Dr. James N. Anderson speaks about the philosophy of David Hume, one of the foremost thinkers of the Western tradition. Hume is well known for his influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Throughout his work, Hume developed a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature.

Dr. Anderson is the Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy and Academic Dean (Global and New York) of Reformed Theological Seminary. He is the author of David Hume (Great Thinkers) published by P&R Publishing, What’s Your Worldview: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, and Paradox in Christian Theology.

Participants: Camden Bucey, James Anderson, Jim Cassidy

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.

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.

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.

A recent firestorm has arisen within the blogosphere concerning an alleged failure by Karl Barth. It was initiated by Matthew Rose over at First Things here, responded to by IVP editor David Congdon here, Darren Sumner here, David Guretzki here, and Kevin Davis at After Existentialism here, as well as Bobby Grow over at the Evangelical Calvinist here. An accurate and helpful summary of Rose’s argument is given by Congdon above, so I won’t repeat it here. I agree with Congdon (and the others mentioned above) that Rose is seeking to promote, through criticism of Karl Barth, a Roman Catholic ontology and epistemology. As Congdon concludes:

modernity is Protestant, so to reject modernity is to reject Protestantism. Perhaps that is the underlying message of Rose’s article. Barth finally fails, because he remains, at the end of the day, a theologian of the Reformation.

As I understand Congdon (and company), to be modern is to be Protestant, and since Barth is thoroughly modern and Protestant in his ontology (event over metaphysics, the incapability of fallen man to know God, etc), to call Barth’s program a failure is to call the Reformation a failure. In other words, Rose’s beef with Barth is over the fact that he is not a Thomistic Roman Catholic. In my opinion, Congdon, et al., have penetrated to the heart of Rose’s contention precisely. So, in light of this, I have several thoughts:

1. While I agree with the Young, Restless, and Barthian guys’ tagging of Rose’s agenda, I cannot concede their contention that modernity is identified with Protestantism. That is simply anachronistic and inaccurate. It is inaccurate because first of all modernism has made its way into Roman Catholicism, evidenced I believe by Vatican II (and even before that evidenced by the Leo XIII’s and Pius X’s attempt to stave off modernism in the church by decrees establishing Thomism as the official doctrine of the church and binding priests with the anti-Modernism Oath, respectively. HT: Camden Bucey). Second, the rise of modernity occurred after the rise of Protestantism and was, in effect, a self-conscious move beyond the Reformation. That the Enlightenment occurred within and among Protestants does not mean it constitutes Protestantism. That is simply the historical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Remember, Kant’s influence was nearly 300 years after the rise of the Reformation. Therefore, it is incorrect to read modernism back into the Reformation.
2. As for Rose, I agree with him that Barth was modern and not orthodox. Now, that being said, I believe that Rose is far from having proven that Barth’s modern commitments necessarily arise to a failure. Especially if the alternative is medieval rationalism. Proving the failure of Barth’s newly constructed modernism requires, I believe, a thoroughgoing transcendental critique. More on that anon.
3. Modernism and Thomism have more in common than Rose and the young Barthians will admit. In fact, they are both so fundamentally and essentially (not in an ontological sense) of a cloth that it must be said the Reformation stands over and against both Thomism and Modernism. In other words, the dividing line is not between Thomas and Modernism, ultimately. The dividing line – with regard to the principium cognoscendi externum of theology – is really between Calvin and the Reformed confessions on the one side and Thomas and Modernism on the other. Both of the latter, over against the Reformation, deny the epistemic priority of God’s verbal, inscripturated revelation in matters of church doctrine and life. There is a word for this phenomenon: rationalism. And Thomas, Modernism, and Barth are all guilty of it.

In closing, this charge of rationalism, especially relative to Barth, needs a defense. While I can only be brief here, I offer the following two points to consider and would welcome pushback from Rose, Congdon, and Grow:

1. Barth was right to rise up against against both the analogia entis and his neo-Protestant professors to critique the theological structures which enabled them to support the Kaiser in his attempt at European dominance. However, Barth did not go far enough. He allowed modernism’s commitment to ontological dualism to stand, and with that its denial of God’s verbal, inscripturated revelation to man. In other words, Barth never exited the park which contained the playground of the theologians, even as he dropped a bomb on it. If Barth is correct to say that the event of revelation is not directly given to us in “our time,” then there is no direct revelation of God to us here and now. Scripture and preaching are only witnesses to revelation, but they are not revelation itself. This means that two problems in Barth’s system arise at once. Relative to epistemology, no direct revelation entails the dual and simultaneous problems of rationalism and nominalism/skepticism. On the one hand it entails nominalism because we here-and-now cannot know God, having no access to his direct revelation. We only have witnesses to revelation. But how is the theologian to know if those witnesses are reliable if he has no final arbiter to compare them to? Who is to say St. John’s witness is not more reliable than St. Paul’s? Or, who is to say that Polycarp’s witness is less dependable than St. Luke’s, or St. Peter’s compared to Thomas Aquinas? If there is no direct revelation, then all are equally valid witnesses. Even a dead dog is able to witness to revelation.
2. On the other hand, it also entails rationalism. We are the ones who do the naming. We are speculating about who God is. Barth speaks piously about Jesus Christ, yet the Christ he talks about is a Christ he has constructed as his fundamental starting point from the words of merely fallible humans. In other words, Barth’s Christomonistic prolegomena is built upon the resources of man’s own “natural theology” no less than medieval Scholasticism. His system is nothing other than a modern reconstruction of the very natural theology he so passionately dismissed as the invention of the anti-Christ. And it is at this point, the point of Barth never having escape the very thing Rose is seeking to promote, which constitutes Barth’s fatal failure. It is the failure of all would-be autonomous man-made theologies. It is the failure of not just another equally valid expression of Christianity, but of another religion altogether.

Links

• James Anderson’s review at Themelios.

Participants: Camden Bucey, James Dolezal, K. Scott Oliphint

The crew spends a few minutes discussing the metaphysical system of Aristotle, one of philosophy’s greatest minds.

Participants: Bob LaRocca, Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack

We realized many of our discussions on the Reformed Media Review were drifting toward the philosophical.  And we also believe there is a general lack of good philosophical resources – at least from people working from a Reformed theological framework.  As a result, we bring you Philosophy for Theologians. Our goal in this program is to provide an overview of a particular philosophical figure or an idea and to analyze it critically through the lens of Scripture.  That doesn’t mean proof-texting Kant’s views, but it does mean that we consider everything in light of God’s revelation.   We not only want to address philosophical questions on Philosophy for Theologians, but we want to equip you with a way to think about these questions. In this wide-ranging discussion, the panel begins with a discussion between Nate Shannon and Bob LaRocca regarding the role of realism in Herman Bavinck and the consistency thereof.   The discussions moves on and touches, among other things, upon Thomas Reid, Alvin Plantinga and possible worlds semantics.

Participants: Bob LaRocca, Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

Participants: Camden Bucey, K. Scott Oliphint, Nick Batzig