (incarnatus) the Logos asarkos disappears as it is “absorbed into the incarnation without remainder.”^[32]

The traditionalist on the other hand argues that because the Logos asarkos is determinate in and of itself, the Logos asarkos retains its role during and after the Incarnation. While the revisionists view the Trinity as subsequent to the act of election, the traditionalist understands the act of election to be predicated on the self-existent Trinity.^[33] The revisionists require the abolition of the Logos asarkos in order to warrant the “reversal from antecedence to subsequence.”^[34] In other words, instead of grounding the economic Trinity in the ontological, the revisionist reverses that order so the ontological is grounded in the economic, ensuring that there can no longer be any God outside of God for us (Deus pro nobis).

At this point, Hunsinger offers a helpful distinction between God’s “correspondence” to and “dialectical identity” with His creation. The traditionalist understands the relationship between the Father and the Logos to foreshadow God’s relationship to the world.^[35] He defines dialectical identity as the act of “looking at one self-identical object from two different but mutually exclusive perspectives.”^[36] Hunsinger argues that “dialectical identity” must be replaced by a view that recognizes the “asymmetrical unity in distinction” present in Barth’s theology. By “asymmetrical” he simply means the logical and ontological priority of the ontological Trinity as the “basis on which God turns to the world.”^[37] That is, the economic Trinity is ontologically and logically grounded in the ontological Trinity.

Now, Hunsinger observes, the allegation of inconsistency (leveled by the revisionist against Barth) serves as a lynch pin for the revisionist, making their claims practically non-falsifiable. “No matter what the counter evidence may be, it can always be chalked up to inconsistency.”^[38] Part and parcel to Hunsinger’s proposed hermeneutical approach is the willingness to grant a writer the courtesy of a charitable reading. If you run across what appears to be a contradiction, do not immediately assume the writer is simply daft. Rather, seek diligently for a solution to the problem and rescue it from contradiction.

Back to Barth and the extra Calvinisticum. Barth famously differs with the extra due to his fear that it could invite speculation into the being and act of God. It may invite one to consider the Logos asarkos apart from the Logos ensarkos and could even lead to the denial of Jesus as the “subject” and “object” of election.^[39] “For Barth, Calvin failed to see that it was the whole Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), not just God in abstraction, who was the Subject of election…Calvin’s doctrine of election was therefore ‘speculative’ in Barth’s eyes precisely to the extent that it was not grounded in the Trinity.”^[40] Barth, according to Hunsinger, would reject the revisionist reception of his theology precisely because he emphasized the absoluteness of the Triune being of God. He would be averse to any notion of a “pre-trinitarian God beyond God”^[41] as speculative.

Seek God where He May be Found

In chapter 2 Hunsinger analyzes a debate between McCormack and Edwin Chr. van Driel, a professor of theology at Pittsburgh theological seminary. The centerpiece of their discussion is the statement, “Jesus is the subject of election,” a claim of central importance in the traditionalist revisionist debate. According to Hunsinger, van Driel exhibits the principle of charity in his reading of Barth. Contra McCormack, van Driel proposes that “Jesus Christ is not the acting Subject of election but instead ‘the verb, the action.’”^[42] In his overall critique of McCormack, van Driel rejects the notion of a self-constituting God due to the shadow cast by Hegel over the idea.

Obviously Hunsinger has a problem with this proposition as it fails to do justice to Jesus as the “Subject” of election (and not simply the “verb” or “action”). In response, Hunsinger offers three alternative interpretations. First, he argues that for Barth God has no beginning. Jesus Christ as the Logos ensarkos cannot rightly be considered a “constitutive” member of the Trinity as the Logos ensarkos has a beginning while the Trinity does not. Similarly, the Logos ensarkos is not eternally begotten as is the case with the Logos asarkos. Additionally, the Logos asarkos does not exist for the sake of the Logos ensarkos (as the revisionist idea of subsequence would require), rather the Logos asarkos exists “in and for himself.” Therefore, election presupposes the Trinity. It is by way of election that God “determines,” not constitutes, himself to “deal graciously with the world.”^[43]

Hunsinger’s second point is slightly more opaque. He seeks to determine in what sense the Logos ensarkos was present “at the beginning of all things.”^[44] The Logos ensarkos is not the same as the asarkos, and neither is the Logos ensarkos pre-existent in the same way as God.^[45] Hunsinger explains “as the antecedent Logos asarkos, he wills himself as the subsequent Logos ensarkos. It is obviously not the Trinity that is subsequent to the incarnation, but the incarnation that is subsequent to the Trinity.”^[46] The result is an eternal-historical conception of Jesus Christ as He belongs to eternity as the Logos asarkos and to history as the Logos ensarkos.^[47] This means that for Barth, according to Hunsinger, God’s decree of election, the cross, and the final judgement are three “forms” of the same eternal act, so that, “They remain eternally distinct while also coinhering.”^[48] For Barth, “beginning, succession, and end” exhaustively indwell one another in a perichoretic relationship.^[49] This means that Jesus, according to God’s act of election is “present in the eternal foreknowledge and counsel of God.”^[50] Jesus is present at the beginning due to the foreknowledge of God, as he is known by God in eternity to be the object and subject of election. Hunsinger explains, “Because everything that exists outside God exists first of all in God, in his eternal sight or foreknowledge, it follows ‘that [God’s] knowledge is not actually tied to the distinction between past, present, and future being’ ([CD] II/1, 559). It is again supremely the person of Jesus Christ in his irreducible historicity who, for God, sub specie aeternitatis, is not tied to the distinction between past, present, and future being.”^[51]

So while Jesus is essentially present in eternity with God, He is not present according to his historical actualization. But that is not to say that Jesus exists in a less than real way in God.

Jesus Christ is present ‘in the beginning’ with God as ‘an eternal [event] in the form of time, and [as] a temporal [event] with the content of eternity’ ([CD] II/2, 97). In the beginning, he is no less real to God in pretemporal eternity than he will be in time, and as he is real in God’s pretemporal foreknowledge and counsel, so he will also be actualized in time.^[52]

By virtue of God’s foreknowledge, Jesus is in eternity what he will become in the economy.^[53]

As I mentioned above, one of the strengths of Hunsinger’s work is his close exegesis of the Barthian texts critical to the traditionalist/revisionist debate. It also makes his book very difficult to review. Hunsinger frequently interacts with fairly lengthy sections from the “Church Dogmatics” and offers pages of incisive exegesis and makes extremely helpful distinctions. Following his discussion of Jesus as the “Subject and Object of election,” Hunsinger attempts to explain the relationship between the Logos asarkos and ensarkos in Barth’s theology. Hunsinger argues that the man Jesus Christ (Logos ensarkos) was brought into the Triune being of God via the Logos asarkos. Thus, the man Jesus is the Son of God by grace, not by nature. Hunsinger explains, “Although in some sense he belongs to the Holy Trinity he does so not by nature but by grace, not by eternal generation but by historical (and thus contingent) participation.”^[54] This act of election presupposes a “fully constituted” Divine Triune God who elects in grace.

If Hunsinger is correct, Barth is clearly contradicting the revisionists’ reception of his theology by affirming that election is grounded in the Trinity and “represents the free overflowing of the superabundant glory of the Triune God.”^[55] Election cannot therefore be viewed as God reducing some potentcy within Himself, He is not filling up what was once lacking, rather His goodness is overflowing freely and graciously according to Hunsinger.

It is important to remember that in the act of election the Logos asarkos is not totally absorbed into the Logos ensarkos, the Logos asarkos still subsists behind the Logos ensarkos in a manner incomprehensible to man.^[56] The Logos asarkos must have logical and ontological priority over the Logos ensarkos while both must remain united together in the One eternal Word. In other words, the relationship between the Logos asarkos and Logos ensarkos is one of asymmetrical unity-in distinction. This asymmetrical unity-in distinction makes it possible for the Logos asarkos to be “completely abased” while the Logos ensarkos is “completely exalted.” Simultaneously, the Eternal Word as the Logos asarkos transcends its abasement even while it completely participates in it.^[57] Hunsinger argues that Barth preserves the unity of the Logos asarkos and Logos ensarkos while still respecting their unique roles. More pointedly, the eternal Logos in its two forms and their asymmetrical unity-in distinction makes it possible for the Logos to fully experience sin and death as the Logos ensarkos while simultaneously transcending death in its form as the Logos asarkos. The Logos asarkos simultaneously participates in and transcends all its activities in and with the Logos ensarkos. Similarly, the Logos ensarkos and its antecedent grounding in the Logos asarkos, makes the transcendence of sin and death a reality.^[58]

Returning to McCormack and van Driel, Hunsinger notes that van Driel sees the antecedence of the Logos asarkos, “but at the expense of his proleptic unity with the earthly Son of Man.”^[59] McCormack, on the other hand, grasps the unity of the Logos asarkos and Logos ensarkos but fails to see the distinction between the two. They both fail to grasp (according to Hunsinger) how Jesus Christ could be the Subject of election. For Hunsinger, the solution is found in understanding Jesus to be present in pre-temporal eternity, namely by way of his election and union with the Son based upon the foreknowledge of the Triune God.^[60] In this sense, Jesus is present “before the dawn of his own time, as the one he will be in time.”^[61] Additionally and following from the previous point, the human will and essence of Jesus are “enhypostatic” with regards to the Person of the Son even in eternity (proleptically). The essence and will of Jesus are necessarily “anhypostatic” as well.^[62] This tells us, according to Hunsinger, that Jesus has no hypostasis apart from the eternal Word, but that the eternal Word makes himself the subject of election “really but contingently (and irreversibly) identical with Jesus of Nazareth.”^[63]

Being and Action: The Question of God’s Historicity

In chapter 3 Hunsinger interacts with professor Paul T. Nimmo’s work “Being in Action,” a work Hunsinger still finds praiseworthy despite the revisionist current that runs through it. Hunsinger notes, “[Nimmo] presents Barth’s entire ethics as dominated by a particular philosophical structure [see ontology₁] ’Actualistic ontology’ becomes the controlling idea within which Barth works out his ethics.”^[64]

Under the controlling concept of “actualism” Nimmo defines God’s personhood in terms of “decisions, acts, and relations.” Act and being are not basic to God, rather God constitutes his Triune Being through act.^[65] Hunsinger disagrees with Nimmo’s notion of God’s self-determination “filling up some deficit as though without election God would be less than fully constituted as God.”^[66] The apparent confusion occurs when the line between constitution and determination are blurred.^[67]

While traditionally revisionists have turned to CD II/2 for justification for their actualistic ontology, currently many scholars are turning their attention to CD IV/1 pp. 192-210, “The Way of the Son of God into the far Country,”^[68] for more solid evidence of their position. Hunsinger lays out some helpful guidelines for reading the text: first, read it in its entirety; second, don’t neglect the “second ending,”^[69] and third, read it in light of Barth’s “doctrine of antecedence.”^[70]

God’s economic activity, for Hunsinger, is based in eternity (antecedence) and in that way time and eternity correspond to one another in form (temporal/eternal), and in their correspondence “they comprise an asymmetrical unity-in distinction.”^[71] Hunsinger argues that Barth’s conception of eternity is essentially Trinitarian, and therefore eternity includes elements of pre, supra, and post temporality which while sequentially distinct, mutually coinhere.^[72] “They [pre, post, and supra temporality] constitute God’s (antecedent) history with himself while also serving as the eternal basis of God’s history with the world.”^[73]

In the same thesis, Nimmo proposes 2 conclusions regarding the Holy Spirit: first, that the Holy Spirit should be considered “elected God” with Jesus; and second, he suggests that Jesus was only incarnate for the sake of election, so likewise the Holy Spirit’s sole purpose is the establishment of the Church. “No antedent and independent Trinitarian role exists for the Spirit in eternity (logically and ontologically)- no role, that is, such as the one Barth actually assigns to the Spirit of being the eternal (and antecedent) bond of peace between the Father and the Son.”^[74]

Hunsinger responds by arguing that the Holy Spirit’s antecedent role in the eternal being of God involved being the “mediator of communion between the Father and the Son.”^[75] This antecedent (eternal) reality (of the Spirit as mediator) grounds the Spirit’s mediatorial work (temporal) in history. Additionally, Hunsinger offers his own reading of CD IV/1 that seems to answer how the Son of God could be submissive to the Father without falling into either modalism or subordinationism. He argues that the obedience of Jesus in the economy is actually based on Divine Freedom, so Jesus’ obedience to the Father is performed, “in virtue of the richness of his divine being (CD IV/1, 194)”^[76] (unity-in distinction). The Father makes Himself “identical”^[77] with Jesus in the sense that the two are inseparably one “but never lose their abiding distinction.”^[78]

Now the question must be answered, how can we speak of economic and eternal obedience? If Jesus is eternally obedient, how do we avoid subordinationism? Hunsinger explains, “obedience is not just an earthly event undertaken in the economy.” Or to state it more directly, “Moreover, it [economic obedience] can occur in the economy only through its antecedent in eternity.”^[79] That is, the obedience of the Logos ensarkos presupposes the obedience of the Logos asarkos. This reading safeguards Barth from any notion of election constituting the Trinity for the act of election presupposes the Triune God.

Now what follows from the Son’s obedience in eternity (ad intra) according to the doctrine of antecedence? As you could probably guess, his obedience in the economy (ad extra).^[80] This is where Hunsinger introduces his “Chalcedonian grammar,” “[Jesus] simply ‘activates and reveals himself’ for who he is in a new and temporal form.”^[81] The two “forms” of Jesus’ obedience (eternal and temporal) coexist “without separation or division” and “without confusion or change” and are asymmetrically related.^[82] Hunsinger’s intention is to correct the revisionist trajectory by shifting it away from Hegel and towards Chalcedon.^[83] It is worth noting that the Son’s obedience is “parallel in status to his lordship.”^[84] In other words, by being obedient Jesus does what only God can do. His obedience, therefore, does not suggest any inherent ontological deficiency as is so often assumed.

Two Disputed Points: The Obedience of the Son in Classical Theism

At the heart of the traditionalist/revisionist debate is the assertion that the Son’s obedience to the Father is constitutive of his essential deity. But how does that claim square with Barth’s own assertion, “What he [God] is in revelation he is antecedently in himself” (CD I/1, 466)? Hunsinger explains, “On this basis Barth argues from below to above. He reasons from the Son of God’s obedience in the far country back into the Trinity’s inner life. He draws inference from time to eternity…He could not be obedient in the economy were he not already obedient in eternity”^[85] [emphasis mine].

Now Hunsinger is not arguing that we can reason our way back into the Godhead and understand exactly what the eternal obedience of the Son is like simply because we can observe his obedience in the economy.^[86] But we can discern the Son’s identity as son by witnessing his obedience in the economy, the obedience which finds its antecedent ground in the eternal obedience of the Son.^[87] The Father and the Son share the same will and essence, but in differing ways. The Son receives His essential deity from the Father via His eternal generation and his will from the Father is “in the mode of perfect and eternal submission.”^[88]

Regarding Barth’s unusual use of history, Hunsinger comments, “I propose to ‘disambiguate’ Barth by designating his concept of God’s eternal history as ‘history₁’ and his concept of God’s earthly history as ‘history_2.’”^[89]

Barth states,

The divine being and life and act takes place with ours, and it is only as the divine takes place that ours takes place. To put it in the simplest way, what unites God and us human beings is that he does not will to be God without us, that he creates us rather to share with us and therefore with our being and life and act his own incomparable being and life and act, that he does not allow his history to be his, and ours ours, but causes them to take place as a common history…

The whole being and life of God is an activity, both in eternity and in worldly time, both in himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in his relation to humankind and all creation. But what God does in himself and as the Creator and Governor of humankind is all aimed at the particular act in which it has its center and meaning.(CD IV/1, 7)

Hunsinger interprets Barth as arguing for “one indivisible activity in which God subsists”^[90] which would embrace both “history₁” and “history_2.” The above passage is frequently used by revisionists^[91] to support their departure from classical metaphysics in favor of an “actualistic ontology” in which the very being of God is conditioned by his creation. As a result, many of God’s attributes would by necessity be historicized by this “common history” God shares with his creation.

For Hunsinger the “common history” of God and creation poses no threat if it is “governed by the grammar of the Chalcedonian pattern.”^[92] This gift of unity “occurs in and through the Incarnate Son” and therefore presupposes the “Triune God’s antecedent eternal perfection.”^[93] As a result, “history₁” and “history₂” are united “without separation or division” (inseparably united) and “without confusion or change” (abidingly distinct).

Now that is not to say that Barth was in no way Hegelian, according to Hunsinger. “Barth drank deeply from the wells of both Anselm and Hegel.”^[94] Barth appreciated Anselm’s emphasis on the perfection of God’s being, but disliked his apparent incipient essentialism. “[Barth] worried that in [Anselm’s] theology ‘God was at bottom a supreme being with neither life, nor activity, nor history, in a neutrality which can never be moved or affected by anything.’ ([CD] IV/1, 112).”^[95] Predictably, Barth saw in Hegel the idea that God was living and active, over and against the static (allegedly), immovable God of Anselm. On the other hand, Barth disliked Hegel for his seeming disregard for the freedom of God, and his dialectic which makes God dependent on the contingent for his [God’s] own self-actualization. He was in Hegel’s dialectic the possibility for a “fatal reversal”^[96] making God dependent on man. That is precisely why, according to Hunsinger, Barth developed his doctrine of antecedence.

According to Hunsinger, Barth includes both Anselmian and Hegelian elements in his theology. He revises the attributes of God^[97] in lieu of his actualism so that, “[t]hese aspects or ‘perfections’ of the divine being are not the same as those in classical theism because they are all qualified by God’s sovereign freedom [emphasis mine] as the freedom of his love.”^[98] In other words, Barth “Hegels” the traditionally received incommunicable divine attributes and so “actualizes the divine perfections while maintaining their absolute, self sufficient, antecedence.”^[99]

Revisionism Scaled Back: a Partial Dissent

In the final full chapter of his book, Hunsinger interacts with a Barthian scholar Paul Dafydd Jones. It seems that Jones has managed to achieve a revisionist reading of Barth while for the most part adhering to the “principle of charity” as laid out by Hunsinger. Jones rejects the revisionist receptions’ most shocking idea, namely that the Trinity is constituted by election, and substitutes it with what he has called “the doctrine of subsequence.”^[100] Jones asserts, “God decides, freely, that the economic elective activity of the Son, realized by way of his union with a contingent human being, should prove eternally determinative for God’s second way of being.”^[101] In other words, God’s act of election conditions his eternal existence as the Son.

The problem is, for Barth, “a doctrine of divine antecedence took precedence over all elements of subsequence. He argued that the Lord God remained the same in and through every change.”^[102] Hunsinger reads Barth as positing that impassibility, as is traditionally received in the Reformed tradition, threatens the freedom of God, but not in the way we may think. For the historic Reformed, impassibility safeguarded God’s independence and therefore His freedom. Barth reconfigures the doctrine to mean that God is free to suffer and still remain essentially absolute. He makes God sovereign over his own independence so that God can choose to be passible and remain (somehow) independent.^[103]

According to Hunsinger, Barth conceived of a suffering God as a means of explaining how the cross dealt with sin. What he comes up with is a thoroughly actualistic passibilism in which sin and death are consumed by suffering. This is for Barth the unique mode of God’s victory in defeat. A dialectical re-interpretation of impassibility. The sufferings of the Logos ensarkos are mediated back to the Logos asarkos, and thus to the very being of God.^[104] The sufferings were abidingly distinct and yet united, the Father and Son suffering in tandem. For Barth, God must have remained impassible in suffering or he could not overcome sin and death.^[105]

Tolle Lege?

Why should a Reformed believer (I’m speaking more narrowly of someone who would fit into the category “Calvinist” in the Calvin and the Calvinist paradigm) read this book? First, every Reformed believer shouldn’t read this book. It is definitely not intended for a general readership. While Hunsinger does a superb job of writing clearly and with varying levels of complexity, this book is not one I would pick up for spiritual edification. Now, this book is required reading for anyone who intends to enter the “Barth Wars” (whether they are critical or sympathetic to Barth it really does not matter, the book is simply too important to neglect reading carefully). That said, it is unlikely that this book will convert many “revisionists.” It seems to me that the greatest good that will come from this book is the response it will likely elicit from the “revisionist” camp.

With the above proviso in mind, I have at least three reasons why a Reformed believer should read this book. First, Hunsinger’s exegesis of Barth is interesting to say the least. However, I think his main proposal to read Barth using a hermeneutic of charity is more of a rhetorical than a substantive move. Additionally, it seems that Hunsinger would spend a bit more time explicitly developing what a hermeneutic of charity looks like.^[106] It was helpful to observe Hunsinger deal with the problem texts for “traditionalist” Barthians, but again, given the title of the book one would expect to see more explicit development of the hermeneutic of charity as it is applied outside the context of analytic philosophy. Second, Barthianism is in vogue. And while the number of Barthians may not increase substantially as a result of the resurgence of interest in Barth, we can rest assured that Barth’s influence will nonetheless be felt in evangelicalism. If the Reformed pastor and engaged layperson are to serve effectively in the context of the Church (given this resurgence of interest in Barth) they should at least consider becoming acquainted with the most influential appropriations of Barth’s theology. We have to square with the reality that many today are captivated by what appears to be new in Barth’s theology. The Reformed pastor owes it to his people to stay informed on these issues. Third, and I want to state this point carefully, reading Barth and his most recent expositors critically has the potential to make us better theologians. These are not easy books to work through, but I think critical engagement with the source material will prove to be of use in clarifying and advancing a more consistently self-conscious confessional Reformed theology_.

^[1] George Hunsinger, Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015)

^[2] “While Barth has no Christology as such because the whole of his theology is Christological he does, however, have a doctrine of God as such even though the whole of his Church Dogmatics could be called a doctrine of God. The reason for this is obvious. For Barth an isolated Christology would be an abstraction since it would not deal with the whole Jesus Christ in his being and action in their unity.” John Thompson, Christ in Perspective: Christological Perspectives in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 1N1

^[3] Not a principle unique to Hunsinger (see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/)

^[4] Hunsinger, xii

^[5] Ibid. xiii

^[6] Ibid. xv

^[7] For a devastating critique of the “Calvin and the Calvinists” thesis see: Richard Muller, Was Calvin a Calvinist? Or, Did Calvin (or Anyone Else in the Early modern Era) Plant the ‘TULIP’?” [http://www.calvin.edu/meeter/Was%20Calvin%20a%20Calvinist-12-26-09.pdf]

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] “The reasoning of the Barthian revisionists seems closer to rationalistic Calvinism than to evangelical Calvinism.” Ibid. xvi

^[11] Bruce McCormack, Grace and Being: “The Role of God’s Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 92-100

^[12] As with any theological movement there is a great deal of diversity within the “revisionist” camp. If I speak of the movement monolithically I do so with the above proviso in mind.

^[13] Hunsinger, 2

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Ibid. 3

^[16] Ibid. 4

^[17] Ibid. 5

^[18] He says as much on p. 115 “Perhaps this is the place to reiterate that the driving interest of this book has to do with Karl Barth, not with revisionism.” Hunsinger’s concern is for the textual Barth, and that concern is evinced by Hunsinger’s careful exegesis of the relevant Barthian texts. The revisionist may find fault with much of Hunsinger’s take on Barth, but they definitely cannot say that he hasn’t provided a nuanced and textually based argument against their position.

^[19] Ibid. 5

^[20] Ibid. 7

^[21] Ibid.

^[22] Ibid. 7-8

^[23] Hunsinger offers this disclaimer, “I use the word doctrine here only as a matter of convenience. I do not mean to suggest that Barth has anything like a formal ‘doctrine of antecedence’” Ibid. 8N11

^[24] Ibid. 8

^[25] Ibid. 9

^[26] Ibid. 10

^[27] Ibid.

^[28] Ibid. 14

^[29] “A term used by 17th century Lutheran theologians to describe the Reformed view that after the incarnation the eternal Word as the second Person of the Trinity continues to be present and active beyond the flesh of Jesus Christ himself. Thus the Word is never totally contained in flesh.” Donald K. McKim, Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms (Louisville: WJK, 1996) 100

^[30] The Logos to become incarnate. Ibid. 16

^[31] Ibid.

^[32] Ibid. 19

^[33] Ibid. 18

^[34] Ibid. 19

^[35] Ibid. 19-20

^[36] Ibid. 20n22

^[37] Ibid. 21

^[38] Ibid. 21

^[39] Ibid. 33

^[40] Ibid. 34-35

^[41] Ibid. 36

^[42] Ibid. 41

^[43] Ibid. 43

^[44] Ibid. 45

^[45] Ibid. 46

^[46] Ibid.

^[47] Ibid. 48

^[48] Ibid.

^[49] “That being is eternal in whose duration beginning, succession, and end are not three but one, not separate as a first, a second, and a third occasion, but one simultaneous occasion as beginning, middle and end. Eternity is the simultaneity of beginning, middle, and end, and to that extent it is pure duration. Eternity is God in the sense in which in himself as well as in all things God is simultaneous, i.e., beginning and middle as well as end, without separation, distance or contradiction.” CD II/1, 608 cited by Hunsinger on 49

^[50] Ibid. 49

^[51] Ibid. 50

^[52] Ibid. 51

^[53] Hunsinger offers this clarification, “Pretemporal election is a comples transaction that unfolds as follows. The Father elects the Son; the Son elects himself in free obedience to the Father; in electing himself the Son also elects the human Jesus into unity with himself; the man Jesus elects himself by consenting to be the objet of the divine election; and finally the man Jesus consents to his election by electing the God who elected him. Remarkably, all this is seen as occurring in pretemporal eternity. In this pretemporal occurrence, the man Jesus is thought to be present with the Holy Trinity in a unique way, namely, from before the foundation of the world. He is present proleptically according to the eternal counsel and foreknowledge of God.” Ibid. 160

^[54] Ibid. 51

^[55] Ibid. 53

^[56] Ibid. 58

^[57] Ibid. 59

^[58] Hunsinger explains, “The actuality of the multiple and simultaneous forms of the one Word of God in its diverse temporal and eternal operation s surpasses anything that we can think or imagine. That is the surpassing mystery of the divine Logos.” Ibid. 59

^[59] Ibid. 69

^[60] Ibid. 71

^[61] Ibid.

^[62] Ibid.

^[63] Ibid. 72

^[64] Ibid. 76

^[65] Ibid.

^[66] Ibid. 77

^[67] “For Barth, however, self-determination means that the triune God decides to be who he is also in another and contingent way. The transition is not from the indeterminate to the determinate, but from the noncontingent to the contingent. In an act of free self-determination, contingent ‘properties’ are added by the incarnation to God’s already determinate reality as the eternal Trinity.” Ibid. 77n2

^[68] Ibid. 81

^[69] “Barth’s second ending has him returning home to himself. For in this section he endorses what he had written more than three decades earlier. He openly reaffirms the doctrine of the Trinity found in [CD] I/1, the first volume of his dogmatics. Not surprisingly, Barth revisionists tend to sidestep this second ending. The ending calls into question their claim that the later Barth had disowned his early work on the Trinity.” Ibid. 82

^[70] Ibid. 82

^[71] Ibid. 83

^[72] Ibid.

^[73] Ibid.

^[74] Ibid. 86

^[75] Ibid. 86

^[76] Ibid. 91

^[77] Ibid. 92

^[78] Hunsinger continues to explain, “It is always a matter of unity-in-distinction and identity-in-difference.” Ibid. 93n16

^[79] Ibid. 94

^[80] Ibid. 102

^[81] Ibid.

^[82] In other words, the eternal takes precedent over the temporal.

^[83] “ It [the revisionist thesis] misreads him [Barth], in other words, as if her were operating with a more or less ‘Hegelian’ ontology as opposed to the ‘Chalcedonian’ pattern. It overlooks that Barth continues to uphold ‘an absolute (and infinitely qualitative) distinction’ between divine and human being ([CD] IV/2, 61)” Ibid. 162

^[84] Ibid. 111

^[85] Ibid. 116

^[86] “The eternal obedience of the Son must differ from any obedience we know.” Ibid. 118

^[87] Ibid. 119

^[88] Ibid.

^[89] Ibid. 120

^[90] Ibid. 121

^[91] Ibid. 122

^[92] “Divine history in itself (history₁) and divine history in relation to us (history₂) are related not only in inseparable (‘without separation or division’) but also in abiding distinction (‘without confusion or change’).” Ibid. 123

^[93] Ibid.

^[94] Ibid. 128

^[95] Ibid. 129

^[96] Ibid. 130

^[97] For a very helpful summary of his revision of the incommunicable attributes see pp. 131-132.

^[98] Ibid. 133

^[99] Ibid. 134

^[100] Ibid. 138

^[101] Ibid.

^[102] Ibid. 165

^[103] “What he [Barth] denies is that God’s impassibility is an impediment to his sovereign freedom. He denies that God is a prisoner of his own perfections (IV/1, 187)…In the cross of Christ, divine impassibility is hidden under the form of its opposite without ceasing to be what it is.” Ibid. 152

^[104] “The inseparable unity meant that Christ’s sufferings and death took place in his humanity without being strictly confined there. Through the flesh of the Word made flesh, they were mediated back into the being of God, where they were destroyed as through a raging fire [emphasis mine].” Ibid. 155

^[105] Such is the “surpassing mystery of the incarnation.” Ibid. 155

^[106] Instead Hunsinger offers only a few short explanations see pp. xii-xiii, 39-40, 41, 47N4, and 73.