Steve,

Good point, I did not intend to claim Rose’s church affiliation, just that what he was advocating was in keeping with Thomistic ontology characteristic of so much of Roman Catholicism.

I just read the SJT article from Molnar on the Son’s obedience in Barth and Torrance. It is a fascinating article, and I’m glad you pointed it out to me. Molnar is identifying the “one line of thought,” which I had mentioned above, in Barth’s theology, which McCormack radicalizes (as does Pannenberg). Yet, Molnar is careful to establish that Barth’s theology precludes this radicalization. The substantial difference between McCormack and Molnar is whether the Incarnation constitutes the Trinity or the Trinity constitutes the Incarnation. McCormack says yes to the former ordering; Molnar says yes to the latter ordering. Early in the article, Molnar is clear to affirm that Barth “could not mean that God was always incarnate” (p. 52) and quotes from II.1, IV.1, and IV.2 to affirm this point: e.g., Barth wrote, “the divine essence does not, of course, need any actualisation…Even as the divine essence of the Son it did not need His incarnation…to become actual” (IV.2, p. 113). This covers the past debates with McCormack. Molnar is hardly conceding anything here. Likewise, the logos asarkos is affirmed in Barth’s theology (p. 57 and the footnote on p. 69).

Molnar is, however, identifying a “lack of clarity,” “confusion,” “fuzziness” in Barth’s reading of subordination in the immanent Trinity. This move from the economic to the immanent can be taken to mean that “Jesus Christ humanly existed before he actually came into existence,” yet, Molnar claims, “It is clear from the context that Barth meant to distinguish what in reality is God’s predestination of himself to be born of the Virgin for us and for our salvation and what occurs in the fullness of time. But unfortunately he has been read here as collapsing the inner trinitarian relations once more into the missions” (p. 62). The footnote cites Pannenberg and McCormack. Molnar continues, “He has not of course. He simply wanted to say, against those whose thinking pushed Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word to the side when they thought of predestination as a pact between the Father and the Son, that God is one as Father, Son, and Spirit and, as the one God, decided to be for us in Jesus Christ who himself was ‘the beginning of all the ways of God’ (CD, IV/1, p. 66).” The rest of the article argues why Barth can support this without introducing hierarchy into the immanent Trinity. So, Molnar sees Torrance as doing a better job, but both Barth and Torrance are intending to affirm the very same thing.

This, by the way, has nothing to do with dialectics in Barth. And on the larger debate between us — about whether Barth began with philosophical “dualism” — Molnar is not even remotely conceding anything of the sort. He is noting a tension, a confusion in Barth’s theology. That is hardly new. Balthasar did the same. As did Torrance. As does Webster. As I have on my blog. This is par for the course for grateful students of Barth and those who align with Barth’s theology on the whole. Barth himself joked about some inconsistencies in his CD in his very humorous Table Talks.

It’s a minor point but it could be that Rose is Lutheran and not Roman Catholic. If you click on Rose’s other article on First Things you will see that it is entitled: “Unremarkably Lutheran”. In it he states that: “Such a quip shouldn’t be anywhere near surprising, let alone offensive, to most of us Lutherans”.

Of course, being Lutheran or having had been one , does not preclude someone from pushing a Roman Catholic ontology. Also, I wouldn’t key on the word “Protestant” as a sign he’s Catholic as many Lutherans do not consider themselves “Protestant”. I’ve heard more than one LCMS member draw the distinction between “Protestant and Lutheran.

Just a thought

Just as one parting shot (cause I am out of time for today): I think in many ways, Jim, that you are arguing more with After Barth, and after Barth in a particular even idiosyncratic direction, than with Barth himself. I will have to wait and see if this is true after I have a chance to read your dissertation someday.

Jim,

1. Yes, I have affirmed the Muller thesis, in some respects (not all!) for quite some time now. If you had read our edited book you would know that. 🙂 I am concerned with being a critical reader … I am not all or nothing with any scholar (Torrance or otherwise).

2. I don’t believe Reformed theology, in the post Reformed era is opposed to Thomism at all! I believe a certain species of Reformed theology is opposed to Thomism, but the Westminster trad as I understand it is largely in bed with Thomas.

3. I am not changing my tune, only inflecting it in a certain way. As Kevin has ably demonstrated Barth’s turn is to the Incarnation; as Muller and Gibson have highlighted, Barth’s approach is a intensive principial Christocentrism; and this is why his work is so corollary with someone like Athanasius in mode. Barth is a rationalist in this way:

Rationalism,” finally, again as used in this essay, is the motif which pertains to the construction and assessment of doctrine. Theological language as such is understood to include an important rational or cognitive component. This component is subject to conceptual elaboration, and that elaboration (along with scriptura exegesis) is what constitutes the theological task. Because of the peculiar nature of the object on which it is based, rationalism takes pains to rule out certain illegitimate criteria and procedures in the work of doctrinal construction and assessment. Within the critical limits open to it, however, doctrines may be derived beyond the surface content of scripture as a way of understanding scripture’s deeper conceptual implications and underlying unity. — George Hunsinger

Within the locus (to get Ramist) of Barth’s Incarnational theology and prolegomena. He is rational[ist] because he follows the intelligibility of God’s Self revelation (particularism), through his exegesis of Holy Scripture.

Anyway, Jim, I think my friend Kevin, has more than ably demonstrated there is breadth in this discussion, and that even Barth commentators take fundamentally different views on Barth’s work. But what is clear, and even McCormack admits this, is that McCormack’s Barth is a constructive and theological Barth who has gone where McCormack thinks Barth should’ve gone, but Barth himself never did. pax.

Kevin, thank you for the cordial and engaging discussion!

Moreover, Kevin Hector’s SJT article from 2012 defends Molnar, even though Hector himself follows McCormack’s “post-metaphysics.” Hector argues that McCormack needs to distinguish his own constructive theology from Barth’s. So, this debate is hardly closed, much less “check mate” on any side.

Yes, we are at an impasse. I must say, however, that my interpretation covers the whole sweep of the CD, whereas McCormack is taking a particular line of thought from II.2 and IV.1, radicalizes it, and then claims that the rest of the CD, especially II.1, needs to be revised in the light of his (McCormack’s) historicism. Barth believed no such thing, and neither did his interpreters in the past and (most of them) in the present. And, secondly, “smoothing over” is hardly what anyone is doing, though I suppose a blog combox could give that impression. Balthasar’s reading, and Long’s recent brilliant defense of it, is incredibly nuanced, challenging Barth in certain respects. And I like to think that my blog also demonstrates these nuances.

Kevin,

Thank you again for your comment. I believe we are at an impasse on how we interpret Barth. Which is no surprise. Due to the purposeful use of equivocal language employed by Barth to accentuate the dialectical nature of his theology, he can be read one way in a narrow section of the CD – especially in the small print sections – and say something completely different elsewhere – often within the same sub-section. I am afraid that Barth scholarship will never come to a consensus on much until we can come to terms on basic principles of Barth-meneutics.

What I seek to show in my dissertation is that Barth’s commitment to the indirect nature of God’s grace – in revelation, election, creation, and redemption – remains constant. It has to, given the way he – right through to the end of CD IV – makes God-in-Christ a transcendently temporal act quite independent from our own time here and now. What does happen in the CD, however, as you rightly point out, is room is made for the incarnation (and yes, for analogy as well, but of a radically different kind than that found in Thomas. I call it an analogia veri temporis). But the incarnation, redemption, revelation, creation, etc does not occur here, in our time. Rather, our time is taken up (hebt) into God’s time for us, which is the time-sphere of God’s existence and being-in-act. You are trying to smooth over the radical nature of Barth’s proposal (as vBalth and and Molnar have done themselves). By the way, as an aside, I believe Molnar surrenders the debate completely to McCormack in his recent SJT article. It looks like checkmate there to me. But that is simply one man’s opinion.

In a recent post (from April 26), I quoted a highly relevant excursus in II.1, where Barth recognizes what I have just said above:

“Expounding Rom. 8:24, I even dared to say at that time: ‘Hope that is visible is not hope. Direct communication from God is not communication from God. A Christianity that is not wholly and utterly and irreducibly eschatology has absolutely nothing to do with Christ. A spirit that is not at every moment in time new life from the dead is in any case not the Holy Spirit. ‘For that which is seen is temporal’ (2 Cor. 4:18). What is not hope is a log, a block, a chain, heavy and angular, like the word ‘reality.’ It imprisons rather than sets free. It is not grace, but judgment and destruction. It is fate, not divine fulfilment. It is not God, but a reflection of man unredeemed. It is this even if it is an ever so stately edifice of social progress or an ever so respectable bubble of Christian redeemedness. Redemption is that which cannot be seen, the inaccessible, the impossible, which confronts us as hope. Can we wish to be anything other and better than men of hope, or anything additional?’ Well roared, lion!” [you can read the rest on my blog]

Moreover, the context of this quote is Barth’s discussion of God’s relation to our temporality, and he consciously and explicitly affirms an “in our time” relationship, which he could not do in the 1920’s. Barth’s ontology of creation is still firmly against locating “possibilities” for divine revelation within creation as such, but this is not true for creation as capacited by God. It is not “creatureliness” (or finitude) that is the problem — as it was with both Idealism and existentialism — but sin, which is a wholly theological category for Barth.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

I would only disagree with what you say concerning the supposed development in Barth’s thought from dualism to incarnation. I believe his doctrine of the incarnation absolutely fits into his Romans theology. Barth does not surrender that previous commitment to dualism, but rather develops a way to place the incarnation within that structure. The incarnation then is not an event in our time, for Barth, but a transcendent event in which God and man are united. In this way, Barth does appropriate analogy, but does so in a rarified sphere of time, which is prior to and independent of our time here and now. And so the dualistic structure remain constant.

If I had time, I would get into the nitty gritty of Barth’s dogmatics, but alas I do not have the time. I can only point to my blog, where I have been dealing with these matters for quite some time. I do appreciate, Jim, that you are actually trying to offer an argument, with probing questions, which is much more than I can say for Rose’s bluster.

Thanks for your response. A couple points of clarification which should help.

1. I find it interesting that you are now invoking Muller when you seem to so easily dismiss him when he differs from Torrance. Since when do you disagree with the Torrancean Calvin against the Calvinists thesis?

2. But more to the point, it is important for you to note the qualifier I added concerning the opposition of the Reformation and Thomism. I am speaking relative to the matter of principium. I am very happy for the recent scholarship which worked so hard to not pit Thomas and scholasticism against the Reformed tradition. The continuity is clear. However, we must not lose sight of the discontinuities for the continuity. And one of the discontinuities is with regard to theological principium. It is appropriate to pit the Reformed against Thomism relative to prolegomenon, justification, and the Eucharist, just to name a few. Don’t you believe Reformed theology is contrary to Thomism as your post and the others have made clear?

3. That Barth works in the modern period is not why I argue he is a modern modern. All the blog posts, including your own, acknowledged the basic modern commitment of Barth. Why change your tune now? McCormack is, of course, absolutely right (except where he tries to make Barth orthodox AND modern – what has Jerusalem to do with Athens?). Barth is a rationalist because he, like Thomas, denies the absolute epistemological priority of direct special revelation. Barth is a modern because he holds to an ontological dualism, whereas Thomas holds to ontological monism (this too, of course, is being contested more recently). Reformed theology, however, holds to a creator/creature distinction, not a creator/creature opposition. The creator is distinct from the creature according to Reformed ontology, whereas for Barth the creator is opposed to the creature with no hope of actual direct contact or knowledge.

Where to start?! I am mostly puzzled at how you have revisionally annexed the Reformed faith away from its Thomist heritage and lumped it in with modernity. Not that I don’t agree that Thomism constitutes a definite type of rationalism–especially anthropologically (see Norman Fiering)–but that against the work and thesis, appatently, of Richard Muller, you seem to be arguing that Calvin is against the Calvinists since many if not most of them work with and through Thomas’ categories and synthesis. So it is the Calvinists who are closer to Rose’ s Thomism, and Barth who instead critically undercuts the Thomist and modern theses even as he is working in the modern period. But just because Barth works in the modern period does not necessarily make him a moder thinker, simpliciter, anymore than you or I having to be post-modern thinkers simply because we inhabit the so called post-modern period.

Barth is more complex than these simplistic labels reduce him to be. Bruce McCormack offers one trajectory for reading Barth ( which I know you approve of Jim because you think it makes your case easier), but of course there are others within Barth scholarship who contest McCormack’s thesis of Barth as a full on Kantian Hegelian Schleiermacherian modern (Hunsinger, Molnar, Webster, Gorringe, Long, et al). If this is the case, this makes your case and thesis and critique less stable, if in fact McCormack is wrong–or at least not completely right about Barth’s turn to the subject (modernity).

Anyway, I’m typing this on my Nook. I will respond more later when I have access to my computer.