Someone once said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” It is a truth acknowledged but often forgotten. Have you ever been in a conversation when someone acted as though postmodernism was a new problem faced by the church? That is what I mean. So, I am writing this article as a reminder. We need to keep our wits about us. In part, that means remembering Solomon’s dictum, “There is nothing new under the sun” and taking it seriously.

Let me give you an example that fits the season. Take N. T. Wright for instance, who understands the atoning death of Jesus and his self-identification with Israel in metaphorical terms.[1] As such, on the cross Jesus thought of himself as taking on himself “the direct consequences…of the…failure and sin of Israel.”[2] In other words, according to Wright, Jesus was literally shouldering the direct result of political, social, personal, moral, and emotional manifestations of evil and he saw himself doing it metaphorically for the nation of Israel.[3] And of course, Wright contends that Jesus didn’t do these things for Israel alone. Wright maintains that Jesus “is Israel’s and the world’s representative” such that “he can stand in for all.”[4]

Now, do you see what that does? It reduces the wrath of God to the details of history. So, Pilate’s failure to render justice, the religious leader’s failure to see Jesus as the Messiah, the crowd’s willingness to be swayed should all be interpreted as the wrath of God. Now, let me be clear, there is a sense in which this is true. It’s true but it’s incomplete. The penal substitutionary death of Christ taught in Scripture has a dimension of truly unimaginable distress making every other painful aspect of Christ’s death pale by comparison.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about the suffering of Christ in the text that does not come from Pilate and a corrupt legal system, societal sins and moral failures, or from the corruption of religion. I’m talking about the suffering that came as a result of Christ being our sin bearer before God. In the prophesy of Isaiah, the divinely inspired prophet explains what happens when sin comes between God and man. He says, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.”[5]

Now, with that in mind think of Matthew 27:45. It says that darkness fell over the face of the land from the sixth to the ninth hour. In other words, from noon to 3 PM darkness canvassed the land and then, at 3 O’clock Christ cried out with a loud voice, “’Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My God, My God. Why have you forsaken Me?’” His cry is one of dereliction. The divinely loved Son, who could never lose the favor of God, has a sense of abandonment in His mediatorial office.

This is the very thing denied today. “Oh, of course not,” say Wright and folks like him. They might continue saying, “Christ did feel abandonment but he felt it precisely because of the political, societal, and religious isolation which had placed him on the cross.” Now, I need to be honest. I’m not buying their theological wares. But again, they might say, “If you deny what we are saying, how do you understand his cry of dereliction without falling into abstraction?”

Now, at this point it is important to listen to a voice from the past that reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun. Listen to Calvin’s comments on these very words from the Gospel. He says,

And certainly this [his cry of having been forsaken] was his chief conflict, and harder than all the other tortures, that in his anguish he was so far from being soothed by the assistance or favour of his Father, that he felt himself to be in some measure estranged from him. For not only did he offer his body as the price of our reconciliation with God, but in his soul also he endured the punishments due to us; and thus he became, as Isaiah speaks, a man of sorrows. Those interpreters are widely mistaken who, laying aside this part of redemption, attend solely to the outward punishment of the flesh; for in order that Christ might satisfy for us, it was necessary that he should be placed as a guilty person at the judgement seat of God.”

In the Institutes he’s even more emphatic, “If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual.”[6] Did you hear that? If the suffering of Christ is simply a bodily death due to political, social, and moral forces, then as a sacrifice for sins it would have been ineffectual.

Brothers and sisters, there is nothing new under the sun. Solomon’s dictum reminds us of another, “Read at least one old book for every new book that you read.” But my reason for writing this article goes far beyond a simple desire to help us to see that what is propounded as new is really not new at all. My reason has more to do with the very nature of Christ’s work. And Rabbi Duncan said it simply and said it best. He asked his class, “Do you know what Calvary was? What? What? What? ” With tears in his eyes, he said, “It was damnation; and Christ took it lovingly.” The nature of Christ’s worst suffering was damnation and he took it for me.

[1] Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 86.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 95.

[5] Isaiah, 59:2.

[6] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.16.10.

Recently I have been preaching through the life of Moses during the Lord’s Day evening service. Last week I ran headlong into the most difficult set of verses that the book of Exodus has to offer. Let me remind you of how Exodus 4:24–26 reads:

Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and threw it at Moses’ feet, and she said, ‘You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me.’ So He let him alone. At that time she said, ‘You are a bridegroom of blood’—because of the circumcision.”

Now, these few verses are a bit startling and not a little perplexing. Despite Moses’ earlier objections to God’s idea of using him as a deliverer, the Lord was fatherly toward him. The Lord even sent his brother Aaron as the mouthpiece for thick lipped and heavy tongued Moses. Why the radical change toward the man and his family when he was obviously on his way back to Egypt?

I have not done an exhaustive search, but current resources are not very helpful in resolving the critical questions that arise from the text. For instance, who was the Lord about to strike? Was it Moses or his son, Gershom? Is Zipporah’s statement one of anger or endearment? And why this little section (vv. 24–26) in the midst of other apparently little sections (vv. 18–31)? One scholar believes that verses 18–31 of chapter 4 are an example of loose editorial work. Do these rough-hewn verses merely move the narrative along? How do we understand the situation that took place at the lodge along the way back to Egypt?

The Context

Is it true that verses 18–31 fit together loosely? Is this a neglected section of the text? Is it an example of editorial forgetfulness? I don’t think so. Actually, it is quite the opposite. The context gives, well, … context … to the troubling verses. Think about it like this, after Moses leaves God he returns to his father-in-law to seek what appears to be permission to return to Egypt. But this would be a misinterpretation. Moses is not asking for Jethro’s permission so much as he is seeking his blessing. In other words, Moses says in effect, “Jethro, will you put your blessing on my departure?”

Now, there is a sense in which this is unremarkable. In fact, it may even be courteous, after all, he is leaving Jethro without an extra set of hands. He will take the man’s daughter away, and perhaps worst of all, the man’s grandchildren! So, in one sense Moses’ actions are unsurprising. However, what we find in verses 24–26 startles us. The man who eagerly sought the blessing of his father-in-law did not seek the blessing of God upon his child through the sacramental sign of circumcision. What a contrast!

The Obedience Problem

Having noticed how verses 18–20 work in concert with verses 24–26 we are now to think about verses 21–23. God had just said to Moses, “Israel is My son, My firstborn. So, I have said to you, ‘Let My people go that he may serve Me; but you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.” Here we find a clue to one of the most perplexing questions in the story. God told Moses that Pharaoh would lose his firstborn because of disobedience. Now, on the way back to Egypt Moses is about to lose his firstborn because of his own disobedience. He had not circumcised his son and God was about to strike Moses’ firstborn. The parallel is striking. This also goes hand in glove with what we have learned thus far in the story. In comparison to a bush, a stick, Moses’ hand, Jethro, and Zipporah—Moses is hesitant and perhaps even a bit disobedient!

But God does not show favoritism. He does not say, “Oh Moses! You hard-headed guy! Okay, I will let you get away with a little rebellion.” Can you imagine how hypocritical that would be? How could Moses stand before Pharaoh and say, “For your disobedience God will strike down your first born” knowing that he has been disobedient by not placing the sign of the covenant given to Abraham on his child? So, what we have in verses 24–26 is nothing short of God showing up at the lodge ready to strike down Moses’ firstborn because of his disobedience.

The Example

Finally, let us notice how verses 27–31 fit with verses 24–26. Moses went up to meet Aaron (who was obedient to God by the way [4:27]) in the wilderness and it appears to have been a wonderful reunion. Moses then described to Aaron all that God commanded him to do. Surely the events at the lodge had an enormous impact on Moses personally and it’s likely that he shared those events with Aaron. Perhaps this very incident came to mind when Aaron lost his sons Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10. Nonetheless, Moses told his brother all that the Lord had commanded.

Afterward, Moses and Aaron went to visit the elders of the Sons of Israel. Now, may I pull language down from v. 22? They went to meet God’s son, God’s firstborn—Israel. And what was the result? Verse 31, God’s son believed. And when they heard about the Lord’s concern and how He had seen their affliction they bowed in worship. What a lesson in parenting for Moses!

Conclusion

But to extend the thought. The obedience of Israel, God’s typological son, would be short-lived. Moses would also see Israel’s disobedience. Therefore, he would need to look beyond them. By the Lord’s Word and the types and shadows of the law, Moses looked forward to God’s greater Son—God’s own obedient only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus. That Son, though perfect, bore the disobedience of His people and He did not escape death like Gershom. But for the moment, Israel’s obedience as God’s son pointed Moses in the right direction.

While a senior in high school, I was pressed into playing the part of a court jester in our annual Canterbury festival. I was prepared with the perfect objection—I was unable to juggle. What jester cannot perform the most basic of jests? After voicing my handicap, I sat back and smiled. That is when the voice from the back of the room said, “I can teach him.” And so, it began.

Sad and sorry described not only my attempts to juggle but also my classmate’s attempts at teaching! She simply said, “Throw the first ball up in the air. Then throw the other two at the same time and keep doing it.” Ahem. Yeah. What I heard was, “Manage the chaos.” But to my amazement, it worked. It took a little time but it wasn’t long before I was managing the chaos.

This humorous story illustrates a not so humorous scenario. Imagine a person and their first tryst with a secret sin. Take gambling for example. I know of a small company in the area that occasionally takes employees to the local casino. Let’s imagine that while there, one of the employees is smitten with the whole thing. However, he knows his wife well enough to know that she would be neither amused nor approving. So, on several subsequent occasions, with money he has squirreled away, the man successfully sneaked away in order to satisfy his urge to gamble.

This man has come to a watershed moment. Will he continue to nurture the dual life that he has set in motion by his engagement with sin and his attempts to hide it from those closest to him? On the other hand, will he simply stop? The problem is he has learned to juggle the disparate aspects of his life rather well. He may have felt a bit guilty when he deceived his wife about the money but, he thought, what harm is done? This scenario rarely ends well. The man who trains in deceit and becomes adept at the double life will eventually enlarge his interests. He will progress from a journeyman to become a deceitmeister, and the door of secret pleasure will be open wide to him—or so he thinks.

Judas the Deceitmeister

I have often thought about Jesus and Judas. Judas was a prominent figure among the Lord’s disciples. He was the trusted treasurer of the twelve. But Judas was also a thief. He was living a dual life and apparently juggling the chaos quite well. In other words, no one suspected a thing. Even John admitted that when Judas left the Passover meal to betray Jesus, “We supposed that, because he had the money box, that Jesus told him to buy things needed for the feast…or to give something to the poor.” But there were signs of a problem.

Think specifically about Jesus’ final week. Mark tells us that Jesus retired to the home of some friends in Bethany for the evening.[1] While there, a woman came to the house carrying an alabaster jar full of expensive perfume. She walked over to Jesus and poured the contents on his head.

Some were indignant. Why? Because the perfume might have been sold for over three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor. Who was indignant? Do we know? John identifies the speaker as Judas Iscariot.[2] Clearly, Judas saw money that could have gone into the coffers poured out in waste. Now, this story reveals a number of things about Judas—and all who walk in his footsteps.

Dissecting the Double Life

First, this person will practice cunning cloaked in godly garb for personal gain. Cunning is difficult if not impossible to detect—it is, after all, cunning! On first hearing, who would have argued with Judas? Yet, Judas’ pious verbiage did not sound altogether pious to everyone, at least, not to Jesus. I mean, why not anoint Jesus? According to the Lord, the Disciples would always have the poor to serve but not Him to anoint.[3]

Second, this person will seek allies among the godly. The woman, by her self-denying act, had brought upon herself the reproach of Judas. Imagine the reputation of Judas. The brethren esteemed him, which was a special feat since these Disciples were always looking for ways to be first among the brethren. So, it seems from the text that others, following Judas, scolded the woman. Thus, the calm condemnation of Judas appeared to be a condemnation followed by the judicious and godly. Judas was not only advancing his agenda but also insulating himself in the community.

The previous two points may account for the third aspect. Judas had a god-complex. Upon looking at the accounts, what I find interesting is that when Jesus offered His support to the woman Judas reached a turning point. He betrayed Jesus. Now, that is suggestive. Perhaps Jesus’ public “opposition” to Judas in siding with the woman pricked his pride and stirred his jealousy. Possibly that is why Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss to the cheek, which implied equality, rather than a kiss to the hand, which implied respect. Regardless, the common theme in each of these points is the deceitmeister’s hatred for the Savior.

[1] Mark 14:1–11

[2] John 12:4–5

[3] Matthew 26:11

Simple images have a way of simplifying stories. Movies have perfected this technique. Think of oranges rolling randomly about in the back of the vehicle. They are just fruit in chaos! But the image of aimless oranges can cull the chaos in almost any story. What do I mean? Think of a well-worn scene. A young well-to-do wife is having an affair with a man from the wrong side of the tracks. She only has so much time. As she recklessly drives to rendezvous with her lover the camera cuts to an image of a overturned grocery bag and oranges crashing about atom-like in the back of her vehicle. The oranges tell the story. The woman’s life is in chaos. She is living a double life.

Heartbreakingly, this story is all too real and rather than recognizing chaos for the chaos it is and repenting as a result, some take their sin underground to live the double life. Growing up I had a friend who as a teenager found out that his father had fathered two families at the same time. The truth eventually emerged like pus from a boil. It was ugly. The man’s second wife uncovered his lie and she killed him.

I wish that had been my only experience with that sort of ugliness but unfortunately it was only the first. As a pastor, I have seen the same unsightly wreckage but with one difference. Now, it’s my calling as a under-shepherd to get involved. So, in this article I want to reflect on what I am calling the pathology and the psychology of the double life.

The Pathology of the Double Life

The double life doesn’t start differently than any other sin. James says it best in the first chapter of his letter, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin…” Sin is born in our lives because we desire something that is lawfully off-limits. Our head may know to say no but our unchecked affections don’t seem to care. They want what the head knows better than to give. This is not very startling; pastors see it all the time. It is pattern dating back to Adam.

But the double life does not begin when we engage in a sinful act. The dual life is set in motion when we develop a pattern of engagement with sin that we seek to hide from those closest to us. A person involved in this sort of cover-up will employ deception, rely on blame shifting, master the art of the con, and obsessively lie all in order to cover up the affair, the gambling, the drinking, and on and on. That is the double life and it is alive and well even in the church.

The Psychology of the Double Life

Now, why is it that the person living the double life is so hard to retrieve? Perhaps you say, “Because he covers it up so well!” True enough. However, there is something far more subtle and dangerous. Let’s take a minute to think about the psychology of the person living the double life. The person develops an attitude that is nothing short of superior. In other words, they possess an almost Gnostic mind-set; they know better. What do I mean? It’s simple really. They claim to have (in)sight that no one else has. They can see the hypocrisy of the one group (the church) and the sin of the other (some part of the world) when the fact of the matter is – they are engaged in the worst sort of hypocrisy and the worst sort of sin!

But this Gnostic omniscience is, not surprisingly, accompanied by a god complex, which is to say, the person believes that he is more than competent to control the details of his dual life. Yet, and strikingly, this god complex does not lessen when the sinful behavior of his dual life is ushered into the light of day. In fact, even and especially when his dual life is exposed he judges himself a more capable judge than those proper authorities that God has set over him! The pride that once fed his god complex now only emboldens his superiority in the face of Christ’s under-shepherds. In other words, he still thinks that the oranges crashing about in the back of the car are under his sovereign control. But it only appears that way to him.

Having looked at the pathology and the psychology involved in the double life next time we will look a bit closer at some specifics. In other words, when the double life begins to breakdown it will manifest certain characteristics. It is to these that we will turn the next time.

Perhaps you will remember from the last post, according to Jenson, Israel’s hope, as well as our own, is for participation in God’s own reality, which is nothing less than deification.[1] Working this idea out, Jenson asks, can God as Triune “bring other persons into that life?”[2] His answer is, on the surface, less threatening than we might have expected, though minimally. He writes, “that if bringing other persons into the triune life were in such a fashion to ‘deify’ them as to increase the number of persons whose life it is, if it added to the identities of God, then God could not accommodate them without undoing himself.”[3]

So, how does Jenson explain the deification of participants in the divine life? Not surprisingly his answer has a grammatical focus. In other words, the participant who is deified does not become a divine identity. But what does that mean? According to Jenson, “a divine identity is a persona just of that dramatis dei actually told by the gospel,” thus any other relation than this “is not a divine identity.”[4]

Consequently, Jenson is drawing a distinction between the narrative of Scripture and history itself. Thus, the Triune God is eternal “by the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection.”[5] However, in and through Christ God takes our time into His time. Thus, the source of God’s temporal infinity is found in the Person of Christ. Therefore, we find that Jenson wants to distinguish between Creator and creature even in the telos.

This constant attempt to maintain a Creator creature distinction is also consistent with his understanding of the analogia entis. Let us return one final time to Jenson’s revolutionized understanding of analogy this time as it relates to deification or perichoresis. I have already pointed out that for Jenson the analogia entis is an irreducibly grammatical construct as it relates to being, which is conversation.

However, Jenson realizes that there is a breakdown between grammatical assertion “God is” and “creatures are.”[6] Thus, Jenson adopts categories that will help us to understand the breakdown. He says, “‘x is’ is univocal in its locutionary sense” but “equivocal in its ‘illocutionary force.’”[7] In other words, the utterance’s illocutionary force is the particular act performed when it is said.[8] We might interpret Jenson as saying that the illocutionary force is the product (act) of the locutionary sense. Thus, says Jenson, “We may ask, when we say “God is,” what do we do?”[9]

Consequently, Jenson maintains an archetype ectype distinction in his understanding of analogy and in his view of deification. But can he uphold the distinction? Again, let us return to Jenson’s conception of the incarnation. For him, it is simply the adoption of Christ; an adoption that is only constituted in the univocal address of the man Jesus of Nazareth to God the Father. However, can there be a coincidence between the thought of man and the thought of God, or according to Jenson, between the conversation of man and God, without there being a coincidence of being? Surely the answer is, no.

Thus, the implications are obvious. If there is a univocal epistemological address between God and man then there must be a univocal correspondence between the being of God and man. Thus, in and through the application of Jenson’s view of the analogia entis to the incarnation of the second Person of Trinity, Jenson has destroyed the archetype ectype distinction that he seeks so carefully to maintain. Thus, God has become history or perhaps more to the point, man has become the Biblical narrative. Thus, Jenson has thoroughly temporalized God. There is now, no distinction between God and man. God has been thoroughly temporalized; man has been thoroughly deified. Thus, both God and man are irreducibly univocal grammatical constructions.

Having come to the end of this series, which was one post more than intended, I believe that I have demonstrated my thesis. Through his revolutionized understanding of the analogia entis Jenson laid the groundwork for the total temporalizing of God. What is more, Jenson’s inability to reconcile the univocal address of the man Jesus in his adoptionistic grammatically oriented view of the incarnation destroyed any residue of an archetype ectype distinction. Furthermore, such a move opened the door for the full deification of participants in the Godhead.

Throughout these posts the nagging question has been; has Jenson gone beyond

Barth? Now, we may answer without reservation. Yes, though Barth sowed the seeds, Jenson has indeed reaped a Barthian harvest of ideas with regard to the Creator-creature distinction that are simply contrary to the Biblical account and the orthodox confessions of the faith.

[1] Jenson, ST 1, 71.

[2] Ibid., 226.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 219.

[6] Jenson, ST II, 38.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

In our last post, (a while back!) I argued that Jenson had in fact compromised the creator creature distinction and I said that we would flesh that out a bit, which is what I plan to do here. So, if Jenson has damaged the crucial theological distinction between Creator and creature what are the implications?

First, let me identify the problem. When discussing the univocity of address between Jesus the man and the eternal God, Jenson cannot adopt the view that God is communication and man is communication, but their conversation is separate from one another. Quite the contrary, if the address of Jesus, the adopted Son, to the Father is univocal (as Jenson argued), then there must be an epistemological correspondence between the conversation of God and man. Moreover, if there is an epistemological correspondence then God is no longer hidden.

Now, before critiquing this apparent problem let us explore one way in which Jenson might free himself from this difficulty. He might appeal to Kant’s theory of transcendental unity of apperception as applied to the Godhead. According to Kant, self – consciousness is not really consciousness of self; rather a self – conscious person is merely identifying his experiences as his own. So, says Jenson, “If the ‘I’ is not primally identical with the focus of consciousness, then the self is not a ‘self’-contained or ‘self’-sustaining something.”[1]

Jenson applies this concept to theology. For him, “It should always have been apparent that Father, Son, and Spirit could not each be personal quite in the same way.”[2] Jenson’s conclusion is, for example, the Spirit, is then someone’s Spirit, so that he (the Spirit) cannot be an autonomous someone.[3] But the end of such reasoning is that the Persons of the Godhead are not fully self-aware.[4] That is, each person of the Triune Godhead could only identify their experiences ad extra, but not necessarily be aware of themselves individually. So, perhaps Jenson could argue that the hiddenness of God resides at just this point.

However, this seems an unlikely position due to the fact that Jenson seems to follow Barth’s model of the Trinity. For Barth, the Trinity was a threefold repetition of the divine ousia. Jenson, consistent with his understanding of being as communication, interprets Barth’s view by suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity is merely a “set of identifying descriptions” to back up the name “God.”[5]

Thus, for Barth, God is a uni-conscious being. However, Jenson, sensitive to the criticism of Modalism that was leveled against Barth, asks if “we can interpret the differing personalities of the Father as the Father, and the Father as the Trinity, ontologically.”[6] His answer is alarming and consistent with Barth. He says, “All suggestions at this point must have an arbitrary air, as we again strain the limits of language.”[7] However, Jenson does attempt to strain the limits of language but in the end he can only affirm the “oneness of the one Trinity.”[8] Consequently, it appears that Kant’s theory of transcendental unity of apperception as applied to the Trinity cannot be sustained over against a God that is solely uni-conscious.[9]

Therefore, we return to our original assertion. When discussing the univocity of address between the man Jesus and the eternal God, Jenson cannot adopt the view that God is communication and man is communication, but their conversation is separate from one another. To do so would ontologically and narratively sever the Son from the Father, according to Jenson’s way of thinking.

Second, to posit that the univocal correspondence of conversation between the eternal God and the man Jesus would make Scripture more than what Jenson has alleged it to be. For example, if all that I have claimed thus far concerning Jenson’s understanding of language, per a cultural – linguistic model follows, then, for Jenson, the Bible is not a set of truth propositions that have cognitive correspondence between man and God. The statements found in Scripture are only ontologically true insofar as they are intra-systemically consistent.

Thus, whether Jenson would admit to it or not, the Bible is reduced to pious feelings set forth in speech. Therefore, to snatch a line from Cornelius Van Til with slight modification, Jenson’s “theology is anthropology still; the ‘cool smile’ of Feuerbach may perhaps now be thought of as a sardonic grin.”[10]

Though Jenson obviously believes that Scripture is simply pious feeling set forth in speech he is still unable to extricate himself from the difficulty Jesus’ univocal address creates. That is, if the man Jesus of Nazareth was adopted to be the Second Person of the Trinity, and that adoption is constituted by Jesus’ address to the Father, then Scripture must be more than pious feeling set forth in speech. Moreover, Scripture, at least the address of the Son in Scripture, must have a cognitive correspondence between man and God at that point, which pulls God out from His hiddenness and makes the unknown God knowable.

Therefore, we must conclude that although Jenson’s view of God and his revolutionized analogia entis lays the groundwork for the temporalizing of God, it is the incarnation (i.e. the adoption of Christ) that wholly temporalizes God. Furthermore, it is this wholesale temporalizing of the deity that raises a final point that we will address in the final post; our being enfolded into the Triune God or as Jenson puts it, our deification.

[1] Jenson, ST 1, 121.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] It’s interesting that Oliphint notes that ideas depicting Christ as schizophrenic have begun to surface in discussions of Christology and the incarnation. Cf. Oliphint, 287-88n14.

[5] Jenson, God after God, 98.

[6] Jenson, ST 1, 122, Cf. 119. Jenson also calls the Trinity “a conceptually developed and sustained insistence that God himself is identified by and with the particular plotted sequence of events that make the narrative of Israel and her Christ,” (ST 1, 60, Cf. 46). However, one must be sympathetic with Jenson’s attempt to free himself from the charge of Modalism because of the Biblical narrative itself (ST 1, 96-100).

[7] Jenson, ST 1, 122.

[8] Ibid., 123.

[9] Obviously, Jenson could say that God, as a uni-conscious being, is not self-aware. However, this does not seem to be the direction that Jenson wants to go due to his view of God as free act.

[10] Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner (Philadelphia, PA: P & R Publishing, 1947), 244.

In the last post we asked if Jenson had gone beyond Barth. Has he temporalized eternity? Jenson is certainly bolder in his assertions linking eternity and time, but has he really achieved a consummation between the two? Frankly, at this point his theology appears no more threatening than that of Barth. However, we may not see a storm cloud in the sky but we sure can smell the rain. Therefore, we must now consider the person of Jesus Christ in Jenson’s thought. Because, according to Jenson, this is the epitome of God’s temporality and so to this we now turn.

To begin, let us return for a moment to our discussion of Jenson’s revolutionized understanding of the analogia entis as it relates to his archetype ectype distinction. Again, it is vital to remember that God’s being is utterance, which is in contradistinction to “an unspoken mental form.”[1] Thus, “being itself must be such as to compel analogous use of language when evoking it.”[2] So, again we are to understand that being is an irreducible grammatical construction.

Following Jenson’s logic, we may conclude that God has being in precisely the same way that creatures have being. Whatever God means by “be” is exactly what it means for Him or a creature to be.[3] “Therefore,” says Jenson, “insofar as ‘being’ says something about God or creatures, ‘being’ must after all be univocal rather than analogous.”[4]

But what does Jenson mean by saying that being, as shared by God and creatures, must be univocal? Again, let us remember that for Jenson “being is conversation.”[5] But how can the conversation of God and man be shared univocally when the word of God is hidden behind the word of Scripture? In order for God’s word in conversation to be univocal with our word in conversation, and vice versa, what is attributed to one thing must be identical when attributed to another.[6] Thus, the question is; what is identical in the conversation that God shares with man?

Before pursuing this question further I will demonstrate what Jenson does not mean. Jenson does not mean that the statement “God is good” and the statement “Paul is good” share a univocity, and the reason is simple. According to Jenson, “good” is not an essential element of the nature of God or man. Hence, Jenson is clearly defining the parameters of what may be considered univocal and what may not be. Therefore, the only thing that can be considered univocal between God and man is being, and being is conversation. So again, what univocal element does the conversation between God and man share?

It seems that Jenson has become entangled in a difficulty. If he says that the language of God and the language of man coincide at any given point then some type of cognitive knowledge between God and man must exist, which is exactly what Jenson does not want to maintain. But if he says that God and man share univocally in being, in the sense that God is communication and man is communication but their conversation is separate from one another, then he has really said nothing about the univocity that supposedly exists between Creator and creature. Perhaps this is the position that Jenson wants to maintain, for prior to this he has maintained that our conversations are surely not identical with one another, though he would certainly disagree that this univocity says nothing about God’s relationship to man.

However, Jenson’s view of analogy, as applied to the incarnation, brings a new dimension to the discussion. Jenson begins his discussion of the Persons of the Godhead by affirming an adoptionist Christology. Thus, Jesus of Nazareth was the adopted Son of God. He became what He was not.[7] Jenson claims that the Nazarene was merely a man as set forth in the narrative of Scripture. Moreover, this man from Nazareth was adopted to be the eternal Son of God. But what constitutes the adoption of Jesus?

For Jenson, “Primally, it denotes the claim Jesus makes for himself in addressing God as Father.”[8] In fact, posits Jenson, “This Son is an eternally divine Son only in and by this relation” of address.[9] So, for Jenson, the adoption of Christ is established in the univocal address of the Son to God as Father. Let me say it another way. The utterance of Jesus, the man from Nazareth, addresses the Father, and both man and God understood that conversation in a univocal manner.

This appears to create a difficulty for Jenson but he puts off answering the crucial point for the time being. He says, “When trinitarian reflection recognizes the Son as an eternal divine Son, a question will indeed arise about the relation of his divine identity to his reality as creature, but this is a question of secondary reflection, whose systematic place is further on.”[10] However, this particular topic is not taken up again. Jenson does deal with pre-existence in light of the birth of Christ, but the notion of the univocal address that constitutes Sonship does not appear again.

Yet, the relation of the Son’s “divine identity to His reality as a creature” is no secondary matter, especially as it relates to the univocal relationship of being between God and man. It is at this very point that Jenson can no longer maintain his distinction between Creator and creature. In our next post we will flesh this out.

[1] Jenson, ST II, 38.

[2] Ibid., 37.

[3] Ibid., 38.

[4] Ibid. Following Thomas, “being,” says Jenson, “used simultaneously of God and creatures must, as we use it, mean in the case of God ‘first archetypical causation of created being’ and in the case of creatures just ‘being.’”

[5] Ibid., 49.

[6]Oliphint, Reasons {for Faith} (Phillipsburg, NJ: P& R Publishing, 2006), 98.

[7] For Jenson there is no pre-existence of the Son in any traditional sense, Cf. Jenson, ST 1, 141.

[8] Jenson, ST 1, 77.

[9] Ibid, emphasis mine.

[10] Ibid., 78.

In our last post we left two questions begging to be asked. First, how can Jenson talk about ontological truth statements in Scripture? Second, how is he able to identify God as ontologically equivalent with the word of Scripture? Today we take up Jenson’s answers to these questions.

In the cultural–linguistic model of language Jenson has found an explanatory model.[1] There are two crucial concepts that attend the cultural-linguistic model of language that are useful for understanding Jenson’s thought. The first attending idea is the theory of “intrasystemic consistency.”[2] This category deals with the functional coherence of a given system. Unlike the idealist who defines coherence as the intelligent and consistent integration of any fact with all other facts; the cultural–linguistic model speaks in terms of systems. Thus, the internal consistency of a system is the meaning of coherence.

The second notion that must be taken into account is that of ontological truth statements.[3] According to the cultural-linguistic model, these statements deal with the truth of correspondence. Whereas, philosophically such a notion usually has to do with the correspondence of the idea I have in my mind to what is “out there;” however, for the cultural-linguistic model it has more to do with understanding one’s own system among many others. Correspondence, then, is not an attribute that any one system can itself possess.[4]

So, how can these concepts help us to understand Jenson’s view of God as ontologically present in a mere Scriptural witness, while at the same time remaining unknowable? Jenson claims to adopt the cultural-linguistic model of intrasystemic consistency because it is found in Scripture.[5] There is, says Jenson, a “theology of culture” that permeates Scripture. So, according to Jenson, “every culture is a religion and the body of every religion is a culture;” the religion of Israel is no exception.[6]

Furthermore, according to Jenson, this intrasystemic consistency is known as dramatic coherence.[7] Thus, after a grammatical and cultural discussion of words like “god” and “eternity” Jenson says, “We summarize this chapter so far: the God to be interpreted in this work is the God identified by the biblical narrative.”[8] The point is clear. Jenson is defining the system in which his theology is to be situated. He is dealing with the God of the biblical narrative. Jenson is not dealing with the Canaanite idols or the expressions of the divine found in Buddhism; instead, he is interpreting the God found in the system of the Biblical narrative.[9]

Having established the system in which he will converse, Jenson can now begin to use ontological truth statements. Since according to the cultural-linguistic model an intrasystemic true statement may be ontologically false in a system that lacks the appropriate concepts and categories of reference, but situated in its respective system as part of the system, the statement is now ontologically true.[10] Thus, it is possible according to a cultural-linguistic model of language for Jenson to posit an ontic equality between God and the narrative of Scripture, which is exactly what he does.[11]

However, these ontic statements need not correspond to what is beyond their own system. In his, The Nature of Doctrine, Lindbeck writes,

The ontological truth of religious utterances, like their intrasystematic truth, is different as well as similar to what holds in other realms of discourse. Their correspondence to reality in the view we are expounding is not an attribute that they have when considered in and of themselves, but is only a function of their role in constituting a form of life, a way of being in the world…[12]

Therefore, when Jenson talks about the narrative of Scripture being ontologically identifiable with God he is only being consistent with his own system as he sees it. That is not to say that the language corresponds with a being that stands over against the narrative. Nor are we to think that the grammatical logic of the narrative will correspond to anything beyond the system itself. Rather, we must simply and only think of these statements in the Scripture as having ontological status within the Biblical system as Jenson sees it.

To use the terminology of the cultural-linguistic model, these ontological truth statements merely express “a form of life, a way of being in the world.” This view is consistent with Jenson’s own understanding of Christian narrative in that insofar as “theological propositions are factual propositions, they be logically and epistemically homogeneous with propositions of first – level proclamation and prayer, as is ‘God is love.’”[13] Thus, ontological truth statements, according to a cultural-linguistic view, are simply statements that produce intrasystemic consistency in both the thought and life of the community.

Yet, the question remains; can these ontological truth statements provide any cognitive knowledge concerning God? Again, the answer must be, no. Our language cannot communicate anything cognitive about God. The event of God’s act cannot be known through intuition, reason, or theoretical categories. God does not adapt himself to our cognitive efforts.[14] So then, the ontological truth statements about God in Scripture are simply and only statements that will enable a community to function and communicate consistently with one another.

The nagging question at this point is; has Jenson really gone beyond Barth? Jenson is certainly bolder in his assertions linking eternity and time, but has he really achieved a consummation between the two? At this point his theology appears no more threatening than that of Barth. After all, he still maintains a distinction between God and creation that can only be penetrated by an unknowable act, while at the same time, adopting a cultural-linguistic view of Scripture that enables the community to make ontological truth statements without the burden of correspondence. Therefore, we must now consider the person of Jesus Christ. According to Jenson, He is the epitome of God’s temporality and to Him we will turn in the next post.

[1] Jenson, ST 1, 18 n43.

[2] George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1984), 64.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 65

[5] Jenson, ST 1, 51.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid. 55.

[8] Ibid., 57.

[9] Ibid., 55 – 56.

[10] Lindbeck, 65.

[11] Jenson, ST 1, 59.

[12] Lindbeck, 65.

[13] Jenson, ST 1, 20.

[14] Ibid., 227.

By now it should be understood by the reader that for Jenson, God is the act of utterance.[1] For Jenson, as I argued in my last post, God is to be identified by and as wholly temporalized in the narrative of Scripture. However, in a seemingly contradictory move, Jenson also believes that to reduce God to a set of propositions is to devolve “into the biblicisms of modernity.”[2] Following Barth, Jenson dismisses the notion that to simply adopt Biblical language is adequate to apprehend God.[3] God is ineffable.[4] Thus, before we can understand Jenson’s view of Scripture we must understand how the God who is to be identified by the narrative of Scripture is known in and from the narrative. Only then may we know the functional place of Scripture within the life of the church.

Therefore, how can we speak about the veracity of man’s knowledge of God? Can man know God cognitively? According to Jenson, “God’s knowability is not a dispositional property.”[5] Defining what he means by “dispositional property” Jenson explains, “That is, it is not his possession of qualities that adapt him to satisfy some exterior effort, in this case our cognitive effort.”[6]

Clearly, for Jenson, cognitive knowledge of God is impossible. In fact, says Jenson, our union with God “transcends the mind’s natural ‘cognitive capacity.’”[7] So, how does man come to know God? How does God pierce historie in order to make Himself known? For Jenson, the answer is simple; God reveals Himself.[8]

However, it is a matter of primary importance to remember how God is said to reveal Himself. According to Jenson, the way in which God discloses Himself is in act. For Jenson, this is a primary theological category. God is free event. In fact, God must be taken “as invariant through the event.”[9] He is not the gift that the event brings; He is the event. In other words, God reveals His whole self in the event of His act.

But what is the event of God’s self-revelation? According to Jenson, it is conversation. Furthermore, Jenson argues that this self-revealing act of conversation is the narrative of Scripture. He writes,

At several places in this chapter and before, a conceptual move has been made from the biblical God’s self-identification by events in time to his identification with those events; moreover, it will by now be apparent that the whole argument of the work depends on this move. In each case in which it has been made, it has been conceptually secured in that context. But it is now possible, and high time, to justify it directly.

Were God identified by Israel’s Exodus or Jesus’ resurrection, without being identified with them, the identification would be a revelation ontologically other than God himself. The revealing events would be our clues to God, but would not be God. And this, of course, is the normal pattern of religion: where the deity reveals itself is not where it is.[10]

Two important points stand out in these lines. First, the revealing events of Scripture are the act of God. They are the event of God’s self-revelation in utterance. Second, these events ontologically identify the person of God. They do not point to God; rather the narrative acts are God. Therefore, initially it appears that Jenson has gone beyond Barth in claiming that the act of God can be identified. After all, Barth claims that,

When on the basis of His revelation we always understand God as event, as act and as life, we have not in any way identified Him with a sum or content of event, act, or life generally. We can never expect to know generally what event or act or life is, in order from that point to conclude and assert that God is He to whom this is all proper in an unimaginable and incomprehensible fullness and completeness. When we know God as event, act and life, we have to admit that generally and apart from Him we do not know what this is.[11]

Thus, Barth maintains that even the act of God is unknowable. And so, for Barth, Scripture is only a witness to God’s act. Therefore, it would be untenable to suggest that Scripture could claim an ontic status with regard to the being of God.

So, has Jenson gone beyond Barth at this point? We must remember that, according to Jenson, Barth was not fully able to extricate himself from the material doctrine of being. Thus, for Barth the fundamental resemblance between God and creatures is that God is Being and creatures are beings. However, Jenson says that the analogous use of language is what constitutes the analogy of being making it an irreducibly grammatical construction. Therefore, God and the Biblical narrative are ontologically one.

However, this move by Jenson seems to lock him into three positions that he is unwilling to endorse. First, to posit an ontic equality between God and Scripture sanctions the “biblicism of modernity” that Jenson has previously repudiated. Second, an ontic equality between God and Scripture suggests that we can have cognitive knowledge about God. This is something that Jenson denies because the event of communication cannot occupy cognitive categories because it is an event that “transcends natural cognitive capacity.” Moreover, to claim that we can say, “God is good” is to posit something about the very nature of God. But if God is by definition a free act that can chose His own nature, then it is impossible for us to say that God is “anything” other than free decision. Any other claim goes beyond our ability to know.

So, how does Jenson answer this apparent problem? It is true that for Jenson, God is free utterance. He is communication. However, God is the word to which all other words respond.[12] He is not necessarily our word. He does not depend on a prior word or language.[13] In other words, God is the word that stands apart from the word of Scripture, whether in English or Swahili. God’s word remains hidden as it were behind the word of Scripture. Thus, a dual conversation takes place. According to Jenson, God is conversation and man is conversation but their conversations do not correspond at any given point, nor can they, for such a correspondence would entail an epistemological correspondence that Jenson wants to deny.

Therefore, the word of Scripture is a witness to God’s word and serves as a vehicle for encounter, but Scripture is not His word. Scripture must become His word – event.[14] Thus, Jenson is able to maintain a distinction between God as his own word and the word of Scripture. But the question that begs to be asked is how can Jenson talk about ontological truth statements in Scripture? How is he able to identify God as ontologically equivalent with the word of Scripture? We will take up these questions in the next post.

[1] Jenson, God after God, 190.

[2] Jenson, ST 1, 29.

[3] Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1, 195.

[4] Ibid., 190.

[5] Jenson, ST 1, 227. Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics II. 1, 205, “But is God really an object of human cognition? Is an object of human cognition God? No postulate, however necessary, can compel this to be true.”

[6] Jenson, ST 1, 227.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 124.

[9] Ibid., 50.

[10] Ibid., 59.

[11] Barth, Church Dogmatics II. 1, 264.

[12] Jenson, God after God, 190.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Jenson, ST 1, 28.

I stated my basic contention in the last post. It was simply this, Robert Jenson, adopting Barth’s theological notion of time and eternity and taking that understanding to its logical conclusion, has laid the theological groundwork for the destruction of the Creator creature distinction that he seeks to maintain. Therefore, in this post I will demonstrate that Jenson’s definition of “being,” as conditioned by his understanding of the analogia entis, has laid the groundwork in order to thoroughly temporalize the Triune God, to the extent that an a se God does not, nor can He, stand apart from His creation.

Understanding the Being of God Grammatically

For Jenson, the traditional definition of God as “invisible, timelessly present, something – analogous – to – a person” will no longer due(sic).”[1] According to Jenson, these are useless descriptions at best being more philosophical than Biblical.[2] So, Jenson sets out to establish a working definition of the traditional concept of being which has “become an inextricable determinant of the actual Christian doctrine of God.”[3]

For Jenson, this inadequate definition of being as understood by philosophy and adopted by traditional theology is threefold. First, being is immunity to time.[4] For Jenson, this is the traditional theological concept of timelessness, and, as he points out, this is more Greek than Biblical. Second, what truly is, is form (eidos).[5] A form, as defined by Plato, is a pattern that must be immune to time and therefore, is. This form, according to Greek philosophy, is a human being, a tree, or a god. This too is inadequate and part of the traditional concept of being. Third, form or eidos is the shape that the mind’s eye sees.[6] Compatible with his first two points Jenson observes that a being that is immune to time and possesses form must “appear in the present tense of the consciousness without inner reference to the past or future, as objects in space appear to sight.”[7] This, according to Jenson, is the traditional concept of being.

But for Jenson this philosophical definition of being is not suitable for a post-enlightenment, post-Kantian culture, nor does traditional theology help matters by simply filling the concept of being with different (i.e. Biblical) content.[8] So, Jenson asks, “What kind of being does God have as the one God?”[9] For Jenson, this question is crucial to his whole theological enterprise.

But before we can answer a question about the being of God we must ask another, namely, what is being? Jenson postulates that in metaphysical discourse, of which the Creator creature distinction is the first axiom, we may only use the concept of “being” analogously.[10] “Which is to say,” affirms Jenson, “that being itself must be such as to compel analogous use of language when evoking it, that “God is” and “this creature is” are irreducibly at once incomparable and comparable facts.”[11] As a result, Jenson has redefined the analogia entis making it an irreducibly grammatical construction. Thus, “being” is now to be interpreted by hearing rather than seeing.[12]

Only after having Jenson’s definition of being may we now ask; what kind of being does God have as the one God? Jenson gives a fourfold answer. First, God is an event.[13] According to Jenson, God is not “being” in the traditional sense; He is a concrete act. But it is not enough to say that God is Actus purus.[14] God must be a particular event; He must be Actus Purus et singularis.[15] Here Jenson follows Barth and concedes to Kant. According to Barth, Kant was right. We can have no access to God through intuition, reason, or theoretical categories. Therefore, how do we bring geschichte into meaningful relationship with historie? Barth’s answer to Kant was that we must not think of God in passive categories, but rather we must think of him in terms of event. God is, according to Jenson, the event that enters historie.

Second, Jenson says that, God is a person.[16] This raises the obvious question, if God is a person how can he not be “being” in the traditional sense that Jenson repudiates? It is important to notice that in order to answer this question Jenson modifies the definition of “person” offered by Boethius. Whereas Boethius defined person as an individual entity endowed with intellect Jenson says that to be a person is to be one with whom other persons can converse.[17] Thus, we might safely say that Jenson equates personhood with the ability to communicate.

Third, Jenson also posits that God is a decision.[18] For Jenson, who is simply following Barth at this point, “God’s freedom is that of a subject, of a person.”[19] Consequently, God is the subject who determines His own nature.[20] God is the act of His own decision.[21] In other words, God could have been other than who He is.[22]

Finally, and not surprisingly, Jenson says that God is a conversation.[23] For Jenson, this is the logical conclusion of the preceding items, including his understanding of the analogia entis. Again for Jenson, to be a person is to converse with another. Therefore, God, as free event, reveals Himself in his free decision to converse with His creation.

It is precisely at this point that Jenson believes he is taking Barth’s thought to its final conclusion. What is more, this understanding of God is consistent with Jenson’s view of being. God is the free event of conversation. Therefore, the divine is reduced to an irreducibly grammatical construction. Therefore, to say “God is” is to say, “language is.” Jenson says it like this, “God is the communication that creates our communication.”[24]

It is important to note that in God after God Jenson sees promising beginnings in Barth’s theology, per a reconstructed analogy of being.[25] However, Barth failed to destroy the traditional notion of analogy as it pertains to our understanding of God’s eternity.[26] Barth had only hinted at the importance of language but had maintained an analogy of image rather than destroying it altogether.

According to Jenson, in order for a theological revolution to take place “we will have to understand the radicalness of God’s temporality as a certain pattern of that temporality itself.”[27] Which means claims Jenson, new ways of understanding the continuities of God’s reality and work in time must be posited. And for Jenson it is “fairly clear what categories offer themselves: communication, utterance, and language. We will learn to understand God as an hermeneutic event, as a Word.”[28] Thus, we are provided with the context of Jenson’s claim in his own treatment of systematic theology that, “language is the possibility of historical being.”[29]

The Being of God as Narrative

We are thus brought back to the question, what is God? According to Jenson’s revolutionary understanding of the analogia entis and his four point description of God

culminating with God as conversation, Jenson makes the assertion that, “God himself is identified by and with the particular plotted sequence of events that make the narrative of Israel and her Christ.”[30] In other words, God is not identified by the events of Exodus and resurrection, but rather with those linguistic and grammatical events.[31]

Reciprocally, Jenson affirms, “the Scriptural narrative is thus itself Israel’s sole construal of the Lord’s self-identity.”[32] Perhaps one more instance will serve to solidify the point that Jenson has thoroughly identified God with the narrative of Scripture and that the narrative is our sole construal of the Lord’s self-identity. He writes, “God…is identified by the narrative of which his word by his prophets and our answering prayer make the dialogue.”[33] “Thus,” Jenson concludes, “the Lord is not only in fact identifiable by certain temporal events but is apprehended as himself temporally identifiable.”[34] That is too say, according to Jenson, “blatantly temporal events belong to his very deity.”[35]

At this point it seems rather obvious that Jenson has at least sought to temporalize God’s existence in and through the use of language as a new and irreducibly grammatical way of understanding the being of God. But even so, Jenson is unwilling to give up an archetypal ectypal distinction. What is more, the problems that inhere with his development seem to be equally plain to him.[36] As a result, he employs a cultural – linguistic view of language in order to establish not only his revolutionized notion of the analogia entis, but also an archetype ectype distinction. How he accomplishes this is for our next post.

[1] Jenson, God after God, 124.

[2] Ibid., 124n.3.

[3] Jenson, ST 1, 207.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 210.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 211.

[9] Ibid., 221.

[10] Jenson, ST II, 37. Jenson conceives this as a radical departure from Barth. Jenson says, “In the classical doctrine of analogy, the fundamental resemblance between God and creatures is that God is Being and creatures are beings” And according to Jenson, Barth’s “fundamental objection to the classical doctrine of the analogy of God and the world is that as the correspondence between them it puts being – in – general where Jesus Christ belongs” (Jenson, God after God, 77). Thus, Barth apparently maintained a somewhat traditional understanding of being but shifted it from theology to Christology. Such a move was not sufficient for Jenson (Cf. God after God, 85, 179).

[11] Jenson, ST II, 37.

[12] Jenson, ST 1, 210.

[13] Ibid., 222.

[14] Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1, 264.

[15] Ibid., Cf., Jenson, ST 1, 221.

[16] Jenson, ST 1, 222.

[17] Ibid., 117.

[18] Ibid., 222.

[19] Jenson, God after God, 126 (emphasis his).

[20] Ibid., 127.

[21] Jenson, ST 1, 140.

[22] Jenson, ST II, 27. Jenson is quick to point out that it is speculation to ask what this “other than” aspect could have been, Cf., ST 1, 65.

[23] Jenson, ST 1, 223.

[24] Jenson, God after God, 190.

[25] Ibid., 155.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid. 155 –156.

[29] Jenson, ST 1, 223. Cf. God after God, 190.

[30] Jenson, ST 1, 60.

[31] Ibid., 59.

[32] Ibid., 64.

[33] Ibid., 80.

[34] Ibid., 49 (emphasis his).

[35] Ibid.

[36] Even though Jenson does not view timelessness and temporality as categories of the archetype and ectype distinction he is unable to fully extricate himself from their implications (Cf. Jenson, ST 1, 99).

When Karl Barth was once asked to comment on the reception of his theology in America, he noted that a bright young American scholar named Robert Jenson had rightly grasped and interpreted his dialectical theology.[1] Carl E. Braaten, Jenson’s long time friend and colleague, notes that since that time Jenson has always been a Barthian.[2] This is true with qualification. Though there are many similarities between the thought of Barth and Jenson, the comparative length of their systematics not withstanding, there are also many dissimilarities, not the least of which is their view of time and eternity. In the final analysis this too may need qualifying, especially if one adopts the view that Jenson’s theology is merely the logical outworking of Barth’s own thought.

According to Hunsinger, the distinction between God’s being as eternal and God’s being in relation to time and the world were, for Barth, a matter of immense importance even though he often failed to keep a clear distinction between the two.[3] Regarding this distinction Barth makes the following claim;

Eternity is God in the sense in which in Himself and in all things God is simultaneous, i.e., beginning and middle as well as end, without separation, distance, or contradiction. Eternity is not, then, an infinite extension of time both backwards and forwards. Time can have nothing to do with God.[4]

This distinction between the eternal Creator and creation is heightened even more when Barth claims that “eternity is God” whereas “time is God’s creation.”[5] Thus, according to Barth, created time can have nothing to do with God.

However, the confusion is introduced when Barth later makes the assertion that “God has time because and as he has eternity.”[6] This statement claiming that God possesses time “as he has eternity” clearly contradicts Barth’s earlier assertion that “time can have nothing to do with God.” The implications of these contradictory statements is monumental and has led Barthians like Hunsinger to take a defensive posture asserting that “although certain ambiguities and difficulties arise as a result, I do not think that they are finally insuperable.”[7]

Jenson is not sympathetic with regard to Hunsinger’s patchwork attitude toward Barth. In fact, Jenson seems to understand Barth’s apparent equivocation per eternity and time, as a failure to carry his own thought to its logical conclusion. Jenson did not share Barth’s reluctance to bring the Creator into univocal line with the creation. Much to the contrary, according to Jenson, “God is the temporalizing of the world.”[8] Again Jenson writes, “God’s eternity” is “temporal infinity.”[9]

Nevertheless, like Barth, Jenson is concerned to maintain a Creator creature distinction. Jenson writes in his second volume on systematics, “The first proposition: that God creates means there is other reality than God and that it is really other than me.”[10] Yet, if God is the temporality of the world, how can such a basic distinction between Creator and creation be credibly maintained?

It appears that on the one hand, Jenson wants to carry Barth’s theology forward in a logically consistent and constructive way so as to apprehend God as the temporality of the world.[11] However, on the other hand, Jenson wants to maintain an archetypal and ectypal distinction found in Barth that ultimately forbids a temporalizing of God, a distinction that ought to function as a corrective. Thus, Jenson seems only to make the “ambiguities and difficulties” that much more noticeable and insuperable.

However, Jenson would certainly object to having created such a problem. In fact, according to Jenson, this apparent difficulty merely drives us back to Jesus Christ.[12] For in Jesus Christ, “God ‘takes time,’ and in a most radical way: he becomes temporal, he makes our time the form of his eternity.”[13] But what does Jenson mean when he writes, “he (i.e. Christ) becomes temporal?” Moreover, how does such a statement affect his supposition that “God creates means there is other reality than God?” These and other questions appear to make Jenson’s Trinitarian theology just as insuperable as Barth’s Trinitarianism.

Therefore, my basic contention in this series will be that Jenson, adopting Barth’s theological notion of time and eternity and taking that understanding to its logical conclusion, has laid the theological groundwork for the destruction of the Creator creature distinction that he seeks to maintain. How this enterprise takes shape will be for next time.

[1] Colin E. Gunton ed., Trinity, Time, and Church: A Response to the Theology of Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), 4.

[2] Ibid. Braaten adds that Jenson’s Barthianism has increasingly diminished due to interaction with Catholic and Orthodox theologians. However, a careful reading of Jenson’s Systematic Theology proves otherwise. Jenson embraces the theological actualism that is the macro-argument and basic presupposition of the Church Dogmatics (Cf. Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, The Triune God (NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 65 and Robert W. Jenson, Sytematic Theology, vol. II, The Works of God (NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 23.

[3] George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), 197.

[4] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2004), 608.

[5] Ibid. Barth even goes so far as to say that, “eternity is the source of the deity of God in so far as this consists in his freedom, independence, and lordship” (610).

[6] Ibid. 201.

[7] Hunsinger, 197. According to Hunsinger this seeming contradiction is cleared up by understanding God’s eternity, as described by Barth, as the ground of creaturely time, cf. 201, 202.

[8] Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Christian Dogmatics: vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 168.

[9] Jenson, ST 1, 217.

[10] Jenson, ST II, 5.

[11] Robert Jenson, God After God: The God of the Past and the God of the Future, Seen in the Work of Karl Barth (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969), 156.

[12] Ibid., 129.

[13] Ibid., 128.

It was in the fall of the year 2000. My professor had strolled rather awkwardly into the classroom with a very large stack of papers cradled in his arm. He simply looked at us as he began tossing them around the u-shaped formation of the tables. Upon receiving my copy, I realized that it was a manuscript printed on both sides totaling fifty-five pages. Little did I know at the time that my professor had just given us a treasure of inestimable value. The small class of which I was a part had been given a roughly typed manuscript titled, Von der Waren Seelsorge. It was originally written in 1538 and would not be printed in the English language until 2009 by the Banner of Truth Trust. Who is the author and what is the book? The title in English is, Concerning the True Care of Souls, and it was written by Martin Bucer (1491–1551).

Many know that Martin Bucer has some connection to John Calvin, which is true, but they are uncertain about the nature of the relationship. Bucer was a first generation reformer and leader in the city of Strasbourg when Calvin sought refuge there during his Genevan exile (1538–1541). When Calvin arrived Bucer recognized his obvious potential and asked him to pastor the French refugee congregation in the city. Calvin hesitated but only for a moment. Though still a young man, he had wisdom enough to recognize, as he did with Farel earlier, that Bucer was a man to whom he must listen. Consequently, Calvin, not altogether happily, once again took up the yoke of the pastorate. It is enlivening to think that Bucer wrote his book on pastoral care the year that Calvin arrived in Strasbourg!

However, I was not thinking about the history of the reformers at Strasbourg when I started to read the manuscript.[1] I was the church planter of a small congregation meeting in an old YWCA and quite frankly discouragement was a constant companion. It was hard to put off dampened feelings and take captive disheartening thoughts. I was being encouraged to network and evangelize, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the small flock gathered behind me was too weak not to wander out of the pasture. It was at this point in my pastoral life that Martin Bucer, my pastoral better, began to mentor me.

There are a number of things in, Concerning the True Care of Souls, that are helpful to any pastor at any time in his ministry. But there were several interrelated points that ministered to me. First, after briefly explaining the nature of the church, Bucer claims that Christ alone rules in His church. He alone teaches, disciplines, and leads His flock and no one—not even the pope—can claim governing authority in the church.[2] And then Bucer wrote this, “Therefore, it has pleased him to exercise his rule . . . outwardly and tangibly through his ministers and instruments.”[3] What an encouragement. Every Lord’s Day as I stood in the old YWCA hall that was crowded with junk, I remembered that God was exercising his rule through me over this little flock.

After getting that lesson firmly fixed in my thinking, the second lesson was like a tonic. Bucer taught me balance and priorities. According to Bucer, the minister must engage in five main tasks which emerge from Ezekiel 34:16.[4] First, he must seek lost sheep. Second, he must restore those who have once been united to the church, but have wandered. Third, he must help to reform those who have remained in the church, but who have fallen into sin. Fourth, the minister must encourage growth in those who have remained in the flock, but who have not grown. And finally, he must protect the sheep from all harm.[5] The remainder of the book exfoliates each of the five tasks.

But the point was clear to me. As a church planting pastor I had found in these pages a responsible way forward. Bucer’s unremitting and unyielding search for the lost[6] combined with his equal enthusiasm for helping the hurt and wounded in the congregation was as simple as it was profound.[7] Bucer had given me permission to shake off a one sided view of church planting. Perhaps the impact of this lesson was best seen in how I planted the next church. I set the first year aside in order to explain to the core group what it meant to be united to Christ and hence united to one another. It was then, and only then, that we were ready and healthy enough to add to our family—because by then that is what we were—family.

Notes

[1] I will quote from the Banner of Truth edition rather than my unpublished manuscript for ease of reference.

[2] Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, translated by Peter Beale (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 9, 13.

[3] Ibid., 17.

[4] It should be noted that Bucer’s translation of the last part of this text differs from modern translations. Bucer renders the last part of verse 16, “the sleek and the strong I will watch over.” However, the NASB renders it, “the fat and the strong I will destroy.” The exposition is based on Bucer’s positive rendering.

[5] Ibid., 70.

[6] Ibid., 78.

[7] Ibid., 101.

Benjamin B. Warfield once said that the Reformation “inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church.”[1] Warfield, as he was wont to do, vividly described the tension in Augustine’s thinking as “two children . . . struggling in the womb of his mind.” As a result, both Roman Catholics and Protestants often appeal to him as their founder. I bring this up because Gregory I (b. 540), known to history as Gregory the Great, raised Augustine’s two children in the sixth century.

Gregory was a disciple of Augustine’s theology. He taught that human beings were born sinful and that Christ alone by His sovereign grace can rescue sinners.[2] But with equal vigor he taught that this salvation comes through baptism.[3] In fact, what Warfield said of Augustine might well be reversed with regard to Gregory. Because of Gregory’s teaching that communion had the power to wash away sins, the confirmation of purgatory, and the celebration of communion for the dead[4] one might well say that in the mind of Gregory, Augustine’s doctrine of the Church triumphed over Augustine’s doctrine of grace.

However, despite these intractable errors Gregory did leave us with something positive. In 590, Gregory, who had been living in St. Andrew’s Monastery at Rome, was called by clergy and people to be the bishop of Rome.[5] Like Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom before him he too declined the role to which he had been called. After a bishop chided him for his reluctance to take the office he wrote, Regula Pastoralis, or, what is now called, Pastoral Care.

What many may not know is that Pastoral Care became a staple of the pastoral ministry for several hundred years. No less than Alcuin wrote to Eanbald, the archbishop of York, in 796 saying,

Wherever you go, let the pastoral book of St. Gregory be your companion. Read and re-read it often, that in it you may learn to know yourself and your work, that you may have before your eyes how you ought to live and teach. The book is a mirror of the life of a bishop and a medicine for all the wounds inflicted by the Devil’s deception.[6]

Gregory certainly had wounds. He once wrote that his pastoral duties now forced him to deal with “worldly men” which defiled his mind “with the mud of daily affairs,” which, he said, left him with “manifestly less strength than before.”[7] The before refers to his monastic life. Yet, the point is simple, this is a pastoral book written by a pastor for pastors.

Gregory divided Pastoral Care into four sections. The first section discusses the difficulties of the pastoral office and the responsibilities that will be laid upon the pastor. The second part takes up various aspects of the minister’s life. The third section focuses on the exercise of the pastoral office in the life of the congregation. And the fourth section, though brief, encourages the pastor to be humble after he has completed his work. This section is four pages and packs a wallop.

The book is useful, especially the third section, which is laden with Scripture and directed at how to admonish everyone and anyone in the church! Thirty-five of its forty sections begin with the phrase “How to admonish.” Here Gregory deals with the poor and rich, the sincere and insincere, the taciturn and talkative, the obstinate and fickle, the gluttonous and abstemious, and on and on and on. Section three might be described as a primitive primer on Biblical Counseling!

I have already mentioned the single most reason that I find this book useful. It is loaded with Scriptural applications for the muddy affairs of life. For that reason alone this man, who is my pastoral better, teaches me how to be a better pastor. He teaches me and shows me how to use Scripture as a pastor. Yes, there are times when Gregory’s interpretation of those Scriptures looks more like what I like least about the Medieval Church but, then again, he was not standing on the shoulders of the giants who came after him. It is true that he had Augustine. But unlike Luther and Calvin, Gregory never knew which of Augustine’s children was Jacob and which one was Esau.

Notes

[1] Benjamin B. Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine, vol. IV, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 130.

[2] N. R. Needham, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: Part One: The Age of the Early Church Fathers (London, England: Grace Publications Trust, 1998), 300.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 300–301.

[5] Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care (New York, NY: Newman Press, 1978), 3.

[6] Ibid., 10-11.

[7] Needham, 298–299.

By the fourth year of my first church plant the congregation was in financial jeopardy. Members of my denomination’s Home Mission Board had informed me with all solemnity that it would take ten years to plant a church. In the next breath, I was told that we would be given six years of decreasing denominational aid. By year four it didn’t look like we were in sniffing distance of ten let alone five years!

In those situations everyone has an idea. One man on the board continually urged me to form and reform the church’s vision and purpose statement. Another wanted me to think about our niche in the community. Why were we there? What were we doing? Who were we serving? I was being encouraged to read church growth material and marketing books, always with the qualification that these principles needed to be baptized.

It was then that I discovered John Chrysostom’s, Six Books on the Priesthood, published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Chrysostom is another well known figure in church history but he is usually thought of as the golden-mouthed preacher, which he apparently was. To put Chrysostom into historical perspective, he was about twenty years younger than Gregory of Nazianzus and though there is no evidence of them having met, John, in February 398, would become pastor of Gregory’s Constantinople congregation. Whether they met or not, it is likely that Chrysostom had read Gregory’s De Fuga. Why is that a good assumption? Well, not only does Chrysostom have his own version of a “flight” from the pastorate but he picks up the metaphor of the pastor as physician saying of the ministry, “It takes the place of medicine and cautery and surgery.” He too had likely imbibed a lesson or two from his betters.

So, what did I learn from Chrysostom during those belt tightening times? First, I learned not to panic. My inclination during those days was to turn to the law as a motivator; a whip might be a better description because that is essentially what it is. These sheep needed to get into shape and start moving in the right direction! But Chrysostom urged me to think of the pastorate as ministerial in nature and not magisterial. That alone is worth its weight in gold.

He wisely said of the ministry, “But in the case we are considering it is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion.” He then adds, “[A] lot of tact is needed, so that the sick may be persuaded of their own accord to the treatment…and not only that, but be grateful to them for the cure.” This is a lesson every seminary student and pastor must learn. The pastorate is a ministerial office. Tact is a must.

But before I could be persuasive Chrysostom helped me to do a little self-reflection. In other words, and second, he helped me to see who it was that first needed some whipping into shape! It was me. According to Chrysostom, a pastor “must be sober and clear sighted and possess a thousand eyes looking in every direction, for he lives, not for himself alone, but for a great multitude.” He lives for his congregation. Let me put it another way. He lives to care for his congregation. Let me not mince words. The church is not the pastor’s kingdom. He is God’s steward called and appointed to soberly and vigilantly keep watch over the sheep in his trust.

The third lesson that Chrysostom taught me was something that I was going to learn over and over again from these spiritual masters. I needed to remember, “When all is said and done, there is only one means and only method of treatment available (Chrysostom is speaking of the sinful condition of the people), and that is teaching by word of mouth.” Chrysostom’s view of preaching is simple, “[words] are urgently needed, not only for the safety of the Church’s members, but to meet the attacks of outsiders as well.” I needed to remember what another theologian has said so well publicly, namely, when a pastor preaches the Word faithfully God is doing something in the life of those in the congregation that will last for all eternity.

So, how did that fourth year end? The session called the congregation to fast and then appointed a worship service in order to break that time of humiliation with a guest preacher opening the Word. It was a sober and sobering time in the life of the congregation but it was also a time of rich blessing. Later that month someone quietly placed a substantial offering into the collection plate which opened the door to further blessing from the Lord. But better still I had learned some invaluable lessons, yet again, from my pastoral betters.

I was sinking fast. It was my third year of church planting and I was having one of those “seminary didn’t prepare me for this!” moments. If memory serves me, I was taking what felt like my last gulp of air when I came into contact with several life altering texts that I would like to share with you over the next several posts.

The first was by Gregory of Nazianzus. For some that will be a familiar name. He, along with Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, was one of the three Cappadocian Fathers. No, they were not the inventors of cappuccino! These men were theologians. In fact, Gregory of Nazianzus was given the title of “The Theologian” for a series of sermons he delivered titled, Five Orations on the Divinity of the Logos.

All of this is fairly common knowledge to the avid church history buff. However, what may not be so well known is that these men were first rate pastors. In fact, what is not so well known is that Gregory of Nazianzus wrote an oration titled De Fuga or the Flight. If you know anything about the early church fathers (or the puritans for that matter!) it won’t surprise you to find that the full title is a bit longer. If you’re interested it reads, Oration II: In Defense of His Flight to Pontus, and His Return, After His Ordination to the Priesthood, with an Exposition of the Character of the Priestly Office.

A little background might be helpful at this point. In our parlance, Gregory appears to have been a loner. In fact, his plan was to spend his life in seclusion. However, necessity called. His father (also Gregory) was a pastor in need. So, on Christmas Day in the year 362 Gregory senior ordained junior to the gospel ministry, which Junior later described as an act of tyranny. To everyone’s dismay Junior fled. However, after thinking about the situation he concluded that he had not acted rightly and so he returned. As you might guess, he had not endeared himself to his congregation and so he needed to explain himself. So, he wrote Oration II: De Fuga.

Now, it was to De Fuga that I turned in my third year of church planting and there I learned from my betters. Let me briefly share some of the lessons I learned. First, I learned that Gregory loved the church. He didn’t flee because he despised the church. No, he fled because he loved her and didn’t want to inflict or afflict her with his leadership! He was not enamored with himself. In fact, he cried out with Paul, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Now, that is a lesson every pastor needs to learn. And may I say it is a lesson that every seminary student needs to learn. Let me put it plainly. I realized in that third year of ministry that “my” church did not need “me.” It could survive just fine without me if God so chose. To put the lesson simply, the pastor needs to stop feeling the need to be needed and instead give himself to loving Christ’s sheep sacrificially whether or not the love is reciprocated.

The second lesson I learned was and continues to be vital. As a church planter, I was being pressured into the mold of a religious salesman rather than allowed to be a pastor. Gregory (not to mention Martyn Lloyd-Jones) helped me to resist putting on the hat of CEO and instead put on the coat of physician. He reminded me that the pastoral office is an art much like that of a medical doctor. However, there is one great difference. The spiritual physician’s task is greater because he treats the hidden man of the heart. It was from Gregory that I began to realize that my task was not to market the church or to develop a purpose driven philosophy of ministry. My task was the three “P’s” of the pastorate: preach, pray, poimenics (okay, it’s the Greek for shepherding—but I needed a third “P”). That is a lesson pastors once again need to imbibe if they are to be faithful.

The third but not the final lesson I learned from Gregory was to preach the word. Gregory writes, “In regard to the distribution of the word, to mention last the first of our duties…” For Gregory, preaching was the first duty of the pastor. For this early pastor that meant knowing the Scripture and being well versed in theology. It meant more than knowing the different kinds of hearers; it also meant knowing the people to whom you preach and knowing them well. In other words, the pastor’s task is not only to exegete the text but his hearers as well. As important as evangelism was to my fledgling church plant Gregory reminded me to be in the study wrestling with God’s word and in homes with people so that when I climbed into the pulpit on the Lord’s Day morning and evening I would not arrive empty handed.

Let me encourage you to learn from my pastoral betters and yours too. Get hold of Gregory’s Oration II: Flight to Pontus and prepare for a treat. If you are a layperson you will find yourself in the text at some point and if you are a pastor you will find yourself saying, “Who is sufficient for these things?” But don’t despair. The answer to this question is rather obvious when you think about it. The God who called you, prepared you, and sustains you even now. He is sufficient for you and your congregation.

Speaking theologically, what was Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Was he a German liberal or might we label him a conservative evangelical Christian? Bonhoeffer’s use of Kantian Transcendentalism as a theological beginning point seems to disqualify the latter. However, some remain unconvinced. For example, some contend that Bonhoeffer was a conservative Christian and could even be described as an evangelical. So, in this, our last post, I want to examine Bonhoeffer’s views which touch upon conservative and evangelical Christianity.

The Nature of Scripture

All believers are concerned with how Christ and history relate because our faith is rooted in history. Benjamin B. Warfield once wrote, “… Christianity is a supernatural religion and the nature of Christianity as a supernatural religion, are matters of history …”[1] For Bonhoeffer the matter was not so easily settled. He had been influenced by Hegel, Lessing, and Troeltsch all of whom believed in one way or other that a big nasty ditch separated the contingent facts of history from absolute meaning.[2]

In his 1933 lectures on Christology, now printed as Christ the Center, Bonhoeffer illustrates the influence of these men, saying, “Historical research can never absolutely deny, because it can never absolutely affirm.”[3] And again, “Absolute certainty about an historical fact is in itself never attainable.”[4] According to Bonhoeffer, the Bible is no different from any other flawed history book.[5] In fact, he says, this is of particular importance for the preacher. Why? Because, says Bonhoeffer, “There may be some difficulties about preaching from a text whose authenticity has been destroyed by historical research.” Bonhoeffer offers help to the pastor in this situation; don’t stand on that destroyed text for long but like a man crossing a river covered in ice floes move about over the whole Bible![6]

But to make matters even worse Bonhoeffer says that verbal inspiration will not prop up a historically flawed Bible.[7] In fact, it’s quite the reverse. According to Bonhoeffer, the doctrine of Scripture’s verbal inspiration actually “amounts to a denial of the unique presence of the risen one.”[8] So, whatever pietistic sounding Bonhoeffer quotes we might be able to marshal about Scripture we must also take these into account.

The Nature of the Person of Christ

Bonhoeffer’s view of history also affected his Christology. He wrote, “As a subject for historical investigation, Jesus Christ remains an uncertain phenomenon; his historicity can neither be confirmed nor denied with the necessary absolute certainty.”[9] What, according to Bonhoeffer, does this mean for something like the empty tomb? Is the Bible’s account of the historical fact of the resurrection in question? Bonhoeffer says of historicity of Christ’s tomb, “This is and remains a final stumbling block, which the believer in Christ must learn to live with in one way or another. Empty or not empty, it remains a stumbling block. We cannot be sure of its historicity.”[10] Not surprisingly, Bonhoeffer says that since there is no absolute ground for faith that can be derived from history “the historical approach to the Jesus of history is not binding for the believer.”[11] Bohoeffer says, “We have Christ witnessing to himself in the present, any historical confirmation is irrelevant.”[12] And of course, Christ’s witnesses to me in the present is found in my brother who is Christ pro me.

The Nature of Justification

The doctrine of Christ pro me naturally leads us to think of the Gospel. For Bonhoeffer, humanity is either in Christ or in Adam. This means, for Bonhoeffer, that a person is either turned inward upon one’s self and alone (that is, in Adam) or he comes to recognize Christ in his self–consciousness and his need for others in community (in Christ). According to Bonhoeffer, this turn means that a man no longer seeks justification in himself but in Christ alone.[13] To continue, “The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God’s claims and God’s justification.”[14] The Christian is, says Bonhoeffer, justified by an alien righteousness.[15]

However, this raises an important question. From where does this declaration of justified come? For Bonhoeffer, it comes from outside oneself. But from where does it come? It is from the lips of my neighbor.[16] For when I go to my brother to confess, I go to God.[17] He speaks the message of salvation to me, speaks forgiveness to me, and brings me assurance. According to Bonhoeffer, in the presence of another Christian and “there alone in all the world the truth and mercy of Jesus Christ rule.”[18] I am justified by my brother’s word spoken to me, for in him, Christ stands for me.

What was Bonhoeffer? The truth is plain.

When Warfield described the Ritschlian school of thought he said that there was a strong tendency in evangelical circles to look upon this neo–Kantianism with favor. Warfield continued, “Such a tendency was, indeed, little creditable to either head or heart; and can be esteemed merely a fresh example of that shallow charity which ‘thinketh no evil,’ only because it lacks the mind to perceive or the heart to care for the evil that is flaunted in its face.” Let us admire Bonhoeffer insofar as we are able and, yes, we are able. However, let us also keep a careful and caring eye on what is being flaunted in our face.

[1] B. B. Warfield, “The Church Doctrine of Inspiration” reprinted in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1948), 121.

[2] Cf. pages in 78, 83, 910 in Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000).

[3] Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center (NY: Harper San Francisco, 1978), 72.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 73–74.

[6] Ibid., 73.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 72.

[10] Ibid., 112.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., 73.

[13] Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 31.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.,

[16] Ibid., 32.

[17] Ibid., 109.

[18] Ibid.

Having begun with Kant’s concept of the transcendental unity of apperception in order to establish God’s immanence Bonhoeffer was brought up against a potential philosophical problem. Kant’s Transcendentalism had a solipsistic tendency. In other words, if my mind is the constitutive manifold of reality, then how can I possess any knowledge regarding the existence of a reality external to me? Yet, for Bonhoeffer, this was not a problem but a wonderful theological advance! He wrote, “Is it merely a coincidence that the most profound German philosophy resulted in the enclosing of the all in the I?”[1]

Theological Advance

For Bonhoeffer, this enclosing of the all—even God—in the I had marvelous theological significance. Imagine how an always present God “existent only in, or for, the consciousness of human beings”[2] was far better than, say, a Barthian conception of God—a “God who ‘comes’ and never the God who ‘is there.’”[3] For Bonhoeffer, locating God in the self-consciousness meant that God “is there.” But this raises the question with which we ended our last post; namely, how does this make Christ haveable?

To answer this question Bonhoeffer would have to engage in Christology. He must identify or describe this Christ who both transcends the conscious self and who is enclosed within the self. In Bonhoeffer’s Outline for a Book found in his Letters & Papers from Prison, he gives us a toe hold, “Our relation to God is not a ‘religious’ relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best being imaginable—that is not authentic transcendence…”[4] Nor, says Bonhoeffer, does the transcendence of God have anything to do with the transcendence of epistemological theory.[5] Thus, Bonhoeffer rules out traditional metaphysical and epistemological ideas of transcendence.

So, what remains?

Christological Innovation

In Bonhoeffer’s earlier 1933 lectures on Christology he approached the same theological matter from a telling and unique angle. In these lectures he describes the issue of transcendence and immanence as the difference between the question of “who” and “how?”[6] According to Bonhoeffer traditional Christology has always left theologians wrongly speculating on how to fuse a metaphysical transcendent God with a finite and immanent man. Instead, Bonhoeffer shifts the Christological question from the “how” by asking “who,” to which Bonhoeffer responds, “He is the one who has really bound himself in the freedom of his existence to me.”[7] In other words, the Christ who transcends my self-consciousness has ensured his enclosure in it.

The Church to the Rescue

However, Bonhoeffer understood the problem in his theology. It was centered on self. He writes in Act and Being, “All that we have examined so far in this study was individualistically oriented.”[8] Yet Bonhoeffer contended that if his theology is solipsistic then, like idealism, it had failed.[9] But a logical question emerges. Why? If God has enclosed himself in the I, then what more do I need? Bonhoeffer had two answers.

First, in his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer established one essential criteria for his doctrine of the Church, “every concept of community is essentially related to a concept of person.”[10] Accordingly, after having found other definitions of ecclesiology wanting Bonhoeffer writes, “for the individual to exist, ‘others’ must necessarily be there.”[11] This ethical dimension is picked up in Act and Being when Bonhoeffer says, “every member of the church may and should ‘become a Christ’ to the others.”[12]

The second and more significant answer comes from Life Together written in 1936. Bonhoeffer says that the Christian needs his brother because “the Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s heart is sure.”[13] Why? Because Bonhoeffer says, “When I go to another believer to confess, I am going to God.”[14] The other believer acting on the authority of the Christ enclosed in his I is able to declare me forgiven[15] and give me certainty and assurance of having been forgiven and I am able to do the same for him. [16] Thus, for Bonhoeffer, the ecclesia extracts the individual from the potential solipsism of idealism as well as supplies me with a present and haveable Christ in my brother who is Christ pro me.

Cornelius Van Til once said that you can tell a good deal about a system of theology that has been informed by Kantian philosophy. Bonhoeffer’s theology has certainly drunk deeply from the Kantian well and as a result there is more of man than God in it. The result is personally unsatisfying. However, there are those who vigorously argue that Bonhoeffer is an evangelical to whom we must listen today. In fact, some contend that Bonhoeffer experienced a conversion while in America and though he may once have been a German liberal he became an evangelical Christian. We will head in that direction next time.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Acts and Being (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 80.

[2] Ibid., 57.

[3] Ibid., 85.

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (NY: The Macmillan Co., 1971), 381.

[5] Ibid., 282.

[6] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology (NY: Harper Collins, 1978), 30.

[7] Ibid., 48.

[8] Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 113.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 34.

[11] Ibid., 51.

[12] Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 113.

[13] Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 32.

[14] Ibid., 109.

[15] Ibid., 111.

[16] Ibid., 113.

On December 24, 1920 Benjamin B. Warfield fell ill after being struck with angina pectoris. He died on February 16, 1921. Why should we pause to remember a Princeton theologian who has been with the Lord for almost one hundred years? Perhaps Isaac Newton’s reason is enough, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Warfield was a giant. Let me remind you of his stature with an example that hits close to home.

By the nineteenth century American theologians and exegetes had done little to stem the influx of Ritschlian theology. But as Warfield, ever the observer, watched the theological landscape develop he noticed a pattern among his peers and colleagues with regard to the new critical theological views: a pattern that provided the new views with a foothold into the Church’s institutions no matter the denomination. Warfield identified this pattern as the “Concessive Method.”

We need not think of Warfield as a prototypical fundamentalist ready to reject scholarship simply because it may pose a challenge. However, what Warfield did reject, and resoundingly so, was the camouflaging of higher critical methods, smuggling them into the church, and making them the norm of truth rather than the Scriptures. This seemed to be happening in many universities and seminaries scattered throughout the country.[1] Thus, for Warfield, the Concessive Method adopted by many of the Church’s theologians and pastors to deal with the new theology emerging from German critical methods and presuppositions was actually, “a neat device by which one may appear to conquer while really yielding the citadel.”[2]

But how did this happen? Well, according to Warfield, the concessive method operated on the principle of defending the minimum.[3] In 1895, Warfield published several articles in The Presbyterian Quarterly documenting the latest phase of rationalism abroad and in the American Church in order to demonstrate what was being defended as minimum ground upon which we might all stand together. But in order to help his readers understand what is lost by the application of the Concessive Method, Warfield took his example from what was happening with regard to the authority of Scripture.

Concession begins, says Warfield, by, “rejecting the authority of the Bible for minor matters only—in the ‘minima,’ in ‘circumstantials’ and ‘by-passages’ and ‘incidental remarks,’ and the like.”[4] The next step in the descent is to reject the Bible’s authority for everything except matters of faith and practice.[5] Then comes unwillingness to bow to all the doctrinal teaching or ethical precepts from Scripture and instead, according to Warfield, we find men who, “subject the religious and ethical contents of the Bible to the judgment of their ‘spiritual instinct.’”[6] Finally, says Warfield, “the circle is completed by setting aside the whole Bible as authority; perchance with the remark…that in the apostolic age men depended on the spirit in his own heart,” because, they say, no one ever dreamed of making the Scriptures, and much less the New Testament, the authoritative word of God.[7]

Today the nature of Scripture is once again under assault and those interested in defending the minimum have sought to convince us that in order to be theologically sophisticated and properly nuanced—that is to say, in order to have a place at the table—we must join them in supporting a Concessive Method. But there is a price to pay for the application of this method. Warfield would later point out in 1896, “it may not unnaturally happen sometime that the defense of the minimum alone will turn out to be the minimum defense of the Gospel.”[8] Not surprisingly, this type of concessive thinking will eventually crown enlightened human reason as the final arbiter of truth rather than God’s Word.

I hope that we may once again find ourselves atop the shoulders of this Southern gentleman. Why? On the day of his Inauguration at Western Theological Seminary in 1880 he understood that he was a young and untried commodity. So, he began his lecture with an affirmation, “I wish, therefore, to declare that I sign these standards not as a necessary form which must be submitted to, but gladly and willingly as an expression of a personal and cherished conviction.” Friends, atop Warfield’s shoulders we will begin, not with concession, but with a personal and cherished conviction that the Bible is the very Word of God.

[1] Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2005), 679.

[2] Warfield, Studies in Theology, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1988), 588-589.

[3] Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, 2:675. Warfield also talks about this concessive method as an “eager hospitality.”

[4] Warfield, Studies in Theology, 589.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, 2:678.

Kant’s Copernican Revolution might have been better described as a theological warhead aimed directly at theology. The immediate epistemological carnage caused by Kantian Transcendentalism can be witnessed initially in Schleiermacher’s theology of Gefühl (feeling). After all, Kant had rendered any and all cognitive knowledge of God impossible. Barth’s reaction to Schleiermacher had not helped. According to Bonhoeffer, Barth had established the majesty of God on the basis of Kantian Transcendentalism. In other words, Barth’s conception of God as Wholly Other looked a lot like the unknowable Noumena dwelling god of Kant.

Bonhoeffer’s Dilemma

Kant had to be answered. According to Bonhoeffer, Kant had posed the problem and now it was incumbent upon theologians to find a solution. However, rather than taking his stand upon the self-authenticating Bible, Bonhoeffer sought make room in Kant’s Transcendentalism for God’s self-revelation.[1] However, if the Kantian god of the Noumena cannot be accessed because he is not a percept that can be cognitively constructed by human mental categories, then, according to Bonhoeffer, the only place for theology to begin is in the realm of phenomena: the realm of percepts and concepts. So, according to Bohoeffer, the problem to be dealt with lay in “the relationship between ‘the being of God’ and the mental act which grasps that being.”[2] Not surprisingly, Bonhoeffer’s Act and Being has been described as a theology of self-consciousness.

So, where was Bonhoeffer to begin? He took his starting point with what Kant called the transcendental unity of apperception or the supposition of self-identity based on a unity of experience. Ewing, a Kantian scholar, summarized Kant’s view of transcendental unity of apperception this way:

The true or transcendental self has no content of its own through which it can gain knowledge of itself. It is mere identity, I am I. In other words, self-consciousness is a mere form through which contents that never themselves constitute the self are apprehended as being objects to the self.[3]

Now, for Kant that meant identity can never be discovered through experiences; it can only be a condition for them. Thus, a self-conscious person is merely identifying his bundle of experiences as his own. There is a “gap” between the I and experience.

Bonhoeffer’s Solution

It was at this point that Bonhoeffer saw an opportunity to find God in Kantian Transcendentalism. He wrote, “I discover God in my coming to myself; I become aware of myself. I find myself—that is, I find God.”[4] And again, “God is the God of my consciousness. Only in my religious consciousness ‘is’ God.”[5] However, Bonhoeffer understands his own dilemma. This means that God “becomes objectified in consciousness and is thereby taken into the unity of transcendental apperception, becoming the prisoner of consciousness.”[6]

Consequently, Bonhoeffer provides two possible solutions and adopts the latter saying, “God ‘is’ in the pure process of completion of the act of consciousness but evades every attempt on the part of reflection to grasp God.”[7] Bonhoeffer continues, “In this manner the danger of identifying God and the I is averted. God is the supramundane reality transcending consciousness…. But, on the other hand, it can also be said that God is existent only in, or for, the consciousness of human beings.”[8]

Now, do you see what Bonhoeffer has done? He, like Barth, has accepted Kantian categories and conclusions as his starting point. Thus, if Barth had established the transcendence of God on Kantian Transcendentalism, then Bonhoeffer had established the immanence of God on the same foundation. Consequently, even the God of Bonhoeffer’s theological construction remains out of reach—or does he? On the contrary, according to Bonhoeffer, this view makes God present and “haveable.”[9] The question is how? To this we will return in our next post.

[1] Cf. “The Theology of Crisis and its Attitude Toward Philosophy and Science” in No Rusty Swords.

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Acts and Being (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 27.

[3] A. C. Ewing, A Short Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 82.

[4] Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 50.

[5] Ibid., 51.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 54.

[8] Ibid., 57.

[9] Ibid., 91.

In our last post we concluded that juxtaposing Bonhoeffer against himself might not be the most useful way to determine whether the man was a pietistic evangelical or a German liberal. So, how do we sally forth from what some might consider a safe method of departure? Well, let’s begin with Bonhoeffer’s theological and philosophical background and then consider how he appropriated it to his own theology.

Theological and Philosophical Background

In Germany, less than fifty years before Bonhoeffer emerged on the scene, Nietzsche, had made an astute observation. He claimed that God had “bled to death under our knives.”[1] The knives that Nietzsche had in mind were the quills of the philosophers. Through their unbelieving reason he contended that they had murdered God. Surely, Immanuel Kant was one of the more prominent assailants.

After all, when Kant published his book, The Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781 he described it as a Copernican Revolution. Kant’s primary purpose in the Critique was to define the limits and scope of pure reason. In order to accomplish the task he had to answer a crucial question, “What are the necessary conditions of possible experience?” According to Kant, two complimentary conditions need to be met.

First, something must be given to our senses. Kant calls this something a percept or a perception (and at times impressions). Second, a percept must be brought under a mental concept. Or to put it another way, a percept must be brought under the constructive powers of the mind or what Kant calls the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic. Kant’s pedagogical mode of expression for all of this was that concepts (the empty a priori categories of the mind) without percepts (discrete bits of data tethered to our sense experience) are empty and percepts without concepts are meaningless.

Now, do you see what effectively Kant has done? Follow his logic for a minute. If human beings can know only perceptions which are then constituted by the constructive powers of the mind, then what is the theological implication? God is not a percept that can be processed through the time/space manifold of the transcendental aesthetic so to be understood by the transcendental analytic. Thus, Kant’s conclusion was that human beings cannot know an imperceptible God. If God exists and created, thought Kant, then He created in such a way so as to forbid creation from knowing it.

Enter Bonhoeffer

Now, what does all this have to do with Bonhoeffer? Well, Bonhoeffer recognized this background and accepted it as the Sitz im Leben of the German theological and philosophical landscape. We might even say that Bonhoeffer believed Kant to be asking the right questions—questions worthy of a theologian. In fact, while in America studying at Union Theological Seminary, Bonhoeffer critiqued his American students, saying, “questions such as that of Kantian epistemology are “nonsense,” and no problem to them, because they take life no further” than what is pragmatic.[1] America focused on William James not Immanuel Kant. And Bonhoeffer thought that this was wrongheaded and frustratingly without depth. He wrote that Americans order up theology and philosophy as one ordered a car from the factory![2]

But what Bonhoeffer did not accept were the conclusions of his colleagues and the theological answers they gave in light of Kantian transcendentalism. For example, Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s student and close friend, wrote in his biography that Bonhoeffer “saw Barth establishing the majesty of God by methods of Kantian transcendentalism.”[3] According to Bonhoeffer, Barth had allowed Kant the privilege of asking the questions but problematically he had also allowed Kant the privilege of dictating the answers. For Bonhoeffer, Barth’s response to Kant was to make God remote or wholly other. But, according to Bonhoeffer, Kant had already done that.

For Bonhoeffer, this was unacceptable. The task of the theologian was to bring God near while answering not ignoring men like Kant. Consequently, Bonhoeffer decided to address the situation in his post-doctoral habilitation called, Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology. And, not surprisingly, in these opening pages, he writes, “At the heart of the problem is the struggle with the formulation of the question that Kant and idealism have posed for theology.”[4] In this work Bonhoeffer set out to make God immanent rather than transcendent or wholly other. But in order to do that he had to find a way to answer Kantian objections to the knowability of God. How he did that is for our next post.

[1]Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche; Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 97.

[1] Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 161.

[2] Ibid., 158.

[3] Ibid., 134.

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being (Minneapolis, Min.: Fortress Press, 2009), 27.

In March Intervarsity Press plans to release a book by John Walton with a contribution from N. T. Wright titled, The Lost World of Adam and Eve. Wright’s excursus follows Walton’s chapter titled, “Paul’s Use of Adam Is More Interested in the Effect of Sin on the Cosmos Than in the Effect of Sin on Humanity and Has Nothing to Say About Human Origins.” Wright’s piece is called, “Excursus on Paul’s Use of Adam.” However, from the Intervarsity website it’s difficult to tell if Wright wrote only the Excursus or chapter nineteen as well. Nevertheless, as a foretaste of what is to come next month I want to briefly review chapter two in Wright’s book of collected essays, Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues (New York, NY: Harper One, 2014).

Wright begins chapter two, “Do We Need a Historical Adam?,” by observing two common theological drivers in today’s discussion. The first is the presupposition that if people let go of an historical Adam, “they are letting go of the authority of Scripture” (26–27). Wright contends that this is a sociocultural bugaboo which works in tandem with an inaccurate view of how biblical authority actually functions. In other words, if you read Wright as critiquing what is described as “the American Inerrancy Tradition” (or the AIC, cf. Five Views of Inerrancy, Zondervan, 2013) coupled with Dispensationalism,” Wright’s favorite American target, then you have identified the people to whom he is referring.

The second theological driver is a favorite of Wright. It is his unceasing refrain that the Bible is not about how we get saved (27). For Wright, this is a particularly important issue for Reformed theologians who view Adam as a federal head. However, according to Wright, by reading Paul as saying that we are either in Adam condemned or in Christ and saved is to misread the Biblical text or, at the very least, to read too narrowly.

Having dismissed these theological hang-ups Wright’s own construction concerning the historical Adam goes something like this. Adam’s sin meant not only that he died but that he no longer reigned over the world (34). To put it tersely, Adam’s death meant that he had lost God’s image, which when translated is to say that he had lost his vocation or calling in the world. Thus, God’s plan for kingdom expansion had been derailed. God no longer had a priestly vice-regent. However, in Jesus God’s plan was set right again. Jesus fulfilled his vocation and is enthroned as the reigning king. He is now where the last Adam was supposed to be (35).

So, what does this have to do with an historical Adam? Well, according to Wright, Israel too is in Adam and Israel bears the solution to the problem of God’s derailed kingdom. To be specific, the link between Israel and the historical Adam is found in God’s choosing of Israel. [Now, pay attention, because here is the move.] In the same way that God chose Israel from among the nations to engage in a demanding vocation, which they failed to fulfill, perhaps, speculates Wright, in like manner God chose Adam and Eve from among the early hominids to represent the whole human race in order to take God’s kingdom forward into the world. Here is Wright’s quote:

And it leads to my proposal: that just as God chose Israel from the rest of humankind for a special, strange, demanding vocation, so perhaps what Genesis is telling us is that God chose one pair from the rest of early hominids for a special, strange, demanding vocation. This pair (call them Adam and Eve if you like) were to be representatives of the whole human race, the ones in whom God’s purpose to make the whole world a place of delight and joy and order, eventually colonizing the whole creation, was to be taken forward. God the creator put into their hands the fragile task of being image bearers. If they fail, they will bring the whole purpose for the wider creation, including all the nonchosen hominids, down with them. They are supposed to be the life bringers, and if they fail in their task the death that is already endemic in the world as it is will engulf them as well. (emphasis his, 37–38)

Well, what can we say to Professor Wright? Perhaps we might suggest what he already knows; his construction is unique and wholly speculative. And perhaps we might even send Professor Wright to our brother in the Lord, Benjamin B. Warfield. Now, this brother of ours, like Wright, surely had a concern for science. Who would deny it? But listen to what he says about the unity of the human race. He wrote,

The assertion of the unity of the human race is imbedded in the very structure of the Biblical narrative. The Biblical account of the origin of man (Genesis 1:26–28) is an account of his origination in a single pair, who constituted humanity in its germ, and from whose fruitfulness and multiplication all the earth has been replenished. Therefore the first man was called Adam, Man, and the first woman, Eve, “because she was the mother of all living” (Gen 3:20). (emphasis mine, “On the Antiquity and Unity of the Human Race,” quoted from Biblical and Theological Studies [P&R, 1968, p. 259])

And again,

[It] would be truer to say that the whole doctrinal structure of the Bible account of redemption is founded on its assumption that the race of man is one organic whole, and may be dealt with as such. It is because all are one in Adam that in the matter of sin there is no difference…. The unity of the old man in Adam is the postulate of the unity of the new man in Christ. (261)

Yes, we need an historical Adam. But we need more than an Adam who was historical. We, like Warfield before us, need to affirm the authority of Scripture by taking our stand on what it says about the unity of the human race in Adam that we might also take seriously what it says about the One Man, Jesus Christ.

Within a year of my profession of faith I came into contact with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The owner of the local Christian bookstore gave me a copy of The Cost of Discipleship. After giving me a brief biographical introduction he sent me away to read. Knowing about the man I had an instant admiration for him. What is more, The Cost of Discipleship resonated with my newfound zeal to give up everything for Christ. I was hooked.

However, my contact with Bonhoeffer centered primarily on his most evangelical works until I had to choose a thesis topic for the Master of Sacred Theology degree. I finally decided on the Christological substructures of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. It was a topic that forced me to read wider in Bonheoffer’s corpus. And while working on that thesis I found myself face to face with what appeared to be two different Bonhoeffers; one that was very warmly pietistic and evangelical and the other a liberal German theologian.

Let me give you an example. In his 2010 Bonhoeffer biography, Eric Metaxas puts the warm pietistic Bonhoeffer on display. He records one memory by a student of Bonhoeffer in 1933:

[He said] When you read the Bible, you must think that here and now God is speaking with me…He [Bonhoeffer] wasn’t as abstract as the Greek teachers and all the others. Rather, from the beginning, he taught us that we had to read the Bible as it was directed at us, as the word of God directly to us. Not something general, not something generally applicable, but rather with a personal relationship to us. He repeated this to us very early on, that the whole thing comes from that.[i]

One can find similar evangelical quotes in Bonhoeffer. In a 1936 letter to his brother-in-law, Bonhoeffer wrote, “First, I want to confess quite simply that I believe the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we only need to ask persistently and with some humility in order to receive the answer from it.”[ii]

But what about other quotes that do not make their way into Metaxas’s biography; quotes that appear in lectures given at the University of Berlin in the winter semester of 1932-1933, the same year as the Metaxas quote above. The lectures, now published as Creation and Fall, are introduced with words similar to what we find in Metaxas. An evangelical sounding Bonhoeffer writes,

The church…is grounded upon the testimony of Scripture…. Therefore it reads all Holy Scripture as the book of the end, of the new, of Christ. What does Holy Scripture, upon which the Church of Christ is grounded, have to say of the creation and the beginning except that only from Christ can we know what the beginning is? The Bible is nothing but the book upon which the Church stands or falls.[iii]

However, in the same work, when commenting on Genesis 1:6-10 Bonhoeffer writes, “Here we have before us the ancient world picture in all its scientific naivete.”[iv]

What is more, after telling us that we, as interpreters, should not be too cocky and self assured he goes on to say, “The heavens and the seas were not formed in the way he says…” that is, in the way the Biblical author says. And then to knock away any evangelical footing that one might claim, he writes, “The idea of verbal inspiration will not do.”[v] According to Bonhoeffer, “The writer of the first chapter of Genesis is behaving in a very human way.” That is why he can also say with regard to the Lord’s creation of man from the dust of the earth in Genesis 2:7, “This can surely not produce any knowledge about the origin of man! To be sure, as a narrative this story is just as irrelevant or meaningful as any other myth of creation.”[vi] Let me state him again. The Biblical story of creation is as irrelevant or as meaningful any other myth of creation.

You see the difference. But these battle lines are not new. In fact, to line up Bonhoeffer quotes is not a new strategy in this war. So, if stringing quotes together will not help us to determine which is the real Bonhoeffer, then what will? That my friends is for our next post.

[i] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville, Tenn: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 128.

[ii] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1986), 43.

[iii] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall & Temptation (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 10.

[iv] Ibid. 30.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid., 50.