As in a Mirror John Calvin and Karl Barth on Knowing God Studies in the History of Christian Traditions Founded by Heiko A

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AS IN A MIRROR JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH ON KNOWING GOD STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS FOUNDED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN †

EDITED BY ROBERT J. BAST, Knoxville, Tennessee

IN COOPERATION WITH HENRY CHADWICK, Cambridge SCOTT H. HENDRIX, Princeton, New Jersey BRIAN TIERNEY, Ithaca, New York ARJO VANDERJAGT, Groningen JOHN VAN ENGEN, Notre Dame, Indiana

VOLUME CXX

CORNELIS VAN DER KOOI

AS IN A MIRROR JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH ON KNOWING GOD AS IN A MIRROR JOHN CALVIN AND KARL BARTH ON KNOWING GOD

A DIPTYCH

CORNELIS VAN DER KOOI

TRANSLATED BY DONALD MADER

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2005 Cover illustration: detail from the Issenheim Altarpiece showing John the Baptist at the foot of the Cross. © Musée d’Unterlinden – F 68000 Colmar. Photo: O. Zimmerman.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kooi, Cornelis van der. [Als in een spiegel] As in a mirror : John Calvin and Karl Barth on knowing God : a diptych / by Cornelis van der Kooi ; translated by Donald Mader. p. cm. — (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; v. 120) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13817-X (hard ; alk. paper) 1. God—Knowableness—History of doctrines. 2. Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564— Contributions in knowableness of God. 3. Barth, Karl, 1886-1968—Contributions in knowableness of God. I. Title. II. Series.

BT98.K66 2005 231’.042’0922—dc22 2004057550

ISSN 1573-5664 ISBN 90 04 13817 X

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Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... xi ListofAbbreviations...... xiii

Chapter 1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1. KnowingGodandthewayofhistory...... 1 1.2. CalvinandBarth...... 3 1.3. Faithasknowing? ...... 6 1.4. Bipolarityandconﬂict ...... 14 1.5. Themirrorasaninvitation...... 15

part one john calvin

Chapter 2. WaysofKnowing ...... 21 2.1. Introduction...... 21 2.1.1. KnowledgeofGodandpiety ...... 21 2.1.2. Rootageinsociety ...... 30 2.1.3. Knowledge of God and conscience ...... 35 2.2. Accommodation...... 41 2.2.1. Accommodation as the basic form of all revelation...... 41 2.2.2. Accommodation as the key concept in sacred history...... 48 2.2.3. Accommodationandlanguage ...... 52 2.2.4. The metaphor of the mirror: knowledge as imitation ...... 57 2.3. Inwardrevelation ...... 63 2.3.1. The soul as bridgehead: mental capacities ...... 63 2.3.2. Sensusdivinitatis...... 70 2.3.3. Sensusconscientiae...... 73 2.4. Manifestationsintheexternalworld...... 75 2.4.1. Stirringthesenses ...... 75 vi contents

2.4.2. A splendidtheatre...... 77 2.4.3. Excursus: the discussion between Dowey and Parker ...... 85 2.5. Appreciationofculture ...... 87 2.6. Scriptureasaccommodation ...... 89 2.7. KnowledgeofGodasresultofWordandSpirit...... 95 2.8. Faith ...... 104 2.8.1. A qualiﬁedconceptoffaith ...... 104 2.8.2. Uniomystica...... 106 2.8.3. Faithandcertainty ...... 108 2.9. ThelimitsandbeneﬁtofknowledgeofGod...... 115

Chapter 3. God:JudgeandFather...... 117 3.1. UtilityandthedoctrineofGod ...... 117 3.2. Theanti-speculativetenor...... 121 3.3. Partialknowability ...... 124 3.4. Unceasingactivity...... 127 3.5. Core concepts: loving-kindness, judgement and righteousness ...... 130 3.6. Lord of the world: God’s care and goodness in the order oftheworld...... 132 3.7. The judgement of the judge and the discipline of the father ...... 136 3.8. Theabsurdityoflife ...... 138 3.9. TheanchorofGod’sunchangingwill...... 143 3.10.Predestinationandresponsibility...... 148 3.11. FatherandLord:loveandfear...... 151 3.12. Knowing in faith, in bits and pieces: predestination...... 158 3.12.1. A centerorthecore?...... 158 3.12.2. Handling of the doctrine of predestination...... 167 3.12.3. The beneﬁt of the knowledge of predestination.... 170 3.12.4. God’swillasthefarthesthorizon...... 174 3.12.5. Godasabsolutepower?...... 176 3.12.6. Excursus: potentia absoluta et ordinata. A brief historicaloverview...... 177 3.12.7. Wherefaithmustlook...... 184 3.13. Onceagain:Godasfather...... 185 contents vii

Chapter 4. The Supper and Knowledge of God ...... 189 4.1. Introduction...... 189 4.2. Whatisa sacrament? ...... 195 4.2.1. Onlya cognitiveadvantage?...... 195 4.2.2. Signandthing ...... 199 4.3. Sacramentasa form ofaccommodation ...... 200 4.4. Themeaningofthemeal...... 202 4.4.1. Thefamily ...... 202 4.4.2. The body of Christ after Ascension. The discussionwiththeLutherans...... 204 4.4.3. Fleshandblood...... 208 4.5. TheHolySpiritandinstrumentality...... 213 4.5.1. The Supper as instrument ...... 213 4.5.2. The incomprehensibility of the work of the Spirit . 216 4.5.3. ThewayofknowledgeofGod...... 218 4.5.4. Experienceandtasting...... 219

the hinge

Chapter 5. TheTurntotheSubjectinKant’sPhilosophy...... 225 5.1. A watershed ...... 225 5.2. Thetradition-criticalattitude...... 228 5.3. Forthesakeofhumanity ...... 230 5.4. Theturntothesubject ...... 233 5.5. The conditions of knowing. Metaphysics as methodological investigation into the conditions of knowing...... 236 5.6. Knowledgeashumanconstruction ...... 238 5.7. The limitation of metaphysics and the place of faith in God...... 241 5.8. AfterKant...... 246

part two karl barth

Chapter 6. TheWayofKnowingGod...... 251 6.1. Introduction:theologyandsociety...... 251 6.2. ‘Not without audacity’: the primacy of revelation ...... 258 6.3. HumanknowingofGodastheologicaldatum ...... 262 viii contents

6.4. KnowledgeofGodasevent ...... 263 6.5. Knowledge of God as participation in God’s self-knowledge...... 265 6.6. Godastheobjectofknowledge...... 266 6.7. Faithasa form ofknowledge...... 268 6.8. Theplaceofthehumansubject...... 268 6.9. Mediationandsacramentality...... 271 6.10. The way of knowing God. Between mystery and truth .... 274 6.11. A lookback.Fromimpossibilitytoreality ...... 278 6.12. Dogmatics as a grammar for speaking about God? ...... 281 6.13. Human capacities and knowledge of God: the heritage ofMarburg...... 289 6.14. The reality of knowledge of God. The analogia ﬁdei ...... 293 6.15.Faithandcertainty...... 308 6.16.Naturaltheology ...... 311

Chapter 7. TheDoctrineofGod ...... 317 7.1. Knowledge of God as knowledge of God’s being. The anti-agnostic thrust of a theological decision ...... 317 7.2. God’sreality:beingandact ...... 322 7.3. Love...... 324 7.4. Freedom ...... 326 7.5. Multiplicityandunity...... 329 7.6. Revelationasself-revelation? ...... 329 7.7. Twoseries ...... 335 7.8. TheperfectionsofGod’slove ...... 337 7.8.1. Graceandholiness ...... 337 7.8.2. Mercyandrighteousness...... 339 7.8.3. Patienceandwisdom...... 345 7.9. TheperfectionsofGod’sfreedom...... 348 7.9.1. Unityandomnipresence ...... 348 7.9.2. Constancyandomnipotence...... 353 7.9.3. Eternityandglory...... 358 7.10. Election as a component of the doctrine of God ...... 363 7.11. ElectionasthebasicdecisionofGod ...... 365 7.12. Electionasthecoreissue ...... 368 7.13. Thedecretumconcretum...... 371 7.14. ThecritiqueofCalvin ...... 381 7.15. Eternity,timeandGod’sactingtoday...... 384 contents ix

Chapter 8. New Space for Human Action: Barth’s View of the Sacrament...... 387 8.1. Doctrineofbaptismasmirror...... 387 8.2. Developments ...... 392 8.2.1. RegardforthehumanityofJesus...... 392 8.2.2. Theonesacrament...... 393 8.2.3. ThelivingChrist ...... 395 8.2.4. The assistance of the Enlightenment ...... 397 8.3. BaptismwiththeSpirit ...... 398 8.4. Baptismwithwater...... 404 8.5. Directness...... 405 8.6. Baptismwithwaterasanswer...... 407 8.7. Thenorm forhumanity ...... 411 8.8. Themeaningoftheterm ‘noetic’...... 412

evaluation

Chapter 9. ProfitandLoss ...... 417 9.1. Christiantheologyasa counterproposal...... 417 9.2. KnowledgeofGodandtheology...... 419 9.3. From cosmological rootage to self-sufficiency...... 426 9.4. The systematic function of the concept of revelation: guaranteeforknowledgeofGod ...... 428 9.5. Theplaceofthefacultiesofknowing ...... 430 9.6. Thetheologicalelement ...... 433 9.7. WordandSpirit...... 435 9.8. Lights,lampsandtheirfuel...... 438 9.9. ThecontentofknowledgeofGod:savingproximity...... 442 9.10.TheroleofmaninknowingGod ...... 446 9.11. Sacrament: the same thing, in a differentway...... 450 9.12.Asina mirror… ...... 453

Bibliography ...... 455

IndexofNames...... 467 IndexofTerms ...... 473

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first impetus for this study came quite a time ago. It began when Dr. H.J. Adriaanse, the co-supervisor for my doctoral studies at Leiden, invited me to think again of a sequel to my dissertation. This resulted in a plan to expand the field of research to the later Barth and to Calvin, under the title ‘Knowledge of God as Mystery’. On the recommenda- tion of Dr. H.A. Oberman I was able to realise an unforgettable term of study at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Wiscon- sin, Madison, WI, USA. Meeting W.J. Courtenay, D.C. Lindberg and R.M. Kingdon provided me with access to American research on the background and social context for Calvin which unmistakably left its mark on this book. In Amsterdam, at the Vrije Universiteit, I was able to continue the project next to all my other work. I would mention several persons here by name who read the manuscript in whole or in part, in that way playing a significant role in this book coming into being. The friendship and regular exchanges with René van Woudenberg, in particular with regard to the epistemology of the hinge section dealing with Kant, was of particularly great value to me. The sections of the manuscript on dogmatics were read by and discussed with Aad van Egmond and Dirk van Keulen. I would further mention here Maarten Aalders, and the conversations with Georg Plasger on Barth interpretation. It was an enormous support for me to have Dr. C. Augustijn and Dr. H.A. Oberman both read the section on Calvin and provide me with their critique of it. That the latter passed away before he could see the completion of this book saddens me greatly. His reactions were more than heartening. A fragment of the Isenheim altarpiece by Mathias Grünewald is depicted on the cover. A reproduction of this altarpiece hung over Barth’s desk. The figure of John the Baptist pointing to the crucified Christ was for Barth a metaphor for the limited service that theology can perform. Theology points to the matter that is really paramount; it does nothing more, and if it does well, nothing less. xii acknowledgements

The translation was made possible in part by support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientiﬁc Research and the Bastiaan Haack Kunneman Foundation of the Free University. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Anfänge I Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie. Teil I: Karl Barth, Heinrich Barth, Emil Brunner, hrsg. von J. Moltmann, München 19774. CCLS Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, Turnholti 1953e.v. CD K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 Volumes, 13 Parts, CO Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. W. Baum, E. Cunitz et W. Reuss, Brunsvigae 1863– 1900. EB Evangelische Bekenntnisse. Bekenntnisschriften der Reformatoren und neuere Theologische Erklärungen in zwei Bände, Bielefeld 1997. KD K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, München 1932- Zürich 1967; ET: Church Dogmatics, Edinburgh 1975. OS Opera Selecta, Ed. P. Barth/W. Niesel, München 1926– 1936. PG Patrologia Graeca Cursus Completus. Ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris 1857–1866. PL Patrologia Latina Cursus Completus. Ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris 1844–1855. Römerbrief 1 K. Barth, Der Römerbrief, (Erste Fassung) 1919 (hrsg. von H. Schmidt), Zürich 19853. Römerbrief 2 K. Barth, Der Römerbrief, 2. Auﬂage, (München 1922=) Zürich 197611; ET: The Epistle to the Romans, tr. by Edwin C. Hoskyns, London/Oxford/New York 1968. STh Sancti Thomae de Aquino Summa Theologiae, Roma 1962. WA D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Weimar 1883e.v. ZdTh Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie

chapter one

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Knowing God and the way of history

‘What is the primary goal of human life? That we know God’.1 This opening sentence of the Geneva Catechism does not represent merely an age-old vision of human life, but also refers to the mystery that to this very day is interwoven with Christian belief and is the foundation for all Christian theology: living has something to do with knowing God. In our time the answer may appear in other forms, with more emphasis on being human and humanity, but it has remained like a hidden magnet under various theological themes. It is however precisely this answer that has become a problem for present generations, under the influence of a culture that is embarrassed about or even rejects belief in God. What does it really mean to know God? Can we indeed know God? Where does such knowledge have its foundations, what nourishes it, and what is it that is ultimately known? And if there is something like knowledge of God, what does it have to do with being human, with life, with our actions? These are substantive theological questions which belong to the field of reflection on Christian dogma. The direction that this study will go in reflecting on these questions is that of theological history, or historical theology. Theological history (or historical theology) will be used to treat questions in the field of Chris- tian dogmatics. In the light of advancing differentiation between systematic and historical disciplines, this is anything but an obvious choice. On the basis of the experience that such an approach very easily fails to do justice to at least one of the two—or even both—elements, proceeding this way can ever generate suspicion. At the same time it must be said that dogmatic reflection is impossible without involving its own

1 CO 6, 9–10: ‘Quelle est la principale Fin de la vie humaine?’ L’enfant: ‘C’est de cognoistre Dieu’. The Latin version has a somewhat expanded answer: ‘ut Deum, a quo conditi sunt homines, ipsi noverint.’ Cf. also the Instruction et confession de Foy (1537), OS I, 378. 2 chapter one particular situation in the reflection. That is to say, the reflection cannot be separated from the Church—and in this case we of course mean the Church in its ecumenical sense, namely as the community of faith in all times and places. If dogmatics can be regarded as the orderly reflection on the content of Christian knowledge of God,2 then its interrelation- ship with the Church as an historically defined entity is indispensable. That perhaps sounds like a curtailment, as if the message of Christian faith does not extend to all the world and to all mankind. Our situating of the question is anything but intended to place a limit on the public domain of Christian theology. It is indeed necessary however to recognise that Christian belief does come from somewhere, and points back to events in history and continues to bear their stamp.3 That in Protestant tradition the Bible, as the Word of God, is regarded as the primary and decisive source of Christian theology, is something which will not be disputed in the following theological-historical arrangement. It is nevertheless important to realise that access to and dealing with this source is not something that is independent of debates which were carried on in the past, and just as little from debates that are ongoing with contemporary culture. Expressed in the language of dogmatic theology, with these questions we move within the sphere of the doctrine or the Holy Spirit, or pneumatology. The organisation of this study includes an explicit acknowledgement that in our thinking and speaking we have been in part shaped and marked by preceding generations, and that with an eye to current theological reflection it is worth the effort to grapple seriously with what previous generations have thought, experienced and felt in their encounters with the subject that lies before us:knowingGod.

2 Thus in principle the whole of the content of dogmatics can be included within the deﬁnition of knowledge. God is really the most comprehensive object of Christian religious knowledge, and thus also of theology. See for instance H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II,Kampen19082, 2 and W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie Bd. I, Göttin- gen 1988, 14–15;ET,Systematic Theology, Volume I, Grand Rapids/Edinburgh 1992, 4–5. 3 The choice of the Church as the primary reference point is intended both theologically and sociologically. This is anything but a denial that alongside it there are audi- ences of other sorts which can be distinguished, namely society at large and academia. I merely want to underscore that Christian theology and what it has to say about God assumes both an historical and a contemporary community. For the distinction of the three forms of audience, see D. Tracy, The analogical Imagination. Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism,NewYork1993, 6–31. introduction 3

1.2. Calvin and Barth

This study limits itself to two theologians who each has assumed a representative place in Reformed Protestantism: John Calvin (1509–1564) and Karl Barth (1886–1968). It can justly be said of both that they made their choices and presented their vision of human knowledge of God in an independent manner and in entirely diﬀerent intellectual climates. This book therefore consists of two parts or panels which, connected by a hinge, together form a diptych. In the ﬁrst panel a sketch is given of Calvin’s vision of human knowledge of God. How does man arrive at knowledge of God, what invites him to faith and how does this knowledge relate to other forms of knowledge and experience? The question about the way in which knowledge of God is acquired can not however be separated from the substantive question of what is known of God. Epistemological questions are connected with the material which constitutes the theological content. What does man really know about God and himself ? What can he hope for, what guides his life in the world, his fears and desires? Arising from the same questions, a sketch of Barth’s concept of knowing God appears in the second panel. Karl Barth’s theology, since the appearance of his dogmatic work unjustly termed ‘neo-orthodoxy’,4 fully bears the marks of the post-Kantian situation. Barth lived and worked in a culture and intellectual climate that stood in the shadow of the Enlightenment. He was part of that intellec-

4 In this compound ‘orthodoxy’ is viewed as the position that the truth of God methodically permits itself to be immediately and uninterruptedly present in words and dogmatic concepts—thus knowledge of God is knowledge of eternal truths, authoritatively proclaimed. Originally the term primarily carried the negative connotation of authoritarian belief. See for instance the reaction by P. Wernle to the first edition of the Epistle to the Romans: ‘Der Römerbrief in neuer Beleuchtung’ in: Kirchenblatt für die reformierte Schweiz 34 (1919), 163 and Barth’s response to that in the Foreword to the revised edition Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) (München 1922=) Zürich 197611,VI: ‘… das Schreckgespenst einer neuen Orthodoxie …’ (ET: The Epistle to the Romans,translated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, London/Oxford/New York 1968, 3: ‘the appearence of the horrible spectre of a new orthodoxy’). Cf. also Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf (1927), hrsg. von G. Sauter, Zürich 1982, 7 en KD I/1,IX;ET:ChurchDogmatics I/1, XIV. For the reception in the Anglo-Saxon context, see Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology. Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936, Oxford 1997, 24–26. See also the reference there to F. Kattenbusch, Diedeutscheevange- lische Theologie seit Schleiermacher II,Gießen1934, 46. The association of Barth’s theology with repristination and imposed authority received no small impetus from Bonhoeffer’s memorable assessment of Barth’s theology as a form of revelation positivism (letter of May 5, 1944). 4 chapter one tual climate, where the possibility and desirability of believing in God was doubted, or forcefully denied. The arrangement followed has implications for the manner in which the context is discussed. Put differently, the manner in which theological history is handled has considerable limitations. Tracing the factors which went into the development of their ideas, seeking out sources and striking differences from contemporaries, or the course of their own development is not the intention of this study. Because of the structure of the study the reader can for a moment get the impression that Calvin and Barth were two solitary figures who arrived at their positions sui generis. I emphasise that this is not my intention. Contemporary theological research makes it clear again and again that Calvin and Barth were both connected with their contemporaries within a fine-meshed net of existing concepts and forms of exegesis. Where it was possible, I have made use of studies that focus on the narrower context, on a detail of the panel, but in general it is the larger field that is of interest in this book. The idea of context is thus understood broadly, in the sense of the cultural climate, the whole of the positions and attitudes that permeate the way we deal with the world, ourselves and God. An awareness of the context is of great importance in dogmatic reflection. A direct comparison between Calvin and Barth is therefore not the intention, and the annexation of the one for the other even less so.5 Consideration of their concepts of knowledge of God takes place precisely in the consciousness of their presumptive otherness and strangeness, while the otherness is not so absolute as to exclude the possibility of a fruitful comparison. I have tried to do justice to both. The step that has to be taken within dogmatics is the question of what a concept contributes to the particular reflection at hand. The two panels are connected by a hinge. The hinge is formed by the epistemological critique of the Enlightenment, culminating in the thought of Immanuel Kant. The choice for Kantian epistemological critique as the hinge is not intended to suggest that Barth is responding to Kant in any direct sense. What I do wish to express by this is that Calvin and Barth each lived in a very particular time, separated by the time we call the Enlightenment. Calvin is portrayed as a pre-modern

5 See the irate response of R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin. Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition,NewYork/Oxford2000, 187 and idem, After Calvin. Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition,Oxford2003, 63–102. introduction 5 thinker,6 and Barth as someone who completely shares in the problems of modernity.7 The focus on Kant’s epistemological critique functions as a means to briefly describe the changed constellation of theology after Kant. The intention of this book implies that I will not limit myself purely to observations and assembling data. In the discussion of the two panels the difference in the configuration of the various elements will necessarily be dealt with. There are shifts in the role taken by man and in the manner in which God is portrayed. As a viewer of the panels, one immediately forms judgements, and the judgement thus does not remain neutral. There is profit booked, but also losses. The critical glance is not only cast backwards toward Calvin, but also forwards, toward Barth. Contemporary theology may be closer in time to Barth than to Calvin, but that does not eliminate the possibility that there is something to be learned from essential components in Calvin, something which has been lost in the more modern panel. Thus material is brought together for an individual answer to the questions of what it is

6 With this general characterisation of Calvin’s context I am implicitly taking a position opposed to those classifications which seek to all too easily situate Calvin, or more broadly, the Reformation, as early-modern, and thereby as a sort of overture for modernism. The collective religious and cultural characteristics of what historiography with good reason distinguishes as the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Biblical humanism and Reformation are so decisive in comparison to the Enlightenment and modernity which flowed from it, that the term pre-modern is fully justified. This leaves intact the value and necessity of Calvin research differentiating within this wider context. For this tendency within current research see particularly the book by R.A. Muller already mentioned, The Unaccommodated Calvin. 7 Quite intentionally this characterisation leaves aside the approaches to Barth as a critic of modernism (for instance K.G. Steck, ‘Karl Barths Absage an die Neuzeit’ in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit,München1973, 7–33), as an exponent of modernism (D. Schellong, ‘Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit’, ibidem, 34–102;T.Rendtorff, ‘Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verständnis der Theologie Karl Barths und ihre Folgen’ in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studien zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung,Gütersloh1972, 161–181) or of anti-modern modernism (G. Pfleiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie. Zu Genese und Kontext eines paradigmatischen Entwurfs systematischer Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 2000, 25), or as post-modern (G. Ward, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, Cambridge 1995;idem,‘Barth, Modernity and Postmodernity’ in: J. Webster [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, Cambridge 2000, 274–295; William. S. Johnson, The Mystery of God. Karl Barth and te Postmodern Foundations of Theology, Louisville 1997;L.Karelse,Dwalen. Over Mark C. Taylor en Karl Barth, Zoetermeer 1999). Barth has a very nuanced attitude toward modernism, in which it is difficult to bring the elements of continuity and discontinuity together under one term. For a well-considered balance, see D. Korsch ‘Theologie in der Postmoderne. Der Beitrag Karl Barths’ in: idem, Dialektische Theologie nach Karl Barth, Tübingen 1996, 74–92. 6 chapter one to know God, where this knowledge comes from, what is to be hoped for, and what place we are invited to take. The procedure is that in both panels there is first a general outline sketched of what contemporary dogmatics would call the doctrine of revelation (Chapters 2 and 6). Here one begins to see what the way or ways are by which man can obtain knowledge of God. This is followed in each panel by two chapters in which several substantive themes are discussed. For both Calvin and Barth several subjects from the doctrine of God and the doctrine of the sacraments are successively taken up for examination (Chapters 3, 4, 7 and 8). The choice of using the doctrines of God and the sacraments as the basis for sketching the content of the theology in both cases is dictated by the hypothesis that these are the themes which are pre-eminently suited to serve as mirrors of the theological concept as a whole. After all, in the doctrine of God one finds reflection on the question of who it is that man is dealing with in faith. There lie the roots of any answer to questions about salvation. The themes of providence and election are taken up within this context. I consider the doctrine of the sacraments to be significant because it is in this field that it becomes clear in a concentrated way how man arrives at knowledge of God, what he perceives of God’s salvation, and what position he takes with respect to God as an acting person. For Calvin this is focused on his view of the Supper, for Barth on what he left behind of his fragment on baptism as KD IV/4.Asthisdifferent choice in rounding off the panels already shows, I have not chosen to maintain a strict symmetry between the two panels, nor is this strictly necessary. Rather, it can be defended that the portion of the doctrine of the sacraments in each panel permits itself to be read as a pregnant summary of the whole vision of the content of any way to knowledge of God. Moreover, it appears to be precisely the view of baptism and the Supper that is suitable for catching sight of the division of roles between God and man. In addition, in the case of Barth it makes clear just how much his view on the place of man as a subject in the God- man relationship evolved.

1.3. Faith as knowing?

Proposing to study Calvin and Barth’s theology from the perspective of human knowledge of God is anything but an obvious choice in the present cultural climate. Can faith in fact be characterised as a form of introduction 7 knowing? Doesn’t theology have a lot of explaining to do in that case? Indeed, upon hearing the word ‘knowledge’, many in Western cultural circles would think first of scientific knowledge. The term knowledge is in that case reserved for knowledge that derives its claim to truth from some form of argumentation from the natural sciences. Only that knowledge which fulfils a limited number of criteria from physical sciences is justified.8 In terms of this approach, knowledge of God falls out of the boat, because there is no epistemological guarantee that can be given for it. Even if one is of the opinion that the concept of knowledge must be taken more broadly than just knowledge in the physical sciences, it is still clear that the concept of knowledge of God can easily be misunderstood intellectually or scientifically. Under the influence of intellectual associations, the concept of knowledge of God as a description of the relation between man and God was pushed to the margins and has undergone an enormous reduction. That was not just a phenomenon of this century. About a century ago the mystic ring of the concept of knowing God was again brought to the fore when Abraham Kuyper translated cognito dei into Dutch as kennisse Gods (which can be understood as mystical ‘knowledge from God’ as well as ‘knowledge of God’) instead of simply godskennis (knowledge of God).9 Since the advance of science and technology, knowledge has generally been associated with instrumental knowledge and scientific knowledge. This sort of knowledge attempts to make phenomena as clear as possible and to come to grips with them by means of theory and experimentation. Thanks to instrumental knowledge modern society is able to produce a massive flood of goods and thus to realise a standard of welfare for at least a segment of humanity the like of which has never been seen in world history. This development however has its darker side. Through this shift to an instrumental conception of knowledge the content of what

8 Without going into the matter further, following the philosopher Alvin Plantinga one can term this approach to the guarantee of human knowledge classic foundational thinking. See A. Plantinga ‘Reason and Belief in God’ in: A. Plantinga/N. Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality. Reason and Belief in God, Notre Dame/London 1983, 16–93 and the broad exposition of the project of his epistemology in the trilogy Warrant and Proper Function,NewYork/Oxford1993, Warrant: The current Debate,NewYork/Oxford1993 and Warranted Christian Belief,NewYork/Oxford2000. 9 A. Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der heilige Godgeleerdheid, Deel 2. Algemeen deel,Kampen19092, 193e.v. In the same line H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek I,Kampen19062, 11, 15; ET: Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. I: Prolegomena (ed. by John Bolt, translated by John Vriend), Grand Rapids 2003, 38–42. 8 chapter one it meant to know has been reduced, and the broader meaning that the concept of knowledge of God traditionally encompassed now must be expressed by means of other words. Distinguished from scientific and instrumental knowledge, there is also a broader concept of knowing that is possible, one which has its foundations in the world of experience. According to this epistemology it is defensible to begin with the multiplicity of sensory and intellectual capacities. If our faculties are functioning well they produce trustworthy knowledge. In addition to sense perception we possess memory, we accept the witness of others, we know the difference between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, truth and falsity. In short, in practice we live with all sorts of knowledge that is the product of capacities and that we accept in an immediate way, that is to say, without the intervention of reasoning.10 The experience of the light of the autumn sun on a hedgerow, the first notes of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’, the warmth of the spring sun on your forehead, the smell of lavender, the taste of fresh bread, an intensely experienced memory, a strong feeling of indignation, the testimony of others: all these are examples of primary experience and forms of knowing that do not fall into the category of scientific knowledge, but none the less produce knowledge of a sort that in practice we accept to be trustworthy. Knowing in this primary sense is being in contact with, spoken to by, conditioned by, in the presence of, involved with: in other words, relationally defined in a wide sense. This knowing is a form of contact in which the person who knows first is receptive, and then receives and experiences that which transpires. This sort of knowing also has conceptual and propositional implications and can become the object of reflection; but all these operations are an abstraction of what presents itself in experience. What is experienced is more than can be comprehended in words or reflection about it. We could call it a form of relational knowing, in which the person does not so much become master of the thing known, but is addressed by and becomes conditioned by it. It is to be emphatically distinguished from knowledge which has the sole purpose of the transfer of information, or control.11 In both Calvin and Barth the concept of knowing God

10 See R. van Woudenberg, ‘Plantinga’s externalisme: waarborg door het naar beho- ren functioneren van kenvermogens’ in: R. van Woudenberg/B. Cusveller, De kentheorie van Alvin Plantinga, Zoetermeer 1998, 67–82; ET: ‘The Assurance of Faith: A Theme in Reformed Dogmatics in Light of Alvin Plantinga’s Epistemology’, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 40 (1998), 77–92. 11 See C. van der Kooi, ‘Kennis van belang. Wetenschapsbeoefening in het licht van introduction 9 is ultimately connected with notions of this sort. In knowing God the person who knows is taken up into a relationship, defined by the proximity of God. It should not be surprising that in contemporary theology there has been an attempt to replace the concept of knowing God with words and concepts which lack the intellectual and scientific associations this has assumed, and which therefore appear to fit better with the peculiar character of knowledge in faith. An orientation to the situation of dialogue and the personal encounter has been characteristic of the manner in which revelation and the knowledge acquired through it have been approached over the last century. In theology influenced by Barth the object of knowledge of God is formulated in terms of revelation, Word and being addressed by God in his Word. In some cases, such as E. Brunner and H. Berkhof, the knowledge in faith is explicitly formulated as knowledge which arises from encounter.12 For E. Jüngel God is the mystery which reveals itself in the history of Jesus Christ. Through this the story, and the narrativity which is connected with it, becomes the theological category par excellence for thinking about God and His coming.13 In Roman Catholic theology God is often spoken of as the hidden perspective that one discovers if one begins with the whole broad range of fundamental human experiences, the open places in human existence, and through surprise and amazement comes out at faith in God, precipitated in myths and stories. The word ‘God’ becomes a meaningful word when people dare to let themselves be touched by these experiences, which are nothing less than traces of God and themselves lead to the way to God.14 Among thinkers of Protestant background this broad approach generally takes the form of the question of meaning as the context for the question of God,15 or, christelijke geloofskennis’ in: J.P. Verhoogt, S. Griffioen en R. Fernhout (red.), Vinden en zoeken. Het bijzondere van de Vrije Universiteit,Kampen1997, 98–116. 12 H. Berkhof, Christelijk Geloof. Een inleiding tot de geloofsleer, Nijkerk 19937, 29;ET: Christian Faith. An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, Grand Rapids 1979, 30 for instance, is characteristic. 13 E. Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus, Tübingen 1977;ET:God as the Mystery of the World. On the Foundation of the Thology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, Edinburgh 1983. 14 A. Houtepen, God, een open vraag. Theologische perspectieven in een cultuur van agnosme, Zoetermeer 1997, 330;ET:God: An Open Question, London/New York 2002, 85–108, 258. E. Schillebeeckx, Mensen als verhaal van God, Baarn 1989. 15 See for example W. Stoker, Is vragen naar zin vragen naar God? Een godsdienstwijsgerige 10 chapter one as in Adriaanse, the question of God becomes a perspective which in the act of thinking steadily recedes further without however disappear- ing. The continuing fruitfulness and blessing of faith in God for life is thereby acknowledged, while at the same time it becomes abundantly clear that the notion of knowledge is profoundly problematised.16 Unde- niably these approaches offer a subtle tool for catching sight of that which is peculiar to faith, within a context in which religious knowledge is no longer rooted in the generally accepted metaphysics of being. What contemporary, Western theology has in common is that over a broad line it has undergone a hermeneutic change of course, or, in the case of Karl Barth, even himself was instrumental in inaugurating that development.17 As we have already said, according to this change of course faith, knowing of God, still can be best compared with the situation of a conversation in which two partners encounter one another, learn to know each other personally. The assumption that revelation can be reduced to a dialogue continues to make itself felt, even though the conversation takes place via a text, through an experience which has become a story.18 The believer is the hearer of the Word. The sense which dominates the paradigm of the conversation is therefore hearing, and the content of the divine Word is defined as self-revelation. One can ask if this image of a conversation is not all too barren. Particularly in the literature by Calvin, as we shall see, we are reminded that in the way to faith all the senses are brought into play, and that knowledge of God can be acquired through more senses than one. Moreover, one becomes aware of how modern, limited and perhaps also damaging it is when in contemporary theology the concept of self-revelation serves as the only adequate correlate for Christian knowledge of God.

studie over godsdienstige zingeving in haar verhouding tot seculiere zingeving, Zoetermeer 1993;ET: Is the Quest for Meaning the Quest for God? The Religious Ascription of Meaning in Relation to the Secular Ascription of Meaning. A Theological Study,Amsterdam1996. 16 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur Religionsphilosophie, Kampen 1995, 44, 261, 300. See also H.J. Adriaanse, H.A. Krop, L. Leertouwer, Het verschijnsel theologie. Over de wetenschappelijke status van de theologie, Meppel/Amsterdam 1987. 17 Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Erste Fassung) 1919, Hrsg. v. H. Schmidt, Zürich 1985, 3: ‘Geschichtsverständnis ist ein fortgesetztes, immer aufrichtigeres und eindringenderes Gespräch zwischen der Weisheit von gestern und der Weisheit von morgen, die eine und dieselbe ist.’ Cf. also Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung), (München 1922=), XI: ‘… bis das Gespräch zwischen Urkunde und Leser ganz auf die Sache … konzentriert ist.’ (ET, 7) 18 See W. Stoker/H.M. Vroom, Verhulde waarheid. Over het begrijpen van religieuze teksten, Meinema 2000, 34–51, 86–105. introduction 11

The foregoing is not intended to suggest an intellectualistic conception of faith. However, the caricature repeatedly arises that knowledge in faith could be resolved into a number of revealed truths or could be derived from the highest principle. Now, faith indeed has content which one can also try to express in propositions. It exists precisely in the consciousness that God has acted and spoken in contingent historical acts and experiences. It is knowledge that refers to the history of Israel and Jesus Christ as the history in which God has spoken in words and deeds, has addressed man, and through His acting has accomplished salvation.19 That God in all this also makes Himself known and does not withhold Himself is the deepest and most unabandonable core of belief, which is to be heard in the modern definition of revelation as self-revelation. To what extent the latter concept is pure profit or may also involve a loss, will be a topic for discussion in the succeeding chapters. The contingent experiences of God’s dealings are passed on through human testimonies and in this way have defined a community, are assimilated there, and in turn passed on within varying situations. Pre- cisely these varying situations, the debate over God’s acts and speaking within the Christian community, and its debate with culture have assured that Christian doctrine would be created. In the process of testi- fying, retelling, actualising and referring to plausibility there arose what we term tradition, a paradosis, was given form in a rite and a cultus, and Christian doctrine took shape as a meta-language in the practice of faith. In other words, it is impossible to imagine a situation where the involvement and activity of the knowing subject is not at both the level of lived faith, testimony and the cultus, and also at the level of reflection about faith. Particularly the latter, the conviction that the human subject plays an active and constitutive role in knowledge of God and, with that, also in confession and doctrine, is both broadly accepted in our post-Kantian culture and to a great extent defines the problem. It raises the question of the status of dogmatic pronouncements, and in modern theological history has led to constant scepticism regarding purported objectivism

19 Cf. N. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse. Philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks, Cambridge 1995, who opposes the identification of God’s speaking and revelation, and with the aid of J.L. Austin’s theory of language acts defends the possibility of interpreting the Bible in a coherent manner as the speaking of God. 12 chapter one in dogmatics.20 The increasing scientific monopoly on the concept of knowledge and the wide acknowledgement of the role of the human subject in the acquisition of knowledge went hand in hand, so that in general the question about the status of religious language, and in particular that of metaphor,21 became a focus of interest. People do not use language only for their dealings with the world. They also use earthly means in order to express that which transcends the earthly. Can that which is said in religious language and concepts still be characterised as knowledge? Can this claim be made? Or, all things considered, is all belief and all theology a human product, an entity of convictions, stories, norms, values and rules that as a cultural construct serves to provide answers for questions in life and our search for orientation?22 Is man all alone by himself even at the heart of the deepest metaphors he uses? Western theology has been deeply influenced by the agnosticism that modernity has accepted as its basic attitude. That knowledge is a ‘success word’ has also, in part, fed into this distrust. To know something implies that there is something known which actually exists or works. When the concept of knowing God is used, it means that an implicit claim is being made that God exists, or rather, acts and speaks. We indeed do find that claim with both of the theologians discussed here. No matter how different the times in which they lived, for both Calvin and Barth the existence of God— or better, the knowability of God—is not open to question. Before a man can pose the question about God’s existence, he has already been touched by God. Both point to experiences through which it appears that man always arrives on the scene too late with his scepticism. By beginning with the concept of knowledge of God, I do not deny

20 The dogmatic work of G.C. Berkouwer, particularly his Dogmatische Studien,Kam- pen 1949–1972;ET:Studies in Dogmatics, Grand Rapids 1952–1976 documents the attempt to banish objectivism from theology and give the subject his specific place, oriented within concentration on the Gospel. 21 See for example S. McFague, Metaphorical Theology. Models of God in Religious Lan- guage,London1983;idem,Models of God. Theology for an Ecological Nuclear Age,Lon- don 1987. E. Jüngel, ‘Metaphorische Wahrheit. Erwägungen zur theologischen Rele- vanz der Metapher als Beitrag zur Hermeneutik einer narrativen Theologie’ in: idem, Entsprechungen: Gott—Wahrheit—Mensch. Theologische Erörterungen,München1980, 103–157. Idem, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 357–383;ET,261–281. 22 For an approach of this sort, see for instance G.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine. Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia (PA) 1984. For the anthropological approach to religion as a cultural construct see the frequently cited article by Clifford Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’ in: idem, The Interpretation of Culture,London 1993, 87–125. introduction 13 that this assertion is subject to tremendous pressure, at least within the agnostic climate of a Western society which, for the rest, in a global perspective, geographically and culturally, overrates itself. The choice for the concept of knowledge of God is however inspired by the conviction that the notion of knowledge is something which simply cannot be abandoned by Christian faith. As soon as we accept the idea that man not only thinks, but reflects on what he hears, the metaphor no longer has to be labelled figurative language, but quite to the contrary it can be said of a metaphor precisely that it supplies knowledge. If what the sources of Christian faith themselves suggest is true,namelythatfaithiscalledupbyactsofGod,throughHisWord, through the coming of God to man, to His world, then the words, stories and songs, and the metaphors that control them live from that coming. Knowledge in faith, or knowledge of God, arises where man lets himself be addressed, be determined, responds to God’s address and approach. The reflection takes place within an already existing web of being addressed by stories, words, songs, images. That means that from the very start revelation has the nature of an appeal, is creative and performative because it creates a relationship. Knowledge of God certainly also implies information, but the informative is ultimately embedded in the performative: in the relation, in the appeal. If that is true, there are good reasons to withstand the agnostic tendency in contemporary theology and, for the sake of internal theological reasons hold fast to the notion of knowledge.23 There are thus substantive reasons for arguing for maintaining the term ‘knowledge of God’ as a central concept. Where people experience their faith, in praying, singing, meditating, in liturgy, in shaping their lives, in taking responsibility for the care of creation, for their society in a larger or smaller sense, there God and his will to salvation are in one way or another the object of human knowing, however much hesitancy and how many limitations may accompany it, and a cause for acting. There is no need to speak about it noisily or ceremoniously, as if God were something that could be pointed to. Man knows all too well that within the Christian tradition itself the knowing of God in this life is a knowing in part, thus tentative, and the concepts of Christian doctrine reminds us that all theology is no more than a map on the way, in via.

23 Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 383–408;ET,281–298. 14 chapter one

1.4. Bipolarity and conﬂict

In this study knowledge of God is not used in the sense that it has as its primary meaning in scholastic theology, namely God’s knowledge of Himself. As human knowledge of God, the concept can be pictured schematically as an ellipse with two foci. The one focus is the acting of God, and the other the faith of man as answer to that acting. These two elements, which in dogmatics are generally discussed separately under the headings of revelation and faith, are taken up together in the one concept of knowledge of God. By reaching back to the older concept we make it clear that these two, faith and revelation, belong together from the very outset, and can not be discussed apart from one another. The concept of knowledge of God thereby contains within itself the tension that characterises the relation between God and man. The concept of knowledge of God has not only a propositional, epistemological presumption, but implies from the outset a bipolarity, namely, the relation of God and man. It is therefore at the same time a conflict-laden concept. It is not without reason that I have referred already to the mystical, or better in this connection, the spiritual dimension of the concept.24 This designation must still be sharpened somewhat, because the adjectives mystic and spiritual taken in themselves are too pallid and can easily lead to misunderstandings. They reflect too little of the drama, tension and conflict in this relation. If God is known, this takes place within a damaged world, and this is partly the fault of men who are at odds with themselves and their world. Knowing God is not a matter of tranquil reflection or serenity, but on the contrary refers to a confrontation, an invitation to let oneself be defined by a promise, to respond to an trumpet call, and to do that in the midst of an existence which is marked by emptiness and a flight from the void. Put in other words: the concept of knowing God is soteriologically charged, and not without reason refers to eschatology. A short tour through the Johannine writings, at first sight the most serene documents of the New Testament, will teach that knowing in this context is absolutely not serene, and has lost all sense of neutrality. According to these texts, human knowing of God involves not only a decrease of ignorance. Knowledge and acquisition of knowledge stand in tension with error and lies. In the Gospel according to John the

24 Cf.H.Bavinck,Modernisme en orthodoxie,Kampen1911, 37. introduction 15 attitude opposed to light is described as rejection (John 1:10–11), in chapter 3 the ignorance of Nicodemus is a form of error (John 3:10), and in chapter 8 the rejection is characterised as violence and lies (John 8:44). These are indications that in the sphere of faith the theme of human knowledge of God therefore can not be discussed merely as an epistemological problem. It is a completely theological concept within which the whole relation of man to God is being expressed. Knowing God involves both the aﬀective and the cognitive, but also acting. Knowledge of God reveals itself in love, in doing the will of the Father (IJohn 3:6, 16). It coincides with the perspectives on being human that in the catechetical tradition were traditionally discussed under the heads of faith, command and prayer. The knowledge to which theology refers has to do with engagement, with contact and presence. In short, it is relational knowing, sometimes in a pregnant sense. This view is not limited to the Johannine writings. It is not without reason that the Hebrew word yada is also used for sexual intercourse between a man and woman (see for instance Gen. 4:25;; see also Matt. 1:25). Knowledge that really moves one often has a corporeal basis. It will be seen that particularly Calvin’s theology contains reminiscences of these sensory dimensions of our knowing. God invites us through concrete, earthly means. No matter how strange that may sound, we can learn more from Calvin about the interaction of knowledge of God and creation and physicality than we can from Barth.

1.5. The mirror as an invitation

The title given to this book picks up on the familiar passage from the apostle Paul about the limits of knowledge of God in this life, but it is not restricted to this specific association. In ICor. 13 Paul offers an assessment of the charismata which are found in the community. He listsprophecy,speakingintongues,andknowledge,gnosis.Forallof these ways of knowing and dealing with one another, however, it is the case that we still see ‘in a mirror’, ‘dimly’; it is to ‘know in part’. In other words, in this passage the image of the mirror refers to the restrictions and limitations to which the knowing of God is subject. This specific meaning was however already in the ancient world embedded in the broader field of symbolic possibilities to which the natural phenomenon of visual reflection gave rise, namely as a metaphor for 16 chapter one knowledge. The mirror invites, makes known. This broader meaning, which as it were is presupposed in the use Paul makes of the image, is what the title is intended to express. As a utensil the mirror was also a source of fascination in the ancient world. One could view an object through its reflection in a mirror. It was a form of indirect knowledge. The image is not perfect, as in direct observation. The reflection is the mirror image of the original: what is left appears to be right, and what is right, left. We should particularly remember that the antique mirror, as Paul knew it, was very far from having the accuracy of today’s bright and blemish-free glass mirrors. One had only mirrors of beaten and polished metal.25 The image that was visible in the mirror was vaguer and subject to deformations by the unevenness of the surface. It is for this reason that the apostle adds ‘dimly’. A mirror afforded no perfect image; there was indeed an image, but it was vague and freakish. That throws light on the manner in which the metaphor is used by Paul. What we know of God and His kingdom has holes, empty places, things that are really unknown or are known only in part. This is tentative knowledge. That however does not detract from there being enough known, according to Paul, to live with it. Christian knowledge of God comprises the essentials. and at the same is limited. The image of the mirror plays an important, and in part identical role in both Calvin and Barth, but as we will see, they differ on one important point. For both there are places, facts or a history which can be pointed to which fulfil the role of a mirror, of an open invitation to learn to know, to participate. In Calvin’s theology the metaphor of the mirror stands for a multiplicity of concrete ways through which knowledge of God can arise and be nourished. It is an outspoken metaphor which functions positively theologically as an indicator of the range of earthly means with which God, through his Spirit, draws men to himself. Mirrors are the places where God makes clear what He wills regarding man. God has something in store for man; He made him to be in fellowship with Him. They play an essential role in the trustworthiness of the images and the content with which God makes Himself present with man. For Calvin knowledge of God is not reduced to the singularity of the self-revelation given in Christ.

25 See 2.3.1. introduction 17

The image of the mirror also fulfils a role for Barth, in particular in the doctrine of the analogia fidei, later elaborated into the doctrine of the analogia relationis. Like Calvin, Barth proceeds from the actual knowability of God, but knowledge of God is rigidly Christologically defined, and the pneumatology that we encounter in some breadth in Calvin is here entirely in the service of Christology. God is knowable through his revelation in Jesus Christ. In fact this history is the locus of knowability in which all other elements by which God makes himself known participate. At the same time, the manner in which this knowability is presented reveals the degree to which it is interwoven with the problematic of modernity. Barth’s concept of knowing God begins with the realisation that the word God, as it is used in the Bible and Christian faith, does not coincide with the fact, with the visible. The word ‘God’ refers to the Holy One who ‘distinguishes [Himself] from fate, in that He not so much is,butrathercomes’.26 Barth’s preference for an idealistic structure of thought, in which God, the origin or the idea, is not considered to be represented in the factual, but as an object of knowing can only be gained in a process of critical distancing, is brought into relation with this preference by Barth himself. Knowledge of God is no longer derived from the world, nor is it to be directly identified with the text of the Bible, but can only be conceived as the bestowed participation in the self-revelation of God in Christ. In the idea of self-revelation what is characteristic of this concept appears to contrast with Calvin’s concept, where the work of the Spirit is conceived more broadly and is not just a property of Christology. According to Barth knowledge of God is only conceivable as participation in a movement, an irreducible but nevertheless actual reality of God’s acting and speaking which must always be reconstituted anew. Only by virtue of this reality and that event can a part of earthly reality, concretely the man Jesus, become the revelation of God’s acting. It is characteristic of this concept of knowing God that, as a result of this approach, there is no plausibility whatsoever to be searched for or to be found for the truth of knowledge of God outside of participation in this actual reality of God’s acting. This has led to the questions and complaints which still pursue Barth’s theological concept. In the wake of this theology, is knowledge of God not typified by a certain Docetism, hermetically sealed to the concretely historical? One does not have to answer this question in the affirmative to nevertheless

26 K. Barth, ‘Schicksal und Idee in der Theologie’ in: idem, Theologische Fragen und Antworten. Gesammelte Vorträge III,Zürich1957, 70. 18 chapter one acknowledge the underlying question as legitimate. In what way is the truth of God peculiar? What are the supporting elements for a Chris- tian concept of knowledge of God that is characterised by a fundamental openness for perception of reality, and that can become a contribution to discussion about our world and the search for humanity? In this Calvin and Barth, as representatives of an ecumenical Reformed theology, both agree that knowledge of God not only concerns the private aﬀairs of the individual, but serves a public interest. part one

JOHN CALVIN

chapter two

WAYS OF KNOWING

2.1. Introduction

2.1.1. Knowledge of God and piety The face of a theological project is at least as strongly defined by the lines which are not there as by the lines which are deliberately and forcefully introduced. That is true for Calvin’s theology too. One of the most obvious differences with contemporary systematic theological projects is the absence of any separate handling of the doctrine of revelation, or the question of the nature and sources of knowledge of God. In modern schemes the discussion of this subject precedes all else, and is broadly conceived. Anyone reading Calvin discovers that this subject has no separate or central place in the whole of his writings and theology. This should not be surprising. The term revelation only made its appearance as a central and fundamental concept that organ- ises and qualifies the whole of theology and all of its sectors when it became a point of debate where and if God revealed Himself.1 That does not deny that Calvin too discusses the question of how man comes to knowledge of God, but the doctrine of revelation and theological epistemology as such are not of primary interest to him.2 That is a not unimportant observation, because it gives us insight into the certainties

1 P. E i c h e r, Offenbarung. Prinzip neuzeitlicher Theologie, Munich 1977, 17–57, distinguishes among four different functions of the concept of revelation, namely 1)asa qualifier of the content of belief, 2) as legitimator, to the extent that the concept refers to God as the source of authority, 3) as an apologetic category, and 4) as a systematising and unifying concept for the whole of theological assertions; see also H. Waldenfels, Einführung in die Theologie der Offenbarung,Darmstadt1996, 83–143. In agreement with W. Pannenberg (Systematic Theology,Vol.1, Grand Rapids, MI, 1991, 194–195), one can argue that the explicit assumption of revelation as a subject in contemporary theology primarily serves the function of legitimisation and authorisation. Knowledge of God without any form of authorisation remains a purely human, subjective assertion. See further 9.4. 2 E.A. Dowey, ‘The Structure of Calvin’s Theological Thought as Influenced by the 22 chapter two that Calvin shared with his times. Of course, it is possible to read a number of portions of Book I with modern eyes and to scrutinise them in terms of the questions that are discussed as introductory questions in the prolegomena of later times.3 We can not however overlook the fact that a general introduction of the sort that dogmatics in the modern era feels is obligatory, is simply not present in an explicit form in Calvin. He does not worry about the question of whether knowledge of God as such is possible or real. The critical commitment of his theology lies elsewhere, in much more substantive questions, namely who God is for man and what his salvation for man means. It is these substantive questions which interest him more, precisely because their substance, which should guide relations with God, in his judgement has been buried under a weight of ritual and tradition in the church. A frequently recurring description of the situation in the church is ruina.Inhiseyes,the church—or better yet, Christianity—is in a state of decay. That which people know of God and His salvation is hidden and smothered by illegitimate elements, by innovations which deviate from the original truth. Therefore, reformation is necessary, because the lack of knowledge, the ignorantia, that has gained the upper hand in church and society can then be combated. Calvin’s sense of his times is characterised by his assertion that it is only recently that, thanks to the grace of God, insight into the true content of the Gospel has again been gained.4 He sees his own role lying in propagating and strengthening the rediscovered Gospel in the hearts of men and in social institutions. I mention these elements because they are of importance in seeing more sharply what Calvin is out to accomplish. Pure knowledge of God is important, because only pure knowledge can afford understanding of salvation. Thechanceisgreatthattheword‘pure’willimmediatelysetoff alarm bells. It confirms the image of doctrinal orthodoxy, intellectualism and persecution of heretics, in short, of all the notions that the pejorative use of the word Calvinism has powerfully fed. Is the pursuit

two-fold Knowledge of God’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus ecclesiae Genevensis Custos, Frankfurt a.M/New York 1984, 139. 3 W. J. B o u w s m a , John Calvin. A sixteenth Century Portrait,NewYork/Oxford1988, 153. 4 See, for instance, the letter presenting the Institutes to Francis I, where ignorance among those disposed to the Gospel in France is given as a reason for writing the first edition, OS III, 9: ‘… paucissimos autem videbam qui vel modica eius cognitione rite imbuti essent.’ and OS III, 15: ‘Quod diu incognita sepultaque latuit, humanae impietatis crimen est: nunc quum Dei benignitate nobis redditur, saltem postliminii iure suam antiquitatem recipere debebat.’ ways of knowing 23 of religious purity not inseparably linked with intolerance and inhumanity, with the fate of Castellio, Bolsec, Gruet, Servetus and so many others whose lot was banishment or death? Is not purity a suspect word, because as distant inheritors of the Enlightenment we are firmly convinced that nothing in the world can be pure? Anyone who wishes to penetrate this distant, and for contemporary attitudes strange and dep- recated world will have to be open to the possibility that for Calvin the concept of purity may stand in a broader context than that of doctrine. What did Calvin have in mind? For him it did indeed mean to purify doctrine or free the church of deeply ingrained but reprehensible ritualsandcustoms—butitdidnotmeanthatexclusively.Theword ‘purify’ had a much broader and, I would say, both social and spiritual or intellectual meaning. That is to say, knowledge of God touches the full breadth and depth of life. By breadth I mean the quality of public life, the quality of society. Religion is not just what it appears to be in modern Western society, namely a matter for individual believers or a congregation on the margins of society. The concern for religion is just as much a responsibility of the authorities and represents a public interest. This ideal of a unified culture, striving for a Christian society, the societas christiana, has become totally alien to us. We associate that with an authoritarian culture. This is not to say that the necessity of a certain social unity or consensus is denied in contemporary public debate. Anything but that; but within a situation of plurality and diversity of convictions, ‘norms and values’ is the search for unity narrowed down to a search for a common ethos, which is not strictly dependent on a religious source. With Calvin we are still in a climate in which ethos, religion and public interest are directly linked with one another. Merely the fact that Calvin dedicated his Institutes to the king of France is an indication that there was a totally different relationship between the church and government. What he writes about the task of the government can only confirm this: The worship of God and the Kingdom of Christ should also be given form in social and public life.5 The reformation that he had in mind operates not only on the level of doctrine

5 OS III, 11: ‘Tuum autem erit, serenissime Rex, nec aures, nec animum a tam iusto patrocinio avertere: praesertim ubi de re tanta agitur: nempe quomodo Dei gloriae sua constet in terris incolumitas, quomodo suam dignitatem Dei veritas retineat, quomodo regnum Christo sartum tectumque inter nos maneat. Digna res auribus tuis, digna tua cognitione, digna tuo tribunali. Siquidem et verum Regem haec cogitatio facit, agnoscere se in regni administratione Dei ministrum. Nec iam regnum ille sed latrocinium exercet qui non in hoc regnat ut Dei gloriae serviat.’ 24 chapter two that finds its apex in personal salvation, but equally involves the public sphere, as can be seen in the role that the Consistory fulfilled in the Genevan community. By depth I then mean personal spiritual life. This introduction will direct attention toward both aspects. The breadth of the social rootage will be discussed in 2.1.2. The final introductory section (2.1.3)willgive a number of examples of the inseparable connection of religion with a pure conscience. The involvement of the knowledge of God with the concrete circumstances of human life is programmatically expressed in the famous opening sentence of the Institutes:‘Ourwisdom,insofarasitought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.’6 In this characterisation of the content of faith, which unmistakably bears traces of the Bibli- cal humanism of the day and the search for a philosophia christiana as the true wisdom,7 knowledge of God and human self-knowledge are directly linked with one another. One cannot be had without the other. Human religious understanding can be conceived as an ellipse with two foci, namely the knowledge of God and human self-knowledge. These two are correlates of one another. In this sense, Calvin enunci- ates a principle of methodology that will be fruitful everywhere in his theology: religious knowledge is bipolar. Knowledge of God has consequences for that which men know about themselves. As a man achieves insight into himself and life, that will have direct consequences for his knowledge of God. Knowledge of God is anything but theoretical. In its aim and intent it is practical and, to immediately say the word that characterises this concept and the spirituality which accompanies it in its whole height, breadth and depth, it is profitable. Calvin’s theology is rooted in the humanistic climate shaped by the Renaissance, in which it is no longer the vita contemplativa, far from the world, which provides the paradigm for proper life, but existence in the world that functions as the divine task.8 What we call his theology is anything but a theoretical activity. It is practical knowledge.

6 Inst. 1.1.1. 7 F. We n d e l , Calvin et l’humanisme,Paris1976, 75–76 points to Cicero’s deﬁnition of philosophy which lies behind this, and the handling of this deﬁnition by Budé and Erasmus. See particularly J. Bohatec, Budé und Calvin. Studien zur Gedankenwelt des französischen Frühhumanismus,Graz1950. 8 See for instance Calvin’s abundantly clear rejection of monastic life in principle in Inst. 4.13.16. ways of knowing 25

The practical orientation of Calvin’s theology is expressed in a word that is related to knowledge of God and that describes the spirituality which is connected with this theology: pietas,devotion.9 The double implications of the concept of pietas have almost been lost to us. In the modern vernacular piety has suffered a thoroughgoing reduction to a description of a religious attitude. Piety then refers primarily to ourselves, and not to God. Remnants of the original double meaning of the concept can, however, still be found in English in the term ‘filial piety’, for piety was not originally focused exclusively on the divine or sacred, but equally well described what was owed to our fellowmen. Calvin has deliberately chosen to limit the definition of pietas. Real knowledge of God results in piety. Piety is no outward form, no inessential, but has real content. The definition that he gives for piety is worth citing; it affords access to what Calvin presents as faith. He writes, ‘By piety I mean that union of reverence and love to God which the knowledge of his benefits inspires.’10 A couple of elements in this definition attract our attention. In the first place, it must involve knowledge of God’s benefits, notitia.Inotherwords, piety is not empty; it is paired with knowledge. Next, something is proposed regarding the content of this knowledge. In piety God is known as the source of all good that mankind meets, both in the world surrounding him and also in the Bible. Knowledge of God does not start at point zero; it is the perception of a source of good, of something positive. Third, the definition makes it clear where such knowledge must lead, namely to the double reaction of respect (or worship) and love. The worship acknowledges the distance of God and the majesty of this source of all good; the love of God acknowledges the graciousness of the Divinity. As we have said, in the concept of pietas the practical point of Calvin’s theology becomes visible. It is no longer a question of doctrine or orthodoxy. Doctrine is in the service of a purpose, namely to present man to God in integrity and purity.11

9 See L.J. Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin, Atlanta 1974, 97–134.Seealsothe studybyF.L.Battles,The Piety of John Calvin. An Anthology illustrative of the Spirituality of the Reformer of Geneva, Pittsburg 1969. 10 Inst. 1.2.1: ‘Pietatem voco coniunctam cum amore Dei reverentiam quam beneﬁ- ciorum eius notitia conciliat.’ 11 See the letter to Francis I, OS I, 9: ‘Tantum erat animus rudimenta quaedam tradere, quibus formarentur ad veram pietatem qui aliquo religionis studio tanguntur.’ See also what Calvin wrote in the Supplex exhortatio ad invictis. Caesarem Carolum Quintum (1543), preparatory to the religious discussion at Spiers, (CO 6, 484): ‘Certe nihil ab aliis 26 chapter two

M. de Kroon has pointed to another text where for Calvin this point comes clearly to the fore. In his exegesis of Psalm 97:7 (‘All worshippers of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols; the gods bow down before him’), he writes, ‘Piety in the true sense of the word is this: that the true God be worshipped totally and wholly, so that He alone is exalted and no creature casts a shadow on His majesty.’12 Calvin is there anxious that honour which in fact belongs to God not be paid to people or things. Further along we shall also see again how this anxiety for the way in which he will speak of the relation between God and man is characteristic of his theology.13 Neither man, nor a moral project is the deepest motif of his theology, but a God who inclines to man. The acknowledgement of this is what piety is about. All else is subordinate to this practical purpose of piety. This is of paramount importance for evaluating Calvin’s theology. What God makes known of himself does not serve a theoretical or contemplative purpose, but is practical in import. A fourth element that surfaces in the deﬁnition of piety, and which is telling for the colour and tone of knowledge of God, is related to this. I am referring to the verb conciliare, which can have the more neutral meaning of ‘to bring about’, but with regard to human aﬀection can be translated as ‘arouse’ or ‘win’. It is close to another word which will play a large role in the knowledge of God, namely the word invitare,or invite. The words ‘arouse’ and ‘invite’ are indicators of a basic line in Calvin’s theology which, I would emphasise, is far too little taken into account in the reception of Calvin’s thought in dogmatics. According to Calvin, in many manners, through a colourful palette of means, God entices, draws, invites and encourages man to acknowledge his Maker. It must be emphasised that this invitation comes through a

differimus, sicut dixi,nisi quod nos hominem, inopiae impotentiaeque suae convictum, melius ad veram humilitatem erudimus, ut abdicata in totum sui fiducia in Deum totus recumbit, item ad gratitudinem, ut Dei beneficentiae quidquid habet boni transscribat, sicut revera ab ipso est.’ 12 M. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn. Reformatorische perspectieven. Teksten en inleiding, Zoetermeer 1991, 99. 13 According to M. de Kroon that is the point which distinguishes him from M. Bu- cer, for whom pietas describes the unity of faith and love. While for Calvin pietas is focused on God, for Bucer the concept includes the relation to God and to man, thus faith and ethics. Bucer opposes the Anabaptist tendency to primatise love toward the neighbour with the unity of faith in the justifying God and love of the neighbour. See M. de Kroon, Martin Bucer en Johannes Calvijn, 92–108. ways of knowing 27 colourful palette of means. The Scriptures are certainly central to this, but they are not the only means through which God lets himself be known; the Scripture offers the possibility of giving all sorts of other experiences, inward and outward, a place in the contact that God exercises with them. To use a favourite metaphor of Calvin’s, God places the believer in the school of the Holy Spirit and thus subjects him to a lifelong learning process that only comes to an end when in the future life men are united with Christ in a new body. We can call that eschatological, or better yet, the final orientation of this theology. Or yet again, Calvin’s theological idiom here betrays that it finds its nourishment in an intellectual climate in which God is experienced as the One who is actively occupied with mankind, spurring him on, drawinghim,constantlytraininghim. By leading off in this study with the suggestion that for Calvin the world and Bible function as an open invitation to the knowing of God, I am following a path that is not often trodden. The well-worn image of Calvin’s theology, set in stone once and for all when Hegel’s philosophy in fact defined the interpretation, is that all things come together at one point in Calvin’s theology, namely at the Counsel of God as the centre which defines everything and gives all its proper place. Calvin was the man of the system, logic and determinism. It cannot be denied that Calvin sees no other possibility than to acknowledge God as the director, as the sovereign Lord who exercises dominion over all things in his sphere, but it is something else to separate and elevate this to the only aspect of Calvin’s peculiar theology. It must be admitted that this did not come out of the thin air. Seen historically, in the wake of the arguments between the Remonstrants and the Counter-Remonstrants, independent consideration of God’s Coun- sel, out of which arise both providence and double predestination, has become definitive for the image of Calvinism internationally. Against the background of the way this image was shaped, it may appear to be an all too easy attempt to save Calvin for ecumenical discussion to now label invitation the fundamental element in his theology. Is such language, when it comes from Calvin’s pen, indeed to be taken seriously? Or does the invitation evaporate in the light of the Counsel of God, to become an empty haze, something that in the end does not matter conceptually? After all, is the conviction that all things that happen, happen at God’s command, not a part of the knowledge of God’s benefits? Certainly the things of man and this world are fixed in His Counsel, and all is decided about doom and salvation, about all that 28 chapter two lives, moves and has its being? It is in line with this sort of rigid doctrine of providence that Calvin generally has been, and is understood. In the vehement critique of Bolsec, in the speculative idealist interpretation of the 19th century,14 and down to our own time Calvin is read through the one lens of God as absolute causality, which threatens to smother the singularity of the finite world, and thus also the singularity of man. As has already been said, it cannot be denied that in the conception of God, man and the world that Calvin has, seen from the perspective of God all things are appointed. Calvin is absolutely convinced of this, and it is his view that God himself, by making known this part of his Counsel to man, will reveal His faithfulness to the faithful. Or do we have here two lines that, according to Calvin, cannot be combined in human thought, while according to the 19th century speculative-idealist interpretation indeed can be brought together in the same discourse? Do the invitation to all hearers and the limitations that are given with God’s eternal Counsel contradict one another? As we have said, Calvin is generally understood only in terms of the

14 Under the influence of 19th century idealist philosophy, for a long time the theology of Calvin was reduced to a system where one central dogma dominated, namely that of God as absolute causality. See for instance F.C. Baur, Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte, Tübingen 1847, 218,Alex.Schweizer,Die protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der Reformirten Kirche, Erste und zweite Hälfte,Zürich1854/1856, (Bd. I, 199)andO.Ritschl,Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus, Bd. 3. Die reformierte Theolo- gie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in ihrer Entstehung und Entwicklung, Göttingen 1926, 166–168. H. Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins,Leipzig1922, pointed to new paths. Accord- ing to Bauke there are always two antithetical principles that are involved with one another, in a complexio oppositorum. Beside the doctrine of providence stands individual responsibility; beside justification stands sanctification. For a survey of the discussion: P. Ja c o b s , Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin,Neukirchen1937, 15–49.Seealso M. de Kroon, De eer van God en het heil van de mens. Bijdrage tot het verstaan van de theologie van Johannes Calvijn naar zijn Institutie,(Roermond1968=) Leiden 19962. For a contemporary ‘deterministic’ interpretation, see C.H. Pinnock, ‘From Augustine to Arminius. A Pil- grimage in Theology’ in: idem, The Grace of God, the Will of Man. A Case for Arminianism, Grand Rapids 1989, 15–30. See also C.H. Pinnock/R.C. Brow, Unbounded love. A Good News Theology for the 21st Century, Downers Grove, Ill., 1994. The question of to what extent one can speak of systematic theology with Calvin of course is ultimately dependent on the answer to the question of what is systematic. If the only thing which one can conceive with the word is the idealist notion of a system, then the answer must be negative. W.J. Bouwsma (John Calvin, 5) appears devoted to this view of systematic theology. If one considers the Institutes as a well-considered collection of loci communes and disputationes, and therefore as a genre of its own that must be distinguished from genres such as the sermon and commentary, the answer will be otherwise. See R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140–173. ways of knowing 29 latter line, and then in such a way that speaking in terms of invitation no longer has any weight. The image of Calvin is still defined by the idealist interpretation that threatened to conceive the finite as a manifestation, and therefore as an appearance. It will be made clear in Chapter 3 that according to Calvin a partial revelation of God’s Coun- sel does not imply that man has the freedom to take this divine perspective as his point of departure and deny human responsibility. The revelation of God’s preordination is no licence to play human responsibility and God’s Counsel against one another in the space of our human understanding. Human understanding is fundamentally limited knowledge. The position of man as creature brings with it that man’s speaking about God must take into account the categorical difference between God and man. With Calvin that difference functions as a religious given, which makes following through a line of reasoning logically impossible. He refuses to accept the final conclusions of an absolute determinism, namely that God is the creator of evil.15 Precisely because of this limitation it is not possible to relativise the seriousness of the invitation and individual responsibility in the light of divine preordination. What lies within the infinity of God’s Counsel actualises itself in the way of invitation and individual responsibility. In what follows we will investigate what it means for Calvin’s theology that he allows both perspectives to exist.16 Not only historically, but also with an eye to present- day systematic reflection, it will be productive to pay attention to that first line, almost forgotten in a dogmatic perspective: for Calvin, life in time, in the world of the senses, in everyday experience is full of a God who seeks, draws and stimulates. Is this something which has become strange to us, or does Calvin’s theology here put us precisely onto a track that has become overgrown and will have to be rediscovered once again?

15 It is significant that the critics of ‘determinism’ in Calvin, and more broadly in Reformed theology, do not accept the religious character of the sovereignty of God and reduce it to a system of causes and effects that lie on the same plane. Thus for instance Pinnock, in his effort to do justice to the freedom and subjectivity of man and the openness of history, arrives at a theology in which the notion of God’s sovereignty disappears completely into the void. This sort of theology is right to the extent that it will do justice to human responsibility; it is wrong to the extent that this is done at the cost of the notion of God’s sovereignty. Karl Barth increasingly wanted to do justice to both perspectives, that of God’s sovereignty and that of human subjectivity, without however telescoping them together as factors in one sphere. 16 See P. Jacobs, Prädestination und Verantwortlichkeit, 138–139. 30 chapter two

2.1.2. Rootage in society Choosing the concept of knowledge of God is not without risk. In the introduction we have already discussed a possible intellectual and scientific misunderstanding due to the associations that the word ‘knowledge’ calls up. Once it has been made clear that knowledge of God has its source in the faithful relationship with God, at once the misconception that knowledge of God belongs purely to the inner chamber and personal life threatens. Now, there can be no doubt about it: the personal is indeed present. It is one of the characteristics of Calvin’s theology that the point of knowledge of God is focused on the individual person, on his or her eternal salvation. At the same time the association mentioned wrong foots us if we forget that Calvin lived in a society where faith and the church were part of the ferment in society and played a central role in the public domain. Moreover, Calvin was not willing to limit the role of religion to the civil well-being of the city and society alone. For him, it was ultimately a matter of the spiritual quality of society. His pursuit of pure knowledge of God is at one with his pursuit of reformation in the church and society, and in this he had in mind not just one city, or a couple of cities, but the whole of Europe, which threatened to fall to pieces, not through the divisions that the Reformation as such brought about in Europe, but through the lack of spiritual values. He acted as the reorganiser of the Genevan society and as an advisor to the city council, which by withdrawing from episcopal authority and through the disappearance of the old ecclesiastical structures that followed from this had to deal with countless new responsibilities in jurisprudence, administration and morals. Important institutions that previously had seen to education and the care of the poor and sick, and which in doing so had encouraged the human qualities of the society, were now left in an administrative and organisational vacuum. Thus thinking and acting were not separate compartments for Calvin. His theology cannot be separated from a situation in which he bore responsibility for the well-being of a concrete society. Put more strongly, it is inseparable from a situation in which the issue of reformation was a European affair, and the break with the Roman Church was not accepted as anything like a fait accompli. It would still be more than a century before the shock of the spiritual and political rupture in Europe had been digested somewhat and the division took political shape in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). To complicate things still further, in his vision of the church ways of knowing 31 and state Calvin is in no sense modern, but stands entirely in the ideal of the Middle Ages, of one undivided society. For a long time Calvin hoped for a renewal of one unbroken church, in which the old unity between nation and church or between city and church would still be maintained. As a reformer of the second generation,17 his work and theology is to be placed in a situation in which the reformation of the church had for some time been seen as the affair of the cities and their leaders.18 With regard to the relationship of the church and state, the reformation of the cities did not deviate from the medieval pattern: the borders of the state (or rather of the city-state) coincided with those of the church. Church and civil authorities considered themselves as parts of the societas christiana, in which both had responsibilities which were indeed to be distinguished, but in which the realisation that people belonged to one Christian society was so overwhelming that the civil authorities felt themselves responsible for the welfare of the church and the Christian identity of society. Church and government are involved in the same concern and from that involvement work together constantly. Calvin can call on the government and point out to it its task, to be concerned with the organisation of church and society and the purity of doctrine and life.19 In his Institutes Calvin includes public life,

17 Historically, Calvin’s theology can be situated at the transition of what Oberman termed the second and third reformation. See H.A. Oberman ‘Calvin’s Legacy. Its Greatness and Limitations’ in: idem, The two Reformations. The Journey from the last Days tot the new World, New Haven/London 2003, 146–147. The ﬁrst reformation was that of Luther and Zwingli, the second that of the cities, and the third reformation was that of the refugee movement. This arose because in the ‘Interim’, after the close of the Schmalkaldic wars, the terrain won by the evangelical movement was seriously threatened. It was a time in which transitions from the old church to the evangelical movement and vice versa were still the order of the day, as the example of Louis du Tillet shows (on this see for instance A. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, Philadelphia 1987, 118–120). In short, Calvin’s theology was not born in a situation of academic peace. The ﬁrst edition of the Institutes was written because he felt the challenge to give orientation to those inclined to the evangelical movement in France, who, in his opinion, found themselves in a spiritual vacuum. Many of his writings were in response to concrete situations and are polemic in nature, in which he does his absolute best to win people over or defend his rigid and highly controversial policy in matters of organisation and reformation of the society. 18 See H.A. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk,Kampen1994. 19 See, for example, the Articles concernant l’organisation de l’église et du culte a Genève, proposés au conseil par les ministres (1537), OS I, 369–377. A striking example is Calvin’s commentary on the words from Luke 14:23 compelle intrare (‘compel them to come in’), CO 45, 401: ‘Interea non improbo, quod Augustinus hoc testimonio saepius contra 32 chapter two governmental authorities and their organisation under those aids that are necessary for man’s journey to the kingdom of God. The government and its tools are not to be placed outside of God and his dealing with mankind, as Anabaptist groups did. Certainly, God’s rule over the inward man, over the soul, is lasting and most important; worldly rule is however just as much involved in that eschatological salvation, and subservient to that end. In connection with the role of the government and the shaping of public life, Calvin uses the metaphor of peregrinatio, a journey to a foreign land. The life of a believer is a journey to the heavenly fatherland. It is Calvin’s conviction that the government, with its institutions, is one of the aids to accomplishing that journey satisfactorily and preserving humanity.20 The task of government is thus directly connected with the objective and accomplishment of all knowledge of God: eternal communion with God in the future kingdom. It is clear that criteria can be derived from this purpose by which the government can be criticised, and that unity with the government is not to be preserved at all cost. Salvation in Christ is a higher good than remaining at one with the civitas,21 the civil unit, but this possibility of critical distance should not blind us to the principle from which Calvin proceeded totally: namely the linking of church and state, solidarity between church and government on the point of the goal of mankind, and the lifestyle which was geared to attaining that goal. One place where the entwining of the church and civil authorities within the whole of the Christian society can be seen in a striking way in the Genevan situation is the Consistory. It will be worthwhile to

Donatistas usus est, ut probaret, piorum principum edictis ad veri Dei cultum et fidei unitatem licite cogi praefractos et rebelles: quia, etsi voluntaria est fides, videmus tamen, iis mediis utiliter domari eorum pervicaciam, qui non nisi coacti parent.’ For the whole, see O. Weber, ‘Johannes Calvin, Gestalter der Kirche’ in: idem, Die Treue Gottes in der Geschichte. Gesammelte Aufsätze II, Göttingen 1968, 1–18. 20 Inst. 4.20.2: ‘Sin ita est voluntas Dei, nos dum ad veram patriam aspiramus, peregrinari super terram: eius vero peregrinationis usus talibus subsidiis indiget: qui ipsa ab homine tollunt, suam illi eripiunt humanitatem.’ 21 According to H.A. Oberman, ‘Europa afflicta: The Reformation of the Refugees’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992), 91–111, especially 102–105, Calvin can not therefore be understood in terms of the reformation of the cities, in which civic peace and unity were more important than maintaining the truth of faith, but must be understood in terms of what he calls the ‘reformation of the refugees’. In this Calvin proceeds in a different direction than Zwingli and Bucer before his banishment from Strasbourg. At the same time one can determine that it was only rather late, and not then under the force of circumstances, that Calvin became resigned to the unity of the national church in France being broken and membership being uncoupled from the ways of knowing 33 introduce several points from more recent research into the functioning of this administrative body into this study, because they throw light on the social rootage of Calvin’s theology.22 The Consistory was established by Calvin in Geneva in 1541.FromtheRegistres of this administrative body it can be concluded that this ecclesiastical institution in the main played a role in three ways. In the first place, it functioned as an educational institution. We can hardly imagine today what a staggering loss the withdrawal of episcopal authority must have been for broad portions of the population in terms of religious rituals. The search for reformation resulted in a tremendous reduction in the shaping of their life. Rituals and customs gave form and offered rootage and guidance to daily life. Henceforth there could be no appeal to saints in times of need or uncertainty; there was no longer a sacrament of extreme unction in the last hour of life; henceforth there were just two sacraments, only the first of which could still function as a rite of passage. One lived in a society without priests, and was driven in the direction of a more personal form of belief. The Consistory played a considerable role in this process of interiorisation, even if its remedies for ignorance and superstition were clumsy and deeply inferior according to today’s standards. There are countless cases known from the first years in which the Consistory summoned the citizens to leave behind the old rituals, to no longer be involved with devotions to Mary, and to learn the Lord’s Prayer and Ten Commandments in the vernacular. The people were regularly reminded to attend the countless preaching services and Bible lectures that were held in Geneva. In the second place, the Consistory functioned as a Council for Arbitration and Reconciliation. In the case of disrupted relationships in families, or differences in business relations, people could be summoned by the Consistory, which then attempted to effect a reconciliation, or impose a solution.23

state church (January, 1562). He continued to hold to the ideal of the unity of city or state and church. See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 179–184. 22 For years now the leading ﬁgure in this research has been R.M. Kingdon of the University of Wisconsin. For a description of the function of the Consistory from his hand, see ‘The Geneva Consistory in the time of Calvin’ in: A. Pettegree/A. Duke/ G. Lewis (eds.), Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620, Cambridge 19962, 21–34. See idem, Adul- tery and Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva, Cambridge/London 1995, 10–30. See also H.A. Speel- man, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 72–79. 23 See the examples that R.M. Kingdon gives in Adultery and Divorce. Where possible 34 chapter two

The third function was as an ecclesiastical court. Questions of doctrine or life were brought before the Consistory. When the case was serious enough that a public punishment was necessary, the matter was then handed over to the civil authorities. This last function is the most familiar—and notorious. According to Kingdon, however, the great influence this administrative body projected is to be attributed rather to the first two functions mentioned. Among the factors which are indicative of its close interrelations with the government is its composition. In addition to clergymen the Consistory had a majority of elders, who in fact sat as commissioners and deputies in the church council as representatives of the various councils, and were also so selected that the various neighbourhoods of the city were represented. It was chaired by one of the syndics,or burgomasters. Although primarily an ecclesiastical organ, where the burgomaster has to set aside his staff and seal, the way that the civil or municipal authorities were woven into it is very clear. The long conflict between the Consistory and municipal authorities regarding the right of excommunication,24 which was only decided in Calvin’s favour in 1555, shows not only that for him the importance of a sanctified society prevailed over the rights of citizens, but also is further evidence of the close relationship between church and society. The conflict also reveals how great the sensitivity on the point of excommunication was. The link between faith and society is clearly to be seen with the Eucharist, or Supper. In this there is no difference from time when the church was still under episcopal control. The struggle over the question of whether excommunication was the prerogative of the municipal authorities or an ecclesiastical body is precisely reminiscent of the previous era when ecclesiastical courts under the guidance of episcopal authority could pronounce excommunication even as a sanc- tion in business conflicts. In the new situation too excommunication

a reconciliation between the marriage partners was hammered out, often expressly against the will of the complainant. In several cases a divorce was allowed and a second marriage permitted. Kingdon believes that in the dissolution of the marriage between Calvin’s own brother Antoine and Anne le Fert, the Reformer’s unswerving commitment to preserve his own house from any possible scandal and taint played a decisive role (88, 94). The first request for a divorce was made as early as 1548 on his brother’s behalf by John Calvin himself. It was only granted in 1557,whenhehasatthe height of his power. 24 See particularly the description by W.G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation,Manchester/NewYork1994. ways of knowing 35 had not only a religious significance, but also immediate social consequences. Anyone excommunicated, or banned from the city, was not only excluded from an important ritual, but cut off from family, friends and business.25

2.1.3. Knowledge of God and conscience We might summarise the previous section by saying that in Calvin’s model the growth of human knowledge of God and the life style which accompanied it was supported by the civil authorities and social institutions. We now arrive at the second point, namely that of the inward anchor of knowledge of God, within man. I particularly want to high- light the role that conscience has in the knowledge of God, according to Calvin. We are not used to that; in the history of philosophy the emphasis has come to be placed on the relative autonomy of faith and morality opposite, or next to, one another. A pluralistic society finds it important to emphasise a shared moral framework, apart from religious convictions. With Calvin we are still in an entirely different world. Conscience is a faculty, but not a faculty which primarily rests in men themselves. The centre of gravity lies elsewhere and is defined theocentrically: conscience is an opening by which God approaches man. Listening to the voice of conscience is listening to God. Con- science and God are inseparable. Those who slam the door in their conscience to the appeal that God makes there, deprive themselves of the possibility of seeing the reality of God. To illustrate that it will be worth the trouble of examining two passages in which an explicit connection is made between an active conscience and pure knowledge of God. The first passage is taken from the Advertissement contre l’astrologie iudici- aire (1549), a polemic written by Calvin on the improper use of astronomy. Calvin begins immediately with a warning which still sounds curious to the reader today. He reminds his readers of the words from ITimothy 1:18–19, where Paul impresses upon Timothy to fight the good fight with faith and a good conscience: ‘By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.’ (RSV) According to Calvin, what Paul intends to say is that those who have besmirched their conscience and given themselves over to evil are not worthy of

25 See R.M. Kingdon gives in Adultery and Divorce, 18–19. 36 chapter two being preserved in the true knowledge of God. They deserve to be blindedandledastrayintodiverseerrorsandlies.26 In short, the one follows from the other. Astrology—or according to modern terms, astronomy27—is used properly so long as it is applied to obtain knowledge about the natural order and the way in which God has disposed the planets and stars to fulfil their task. God has given the sun and moon to rule the days and nights, months, years and seasons. Natural astrology has a certain use for agriculture and public life.28 Such use finds abundant support in Scripture, according to Calvin. There are however—so his critique runs—also people who use the Word of God as social conversation, as a manner of obtaining a personal advantage or—still worse—of gaining access to noble women.29 God will not permit such abuses, warns Calvin. God will permit those who give themselves over to such practices to lapse into the most foolish ideas. Such people call down God’s wrath and punishment upon themselves. In contrast (citing Heb. 4:12), the Word of God is living and powerful, so that it penetrates to the marrow in order to discern what is within man.30 The tenor of Calvin’s argument is that on the human side the way to pure knowledge of God begins with a clean conscience, or rather with self-examination before the face of God. The first step in that way is that a man, standing before the tribunal of God, becomes honest and is aware of the need for obedience.

26 J. Calvin, Advertissement contre l’astrologie judiciaire. Crit.ed. by O. Millet, Geneve 1985, 47: ‘Car il signifie que ceux qui polluent leurs consciences en s’abandonnant a mal ne sont pas dignes d’estre maintenus en la pure cognoissance de Dieu, mais plutost meritent d’estre aveuglez pour estre seduitz par divers erreurs et mensonges.’ 27 The negative associations of the word astrology as a pseudo-science only date from a much later time. See the introduction by O. Millet accompanying the Advertisse- ment. 28 Advertissement, 54. 29 Advertissement, 48: ‘La plus part se sert de la parolle de Dieu seullement pour avoir de quoy deviser en compagnie; les uns sont menez d’ambition, les autres en pensent faire leur profit; il y en a mesmes qui en pensent faire un maquerellage pur avoir acces aus dames.’ According to J. Bohatec, Budé und Calvin, 274,Calvin’s treatise is a direct response to a text published anonymously in Lyon in 1546, entitled Advertissement sur les jugemens d’Astrologie, a une studieuse Damoyselle.BohatecnamesMellinde Saint Gelais as the probably author. See also Millet’s introduction to Calvin’s treatise, 22. 30 Advertissement, 48: ‘Elle doit estre vive et d’une telle efficace qu’elle transperce les doeurs pur examiner tout ce qui est dedans l’homme, ouy jusqu’aux mouelle des os, comme dit l’Apostre.’ ways of knowing 37

One can ﬁnd the same crucial role for the conscience with regard to the knowledge of God in De Scandalis (1550),31 published in a period in which the political prospects of the Reformation were frankly poor, as a result of the ‘Interim’. It is a text with a patently obvious polemic tendency, written as an aid for those who were wavering in their attitudes regarding the Evangelical renewal. In this text Calvin indeed names the names of a number of freethinkers in the cultural upper crust of Paris and Strasbourg, such as Agrippa van Nettescheim, Villeneuve, Etienne Dolet and François Rabelais,32 but the treatise is not addressed to them. They have crossed a critical line. In Calvin’s view they belong to a group who have become far too casual in their attitudes toward God and his Commandments and embody an attitude that has overstepped all bounds. Their satiric commentary on parts of Christian doctrine such as the immortality of the soul and hope for personal eternal life is, to Calvin’s mind, destructive of faith. Such commentaries result in inward scepticism, which undermines and drives out all fear of God Calvin can just hear them thinking: if there is no personal life extending on into eternity, the fact of the matter is that there is also no judgement, so why should anyone still be concerned about such things? In their eyes religion and morality are sheer fabrications, invented to keep people in check.33 Calvin accuses them of what he elsewhere calls an Epicurean concept of God: if such a supreme being exists in some form, then it does not have anything to do personally with mankind. Calvin mentions the ominous word ‘atheist’ in this connection. One can best understand the function of this term by comparing it with the manner in which ‘anarchist’ was used around 1900 to stereotype one’s opponents, or the term ‘communist’ was used in the 20th century. In any case, it means that those being so labelled were to be considered a threat to something that is fundamental. In the view of Busson, in Calvin’s mouth atheism becomes a collective label for diverse forms of unbelief or deviant convictions. In some cases it implies the denial of God’s existence in any form, in others to a form of rationalism, deism or Averroism.34 What these ideas all have in common is that they lead to a form of practical atheism. People lose their respect for God, scorn

31 See the introduction and edition by O. Fatio, Des Scandales,Geneve1984, 8.For the Latin text see: OS II, 162–240. 32 OS II, 201. 33 OS II, 202. 34 See H. Busson, ‘Le nom des incrédules au XVIe siècle’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 16 (1954), 273–278, who opposes the assertion of L. Febvre in his book Le 38 chapter two obedience and lose their passion for those things that are of eternal value. If there is no immortal soul, if man will not always stand before the face of God Almighty, life in time is stripped of its importance. According to Calvin’s deepest conviction, that is the gravest of errors. As we have said, those being addressed in De Scandalis are not these ‘atheists’; they have already passed the point of no return. The treatise is directed toward doubters, to those who may indeed have difficulty with some points of doctrine, but who are nevertheless still to be healed, because their conscience is not yet obstructed.35 One of the ‘stumbling blocks’ that Calvin takes up is the doctrine of the incarnation. It is striking that he makes no attempt whatsoever to clarify or explain this doctrine. In the passage in question we encounter another strong example of how Calvin deals with what I previously termed the categorical difference between God and man. It appears as if he wants to say that any attempt at explanation rests at its outset on a false estimate of human capacity to comprehend what he terms ‘doctrina caelestis’. The incarnation is a mystery which far exceeds human understanding. Among the causes of the difficulty which people have with this doctrine is that the human mind is incapable of taking it in. From God’s side there is however no paradox whatsoever. According to Calvin the real problem lies not at the intellectual level; one must dig deeper. The problem is spiritual in nature. It becomes visible when men let their conscience speak. Calvin suggests that the offence with which the incarnation confronts us lies in human arrogance and the refusal to accept God’s nearness in the incarnation. God comes too close for man’s taste. ‘Because God descends from his immeasurable heights to you, would you therefore continue further removed from Him? What if He had called you up to the inaccessible sanctuaries of the heavens? How would you have gone to him from such a distance, you who are offended by his drawing near?’ According to Calvin, the scoffers conclude ‘that there is no one more foolish than we, who hope that we shall be given life out of a dead man, who ask acquittal from a condemned man, draw the grace of God from a curse, and flee to the gallows as the only anchor of eternal salvation.’ By laughing at so much gullibility on the part of others, they present themselves as being extremely intel- ligent. There is however something which cannot be found in them, problème de l’incroyance au XVI e siècle,Paris1942, that the concept cannot be considered as theoretical atheism because such an idea could not have been conceived in that day. 35 OS II, 172. ways of knowing 39

‘which is the most important in true wisdom. That is a sense of conscience. What remains of wisdom, of reason, of the capacities for judgement, when the conscience is blunted?’36 The stumbling block however disappears when someone descends into themselves and sees their own deplorable condition. True knowledge of God begins with the realisation of who it is that men are really dealing with, with God himself. A man must first become a fool in his own eyes. In the confrontation with God men learn humility. Then, when someone sees their own wretchedness, the realisation of the necessity of a Saviour will grow, someone through whose mediation one can escape eternal death. Only ‘then shall the way for them to come to Christ be opened, at the same time with the possibility for Christ to come to them.’ What is striking about Calvin’s refutation is the emphasis on the necessity of getting a feeling for the real relationship between God and man. When the realisation of the holiness of God is absent in a man, if he has no fear of God, no timor Dei, he will remain stuck at the level of questions born of curiosity, which because of sin really do not accomplish anything. Calvin’s thought has no room for outsiders, spectators in the sidelines. ‘We know that they take offence, because they, devoid of fear of God, have no taste whatever for spiritual teachings. There- fore let us, so that their senselessness should not be a stumbling block for us, be led from the human nature of Christ to divine glory, which transforms all curious questions into reverence. Let us turn from the death on the cross to the glorious resurrection, which negates the whole ignominy of the cross. Let us exchange the weakness of the flesh for the might of the Spirit, in which all foolish thoughts are absorbed.’37 We have quoted extensively in the foregoing, because these passages put us on the track of several basic lines in Calvin’s vision of knowledge of God.

1. As a means by which the transcendent God can enter our inward life, conscience plays a fundamental role. God appeals to us through conscience. No one can ignore this voice without suﬀering the conse-

36 OS II, 173. 37 OS II, 174: ‘hos sciamus ideo offendi, quia timore Dei vacui, nullum spiritualis doctrinae gustum habent. Quare ne sit nobis offendiculo ipsorum stupor, sed potius ab humana Christi natura ad divinam gloriam feramur, quae omnes curiosas questiones in admirationem convertat: a morte crucis ad gloriosam resurrectionem dirigamur: quae totum crucis opprobrium deleat: a carnis infirmitate ad potentiam spiritus transeamus, quae stultas omnes cogitationes absorbeat.’ 40 chapter two quences. That which presents itself to man in his realisation of good and evil is precisely nothing other than the voice of God breaking in upon his life. But beginning with conscience does not suppose that moral restoration is possible in itself. Conscience confronts man with a gaping chasm, a gulf between them and God. Conscience forces man to consider his turning away from God.

2. Knowledge of God is a way which begins with God making man restless. This way continues by man, in his misery, grasping the gift that is oﬀered him in the incarnation and Christ’s death on the cross, and which leads to the glory and power of the exalted Christ. Man is borne upward on the way of the knowledge of God. The sursum corda is a part of the movement that the human soul makes under the inﬂuence of the Spirit of God. A third characteristic is connected with this:

3. Calvin exhibits no need whatsoever to ﬁrst speak of Jesus Christ and then of conscience. Instead, as far as our understanding reaches, conscience is the unconditional starting point. Conscience is a source for the beginning of knowledge of God. Calvin does not distrust conscience; for him, temporally and theologically, revelation is not immediately revelation of Jesus Christ, but revelation of the harsh judgement of God, although this is certainly ﬁnally oriented to Christ.38

4. Man’s knowledge of God is not an epistemological or intellectual problem, but primarily a spiritual problem, and from the outset is defined soteriologically. That is to say, it cannot be separated from the fact of the relationship in which God and man stand. Man lives in a tension between obedience and disobedience, remorse and obduracy, tractability and intractability. This is the spiritual realm in which intellectual, conceptual and moral problems take their place. Anyone who really becomes concerned with the question of how things are between God and man will take a different attitude with regard to the difficulties in understanding the incarnation theologically. The human situation and God’s wrath are the real heavy-weight problems and are the centre from which intellectual difficulties take their own, albeit secondary place. In short, Calvin has no revelation problem as the centre of his theology. He begins with the religiously, ethically charged reality

38 See also Calvin’s answer to Sadoletus, where he describes something like an ordo salutis,OSI,469. ways of knowing 41 in which man will henceforth ﬁnd himself. This reality is that of the man alienated from God, who is again sought out by God and enticed to a way in which community with God can again be found. That is the passion of this thought.

2.2. Accommodation

2.2.1. Accommodation as the basic form of all revelation God’s actions are the foundation of all human knowledge of Him. This formulation, when applied to Calvin’s theology, is not untrue, but at the same time is not specific enough. In order to catch sight of the way by which knowledge of God comes into being, we must pay attention to characteristic words and concepts that are definitive for its structure. One of the most important words that Calvin uses to describe God’s action is descendere, coming (or going) down. God’s act is a movement from above to below. We also find the word ascendere, to ascend or mount, directly linked with this. In other words, Calvin describes God’s acts as movements in space, as a movement from high tolowandfromlowtohigh.BecausebyhismovementGodcomes closer to man, to be within the reach of the human capacity to know, knowledge of God arises. Knowledge of God is the result of an action of God, who through his Spirit, in a multiplicity of ways, will reveal his will and intentions to man, stimulate and invite him, instil him with his presence and bring him into connection with the divine power from on high. The spatiality of this concept is intended literally. It is intended to focus attention on the distance and difference in place which must be bridged. That does not mean that Calvin situates heaven on the utmost edge of the universe and in that way postulates it as a localisable place. He is well aware of the sense of the word ‘heaven’ in many Bible verses. According to his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, the apposition ‘who art in heaven’ is intended precisely to deny any possibility of sensory perception. It reminds us that the exaltation of the glory of God exceeds any human capacity for understanding.39 That does not detract from the fact that in the concepts of descending and ascending, space and distance must be understood as real. That

39 Inst. 3.20.40. 42 chapter two heaven is defined as being a place, and Christ’s ascension by physical movement and separation from the earth, are both part of the content of revelation which is to be taken literally.40 In the chapter concerning the sacrament of the Supper (Chapter 4), the theological (or more precisely, eschatological) tenor of this thinking in terms of space and distance will once again become clear. Revelation, or rather God’s deeds, consist of a movement of the Spirit from high to low, and from low to high. In faith and in the Supper, the Spirit connects man with the flesh and blood of Christ, and so opens up participation in renewed being existence. It is this renewed body and blood of Christ that is localised ‘above’, in heaven, and this is the guarantee and eschatological goal of our renewal. In the following sections of this chapter the various parts of this structure of descent and ascent will be developed further. The first movement is that of descent, and the concept of accommodation fits as part of this descent. Human knowledge of God exists thanks to accommodation.41 Accommodation describes what happens structurally in this descent. In His coming down, in all his acts and words, God accommodates himself to our human measure and human capacity for understanding. We will here discuss further the necessity and form of this accommodation. For Calvin it is self-evident that in the whole of his dealings with man, God must accommodate himself to man’s measure. The necessity for accommodation arises directly from the infinite elevation of God above creation.42 There is a fundamental distance which must be bridged. Accommodation therefore implies both the notion of indirectness and the tempering of God’s overpowering glory. The necessity of accommodation and tempering must be sought not only in the fact that sinful man has lost the way to God; it is a given that arises from the categorical difference between Creator and creature. The elevation of God above the transient world always makes a certain form of media-

40 See his exposition of Acts 1:11,CO48, 13. 41 For a survey see F.L. Battles, ‘God was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity’ in: Donald K. McKim, Readings in Calvin’s Theology, Grand Rapids 1984, 21– 42;J.deJong,Accommodatio Dei. A Theme in K. Schilder’s Theology of Revelation,Kampen 1990. The great theological significance of thet concept of accommodation is discussed in D.F. Wright, ‘Calvin’s Accommodating God’, in: W.H. Neuser/B. Armstrong, Calvi- nus Sincerioris Religionis Vindex. Calvin as Protector of the Purer Religion, Kirksville (MO) 1997, 3–19. 42 See for instance his commentary on Jeremiah 31:2,CO38, 660. ways of knowing 43 tion necessary. Thus it is not in sin that the necessity of accommodation itself is found. Some form of mediation is always necessary. Calvin does not speak at length of this, but the matter is clear. It is one of the tings taken for granted in his theology: ‘Had man remained free from all taint, he was of too humble a condition to penetrate to God without a Mediator.’ This remark comes in the course of the discussion with Osiander about the necessity of the incarnation.43 Reflecting on Luther’s notion of the justification of the godless, Osiander had argued that justification is the result of the indwelling of the divine nature in man. If man is called the image of God, then that must imply his participation in divine nature in some manner. The next step that Osian- der makes is that he derives the necessity of the incarnation as such from the ontological difference between God and man, and not from the fallen state of man. Calvin opposes that second step, but nevertheless the remark that the distance between God and creature demands a mediator or agent comes in this context. How can that be? Is the incarnation of the eternal Son still to be derived from the distance between God and man? The apparent inconsistency disappears however when we take into account that Calvin emphatically distinguishes between Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word and the eternal Word as agent of creation. In his thinking the concept of the mediator has a wider meaning and reaches further than the incarnation. When dealing with the incarnation of the eternal Son, the assumption of human nature by the second person of the Trinity, Calvin wants to stop at the strict relation that is made in the Bible with deliverance: he refuses a speculative diversion. Anyone who seeks further grounds for the incarnation than this soteriological ground, oversteps the bounds set by God.44 To summarise, as a theological concept the notion of ‘mediator’ has a wider function, and by Calvin is chiefly, but not exclusively connected with the incarnation, the assumptio carnis. But Christ, as the eternal Son of God, also plays a decisive role in God’s dealings with the world outside

43 Inst. 2.12.1: ‘Quanvis ab omni labe integer stetisset homo, humilior tamen erat eius conditio quam ut sine Mediatore ad Deum penetraret.’ 44 Inst. 2.12.4: ‘Ubi ad opem miseris peccatoribus ferendam Christum divinitus proprie addici audimus, quisquis has metas transilit, stultae curiositati nimis indulget.’ Inst. 2.12.5: ‘Siquis excipiat, horum nihil obstare quominus idem Christus, qui damnatos redemit, testari etiam potuerit suum erga salvos et incolumes amorem, eorum carnem induendo: brevis responsio est, quum pronuntiet Spiritus, aeterno Dei decreto coniuncta simul haec duo fuisse, ut ﬁeret nobis redemptor Christus, et eiusdem naturae particeps, fas non esse longius inquirere.’ 44 chapter two of the incarnation, extra carnem. As the Son, as the eternal Word, He is involved with the world as mediator in creation and as sustainer.45 Nor does the incarnation prevent Him as the eternal Son from being active extra carnem in certain ways. We here encounter a substantive element of Calvin’s concept of the knowledge of God that is taken up in the debate between Lutheran and Reformed theologians under a title prone to lead to misunderstanding, the ‘extra-calvinisticum’, as if this were a notion wholly limited to Calvin. I will restrict myself here to two observations. First, in light of the history or dogma, Calvin is absolutely not original on this point. As Willis has demonstrated from an abundance of materials, he simply continues a line of thought that has been generally accepted since the apologists.46 Next, it must be stated that

45 Calvin agrees with the exegesis in the ancient church in which the appearances of the angel of the Lord (Judges 6:11–24;Gen.32:29–30) were appearances of the Word as the second person of the Trinity. See, for instance, Inst. 1.13.10: ‘Etsi enim nondum erat carne vestitus, descendit tamen quasi intermedius, ut familiarius ad fideles accederet.’ E.D. Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology,Leiden1966, 69–71, points to the clarification that Calvin introduced in his vision of the mediatorship of Christ in answer to the views of F. Stancaro. According to Stancaro Christ was only mediator by virtue of the human nature that he assumed in the incarnation. In his Responsum ad Fratres Polonos (1560), CO 9, 338,Calvin makes it clear that Christ’s mediatorship also involves the creation and sustaining of the world. By virtue of this mediatorship in creation the Son is the Head of the Church from the very beginning, standing above the angels, and is properly named the firstborn of the whole creation. 46 See Calvin’s famous formulation in Inst. 2.13.4: ‘etsi in unum personam coaluit immensa Verbi essentia cum natura hominis, nullam tamen inclusionem fingimus. Mirabiliter enim e caelo descendit Filius Dei, ut caelum tamen non relinqueret: mirabiliter in utero Virginis gestari, in terris versari, et in cruce pendere voluit, ut semper mundum impleret, sicut ab initio.’ The study by E.D. Willis cited in note 71 shows that in light of the history of dogma there is no reason this should be termed the extra-calvinisticum. The notion that the Logos was active apart from the incarnation is a component of the established store of traditional doctrine. From the abundance of material, see for instance Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, 17, John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, III.7, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q.5,a.2.Theterm can therefore only be understood as a polemic label that was introduced against the Reformed position by the Lutheran side in the conflict over the nature of Christ’s presence in the Supper. The Reformed position is expressed in Question and Answer 48 of the Heidelberg Catechism: ‘Q. But are not the two natures in Christ separated from each other in this way, if the humanity is not wherever the divinity is? A. Not at all; for since divinity is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must follow that the divinity is indeed beyond the bounds of the humanity which it has assumed, and is nonetheless ever in that humanity as well, and remains personally united to it.’ (trans. A.O. Miller and M.E. Oosterhaven) Since its introduction the term has become meaningful in the theological debate to the extent that it does refer to the Lutheran accusation that Calvin does not take the incarnation seriously enough theologically. For ways of knowing 45 the distinction has its roots in Trinitarian theology, and has major consequences for the whole structure of theology. In Calvin God’s acts are differentiated in a Trinitarian manner from the very beginning; that is to say, what God does is to be resolved into the work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in which these three can not be identified with one another without qualification. With all emphasis on the unity of God, the work of the Spirit, for instance, has a peculiarity with respect to the work of the Son, and the work of the Son has characteristic properties with respect to that of the Father. The eternal Son does not coincide perfectly with the incarnate Word, and knowledge of God does not therefore coincide perfectly with knowledge of Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word. However much knowledge of God substantively derives the criterion for its content from Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word, as the mirror of divine mercy, for Calvin the work of the Spirit forms the wider horizon in which the work of the Son is situated and the Father leads his people to renewal and perfection through the Spirit. It is at this point that later, in our second panel regarding Barth’s theology, a variant configuration will be seen. Barth derives all knowledge of God from the one revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the logos ensarkos,and sees it as consisting of the ‘disclosure’ of that which is given in Christ. The concept of disclosure would not do justice to the peculiarity and relative originality of the work of the Spirit as conceived by Calvin. Meanwhile, from the discussion between Calvin and Osiander we can make out the premise that both share, for all their differences: God stands far above man, and cannot be reached from the side of man. ‘The majesty of God is too high to be scaled up to by mortals, who creep like worms on the earth.’47 God would therefore remain hidden if He himself had not come towards mortals by various paths and finally the brightness of Christ had not shown upon us, according to Calvin.48 After all, the difference between Creator and creature, and between its significance in the structure of Calvin’s theology see H.A. Oberman, ‘Die “Extra”- Dimension in der Theologie Calvins’ in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach Genf, Göttingen 1986, 253–282. According to Jüngel, Karl Barth’s doctrine of the eternal election of the man Jesus Christ can be seen as a systematic counter-proposal to this accusation: one can no longer think of the man apart from the Logos incarnatus.See E. Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden. Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth. Eine Paraphrase, Tübingen 19763, 96. 47 Inst. 2.6.4. 48 Inst. 3.2.1: ‘Nam quum Deus lucem inaccessam habitet, Christum occurrere medium necesse est … Quia Deus ipse procul absconditus lateret nisi nos irradiaret fulgor Christi.’ 46 chapter two

God’s infinitude and the finiteness of creation, is immeasurably great. The necessity for mitigation applies even within the unseen world of the angels around God’s throne. Appealing to Isaiah 6:2, Calvin says that as parts of God’s creation, even the angels are not permitted to look upon Him directly.49 For Calvin, the realisation of an all-excelling majesty of God is not theory. Although Calvin exercises the utmost restraint in telling about himself and his religious experience, his writings nevertheless betray a direct realisation of God’s holy and mighty presence. In every nook and cranny of his work we can find the realisation of his own insignificance and a majesty of God that shines in the cosmic cogwheels. The awe with which he recounts and evaluates the theophanies described in Scripture is typical. In the confrontation with the majesty of God the creature is deeply convinced of his dependence and fragility.50 For those to whom this occurs, this is a shattering experience which they fear they will not survive. The reason that Calvin adduces for this fear (as in Judges 13:22 and Isaiah 6:5) is interesting, and at first sight appears totally illogical. God is after all the source of life; why should people who confront the source of life need to fear that they will die? Calvin makes an important distinction here. He explains that the fear has its ground in something incidental (per accidens), namely the fact since the fall, mankind bears death within himself.51 There is no reason for fear because of our created nature as such. Whatever the case, in order to learn to know God, it is necessary that God comes down, bends down to man, and accommodates himself to man’s capacity for comprehension. In his commentaries, and still more in his sermons, Calvin never tires of impressing on his audience

49 Inst. 1.11.3. See also Comm. Isaiah 6:2,CO36, 128: ‘Duae aliae quibus faciem tegebant satis indicant ne angelos quidem fulgorem illum Dei sustinere posse, sicque ipsos perstringi Dei conspectu, ut quum solem splendentem intueri volumus.’ 50 Comm. on Is. 6:5,CO36, 131: ‘Itaque priusquam sese nobis patefaciat, non cogi- tamus nos esse homines, imo nos putamus esse deos: ubi autem apparuit Deus, tunc incipimus sentire et experiri quales simus. Inde vera humilitas: quae in eo consistit ut homo nihil amplius sibi arroget, totusque a Deo pendeat.’ See also Comm. Gen. 32:30,CO23, 446: ‘Quamdiu praesentem non sentimus Deum, superbe nobis place- mus. Atque haec imaginaria est vita, quam stulte sibi arrogat caro, ubi deorsum incli- nat. Fideles autem, dum se illis Deus ostendit, quolibet fumo se magis evanidos esse sentiunt: denique ut confusa iaceat carnis superbia, ad Deum venire necesse est.’ 51 Comm. Is. 6:6,CO36, 131: ‘Videtur enim absurdum ut Dei intuitus vel propin- quitas vitam auferat, cuius ipse fons et autor est. Respondeo id fieri per accidens: quando id ex nostro vitio, non ex Dei natura accidit. Mors enim est in nobis: eam non perspicimus, nisi cum vita Dei conferatur.’ ways of knowing 47 the fact, the significance of God’s coming down and accommodating himself. We here encounter an element that will be deeply definitive for the configuration of this first panel. It confronts us with a radical difference between the mentality of that day and ours. The human spirit was still considered as lower, dependent and uncertain. We are still a long way from an attitude toward life founded on the notion of the free, autonomous individual who shapes, orders and in that sense creates the world by his own power and from his own resources. The images that Calvin employs leave no doubt about what the real place and stature of the creature is, seen in the perspective of the relation between heaven and earth. One of the fixed stars of Calvin’s symbolic universe is the image of the wet nurse suckling a child while speaking baby talk to the child. God is like that. God addresses us in simple and unaffected language.52 We will perhaps find the physicality of the image very appealing in our day, but probably not find the point of the image so attractive. The point is our stature, and our lack of capacity when compared with the sublimity of God. What we hear from God is an adapted speech, an address in simple language, as a baby is spoken to. Indeed, the image of the wet nurse and her baby talk is not designed with the self-confident, autonomous man in mind, and is calculated for a relationship in which man is by far the inferior. All of God’s self-revelation in creation, in the Scriptures, in Jesus Christ and in the sacraments must be understood as a form of accommodation. The characteristic of revelation is its downward motion. Or put in other terms, God stoops down to such an extent that he deliberately places himself at the level where he can be seen and heard by his creatures. That too is an element which is often forgotten. Not rarely, the figure of accommodation is understood only as a concession, something which really does not fit with the highness of God. It has been part of the established theological and historical repertoire to contrast Luther and Calvin with reference to this. Luther’s theology then is accounted as a theology of the Cross. God is present here sub cruce.Itis however best not to force the issue and act as if only the transcendence

52 See for example Inst. 1.13.1. See also OS II, 171,CO5, 181 and CO 7, 149: ‘Car le Seigneur, sachant bien que, s’il parlait à nous selon qu’il convient à sa maiesté, nostre intelligence n’est point capable d’atteindre sihaut, s’accommode à nostre peti- tesse: et comme une nourisse begaye avec son enfent, aussi il use envers nous d’une facon grossiere de parle, à fin d’estre entendu. Celuy donc qui renverse cest ordre, ne tasche sinon d’ensevelir la la verité de Dieue laquelle ne peut estre congneue, qu’en la facon qu’il la nous al voulu reveler.’ 48 chapter two of God counts for Calvin. God is not only elevated; he comes down, with the crucified Christ as the nadir, down to within the reach of the senses, and thus into our lives and hearts. He wishes to reach out to his people in his effacement. The fact is, that mankind must be delivered. God does that in a way that leads down, and from the depths upward. This is the way and the movement that forms the structuring principle of Calvin’s vision of the Supper. Accommodation is a central element in Calvin’s theological epistemology. However, for Calvin it is not limited to an epistemological concept. It is also a concept that is of far-reaching significance for the content of his theology. In the following section we will however limit ourselves for the present to the consequences for Calvin’s hermeneutic and his conception of language. That God as the great Orator accommodates himself to various times and places53 is even the key to understanding the Old Testament, as we will explain in the following section.

2.2.2. Accommodation as the key concept in sacred history In the past century the concept of accommodation has prompted questions which affect the content of theology. What does it mean for the content of religious knowledge? Is it at the cost of content if God makes himself known under the conditions of this world? Does the reality of what God has to say not suffer under the form of accommodation, under the baby talk? We here encounter the mine field of anthropomorphic language, which has occupied theology and philosophy since antiquity. Only in the very latest theology has this reflection led to a revaluation of the anthropomorphism in the Bible.54 How adequate are the Biblical concepts actually, when all that God says is accommodated to the measure of man? Calvin shares with the metaphysical tradition the realisation that God exceeds all manner of human conception. One can ask whether the coalition between the metaphysical tradition and Christian belief does not necessarily lead to a total relativisation of the historic and terrene in favour of the eternal. Does this not lead us to Fichte’s adage, ‘Nur das Metyphysische, keineswegs aber das His-

53 Comm. Ex. 31:18,CO25, 79. 54 E. Jüngel, ‘Anthropomorphismus als Grundproblem neuzeitlicher Hermeneutik’ in: idem, Wertlose Wahrheit. Zur Identität und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens, Munich 1990, 110–131. ways of knowing 49 torische, macht selig; das letzte macht nur verständig’?55 What is most remarkable, however—and I deem this fundamental—is that the presence of metaphysical elements in Calvin’s concept of God has not led to disqualification of revelation in history. He arrives at an extremely varied and well-considered evaluation of anthropomorphisms. Some are metaphorical, others on the contrary very precise. In Chapter 3 we will return to this matter. I will here limit myself to the manner in which accommodation functions as a hermeneutic key for the clarification of the differences between the Old and New Testaments. Accommodation as a means in divine pedagogy is a familiar element in the history of Christianity. In the theology of Irenaeus of Lyons, Origen and Clement of Alexandria accommodation is the key for the understanding of revelation in the Old Testament. Calvin thus stands in a long hermeneutic tradition, inaugurated by Philo of Alexan- dria.56 According to this tradition, the anthropomorphic ways of speaking about and images for God in his relation to Israel are part of an earlier phase of revelation. Accommodation fits into the childhood of mankind. In other words, Calvin spiritualises. And yet, with all the critique that has been passed on this method, a basic assumption that has come to be of great importance for the high esteem for the Old Testament and Israel in the Reformed tradition can be seen. The way in which Israel and the church become acquainted with revelation is very different, but the content of the revelation is the same under both the old and new covenant, namely community with God.57 In terms of its substance, the covenant is the same. It is merely that under the old covenant the church is still in the stage of childhood. The content of the covenant appears to coincide with land and possessions; the punishments which are threatened are corporal punishments. The ceremonies under the old dispensation are the primer, as it were, through which the child is taught the rules. The old dispensation is a veil.58 With Galatians 3:24 in mind, the law and its dispensation are the custodian, literally our schoolmaster, the tutor who is to lead a young child to adulthood.

55 J.G. Fichte, Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben, oder auch die Religionslehre (1806), Fichtes Werke Bd.V, ed. by I.H. Fichte, Berlin 1971, 485. 56 See among others Stephen D. Benin, The Footprints of God. Divine Accomomodation in Jewish and Christian Thought,NewYork1993. For Philo see for instance W. Maas, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes. Zum Verhältnis von griechisch-philosophischer und christlicher Gotteslehre, Munich/Paderborn/Vienna 1974, 87–99, 116–118. 57 Inst. 2.10.2. 58 Inst. 2.11.3;Inst.2.11.5;Inst.2.2.13. 50 chapter two

When the content of the covenant between God and man in Christ comes into being, God speaks at another level, namely to people who have become adults. Then what is important is no longer the letter, but the spirit, not bondage but freedom. History is a process of education and within this process anthropomorphisms have their function. It will help clarify things to understand which opponents Calvin is trying to fend off with this vision. He is fighting against millennial- ist views which had their followers particularly in Anabaptist circles. In these groups the prophecies about the coming kingdom of peace and the Day of the Lord were being applied directly—and in Calvin’s eyes uncritically. Qualifying these prophetic predictions as anthropomorphisms offers the possibility of conceiving them as metaphorical. On the basis of the New Testament Calvin concludes that what they are about is not the establishment of peace on earth; the prophecies in fact involve the eternal kingdom with God. Here the concept of accommodation serves to spiritualise the interpretation of the promises. Accord- ing to Calvin, the same is true for other anthropomorphic images and expressions. That God has ears, a nose, eyes and hands must not be taken literally. It is a way of speaking, a modus loquendi, which is not adequate to express the spiritual nature of God’s being. Obviously one can not avoid questions of a substantive theological nature about the use of this concept of accommodation. How does Calvin arrive at the criterion for distinguishing real and metaphorical language? If all revelation given is an accommodation and involves some degree of metaphor, does this not undermine its trustworthiness as such? We betray ourselves in such questions. We touch a sore spot, the raw nerve of contemporary theology, where every mediation, every embodiment of God’s speaking and disclosure has become the basis for uncertainty. What does the distinction between real and metaphorical mean when the Bible speaks of God as the loving Father? Can men still take that seriously? Or in the end is God’s Counsel all that is left, like a threatening thunderhead behind which all the sunlight suddenly disappears? As we have indicated, these questions particularly concern the content of knowledge of God, and will be taken up in Chapter 3. Yet it would be good to here note that Calvin was evidently not conscious of a possible relativisation of all revelation. He does not speak of this in simple terms, and that in itself is telling. It is at least as important to know what is not the subject of the debate, as to know what is being spoken of. He is defending himself against a critique of an entirely different nature, apparently coming from spiritualising ways of knowing 51 circles. Briefly, in the spiritualistic view all the outward manifestations of the church, its offices and Scripture were fundamentally relativised as means of divine revelation and sources of authority because God could be known by the human soul in a direct manner.59 Truth is eternal and immutable. According to the spiritualistic critique, if one really took seriously the different manner of revelation in the Old and New Testament as coming from God, that would indicate mutability and inconstancy in God himself. Such inconsistency cannot properly be attributed to God. Calvin’s reply reads that the development in forms of revelation must be considered as being purely of a pedagogic nature. It is a response of God to different times and circumstances, and not a reflection of any inconstancy in God himself, which would indeed be absurd. In the third chapter we will yet go into that which is at stake existentially with regard to the changelessness of God, not only for Calvin but for the whole of ancient and medieval thought. The conclusion can here be limited to noting that Calvin appears to be defending himself against the accusation from some enlightened minds in his age, namely that his God shows some tendencies to instability. As an illustration of how he deals with accommodation, there follows here a passage in which he points to the difference in agricultural activities in different seasons as an apt comparison. ‘If the husbandman prescribes one set of duties to his household in winter, and another in summer, we do not therefore charge him with fickleness, or think he deviates from the rules of good husbandry, which depends on the regular course of nature. In like manner, if a father of a family, in educating, governing and managing his children, pursues one course in their childhood, another in their adolescence, and another in their adulthood, we do not therefore say he is fickle, or abandons his opinions. Why, then, do we charge God with inconstancy, when he makes fit and congruous arrangements for diversities of times?’60 In summary: changes in the means of revelation have nothing to do with God’s own being, but with altered circumstances. Accommodation and anthropomorphism as a form of accommodation within sacred history are related to changing circumstances in human history. It can be

59 According to the publishers of the Opera Selecta, Calvin is reacting against Sebasti- aan Franck and his Paradoxa, published in 1535.SeeInst.2.11.13. Regarding Franck see A. Séguenny, ‘Sources du spiritualisme d’après la “Chronica” de Sebastian Franck’ in: M. Lienhard, Les Dissidents du XVI e Siècle entre L’Humanisme et le Catholicisme, Baden-Baden 1983, 165–174, particularly 169. 60 Inst. 2.11.13. 52 chapter two said that the price which Calvin pays for the concept of accommodation is that something of the clarity of revelation must be surren- dered, but nothing of its essential content. The substance, the actual content, of revelation in both the Old and New Testaments is the same. Or,asformulatedbyK.Schilder,accommodationaﬀects the revelation received in such a way that it cannot be said to be perfect, but can still be said to be pure.61 The anthropomorphisms are means in the hands of God with which He makes clear what He has to say.

2.2.3. Accommodation and language The foregoing turns the spotlight on Calvin’s vision of the language of the Bible. This view deserves attention because the differences between Calvin’s time and ours are great, and of immediate importance for the concept of knowledge of God. The images in the Bible are chosen by GodinorderforHimtocommunicatewithmanthroughthem.That makes anthropomorphic language useful and means that man must carefully follow the indications given in Scripture. This does not mean that Calvin ignores the human nature of language in general or for the human input in these Biblical writings. Among the things that reveal Calvin’s connections with the humanistic culture which surrounded him is the way in which he identifies and deals with the theological problem of accommodation as in part a general problem confronting anyone who wants to communicate something, that is to say, as a problem of rhetoric. Or, from the opposite angle, one could say that it is precisely from his familiarity with rhetoric that he is to a large extent sensitive to this theological problem.62 The realisation of the necessity of effective communication, or eloquence, was a characteristic of humanistic culture. A speaker must choose a means of expounding his subject and a style that is in accordance with that subject and the audience that he wants to address.63 With such a concept from rhetoric, decorum is necessary. True eloquence, eloquentia, seeks precisely a simpler

61 K. Schilder, Wat is de hemel,Kampen19542, 54. See also H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, 90, 92. Human knowledge of God is not adequate, but is analogical, pure and trustworthy. 62 Among others, W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 116–127, points to these connections. See further the extensive study by O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. Étude de Rhétorique réformée,Genève1992. 63 Comm. ICor. 1:17,CO49, 320: ‘… sed eloquentiam veram, quae constat prudenti rerum inventione, dispositione ingeniosa, et elegantia sermonis.’ ways of knowing 53 form, not a more elaborate one, using now this image, and then that one. But it always searches for a form that is in the service of the powers of persuasion, persuasio, for the matter involved and the audience being addressed.64 It is remarkable how greatly Calvin’s thought regarding God’s way of approaching man is permeated by rhetoric. The realisation that God accommodates himself to the measure of man is omnipresent in it, so to speak. That God expresses himself pro sensus nostri modulo or has accommodated himself ad sensum nostrum is constantly on his lips. The consequences of this interweaving of the doctrine of revelation and rhetoric can hardly be overstated; they extend throughout his theology. For Calvin the question of how (qualis) God is (we today would say who God is) often appears to matter less than does sorting out the effects of certain words and images on man. Theologically his interest lies in the pragmatic question of the handling of language and images, with what God seeks to accomplish in man through an image or word. In terms of language theory, the centre of gravity for his theology lies in perlocution, the effect intended by the use of certain words. In the course of the discussion in this first part, diverse examples of this will be provided. It should be clear that this linkage has consequences for a theological evaluation of both panels of this study. When in a post-Kantian situation, in which Biblical images and concepts are regarded as human constructs, the trustworthiness and salutary value of revelation becomes dependent on the question of whether God is revealing himself, one can expect little understanding for a concept that structurally places so much emphasis on the practical effects of words and concepts. Calvin can stress the metaphors and images of the Scriptures precisely because he is convinced that they are given by the Holy Spirit and not for- mulatedbythehumanmind.Accordingtohim,itisexactlyatthose points in Scripture where the central truths of faith are unfolded for us that we must make minimal use of our own freedom.65 In fact, we here

64 See for instance Calvin’s extensive commentary on ICor. 1:17,CO49, 320–322. He exerts himself to show that the apostle does not intend to condemn rhetorical means in general. On the contrary, the verse gives Calvin the opportunity to pronounce a eulogy on true eloquence. The power of the Cross would have been buried if Paul had availed himself of philosophical subtlety (philosophico acumine) and rhetorical artifice (artificio dicendi)(320). What is important is that eloquence serves the Gospel in all ways. 65 From a letter to Simon Grynaeus (Nov. 15, 1539), here cited from: Iohannis Calvini Commentarius in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. T.H.L. Parker, Leiden 1981, 4: ‘deinde ut 54 chapter two encounter what Protestant theology will later call the truth principle. Scripture is the revelation of God’s will. That will have great consequences for dealing with the Bible, its words and stories. Knowledge of God arises when people carefully follow the instructions given by God. It is not human imagination or construction that takes primacy; the emphasis is on the Spirit as instructor. In this field we encounter still other metaphors. One image which surfaces frequently in Calvin is that of reins.66 God does not drive with a loose hand or long rein, much less give free rein. The reins are tight, and train the pious to be attentive. In his text Contre les libertins Calvin also utters a strong critique of the handling of the Bible by people such as Quentin, who he terms ‘libertines’. Basing themselves on IICor. 3:6 (‘for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’), according to Calvin they permit themselves an exposition of the Scripture that is a hundred times worse than the allegorical exposition of the Papists. The literary means used lead the reader down the garden path, away from the true intention. Are the injunc- tions satire, or caricature? The reader no longer knows how to properly interpret the author; is the author playing the clown, is he being serious?67 Calvin condemns this game of disguises, because it runs counter to the order that God has laid down. Certainly when the mysteries of id fiat in Scripturae expositione: in religionis autem dogmatibus, in quibus praecipue voluit Dominus consentaneas esse suorum mentes, minus sumatur libertatis.’ 66 See for example what Calvin wrote in the prologue to his commentary on the psalms on the experience of God’s guidance in his own life: CO 31, 20:‘…Deus tamen arcano providentiae suae fraeno cursum meum alio tandem reflexit.’ Faced with the precarious situation of the evangelical movement as a result of Interim, he again used the image of reins: OS II, 192: ‘Hodie cum duro austeroque fraeno nos Dominus constrictos teneat, videmus ut passim omnes fere lasciviant.’ See also OS II, 197. 67 Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Libertins,CO7, 149–248, 174.Seealsothe telling chapter titles ‘Du langage et style de parler qu’ont les Quintinistes’ (168) and ‘De la grande malice et impudence qu’ont les Libertins, en se glorifiant d’estre doubles de cueur et de langue’ (170). See J. Wirth, ‘“Libertins” et “epicuriens”: aspects de l’irreligion en XVIe siècle’, Bibliotheque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 39 (1977), 601–627.As examples of such ‘spiritualistic’ exegesis Wirth refers to Agrippa’s text De nobilitate atque praecellentia foeminei sexus (1529)andtheProblemata of O. Brunfels (1523). With a range of arguments and examples, Agrippa defends not the inferiority, or even the equality, but the superiority of woman over man. If in his creative action God progresses from the lesser to the more perfect, then logic would dictate that the woman is the most perfect creature. Only in female beauty does the true image of God light up! Moreover, it was Adam who sinned first, not Eve. However fine this may sound, according to Calvin it leaves the reader in fatal confusion. The praise of woman is ambiguous in the extreme, and in the last analysis the reader does not know if the author really intends to praise women or if the text is persiflage, and the reader is being taken for a ride. See also De Scandalis, 201. ways of knowing 55

God are at stake, the Scripture itself must be the rule for exposition. In the Scripture the Spirit itself is speaking, without indirection. The point for God, in all his accommodations, is to penetrate the heart of man, to attract him, to stir him from his lethargy, to invite him to community. It would be too simple and even unjust to dispose of Calvin’s criticism of literary tools such as persiflage and satire as a want of personal artistry. Anyone hazarding such a judgement shows instantaneously that they have never read Calvin, or in any case read none of his trea- tises, where he permits himself more room than he does in, say, his commentaries. The rhetorical ideal of elegance and eloquence is highly valued, and it is not without reason that in Calvin studies there has been so much attention for his use of the rhetorical arts.68 His critique does not involve satire and persiflage as such, but flows from a vision of the Bible and the instruction given in it. The Bible is a book drafted by the Spirit, and comprises the doctrine given by the Spirit. Put succinctly, man should not step in and fiddle with it. What counts systematically is a totally different vision of the language and words of the Bible. For Calvin biblical anthropomorphism and analogies are not what they are in post-Kantian theology, namely creations of men who, in their speaking about what is more than this world are also connected with this world.69 For him they are creations of and tools in the hand of God. The place of anthropomorphism in this concept therefore results in a positive valuation for rhetorical means employed by God.70 Man must adapt himself to the way and order used by God. Calvin’s argument for a way of thinking that lies within the boundaries of revelation is therefore directly linked with his doctrine of scripture. The message of God enters the understanding of man through Scripture. The Bible contains the ‘oracles of God’,71 the ‘instruction from heaven’.72 These descriptions begin to

68 See for instance Q. Breen, John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism, Chicago 1931, Bouwsma, John Calvin, 113–127. See also R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 140– 158. 69 See for instance S. McFague, Models of God, 29–57. 70 In recent years quite a bit has been written on the significance of rhetoric for Calvin’s context and theology. See W.J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 14, 113–114.Seealso S. Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety, Louisville 1995. See particularly the study already mentioned, O. Millet, Calvin et la Dynamique de la Parole. Étude de Rhétorique réformée, Genève 1992. 71 Inst. 1.6.2: ‘oracula Dei’. 72 Inst. 1.6.3: ‘caelestis doctrina’. 56 chapter two define revelation: revelation is not exclusively, but certainly also the making known of truths; it has a propositional content. Therefore, according to Calvin, the church has repeatedly gone down the wrong path when people obstinately sought to add something to the content of revelation. Calvin’s criticism of the many ceremonies and institutions of the Roman Church as innovations with regard to doctrine given by God, and his deathbed entreaty to change nothing both arise from this. The desired purity can only be achieved if everyone carefully holds to what God Himself has said in Scripture.73 What is the place of man in this concept? What role remains for him? On the basis of the above, one can conclude that man is the one who receives, pays careful attention and listens. The relation is that of teacher and pupil. Calvin seeks to engender in man a concentration on what God shows, says and offers to him. The roles are fixed. The role of human subjectivity in the understanding of divine teaching is not a subject for further reflection. It goes without saying that this is very different from the manner in which Barth’s theology develops the role of man as the answering subject. The Kantian turn toward the subject is reflected in a much more individual and independent activity by man. With Calvin there is less room for man as a creative, answering being. The emphasis lies entirely with God. God has accommodated himself to our limited measure, and reveals his will to our salvation in a form adapted to our understanding. The church deals carefully with the knowledge which is given it when it immures itself on two sides, against ignorance, and against speculation. Truth is therefore an approach to the truth supplied by God, an approach made under the guidance and direction of God; and knowledge of God is therefore the via media between these two extremes. On the one hand men must guard against lagging behind the knowledge they are given, and on the other side they must not run out ahead of it.74 It goes without saying that Calvin affords few opportunities for the human capacity for invention and imagination with respect to the teachings of God. When it comes to divine revelation, it is other virtues that count. Let me emphasise once again: in saying this, I am in no way denying that many points in Calvin’s writings reveal rhetorical skill,

73 See the example of Ahaz in Inst. 4.10.23. See IIKings 16. 74 For an interpretation of Calvin’s theology with the aid of limit theory, see F.L. Bat- tles, Calculus Fidei—Some Ruminations on the Structure of Calvin’s Theology, Grand Rapids 1978. ways of knowing 57 creative power and imagination. I am only saying that on theological grounds one should expect no place for invention, imagination and literary ﬁction in the theological concept. This has not been without its consequences for ﬁction and literature within the Calvinistic tradition.75

2.2.4. The metaphor of the mirror: knowledge as imitation From whence does mankind obtain knowledge regarding God’s salvation?Inaworldinwhichthechurchisnolongerthedispenserofsal- vation, but its role is reduced to a service in which man comes before the face of God without human mediation, the question of how the subject is able to take part in this salvation becomes all the more pressing. According to G.P. Hartvelt, the deepest intention of the Reforma- tion can be understood as the ‘recovery of the subject’.76 According to him, the history of both Lutheranism and Calvinism is a great extent defined by the dynamic of this question. According to the usual interpretation the core of Lutheran theology is the preaching, or in terms of content, the justification of sinners, and election takes second place to this. In Calvinist tradition the emphasis, in terms of content, was reversed. There too the promises of the gospel were proclaimed in the preaching, but this salvation was explicitly anchored in the Counsel of God. To again cite Hartvelt, ‘there is nothing more solid than the Counsel of God—but nothing more distant, either’.77 This characterisation is given particularly with an eye to the development of Calvin- istic thought in the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and can indeed be said to be characteristic of the image we have of Calvin himself and the questions addressed to him. When Barth suggests that Calvin’s image of Christ as the mirror of election has hardly any effect on Calvin’s theology and has only a pastoral intention,78 he is moving in the same line. Should we not take seriously the idea of the mirror as the place where knowledge of God is obtained, because the locus of the decision is the Counsel of God? Is that justified? In this section I will argue that the metaphor of the mirror is a structural part of Calvin’s theological epistemology, and therefore must be taken more

75 For example, with regard to Agrippa d’Aubigné, see C. Randall Coats, Subverting the System. D’Aubigné and Calvinism, Kirksville (MO) 1990, 1–24. 76 G.P. Hartvelt, Symboliek. Een beschrijving van kernen van christelijk belijden,Kampen 1991, 129. 77 Hartvelt, Symboliek, 132. 78 KD II/2, 68;ET,64. 58 chapter two seriously theologically than it has generally been. It stands for the indirect means to which God commits himself toward man. As a theological concept, the Counsel of God only becomes a relativisation of and threat to the revelation which is given if it is forgotten that God has committed Himself to man by means of the mirrors in which he permits Himself to be known. The whole of created reality, in all its facets, is a tool in the hands of God by which He makes himself known to man—or better, an invitation to enter into community with God. The word ‘facet’ is used here deliberately; it connects with another metaphor which surfaces frequently in Calvin’s writings. To describe the forms of divine accommodation Calvin uses the metaphor of the mirror. The metaphor is definitely not unique to Calvin; it has a long and rich history in epistemology, in optics and in literature. Since antiquity the natural phenomenon of the reflection of an object on the surface of water and the mirror as a utensil have provided a paradigm for understanding what knowledge is and how it comes to be.79 In the neo-Platonic and Augustinian tradition the nature of knowledge is understood primarily in terms of light and sight. Knowledge comes into being because an external object through its effect represents itself to the knowing subject.80 The criterion in both aesthetics and the artes was that trustworthy knowledge and art were an imitation of reality. In pre-modern times knowledge was a form of repetition or imitation of the given. The metaphor of the mirror is closely connected with imitation (imitatio) as an epistemological principle. Just as the steam engine had a paradigmatic function in the culture of the 18th and 19th century, and the computer at the end of the 20th,themir- ror and its optical potential afforded the 16th century the possibility of visualising what knowledge was and how it arose. In Calvin we find the metaphor in connection with knowledge of God. What the use of this fundamental metaphor implies for Calvin’s doctrine of revelation will be summed up in several points in the paragraphs which follow.

79 H. Leisegang, ‘Die Erkenntnis Gottes im Spiegel der Seele und der Natur,’ Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 4 (1949), 161–183. 80 For a brief survey of optics in the Middle Ages—or as it was then known, per- spectiva—see D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science. The European Scientiﬁc Tra- dition in Philosophical, Religious and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago 1992, 307–315. For Roger Bacon’s inﬂuential theory of representation, see particularly K.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Founda- tions of Semantics, 1250–1345,Leiden1988, 3–26. ways of knowing 59

First and foremost, the metaphor allows us to visualise that God permits himself to be known by indirect means. God makes his will known with the aid of a selection of means in creation, in which he makes his own qualities visible, as though in a mirror.

Second, that the various mirrors are places where God becomes perceptible in his works is something that rests on God’s order. The concept of ordo refers back to that which is the subject of the place and quality of the created thing, namely God. From their inception, the means of God’s revelation have never been neutral in any sense.

Third, the metaphor makes it clear that the image that is visible is there because of God, and is not the result of human thought. The image in a mirror is not the result of mental activity in man himself, or which he has arrived at by way of an abstract process. God himself sees to it that something of himself and his works is visible in these mirrors, and presses himself upon man in his ineluctable majesty. For Calvin the stress lies upon direct experience, the realisation of God’s presence in the mirrors He has set up, and less on a process of abstraction through which man comes to a conclusion about God’s activity. Perhaps, from a theological-historical perspective, one might say that in this regard there is a formal similarity between Calvin’s concept of knowledge of God and what in late medieval philosophy was termed cognitio intuitiva, as distinguished from cognitio abstractiva.81 As will be seen in the remain-

81 For the concept cognitio intuitiva, see among others W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England, Princeton 1987, 206–208;K.H.Tachau,Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham, 55–84, 113–153 and T.F. Torrance, ‘Knowledge of God and Speech about him according to John Calvin’, included in: idem, Theology in Reconstruction, Grand Rapids 1965, 76–98.Thetermcognitio intuitiva was originated by Duns Scotus in contradistinction to cognitio abstractiva, in order to resolve a number of problems for which perspectivism had no solution. It is assumed in Roger Bacon’s theory that the knowing subject obtains knowledge of an object because the object itself produces ﬁgures or forms of itself (species) in the space surrounding it, conceived of as transparent and mediating material. Through endless multiplication the form is imprinted on the outward senses, becoming visible on the retina. From here the forms are then assimilated by the various inward senses and noetic faculties. The diﬃculty with this theory was that the knowing subject had not been confronted with the substance of the object itself, but only with its accidental qualities. This being the case, it becomes impossible to distinguish between the forms that actually go back to an object and those which are purely hallucination or imagination. With the concept of a cognitio intuitiva, Duns Scotus asserts that there are actually countless moments in which we are directly certain of the existence of the known object. The statement ‘I see a tree’ does not mean that on the basis of the shapes and colours that I see, I 60 chapter two der of this chapter, knowledge of God is less a matter of abstraction and demonstration, and more a consequence of immediate impressions, a direct realisation of God’s presence, which is not gained through an interjacent process of reasoning.

Fourth, for Calvin the metaphor serves to make it clear that the image that appears in the mirror is always of less quality, less pure than the object itself. With regard to this, we must remember that in Calvin’s time they did not yet know the smooth glass mirror we have today.82 Mirrors were then of hammered metal, and depending on the smooth- ness of the surface achieved, the image was unclear or vague. Never- theless Calvin holds fast to the trustworthiness of the mirror image. In his exegesis of ICorinthians 13:12 he suggests that the mirror lacks only the precision that characterises direct sight.83 The angels do not need the aid of mirrors; for them God is already openly present. Mortals have not yet risen to that height in this life. In comparison with the conclude that these could indicate something like a tree. I am immediately certain that there is a tree there. This cognitio intuitiva involves both the receptive capacities of the soul as well as the intellectual faculties. Cognitio intuitiva is thus knowledge that is caused by an immediately present object. It affords immediate certainty of the existence of the object. With cognitio abstractiva, on the other hand, one is speaking of a process which abstracts from the factual existence of an object. This knowledge is derived from other objects. According to Torrance, it is this concept of a cognitio intuitiva,inaversion reinterpreted by John Major, that is the foundation of Calvin’s concept of knowledge of God. Knowledge of God is not obtained through abstraction, as Aquinas maintained following Aristotle, nor does it come about because God grants man some form of cognitio abstractiva during his pilgrimage on earth, which coincides with the revealed truths established in Scripture and tradition, as argued by Ockham, but it arises from the intention and influence of God, who is personally present through his Spirit (see Torrance, particularly 84–86). Torrance demonstrates that there is at least a formal similarity with Duns Scotus and John Major at important points. However, evidence is not forthcoming for his confident assertion that Calvin was directly dependent on Major and Scotus. 82 The technique of making glass mirrors was known in antiquity, but lost until it was rediscovered at the end of the 12th century. Only in the course of the 16th century was the glass mirror imported into Western Europe from Venice. It steadily gained popularity as a mass product. One can assume that Calvin was primarily familiar with mirrors of cut or polished material. See H. Grabes, The mutable Glass. Mirror-imagery in titles and texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance, Cambridge 1982, 72ff. 83 Comm. on ICor. 13:12,CO49, 514: ‘Hanc visionem, aenigmaticam hic appellat Paulus: non quia dubia sit aut fallax, sed quia minus conspicua est, quam quae olim extremo die constabit … Quare sic habendum est, notitiam Dei, quam nunc ex Verbo habemus, certam quidem esse et veracem, nihil in ea confusum aut perplexum aut tenebricosum: sed comparative aenigmaticam nominari, quia procul abest ab illa perspicua manifestatione quam exspectamus: quia tunc videbimus facie ad faciem.’ ways of knowing 61 state of angels, our knowledge is less clear. Calvin emphatically disputes the idea that what appears in a mirror is dubious or deceptive. Only in comparison with the knowledge that will come in the perfection of seeing face to face can it be said that the image with which the pilgrim must make do in this state is dark. The comparison of knowledge of God with a mirror image must not be conceived in such a way that it is at the cost of the clarity of the Gospel. Calvin disputes that the revelation of God is packaged in other things and must first be distilled from them. The revelation God offers in his word is ‘open and bare.’84

Fifth, for Calvin the metaphor functions within the eschatological structure which characterises all human knowledge of God. There is not one mirror, but many, and all serve to aid the pilgrim on earth in growing in knowledge and conformity with the image of God, not in one moment, but in a successive series of moments.85 The diverse mirrors are God’s aids on the way on earth, the manner in which God brings himself into our ﬁeld of vision and exerts his attraction. They are part of God’s order of salvation, of the intention that He has for man.86

Sixth, the metaphor illuminates the belief in the divine origin of Scrip- ture and the assurance of salvation. Although both topics will be discussed again later in this chapter, an explicit reference is now already in order: while the mirror and the image that appears in the mirror can be distinguished logically, in fact both are directly linked with one another. Scripture is called the mirror in which Christ comes to us.87 One cannot see the image that appears in the mirror without looking at the mirror. One does not see the mirror ﬁrst, and after that the image. In the act of seeing, both moments coincide. It therefore does no justice to Calvin’s theological epistemology to make a separation between formal and material belief in scripture.

84 Comm. ICor. 13:12,CO49, 514–515: ‘… aperta et nuda Dei revelatio in Verbo (quantum nobis expedit), nec quicquam habet involutum (qualiter ﬁngunt impii …)’ 85 Comm. IICor. 3:18,CO50, 47: ‘… continuo successu …’ 86 If there is anywhere that there is a possibility of placing Calvin against the background of the theology of the late Middle Ages, then it is at this point, of an express ordo salutis. Despite all attempts to make direct connections and indicate sources, one can apparently not get beyond a number of analogies. For a survey see H.A. Oberman, ‘Initia Calvini. The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation’, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994, 117–127 on ‘The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit’. 87 Inst. 3.2.6. See also Comm. IICor. 3:18,CO50, 47. 62 chapter two

In short, the metaphor of the mirror provides the key to enter into Calvin’s concept of the knowledge of God. In order to learn to know God and his salvific intent, man must look into the mirrors that are held up before him by God himself. God engages man through the mirrors He himself appoints for man’s knowledge of God and his salvation, and forbids man to obtain insight outside of these mirrors. This draws a line on both sides for knowing and thinking. The one limit is that man must not neglect the knowledge of God that is given, the other is that the knowledge of God that is given must not be a reason for continuing to ask questions out of curiosity. Transgressing this latter line leads to speculation. Theology moves between these two lines. We will return to this point again. What are these mirrors? In a brief compass we will summarise them here, in order to elaborate them in the following sections. The first form of accommodation or mirror is found in the creation of heaven and earth. God invites man to knowledge of him. To that end he places the structure of heaven and earth before our eyes, thereby making himself visible in a certain manner.88 The cosmos can therefore, with Psalm 104, be called the garment of God, or the mirror in which he made himself visible.89 But, second, Calvin says that man himself, with his faculties, is a mirror in which God’s image appears.90 Through the coming of sin, however, this mirror is not longer adequate for arriving at a sufficient knowledge of God. The third mirror, the Bible, assumes that role. The Bible too is a consequence of divine accommodation, a mirror, in which faith can behold God.91 Or better, to use another optical image, the Bible is the spectacles through which God’s revelation in creation becomes visible again.92 In this sense, the Bible fulfils an integrating function. The fourth and highest form of accommodation is the incarnation, an idea which Calvin takes over directly from Irenaeus: ‘The Father, who is boundless in himself, is bounded in the Son, because he has accommodated himself to our capacity, lest our minds be swal-

88 See his Argumentum in Genesin,CO23, 7: ‘Haec ratio est, cur Dominus, ut nos ad sui notitiam invitet, proponat nobis ante oculos coeli terraeque fabricam, et in ea se quodammodo conspicuum reddat. Nam aeterna quoque eius divinitas et potentia (ut inquit Paulus) illic relucent.’ 89 Comm. Ps. 104:4,CO32, 86. 90 Inst. 1.15.4. 91 See, for instance, Inst. 3.2.6;seealsoCO31, 16. 92 Inst. 1.6.1;Inst.1.14.1.SeealsoArgumentum in Genesin,CO23, 9. ways of knowing 63 lowed up by the immensity of his glory.’93 Finally, the sacraments are also among the mirrors. They are the apex of what Calvin terms the outward means through which God comes to the aid of those who still ﬁnd themselves on earth. It is true for all of the forms of accommodation or mirrors listed that they must be understood as means through which God, through the Spirit, invites mankind to come to himself. The goal is that man be enticed into entering into communion with God. Calvin’s vision of the events of revelation is located within a very broad and dynamic view of the work of the Holy Spirit. At its deepest, knowledge of God is possible because God, through his Spirit, becomes present in his creation in all sorts of diverse ways, and brings man into a vital community with Christ. This will be developed further in what follows. First, we will discuss the forms of accommodation that we might characterise as God’s manifestations in the inward life of man. Then we will turn our attention to revelation in creation and the cosmos. These manifestations of God are likewise insuﬃcient to bring man to real knowledge of God. To state it roughly here already: man needs the spectacles of Scripture to arrive at a saving knowledge of God. Ultimately that is still too little, too formally put. Men need the guidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit in order to really discover what is really important and to be led to a mirror where God is really to be seen, namely in the face of Christ. Fellowship with God is reached through faith, in the interaction of Word and Spirit. This chapter will then conclude with a discussion of Calvin’s concept of faith, his view on the assurance of faith and a provisional exploration of the boundaries of knowledge of God.

2.3. Inward revelation

2.3.1. The soul as bridgehead: mental capacities In every age, and for every person there are certain unquestioned verities. Such certainties do not have to coincide with those things which are subconsciously accepted; they can even be contested in their own time and still belong to what is accepted as entirely self-evident by

93 Inst. 2.6.4. 64 chapter two some people or some groups because there is also a range of good reasons which can be adduced for them. For the persons themselves they are not a point of discussion. In reading Calvin it is striking how frequently the expression extra controversiam appears. Certain views or convictions are beyond dispute. As is often the case, these verities are not to be traced back to one origin or source. Bouwsma has characterised the early-modern culture in which Calvin lived as a culture in which, in general, two impulses were at work, namely those of the Stoa and of Augustinianism.94 Each of these is a set of convictions which are nowhere to be found in a pure form, and that sometimes have become inextricably intertwined with the content of Christian belief. One of these convictions, which Calvin passionately defended and which cannot be traced back to any one single source, is the immortality of the soul. For him, this doctrine not only has the negative effect of being an antidote for religious and moral indifference, but also has a positive side, namely lasting community with Christ. In this section I will therefore discuss the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as something which has great significance for epistemology.95 For Calvin epistemology lies embedded in classical metaphysics, where the human soul forms the link between the visible world and the divine world. In contrast to the independence of human knowing in Kant, this epistemology is still wrapped within an all-inclusive vision of the relationships of God, man and the world. The existence of a number of human mental capacities which in their marvellous power point to a connection and relationship with that which is above the world perceived by the senses, with God, is still something which is beyond question. Calvin is firmly convinced that man comprises a duality-in-unity of soul and body, in which the soul must be qualified as the nobler part.96 The soul is the immortal and higher element in man. In contemporary terms, the soul guarantees the mystery of the identity of the human person.97 It is, so to speak, the bridgehead to the higher created world

94 Regarding the different impulses of Stoicism and Augustinianism in early-modern Europe, see W.J. Bouwsma, ‘The Two Faces of Humanism’ in: idem, AUsablePast. Essays in European Cultural History,LosAngeles1990, 19–73. 95 Regarding this see E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Bd.I,Darmstadt1991 (=19213), 89. 96 Inst. 1.15.2: ‘Porro hominem constare anima et corpore, extra controversiam esse debet; atque animae nomine essentiam immortalem, creatam tamen intelligo, quae nobilior pars est.’ 97 For a contemporary analysis of the mystery of the human person, see R. van Woudenberg, Het mysterie van de identiteit. Een analytisch-wijsgerige studie, Nijmegen 2000. ways of knowing 65 of the angels, where immortality reigns. The anthropological dualism which we find in Calvin is of immediate importance for epistemology. Man, as he literally says, is formed from the dust of the earth, and that is immediately a curb on man’s pride. Through its physicality, that which is created has a humble place in the order of created things.98 By virtue of their possessing a soul, however, all people also belong to the world of immortality, in which the angels likewise have a share. After all, the angels were also created, but thanks to their immortality stand closer to God. Calvin refers to words from Matt. 22:30: ‘For in the resurrection they [men] are like angels in heaven’. This does not mean that corporeality and physicality are in themselves to be disdained. In that respect we cannot simply identify Calvin’s view with a neo-Platonic devaluation of the material as such. The body is also created by God. There are numerous passages to be found in Calvin’s writings that reveal that he knew from personal experience the joys of life as a created being and of physical pleasure. Even more strongly, as we will elaborate in Chapter 3, material reality is a daily evidence of God’s continuing goodness. But nevertheless physicality occupies a low position in the hierarchy of being. It belongs to the things which are perishable. The soul or spirit—Calvin uses the two terms interchangeably—is the created, immortal part. With this position Calvin draws a line separating himself from two views which had considerable following in the late Middle Ages. In the conflict with Servetus, among other points, Calvin encountered the view that the soul must be considered as an emanation from the divine Spirit.99 As might be expected, Calvin sharply opposed this idea, apparently arising in French and Italian rationalism. The distinction between God Himself and the human soul must not be blurred. The human soul or spirit is a result of God’s creative action, and not an outpouring of divinity. The soul is an incorporeal substance of its own sort, an entity of its own.100 The same rejection is dealt to the idea, labelled Epicurean,

98 Inst. 1.15.1. 99 Inst. 1.15.5: ‘Quod dicitur inspirasse Deus in faciem hominis spiraculum vitae, putarunt animam traducem esse substantiae Dei, quasi aliqua immensae divinitatis portio in hominem ﬂuxisset.’ For Calvin’s attitude toward the thinking regarding the soul in spiritualistic circles, see G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, Kirksville (MO), 19923, 899–904. The idea of a world-soul appears to have its roots in the Averroism of Siger of Brabant, and through the Italian Platonism of Pomponazzi to have gained inﬂuence in free, non-conformist groups. 100 Inst. 1.15.5: ‘Creatio autem non transfusio est, sed essentiae ex nihilo exordium.’ 66 chapter two that the soul is mortal in nature, because its form is linked to the material, in this case to the body. According to this idea which achieved popularity in the Aristotelian climate of Averroism, with the death of the body the soul dissolves again in the general world-soul.101 In his text Psychopannuchia Calvin passionately opposed this idea, which had found a home in Anabaptist circles.102 While the soul may be created, it is an immortal element. In this text it becomes crystal clear why Calvin is so attached to this doctrine. The ultimate salvation in the consummation is at stake. If the soul dies with the body, community with Christ is broken. It is of eternal importance that the pilgrim on earth has already entered into the Kingdom of God, shares in the community with God which lasts for eternity, even if that Kingdom has not yet been perfected. From the fact that the Kingdom is not yet in its perfected form one may not conclude that there is no Kingdom.103

101 In De scandalis, OS II, 201 Calvin names Agrippa, Villanovanus (alias Servetus) and Dolet. See among others G.H. Williams, The Radical Reformation, 900–901 and S. Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory. Nature and Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin, Durham 1991, 20. For this idea of monopsychism, reminiscent of the radical Averroism of Siger of Brabant, see D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 234–236. 102 CO 5, 177–232. The subjects of the immortality of the soul and the situation between death and the consummation are central in the Psychopannuchia,afirstversion of which had been written as early as 1534 but which was only published in 1542,as matters of the first order. The existential importance of this theme must be said to be directly linked with the heart of Christian faith, fellowship with Christ. If the soul would sleep or perish in death, fellowship with Christ would be broken, or at least interrupted. That was in complete conflict with Calvin’s conviction that in faith and through the sacraments man, with regard to his soul, was now already together with Christ, and that this fellowship could not be broken by anything or anyone. Although it cannot be said of the dead that they are already delivered, they can nevertheless be called blessed. Thus the situation between death and the general resurrection is characterised by the eschatological perspective, through the ‘not yet’. This looking forward however takes place in a situation of rest and bliss with God, and the seeing of things that during their life on earth the faithful only foresaw in hope. ‘Cur enim nondum salvati dicuntur aut regnum possidere, qui in domino mortui sunt? Quia exspectant, quod nondum habent, nec finem suae felicitatis attigerunt. Cur nihilominus beati sunt? Quia et deum agnoscunt sibi propitium et futuram mercedem eminus vident et in certa expectatione beatae resurrectionis acquiscunt. Quamdiu certe habitamus in hoc carcere luteo, speramus quae non videmus et preater spem credimus in spem, quod ait apostolus de Abraham (Rom. 4:18). Ubi autem oculi mentis nostrae, qui nunc sepulti in hac carne hebetes sunt, absterserint hanc velut lippitudinem, videbimus quae exspectabamus et in ea requie delectabimur.’ Quoted from the edition of W. Zimmerli, Psychopannychia. Quellenschriften zur Geschichte des Protestantismus 13,Leipzig1932, 81. 103 CO 5, 212: ‘non ideo nunc nullum esse regnum, quia nondum perfectum est’. See also C. van der Kooi, ‘De spanning van het “reeds” en “nog niet” bij Calvijn, Kuyper en Berkouwer’ in: M.E. Brinkman (ed.), 100 jaar theologie. Aspecten van een eeuw theologie in de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (1892–1992),Kampen1992, 257–259. ways of knowing 67

The soul is the sustaining element of all human faculties, and thus the bearer of knowledge. What, however, are these faculties? Calvin exhibits a remarkable reticence toward making an all too specific and distinct breakdown. With him we find no extensive discussion of the relation of the various faculties of the soul. The discussion of the problem occurs in the context of soteriology, and thus has more to do with the freedom—or absence thereof—of man to make use of his capacities, than with the question of what man might be capable of in an ideal state. With this qualification, however, one can nevertheless determine that the most important faculties are those of understanding and will. Calvin refuses to consider an original opposition or tension between higher and lower capacities of the soul before the fall. The conflict that takes place within man is a consequence of sin.104 If the fall had not occurred, will and understanding would have been perfectly attuned. The inner economy of understanding, will and feelings would have been an harmonious unity, such as Calvin attempts to derive from the example of Christ. Understanding steers and gives direction to the mental faculties. It helps make the distinction between good and evil, between justice and injustice. Will however is the capacity with which in fact a choice is made. Every other capacity that is found in man is resolved into these two faculties. It is not unusual to find that, because Calvin speaks of the intellect as the leading part, the conclusion is drawn that he takes an intellectualistic standpoint in his vision of humanity. That understanding is the leading part implies anything but that understanding is determinative. It is leading only in the sense that it comes first. According to Calvin, however, the real decisions are made by the will. That would argue for a more voluntaristic position.105 This last tallies with the observation that, as we will soon see, for Calvin understanding, cognitio, includes more than only intellectual categories.

104 Inst. 1.15.6–7. 105 See Inst. 1.15.7: ‘… quasi animae ducem et gubernatorem’. Cf. Bouwsma, John Calvin, 101, who is of the opinion that Calvin’s vision of man is intellectualistic. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 162, points out that intellectualism and voluntarism are wrongly identified with a particular human type. Intellectualism is then associated with the inclination to want to reason everything out, voluntarism with the inclination to focus entirely on free will. In a theological-historical perspective, both qualifications describe the relation of God and man in eschatological perfection. If bliss can be characterised as a visio beatifica, and is thus a form of seeing, we can speak of intellectualism. If in the consummation the soul devotes itself to God as the highest good, then we can speak of voluntarism. In this case God is the summum bonum or summum volendum. 68 chapter two

Calvin classifies all forms of perception, sensus, both inward and outward, under understanding, and desire under the will, although he also says he has no objection to others who arrive at three basic capacities, namely the senses, understanding and desire.106 We find the word sensus used by Calvin to denote the five senses, and in the phrase sensus communis, which has not yet taken on the later meaning of sound human understanding (‘common sense’).107 Here sensus communis denotes the ground for the whole field of inward and external perception. What is received in perception is subsequently subject to processing by the cognitive faculties in three steps.108 He further names phantasia as the faculty that makes the first distinction, after which follows reason, ratio,which renders a general judgement, and finally mens, mind, through which a more refined and differentiated judgement comes into being. Parallel with the three cognitive faculties of phantasia, ratio and mens,thereare three corresponding capacities in there will. Will strives to obtain that on which can produce judgement and feeling. Choler, vis irascendi,draws to itself that which is supplied by the first faculty of discrimination and reason,; then there is desire, vis concupiscendi, which takes to itself what is offered by perception and phantasia. The degree of caution with which Calvin presents this further distinction of mental capacities is striking. Understanding and will are not separated from one another. They are not faculties which each lead a life apart from the other. Both belong to the equipment of human reason. Anthropologically, what is most important for him that in the soul man possesses an immortal, incorporeal element which is still involved with the body, through which he as such is connected with God as the source of life. In short, the faculties of the soul proclaim aloud that ‘something divine is engraven upon’ man.109 The soul, as integral for the mental faculties of the human person, is therefore not linked with the five senses. One can sense Calvin’s admiration for the fact that the reach of human mental capacities far exceeds the range of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. The soul

106 Inst. 1.15.6. For the whole see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 165–166,who points out that Calvin, despite his refusal to participate in the debate between Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus regarding the designations intellectus appetitivus or appetitus rationalis, appears to opt for the Scotian position. 107 See H.G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tübingen 19754, 22. 108 For the origin of this triple division, Barth and Niesel refer to the commentary by Themistius on Aristotle’s De Anima. See Schreiner, The Theatre of God’s Glory, 141. 109 Inst. 1.15.2: ‘divinum aliquid insculptum ei esse.’ ways of knowing 69 transcends the limitations of place and time, to which the senses are connected. For example, it possesses the capacity to gauge and bridge distance in the mind, and memory is able to link past and present. In short, in contrast to the Aristotelian tradition, where the independence of the soul is simply not conceivable, on this point Calvin stands in the Platonist current of thought, where the independent soul is the foundation of thinking and knowing. The independence of the soul can especially be seen in the phenomenon of the dream. While the body shows no sign of activity during sleep, the mind can be highly active, and even be elsewhere. The fact that man can form a concept of angels and of the invisible God points to a capacity that cannot be ascribed to the senses.110 Thus, as an independent substance the soul or spirit is not to be identiﬁed with God, but in relation to the body is indeed to be labelled as ‘something divine’.111 At the same time that says something about its value and destiny. Calvin exhibits no hesitation at all on this point. The senses of honour and shame are a tangible proof for everyone that man is born to lead a just and honourable life. The concept is already founded in the soul of what the really satisfying life for man is, namely life lived in relation to God. These are things which are absque controversia, beyond discussion. In its original and undamaged state the soul strove for these higher things. Even in the situation where the soul sits imprisoned in the web of a life turned away from God, good remnants of this original orientation still exist.112 This conviction that is so essential for the early Renaissance echoes powerfully through Calvin’s theology too. The soul is of cosmic significance and the orientation of its life is deﬁnitive for human worth.113

110 Inst. 1.15.2. 111 Inst. 1.15.2. 112 Inst. 1.15.6: ‘Unde enim tanta famae cura hominibus, nisi ex pudore? unde autem pudor, nisi ex honesti respectu? cuius principium et causa est, quod se ad colendam iustitiam natos esse intelligunt: in quo inclusum est religionis semen. Sicut autem absque controversia ad caelestis vitae meditationem conditus fuit homo, ita eius notitiam animae fuisse insculptam certum est. Et sane praecipuo intelligentiae usus careret homo si sua eum lateret foelicitas: cuius perfectio est cum Deo coniunctum esse.’ 113 See Ch. Trinkaus, ‘Renaissance Idea of Man’s Dignity’ in: Idem, The Scope of Renaissance Humanism,AnnArbor(MI)1983, 345.Idem,In Our Image and Likeness. Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought,London1970, 171–321 and 459–551. With Florentine Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Pietro Pomponazzi human dignity is complementary with the factual misery of the human condition. 70 chapter two

Calvin may then be known for his negative image of man,114 but one also ﬁnds passages sounding forth the praises of human possibilities. M.P. Engel explains this contradiction on the basis of the changing perspectives of Calvin’ss theology.115 If it is forgotten who the Giver is of man’s superb potential, then there is reason to speak of the immense frailty or fragility of human existence. If the divine origin of humanity is indeed acknowledged, then there is every reason to challenge the disparagement of human potential.116 Precisely because man through his terrestrial existence participates in both the visible and the unseen world, he can be highly regarded in comparison with other created beings. In terms of his original nature, man was a being who strove upward, and theology must not deny the traces of this dynamic and excellence. Calvin appeals to the fact that, in a cultural perspective, his view is anything but isolated. He points out that what he writes about the soul is also eloquently said by profane writers.117 In his eyes, that increases its plausibility. In other words, according to Calvin the existence of an independent, immortal soul is a truth that is also upheld by non-Christian thinkers. Insights from non-Christian sources and data derived from Scripture form a perfect unity. In summary, the inward faculties of thought, will and feeling are explained by Calvin through the concept of an independent, created, but immortal soul.

2.3.2. Sensus divinitatis The above can serve as background for the two faculties of inward perception that play a role in knowledge of God coming into being, to wit the sensus divinitatis and the sensus conscientiae. What is the sensus divinitatis? It is beyond question, says Calvin, that in the human soul there is ‘a certain realisation present of Divinity, and this through natural inspiration.’ In his theology this is a fundamental anthropological given. It precedes all denial and obfuscation;

114 Inst. 1.13.1. From the majesty of God, man is a worm crawling upon the earth. If God did not elevate the human soul toward those heights, the spirit in its slowness would continue to hang back on earth. 115 For the significance of perspective in Calvin’s theology, see M.P. Engel, John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology, Atlanta 1988. 116 Calvin’s Comm. on Is. 2:22 affords a good example of this dual perspective, CO 36, 77–78. 117 Inst. 1.15.2. ways of knowing 71 it possesses a facticity that God Himself has deposited in man. The importance assumed by the subjectivity of God in the description of this faculty is significant. God, we are told, has ‘engraved [this realisation] in the heart of man’. It is not something which can wear away; it is constantly renewed. In images that relate to a most strongly dynamic view of God’s work (see Chapter 3), we are told that God ‘constantly renews’ the memory of the Godhead, and ‘constantly sends down new droplets of it on him’.118 Calvin borrows from Cicero’s De natura deorum the conviction that this sense of the Godhead is to be found in every nation and tribe, however civilised or uncivilised they may be. Mankind has thus never been without the realisation of God’s presence. Knowl- edge of God’s existence on the basis of this sensus divinitatis is not the result of a conclusion which men arrive at after a process of argumentation, or the result of the human capacity for abstract thinking. The sensus divinitatis implies a more or less developed capacity to directly perceive God’s majesty inwardly. It is a form of knowing that thrusts itself upon us, which can be repressed, but which man can never shake off for good. In terms of ‘Reformed epistemology’ the sensus divinitatis belongs to the ‘design plan’ of man. The knowledge that results from it is not derived, but is ‘basic’, fundamental. For man, who would prefer to dismiss the very idea of God, it is an uncomfortable sort of sense. Man can never entirely free himself from the effectsofthisfaculty,no matter how deep he sinks. The Emperor Caligula is adduced as an illustration: ‘We do not read of any man who broke out into more unbridled and audacious contempt for the Deity than Gaius Caligula, and yet none showed greater dread when any indication of divine wrath was manifested. Thus, however unwilling, he shook with terror before the God whom he professedly studied to contemn. You may every day see the same thing happening with his modern imitators. The most audacious despiser of God is most easily disturbed, trembling at the sound of a falling leaf.’119 It is impossible to escape from God’s majesty, either in this life, or in the life to come. In his Psychopannuchia Calvin makes it clear to the reader that this is not only a comforting truth, but also one of terror. One

118 Inst. 1.3.1: ‘Quendam inesse humanae menti, et quidem naturali instinctu, divinitatis sensum, extra controversiam ponimus: siquidem, nequis ad ignorantiae praetex- tum confugeret, quandam sui numinis intelligentiam universis Deus ipse indidit, cuius memoria assidue renovans, novas subinde guttas instillat.’ 119 Inst. 1.3.2. 72 chapter two cannot flee God’s presence, not even if one is prepared to throw himself into the deepest abyss.120 Calvin’s theology is thought dominated by the presence of God. Theologically and spiritually it has no room for a theoretical atheism. All men have indeed some knowledge of God.121 Moreover, while the direct realisation of God can be disrupted, it cannot be destroyed by sin. The noetic effect of sin never goes so far that this capacity ceases to stir. ‘They all, indeed, look out for hiding-places where they may conceal themselves from the presence of the Lord, and again efface it from their mind; but after all their efforts they remain caught within the net. Though the conviction may occasionally seem to vanish for a moment, it immediately returns, and rushes in with new impetuosity, so that any relief from the gnawings of conscience is not unlike the slumber of the intoxicated or insane, who have no quiet rest in sleep, but are continually haunted with dire horrific dreams.’122 Sin and rebellion against God thus will not silence this capacity for knowledge. At the same time, Calvin makes it clear that possessing the sensus divinitatis has no positive effect spiritually. The realisation of God comes to life in a field of influence which carries man away from God rather than toward Him. Man lives in an attitude that turns aside from God; his life is ruled by pride and vanity. The blindness toward God goes together with emptiness, vanitas and restiveness, contumacia.The realisation of the Godhead therefore becomes a function of an image of divinity developed by man himself. Calvin is, we can say, well aware of the creativity inherent to human consciousness. However, according to him, this creativity has only negative results. In his imagination sinful man, caught up in himself, cannot rise above his own measure. Once again we encounter the familiar concept of accommodation, but this time as something which is in the hands of man. Accommoda- tion promptly becomes a mechanism preceded with a minus sign. It is now man, alienated from God, who has control of things. He designs an image of God according to the things which he encounters in his own world. In his creativity man ‘manufactures’ idols.123 The attitude

120 Psychopannychia (Zimmerli), 6: ‘Et quemadmodum maiestas dei, quam sit sublimis, verbis explicari non potest, ita nec quam terribilis sit ira iis, quibus incimbit. Vident praesentem dei omnipotentis gravitatem, quam ut effugiant in mille abyssos se demerg- ere parati sunt, effugere tamen non possunt.’ 121 Inst. 1.3.2: ‘aliquem Dei notionem’. 122 Inst. 1.3.2. 123 Inst. 1.4.1: ‘Itaque non apprehendunt qualem se offert, sed qualem pro sua temer- ways of knowing 73 of faith is different. There, so to speak, there is no space between the way God presents Himself and the perception of faith. Pure knowledge of God comes into being because man follows the instructions of God and directs his capacity for knowledge in strict obedience to them. Calvin’s dependence on what Paul wrote to the Romans on the substitution motif is obvious (Rom. 1:23). The worship of the living God has made way for that which is not-God. This is not only a matter of ignorance or pure vanity. It has to do with man’s wanting to reach further than the boundaries which are set for him, and precisely through this, dissatisfied with his human measure, man courts darkness of his own accord.124 The idolater exhausts himself in all sorts of rituals and ceremonies, but precisely in that misses the holiness of life and integrity which are necessary to come before the face of God.125

2.3.3. Sensus conscientiae The second form of inward faculty for perception in Calvin’s concept is the sensus conscientiae.Ofthisfacultytooitmustbesaidthatitis part of the basic equipment of man, and its results present themselves directly. The only response possible for man is to embrace the results, or repress them; the capacity cannot be denied as such. In modern terms we would also thus here use the term ‘basic’. The diﬀerence from the sensus divinitatis is that here it is not the majesty of God with which man is confronted, but in his conscience he is being summoned before God’s court. In conscience, then, man stands before God’s judgement seat. Conscience is a powerful evidence of the immortality of the soul, of the indissoluble bond between man and God.126 Etymologically Calvin derives the meaning of the term conscience from the word scientia, or knowledge: it is the realisation of divine judgement ‘as a witness not permitting them to hide their sins, but bringing them as criminals

itate fabricati sunt, imaginantur’. (‘Hence, they do not conceive of him in the character in which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness has devised.’) See also his Comm. on Rom. 1:22,CO49, 25: ‘Nemo enim fuit, qui non voluerit Dei maiestatem sub captum suum includere, ac talem Deum facere, qualem percipere posset suopte sensu.’ 124 Inst. 1.4.1: ‘… quia sobrietate non contenti, sed plus sibi arrogando quam fas sit, tenebras ultro accersunt …’ 125 Inst. 1.4.4. 126 Inst. 1.15.2. 74 chapter two before the tribunal of the judge’. Literally it is ‘a kind of middle place between God and man, not suffering man to suppress what he knows in himself ’.127 Conscience is not only the formal potential to distinguish between good and evil. It is also the source from which substantive knowledge of good and evil is drawn. It will be clear that in this Calvin’s appeal to conscience differs radically from that in modern times. Calvin’s appeal to conscience is defined by the struggle against what in his eyes was the restraint of conscience by the Roman Church. These were rules and dictates of Pope and tradition which were slipped in between the revealed word of God and man. For him conscience was not a last source of appeal which has authority because it is viewed as being anchored in the integrity of an unique human person. In Calvin there is no place for an appeal to individual conviction and personal conscience in that sense. Appealing to conscience means that there is immediately a given content, namely the will of God, and that this sets the norm for the whole of society. Calvin exhibits no doubt about the clarity of the will of God.128 There is no room for divergent opinions.129 Even as with the sensus divinitatis,herewemustaskabouttheeffect. What are the results of the working of this faculty for perception? Conscience marks the human being as a responsible being, and through that deprives him of every excuse of ignorance before God. Man is convicted by the witness of his own conscience.130 Still, Calvin is more positive about the effects of this capacity than he was about the sensus

127 Inst. 4.10.3. 128 It appears to the conscience as the lex naturalis. This lex naturalis is in turn the foundation for the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commands in turn point forward to the complete unfolding that God’s will received in the obedience and love of Jesus Christ. See I.J. Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, Allison Park (PA) 1992, 68, 101. 129 The collective of society can be corrupted if a pernicious element is tolerated. A rotten spot is a danger to the whole apple and the whole basket. Cf. what Calvin says in a sermon on Deut. 13, with an eye to the cases against Bolsec and Servetus: ‘What sort of mercy is it really to want to spare two or three and subsequently suffer cutting the throat of a whole people? Quite the reverse: if they who are found so lawless are suppressed, no longer allowed the last word, but are destroyed, you see a purified people and healing of society.’ CO 27, 268. Calvin acknowledges that Jesus Christ did not come to establish His kingdom with the sword, but he argues that everyone within his own calling is required to advance that kingdom. CO 27, 247.CF.alsoCO24, 362. The alienation that we feel from Calvin on this point has less to do with the principle that not everything can be tolerated in society, as with the decision about what it is which is intolerable, and the choice of means to accomplish its elimination. 130 Inst. 2.2.22. ways of knowing 75 divinitatis. I will return to this later. For now it is sufficient to establish that the conscience is an irreducible and axiomatic element in the definition of man. No one can escape this appeal. ‘The sinner, when trying to evade the judgement of good and evil implanted in him, is ever and anon dragged forward, and not permitted to wink so effectually as not to be compelled at times, whether he will or not, to open his eyes.’131 Under the influence of this source of knowledge of God man is brought under judgement, because the choice between obedience and disobedience is a matter that is part of true piety. True piety lies within the force field of the choice between obedience and disobedience.

2.4. Manifestations in the external world

2.4.1. Stirring the senses A third and important place where God reveals Himself is the external reality of heaven and earth. Here the outward senses pave the way for knowledge. According to Calvin, contemplating the natural order and wealth with which the created world is endowed automatically forces one to look up to the Maker of all of this. The good things that man descries in himself and through which he is surrounded are not of his own making. Man can follow them, as one follows a stream upwards to seek out its source, and thus arrives at God.132 Calvin frequently describes God as an architect, a craftsman or an artist, whose work unmistakably bears his signature. One would in these cases be able to qualify knowledge of God as a matter of indirect recognition. Within Calvin’s thought there is, as we said before, also an other, more direct and intuitive knowledge possible, which does indeed arise in connection with the senses, but which is not the result of argumentation. Anyone reading Calvin is impressed at the way in which in his experience the presence of God and the sparks of his glory can be perceived by the external senses. The realisation of an ordered cosmos, a heritage from the Stoa, and belief in a free, creating God are fused into an indissoluble unity. Modern readers are however warned: the belief in God the Creator has still by no means eroded into the general

131 Inst. 2.2.22. 132 Inst. 1.1.1. 76 chapter two realisation of ‘something’, a Supreme Being. At no point does this realisation of God become general or vague. All our pores are open, so to speak, and all our senses participate in our encounter with God. God and his acts enter our consciousness not only by hearing. A quote from the introduction to his commentary on the book of Genesis illustrates the sensory nature of our experience of God: ‘With the eyes we see the world, with the feet we walk the earth, with the hands we touch God’s works in uncounted forms, we breathe in the sweet and pleasant odour of grasses and flowers, we enjoy a multitude of good things; but in all these things of which we obtain knowledge, lies an infinity of divine power, goodness, wisdom, an infinity through which all our perceptions are devoured.’133 The citation reveals the immediacy and tangibility with which the presence of God manifests itself, according to Calvin. Smelling, tasting, providing food for the eyes, the tactile sense of skin and feet: it is all as God has willed it. In these ways too God approaches man. This is an element in the image of Calvin which is hardly recognised today, thanks to the overpainting of later generations who were certain that Calvin was all head, and no body. The image of Calvin held by modern Protestantism has no room for this unrestrained enjoyment.134 Indeed, the senses and enjoyment do not stand alone in Calvin. They are in a spiritual force field, but that does not stand in the way of the immediacy and surprise of the experience of God. In modern terms, the meaning of life is astoundingly close at hand: it forces itself on the senses.135 It is literally to be found in experience. With Alston, one could also call this sort of knowledge, which arises in close connection with the senses, indirect mystical experience of God.136 In this context the word ‘mystic’ has nothing to do with a supposed unity between God and man, but is suitable for indicating the intuitive character of the experience. That seems to be in conflict with the term ‘indirect’, but this is only apparent. The experience is indirect because it arises in the contemplation of evidence. At the same time, the perception of evidence is to be distinguished from the experience of God’s presence. That is another word for ‘experimen-

133 Argumentum in Genesin,CO23, 6. 134 See M. Weber, ‘Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus’ Gesam- melte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Tübingen 1922, 183. 135 For the relationship of the senses and the question of meaning, see the fine book by G. Sauter, Was heißt: nach Sinn fragen,München1982. 136 W. P. A l s t o n , Perceiving God. The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Ithaca/ London 1991, 28. ways of knowing 77 tal Christianity’. There is a congruence of evidence and God’s presence in the service of God’s presence. That is the inner dynamic of this congruence. I use the term ‘mystic’ only to indicate that dynamic, by virtue of which God imposes Himself on the senses. The preceding fixes attention on a fundamental given in Calvin’s vision of knowledge in general and knowledge of God in particular. In his thinking and world the connection of the senses with knowledge is still very direct. The senses are in principle direct and trustworthy entries into reality itself, and lead to what one could call experiential knowledge of God’s goodness and care. Only in the course of the development of modernity would the place of sensory perception in the realisation of knowledge become complicated. The way from senses to knowledge became longer because such aids as the microscope and telescope made their appearance, and thus gave shape to the methodological procedure of the experiment. Knowledge became more and more the fruit of a rational operation than the direct fruit of the senses. In the long term that led—not only in continental philosophy, but also in theology—to the drastic decline in the market value of the senses as sources of direct and evidential knowledge. In the course of that development the role of the senses in the acquisition of knowledge of God would also fade in comparison with what we find in Calvin. For him, faith in God the Creator and Maintainer of the world and its order is not just a logical conclusion; it rests also on the recognition of His presence and majesty which forces itself upon man through the senses.

2.4.2. A splendid theatre What we earlier remarked regarding receptivity is now confirmed in another manner: here too in the encounter with the majesty of God in creation, man does not play the role of active subject; the emphasis lies on human receptivity. The external structure of the world is an invitation to the purpose of life, the knowledge of God. It is important to note that it is inconceivable in Calvin’s theology that someone could pass over the exterior world as if it was meaningless. Calvin did not live in the modern climate where nature is experienced as dumb, as user- unfriendly, a labyrinth of phenomena that bit by bit must be mapped out until the whole of reality lies open to the all-seeing rational mind. On the contrary, his reality testified on all sides to a connection with its Creator. In this first panel people were still in a time in which things were considered to have an openness to their Maker, a capacity to obey 78 chapter two

God’s command. In the language of medieval theology, the created world possessed a potentia oboedentialis. In Calvin this openness comes to the fore in terms of the Holy Spirit. The mysterious working of God’s Spirit is the vital ground of being for all that exists. That is all important. The realisation that there is a secret working of God in all things defines his symbolic universe. Reality is the primary handiwork of God. Every element is dependent on Him, a mirror in which the Creator testifies to Himself. Thus, God displays his majesty in the ordering of the world, and man is the spectator. God is not far away. He is indeed exalted, but his majesty is perceptible and nearby. The Spirit is active in the tiniest details. A somewhat longer quote: ‘God has been pleased … so to manifest his perfections in the whole structure of the universe, and daily place himself in our view, that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold him. His essence, indeed, is incomprehensible, utterly transcending all human thought, but on each of his works his glory is engraven in characters so bright, so distinct and so illustrious that none, however dull and illiterate, can plead ignorance as their excuse.’137 The visibility and appearance of God’s activity and goodness are striking elements in this first panel. For more than one reason this pre- modern panel saddles us here with suggestions that we find almost entirely strange, with figurations that we find confrontational at the least. With regard to creation and the natural world, it is not the com- plaint about pain and physical suffering that dominates the image. We might expect something of that sort in a time when physical pain, child mortality and economically straitened circumstances ravaged daily existence in untempered intensity. That is not however the dominant thought. What rather manifests itself in Calvin’s writings is surprise at the wealth of the external world and its essential user-friendliness. Calvin may be known for being severe and austere, but he experienced the natural reality which surrounded him as anything but barren or meagre. Creation is a fine and spacious house, provided and filled with the most exquisite and at the same time copious furnishings.138 The image lies close to another metaphor, namely that of the theatre. Bouwsma points out that the 16th century was not just one of the Golden Ages inside the theatre. It also provided theology and preaching with a wealth of images and metaphors. The world of the theatre

137 Inst. 1.5.1. 138 Inst. 1.14.20. ways of knowing 79 included a range of forms, a ﬁeld of possibilities for picturing man, God and the world.139 In this case the metaphor oﬀers the opportunity for a comparison of the world with a most glittering theatre, into which man is placed as both actor and audience.140 That implies a high esteem for created reality. This cosmos as such is a visible representation of God’s glory. Knowledge of God is in part nourished and constructed via the eyes. These observations prompt us to see a not unimportant nuance in the image that the literature has created with regard to Calvin’s attitude to the visual arts. It is generally acknowledged that Calvin had little use for the visual arts. Personal disinterest may have played a role in this; a more important factor in this connection is the criticism of the use of images and representations in worship that was expressed across the whole breadth of the Reformation.141 Images in the church as ‘books’ for the laity undermined the instruction that God gives primarily through the Word. The language of the second commandment set the tone: ‘Thou shalt not make for yourself any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or is in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them or serve them: for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God …’ (Ex. 20:4–5) In his exposition of these words Calvin makes clear what the intention of the ban on images was. God, in his incorporeality and majesty, is much too exalted for men to be able to represent him in stone or wood. Worship of images shifts the attention to the object and thus dishonours God’s majesty.142 To this extent it is thus true that in Calvin’s theology

139 According to Bouwsma, John Calvin, 177–188, the notion of theatre made it possible to perceive historical changes and mobility, and the peculiar role of man on the stage of history. The general repudiation of the stage and theatre is not yet present in Calvin. He does sharply criticise every form of hypocrisy. Man can play no role opposite God, and cannot make himself up to be what he is not. But that does not prevent dramatic expression from being powerfully present in the manner in which the history of the church and faith is perceived. Creation is a stage, God the director, man both the actors and the audience, life a pilgrimage and heaven the distant fatherland where bliss awaits. 140 See for instance Inst. 1.5.1–2 and Inst. 1.6.2. 141 Philip Benedict, ‘Calvinism as a Culture? Preliminary Remarks on Calvinism and the Visual Arts’ in: Paul Corby Finney (ed.), Seeing beyond the Word. Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition, Grand Rapids (MI) 1999, 19–45. See also in the same collection Daniel W. Hardy, ‘Calvinism and the Visual Arts: A Theological Introduction’, 1–16, 12. Cf. also William A. Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture. The Protestant Imagi- nation from Calvin to Edwards, Cambridge 2004, 62–89. 142 Inst. 1.11.1–2. 80 chapter two too the visual in the church service is suppressed in favour of hearing and the Word. ‘Because faith comes by hearing, the beginning of spiritual life lies here,’ we read in his commentary to Luke 11:28.143 Calvin’s underscoring the commentary of Jesus on the anonymous voice from the crowd in the same passage is typical. ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!’ shouts a woman. When Jesus then answers, ‘Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it,’ according to Calvin that is an indirect reprimand. It is by way of the word that God indeed opens heavenly treasures to us, and this is the way through which life eternal must take root in the heart.144 ‘The key to the kingdom of heaven is the free acceptance, through God, that we receive from his word.’145 To this extent, our view is correct: the source of knowledge of God is the word, and hearing. But that is not the whole story. Anyone who wrenches Calvin’s concentration on the Bible as the Word to which we must listen from its 16th century context and brings it over to our culture, has the inclination to all too quickly bypass the sensory web by which knowledge is fed in Calvin. His high esteem for the Word does not permit us to shut our eyes to the extent to which Christian knowledge is fed by all the senses in his theology, and particularly the large role played by sight. Thus the criticism of the role of the visual arts in worship may not result in a general judgement that the visual plays no role of importance in his theology. Calvin does not reject those sources of revelation that appeal to the visual faculties. Visible signs and wonders conﬁrm that which the ear receives, which must penetrate to the heart.146 The sobriety of the design of the Calvin- ist worship service must not mislead us, living as we do so much later. It must not be misunderstood rationalistically. The point of his criticism of the use of images in the cultus is not that God has nothing to show us. Anything but! The point is that men must not let their eye rest on things other than those which God places before our eyes. God does indeed give us visible signs of his presence, and signs perceptible to the other senses. The problem with the visible arises when man begins to get involved in their design. That is the background of the ban on images. This point of the knowledge of God, the focus on Christ, thus

143 Comm. Luke 11:27,CO45, 349: ‘… fides est ex auditu …’ 144 Comm. Luke 11:27.CO45, 349. See also Comm. Gen. 28:13,CO23, 392. 145 Comm. Luke 11:27,CO45, 349: ‘Clavis enim regni coelorum est gratuita Dei adoptio, quam nos ex verbo concipimus.’ 146 See for example Comm. Gen. 15:4,CO23, 210. ways of knowing 81 does not detract from the fact that Calvin’s theology includes ahigh degree of pictural content. There is a lot to see and experience in the world and its order. There is a richness and a glory in creation, which man can ignore only at the cost of the greatest possible ingratitude. Thus for Calvin there is much to be experienced in the world and its content. This point touches upon a subject that became the exposed nerve in theology in the last century, namely the question of natural theology. What is the place for the appeal to conscience and reference to natural order in theology, and particularly the theology of revelation?InsuchanappealistheworshipofGodinfactexchangedfor the worship of idols, and is there an attempt to replace God’s free grace? There are no tensions in Calvin’s own theology which reflect such questions. He maintains both that the world is God’s creation, and the radicalness of our alienation from God. I would suggest that the charged debate about natural theology in recent theological history reflects questions that occupy theology in a culture marked by modernity. Can the proclamation and theology still appeal to the world as creation? Or, has the influence of a range of factors—the epistemological critique of Kant, the natural sciences, and later historical sciences— so made reality into something that must be understood in terms of laws, energies, particles, human actions and thinking that the notion of a revelation of God in the reality surrounding us has trickled away, and Christian theology has no other choice than to radically begin with special revelation? The question can also be posed in other terms: does man encounter vague traces of God as Creator before knowing him as Redeemer? Or do men in fact know Him only as Redeemer, and after that as Cre- ator? How are these two matters of the knowledge of God related to each other? We are here faced with a fundamental problem in Chris- tian theology, which is not only important for doctrine regarding God, but also for the doctrine of revelation. With Calvin we encounter this problem when he speaks of the knowledge of God as cognitio duplex.God reveals himself as Creator and Redeemer. In response to the debate between Barth and Brunner on the possibility of a natural knowledge of God, an extensive discussion arose in the 20th century with regard to the relationship between these two aspects of the knowledge of God in Calvin.147 The issue in this discussion was what place knowledge of

147 E. Brunner, ‘Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie’, Zwischen den Zeiten 7 (1929), 255– 276, idem, ‘Die Frage nach dem “Anknüpfungspunkt” als Problem der Theologie’, 82 chapter two

God outside of Christ—i.e., knowledge based on nature or history— holds for Calvin. Both sides acknowledge that the idea that man can learn of God from creation, apart from Christ, is problematic. How- ever, the question which is posed for Calvin’s theology in the 20th century is what place this problematic knowledge occupies. Can it serve as a point of departure for the proclamation of Christian belief ? Or does Calvin speak of this knowledge of God so negatively that it is entirely useless theologically? It is obvious to both schools of expositors that in Calvin’s concept knowledge of God as Redeemer is necessary to recognise God’s creative role. Calvin says this clearly: ‘It is certain that after the fall of our first parent, no knowledge of God without a Mediator was effectual to salvation … It would have been useless, were it not followed up by faith, holding forth God to us as a Father in Christ.’148 That however does not remove the ambivalence of Calvin’s view of the creation. On the one side he asserts that God objectively manifests himself in the order of created reality, and on the other denies with even greater force that these manifestations really produce the spiritual fruit for which they were intended. Thus we read that ‘In vain for us, therefore, does Creation exhibit so many bright lamps … but that [men] have no eyes to perceive it until they are enlightened through faith by internal revelation from God.’149 Sin thus has a negative effect on God’s revelation for man. Only because Scripture is added as an aid—or as spectacles—does man again receive sight to see God’s revelation in created reality. Laid out schematically, Word and Spirit are the aids to double knowledge of God, to learning to know God as Cre- ator and Redeemer. True knowledge of God as Creator is not available outside Christ. Certainly Calvin is convinced that creation would have been a sufficient basis to arrive at true knowledge of God ‘had Adam stood upright’.150 It would have been the natural course of events, we understand him to say, for the structure of the world to have served as our school, in which piety would have been taught, so that we might

Zwischen den Zeiten 10 (1932), 505–532 and idem, Natur und Gnade. Zum Gespräch mit Karl Barth, Tübingen 1934.K.Barth,Nein! Antwort an Emil Brunner,München1934.The discussion was continued with some bitterness by G. Gloede, a student of Brunner, Theologia naturalis bei Calvin, Stuttgart 1935 and P. Brunner, student of K. Barth. For an extensive discussion and rejection of E. Brunner and G. Gloede see: W. Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Göttingen 1957, 67–85. 148 Inst. 2.6.1. 149 Inst. 1.5.4. 150 Inst. 1.2.1: ‘… si integer stetisset Adam …’ ways of knowing 83 have subsequently passed from that school directly to eternal life and perfect bliss.151 Under the factual circumstances of a world fallen into sin, however, there is what Calvin terms a conditio irrealis.Intheintro- duction to his commentary on Genesis Calvin makes it clear in an impressive way that Christian knowledge of God does not have its central source in the construction of the world, but in the Gospel, where Christ on the cross is proclaimed to us.152 Notwithstanding all this, one finds in Calvin an appeal to the universal presence of God and the ineradicability of a fundamental realisation of God which is entirely absent from contemporary theology. Is this an inconsistency in Calvin, or is it precisely typical of his thought? What separates Calvin’s pre- modern theology from contemporary theology is that he appeals to an evidence for which the inward faculty now seems to have disappeared. The appeal to God’s evident presence appears to contradict Calvin’s assertion that we ‘will find nothing in the world that draws us to God, until Christ will have instructed us in his school’.153 But these words do not contradict the appeal to evidence of God’s revelation in nature. Where modern, post-Kantian theology experiences an absolute opposition, Calvin did not see one. Precisely in the school of Christ can creation, providence and the hidden work of the Spirit be called upon. In fact the school of Christ includes classes and grades where initially a faint notion of God is given, then a more powerful impression of his majesty and role as judge is imparted, and finally Christ appears as the image of the loving Father as centre and goal of the knowledge of God.154 God’s revelation through the inner capacities of the sensus divinitatis and sensus conscientiae and the outward senses can indeed be repressed, but never entirely eradicated. What can conceptually be described as a continuing field of tension pushes itself to the surface in Calvin’s texts: only someone who himself was strongly impressed by the givenness and irresistibility of God’s presence could write about the world around us as he does. When one reads Calvin’s

151 Inst. 2.6.1.: ‘Erat quidem hic genuinus ordo ut mundi fabrica nobis schola esset ad pietatem discendam: unde ad aeternam vitam et perfectam foelicitatem fieret transitus’. 152 Argumentum in Genesin,CO23, 10: ‘Nam ita innuit, frustra Deum quaeri rerum visibilium ductu: nec vero aliud restare nisi ut recta nos ad Christum conferamus. Non igitur ab elementis mundi huius, sed ab evangelio faciendum exordium, quod unum Christus nobis proponit cum sua cruce, et in eo nos detinet.’ 153 Ibidem, 10. 154 Calvin’s exposition of the conversion of Zachaeus in Luke 19,CO45, 563,offers a fine example: ‘Sic Dominus saepe, priusquam se hominibus manifestet, coecum illis affectum inspirat, quo feruntur ad ipsum adhuc latentem et incognitum.’ 84 chapter two descriptions of the creation and becomes acquainted with his admiration of the ingenious structure of the cosmic order, one does not receive the impression that he was hindered by the conviction that God’s work is obscured by sin. Calvin counts on the ceaseless, universal activity of God through his Spirit. The revelation of God has a teleological structure which certainly finds its completion in the knowledge of Christ, but which is not determined by Christ in all its components. Expressed conceptually, there is indeed a soteriological Chris- tocentrism, but not of a fundamental Christocentrism.155 In Calvin’s Trinitarian concept the work of the Spirit has its own place in the acts of God, which is certainly involved in Christ, but not congruent with Christ. Only in this way, taking into account the separate work and weight of the Spirit, can we understand how Calvin presents knowledge of God the Creator to his audience as something over which the speakers and hearers must be in agreement.156 Men who open their eyes must indeed lift their eyes to the Creator of all of this. The ignorant and the learned alike must admit that the world can not be understood without God. Remarks on the unproductivity of knowledge derived from nature are thus not the only thing that determines Calvin’s thought and concepts. Calvin proceeds from a very differentiated, active presence of God, and this must also have a place in our reconstruction of his thought. It can only be understood if one takes into account that, even in man’s rebellion and estrangement, God continues to invite man and draw him to Himself in very many ways. The fact that men cannot arrive at a true knowledge of God on the basis of their contemplation of the world remains an undiminished source of amazement for Calvin and internalises the tension that is defined by God’s active presence in the creation on one hand, and by sin as an intervening factor and the necessity for the Spirit as a spiritus adoptionis on the other.

155 See R.A. Muller, ‘The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A Response to T.F. Torrance’, Thomist 54 (1990), 685. See also C. Link, ‘Der Horizont der Pneumatologie bei Calvin und Barth’ in: H. Scholl (ed.), Karl Barth und Johannes Calvin. Karl Barths Göttinger Calvin-Vorlesung von 1922,Neukirchen1995, 22–45. 156 Inst. 1.14.21. Calvin’s unnuanced appeal to nature has nothing to do with the fact that ‘something escaped the otherwise so sharp eyes of the Reformers’, as Karl Barth ways of knowing 85

2.4.3. Excursus: the discussion between Dowey and Parker The question regarding the knowledge of God as Creator and the knowledge of God as Redeemer was drawn into the foreground in Calvin studies once again in the 1950s through the previously referred to studies by E.A. Dowey and T.H.L. Parker on knowledge of God in Calvin. At stake in the discussion was the question of how greatly the distinction of the duplex cognitio inﬂuences Calvin’s thinking in its totality, and in particular the structure of the Institutes.Inthe1559 edition the Institutes, which by that time had grown to 80 chapters, was divided into four sections, conforming with the fourfold division of the Apostles’ Creed. In agreement with older observations by J. Köstlin, E.A. Dowey suggested that the cognitio duplex nevertheless should be considered the true principle behind the design of the Institutes.The division into four parts indeed took place, but the distinction which is systematically and epistemologically of importance is the point of view of double knowledge of God.157 Dowey sums up his thesis in the assertion that the duplex cognitio must be considered as a double presupposition. According to Dowey, justice is best done to Calvin’s positive statements regarding the understandability of God’s self-revelation in creation and providence, and alongside them his decisive words on the necessity of learning to know God through the face of Christ, if one considers them as two perspectives which stand next to one another in Calvin in a dialectical duality, which cannot be taken up into one higher synthesis. Parker forcefully rejects this.158 He accuses Dowey of reforging the theme of God’s being as Creator into a general, preparatory chapter, in

remarks in KD II/1, 140;cf.ET,127 but with another, more subordinate place that the concept of nature had in the intellectual climate of the day. 157 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology,NewYork1952, 49.Thus according to Dowey Book I in fact runs through Book II, Chapter 5. On page 46 he writes: ‘All that he says subsequently lies within the vast background he has given of the Trinitarian God, his creation of the universe and of man in a state of perfection and his providential care of that creation. Yet, while this background is a frame of reference and a presupposition of the redemptive revelation—it is not even known apart from the redemptive revelation which Calvin has yet to discuss. Thus from another point of view the redemptive revelation is actually the presupposition of the knowledge of the Creator which in Calvin’s treatment precedes it.’ 158 T. H . L . Pa r k e r, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Grand Rapids 1959, 121: Dowey ‘takes one methodological distinction made in the word and magnifies it into the leading principle to interpret the whole.’ 86 chapter two the sense of a 17th century prolegomena. Through labelling the knowledge that man can gain of God’s being as Creator as insufficient, Dowey would suggest that the effects of the fall to which this knowledge is subject are much too innocuous. According to Parker, in Calvin general ideas of knowledge of God lead only to man not being able to excuse himself before God. What are we to conclude about this debate? Aside from its high quality as Calvin studies, after a half century one must admit that it is chiefly significant for the way that modern dogmatic distinctions and sensitivities were so directly applied by both parties. Parker correctly draws attention to the fact that subject of creation regularly surfaces in Calvin after Book I. It is indeed extreme to split the Institutes into two parts on the basis of the methodological distinction of a duplex cognitio. At the same time, it is highly curious and anachronistic when Parker for his part feels the need to declare Calvin somewhat guilty of interpretations such as those of Dowey. After all, Calvin does not at all points make it entirely clear that Christ is the starting point for every sort of knowledge of God, whether it is of God as Creator or of God as Redeemer.159 The fact that Calvin fails to do so is no slip of the pen, but reveals the importance of this twofold perspective. In the irresolvable mutual involvement of both sorts of knowledge with one another, the difference between the conditions under which reflection is carried out on Christian belief in a pre-modern and a post-Kantian context becomes clear. Calvin feels no need to emphasise at every moment that true knowledge of God is Christologically determined. His theology reflects the fact that he encountered the self-revealing and manifesting God everywhere in his world, and the conviction that appealing to this sort of experience continued to have a purpose of its own, even though one must the following moment stress that this source of knowledge was insufficient for faith. Knowledge of God as Creator must also be purified through Scripture, but the knowledge of this goodness of God retains its peculiarity alongside the knowledge of God’s mercy in Christ. Calvin did not share the aversion against an appeal to nature or history, issues which became so problematic as sources of knowledge of God in post-Kantian theology.

159 Parker, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 121. ways of knowing 87

2.5. Appreciation of culture

On the basis of the motif of substitution and displacement one might get the impression that Calvin’s vision of human mental capacities is overwhelmingly negative. As has already been seen, this impression is, however, inaccurate. Calvin’s negative judgement must be further differentiated. He explicitly follows Augustine when he says that through the fall man has lost his preternatural endowments, and his natural gifts are corrupted. That does not mean that they are entirely eradicated. As so often, Calvin refers both to Scripture and to experience for the confirmation of this view.160 In one key passage he writes, ‘We see that there has been implanted in the human mind a certain desire of investigating truth, to which it never would aspire unless some relish for truth antecedently existed. There is therefore now in the human mind discernment to this extent, that it is naturally influenced by the love of truth … Still it is true that this love of truth fails before it reaches its goal, forthwith falling away into vanity … the human mind is unable, from dullness, to pursue the right path of investigation … in the search for truth.’161 The human mind has a natural inclination to truth. That is no small thing. The result of this desire for truth is however dependent on the sort of knowledge that is involved. Elsewhere Calvin makes a clarifying distinction in this connection, that is of immediate importance for his appreciation of science and culture. There are two sorts of knowledge, namely those of terrene and heavenly affairs: ‘By earthly things I mean those which relate not to God and his kingdom, to true righteousness and future blessedness, but have some connection with the present life, and are in a manner confined within its boundaries. By heavenly things I mean the pure knowledge of God, the method of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom. To the former belong the matters of policy and economy, all mechanical arts and liberal studies. To the latter belong the knowledge of God and of his will, and the means of framing life in accordance with them.’162 Calvin’s appreciation of culture thus depends to a great extent on the perspective that he chooses.163 With regard to our human capacity to

160 Inst. 2.2.12: ‘experimento sensus communis repugnat.’ 161 Inst. 2.2.12. 162 Inst. 2.2.13. 163 See the previously cited book by M.P. Engel, John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology, 88 chapter two occupy ourselves with earthly affairs, with the design of society and lawmaking, he is strikingly positive. Following Aristotle, he identifies man as a ‘social animal’, who by nature has the inclination to form and preserve society. Undeniably in such judgements one encounters something of the jurist who was educated within a climate shaped by the Renaissance and Humanism, and within whose purview lie public administration and social questions. From a cultural-historical and social perspective this interest is easy to place. But it is also interesting to inquire about this positive attitude on theological grounds. Pro- ficiency in the matter of earthly affairs can be positively valued precisely when it is certain that man is blind in the matter of his eternal salvation. As soon as the relation between God and man enters the discussion, the soteriological perspective applies and we hear judgements about man as a whole person. Sin, as loss of original splendour and identity, has flooded over the human person like a tidal wave and has saturated him from head to toe.164 The alienation from God affects everything. Thus even the most ingenious are ‘blinder than moles’.165 According to Calvin the discernment of the greatest philosophers, some of whom can now and then provide very apt visions of God, ‘resembles that of a bewildered traveller, who sees the flash of lightning glance far and wide for a moment, and then vanish into the darkness of the night before he can advance a single step. So far is such assistance from enabling him to find the right path.’166 Like his contemporaries, Calvin is surely not sceptical about the possibilities of the human mind in the public domain. He is certainly sceptical about man’s possibilities for finding a way to God and his salvation. What he says about culture, man, his skills and his knowledge is bounded by this distinction. That is the basis of his view of freedom, that knowledge of God is not anywhere just for the taking, but must be found in the way which the Spirit points. And which way does the Spirit point? With apparent pleasure Calvin tells the story of the philosopher Simonides, whom the tyrant Hiero asked what God is. A number of times Simonides sought to postpone answering, and finally

Atlanta 1988. 164 see Inst. 2.1.9: ‘Hic tantum breviter attingere volui, totum hominem quasi diluvio a capite ad pedes sic fuisse obrutum, ut nulla pars a peccato sit immunis.’ See also Comm. on Rom. 7:14,CO49, 128:‘To t a mens, totum cor, omnes actiones in peccatum propendeant.’ 165 Inst. 2.2.18. 166 Inst. 2.2.18. ways of knowing 89 replied, ‘The longer I consider, the darker the subject appears.’167 The darkness in which man ﬁnds himself with regard to heavenly things can only be removed by the Word of God.

2.6. Scripture as accommodation

According to Calvin the world of creating and maintaining, however positively he may want to speak of it, is still no longer sufficient to draw man to God. One could say that because of the other direction that the human heart has turned, creation no longer has its intended effect as a conduit for God’s revelation. Because of this the place of Scripture must next be discussed. Calvin’s doctrine of Scripture has been the subject of fierce discussion in Reformed theology over the past century. That should not be surprising. To the extent that the status of the Bible as the Word of God has been threatened in theology through the increased consideration of its human dimensions, various proposals have been advanced with respect to the question of how the inspiration of the Bible could be further handled. With this the question of Calvin’s position regularly arose. Is his doctrine already practically one of verbal inspiration? Or is his doctrine of inspiration best described as mechanical, or is the adjective ‘organic’ to be preferred? For Calvin is the Bible the revelation of doctrinal truths, or is it the revelation of the person of Christ?168 Such alternatives, it must emphatically be said, do no justice to Calvin’s views. As mutually exclusive possibilities these bear the stamp of a later era. In his theology the concepts mentioned here simply stand next to one another. That the promise of Christ given in the Gospel is the point of revelation169 does not detract from the fact that God inspired the whole Bible with all its contents. That God uses men, including their character and talent, does not detract from the fact that every word of the Bible came into being under direct influence, or even better, under the ultimate direction of the Holy Spirit. We will go into this more extensively. According to Calvin’s concept of knowledge of God, knowledge of God acquired on the basis of God’s Word qualitatively far exceeds the

167 Inst. 1.5.12. 168 For a discussion see B.B. Warﬁeld, Calvin and Calvinism,NewYork1931, 60–65. 169 Inst. 3.2.29. Calvin literally uses the word scopus. 90 chapter two knowledge that fallen man gains from nature. The one school is not the other. After the fall of Adam, post Adae lapsum, man must receive knowledge from the instruction God gives by means of verbal revelation. This conviction on Calvin’s part is only given added strength by the extensive place that his commentaries and Bible exegesis took in his life’s work. In the eyes of later generations Calvin may frequently have been the systematiser, the one who arranged the elements of the Chris- tian faith and attuned them to one another, but in his own eyes the Institutes was a manual for students and preachers in their exposition of Scripture. This manual does not replace the commentary; it does not replace the sermon; it is a genre of its own. It provides space for dealing with subjects, loci, and discussions, disputationes, connected with the knowledge of God granted in Scripture.170 Ultimately, however, it is about the knowledge of God, about God’s Words and promises that men learn from Scripture. The superiority of the Bible over every other means of revelation is not open to discussion; in the Institutes 1.6.1 it is termed ‘a better aid’,171 or concretely, the spectacles with which God’s manifestations in created reality can be perceived.172 Compared with it, God’s manifestations in nature are still only general indications. They are ‘dumb teachers’, while in the Scriptures God opens his own holy mouth. Creation testiﬁes that there is a God, in Scriptural revelation He tells who this is.173 For methodological and didactic reasons Calvin does not enter into the connection between Scripture and the revelation of Christ as Mediator in this chapter. The disquisition on Scripture in the chapter on God the Creator can therefore easily leave the impression of being a defence of the formal authority of the Bible. This view however cannot be maintained when one sees to what degree Calvin already appeals to experience in this context. His exposition of revelation through the Word in Book I of the Institutes is intrinsically linked with the content that is given in the revelation. The methodological limitation of Book I to God the Creator can not disguise the fact that the experience which Calvin assumes of every reader of the Scripture

170 Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 101–117. 171 Inst. 1.6.1: ‘aliud tamen et melius adminiculum accedere necesse est.’ 172 Calvin uses the image of an old man who can no longer distinguish the letters in a book held before him. Only when someone provides him with spectacles is it possible to distinguish the words and understand what is being said there. See Inst. 1.6.1:‘ … specillis autem interpositis adiuti, distincte legere incipient.’ See also Argumentum ad Genesin,CO23, 10. 173 Inst. 1.6.1. ways of knowing 91 relates to everything that God has made known through his prophets and apostles, and just as little can it remain unsaid that this content, as will appearfurtheronintheInstitutes, will ﬁnd its culmination in Christ as the real content of the Gospel.174 We will return to this point later in this section. What is the foundation for the authority of Scripture? Does the Bible have authority on formal and external grounds, or because of its content relating to faith? Such alternatives, it must be clear, say more about later discussions than about Calvin, and are too limited. Both positions are found in Calvin. Scripture has authority because it comes from God, and it has authority because of its content. In Calvin studies it is not rare to see the conclusion that there is dissonance in Calvin’s doctrines on Scripture. As a matter of fact, this reproach, made by both Dowey175 and Gerrish176 is once again most curious. It is a theological judgement at which one might arrive on the basis of a later position, but which has no historical basis. Calvin would not have recognised himself for even a second in the conclusion that he considered the Bible to be external and formal authority! The adjectives ‘external’ and ‘formal’ simply do not square with the manner in which he describes the experience that he has in his encounter with Scripture, and which he equally assumes for his readers. In the Scriptures man encounters the unceasing activity of God, which he, when he looks up from the page, sees in the world around him and within himself.177 At no point does Scripture come to man with an authority that is abstracted from its content. After all, it is God himself who brings his message to man in these writings, with all their diversity. The paired concepts of formal- informal and internal-external do not ﬁt into Calvin’s vision of the manner in which Scripture acquires its authority. Revelation through

174 See at Inst. 3.2.29.SeealsoArgumentum in evangelium Ioannis, Comm. John 14:1,CO 47, 321. 175 E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 161–162.Doweywrites:‘We must conclude, in fact that two “interpretations” exist side by side in Calvin’s theology concerning the object of the knowledge of faith, because he never fully integrated and related systematically the faithful man’s acceptance of the authority of the Bible en bloc with the faith as directed exclusively toward Christ.’ 176 It would appear from this statement that B.A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New. Essays on the Reformation Heritage, Chicago 1982, 62 also shares this view: ‘Calvin did not adequately relate his doctrine of faith and his doctrine of authority; for while his faith was strongly Christocentric, he continued to work with the Bible -in the medieval fashion- as an external and formal authority’. 177 Inst. 1.10.1. 92 chapter two the Word is a matter of God’s active instruction, and that instruction takes place in countless separate events in which God has revealed his will. Calvin makes clear what it is that must be conceived as the initial forms of divine instruction. One must think of visions, of appearances, of voices which confirm the visions, so that at the same time the vision is received the prophet is granted certainty that this was indeed from God.178 In this case the Bible writer is conscious of the inspiration, and functions as an amanuensis.179 In short, on the human side of the process revelation receptivity is the dominant factor. Calvin’s theology is governed by an orientation to the object, which means that there is hardly any attention given to the human role. We also find this object orientation in a different form. In modern theology the distinction between revelation and ‘revelation become Scripture’ has become increasingly important. We will encounter this pervasively in the second panel. Calvin does indeed know this distinction, but it is characteristic that it plays no significant role in his doctrine of revelation. There is no gap between God in his revelation and God who speaks through Scripture. God simply wanted to seal his revelations of himself, his oracula, to the Fathers for coming generations by in effect hanging them up in public, as on a bulletin board.180 That public notice board is the Bible. Revelation and Scripture coincide in the Scriptures. The terms employed by Calvin for the content of revelation are telling in this connection. The terms ‘heavenly doctrine’,181 ‘heavenly wisdom’, oracula Dei,182 and the use of the word dictare183 lack precisely that which through historical-critical research has come to be the centre of attention, namely the human factor. The Scriptures as they lie before us come from God, and in all their parts came into being under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. In later theology this concept is elaborated into the doctrine of verbal inspiration, and with good reason theologians appealed to Calvin in the process. There is however a striking difference, which has to do with attention for the

178 See for instance Comm. on Gen. 28:12, 13,CO23, 391–392. 179 Inst. 4.8.9: ‘certi et authentici Spiritus sancti amanuenses’. 180 Inst. 1.6.2: ‘Tandem ut continuo progressu doctrinae veritas seculis omnibus su- perstes maneret in mundo, eadem oracula quae deposuerat apud Patres, quasi publicis tabulis consignata esse voluit.’ 181 Inst. 1.7.4. 182 Inst. 1.6.2; see also Inst. 4.8.9. 183 Comm. IITim. 3:16,CO52, 383 and IIPeter 1:20,CO55, 457–458. ways of knowing 93 human factor. Calvin does not deal further with the question of how this inspiration occurred; he does not elaborate on the method of inspiration. B.B. Warfield has rightly indicated what mattered for Calvin. While it is true that Calvin did use the term ‘dictate’ figuratively, it is clear that what he meant to say in doing so was that the result of the inspiration by the Spirit is a revelation that comes as directly from God, as if it were a letter being dictated.184 To repeat: in his doctrine of revelation Calvin gives no explicit attention to the human factor. All of his attention focuses on the result of revelation, which does not belie its divine stamp. It is easy to test this proposition. Even in those cases where, to the modern mind, the human character of Scripture is abundantly clear (such as in the complaints, lamentations and doubts in the Psalms), even then it is still Calvin’s view that these sections came into being expressly under the direction of the Holy Spirit. That is not because Calvin had no concept of the psychology of the inner man. Quite on the contrary. It is, so he says, the Holy Spirit who in the Psalms portrays the human soul in powerful lines, and who holds a mirror up before the reader, with therein his own spirit and its anatomy.185 The Spirit is the great Psychologist. Still another example: When in their presentation of the succession of events the evangelists differ from one another, that is for Calvin no reason to examine their work further as a human product. It is once again the Holy Spirit who has found the question of chronology unimportant. What is important is that which is to be learned from the history.186 Other examples are there for the taking: the difference in style among Biblical texts is for Calvin no reason to look further at the issue of human mediation. He draws from this the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is the greatest of all rhetoricians. What can be said here ultimately fits with what was said above in the section on accommodation and language. The fact that some parts of the Bible can measure up stylistically with the best of profane Latin literature demonstrates that the Spirit is indeed a powerful rhetorician. But the unaffected and indeed sometimes uncouth style in which other parts

184 Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism, 62–64. 185 CO 31, 16: ‘I’ay accoustumé de nommer ce livre une anatomie de toutes les parties de l’ame, pource qu’il n’y a affection en l’homme laquelle ne soit yci representee commeenunmiroir.Mesme,pourmieuxdire,leS.Espritaycipourtraitauvif toutes les douleurs, tristesses, craintes, doutes, esperances, solicitudes, perplexitez, voire iusques aux esmotions confuses desquelles les esprits des hommes ont accoustumé d’estre agitez.’ 186 See Argumentum in Evangelium,CO45, 3–4. 94 chapter two of the revelation have come to us equally demonstrates what is and is not a prime concern for the Holy Spirit. Making a literary impression is not important; what is important is the effect on the listeners. The Spirit will pierce the heart, penetrate to the very marrow, far surpassing the powers of the greatest speakers. Holy Scripture is redolent of ‘something divine’.187 In these remarks the emphasis does not line on the role of the mediator or the mediation, but on the authenticity of the message. In the Bible men really encounter the message of God. We now arrive at the following point that is important for the sketch of Calvin’s concept of knowledge of God. Divine revelation through the word and sight has a propositional value. It has content. Ultimately that is self-evident for Calvin. As the Son is the expression and image of God, and conversation or speech is the mark of the human mind, revelation thus must have a content which can be described. The Son is the speech, sermo,ofGod.188 Instruction and teaching with a propositional content are an integral component of Calvin’s concept of knowledge of God, although they are not identical with it. Knowledge of God arises and exists in part in instruction, doctrina. Knowledge of God cannot however be reduced to the act of knowing propositions or to an attitude of submission and acceptance, which always must be paired with certain content, with certain truths. This substantive component in Calvin’s concept of faith has already been discussed in the definition of piety. Unavoidably we here encounter an aspect of the concept of faith that within the Calvinistic tradition has led to great emphasis on the formulation of content. Frequently in this tradition the confidence placed in good formulation and intellectual doctrine has been great—all too great.189 At the same time I will remind readers once again that Calvin’s concept of faith can in no way be categorised as intellectualistic. Knowledge lies within much broader connections. The propositional is rooted in and subject to living, active experience effected by the Spirit, of which the affective is integrally a part. The propositional is an implication of the mystic unity with Christ. We will return to that later, in the discussion of the concept of faith.

187 Inst. 1.8.1. 188 See Comm. John 1:1,CO47, 1: ‘Quod Sermonem vocat Dei ﬁlium, haec mihi simplex videtur esse ratio, quia primum aeterna sit Dei sapientia et voluntas, deinde expressa consilii eius eﬃgies. Nam ut sermo character mentis dicitur in hominibus, ita non inepte transfertur hoc quoque ad Deum …’ 189 See also B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude. The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 81–82. ways of knowing 95

For the rest, the foregoing makes clear how far Calvin’s view of doctrine, doctrina, stands from modern views of dogmatics. For Calvin, doctrine is instruction given by God. What he tries to do in his Institutes and his dogmatic tracts is, in his own mind, nothing more than arrange the given truth, which is clear in itself. He does not view doctrine as something that is formulated by man on the basis of stories and histories. Doctrine is not primarily a product of human intellectual capacities formulated for the sake of preaching or the guidance of the Christian community. These are views that ﬁt with the post-Kantian situation. In this ﬁrst panel doctrine is a part of divine speaking itself. At the same time it is clear that doctrine is not an end in itself. The goal of doctrine is that man comes to worship and obedience. Even his thinking is permeated by Calvin’s character as a doer.

2.7. Knowledge of God as result of Word and Spirit

With the terms Word and Spirit we stand before two key concepts in Calvin’s views on the knowledge of God. They can not be separated from one another, nor can they be resolved into one another. The intersection here is the Bible, revelation set down in writing. Here there is already a relation with the work of the Holy Spirit, to the extent that all revelation through the Word is an act of the Holy Spirit, and ‘in the sacred volume there is a truth divine’.190 Scripture arises from the Holy Spirit. The Word, heavenly wisdom, as Scripture however remains an outward entity. Only through the work of the Holy Spirit does man become inwardly convinced of the truth of the message of salvation that resounds in this Holy Scripture.191 Knowledge of God cannot, therefore, be resolved into either Word or Spirit; it arises in the involvement of the Word and Spirit with each other.192 In short, they are correlates.

190 Inst. 1.8.1: ‘divinum quiddam spirare sacras Scripturas.’ 191 Inst. 2.5.5. 192 Inst. 1.9.3: ‘Mutuo enim quodam nexu Dominus verbi Spiritusque sui certi- tudinem inter se copulavit: ut solida verbi religio animis nostris insidat, ubi affulget Spiritus qui nos illic Dei faciem contemplari faciat: ut vicissim nullo hallucinationis timore Spiritum amplexemur, ubi illum in sua imagine, hoc est in verbo, recognoscimus. Ita est sane. Non verbum hominibus subitae ostentationis causa in medium protulit Deus, quod Spiritus sui adventu extemplo aboleret, sed eundem Spiritum cuius virtute verbum administraverat, submisit, qui suum opus efficaci verbi confirmatione absolveret.’ 96 chapter two

With this correlation of Word and Spirit Calvin takes an intermediate position between the Roman Church and contemporary spiritualistic currents. He emphatically defends the primacy of Scripture over against oral tradition. Calvin considered the primacy of ecclesiastical tradition as an usurpation and unnecessary expansion. God has made enough known in his Word for us to live and to organise the church. Biblical authors are cited as critical authorities against ecclesiastical doctrine and practice.193 That is an important point of diﬀerence in comparison with pre-Reformation theology. The authority of the Bible is distinguished from the authority of the hierarchic church. It is not self-evident that divine truth coincides with an institution. One could respond that in the situation of Geneva the authority of Scripture in fact corresponded with the exposition and authority of Calvin, and that this distinction thus could not have meant all that much. There will always be people who speak in the name of God. The obvious conclusion that little has therefore changed is, though, only partially true. It is valid to the extent that in the concrete situation of Geneva Calvin’s dominance was indisputable. But strikingly enough, there was at the same time a change in the view of authority. No longer were antiquity or tradition decisive arguments. Against Sadoleto Calvin argues that an appeal to Scripture has more weight than an appeal to tradition or antiquity. In other words, the authority of Scripture is not dependant on the church, despite the famous words of Augustine that he would not have believed the Gospel if the authority of the church had not led him to that. Calvin denies that the authority of the church is the foundation for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. According to him, Augustine meant that the moral authority of the church was for him the impetus for turning to Christ.194 The second front that Calvin has in mind with these terms is the spiritualistic disparagement of the concrete text of the Bible.195 Earlier in this chapter we brieﬂy mentioned IICor. 3:6; among the spiritualists the text of the Bible was the dead letter and the Bible was seen as subordinate to the immediate revelation of the Spirit. In Calvin’s eyes this is an improper devaluation of Scripture as divine revelation. For his defence he reaches back to the premise that the words of Scripture

193 SeeA.Ganoczy/S.Scheld,Die Hermeneutik Calvins. Geistesgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen und Grundzüge,Wiesbaden1983, 11–15. 194 Inst. 1.7.3. 195 Inst. 1.9.2. ways of knowing 97 speak in clear and ordinary language. There is a clarity that stands in shrill contrast to the randomness at which one arrives as a result of the allegorical exegesis of the spiritualists. On both fronts Calvin maintains that God works through Word and Spirit. The Spirit binds itself to the concrete text of the Bible, although this does not mean, as this was interpreted against Rahtmann by the later Lutherans, that the work of the Spirit is wholly absorbed in the Word. The Bible as the Word of God proceeds from the work of the Spirit, and continues in union with the Spirit, but in involvement with the Word the Spirit does not cease to exercise its own identity. The Bible cannot be understood by man except by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Further in this section we will return once again to how far-reaching, but also how productive it is to think about knowledge of God from a correlation of Word and Spirit. First however we must return to the historical context of Calvin’s regard for the Bible. The issue here is not the question of the humanity of the Scriptures, but the question of where its authority ultimately rests: in the authority of the church, or in an individual, inner revelation? Against opponents who in his eyes undermined the authority of Scripture for various reasons, Calvin argued that there were enough grounds why the Scriptures themselves commanded respect.196 He did not hesitate to employ the usual apologetic arguments against sceptics: the Bible contains the ground of its authority within itself, in the majesty which is manifest in these writings.197 Atthesametimehe emphasises that the question of the authority and trustworthiness of the Bible at its deepest cannot be decided in this way. The solid certainty in the hearts of the patriarchs that they were dealing with God himself in the revelation which had been bestowed upon them can, we are told, only be traced back to God himself. The certainty that is obtained in encounters with the divine Word exceeds any derived from human thought and opinions. Scripture is, at its heart, autopis- tos.198 It is worth the eﬀort to see just what Calvin says here. In the Scripture he experiences God as an active, working person. The highest proof for the theopneustie of Scripture is derived ‘from the character

196 Inst. 1.7.4. 197 Inst. 1.8.2. Calvin lists, for example, the antiquity of the Bible texts, the miracles which attest to the truth of the proclamation, the fulfillment of prophecies, the providential preservation of the books of the Bible, and the unanimous feeling of the church regarding the truth of Scripture. 198 Inst. 1.7.5. 98 chapter two of him whose word it is’.199 Or stronger yet, the basis of trust and confidence lies in experience that transcends human reason and conjecture. In faith there occurs a moment at which trust and certainty come about in an immediate and intuitive manner, beyond anything that man can adduce in apologetics. A somewhat longer quotation will not be out of place: ‘For though in its own majesty it has enough to command reverence, nevertheless it then begins to truly touch us when it is sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgement nor that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgement, feel perfectly assured—as much so as if we beheld the divine image impressed upon it—that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God. We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgement, but we subject our intellect and judgement to it as too transcendent for us to estimate … we feel a divine energy living and breathing in it—an energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly, indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge.’200 What is striking in this citation is that Calvin draws a contrast between a conclusion in the basis of human judgements and arguments on the one hand, and the certainty from the majesty of Scripture on the other. Certainty arises as a consequence of the experience of divine activity. The certainty that the faithful have regarding divine origin of Scrip- tures is compared by Calvin with the manner in which we are immediately certain of the difference between black and white. It is beyond all doubt.201 It is knowledge which imposes itself without the intervention of reasoning or argumentation. In Calvin’s discussion the decisive factor is that man is subject to an energy, carried along by the force of

199 Inst. 1.7.4: ‘Itaque summa Scripturae probatio passim a Dei loquentis persona sumitur.’ 200 Inst. 1.7.5: ‘Etsi enim reverentiam sua sibi ultro maiestate conciliat, tunc tamen demum serio nos afficit quum per Spiritum obsignata est cordibus nostris. Illius ergo virtute illuminati, iam non aut nostro, aut aliorum iudicio credimus, a Deo esse Scrip- turam: sed supra humanum iudicium, certo certius constituimus (non secus acsi ipsius Dei numen illic intueremur) hominum ministerio, ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos fluxisse. Non argumenta, non verisimilitudines quaerimus quibus iudicium nostrum incumbat: sed ut rei extra aestimandi aleam positae, iudicium ingeniumque nostrum subiicimus … sed quia non dubiam vim numinis illic sentimus vigere ac spirare, qua ad paren- dum, scientes quidem ac volentes, vividius tamen et efficacius quam pro humana aut volutate, aut scientia trahimur et accendimur.’ 201 Inst. 1.7.2. ways of knowing 99

God’s activity; in short, human receptivity is key in this discussion.202 H. Bavinck correctly and keenly formulates it that Christian theology takes the believing subject as its point of departure.203 That is already true for Calvin when he finally points to the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. It is however important to see how many, and what terms are used to specify the reality of this subject. Man is the one who in the depths of his being hears, perceives, receives, is carried along, affectively moved through what is heard. The answer to the question of how the believer can be certain of the authority of Scripture is in fact found in the foregoing. The battlefront that Calvin has in mind is not that of historical criticism, although in his immediate environment there were sceptical voices to be heard which asked how people could be historically certain that Moses and the prophets had spoken for God. His remarks are directed against the view that the acknowledgement of the authority of the Bible depends on the judgement of the church. In the encounter with Scripture there is an experience that exceeds all argumentation. From the human side, this acknowledgement is however the consequence of the inner testimony of the Spirit. The Spirit brings a believer to the certainty of the majesty of this Word, but this certainty must be distinguished from the truth that the Spirit binds upon the heart of man.204 In Book I of the Institutes Calvin discusses the subject of the testimony of the Holy Spirit extensively in connection with the authority of the Bible. For that reason Bavinck has accused Calvin and his followers of standing at the beginning of a tradition in which the inward testimony of the Spirit is involved exclusively with the authority of Scripture, and is too little related to the significance for faith and the life of faith as awhole.205 Is Bavinck right? S.P. Dee and J. Veenhof have correctly pointed out that at least in the Institutes the inward testimony of the

202 One should carefully note the verbs in Inst. 1.7.5:afficere, obsignare, intueri, subicere, sentire, vigere, spirare, trahere, accendere. 203 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek I, Kampen 19062, 603–604;ET,564. 204 In Reformed orthodoxy this difference is formulated as the difference between the authority of Scripture and certainty regarding the authority of the Scriptures. By virtue of its inspiration, Scripture bears inspiration in itself; in the light of the Scriptures the firm belief in this truth, that comes upon man of itself, is derived from the inner testimony of the Spirit. See S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn,Kampen1918, 133. 205 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde dogmatiek I, 563ff. For a discussion of oldere Calvin interpretations on this point, see W. Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, 217. See also J. Veenhof, Revelatie en inspiratie. De openbarings- en schriftbeschouwing van Herman Bavinck in vergelijking met die der ethische theologie,Amsterdam1968, 494–495. 100 chapter two

Holy Spirit is also discussed in relation to the question of the certainty of salvation.206 The impression that the authority of the Bible takes on a formal character with Calvin arose chiefly when people reduced him to the author of only one text, the Institutes. Anyone reading the Institutes in relation to his sermons and commentaries will presently come to the discovery that the work of the Spirit, the Spirit as teacher, is a constant in Calvin’s thinking. The testimony of the Spirit is linked with all of the content of faith, and with the course of a life of faith itself. Knowing God is not just parroting the Bible; it is a learning process under the active tuition of the Holy Spirit. It is therefore a distortion to appeal to Calvin for the distinction between formal and material authority. For him, belief in the divinity of Scripture is inseparable from the encounter with God, who speaks as a person in these texts. To replace that with a reference to the activity of the Spirit, who confirms the truth of these texts in the heart of the faithful, is to go too far. Calvin’s position is completely pneumatological. God speaks in these texts, shows his face, opens his mouth,207 and gives his adoptive children certainty about this truth. In order to have a correct picture, one must also bring in how Calvin thinks about the certainty of faith and, last but not least, how this testimony evidently functions in his commentaries—thus not apart from the content of God’s instruction. The way in which Calvin speaks about the Scripture is identical to the way in which he speaks in Book III of the Institutes with regard to the certainty of salvation. The things which are expounded in Book I with respect to the whole of Scripture as a source of knowledge of God return in connection with the point of faith. Further, one can recall what was said previously in connection with the metaphor of the mirror. When Calvin says that Scripture is the mirror in which we recognise Christ, this image itself makes any distinction between formal and material faith in the Scriptures impossible. In one and the same act of looking into the mirror one also perceives the image in the mirror.208 We therefore find that there is good reason to reject the opposition that is implied in the paired concepts of formal and material authority. The way in which Calvin discusses the authority of Scripture in Book I of the Institutes shows that this authority

206 See J. Veenhof, Revelatie en inspiratie, 494,andS.P.Dee,Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, 136ff. 207 Inst. 1.9.3. 208 See once again the outstanding discussion in S.P. Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, 166. ways of knowing 101 comes to light in experience, and that it is confirmed by the Spirit in that experience. It is not an a priori authority. In creation, in the perceived order of things, in conscience and finally in the Scripture God shows his face to man. Scripture acquires its authority, and certainty grows, in the course of God’s dealings with man.209 Calvin arrives at his characterisation of the authority of Scripture and its certainty precisely through the indissoluble relation between Word and Spirit. The Bible has authority because it, in all its parts, stands in the dynamic sphere of influence of the work of the Holy Spirit. Of course there are obvious differences in the present debate on the Bible and certainty. While in contemporary biblical scholarship the emphasis has come to lie on the historical process through which the Bible took shape, and with that on the human form in which revelation comes to us, in Calvin one finds hardly any specific attention for the role of the human subject in the Bible’s coming into being. To be sure, he acknowledges that the personality and origins of the writers played a fundamental role in the language and style they employed. He has no problem pointing to certain faults. This is all possible, though, because the human character of the Bible is not yet a charged issue. However much Calvin may stresses that God makes use of the services of men in his revelation, nowhere does he imply that the human subject should receive an independent place in his theology as an active and shaping subject. The roles are fixed. The centre of gravity lies with God as subject of revelation, and man is the one who listens and gives heed to it. The division of roles between God and man works through into the metaphors that characterise the way the Bible is to be seen. The revelation in the Old Testament is termed the ‘fencing in’ which would prevent the Jewish people perishing like the heathen nations.210 The metaphor of the school, so beloved by Calvin, also fits in this context. The believer must be a pupil of the Holy Scriptures. This is not a class in which the students do experiments and make discoveries for themselves; they are there to listen attentively. Man must be prepared to learn.211 All the way through to Calvin’s own biographical notes at the beginning of his commentary on the Psalms we encounter the word that describes this readiness to learn: docilitas.212 The development of

209 Dee refers to Comm. Acts 17:11,CO48, 401. 210 Inst. 1.6.1. 211 Inst. 1.6.2. 212 CO 31, 21. 102 chapter two docility in our time into a pejorative term is telling. That was not the case with Calvin. The Bible is the school in which pure knowledge about God can be learned. In short, the instruction that is given in revelation and Scripture, the images and metaphors that are used, are not grounded in human creativity, nor in chance historical circumstances; they are so intended by God, and deliberately given. Anyone who allows the foregoing to sink in will perhaps begin to get a sense of what in the Reformed tradition has come to be termed the Scripture Principle, and of the tremendous formative power of this principle. Within the ‘fence’ of Scripture God has said neither too little nor too much, but precisely as much as is profitable for man. It is a view which has great consequences for both the borders and the content of knowledge of God, as we will see in the course of these chapters. Every deviation from this given content, every innovation is then a change for the worse. Therefore one does not encounter a positive regard for history and development in Calvin.213 We will pause for a moment to pose the often-heard question: can this attitude toward the Bible be described as Biblicism?214 In view of the short history of this concept it is certainly an anachronism, and an unfortunate designation.215 Biblicist use of the Bible is associated with a very simple and direct appeal to the Bible and a rejectionist attitude toward hermeneutics. It is crystal clear that the term Biblicism cannot be applied to Calvin in that sense. It is however also understandable why this term is used in connection with Calvin. It is a later application by a theology that has made an explicit issue of the humanity of the Scriptures. In the second panel we therefore find an entirely different situation. For Karl Barth theology is something that man has to engage in on his own responsibility, conscious of the humanity of the Scriptures and in obedience to the Word of God that sounds therein. This making an issue of the humanity of the Scriptures is not yet present in Calvin.

213 In this Calvin does not deviate from Renaissance culture. See Bouwsma, ‘The two faces of Humanism’, AUsablePast, 37: ‘As the retrospective preﬁx in the familiar Renaissance vocabulary of amelioration attests—renascentium, reformatio, restoratio, resititutio, renovatio, etc.—it could only look backward for a better world.’ 214 For instance, Bauke, Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins, 19–20, 44–52. 215 The term Biblicism arose in reaction to historical criticism and is generally associated with an attitude in which there is hardly any room for a conscious hermeneutic. Calvin indeed has very much a conscious hermeneutic, and the problem of Scriptural criticism played no role in his time. It goes without saying that Biblicism is not to be confused with fundamentalism. See J. Veenhof, ‘Orthodoxie und Fundamentalismus’, Praktische Theologie 29 (1994), 9–18. ways of knowing 103

Everything in the Bible is worth study because God has consciously provided it for us. The Bible must be taken seriously and obeyed as the revelation bestowed by God. In part this forms the background for Calvin’s preference for a short and sober exegesis of the Bible. In order to make progress in knowing God, the line must be kept short and taut. It is in this context that the famous words come: omnis recta Dei cognitio ab oboedentia nascitur.216 Right knowledge of God is born of obedience. In our contemporary Western society the idea of obedience can count on being received with a large dose of distrust. The extermina- tion camps of the Second World War would not have been conceivable without an underlying system that was kept going in part by a culture of obedience. The anti-authoritarian experiments of the 1960sandthe uncertainty on the part of the generation of parents in the last few decades not only reveal how diﬃcult it is to unite freedom and restrictions, but also something of a collective trauma surrounding this concept. When training in obedience is uncoupled from the simultaneous shaping of personal, unrelinquishable responsibility of the individual, an essential element of humanity is undermined. In this respect one must also ﬁnd that the Reformation, with its Scripture Principle, fundamentally uncoupled authority from the church as institution. Calvin does not deny that God works via means, and thus also through men. Yet in relation to the preceding situation something has changed in the place of the church. Its divine authority is no longer direct, but derivative, and that opens the door to discussion on the place of the church. What does it mean that this concept of obedience surfaces in Calvin’s discussion of the way to knowledge of God? It stands within the context of the invitation to follow the direction that the Spirit points out to faith in the Scripture. Concretely, that way leads to Christ. Obedience obtains for the living word of God, through which men come further than the confusing knowledge on the basis of nature, and further than the barricade that the church erected in her cults and ceremonies.217 That is the context within which one must understand Calvin’s remarks on obedience. But at the same time it is clear that the subjectivity of man is poorly developed in this concept. It is a curtailment and limitation if the role of man is discussed only in terms of obedience and the space given to the creature in his answer to God.

216 Inst. 1.6.2. 217 Ibid.: ‘aures tamen praecipue arrigere convenit ad verbum, ut melius proﬁciat.’ 104 chapter two

2.8. Faith

2.8.1. A qualified concept of faith In the preceding section Calvin’s concept of faith was discussed implicitly. It is time to make this explicit. A beginning can be found in Calvin’s ‘full definition of faith’: ‘It is a firm and certain knowledge of the divine favour toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.’218 Each aspect of this well-considered definition deserves special attention. First of all, it strikes us that the concept of faith is, from its inception, a theological, content-filled definition. It is not limited to a formal definition. Faith is defined by its content, namely God’s ‘divine favour towards us’. Second, it is to be noted that the object of faith does not simply coincide with God. It is, rather, God’s favour, founded in the promise given in Christ. Faith has as its object Him who is sent by God and the gifts bestowed in his person. The focus on the person Jesus Christ has a polemic point, or so it would appear in the discussion of the concept of faith. The dispute concerns the concept of implicit faith, fides implicita.Onemayconsider this concept as a theological solution to a pastoral problem which had arisen for the church in the preceding centuries, with the Christianisa- tion of Europe. This concept opens the way to argue that the benighted folk by implication receive eternal salvation by submitting to the cultus and rites of the church, even if they have only a very limited or distorted understanding of the truths of salvation. Calvin has no sympathy with this. Perhaps the fact that he himself was part of a culture in which the standards for development and civilisation among the bourgeoisie had risen sharply played a part in this.219 In any case, he can not see the idea of ‘implicit faith’ as other than a legitimisation for gross ignorance and lack of knowledge. It conflicts with the attempt to reform the whole of society. Faith does not reside in ignorance, but in knowledge. The sharpening that Calvin introduces in his concept of faith however goes still a step further. Faith does not focus on God as such, but on the will of God. The object of faith is in fact that God, for the sake

218 Inst. 3.2.7. 219 H.A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation. The Shape of Late Medieval Thought, Philadelphia 1981, 6. ways of knowing 105 of reconciliation, is our merciful Father, and that Christ is given to us for righteousness, sanctification and life.220 Calvin is conscious that he is hereby stipulating the concept of faith theologically. He acknowledges that in Biblical texts the concept of faith is also used in a much more general sense. Still he quite deliberately chooses for a pointed concept of faith that is defined by the concept of revelation. The content of faith is not just the conviction that God exists, and just as little, how God is, as He is in himself. Faith focuses on how God is as he is toward man,or,to put it differently, on God’s will.221 Yet this too is not sufficient, and further specification is necessary. According to Calvin, the focus of faith is not just any expression of God’s will. Nor can that be the case. When Adam heard from God that he would suffer death, or when Cain heard the curse pronounced on him, those were indeed expressions of God’s will, but at the same time they are things at which man can only turn away. Faith is not a formal concept, but is from the very outset a concept guided and filled by the revelation of God’s mercy. Man will not rely upon curses and threats, although they be expressions of God’s will; at such points the threatened conscience finds no rest. Faith does not focus simply on God’s will, but on His favour and mercy.222 In this context Calvin calls on the concept of scopus, which can perhaps best be translated as the target or point of faith. Christ is the point of faith, and this point determines the direction of gaze. Faith then is only invited and quickened when man has learned that there is salvation to be found with God. Man learns this by looking to Christ and the good news he brings. ‘The true knowledge of Christ consists in receiving him as he is offered by the Father—namely, as invested with his Gospel. For, as he is appointed as the end of our faith, so we cannot directly tend towards him except under the guidance of the Gospel.’223 According to Calvin, intheincarnationoftheeternalSonwehavethedeepestmoment of God’s descent toward us. This is the closest point where God has shown himself in our reality as in a mirror, namely in the figure of

220 Inst. 3.2.2. 221 Inst. 3.2.6: ‘Neque enim unum id in fidei intelligentia agitur, ut Deum esse noverimus, sed etiam, imo hoc praecipue, ut qua sit erga nos voluntate, intelligamus. Neque enim scire quis in se sit, tantum nostra refert, sed qualis esse nobis velit.’ 222 Inst. 3.2.29. 223 Inst. 3.2.6: ‘Haec igitur vera est Christi cognitio, si eum qualis offertur a Patre suscipimus, nempe Evangelio suo vestitum: quia sicuti in scopum fidei nostrae ipse destinatus est, ita nonnisi praeeunte Evangelio recta ad eum tendemus.’ 106 chapter two the Mediator. Further, it must be noted that the death of Jesus on the cross is the sharpest facet of this mirror. Indeed, from the resurrection it retrospectively becomes clear that Jesus Christ has assumed the condition humaine in his death agony, has undergone the punishment which man deserved, has endured the forces which imprisoned man. There the chasm is deepest. At that deepest moment it is no longer visible that Christ is the eternal Son. The pronouncement of Irenaeus that the divinity of Christ is not active in His suffering, but was as it were hidden and at rest, is assumed by Calvin: the divine powers of Christ were at that moment concealed.224 The light in this mirror comes from the resurrection. Only then does the image become visible: Christ, who takes the place of all, so that all can be included in fellowship with God.225 In the resurrection God makes visible what really happened on the cross. Even here—or perhaps precisely here—Calvin does not shrink from appealing to the dramatic possibilities of the theatre as a place where the spectators must be touched to the depths of their hearts: ‘The incomparable goodness of God his made visible before the whole world in the cross of Christ, as in the most splendid theatre’.226

2.8.2.Uniomystica In the definition that Calvin gives for faith in Institutes 3.2.7, it becomes clear that the content of the knowledge involved in faith is anchored in Christ’s promise of the grace of God and that this knowledge is planted in the believer through the Holy Spirit. The reference to the work of the Spirit is essential: ‘So long as we are without Christ and separated from him, nothing which he suffered and did for the salvation of the human race is of the least benefit to us’.227 In Calvin’s characterisation of the experience of faith we encounter both the experience of the distance from God as well as God’s closeness. However, the experience ofproximityandcommunityisdecisive.Whileweinoneplaceread

224 Comm. Luke 2:40,CO45, 104: ‘… quatenus salutis nostrae interfuit divinam suam potentiam quasi occultam tenuit Filius. Et quod dicit Irenaeus, quiescente divini- tate passum fuisse, non modo de corporali morte interpretor, sed de illo incredibili animae dolore et cruciatu, qui hanc illi querimonimam expressit, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?’ 225 Inst. 2.12.3. 226 Comm. John 13:31,CO47, 317: ‘Nam in Christi cruce, quasi in splendidissimo theatro incomparabilis Dei bonitas toti mundo spectata fuit.’ 227 Inst. 3.1.1. ways of knowing 107 that the gracious God shows himself in faith as indeed still ‘high and lifted up’,228 further on we read the opposite: ‘We expect salvation from him—not because he stands aloof from us, but because ingrafting us into his body he not only makes us partakers of all his benefits, but also of himself … If you look to yourself damnation is certain: but since Christ has been communicated to you with all his benefits, so that all which is his is made yours, you become a member of him, and hence one with him. His righteousness covers your sins—his salvation extinguishes your condemnation’.229 As Bavinck has rightly observed,230 with these words we have landed in the midst of Calvin’s concept of faith: the unio mystica. What Luther called the miraculous exchange231 takes place in the communion between Christ and men. Through faith Christ takes up his dwelling in man. ‘That Christ is not external to us, but dwells in us, and not only unites us to himself by an undivided bond of fellowship, but by a wondrous communion brings us daily into closer connection, until he becomes altogether one with us.’232 There are several notable points in this important characterisation. First, the present and eschatological elements of the knowledge of God coincide. In faith, participation in the new reality is already a reality now, and at the same time there is the potential for growth. Second, what faith is about is anchored in the person of Christ. Christ is the mediating person in whom man is again brought into fellowship with God. But third and finally, I would call your attention to something remarkable. The new reality is expressed in terms of corporeality and growth. These are not the obvious categories of consciousness or of personal encounter which one would expect to be used in describing that which is new. The basis of the knowledge of God and its certainty is not primarily cerebral, but expressly transcends that. The language of the body has primacy. It is about powers that will be exercised. We here encounter an element of Calvin’s view of the knowledge of God that also permeates his teaching on the Lord’s Table and gives it its peculiar colour. This will be discussed further in the fourth chapter.

228 Inst. 3.2.19. 229 Inst. 3.2.24. 230 H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek III,Kampen19102, 594. 231 M. Luther, WA 40 I, 443. 232 Inst. 3.2.24; ‘quia Christus non extra nos est, sed in nobis habitat: nec solum individuo societatis nexu nobis adhaeret, sed mirabili quadam communione in unum corpus nobiscum coalescit in dies magis ac magis, donec unum penitus nobiscum ﬁat’. 108 chapter two

For the rest, fellowship with Christ is not something about which one can say nothing further. Calvin’s interest is primarily in the benefit that is found in faith in Christ. ‘Christ and his benefits’ is a typical expression for Calvin. In fellowship with Christ man shares in the benefits which are contained in Christ’s person. Here is the one source from which both justification and sanctification spring. According to Dee, the terms fides, unio mystica and iustificatio can be conceived as purely logical distinctions within what is ultimately one and the same reality.233 With Calvin, faith and knowledge of God are not formal concepts, but are defined precisely in relation to their content. His is a soteriological understanding of faith and knowledge.

2.8.3. Faith and certainty In the preceding the work of the Spirit has been discussed several times. The Spirit binds us with Christ, at the same time making man certain of his own connection with Christ. But what kind of certainty and confidence is that which marks the knowledge vested in faith? We will enter into that question in this section. The work of the Spirit is the foundation for various aspects and phases in the way faith proceeds. ‘For the Spirit does not merely orig- inate faith, but gradually increases it, until by its means he conducts us into the heavenly kingdom,’ we are told.234 It is characteristic that Calvin, within the context of this pronouncement about knowledge of God’s election, contrasts the word that he uses to indicate the mind or understanding, mens, with the Holy Spirit. The mind (or understanding) is termed blind, stubborn, inclined to vanity. The human mind may have originally been inclined to God, but once imprisoned in the sphere of sin this capacity or keenness appears to be lost. That with which man is equipped is simply inadequate; it has become blunt, lacks acuteness. Therefore faith must come in the form of a gift. Calvin distinguishes steps or aspects in the work of the Spirit. The first aspect is illuminatio, enlightenment of the understanding. In illumination by the Holy Spirit, man receives a new power of sight, as it were, aciem.The second step is that the heart (or better, the soul), animus, here seen in a more limited definition as the seat of the human affections and emo-

233 Dee, Het geloofsbegrip van Calvijn, 190–194. 234 Inst. 3.2.33. ways of knowing 109 tions, is confirmed in the truth as something which applies to it.235 The one work of the Spirit thus has a double effect, on understanding and heart, intellectual and affective.236 In evaluating Calvin’s view of knowledge of God, it is important to note that this work of the Spirit, both in illumination of the understanding and the confirmation of this in the heart, are both discussed in terms of experience. ‘As we cannot possibly come to Christ unless drawn by the Spirit, so when we are drawn we are in both mind and spirit exalted far above our own understanding. For the soul, when illuminated by him, receives as it were a new eye, enabling it to contemplate heavenly mysteries, by the splendour of which it was previously dazzled. And thus, indeed, it is only when the human intellect is irradiated by the light of the Holy Spirit that it begins to have a taste of those things which pertain to the kingdom of God; previously it was too stupid and senseless to have any relish for them.’237 Human understanding itself is weak and incapable of grasping the promises of the Gospel of on its own. Therefore it is first necessary that God through his Spirit makes these promises seen. In the midst of the discussion of the concept of faith and the certainty of faith, it becomes clear that it is not the concept of cognitio which must be used to understand that knowledge which man can attain on his own initiative. Man can attain knowledge of created reality through his faculties for perception. The knowledge toward which faith is oriented however transcends created reality. The knowing that is involved in faith is not simply a matter of comprehending, comprehensio, but rather of ‘tasting’.238

235 Ibidem, ‘Ergo singulare Dei donum utroque modo est fides, et quod mens hominis ad degustandam Dei veritatem pergatur, et quod animus in ea stabilitur.’ We here follow R.A. Muller’s view, in turn taken over from Stuermann. Animus can be used as the equivalent of all the mental capacities, but used in connection with the term mens, animus means all the affective parts of the human mental faculties, or that part of the human mind that reaches out to that which is known. See R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 168. 236 Comm. Eph. 1:13,CO51, 153: ‘Respondeo, duplicem esse effectum Spiritus in fide, sicuti fides duabus praecipue partibus continetur, nam et mentes illuminat, et animos confirmat. Initium fidei, est notitia: consummatio, est fixa et stabilis persuasio quae contrariam dubitationem nullam admittat.’ 237 Inst. 3.2.34: ‘Quemadmodum ergo nisi Spiritu Dei tracti, accedere ad Christum nequaquam possumus: ita ubi trahimur, mente et animo evehimur supra nostram ipsorum intelligentiam. Nam ab eo illustrata anima novam quasi aciem sumit, qua caelestia mysteria contempletur, quorum splendore ante in seipsa perstringebatur. Atque ita quidem Spiritus sancti lumine irradiatus hominis intellectus, tum vere demum ea quae ad regnum Dei pertinent gustare incipit: antea prorsus ad ea delibanda fatuus et insipidus.’ 238 Inst. 3.2.14: ‘Cognitionem dum vocamus, non intelligimus comprehensionem, 110 chapter two

The knowing comes from contact with a reality that one experiences rather than understands. According to Calvin, in faith a conviction of something which men can not understand presents itself. There arises a degree of conviction and certainty which, he says, exceeds the certainty that is involved in the knowing of normal human matters. In this context we again encounter the concept of persuasio, familiar from rhetoric. The knowledge which arises in faith is a fruit of conviction by God. God is the rhetorician who inescapably places before us the truth of salvation. Paul, when he spoke of the height, depth, length and breadth of the love of God (Eph. 3) wanted to say that in faith we come into contact with something infinite, something which far surpasses all ordinary understanding.239 The knowledge of which faith speaks, Calvin says, is therefore more a matter of certainty than of comprehension.240 I would find that at crucial points in his concept of knowledge of God Calvin is not the intellectualist that he is so often accused of being.241 The opposite is rather the case. Affective elements predomi- nate. The moment of acceptance of the truth of faith is, we read, ‘more a matter of the heart than the head, of the affectionthantheintel- lect’.242 Trust, fiducia, must not be considered as a closing phase on the path of faith; on the contrary, it is the supporting element for the cognitive in faith. When the grace of God is presented to our vision, our ‘truly perceiving its sweetness, and experiencing it in ourselves’ must be the inevitable result. Put succinctly, experience surrounds and surpasses understanding. The encounter with the goodness of God calls forth trust and open-heartedness on the part of man.243 In short, faith is becoming convinced, persuasio, and as such that faith is a point of freedom. When the goodness of God is experienced, the freedom arises in which one can surrender to it. Although the term ‘voluntaristic’ brings qualis esse solet earum rerum quae sub humanum sensum cadunt. Adeo enim superior est, ut mentem hominis seipsam excedere et superare oporteat, quo ad illam pertingat. Neque etiam ubi pertigit, quod sentit assequitur: sed dum persuasum habet quod non capit, plus ipsa persuasionis certitudine intelligit quam si humanum aliquid sua capacitate perspiceret.’ 239 Ibid.: ‘Voluit enim significare, modis onmibus infinitum esse quod mens nostra fide complectitur, et genus hoc cognitionis esse omni intelligentia longe sublimius.’ 240 Inst. 3.2.14: ‘Unde statuimus, fidei notitiam certitudine magis quam apprehen- sione contineri.’ 241 Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 171. 242 Inst. 3.2.8. 243 Inst. 3.2.15: ‘Quae audacia nonnisi ex divinae benevolentiae salutisque certa fiducia nascitur.’ ways of knowing 111 with it the danger of easily becoming associated with decisionism and therefore must be employed cautiously, the fact that the affective element is the keynote in Calvin’s concept of the knowledge of God and in that sense is definitive, still points in that direction. God is known as the source of all good. Faith has as its object something which exceeds all intellectual concepts, in the sense of comprehension. It encompasses the whole human person, with all his intellectual and affective faculties, and his will. This does not, however, cancel out the idea of knowledge. Rather, it is knowledge of and contact with a reality that men cannot comprehend, but freely acknowledge. The knowledge involved in faith thus implies a realisation of personal involvement in the truths of salvation. This therefore implies a critique on the late medieval distinction between fides formata and fides informis. Faith is never a matter of intellectual affirmation alone; it is, from the outset, more a matter of the heart than the head, more of the affective faculties than understanding. The Spirit is directly present as a witness that man is adopted as a child of God.244 Calvin’s discussion of the certainty of faith has moments of great beauty. At the same time it must be noted that with his great attention for the inwardness of faith and for self-investigation, Calvin sometimes finds himself on thin ice. The journey inward here also serves the distinction between true and false faith. Calvin explicitly mentions forms of faith in which faith remains superficial. He lists the parable of the sower (Luke 8:6) and Simon Magus (Acts 8:93). In these cases faith means that persons are in some way impressed, in the same way one might be impressed by a masterpiece.245 The impression is temporary, and does not take root in the heart. Does Calvin’s theology, in which man is turned back upon his own capacity to distinguish between true and false faith, between the work of the Spirit in believers and unbelievers, not very vulnerable, or outright dangerous? In Calvin’s call to self-examination, does man not become both the protagonist and his own audience, and is he not asked to assume an impossible distance from himself in order to see what is real and what is hypocrisy?246

244 Inst. 3.2.8. 245 Inst. 3.2.10. 246 Bouwsma, John Calvin, 180 oﬀers the critique that Calvin, in the call to examine one’s conscience, imposes on man the role of the contrite sinner, making it impossible in advance to arrive at a moment of integration between role and reality. Spontaneity 112 chapter two

Election is the background for Calvin’s exposition of true faith; How could it be otherwise?247 Calvin distinguishes two sorts of operations by the Spirit. The operation of the Spirit in the reprobate is called the inferior Spiritus operatio, which nevertheless exhibits considerable similarity with the operation in believers. For a time the reprobate can be subject to almost the same feeling as the elect, ‘that even in their own judgement there is no difference between them’.248 God can infuse unbelievers with his grace, so far as ‘his goodness can be felt without the Spirit of adoption’. In his concept Calvin does have the theological category of temporary faith, which must not be identified with the confidence on the grounds of which the believer says ‘Abba, father’ (Gal. 4:6). With his discussion of the experience of the Spirit of God by these two different groups, Calvin works himself into a tight corner theologically and pastorally. For the reprobate the discernment of grace is nothing other than confused, muddled, a shadow of what is the lot of the believers. Nevertheless he acknowledges that God is also experienced by them as a reconciling God. They too ‘accept the gift of reconciliation, although confusedly and without due discernment’.249 The difference is that the reprobate never reach that full effect and fruition with which God endows the elect.250 All told, we must say that Calvin, with his call for self-examination (seipsos excutere), has laid the foundations for a tradition in which the turn inward plays a great—not to say all too great—role that is at odds with that other line of thought according to which the apprehensive conscience must be directed toward Christ as the mirror of God’s fatherly love and favour. For salvation it is not only necessary that Christ has died for sinners in general, but also to know that one has a share in that grace oneself. This certainty can be confirmed again through the testimony of a good conscience.251 To fairly judge what Calvin had in mind, it is necessary to keep this succession strictly in mind. When it comes to the foundation of salvation, faith focuses only on the goodness of God, on the promises. This goodness is is made very difficult, so that the person is continuously conscious of his or her own conduct. 247 Inst. 3.2.11. 248 Inst. 3.2.11. 249 Ibid.: ‘Merito tamen dicuntur reprobi Deum credere sibi propitium: quia donum reconciliationis, licet confuse nec satis distincte, suscipiunt.’ 250 Inst. 3.2.11. 251 Inst. 3.14.18. ways of knowing 113 not only the starting point, but the end point. This does not, however, detract from the fact that, once having achieved rest, someone is called to take care in how this status as an adopted child of God works out in practical terms. These works are, Calvin says, ‘proofs of God dwelling and reigning in us’.252 Thus man is invited to assess his own practice of life in the light of the work of the Spirit, his unity with Christ given in faith. With his invitation to self-examination Calvin indeed stands in a longer tradition. It is apparent that in his years at the Collège Montaigu he came into very direct contact with the piety encouraged by Modern Devotion. This tradition of inwardness is continued in his own concept of the knowledge of God. It is a rich tradition, because it bestows attention on the way in which man inwardly relates to that which surrounds him. If there is knowledge of God, then there is also something to be experienced which will work itself out in a person’s life, creating a confidence in this contact that is indissoluble. At the same time, in Reformed Protestantism this tradition has led to the ultra-Reformed form of spirituality, which is at odds with Calvin’s own admonition to see Christ as the mirror of election. The succession can easily be reversed:253 first wanting to undergo an inner experience of adoption by God, and thereafter daring to look to Christ as the image of a merciful God. In other words, there is a hidden revelation, a tasting of God’s salvation that is shared only by God’s children. Calvin denies that the reprobate really embrace God’s eternal will to grace; they remain at the level of a fleeting realisation of it.254 That is the one point of view that he emphatically maintains, appealing to concrete examples from the Bible. But now he turns to the other side and offers some pastoral commentary with the high adjectives in his definition of faith. In Calvin’s theology psychological, pedagogical and theological elements still form one whole. He says of faith that it is ‘true’ and ‘certain’. But who experiences that at all times? Calvin realises full well that the flame of certainty does not always burn bright with believers. He acknowl-

252 Ibidem. See also Comm. IJohn 2:3,CO55, 311: ‘Tametsi enim suae quisque fidei testimonium habet ab operibus: non tamen sequitur illic fundatam esse, quum posterior haec probatio instar signi accedat. Certitudo itaque fidei in sola Christi gratia residet; sed pietas en sanctitas vitae veram fidem a ficta et mortua Dei notitia discernit …’ 253 Cf. R.C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith. Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 222. 254 Inst. 3.2.12. 114 chapter two edges that among believers too now and again doubt will arise about whether this merciful God is for them. But now we suddenly hear that this doubt should not be considered as a sign of a false faith. To the vacillating he says that they ‘confine [God’s mercy] within too narrow limits’.255 This grace indeed reaches others, but not themselves. Calvin refers here to a figure from the Bible, with whom he gladly identifies: David. Contesting is possible, as the Psalms demonstrate, but faith is not swallowed up in this chasm. As soon as a drop of true faith has seeped into the heart, Calvin tells us that we begin to behold the face of God as placid, serene and propitious.256 The eschatological streak in Calvin’s theology and spirituality appears clearly with the certainty of faith. Man is a pilgrim on his journey, and as he travels more closely approaches God’s countenance. Ignorance yields slowly.257 The believer, still in the earthly body, is like someone in a dungeon, who sees the sun enter his prison only through a high window. A sense of limitation dominates this image. Nevertheless, there is a radiance by which he is illumined. Thus, in this existence knowledge of God can only be obtained in part. In connection with the image of the dungeon, Calvin takes up the metaphor of the mirror from ICor. 13, to which we already referred.258 The nature of the certainty of faith that is man’s share in this life is related to the fact that man still leads an earthly existence. As we already saw, according to Calvin corporeality and mundanity imply imperfection. The human condition means a limitation in respect to spiritual things, through which it is impossible to fully perceive what is infinite, and through which it becomes necessary that we have to be taught continually. Life on earth implies a ruditas which makes it impossible to approach perfection.259 We have previously discussed the eschatological orientation of Cal- vin’s theology in this context. It can be seen at countless points in his commentaries and sermons. It is not without reason that Calvin can so strongly identify with Biblical figures from the Old testament, who lived with the promise of fellowship with God through Christ, but had this fellowship in hope, in spe.260 Faith possesses the content of the promise

255 Inst. 3.2.15. 256 Inst. 3.2.19. 257 Comm. in epistolam Pauli Ad Romanos, 26. 258 Inst. 3.2.20. 259 Inst. 3.2.20. 260 Inst. 2.10.11. ways of knowing 115 in the mode of hope. That did not change with the appearance of Christ. In a certain sense the believer has indeed passed from death to life, but it must not be inferred from that that he already possesses the benefits that are contained in Christ. Calvin here reminds his reader of IJohn 3:2. Although we know that we are God’s children, all is not yet revealed until we see God as He is. ‘Therefore, although Christ offers us in the Gospel a perfect fullness of spiritual blessings, fruition remains in the keeping of hope, until we are divested of corruptible flesh, and transformed into the glory of him who has gone before us.’261 In the light of the foregoing, it is understandable why Calvin links faith and hope so closely with one another. Faith hopes that God will fulfil the promises, promises that are grasped in hope. According to Calvin, faith has hope in eternal life as its companion.262

2.9. The limits and beneﬁt of knowledge of God

Finally, at the end of this chapter on Calvin’s doctrine of revelation, I want to indicate one striking feature which has major consequences for the content of the knowledge of God. Human knowledge in faith is a limited knowledge. In the preceding sections we discussed the function of the metaphor of the mirror. God reveals himself in various mirrors, which each have diﬀerent qualities. The mirrors in which God makes himself known—the natural order, Scripture, Jesus Christ—have both negative and positive functions. Positively, this means that God will bind his creations to the revelation given. Only by concentration on these mirrors will meaningful knowledge to be obtained. Negatively this means that man must not attempt to go beyond the mirrors given him. Man must not desire to contemplate God outside of the ways in which God oﬀers himself. We can now summarise: according to Calvin, knowing God is from the outset a practical matter, focused directly on the human being as an individual person. It begins with man permitting himself to be addressed in conscience, in his encounter with the natural world, in his inner life, in the Word, and most important at the point where God

261 Inst. 2.9.3: ‘Quanvis ergo praesentem spiritualium bonorum plenitudinem nobis in Evangelio Christus offerat, fruitio tamen sub custodia spei semper latet, donec corruptibili carne exuti, transfiguremur in eius qui nos praecedit gloriam.’ 262 Inst. 3.2.42. 116 chapter two speaks: fellowship with Christ, and the gifts contained in Him. It is God who, through his Spirit, invites man to begin on this path, and to move toward ever fuller knowledge. It is a way that lasts a lifetime, a pilgrim’s journey that becomes concrete in obedience, in worship, in the certainty of faith, reverence and love: ‘The knowledge of God which we are invited to cultivate is not that which, resting satisfied with empty speculation, only flutters in the brain, but a knowledge which will prove substantial and fruitful wherever it is duly perceived, and rooted in the heart.’263 This path is not described by Calvin as intellectual acceptance of truths on the authority of others. By its very nature, knowledge of God is not limited to the cerebral. On the contrary; what comes from God does something with man, touches his affective faculties to their depths and calls forth a diversity of experiences. ‘The Lord is manifested by his perfections. When we feel their power within us, and are conscious of their benefits, the knowledge must impress us more vividly than if we merely imagined a God whose presence we never felt.’264 Knowledge of God does indeed include the intellectual, the conceptual, and at the same time is more than understanding. Knowing God is, at its apex, affective. The Spirit moves soul and senses and opens the way forward.

263 Inst. 1.5.9. 264 Ibidem. chapter three

GOD: JUDGE AND FATHER

3.1. Utility and the doctrine of God

The previous chapter describes how man arrives conceptually at knowledge of God, and directly connected with that, what the nature of that knowledge is. Answering the question of the way to acquire knowledge of God did not appear easily possible without giving a provisional answer to the question of the content of that knowledge. Implic- itly it appears that the distinction which entered the conceptual system of Protestant orthodoxy in the early 17th century, namely the distinction between fides qua and fides quae, between the act of faith and the content of faith, must be regarded as inadequate.1 The misconception that faith as an attitude, as an act, can be separated from the content of faith very quickly arises. In the previous chapter it was absolutely clear that Calvin’s concept of faith, or, to be more precise, his concept of knowing God, can not be separated from the content, namely Christ and all the good things that the believer can count on in fellowship with this Lord. In the context of fellowship with Christ, knowing has the connotation of sealing, that is to say, it engages the heart, the intellect is grounded in the affective, saturated in trust. This chapter is a further elaboration of the content, or the contents, of human knowledge of God. What are the features of God as he appears in the mirror of Calvin’s theology? What are the most important metaphors and images, and how do they relate to one another? Is there actually a dark and threatening side to Calvin’s image of God?

1 According to Karl Barth, KD I/1, 248;ET,236, this distinction is already to be found in Augustine, De Trinitate XIII, 2, 5, but it apparently only came to be employed as a methodological distinction with J. Gerhard in his Loci theologiae (1610). From that time the concept has been part of the standard armamentarium of dogmatics, though not without risk. Barth correctly notes that the distinction indicates the ‘dialectic’ between faith and the object of faith, but contributes nothing to further reﬂection. 118 chapter three

Doctrines regarding God are not known for being the most fascinating part of dogmatics; they deal with matters which absolutely fail to touch man in his day to day existence. It appears to be as the adage which Luther uses in De Servo Arbitrio says: ‘Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos.’2 This maxim, originally attributed to Socrates and included in Erasmus in his collection of proverbs,3 is used by Luther as a warning not to become engrossed with the hidden Counsel of God. Only the deus revelatus, the revealed God, matters for man, not the hidden God, the deus absconditus. One could say that the traditional curiositas motif returns in a new shape in Reformation theology.4 In both the adage cited from Luther, and in Calvin’s theology one can discern the desire to concentrate on what really concerns man in his relation to God, and touches human existence directly. With Calvin, this leads to what is sometimes is termed his Biblicism: he wishes to strictly limit himself to that doctrine which God in his wisdom had determined to grant. Does he succeed in this? What we at least must say is that Calvin had the intention not to take speculation as a point of departure. To what degree he really succeeds in this, and to what extent such an enter- prise is really possible, or even desirable, is another question. In the second panel we will encounter a view of systematic theology that, seen in the light of Calvin’s vision of theology, is much more speculative. On the one hand it is much more modest in its acknowledgement of the human status of doctrine; on the other it is more speculative because, in its conception of fulfilling a regulative function, it ventures to the limits of the discussion. That, however, will be dealt with later. I now will simply note that Calvin, seen subjectively, believed that the effort to maintain sobriety and moderation was a matter of obedience to the Gospel. One repeatedly encounters such exhortations to observe limits as a methodological rule, particularly in the case of doctrines involving angels and devils. ‘Since the Holy Spirit always instructs us in what is useful, but altogether omits, or only touches cursorily on matters which tend little to edification, of all such matters it is our duty to remain in willing ignorance.’5 The word ‘willing’ reveals where his heart lies. He

2 WA 18, 685. 3 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Adagiorum Chiliades (1536). Ausgewählte Schriften,hrsg.Von W. Welzig, Bd. 7,Darmstadt1972, 414. 4 E.P. Meijering, Calvin wider die Neugierde. Ein Beitrag zum Vergleich zwischen reforma- torischem und patristischem Denken, Nieuwkoop 1980 and H.A. Oberman, Contra vanam curiositatem. Ein Kapitel der Theologie zwischen Seelenwinkel und Weltall,Zürich1974. 5 Inst. 1.14.3. god: judge and father 119 prefers to stay away from questions which it is not given to man to be able to answer, and is, we must say, correspondingly angry when in the polemics on double predestination logical consequences were imputed to his position which he himself did not wish to draw. This call for discretion and the acknowledgement of limits does not stand by itself. The determination of limits is not a goal in itself, nor an expression of a general timidity, but is directly linked with the practical and spiritual utility of the content of faith. Knowledge must be useful, we hear time and again. Knowing must result in advancement, in worship of and life with God.6 In a manner which is reminiscent of the ﬁrst edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, Calvin states that man only seeks God in the proper way when he curbs his curiosity and worships rather than investigates God’s being. The correct path for knowledge of God is to see Him in his works, in which he approaches man, reveals and in a certain manner shares Himself.7 The relation between knowledge of God and experience is so strong in Calvin that in contemporary Calvin studies a direct line is indeed drawn from Calvin to Schleiermacher.8 In one of the few places in the Institutes where what are termed the ‘perfections’ of God are discussed, he says for instance that knowledge of God consists more in ‘a vivid actual impression than empty lofty speculation’.9 The context makes clear what Calvin here views as being involved in the ‘impression’. First, discussing Exodus 34:6, he says that the Bible is the mirror in which God shows his image to man in the clearest way. Next he asserts that all these qualities of God can also be experienced in the created world. That is an assertion which may strike us as very strange, accustomed as we are to thinking of things in an instrumental, and sometimes natu- ralistic manner. Can man indeed really experience God’s perfections in the physical world which surrounds us? According to Calvin, we can.

6 Inst. 1.14.4: ‘… tenendam esse unam modestiae et sobrietatis regulam, ne de rebus obscuris aliud vel loquamur, vel sentiamus, vel scire etiam appetamus quam quod Dei verbo fuerit nobis traditum. Alterum, ut in lectione Scripturae, iis continenter quaerendis ac meditandis immoremur quae ad aedificationem pertinent: non curiositati aut rerum inutilium studio indulgeamus. Et quia Dominus non in frivolis questionibus, sed in solida pietate, timore nominis sui, vera fiducia, sanctitatis officiis erudire nos voluit, in ea scientia acquiescamus.’ 7 Inst. 1.5.9. 8 8. B.A. Gerrish, ‘Theology within the Limits of Piety Alone: Schleiermacher and Calvin’s Notion of God’ in: idem, The Old Protestantism and the New. Essays on Reformation Heritage, Edinburgh 1982, 196–207. 9 Inst. 1.10.2. 120 chapter three

The qualities listed in Exodus do not involve only a propositional truth delivered to us, but are confirmed in the experience that the believer gains from human experience and the world, from nature and history.10 With experience as his teacher (experientia magistra), man once again discovers the definitive features in the portrait of God.11 Subsequently, for Calvin it is simply not understandable that that which is said about God should leave man unmoved. Anyone who comes into contact with God also encounters himself. Repeatedly we come upon the methodological principle of bipolarity to which we already referred in the previous chapter. Both the terms with which God’s qualities are characterised (goodness, wisdom, righteousness, judgement and mercy), and the images or metaphors which refer to God as a person (source, judge, Lord and Father), can be considered as one focus in an ellipse. To that corresponds the second focus, namely the answer and attitude on the human side. Knowledge of God is thus useful knowledge. But what is useful? The answer to the question of whether something is useful depends greatly on culture. Use is a qualification derived from a fundamental system with its acknowledged norms and values. If that fundamental system is an anthropology which supposes that relation to God is by definition not part of being human, then it at the same time decides that God is unnecessary or even undesirable. It will become clear that the basic, theocratic system which Calvin had in mind is fundamentally different from a basic system that threatens to reduce utility to economic value. For Calvin, that which does justice to the correct relation between God and man, or which promotes fellowship between man and God, and which motivates man to obedience and worship is useful.12 For instance, in Calvin’s second sermon on Job 33 we can hear that which

10 Inst. 1.5.9: ‘Atque hic rursus observandum est, invitari nos ad Dei notitiam, non quae inani speculatione contenta in cerebro tantum volitet, sed quae solida futura sit et fructuosa si rite percipiatur a nobis, radicemque agat in corde. A suis enim virtutibus manifestatur Dominus: quarum vim quia sentimus intra nos et beneficiis fruimur, vividius multo hac cognitione nos affici necesse est quam si Deum imaginaremur cuius nullus ad nos sensus perveniret.’ 11 See also W. Balke, ‘The Word of God and Experientia according to Calvin’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Ecclesiae Doctor,Kampen1980, 19–31. 12 Inst. 1.5.9: ‘Unde intelligimus hanc esse rectissimam Dei quaerendi viam et aptis- simum ordinem: non ut audaci curiositate penetrare tentemus ad excutiendam eius essentiam, quae adoranda potius est, quam scrupulosius disquirenda: sed ut illum in suis operibus contemplemur quibus se propinquum nobis familiaremque reddit, ac quodammodo communicat.’ god: judge and father 121 is understood as useful in the first panel of this study. At verse 12 (‘God is greater than man’), Calvin notes that it is not sufficient to confess that God is almighty, that He has made the world and that He guides things and holds them in his hand. Those are only confessions volages, empty words. These confessions are of no use to us if we do not move beyond them. According to this sermon it is a matter of his confession regarding God having an immediate effect on the manner in which a person relates to God. Thus, on the human side God’s majesty translates into awe and obedience. If we declare God good, in whatever He does with us, then we accept his will, and we confess his righteousness. If that has a real, practical significance, then we maintain that God never subjects us to anything unjustified or without reason.13 Yet Calvin’s conviction that all that happens is in one way or another willed by God and has a purpose and sense, also has its shadow side, which we would rather not accept. This shadow side is that Calvin has the inclination to seek an apparent reason for everything that occurs. Disasters, illnesses, adversity, good fortune: everything is immediately translated into punishment, or discipline, or blessing or undeserved grace. We will return to this further in this chapter (3.8). This constant focus on the practical use of the knowledge connected with faith is linked with another aspect of this concept, namely the anti- speculative tenor. The anti-speculative tenor and the usus motif are like the head and tail of a coin.

3.2. The anti-speculative tenor

What is the background of this anti-speculative trait in Calvin’s thought? Precisely this theme invites consideration in a theological-historical context. Bouwsma points out that the focus on experience and useful knowledge in Calvin’s thought ﬁts well in the anti-speculative mood of the Renaissance.14 His explicit anti-speculative statements can be understood against the background of the diverse impulses in the intellectual climate in which Calvin developed and played a role. For

13 CO 35, 62: ‘Voila donc ceste grandeur de Dieu comme elle doit estre recognue, c’est qu’il ait toute authorite de faire de nous ce que bon lui semblera.’ 14 See Bouwsma, John Calvin, 150–161, idem, ‘Calvinism as Renaissance Artifact’ in: T. George (ed.), John Calvin and the Church. A Prism of Reform, Louisville, Kentucky 1990, 28–41. 122 chapter three instance, in the sphere of French humanism in which he moved, the critique of speculative knowledge, devoid of any practical benefits, was widely shared. In this connection it is also useful to place Calvin’s thinking against the background of the spiritual and philosophical-theological legacy of Scotism and Modern Devotion. He came in contact with both as a student at Collège de Montaigu. But precise lines of influence can hardly be proven. Several decades of research into late medieval backgrounds for Calvin have indeed produced a mass of suggestions, but little concrete evidence of direct influences.15 That does not detract from the fact that one can say there is in fact a congruence of convictions, and that particularly impulses surface that are to be associated with the via moderna. Behind the distinction between the via antiqua and via moderna as differing directions in the late-medieval debate stands the reconsideration of the relation between God and the world. Charac- teristic of the via moderna, as opposed to the via antiqua,istheideathat the relation between God and the world should no longer be thought of in terms of necessity. The theology of Thomas Aquinas and Anselm is still dominated by a powerful trust in the possibility of ratio, thought, penetrating the truth of God’s existence and essence on the basis of the created world. Or, going in the other direction, conclusions based on a consideration of God as the highest being, of drawing conclusions in a deterministic manner regarding nature and sacred history, the via moderna gives way to a view in which the relation of God to the world

15 For an overview of the present state of the matter, see H.A. Oberman, ‘Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (Mi.) 1994,particularly the section ‘The Pitfalls of Pedigree Pursuit’, 117–127. The evidence is not yet present to prove the suggestion of direct dependence upon, for instance, the Sco- tist influenced John Major at the Collège de Montaigu, as proposed by K. Reuter, Das Grundverständnis der Theologie Calvins unter Einbeziehung ihrer geschichtlichen Abhängigkeiten, Neukirchen 1963 and by T.F. Torrance, ‘Knowledge of God and Speech about him according to John Calvin’ in: idem, Theology in Reconstruction, Grand Rapids 1965, 76–98, part. 81–84. Oberman himself also seems to have become more cautious with regard to a direct contact between Major and Calvin. See the paper ‘Die “Extra”-Dimension in der Theologie Calvins’, dating from 1966, in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach Genf, Göttingen 1986, 275: ‘Wohlmöglich hat er [sc. Calvin] … unter dem gelehrten Johannes Major … studiert.’ In his ‘Initia Calvini’ Oberman limits himself to a clus- ter of concepts that belong to the Scotist legacy and could in part form a key to the understanding of Calvin’s order of salvation. The argument that I make in this study to understand Calvin’s theology as a concept in which the invitation of God to man is central, and the believer is called to hold fast to the mercy of God appearing in the mirror of Christ, fits into this pattern. god: judge and father 123 is determined by his will.16 When God and the world could no longer thought of only in terms of a hierarchy of being, this had consequences for knowledge of both the natural world, and for knowledge concerning salvation. To what degree this separation really stimulated freedom for empirical investigation or formed a condition for the creation of modernity, will not be entered into here. It can however be said that this emancipation in late-medieval theology led to a reduction in the extent of theological knowledge accepted on philosophical grounds. Knowl- edge acquired by speculative means no longer had a place unless it was confirmed by revelation.17 Church and theology were thrown back on the revelation of God. Calvin’s theology, and certainly his doctrines of God, stand closer to the via moderna than to the via antiqua.Asthischap- ter continues we will again discuss this with the doctrine of election and Calvin’s conflict with Bolsec in mind. Calvin’s remarks concerning limits and useful knowledge are in a primarily theological context. Apparently closely related to Kant’s adage sapere aude, in which thinking reflects on its own limits and possibilities, in Calvin we find the phrase nostrum vero est ad sobrietatem sapere.18 The argument for accepting such limits is however fundamentally different. With Calvin it is God who in his word sets a boundary, and not

16 According to Terminist logic, linguistic structures are human constructs which only acquire their meaning within a certain context. According to the dominant view in modalist logic, such linguistic structures belonged to the nature of things. Terminist logic leads to a different view of Aristotelian categories. Only substance and quality are still considered as res permanentes; quantity, relation, movement, place and time are descriptions of a situation in which quality and substance find themselves. A universal concept, for instance the term ‘rational being’ in the sentence ‘Socrates is an rational being’, refers to nothing which exists outside of the concrete individual, in this case Socrates. See W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars, 198–201. 17 For this development, see, among others, H.A. Oberman, ‘Via Antiqua and Via Moderna. Late medieval prolegomena to early Reformation Thought’, Journal for the History of Ideas 48 (1987), 23–40, m.n. 26–28. According to a now long outmoded picture of medieval theology and philosophy, this further distinction led to a skeptical attitude in philosophy and to fideism in theology. Moreover, the development was thought to have had a direct consequence for the idea of God Almighty as a potentia absoluta who worked in a capricious and arbitrary manner. Further on in this chapter we will demonstrate that in his theology Calvin left room for acknowledging that God’s governance sometimes takes on a form that cannot be reconciled with the confession of His goodness. At the same time his concepts of providence and election reflect the fact that for his knowledge of God man must keep to what is presented to him in Scripture and in Christ. In terms of the paired concepts of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata,for his knowledge of God the believer is referred to what God has ordained as the potentia ordinata. 18 Inst. 1.15.8: ‘it is ours to keep within the bounds of soberness’. 124 chapter three man who is to reflect on the boundaries of his own possibilities. God treats sparingly of his essence to keep us within the bounds of soberness, Calvin writes at the beginning of the chapter on the Trinity. The things which God indeed says are useful, because they indicate a boundary, and indicate man’s proper place.19 In short, for Calvin the resistance to speculation does not spring primarily from a general, epistemological- theoretical concern, but is immediately religious in its basis. The idea of a boundary has, as we have previously noted, a double function. On the one hand a border is something man should not wish to transgress; on the other hand the border encloses that which can indeed be known about God. Or put in other terms, with the metaphor which was discussed in the second chapter, the boundary is formed by the multiplicity of mirrors in which God himself appears and can be seen by man, and reaches in this existence. To what degree does God make himself knowable?

3.3. Partial knowability

How much does man actually know of God? A distinction frequently made by Calvin in connection with the content of human knowledge of God is that God has not revealed what He is (quid sit), but only what He is like towards us (qualis sit).20 In recent dogmatics this distinction has been interpreted from various angles in such a way as to open the door for the idea that there is still something more real hidden behind the revelation given.21 In his doctrine of election Karl Barth expresses the fear that referring to Christ as the speculum electonis has more a pastoral signiﬁcance than that it must be taken seriously theologically. The real electing God is after all hidden behind this mirror, and that is threatening.22 In this connection Berkouwer has spoken of a shadow that lay over the doctrine of election,23 and this characterisation pales in comparison with the crushing diagnosis pronounced by Max

19 Inst. 1.13.1. 20 Inst. 1.2.1. See also Inst. 1.10.2. 21 See for example H.M. Kuitert, De mensvormigheid Gods. Een dogmatisch hermeneutische studie over de antropomorﬁsmen van de Heilige Schrift,Kampen19693, 111.SeealsoK.Barth, KD II/1, 208;ET,185–186. 22 KD II/2, 68;ET,63. 23 G.C. Berkouwer, De Verkiezing Gods,Kampen1955, 11, 25.ET,Divine Election. Studies in Dogmatics, trans. by Hugo Bekker, Grand Rapids, 1960, 12, 25. god: judge and father 125

Weber: pathetischer Unmenschlichkeit.24 Later in this chapter, in connection with the doctrine of election, we will return to this question. However, it may serve as a warning for us, living in a different cultural and theological landscape, that Calvin absolutely does not appear to be conscious of the possibility that the discrepancy between what of God’s Counsel which is concealed from human knowledge and what has been given tomaninrevelationcouldbeinterpretedintermsofrealandunreal. The distinction serves primarily to bar speculation about God, outside of his own self-revelation. With this negative attitude in regard to the question of whether we can know what God is, Calvin stands in a long and much-frequented tradition.25 The background is in part formed by the tradition of Aristotelian teaching on categories. It is fundamental for every being that it is a substance, something. The remaining categories answer questions about all sorts of aspects of that being: for instance, quantity, quality, its relation to other beings, the place that it assumes. The first and most important category is that of substance, that which makes a thing a particular thing. It is a question of what something is, and what defines its individuality.26 That which can be answered with regard to created things is not able to be determined with relation to God, namely quidditas. Nor, we are given to understand by Calvin, is this something which concerns man. What does matter for human knowledge of God is what God has thought it fitting to reveal of himself, quid eius naturae conveniat scire,27 how He is disposed to and conducts himself toward man and his world. Calvin’s interest lies more with God’s acts than with God’s essence. It is therefore striking that the explicit discussion of the doctrine of God remains limited. In the relatively little that Calvin does say on the subject, Ex. 3:13,whereGod’s

24 M. Weber, ‘Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus’ (1904–1905) in: M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik I. Eine Aufsatzsammlung,Hamburg19754, 122:‘In ihrer pathetischen Unmenschlichkeit mußte diese Lehre nun für die Stimmung einer Generation, die sich ihrer grandiosen Konsequenz ergab, vor allem eine Folge haben: das Gefühl einer unerhörten inneren Vereinsamung des einzelnen Individuums.’ 25 See for instance John of Damascus, De orthodoxa fide,Liber1,cap.4,PG94, 797. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae,Primapars,q1,a.7. The emphasis on the infinite difference between God and man does not serve here, as we have said, to undermine the revelation received. It is a distinction that we find, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas when he asks of man is able to know God per essentiam. Thomas rejects this view. God is known by man only in his effects. The names which are applied to him indeed do refer to his being, and do to that extent predicate God as substantialiter,but with regard to the modus significandi. 26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, book VII, 1. 27 Inst. 1.2.2: ‘what things are agreeable to his nature’. 126 chapter three holiness and majesty are prominent, takes a prominent place.28 This holiness and majesty is precisely, however, that which eludes human understanding. Regarding God’s essentia, his essence, it can be said that it is incomprehensible (incomprehensibilis) and infinite (immensa).29 There is good reason not to take the word incomprehensible in an absolute sense. Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean denying every possibility of knowledge of God, and that is obviously not Calvin’s intention. In his exegesis of the vision accompanying the call of Isaiah, the point of the distinction between who God is in himself and who He is as he reveals himself is not that God might be other than in his revelation. The point is that in his majesty and glory God utterly surpasses human measure. God as it were doses out the appearance of his glory so that it is not overwhelming for angels and men. Human knowledge of God is a matter of ‘tasting’, ‘touching upon’. It is thus certainly the intention that men, like the angels, each behold the majesty of God and take it in, but each within their own sphere and only to the extent that God manifests his majesty.30 In the previous chapter there were frequent references to the importance of classic cosmology in Calvin’s thought. It is also important within the context of the doctrine of God, and particularly for the recognition of God’s sublimity. Astronomy functions here as the paradigm of scientific knowledge. The knowing soul measures the heavens, counts the stars, establishes their magnitude, their distance, observes the faster or slower speed of rotation, and calculates the deviation.31 Thedistancesareasitwerecompassedbythetapemeasureofthe spirit. If this encompassing activity of the soul is considered as knowledge, we can understand why Calvin calls the being of God incomprehensible. It is after all literally immeasurable and is not embraced by any limits.32 In the encounter with God, man learns to know God as infinitely exalted above every measure.33 The realisation of God’s majesty and sublimity is a fundamental and first fact in the content of revelation.

28 In Inst. 1.10.2 Calvin lists the qualities of eternity (aeternitas) and ‘self-existence’ (autousia), to be understood in the sense of aseitas.Wedonotﬁndthetermaseitas. 29 Inst. 1.11.3 and 4. See also Inst. 1.13.1: ‘spiritualis’. 30 Comm. Jes. 6:1,CO36, 128. Cf. also Calvin’s Comm. to 1 Joh. 3:2,CO55, 330. 31 Inst. 1.15.2. 32 It is said of God’s Spirit in Inst. 1.13.14, ‘Iam hoc ipso creaturarum numero eximitur, quod nullis circunscribitur ﬁnibus’. 33 Inst. 1.13.1. god: judge and father 127

3.4. Unceasing activity

While the sublimity of God may have a prominent place in Calvin’s doctrine of God, this means anything but that man can learn nothing more of Him. It is also clear that one can in no way reduce Calvin’s image of God to mechanistic causality. That idea rests on a manifest misconception, apparently determined by the stubbornly persistent perception of a speculative idealistic reading of Calvin, that his thinking about God is reducible to the force of the principle of causality. The opposite is the case. Calvin needs a multiplicity of verbs to do justice to God’s many sorts of activity. One does not persist with such a superfluity if there is no reason to do so. That God is the Living One does not receive from Calvin a concentrated discussion of one paragraph, such as is usual in a more scholastic treatment, but fans out over a broad field. God is active and involved in many ways. The reader of Calvin’s texts is impressed by the many-faceted work and engagement of God. God is the one through whom the Spirit is ceaselessly active. The particular victim of Calvin’s onslaught is the Epicurean idea of a deus otiosus, a God who withdraws into the heavens and whose work remains limited to the creation of the world,34 or who, self-fulfilled, limits himself to the higher reaches of the spheres.35 God, Calvin says, does not withdraw to some distant corner.36 His power is ‘vigilant, efficacious, energetic and ever active’.37 Therefore man should not suppose God’s power as only the prime movement in an otherwise automatic and blind succession of movements, ‘as in ordering a stream to keep within the channel once prescribed for it’. Thus there is in no way a process closed to outside influence; God’s power is an active regulating influence and is involved with each separate moment of a process or happening. In order to remain in the picture, He guides not only a boil- ing mass of water or a burst of energy, but each drop, at every moment. Thus God is not only the prima causa which stands at the beginning of a series of events; through the hidden working of his Spirit He equally is involved in the second and every subsequent cause. It is characteris-

34 Inst. 3.20.40. 35 See Inst. 1.16.4: ‘Taceo Epicureos (qua peste refertus semper fuit mundus) qui Deum otiosum inertemque somniant: aliosque nihilo saniores, qui olim commenti sunt Deum ita dominari supra mediam aeris regionem, ut inferiora fortunae relinqueret; siquidem adversus tam evidentem insaniam satis clamant mutae ipsae creaturae.’ 36 InasermononIob12,CO33, 588. 37 Inst. 1.16.3. 128 chapter three tic of Calvin’s theology and spirituality that this immanent divine work in our created world is ascribed to the Holy Spirit.38 God is spoken of as both the infinitely high and elevated God, and at the same time as the God who through his Spirit is the power which sustains and quick- ens all that exists, deeply engaged with the whole of created reality. The exaltedness and the indwelling are correlates of one another. In his doctrines of the Lord’s Table Calvin directs his gaze to Christ, who, with regard to his humanity, is in heaven since his Ascension; but this idea is borne by the fundamental conviction that man, as a created being, and all of creation around him, lie within the reach of the immanent and hidden power of the Holy Spirit. This involvement of God’s acts through his Spirit takes on ever different forms, and can be pictured as comprising three concentric circles. In the outermost there is the universal action of God’s Spirit through which He supports the whole of creation. In the second circle we find the guidance of God in human history, and the innermost circle is formed by the very peculiar and preternatural action of the Spirit, who works only in the believers, or elect.39 The hidden, bearing power of the Spirit in all creation is so strong that Calvin is prepared to accept the view that originated with the Stoics, provided that, as he says, it is interpreted in a god-fearing manner.40 His objection to the Stoics is not that they say too much, but rather too little. God is not to be subsumed in nature, but nature rests on an ordo prescribed by God. Calvin therefore wants absolutely nothing to do with the idea, much identified with Epicurean philosophy, that God’s capacities now and then go unused. God directs all things through his providence and arranges all things so that nothing happens outside of his will.41 God is the moderator and conservator.Ina frequently used metaphor, God is the source of all good things, which in very diverse ways are directly involved with his work. Calvin uses a range of verbs for God’s work of maintaining and governing the world. God’s actions are described with the verbs fovere, sustinere and curare,42

38 Cf.alsoW.Krusche,Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin, Göttingen 1957, particularly Chapter 2. 39 See his comm. on Rom. 8:14,CO49, 147: ‘Caeterum observare convenit, esse multiplicem Spiritus actionem. Est enim universalis, qua omnes creaturae sustinentur, ac moventur: sunt et peculiares in hominibus, et illae quidem variae. sed hic sanctifi- cationem intelligit, qua non nisi electos suos Dominus dignatur, dum eos sibi in filios segregat.’ Cf. also CO 7, 186. 40 Inst. 1.5.5. 41 Inst. 1.16.3. 42 Inst. 1.16.1. god: judge and father 129 conservare, tolerare, tueri.43 All these verbs express something of God’s solic- itude. God cares, supports, preserves, protects. God’s activity is focused, caring activity. That is His way of being Lord. Typical nouns in this context are also nod, nutus,andrein,fraenum. All things that happen, happen at His nod. He holds everything and everyone, even the devil, in his reins.44 Never, on any occasion, is the movement which proceeds from God general and disordered, as in the case of Pharaoh’s reaction to the words of Moses.45 Godalwaysactsfittingly,andundertakes focused action. What man learns of God in all this is thus not simply activity; it is not an impersonal process. What man learns to know is God’s will in action. God thus does not reveal his essence, but his will. With this emphasis on the unceasing activity of God in all things, Calvin does not deny the existence of secondary causes, but in contrast to the Stoic and Epicurean world-view, the emphasis unquestionably lies on God as the one who through his Spirit is constantly, decisively and actively involved in all that happens.46 Calvin describes a world which is not deserted by God, no blind process, but a world which has the hidden work of the Holy Spirit as the peculiar locus of activity in the Triune being of God to thank for its unity and colourful diversity. This is the line of Trinitarian theology which, looking back, one can connect with Cappadocian theology, and, looking forward, one which Jurgen Moltmann made productive for an ecological doctrine of creation.47 With this, Calvin’s vision of the relation of God to the world stands in the tradition of the condemnation of radical Averroism by the Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, in 1270 and 1277. These articles are generally regarded as a mirror in which the very fundamental debate between Christian faith regarding the creation and Aristotelian thought regarding necessity becomes visible. One of the points in that debate was, for instance, the proposition defended by radical Averroism that the

43 See for instance Inst. 1.2.1: ‘Hoc ita accipio, non solum quod mundum hunc, ut semel condidit, sic immensa potentia sustineat, sapientia moderetur, bonitate con- servet, humanum genus praesertim iustitia iudicioque regat, misericordia toleret, prae- sidio tueatur: sed quia nusquam vel sapientiae ac lucis, vel iustitiae, vel potentiae, vel rectitudinis, vel syncerae veritatis gutta reperietur quae non ab ipso ﬂuat, et cuius ipse non sit causa.’ 44 See H.A. Oberman, ‘Calvin’s Legacy’ in: idem, The two Reformations, 132.SeeInst. 1.14.7. 45 Comm. on Rom. 9:17,CO49, 184: ‘… universali et confuso motu …’ 46 See for instance Inst. 1.16.2. 47 J. Moltmann, Gott in der Schöpfung. Ökologische Schöpfungslehre,Gütersloh19934, 23. 130 chapter three world must be considered eternal. Another sharply debated subject was the immortality of the personal soul. According to Averroism, that was unthinkable. If the material is the individualising principle, and the soul the form, at death the individual soul dissolves into the world- soul. Over against these views the Paris articles defended the proposition that the given order within which we live stems from the will of God. The power of God cannot be limited to that which is conceivable according to Aristotelian principles. A large number of the propositions therefore are aimed against things that are impossible according to this Aristotelianism. Concretely they oppose any limitation on the freedom of God’s action. In this content, the autonomy of the causae secundae is therefore explicitly disputed.48 This is the line in which we also succinctly ﬁnd Calvin: God, through the Holy Spirit, is involved with all things in various ways. He is actively at work in the natural world, in the course of history, and to a particular degree there where the centre of his exertions lie, where man enters into fellowship with God through Christ.

3.5. Core concepts: loving-kindness, judgement and righteousness

Calvin describes God’s dealings with and relation to man and the world with a multitude of words and concepts. In the following paragraphs I will try to introduce some order into this complexity, using two mutually connected approaches to do so. We discover the first approach by paying attention to the perfections or qualities which characterise God’s actions. The second approach to Calvin’s image of God is through the most frequently used images or metaphors. The qualities and metaphors used are connected with each other, and are clarified precisely in their mutual relationships. We must say it again: what one does not find discussed in Calvin’s theology is as telling for it as what is found there. One does not encounter an explicit, elaborated doctrine of God, as one finds in the manuals of Protestant orthodoxy. Calvin does here and there provide a

48 See for a discussion of this articles a.o. D.C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science. The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago 1992, 234–239. Cf. also H.A. Oberman, ‘Via antiqua and Via Moderna: Late medieval Prolegomena to early Reformation Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (1987), 27. god: judge and father 131 list of qualities,49 nor does he fail to take up the debate with those theological currents which do not do justice to God’s presence and activity. In Institutes 1.10.2 we encounter a comparatively extensive discussion of the question of how the various perfections relate to one another. After the qualities listed in Exodus 34:6 are cited (eternity and self-existence; compassion, goodness, mercy, justice, judgement and truth), and reference is made to the treasury of Psalm 145 as a summary of doctrine regarding God, in connection with Jeremiah 9:24 Calvin points tothreeconceptsthatcanserveasheadingsunderwhichtoclassify all of the acts of God. These are the concepts of misericordia (mercy or loving-kindness), iudicium (judgement) and iustitia (righteousness). God’s loving-kindness accomplishes the salvation of his elect. Judgement is that action of God ‘which is daily exercised on the wicked, and awaits them in a severer form, even for eternal destruction’. Finally, there is God’s righteousness, in which he preserves and cherishes those he has justified. The other qualities, such as truth, power, holiness and goodness, can be arranged under these three, because, as we are told, mercy, judgement and righteousness support God’s inviolable truth. How could one believe in God’s judgement and loving-kindness if his power and strength were not assumed? It is impossible to imagine God’s mercy except as a consequence of his goodness. Finally all three qualities reveal God’s holiness. In this paragraph from the Institutes, and equally from his exposition of Psalm 145, it once again becomes very clear that according to Calvin knowledge of God does not bypass human experience; it is something that can be experienced here on earth. The knowledge that is set before our eyes in Scripture, and that which shines in creation too, has a double purpose. God invites man to respect or fear, and subsequently, to trust. With these two words, fear and trust, we have the terms in which Calvin describes the reaction which, on the human side, corresponds with what God has made known of himself. The three concepts of mercy, judgement and righteousness can in turn be connected with various metaphors. That is the second approach. In the following special attention will be given to the metaphors of Lord of the world, judge and father. The concepts of judgement and righteousness fall into the field of meaning surrounding the metaphor of Lord of the world. In the judgement that the wicked and unbelievers

49 For instance in Inst. 1.14.21: sapientia, potentia, iustitia, bonitas. See also Inst. 1.1.1.andInst.3.20.41. 132 chapter three experience, they encounter God in his role as judge. In the care exercised for the faithful in the world, they encounter God’s fatherhood. In a series of steps I will describe how these qualities become concrete, and becoming concrete means, among other things, that they are experienced in a sensory manner.

3.6. Lord of the world: God’s care and goodness in the order of the world

Calvin’s thought is permeated by an idea that has ebbed away as one of the certainties of life in the centuries after the Enlightenment, namely that man and the world belong inalienably to God. He is the Creator of this world, and as such the world is his property, literally his domain. He is the only one with sovereignty over it. All authority, that of monarchs, that of the church, of parents and patrons, is therefore derived from the authority of God. It is not without reason then that in the French translation the title of the ﬁrst book of the Institutes calls God Createur, et souverain Gouverneur du monde. In the introduction to the Ten Command- ments we read that God claims for himself the authority and right to govern.50 It is his by right, and therefore all men, the godless and believers alike, must deal with him. It also means that from the outset there is an asymmetry in the relation between God and man. It is not a relation with equal partners. That idea is completely foreign to Calvin. The majesty of God, his exaltation, is so great that he owes nothing to any of his creations.51 In theory, God is not beholden to us in any way. The competencies of the two parties are therefore incommensurate. This idea perhaps sounds repugnant. Does God then have no obligations to his creation? Should God not be responsible for his creation? But these questions already betray the modern reversal of perspective in which man summons God to judgement, rather than the other way around. In the following sections on election and damnation I will return to this. From the manner in which Calvin describes God’s providing for this world, or better, His care for his creation, it seems clear that according to him it is inconceivable that man could ever bring God to the bar, as if man had a right to anything. The primary relation between the Creator and the creation makes that impossible. Therefore

50 Inst. 2.8.13: ‘potestatem ac ius imperii vendicat.’ 51 Comm. on Rom. 9.15,CO49, 181: ‘Hoc autem oraculo declaravit Dominus, se nemini mortalium esse debitorem.’ god: judge and father 133 as he develops his arguments regarding Christian life and ethics, we find Calvin repeating the dictum nostri non sumus, sed Domini time after time.52 Nor can unbelievers ever escape from God’s oversight, though there is no comfort for them in this. To their eyes He appears only as a harsh judge. For modern readers, for whom as outsiders it is hardly possible to understand what Calvin experienced of God and the world, this discourse is brimming with pitfalls. Terms such as ‘property’ and ‘Lord’ provoke distrust in a context where the inalienable rights of the individual have found their way into constitutions and human rights treaties. Words like this seem to assail the dignity of man. This makes it all the more important to investigate what meaning these concepts had for Calvin. Firstandforemost,itmustberemarkedthatGod’sbeingasLordof the world must in no sense be confused with a despotism. Calvin knew well that earthly lords could reveal themselves to be despots, but these are excesses and deformations of the ruler who should be caring for his subjects justly, with moderation and leniency. It has already been noted that it is not by accident that the Institutes are preceded by a letter of dedication to a monarch, Francis I. This ends with a critical exposition of the office of the government and on the subjection of all governmental powers to God. ‘The Lord is the King of kings’.53 The aversion to the idea that God is a Lord who rules arbitrarily or who allows himself to be led by his whims will occupy us again later in the sections regarding God’s absolute power (3.12.5–6). In the preceding we have already however established that God’s being as Lord becomes concrete first and foremost in providence. God’s caring dealings with believers indeed take on a form that encompasses the lives of all men, and the whole of creation. It becomes concrete in what Calvin calls general grace, and which embraces all life on earth. It is characteristic of Calvin’s world of faith that in support of God’s goodness and care he does not appeal just to Bible passages. God’s goodness and providence is not just a theologoumenon that one can discover only from Scripture; Calvin’s premise is that it is confirmed in everyday experience. It is clear that at this point we encounter an unbridgeable chasm which has opened between Calvin’s times and our modern sense of life, and that a direct appeal to Calvin is impossible without explicitly reminding ourselves of our altered relation to the

52 Inst. 3.7.1. 53 Inst. 4.20.32. 134 chapter three world around us. In today’s dogmatics God’s being as Creator is a confession which goes ‘contrary to what can be seen and experienced’.54 That was not the case in Calvin’s world. For Calvin, God’s being Cre- ator and God’s providence have an inherent plausibility. The perfections of God’s goodness and care shine forth in the structure of the world, and are confirmed in Scripture. Of what is Calvin thinking with regard to this visibility? What does he have in mind? In particular, we must think of the order of the universe. In the preceding chapter we have already cited his statement that man cannot open his eyes without seeing the hand of God the Craftsman in the ordering of the world.55 According to the geocentric picture of the cosmos current in Calvin’s time, constructed according to Aristotelian concepts, the earth had its place at the centre of the universe. Around the earth were to be found the spheres, nine or ten in total.56 Seven spheres were counted for the moon, the sun, and the five planets then known, and the eighth was for the stars, which had a permanent place in the vault of heaven. Some argued the existence of a ninth sphere, which explained the tremors of the eighth sphere, and a tenth sphere which was identified with the waters above the heavens. The cosmos was thus an inner space encapsulated by the vaults of heaven. That which was between the sphere of the moon and the earth was the sublunary or terrestrial realm, and shared in the susceptibility and instability that is characteristic of the earth. According to the Aristotelian view, the turning or rotation of the outermost sphere was perpetuated by the nearness of God in the void behind the heavens.57 As the primum mobile, the outermost sphere imparts its movement to the spheres within it. Brought into motion by this first impulse, the spheres move around the earth with great regularity and serenity. The closer one comes to the outmost sphere, the greater the tranquillity and order of the rotation is. Calvin’s own picture of the universe is in general agreement with the usual medieval concept.58 There is at least one point at which it

54 H. Berkhof, Christelijk geloof, 152; Christian Faith, 149. 55 See Inst. 1.5.1. 56 C.B. Kaiser, ‘Calvin’s Understanding of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Its extent and Possible Origin’ in: R.V. Schnucker (Ed.), Calviniana. Ideas and Influence of Jean Calvin, Kirksville (MO) 1988, 81–83. 57 Aristotle, De generatione II,10, 333b; 11, 338b. 58 See Kaiser, ‘Calvin’s Understanding of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy’, 85.Cal- vin denies the existence of a tenth sphere and does not make notice of a ninth sphere. god: judge and father 135 deviates, and that he brings explicitly in connection with God’s special providence. According to Aristotelian science, as the first mover God exercises his influence by means of an impulse that moves from the outermost spheres inward. The influence is thus mediated by intermediate causes, causae secundae. At this point Calvin strikes out in a different direction, and argues that God, in his work of sustaining and maintaining, is not bound to intermediate causes, but can intervene directly. He avows that it can be seen from all manner of things that there is a direct influence that runs counter to the regular course of nature or which bypasses it. One example he gives is that the earth is not covered by water, as could be expected from the principles of Aristotelian science. The sublunary realm is constructed of four elements, namely earth, water, air and fire. It is the quality of these elements that each has its natural place in the sublunary realm. As the heaviest element, earth is the lowest, above which comes the lighter element of water, followed by air, and finally fire, as the lightest element and therefore the highest, to be found on the upper margin of the sublunary sphere. The moon is made of fiery matter, although the strength of its light is not so great that it can do without the aid of the sun.59 Calvin does not appear to have been aware of other explanations for why the oceans do not cover the land.60 It is precisely God’s special providence that is expressed in the marvellous fact that the waters are limited to the seas and do not spill over the land.61 Calvin experienced the boundary between the sea and land as a fragile order, which can only be explained by appealing to God’s guiding and protective hand. Another evidence of God’s goodness is the constancy of the earth. The fact that it occupies the centre of the universe, in a position of rest, is frankly to be termed marvellous. While the earth is surrounded by lighter and inconstant elements, and is subject to the influence of the rotation of the heavenly spheres, it nevertheless remains anchored fast in the centre. That is an inexplicable miracle. In this too Calvin sees the good providence of God.62 Thus there could be still more examples listed in which God’s visible power is made to serve his care for man,

59 See Comm. Gen. 1:15,CO23, 21–22. 60 Kaiser, ‘Calvin’s Understanding’, 81. 61 Comm. on Ps. 104:5,CO32, 86 and on Gen. 1:9,CO23, 19. See also Inst. 1.5.6. 62 See Comm. Ps. 93:1,CO32, 16–17 and Inst. 1.5.5. 136 chapter three such as the cycle of the seasons, the alternation of day and night, and the form of man as a microcosmos.63 Once again, we underscore the relation between power and care. In Calvin’s theology the concept of might does not have the negative association of the blind exercise of power by a Supreme Being. God exercises his power with precision and deliberation and is in no way the neutral Supreme Being of the Enlightenment era.64 God’s might serves particularly for preserving the structure of the world, the theatre of his glory. That banishes the idea of neutrality. The power with which God pushes the seas back into the depths and holds the earth fast and immovable in the centre of the cosmos assures that life on earth will be possible for man. From the outset power is under the domination of God’s goodness, and is conceived in religious-ethical terms. The reference to a passage in the prophet Isaiah, where the evidences to God’s might are enumerated, and this summary is to serve as a means of quickening trust on the part of man.65 Calvin still directly feels that.

3.7. The judgement of the judge and the discipline of the father

In the preceding we have given several examples of natural instances in which Calvin sees God’s goodness exemplified. Can Calvin also bring the life histories of people into this context? Part of the intellectual baggage that modern readers bring with them is the idea that Calvin teaches a rigid form of providence. The question is how this looks and if it can still be recognised. We immediately encounter two series of images and terms that describe the relation of God’s action in history with various groups of men. These are the images of God as Father and Judge, and the terms righteousness and judgement, or iustitia and iudicium. Indisputably these terms correlate with the duality which, according to Calvin, is perceptible in historical reality and that has its deepest roots in the hidden Counsel of God, in the double decision of election and damnation. I will not discuss Calvin’s doctrine of predestination here yet, but first limit myself to the question of how this dualism works out in the doctrine of providence. Or to put it differently,

63 Inst. 1.5.3. 64 Th. de Boer, De God van de filosofen en de God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van filosofie en theologie, ’s Gravenhage 1989, 158. 65 Inst. 3.2.31. See further Comm. on Isa. 40:21, 26,CO37, 20–21, 24–25. god: judge and father 137 the dualism has an effect on the perception of man and his fate. First, it must be noted that Calvin does not use the term judgement in only one sense. The concept iudicium is on the one hand used to characterise the dealings with the damned. Calvin describes God’s dealings with his children under the central concept of iustitia. In this context, in connection with atonement, iudicium then emerges again to express God’s dealings with the elect. However, there is a sharp distinction made between punitive judgements and corrective judgements, or iudicium vindictae and iudicium castigationis. In the first case there is real punishment involved, connected with total rejection. Discipline means something very different, namely correction and admonition. The first form of judgement is explicitly coupled with God as Judge, and the second with the Fatherhood of God.66 Therefore, already in this life the damned and unbelievers must undergo God’s curse and wrath, and their life here is already the gate to hell. God is the judge and avenger of wrong. In Calvin’s eyes this is to be seen many times in history, on occasions such as Joshua’s conquest of Jericho, when the city was laid under a curse, and all its inhabitants, man and animal alike, were exterminated. The atrocities committed in the Old Testament are, in this panel, justified by an appeal to the righteousness of God. God has the right to demand obedience, and when this is not given, to punish.67 In order to endure the afflictions they will face, God’s children—the elect—however must also undergo discipline, which is a blessing for them. This totally different perception of sufferingthatatfirstsightmayseemtobethesame, can be understood as an logical application of the belief that Christ has borne the punishment for sins. If Christ has borne God’s wrath over sin for His children, the suffering that still happens to them can never be accounted as a consequence of God’s wrath. Discipline may then be experienced as severe, but it is not to death. For Calvin the doctrine of providence and the doctrine of ‘repentance to life eternal’ are one whole.68 He considers the utterances of the prophets where God’s Peo-

66 Inst. 3.4.31: ‘Iudicium unum, docendi causa, vocemus vindictae: alterum, castigationis … Alterum iudicis est, alterum patris … Iudex enim quum facinorosum punit, in ipsum delictum animadvertit, et de facinore ipso poenam expetit. Pater quum ﬁlium severiuscorrigit,nonhocagitutvindicetautmulctet,sedmagisutdoceatetcautiorem in posterum reddat.’ 67 Comm. Josh. 6:21,CO25, 469. Cf. also the sermon on IISam. 8:2, Johannes Calvin, Predigten über das 2. Buch Samuelis, hrsg. von H. Rückert, (Supplementa Calvinia 6)Neukirchen1931–1961, 235–238. See also Inst. 2.8.14. 68 Inst. 3.9. 138 chapter three ple are subject to God’s wrath (for instance Micah 7:9 or Hab. 3:2)asa manner of speaking which does not say as much about God’s Counsel as about the manner in which the prophet experiences God’s hand.69 One must conclude that the dualism within God’s Counsel and the bearing of the punishment for sins by Christ is decisive for the perception and interpretation of the vicissitudes which happen to a person. In the theological theory we encounter a duality that runs as a hidden thread through all history.

3.8. The absurdity of life

God’s care, his wise measures with his children, and his judgement of the disobedient are far from always visible. Thus the visibility of God’s rule does not totally define the picture in the panel of Calvin’s theology, although it must be said that Calvin generally sees little ambiguity. At such moments his thinking shocks us, and we experience the distance from contemporary theology, which has come to be dominated by the question of human suffering. There are more than enough examples of passages without ambivalence. They create the impression that God’s fatherly care and righteousness toward the justified in this life is already completely obvious. God here shows himself an avenger of injustice and a defender of the innocent.70 WheninthecourseofthenarrativeofJudahandTamar in Genesis 38 the early death of Er is explicitly characterised as the punishing hand of God, this gives Calvin an opportunity to once again expound the general rule with regard to God’s governance over the good and the bad. The death of Er shows how the hand of God rules. The connection between the event and God’s action is very direct for Calvin—indeed, we must admit, with just as much appeal to other passages of scripture, all too direct. The conviction that all things have a purpose, a sometimes hidden but generally undisguised meaning, has as its down side that everything can be reduced to punishment or discipline.71 Calvin has great difficulty with the mystery of God’s actions. Anyone who cleaves too closely to Calvin at this point runs extreme

69 Inst. 3.4.32. 70 Inst. 1.5.7. See also Comm. Ps. 107: 1.5.8,CO32, 136–137. 71 Cf. H.J. Selderhuis, God in het midden. Calvijns theologie van de psalmen,Kampen2000, 130, 304. god: judge and father 139 risks from the perspective of pastoral theology. The conviction that everything which happens has a certain utility, is ordained by God with a specific goal, is dangerous because it is accompanied with the idea that man can generally discover what the purpose of these things is, for what use they were intended. In this Calvin’s theology is inclined to a closedness that leaves no room for the acknowledgement of the absurd, for the experience that things happen which we, for the sake of Christ, can not and will not identify with God. For the rest, Calvin acknowledges that God’s just governance is far from always obvious, because the punishments and rewards are not always immediately dealt out. When it comes to God’s policy in history, he leaves space for that which is not yet understood, but not for the absurd. Calvin does say that the immediate interventions on the part of God were more visible in the time of the law than after Christ. In the new dispensation it is no longer fitting that man be seized by the fear of immediate death. When men who live an ungodly life live long and prosper, this is however in no way a reason to doubt that God will execute his judgements. Nor does their execution always happen in the same manner.72 Moreover, the revelation of the judgement of the godless and of provision for the elect can be pushed forward to the consummation.73 But this is not the total picture. There are passages in which Calvin dwells extensively on the total opacity of life, which means that doubt can strike regarding the goodness and regularity of God’s rule. We find sections that strike us as modern in their trembling at the randomness of life. ‘Innumerable are the ills which beset human life, and present death in as many different forms. Not to go beyond ourselves, since the body is a receptacle, nay, the nurse of a thousand diseases, a man cannot move without carrying along with him many forms of destruction. His life is in a manner interwoven with death. For what else can be said where heat and cold bring equal danger? Then, in what direction soever you turn, all surrounding objects not only may do harm, but almost openly threaten and seem to present immediate death. Go on board a ship, and you are but a plank’s breadth from death. Mount a horse, the stumbling foot endangers your life. Walk along the streets, and every tile upon the roofs is a source of danger. If a sharp instrument is in your hand, or that of a friend, the possible harm is manifest. All the savage beasts

72 Comm. Gen. 38:7,CO23. 73 Inst. 1.5.7;Inst.3.9.6. 140 chapter three

you see are so many beings armed for your destruction. Even within a high-walled garden, where everything ministers to delight, a serpent will sometimes lurk. Your house, constantly exposed to fire, threatens you with poverty by day, with destruction by night. Your fields, subject to hail, mildew, drought and other injuries, denounce barrenness, and thereby famine. I say nothing of poison, treachery, robbery, some of which beset us at home, others follow us abroad. Amid these perils, must not man be very miserable, as one who, more dead than alive, with difficulty draws an anxious and feeble breath, as if a drawn sword were constantly suspended over his neck?’74 It would appear from this quote that anxiety, fear and the experience of insecurity were not unfamiliar to Calvin, and in contradiction to the cliched contrast between Calvin and Luther which still surfaces in Max Weber,75 they are not invented but primarily a matter of his own life experience. His theology focuses on such experiences, and owes part of its vitality and continuing worth to this. If faith has something to do with the lives of flesh and blood people, then the poles of anxiety and desire will take their place in its theology in a theological shape. It is the task of theology not to silence anxiety and desire; it will rather bring these fundamental experiences of life into dialogue with what can be said theologically. Calvin’s theology too points us toward the confidence in God rooted in Christ, but nevertheless the shape of this theme in his thinking is so different that in our time it is almost unrecognisable. For him the demand for a just system in the world and history is not the all-consuming issue that has become dominant in theology from after the Second World War. In contemporary theology we find a powerful tendency to make the experience of suffering mankind the point of departure for theological knowledge. The focus on the subject has worked itself out in the focus on the suffering subject and his aporetic experience of evil.76 Suffering man is the place where knowledge of God and his rejection of suffering and evil is to be won. With Calvin the human subject never has this central function. The world is more than a man experiences personally. He has but a limited place in the system of heaven and earth. Therefore the theological strategy works out entirely differently, so to speak. The fragility of life, the constant uncertainty can only be borne by keeping God’s providence continually before one’s eyes. That

74 Inst. 1.17.10. 75 M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik, 121. 76 A. Houtepen, God een open vraag, 124;ET,83. god: judge and father 141 means that invariability, changelessness, steadfastness receive a positive value. For Calvin providence is not an equivalent of a blind fate, but it is the care of a heavenly Father who never lets fall that which he takes into his hands.77 The issue is not so much the mystery of God’s actions, as that man might be dealing with a blind fate. That would be truly dreadful. In Calvin’s sermons on the book of Job we also find countless passages which touch upon the terror and absurdity of life. Obviously the subject matter of this book provides an opportunity for this, but reading several sermons brings home how deeply Calvin himself is involved with the topic. It is true, he says, that world history offers a confused prospect. To be sure, man can sometimes see the good sense in what happens, and in so doing endorse that God in his deeds is guided by deliberation, wisdom and prudence. Sometimes He blinds those who suppress the truth, and his vengeance is evident. But so often too this clarity is absent, and neither the reason nor the purpose of God’s actionsisapparent.78 At this point Calvin comes up with the idea of a double wisdom of God. That is to say, from the perspective of God the wisdom with which God rules is indeed one, but from the perspective of man one must speak of two sorts of wisdom. The one sort is that which God has taught in His Word; the other wisdom includes that which God has kept to himself. But it is with this wisdom that he rules the world. When tyrants rule, villainous men lead astray, the spirits of the one group proceed to destruction and others are saved, then that is all the wisdom of the incomprehensible Counsel of God. When we ask about the reasons for all of this, an abyss opens up into which all of our senses are plunged.79 Calvin takes into account a fundamental not-knowing. What it all comes down to, according to him, is that man, in his desire to reconcile the events of the world with God’s goodness, is able to stop, and not accuse God of arbitrariness and tyranny. Lim- ited insight into the righteousness of God’s rule must on man’s side correspond to the acknowledgement of our own insignificance and limitation. Calvin refers here to a discipline for faith. Faith acknowledges first the goodness of God, and then acknowledges that there is a wisdom bound up with this goodness that makes it impossible to accuse

77 Inst. 1.17.11. 78 CO 33, 581–582.SeealsoCO35, 51–66. 79 CO 33, 579–580, 590. 142 chapter three

God of excessive use of his power or of tyranny.80 It cannot be doubted that Calvin is reticent in making statements about God’s being. But one thing is absolutely certain for him: God is not morally reprehensible. God’s might, wisdom and righteousness are inseparably linked with one another.81 The acknowledgement of God’s majesty and his infinite elevation over man has the consequence that as a matter of principle room must be left for the respectful acknowledgement that there are spaces in God’s Counsel to which man has no access. In short, human knowledge of God is literally a knowing in part. With Calvin we indeed find the attempt to find explanations for most experiences of calamity and suffering, but even he falters. Suffering is explicable in so far as it is a punishment of the godless, or a pedagogical measure for the pious. There remain cases that cannot be explained, and that cannot be explained with an appeal to God’s wisdom and goodness. The practical orientation of Calvin’s theology becomes visible when he in his sermons time and time again impresses upon his hearers the useofthisdoctrine.Thesenseinthedisasterssuffered is, according to Calvin, that man learns to exercise patience and humble himself under the hand of God.82 The majesty and inscrutability of many of God’s judgements make man conscious of his low standing over against God. This nurtures respect, the recognition of the place that the human being takes in the face of realities of life, be they delightful or disconcerting. The disasters in our lives throw us back upon God himself, who preserves his children through the salvation of Christ. And then the refrain sounds: Puis qu’ainsi est donc remettons nous en la protection de nostre Dieu. When that is the case, let us then place ourselves under the protection of our God.83

80 CO 33, 584: ‘Car il faut que nous recognoissions sa vertu premierement, et puis que nous adioustions avec sa vertu une telle sagesse que nous ne l’accusions point de tyrannie ne d’excez. Car ce n’est point le tout de dire, Il est vray que Dieu gouverne le monde, et cependant ne murmurions contre lui, que nous ne la accusion piont de tyrannie ne dexcez’. 81 CO 35, 60: ‘Quand nous parlons de sa puissance, ou iustice, ou sagesse, ou bonté, nou parlons de lui-mesme: ce sont choses inseparables, et qui ne se peuvent point discerner de son essence, c’est à dire pour en estre ostees. Car elles sont tellement coniointes, que l’une ne peut estre sans l’autre’. 82 CO 35, 9–10. 83 CO 33, 592. god: judge and father 143

3.9. The anchor of God’s unchanging will

It is perhaps difficult if not impossible for the modern reader of Calvin’s theology to empathise with the foregoing, but the conclusion is inescapable: in the panel on Calvin’s theology the knowledge that all things come forth from God’s hand is a source of comfort. In their need and misery, God’s children do not fall into the hands of God’s adversary, the devil. As fragile creatures they do not fall into an unfathomably deep ravine, but live and have their being within the reach of God.84 What overcomes them will ultimately appear to have been for the good. That is comfort in the maelstrom of events. When God’s good care is not however visible, it is all the more an occasion to hold fast to the teaching of Scripture that God controls everything in the life of man. That means that man is dealing with God’s will in all that occurs and all that happens to him.85 In this line of thought we encounter the concept of providence, though indeed in a hard form. God’s foresight does not mean only that God knows what will happen before the fact, but expressly also that all things in one manner or another flow directly from his will, and are ordained by Him.86 That is, God’s decrees in his providence are unchanging, and seen from his Counsel all things are fixed. We here run up against those elements in Calvin’s theology that are always connected with the darker side of his theology, because they not rarely have led to ‘fatalistic consequences and misunderstandings’,87 namely, the doctrine of the decrees of God, and particularly providence and election. What does the changelessness of God’s Counsel mean? It is necessary here to say something, because there are few concepts that have so changed complexion through changes in attitudes toward life, that call up such a different constellation of associations, that they really can only be misunderstood. In the spiritual climate in which Calvin lived, God’s unchangeableness was nothing less than his fidelity. God is not capricious, not an uncertain beacon. Changeless- ness is an unadulterated positive quality of God. From being a term with a positive meaning, eminently suitable for describing God in his

84 Inst. 1.17.7. 85 Inst. 1.16.9. 86 Inst. 1.16.9. 87 E.P. Meijering, Voorbij de vadermoord. Over het christelijk geloof in God, de Schepper, Kampen 1998, 96. 144 chapter three highness and goodness, with our present outlook on life it has become a word that calls up associations of lifelessness and inspissation, and provokes whole-hearted abhorrence. In our climate today change, his- toricity and vitality are positive concepts, because they give precedence to possibilities, in place of a fixation on the past or givens. In the early Renaissance culture in which Calvin moved, innovation had a frankly pejorative implication, and improvement was to be found in rebirth and reformation, a return to an original situation. The change in the cultural climate which has taken place since then extends over the whole manner in which we look at and evaluate Calvin’s premodern thinking in our time. Questions arise which previously were impossible: if the constancy of God is so obvious, if regret and contrition are only forms of anthropomorphic speech, what then are the consequences for other concepts and images which are also undeniably anthropomorphic, and appear to have something to say about God’s relation with man? Can God then still love and have compassion as a father, be moved as a mother? What does anthropomorphic speech mean for the trustworthiness of the images used? Can not being hurt, not being moved, be reconciled with loving? What sort of love is it that must be thought of apart from such affects? Is God still love then, or does this reflect more on the ‘iron Calvin’, to use Harnack’s stereotype?88 Since the cosmological paradigm has been exchanged for a paradigm oriented to modern psychological insights, in which the capacity for change and relationality are highly valued,89 it has become impossible to iterate Calvin’s doctrine of God unchanged. These matters touch on the next subject that is connected with the foregoing: human freedom. If everything that happens can be traced back to God’s unchanging will, what is left of human freedom? Are we not marionettes with no will of our own, moving across the stage of the puppet theatre on invisible strings bring pulled from above? In short, Calvin’s image of God the Father, who protects and supports his children, seats them at his table, and urges and trains them to move forward—images from life that form a continuous line in his exegesis and sermons—appears to be threatened by the notion of God’s unchangingness. It is quite common to find the suggestion in theological literature that Calvin’s conception of God as Father or Mother has

88 A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte Bd.3, Tübingen 19325, 773. 89 For the change in paradigms and the tension between classic theism and modern positions, see H. Jansen, Relationality and the Concept of God,Amsterdam1995. god: judge and father 145 a darker flip side, and in view of this, has little true content. The knowledge that the image of God as Father or Mother appears to yield is immediately undermined because the immutable will of God is concealed behind it.90 God’s real essence would deviate from this image. We will not try to answer these questions all at one time. If we will come to some degree of understanding of Calvin, we will first have to investigate within what context and with what meaning the invariable will of God occurs. Calvin’s explication of Bible verses which speak of God’s regret and contrition is well known, not to say notorious. In Genesis 6:6 we read that God regretted that he had created man, and in ISamuel 15:11 we hear that the Lord regretted that he had appointed Saul as king. We can reach for the book of Jonah, where God, through the repentance of the city of Ninevah, is moved not to execute his judgement on the city. What does Calvin do with these texts about God’s regret and compunction? He considers them as figurative language. It is a way of speaking that is completely accommodated to the manner in which the course of events could be understood by those who then heard it. According to Calvin, one must read these texts in the light of other Bible passages, such as ISamuel 15:29. There one will find the key. From these we learn that God knows no regret, ‘because He is not a man, that he should repent’. In his opinion, in this verse the Holy Spirit does not speak in a metaphorical manner, but absque figura, and teaches straightforwardly about the invariability of God, His immutabilitas.91 The talk of regret and compunction, in other words about an actual response on the part of God, is an accommodation to the way in which man hears and understands. From man’s perspective it appears as if God has had regrets and changed his mind, but this does not describe how God is, in se, sed a nobis sentitur. According to Calvin it is clear as day that God himself is elevated above all emotions, and that the supposition of a change in the exercise of his will simply cannot be contemplated. Thinking about God’s sovereignty must rather take as its starting point a passage such as Isaiah 14:27, where we read ‘For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it? And his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?’ It will be clear that this exposition will leave us, with our ideas, in a considerable quandary. Can one say then that God really responds at all? Put irreverently,

90 H.M. Kuitert, De mensvormigheid Gods, 111. 91 Inst. 1.17.12. 146 chapter three can prayer be anything more than speaking back to an automated answering machine, the message in which was recorded long ago? As we have said before, the reason why Calvin has so little hesitation about rejecting the attribution of feelings, regret and compunction to God as figurative language has become foreign to us. According to the attitudes of that day, the feelings in question are human, characteristic of terrestrial life. There is a great difference between the heavenly spheres and existence in the lower spheres. Inconstancy, ignorance, error and impotence rule the sublunary sphere. This cosmological heritage, already described, plays a powerful role in Calvin’s vision of man and his regard for the perfections of God. From pre-Socratic philosophy on, in Plato and particularly after Aristotle, metaphysics or thinking about the highest existence was deeply influenced by the horizon of contemporary cosmology.92 God as the immobile prime mover is the scientific explanation for the regular, steady rotation of the first heaven. In the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, immutability is the quality of the highest, divine being. Earthly things are compounded, and thus divisible. The wholeness of an earthly object can be sundered by external effects. Since Parmenides it was accepted that existence itself is eternal, and therefore imperishable, unfaltering and without purpose, homoge- nous and therefore invariable.93 These ideas were taken up into Chris- tian doctrines regarding God, and deeply influenced the interpretation of Bible passages such as Psalms 102:12–13 and Psalm 103:15–18.The unchanging nature of God, his immutabilitas, was taught because it had to be denied that the being of God is divisible, as are things in our world. Being compounded is a characteristic of the material world, and is a mark of weakness. God is the One who is perfect in himself. For classic doctrines of God the category of relation is therefore problematic in light of this perfection, because it is associated with dependence. With regard to divine being, relation as a category is illusory. In the deepest sense, God has no relations. God is sufficient in himself. Rela- tions are only real for earthly things, because they are dependent on one another in all sorts of ways, are affected by and are connected with one another. For classic thought the highest being is indivisible and in that sense invariable. Nothing from outside it can impinge upon this being. That is, the divine being is a being that is not subject to effects external

92 W. Maas, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, 59. 93 W. Maas, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, 35–39. god: judge and father 147 to itself. This concept became definitive for the idea of the impassive- ness of God. The centre of the universe, on and around the earth, is controlled by movement, change and transitoriness. There phenomena effect one another. The further one goes from the earth, the higher into the heavenly spheres, the more stable God’s creation is and the more tranquil, orderly and fixed. In this model, regret and compunction are qualities of the terrestrial. They are emotions, affects that belong to the variability and capriciousness of human nature fallen into sin, through which people become playthings of their own or other’s whims. With the distance of history, we can indeed assess how thoroughly this cosmological heritage permeated teaching about God. On the basis of a doctrine of God supported by the geocentric paradigm, Calvin was certain that God could never be tormented by emotions, that inconstancy is excluded from God, and that transitoriness and divine nature are irreconcilable.94 The classical Scriptural proofs of the changelessness of God, such as Ex. 3:14,Mal.3:16,Ps.102:28 and James 1:17, were interpreted in this light, and other passages that spoke of variability in God were pushed aside. At this point the legacy of classical metaphysics hangs over Christian tradition like a shadow, and we will have to discount change and relation as positive qualities of God’s being and acts. Yet, for a fair and proper understanding of the classical concept, it will be necessary to stand by the remarks regarding the concept of the constancy of God and the existential significance this has for faith. Calvin experienced the constancy of God as a reason for confidence in the steadfastness of God in the mist of the uncertainties of human life. God does not suffer from moods. God does not play games with his children.95 This conviction assures that the history of this concept indeed will seem chaotic, but in reality all things occur under God’s rule and governance. In Calvin’s own idiom, nothing happens except by His order, or his nod.96 No branch breaks from the tree,97 no tile falls from a roof,98 no storm arises (Jonah 1:4)exceptthatitcomesforthfromGod’s will. Calvin is able to cite countless examples of Biblical events that are to be resolved into God’s initiative and confirm it, because they

94 See his exegesis of Ex. 3:14,CO24, 43–44. 95 Inst. 1.17.1. 96 Cf. Oberman, ‘Calvin’s Legacy’, in: idem, The two Reformations, 132. 97 Inst. 1.16.6. 98 Inst. 1.17.10. 148 chapter three arise from His will. Although seen from the human perspective, the things happen by chance, in reality they happen by God’s counsel and disposition. Chance is therefore a human explanation, but, according to Calvin, in the light of God’s divine teaching that must be regarded as a false understanding.99 But this is a conclusion from a divine perspective, not the perspective of man. In this distinction we again encounter the importance of the limits that, in Calvin’s own conviction, there are for the human mind. There is a qualitative difference between God’s Counsel and the human mind. However highly Calvin may speak of mental powers, in these things man is still characterised by sluggishness, weakness and incapacity.100 The conclusion that Calvin draws from all this—and that is significant—goes in a different direction than we would expect. His conclusion is not that man loses all his freedom. The accent lies on the smallness and impotence of man over against the majesty of God. But the intended reaction is not paralysis, but trust and security. The message is this: in the chaos of life, frail man may know himself to be in the hand of God.

3.10. Predestination and responsibility

The concept of the changelessness of God’s will does not detract from man being responsible for his own actions. How can that be? Is not the truth more on the side of the critics who assert that Calvin’s position is in fact that of fatalism? To what degree is Calvin bound by the thought of the Stoic philosophy that we ﬁnd in his times? This inﬂuence has often been adduced in connection with the tremendous tension that this sort of thinking implies with regard to conceiving freedom of the will.101

99 Inst. 1.16.9: ‘quasi fortuita sunt quae certum est ex Dei voluntate provenire’. 100 ‘mentis nostrae tarditas’ (1559), ‘imbecellitas nostra’ (1539), Inst. 1.16.9. 101 See for instance D. Nösgen, ‘Calvins Lehre von Gott und ihr Verhältnis zur Gotteslehre anderer Reformatoren’, Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift 23 (1912), 690–747,who Calvin’s concept of providence qualifies as a ‘mechanisches ablaufendes Geschehen’ (702). Cf. more recently A. Ganoczy/S. Scheld, Herrschaft—Tugend—Vorsehung. Hermeneu- tische Deutung und Veröffentlichung handschriftlicher Annotationen Calvins zu sieben Senecatragödien und der Pharsalia Lucans,Wiesbaden1982, 46–53. I quite deliberately speak, following W.J. Bouwsma, of a Stoic impulse, because this in fact leaves room for other influences, such as Augustinianism. For this see W.J. Bouwsma, ‘The two faces of Humanism: Stoicism and Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought’, in: idem, A Usuable Past. Essays in European Cultural History,Berkeley1990, 19–74. See also H.A. Oberman’s critique of the suggestions of Ganoczy and Scheld that under Stoic influence Calvin teaches god: judge and father 149

Wewoulddowelltorememberthatthisisaproblemthatalsoled to fierce controversy in Calvin’s own day. The serious problems which arose in Geneva surrounding Bolsec had to do with this. It is not easy to do justice to Calvin in the matter of whether his theology results in fatalism. It is significant however that when this conclusion was drawn, he always reacted against it fiercely. All things are indeed fixed in God’s Counsel, and the idea that the course of all things is established does resemble the concept of fatalism, but Calvin disputes the conclusion that in this manner man is completely deprived of his responsibility. The distinction which he makes again and again in the matter of human knowledge of divine things is that the heavenly and terrestrial must not be confused with each other. God’s merciful and just actions are in a sphere which may not be played against the sphere of human responsibility. He is convinced that the Scripture teaches us that, too. With a conviction equal to that with which he argues the decisive role of the will of God, he also opposes resignation and passivity as attitudes on the human side. He derives his argument from concrete Biblical examples. Again, although God sends illness, man must resist sickness and death with might and main, when there are means to do so.102 After all, man does not know what the purport of God’s will is in this concrete case; he knows only that things are ordered according to God’s will. His own acts must however be determined by taking active responsibility for the situation. God’s purpose will be fulfilled in the way of human obedience and readiness for action. According to Calvin, they are fools who do not see that the means of deliverance and relief that we are given come just as much from God, and His purpose will be fulfilled in that way. In other words, no conclusion regarding the outcome of any specific situation may be drawn from the fact that God’s will is definitive in all things. God’s deepest Counsel is never known from factuality as such, is never ‘nakedly’ obvious, but, says Calvin, by employing means, assumes a visible form.103 In short, the doctrine of divine providence does not mean that man is relieved of responsibility. There are two

a predetermination for evil: In Stoicism, the Deity or divinity does not interfere with the course of an individual person’s life. ‘Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation’, in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, 120,nt.22. 102 Inst. 1.17.4. 103 Inst. 1.17.4. 150 chapter three

fields of action which appear to collide with one another, on the one hand divine Counsel and on the other human responsibility. Because divine Counsel is unchangeable and lies outside time, logically Calvin will inevitably have difficulties. He must acknowledge that, seen from the perspective of divine Counsel, freedom of action indeed does not exist. But it is essential for Calvin’s theology that precisely at this point, when he comes to the actions of man and man’s responsibility, that he shifts the perspective. Then we are dealing with a second given in knowledge of God, namely with the limitation that is imposed on human knowledge of God, and the mirrors in which God chooses that his power and will be known. The Bible witnesses to the existence of God’s unchanging will. But it is not given to man to know how this unchanging will looks, precisely, and how it relates to human freedom. At that point Calvin instructs man within the boundaries of his limited knowledge. Seen from the human perspective there is a double will. First there is the revealed will of God’s decree. Next, Scripture informs us of the existence of a comprehensive will of God that determines all things. But in his revelation God has not permitted us insight into his will. Man knows only the existence of this comprehensive will. He knows nothing from the perspective of God; his knowledge is limited to what is revealed to him. Finally, Calvin argues for living within these set boundaries in obedience and responsibility.104 In accordance with this varying perspective, Calvin accepts the distinction between of necessitas and coactio, necessity and compulsion, from medieval theology. Post lapsum Adae, human acts are indeed under the necessitas of sin, of a life that is going the wrong direction. From all sides man is vulnerable to sin and destruction. That does not however mean that in a psychological respect one can speak of coactio, compulsion. Enchained by sin, man is always still called to account in his own responsibility; from the perspective of psychology there is still voluntariness.105 For the evaluation of the concept of the unchangeable will of God as the ground of all events, the spiritual profit that according to Calvin lies there is important. Calvin’s thinking and feeling is characterised by the fact that something being fixed by God’s will is not in the least to

104 Inst. 1.17.3–5. 105 Inst. 2.3.5. See J. Bohatec, ‘Calvins Vorsehungslehre’ in: J. Bohatec (Hrsg.), Calvin- studien. Festschrift zum 400. Geburtstage Johann Calvins,Leipzig1909, 339.SeealsoK.Reu- ter, Das Grundverständnis Calvins, 157ﬀ. and F. Wendel, Calvin. Sources et évolution de sa pensée religieuse,Paris1950, 141. god: judge and father 151 be connected with fatalism and paralysis. The spiritual proﬁt is that the faithful know that in all things which happen to them, they have to do with nothing other than with the grace and correcting hand of the Living God, and not with blind fate. In Calvin’s view of life, the constancy of God does not have the negative freight that it has taken on in our time. God’s changelessness is a beacon or anchor in the midst of an uncertain and constantly changing sea. We will return to this in connection with the doctrine of election.

3.11. Father and Lord: love and fear

According to Calvin, the manners in which we know God are sharply divergent. God’s authority and the ways he exercises his power have adiﬀerent form for believers and non-believers, for those who turn toward Him in reverence and for those who refuse the relationship. Toward believers He exercises his caring justice, while the reprobate encounter his wrath and judgement. It is now time to turn our attention to the third main concept that we noted earlier: mercy, misericordia. The corresponding metaphor for God in this case is also God the Father. The fact that fatherhood is the controlling metaphor within Calvin’s concept of God does not exclude that believers, on their way to Christ, also come to know of God in his role of judge. As soon as man descends into himself and his conscience is summoned before the tribunal of God, according to Calvin he encounters God as Judge and Avenger. Wherever man may turn his gaze, above or below, after the fall he encounters the curse against him.106 But that image of God dominates where Christ is not known. Outside of Christ, man does not get beyond it. For the believer God has another face. In Christ, God’s countenance is full of grace and kindness. He appears as Father. Only in faith in Christ does one get sight of salvation, of eternal security with God. We must remember here that which was said in the previous chapter

106 Inst. 2.6.1: ‘sed post defectionem quocunque vertamus oculos, sursum et deorsum occurit Dei maledictio.’ Inst. 2.16.1: ‘Quum enim nemo possit in seipsum descendere ac serio reputare qualis sit, quin Deum sibi iratum infestumque sentiens, necesse habeat eius placandi modum ac rationem anxie expetere, quod satisfactionem exigit, non vulgaris requiritur certitudo: quia peccatoribus, donec a reatu soluti fuerint, semper incumbit ira Dei et maledictio, qui, ut est iustus iudex, non sinit impune legem suam violari, quin ad vindictam armatus sit.’ 152 chapter three about the specificity of Calvin’s concept of faith. Faith is that man clings to the ‘fatherly mercies of God toward us’.107 Revelation in Christ brings into coherence the two aspects in which God is known. God’s disclosure in Christ makes it possible to acknowledge him at the same time as creator and sustainer of life and as liberator and deliverer. Human knowledge of God is therefore a cognitio duplex. Put otherwise, in Christ man learns to know God as Lord of the world and as a merciful Father.108 Calvin explicitly opposes the idea that God becomes merciful and kind after Christ has borne divine wrath for sin. God himself is in fact the primary source for the whole of the way that God goes in his salvation. The exposition of Romans 5:10 is instructive with regard to his doctrine of God and soteriology. How is it possible that the same God ‘whose benevolence and fatherly love’ we embrace in Christ109 in this verse is pictured as the enemy of man? Do wrath and love coexist next to each other? The manner in which Calvin resolves this is characteristic. First the reader is reminded of the didactic intention that the Spirit has in stating it in this manner. The wrath of God even appears to evaporate into an anthropomorphism, into the ‘locutiones ad sensum nostrum … accommodatae’,110 through which believers are made to understand the miserable situation from which they are saved. Through appearing as their enemy, God wishes to achieve an effect in man, namely an intense desire to seize with both hands what God offers him, and deep thankfulness for the gift given. In short, the manner in which Scripture speaks is a way of speaking which is adapted to human capacities, so that we can understand how things are with man outside of Christ.111 But, what is our situation now? Is the Biblical testimony about God’s wrath then false? Does this language correspond to something really in God? It is as if the lines of Calvin’s theology become blurred when the human eye seeks what is taking place within God. Only when the gaze is once again directed on the mirror, where God shows his face and to which he has tied man for his knowledge of God, does the eye once again discover certainty and definition. Wrath is described as a response to man. ‘All of us have that within us which deserves

107 Catechismus Ecclesiae Genevensis, OS II, 92. 108 Inst. 2.6.1. 109 Inst. 2.16.2. 110 Inst. 2.16.2. 111 Inst. 2.16.2. god: judge and father 153 the hatred of God’, writes Calvin. God finds in us enough to deserve his wrath.112 In his commentary on Romans 1:18 Calvin writes that in the Scripture wrath is a anthropomorphic manner of speaking of vengeance, ‘because God, when he engaged in punishing, to our conception shows the face of a wrathful man. With this word therefore [Paul] does not in any way designate a disposition on the part of God; it is only related to the perception of the sinner who is being punished.’113 Wrath as an actual conduct only befits a man who has lost control of his emotions and is dependent on his environment. It is characteristic of Calvin that, both in the case of God’s wrath and God’s love, he does not ask after what corresponds to wrath and love in God’s own being. He stops where we would want to continue questioning, and where contemporary theology, in its initiative of self-revelation, actually does continue to question. In the exposition of IJohn 4:8 (‘for God is love’) Calvin writes first that ‘God’s nature is to love man’. Because God is the source of love, and all love comes from God, He is called love and light. As soon as a statement about God’s essence seems to be made, immediately there appears to be something which must be corrected, through shifting attention to the way in which God desires to be experienced. ‘Thus nothing is being said of the essence of God, but he is only teaching about how we experience Him.’ Such a displacement marks this concept. The attention is shifted to what God wishes to accomplish in man. God desires that we become new creations and that we become similar to Him. Indisputably, here Calvin will not inquire further, and he refuses to further define the relation of wrath and love. There are spaces in God’s Counsel to which the creature finds the door shut. In his disclosure, God keeps a part of his Counsel hidden. For Calvin, secrecy does not have the role that it would later come to have in the theology of Barth, namely as a quality of God’s revelation. It simply means that God withholds a part of his Counsel from man. For the believers it is true, however, that under sin they lived with God’s wrath and at the same time were living in God’s love. To put it in the words of Augus- tine, ‘thus in a manner wondrous and divine, he loved even when he hated us.’114 There are thus two elements in God, which in his concept

112 Inst. 2.16.3. 113 Comm. Rom. 1:18,CO49, 22–23. 114 Inst. 2.16.4: ‘Habebat itaque ille erga nos charitatem, etiam quum inimicitias adversus eum exercentes operaremur iniquitatem. Proinde miro en divino modo et 154 chapter three cannot be reduced to or connected with one another. God must condemn sin because he is the highest righteousness, summa iustitia.Atthe same time he loves sinners ‘according to his pleasure’. There are two elements in God, righteousness and love. The reprobate encounter the righteousness, the elect children his righteousness and his love. Unde- niably this doubleness has major consequences, which, considering the present state of affairs in investigations of the Biblical concept of God’s justice, we no longer want to accept, and that in Barth’s theology are therefore related to each other. Yet, as is evident from the quote from Augustine, according to Calvin too the two qualities have something to do with one another. There is a coherence in God, although Calvin neither can nor desires to make the nature of this coherence more clear. It is of the greatest importance to pause at this point—and not only for theological-historical reasons. We here encounter a structure—or better yet, a rule—for speaking theologically that is still of the utmost importance. For its speaking about God, Christian theology should take seriously the way that God has gone in Christ, and not take as its point of departure an element that lies behind that. What is involved here is the question of whether what is really to be said of God lies behind Christ and the concrete events of his life. As has already been said, Calvin’s theology is open to criticism from various sides on precisely this point. Barth presumes that in speaking of Christ as the mirror of election the real decisive moment lies in God’s decision, and that Christ is the more or less technical means by which this decision is carried out. Then there is no longer an intrinsic connection between God’s Counsel and Christ. In his own time Calvin was challenged by Laelio Sozino to distinguish between God’s decision and the way of Christ. Sozino proposed that speaking of theloveofGodasthesourceofhumanjustificationmadeitimpossible to still speak of Christ’s suffering as being meritorious. The death of Christ as meritorious would be in conflict with the assertion that God redeems as a result of His love. Calvin’s answer to Sozino demonstrates how deeply he wanted to hold together what was separated by Sozino. He impresses upon his audience—that is to say, on potential readers of Scripture—that the quando nos oderat, diligebat. Oderat enim nos, qualies ipse non fecerat: et quia iniq- uitas nostra opus eius non omni ex parte consumpserat, noverat simul in unoquoque nostrum et odisse quod feceramus, et amare quod fecerat.’ Calvin quotes Augustine, In Johannis Evangelium Tractus 110.6, CCSL 36, 626. god: judge and father 155 love of God is not the result of Christ’s suffering for sin. Accord- ing to Calvin, an essential element of Christian knowledge of God is that the love of God is a disposition that arises from God Him- self. The love of God the Father is primary, is a prima causa.115 This remains true despite the fact that in Scripture the obedience of Christ is termed the merit through which grace is obtained. Christ’s obedience is causa secunda or causa propior. What comes first: God’s grace, or the merit of Christ? To our ears, speaking about a first and second cause very quickly sounds like the distinction between actual and apparent. The love of God and the way of obedience and the cross are so easily played against one another. In his explanation of the doubleness, Calvin however opposes precisely the separation of the two sorts of cause. As a first step in his explanation of the doubleness, Calvin reaches back to Augustine. God’s grace cannot be regarded as a consequence of the work of Christ. The fact that the work of Christ can be characterised as meritorious rests on God’s ordinatio.116 With this concept from the doctrine of grace as it developed in the late middle ages, we encounter an element that plays a decisive role in Calvin’s theology at various points, namely the idea of the self-binding of God. From his mere good pleasure God has decided that there will be a mediator who will purchase salvation for us.117 Two statements that are at first sight contradictory thus become possible. The first is that man is justified from the sheer mercy of God. The second is that man is saved by the merit of Christ. These two assertions, Calvin suggests, are not logically contradictory, if one takes in to account that they each lie on a different level. After all, the meritoriousness of the work of

115 Inst. 2.16.3: ‘Proinde sua dilectione praevenit ac antevertit Deus Pater nostram in Christo reconciliationem.’ Cf. his commentary on Jn. 3:16,CO47, 64:‘arcanum amorem quo nos apud se complexus est coelestis Pater, quia ex aeterno eius proposito manat, omnibus aliis causis superiorem esse.’ 116 Inst. 2.17.1: ‘Quum ergo conscendimus ad Dei ordinationem, quae prima causa est: quia mero beneplacito Mediatorem statuit qui nobis salutem acquireret. Atque ita inscite opponitur Christi meritum misericordiae Dei. Regula enim vulgaris est, quae subalterna sunt, non pugnare; ideoque nihil obstat quominius gratuita sit hominum iustiﬁcatio ex mera Dei misericordia, et simul interveniat Christi meritum, quod Dei misericordiae subiicitur.’ 117 Inst. 2.17.1. In other words, the reception of the human nature of Christ into the unity of the divine person is the paradigm par excellence for election. Without antecedent merit, God has chosen this human nature, in order to ﬁll humanity with his wealth, through his corporality. That is the way of salvation, the arrangement that God in his grace has chosen. 156 chapter three

Christ rests upon an order of salvation which God himself ordained. Calling upon John 3:16, Calvin terms God’s love the first and highest cause of salvation, and Christ the second or further cause. It is however incorrect to draw the conclusion on these grounds that Christ is only the formal cause of salvation.118 Why? Because in many places Scripture says more. With reference to IJohn 4:10, Col. 1:20 and IICor. 5:19, Calvin states that the substance of our salvation—that on which man can draw—must be sought in Christ. One cannot separate causa prima and causa secunda as actual cause and proximate means; the vari- ouscausesareaspectsoftheoneeventthatmanisfacedwithinGod’s revelation. When one separates God’s love from the way and the person in which this love became concrete, one wrenches apart that which can not be disjoined. Laelio Sozino confronted Calvin with the argument that God’s love does not permit speaking of Christ’s obedience as a merit, and at a later date Barth accused Calvin that in his theology speaking about Christ as the mirror of election is an unstable basis for trust in God, because for Calvin Christ is ‘merely’ the means of election. Both have overlooked the fact that we may not play a prima causa and causa secunda against each other. Both causae are aspects enabling us to comprehend the one event of God’s salvation and do justice to it. Believers encounter God’s love and righteousness. Thus here the two concepts describing the attitude toward God the Father in the life of the believer correspond. To remind ourselves, these two aforementioned concepts are fear and trust.119 Knowing God in Christ leads to a double effect. Believers know God as Father, but this Father is at the same time Lord, and deserves respect. In order to roughly sketch the content of the knowledge of God, something must be briefly said with regard to the relationship of faith, atonement and justification. At this point we can reach back to the concept of faith. The object of faith is not the commandments or announcements of punishment. The real scopus of faith is God’s loving-kindness.120 Thosewhoareunited with Christ through the power of the Spirit know Him not merely

118 Inst. 2.17.2. See also commentary on Jn 3:16,CO47, 64. 119 Inst. 1.10.2. 120 Inst. 3.2.29: ‘… sed misericordiae promissionem fidei in proprium scopum desti- namus. Quemadmodum iudicem et ultorem scelerum Deum debent quidem agnoscere fideles, et tamen in eius clementiam proprie intuentur: quando talis considerandus illis describitur qui benevolus sit et misericors, procul ira, multus bonitate, suavis universis, super omnia opera sua misericordiam suam effundens.’ god: judge and father 157 as a strict judge. ‘In Christ his countenance beams forth full of grace and gentleness towards poor unworthy sinners.’121 But this faith, the intercourse of God with man, has a dynamic, an irreversible direction. The believer knows God as Lord and realises that outside of Christ this lordship of God takes the form of judgement. Within the sphere of influence of God’s Spirit, faith holds fast to the image that prevails there: God as the merciful father, who invites his children to come to him and in Christ gives them a share in his benefits. Or, following Isaiah 49:15: God’s love goes beyond the love of a mother. If a mother will not forget her children, how much more will God keep man in His heart.122 There is yet something more that lies behind the metaphor of a mother, but this analogans is not of lesser import than the familiar elements of the analogy. God’s love goes deeper, compared to the love of a mother or a father. This knowledge does not however lead to stasis; it leads man once again into the midst of life and into himself. Calvin speaks of a double grace that is received in faith.123 On the one side there is the regeneration that takes a concrete form in penance; on the other side the child of God receives forgiveness of sin.124 Christian life can be typified from this origin and by this dual process. It is characteristic of Calvin’s dynamic of knowing God that immediately after his discussion of the concept of faith he next speaks of repentance. In this way every chance is removed that the believer who is preserved for justification in faith might therefore be careless in regard to renewal of life.125 Faith sets in motion a process of life-long regeneration, a rebirth which for Calvin is not limited to one single moment. One might say that life with the Spirit opens a moment with him in which man particularly gets insight into the depths and chasms of his own life. That is rebirth. Knowledge of God in Christ implies a continual participation in forgiveness, and at the same time a renewal that is characterised by the concepts of mortificatio and vivificatio. The manner in which Calvin works this out however reveals that mortificatio is really a designation in which he includes new

121 Inst. 2.7.8. 122 CO 37, 204. 123 Inst. 3.3.19;Inst.3.11.1. 124 Neither penance, nor the simultaneous mortificatio and vivificatio, are conditions for salvation, but its consequences. This does not detract from the fact that in Calvin’s understanding of man the conscience is an important pedagogical path, along which God draws the sinner to himself. This however is not yet penance. 125 Inst. 3.11.1. 158 chapter three life. O. Weber has correctly remarked that in this manner Calvin does not distinguish himself from a long Western tradition.126 Although faith is focused on God’s mercy, it is still characterised by a certain doubleness. As Calvin remarks, God has within himself the honourable qualities of a Lord and a Father. That means that love for God the Father is constantly characterised by his lordship. The children of God thus do not obey as servants, that is to say because they cannot avoid doing so, but in respect. Malachi 1:6 is cited as evidence that this fear of the Lord is a reverence in which fear and respect come together. The fact that a believer knows himself to be an adopted child and subject of pity thus does not detract from the realisation of God’s majesty. In other words, the man of faith also knows the experience of trembling, the abyss, although this differs in quality from the fear that seizes the unbeliever when he is confronted with judgement. In addition to the timor Dei the believer also knows of God’s mercy, and in the orientation to that mercy he has the realisation of God as avenger of all wrong behind him, as it were. This is clear: Calvin disputes that in faith there is no fear whatsoever. In doing so, he seems to flatly contradict the words of IJohn 4:18, ‘Perfect love banishes fear.’ Calvin however boldly declares that this refers only to the fears of the unbelievers. The unbeliever has an abject spirit and his only concern is to avoid the wrath of God. The fear peculiar to faith is that of the child, who suffers from it when the relationship with the father has been disrupted.127

3.12. Knowing in faith, in bits and pieces: predestination

3.12.1. Acenterorthecore? In the foregoing various essentials have already been discussed: in Calvin’s thought, one essential part of the knowing involved in faith is the acknowledgement that all things, including the answer that people give to invitation which God extends to them, are anchored in God’s

126 Inst. 3.3.8–9. See the critique of O. Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik II,Neukirchen 19775, 394: ‘Der Ton der eschatologischen Freude, der das ganze Neue Testament durchzieht, der in den gebundenen Formen des Rituals und der Sitte die Ostkirche so kräftig bewegt, is in der auch von Calvin nicht durchbrochenen abendländischen Frömmigkeit zu wenig, zu kärglich zu vernehmen.’ 127 Inst. 3.2.27. god: judge and father 159

Counsel. In other words, it is time to take up explicitly the doctrine of election. If ever a doctrine has become notorious, if ever a person has become identified with and vilified for a doctrine, if a movement named for that person has ever become isolated through a doctrine,128 then that has been Calvin and his doctrine of predestination. It is as simple to describe the content of Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and to reject it on the basis of the insights of modern Biblical studies as it is problematic to determine the place of the doctrine in the whole of his thinking. Responding to the question of what is at stake existentially with this doctrine of knowing in faith is the most difficult and at the same time most theologically rewarding direction. One can refer to the definition in the Institutes for a characterisation. There we read, By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or to death.129 What strikes one first in this definition is the parallelism. Eternal salvation and damnation are bound up together. A second striking element is that the subject of election is singular: God. It is not clear from this definition to what degree Christ plays a role in the decision for salvation or damnation, and one can affirm that Calvin offers no more clarity on this elsewhere in his writings.130 It is exactly this which has played a large role in the critique of his doctrine of election.

128 Cf. Oberman, ‘Calvin’s Heritage’, The two Reformations, 156. 129 Inst. 3.21.5: ‘Predestinationem vocamus aeternum Dei decretum, quo apud se constitutum habuit quid de unoquoque homine fieri vellet. Non enim pari conditione creantur omnes: sed aliis vita aeterna, aliis damnatio aeterna praeordinatur. Itaque prout in alterutrum finem quisque conditus est, ita vel ad vitam vel ad mortem praedes- tinatum dicimus.’ 130 When Calvin speaks of God, he is thinking of the Triune God. As the second person of the Trinity Christ is indeed involved in predestination, but then only as authorem electionis of the positive pole of predestination, election (Inst. 3.22.7). Calvin appeals to John 13:18 and John 15:19. Election is not thought through from the incarnation, but precedes the incarnation in order. Calvin is silent on a role for the Eternal Son in reprobation. See C. Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth. Oorsprong en ontwikkeling van de leer der verkiezing in het Gereformeerd Protestantisme, ’s Gravenhage 1987, 37–40,whocorrectly observes that Calvin, by regarding the double determination for salvation and reprobation as the decision of the one God, creates an enormous tension in the doctrine of 160 chapter three

What place does election have? In the previous chapter I maintained that it is not correct to reduce Calvin’s theology to a doctrine of double predestination. The invitation which God extends is primary, the mirror of his grace that he holds up before the hearers of the Word. The attempt has been made many times in research to sharply distinguish Calvin’s thinking from that of his successors, where the discussion of the loci is much less soteriologically ordered, and more logical-deductive. While it is doubtful how much of a sharp distinction it is possible to make between Calvin and his follower Beza,131 thefactisthatonthis point Calvin’s theology has ‘a certain fluidity’.132 As is known, in the final edition of the Institutes Calvin discusses predestination only in the third Book, after having discussed the new life that comes to man in a two-fold manner in regeneration and justification, and after prayer has been discussed. But what importance should we attribute to this placement? It would be improper to conclude on this basis, that election only has a subordinate place. In handling the Bolsec affair, in the aftermath of this affair and the elaboration that he subsequently gave to the doctrine of double predestination, it is clear that with this doctrine we are indeed dealing with a core of Calvin’s thought. It is equally impossible, however, to conclude on the basis of the teleological structure of Calvin’s theology that the most important issues come at the end. Such a conclusion is based on the idea that systematic perspectives play a decisive role in Calvin’s concept of knowing God. That is not the case. Calvin desired to be a Biblical theologian first and fore-

God. With equal justice Graafland remarks that Calvin never works out the implications of this theologically. Indeed, we are compelled to say, it is precisely characteristic of Calvin’s concept of knowing God that man never works out certain questions, respects limits, and turns his gaze on that which God’s actions have produced which is beneficial for him. 131 See particularly the work of R.A. Muller, who in various publications has defended the continuity between Calvin and Beza. See ‘Calvin and the “Calvinists”: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy’, Calvin Theological Journal 30 (1995), 345–375,and31 (1996), 125–160, now also in: R. Mul- ler, After Calvin. Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition,Oxford2003, 63–102; idem, ‘The Use and Abuse of a Document: Beza’s Tabula Praedestinationis, The Bolsec Controversy, and the Origins of Reformed Orthodoxy’ in: C.R. Trueman/R.S. Clark (eds.), Protestant Scholasticism. Essays in Reassessment,Carlisle1999, 33–61. 132 Thus Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 9 and 15. A well-known example of this fluidity is the place of the doctrine of providence, which in the 1539 edition Calvin still discussed in connection with election. In the 1559 edition the doctrine of providence is placed in Book I, with the doctrines of creation and sustenance. Predestination is not however placed within the doctrine of God, a step which is though taken by Beza. god: judge and father 161 most, and with regard to the discussion of election sought to respect the Biblical-theological connections which he had discerned. It is for this reason that election is discussed after he has spoken of God’s gesture of invitation in the creation, of sin, of Christ and of the ‘leading’ work of the Holy Spirit. Predestination, God’s decisive Counsel to life or death, is not the core of his theology, although it is undoubtedly one defining element. What are the consequences, however, if the aspect of God’s predetermination is postulated as sharply and radically as Calvin does, without any inclination to want to mitigate the reprobation or providing more insight into it? As is known, Calvin was unwilling to suppress the fact that, according to his conviction, Scripture also taught a negative counterpart to election to life, namely reprobation. What does that mean for faith? Does the doctrine of double predestination undermine the image of the well-disposed father? For the reprobate portion of humanity, is God not a tyrant who mercilessly destines them to remain entrapped in total misery? One can really not dismiss these questions as questions which have only arisen in modern times. Therefore we must first look back into history. When Jérome Bolsec stood up in the Congrégation (a public Bible lesson) on October 16, 1551, and attacked the concept of predestination taught in Geneva because this doctrine would make God a tyrant or false god like Jupiter, he undeniably laid his finger on a sore point in Calvinist thinking. R.M. Kingdon has demonstrated that Bolsec’s accusations struck a sympathetic chord with the common people.133 One can call the charge that with Calvin God becomes the author of evil an easy cliché, which since then has been repeated end- lessly; the accusation points to an aporia with which everyone is confronted if they wish to maintain both God’s omnipotence and his goodness. What were the motives that contributed to Calvin developing this partofthedoctrineashedid?Isitbecausehefearedtheresponse that Bolsec received from among the common people, and saw support for the Reformation in the city being threatened?134 Is that why he attempted to comprehensively explain what he intended? Or can his harsh attitude against Bolsec be traced back to his personality? Was there simply something wrong with Calvin as a person, that at decisive moments he lacked humanity, which subsequently was projected

133 R.M. Kingdon, ‘Popular Reactions to the Debate between Bolsec and Calvin’ in: W. van ’t Spijker (Hrsg.), Calvin. Erbe und Auftrag,(Fs.W.Neuser)Kampen1991, 138–145. 134 Kingdon, ‘Popular Reactions’, 145. 162 chapter three in his image of God? Most recently Ph. Holtrop, in his book on the Bolsec controversy, has ascertained, to his own shock, that the doctrinal discussion was not only all tangled up with questions of social and political power, but that Calvin personally also played a highly dubious role in the affair. The appearance of Bolsec coincided with a moment at which Calvin—and with him a large number of French refugees in Geneva—found themselves in a threatening situation, in terms of politics.135 Theriskthathewouldcomeoff the worst against the native residents of the city and their party, the Libertines, was great. Possibly it was for this reason that in his trial Bolsec appealed to the magistrate in order to seek judgement in his favour. Apparently he estimated the situation as being such that it was definitely not a foregone conclusion that Calvin and his supporters could be able to maintain their position in the city. The way in which Calvin handled this situation and dealt with Bolsec provides an insight into a number of dubious features in Calvin’s personality. Although he viewed himself as moderate, in reality his response was bitter, harsh and disproportionate.136 He was completely convinced that he was in the right and could only understand Bolsec’s differing opinion as a revolt against God. It is understandable that the list of those who in the name of humanity have appointed themselves complainants against the man has slowly grown to endless length, and one is inclined to promptly declare in their favour. That is all the more so because the negative verdict on Calvin’s role in the Bolsec affair is not only a judgement which has been made in retrospect, on the basis of modern attitudes toward life. It also finds support in the reactions of Calvin’s own contemporaries and supporters: Bullinger, Viret, Myconius. The personal element thus certainly played a role, but one does not do justice to Calvin’s theology when it is suggested that this is the last word on the matter. That would be all too easy. As it happens, in his doctrine of election Calvin is no exception. In its outlines, one finds

135 Ph.C. Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy on Predestination, from 1551 to 1555. The Statements of Jerome Bolsec, and the Responses of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and Other Reformed Theolo- gians Vol.I Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter 1993, 167–230, 56.SeealsoW.G.Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation,Manchester/NewYork1994, 172: ‘The lukewarm support that Calvin’s views received from the Swiss cities must have undermined his position somewhat.’ 136 For several instances of Calvin’s lack of mercy and spitefulness see the study by W. G. N a p hy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation and his conclusion on page 68: ‘Calvin had a particularly unforgiving side to his character.’ See also C. Augustijn, Calvijn, Den Haag 1966, 70–79. god: judge and father 163 the same teaching in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and all the major figures in late medieval theology.137 Moreover, in his doctrine of election Calvin takes a position that logically follows from his concept of human knowledge of God. Why, according to Calvin, does double predestination belong to the fund of human knowledge of God? How did people come to conceive election as the heart of the church? It has been correctly noted that within Reformed Protestantism the doctrine of election has gone from ‘inheritance to stumbling block’, and on to being ‘an article of faith from the day before yesterday’.138 What could the foundation of this doctrine ever have been? What was at stake here, according to Calvin? In the past an attempt was made to answer this question by referring to the horrific inequality in opportunities in nature and history. Elec- tion then becomes a principle that is visible in the whole of life and which rules all existence.139 Although one also finds in Calvin an appeal of this sort to the inequality everywhere in life, it cannot be denied that in Calvin this does not do justice to the soteriological context of the concept of election. Or put differently: standing behind the concept, its primary background, is the awesome astonishment that man is not overtaken by disaster, does not disappear into his own darkness, but is brought home by God in his love. For a part of the Reformed world it was G.C. Berkouwer who again underscored the existential character of election. Election has to do with the acknowledgement of the supremacy of God’s grace, with the heart of God which seeks

137 See A.D.R. Polman, De praedestinatieleer van Augustinus, Thomas van Aquino en Calvijn, Franeker 1936,G.Oorthuys,De leer der praedestinatie, Wageningen 1931,P.Jacobs,Prädes- tination und Verantwortlichkeit bei Calvin,Neukirchen1937. 138 Author’s translation from Oberman, De erfenis van Calvijn, 41. Cf. Oberman, ‘Cal- vin’s Legacy’, The two Reformations, 156. 139 See A. Kuyper, Het Calvinisme. Zes Stone-Lezingen in october 1898 te Princeton (N.-J) gehouden, Kampen Tweede Druk z.j., 179–181;ET:Lectures on Calvinism, Grand Rapids, 197810, 195–197. Here and there in neo-Calvinism one finds others who similarly begin with inequality. See G.C. Berkhouwer’s sensitive discussion of the theology of K. Schilder in Zoeken en Vinden. Herinneringen en ervaringen,Kampen1989, 263–264. Berkouwer refers to an otherwise undeveloped marginal comment in Schilder’s Preken, Vol. I, 81: ‘Heaven cannot be imagined without hell. Election cannot be imagined without reprobation. Here too day arises with night, and light is linked to darkness. This is difficult. Yet life is replete with this. This law applies everywhere. Many are called, few are chosen. One man’s death is another man’s breath. Darwin: survival of the fittest. Thousands of blossoms fall off, so that a handful can ripen into fruit. Why? Millions of living beings are born, only a few continue in life.’ Berkouwer does not seem to be aware that these remarks are a direct summary of a passage from H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II,Kampen19082, 417–418;ET,401–402. 164 chapter three ways where, from the human perspective, all ways have been blocked. Looking toward history, Oberman has tried to anchor election in the faith experience of a community under the cross. Where the community is threatened, where people must flee for the sake of their faith, living in the diaspora in the midst of a threatening world, and where their own faith is robbed of all its certainties, there perhaps the realisation arises again that election has to do with an anchor in God, which provides comfort. Some understanding for this doctrine can perhaps also be found in the ‘recognition of the structures of the existence of refugees in our own time’.140 This is the search for an existential context. It is obvious that all these explanations and situations find their basis in the manner in which Calvin has written of election as comfort. It is however also worthwhile to begin with the basis which Calvin himself identified. In this one is in no way whatsoever denying the existence of an existential context, but beginning with that which in any case also must be said. The simplest justification for the doctrine of double predestination, and the one given by Calvin himself, is the following: it is taught by the Holy Spirit in Scripture. Scripture itself declares ‘he [God] does not adopt promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some what he denies to others’.141 Key texts for the concept of double election are, for instance, Romans 9:18 and 9:22,andProverbs16:4.Such texts are interpreted by Calvin in the light of the double ending of history. Mankind is divided into two groups: one group predestined to be damned and one group of persons who will live in communion with God eternally. On the basis of contemporary insights from Bib- lical research we can only observe that already, on exegetical grounds alone, there is no longer any support for Calvin’s purely individualistic exegesis of these texts and his undervaluing of the category of covenant. Calvin did not see that in chapters 9–11 of Romans election is a category of sacred history, and that the question of personal salvation is subordinate to the question of how God will remain true to his promises and his covenant. One can conclude that Calvin introduces a symmetry between election and reprobation that is not expressly present in Romans 9–11. He mirrors the positive connection of God’s action in the election of Jacob with the rejection of Esau as the negative counterpart of election. For election and reprobation being parallel, he appeals

140 Oberman, ‘Calvin’s Legacy’. The two Reformations, 160. 141 Inst. 3.21.1. god: judge and father 165 to the omnipotence of God, by virtue of which all things ultimately proceed from the Counsel of God. It is in this context that the remark about a decretum horribile, a terrible decision, comes.142 In retrospect we must say that Calvin’s concept of the omnipotence of God has led to a paralleling that finds no support in the text itself. The second reason that Calvin adduces for this element of Christian knowledge of God is that it fits perfectly with the experience that the Church has gained from its preaching of the Word of God. The Gospel does not find the same positive reception from all. But that is still putting too fine a gloss on it. Calvin makes no secret that he proceeds from the idea that the number of the elect will only be small. He believes he reads this in Paul when in Romans 11:5 the latter speaks of the remnant saved for God. Moreover, this word from Scripture is confirmed by daily experience, ‘because experience shows that of the general body many fall away and are lost, so that in the end a small portion only remains’.143 Experience supports what Scripture teaches. The third point is the argument that Calvin always advances as the most important point in favour of this doctrine. Election functions as the anchor of salvation. Salvation, becoming a child of God, is not anchored in one’s own good works; the foundation of salvation is in God himself. God is not obliged to grant participation in salvation. Status as a child of God is not conferred on the basis of merit, but purely because God wills this salvation for believers. With Calvin, election has to do with the surprise that one is safe with God, is ultimately secure. That is the heart of the doctrine. If one wishes to sense something of that surprise in faith, then it is advisable to read the commentary of Ephesians 1:4–5, for instance, and not the Institutes. There Calvin comes closer to the sense. In this section he speaks expressly of the call with which the community, the hearers of the Word, are confronted. ‘If it is asked what is the cause of God calling us to participate in the Gospel, why He daily invests us with so many blessings, why He opens heaven for us, then we must always return to this fundamental point: because He has chosen us, before the world was made.’ Thus he does not speak of election apart from faith, but always after the hearing of the good news, after men have accepted the invitation of Christ. That men belong to God’s family, have a seat at his table, share in the communion of the body of Christ, arises out of God’s

142 Inst. 4.23.7. 143 Inst. 3.21.7. Cf. also Inst. 3.24.12. 166 chapter three high prerogative. It does not happen on the basis of good works or prospective good works; it comes forth from God himself. The manner in which Calvin speaks of this in his exegetical work radiates a sense of surprise, relief, not that of disputatio,asintheInstitutes.InCalvin’s doctrine of election the element of the unexpectedness of God’s grace is magnified and maintained in a manner that makes it impossible to ideologise this grace, in the way that this is at least present as a risk in the development of Barth’s doctrine of election.144 According to Calvin election to life has a parallel in a decision to reprobation. What reasons does he adduce for this? Here too Calvin’s reading of Scripture plays a large role. Thus in Scripture God himself teaches man about the existence of double predestination. That does not mean, however, that God has given man unlimited access to his Counsel and has thrown open all its spaces to inspection. There are matters of his Counsel that God has revealed in Scripture, and matters that he has not revealed. According to this concept, the doctrine of double predestination is among those matters that God has made known for a very specific purpose. Therefore Calvin had no sympathy whatsoever for the standpoint of the preachers in Bern, who in their response to the questions asked in 1551 about the Bolsec affair con- tended that one would do better to refrain from discussion of this matter, because it would agitate the common people.145 What it came down to is that Calvin did not want to introduce any distinction between what theologians said among themselves and what they would bring up in the presence of the laity.146 The theological reason that Calvin holds fast to his view that one must not refrain from speaking of double predestination is that God himself has willed that these things from his holy Counsel be made known to people. In the preceding chap-

144 In the second panel, of Barth’s theology, precisely this unexpectedness is maintained by the ‘actuality’ of God’s Counsel. The fact that all men are chosen for life in Christ prevents grace from becoming a thing, a decree that has existence apart from the living God who judges and establishes his justice in the present. That in the reception of Barth’s theology grace can indeed become a principle, and thereby an ideology that in fact crushes the life out of the call to repentance and a change of life, is a fact that is still too little recognised. 145 See Calvin’s disapproval in Inst. 3.21.4. 146 According to Holtrop, The Bolsec Controversy, 28,intheBolsecaffair Calvin rea- soned along Scholastic lines. He not only based himself on the covenant and election in Christ, but strongly posited a causal relation between God’s Counsel and faith. While in the Institutes he argued from the effects to the cause, in the Bolsec affair he argues from cause to the effects. god: judge and father 167 ter I sought to make clear how greatly Calvin’s doctrine of Scripture was determined by that idea that God, through his Spirit, is the acting Subject of Scripture. The fact that God made use of human writers does not define his vision of Scripture. Those things which appear in the Bible are precisely what God considers good and useful for man to know. They all belong, without distinction, to the doctrina, to the teaching which does not come from man, but comes to us from God. One of the hidden things of his will that He wished to reveal is the existence of a double predestination.147 The making known of this secret in no way means, now that God has revealed one element from the secret things, that suddenly all secrets will be revealed. It is just as little permitted that man can just do what he likes with the revelation. Revealed truths must be handled carefully. It is a matter of historical fairness to take Calvin at his own word on this point. Even if one is of the opinion that he too easily dismissed Bolsec’s conclusions, it is precisely then that the protest that Calvin reg- istered must be taken up as a signal that he wished to deal with revealed truth differently here. Calvin saw absolutely nothing of his own positions in Bolsec’s accusations that in the doctrine of predestination God was turned into a tyrant and the author of sin. He was so vehement precisely because conclusions were being foisted upon him that he did not wish to draw. In his view he stopped short of the line of revealed knowledge of God, while his opponents sought to draw him over that boundary.

3.12.2. Handling of the doctrine of predestination It is in the very important introductory paragraph to the doctrine of election in the third book of the Institutes that Calvin famously uses the term labyrinth in connection with this doctrine.148 One might be of the opinion that, now that the double decision regarding eternal salvation and reprobation has been disclosed, all locks and bolts slid back, all is now freely accessible and every possible conclusion could be drawn. We have noted already that this is in no way the case. The warning against curiosity comes in this context, and rational consideration is

147 Inst. 3.21.1: ‘Quae nobis patefacienda censuit voluntatis suae arcana, ea verbo suo prodidit.’ (‘Those secrets of his will, which he has seen it meet to manifest, are revealed in his word’). 148 For instance in Inst. 3.21.1 and in the Commentary on Rom. 9:14,CO49, 180. 168 chapter three asked to take a back seat, yielding to worship. This takes nothing away from the fact that Calvin rejects every form of Pelagianism in the salvation of man, and affirms that God is the highest cause of election and reprobation. Time and again we see how he believes that this position is supported by Scripture. Election and reprobation take place on the basis of God’s dispensatio,149 ordinatio,150 in arcano Dei consilio.151 Calvin regards the argument that reprobation is based on God’s foreknowledge of actions, or that God only permits the fall, as being untenable.152 With appeals to Scripture, and knowing himself supported by Augustine, the regular refrain throughout his discussion of the objections is the proposition that it is certain that all things happen through God’s ‘ordinance and nod’.153 To use other terms, there exists a direct causal connection between God’s double decision and the eternal misery of the reprobate on the one hand and the eternal bliss of the elect on the other. We noted that in this context Calvin, in addition to the more dynamic terms nutus and ordinatio, also makes use of the term causa from Aris- totelian metaphysics.154 In the Institutes 3.14.17 Calvin explicitly accepts these distinctions. The mercy of God is the causa efficiens, Christ with his obedience the causa materialis, faith is the causa formalis or instrumen- talis.Thecausa finalis is lastly the manifestation of divine justice and the praise of his goodness. Contemporary theology rightly questions whether the causa concept does justice to the nature of God’s actions and whether as a concept it does not remain inadequate. It would be well to remember, however, that in the Enlightenment this concept of causality underwent an enormous impoverishment, gradually being reduced to mechanical causality. Causality was pried away from Aristotelian metaphysics, and what remained was a systematic relation of cause and effect.155 With Calvin we encounter a concept of causation that is much richer in nature. The classic-Aristotelian concept of causality is characterised by its distinguishing among various aspects or

149 Inst. 3.23.8. 150 Inst. 3.23. 8–9. 151 Inst. 3.23.4. 152 Calvin’s tone is very definite in designating God’s election and reprobation as the necessary foundation for all that happens; see Inst. 3.23.8: ‘Non dubitabo igitur cum Augustino simpliciter fateri, voluntatem Dei esse rerum necessitatem atque id necessario futurum esse quod ille voluerit.’ 153 Inst. 3.23.6: ‘… ubi constat ordinatione potius et nutu omnia evenire.’ 154 Inst. 3.23.8. In his Metaphysics I,iii.1, Aristotle makes distinctions among what have gone down in philosophy as causa formalis, causa materialis, causa efficiens and causa finalis. 155 See for instance G.C. Berkouwer, Divine Election, Grand Rapids 1960, 188. god: judge and father 169 principles that all form peculiar approaches to the one reality. It is characteristic of the various sorts of causality that they all describe one and the same thing from various perspectives. The danger however exists that the causa efficiens will be adjudged as the first member in a series of secondary causes which are dependent on the first in a mechanical- causal manner. There is then no place left for an acknowledgement of the peculiarity and relative independence of the other causes. For the evaluation of Calvin’s concept of God’s acts this means that no one aspect may be isolated, but that the unity of actions is assumed. Calvin knew the various causae andusedthemasaspectswhichcanbeused to describe the history between God and man.156 To come closer to Calvin’sspirituality,itseemstomewemustmakeanimportantdis- tinction, which has much to do with the limit of human knowing of God, namely the distinction between causae remotae and causae propinquae. God’s predestination is a cause which lies in the area that is inaccessible to the reach of human investigation; it belongs to the causae remotae. With regard to reprobation, man first encounters the nearer causes, namely his own revolt and apostasy.157 If we look at election to life, then God’s love is the summa causa, and faith the causa secunda et propior.The various causes lie at varying levels and can not be played against one another. In fact, Calvin is speaking of one reality. God’s love, the work of Christ, and the faith of men, sanctification are not different compartments existing apart from one another. God’s love is realised in the work of Christ, and God’s election is realised in faith in Christ. The faith that takes on visible form in the world has an invisible ground in God’s eternal Counsel. What men primarily have to deal with are the causae propinquae.

156 This means that election and reprobation indeed can be described as causa finalis in order to reveal God’s severity and his compassion, respectively; see for instance the Comm. on Romans 9:22–23,CO49, 187 and Inst. 3.24.12. In the explication of Romans 3:22,CO49, 60, God’s compassion is explicitly termed the causa efficiens and Christ is the materia. In the Comm. on Eph. 1:5,CO51, 148–149 the pleasure of God’s will is the causa efficiens, Christ is causa materialis and the praise of his grace the causa finalis. A bit later, at Eph. 1:8,CO51, 150 he calls the preaching of the Gospel the causa formalis. 157 See Comm. on Romans 9:11,CO49, 178. See also the treatise against Albertus Phigius, De aeterna praedestinatione CO 8, 296. See also Comm. on Romans 9:22,CO 49, 187: ‘… causam in aeterno ac inexplicabili Dei consilio absconditam esse: cuius iustitiam adorare magis quam scrutari conveniat.’ What would later be called the supralapsarian perspective thus lies further away, in a region that is closed for human investigation. What man does have to deal with are the things of this life and the appeal that is heard there by the providence of God. 170 chapter three

The same is thus also true for reprobation. The unbelief of men also has an origin which reaches back to God. But God may not be termed unjust. However contradictory it may seem, Calvin thought that on the basis of revelation both things must be said: In the decision of God’s own Counsel lay the deepest cause of salvation and doom, while at the same time revelation forbids the conclusion that God is the author of sin, or is liable to moral censure.158 The existence of good and evil alongside one another, of light and dark, of weal and woe, has reasons that lie in God and which are further unknown to man.

3.12.3. The benefit of the knowledge of predestination Why has God made these secrets known? Calvin remains true to his conviction of the usefulness of all revealed knowledge of God. This conviction has an axiomatic significance in his theology. Thus somehow the principle applies here that knowing God and knowing ourselves are correlates. Doctrine is not complete if it remains exterior, like a droplet on a window; it must penetrate and only then finds its purpose in the fitting response on the part of man. What are the benefits? In the first place, knowledge that human salvation is founded in God’s election affords certainty. Certainty? Indeed, one would not suspect this after so many centuries of individuals in some Reformed Protestant circles wrestling with the question of whether they are really children of God. Yet Calvin connects election with certainty. It however becomes somewhat clearer when one takes into account the forum that Calvin had to deal with. The anchor for certainty of salvation does not lie in works or in personal sanctity; the anchor of eternal salvation lies in God’s own decision. But it is not without reason that in the Institutes this decision is discussed after the realisation of community between God and man in Jesus Christ is treated. The inward work of the Holy Spirit, through which Christ is no longer at a distance but in whom the believer grows together with Christ, is the mystery of faith. That is in the foreground. That this workoftheSpirithasitsfoundationintheelectiontolife,andthat there is even a double predestination whereby some are chosen for life

158 Inst. 3.23.8: ‘nihil aliud quam divinae iustitiae, occultae quidem, sed inculpatae, dispensatio … sic ex Dei praedestinatione pendet eorum perditio, ut causa et materia in ipsis reperiatur … Cadit igitur homo, Dei providentia sic ordinante: sed suo vitio cadit.’ god: judge and father 171 and others rejected, is the mysterious background of an experienced fact that, according to Calvin’s firmest conviction, is entirely palpable. The teaching of the Spirit in Scripture is confirmed in everyday experience. Remarkably enough, Calvin begins his treatment of the doctrine of predestination precisely with this reference to experience. Preaching is received very differently by various persons; the effect can be diametrically opposite. The depth of divine rule is revealed in this experienced fact.159 The ordo cognoscendi, the way of knowing of faith, is paramount in Calvin’s treatment—that is to say, first the divine mercy that is revealed in Christ, and then the background of this faith in the decision of divine Counsel, the ordo essendi. As opposed to the late medieval doctrine of grace, in which merit played a fundamental role, Calvin has, as he sees it, adduced a stronger basis. Calvin proposes thankfulness as a second practical purpose of the doctrine. Election points to God’s free mercy, and this evokes thankfulness from the side of man. In this way God is glorified. It is not without reason that in connection with God’s eternal Counsel we hear the phrase that is also typical of Calvin’s concept of knowing God: it is fitting to praise God’s judgement, rather than to interrogate it.160 As a third point Calvin lists humility. Man must learn to know his place in relation to God. He is being trained in humility and submission. Once one has taken cognisance of these three practical effects, it can then be understood why Calvin reacted furiously to the suggestion that it is better to hold one’s peace about the doctrine of election. If election were not to be spoken of, according to Calvin then on the contrary the honour of God would be disparaged and the faithful would not be stimulated to thankfulness and meekness. In this case man is being wiser than God, who indeed thinks it useful to reveal this secret. Calvin’s ‘Biblicism’ is here of decisive importance. He labels the advice of the Bern clergy to practice reticence in speaking of predestination as human pride.161 No concession is possible. Calvin indicates where the boundary between speaking and remaining silent lies for him: Let us, I say, allow the Christian to unlock his mind and ears to all the words of God which are addressed to him, provided he do it with this moderation—viz. that whenever the Lord shuts his sacred mouth, he also desists from inquiry. The best rule of sobriety is, not only in learning to

159 Inst. 3.21.1. 160 Comm. Romans 9:22,CO49, 187. 161 Inst. 3.21.4. 172 chapter three

follow wherever God leads, but also when He makes an end of teaching, to cease also from wishing to be wise.162 It is characteristic of Calvin’s position that, with Deuteronomy 29:29 in mind, he seeks a via media with regard to predestination. At one extreme is an excessive curiosity, in which man wants to know more than what God has disclosed in his Word. On this side the limit is formed by a docta ignorantia, a not-knowing that is precisely the fruit of revelation.163 The emphasis however comes to lie on the second boundary that Calvin wants to avoid, namely that ‘lest under the pretence of modesty and sobriety we be satisfied with a brutish ignorance’.164 This ignorance is in fact ingratitude with regard to that which God has disclosed.165 In the above we have once again discovered the three fundamental concepts that qualify human knowledge of God. Man is certain of his salvation, not on the basis of works, but on the basis of God’s mercy, his misericordia. Further, in this earthly existence he practices humility and thankfulness. Anchoring salvation in election in Calvin’s theology indisputably has consequences for the place which the concept of covenant will assume. Covenant is subordinated to election. The particularity of God’s gracious acts is indeed reflected in the covenant with the people of Israel, but that does not mean that all who belong to that nation have the Spirit of regeneration bestowed upon them.166 God’s gracious action is focused on single individuals. For Calvin the covenant is a function of election. The election of the one nation of Israel out of the many nations reflects the splendour of election, which takes place not on the basis of merit, but purely on the basis of mercy. In other words, the freedom of God’s grace and turning toward man becomes visible in the mirror of the covenant.167 Thus all this means that far from everything is decided about the eternal salvation of those who are included in this covenant. Esau was

162 Inst. 3.21.3: ‘Permittamus, inquam, Christiano homini, cunctis qui ad eum diri- guntur Dei sermonibus mentem auresque reserare, modo cum hac temperantia, ut quum primum Dominus sacrum os clauserit, ille quoque viam sibi ad inquirendum praecludat. Hic optimus sobrietatis terminus erit, si non modo in discendo praeeuntem semper sequamur Deum, sed ipso finem docendi faciente, sapere velle desinamus.’ 163 Inst. 3.21.2; see also Inst. 3.23.8. 164 Inst. 3.21.3: ‘… ne modestiae et sobrietatis praetextu bruta inscitia nobis placeat.’ 165 Inst. 3.21.4. 166 Inst. 3.21.7. 167 Inst. 3.21.7. god: judge and father 173 part of the covenant, but in no way belongs to the elect. Salvation is indeed offered by the covenant, but that is not to say that God seals all for salvation.168 The invitation of a whole people into the covenant is followed by a second act of God in which he elects a part of that people in a special, or indeed active, manner. The first or general election is, Calvin literally says, a sort of ‘middle ground’169 between the rejection of the human race and the election of a small number of sinners. There is, we must conclude, still a large gap between God’s invitation to and offer of salvation, and actual, personal participation in salvation. We undeniably there encounter the tension that lies within Calvin’s doctrine of God and that he, as we previously observed, does not attempt to resolve. He only points his readers toward a way of dealing with it. Calvin saw clearly that people can easily blunder in the discussion of God’s rule in election and rejection. Those who will know too much, who are led on by their curiosity, will, he contends, end up in questions and observations that are ridiculous and arouse mockery. He will therefore teach his readers to respect the limits of Scripture. There are questions which can be asked, and questions which must not be asked. As was said earlier, one can object that Calvin himself does not abide by that principle when he characterises reprobation as the necessary counterpart to election. His exegesis of Scrip- ture is here crucially defined and distorted by a vision of omnipotence and election that can not be defended. Calvin did not see that in the Bible election is a category of sacred history that describes the manner of God’s mighty acts. For him, following the tradition inaugurated by Augustine, election has become a category of the Coun- sel of God, in which decisions are made about the eternal salvation and damnation of separate individuals. It is not just the indefensibil- ity of his exegesis of Romans 9–11 that has meant that Calvin’s theology is no longer followed on this point. In our second panel, in the description of Barth’s theology, we will see how deeply changing views of the Bible and the relation between the Bible and systematic reflection have had their effects there too. That God’s acts in the history of Israel and in Christ are unconditional acts for good, in the second panel will be seen to be a compass for the reading of Scrip- ture.

168 Inst. 3.21.7. 169 Inst. 3.21.7: ‘… medium quiddam …’ 174 chapter three

Calvin has gone down in the history of theology as the one who defended the doctrine of double predestination in its most rigid form, thereby undermining the character of the Gospel as a message of salvation. Seen from Calvin’s own position, that is a most curious and particularly ungracious outcome. The fact is that he precisely did not want to burrow around in the Counsel of God, did not wish to obscure the image of God, but intended to ﬁx his reader’s minds on revelation as it is given, on Christ as the one in whom God comes to meet them with his salvation. In Him God’s will is revealed.

3.12.4. God’s will as the farthest horizon That Calvin felt himself provoked by the accusations that his doctrine of predestination cast a shadow over the image of God as a loving father is understandable not only psychologically, but theologically. God himself revealed that man’s eternal salvation depends on a decision in God’s hidden and immutable Counsel.170 If anyone subsequently asks what the reason of this decision was, what the reasons are which guided God’s will, then he will receive no answer. God’s will is the ﬁnal point to which knowledge in faith, instructed by Scripture, can go back. In this matter the believer will have to live with a docta ignorantia, as Calvin, following Augustine, termed it171 The ﬁnal thing we can know, the extreme of human knowledge, is the will of God. The reference to the will of God immediately calls up the question of what it means if Calvin’s doctrine of God is termed voluntaristic and is situated within the channel of Scotism.172 Is God’s freedom to be distinguished from arbitrariness? Undeniably there are statements to be found in Calvin that appear to give cause for the negative picture that is given in the older manuals of the voluntarism of late medieval theology. We are told in the discussion of predestination that there is no sense in asking why God entered into covenant with Abraham and his descendants. Calvin dismisses such questions with the requisite irony.

170 Inst. 3.21.7: ‘Quod ergo Scriptura clare ostendit, dicimus aeterno et immutabili consilio Deum semel constituisse quos olim semel assumere vellet in salutem, quos rursum exitio devovere.’ 171 Inst. 3.21.2. Cf. Augustine, Epistulae 130, 15, 28,CSEL44, 72, 13. 172 For a careful but nevertheless sure backgrounding on this tradition, see H.A. Oberman, ‘Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.) Calvinus sacrae scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids 1994, 113–154, particularly 117–127. god: judge and father 175

People who try to understand such irreducible facts could just as well ask why they were created as men and not as oxen or donkeys. God could just as easily have made them as dogs. Calvin asks if people who want to investigate these contingent things might also wish to allow lower animals to expostulate with God about not having made them men.173 Things are as they are. God’s right to make a variety of creatures now transports Calvin to the realm of salvation. God’s freedom to introduce diversity into creation serves as an argument for God’s freedom to elect some and reject others. Such an appeal to the concept of freedom is dangerous because in this context it is not made clear how God’s freedom differs from arbitrariness. Considering such statements in isolation, one can easily manage to separate election from the soteriological context in which the doctrine stands in Calvin, and make it an independent, controlling principle of the sovereignty of God. God then becomes a duplicate of the double face of nature. A natural observation comes to define the image of God. Above I have referred to remarks by Kuyper and Schilder which do not escape this danger. That in the Bible election stands in the context of salvation and redemption is entirely lost. If we look at the context in which these statements appear in Calvin, then it is clear that the point of his argument is not so much the concept of freedom, but the foolishness of some questions. The farthest horizon of human knowledge of God is God’s will. A boundary is drawn in the reference to God’s will, which man cannot pass. It is not possible to ask again why God wills as He does.174 Does this reference to God’s will as the furthest horizon open the door to the view that God, at his deepest, is defined by arbitrariness? That is how Calvin is often understood. I would say this is incorrect, certainly if one takes him at his own word. God’s will is always governed by his justice and goodness. One can not search for reasons behind that. I have previously noted that Calvin fences off reflection on God’s being, and always has the inclination to move immediately through to questions about the effect that God wishes to produce with man. It is characteristic of Calvin’s concept that he makes thinking about God as prima causa subordinate to the finality of God’s action. It is not without

173 Inst. 3.22.1. 174 Inst. 3.23.2: ‘Adeo enim summa est iustitiae regula Dei voluntas, ut quicquid vult, eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sit. Ubi ergo quaeritur cur ita fecerit Dominus, respondendum est, Quia voluit.’ The publishers of the OS refer to Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos I 2, 4 MSL 34, 175. 176 chapter three reason that I previously pointed out the dominance of active verbs such as invite, awaken and draw. These verbs are more definitive for Calvin’s doctrine of God than thinking in terms of primary causality is.175 His handling of the concept of potentia absoluta also fits within this pattern. Calvin storms furiously against the idea that God acts as a potentia absoluta, as absolute power. The reference to God’s will as the furthest horizon serves to remind us of the categorical difference between God and man.

3.12.5. God as absolute power? Is God’s will identified with caprice? In his actions is God a power standing above the law? Calvin thoroughly realised that this idea could easily take root.176 Yet everything indicates that he did not wish to go down this road. Already, in section 3.8, it was mentioned that Calvin strongly militated against the idea that God might be a despotic power who wielded his might arbitrarily. The first thing to which faith clings is the goodness of God, his grace and justice. God’s power is not separated from justice, but is always its norm and exponent. ‘We do not imagine God to be lawless. He is a law to himself.’177 What does Calvin mean by this? There are various places in his works where he explicitly speaks negatively about the concept of absolute power, potentia absoluta or puissance absoluë. It appears to be a term which has frankly objectionable connotations for Calvin. What did Calvin have in mind when he rejected this term? In the treatise De aeterna praedestinatione (1552) we find an example. He there disputes the papales theologastri,accordingtowhomonecanascribe absolute power to God. A more extensive citation is in order here: It would be easier to wrench light away from warmth, or to separate warmth from fire, than to divorce God’s power from his justice. Thus let these monstrous speculations be far from pious minds, that God can do more than is fitting, or that He carries out something without measure and without reason. And I do not accept this as illusion, that God, because he is free of law, is free of reproach, whatever He does. Those who place God outside the law rob Him of the greatest part of

175 See Oberman, ‘Initia Calvini’, 126. 176 Inst. 3.23.4. 177 Inst. 3.23.2: ‘Adeo enim summa est iustitiae regula Dei voluntas, ut quicquid vult, eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sit … Non ﬁngimus Deum exlegem, qui sibi ipsi lex est’. god: judge and father 177

his glory, because they bury His truth and justice. Not because God is subject to law, except to the degree that He is law to himself, but because between his power and justice there is such an harmony and symmetry that nothing can come from Him except that it knows measure, law and rule. And it is certainly necessary that believers acknowledge that the same One whom they confess as almighty at the same time is the judge of the world, so that they regard the power as in this sense determined by justice and equity.178 God does not act arbitrarily. His deeds are always determined by his justice and goodness, although that is sometimes hidden. Other passages too where Calvin speaks explicitly of potentia absoluta are of the same tenor.179 By absolute power Calvin understands an actually used capability, which stands apart from God’s justice and wisdom.180 Calvin will have none of this. If that were true, God would indeed be a tyrant, someone who acts arbitrarily. According to Calvin, to think of God in that way is the equivalent of blasphemy.

3.12.6. Excursus: potentia absoluta et ordinata. A brief historical overview In the following I will place Calvin’s negative statements regarding God as potentia absoluta within the context of late medieval discussions on God’s power. The term potentia absoluta refers to a discussion that was carried on since Augustine about the relation between God’s power and his will, and which resulted in a distinction between absolute and ordained power. In the later middle ages, under the inﬂuence of the use of these terms in canon law, this distinction led to the view that the highest authority, that is to say the pope, can act according to powers that are not bound by any law or regulation. It will be clear that in this context freedom rapidly takes on overtones of arbitrariness. On the basis of recent studies I will here present a brief survey in order to situate Calvin’s ideas.181

178 CO 8, 361.Cf.alsoCO8, 310: ‘nihil esse in Deo inordinatum’. 179 See Comm. Isa. 23:9,CO36, 391;andAltera Responsio de occulta Dei providentia,CO 9, 288. One will also ﬁnd frequent examples in the sermons on Job, for example CO 35, 60 (‘puissance absoluë’) and CO 33, 584 (‘puissance tyrannique’). 180 Inst. 1. 17.2 and Inst. 3.23.2. 181 For the view of the relation between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata,see the study of H.A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology. Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism, Cambridge (MA) 1963. For a critical evaluation of the older view and a reinterpretation, see particularly 30–56. Further, I have made extensive use of W. J. C o u r t e n a y, Capacity and Volition. A History of the distinction of Absolute and Ordained Power,Bergamo1990, idem, ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion’ in: Ch. Trinkaus 178 chapter three

A good place to begin in order to understand what the distinction was originally about is the famous table conversation between Peter Damian and abbot Desiderius at the abbey of Monte Cassino in 1067. The subject of the conversation was the manner in which a citation from Jerome should be interpreted, in which he asserted that God, although he could do anything, could not undo the loss of virginity.182 Although the question can be so conceived that the problem of the relation between the natural order and a supernatural intervention becomes the nub, the discussion between Peter Damien and Desiderius focused on the first aspect, namely the question of in what sense it may be said that God cannot do a thing. Desiderius defended the view that God’s omnipotence cannot be understood as the capacity to do anything whatsoever. Discussions about God’s power apart from his will are senseless. Pronouncements about what God can not do simply mean that God does not will doing this. Damian thought this position unsatisfactory. It would mean that God’s power is limited by his will. According to Damian, God is able to do more than He in fact wills. Outside of what God actually does, there lies a field of possibilities that are open to Him. The questions which were raised in that conversation were not new; they have their background in Augustinian tradition. Already in Augus- tine one finds the distinction that God can do more than He wills. Potuit, sed noluit, as he put it. It is true for God: ‘poterat per potentiam, sed non poterat per iustitiam’.183 Divine will can, for unsearchable reasons, choose not to do a thing which from our perspective would seem to fit better with God’s goodness, although it does not tally with what is right. An example given by Augustine is the fall of Adam. It would appear in keeping with God’s goodness if he had prevented the fall of Adam; he has however, for inscrutable reasons, chosen not to do that.184 For other things which He cannot do, it is the case that He can not do

and H.A. Oberman (ed.), The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, Leiden 1974, 26–59.FurtherF.Oakley,Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order. An Excursion in the History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz,Ithaca1984;G.vandenBrink,Almighty God. A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence,Kampen1993, 68–92. 182 Hieronymus, Epist. 22 ad Eustochium, 5,CSEL54, 150: ‘Audenter loquor: cum omnia Deus possit, suscitare virginem non potest post ruinam. Valet quidem liberare de poena, sed non valet coronare corruptam.’ 183 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 28. 184 Augustine, De natura et gratia, 7.8,CSEL60, 237 and Contra Gaudentium I, CSEL 53, 233. god: judge and father 179 them because they are contrary to His nature. ‘Can not’ must simply be regarded as ‘does not will to’. It is nonsense to think of God’s capacity apart from his will. Particularly Anselm is important for the further development of the classical meaning of the distinction. In his writings he took several steps that stimulated reflection on the capacity of God and suggested that in God there is an unrealised sphere of potential that is apart from his will. One of these steps is found in the consideration of the incarnation in Cur Deus Homo. If Christ has taken on a truly human nature, by virtue of the communion between the two natures in the divine-human person He has the communicatio idiomatum, the capacity to do things which are totally out of keeping with the divine nature, such as to lie and steal. At this point Anselm applies the distinction between being able to and willing. God in Christ has well the ‘bald’ capacity to do all sorts of things, but on account of his divine nature he does not have the capacity to want to do them. The step which Anselm takes here is to think hypothetically about what God might have wanted to do.185 A further step taken by Anselm is the distinction between various sorts of necessity. First, there is the distinction between necessitas antecedens and necessitas consequens. Necessitas antecedens describes the cause of a particular effect. Necessitas consequens refers to the act as it takes place or that is a result of an act. The second distinction is related to this, namely that between an act that is compelled by an external influence and an action that takes place on the basis of a previous, freely made act of will which the subject imposes on himself.186 Particularly this latter distinction was to have immense consequences for thinking about God, man and the world in terms of covenant. In freedom God commits himself to act in a certain manner in his creation and in sacred history. It is in keeping with God’s honour to act in conformity with that to which he has committed himself in creation and redemption. To the extent that these actions of God can be described as necessary, this necessity is characterised by his honour, or, better, by his nobility. Nearly all the ingredients which would be definitive for the classical meaning of the distinction are already present with Anselm. The difference is that Anselm limits himself to God’s freely chosen obligation. In its classic form the distinction describes the operation of a covenant in terms of a comprehensive system of causes and effects on the basis of

185 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 33. 186 Cf. Cur Deus homo,II5. 180 chapter three attributed value. The second difference is that while Anselm’s thinking about God’s capacity apart from his will has only a hypothetical value, in the classic form that capacity is considered as a real, continuing, although often unused potential. For the subsequent debate it was important that more and more emphasis came to be placed on what God had the power to do, apart from his will. Against Abelard, who wanted to limit God’s potential to what really occurred, Hugo of St. Victor, Bernard of Clairveaux and Peter Lombard, for instance, insisted that it was unacceptable that God could not do other, or better, than what he actually did. The idea that divine goodness was fully realised was unacceptable. As we have said, with that the accent shifted. If Damian and Anselm not read non potuit as noluit, in the first decade of the 12th century the stress fell on the posse:‘potuit, sed noluit’. If at first the distinction had had God’s incapacity as its subject, now it became a positive assertion about God’s capability, about his power.187 Added to this was the fact that reflection on the difference between God’s willing and capacity was increasingly used to make room for miracles. In the 12th century, under Aristotelian influence the world was more and more being viewed as a place governed by laws. In such a world, how were men to regard God’s interventions by means of miracles? What sort of powers and causes formed the basis for miracles taking place? Questions of this nature led to the expansion of the available concepts. It was assumed that created things had a receptive capacity, a potentia oboedentialis, which made possible a reaction or response on the part of lower natural powers and causes to the higher, preternatural power of God himself. Courtenay remarks that when, in the late medieval debate, the term potentia absoluta was defined as potentia extraordinaria, it already had a long history of being used in this sense. The world was experienced as responding to God. At that time, such an operationalising of the term potentia absoluta had not yet taken place. Miracles were thought to belong among the potentia ordinata,as the definition in the Summa Halensis (1250) demonstrates. Around 1250 the distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata was taking on its classic form and meaning. The distinction must not be regarded as an assertion about two powers in God. It is a manner of speaking about the one power of God. Potentia absoluta is used for

187 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 68–69. god: judge and father 181 speaking of God’s power apart from his will and his concrete deeds in creation and sacred history. Potentia absoluta refers to the whole of possibilities that initially stood open for God. These possibilities are only limited by the principium non-contradictionis. God can not will and not- willatthesametime.Potentia ordinata regards God’s power according to what He has actually done. The adjective absoluta is thus not a statement about a concrete act of God; it is his potentia considerata abstracta.188 We see that it is not the intention of the distinction to make a statement about what God can and cannot do. The intention is rather to make a positive statement about his relation to the world. The point of the distinction is God’s binding himself to the order that He has chosen in creation and sacred history. Since God in his Counsel has chosen for this world and this sacred history, he is approachable on that basis. In light of this, the distinction first of all says something about the contingency of creation, as opposed to Graeco-Arabic determinism.189 The present order is a product of God’s will. It is an order that is not necessary, and not logically deducible. It is not the only possible order, and it rests positively in the will of God. The difference between willing and potential in God is interpreted as potuit per potentiam, sed non per voluntatem. This classical form of the dialectic between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata is not the end of the debate, however. When so much emphasis is placed on God’s self-binding to a particular order, and when he is thought of as the one who has appointed the laws in his creation, it becomes more difficult to situate miracles within the potentia ordinata. Moreover, the self-binding of God’s power to particular forms and laws assumes an element of deliberation in God. This assumption is not easy to square with God’s immutabilitas. In the third quarter of the 13th century, under the influence of a debate carried on by canon lawyers, still another use of the distinction emerged. Potentia absoluta was understood by analogy with papal power and sovereignty. The pope was thought to possess the plenitudo potestatis with which the status ecclesiae must be maintained. The principal of lex digna, coming from Roman law, encouraged the opinion that the pope could act ex ratione ecclesiae.190 Concretely, that meant that the pope could grant dispensation or could act against rights which had been granted, when larger interests or the greater good was served by doing so. Then

188 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 74. 189 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 90. 190 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 92. 182 chapter three he acted extra or supra legem. Potentia absoluta at that moment entered the sphere of practical actions; the concept was operationalised. The articles of 1277 must be situated within this historical context. In fact the condemnations involved propositions according to which God acted ex necessitate. With the condemnations the possibility was kept open that God acted directly and unexpectedly. According to Hendrik van Gent, a secular priest in Paris, the pope could use his power to cancel the privileges of mendicant orders. According to Courtenay, this development in the meaning of the term potentia absoluta as a means of thinking of the order of the world and sacred history as a non-necessary, given order, according to a model in which potentia absoluta was considered as a sphere of actually used power, was unintentionally furthered by Duns Scotus. Duns himself emphatically did not regard potentia absoluta as a form of practical action. However, the debate among the canon lawyers is undeniably reflected in the definition he gives. According to his definition, the distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata can be applied to every possible subject that possesses the capability to will and think.191 Duns hereby attributes an element of free choice to God. Free will applies to God and mankind. Potentia absoluta is no longer a realm of possibilities from which a choice can be made. It is the capacity to act outside the given order. In this way Duns hands the pope a resource enabling him to change his mind. For William of Ockham the distinction has primarily the traditional meaning. It is used to explore the boundary between the necessary and contingent in the reality of creation and grace. Ockham reaffirms the explanation that Augustine had already given of the difference between willing and capacity to act. God could do much more, but He does not will it. The concept of potentia absoluta only illuminates that

191 Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, 101 refers to Ordinatio I. Distinctio 44.Opera Omnia vol IV, 363–369: ‘In omni agente per intellectum et voluntatem, potente conformiter agere legi rectae et tamen non necessario conformiter agere legi rectae, est distinguere potentiam ordinatam a potentia absoluta; et ratio huius est, quia potest agere conformiter illi legi rectae, et tunc secundum potentiam ordinatam (ordinata enim est in quantum est principium exsequendi aliqua conformiter legi rectae) et potest agere praeter illam legem vel contra eam, et in hoc est potentia absoluta, excedens potentiam ordinatam. Et ideo non tantum in Deo, sed in omni agente libere—qui potest agere secundum dictamen legis rectae et praeter talem legem vel contra eam—est distinguere inter potentiam ordinatam et absolutam; ideo dicunt iuristae quod aliquis hoc potest facere de facto, hoc est de potentia sua absoluta,—vel de iure, hoc est de potentia ordinata secundum iura.’ See also Lectura I, 44. god: judge and father 183

God could have acted differently. The contingency of the given order is underscored. After all, certain miracles, such as the three men in the fiery furnace or Elijah’s offering on Carmel, demonstrate that the laws of nature are not necessary laws, but are contingent. Fire does not always burn human flesh, and water and fire are not always opposites. The question of whether the incarnation of the Son could have taken place in a donkey is not asked because it was a serious possibility, but as a means of distinguishing the incidental from the essential. It however creates confusion when Ockham regularly creates the impression of speaking of actual forms of Divine actions, when he only intends to speak of the contingency of the world and the order of salvation. Nevertheless, the operationalising of the term potentia absoluta through the debate among canon lawyers unquestionably had influence on the era after Scotus and Ockham. The literature refers to Gabriel Biel and Pierre d’Ailly as examples where potentia absoluta was interpreted as potentia extraordinaria.192 To return to Calvin. His use of the term potentia absoluta as actually used power—thus in operationalised form—leads one to suspect that he became acquainted with the concept as it was being used in the circles of canon lawyers. It is important for Calvin that an absolute freedom can never, ever be attributed to God in his actions. Both in the work of creation and in the order of salvation, his actions are always connected with his wisdom and his goodness. This does not mean, we would once more emphasise, that man always understands how God’s action rests in his justice and goodness. The fact that they form the pillars of God’s action is something that the believer must accept as an axiomatic point of departure, on the ground of revelation given in Scripture. Calvin’s view of the concept of potentia absoluta also leads one to suspect that he was not aware of the classic meaning of the paired concepts potentia absoluta et ordinata. At least he says nothing about them explicitly. This in no way has to be in conflict with the proposition that both terminologically and in its content Calvin’s theology is permeated with the idea of the self-binding of God to a given order. This is particularly to be seen in the discussion of the work of Christ as a meritum. In still another manner in our study we also already came across elements which in terms of their content are related to the

192 See for example van den Brink, Almighty God, 85. 184 chapter three idea of self-binding. God makes himself known through a variety of mirrors, and it is therefore logical that believers are referred precisely to these mirrors for their knowledge of God. The importance of the self-binding of God emerges with particular clarity in his discussion of election and Christ as a mirror of election. Believers must derive their knowledge of God from the means that God has appointed for that purpose. These are the mirrors that God intentionally set up, in which He makes himself visible. Scripture opens our eyes to God’s goodness also being visible in nature, and, most important, Scripture points the way to Christ as the mirror where God’s fatherhood is to be seen. Our knowing of salvation proceeds in an orderly manner. None of this detracts from Calvin’s thought that God’s power in a certain sense is related to the late medieval view of God’s power as a potentia extraordinaria. God’s governance of the world does not always proceed through natural laws, through causae secundae.Itisalsotrue that salvation does not always proceed through a given order. God retains his freedom with regard to the normal means with which He rules the world and draws men to him. God’s might appears as a potentia extraordinaria which governs man and the world and draws them to him through his secret or hidden power. It is crucial however that this inimitable quality does not concern the trustworthiness of human knowledge of salvation. Man’s knowledge of salvation comes through obediently looking in the mirrors God has set up.

3.12.7. Where faith must look One could say that Calvin wishes to fix the gaze of the reader of Scripture on the image that is given in Christ. In the discussion of the concept of faith we already arrived at the conclusion that the knowledge of faith is an aimed knowledge. It has a scopus, a target, and that is Christ, who is offered by the Father, as vested in the Gospel.193 In the doctrine of election we read, ‘if we seek for the paternal mercy and favour of God, we must turn our eyes to Christ, in whom alone the Father is well pleased’.194 The knowledge of faith indicates the source from which believers must draw. ‘If we are elected in Him, we cannot find the certainty of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we look at him apart from the Son. Christ, then, is the

193 Inst. 3.2.6. 194 Inst. 3.24.5. god: judge and father 185 mirror in which we ought, and in which without deception we may contemplate our election.’195 Calvin was aware that this reference to Christ as mirror was threatened when the believer, on the basis of the same Bible, seeks to get behind this mirror and open up a path to the Counsel of God. This was discussed in the previous chapter in connection with the question of the certainty of salvation. Precisely the manner in which Calvin goes to work here reveals how deeply he was convinced that believers for their knowledge of God must turn their eyes to those sources or mirrors in which God lets himself be known, and must not desire to go outside this appointment, this ordinatio.In these sources He provides trustworthy knowledge, in human language and metaphors, acting as a father who out of his own love gives Christ and adopts men as his children. With this concept we once again stand before the central metaphor in Calvin’s vision of God. But what, however, is this term worth in Calvin’s conception if one considers that this term too is the language of accommodation? How trustworthy is the knowledge that God oﬀers about himself in Scripture? We return to this question one more time.

3.13. Once again: God as father

Are metaphors or anthropomorphisms such as father and mother not endangered by the stress on the transcendence of God? Can the forms of accommodation be taken seriously when faith itself also knows that God is always still higher and more than the images with which He makes himself known? In short, is the value of accommodated language not undermined by God’s majesty, precisely because He is not swallowedupinhisaccommodation? It is my contention that Calvin gives no reason to distrust them. Indeed, the whole of revelation to man is a form of accommodation, a descent of God from his majesty. The already cited comparison that Calvin makes in this connection is that of a woman feeding her child. In the same way that a woman who communicates with her infant does so in baby-talk, God defers to man and gives of himself in a way that is understandable for the child. According to Calvin this descent is involved in all revelation, but that in no way means that every form

195 Ibid. Cf. also De aeterna praedestinatione (1552), CO 8, 318. 186 chapter three of accommodation must now be qualified as illegitimate. Certainly, when it is said that God has nostrils, a mouth and eyes, snorts, or is drunk,196 then Calvin considers this as excessive accommodation to man’s capacity for understanding, through which a great measure of illegitimacy accrues to such statements. But I believe I can establish that there are for Calvin various degrees of accommodation. There are moments when Calvin drops these reservations regarding the language. Some images are apparently much more precise and fitting than others. I wish to develop this somewhat further. I do not find in Calvin the smallest trace of fear that accommodation and anthropomorphisms would ultimately undermine the trustworthiness of the content of revelation. As we have previously noted, with regard to revelation in the Old Testament he does express this reservation. But in a fundamental sense his doctrine of revelation rejects this reservation about illegitimacy, and with it distrust. Man must gain his knowledge regarding God from the mirrors that God holds up before him; these he must consult, where the Spirit in Scripture pins him down and where God shares the metaphors with him most radically. According to Calvin, in Scripture God is actively leading. The student of Scripture must keep to the pointers given, and not go elsewhere. There is however no basis whatever to suppose that Calvin wished to undermine the image of father. On the contrary—and to confirm this I refer to his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. In his explication of this prayer he offers a surprising perception of this metaphor. ‘With what confidence could anyone call God his Father?’ he asks. His answer is that it is not possible other than through the believers being adopted as God’s children in Christ. The whole of the metaphor of the family and adoption is given a key role here, and later in the doctrine of the sacraments. The reason for calling God Father lies in God himself. God takes us into his home as children. ‘Hence he both calls himself our Father, and is pleased to be so called by us, by this delightful name relieving us of all distrust, since nowhere can stronger affection be found than in a father.’ It is apparent from this quote that Calvin realises very well that the term father is an ordinary word that has a general applicability as a designator. There is however a substantive reason for applying this term to God in particular. ‘His love toward us is so much the greater and more excellent than that of earthly parents,

196 Comm. Ps. 78:65,CO31, 742. god: judge and father 187 the farther he surpasses all men in goodness and mercy.’197 In this exposition there is nothing of the image of an impassive God and of a threat through his highness. God’s love is not less than that of earthly fathers, but exceeds it greatly. The aﬀection that earthly fathers have, upon which children can call even if they have misbehaved, is applied to God without any hesitation. For if among men a son cannot have a better advocate to plead his cause with his father, and cannot employ a better intercessor to regain his lost favour, than if he come himself suppliant and downcast, acknowledging his fault, to implore the mercy of his father, whose parental feelings cannot but be moved by such entreaties, what will that ‘Father of all mercies, and God of all comfort’ do?198 In this quote the appeal to the sublimity of God has an extremely practical consequence. God’s mercy exceeds that of earthly fathers. That is the practical meaning of the deus semper maior.Intheparable of the prodigal son God has sketched out how he himself is, according to Calvin: By setting before us this admirable example of mildness in a man, he designs to show in how much greater abundance we may expect it from him who is not only a Father, but the best and most merciful of all fathers, however ungrateful, rebellious and wicked sons we may be, provided we only throw ourselves on his mercy. And the better to assure us that he is such a Father if we are Christians, he has been pleased to be called not only a Father, but OUR Father.199 The term father may have applicability as a general designator, but from a citation like this it is clear how in the language of faith this term becomes a ‘rigid designator’ and in fact functions as a personal name.200 It also becomes clear that Calvin does not view the metaphorical use as an initiative of mankind, but as a usage that God himself willed and assigned. In his relation with mankind He appoints himself as father, with whose will and whose purposes the children will deal. He commits himself to this. Of course, the fact remains that God in Christ making himself known as Father is a specimen of accommodation and the term father is an anthropomorphic image, but in these images, derived from the sphere of the family, adoption and meals, God provides very

197 Inst. 3.20.36. 198 Inst. 3. 20.37. 199 Ibid. 200 Cf. I.U. Dalferth, Religiöse Rede von Gott,München1981, 577. 188 chapter three precise information about the way in which He intends to relate to mankind. I draw the conclusion that in Calvin’s thought there is a great difference in the precision and truth of the various metaphors and anthropomorphisms. Calvin himself has no intention of making these distinctions arbitrarily. Rather, he believes distinctions between those images which are less precise and those images in which God makes himself known to man in a precise sense, without ambiguity, can be made on the instruction of the Holy Spirit, by means of Scripture. The trustworthiness of God has its theological guarantee in a concept of self-revelation, but the final guarantee is in the Spirit who keeps men to the Word given in Christ. God desires to give man something, to affect him inwardly. The model of the family and adoption offers an apt image for accomplishing this. The pre-eminent place to which God will bring his children is the Supper. Our next chapter is devoted to that. chapter four

THE SUPPER AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

4.1. Introduction

The preceding two chapters were centrally concerned with the question of what sources give rise to and support human knowledge of God, and of what comprises this knowledge of God. This closing chapter in the first panel concentrates on what is variously termed the Eucharist, the Lord’s Table, or, to use the word Calvin himself used, the Supper or la cene. The reason is that in the understanding and experience of this sacrament several characteristic features of Calvin’s conception of the knowledge of God become visible. The doctrine of the Supper reveals in a concentrated manner how Calvin thought about the nature of the knowledge of God, how it was mediated, and what its most important content is. The Supper is not only an illustration of God’s invitation to mankind to enter into communion with Him, but it is also for the present its apex. Although the theological perspective will be dominant in this Chap- ter, it should be noted that this subject is interesting for another reason as well. One can also point to the wider social function of the Eucharist or Supper. Together with infant baptism the Supper is one of the rare rituals that survives, in comparison with the old situation in the church. In accordance with their nature as public events in religious life they are moments of direct social and communal importance. Thus the changed social and religious situation in Geneva and the demand for public obedience to the Word of God somehow had to be expressed surrounding these rituals. It is therefore not surprising that precisely in relation to this sacrament a conflict with the civil authorities broke out in 1538, namely over the right to excommunication. It would lead to the ban- ning of Calvin and Farel from Geneva, a period of absence that would last until 1541. The sociological and theological perspectives cannot be separated, not even in Calvin’s own theology. It is undeniable that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper occupies a central place in Calvin’s own life and 190 chapter four thought. For him, the church as a sociologically visible organisation in fact coincides with the community at the Lord’s Table. There, around the Supper, the church finds its centre. Among other points where this can be seen is the view that every member of the church is expected to participate,1 and the desire that the Supper should be celebrated weekly.2 In order to clarify what is involved in the Supper and how it reflects the concept of the knowledge of God, I will trace the theological arguments in the debate over the Supper. They are not entirely self-evident. From the modern perspective the debate can perhaps be assessed as a succession of tragic misunderstandings that could have been avoided if those involved had had at their disposal better (that is to say, more modern) concepts. Berkhof ’s critique may serve as representative of this: the dispute over the Lord’s Supper would not have gotten so out of hand if people had conceived the media of transmission less in terms of substance and more personalisticly.3 According to Berkhof ’s own theology, the core of the Supper as an instrument of transmission is the ‘effective representation of Christ’,4 the encounter and the acknowledgement of the impossibility of formulating the encounter.5 Berkhof ’s distancing himself from the concept of sacrament is directly related to his observation that the doctrine of the sacraments has become isolated in Protes- tant theology. The latter is certainly true. The advantage of the new debate sparked by the Lima report is that reflection now stands in the broader context of the question of the mediation of salvation, so that not only the proclamation of the Word, baptism and the Lord’s Table, but also the place of the other means of mediation are involved in the discussion.6 This broader context is emphatically absent in Calvin. Theological debates are rarely interesting only for the sake of their arguments; there is generally much more at stake. They are not only

1 See H. Speelman, Calvijn en de zelfstandigheid van de kerk, 88–91: Church and participation in the Supper are most closely connected with one another. In an organisational sense, to all intents and purposes the church coincides with the community at the Lord’s Table. 2 Christianae Religionis Institutio 1536, Joanne Calvino autore, OS I, 150 en Articles concernant L’organisation de l’eglise et du culte à Genève,OSI,370. 3 H. Berkhof, Christian Faith, 347. 4 H. Berkhof, Christian Faith, 366. 5 Berkhof, Christian Faith, 368. 6 Berkhof himself includes what was traditionally discussed under the concept of the sacraments in a broader pneumatological context of media of transmission. Thus he arrives at nine institutional elements that have a conductive character, whether the supper and knowledge of god 191 about shifts in the arguments themselves, but ultimately they reflect shifts in the field of spirituality, in the way faith itself is experienced. That is certainly true for the conflict around the Lord’s Supper, and that is also the case in Calvin. For him, what was at stake in the Sup- per touched on the heart of his theology and his spirituality. In order to make the contrast with today immediately clear, Calvin’s spirituality, that which he experienced in and around the Supper, is much more distant from what has come to be called the Reformed view of the Sup- per, and much closer to the ‘material’ experience of Christ’s presence of the undivided church in which he had grown up. One can look back on this conflict as an unnecessary battle, which unfortunately arose because people did not have the ‘right’ set of concepts at their disposal. When today, as in the case of Berkhof, a reduced concept of the sacrament is criticised and set aside in favour of a wider vision of conductive elements of the revelation event, then this expansion can undoubtedly be linked up with the breadth that we encounter in Calvin in the ways by which human knowledge of God arises and is guided. At the same time it must be feared that, once the revelation event is characterised in a personalistic sense as an encounter event, a standard has been established through which those elements in the knowledge of God for which personalism has no regard will disappear. Personalism is itself a critical offshoot of modern subject thinking, in which only that which can be distinguished and designated by the subject within his own horizon is of value. Those things which exceed the horizon of the personal encounter are bracketed off in advance and reduced to that which is of concern within a personalistic perspective. In Calvin one finds a vision of knowledge of God in which both personal terminology and substantialist and physical terminology play a role. In faith the believer discovers himself as a child that is introduced into a new community, a new entity. This inclusive, more encompassing dimension of a new coherence of life established by Christ becomes a subject of discussion in the conflict about the sacrament. In the imma- nence of Christ justice is done to the personal, but that personal dimension is not without a context, the world.

intentionally or not. See Christian Faith, 348. For a broader discussion in the context of the doctrine of creation, see M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom, Ecumenical Essays on Creation and Sacrament, Justiﬁcation and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999, 57–90. For a recent discussion of ordained ministry as a medium of transmission, see M. Gosker, Het ambt in de oecumenische discussie. De betekenis van de Lima-ambtstekst voor de voortgang van de oecumene en 192 chapter four

Debates with regard to the Lord’s Table, Eucharist or Supper and its meaning have been long and fierce. One need not think only of the Reformation rejection of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. More painful and shameful, and at first sight more remarkable, is the dissension within the Reformed camp itself. These differences were raised in successive religious discussions, and there were moments when it appeared that a consensus had been reached.7 But the mistrust remained and the splits among Lutheranism, Zwinglianism and Calvin- ism were the result. In these discussions Calvin tried to take a middle position, and hazarded various attempts to effect reconciliation. His Petit Traicté de la Saincte Cene (1541) and the negotiations with Bullinger that ultimately led to the Consensus Tigurinus (1549)areprominentexam- ples of this effort. But we must record that he did not succeed in his aim. It lies outside the issues being dealt with in this book to answer the question of to what degree the cause of that failure lay within Calvin himself. One can at the most state that he employed a terminology which made him suspect from both sides. In the eyes of Zwingli’s disciples it leaned heavily toward a substantialist view of the presence of Christ in the Supper. In their eyes Calvin stood close to the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, or at least leaned toward the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. Luther’s followers took a diametrically opposite position. Westphal and Heshusius placed Calvin close to the spiritualism of Zwingli, and in their own way continued Luther’s conflict with Zwingli and Bucer. To their mind, with Calvin there is nothing left of the real presence of Christ in the Supper, his presentia realis, and they criticised him on that score. For Calvin it was still only a matter of memory and intellect. Calvin absolutely could not recognise his own position in these accusations, and repeatedly defended himself.8 Our subject in this chapter is not the arguments of the disciples of Luther and Zwingli in themselves.9 They only enter consideration de doorwerking in de Nederlandse SOW-Kerken,Delft,2000 and E.A.J.G. van der Borght, Het ambt her-dacht, Zoetermeer 2000. 7 See G.W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europäischen Kirchenge- schichte, Göttingen 1979, 310–318. 8 See J.N. Tylenda, ‘Calvin and Westphal: Two Eucharistic Theologies in Conflict’ in: W.H. Neuser/H.J. Selderhuis/W. van ’t Spijker (ed.), Calvin’s Books. Festschrift dedicated to Peter De Klerk on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Heerenveen 1997, 9–21. 9 For a useful survey see W. Köhler, Zwingli und Luther. Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl the supper and knowledge of god 193 to the extent that it is necessary to recognise the characteristic way that Calvin took, since Calvin’s views on the Supper, together with his experience of it, can serve as a mirror in which all that he meant by knowledge of God or knowledge of faith appear in concentrated form. Calvin experienced the long and debilitating dispute in Reformation circles about the Supper as unnecessary and shameful. He ultimately did not know how to cope with it. He characterised the doctrine of the eucharistic meal, as it had developed since Paschasius Radbertus (832) and been laid down by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)asthedoc- trine of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, as nothing more than a furious attempt by Satan to deter simple believers from fellowship with God.10 With this critical attitude Calvin fits into Renaissance culture, and he has his own variant for putting paid to what had taken place in the preceding centuries of theological debate. The miracle of the last decades, he wrote in his Petit Traicté,isthatinsuchashorttime the Lord has brought leading figures out of the net of error in which men had been ensnared for so long.11 But he showed his deep unhap- piness at the discord that had now arisen. It is entirely consistent with Calvin’s own doctrine of providence when he says that not only does Satan have a hand in this, but that it is ultimately the Lord himself who intends to humble his servants with this affliction. The Lord and Satan can both play their role on this stage, but that does not place man in the role of marionette or mannequin. Calvin, we might say, did all that he could to play his own role as protagonist and take responsibility in this debate. Everything indicates that for Calvin this difficult dispute was not over trifling matters. With this, at least, his partners in the debate were in agreement. The reason why the conflict was carried out with so much passion, or even bitterness, had to do with the importance of the issue that was at stake, according to all concerned. It was about the reality of salvation itself. Or more precisely, the issue was the question of how man takes part in that salvation. Is that only through proclamation and faith? All the parties were in agreement about the centrality of proclamation. They were also in agreement that the celebration of the Supper is closely coupled with the proclamation, and means something nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen. Bd. 1 und 2,Leipzig1924–1953 (=New York/London 1971). 10 See Inst. 4.17.1.SeealsoOSI,517, 527. 11 OS I, 527. 194 chapter four for participation in salvation. The question was only, what role did it play? Why was this precisely the sticking point? Does this not fundamentally call into question the church with its offices, rituals and ceremonies? The Reformation took leave of a concept in which the official church was self-evidently the embodiment of and dispenser of grace. The presence of God was no longer congruent with the church and its sacraments. In that case, are the church and its sacraments not among those outward things that are of little or subordinate importance? In this connection I wish to discuss several observations by Graafland so as to point out some of the ambivalences that particularly dominated Reformation theology on the church, offices and sacraments. Graafland has pointed out that formally Calvin’s discussion of the content of faith in the Institutes is within the plan of his discussion of the themes of the Apostles’ Creed. This coincides with the first three books of the Institutes. What follows in Book IV regarding the church, the sacraments and government is no longer the object of confession. For Calvin church and covenant fall outside the actual content of faith. He demonstrates that with Calvin covenant stands in order under predestination. The emphasis on the invisible church as the gathering of the elect leads to the hollowing out of the concept of covenant as a primary theological category. Participation in the covenant is still not participation in eternal salvation. The consequence of all this is a mea- sured dualism in the view of the church; one unintended effect might be disregard of the visible church.12 All this critique is just. However, it appears to me to be incorrect to also suggest on the grounds of this that the outward means, which are discussed in Book IV, have little weight theologically. This brings Calvin’s own theology all too easily under suspicion of spiritualism. That might be the result in a time in which interior and exterior, inner experience and world experience are separated from one another, or a perspective on their mutual relationships is no longer acknowledged, but does not apply for Calvin’s pre-modern theology. With Calvin there is a theological line that keeps the institutional church and inward and outward communion with Christ close to one another. In the preceding chapters we have frequently seen how considerable and fundamental the role is that Calvin grants to external reality in the way that knowledge of God comes. One might even speak of a sacramental function of outward, created reality. Outward means

12 C. Graaﬂand, Kinderen van één moeder. Calvijns visie op de kerk volgens zijn Institutie, Kampen 1989, 51. the supper and knowledge of god 195 which God uses in a speciﬁc sense, such as preaching, the church, sacraments and the authorities, are no less essential because of their outwardness. The fourth book of the Institutes deals with ‘the outward means or aids through which God invites us to fellowship with Christ, and preserves us therein.’13 Reading what Calvin then writes of these aids, one discovers that theologically they receive their stature because God is pleased to invite man by means of them. ‘Outward’ is anything but synonymous with ‘non-essential’ or ‘unimportant’. The outward world is just as much theologically charged as the inward world. God relates to it in an immediate way and appears in it ‘in a certain manner’, thus in ever-changing ways. A direct line connects Calvin’s theological appreciation for creation to the place of the sacraments in his thought.14

4.2. What is a sacrament?

4.2.1. Only a cognitive advantage? Chapter 2 discussed by which means God invites men to knowledge of Him. One can rightly say that for Calvin the created world plays a powerful guiding role on the path to knowledge of God. For all that, however, the natural world is not in itself a sacrament. One can only speak of sacraments if God has chosen the element from the created world as a sign of his promise.15 With this it immediately becomes clear that Calvin’s concept of the sacraments must be understood against the background of a long tradition that stems from Augustine, in which notions from a general hermeneutic or semiology go hand in hand with speciﬁc theological or soteriological notions. The doctrine of the sacraments is a ﬁeld where doctrines of creation and soteriology come together. Augustine proceeded from a general ontological distinction,

13 ‘De externis mediis vel adminiculis, quibus Deus in Christi societatem nos invitat, et in ea retinet.’ 14 See Brinkman, Schepping en sacrament. Een oecumenische studie naar de reikwijdte van het sacrament als heilzaam symbool in een weerbarstige werkelijkheid, Zoetermeer 1991, 43–52.Cf.also M. den Dulk ‘De verzoeking Christus te representeren’ in: M.E. Brinkman/A. Houte- pen, Geen kerk zonder bisschop,Utrecht1997, 115–129, which in connection with office points to two lines in Calvin: one line in which the office arises from the community, and a line in which the office is rooted in the hierarchical structure of God’s governance. 15 Inst. 4.14.18. 196 chapter four namely that between thing, res, and sign, signum. For instance, words are signs for the things to which they refer. Signs are also things themselves, to wit res significans. There are also, however, things that are not signs, but simply res. These are eternal things, to which earthly signs refer. It is necessary for man that there be powerful pointers toward eternal things, because left to himself he would remain stuck among earthly or temporal things. Here only the remedy of a given sign, a signum datum, can help. At this point a distinction that is of eminent importance within the theological use of semiotics comes into sight, namely the distinction between the natural sign and the given sign. A fox spoor isanaturalsignthatafoxhasbeenataparticularspot.Agivensign involves, for example, a gesture or a facial expression, or is more frequently connected with the sense of hearing.16 Language or the spoken word is thus the given sign or signum datum par excellence. After all, a word can be used only as a sign. Apart from that it loses its meaning. To the extent that signs are involved with the sense of sight, according to Augustine we can gather them under the broad meaning of ‘word’ and language, and speak of visible words, verba visibilia. In Augustine’s analysis of the sacrament these general ontological considerations enter into connections with specific theological matters. A sacrament includes a natural element and a word which stems from the field of belief and revelation. Because the verbum fidei is spoken, the sacrament mediates the enduring things that are of God. ‘Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum, etiam ipsum tanquam visibile verbum.’17 Thus there is a distinction made between that which mediates, the sacramentum rei or the res significans, and that which is mediated, the res sacramenti.With regard to sacraments, this also makes clear what they are. The selection of the element or sign from the created world is certainly not a completely random choice. According to Calvin it is also a general rule that there must be a certain resemblance between the sign and thing. For instance, it is abundantly clear that a tertium comparationis exists between the water of baptism and the cleansing from sin, or between bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ as spiritual food for the soul, which makes the analogy possible.18 Theemphasisisnothow- ever on the naturalness of the sign, or with the people who seek a symbol, but on God as the One who gives it its significance. It is not

16 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, II.2.3; CCSL 32, 33. 17 Augustine, Joh.Ev.Tract. 80, 3; CCSL 36, 529. 18 OS I, 521. the supper and knowledge of god 197 man who assigns it significance, reads or interprets it. He simply follows God, ‘who at his pleasure makes all the elements subservient to his glory’.19 Calvin also points to various accounts in the Old Testa- ment in which an element from created reality becomes a sacrament. But this sacramental function was of a temporary or incidental nature, suchastheTreeofLife(Gen.2:17), the rainbow for Noah (Gen. 9:13), circumcision (Gen. 17:10) and Gideon’s fleece (Judges 6:37). Each has temporarily fulfilled a role in God’s dealings with man. For Calvin it is beyond dispute that other elements of created reality also function to lead to God, but that does not yet make them sacraments. Therefore only those actions that are included by God’s ordinance can be termed sacraments.20 Sacrament rests upon a choice by God. Sacraments are only those actions that are instituted by Jesus Christ himself, and to which he has conferred a particular significance. According to his definition, a sacrament is ‘an external sign by which the Lord seals on our consciences his promises of good-will toward us, in order to sustain the weakness of our faith, and we in turn testify our piety towards him, both before himself, and before angels as well as men.’21 Various components can be distinguished in this careful definition. First, it is clear how closely the understanding of the sacraments is linked with the understanding of faith. The content of the thing with which the sacramental act deals is the good will of God toward us, his benevolentia. A sacrament is therefore qualified as an act of God’s turning toward man, with which He confirms his promises of salvation to mankind. Only secondarily is the sacrament an action in which men also do something, namely testify before the forum of the world and the invisible world of the angels. With this testimony faith or piety takes on a public character. The peculiarity of the way in which God acts in the sacrament is described by the words ‘seal’ and ‘sustain’. What precisely are we to understand by these notions of sealing and sustaining? As it stands here, the sacrament primarily appears to be nothing other than a con-

19 Inst. 4.14.18: ‘qui pro suo arbitrio elementis omnibus in obsequium gloriae suae utatur.’ 20 Inst. 4.14.19. 21 Inst. 4.14.1: ‘… externum esse symbolum, quo benevolentiae erga nos suae pro- missiones conscientiis nostris Dominus obsignat ad sustinendam ﬁdei nostrae imbecelli- tatem: et nos vicissim pietatem erga eum nostram tam coram eo et Angelis quam apud homines testamur.’ 198 chapter four

firmation by God to man, a reinforcement of the certainty that man can entertain toward God and his promises.22 Does that mean that the sacrament is a thick underscoring of something that man already knows from proclamation? Or does the meaning of sealing and sustaining transcend a cognitive act? It is not easy to determine precisely what Calvin’s own position is. Does it consist, as Hartvelt suggests, of a ‘cognitive plus’ toward man?23 At first glance one is inclined to accept this conclusion. The fact is, from the definition of a sacrament it appears that what is made visible to man in the sacraments has already been received in faith. Calvin strongly opposed the idea that participation in salvation could only be obtained by participation in the sacrament.24 Faith is and remains the central moment in the concept of knowledge of God, because in it the Holy Spirit enables man to share in Christ. To this extent the assertion is true that ontologically the sacraments add nothing to that which has already been received in faith. It seems to me however that the point of Calvin’s theology is being missed if one stops with this conclusion. Anyone reading what Calvin has to say on the Supper finds it impossible to escape the impression that the Supper in fact meant more for him. They discover a ‘plus’ that is inadequately designated with the adjective ‘cognitive’, particularly if one interprets cognitive in its limiting sense as intellectual. In crucial passages it appears that what we already remarked with regard to Calvin’s concept of the knowledge of God is also true for the Lord’s Table. Knowing God is more than an intellectual act. In the Supper believers are fed with ‘the body and blood of Jesus Christ’, as the stubbornly maintained formula puts it. Anticipating the conclusion of this chapter I will propose: In Calvin’s thought regarding the Supper,

22 In Inst. 4.14.13 he rejects the derivation for the word sacrament that Zwingli had given in De vera et falsa religione. For Zwingli the sacrament is the battle ﬂag upon which the soldier swears loyalty to his commander. With it he aﬃrms something to his general. Calvin argues that the Latin writers were no longer aware of this meaning when they chose the word ‘sacrament’. They understood nothing more by it than a sacred sign, but no longer from the perspective of the soldier who swears his allegiance, but from the perspective of the commander, who calls up the soldiers to his ranks. For the rest, Calvin does not consider this etymology decisive. According to him, the word sacrament is derived from the Greek musterion (Inst. 4.14.2). As the New Testament uses musterion for a hidden thing that God makes visible to man, so in the sacrament a hidden thing, God’s goodwill, is made visible. 23 G.P. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus. Een studie over een centraal hoofdstuk uit de avondmaalsleer van Calvijn,Delft1960, 115. See also B. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude. The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin, Minneapolis 1993, 127–133. 24 See for instance his commentary on John 6:47,CO47, 151. the supper and knowledge of god 199 but particularly in his experience of the supper, there is an element that has found little or no reception in Reformed theology. In the way that it takes, both conceptually and spiritually the knowledge of God has an involvement with the physical and sensory which has been lost in Calvin’s intellectual heirs. The entrance to salvation is embedded in the material, in the world of the senses. The Spirit is not in opposition to the material, the external, but dwells in it, uses it and stimulates man from all sides to permit himself to be taken along.

4.2.2. Sign and thing The real significance of the sacrament in addition to the preaching is that it sets more clearly before our eyes, or better yet, internalises what the proclamation is about. The sacraments are signs that obtain their meaning through the word that the preacher speaks. To call on Augus- tine’s definition, ‘Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum.’25 But evidently in the sacramental act something more happens with that which has already come to people in the proclamation. The sacramental act sustains the knowledge, increases and confirms it. Calvin adduces various examples from daily life to illustrate the function of the Lord’s Table. He reminds his readers of the old custom of slaughtering a pig when a treaty was concluded. He reaches into the world of archi- tecture: sacraments are the columns that support the roof. He reaches for other metaphors, specifically one which has been present prominently in the study of the knowledge of God in this section: the mirror. Sacraments are a mirror in which God’s benevolence becomes visible.26 That benevolence is the thing to which the signs refer, or rather, the thing which comes along in the signs. Calvin is classic in the distinction between sign and thing. He follows Augustine. The sacrament is rei sacrae visibile signum.27 That is to say, the sacramental act refers to a thing which is certainly connected to the sign, but which nevertheless must be distinguished from it. Both parts of this assertion, the connection and the distinction, are of equal importance for Calvin, as we will see further on. The sign is not independent of the thing. The sacramental act as such may thus never

25 Augustine, Homilia in Johannem 13;InIoh.tract.80,3,MSL35, 1840.CSEL25 I, 512, 19ff.. 26 Inst. 4.14.5. 27 Inst. 4.14.1. 200 chapter four be isolated from the word that it contains.28 This means a repudiation of sacramentalism and magic and a key role for faith, with which the Word is accepted. The work of the Holy Spirit has a central place in the doctrine of the Supper, even as it has in faith. But precisely the work of the Holy Spirit takes multiple forms. Not everything is accomplished in proclamation and faith. ‘For, first, the Lord teaches and trains us by his word; next, he confirms us by his sacraments; lastly, he illumines our mind by the light of his Holy Spirit, and opens up an entrance into our hearts for his word and sacraments, which otherwise would only strike our ears, and fall upon our sight, but by no means affect us inwardly.’29 The Holy Spirit is ‘the internal Master, whose energy alone penetrates the heart, stirs up the affections, and procures access for the sacraments into our souls.’30 Without this Spirit, without faith, we are like the blind in full daylight or the deaf in a world full of sound. If there is no organ to see or hear, images and sounds cannot reach us. The Holy Spirit thus first brings us to understanding. The work of the Spirit is not however limited to enabling perception among men. There is a second aspect to the work of the Holy Spirit: the sacraments themselves are only effective because the Spirit takes them into service in order to convince and persuade men. Without that they would be ‘empty and frivolous’.31 But that means that these sacraments do not stand apart, and could actually be dispensed with, but that through the sacraments the Spirit very much brings man along and helps him on the way.

4.3. Sacrament as a form of accommodation

The gift of the sacrament is immediately linked with the situation in which men ﬁnd themselves as created beings. In the previous chapter we have seen that this situation is not deﬁned by sin alone. It also has to do with the place that man has in the hierarchy of being.

28 Inst. 4.14.15. 29 Inst. 4.14.8: ‘Nam primum verbo suo nos docet et instituit Dominus: deinde sacramentis confirmat: postremo sancti sui Spiritus lumine mentibus nostris illucet: et aditum in corda nostra verbo ac sacramentis aperit, quae alioqui aures duntaxat percellerent, et oculis observarentur, interiora minime afficerent.’ 30 Inst. 4.14.9: ‘… interior ille magister Spiritus … cuius unius virtute et corda penetrantur, et affectus permoventur, et sacramentis in animas nostras aditus patet.’ 31 Inst. 1.14.9: ‘… inane et frivole …’ the supper and knowledge of god 201

The characterisation that Calvin gives of the condition humaine strikes our ears today as frankly alienating. With endless frequency we hear the list of what typifies man, namely his ignorance, sloth and weakness.32 Through his body, man is still bound to the earth. In all sorts of ways his existence is defined by the cares and limitations that this life brings with it. Calvin can say that we still creep like animals along the ground. In short, man’s station is low, and God must descend deeply to reach mankind.33 The sacraments are therefore typical examples of God’s accommodation to the low station of man.34 God descends and accommodates himself to man’s capacity to understand in order to draw him into fellowship in this way, by means that man understands and in which he himself participates. In Calvin’s day this positive regard for the sacraments as means of accommodation was anything but a generally accepted idea. His position is interesting because on the one hand it guards against objectivism or sacramentalism, and on the other hand does not surrender to the rising spiritualism. At the same time, maintaining this via media makes his position vulnerable on both sides. On the one side he defends himself against the spiritualist views according to which God can work very well in the faithful without physical means. Because of his emphasis on the mediating work of the Holy Spirit, Calvin himself is often understood in this sense, and from the Lutheran side identified with the thought of Zwingli. Zwingli had emphasized that the Holy Spirit had no need of means.35 Calvin does not contest that God would be able to do this.36 That is not really the point. The important thing is that it has been God’s will to make use of this means. Making use of a physical means is in no way an offense to God’s honour.37 It is his disposition to make use of these signs in order to convince man by means of them. One can not forbid God to make use of these signs to illumine our heart, Calvin says, in the same way as our eye is stimulated by a mediating beam of light.38 In other words, it simply pleases God to use these

32 Inst. 4.14.3. 33 Inst. 4.14.3: ‘quomodo nostrae ignorantiae ac tarditati primum, deinde inﬁrmitati opus esse Deus providet.’ 34 Inst. 4.14.3.SeealsoPetit traicté de la Saincte cene,OSI,505, 520. 35 H. Zwingli, Fidei ratio ad Carolum V (1530), Corpus Reformatorum 93 II, 803–804. 36 For instance, in connection with infant baptism, see Inst. 4.16.19. 37 Inst. 4.14.10. 38 Inst. 4.14.10. 202 chapter four means in his dealings with man, and men must accept that.39 One must not seek to deny the revelation we have been given.

4.4. The meaning of the meal

4.4.1. The family We have suggested that one can consider the meal as an intersection where various lines which are definitive for the existence of the believer visibly come together. In his Petit Traicté de la Saincte Cene Calvin sums up three functions.40 The Supper is primarily intended as a gift, through which God internalises the promises that are contained in the gospel. Or more precisely, God binds the promises to the consciences of men. God does this by making man a sharer of Christ, of his body and blood, de son corps et de son sang. This expression may sound strange, not to say bizarre, to us, but for Calvin it is essential to put it in this way, and no other. I will return to this point. The second purpose of the Supper is to call upon the faithful to acknowledge God’s goodness toward them. In the Supper man finds reason to praise God and to live a life of gratitude. From here one can draw connections to the theme of obedience and sanctification. Finally, the third purpose is related to the visible community in which the Supper is celebrated, and in which people thus participate: the church. One who shares in the Supper is thereby included in the church, and is then called to a holy, purified life, and in particular to a living in harmony with his or her other brothers and sisters.

39 It is this element that has gone unnoticed for a long time in the catholic reception of Calvin’s theology. See for instance A. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin,translatedby D. Foxgrover and W. Provo, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1987 (= Le jeune Calvin: Genèse et évolution de sa vocation réformatrice,Wiesbaden1966). In this study Ganoczy reaches the conclusion that in Calvin all emphasis lies on the distinction between the human and divine, which is expressed in a manifest aversion to linking grace to earthly elements, 237. See however the remarkable retraction in the introduction to the American translation, 11: ‘We could say today that Calvin’s pneumatology serves not only to aﬃrm God’s absolute freedom in his saving acts but also to support a dynamic understanding of the sacraments, which in many ways is quite close to the doctrine of the Eucharist in the Eastern Churches. It makes possible a theology of epiclesis.’ The closeness of Calvin’s theology to Eastern Orthodoxy is something to which I would subscribe. See further 4.4.3. 40 OS I, 505–506. the supper and knowledge of god 203

The following paragraphs limit themselves principally to the first intention. The reason is anything but that the latter two purposes are beside the point. They both have to do with the intended response from man, and refer to the themes of the law, sanctification and the visible church. A discussion would however lead us outside the plan of this study. What is the salvation, actually, that is offered in the church in the proclamation and the celebration of the Supper? This question deals with its reality. Images and metaphors sometimes express what people want to say more precisely than abstract definitions do. Later theological heirs have perhaps frequently been fascinated by Calvin’s definitions, but his first hearers pricked up their ears rather at the images and metaphors with which his tracts and, above all, his sermons overflow. They evoke the concrete world of the family household, adoption, and meals. Here we can refer back to the conclusions of the previous chapter about the image of God as father. Never for a moment does one get the impression that the thought ever occurred to Calvin himself that the image of a father could become eroded as a metaphorical image for the relation between God and man. Something similar is true for the meal. The prominent place that the metaphor of the family has in Calvin’s theology of the sacraments, including in the Petit Traicté, is telling. Calvin firmly believes that the image of the family is the medium through which God lets us see how he wishes to relate to mankind. That is true both for baptism and the Supper. According to Calvin, God takes man into his family through baptism, not as a boarder, but as an adopted child, with full rights. The walls of the church are in fact the walls of God’s house.41 The image of the family appears not only in the discussion of baptism, but also is the background for the Supper. Godisvisualisedasthefatherwhohasadoptedusashischildrenand feeds us at his table as his children. The food consists of the life that is found in Jesus Christ. It is given to us in Word and Sacrament. When unpacked, this gift appears to consist of multiple gifts—benefactions, as Calvin says. Men receive forgiveness, the promise of eternal life, a share in sanctification, in perseverance. What sort of people are these who are given a place at the table in this house? The necessity for receiving a share in these benevolences

41 OS I, 504. 204 chapter four becomes painfully clear when one sees the state, according to Calvin, of the people to whom the invitation comes. Here we should be reminded of what was said in previous chapters about the function of conscience in knowledge of God. Calvin proceeds from the idea that the people who come together for the Supper are people in need, and that they themselves recognise this need. It is not something they have been persuaded of; they recognise it as their own world. Anyone who looks into his or her own heart knows very well that this is a wasted life and that there is no scrap of righteousness to be found there.42 Nothing from outside need be called upon to arrive at that judgement; our own conscience is suﬃcient to remind us that we have fallen into death and iniquity. In short, if we take our own inner world under consideration, we see a structure that cannot stand, one rotting away. It is at that juncture that the Supper holds a mirror up before us, in which there appears another image, namely that of the cruciﬁed Christ.43

4.4.2. The body of Christ after Ascension. The discussion with the Lutherans The body and blood of Jesus Christ are given to believers by the Holy Spirit in the bread and wine. What does Calvin mean by this? What did he want to say in this discussion that was carried on with concepts derived from Aristotelian metaphysics? First we must note what he did not intend. He did not intend any view in which the presence of Christ is given in an immediate way in the elements of bread and wine. The water of baptism and the bread and wine in the Supper have no inherent power of their own. The power of the Spirit, everlasting life, is not inherent in the substance. The eﬀect of the sacrament does not lie in the performance of the act itself, ex opere operato.Werethatso, sign and thing, signum and res, would be identiﬁed with one another in an improper way, a view that Calvin encounters in Peter Lombard.44 In Calvin’s concept the bread and the wine that the believer drinks remain bread and wine, and nothing else.45 The physical element never receives a power that is inherent to the element. The acting subject

42 OS I, 506. 43 OS I, 504. 44 Inst. 4.14.16. In his research into the theology of the young Calvin, Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, 168–170 comes to the conclusion that Calvin quotes only from the fourth book of the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, in an extremely selective manner, and with a declared polemic intention. 45 Inst. 4.17.15. the supper and knowledge of god 205 remains God, who works through the power of the Spirit. We might say that with this Calvin maintains the moment of freedom of God’s act over against any possible form of sacramentalism. For that reason he disputes both the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the position defended by the Lutherans, usually denoted as consubstantiation. In Calvin’s view the words spoken at the consecration are a magic formula through which the bread and wine are reputed to be changed with regard to their substance. But also the view defended by the Lutherans, the doctrine of consubstantiation, that Christ is physically present ‘in, under and with’ the elements of bread and wine, goes too far for him. The body of Christ would thus become omnipresent, have an ubiquity ascribed to it that supposes that the nature of that body has undergone a complete alteration. Because of this supposition he also separates himself from the Lutheran position. A human body implies spatial limits, and although Jesus after his resurrection was gloriﬁed, that does not alter the fact that Jesus, according to his corporeal nature, could only be in one place at a time. According to Luther and his followers, the substance of the bread and wine remain unchanged, but Christ, according to his corporal nature, is present in the form of the bread and wine. The capacity to be in an inﬁnite number of places at the same time is ascribed to the human nature of Christ on the basis of the connection with the divine nature that there is in the unique person of Jesus Christ.46 It is a development

46 We should refer here to the development of the concept of a communicatio idiomatum in Lutheran theology. From as early as John of Damascus, the foremost theologian of the 8th century, the doctrine that provides a reflection on the consequences of the unio personalis has been designated by this term. Traditionally it has been accepted that the union of two natures in the one person implies that the qualities of both natures can be predicated for that one person. This is true, however, not only for the being of Jesus, but also for his works. The reference is the unique person. On the Lutheran side theologians spoke of a genus apotelesmaticum,ontheReformedside of a genus operationum. With Luther one also however finds a development in which the qualities of the divine nature are communicated to the human nature, the genus maiestaticum. The human nature shares in the omnipresence of the divine nature. In the other direction, one can argue that the divine nature must share in the limitation and vulnerability of the human nature (genus tapeinoticum). The traditional objection is that in this manner one arrives at the proposition that the divine nature could suffer and die. In his remarks in Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis (1528) Luther has apparently indeed seen this objection and nevertheless is willing to accept the idea of the involvement of the divine nature in suffering, WA 26, 320:10–14; 321:5–10: ‘Denn wenn ich gleube, das allein die menschliche natur fur mich gelidden hat, so ist mir der Christus ein schlechter heiland, so bedarff er wol selbs eines heilands. Summa, es ist unsaglich was der teuffel mit der Alleosi sucht … weil Gottheit und menschheit ynn Christo eine Person ist, so 206 chapter four of the idea of the communicatio idiomatum into a genus maiestaticum,asthat is found in Luther. One might say that in this concept the incarnation definitively prescribes the manner of Christ’s presence. The incarnation offers the model of God’s presence. Calvin also wants to retain a real presence of Christ in the Supper, but he places the accents elsewhere. Theological theory and personal experience go hand in hand here. Distance and communication, the Ascension and the work of the Holy Spirit are defining factors. Ascen- sion stands for the distance, and the Spirit for the connection: with regard to his human nature, Jesus Christ is far away, in heaven on the throne next to God the Father. In the Supper however the believer is fed with the blood and flesh of Christ,47 even though since the Ascen- sion the Crucified One is no longer on earth in any form whatsoever. Calvin thus also sees the cross as the deepest point of God’s approach and accommodation to man. It is the moment at which God’s majesty is no longer visible. But this moment is not definitive for the nature of God’s continuing presence. The history of the cross is made productive in the dynamics of Ascension and Pentecost. The Spirit guarantees the connection. He is the One who ever and again spans distance and space, connecting that which is far separated. That leads to another, eschatological accent, reaching above and to the future. I will go into this more deeply. In Calvin’s judgement, the concepts by which the presence of Christ are linked to the physical elements of bread and wine do not take account of the situation after Ascension. Ascension implies that with regard to his humanity, thus with body and members, Christ is taken away and remains in heaven. By virtue of the power and glory that Christ since then shares with God the Father, he exercises his rule on earth. Thereby He is, as we read, ‘not limited by any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions’. Christ manifests his presence in his potentia and virtus.48 gibt die schrifft umb solcher personlicher einichkeit willen auch der gottheit ales was der menschheit widderferet und widerümb … Denn das müstu ia sagen. Die person (zeige Christum) leidet stirbet. Nu ist die person wahrhaftiger Gott, drumb ists recht geredt Gottes son leidet …’ The cross invites us to think of God’s nature as involved in human suffering and death. Correctly, theology in our time has attempted to go further along this path. The question is how this relates to the pathos that we encounter in Calvin surrounding the distinction between heaven and earth which is never ever given up. Or do we find in Calvin himself other notions when the salvation of man is the issue? 47 OS I, 506. 48 Inst. 4.17.18. the supper and knowledge of god 207

Several times already we have had occasion to refer to the distinction that is fundamental for Calvin’s understanding. This is the distinction between the heavenly and the earthly, the spiritual and the physical, between body and soul. These are fundamental dichotomies that are based on God’s will.49 The problem with the concepts of transubstantiation and consubstantiation is that, in his view, they do not respect the boundary between heaven and earth. They mix up that which God has separated. According to Calvin they are intellectual attempts to get a hold on something which cannot be grasped by the human mind. The presence of Christ is distrained by perishable elements of this world, and in this He is robbed of his glory.50 He considers both Luther’s view and the doctrine of transubstantiation as concepts through which Christ is in fact robbed of his concrete corporeality and turned into a ghost. In Calvin’s eyes these views thus run counter to the God-given order. A body is defined by space and delimitation; it has a certain place.51 If in the Supper the flesh of Christ becomes ubiquitous, and thus is present everywhere that the Lord’s Table is celebrated, it no longer satisfies the definition of spatial delimitation. It takes on qualities that are characteristic of the divine. This is the same as rejecting the principium non-contradictionis. Westphal, from his side, responds by accusing Calvin of not taking seriously the words of the Bible and as a result underestimating the might of God. He attacks Calvin at a point which is for him an axiomatic basic assumption, but which precisely because of their allegiance to the concrete word of the Bible was regarded differently within Lutheran circles. He argues that Calvin incorrectly declares the general laws of nature to apply to the glorified body of Christ. Thus accusations of intellectualisation fly back and forth from both sides. Calvin defended himself against the accusation of shortchanging the biblical witness, and lobbed the same accusation back. Unlike West- phal, he argues that with their concept Luther’s followers impermissi- bly overthrow an arrangement that comes from God. In fact he accuses them of what one might call anachronistic biblicism. According to Calvin the starting point for the reading and exposition of Scripture must be that each word in the Bible has precisely the same meaning

49 OS I, 144. 50 OS I, 521.Inst.4.17.19. 51 Inst. 4.17.24 and Inst. 4.17.29. 208 chapter four everywhere. He says that with each passage the exegete ‘with placid docility and a spirit of meekness’ must make an effort to understand the teachings that come from heaven. We do our best, he says, to obtain understanding, not only through dutifulness, but also by precision. Westphal, he thinks, has failed in the latter. The meaning of a passage is not the first thing that comes into our mind. Diligent thought is necessary, and in it we will embrace the meaning that God brings to us through the Spirit.52 From the heights we attain we look down on whatever opposition may arise from worldly wisdom. Calvin felt the accusation of his Lutheran opponents that in his view the presence of Christ in the Supper evaporated into a notion or a memory was a total misrepresentation of his position. In the following section we will return to how he responded conceptually to the spatial problem that is a given with Ascension. For now it will suffice to say that Calvin to his own conviction confessed nothing other than the real presence of Christ in the Supper. In the Supper one does not receive only a share in the Spirit53 or the benefits of Christ. Jesus Christ is material and substance.54 Or put more sharply, what is partaken of is the flesh and blood of Christ. What did Calvin mean by this?

4.4.3. Flesh and blood That Calvin so stubbornly insisted that we share in the flesh and blood of Christ has caused no little wonderment in the history of research. For him, the terminology from John 6 is holy. He speaks of caro vivifica, the life-giving flesh of Christ,55 of the body of Christ that is the only food of the soul which must be vivified. In the history of research this has led to the question of whether we are here dealing with a Catholic remnant in Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper.56 In his study on Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper, Hartvelt pointed out that one definitely does not do justice to Calvin if they skip over these ideas and

52 Inst. 4.17.25: ‘… placida docilitate et spiritu mansuetidinis …’ 53 Inst. 4.17.7. 54 OS I, 507. 55 Inst. 4.17.8. Cf. the ‘lack of ease’ on this point with C. Trueman, ‘The Incarnation and the Lord’s Supper’ in: D. Peterson (ed), The Word became Flesh. Evangelicals and the Incarnation,Carlisle2003, 200–201. 56 Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 2–7, refers for instance to J.W. Nevin, The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, Philadelphia 1846. the supper and knowledge of god 209 interpret them figuratively.57 Nonetheless, the metaphorical view gained the upper hand. Through John à Lasco this view has become the usual interpretation in Reformed theology.58 Why did Calvin so tenaciously hold to the concept of the ‘flesh and blood of Christ’? Here lies the core, the vital and indispensable moment in Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper—or more precisely, the nucleus of his doctrine of the knowledge of God. What Calvin says of participation in the flesh and blood of Christ is not limited to the Supper. On the contrary, in his exegesis of John 6 he makes it clear time after time that it would be improper to think that Jesus is speaking here only about the Supper. In its content, the terminology from John 6 describes that which takes place in the mystic union between the believer and Christ. Communion with the life-giving flesh and blood of Christ also takes place outside participation in the Supper, extra Coenae usum.59 There are at least four reasons that can be given why Calvin so tenaciously speaks of communion with the ‘flesh and blood’ of Christ. First, Scriptural considerations play a tremendous role. In insisting on the words ‘flesh and blood’ Calvin tried to be obedient to that which he believed he read in Scripture. After all, the biblical writers and their texts are the means through which God holds up divine wisdom before men. Evidently God has found it necessary to use these concepts in all their concreteness. Second, it should be noted that the reference to flesh and blood has an epistemological function and thus fits within the path to knowledge of God. Divine salvation comes to the believer through the concrete man, Jesus Christ. Just as for Luther, the crucified Jesus is the deepest point of God’s coming down. Salvation is localised in the physicality

57 See Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 87. Calvin indisputably wanted to say more than that in the Supper the faithful have communion with the person of Jesus Christ. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 171, cites Berkouwer as an example of a personalising interpretation. See G.C. Berkouwer, De sacramenten,Kampen1954, 305. Berkouwer disputes that for Calvin it was a matter of flesh and blood as an abstraction and interprets this as a metaphor for the act of reconciliation, ibidem, 307. It is a matter of He himself in his sacrifice, ibidem, 313. I do not dispute that in Calvin’s view of salvation the act of reconciliation plays an essential role, but it still appears to me most fundamental that for Calvin the blood and flesh of Christ is a source of divine, everlasting life. 58 Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 184, 194. 59 See for instance his commentary on John 6:53,CO47, 154: ‘Neque enim de Coena habetur concio, sed de perpetua communicatione, quae extra Coenae usum nobis constat’ and on John 6:54: ‘Et certe ineptum fuisset ac intempestivum, de Coena nunc disserere, quam nondum instituerat. Ideo de perpetua fidei manducatione eum tractare certum est.’ 210 chapter four of this concrete person. God, in his approach to man, takes the road of incarnation. Man does not have to climb above the clouds. No, the gate to God’s inner chamber is on earth, in the body of Jesus.60 No one who disregards Christ as a man shall reach God in Christ.61 Life from the divine source reaches us in the way of a concrete man.62 Faith must be gotten from the lowest place that God appoints in his revelation, the most accessible to sight. That is the concrete Son-become-flesh, who was among us physically. From there faith can ascend to the source, to God the Father as the source of life. Third, in connection with the preceding point, the conviction that the believer is fed with the flesh and blood of Christ has immediate soteriological content. Believers receive the flesh and blood of the Cru- cified.63 Life, you see, is in this flesh and blood. It is striking that in his exegesis of John 6 Calvin constantly links the words caro and vita with one another. It is according God’s marvellous Will that He reveals life to us in this flesh, in which previously only substance moving to cor- ruption, materia mortis, was to be found.64 Life, for Calvin, means everlasting life. Salvation is formulated in terms of transient and eternal. In Calvin’s exposition in the Institutes we find confirmation that for Calvin salvation means sharing in immortality. Not sacrifice and satisfaction but the antitheses transient-everlasting and perishable-imperishable are dominant. At the Lord’s Table it is once more, as it were, literally held under the nose of the mortals that mortal man, doomed to death, receives a share of heavenly life through faith, as appears from a crucial section like Institutes 4.17.8: in his Word God previously diffused his vigour into all creatures, but man became alienated from God by sin and lost the communion with life. In order to regain the hope of

60 Comm. John 6:51,CO47, 152. 61 Comm. John 6:56,CO47, 156: ‘Neque enim ad Christum Deum unquam perve- niet qui hominem negligit.’ 62 Comm. John 6:57,CO47, 156: ‘Primum locum obtinet vivens Pater qui scaturigo est, sed remota et abscondita. Sequitur Filius, quem habemus velut fontem nobis expositum, et per quem ad nos vita diffunditur. Tertia est vita quam nos ab ipso haurimus.’ 63 Berkouwer, De sacramenten, 314, refers to Kuyper, Dictaten Dogmatiek, Locus de sacramentis par. 24 Kampen, n.d., where he argues that the communion exercised is with the corpus crucifixum Christi, not with the corpus glorificatum Christi. Kuyper here appears to proceed from the idea that communion with the glorified Christ would mean cancelling out the crucifixion. That is a distinction that has no foundation in biblical witness. God has identified himself with the Crucified, and with the Crucified clad in glory he bestows communion upon the disciples. (John 20:26–27). 64 Comm. John 6:51,CO47, 152. the supper and knowledge of god 211 immortality man must be restored to the communion with that Word. This restoration began in the incarnation, that is, the personal union that the Word enters into with the human nature of Jesus. ‘Since that fountain of life began to dwell in our nature,’ writes Calvin, ‘he no longer lies hid at a distance from us, but exhibits himself openly for our participation. Yea, the very flesh in which he resides he makes vivifying for us, that by partaking of it we may be fed for immortality.’65 The foregoing in part finds basis in the fourth point, namely the relation between Calvin’s insistence on the communion with the flesh and blood of Christ and his doctrine of the immortal soul. Because in our culture this relation is no longer felt or seen, it seems obvious to relate the expression ‘flesh and blood’ to the personal relation with Christ. I do not deny that with Calvin one must speak of solidarity with the person of Christ, but wish to also emphasize that for Calvin this solidarity goes together with thinking in impersonal terms of power and life. If we now try to reconceive Calvin’s theology in terms of revelation as an encounter event, then we overlook an essential element in this theology. The concept of encounter is too personalistic; it suggests that we internally have a grip on that which happens with man in God’s acting. The concept of power points to there being elements in the process of renewal and salvation that exceed the grasp and control of man. In solidarity with the person of the Mediator our soul is fed by the Holy Spirit with the life-giving power of God himself. Calvin’s doctrine of the immortal soul seems of the greatest importance here. From the time of the polemic text Psychopannuchia it is clear that whoever denies the immortality of the soul in Calvin’s view assails a principle of salvation of the first order. In the doctrine of the Supper we once again encounter the importance of Calvin’s anthropological concept. The soul is the created, immortal core of man, and in faith once again becomes the possession of the everlasting life that flows from Christ.66 In the Supper this reality is bound to the heart of the believer and inwardly impressed more powerfully than in the preaching of the word alone. If the soul is at the same time fed with eternal life, then there is a continuity which cannot be broken even by death.

65 Inst. 4.17.8: ‘At vero, ubi fons ille vitae habitare in carne nostra coepit, iam non procul nobis absconditus latet, sed coram se participandum exhibet. Quin et ipsam, in qua residet, carnem viviﬁcam nobis reddit, ut eius participatione ad immortalitatem pascamur.’ 66 Inst. 4.17.4–5. 212 chapter four

Two remarks here as commentary. First, Calvin’s concept of salvation as a whole stands much closer to Eastern Orthodoxy than to modern personalistic interpretations. Characteristic of this is the direct call on Cyril of Alexandria.67 For Calvin the flesh or human nature is not only the place where sin is found, but thus must also be the place where reconciliation must take place. That is the common, later Reformed doctrine of Christ’s active and passive obedience, in part based on Anselm, and we indeed also find this concisely with Calvin.68 But it is not the be all and end all of his teaching. In addition to thinking in terms of right, guilt, satisfaction and reconciliation we find that the reflection takes place in terms of transience and immortality. Possibly this latter is even a more comprehensive frame of thought. This latter polarity is strongly present not only in the doctrine of unio mystica, but also in the doctrine of the Supper. The flesh of Christ is a channel through which we come in contact with God. In his commentary on John 6:51 it can be seen how close Calvin comes to Alexandrine theology in his Christology and soteriology. The distinction between life in God, life in this flesh and the life that is our inheritance through this source is certainly maintained. But at the same time it becomes clear how much the humanity of Christ, which in itself would be mortal, is permeated with immortality through the incarnation of the eternal Son. The flesh of Christ is certainly not the primary source of life in God; that is an attribute of the being of God. But in a secondary sense it can certainly be said that this flesh is the locus of life. ‘It rests in a marvellous decree of God that life is presented to us in that flesh, where formerly there was only matter doomed to death to be found … Because even as God’s eternal Word is the source of life, so as a channel his flesh confers life on us. And in this sense it can be called life-giving, because it bestows upon us the life that it takes from elsewhere.’69 Next, because of the mortal-immortal polarity it is scarcely surprising that at crucial moments in his doctrine of the Supper Calvin should speak in impersonal terms rather than in relational terms. In the Sup- per we receive communion with the substance of Christ.70 That is to

67 Calvin quotes Cyril’s Expositio in Evangelium Ioh. lib. II, cap. 8,MPG73, 381–382. In Cyril see also for instance his Quod unus sit Christus,MPG75, 1360–1361. 68 Inst. 2.17.2–5. 69 See Comm. John 6:51,CO47, 152. Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 215–226,wrongly concludes that for Calvin, in his discussion of the eating of the caro vivifica,thevere homo is breached. 70 Inst. 4.17.3. the supper and knowledge of god 213 say, we receive a share of the virtus or vigour from this substance. In faith and in the sacrament the soul of the believer stands in the immediate sphere of influence of divine power, the divine current of life, which comes directly from the divine-human nature of Christ. The human nature of Christ, his humanity, has this power because the second person of the Trinity has taken on this human nature, and in that taken in the divine sphere of influence. Thus the flesh and blood of Christ has that life-giving property by virtue of the unio personalis. It would be incorrect to negatively qualify this manner of speaking with the adjective ‘impersonal’. Perhaps it is also possible to say that Calvin’s theology reminds us that we, as persons, always move within a sphere of influence, a relationship, that does not permit itself to be adequately expressed in personal terms. Our contemporary theology, still very much marked by the personalism of modern subject thinking, should be reminded by this sort of pre-modern theology that the life of a human being, as a person, is always determined by supra-personal categories.

4.5. The Holy Spirit and instrumentality

4.5.1. The Supper as instrument In the preceding it has been discussed how Calvin, together with the Lutherans, emphasized that in the Supper there is a real participation in the ﬂesh and blood of Jesus Christ. At the same time it is clear he held the concept of a local presence of the body of Christ to be untenable. On the question of how the union with something that is so high and far away could come to be, Calvin answered with a reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. The spirit is the link through which the divine power comes to man. Here the Spirit is the vinculum coniunctionis.71 The question is now what Calvin meant by this. The Lutherans were of the view that through the reference to the Holy Spirit no more could be left of a real communion with the ﬂesh and blood of Christ than a remembrance or communion with the Holy Spirit. The presentia realis would be lost. On the basis of Calvin’s qualifying this communion as spiritualiter ithasalwaysbeeninterpreted

71 Inst. 4.17.12. 214 chapter four in a spiritual sense. Westphal concluded that when Calvin speaks about a spiritual eating (spiritualis manducatio) this was in opposition to a real and true eating (vera et realis manducatio).72 According to Calvin however, the reality of the eating of the flesh and blood of Christ is not at issue in the adjective spiritualis, but only the manner in which this participation in the flesh and blood of Christ comes into being. Among the Lutherans this eating is understood materially or physically (carnalis), because it is included under the bread and wine. Among them spiritualiter means an actual non realiter. Calvin insists that this eating, this communion, is brought about by the Holy Spirit, and therefore speaks of a spiritual eating (spiritualis).73 It is now time to examine another front with which Calvin was involved in debate, namely Zurich, and particularly with the person of Bullinger. In his negotiations with Bullinger Calvin showed himself willing to say more than just that in the Supper we are connected to Christ through the Spirit. The characteristic feature of Calvin’s position is to be seen in the course of the correspondence with Bullinger leading up to the Consensus Tigurinus. In essence it turns always on the question of whether bread and wine can be termed a sign or an instrument of God’s grace.74 Calvin is in agreement with Bullinger that bread and wine must be termed an analogy of the flesh and blood of Christ. The concept of analogy is used to respect the boundaries of the physical and the spiritual, earthly and heavenly. The invisible thing is given in the sign, in the physical thing. One operation of the Holy Spirit through an analogy cited by Calvin himself is the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. The visible thing that is seen is a dove, the invisible thing that is connected with visible thing is the Spirit. A similar use of the sign also is to be found in the sacraments. The signs are an analogy for a hidden operation of the Spirit.75 As wine and bread connect nourishment and the preservation of the body through eating and metabolism in the body, so the everlasting life of the body of Christ flows over into man and bestows the power of imperishable life upon his soul, that

72 J. Westphal, Collectanea sententiarum D. Aurelii Augustini ep. Hipponensis de Coena Domini, Ratisbon 1555,E7a. 73 Inst. 4.17.33. 74 The following is based heavily upon P.E. Rorem, ‘The Consensus Tigurinus (1549): Did Calvin Compromise?’ in: W.H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor. Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, Grand Rapids (MI) 1994, 72–90. 75 OS I, 509. the supper and knowledge of god 215 immortal, eternal part of him. The promise of the resurrection of the body is also given in this vitalisation of the soul.76 Calvin is no gnostic. However, the question remains how this life is conveyed in Calvin’s concept. The body of Christ does not come to earth, but remains in heaven, does it not? How then can be believer be fed by the flesh and blood of Christ? Discussions about the nature of the communion with Christ that man exercises in the Supper are directly connected with the discussion about the previously mentioned extra-calvinisticum.77 This term refers to the coordinates of the whole of Calvin’s theological concept, namely the range of works of the Triune God. God’s works cannot be reduced to one denominator, but have a diversity in sacred history. The work of the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, is therefore not limited to the incarnation in Jesus Christ. The eternal Son also works outside the incarnation, extra carnem, and also outside the Sup- per.78 Thus, for instance, we encounter the Son already in creation. As the incarnate Word, with regard to his body Jesus Christ is in heaven after his Ascension. There he exercises power and rule at the right hand of the Father. As we read elsewhere,79 this regnum is not limited by spatial distance or defined by any dimensions. It is human nature that is characterised by boundaries. According to his divine nature the incarnate Son is not bound by these limits. Anywhere He wills, anywhere it pleases Him, in heaven and on earth He exercises his power, and through this power He is near his people. He gives them life, lives in them, sustains them, preserves them, pours out power on them. To make this more specific, Calvin uses an older distinction between Christ in his glorified state and everything that there is in Christ. According to his glorified state, Christ is totus, as a person, present with his people. But, says Calvin, not everything that is in Christ, namely his human flesh, is present in the Supper, non totum. The distinction between totus and totum reminds one again of the eschatological import of his con-

76 Inst. 4.17.32: ‘Quam tanta virtute tantaque efficacia hic eminere dicimus, ut non modo indubitatam vitae aeternae fiduciam animis nostris afferat, sed de carnis etiam nostrae immortalitate securos nos reddat.’ 77 See E.D. Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology. The Function of the so-called extra calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology,Leiden1966. See also the paper by H.A. Oberman, also from 1966, ‘Die ‘Extra’-Dimension in der Theologie Calvins’ in: idem, Die Reformation. Von Wittenberg nach Genf, Göttingen 1986, 253–282. 78 See Chapter 2,note46. 79 Inst. 4.17.18. 216 chapter four cept. It refers to the completion of all things, in which mankind also will share in the glorified state of Christ according to the flesh.80

4.5.2. The incomprehensibility of the work of the Spirit The substance of Christ’s body is thus in heaven, and nevertheless substantial communion takes place. ‘The local absence does not hinder that the flesh does its work in an incomprehensible and hidden manner.’81 It is the Spirit who feeds the faithful on earth with the power of Christ, in a manner we cannot grasp. At various points Calvin makes it clear that the limits of human comprehension have been reached. The nature of the way in which the Spirit works is not among those things which have been revealed to man. Calvin is very decided in his conviction that there must be no confusion of heaven and earth, and there cannot be a ubiquity of the divine-human nature of Christ. He considers that distinction a foundation of human religious knowledge. With the question of how man, here on earth, comes in contact with the life-giving flesh of Christ in heaven, he does not know how it happens, but only that it happens. A boundary looms up before thought which attempts to follow the working of the Spirit and experience.82 Calvin does, however, reach for the metaphor of the sun and its rays. The sun throws off its rays and its power onto the earth, and in this some of its substance flows into that which grows. It is not only the power of the sun that reaches man in this way, but the substantia comes along with the power.83 In the same way, at a great distance Christ pours out his power. In the image of the sun and its warmth, distance and presence go together. But, is the distinction between the creator and the creation not overstepped in the image of the sun and its rays? The mystical image of communio does not cancel out the boundaries. The substance of Christ does not merge with that of our soul. It is, Calvin says, sufficient that Christ ‘out of the substance of his flesh breathes life into our

80 Inst. 4.17.30: ‘Mediator ergo noster quum totus ubique sit, suis semper adest: et in Coena speciali modo praesentem se exhibet, sic tamen ut totus adsit, non totum: quia, ut dictum est, in carne sua caelo comprehenditur donec in iudicium appareat.’ 81 CO 9, 509: ‘… mysticum et incomprehensibilem carnis operationem non prohi- bet absentia localis.’ 82 In the literature the reference is always to Calvin’s letter to Peter Martyr of August 8, 1555,CO15, 722–723. 83 See also Hartvelt, Verum Corpus, 180. the supper and knowledge of god 217 bodies’.84 With the formula used, ecarnissuaesubstantia, Calvin attempts to build a bridge between the bodily presence of Christ in heaven on the one hand and the real presence of Christ in the Supper on the other. How successful is the metaphor of the sun and its warmth? Is Christ not just as far away as the sun stands above us? Is the knowledge of Christ not marked by distance? It fed the suspicions of the Lutheran side if it came down to Christ being far away. What did Calvin accomplish in a theological sense with the reference to Ascension and the bridging work of the Spirit? I will attempt to list several points. First this: these are the conceptual means of his day for establishing that the believers on earth do not out of their own power command the life-giving flesh and blood of Christ.85 Ascension empha- sizes the distance from mankind, still pilgrims on this earth, under way. The work of the Holy Spirit stands for the bridge building, the reacha- bility on earth. Second, this concept is the means of preserving knowledge of God on earth through its eschatological structure. The glorified body is not here; the completion has not yet arrived. Through the Spirit God comes near to his children living in this world with his power to life, but the presentia realis does not cancel out the state of incompletion. Within Calvin’s theology lies a strong sense of the incompleteness of God’s way with man, of that which is not yet realised. Those who follow Calvin have the room theologically to say that there is still much that is not finished in God’s work. God makes life hard for his children with a range of things that lay claim on their daily existence. There is still a way to go, the most important is yet to come. Things that cause difficulty and that stand in shrill contrast to the promises of the Kingdom do not have to be polished up or ironed out. This theological notion is important, in part because it can be productive in other dimensions and relationships. It is of direct importance for pastoral care, for politics, for what we demand of ourselves and of others. Seen positively, with Calvin faith has the form of hope. The body of Christ in heaven is the guarantee of the renewal of man and the world at the end of time.

84 ‘quia nobis suﬃcit Christum e carnis suae substantia vitam in animas nostras spirare: imo propriam in nos vitam diﬀundere, quamvis in nos non ingrediatur ipsa Christi caro.’ Inst. 4.17.32. 85 See O. Weber, ‘Calvin’s Lehre von der Kirche’ in: idem, Die Treue Gottes in der Geschichte der Kirche. Gesammelte Aufsätze II,Neukirchen1968, 76. 218 chapter four

4.5.3. The way of knowledge of God If the Lutherans suspected an evaporation of the content of concepts in Calvin, from his side Bullinger feared an impermissible objectification of grace with Calvin. Succinctly put, that which distinguished Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper from Bullinger’s is the instrumentality of the outward reality of the signs. While in their written discussion Bullinger time after time repeats that the bread and wine are signs which form an analogy with that which is done for the believer by the Holy Spirit, Calvin advances a powerful argument that the signs also be termed an instrument. We previously encountered this theme of the instrumentality of the created in the way to knowledge of God. We find it again here. Calvin agrees whole-heartedly with Bullinger that the proclamation of the Word brings man into communion with the eternal life that is in Jesus Christ. In receiving the bread and wine this reality is once again, and now more strongly, inwardly impressed and bound upon the heart of the believer. Previously we have already argued that Calvin thinks in spatial terms. That is also true for the Supper. In the sacraments it is not the intention that man’s eye should continue to rest upon the outward signs. His gaze must rise to the Giver himself. To the extent that this movement can be thought of with the aid of an analogy, there is no difference with Bullinger. The characteristic feature and distinction for Calvin is that he reserves a more fundamental place for the outward and visible sign by terming it an instrument or channel. Therein resides the added value of the sacrament. Bullinger fears that in the use of this term something that can only come from God will be assigned to that which is created. He fears an objectification or materialisation of the grace in the qualifying instrument. Bullinger wanted to emphasize the role of God and the Spirit as acting subjects in such a radical way that the close relation between the sign and the signified actually became looser. Bread and wine are signs in so far as they are taken into service by the Holy Spirit. Calvin does not disagree with this. He also takes the active use of these signs by the Holy Spirit as his point of departure. He however adds that the Spirit moves in this particular way, through the createdness of the outward signs. In this sense they are also instruments, means accomplishing something. It is God’s choice, his disposition, to carry man along upwards in that way. It is God’s freedom to feed and to cleanse man, living in the depths, through these instruments. This dynamic view of the the supper and knowledge of god 219 sacrament is in agreement with what I previously said about the role of outward things and the senses.

4.5.4. Experience and tasting For Calvin, the concrete experience, tasting, eating and drinking of the bread and wine had an added value that we can scarcely conceive any more. The evaluation of Calvin’s doctrine of the Supper by Berkhof is typical of today’s vision and perception. He primarily has an eye for the sensory nature of the sacraments being a concession of divine Prov- idence.86 Calvin’s doctrine of sacraments is held up against the light of what is essential for Berkhof, namely personal encounter. The sensory is taken as a form which God chooses to actually descend to human level. But in this the positive reasons for the sensory that are also to be found in Calvin threaten to disappear from view: the material sacrament is a fitting tool for God. He is in no sense ashamed of it. In Calvin’s theology we encounter thought in which our physicality is taken completely into account. Without our physicality, without employing our senses, we will never come into contact with God. The bread and wine make the believer heedful of the life-giving presence of the life that is in Christ. They are concrete signs of the hidden nearness of God, which through his Spirit now already are awakening the soul to life and in a hidden way now already pour out the gifts of God upon the believer. The presence of hope, patience, the striving for righteousness, the capacity to offer resistance to temptations: these are all nothing other than the effect of the influence of Christ’s life upon us. Through these instruments the believer comes under the influence of the abundant and eternal life that flows through the flesh and blood of Christ as a channel, not exclusively, but certainly more powerfully.87 The eating and drinking of the bread and wine are in direct relation with the thing, life eternal. Calvin’s fear is that the outward sign will become only a sign, a nuda figura. The thing itself and the truth are connected with the sign.88 One can also say that it is in keeping with Calvin’s theology to have an eye for the nature of God’s acts as means of knowing Him. The knowledge of God does not arise in abstracto, not through the Spirit

86 Berkhof, Christian Faith, 348. 87 Comm. John 6:51,CO47, 152. 88 OS II, 282: ‘… res ipsa et veritas coniuncta est …’ See also OS II, 509:Thedove at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan is no ‘vaine figure’. 220 chapter four alone, apart from means, but through a multiplicity of ways, leading up to the Supper, where in the most powerful way man is pointed to the place where the spring of life is. I would add a second observation to this. The experience, the confirmation, the certainty comes into being in the connection between sign and thing. It is not enough to be a spectator to the breaking of the bread. It is also not enough to leave things at the moment that faith comes into being. Faith itself leads to activity, to a manducatio of what comes from this source.89 But there is also progress, a driving force, a hidden working of the Spirit connected with the concrete eating and drinking that leads to experience. As has already been remarked in passing, this experience is more than a ‘cognitive plus’. The sacrament does not internalise anything different from what one receives a share of in faith, but it internalises it differently. God’s promise is linked in a very special sense with the graphic moment, the concrete experience of eating.90 It is intended to refer to the experience that can only be acquired by participation. ‘It [the sacrament] calls to remembrance that Christ was made the bread of life that we may constantly eat him, it gives us a taste and relish for that bread, and makes us feel its effi- cacy.’91 The Holy Spirit therefore sees to it that what is outwardly signified reaches the believer inwardly. The language that points to an experience of reality, of effect, that the believer undergoes in all intensity, is significant.92 The way in which the Holy Spirit through his hidden operation brings the believer into the presence of Christ conceptually remains a mystery. The mystery is too sublime, Calvin says, for us to conceive with our understanding.93 Directly thereafter he confesses, ‘I rather feel than understand it.’94 At the apex of his doctrine of the Sup-

89 Comm. John 6:47,CO47, 151: ‘Quod quidam ex hoc loco colligunt, credere in Christum idem esse atque edere Christum vel carnem eius, non satis firmum est. Haec enim duo inter se tanquam prius et posterius differunt, sicuti ad Christum venire, et ipsum bibere. Praecedit enim accessus. Fateor non manducari Christum nisi fide: sed ratio est, quia fide eum recipimus ut habitet in nobis simusque eius participes adeoque unum cum ipso. Quare manducatio effectus est aut opus fidei.’ 90 Cf. also Oberman, Die Reformation, 263. 91 Inst. 4.17.5: ‘sed dum in memoriam revocat, panem vitae esse factum, quo assidue vescamur, eiusque panis gustum et saporem nobis praebet, ut vim panis illius sentiamus facit.’ 92 Inst. 4.17.1 and Inst. 4.17.4: ‘dum efficaciam mortis eius vivo sensu apprehendi- mus.’ 93 Inst. 4.17.32. Cf. also Inst. 4.17.10. 94 Inst. 4.17.32: ‘… atque, ut apertius dicam, experior magis quam intelligam.’ the supper and knowledge of god 221 per Calvin seems to base himself not only on Bible exegesis, but his own experience also speaks powerfully. Above all, for him knowledge of God is not limited to what a human being can understand, comprehend or formulate. To sum up: In faith there are no inward or outward contradictions. The Holy Spirit uses external things, the world that comes in through the senses, for inward purposes, and provides what is there signified, the life-giving flesh of Christ. In this way the soul already receives a share of coming glory. With regard to the sacraments one may summarise that the way runs from outward to inward, and from within to above. God desires that our senses be carried from the elements to on high, to heaven. In the Supper the believer himself is carried on high. With his soul already in heaven, he is conveyed into the neighbourhood of the majesty of God. ‘The dignity is amply enough commended when we hold, that it is a help by which we may be ingrafted into the body of Christ, or, already ingrafted, may be more and more united with him, until the union is completed in heaven.’95 In this citation it becomes clear once again to what extent the knowing of God transcends the intellectual. Faith has its point of concentration around the Supper because there, in the midst of the community, what is already the truth is experienced in faith, and will come to its full unfolding, namely inclusion in the perfect communion with Christ, in the completion of all things.

95 Inst. 4.17.33.

THE HINGE

chapter five

THE TURN TO THE SUBJECT IN KANT’S PHILOSOPHY

5.1. A watershed

In this study, Kant’s philosophy serves as the hinge between the two panels of Calvin and Barth. There is a risk involved in proceeding in this manner, not so much because the interpretation of Kant’s writings is a matter better left to philosophers, but because it might easily be thought that in this study Barth’s theology is being considered as a direct and conscious response to Kant. Such a suggestion is not, however, the intention. Barth was first and foremost a theologian who sought to make a contribution to Christian theology in obedience to revelation. If he was directly responding to someone in a theological- historical sense, then Schleiermacher would be a better candidate to serve as the hinge here. The connection between Barth and Kant is looser, less direct, but not therefore less profound. In making this choice I affirm the widely shared conviction that Kant de facto marks a watershed in Western theology. Whether this role belongs to him de iure is another question, which will not be discussed here. I will limit myself to noting that his thought fulfils this role for the main stream of Western theology. He is a watershed, and indeed in two senses. First, one can regard his philosophy as a mirror in which a number of the shifts in the history of thought which are characteristic of modernity become clearly visible. In his thinking, and in particular in his epistemology, the turn from a theocentric view of the world to an anthropocentric point of departure comes to be seen. Knowledge is henceforth no longer knowledge of the preternatural, of divine truth. Within modern philosophy knowledge comes to be ever more strictly regarded as knowledge that is limited to human, earthly things, and has the status of an object, which does not extend beyond the limited horizon of human faculties. The second manner in which Kant is a watershed is connected with this latter. It concerns theology directly. Modern theology has become 226 chapter five fundamentally uncertain. It lives with the uncomfortable feeling that there is something not quite right with knowledge in faith—or better, there is something wrong with it. Modern theology is for the most part post-Kantian, in the sense that it has taken over the fundamental denial that is contained in Kant’s epistemology: God cannot be the object of human knowledge. Men will always continue to think and talk about God, because for various reasons they simply cannot stop doing so. But strictly speaking, we are then dealing with ‘god’ or the divine as a concept, idea, or as a word from our language, sometimes a disturbing word that reminds us that we have no hold on it, because at the same time we use it we are reminded that ‘god’ or the divine does not have the status of knowledge. In post-Kantian theology the idea of knowledge has become that problematic with regard to God. That God exists, lives and works is no longer beyond question, as was the case from the early church through to the Renaissance culture of Calvin. For Calvin there was certainly the realisation that God is greater and more than human concepts of Him, but that did not detract from the reality claim that knowledge of God made. On the contrary: that God existed, that He revealed certain things about himself, was a deep conviction. The evidence did not lie in the visible, in the swarm of commonplace things, but in that which withdrew from them, in the spiritual, in heavenly things. In modernity, as it developed, where one looked to find the evident would shift. That which is evident no longer lies above man, but below him. The poles of proof were reversed. To an increasing degree in modernity the fundamental attitude would be that of agnosticism. Once again, the observation that this is a watershed is a de facto observation. Whether this watershed is also justifiable, de iure, is another question, which will only be addressed indirectly in this hinge chapter.1 I will limit myself to approaching the matter from the history of thought. For Barth it is the case that his theology, and in particular his concept of knowledge of God, cannot be understood without some realisation of the barriers that Kant erected, and the responses to them by F.D. Schleiermacher, G.W.F. Hegel, A. Ritschl and W. Herrmann. Karl Barth’s earliest theology is still entirely in line with that of Schleier- macher and Herrmann, and in the baggage of his own critical theology there is still a good deal present that is in part defined by Kantian struc-

1 See N. Wolterstorﬀ, ‘Is it possible and desirable for theologians to recover from Kant?’, Modern Theology 14 (1998), 1–18. the turn to the subject in kant’s philosophy 227 tures. When in his second Römerbrief Barth labels knowledge of God an ‘impossible possibility’ and begins with man’s problem of doing justice to God in human language, that is not only a radicalisation of the Ref- ormation’s realisation that knowledge of God is a matter of grace, but also a shared assumption with regard to the limitedness of all human knowledge.

What are the broader changes in intellectual history? It has become customary to characterise modernity as a cultural-historical constellation typified by a number of qualities such as anthropocentrism, anti- traditionalism, rationalisation, individualisation, democratisation, and differentiation of spheres of life.2 Summed up in one comprehensive definition, modernity is characterised by the turn to the subject and a shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric view of life. In the

2 See for instance the analysis by H. Küng, Christianity. Its Essence and History,London 1995, 650–770. a) Beginning with man as subject and the development of empirical research as the entry to the world has led to modern culture being impressed by the power of instrumental reason. Knowledge is power, according to Bacon’s maxim. It is no longer primarily theoria, reflection. Like the natural sciences and technology, knowledge has become a domain of its own. That has made an enormous expansion possible in the technical and economic sense, and created a new myth which still maintains itself, even now that the original confidence in the omnipotence of reason has evaporated, namely the myth of growth and progress. b) As the polar opposite of the ideal of control and unification, modernity is characterised by a process of constant individualisation of spiritual life. The value of man, of the individual, was always already there in the Christian concept of creation, but viewed theologically is a secondary, and not a primary element. Within modernity regard for the individual as a moral and spiritual being moves up into first place. The problem of personal identity and maintaining that personhood over against a systematic and impersonal world becomes a concern of the first order. c) The preceding point is directly linked with the universal perspective of modernity. The question of identity develops more and more into a question of humanity.The concept of humanity cannot be viewed in terms of particularity; in principle, humanity comprises not some men, but all mankind. This cosmopolitan, universal perspective, the explicit desire for a humanity that reclaims and includes all people, is an essential element of modernity. It conflicts with every view that excludes any particular group of people for whatever reason. d) The primacy of the individual has consequences for the relation of the individual to social institutions and to society as a whole. The primacy of the individual over against the institutional on the one hand implies a demand for tolerance, but there is also present at the same time an element that is corrosive to society. Tolerance has its price. Europe initially had difficulty becoming accustomed to the break up of the unity of society as a religious entity, but since then has embraced with conviction the hard- won ideal of tolerance as being of paramount importance. The separation of church and state in the 19th century was the result of this at the political level. 228 chapter five long run this has had consequences for the place of religion in Western culture in general, and for Christianity in particular. Increasingly a pronounced agnosticism and secularism has become the mental trademark of our culture, and knowledge of God has become a problem. Kant’s thought serves as a mirror of this development.3

5.2. The tradition-critical attitude

The self-confidence with which modern men, unlike in previous generations, take up a position over against tradition, and indeed over against any sort of knowledge that rests on tradition and whose authority is represented by the church and government—in short, anti-traditionalism—is a characteristic of the mental attitude of modernity. The well- knownadageofKant,inhis1784 answer to the question Was ist Auf- klärung, reflects this attitude and radiates confidence and self-assurance: Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minor- ity is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your own understanding! Is thus the motto of enlightenment.4 Kant expresses here what was a collective assumption and shared ideal of a small elite of geographically diffuse and, in a social perspective, very diverse minds: the present era is not a time in which the mind and humanity already stand high above the landscape like a sun, but it is indeed a time in which we see the light dawning. It is not an

3 For another point of departure in the case of, for instance, Spinoza, see D. Schel- long, ‘Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit’ in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit,München1973 or for the point of departure for Descartes, see E. Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 146–167;ET:God as the Mystery of the World, 111–126. 4 I. Kant, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? Werke in Sechs Bänden, Bd. VI, hrsg. Von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19644 =) 1983, 53 (A 481): ‘Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Man- gel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Ver- standes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.’ ET in: Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (eds. P. Guyer and A. Wood): Practical Philosophy (translated and edited by Mary J. Gregor), 17. the turn to the subject in kant’s philosophy 229 enlightened era, but is indeed a time of Enlightenment.5 That marks one of the striking differences with the preceding period. This is no longer a culture or era for which the ideal model lies in the past; man now looks forward for amelioration. Progress now becomes a social virtue. Like the concept of Enlightenment itself, the progress that with Calvin had its place in the realm of personal consecration of life, as expressed in the way the pilgrim from day to day changes into the image of Christ, is lifted out of its Christian and pneumatological context and receives cultural status.6 One could easily misunderstand the passage cited above from Kant if one analyses it in isolation and does not take the political-social context into account. The last thing Kant intended was to defend epistemological solipsism. Man is in fact dependent on a community of persons for knowledge. What Kant has in mind in the above citation is the process of public discussion of faith and theology, intellectual freedom, the necessity of a public domain where debate can be carried on without interference from the authorities. Kant too was addressing— albeit indirectly—a ruling monarch, Frederick the Great, but now not to appeal to the monarch as defender and protector of the true faith, but on the contrary, to praise him for his tolerance. In all matters of conscience, Kant says, a person must be free to avail himself of his reason. Kant was speaking in a situation in which public debate on theological and moral subjects was still controlled by the government apparatus. He deliberately takes an intermediate position, and makes a distinction between the responsibility that people have as scholars and that which they have as holders of ecclesiastical offices.7 When clergy are bound to an ecclesiastical tradition or confession by their office, there are still curbs on thinking for oneself. It is however clear which direction things must go. ‘As matters now stand, a good deal more is required for people on the whole to be in the position, or even able to be put in the position, of using their own understanding confidently and well in religious matters, without another’s guidance.’8 With that a line of demarcation is drawn, and a characterisation is given of those thinkers who belong to the Enlightenment. Kant demands that peo-

5 Was ist Aufklärung, 59 (A 491); ET, 21. 6 The term Enlightenment in itself already betrays how much, in the period of the Enlightenment, the light of reason and the light of revelation were identiﬁed with one another, for instance in J. Locke and G.E. Lessing. 7 Was ist Aufklärung, 56 (A487), ET, 19. 8 Was ist Aufklärung, 59 (A491), ET, 21. 230 chapter five ple think for themselves, as John Locke and David Hume argued that they should, and that tradition and authority must be answer to reason. Only on that condition can religion exist. The intellectual climate of modernity, with its ideal of autonomy, is unmistakably anti-traditional. This anti-traditionalism at the same time applied the axe to something which had been accepted as self-evident in European culture, namely the role of Christian tradition as the fundamental source of vitality and truth for the whole culture. However inadequate, rancorous and malicious the image sometimes was that was given of the Middle Ages in the time of the Enlightenment, according to Peter Gay in one regard it was right, namely that the Christian narrative had been the deepest driving force and ultimate goal of this civilisation.9 In the era of the Enlightenment and the developments which followed it, this certainty and its acceptance as natural falls away. The Christian legacy is more critically received. No longer do people automatically regard themselves as exponents of this tradition, but see themselves as emancipated from the religious and metaphysical matrix, and indeed question the matrix itself.

5.3. For the sake of humanity

Kant’s investigation of the conditions for human knowledge marks a moment that deeply affected Western theology. It changed the view of the boundaries of knowable, it transformed metaphysics from a material to a formal discipline, and all of this had great influence on the theological questions of from whence man derives knowledge of God, and for what may we hope. Kant’s investigation of the possibilities of the human mind and its faculties is divided into three critiques, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781), the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788) and his Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). For the status of religion, it is particularly the first two studies that are important. Kant’s own existential interest unquestionably lay with the second critique, the investigation of practical reason, its range, validity and conditions. For him, this involves what makes a man human, humanity itself, and what makes a culture humane.10 In order to obtain

9 P. G a y, The Enlightenment. An Interpretation. Vol. 1: The Rise of modern Paganism,London 1973, 212. 10 ‘Thus morality, not understanding, is what first makes us human beings’, I. Kant, the turn to the subject in kant’s philosophy 231 clarity in this question, he radicalises the distinction between the order of being and the moral order. In the pre-modern panel the natural order and the moral order still lay within the same sphere. A certain meaning can be found for all things that exist. Everything that is—bad things, good things, the beautiful and the ugly—has a certain sense yet within God’s Counsel and governance, although it is not always given to man to understand what that is. With Kant this unity is shattered. In contemporary language: being and meaning are not the same. There is not even a link between being and meaning. I wish to outline Kant’s position in several broad strokes, and will focus primarily on the first critiques. The human mind has at least two ranges; man is a citizen to two worlds: by means of his power of reason and physical senses man is able to acquire knowledge of the natural order. Science—or to be more precise, empirical science—establishes what is. It operates in the world of phenomena. In addition, the human mind has a second range or capacity, by virtue of which it has access to the world of freedom. That capacity is practical reason. Practical reason is the deepest motivation of human acts. It is likewise a power of reason which produces generally valid knowledge, namely moral knowledge. Practical reason is not dependent on the outside world. On the contrary, this reason focuses on that which transcends the sensory, namely on that which should be. Kant’s critiques have their point in finding a peculiar domain for morality. To this end, the reach of pure reason must be limited, and those limits are in fact space and time. Morality supposes freedom, and this freedom is only guaranteed when a particular act is not considered from the viewpoint of the phenomenal world (the world of phenomena), but as noumenal, that which cannot be known, but which can be conceived.11 The positive result of the restriction on speculative reason is aimed at being able to continue to use God, freedom and immortality as ideas, as convictions, which are indispensable for man, that is to say, for man as a free being. God, freedom and immortality are postulates of practical reason. That is to say, according to Kant, these are convictions which are entirely

Der Streit der Fakultäten, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd. VI, hrsg. Von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19644=)1983, 344 (A122); ET (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Vol. Religion and rational Theology), 291. 11 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bände, Bd.2,hrsg.vonW.Weischedel, Darmstadt (19565=) 31 (B XXVI); ET: Critique of Pure Reason,tr.anded.byP.Guyer/ A.W. Wood (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Cambridge 1998, 115. 232 chapter five warranted on the basis of human reason. It is here that the famous citation comes: ‘Thus I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith; and the dogmatism of metaphysics, i.e., the prejudice that without criticism reason can make progress in metaphysics, is the true source of all unbelief conflicting with morality.’12 This indicates the positive point, aiming at humanity, that Kant unquestionably had in mind. This is the order of humanity. For a proper estimation of Kant’s place in the history of modernity, it is important to grasp the order of importance. For Kant in his critiques, this issue is not merely epistemology as such. His critiques are in the service of seeking that which is definitive for humanity and meaning, in the service of the search for human dignity in a remote corner of the cosmos. In this last, man’s place in the cosmos, one can also immediately see the distance from Calvin. For Kant there is a sense that man no longer lives in a discrete, closed space. The globe is somewhere in a remote corner of an immeasurable space. While for Calvin our space was still enclosed within the rotation of the heavenly spheres, and the revolving whole experienced as orderly and inspiring confidence, as an evident reference to God’s care, in Pascal we find a totally different experience. ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me’, he writes.13 And although even in his critical period Kant still deems the teleological proof of God the ‘the oldest, clearest and the most appropriate to common human reason’ which makes belief in a Highest Causer compelling,14 he denies the faith that arises as a result of awe the status of objective, generally valid knowledge. Only the moral law, which is manifest in men, offers man an escape from the crushing realisation of cosmic infinity and his own insignificance. With Calvin man received a central place within God’s order of created reality; he is a pilgrim on earth, on his way to heaven. With Kant man has lost that anchor, and the physical extent of the universe offers no possibility to ascertain one’s place in it any more. The experience of the silent cosmos and a harsh universe, where man has become a derelict, has increasingly marked our understanding of life since Kant. It is no longer the experience of guilt or mortality that forms the background for questions about God in our culture, but the realisation of our bereft

12 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 33 (B XXX); ET, 117. 13 B. Pascal, Pensées, 206: ‘Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.’ 14 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 550–551 (B 651); ET, 579–580. the turn to the subject in kant’s philosophy 233 state in infinite space. Man is doomed to living as a nomad in the endless reaches of the universe. The only thing that remains is life itself, the uninterrupted stream of impressions and vital moments that one must seize, embrace in the pleasure and terror that they offer, which one can also let go of again, reject if one must. With Kant, however, we are far from reaching that point. The natural sciences offer no solace, the earth has indeed been displaced from the centre of the universe, but in him we find the development of a new answer: the turn to the subject. The new centre is found in man himself, as the thinking, willing, feeling subject. Man, and particularly his morality, becomes the anchorage for humanity.

5.4. The turn to the subject

How does Kant go about achieving space for the moral order and limiting of the reach of theoretical reason? Let me begin with the famous sentence from the start of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft: But although all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that account all arise from experience.15 One can regard this sentence as programmatic, because there are echoes in it of both Kant’s critique of his predecessors and his own solution. Kant is seeking an answer for the problem which he sees has been created for epistemology by the empiricism of Locke and Hume. This problem involves the question of how necessary or apodictic knowledge is possible. Kant’s otherwise very questionable interpretation of Locke is that Locke would also derive mental concepts from experience, because he encounters them there.16 Moreover, he reproaches Locke for going far beyond the boundaries of experience in his use of mental concepts.17 Kant’s judgement of Locke is that he ‘opened the gates wide to enthusiasm’ because, when once reason does prove to have some competence, he does not permit it to be limited by any exhortation to moderation.18

15 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 45 (B1); ET, 136. 16 According to N. Wolterstorﬀ, this customary interpretation must be characterised as historically incorrect. The core of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding must be sought instead in book IV. See N. Wolterstorﬀ, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief, Cambridge 1996, 10: ‘The undeniable empiricist strands in his thought will be seen to be balanced, if not outweighed, by the rationalist strands.’ 17 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 132 (B 127); ET, 225. 18 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 133 (B128); ET, 226. 234 chapter five

The way of empiricism, as Kant maps it out, leads to a number of unsolvable difficulties. It is Hume who, in the eyes of Kant, deserves the honour of having called attention to these difficulties. According to empiricism, all our concepts must be based on observation. Hume noted that, on the contrary, one of the most important concepts that we use, namely causality, is not based on observation. We do indeed observe the order in which events occur, or the state of affairs, but not causality itself. The conviction that we possess apodictic or generally valid knowledge can not be accounted for from the standpoint of empiricism. Empiricism never gets further than the observation of facts, never arrives at the formulation of general validity. Thus, Kant says, the realm of metaphysics has been thrown into anarchy. An agony of doubt prevails regarding the foundation of knowledge, and the scope of intellectual concepts. Opposite a dogmatic (for Kant, that is to say an uncritical) use of reason and its concepts, as was customary in the school of Leibnitz and Wolff, are the sceptics, who, as far as Kant is concerned, are ‘a kind of nomads who abhor all permanent cultiva- tion of the soil’.19 The problem for Kant now is how it can be that we indeed take the existence of generally valid, or as he calls it, apodictic knowledge as a point of departure. Kant proposes a radical reversal of perspective, that is, one with reference to the reversal in perspective which occurred in cosmology: in epistemology it is also necessary to perform a Copernican revolution. Our capacity for thought is no longer aimed toward things, but things are aimed toward our capacity for thought.20 In thinking about human knowledge of the world, the central point is no longer a given, ordered world that invites us to discover how it is arranged, but rather is the subject who, with his capacity for thought, imposes an order on the world. In other words, Kant breaks with the idea that knowledge at its deepest is a matter of imitation, in which the subject’s role is chiefly receptive. Man’s role in acquiring knowledge is not passive, but rather highly active and constructive.21 With this, Kant assigned a large role to reason, and shifted the balance in the realm of epistemology, something which would in a certain sense find its substance in the social and cultural development of the 18th century. One can detect an intellectual change which first emerges

19 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 12 (A IX); ET, 99. 20 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 25 (B XVII); ET, 110. 21 Der Streit der Fakultäten, 341 (A 116); ET, 299–289. the turn to the subject in kant’sphilosophy 235 among natural scientists and the philosophes as a slowly unfolding realisation that life here on earth can be improved. The circumstances of life in the 18th century might still be bad everywhere and the life prospects for most slight, but the applications of the natural sciences, rapidly being translated into technical inventions, nonetheless opened vast perspectives. Man discovered that he could bend nature to his will. James Watt discovered the principle of the steam engine, medical science raised the hopes of a life with less affliction, fewer complaints.22 Such developments and possibilities put life in a different light. Man is no longer powerless in the face of his lot in life, in the face of life itself, but creator of his world, or, in the words of one of Thomas Jef- ferson’s favourite maxims, faber suae quisque fortunae.23 Knowledge is no longer first and foremost insight, contemplation; knowledge is power (Bacon). It is this evocative idea of the constitutive role of reason that penetrates epistemology with Kant. The way in which reason comes to weigh more and the world less is nicely visualised by Kant. Reason is no longer in the position of a pupil who repeats precisely what his master says, but takes the role of a judge who interrogates and demands answers.24 This famous dictum is diametrically opposed to what we saw with Calvin, for whom man has to assume the role of pupil in all things. This is a new attitude that is the consequence of developments in the natural sciences, their application in technology and in medical science. Reason is an active and creative force in opening up our world. Reason considers only that which it brings forth according to its plan. Kant argues that one will only get around the aporia of empiricism if one realises that only that can be considered which one has apriori brought along oneself through ideas, and is applied to that which is a given in the observation. According to Kant, only through a change in perspective, that is to say, a Copernican revolution, is it possible to explain the existence of apriori knowledge and apodictic knowledge.

22 Cf.P.Gay,The Enlightenment. Vol.2: The Science of Freedom,London1973, 4–23. 23 See P. Gay, The Enlightenment. Vol.2: The Science of Freedom, 7. 24 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 23 (B XIII); ET, 109:‘Reason,inordertobetaughtby nature, must approach nature with its principles in one hand, according to which alone the agreement among appearences can count as laws, and, in the other hand, the experiments thought out in accordance with these principles—yet in order to be instructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wants to say, but like an appointed judge, who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them.’ 236 chapter five

Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft thus fulﬁls the role of a treatise on method,25 and does not proﬀer itself as a system of knowledge. The realisation of a boundary for human theoretical knowledge is highly developed for Kant, but this realisation has primarily a positive, anti- sceptic intention.

5.5. The conditions of knowing. Metaphysics as methodological investigation into the conditions of knowing

In classic and early modern thought metaphysics is not only knowledge of being as such, ens qua ens, thus what we today would term ontology, but also knowledge of the world of first things, the highest being, or God.26 Thus classic metaphysics also comprises knowledge of the preternatural world, of God, the soul and human consciousness which can be acquired with the aid of reason. In other words, the metafysica specialis covers in part what is handled in classic theology under the headings of the doctrines of God and creation. Calvin’s theology already reflects the development in late medieval theology toward a sharper distinction between philosophical knowledge of God and theological knowledge. But with Calvin too all knowledge is still rooted in a metaphysical context. The soul, which through its capacities is able to gather knowledge, operating outside the limits of its own body, is a bridgehead to the higher, divine world. This metaphysical rootage for knowledge did not disappear overnight. In the school of Leibnitz and Wolff metaphysics is still in an inclusive theological framework, comprising metafysica specialis alongside metafysica generalis. A part of our knowledge of God is obtained by rational means, and can be regarded as generally valid knowledge. Kant’s thought can be regarded as the moment in Western thinking when this interweaving of theological and philosophical knowledge is broken once and for all. Thought comes to stand on its own, and no longer refers to a higher world for its categories and its own operations, but exclusively to itself.27 According to Kant himself metaphysics changes from a material to a transcen-

25 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 28 (B XXII); ET, 113. 26 See O. Duintjer, De vraag naar het transcendentale, vooral in verband met Heidegger en Kant, Leiden 1966, 52. 27 E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Bd. I (Berlin 19223=) Darmstadt 1991, 13–14 en Bd II, 662. the turn to the subject in kant’s philosophy 237 dental discipline, and henceforth occupies itself with the conditions for human knowing, with the systems and properties of human reason as such. That is an enormous turnabout. The content of metaphysics is no longer being, or the highest being, but thought and the knowing of being. These conditions for human knowing no longer lie in a world behind this world. Kant proposes that the conditions belong to the equipage of man. Authoritative knowledge from the natural sciences can only be accounted for if we make a distinction between knowledge that we already possess apriori, and knowledge which is obtained aposteriori. Apriori knowledge is composed of the concepts and categories with which the mind works in its operations from the outset. This apriori knowledge—in other words, knowledge which one arrives at apart from experience, thus in pure form—is found in mathematics and logic. Apriori concepts and categories thus are the apparatus of human capacity for thought. Kant also postulates such a constitutive role for time and space, but now with regard to the faculties of perception. While in the Mid- dle Ages and Renaissance space and time were conceived as created qualities that had an objective existence apart from man, in Kant’s philosophy they were regarded as being part of the equipage of the human subject. They are the forms of observation, that is, conditions that impart structure to the sensory capacities of man. Perception and thought now mesh with one another and together produce knowledge, or better, ideas. Kant terms the capacity to produce ideas, thus the spontaneity of knowledge, understanding. The diﬀerence with Calvin is palpable. In its constitutive function for perception, human reason has taken on itself a role that, in Calvin’s concept, still belonged to God. For Calvin, God is the One who imposes ordo; for Kant, that is the role of pure reason. There is no perception apart from the forms and concepts that are anchored in the human mind. This last becomes very important. There is, in other words, no knowledge of things as they are in themselves. Kant states in his Prolegomena that the natural sciences can never permit us know the inward nature of things—thus, that which is not phenomenal—but still can serve as the highest ground for explaining phenomena.28 What we know is the shape of things as that is produced

28 I. Kant, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (1783), Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd.3, hrsg. von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt 238 chapter five by the combined action of thought and perception. There is indeed a connection between the Ding an sich and our knowledge of the thing, but only as impetus. The Ding an sich is indeed unknowable, but at the same time it is unavoidably the correlate to the phenomenon. Obviously this position of the Ding an sich in Kant’s concept gives rise to a tremendous difficulty, not to say a contradiction that problematises the whole concept. If causation is first termed an intellectual category, which can only be applied to ideas, how can one then speak of a Ding an sich as the ground for explanation, or impetus? Once again, this chapter is not intended as a systematic critique of Kant, but to provide some insight into the consequences for the status of knowledge of God within his concept. These consequences were in no sense slight. We have knowledge of all things only to the extent that they present themselves as objects of sensory perception, namely as phenomenon. The interest shifts from the reality that comes in to the thought process that brings things in. After all, there is always the filter of its own operations between the human subject and the world. In knowing, man unavoidably must deal with his own activity. If there is contact with reality, it is at the most indirect. According to Kant, there is no perception without the forms of perception and the concepts of the mind imposing coherence upon it. In other words—and here we encounter the legacy with enormous consequences for theology—experience is always interpreted experience. Perceptions find their interpretation within the forms of time and space, and the conceptuality of reason. This shift of the balance to the thinking subject has the not insignificant consequence that there is a break in reality: not that this reality can no longer be the subject in the sense that it addresses us, but the direction is reversed. The thinking man shapes a world for himself, forms impressions, speaks language: in short: human acts are the centre of our reach.

5.6. Knowledge as human construction

Kant’s philosophy is an salient example of the anthropologisation of human knowledge. Knowledge is a product of the human mind, in which the data of experience is processed into knowledge by the mind. It is a critical idealism that ascribes a large measure of constructive

(19565=) 1983, 227 (A 168); ET: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge 2002, 142. the turn to the subject in kant’s philosophy 239 function to the mind. Kant’s constructivism, as he develops it in his critical philosophy, leads to knowledge being regarded as a completely human activity, no longer supported by or rooted in a relation between God and man. Knowledge is the creation of conceptual relationships, from which the subject constructs reality. With this, the construction of reality has become a human endeavour. The starting point and origin of the reality that we are dealing with in our knowledge lies in the human mind, which has been discovered in its independence and autonomy. This contrasts with Calvin, where in its activity the soul displays evidence of its divine origin. With Leibnitz human thought is still derived from God’s thought. With Kant thought and human knowing is fully anthropologised. Barth, in his concept, does not retreat from this anthropologisation. The Bible, confessions of faith, doctrine: these are human words and constructs that are sounded for their congruence with the Divine Word, and as such have a heuristic function. In themselves they are however human givens, which in comparison to the situation with Calvin have lost their status as ‘heavenly’ teaching or divine word. The consequence of this anthropologisation is that a rupture appears in the sensory foundation for knowledge, between phenomenon and the Ding an sich. As a scheme, the world as it is described by the natural sciences is the world of man. This split permitted a deep scepticism to take root within the channel of modern intellectual history with regard to all our knowledge, and in particular with regard to any presumption to knowledge of God. The question that arises in Kant’s concept is, in any case, to what extent we in our knowing still have knowledge of things themselves. Or is human knowledge comprised only of consciousness of mental states? For Kant, knowledge consists of mental representations. Letmetakeanexamplefromsensoryperception.29 In our knowledge we are conscious of looking at a tree. But all concepts that I use in this mental representation are derived from my own reason. According to Kant, the statement ‘I see a tree’ is to be understood as ‘I am conscious of being aware that a tree stands before me’. He no longer understands this statement as expressing the consciousness that I am aware that a tree outside of me furnishes me with the impression of a tree. Nothing can be said about the reality of the objects observed. They fall outside of human reach.

29 See Wolterstorﬀ, ‘Is it possible and desirable for Theologians to recover from Kant?’, 17. 240 chapter five

The fundamental problem that this split produces for all speaking about God, for every presumption to knowing God, is not difficult to appreciate. The things that we know are of our own design, shaped by our own mind. Whether reality corresponds to these designs, is a question that becomes more difficult to answer. The correctness of our designs is demonstrated as they work, when our knowledge proves applicable to reality. It is however fundamentally impossible to have knowledge of that which is found on the other side of our finiteness. That is the epistemological problem that history has created in modern theology. What was not accepted was the manner in which Kant sought to resolve the problem: God, soul and immortality as convictions which are warranted for man on the basis of pure reason. With Kant, the idea of God is still present as the keystone. The question was, however, how long thought that simply referred to itself, would still need, and would still tolerate, being circumscribed in this way. In knowledge the gap continues to exist between Ding an sich and phenomenon. The relation between ontology and gnoseology is reversed in this concept. The consequences have been gigantic. What is real is determined in epistemology. The ever-expanding natural sciences provided a model for this turnabout. In his Logik Kant writes of nature, ‘The whole of nature in general is really nothing but a connection of appearances according to rules, and ther is no absence of rules everywhere. If we believe we have found such a thing, than in this case we can only say that we are not acquainted with the rules.’30 In other words, if reality can be ascribed to particular phenomena depends on whether they can be thought of in relation. The judgement of reality is only given then when a phenomenon, with the aid of rules derived from the mind, can be brought into connection. The judgement of reality is determined by rules that the mind itself has introduced. That which cannot be included within this relationship is not known, or does not exist to be known. Knowledge can only possess the status of certainty if we have internal access to the conditions under which this knowledge arises. That this form of foundational thinking has had radical consequences for the epistemological status of knowledge of God is not at all surprising.

30 I. Kant, Logik, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd. 3, 432 (A1); ET: (The Cambrigde Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Lectures on Logic, tr. and. ed. by J.M. Young, Cambridge 1992, 527. the turn to the subject in kant’sphilosophy 241

5.7. The limitation of metaphysics and the place of faith in God

According to Kant, at first sight the subjectivation of knowledge has a very disadvantageous result for metaphysics, namely that we with our capacity ‘are brought to the conclusion that we can never transcend the limits of possible experience, though that is precisely what this science is concerned, above all, to achieve’.31 It is clear that Kant’s limitation of human knowledge (i.e., knowledge from the natural sciences) to experience that is defined by space and time has consequences for the status of classic proofs of God, at least to the extent that these avail themselves of causality. On the basis of this principle the acceptance of a first principle or God as the prime mover obtained as a general or authoritative proof of God. The reasonableness of belief in God, its general acceptability as the content of human knowledge, was thrown into doubt by the Kantian critique, although Kant indeed made it clear that in his own view, the cosmological proof of God should be regarded with the greatest esteem: ‘It is the oldest, clearest and the most appropriate to common human reason.’32 Notwithstanding this commendation, as far as Kant was concerned there had to be a break with a long tradition in European intellectual history. In this tradition the concept of God as the highest being had been a fundamental, and foundational element. One’s own relative, unstable existence could only be considered as dependent on God as the highest, unchangeable being. Men could be more certain of that highest being than they were of themselves; it was among those things which, according to the expression we found in Calvin, were extra controversiam, beyond question. But slowly ‘god’ or the concept of God took on another function for thought and human knowledge. While in pre-modern thought thinking about the faculties of cognition was still entirely in the context of a religious understanding of the world and dependent on this metafysica specialis, in the early-modern philosophy of Descartes we see that God becomes a prior condition for the trustworthiness of reason.33 Kant goes still a step further: the concept of God fulfils the role of a regulative idea for reason. What does Kant mean by this? By a regulative idea Kant means something that one can not know, but just as little can avoid think-

31 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112. 32 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 550 (B 651); ET, 579–580. 33 See Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 111–125. 242 chapter five ing about and working with it. In thinking itself, he says, there is the tendency to go beyond all experience, namely the unconditioned, das Unbedingte.34 There is something in reason itself that seeks this unconditioned in things in themselves, or in a series of conditions ‘which reason, by necessity and by right, demands in things in themselves, as required to complete the series of conditions’.35 There is a unity demanded as a regulative principle for theoretical reason.36 In any case, reason has the inclination to venture to the farthest bounds of knowledge and to seek for a unity in which it can find rest.37 Knowing seeks an idea that lies on the far side of all transcendent conditions, and this idea must become the ground of unity. According to Kant, the concept of God is necessary first of all as an intelligible ground for the world of our experience, and then as the highest element behind the efficiency of nature, and finally as the idea of unconditionality, in order to think of all experience systematically as unity.38 As soon as one begins to regard this regulative idea or Unbedingte as an object that man can know, as a constitutive principle about which men can form a concept, one falls into antinomies. The regulative idea is not an object that can be defined by thought; it is nothing more than a necessary framework that makes thinking in its unity possible. Kant himself interpreted the regulative principle of Unbedingte as the idea of a highest being.39 Within Kantian studies the question is being asked if within his own philosophy that is really necessary. It is striking that in interpretations of Kant the necessity of God as a mental concept can be explicitly denied.40 Once reason had discovered its own role in the attempt to understand what knowledge is and what humanity is, it appears that in the long term the concept of God will disappear from reason as a material or constitutive principle. That is not yet true for Kant himself. For him, the concept of God as a postulate of practical reason has the status of objective reality. But that does not detract from

34 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112. 35 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 27 (B XX); ET, 112. 36 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 602 (A 699,B727); ET, 620. 37 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 671 (B 825); ET, 673. 38 K.H. Michel, Immanuël Kant und die Frage der Erkennbarkeit Gottes. Eine kritische Unter- suchung der ‘transzendentalen Ästetik’ in der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ und ihrer theologischen Konse- quenz, Wuppertal 1987, 211. 39 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 602 (B 725); ET, 619. 40 Michel, Immanuel Kant und die Frage der Erkennbarkeit Gottes, 231.Cf.alsoW.Stoker, ‘Kants visie op de betekenis voor kennis en wetenschap’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 35 (1981), 218. See also Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 19–20. the turn to the subject in kant’sphilosophy 243 the fact that in Kant the balance has already shifted. Once reason perceives its own autonomy, it no longer has to appeal to God, and this ‘no longer has to’ very quickly becomes ‘no longer may’, and in the case of Nietzsche even ‘can no longer bear to’. Although the logical rule applies that necessity can no longer be concluded from possibility— e posse consequentia non valet—culturally modernity has gone down this path. In any case Kant ushers in a period in which theological notions are removed from the sciences. Within the natural sciences there is no longer any room for a reference to God. The nature of its knowledge is neutral in the sense that no value judgement can be derived from it, nor is there any reference possible to another order. General knowledge and knowledge of God go their separate ways. Can we then still speak of knowledge of God within Kant’s philosophy? What does the word ‘God’ mean when the concept of God becomes a regulative idea and no longer a constitutive concept? The manner in which one can still speak about God in Kant reveals the distance from Calvin. In Calvin readers are tied to the anthropomorphic image of God’s fatherhood. That is what God desires; that is how He wishes to be addressed. In the distinction that Kant makes in his Pro- legomena between the symbolic anthropomorphism he defends and dogmatic anthropomorphism,41 God himself has become the Unknown. Only his relation to the world can be spoken about, and then only in terms of a category that we ourselves employ in our relation to the world, namely causality. How does Kant’s reasoning run? He asks how our reason in its application to experience relates to that which this same reason expels to above experience, transcendental ideas. He then suggests that one can indeed unite the prohibition against the speculative use of pure reason with the command to form ideas that provide our knowledge with its ground and unity, and indeed to do so by limiting itself to the relation of a highest being to the world. From the world of experience we learn to know certain relationships, and consider these relationships commen- surate with the relation of a highest being to the world. Kant terms this symbolic anthropomorphism, in contrast to dogmatic anthropomorphism. Symbolic anthropomorphism makes metaphorical use of a relationship that we know; dogmatic anthropomorphism presumes to also know this highest being itself. Kant wants to absolutely avoid the

41 Prolegomena, 233 (A 175); ET, 146. 244 chapter five latter. We look at the world as if it were the work of a higher intelligence and will. Kant points to the relationship of a watch to its maker, a ship to its builder, and a regiment to its commander. He is of the opinion that one can make an analogy of relationships of things that are further entirely unknown. The result of this analogy for knowledge of God is illustrative. ‘E.g., the promotion of the happiness of the children = a is to the love of the parents = b as the welfare of humankind = c is to the unknown in God = x, which we call love: not as if this unknown had the least similarity with any human inclination, but because we can posit the relation between God’s love and the world to be similar to that which things in the world have to one another. But the concept of the relation is a mere category, namely the concept of cause, which has nothing to do with sensibility.’42 In terms of the types of analogy, Kant characterises the relation of God and the world as an analogia proportionalitatis: the equivalence in the relationship is the object of the analogy. The only thing that can be expressed in human language and concepts is that God is a premise for the world. To my mind, Jüngel is correct when he argues that within this concept God only comes into the discussion as an unknown causer.43 Our knowledge of God is in no way increased; only the relationship is known. Kant writes explicitly that that which is unknown in God, which we term love, shows not the least equivalence with any human propensity. The relational term here is merely a category in human thought, namely the concept of causality that we employ for the sensory world. Here we can see very sharply the extent to which God can only be spoken of in his unknowabilty within Kant’s concept. What Kant then does say of God falls far short not only of what the Bible says of God, but is a tremendous, not to say terrible, abstraction with regard to the images that we encountered in Calvin’s theology.44 God permits himself to be thought of as a premise, analogous to the causality that we employ as a category within the world of our experience. That men might also be able to learn to know something that did not arise from the world of experience itself, but that accrues to them within

42 Prolegomena, 233 (A 176); ET, 147. 43 Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 277–278. 44 Because of this abstraction the concept of causality has gotten an enormously bad name in contemporary theology. See for example Th. de Boer, De God van de filosofen en de God van Pascal. Op het grensgebied van filosofie en theologie, ’s Gravenhage 1989, 105 and Houtepen, God: an open Question, 360–361. the turn to the subject in kant’sphilosophy 245 that world of experience and is mediated by that world of experience by virtue of God’s condescension and turning toward man, is ignored. God remains the Unknown. Does this negative judgement change when in his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft Kant advances the ideas of freedom, immortality of the soul and the existence of God as the three postulates of practical reason? Kant is prepared to term these postulates knowledge, but we must note carefully what he means when he says this. They are ideas, concepts of pure reason, to which no reality can be attributed by means of theoretical reason. Practical reason, the discovery of morality, demands the existence of a highest good, and these three ideas are postulated on the basis of this requirement for moral sense in man. Their objectivity is however only postulated with an eye to practical reason, to morality. Therefore no use of these ideas can be made apart from this relation to morality, as though these were knowledge in the theoretical sense.45 In the domain of practical reason, ‘they become immanent and constitutive inasmuch as they are grounds of the possibility of making real the necessary object of pure practical reason (the highest good), whereas apart from this they are transcendent and merely regulative principles of speculative reason which do not require it to assume a new object beyond experience, but only to bring its use in experience nearer to complete- ness.’46 It is a ‘cognition of God, but only with practical reference’.47 One can conclude that Kant’s philosophy marks the moment at which knowledge of God loses its status as generally valid knowledge. The conclusion that for Kant God in fact is unknowable, is confirmed by his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft. ‘Religion is (subjectively regarded) the recognition of all duties as divine commands.’48 What Kant termed statutarische Religion or Kirchenglaube occupies a secondary place with regard to the secret that is present within men themselves. It is something which can indeed ‘be known by each single individual but cannot be made known publicly, that is, shared

45 I. Kant, Kritik der praktische Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd.4,hrsg.von W. Weischedel, Darmstadt (19565=), 266–268 (A 241–243). ET in: Practical Philosophy, tr. and ed. by M.J. Gregor (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), Cambridge 1996, 247–249. 46 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 268 (A 244); ET, 249. 47 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 270 (A 248); ET, 250. 48 Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Werke in sechs Bänden, Bd.4, 822 (B 230,A216). ET in: (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant) Religion and Rational Theology, tr. and ed. by A.W. Wood/ G. di Giovanni, Cambridge 1996, 177. 246 chapter five universally’.49 An archetype lying in reason is the foundation of historical, empirical faith. Belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God is one exponent of it.50 Indeed, all religion rests not on knowledge, but on the need to conceive the relation of a highest moral ruler to mankind in this way, namely as an unchanging, omniscient, good and all-powerful being.51 Within Kant’s own concept God is a ideational thing, a quantity which appears within the horizon of pure reason as the Unbedingte, and within the horizon of practical reason as the guarantee of the moral order. Can one pray to such a quantity, or call upon Him?

5.8. After Kant

In epistemology, Kant’s critique of knowing marked a trend that was increasingly asserting itself in Western culture, namely the diminishing self-evidence of belief in God. Therefore Western theology has taken the Kantian subdivision of the various sorts of knowledge as its starting point. To determine the status of a certain sort of knowledge, the conditions or the transcendental potential of the knowledge must first be determined. If an assertion is to be acceptable as knowledge, then the conditions for such a statement must first be clarified. Since Kant, Western theology has accepted that one of its responsibilities is to make clear what the peculiar domain of faith is, or with which domain it must be associated. In short, the question regarding the possibility of knowing God was henceforth regarded as a question of the first order. Where are the anchorages or bridgeheads for knowing God? Now, the faith that is summoned up by the Bible, that is confessed and experienced in the Christian community, is not dependent on a philosophical or conceptual system. Every systematic consideration of the content of faith does however take place in a climate that is influenced by changes taking place in philosophy or in the realm of culture. To this extent the post-Kantian situation has also been one of the influences in shaping the theology of Karl Barth. There have been various responses to Kant and his removal of knowledge of God from the domain of generally valid knowledge. The responses are generally to be connected with three names. First we can mention the response of

49 Die Religion, 803 (B 208); ET, 164. 50 Die Religion, 782 (A 165, 166); ET, 149. 51 Die Religion, 806,(B211,A199); ET, 165–166. the turn to the subject in kant’sphilosophy 247 those who with Albrecht Ritschl wished to go further in the footsteps of Kant, and give religion a place as an extension of the domain of morality. A second response is connected with the name of Hegel. Hegel sought to win the universal domain of knowledge of God back again. According to him, Kant thought too little and too narrowly of reason. All of history and its development were expressions of reason, that in essence is nothing less than divine reason, the Spirit that comes into its own in the thinking of philosophy. The third way, which became very important for Barth’s own development, stems from Schleiermacher. To Schleiermacher belongs the honour of having gotten theology back on its own feet again after Kant by designating belief as an irreducible experience. In the famous words of paragraph 3 of his Glaubenslehre, ‘Die Frömmigkeit, welche die Basis aller kirchlichen Gemeinschaften ausmacht, is rein für sich betrachtet weder ein Wissen noch ein Tun, sondern eine Bestimmtheit des Gefühls oder des unmittelbaren Selbst- bewußtseins’.52 In this way he prevents piety from being swallowed up in the acknowledgement of articles of faith or in ethical acts. Knowl- edge of God is accorded a place in the concrete life of every person as it is lived. Schleiermacher conceives men as beings who as such, in the pre-reflexive layer of their consciousness, are already linked to the divine. Schleiermacher accepted Kant’s view of scientific knowledge, but he pointed to a realm, to a particular domain for the religious, where man as it were is at home. For him too there is a turn toward the subject, but it is a concrete subject, living in history, the living person, who is characterised by receptivity precisely in his or her connection with the universe.53 Christian doctrine is the articulation of the self- consciousness of the Christian community of faith, as it was defined by Jesus’ consciousness of God. In Schleiermacher, the turn to the subject is made concrete in the individual person living in community—thus in the Christian community of faith.

52 F.D. Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt, Bd.I (hrsg. von M. Redeker), (Berlin 18302=)Berlin19607, 14. 53 Cf. F. Schleiermacher, Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (1799), Göttingen 19917, 49: ‘Sie begehrt nicht, das Universum seiner Natur nach zu bestimmen und zu erklären wie die Metaphysik, sie begehrt nicht, aus Kraft der Freiheit und der göttlichen Willkür des Menschen es fortzubilden und fertig zu machen wie die Moral. Ihr Wesen ist weder Denken noch Handeln, sondern Anschauung und Gefühl. Anschauen will sie das Universum, in seinen eigenen Darstellungen und Handlungen will sie es andächtig belauschen, von seinen unmittelbaren Einﬂüssen will sie sich in kindlicher Passivität ergreifen und erfüllen lassen.’ 248 chapter five

It can with some right be said that Schleiermacher’s foundation for religion in Anschauung und Gefühl works out an element of Calvin’s concept of knowing God, namely the notion of the sensus divinitatis. When Schleiermacher speaks of the universe, we encounter the same dynamism that we found in Calvin in his description of God’s operations. The diﬀerences are however obvious. What for Calvin is a more or less self-evident faculty within an aggregate of faculties in Schleier- macher becomes the cork on which the whole of knowledge of God is adrift. From the perspective of the history of theology, it is this tradition of experiential theology that Barth appropriates, as a student of W. Herrmann. It is also this point of departure in the actuality of given knowledge of God to which Barth held fast in his theological development. In an early article he describes religious experience as.54 In other words, religion has the stream of history in which men participate as persons to thank for its origin and existence. The core of human existence is this immediate reality, which, from the perspective of philosophy of life, is to be conceived as dynamic. In his acceptance of this religious reality as the fundamental datum of theology, one can characterise Barth’s position as a form of realism. In ﬁnding foundations for this facticity, he would go his own way with regard to the experience- based theology of Schleiermacher and Herrmann.

54 K. Barth, ‘Der kosmologische Beweis für das Dasein Gottes’, Vorträge und kleine Arbeiten (1905–1909), in Verbindung mit Herbert Helms herausgegeben von Hans-Anton Drewes und Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth-Gesamtausgabe III, Zürich 1992, 407. part two

KARL BARTH

chapter six

THE WAY OF KNOWING GOD

6.1. Introduction: theology and society

From the perspective of intellectual history, Barth’s concept of knowledge of God can be considered as a theological counterproposal to modernity, to its ideals and, it must immediately be said, to its failures.1 If modernity initially cherished the expectation that humane conduct and human happiness were attainable if only we were resolute enough in following a rational course in dealing with reality, in which only that which was completely clear for the human mind was acceptable, it has been some time now since we became much less hopeful, and the optimism about the success of this effort has yielded to a proper distrust of the potential of mankind and a staggering loss of comprehensive ideal objectives. Independent of the change in mood and ideals, however, the conviction has remained that men ‘in the last analysis define themselves, set their limits, articulate their values and design their existence’.2 In that regard, post-modernity is nothing more than a ripple in the pond of modernity. What face does Barth’s theology show against this background? The curious thing about Barth’s theology is that he does anything but deny the formal definition of man as a self-determining being. Indeed, he integrates it into his own view of what it is to be human.3 Through his theology he does implicitly confront the church and culture with the claim that absolutising the human subject is a threat to humanity. It is the implicit assumption that mankind is better protected and served if

1 See for instance the previously mentioned essay by D. Schellong, ‘Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit’ in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit,München 1973, 34–102 en T. Rendtorff, ‘Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verständnis der Theologie Karl Barths und ihrer Folgen’ in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch- theologische Studien zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung, Güthersloh 1972, 161–181. 2 H.J. Pott, Survival in het mensenpark. Over kunst, cyborgs en posthumanisme, Rotterdam 2000, 29. 3 KD I/1, 206–239;ET,198–227. 252 chapter six man understands himself as constituted and defined by God’s turning toward man. It is sounder if man lets himself be interrupted, and finally lets himself be defined by that which does not coincide with his own projections, namely, by God and His gracious care for man and the world. The claim of this theology is that any thinking which does not on every occasion seek its point of departure in God’s approach, no matter how bold or modest its further development may be, runs the risk of actually embracing demons or idols. Or, still more concretely, and now with terms that gradually crystallised in Barth’s theology, man is well served, and does justice to his deepest vocation if he understands himself as being included in and defined by the history of Jesus Christ as the history of God’s approach to man. In this history man learns to know his own situation as dwelling with Jesus Christ. That is to say, man is intended for a life that shares in the glory of God. No one claims that for himself; it is declared to us. With this we encounter a theme that was also briefly discussed in the first panel with regard to Calvin’s theology, namely the relation between knowledge of God and social questions. Barth has a massive theological oeuvre to his name, in which he continually and protract- edly ploughed over the theological landscape. One could make a very good case that Barth’s influence can be credited more to his smaller, occasional writings, in which he often addressed the social and political questions of the moment, than to his Kirchliche Dogmatik, unquestionably his main work.4 One can ask if there is a relation between the severity with Barth persists in presenting the theological questions in KD and the fact that he continually could surprise (and irritate) his contemporaries with very pointed and, from a political perspective not rarely controversial positions. It becomes increasingly clear that this question must be answered positively. Barth’s main work is not the monolithic block that it perhaps appears to be, unread and from a distance. In fact parts of this central work are also products of a dia-

4 The lecture ‘Der Christ in der Gessellschaft’, presented in 1919 at a meeting of religious socialists in Tambach, and included in Anfänge I, 3–37, is an example of such a paper; the lectures and letters in which Barth as a Swiss citizen took a clear and immediate position in regard to National Socialism and the political and military dangers in Germany of that day, in part collected in Eine Schweizer Stimme, 1938–1945, Zurich 1945,provideothers.SeealsoK.Barth,Offene Briefe 1935–1942 (ed. D. Koch), Zurich, 2001. Because of these stands, Barth helped shape opinion among a broad range of Christian intellectuals. The interplay between his two roles as an opinion leader and theologian intensified both, and formed a field of influence with great impact. the way of knowing god 253 logue, results of an often behind the scenes debate with contemporary positions and persons.5 The fact that Barth generally refrained from making this debate explicit is an omission that unnecessarily increases the inaccessibility of the KD, and thereby its monolithic image. Barth’s church theology is explicitly intended as a public theology. The theological breadth and depth is immediately connected to the questions of the day. Although the relations between church and state, and between theology and the various domains of modern society have undergone enormous changes with the comparable constellation in 16th century culture, the public character of theology and its wider influence as such does not appear to have been lost. The course of Barth’s life, and the effects of his theology in diverse contexts, are a rich source for illustrations of the changed, but for all the changes no less broad social and political function of theology.6 That he puts his readers on the wrong track is connected to his vision of the place and task of the church and theology in the public context. The unity of church and state, of church and society, which was briefly contemplated and attempted in Zurich, Basel, Bern and Geneva at the time of the reformation in the Swiss cities, is in Barth’s eyes something long in the past, not only sociologically but theologically. It had become unthinkable to dedicate a theological text to a ruling monarch and to call upon the government to maintain the purity of religion, as Calvin does. The modernisation of society, as this presents itself in the separation of church and state among other things, is manifest in his theology. Barth thinks of the church as a small group which by God’s grace has become engaged in a countermovement, and which is of importance to the whole society only as a countermovement. But in his theology this engagement does not obviously take the form of an hierarchically structured, broadly based people’s church; his view inclines rather to congregationalism. The strategy of a small group, the shaping of an elite of inwardly engaged individuals who have a realisation of the actual relations of things and who can act from this

5 See S. Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth. A Study in Biography and the History of Theology, University Park (PA), 1998 for an illustration of how Barth found it necessary to engage in a direct dialogue, in order to work out a thesis by Eberhard Busch. 6 For the Dutch context, see M.E. Brinkman, De theologie van Karl Barth: dynamo of dynamiet voor christelijk handelen. De politieke en theologische kontroverse tussen Nederlandse Barthianen en Neocalvinisten, Baarn 1983. 254 chapter six stance, fits with this.7 It also fits with this strategy that Barth enforces a strict separation between politics and theology. Sometimes he makes this separation so rigorously that readers got the impression that theology could go its way unperturbed, although the world was ablaze.8 The reader will find, however, that he is on the wrong track if he believes that for Barth theology can be separated from its public function. On further examination the imperturbability proves to have a clear theological and strategic reason behind it, as can be seen in Barth’s response to Hitler’s coming to power. According to Barth, the effort of the Nazi regime to bring all political, social and ecclesiastical organisations into line, which was greeted in National Socialist and conservative circles with their romantic vision of the past as a vitally necessary restoration of the unity of church and state,9 does not stand by itself. In his eyes this was merely the rank shoot of a poisonous plant that had for much longer grown rampantly in Western theology. Barth did not choose to view the struggle over the churches as an isolated event, but as the frothing tip of a wave that had travelled much further and was pro- pelled by hidden forces. He therefore worked on the development of a theology and Christian doctrine, in the conviction that there would only be a productive relation between theological positions and contemporary situation if this theology provided ‘comprehensive clarification’ and had the courage to ‘follow the rhythm of its own objectivity’,

7 See, for instance, how already as early as 1919, in the Preface to the first edition of The Epistle to the Romans, Barth describes his work as ‘a preliminary undertaking [which makes] further co-operation … necessary’, and the characterisation of the church in KD IV/3780(ET, 681) as ‘the provisional representation of the calling of all humanity … as it has taken place in Him’. See particularly the study by G. Pfleiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie, Tübingen 2000, which places Barth’s theology in the context of attempts to shape a theological elite, a ‘strong’ acting subject, which understands itself and, in doing so, is enabled to discover what the Word of God is within a given situation (426–428). Here with Barth the professionalisation of life, so characteristic of modernity, the roots of which Max Weber suggested lay in modern Christianity, reaches Christianity itself (440). 8 The sharpest example of this is Barth’s response in 1933 when he was asked to comment on the assumption of power by Hitler. By his own admission the most decisive thing that he had to say was the simple statement that he would continue his theological teaching ‘als wäre nichts geschehen—vielleicht in leise erhöhten Ton, aber ohne direkte Bezugnahmen—Theologie und nur Theologie zu treiben’. Zie K. Barth, Theologische Existenz Heute (1933). Neu herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Hinrich Stoevesandt, München 1984, 26. 9 For the historic context, see L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz, ‘Die Kirchen zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand im Dritten Reich’, in: W. Hüffmeier und M. Stöhr, Barmer Theologische Erklärung 1934–1984. Geschichte, Wirkung, Defizite, Bielefeld 1984, 11–29. the way of knowing god 255 so that it would become clear what the real problems of the day were.10 Focusing on the subject that is central to this chapter, Barth’s reflection on the theme of knowledge of God, and the accompanying rejection of ‘natural theology’ in KD II/1 as the mortal enemy of all Christian theology, must be read as opposition to the acceptance and glorification of Nazism in Germany. Subsequently, the radical re-evaluation of the doctrine of election in KD II/2, which we will discuss in the next chapter, can not be seen apart from the conviction that God is never a tyrant to whom mankind essentially does not matter, and who has overseen the destruction of a part of humanity. In short, on further examination the impression of timelessness does not appear to tally with the evidence. According to Barth, theology fulfils its task most adequately when it has the courage to concentrate on Christian doctrine as an unceasing exercise in listening. Barth’s presupposition is that the principle of the primacy of God in his revelation makes it possible to include everything that happens in the social and political sphere in a constant interaction between the Word of God and everyday reality.11 The conviction that Barth’s theology is not a timeless theology, and thus can not be studied in that way, has become deeply rooted in Barthian studies of the last decades, in large part through the efforts of T. Rendtorff and F.W. Marquardt, however open to challenge the remainder of their views may be.12 However, there is still no definitive answer to the question of how the relationship between Barth’s theology and its context must be defined. A number of possibilities or approaches present themselves, through which one can discuss or expound his theology as an engaged theology involved with its times.13 As was indicated above, the arrangement of a diptych of pre-modern

10 KD I/1,XI;ET,XVI. 11 W. Krötke, ‘Die Christologie Karl Barths als Beispiel für den Vollzug seiner Exegese’ in: M. Trowitzsch (Hrsg.), Karl Barths Schriftauslegung, Tübingen 1996, 19,note 74. 12 F.W. Marquardt must be accorded the honour of having powerfully placed the discussion of the historical and social rootage of Barth’s theology at the heart of the theological agenda with his study Theologie und Sozialismus: das Beispiel Karl Barths, Munich, 1972. This resulted in a large number of studies that all had Barth’s relationship with the history of his time and, in particular, with modernity as their subject. See, among others, M.E. Brinkman, Karl Barths socialistische stellingname. Over de betekenis van het socialisme voor zijn theologie, Baarn 1982. 13 See H.J. Adriaanse, ‘Die Barthrezeption in den neuen hermeneutischen Entwick- lungen’, Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 14 (1998), 52–64. 256 chapter six and post-Kantian theology followed here implies that Barth’s theology in any case must be viewed against the background of intellectual history, which has been disrupted by the Kantian critique of the means of knowing, and that his Christian theology responds to the problematic of modernity. This is anything but an assertion that Barth has been directly influenced by Kant in all sorts of ways, or is responding directly to him. One must first take Barth’s theology as a Christian theology which attempts to speak of the matter of Christian faith, God in his turning toward man, in a responsible way. That is its primary intention, anditisfirstofallonthispointthatonemustmeasureit.Butthatdoes not eliminate what was previously argued with regard to background and context. On the contrary, the critical acuity and value of a theology lies precisely in the manner in which it implicitly or explicitly carries on the debate with its own environment and its own soul. Barth’s theological labour took place in a constellation in which the ideals, possibilities and limits of modernity also had enormous consequences for theology. In part he accepted these possibilities, limits and ideals, and in part he critically reworked and corrected them in his theology. Moreover, he very deliberately wished to connect with the notions that are distinctive for Reformation theology. Church and theology have their ground and criterion in the Word of the Living God and therefore display an orientation to the Bible and Jesus Christ. The dual sounding boards of Reformation theology and modernity define the methodological problem in this dogmatics, for which Barth sought an answer. How must we speak about God so that we are still speaking about God? With that the question of content comes to the fore. What must we say about God, and what is the guarantee that what we are saying is still about the God of the Bible? The choice Barth makes in terming his dogmatics a church dogmatics is directly related with the foregoing. The term ‘church’ has a critical point, with reference both to the prevailing theological traditions as well as the institutional church. In Chapter 8, in the rejection of infant baptism, we will encounter an example of a critique of the latter; here we are first dealing with the first critical sense of the term ‘church’. Barth discovered more and more that Christian thinking about God, man and the world was never a ‘free’ occupation, but in a spiritual sense is tied to the space of the church. In short, in Barth’s own more mature theology tradition is the space in which systematic reflection finds, learns and reformulates its material. Society as a context and reference point for theology does not drop out of sight in Barth. The the way of knowing god 257 assumption is that society will best be served if theology expressly takes its place in the space of tradition, and attunes its ear to listen to the Word. 14 Barth’s concept of knowledge of God leads to a critical stance in, and over against, one’s own culture. He proposed a theology that structurally keeps alive the realisation of the difference between man and God, between human experience and knowledge on the one hand and God, who continues to speak through his Word, on the other. It is an attempt to assure at the conceptual level that one’s own experience, words and concepts can never become more than secondary phenomena, answers with respect to the primacy of God’s own approach and revelation, which can never be cancelled out. Barth himself was always allergic to social and political positions in which this distinction between what he called the penultimate and ultimate was forgotten.15 The critique is obvious. Is Barth then himself above this reproach when he, in his sometimes very decidedly political positions, identifies the cause of Christ with a certain position, as he does in the famous letter to Hromadka?16 And applied to the foundations of his theology:

14 With an eye to the various contexts of theology it is worthwhile to distinguish between that which theology says directly to its time, on short wave, one might say, and on the other side a theological reflection that enters into debate with the underlying motives and structures of a culture—long wave, so to speak. Long wave is slower, but its strength is all the deeper and more powerful for that. Dogmatic reflection will have to find the courage to first of all be of service in long wave. Only then can it be productive in short wave. Barth’s theology and life is an example of both. 15 The examples are well-known, and are gradually being documented in Barth studies. One may think of Barth’s consternation at the identification of the German cause with God’s purpose at the outbreak of World War I, of his critique of Leonard Ragaz, who in his eyes identified socialism too closely with the Kingdom of God, and of the manner in which Hitler’s assumption of power was greeted in leadership circles in Germany as a direct intervention by God, but also of positions in which either Western capitalism or Eastern European state communism was too directly identified with the will of God. For a brief and popular overview, see F. Jehle, Lieber unangenehm laut als angenehm leise. Der Theologe Karl Barth und die Politik 1906–1968,Zürich1999 and T.J. Gorringe, Karl Barth against Hegemony. Christian Theology in Context,Oxford1999.See also my Anfängliche Theologie, 63–72. 16 K. Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme 1938–1945,Zürich19853, 58–59: ‘Jeder tschechische Soldat, der … streitet und leidet, wird es auch für uns—und, ich sage es heute ohne Vorbehalt: er wird es auch für die Kirche Jesu Christi tun, die in dem Dunstkreis der Hitler und Mussolini nur entweder der Lächerlichkeit oder der Ausrottung verfallen kann.’ The exchange of letters is also included in M. Rohkrämer (Hrsg.), Freundschaft im Widerspruch. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Karl Barth, Josef L. Hromádka und Josef B. Soucek 1935–1968. Mit einer Einleitung von J.M. Lochman,Zürich1995, 54; now also included in K. Barth, Offene Briefe 1935–1942, 114. 258 chapter six are his thesis of the primacy of the Word, of God’s immutable subjectivity, and yes, even the prophetic pronouncements of the synod at Bar- men,17 not equally human acts, the work of man, and therefore subject to all ambivalence? To ask the question implies the answer. No human act whatsoever escapes this ambivalence. What can be given conceptual form is that one’s own words and judgements always remain fluid. Over against the primacy of God’s Word the human subject is constantly made aware of his own secondary position. Man is the one who is called to obedience, to an attitude of prayer, which results in this dependence on God. The concept of this second panel is no less theocentric and no less focused on culture and society than was the case with Calvin. It is certainly theocentric in a different way, and focuses differently on culture and society. Theology is useful and worthwhile when it confronts the church, the Christian community and, at its deepest, the world ‘with the fact that not only sheds new light on, but materially changes, all things and everything in all things—the fact that God is’.18 With this we find ourselves at the hub, on which, we would emphasise, all Christian theology turns, and through which its exercise within an agnostic and anthropocentric cultural climate becomes a astonishing and at the same time hopeful phenomenon. Audacity is necessary to look at the world and man, at ourselves and our history, in the light of a living God.

6.2. ‘Not without audacity’: the primacy of revelation

‘Without audacity there can be no foundation for theology’. This axiom, once meant ironically by F. Overbeck and cited by Karl Barth in his review of Overbeck’s posthumously published book Christentum und Kultur,19 couldbeusedasamottoforBarth’sowntheologyingen- eral, and his concept of the knowledge of God in particular. The back-

17 For the text of the Barmen Declaration and a commentary by H. Asmussen, see EB 2, 255–279. Barth very decidedly experienced, and wished to see the Declaration valued as prophetic speech. In his deepest conviction it regarded it as more than a ‘Theologenfündlein’. See KD II/1, 198;ET,176: ‘not merely a pretty little discovery of the theologians’. 18 KD II/1, 289;ET,258. 19 ‘Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie’ in: Karl Barth, Die Theologie und die Kirche,München1928, 23. the way of knowing god 259 ground of Overbeck’s remark was his conviction that Christian theology had had all the ground cut away from under it by historical investigation. The expectation of the first Christians that God’s kingdom would quickly descend from the heavens to earth is of such a totally different structure from the expectation of modern Christian- ity, namely that the Kingdom will be realised by way of a humani- sation of their own culture, that there is simply no relation between the them. Concrete eschatological expectations and cosmological con- ceptions separate the two. If Overbeck can stand for the voices that maintain that Christian belief has been fundamentally problematised on historical grounds and argue that people can no longer adhere to Christian belief without losing their intellectual integrity, Barth is the model of the attempt to reflect on the premises of that Christian faith anew, even after the problematising of Christian faith in Western culture. He does not begin his theology by taking up general problems. Swelling prolegomena were one of the characteristics of the theological projects that initially were developed in response to the break in Europe between Rome and the Reformation, and later in reaction to the process of continuing differentiation among domains of knowledge. That Barth’s theological concept belongs in the second, modern panel is clear simply from the fact that the Kirchliche Dogmatik begins with an extensive prolegomenon entitled Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes. Prolegomena zur kirchlichen Dogmatik. What is found in this prolegomenon is however as surprising as it is pregnant. If it had been customary for prolegomena to discuss questions which have to be answered first before one comes to the content of the project, Barth makes clear that he will not separate the way of knowing God from the content of the knowledge of God. Prolegomena are not the things which must be said first; they are the first things which need to be said. One can not first speak about the way of knowing God, as if this involved only formal considerations of a general nature. Speaking about the way and nature of knowing God is not possible without discussing the content of the knowledge of God. Or, to put it better, the way and nature of human knowledge of God are completely defined by the content of the knowledge of God, that which God himself reveals. In doing this, Barth relativises the distinction within the concept of faith that had made itself at home in Protestant orthodoxy as the difference between fides quae and fides qua: one cannot think about the way of knowing God without Him who is the content of what is known in human religious knowledge. In KD 260 chapter six

I/1—thus in his prolegomenon—Barth formulates the unity of the way (or form) and content of knowledge of God in the thesis ‘God reveals himself as Lord’.20 This elementary thesis is clearly what the content of the revelation is. Revelation is essentially the self -revelation that is further characterised as the revelation of God’s lordship or the revelation of the basileia theou. One can hear the modern rejection of revelation as the imparting of preternatural truths reverberating through this definition of revelation as self-revelation. But there is more to it: one arrives at human knowledge of God only because God reveals himself as the Lord, the Kurios. The relation is constructed from God’s side. He is the acting subject. In its whole, the thesis says something about the ambivalence toward the idea of divine revelation and knowledge of God. In this thesis the question of whether God can be known on the basis of human faculties or experience is radicalised and integrated by powerfully denying it. In this—particularly in his early ‘dialectic’ phase—Barth follows a strategy of negative association. He sides with his times in the assumption that there is nothing that can be known of God with certainty on the basis of experience in nature and history. The latent agnosticism is exposed and intensified into a radical denial. This radicalisation has a theological basis, however. Knowledge of God—knowledge of God that really saves and liberates—is a gift of God, an act of grace. It is an act through which God’s divinity and being as Lord are known. It is this dominion of God in his revelation which Barth points to in KD I/1 as the root of the doctrine of the Trin- ity.21 That is to say, as a construct the doctrine of the Trinity is a human product; the ground in which this construct has its roots are the acts of God. In this way, within theology itself Barth drives home the realisation that the presence of God can not be proven. Only God himself can himself produce the evidence by being present. In this way Barth makes a connection with the question which faced theology after Kant, namely the question of where the anchorage and mediation of God’s revelation is to be found in this finite reality.22 In the phase of his dogmatic theology, the strategy of negative association recedes more and

20 KD I/1, 323;ET,314. 21 KD I/1, 324;ET,314. 22 See H.M. Kuitert, Wat heet geloven. Structuur en herkomst van de christelijke geloofsuitspraken, Baarn 1977, 210–215, according to which Barth thereby exposes the subjectivism of liberal theology. The appeal to revelation serves as legitimisation for his own religious thinking. See also B. Kamphuis, Boven en beneden. Het uitgangspunt van de christologie en de the way of knowing god 261 more into the background in favour of the effort to formulate the perspectives in which speaking about God has a chance of really remaining speaking about God. In this second panel we will focus on this later phase in Barth’s theology. A few words will not be out of place regarding the limitations which accompany this. For the purposes of this investigation, there are highly defensible reasons for limiting the study to the Kirchliche Dogmatik, because in this opus magnum Barth’s concept of knowledge of God is found in its most mature form. But this context is still too broad, and therefore two chief points of reference have been chosen. Attention will be focused on the main outlines of the second part of the KD,‘Die Lehre von Gott’ (KD II/1), where knowledge of God is discussed as both way and event, and in its content, namely the being of God and his qualities.23 The investigation continues on into the doctrine of election, because it is here that Barth’s thinking finds its substantive heart (KD II/1). Barth’s thinking on baptism (KD IV/4), where the epistemological implications of Barth’s doctrine of the prophetic office of Christ from KD IV/3 make themselves felt, will be taken as the second point of reference. However, a discussion of continuity and discontinuity in Barth’s development will not be a focus of the study in this second panel.24 Only where this is useful for a sounder understanding will we now and then, by way of an excursus, sketch the lines through for the course of Barth’s development.

problematiek van de openbaring, nagegaan aan de hand van de ontwikkelingen bij Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeﬀer en Wolfhart Pannenberg,Kampen1999, 204, which supports Kuitert on this. 23 For a very diﬀerent sort of investigation, where Barth is followed step by step, see the studies of J. Wissink, De inzet van de theologie. Een onderzoek naar de motieven en de geldigheid van Karl Barths strijd tegen de natuurlijke theologie, Amersfoort 1983 and R. Chia, Revelation and Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, Bern/Berlin 1999. 24 Investigation of the development and phases of Barth’s theology has become a genre all of its own within Barth studies. See, among others, I. Spieckermann, Gotteserkenntnis. Ein Beitrag zur Grundfrage der neuen Theologie Karl Barths,München1985; M. Beintker, Die Dialektik in der ‘dialektischen Theologie’ Karl Barths. Studien zur Entwicklung der Barthschen Theologie und zur Vorgeschichte der ‘Kirchlichen Dogmatik’,München1987;C. van der Kooi, Anfängliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barths 1909–1927,München 1987; H. Anzinger, Glaube und kommunikatieve Praxis. Eine Studie zur ‘vordialektischen’ Theologie Karl Barths, München 1991; J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption des Neukantianismus im Römerbrief und ihre Bedeutung für die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths, Berlin/New York 1995;BruceL.McCormack,Karl Barth’s critically realistic dialectical Theology. Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936,Oxford1997. 262 chapter six

6.3. Human knowing of God as theological datum

As Barth begins in his prolegomenon with the phenomenon of the proclamation of the church, in order from this to move back to revelation as the prerequisite for this proclamation, he also begins his doctrine of God with a localisation of theological thinking. Theological thought has its place within the space of the church, where people speak about and hear about God. What the church does in all its activities and everything it undertakes, presupposes God as the subject of everything that is to be said and heard. The point of departure for the church and its acts is the reality of God, who lets himself be known to men and practices community with them.25 Starting from the actual knowing of God has a number of consequences that deserve attention. First, the question is not whether God can be known and how far our capacity to know reaches. A question of that sort, Barth says, can only arise from the perspective of an outsider. The community lives within the circle of the movement that God has set in motion by making himself known to man. The whole raison d’être of the church depends on whether God is indeed present with the people who speak and hear within the church. Christian theology exists thanks to the truth of this insider’s perspective, or it does not exist at all. That is the first point. The second, which is connected with this, involves the order of the modalities of reality and possibility. What is revolutionary about Barth’s concept is his reversal of the usual order. In classic foundational thinking, the question about the possibilities of knowing comes first. The first thing asked is what man, on the basis of his faculties for knowing, can know. The primary question is about the reach of human reason. The extent to which things visible and invisible can actually be known depends on the answer to this question. Barth reverses this order. The question is not whether it is possible to know God. The starting point for the theological concept is the reality of knowledge of God, which presupposes that God actually permits himself to be known. Man already stands in this reality. He has already been reached, he already stands before God, and God already has him in sight. In short, the facticity of knowledge of God—and thus the modality of reality—precedes questions of possibility. In this respect Barth’s theol-

25 KD II/1, 1;ET,3. the way of knowing god 263 ogy is a form of realism. He asks ﬁrst about that which is known, that which we are in fact confronted with in our knowing, in order to then pose questions about the possibility that serves as the foundation for our knowledge. It is at this point that Barth’s position is at odds with all positions which, appealing to Kant, regard it as impossible that God could be the object of human knowledge. Revelation means that this barrier has been lifted—and is continually being lifted—from God’s side. Accord- ing to Barth, the only theologically legitimate question is therefore to what extent God can be known.26 The question of whether God can be known is immediately ruled out. This question implies a search for what has already been found, namely God. In situating itself this way, Barth’s theology takes the standpoint of faith. From the outset, the reader is invited to take his or her place within the circle of faith. Ques- tions about what constitutes knowledge of God are already entirely within the movement of the knowledge of God.27 It is understandable that this starting place for Barth’s concept makes it attractive for ‘believing atheists’. From this world there is only one way that authoritatively leads to God. Were it not that they every now and then stumble across Him, feel themselves forced to call on him, Christian belief would not be an option. Further along we will still see how Barth does all that he can to grant human knowledge of God, in all its elements, a conceptual raison d’être only to the extent that it is supported and guided by God’s own turn toward man. Without this vital speaking and acting by God, human knowledge of God is an empty husk, in which there is nothing to be found. Knowledge of God cannot be summoned up by man; man ﬁnds himself in it, or it is not found at all.

6.4. Knowledge of God as event

The characterisation of knowledge of God, as it is given in the title of §25, ‘The Fulﬁlment of the Knowledge of God’, is crucial for this concept. Knowledge of God is not a static entity, and for Barth, as a good student of the post-Kantian, ‘modern’ tradition, as represented by the names of Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Herrmann, it is not comprised

26 KD II/1, 3;ET,5. 27 By G. Pﬂeiderer, Karl Barths praktische Theologie, 141 formulated as ‘prinzipialisierte invertierte praktische Transzendentaltheorie’. 264 chapter six primarily of articles of faith; it can best be characterised as a movement, an event that has its origin in God, and in which man is given a part. The relation between God and man is constituted in this movement proceeding from God. It is a circle, in which man moves forward from faith to faith and from knowledge to knowledge.28 In this movement man is given a role in the self-knowledge of God. It has the nature of a personal encounter in which God shares part of himself. With such a great emphasis on knowing as an encounter event, as an activity, of course the question naturally arises of whether it can be designated by the noun ‘knowledge’. What role do observation, propositions, notions, concepts and texts play in this concept? We must acknowledge that Barth has no intention of allowing knowledge of God to be reduced to an action. In knowledge of God, God is the object of an act of knowing. Barth formally characterises the act of knowing with terms such as observation, perceiving and understanding. The Kantian background is unmistakable. Observation stores up unprocessed sensory data; perception and human faculties for understanding lead to knowledge.29 Con- cepts and propositions play a role; man must use them to interpret, but only so far as they are included in the context of a personal contact, a contact in which God opens himself to be addressed as Thou, and the human being knows him or herself to be addressed as a person. Barth recognises that these are human words, ecclesiastical doctrine, concepts—but none of these factors within our history and on the axis of time are of primary interest for him. What is theologically important is the vertical relation of God’s acts to these concepts, words and narra- tives as signs. Theologically situating that which has a role as a means on the horizontal axis is overshadowed by the vertical element in which all forms and concepts of our knowledge are included in the movement and mental activity of knowing. The assertion that man has no access to this event from his side, and that it does not have its origin in man, is fundamental for Barth’s concept. The decisive conclusion is that the basis of this movement which leads to knowledge of God on the part of man must be sought in the openness of God himself. Theologically one must return to that

28 KD II/1, 40;ET,37–38: ‘In love we are set on the circular course in which ther is no break, in which we can and shall only go further—from faith to faith, from knowledge to knowledge—never beginning with ourselves (and that means, with our own ability for faith and knowledge) but therefore also never ending with ourselves (and that means, with our inability for faith and knowledge).’ 29 Cf.J.Wissink,De inzet van de theologie, 21. the way of knowing god 265 sphere which is closed to man as man, but which, once God involves man in knowing Him, is de facto not closed. This characterisation of knowledge of God does not infringe on a sphere to which we as men have no access. On the strength of God’s willingness, in the opposite perspective one can however say that God breaks in on our sphere.30 Put in other words, knowing God is a grace, is a sui generis event for which there are no analogies. It is the mystery of divine pleasure, to which no earthly analogies lend us access. God’s breaking into our sphere, his choosing to live in unity with the man Jesus, is an act which is not accessible for us on the basis of any other earthly data. The accessibility rests, without any restrictions, in God’s own act, and certainty of it is only to be found in the actual interaction of God and man. To put it in Barth’s own words, ‘In it rests the undialectical certainty of the realisation of the true knowledge of God’.31 In short, if man looks to himself, to the flow of his own thought, to his own psychological state, then he will find varying moments of certainty and uncertainty. In the circle of knowing God, he is summoned to also look to the other side, to Christ. In that name he stands before divine pleasure, before grace, that transcends and fills the fragility of knowledge of God on the human side.

6.5. Knowledge of God as participation in God’s self-knowledge

Now it is also possible to further characterise what the relation is of God and human knowledge of God: on the human side, the knowing of God is participation in God’s self-knowledge. On his way toward man, God shares his self-knowledge in ‘impartation’, Anteilgabe.32 It is one of the essential characteristics of this concept that God permits himself to be known wholly, and not merely in part. Even when God makes himself known through the mediation of an earthly element, the sharing is not partial in the sense of a certain quantity or segment. Barth has already explicitly described revelation as the repetition of God’s being,33 as the representation of the event that takes place in God

30 KD II/1, 72;ET,67: ‘We therefore have to go back to a sphere which, since wee are men and not God, might be entirely closed for us, But in the fulﬁlment of the true knowledge of God, it is not actually closed’. 31 KD II/1, 81;ET,74. 32 KD II/1, 55–56;ET,51–52. 33 KD I/1, 315;ET,299: ‘Revelation in the Bible is not a minus; it is not another over 266 chapter six himself. If man knows God, God is known entirely, or not at all. In this movement the emphasis lies therefore on the cognisance of God, as He exists in the mystery of his threefold being.34 That does not mean that in the knowing of God there cannot be movement or growth. There is a movement that leads deeper into the whole of this knowing and is expressed in the term mystery. The word mystery serves to characterise the depth and inexhaustibility of this knowing of God. It should be clear that at this point there is a huge diﬀerence dis- cernible from Calvin’s vision of knowledge of God. For Calvin, revelation is a form of accommodated speaking. In his speaking God adapts himself to man and human measure. For Calvin it is most certainly possible that God holds certain matters hidden in his Counsel. Accommo- dation means that revelation is also viewed quantitatively. For Calvin, revelation is composed of revelations, announcements. If in the second panel revelation is thematised as self-revelation and knowledge of God is basically participation in God’s self-knowing, a quantitative view is no longer possible. Human knowledge of God then always has the quality of being seized by what God essentially is, and coincides with Him. This seizure can certainly deepen, but only within the relation of the participation.

6.6. God as the object of knowledge

If knowing God is participation in God’s self-knowledge, this immediately has implications for the content of the knowing. Knowing means that God is in some form or another the object of observation, perceiving and understanding. Barth is not willing to accept less than these terms, although further along he will specify what the content of the observation, perception and understanding means with regard to God. After all, God is not an object like other objects.35 From the perspective of the ‘objectness’ of God, we have the fundamental assertion that God, whatever the case, falls within the horizon of man as an object of knowledge, and that the categories of observation, perceiving and understanding, as they are normally found in epistemology, are applica- against God. It is the same, the repetition of God. Revelation is indeed God’s predicate, but in such a way that this predicate is in every way identical with God Himself.’ 34 KD II/1, 56;ET,52. 35 KD II/1, 13;ET,16. the way of knowing god 267 ble. The reality of religious knowledge stands or falls with the reality of this appearance of God within the human horizon. If one cannot speak of observation, perceiving and understanding, the life of the church, the calling of people to God, their being moved, their protest, their gratitude and daily prayer are all to be viewed as a dream world, an illusory world of concepts which correspond to no reality.36 That people hear about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, about grace and truth, of promises and commandments, that there is something of the nature of observation, perceiving and understanding on the human side of God in his works, has its reality in God’s making himself the object of human knowledge.37 In terms that are reminiscent of the German idealist tradition, Barth says ‘Only because God posits himself as the object is man posited as the knower of God.’38 Theconstantdependenceofreality on God’s acts comes across clearly here. Man can only have and know God as an object that postulates itself.39 The believing subject exists only in the act of God’s own self-revelation. This is Barth’s manner of expressing that faith does not lie within the control of man himself. If he encounters himself as believing, as knowing, that is a matter of grace, a transition from non-being to being, the creation of an I that dares to say yes to a God who gives himself. Once that is said, then it must follow that God makes himself knowable as an object, to man as a subject. In this phase of Barth’s theology, the acknowledgement that God makes himself the object of human knowing means a high regard for indirectness of all knowledge of God. Over against Augustine he maintains that no one can transcend language, concepts and other human images.40 God meets man in the midst of this world, as creature. This means that words, terms, concepts, preaching and ecclesiastical acts have a legitimate place in Barth’s concept. He no longer stresses, as he did in the ‘dialectic’ phase of his theology, human impotence to speak God’s Word. In the foreground of his doctrine of God stands the contention that God himself permits peopletospeakhisWord,gives them his Erlaubnis.

36 KD II/1, 2;ET,4. 37 KD II/1, 1;ET,3. 38 KD II/1, 22;ET,22. 39 Ibidem: ‘Ánd so man can only have God as the self-posited object.’ 40 KD II/1, 9–11;ET,10–12. 268 chapter six

6.7. Faith as a form of knowledge

As was the case in the first panel, the concept of knowing thus plays a key role. Because in religious knowledge we are not dealing with an ordinary object from created reality, but with God, knowledge of God must be further particularised. Faith is the positive relation of man toward God, in whom the believer trusts. It is the ‘yes’ by which a person acknowledges that he is completely committed and declares that ‘God is God and He is his God’.41 That ‘yes’ is central to this definition of faith as the movement of the whole human person. Faith is surrender of the whole person to God, whose being and holiness is expressed in the tautology ‘God is God’. Along with the term knowing, words such as love, trust, obey and obligation also belong to the characterisation of the act of faith. These words can all be used to describe the total reality of faith. It is, however, characteristic of Barth’s concept of faith that, with express reference to Calvin, he makes the concept of knowing central.42 In fact, the concept of knowing not only makes it possible to involve all the other concepts mentioned, but more than all else it is valuable because it guarantees a structure in man’s relation to God that Barth emphatically wishes to retain. The characterisation of faith as an act of knowing expresses that in his faith man forges a link between himself and God, but at the same time makes a distinction between himself and God. In the relation with God, man acknowledges himself to be the one loved and blessed; he recognises God as the one from whom this love and blessing comes. Knowing is an act which links and separates, one in which the duality is not lost in an undifferentiated unity, but which creates association and connection, which nonetheless respects the peculiarity of each of those linked in it.43

6.8. The place of the human subject

Starting from God’s approach to man implies that a decision has been taken about the place of the human subject in relation to God. With the fact that God places himself within the human horizon as an object

41 KD II/1, 11;ET,12. 42 KD II/1, 12;ET,13. 43 KD II/1, 12;ET,13. the way of knowing god 269 of knowledge, there is implicitly a link forged,44 and a requirement of obedience. From these givens about the reality of faith, Barth comes to the conclusion that not all questions can be asked any more. There are questions which become meaningless in this context. For example, the question of whether God can be known becomes absurd, if God has already provided his ‘self-evidence’. Put differently, in the living relationship to God’s Word, in the experience of being spoken to, uncertainty and doubt are banished. It is important to remember in relation to this that Barth’s arguments on this point are primarily theological, and that it is not his intention to give a psychological characterisation. He consciously avoids the question of which psychological experiences or emotions man encounters in his dealings with God. He limits himself to a purely theological characterisation. His contention that true knowledge of God is ‘is not and cannot be attacked; it is without anxiety and without doubt’ can only be understood in this way.45 This characterisation appears to be true only to the extent that the tie to the living Word of God is reality. The concrete believing individual just surfaces at the edge when he writes, ‘The battle against uncertainty and doubt is not foreigntomanevenhere.’46 But the psychological aspects are deliberately left out of consideration as much as possible. The purpose of this theology is the characterisation of an objective reality from a strictly theological perspective, in which psychology (although perhaps not in theory) is granted hardly any role in practice. Theoretically Barth does indeed leave room for human experience as a secondary and dependent element in the relation between God and man. However, the primary attention for the objective element in knowledge of God is the critical mass of his theology, and fosters a practical mistrust of the experiential element. That mistrust, and the obstructive effects it has had, are something which has continued to haunt this theological current.47 In implementing a rigid and deliberate differentiation between various domains, Barth’s concept is an exponent of the differentiation which is so characteristic of modernity. He provides an analysis—or

44 KD II/1, 5;ET,7. 45 KD II/1, 5;ET,7. 46 KD II/1, 6;ET,7. 47 In retrospect we have to say that the hostility to psychology that is connected with this has had deep and, where it has taken on an independent existence, damaging effects in the wider realm of church and theology. If the only thing that be done is to stake out danger signs around any interest in human experience and psychological processes—in other words, around anything that lies in the horizontal plane—this leads 270 chapter six if one may choose to call it that, a phenomenology—of the strictly theological element of faith. From the theological perspective, uncertainty and doubt are part of an entirely different process, namely that of man going in search of God entirely outside of this link with the Word. Only when tied to the living Word can the good fight of faith be fought.48 Barth therefore speaks of two circles, or two closed systems, which do not touch upon one another. It should not therefore be surprising that prayer has an essential—that is to say, a theological—place in this concept of knowing God. Conceptually, prayer is wesensnotwendig, of essential necessity.49 Because knowledge of God is a gift, a gift that God freely gives, this relationship correlates with a continuing dependence on human side, and thus with prayer. In prayer man acknowledges that he is reliant on God and evidences his position as a subject over against God. In this way prayer also becomes the place that offers a prospect on another word which in Barth has not so much an ethical as a theological significance, namely obedience. Prayer is a visible sign that one does not stop with that which one already knows or understands on the basis of previous encounters, but that one is thrown back on the coming of God. The actions on the human side which correlate with God’s saving grace are obedience and prayer.50 In this context we encounter a concept that to an increasing degree will define the structure of human knowing and response, namely Entsprechung, correspondence or analogy. Human subjectivity takes on its colour and character in this concept. Because man has been given a role in knowing God, he is no longer an objective outsider, but an involved participant. Knowing God involves man as a participant and constitutes him as an answering and responding partner. In this panel knowing does not move toward a fulfilment in imitation; it is active participation and response. Ethics and dogmatics are extensions of one another, and it is impossible to say where the one ends and the other begins. to a damaging isolation of Barth’s theological legacy. On this obstructive effect see M. den Dulk, … Als twee die spreken. Een manier om de heiligingsleer van Karl Barth te lezen,’s Gravenhage 1987, 112, 226–231.See also the overview of the influence that Barth has had in the field of Biblical studies provided by J. Barr in The Concept of Biblical Theology. An Old Testament Perspective,London1999. For a powerful defence of Barth’s objectivism and anti-psychological stance see N.T. Bakker, Miskende Gratie. Van Calvijn tot Witsius. Een vergelijkende lezing, balans van 150 jaar gereformeerde orthodoxie,Kampen1991, 47–65 and idem, Geschiedenis in opspraak. Over de legitimatie van het concept geschiedenis,Kampen1996. 48 KD II/1, 7;ET,7. 49 KD II/1, 23;ET,22. 50 KD II/1, 27;ET,26. the way of knowing god 271

6.9. Mediation and sacramentality

In his revelation God makes himself the subject of human knowledge. In this way He becomes present with man. Barth however introduces a restriction into this, one which is reminiscent of the distinction which was made in classical dogmatics between theologia archetypa and theologia ectypa, although because of the content of the theologia,namelyGod’s self-knowledge, the distinction has much less effect.51 The nature of God’s presence with man varies, Barth suggests, according to the way in which God himself is present. To distinguish the two manners of objectivity or presence, Barth introduces the distinction between ‘primary and secondary objectivity’.52 God’s knowledge of himself is immediate, in no way veiled. That is God’s primary objectivity. That knowledge which man has of God is veiled. That is God’s secondary objectivity. The latter thus means that God makes use of things of this earth in order to reveal himself. More precisely, God makes use of what is not-God in order to reveal himself, God. No element in our reality is in itself able to reveal God. God’s explicit acts therefore also play a role in the revelation of God by means of what is essentially not-God. Barth’s verb here is active, the language directive. At the appointment of God, a piece of reality becomes operative for him. He determines and sanctifies certain elements from our reality as symbols, to clothe his presence.53 In this event an object from our created reality becomes more than it is in itself. Without that object becoming identical with God, it represents God. It clothes his acts, becomes a symbol or temple for them. This characterises the manner in which knowledge of God arises and exists as being very specific and defined. God does not reveal himself in everything and everyone. For its knowledge of God the Christian message does not refer man to the eternal, the infinite, the unfathomable. Those who wish to know God are directed to a concrete history, the history of prophets, apostles, of the man Jesus Christ. God teaches men to know him from his works, performed in specific places, at specific times. By this, knowledge of God in this concept is tied to concrete acts and spaces. It is not the world which as such coincides

51 R. Chia, Revelation and Theology. The Knowledge of God in Balthasar and Barth, 104–105. 52 KD II/1, 16;ET,16. 53 KD II/1, 16;ET,16. 272 chapter six with God’s presence, but on the basis of God’s choice and sanctification his work does indeed take place within this sphere.54 Barth has explicitly further qualified this concreteness of God’s self- revelation by linking it with two other concepts that are important within this study, namely sacrament and Christology. Christian knowledge of God is thus given a Christological foundation. Just as in the first panel, in the second too there is a deep coherence between thinking about the sacramental and Christology. The centre and inclusiveness of the sacramentalilty of God’s act is the human nature of Jesus Christ. Through union with the Word of God this creature is distinguished and appointed as the work and symbol of God. In other words, the human Jesus is localised as the place where God’s condescending to man occurs pre-eminently. That suggests that it is a unique occurrence, but this is a uniqueness that corresponding occurrences permit and suppose. The incarnation, the taking on of the humanity of Jesus by the eternal Word is indeed, according to Barth, a unique event, but that does not deny the possibility of continuations of it, proceeding from it as a centre, moving both forward and backward in time. In his doctrine of God he explicitly terms the humanity of Jesus the first sacrament, and as such the ground of reality and circumscribing concept of a sacramental repetition. Other sacramental realities are the people Israel—this was written in 1940!—and the church built upon the apostolate. They are denoted as the created realities that can bear witness to that which was real in Jesus Christ in a unique sense, namely the unity, or better, the union of Creator and creature.55 True knowledge of God therefore finds its origin in this extraordinary act of God. It is explicitly knowledge of the gracious act of God; it goes without saying that it is defined soteriologically. In this concept revelation is not thought of as a plurality of parts, but is each time singular and whole, because it is ultimately God himself who reveals himself as sacred reality. For a good understanding of Barth’s concept it is of the utmost importance to grasp the elementary difference between revelation and the means of revelation. In the incarnation a sharp distinction continues to exist between Jesus’ humanity as the means and God’s revelation

54 KD II/1, 21;ET,20: ‘Christian faith as knowledge of the true God lets itself be included in this area of objectivity, and allows itself to be kept in this area, which in itself and as such is certainly not identical with the objectivity of God. But in it God’s work takes place, and hence God’s own objectivity gives itself to be known and is to be known, and this on the the strength of the choice and sanctification of His free grace.’ 55 KD II/1, 58–59;ET,54. the way of knowing god 273 which makes use of this man Jesus. For this Barth reaches for terms from early Christology, namely the terms anhypostasis and enhypostasis. The humanity of Jesus is understood anhypostatically. That is to say, in itself the humanity of Jesus does not reveal God. Only by virtue of the taking on of the human, the assumptio of Jesus Christ by the eternal Son, thus by virtue of the enhypostasis of the human nature in the Son, is Jesus the revelation of God.56 Enhypostasis however is conceived of in as dynamic a manner as possible. It never under any circumstances becomes a condition or takes root as nature. In this way Barth keeps the gap between the man Jesus and his revelation as the Son as open as possible. The words of ICorinthians 13 about knowing in part and seeing through a glass darkly are identified by Barth with his postulating the hiddenness and indirectness of revelation. ‘Even the man Jesus as such is always enigma as well. If He is not only enigma, if as enigma He is also illumination, disclosure and communication, then it is thanks to His unity with the Son of God and therefore in the act oftherevelationoftheSonofGodandofthefaithinHimeffected by the Holy Spirit.’57 What Barth wishes to say is clear. One does not arrive at knowledge of God on the basis of a human and historical knowledge of Jesus. The earthly Jesus becomes a sacrament of God’s presence through God’s grace. Historical and literary investigations in themselves will never lead to faith. There are indeed some questions that must be raised systematically about this rigid division—and indeed separation—of domains. The question which arises in the exposition in KD II/1 is whether the relationship between Jesus and his revelation as the Son of God is then completely arbitrary. While there may be no necessary connection

56 Barth used the concepts of enhypostasis and anhypostasis in his own way. In the early church anhypostasis meant that the man Jesus had no existence apart from the tie with the Word, the Logos. That did not mean that as a man Jesus would not have had any individuality; that is not included in the word hypostasis. What the early church did intend to do with these dual terms was insure the unity of the person of Jesus Christ. If it is said that Jesus Christ as a unity is a true divine person (unio hypostatica), then that unity would be threatened if people subsequently spoke of two persons in Jesus Christ. The doctrine affirmed that no, this one person had his existence in the Word, in the second person of the Trinity. Therefore, the point of the concept lay in keeping together the true God-being and the true man-being of this one person. See A. van de Beek, De menselijke Persoon van Christus. Een onderzoek aangaande de gedachte van de anhypostasie van de menselijke natuur van Christus, 48–49 and G. Hunsinger, ‘Karl Barth’s Christology: its basic Chalcedonian Character’ in idem, Disruptive Grace. Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 131–147. 57 KD II/1, 61;ET,56. 274 chapter six between the earthly actions of Jesus, his historic Gestalt,andwhoHein fact is through God’s revelation, his Gehalt,doesthatatthesametime mean there is no connection whatsoever? Is the means of revelation only the opportunity for God’s revelation, or, in view of the content of the revelation, is there in retrospect, is there indeed a connection with the means of revelation? In terms of Augustine’s semantics, is there a connection between Jesus’ life and actions as signum and the revelation in this life of the kingdom of God as res, or is the connection entirely random? Barth’s use of the image of seeing through a glass darkly seems to indicate that for him the opacity of the symbol is the only viewpoint that he will allow in this phase of his theology. He is still moving along a track that is antithetical to the effort of the Leben Jesu- Forschung to arrive at a generally accepted appraisal of Jesus on the basis of historical and psychological investigation. The point of the insistence that Jesus is a riddle is that historical investigation cannot function as a basis for faith in Jesus. The only reason why Jesus Christ has theological significance and is an object of faith is the act of God in Him, the power of the Word of God. Within the programme of KD II/1 one can see this as a means of cutting off every attempt to arrive at ‘natural theology’. It would however bear witness to a certain folly to reject offhand every inquiry into the relation of this revelation with the actions of Jesus as the Gospels bear witness to them. The presence of the genre of gospels as part of the canon testifies to the perfect right, indeed the theological importance, of this inquiry.

6.10. The way of knowing God. Between mystery and truth

In his thought Barth’s approach to knowledge of God is severely ana- lytic. If human knowledge of God is genuine and real, it has its prerequisite and source in what God himself says. Because of this, this concept of religious knowledge can defined as ‘revelation theology’ in a strict sense. It will do no harm to spend a moment examining this concept, which is called upon so easily by contemporary theologians. At first glance it is a remarkable term. Every Christian theology will in one way or another appeal to revelation, to a transcendental element, but this appeal does not justify calling it revelation theology. That is true, and thus a narrower definition is required. One can only speak of revelation theology in a terminological sense if the subject of revelation is explicitly taken up as a theme and becomes the starting point the way of knowing god 275 of the thought. This is the case with Barth. That is a point which distinguishes this second panel from the first. As Barth himself indicates in §27, under the title ‘The Limits of the Knowledge of God’, his theological thinking on the existence and origin of human knowledge of God takes place between two limits, as it were. The terminus a quo any time God is spoken of is revelation, God himself, and that is also were we end up. The terminus ad quem is once again the knowledge of God. Possible human knowledge of God lies between these two limits. The section involved has two parts. The first part deals with the hiddenness of God as the terminus a quo of all that is said of God. The second part of this section is entitled ‘The Truthfulness of Human Knowledge of God’. In fact section 27 is once again an exposition of the thesis ‘God is known through God’. The beginning of knowledge of God has its origin in the recognition that God himself is the subject of this knowledge. Negatively, this means further emphasis on the proposition that it is not our own faculties for knowing which are the foundation which supports knowledge of God. For any evaluation of Barth’s view of human capacities this is of great importance. While it is quite true that knowledge of God cannot exist without human faculties, but it does not owe its existence to these human faculties.58 The emphasis in this concept is deliberately placed not on our own human capacities, but on the singularity of God as subject. In this concept revelation, God’s own act is the only element which is acknowledged as basic. From a general epistemological perspective this exclusive fixation on the element of revelation is to be regarded as inconceivably lopsided. It can however be understood as a form of theological reductionism in which only those elements which are constitutive for knowledge of God as such are acknowledged as fundamental. The concept of the second panel implicitly recognises that finiteness as such, including man with his faculties, can not produce knowledge of God. God, in his otherness or his holiness, is hidden from man. It must however be emphatically stressed that with Barth such an assessment of finiteness is justified indirectly, by theological argument. The hiddenness of God is not the result of a general ontology. At this point we see in this second panel an attempt to keep general ontology and theology strictly separated. Barth’s concept is an exponent of the aspiration that welcomes the disjunction of culture and Christian faith

58 KD II/1, 205;ET,183. 276 chapter six as a purification of Christian belief. Again we see the strategy with a negative association. Philosophical critique of classic metaphysics and the thinking about God as the highest being which accompanied it is drawn into theology as a blessing in disguise. The field in which Barth wants to carry out this purification is marked by the concepts of hiddenness, incomprehensibility and ineffability. He pauses to provide an exhaustive examination of how these concepts are a familiar and wide-spread theme throughout the tradition of Christian doctrine,59 and that God’s incomprehensibilitas is even counted among his qualities. In his judgement it however remains veiled in the mist whether the tradition wishes to have the incomprehensibility of God regarded as an assertion of Christian belief, or whether it simply annexed a theme from philosophy. To his mind, it can not be ruled out that with the hiddenness and ineffability of God one is saying about the same as what the Platonic ideal or Kantian regulative idea stood for.60 The attempt at purification and to separate out a general philosophical ontological concept at any rate says enough about the new self-confidence that appears in this second panel. Barth seeks to regard the incomprehensibility of God and his hiddenness not as a general truth, but considers them as a truth of faith with its roots within Christian knowledge of God. Barth’s exposition of the boundaries of knowledge of God thus is definitely intended to exert a critical and cleansing function with regard to Christian doctrinal tradition. The incomprehensibility of God is not one of the qualities of God standing alongside the others, but is a constant which accompanies and qualifies everything which is said of God’s virtues.61 The incomprehensibility of God expresses that human thinking and understanding are not as such in the position to comprehend, conceive and understand God.62 It must be repeated again: knowledge of God is a matter of grace. In summary, in this concept of knowledge of God, hiddenness is not a predicate which can be ascribed to God on the basis of a general ontology. It is to be regarded as a quality which accompanies the acts of God from the outset. God himself is not hidden; in his being as Father, Son and Spirit He is himself obvious. However, the veiling is a direct

59 For example Augustine, Sermo 117, 3.5: ‘De Deo loquimur, quid mirum, si non comprehendis? Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus.’ 60 KD II/1, 207–208;ET,184–186. 61 He names H. Bavinck as one of the few who have realised this. KD II/1, 208;ET, 186. 62 KD II/1, 209;ET,187. the way of knowing god 277 consequence of his revelation. Because God becomes present with man in a part of our reality, seen from His perspective he at the same time renounces his manifestness to the extent that this involves concrete means. In this context, Barth labels this humiliation. Compared with the unveiled way in which God himself is manifest, he degrades himself and becomes alienated from himself in the mediation of revelation.63 Applied to the incarnation, this means that because God revealed himself in Jesus Christ, in a piece of earthly reality, he at the same time hides the glory with which He himself is present. In the incarnation he indeed does reveal his glory, but in the doctrines of God the accent still rests primarily on the veiling and hiddenness that revelation ipso facto implies. Revelation, incarnation, is limitation. The form in which God reveals himself is not the revelation itself. It is form, not content. The question that we earlier sketched out is whether the form of the revelation, the means of revelation, also has any connection with the content of the revelation. With this question we again pick up the thread which was dropped at the end of the previous section. Barth refused to draw a positive connection between form and content in revelation. One can ask if Barth did not employ a dialectic of veiling and unveiling that was not so much the result of an investigation of Biblical concepts and forms of revelation, but which rested rather on his reﬂection of the concept of revelation as such. If revelation means that God makes himself known to man who is not-God, and in that revelation makes use of that which is not-God, then from the outset the medium of the revelation stands over against what must be revealed. The medium of the revelation, the Gestalt, is opposed to the content, the Gehalt. What is the relation between them? In the Bible, is the form of revelation only contradictory to the content? One can ask to what extent Barth took into account the fact that the nature of the veiling diverges sharply in various forms of revelation. The relation of signum and res maynotbeanecessaryone, but that is far from saying that this relation is arbitrary. In revelation the ambivalent symbol begins to speak a language that removes the ambivalence and unveils the referential function of the symbol for once and for all. A connection is constituted and unveiled through the revelation that elevates the symbol above randomness. When Jesus heals, restores, encounters people, these actions do not compel one to

63 KD II/1, 59;ET,55. 278 chapter six the conclusion that this is more than a prophet. The acknowledgement of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel is something that flesh and blood does not have the capacity to reveal (Matt. 16:17). But once involved in God’s revelation the symbol begins to speak, and its symbolic power becomes integrated into God’s act. The nature of the veiling in the case of the signs of God’s coming kingdom differs fundamentally from the manner of veiling in the cross. Did Barth later correct himself ? In KD IV/2 Barth will describe the way of the Son in depth in his significance for mankind, namely as elevating. In this context he indeed does not leave the ‘closed circle’ of self-revelation.64 But it is certainly more than a detail that Barth in his exposition of the ‘royal man’ devotes substantial attention to the witness of the New Testament. Precisely within the circle of revelation, within knowledge of God, paying attention to the witness regarding the earthly Jesus is of theological importance.

6.11. A look back. From impossibility to reality

With his thesis that knowledge of God precedes the question of its possibility, Barth chooses a position in the debate that dominated theology since the Enlightenment and which in part defined his own theological development: how can we think about God’s relation to our earthly reality? Where do the connections lie, the points of anchorage that invite us to knowledge of God? Has the world as a mirror become clouded, or even lost its reflective quality all together? In his dialectic period Barth’s method of doing theology was still strongly dominated by the conviction that human words and thoughts can not make the living God of whom the Bible speaks present. In the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans Barth characterises revelation as an ‘impossible possibility’.65 The method of his theology is defined by the human situation, the given world in which God is not immanent. Time and eternity are characterised as mutually exclusive.66 Seen from this life, God’s eternity is separated from the finite by a Todeslinie,a

64 KD IV, 2, 174;ET,156. 65 See for example Römerbrief 2, 80, 89, 142, 256;ET,79 105, 114, 273. 66 It is this static view of the duality of time and eternity that has saddled Barth’s dialectic theology with a number of aporias which were not easy for him to escape, for instance with regard to the incarnation. That the word became flesh (John 1:14) can, according to the Epistle to the Romans, only be thought of as a crisis and negation the way of knowing god 279 chasm which cannot be bridged from this side. All religious possibilities for arriving at God, at sacred reality, die in the no-man’s-land that separates us from God’s eternity. Considered from the reality of this world, God, revelation, salvation and all words that intentionally refer to the divine mystery can be termed impossibilities. An example of Barth’s early dialectic theology is the 1922 essay ‘Das Wort Gottes als Aufgabe der Theologie’.67 The essay is developed through three theses: 1) ‘As theologians, we ought to speak of God’; 2)‘Weare,however, human and as such cannot speak of God’; and 3) ‘We should recognize both our ought and our cannot and by that recognition give God the glory’. In this panel theologians are not just professional theologians or clergy. In principle, the term includes anyone wishing to speak of God and his Word. The first and second theses are antithetical. The third does not bring the two preceding thesis into synthesis, but argues that one must hold fast to both in order to honour God. Only God himself is able to speak his saving word, the Word of God. Methodologically— and that is what this is about—the starting point for his argument is located in the human situation.68 This methodological point of departure in the human situation is still the foundation of Barth’s 1927 Christian Dogmatics. The summons by Gogarten, Bultmann and others to refine the attention for the human situation by making it an explicit theme convinced him that this starting point was precisely a fundamental weakness in his concept. Gogarten asked for a clear anthropology as the entrance to the theology; Bult- mann likewise considered Barth’s analysis of human existence unclear. For Barth, this criticism was the reason to methodologically no longer begin the whole project with the human situation. He allowed his concept of knowledge of God to be defined methodologically by the insight that the truth of God is a concrete fact. Theology has its reality and possibility in the God’s revelation. Or, in terms he used in his study of Anselm, in revelation lies an ontic rationality that is reflected upon by a noetic rationality. The ontic precedes the noetic.69 A theology which acknowledges that permits itself to be guided by this realisation in the of history (Römerbrief 2, 5;ET,29–30). In the idea of the analogia fidei and enhypostasis Barth found means for thinking of God’s revelation in a more satisfactory manner. 67 Included in: Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze,München1925, 156–178. 68 For a sketch of the development of Barth’s dialectic, see M. Beintker, Die Dialektik in der ‘dialektischen Theologie’ Karl Barths,München1987. 69 K. Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum. Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammenhang 280 chapter six manner in which it orders the modalities of possibility and reality. The- ology is intellectus fidei.70 Putting the human problematic first—in other words, putting the question of how man can arrive at knowledge of God first—even summons up the misunderstanding that a particular anthropology or epistemology would be fundamental for knowing God. In Barth’s eyes that is both to overrate human potential and undervalue God’s power and freedom to reveal himself. In his study of Anselm Barth thus arrives at an explicit development of what I just term the apriority that, seen in retrospect, had already asserted itself in his theology very early on. Much earlier Barth had expressed the idea that knowledge of God is to be considered only as something that finds its ground in God as subject, without this subjectivity being able to be brought into synthesis with human subjectivity.71 Undoubtedly even in its dialectic period Barth’s theology was already dominated by a theological apriority and universalism. In this context, that means that the conclusion has already been reached about truth. Christ is the driving, motivating power in society, the resurrection is not at hand, but in its imperspicuity still the definitive and disquieting driving force in history.72 In dialectic terms, the power of the thesis and antithesis are rooted in a preceding synthesis.73 In his life, man encounters the living, all-defining God. In his dialectical phase, when he also used the reality of revelation as his methodological starting point, Barth’s theology developed more and more into a theology of confidence. The theology could proceed from God’s revelation and try to follow the ontic or inner rationality of what is discerned in faith. This trust is not determined by a confidence in human faculties for knowing, but happens ‘im Blick auf die Mächtigkeit der objektiven, durch die summa veritas von oben her erleuchteten und erleuchtenden ratio des Glaubensgegenstandes selber, seines theologischen Programms (1931), hrsg. von E. Jüngel und I.U. Dalferth, Zürich 1981, 49–52. 70 Fides quaerens intellectum, 55. 71 See for instance Spieckermann, Gotteserkenntnis, 69–70, who locates this relinquish- ment of a synthesis in a letter from Barth to Thurneysen of August 6, 1915.Faith,the kingdom of God and knowledge of God become realities that one does not simply ‘experience’ and ‘have’, or ‘make present’. See also my Anfängliche Theologie, 71,where I point to an echo of the lecture ‘Kreigszeit und Gottesreich’, given in 1915 but not preserved. 72 See for instance his Tambach Lecture (1919) ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ in: Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 33–69, also included in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie I,München19774, 3–37. 73 ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ in: Anfänge I, 33. the way of knowing god 281 der Anselm es zugetraut hat, daß sie zu lehren vermöge und immer wieder lehre, was kein Mensch den andern lehren kann.’74 The formal expression of this power and dominion of God to make himself and his presence known is the tautology ‘God is God’. This tautology is not empty or closed. Barth understands it as a reference to God’s reality which, through the power of the Spirit, is open to man. In this way the ‘proof ’ that can be given in this theology for the truth of knowledge of God is linked with God’s own speaking and coming. Outside of that, according to him, all is illusion.75 This brings us to the question of what the place of dogmatics is in this panel.

6.12. Dogmatics as a grammar for speaking about God?

With Barth, dogmatics is not only a way of checking up on, but also an exercise in ‘biblical speaking’. ‘Exercise’ is to say that Barth does not begin from a collection of Bible texts, but in the various parts of Christian doctrine concentrates on the connections and movements that are in his view characteristic. This altered view of the relationship between Bible text and dogmatic discussion comes to the fore in the way in which Barth goes to work methodologically in his dogmatics. He begins with relatively short and open statements, which sometimes serve as the title for sections, and holds them up to the light in the sections involved. Among the examples of such short statements are his diverse section titles, such as ‘God’s being in Act’, ‘Man before God’, ‘God before Man’ and ‘God’s Being as Loving in Freedom’. They are, as Welker noted,76 statements that taken by themselves are ambiguous and incomplete, and not rarely they could be conceived as a question. They are integral in nature and in the course of the argument are clarified in multiple steps or courses. The clarification is achieved by means of negations, shifts in stress and distinctions. For example, statements which are in themselves vague and open become more focused in a number of steps, and gradually gain definition. It is because of this manner of working that Barth’s dogmatic has a relatively high medi-

74 Fides quaerens intellectum, 71. 75 Fides quaerens intellectum, 70:‘Dievia regis der göttlichen Einfalt und der Weg uner- hörtester Illusion sind in der Geschichte der Theologie in allen Zeiten und Entwicklun- gen nur durch Haaresbreite getrennt parallel gelaufen.’ 76 M. Welker, ‘Barth und Hegel. Zur Erkenntnis eines methodischen Verfahrens bei Barth’, Evangelische Theologie 43 (1983), 307–328, 322. 282 chapter six tative character. His expositions can be read as a meditative exercise in listening to and testing the decisive elements and structures that lie at the foundation of knowledge of God. Short sections of Bible text, parts of abstract concepts and pronouncements that have a rather high metaphorical and evocative character can also serve as starting points for this meditative process. It is not so strange that this method, particularly where Barth makes use of abstract notions, provokes questions and creates the impression of being highly speculative. It is obvious that Barth here gives good reason for critical questions. Pannenberg has expressed the critique that the manner in which Barth develops his doctrine of the Trinity, to wit, as an exposition of the words ‘God reveals himself as the Lord’, can be understood as a logical derivative from the Hegelian subject concept. The Trinity in Barth could be conceived as the self-unfolding of God as absolute subject, with the Chris- tological legitimisation as an afterthought which as such could have no inﬂuence on the argumentation.77 E. Maurer has argued, perhaps in response to such critiques, that one should not take such formal derivatives from the concept of self-revelation at face value.78 Follow- ing the lead of Wittgenstein, he draws on linguistic philosophy to interpret formulations of this sort. According to Maurer, they render their hermeneutic service only in dealing with the Biblical narrative itself. They are, like all dogmata, to be considered as a form of grammar for the language of faith. In this view, they add nothing to knowledge, but only deﬁne the rules for unlocking the narrative and speaking about God. Dogmatics provides the rules and examples by which one tries to empower the language. Understood this way, the scheme of unveiling, veiling and impartation is purely an tool to be taken up in order to lay open the dynamic of a Bible text and its content. Such schemes are useful to the extent that they are subservient to the knowing of God, to following the movement of God in his revelation. They must be made

77 W. Pannenberg, ‘Die Subjektivität Gottes und die Trinitätslehre’ in: idem, Grund- fragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Bd.2, Göttingen 1980, 110.Barth’sman- ner of speaking of the Father, Son and Spirit as manners of being would therefore not do justice to the fact that in the Trinitarian concept of God personality is gained from the mutual involvement of the persons with each other. The Son is a person because He surrenders himself to the Father and his mission. The Father is a person because he identifies himself with the Son. The Spirit is once again nothing in himself, but is a Divine person because in the Spirit the unity of Father and Son works for the renewal of the world. 78 E. Maurer, ‘Grammatik des biblischen Redens von Gott. Grundlinien der Trini- tätslehre Karl Barths.’ ZdTh 14 (1998), 113–130, 117. the way of knowing god 283 transparent until the encounter with God, until the moment at which the Word of God himself breaks through the human aids. To what an extent is such an explanation satisfactory? Perhaps we must conclude that an approach like this from linguistic philosophy indeed succeeds in turning the spotlight on the function of the doctrine of the Trinity for the whole of Barth’s theology. At the same time it must be stressed that one turns aside from Barth if one consistently functionalises dogmatic concepts and formulas. They receive their peculiar content precisely in connection with concrete biblical history.79 In the meantime, the above will certainly be helpful in understanding that dogmatics for Barth is still something more than a summary of doctrine. Dogmatics is the systematic self-investigation of the church, with an eye to the content of what it has to say about God. It is an activity which, when done, is done on a meta-level. Therefore dogmatics seeks the conditions for the underlying structure for speaking about God. The relation between dogmatics and what the church has to say about God can indeed to a certain degree rightfully be seen as the relation between grammar and language. I say ‘to a certain degree’ because this comparison only holds true in limited measure. The fact is that within dogmatics there are solid statements made which, although they have a regulative function, are also intended to have substantive content. This does not detract from the fact that Barth’s theology to a great extent rightly leaves a formal impression, and as reflection is intended to have a regulative function in regard to that which is said about God in the space of the church and in its proclamation. Dog- matics is no longer, as it was for Calvin, a transcription and ordering of the content of what God has communicated. It is an arrangement of perspectives and coordinates which together delineate a field, in the confidence and with the expectation that God himself as Lord of his revelation will make himself present, and that entrance to Him will be opened up through the subjective work of the Holy Spirit. In both Calvin and Barth, systematic reflection is in service of the reading and

79 Perhaps one must say that in the first parts of the KD Barth’s thought still moves strongly from abstract formulations and concepts to biblical history. Later he thinks more from the concrete history to the concepts, thus preparing the way that Pannenberg and Moltmann were to go. When in the second part of his doctrine of reconciliation Barth selects a starting point, he chooses the history of Jesus Christ, thus choosing a point of departure in the opposition of the Father and Son, it becomes clear that thinking in terms of the Trinity springs from this history. 284 chapter six exposition of Scripture. But the connection that is made by each of them between Bible and ‘systematic’ reflection also reveals a deep and radical difference. The truth and truths for which Calvin is seeking a fitting ordo in his Institutes are direct, divine truth. Barth neither can nor will deal with the Bible in this manner. God’s speaking, God’s Word in the singular, is a category all of its own, an event which can indeed make use of human words, but which still remains categorically distinct from man’s word. The theology of the second panel is strongly conscious of its own distance from God’s own speaking and coming. The tiny space that there was in the first panel between Biblical words and Christian doctrine on the one side and God’s Word, His speaking on the other, has become a categorical difference. On the one hand, that means that for Barth dogmatics is on the one hand more modest in tone, to the extent that it is the word of man. At the same time it has more space and freedom to arrive at its own design. To the extent that dogmatic theology boldly occupied the space that opened up, it broadened out and exhibits less modesty, indeed becomes speculative. The method followed in this second panel is the method that was developed in the systematic theology of the 19th century by Schleierma- cher and the idealistic thinkers. Slowly the accent shifts from an entity made up of revelations to an entity that is the collective of revelation.Dog- matics is the individual, personal attempt, with one’s gaze directed to the Bible and tradition, to trace adequate lines and establish perspectives which, in its unfolding, connecting and specifying, invites one to go that way. It is an attempt to do justice to the whole. That is to say, the point of departure in this method is no longer words and revelations, plural. That is the level of the Bible, a human text. The level of knowledge of God is God in his revelation, singular. Systematic reflection and faith are more sharply distinguished, and the space between them becomes greater. Barth’s dogmatic work represents this change in a paradigmatic manner. Dogmatics understands itself as labour on a meta-level with respect to the way of knowledge of God itself, as a possibility that in some way is grounded in the given, and still being given participation in God’s self-knowledge. Adifferentiation of tasks has taken place in theology. While in the first panel, for Calvin the real task of theology lay in Bible exposition, and systematic reflection had no greater aim than the judicious and orderly arrangement of subjects and content, in the second panel systematic theology has lost its direct access to knowledge of God, and the way of knowing god 285 it must formulate the perspectives through which the knowing of God takes place. With Calvin Bible exposition and the search for a fitting ordo for the main points of Christian doctrine were distinguished, but in the second panel we see how just how much dogmatics and Biblical investigation have drifted apart, like two continents which were once united. This observation may be surprising because it is precisely Barth who emphatically called upon biblical studies to be a theological discipline, but this summons is itself an expression of a realisation of the peculiar responsibility and space of dogmatics. Barth’s answer to a written query by Brunner in 1924 asking how the discipline of dogmatics should be conducted in that time, is interesting in this context. Barth chooses two of the various options that Brunner lays before him.80 The first way for dogmatics is prophetic, that is to say going its own way under constant scrutiny by the Bible, the ancient Church and the Reformation. The second option is what he calls confessional. The material of dogmatics is dogma, which perhaps has wasted away as the church has become modern, but that must again be sought beyond the confessional texts of the apostolicum. The confessional texts fulfil an heuristic function and the authority of Scripture as the origin of the whole is termed self-evident. It would appear from this exchange that Barth viewed his own work as a renewing Reformation. ‘Selbt Calvin sein, auf den Tisch schlagen’,81 he calls it, that is to say, daring to speak on one’s own account, while allowing one’s own ideas to be checked constantly against Scripture and tradition. Such

80 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 1916–1966, Hrsg. von der Karl Barth-For- schungsstelle an der Universität Göttingen, Zürich 2000, 87–96. Brunner lists four possibilities: ‘1. Dogmatik, als Auslegung eines christlichen Bekenntnisses. 2. Biblische Theologie—etwa wie Beck oder Hofmann. 3. Lehre von der christlichen Religion als Ausschnitt aus der allgemeinen Religionswissenschaft. 4. Spekulative Theologie, die von vornherein weiß, daß sie bei christlichen Resultate endet.’ In his answer Barth responds with the following possibilities: ‘Loci’ im Anschluß an den Römerbrief (Melanchton). 2. Biblische Theologie à la Beck. 3. Spekulative à la Biedermann. 4. Scholastische (anstelle des Petrus Lombardus: Calvins Institutio … oder der Katechismus Genevensis 1545). 5. ‘Prophetische’, d.h. selber Calvin sein, auf den Tisch schlagen und unter beständiger Kontrolle 1. durch die Bibel, 2. durch das kirchliche Altertum + Reformation einen selbstgewählten Weg gehen. 6. Konfessionelle: Stoff der Dogmatik ist nun einmal das Dogma; gibt uns die verglunggte modern-reformierte Kirche kein solches an die Hand, so stehen wir offenbar wieder am Anfang der reformierten Reformation, haben zu fragen, was dort Dogma war vor den Bekenntnisschriften, kämen also auf das Apostolikum. Bekenntnisschriften heuristisch zu verwenden. Autorität der Schrift als des Ursprungs des ganzen Krams selbstverständlich. 7. Der helle Unfug: Schleiermacher und, was hinter ihm kreucht und fleucht.’ 81 Karl Barth-Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel, 95. 286 chapter six statements are characteristic of this new constellation in the second panel. With regard to the Bible and confessions, dogmatic reflection steps back to take a tertiary position. At the same time it is aware of its own freedom and obligation to be of service in its way to the speaking of the church. By keeping this categorical difference between the word of man and God’s speaking in mind, an answer can at the same time be given to the constantly recurring question of whether in this concept the subjectivism of the 19th century is not brought to a head.82 If there is no basis whatsoever in history to which we can point for our knowledge of God, and if we are then as a result thrown back on God’s speaking in Jesus Christ for our knowledge of Him, then this always takes place clothed in theological, human words and concepts. In other words, has Barth’s own theology not become the mediating body? That is the critic’s argument. To ask the question is to answer it. Barth is completely aware of his role as the subject of theology. Theology is a human endeavour, an attempt to do justice in thinking and speaking to an event which never coincides with the thinking, but that one can at the most follow and attempt to do justice to in the thinking. It is characteristic of Barth’s theology that this categorical difference between knowledge of God and the knowing of the knowledge of God, or reflection on the knowledge of God, is included in the thinking itself. That in his dogmatic work Barth should exhibit a considerable reluctance to provide concrete examples of the knowing of God is consistent with the foregoing. Dogmatics is not proclamation; it sets up rules for proclamation. Dogmatics is not knowledge of God, it points the way to the knowledge of God. It indicates the way in which God himself has and continues to maintain dominion in his revelation, but consciously avoids the suggestion that its indications coincide with revelation. It is not without reason that a reproduction of the picture on the Isenheim altarpiece, where John the Baptist points to Christ on the Cross, hung above Barth’s desk.83 Theology does nothing more than point. Precisely in its referential structure, Barth’s theology possesses a strongly suggestive and meditative power, because the presupposition always is that God makes himself present in the lives of men.

82 Zie H.M. Kuitert, Wat heet geloven? Structuur en herkomst van de christelijke geloofsuitspraken, Baarn 1977, 210–215. 83 See R. Marquard, Mathias Grünewald und der Isenheimer Altar. Erläuterungen, Erwägun- gen, Deutungen, Stuttgart 1996. the way of knowing god 287

One of the few personally coloured examples of the conviction that God himself provides for his presence found in the KD is Barth’s childhood experience with the songs of Abel Burckhardt.84 Barth writes about this in connection with the distance in time which separates us from the incarnation. How is it possible that this history also fills the present day and defines life now? How is it possible that the distance in time is a factor which disappears in Christian feasts? Barth tells of the experience that he had with these songs as a child, in which the content of the ecclesiastical feasts was sung about in a simple manner. In that there was no gap, no historical distance. Jesus was as close as if he still walked the streets of Basel and the events had happened that very morning in his own city. In other words, God himself sees to his presence through his Spirit. The hermeneutic problem is taken care of by the work of His Spirit making Christ present. For this theological reason the hermeneutic problem is not to be regarded as the ‘horribly wide grave’ of which Lessing spoke with so much pathos. One does not understand Barth’s theology if one does not see that he wishes to reflect upon the reality of this mysterious effect with which God himself makes himself known to men in the present. Of course, one can ask if Barth here has done justice to the question of historical distance and the estrangement that one can feel with respect to biblical stories as a problem which can be brushed aside so simply. What interests me now is that this way of dealing with the Lessingfrage is theologically based and displays a form that is also characteristic of Barth’s concept of knowledge of God. In its modern form the problem is dominated by the question of how human knowledge of God is possible. In Barth’s concept this form of the problem is overtaken and trumped by a different statement of the problem. It is not God and his act that is the problem, but man and his answer.85 God and his approach to man constitutes the situation in which man is already being confronted, and from which he constantly wishes to escape. The theme of human knowledge of God does not take on the colour of a general epistemological problem; it is a matter of life and death, being saved or being destroyed—and with that, we find ourselves in the realm of soteriology. It is therefore the fact that God turns his face toward man which defines the force field toward which dogmatic reflection has

84 KD IV/2, 125;ET,112–113. 85 See particularly Barth’s answer to the Lessingfrage in KD IV/1, 321–322;ET,292– 293. 288 chapter six to orient itself. Or, in other words, the object of reflection, God who jus- tifies sinners, at one and the same time determines the way of knowing and the method that must be chosen theologically in order to do justice to this object.86 From beginning to end, knowledge of God is a matter of saving grace; Barth makes this clear in his prolegomenon,87 and it is this opposition between the general epistemological interest and a theological, soteriological input that is decisive. Thus it is also made clear that in Barth’s concept knowledge of God must be discussed entirely from an inward perspective. With this Barth took a fundamental position in a discussion between himself and his friends in dialectical theology that finally lead to the break-up of their common front, and which became concretely visible in the cessation of the periodical Zwischen den Zeiten. The forum in which dogmatics is practised as reflection on what the church says regarding God is not primarily defined by the public fora of the academy, society, or even the church itself. Faith, and therefore reflection on what the church says, must focus on the reality that has already been given, and continues to be given, in revelation.88 Dogmatics as a discipline

86 Already in the foreword to the second edition of the Epistle to the Romans Barth speaks of the Sache that must define the method. But even earlier, in the preceding period, we encounter the realisation that the usual methods of reading the Bible are totally inadequate to do justice to its content. The Bible is not a moral tract, not a book that one can do justice to through historical methods. The is found something other, the Word of God. 87 KD I/1, 2;ET,3. It is surprising and unusual to encounter the word ‘grace’ already in the first pages of the prolegomenon in this dogmatics, and to realise that this word is not used figuratively or as embellishment. Theology, which is characterised as a measure of the church to meet this double need, is only possible and worthwhile in the light of ‘justifying grace’, ‘which here too can alone make good what man as such invariably does badly’ (p. 4 in the English translation). This statement is not an easy, pious formula. It fundamentally characterises how in this theology all knowing of God outside of God’s act of salvation has ceased to offer any certainty. If God is to be known, that is knowledge of salvation, and not knowledge. This reveals how much the core question in Barth is immediately and completely theological. It is identified with the justification of sinners. Epistemology is no longer an antechamber to the doctrine of justification. Or better, the rupture between God and man is so total that knowledge of this God, because he is a God of redemption, is knowledge of salvation. We will return to this in a later section on natural theology. I will now limit myself to the following. Barth’s immediate stress on the gracious character of knowledge of God implies a negative judgement on all attempts to search for signs or grounds for knowledge of God outside this gracious act. Such searching is denial of the real state of affairs between God and man. 88 KD I/1, 2;ET,4. the way of knowing god 289 is focused on something that continues to give itself. The soteriological definition of all knowledge of God now enables us to move toward an understanding of Barth’s evaluation of and handling of human faculties and scientific knowledge in general.

6.13. Human capacities and knowledge of God: the heritage of Marburg

With Calvin, the question of the possibilities for human knowledge of God still lies in the framework of a general concept of human knowing. Man is connected with the world through inner and outward senses, and particularly through his inward cognitive faculties is embedded in the hierarchy of things visible and invisible. Generally acknowledged facts, arranged according to the insights of natural science in that day, point to the existence of God. As we saw in the hinge, in Kant’s philosophy the extent and tenability of human knowledge is determined by critical investigation into the human cognitive faculties. God is no longer the object of generally accepted knowledge. Since Schleierma- cher, theology has responded by postulating a dualism between generally accepted knowledge and faith. The pretence that knowledge of God as creator and sustainer of the world is compelling was declared groundless. If we look to Barth, then his vision of the relation of the sciences and faith is deeply influenced by the Marburg neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. It is an heritage that was deeply influential not only in the dialectic period, but, in the judgement of J.F. Lohmann in his thorough and convincing study,89 also reached on into the Kirchliche Dogmatik throughtothesectiononbaptism.90 It is, one might perhaps say, the most important handling of the Kantian legacy with which Barth came into direct contact.91 It presented him with an extremely dynamic vision of science in general. Science is not so much a file of knowledge, but is rather to be viewed as a process in which the coherence within our reality is constantly defined by the human mind. A short resume of this critical idealism therefore will not be not out of place.

89 J.F. Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus. Die Rezeption des Neukantianis- mus im ‘Römerbrief’ und ihre Bedeutung für die weitere Ausarbeitung der Theologie Karl Barths, Berlin/New York 1995, 399. 90 Lohmann, Karl Barth und der Neukantianismus, 382–383. 91 See also my Anfängliche Theologie, 36–38 en 155–157. 290 chapter six

Particularly in Cohen’s philosophy of science Barth came in touch with a view in which scientific knowledge was conceived as entirely and totally the creation of the human mind. In contrast to Kant, Cohen did not formulate scientific knowledge as the collective result of two heterogeneous sources, namely the senses and cognition, but exclusively as the product of thought itself. According to his philosophy, an appeal to the given, as it plays a role in all sorts of irrationalism and materialism, has no legitimacy. In his epistemology the given is regarded an element of thinking itself. Only that which can be found by thinking itself can be considered as a given.92 Extra-mental reality is accorded only the role in thinking that the letter X has in mathematics. X is that which can be defined by thinking. The given is therefore no longer an unalterable thing, but an object in the literal sense, namely the Vorwurf of thinking itself.93 For Cohen philosophy is not focused on material reality, but on the sciences that study this reality. They are in fact the given around which philosophy is oriented. The laws with which reason works are deposited in the sciences. By expressly focusing on the science which is in fact at hand, Cohen disassociates himself from speculative idealism, which believes that it can develop a system of pure knowledge a priori. His ownsystemisthenthatofcritical idealism, which attempts to follow and discover pure thinking itself on the basis of the historical realisations of thinking. The relation with reality and experience is thus very indirect. ‘Der echte Idealismus macht sich zwar nicht abhängig sonder durchaus unabhängig von der Wirklichkeit und von der Erfahrung; um so energi- scher aber und gründlicher achtet er auf den Zusammenhang mit der Erfahrung.’94 What, now, are the structural points of agreement between Barth’s theology and this philosophy of science? First I would note the highly dynamic view of scientific knowledge, which Barth apparently took over from Marburg neo-Kantianism in his earliest essays.95 With regard to

92 H. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Werke Bd.6. System der Philosophie 1.Teil,hrsg. vonH.Holzhey,(Berlin19142=) Hildesheim/New York 1977, 82:‘DemDenkendarf nur dasjenige als gegeben gelten, was er selbst aufzufinden vermag.’ 93 Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 67. 94 H. Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens. Werke Bd.7. System der Philosophie 2.Teil,hrsg.von H. Holzhey, (Berlin 19072=) Hildesheim/New York 1981, 391. 95 See, for instance, ‘Ideen und Einfälle zur Religionsphilosophie’ in: K. Barth, Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten (1909–1914),hrsg.vonH.-A.DrewesundH.Stoevesandt, Zürich 1993, 126–138. In his essay he distinguishes between three forms of human knowing, to wit, theoretical science, ethics and aesthetics. Together they form what is the way of knowing god 291 theology Barth proceeds from a particular given, namely the fact of the church and its proclamation. He takes the reality of the proclamation and doctrine as the ‘matter’ of theology, in order to theologically define reality a posteriori, in a return to God or his Word as the beginning and source of all knowledge of God. This linkage of the a posteriori method and objectivism also appears in the way that thinking proceeds for Cohen. In his critiques he takes as his point of departure the given science, but scientific objectivity is made dependent on the judgement of the source. In Barth’s dogmatic method too, theological objectivity is only reached in a consistent retrogression toward the divine Word, judgement and election. The judgement of what is theologically real, possible and impossible is dependent on and determined by this divine act, speaking and election. It is only knowable if men participate in this Word as a vital event. By proceeding in this way, there is no room left in this concept for nature or history which is encountered outside of this act and election God. Man, his history, his world, his destiny are the X that must be defined through an ever rejuvenating return to the beginning, namely God’s speaking. Barth’s rejection of ‘natural theology’, his design of a theological view of time, space, man and history, flows from this. A second agreement can be noted in the objectivism, and the anti- subjectivism that accompanies it, which is characteristic of Cohen, and which we likewise find as a characteristic of Barth’s theology. The objective element, represented theologically in the concept of the Word, and in his later theology represented by the history of Jesus Christ, is primary. The work of the Holy Spirit is entirely contained in this element. Nor does this change as in his later doctrine of reconciliation, and very strikingly in the doctrine of baptism, Barth emphatically makes room for man as the answering subject.

termed Kulturbewußtsein. This Kulturbewußtsein seems to be a formal concept. It includes the laws and rules toward which the various fields of human knowledge must orient themselves. This scientific consciousness is therefore to be sharply distinguished from a concrete, empirical I. It contains exclusively the rules which must be observed by thinking in a reconstruction of what men believe they know scientifically. For us it is important that Barth follows Cohen entirely when he gives knowledge of God no place within the structure of Kulturbewußtsein. Knowledge of God is not a matter of generality, something which can be enforced. Science as such is agnostic, or better, atheistic. In this essay Barth locates knowledge of God in the reality of the concrete subject. Where there are living men one can speak of experiencing life in all its mystery, of Erleben,and there one immediately encounters a realisation of God. 292 chapter six

It is clear that Barth’s acceptance of the legacy of Marburg neo- Kantianism brought with it the problem that Kant’s criticism presented theology, namely how one can still defend a form of realism involving revelation while accepting a theoretical epistemological idealism. At the same time one has to give an answer to the pressing question that continues to pursue this criticism, namely the question of the relation of human knowledge to reality. Does this knowledge that men acquire for themselves by means of scientific methods bring them in touch with reality in any way? To begin with the latter problem, at the least one has to say that the status of the surrounding reality has become unclear in neo-Kantianism. As soon as man has acquired knowledge, he is dealing with creations of his own mind. Nature becomes the knowledge of nature. Nature itself has become a precondition, an undefined X. In comparison to what we found in Calvin regarding reality as a mirror of God’s glory, it has here become pure materiality, without the power to bear testimony. If nature is a mirror, in this thinking it is a mirror of the human mind. The world has become empty, undefined, and can only speak again if man begins from his life and mind, as things are understood in the process of forming judgements. As such, in his knowledge man encounters only himself. Reality, with its structures and connections, will never contain a reference to God, because at their deepest level the structures and connections arise from the mind of man, are a matter of human understanding. Between the way theology understands creation and the way science understands nature lies an unbridgeable gulf. The role of the reality which is investigated by the natural sciences in the development of knowledge of God has here become extremely problematic. Barth had learned from Herrmann that nothing could any longer be expected from the sciences, and that one had to begin somewhere entirely different. With this we reach the second problem, namely to what reality in revelation theology points. According to Herrmann (and the young Barth) knowledge of God arises in the centre of the Ur-experience of the human person, the immediate reality in which he or she finds themselves as a living person. The knowledge which arises there, or better, that is a reality there, is dynamic in nature, a vital current of life, Erlebnis. This designates the anchorage in this world where man is sensitive to God and his action, where there is a synthesis of divine and human reality. It is precisely at this point that Barth separated himself from the liberal theological tradition without, for the rest, distancing himself from a certain form of revelation realism. However, he no longer speaks of there being a fixed the way of knowing god 293 bridgehead for God’s revelation in human consciousness, in human capacities, or of a synthesis with the reality of individual lives. Knowl- edge of God rests on a personal act carried out by God. That is why his theology refers to a moment, an origin, conceived geographically as the vanishing point that falls outside the frame of the picture. Only those acts of God, outside the grasp and sight of man, bridge that gulf and assure that man in the last analysis is not left alone with himself in his finiteness. To this end, in KD II/1 Barth develops the concept of the analogia fidei. This concept enables Barth to retain revelation as a very dynamic form of reality.

6.14. The reality of knowledge of God. The analogia ﬁdei

Knowledge of God can not be derived from the existence of the world and given things. With this, the status of universality and rational demonstrability is lost for ever. In this respect Barth belongs to the mainstream of post-Kantian theology. But this does not yet mean that his theology has a sceptical tenor epistemologically. One the contrary, one must say. The purpose and direction of God’s revelation is that He himself becomes the object of human knowledge. In his revelation God permits this, commands it and grants the means.96 For Barth these three assertions are constituents of the positive proposition that real and true knowledge of God with reliable content indeed exists. First, the three all remind us of the fact that God Himself must act and speak. Human knowledge can be conceived as a cycle that ﬁnds its start in God. God is however not only a point of origin, He is also the initiator of the movement, through whom the cycle arises and is sustained. Second, conceptually this is a form of objectivism which is expressed in the thesis ‘God is known through God’.97 As Father, God is the subject of knowledge of God, and as God the Spirit He is the movement itself. Any human knowing of God is only conceivable so far as man is included in this movement. To the extent that through the work of the Spirit man is made a participant in this movement,

96 KD II/1, 213;ET,190. 97 KD II/1, 230;ET,204: ‘A circular course is involved because God is known by God, and only by God; because even as an action undertaken and performed by man, knowledge of God is objectively and subjectively instituted by God Himself and let to its end by Him; because God the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit is its primary and proper subject and object.’ 294 chapter six one can speak of real knowledge of God. Third, this position makes clear what the content of the revelation is. The content of knowledge of God is nothing other than ‘God Himself ’. In this definition the Son of God stands for the content of knowledge of God. What does this mean for human knowledge of God? Is the subjectivity and activity of man himself in faith wholly absorbed in an action of God? If one begins by thinking of the relation of God to man in competitive terms, that could easily be the conclusion. But that is emphatically not what is intended. According to Barth, because God appears He creates the subject of knowledge of God.98 Or perhaps we could express it this way: the ‘eye of faith’, in the sense of the acte throughwhichmandiscoversGodinhis works, is not an extension of other acts of knowing, but is an element of its own, distinguished from them, in which the person becomes a subject that once again begins to see and receive, but now differently. Jüngel has described the characteristic of the experience of faith as ‘an experience with experience, in which all the experiences acquired, and experiencing itself, are once again experienced anew, from scratch.’99 In the experience with God, man is as it were constituted anew as a believing subject. Does not faith in this way take on the form of an esoteric closed circuit? Is access not denied except to those to whom it is given? Epis- temologically that conclusion is correct. The movement which Barth is thinking of with the words ‘knowing God’ can not be compelled. It rests upon an encounter brought into being by God, on a moment in which He comes and makes himself the object of human knowing. The relation which arises here is therefore not symmetrical. He is the Lord who in his revelation declares himself as the Lord of mankind. Barth therefore guards against conceiving the acts of God and the acts of man, the work of the Spirit and the human act of knowing, as points on the same plane. Whether the reality of knowledge of God is closed is however a different question. Would it not be better to term Barth’s theology an attempt to point to an open mystery? In that case his theological theory provides a framework where the reader and hearer have their attention drawn to a possibility that long ago ceased to be an unactualised possibility, but became a reality that presents itself in the lives of people, in proclamation, in the work of a comforting mother, in the simplicity of a children’s song. If that is true, must the configurations of the second

98 KD II/1, 22;ET,21. 99 E. Jüngel, Entsprechungen: Gott-Wahrheit-Mensch,München1980, 196.Cf.also176. the way of knowing god 295 panel, abstract though they may appear, not rather be considered as a form mystagogy, which in all their apparent emptiness precisely are intended to leave room open for the living God himself ? It is within the context of this question about the veracity of human knowledge of God that Barth arrives at the unfolding of his doctrine of the analogia fidei. The movement which proceeds from God gains a hearing among men and achieves its goal. Barth couples this insight to a number of qualities which should characterise reflection regarding dogma. The constant, unceasing dependence of the work on the Holy Spirit demands (1) intellectual sobriety, and further, (2) certainty and (3) trust with regard to human knowledge of God now also are given a place. We have here arrived at an important motif in Barth’s theology. Since Kant the insight into the human character of everything that is said of God has become widely accepted in Western culture. If people speak about God, then these are human words, concepts and schemes. But in the presence of the Biblical witness one now has the room to speak boldly about human knowledge of God as ‘a undertaking … which succeeds’.100 It is important to note the present participle here. Barth quite deliberately does not speak of a successful undertaking. Knowing God is not a matter of the past tense. Completing the work of truth is a matter for God alone. In this way the boundary between God’s work and our human work is maintained, but without the poison scepticism. Our work can only ‘be work which succeeds within its own natural and impassable limits; that is to say, a work which strives towards its perfection as fulfilled in God alone.’101 In our knowing we are on the way to the knowing of God. Because it moves between the two limits of God’s hiddenness and veracity, theology is a theologia viatorum.102 That means that our attempt to understand something of God is not self-deception or something with which we deceive others. This attempt is ‘on the way to success’. It is important here to note carefully the stress that is put on the trustworthiness of revelation. God desires to let himself be known and he has the power to accomplish this. In the moment of revelation God lays his hand on man, and it is from the recognition of that moment that human thinking and speaking begin to develop. Once God’s voice

100 KD II/1, 234;ET,208. 101 KD II/1, 234;ET,208–209. 102 KD II/1, 235;ET,209. 296 chapter six is heard, it is the responsibility of men to speak that which is heard in the presence of God, themselves and their fellows. For a good understanding of Barth’s theology, it is important to remember that the accents have shifted in comparison to the dialectic period. There the inadequacy of all human methods when it came to speaking about God was central. The dogmatic, critical and dialectical methods were all limited means which, complementing one another, gave a description of the task of theology. In KD II/1 the emphasis has shifted to a positive relation between revelation and human knowing of God, between human words and concepts on the one side and the object that is intended with these words and concepts on the other: God. Barth therefore explicitly states that the dialectic of veiling and unveiling must not be conceived as static. If veiling and unveiling are equated with each other as entirely analogous elements, they would simply neutralise each other as a plus and minus. That is emphatically not what is intended. It is not a case of something being given with one hand that is taken away with the other. God’s revelation has an irreversible direction, namely toward unveiling. The mode of revelation is hiddenness, but the sense is its truth, or as Barth expresses it, its ‘veracity’.103 One could once again say, in the expression borrowed from Jüngel, say that veiling and unveiling come together in favour of unveiling. The dialectic movement has a ﬁnality. This does not in any way decrease the fact that the dialectic of veiling and unveiling, which occurs in ever new forms, makes his theology something like walking a tightrope. In his earlier work Barth indeed used the image of the ‘unsuspecting rider on the Bodensee’.104 The image comes from a storybyGustavSchwab.Ahorsemanonhiswaytoavillagecloseto Lake Constance spurs his steed on and gallops across the snow-covered plain before him. On arriving in a village he asks directions, and hears that he has already passed Lake Constance. Without suspecting it, he has taken the clouds ﬁlling the natural bowl in which the lake lay for a snow-covered plain. It is a striking image. It impresses us with the thought that, seen from the human perspective, knowledge of God, all human speaking about God, has no solid basis, like the absurd story of a ride over the clouds. But the fascination with the absence of a human foundation slowly makes way for another emphasis, namely the truth and reality of human knowing of God.

103 KD II/1242;ET,215. 104 Romerbrief 2, 276;ET,293; Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, 24. the way of knowing god 297

This does not mean that what Barth intended with the dialectic of unveiling and veiling disappeared from his theology. In Chapter 8 we will see yet that the point of this is definitive for his doctrine of baptism. In his theology Barth was in search of the true connection between God’s revelation and human knowledge of God. That this connection is there, that there are links made in all sorts of ways, is for him beyond dispute. That God and man, regarded conceptually, are incongruent entities, and human knowledge of God is never to be acquired by way of direct derivation, is likewise beyond doubt. The question that it comes down to, theologically, is how human knowledge of God relates to God’s self-unveiling. If, after the autumn of 1915, it was incongruence which was in the foreground in the theology, now this incongruence has been absorbed into a thought which henceforth takes its theological starting point in the recognition that God imparts knowledge, that God speaks. Barth analyses at great length what the consequences are once the veracity of human knowledge of God is recognised. The terms which emerge here are thankfulness and worship. Both of these are words, we must first note, which fit with the new paradigm which makes its appearance with Barth, namely knowledge of God as the result of an encounter. In his doctrine of God the reality of knowledge of God is characterised as a spatial confrontation: man stands before God and God stands before man. When the possibilities of knowing God are discussed, Barth does not point to anthropological data. It is rather under the heading of the readiness of God. Only secondarily does it rest on the readiness of man, but it is clear that Barth considers the readiness of man as a possibility that only exists within God’s readiness, and nowhere else.105 Within the question of the truth of knowledge Barth arrives at an exposition of the implications of his theory of analogy for theological language. The entrance to human knowing of God lies exclusively in the free initiative that proceeds from God. From the side of man there is no analogy which could connect him with the being of God and with His majesty. Our knowledge rests on a special permission, command and capacity for such knowledge. God imparts the event of his self- knowledge. Barth has described this movement as an analogia fidei,and sharply distinguished this analogy from the analogia entis which he finds

105 KD II/1, 142;ET,128. 298 chapter six in its most acute form in the dogmatic constitution Dei filius of Vatican I. This constitution takes a position against the denial of the general knowability of God.106 According to Barth’s interpretation this constitution makes a distinction between God as principium omnium et finem on the one side and God as dominum nostrum on the other. This erodes the unity of God. Knowledge of God is divided up into a knowing that can be gained outside of revelation, leading to a knowing of God as origin and goal, and a knowing of God as Father that is gained through revelation. What makes Barth’s interpretation interesting is not so much whether he is right or wrong, but his evaluation of this duality in the knowledge of God. Any form of differentiation in the ways of knowing is interpreted by Barth as an attack on the unity of God in his revelation. Once it has been established that Jesus Christ, witnessed to by the prophets and apostles, is the ‘being’ of the church and the one Word of God, then any other sort of knowing is an alien and hostile element in Christian doctrine.107 The confession that God is one must also be expressed in the answer to the question of the way of knowing. On the basis of this principle, there can only be one way to knowing, namely the self-unveiling which coincides with Christ. Within this concept one can not give credence to the idea of an initial notion of God, a first realisation or trace of his presence or mystery, because from the outset it is considered a competing approach. Once brought inside the gates of Christian theology, it will reveal itself as a Trojan horse. The knowing of the one true God does not have its origin with man, in his reason or imagination; it has its origin in an act, a revelation of God. Knowl- edge of God does not have its ground in a conclusion which is drawn on the basis of a predicate which can be attributed to both God and man. According to Barth that is the sin, the mortal sin, of the analogia entis doctrine: the same concept of being which is attributed to God as a predicate in a sublime sense is also attributed—to be sure, not in equal measure, but indeed in a similar manner—to the creature. Therefore, according to Barth, thinking about the relation of God to man becomes a miscalculated arrogance on the part of man. We will return to this in

106 H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (ed. P. Hünermann), Freiburg i.B. 199137,Nr.3004: ‘Eadem sancta mater Ecclesia tenet et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali humanae rationis lumine e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse’ en nr. 3026: ‘Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum, creatorem en Dominum nostrum per ea, quae facta sunt, naturali rationis humanae lumine certo cognosci non posse, anathema sit.’ 107 KD II/1, 87;ET,80. the way of knowing god 299 the subsequent section on Barth’s crusade against natural theology. But it is sufficiently clear now that Barth allows no room for the traces of divine presence that played such a prominent role in the first panel. Calvin left no doubt that man, through his capacities, stimulated by the signs of the presence of God’s Spirit, really could not help but be aware of the living God, were it not that under the influence of sin his faculties had been thrown out of joint and these signs become hidden. In Barth’s concept, knowledge of God rests at all times on a gracious act of God, not on a reference structure intertwined with what is earthly, but on a relation which is being created by God. Nature, or what is given, is not a priori a creation of God, not a priori a mirror. If there is an analogy between God and the creature, it is an analogy that is created ever anew by God in his gracious act.108 We can here refer back to what was said earlier when we discussed Jesus as sacrament. Knowl- edge of God is based on a relation that is created through God’s act in Jesus and through the work of the Spirit being unveiled to man. Knowl- edge of God is saving knowledge, it is a consequence of an salvific act, has the structure of a covenant of grace. It is this act that now defines Barth’s view of theological language, thus of the words, concepts and statements that are used to speak of God. First of all, it is striking how much Barth radicalises the incongruence between God and man in comparison with traditional doctrines of revelation and God. He regards it as half-hearted in the tradition that theologians had the inclination to exercise a thoroughgoing critique with regard to anthropomorphisms in the Bible, but then did not see that the apophatic manner of speaking about God, by using terms such as incomprehensibility, unchangeableness and eternity, in fact was equally anthropomorphic.109 The core of his critique is that, by a methods of spiritualising the incongruence between men and God, the impression has been created that it can be transcended. According to Barth, the truth of our knowledge of God is only conceivable if God in his coming also supplies the means of our thinking and speaking. In his coming He incorporates the means of our thinking and our language into his own speaking, thereby making thinking and language good, whole and fitting for a task for which it in itself is inadequate.110 The difference with Calvin is remarkable. In Calvin’s empha-

108 KD II/1, 92;ET,85. 109 KD II/1, 250;ET,222. 110 KD II/1, 252;ET,223–224. 300 chapter six sis on the accommodation of God, the stress on the humility of human knowledge of God is maintained. God’s majesty stands front and centre. In Barth the stress lies on the permission and command of God, on the taking on of human words and concepts. We may use language in the conﬁdence that God himself involves our language and accommodates it in his work. In this, the tendency of Barth’s theology becomes unprecedentedly positive and turns against the agnosticism that doubts the possibility of knowledge of God. He develops the reality of this acceptance through his interpretation of analogy, the analogy of faith. What does analogia ﬁdei mean? The meaning of the words which we apply to God and to earthly reality is neither completely congruent nor complete incongruent, but there is a similarity, a partial agreement.111 Revelation makes it clear that we can speak of such a congruent relation between our words and God’s being. As always, here too Barth emphasises the element of incongruence. An example is already found in the word analogy. In revelation man not only receives knowledge of God (x) but also knowledge of the relation God’s being and this human word (x:a). In short, the word analogy presents itself as a suitable word. Yet Barth is quick to add that this relation does not simply coincide with what we normally term analogy. When we choose the word analogy, the element of dissimilarity with what obtains for analogy within earthly relationships is always greater than the similarity. What we mean by words used for God and his acts does not coincide with the meaning of the word with God. The polemic against the idea that knowledge of God could be derived from human words brings Barth to the pronouncement that ‘everything that we know as “similarity” is not identical with the similarity meant here.’112 That is to say, the singularity of this similarity is primary, but acknowledgement of this singularity does not prevent there evidently being something in the word ‘similarity’ that makes this word suitable to use for the relation created by God. Is this logical? It is characteristic of Barth’s concept that he does not work this aspect out entirely, but concentrates all attention on the event of revelation in which a human word or concept is taken into the service of God’s revelation. God himself is the one who in his revelation, in his coming, captures the words, as it were, and makes them suitable.113 The element of incongruence, of not being obvious,

111 KD II/1, 254;ET,225. 112 KD II/1, 255;ET,226. 113 Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 285 in this connection speaks of the analogy the way of knowing god 301 of not being capable of representation is retained, but as a qualifier of a succeeding indicator. The relation that is created in revelation between God’s reality and our world is the active principle that draws this word to it, as it were. Something like a shift of subjects takes place. A word which normally describes a relation of an object in our world to another object in our world (b:c) becomes caught up in the force field of revelation. The relation of similarity created by God (x:a) is reflected in what we ordinarily call similarity, so that what we usually denote by the concept of similarity becomes similar with the similarity constituted in revelation.114 Language comes home in the force field of God’s revelation. In contrast to what we saw with Kant in Chapter 5, in this view of proportional analogy not only is a relationship revealed, but one also comes to know the identity of the X. Once again the example of the concept of fatherhood can be of service to us here. The term ‘father’ is an indication of a relationship, namely the relationship of a father to a child, and in revelation is applied as a mirror to make a relation in God visible. God, Barth says, comes to meet us in our language, and makes a choice, which we must accept in obedience. Thus, the words and concepts chosen by men in the tradition of Christianity are not random; they are ultimately not based on human construction, but are a matter of obediently following what God has done in his revelation.115 Barth goes still a step further. When it comes to consonance between our language and God’s being, according to Barth one must assume that this consonance already previously existed in God. The possibility of a successful indicator lies in God himself. He is in himself the one—for instance, the father—who loves. If the human activity, the application of words to God, is moving toward success, that success is not based on a lie or a fiction or on the illegitimate use of these earthly words. The opposite is the case. Our earthly words are not alienated from their real milieu; rather, God brings home terms which belong to him in the truest sense. He came to his own, as John 1:11 puts it.116 At the very least this is a remarkable and certainly contrary vision of language, which can give rise to all kinds of speculation. What

of advent. God is not an unknown X, but he makes himself known. The relation between x:a is not a static relationship; it is a movement through which it comes to be known. 114 KD II/1, 255;ET,226–227. 115 KD II/1, 256;ET,227. 116 KD II/1, 257;ET,228. 302 chapter six does Barth intend with this view of language? In the most original sense language, the words which we apply to him, belongs to God. If words succeed in expressing who God is and what He does, then that is because these words are in the truest sense His. What this concept comes down to, one can note, is a tremendous turn about, a theological reversal of the concept of language. The assertion that God is ineffable and incomprehensible dominates the pre-modern panel. God makes himself known in his revelation, and the question of how this operation relates to God in himself is not a subject for reflection. That is something which is forbidden to man. The recognition that God is always more than he allows be seen in his working does not threaten the trustworthiness of his works and promises; that was the conclusion in Chapter 3, on the basis of the discussion of Calvin’s doctrine of God. But we must realise that the proposition Deus semper maior does not directly result in the view of God as deus absolutus.In the second panel there is explicit reflection on the way in which God’s working is anchored within his inter-Trinitarian being. Here too there is a theocentric perspective, but the background against which the discussion is set has fundamentally changed. If speaking about God in the pre-modern panel was discussed in terms of accommodated speech, and with that the stress lay on the limitedness and inadequacy of human language with respect to divine reality, now human words and concepts are placed within the perspective of God, who has power over human language and captures the language again and again, to prove his power and dominion over it. The point of Barth’s theology is the veracity of knowledge of God. In the hinge section on Kant we noted that God is essentially the unknown, who stands outside of language and concepts. This dogma of modernity is now powerfully contradicted in this concept. God is not the ineffable; God himself ultimately speaks in the language of men, takes possession of it, dwells in human language and words, and can do that because the Word, which is characteristic of Him, has its deepest being in language, is communicative. Compared to that, our use of words such as father, son, love and mother is after the fact. Barth formulates this in legal terms. In this he reminds us of Calvin. God has a ‘lawful claim’ on our language.117 Father, son and love only receive their true meaning in their application to God, who in his

117 KD II/1, 259;ET,229. the way of knowing god 303 own deeds imparts content to these terms. According to Barth, this is likewise the case for concepts that have passed in the tradition for illegitimate anthropomorphisms, such as hearing and seeing. Hearing and seeing are in the truest sense qualities of God, and he cites the familiar passage from Psalm 94:9, ‘Does he that planted the ear not hear, he that moulded the eye not see?’ These terms too come home in revelation. Its point of origin is decisive for Barth’s teaching on analogy. The analogy does not have its origin in this world; ontologically it has its origin in God. It exists because God draws a relation between his own being and our being. The analogy is thus not a latent quality of earthly reality. One may not, as with an analogia entis, first place God and man in a comprehensive relation of being in order to subsequently climb to God from the common being of things. The analogy only exists as an event if it pleases God to reflect his own being in our human relations. The analogy is created each time that God brings the words and concepts home. We recognise what is rightly termed Barth’s actualism. One can not speak of the analogy outside of God’s deeds. Knowledge of this act, of the created relationship, then also belongs to this deed. Barth clearly separates this from what he regards as the error of natural theology, both in liberal Protestant and Roman Catholic theology. According to Barth, in these currents the nature of the analogic relation as an act is transformed into a latent quality of being, and this transformation would spell the end for the realisation of a constant dependence on God’s act. Here we encounter the hidden cultural presupposition of the discussion of analogy in KD II/1. The actualism presupposes a culture in which nature and history are experienced as ambivalent or empty. A part of the attractiveness of Barth’s concept of the knowledge of God is apparently that it fits with the experience of the emptiness of things. The experience that reality is pure materiality, and man as a part of this materiality is confronted with his finiteness, is given full play. Were reality not to receive a new character in its critical involvement with God and be experienced afresh, it would remain essentially dumb and meaningless. Only in the search for this relation will be truth be found. Our critique on this point is confirmed by the discussion that Barth engages in with the teaching on analogy found in Quenstedt (1617– 1688). Barth unfolds his own position in thinking about analogy by means of a critique of Quenstedt, whom he regards as a spokesman for what 304 chapter six

Lutheran Protestant orthodoxy has had to say on this point.118 What are the grounds for applying the same concepts to God and man? Quenstedt suggests that the truth of human knowledge of God rests on an analogia attributionis intrinsecae. The attribution of qualities to both God and man takes place on the basis of the fact that they originally have their existence in God, and likewise exist in man, to be sure in unequal degree (inaequaliter). In Quenstedt Barth descries the threatening shadow of an analogia entis doctrine. This would mean that in principle the reasoning could be reversed and could lead to assertions about God that were not dependent on Jesus Christ, on God’s salvific revelation, but on a being that encompasses both God and man. This could have been avoided if Quenstedt had spoken of an analogia attributionis extrinsecae.119 Indeed, according to Barth, Quenstedt could have avoided this if he had handled the first article of the Apostles’ Creed similarly to the second, that is to say, had he in fact subsumed the article on creation under the doctrine of justification. Barth’s critique of Quenstedt can hardly be taken seriously historically. It would suggest that in his time Quenstedt actually could have written differently. Barth’s critique fits entirely within his thesis that Protestant theology has fallen into decline. It is precisely this thesis however which indicates that Barth himself had too little awareness of the way his own systematic reflection was shaped by the culture in which he lived. He appears not to have seen that his own argument for the external and ‘injected’ character of analogy is deeply linked with an intellectual climate in which the presence of God in creation, the connection of creation and man with God, is seriously problematised. The immanent critique that McCor- mack presented of Barth’s argument in this connection is worth noting.120 Barth would not have had to reject Ouenstedt’s intrinsecae,ifhe had interpreted it within the possibilities that his own concept offered him. If Barth had kept in mind that God also acted as the God of the covenant in his acts as creator, there would have been no need to reject the intrinsecae. In that case there is, as it happens, also an analogia attributionis intrinsecae with regard to the creation, thus at the ontological level, which exists protologically and eschatologically by virtue of God’s gra-

118 KD II/1, 267–275;ET,237–243. 119 KD II/1, 270;ET,239. 120 Bruce McCormack, ‘Par.27 “The Limits of the Knowledge of God”. Theses on the Theological Epistemology of Karl Barth’ in: ZdTh 15 (1999), 75–86,part.83–85. the way of knowing god 305 cious act, and not by virtue of a power residing in the creation itself.121 This permits us to conclude that Barth speaks more negatively about creation and the world than is necessary within the framework of his own theology. That critique deserves support. Further on in Barth’s doctrine of God, in his discussion of the doctrine of qualities, the outlines of his doctrine of creation as the outward ground of the covenant already become visible. Creation is then no longer alien to grace, and the possibility arises for a further expansion of the theories on analogy, as does take place in the doctrines regarding creation. Despite these possibilities for an immanent critique and emendation, the function of Barth’s rejection of intrinsecae as a double signal must not be underestimated. On the positive side, the rejection of intrinsecae serves to protect the dialectic of veiling and unveiling. Barth is apprehensive about every kind of thought which believes that it can reason back to God from the generally human, from an already present and ‘transferable’ identity. Negatively, the rejection is a signal of his view that theologically there is hardly any place for the notion of the indwelling of God’s Spirit, for the traces and channels that are instruments of God’s Spirit, for theological perception of horizontal structures and phenomena that begin to speak precisely in the gospel’s ﬁeld of inﬂuence. Theologically there is a place for the coming of God’s Spirit, but in terms of geometry that is a vertical event which eclipses everything which happens on the horizontal axis and stands independent of it. Barth’s interpretation of the metaphor of the mirror in ICorinthians 13 is connected with this. The world is not in itself a mirror, nor is the life of Jesus a mirror. Earthly things become mirrors at the moment God is pleased to reveal himself in them. Words such as father, mother, love, care and punishment become mirrors at the moment they are ‘overtaken’ and taken over by God’s deeds. God goes after the reality which is estranged from Him and brings it again into the domain where it originally belonged. Barth has been followed on this point by countless others: there is no way from our reality to knowledge of God. The world is not a mirror of God’s goodness and care. This negation, directed by Barth against every attempt to acquire salvation apart from God, can also set itself up as an autonomous principle. This can occur, for example,

121 McCormack, ‘The Limits of the Knowledge of God’, 84. 306 chapter six when the denial that the world as such, in itself is a direct reference to God is presented as a truth of faith, and the world is regarded as empty and in itself meaningless for this theological reason. While Barth’s thinking was intended to impress upon his public that speaking of the world as a mirror can never be separated from God’s active work, imperceptibly the emphasis can shift to the conviction, possibly with a reference to Nietzsche, that the world is cold, meaningless and God- forsaken. A theological conviction—namely that saving knowledge of God is always a work of the Holy Spirit—then keeps company with a view of nature in which nature is a self-referential reality determined by patterns, which as such has nothing to do with God. The barriers thrown up in KD II/1 with respect to the way in which the natural reality which surrounds us was traditionally brought into theology reveals Barth’s own rootage within the post-Kantian tradition. Reality is only used theologically in strict relation to, and in participation in the movement of revelation. Only there, where human knowing participates in the manner in which God makes himself known in secondary objectivity, can there be theological objectivity. Outside of this movement there is, theologically speaking, no true knowledge. Thus one can also understand theoretically why Barth says he feels uneasy with the ‘strange generality’ with which the tradition speaks of God’s relation to the creature. If we dare to speak of God on the basis of the creation, then, according to him, that is on the basis of an additional revelation which illuminates it. Barth’s completely idiosyncratic and contrary view of what are termed the nature psalms affords a good illustration of where this theological conviction can lead in exegesis. For instance, with regard to Psalm 104,heaskshowthejoyoverthe works of creation can be distinguished from the optimism of 18th century physio-theology, which collapsed like a house of cards as a result of the 1754 earthquake in Lisbon. The reading of the nature psalms in the second panel represents an attitude of mind and mentality that is more dismayed by the horrors of an earthquake than it is amazed by a firefly. The spectre of Darwin appears on the stage as we hear that nature yields a spectacle of the struggle of every creature against every other for mere existence.122 Within this new constellation there is no intrinsic relation between this, our familiar reality, and God. Where, asks Barth with an eye to Psalm 104, where does the image of the world

122 KD II/1, 126;ET,114. the way of knowing god 307 that the psalmist has bear witness as such to an order and harmony in which one can immediately read the divinity, wisdom and goodness of the Creator?123 In his view one cannot for a moment read the joy of Psalm 104 without the eschatological key of Revelation 21:1–5,‘Behold, I make all things new.’ According to Barth there is only one conclusion possible: the goodness of creation, its intention, is a divine judgement: it is good in God’s eyes. Goodness and pleasantness are not qualities of the creation; their reality lies entirely in God’s judgement. This judgement of God does not for a moment reflect things as they are. The starting point for judging and knowing theologically is the covenant of grace. Such an evaluation betrays not only the presence of a different mentality, but in terms of theory of knowledge, a neo-Kantian legacy. Reality as it is perceived by the senses is no longer as such ontologically defined by its relation to God. It no longer has its existence in a hierarchy of being, in which this existence as such must be thought to be dependent on God. There is a relation, but it must time and again be made by God and be revealed to man through the work of the Spirit. It is a relation which can only be spoken of theologically in reference to the extraordinary judgements and acts of God. Thus Barth makes it clear that creation is a theological concept which is only meaningful and receives objectivity in the light of God’s particular acts. The concept of creation is never in any way an immanent quality of this world, and has no continuity within this context. The difference from Calvin seems at first sight only a matter of degree. For him too the Creator-creature relationship is not something which proceeds from creation. Calvin conceives God as the highest active force which, through the hidden operation of the Holy Spirit, works and supports creation everywhere, at all times. But the difference is nevertheless fundamental, if one recalls that Barth explicitly must postulate what is self-evident in Calvin: for Barth reality is in itself dumb, meaningless and highly ambiguous. In the second panel, in contrast to the first, there is no manner of conceiving God’s indwelling. Therefore Barth begins with the event of revelation. It is his conviction that something is read into the nature psalms that is not present in reality as such. It is an eschatological reading of the world of creation. Phenomena are in fact seen in the light of the world to come. The definitive moment that invites us to see the phenomena

123 KD II/1, 126;ET,114. 308 chapter six as praise of the Creator and as the work of his wisdom is not connected with any element that is intrinsic in that creation, but lies on the other side of it. God himself must make his works into the content of his Word and his judgement. Only then does one arrive at knowledge. One can ask whether, in his battle against natural theology, Barth has not arrived at a more radical standpoint than was necessary on the basis of his own theological point of departure. He embraces a view of life and the world according to which the works of God are incomprehensible, opaque, ‘indeed dark and strange, in their being and nature’.124 Nature is blind and coarse materiality, and sneers at man rather than being a smiling source. Speaking theologically, Barth stresses the absence of God from the world. If phenomena do speak, they proclaim their own insuﬃciency. Reality only becomes a mirror to the extent that there is ontologically an analogia ﬁdei.125 The relation that leads to knowledge of God is a separate event, which indeed takes place in the sphere of creation, but which is not interwoven with this created reality. The ambiguity of the world in which we live is thus theologically founded, and the experience of the world as creation can only be understood as theological designation.

6.15. Faith and certainty

At the end of the discussion of the truth of knowledge of God Barth comes to speak about the certainty of faith. Considered systematically, knowledge of God is participation by man in the movement that is expressed in the thesis God is known through God. What does this mean for faith? Can a guarantee be given that the reality described is the circulus vertitatis Dei and not a circulus vitiosus?PeculiartoBarth’s radicalism is that in his answer he maintains the dialectic that we

124 KD II/1, 127;ET,115. 125 Later, steered in that direction by D. Bonhoeffer, in his creation doctrine Barth would speak of a analogia relationis. As there is in God a calling I which relates to a called Thou, so God relates to the persons He calls, and so these persons also relate to one another in the human estate, I and thou, man and woman. The world is understood as a series of relations that have a correspondence in the divine being Himself. See KD III/1, 219–220;ET,195–196. Following this line one may expect a more positive, non-tragic recognition of otherness. the way of knowing god 309 always encounter in his doctrine of revelation, namely the dialectic of veiling and unveiling. Now, in the description of faith, it takes the form of faith and disputation. The difference between disputation and doubt was mentioned earlier. Disputation stands within the circle of faith, indeed itself lives from the contact by God. Doubt, on the contrary, falls outside the correlation of faith and revelation. In disputation the believer is affected by the question of whether he or she is really indeed involved with God, or whether he or she has been fumbling around in the dark. Barth emphatically rejects every attempt to provide a support or guarantee for faith outside the reality of faith. He regards the solution of speculative idealism, which would have our thinking correspond with the thinking of an absolute spirit, or that faith is confirmed because it is associated with the highest good, as escape routes that only call up doubt. There is a vast difference between doubt and disputation. Doubt seeks for grounds outside the encounter with God. Only in disputation do things get serious, because disputation searches for and asks of God.126 Disputation itself appears to be a phenomenon that belongs precisely in the circle of faith and encounter with God. Disputation expects an answer from God himself, dies of the question and precisely in this dying, in this way, is there a chance that God himself speaks and acts. Only the way of faith, in the asking of God himself, will faith ultimately find rest and ground under its feet. This also means that the reassurance that faith gives, Sicherung, is accompanied with an ‘unset- tlement’, Entsicherung.127 Faith knows that it can not be founded on the strength of autonomous thinking, on evidence of a moral order, on the hypothesis of an abstract Spirit. Barth emphatically screens faith off against such things. Faith renounces these things when it sees God, and expects and receives an answer from him. The systematic unfolding of knowledge of God can thus in turn not find its support in any other systematic construction; it can have its foundation only outside itself, in God’s speaking. Barth’s theology leaves no other way out. ‘Faith refuses to grasp after any axioms and guarantees.’128 It will be worthwhile, by way of evaluation, to glance back at the first panel. Practically, one finds a similar radicality in Calvin too, when

126 KD II/1, 281;ET,248. 127 KD II/1, 281;ET,248. 128 KD II/1, 282;ET,249. 310 chapter six he points one to the realm of Word and Spirit for the certainty of faith. One receives certainty of God and his salvation only because the content of the Gospel is personally impressed on the believer’s heart. The element of being convinced, persuasio, and commitment, are the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also obvious that there is a difference. For Calvin human knowledge of God is still supported by a number of self- evident cultural and intellectual truths. That God exists, that He works, is so evident in the first panel that only the malevolent would deny it. It is part of the colour scheme of the whole painting. With Barth it is no longer malicious and stubborn folk who deny these self-evident truths; the ‘unsettling’ is a subject which becomes a theme within the discussion of faith itself. Every philosophical support or confirmation is suspect in advance of being ‘natural theology’. The grounds that faith itself gives on the one side, and the cultural and philosophical evidences on the other, have been dispersed like a school of fish, and no longer bear on each other. Is that a purification of faith, or also an impoverishment? Barth undoubtedly saw the Entsicherung as a necessary purification. Purer means that it is now clearer than before what faith ultimately rests upon, namely on God’s own Word, on Christ. Religious knowledge has its own source and cannot be derived from other evidence than that which supports faith itself. And yet, as the further development of Barth’s own theology reveals, the question of the universality of God cannot be suppressed. Even as Christian theology in its modern form acknowledges that it ultimately lives from God’s own speaking, from his Word, then one teeters on the edge of esoteric insularity if one refuses to examine the question of how this Word relates to the world of experience shared with other human beings. It is not without reason that the viewpoint of God’s universality has once again been thought through from various sides, for instance by Pannenberg and Jüngel, the former by demanding that the question of truth be explicitly taken up by theology, the latter by developing a theological anthropology that can also make meaningful and plausible pronouncements about mankind outside of faith. Such attempts are theologically linked, because they take into account the fact that in the Christian creed the Father of Jesus Christ is the same as God the Creator. the way of knowing god 311

6.16. Natural theology

Within the context of the question of the knowability of God, in KD II/1 Barth settles the score with ‘natural theology’. For him, the term ‘natural theology’ represents the negative flip side of his revelation theology. He discusses the matter in the sections ‘The Readiness of God’ and ‘The Readiness of Man’, thus as a phenomenon that deserves attention precisely at that point, because in his eyes ‘natural theology’ is diametrically opposed to the foremost thesis of revelation theology: knowledge of God is possible exclusively on the basis of God’s gracious revelation. Why does Barth so vigorously contest ‘natural theology’, and why should the pages that he devotes to this dispute be among the fiercest in Kirchliche Dogmatik? It is because ‘natural theology’ stands for the attempt on the part of man to justify himself before God. If it has once been recognised that knowledge of God exists only as a reality that is summoned up and maintained through God’s readiness, any suggestion that there could be true knowledge of God outside this movement of God’s action ‘cannot even be discussed in principle’.129 It is in this way, and no other, that Barth interpreted natural theology: as a denial of the fact that knowledge of God is a grace. In his eyes natural theology is nothing but a theologoumenon; behind the concept of knowledge of God outside grace stands the concrete subject of the ‘natural man’, who wants to be justified in this life without God. The ‘natural man’ is inclusive of enmity toward God, the resolution or veiled refusal to live from God’s grace. Barth paints the debate for us as a spiritual struggle. In these pages of his dogmatic work, Barth comes to the strongest identification that one can arrive at in theology. He terms the Barmen declaration ‘a miracle’ which can not be dismissed as a ‘pretty little discovery of the theologians’.130 It is likewise no less than ajudgementoffaithwheninthiscontextBarthassignstothechurch the role of a ‘witness’ which found itself ‘guarded by the Word of God in contemporaneous self-attestation’.131 These designations reveal the degree to which prophecy and theology can coincide in this concept. They are among the rare moments within his dogmatic work when Barth forthrightly passes judgement on a historical situation, and in the

129 KD II/1, 93;ET,85. 130 KD II/1, 198;ET,176.Seealsonote17. 131 KD II/1, 198;ET,177. 312 chapter six light of this situation illuminates a tradition that ‘that for more than 200 years now has prepared the destruction of the church.’132 As Birkner has convincingly demonstrated, with his pejorative use of the term natural theology Barth stands in a longer tradition in which ‘natural theology’ functioned as a designation for heresy and to stigmatise those to whose thought it was applied.133 It became a polemic term and an imputation of theological error. The struggle against the natural man has a function similar to Calvin’s struggle against the lack of pietas, the lack of an adequate life style. While Calvin appeared to be constantly confounded by the tenacity of human hypocrisy, by the feigned obedience to God, by the pockets of resistance in the recesses of the human heart, Barth descries the natural man134 ‘as far as the eye reaches’,135 who refuses to expect everything from God. In KD II/1 the empirical man and the subject living from God’s grace do not entirely coincide. The incongruence is maintained with regard to the

132 KD II/1, 197;ET,175. Literal citation from the commentary that was spoken by Hans Asmussen as explanation with the theses. 133 See H.J. Birkner, ‘Natürliche Theologie und Offenbarungstheologie. Ein theolo- giegeschichtlicher Überblick’, Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 3 (1961), 274–295, 287. The term ‘natural theology’ has a very long history of polemic use. As appears from the overview of theological history offered by Birkner, since Kant the term has had a pejorative significance, serving to characterise the inadequacy of the position of those whose theology was so identified. In modern theological history the term has become a stereotype in disputes, useful for pillorying one’s opponent. Already in Ritschl the term functions to denote that theology which in his eyes remains stuck in a heathen morass because in its doctrines of God it remains connected with Greek metaphysics. For Ritschl true Christian theology is therefore characterised by explicitly taking its point of departure from the spirit, as opposed to nature. For Barth the term incorporates a definition of what Christian theology can not be, namely a domestication of revelation, giving it a middle-class outlook: the Christian as bourgeois (KD II/1, 157; cf. ET, 141). Despite the pejorative connotation the term took on in modern theological history, there is unmistakably a continuity which can be observed with its pre-Kantian meaning. As was already sketched above, in the name of ‘natural theology’ reflection on the relation or connection with contemporary thinking receives a place in theology. The question is not if there should be this connection with modern culture, but, as Gestrich correctly notes, how this connection takes place. Barth’s rejection of natural theology therefore anything but excludes all sorts of connections being made in his theology too with what presents itself as acceptable or plausible in his own culture. A famous example of such a connection within Barth’s theology is his reception of the religious critique of Feuerbach and Marx: religion as an absolutising of a human construct or as legitimisation of bourgeois society. From the first edition of the Epistle to the Romans Barth was applauded by the critics of historical Christianity because he incorporated their critique of religion in his own theology. 134 KD II/1, 93;ET,85. 135 KD II/1, 148, 150, 157; ET for example 133, 134, 137. the way of knowing god 313 believing subject. It can be observed historically that men proceed from the assumption that God is already present in one manner or another in their domain and sphere, God as a being of consequence with whom we are directly related. Natural theology proceeds from a direct connection between God and man, and on the basis of this direct connection can hypostatise or identify itself in whole or in part with God.136 The image which Barth gives is a closed circle. It is a circle which will not permit itself to be broken open, and in which from the onset all that appears is a manifestation of something human, something of this world. The system is from its inception immune to the notion of God as the Other, as alterity, because everything that appears is immediately encapsulated and vitiated within its own system. There has been an immense amount said and written in modern Barth research about the function of Barth’s dispute with natural theology. If anywhere, it is in this polemic that it becomes clear just how much difficulty modern Christian theology has coming to grips with the relation between faith and knowing, church and culture, the connection between the two entities. That there is a relationship between faith and culture is not a point of discussion, the question is only how and where this connection runs. Barth’s argument with Brunner reveals the extent to which a starting point in creation theology had become impossible for Barth.137 Barth could only consider the use of concepts from creation theology as a cover for the autonomy of earthly powers and processes in opposition to God. That Barth—and in his footsteps the Barmen Declaration—broke with the two-source theory of Refor- mation tradition is a signal that concepts such as nature, creation and history have become ambivalent and closed entities in post-Kantian theology. With Barth an experience of reality becomes visible, we might say, which lacks the inner mental capacity to see more in nature than an alien reality, an unknown X, which first and foremost is the object of scientific definition and description. Several conclusions are now in order. We conclude that Barth, in expounding knowledge of God, chooses a way that makes it clear that theological epistemology is anything but a neutral prolegomenon. Epis- temology is in fact already a part of the content of doctrines of God.

136 KD II/1, 151;ET,136. 137 Brunner still worked with notions from creation theology. He proceeded from the distinction between an imago Dei formalis and imago Dei materalis, the former of which also continued to exist after the fall and could be used theologically. 314 chapter six

One cannot speak about the knowing of God in general, outside of revelation itself. How knowledge of God comes to be and is replen- ished can only be conceived as a result of God’s own coming; in Barth’s own terminology, it is a consequence of revelation. The way of revelation is not received without the content (Christ) and the subject of this revelation. In a certain sense, in his thought Barth carries through a movement which differentiates theology and makes it self-sufficient, which was completed for philosophy in the epistemology of Kant and his followers. In the history of philosophy, epistemology liberated itself from a theological framework. Barth completes this process of emancipation for theology. In his theological concept of knowing God, he no longer looks to explicit support from observations of a general epistemological nature. That does not say that his concept can not implicitly include all sorts of insights and elements from its cultural and philosophical environment. The process of inclusion is in principle eclectic in nature. Every form of a preambula fidei as a necessary entrance to the really theological is replaced by the conviction that God in his majesty is able to use any means, without this having the result that means and methods can be chosen at will, as if it made no difference. In his principled eclecticism Barth does anything but defend indifference and capriciousness, although he does go to cudgels with regard to making any particular method or epistemology a matter of principle. There is hardly any reflection on human capacities, let alone support for their having any separate place in his theology. They are entirely secondary in comparison with the speaking and acts of God. In Barth’s personalistic and voluntaristic language, all attention is focused on the command and permission that God gives, and the person who in obedience seeks to follow God in his revelation. A second conclusion is that no status of perfection can ever be attributed to the concepts and images that we form and apply to God. They are in themselves never a work of God, but man’s work. There remains a distinction between the speaking of God and the speaking of men. Dogma is thereby characterised as an eschatological entity; the incongruence continues to exist from the side of man. We can indeed call on and use human words, concepts and images in the intercourse between God and man. Through God’s grace they can become mirrors of God’s greatness and his turn toward man. Within a theologia viatorum, they are to be esteemed as means of blessing. Third, Barth’s teaching on analogy is a radical theological answer to a vision of reality presented by Kant’s philosophy. His concept of the way of knowing god 315 the reality of knowledge of God is an attempt to give the reality of knowledge of God a place in the face of post-Kantian agnosticism. This world in itself has no gateway to God, and there are no bridgeheads where men can get a foot on the ground. The only possibility of knowing God lies in God himself building the bridge, creating the analogy, and making himself knowable in our reality, granting signs of himself.

chapter seven

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

7.1. Knowledge of God as knowledge of God’s being. The anti-agnostic thrust of a theological decision

With whom or what is man dealing? Since modernity penetrated West- ern cultural circles in scores of ways, inhabitants of the West have been made deeply aware that it is chiefly themselves they are dealing with, in one sense or another. Humanity is alone by itself in the world, in all its finiteness. This realisation is revolutionary in comparison to the first panel. Here, the hinge holding the two panels together represents a fault line. The consequences for faith and theology were paradigmat- ically already to be found in the thinking of Kant. The turn to human actions, to humanity takes primacy, and doctrines regarding God and salvation serve at the most as exponents of the question of what man must do. The demand for freedom, for the actualising of mankind, the concern about the fragility of life begin to define the horizon of all questions, all thinking and action. In the context of post-Kantian culture every form of attention to beliefs about God must therefore reckon with responses of surprise, scorn, distrust and, especially, indifference. The autonomous discussion of doctrines of God very quickly raises suspicions that what is being talked about neither touches nor concerns life. All things considered, this is something one can do without, not because the truth of falsity of these claims must be disputed, but because they have simply become irrelevant. If discussions do turn to God, then it is as a somehow unavoidable question within the questions of life, within the context of ethics and humanity. It is not without reason that one of the points of discussion in Christian theology after Kant has been to what degree an autonomous discussion of doctrines of God is responsible. Does not such an approach lead to talking about God as an object, as a thing among things? Barth’s teaching on knowledge of God could be read as an attempt to escape that accusation of immediate objectification. Both the doctrine of the Trinity in the Prolegomenon and the emphasis on the hiddenness of God in the dis- 318 chapter seven cussion of knowledge of God function to point back to an inalienable sovereignty that God exercises in his dealings with mankind, without thereby denying the possibility of knowing God.1 Notwithstanding the tenor of his time, Barth dared to undertake a broad, systematic development of a doctrine on God. Already in the first move in this chess game in his effort one finds the answer to the question implicit in the previously mentioned adage, Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos. Theology has to give an account of ‘the fact that not only sheds new light on, but materially changes all things and everything in all things—the fact that God is’.2 This assertion is problematic. It does not place ethics and the acting man in the limelight; it is not the project of freedom and self-realisation that forms the horizon. According to Barth, the long and short of it is that theology is about the exposition of the sentence ‘God is’, and thus is about nothing less than the being of God.3 All of theology is a form of knowledge of God. Theology deals with the whole sum total, about man, his world, his fears and yearnings—but deals with all of this in the light of the sentence ‘God is’. That is not an insight alongside other insights; it is the given through which all the others come to stand in a new and different light. But the existence of God, his work, what he says, his acts are characterised as things that do not only throw a certain light on life. They indeed do that, but Barth says much more. The being of God, his acts, his deeds as such are definitive for being. The being and acts of God have ontological implications and are therefore relevant for man and his history. The question of the meaning of life, who man is, the question of his humanity and responsibility, all of life is set on one track, is newly constituted as it were, when one understands these questions within the acts of God. After these introductory sentences it will be clear that in this chapter we are not entering totally new territory. The decisive lines toward an answer to the question of who man is dealing with in faith have

1 The other way was chosen by another of W. Herrmann’s pupils, R. Bultmann. In his essay ‘Welchen Sinn hat es von Gott zu reden’ in: R. Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen Bd.I, Tübingen 19727, 26–37, he denied the possibility of a separate, material doctrine of God. For the rest, in both cases there is a deep agreement: God does not permit himself to be objectified in the same way a normal object in the world is objectified. What Barth achieves with his doctrine of the Trinity and his discussion of the hiddenness of God is what Bultmann means by his programme of demythologisation. See E. Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden, Tübingen 19763, 33–34. 2 KD II/1, 289;ET,258. 3 KD II/1, 288–291;ET,257–259. the doctrine of god 319 already been sketched out in the preceding chapter. It must once again be emphasised that the distinction between the way and content of knowing God can only be conceived as strictly a matter of logic. The theme of the way and the theme of the content of knowledge of God together form an inseparable whole. In this chapter then we will find only a shift of the accent within one and the same field. Attention will shift to God as the content of human knowledge. Barth’s concept of knowing God permits itself to be seen as a circular movement, from God to God, with man being involved in this movement. Barth’s exposition makes it crystal clear that from the start he flies straight in the face of undeclared or open agnosticism, any suggestion that there is nothing which can be said about God and His being. In part as a consequence of the Kantian reconsideration of the boundaries of human knowledge, Christian doctrine has been suspected of reaching beyond its grasp. Does not Christian theology speak about an order that transcends the limits of time and space? When it speaks of God and His being does it not assume a reality that in fact means a duplication of the existing order, a world behind this world? Barth is well aware of these suspicions, and for his part in fact uses them against esoteric tendencies.4 The answer in the second panel betrays its modernity by making it clear in many ways that God’s being is not simply a duplication or extension of earthly reality. God is not an object in the normal sense of that word.5 But this otherness of God does not detract from the fact that one must indeed speak of a form of objectivity. Faith takes on shape because another order that does not coincide with ours presents itself. For the rest, it is not only the modern Kantian tradition that assures that there is an extreme reticence in making pronouncements about God’s being. We also encountered this reticence in the first panel. Calvin takes a stance close to the position that Melanchthon took in his Loci in 1521, when he argued that men should not seek to understand the basis of the incarnation, but must have reverence for the blessings of Christ. We stand before a tension which is not rarely felt to be a contradiction. Barth says explicitly, with a reference to Melanchthon, that never on any occasion may investigation, vestigare,beseparated from reverence, adorare. Even if one will investigate the blessings, ben- eficia, of Christ, there is a chance that the investigation will in fact run

4 See for example Römerbrief 2, 82;ET,107–108. 5 KD II/1, 15;ET,12. 320 chapter seven toward irreverence.6 It is clear that Barth, in contrast to Calvin, does not shrink from questions about the essence of God. That is a significant difference. Calvin indeed provides a structure of terms that obtain as qualities of God, but it is deliberately very summary. He offers, as we saw, a rational order, but as soon as the question begins to move in the direction of a question about God’s eternal being, separate from his revelation, this is a question which he will not pursue. Man must know God only as God wishes to make himself known. The content of the knowledge of God has its bounds. There are spaces and subjects in God’s Counsel that man does not know, and does not have to know. It is enough that God adopts believers as children and is known by their as their loving Father. With Barth we have entered another climate. Revelation is self - revelation, and consonant with this, knowledge of God is nothing less than knowledge of God Himself. The question about the essence of God is no longer conceived as a question about God’s substance, but as a question about who we are dealing with. The image of spaces in God’s Counsel to which man is denied access, makes way for an image of a personal encounter, in which man comes out as a person, and enters into a relation with an other. In the second panel it will thus also gradually become clear that faith does not reduce people to children, but makes them adults who are called to partnership. In the Kirchliche Dogmatik the stress comes more and more to be on man as a partner in a covenant, a mature adult who precisely in the knowing of God is not excluded, but included as a whole person and a subject. This must be clear: Barth’s doctrine of God offers a modern reinterpretation, not a reversion. In respect to terms, he seeks as much continuity as possible with the patristic and orthodox Protestant tradition, but that produces anything but a simple repetition of an inherited body of thought. Barth has his theological reasons for making such extensive use of the vocabulary of orthodox doctrines of God: the history of theological thinking may be approached with the presupposition that God speaks to man in His freedom, and takes man into service, inclusive of man’s thought.7 It would testify to an unbelievable impudence and an indifference toward God’s Spirit to scorn the development of doctrine in the Church as merely a defection from original Christianity.

6 KD II/1, 290–291;ET,259. 7 E.P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvätern zu Karl Barth. Das altkirchliche Dogma in der ‘Kirchlichen Dogmatik’,Amsterdam1993, 19–22. the doctrine of god 321

For Barth the Church has wide boundaries, and therefore the possible partners with whom one can enter into discussion are many. The source material for a dogmatics as training in listening to God is found in that which the Church has thought and said, thus in that which is provided in doctrine and reﬂection on doctrine. But the criterion remains the Word of God, and thus critique is always possible. The attention and respect for Protestant orthodoxy thus did not stop Barth from arguing the thesis with great conviction that Protestant orthodoxy was in decline—a thesis the eﬀects of which still permeate our theological-historical conception. In Barth’s eyes the coalition between a general ontology and Christian belief had had fatal consequences in liberal theology, and had its climax and apotheosis in ‘natural theology’, which asserts that God can be known from nature and history. In Barth’s depiction of natural theology, nature and history, or the generally accessible, becomes the actual gangplank to knowledge of God. But the presupposition of Barth’s doctrine of God is the continuing diver- gence between God and man, which he argues was obscured in 19th century theology when it accepted there was a demonstrable point of identity between God and man.8 Barth does not deny that there is such a point of identity, an element of participation; the critical question is how this point must be conceived. For Barth, it is a gift, a relation constituted by the act of God, and as such a grace. The situation in which man is no longer alone, but is confronted by the living God with salvation in his train, does not arise from man. When God comes out to encounter man, the next step must follow: one can begin to think about Who shares himself in this revelation. With this we come to a key element in the theology presented in the second panel: the relation of God’s revelation and his being. There must be a distinction between God’s being and his work, between essence and revelation—but they certainly must not be separated. When in faith people recognise that in Jesus Christ they share in God’s revelation, through the mediation of that name a prospect on God’s being opens up for them. According to Barth that is not speculation. It might be termed speculation if there were a gap between being and work, but one of the pillars of his theology of revelation is precisely that such a gap does not exist in revelation. In the previous chapter we saw why it does not exist: namely, because God himself creates an analogy, because

8 See for example Barth’s critique of Ph. Marheineke in Die protestantische Theologie im 19.Jahrhundert. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte,Hamburg19753, 423;ET,497. 322 chapter seven in his revelation in Jesus He himself reveals his Lordship, and thus himself. Barth does indeed make a distinction between God’s essence and his revelation, but expressly guards against that essence and revelation becoming divided into two ontological layers which would be separated byagap.9 Barth’s fundamental assertion is that God is who He is in his works.10 That opens the possibility for human knowledge of God. Within the reality of faith as participation in God’s self-knowledge, who God is can be further particularised on the basis of his works.

7.2. God’s reality: being and act

The title of the first section of the chapter in which Barth discusses the doctrines of God in a narrower sense presents itself rather formally: ‘The Being of God in Act’.11 For the rest, the intention and scope of this statement is far from modest: it proposes to present a reinterpretation of what is discussed in traditional theology under the concept of the being of God. Two terms are brought together with one another here, which in the history of classical metaphysics represented two unequal orders, namely being and act. ‘Being’ refers to the highest being, and as such the eternal, enduring and foundational. ‘Act’ refers to the world of human action, to the imperfect and inconstant. With the Hebrew word dabar in mind, Barth engages them with one another when he says ‘The Being of God in Act’. God’s being is not a foundational, immovable being; it is Ereignis, event, and more to the point, the reality of God himself is the act. In the picture of God it is no longer the foundational and the immovable that is primary, but God as the acting subject. It is not without reason that Barth presents his doctrine of God under the title ‘The Reality of God’. The word ‘reality’ here must be understood as containing the double meaning, namely as act or deed, and as being. Act and being are both intended as specifications of God’s being. With respect to God, being and act are not antitheses, and neither one has any logical priority over the other. This too must be read as critique of thinking which asserted that one must first and foremost speak of God as the immobile mover, as being at rest. God’s being is typified by acting.

9 Cf. E. Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden, 45;ET,46–47. 10 KD II/1, 291;ET,260. 11 KD II/1, 288;ET,257. the doctrine of god 323

Barth research is very well aware that, in choosing to go in this direction in his reinterpretation of the concept of God, Barth sought to connect with the modern concept of the subject. As a subject, man is someone who creates and shapes the world by has actions. In Barth’s picture of God, man can easily recognise the homo faber, the creative and acting man, or more strongly, in an adapted form, the attempt to maintain God’s autonomy. Certainly the latter concept, used by Trutz Rendtorff,12 calls up the suggestion that in this concept there is in fact no room for the peculiar responsibility of man, and for the mediating and sustaining function of ecclesiastical and cultural institutions. Now, the critical point cannot be whether a theology—in this case Barth’s concept—makes use of the means of thought that our times and culture offer. The critical point is whether such use does justice to what must be spoken of there, namely God as he manifests himself in the history of Israel and Jesus. The answer to that can only be given by investigating the meaning of the content of the terms used. It is the presumption of this second panel that these modern terms precisely do justice to the content of Biblical revelation. The further specification of the being of God takes place through the terms event, act, life, love and person. The content of these terms—so Barth never tires of repeating—must not be drawn from the meaning that these terms have in general, but must be derived from a critical reading of revelation, and concretely, from Jesus Christ. The content of revelation and the way to knowledge go together. That indicates the direction theological thought must go, and it can be connected with what was said in the preceding chapter about Barth’s vision on language. The fact that particular terms are already part of the language is not totally definitive. Barth takes the basic assumption that a term is entirely defined by the ‘thing’ or content of revelation so radically that he sometimes suggests that the meaning of a word which has been ‘captured’ by revelation has hardly anything to do with its ordinary meaning. The polemic point of this accentuation of discontinuity has already been discussed in the preceding chapter. The point is that the words which we apply to God are not purely extrapolation from what we already know. Theology always and in all circumstances has to listen

12 T. Re n d t o r ﬀ, ‘Radikale Autonomie Gottes. Zum Verständnis der Theologie Karl Barths und ihrer Folgen’ in: idem, Theorie des Christentums. Historisch-theologische Studien zu seiner neuzeitlichen Verfassung,Gütersloh1972, 161–181 and idem, ‘Karl Barth und die Neuzeit. Fragen zur Barth-Forschung’, Evangelische Theologie 46 (1986), 298–314. 324 chapter seven to God in his Word, and the words will receive their meaning within the realm of God’s speaking. As the ground of its knowledge, Christian theology has the encounter in revelation through which God’s own being distinguishes itself as the ‘self-motivated person’.13

7.3. Love

In the substantive description that Barth gives of the being of God as a further specification of the formal characterisation ‘The Being of God in Act’, the term ‘love’ comes first: ‘The Being of God as the One who Loves’ is the second section.14 Why, one could ask, is precisely this term chosen, which in the usual series of qualities in traditional doctrines of God is generally subsumed under the holiness or goodness of God?15 It is because this term describes God’s being most comprehensively and inclusively. Love, according to Barth, is the qualification that follows from the revelation of the Name, and also the revelation of the Father, Son and Spirit. Love is the word that indicates the structure of how God is in Himself, and how He is also in his works, namely as the one who exists in fellowship, who creates relations. The lines which Barth sets out in this subsection are therefore definitive for the whole of his doctrines of God and of salvation. A longer citation is therefore not out of place: ‘He wills as God to be for us and with us who are not God. In as much as He is Himself and affirms Himself, in distinction and opposition to everything that He is not, He places Himself in this relation to us. He does not will to be Himself in any other way than He is in this relationship … In Himself He does not will to exist for Himself, to exist alone. On the contrary, He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and therefore alive in His unique being with and for and in another. The unbroken unity of His being, knowledge and will is at the same time an act of deliberation, fellowship and intercourse. He does not exist in solitude but in fellowship.’16 The fellowship that he seeks with mankind is not alien to Him, but is founded in the Divine being itself. Although the word ‘election’ is not

13 KD II/I, 304;ET,271. 14 KD II/1, 306;ET,272. 15 See for example H. Heppe/E. Bizer, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, Neukirchen 19582, 52. 16 KD II/1, 308;ET,274, 275. the doctrine of god 325 used in this passage, it is still clear that the will to fellowship with man ﬂows froth from the depth of divine life itself and therefore is most inti- mately connected with elements in it, namely with the will to fellowship or the love that is peculiar to divine being. Put another way—and here we encounter the central element of the second panel—living in fellowship or love is not incidental for God, but is essential, a characteristic trait for Him. What does Barth hope to achieve by postulating the concept of love in this way? Two points should be listed: First, that the content of human knowledge of God is determined by God, who in Himself exists in community and love. God is a God who exists in fellowship, in love, and therefore seeking fellowship with mankind is not foreign to Him, or something incidental, but is essential to His being as God. Later in this chapter we will discuss this further. In this way Barth prevents knowledge of God being threatened by the ultimate mystery of God, a threat which Barth saw hanging like a dark cloud over patristic, medieval and Reformation theology. One can ask how justiﬁed this charge is, and as a consequence place a question mark after the image Barth himself so successfully created of his own theology as a liberation from the centuries-long bondage to pagan philosophy. Has there ever been a time that faith and theology did not avail themselves of contextual means and were thus free of them? Barth would be the last to deny this, but in his polemic has not escaped the suggestion that a pure stance, listening only to revelation, can only be developed through a fundamentally Christological method. Second, through the primacy of the characteristic of God’s love, Barth makes clear that Christian thinking does not conceive God as a lone, monolithic subject. God has distinctions within Himself, and the fellowship of Father, Son and Spirit. This builds in a critique from the very outset against an ideal of existence as a subject that does not have its existence in analogy with this God. More to the point, Barth posits that God’s being as a person not only illuminates what being a person implies for man (a knowing, willing and acting I), but that only intheloveoftheGodformandoesmanbecome aperson.17

17 KD II/1, 319;ET,285–286. 326 chapter seven

7.4. Freedom

The second central term with which the doctrine of God is unfolded is freedom. Barth brings precisely this term, which was of such paramount importance as a beckoning ideal and driving force for modern humanity, into his theology in order to incorporate a number of characteristics that classic theology subsumes under God’s incommunicable qualities. Dealing with the term freedom after that of love is quite deliberate. Freedom qualifies God’s love.18 For Barth, freedom is not primarily to be defined negatively. It is crystal clear how critical Barth’s attitude on this point is toward metaphysical doctrines of God, where God’s majesty or exaltation is articulated primarily in negative terms. In Barth’s eyes terms such as aseitas and independentia have a good sense in so far as they indicate that God is not defined by others. But precisely in their negativity these terms are too weak, and are incapable of expressing that which must be expressed. Freedom is a positive concept that refers to the depth dimension of God’s acting and being. It expresses that what God does happens out of Himself, has its ground in Him. He is Himself in his act, and his act arises from the depths of his own being. In this context Barth refers very concretely to the self-evidence of God’s existence. In his revelation God himself provides the evidence of his existence, so that theology can only study this after the fact. Every time man stands before the reality of God, he perceives the freedom with which God demonstrates his own existence within the reality which is distinguished from Him.19 Freedom means that God is the one who has his origin within himself, each time beginning again from that same depth and source. What the tradition expressed in the concepts of sovereignty, exaltation, aseitas, for Barth will be discussed under the heading of ‘freedom’.20 Freedom therefore primarily means something positive; it is a qualification of God’s love. The positive thrust of the concept of freedom in the sense of a free choice to do something has great consequences, and argues against the idea of independence, independentia. ‘God must not only be unconditioned but, in the absoluteness in which He sets up this fellowship, He can

18 KD II/1, 334–335;ET,296–297. 19 KD II/1, 342;ET,304. 20 KD II/1, 340;ET,302. the doctrine of god 327 and will also be conditioned.’21 In other words, God’s freedom and sovereignty do not prevent him entering into a relationship in his revelation, seeking a form and binding himself to it. His revelation in Christ is a form of self-definition, covenant, a ‘commitment’, which He will not abandon. This linkage of freedom and love in turn has major consequences for thinking about God’s necessity. It is customary in classic metaphysics to think of God as the highest being in terms of negation. But according to Barth’s critique, by speaking of God as the infinite, absolute or unconditioned we are still speaking of God in terms of our own limitation. When man wishes to transcend himself, God can only be spoken about as a purified human limitation, from an anthropocentric perspective.22 According to Barth, when this is done it does not take into account God’s own revelation as a reality which places itself opposite man in freedom, which is to say, in a contingency of its own. He therefore attempts to interpret God’s freedom as a further qualification of that which God does in his act, namely the creation of fellowship. He must close off the possibility of God’s freedom being discussed solely and only as a term reflecting human boundaries. It must be clear in theology that human existence understands itself to be secondary and made possible by something outside itself. To this end Barth makes a distinction between primary and secondary absoluteness and freedom. In his own being and act God exists in primary freedom and absoluteness. Therefore in God absoluteness and freedom coincide as qualifiers of God’s own Wirklichkeit. The way in which God exists in his own being and act is the actuality, or better, the Wirklichkeit which theology can not get behind or reduce to human categories. Only when that is said can one then speak of freedom or absoluteness in relation to the reality created by God.23 The predicate ens necessarium therefore cannot be applied to God. The decisive objection against the concept of necessity is that in this concept God’s being is associated with need, with the inevitable, while that precisely ignores the sovereign freedom in which God is who He is. The word faktisch, actual, is essential for Barth. Men cannot see behind the actuality of God. Our thinking with regard to God is a posteriori. When God confirms his own being in his act, it is not because there is a necessity that God confirms his own being or

21 KD II/1, 341;ET,303. 22 KD II/1, 342;ET,303–304. 23 KD II/1, 347;ET,308. 328 chapter seven that God bring forth his own being out of the void, but it is simply the actual conformation of his being.24 That God begins from himself each time in his act does not say that God must separate his own being from non-being and needs a foundation, or that God must realise his own existence. Such an affirmation does indeed say that He, because He is who He is, is his own foundation, causa sui, and with his foundation is also the separation from what He is not. Formulated in other terms, the being of God is exalted above the alternative that originates from human experience of man’s own fragility, namely of not-being or being necessary. With respect to God, man can only takes as his point of departure the actuality of God, the ‘empirical decision’ in which God is who He is.25 The location of God’s being as beyond the opposition between the necessary and not-necessary has great consequences for considering relationships and affections with regard to God. Traditional doctrines of God have great difficulty ascribing real relationships to God, because relationships express situations of dependence. For that reason too the attribution of affections to God was problematic in the first panel. By placing God’s own being beyond this opposition, in this panel the existence of affections in God is something which is no longer really unthinkable. It is no longer a pudendum. On the contrary, love, sorrow, being moved, pity and suffering are not illegitimate manners of speaking about God. They have their possibility and reality in God himself. We can draw still another conclusion. We men can not reach God through our concepts, by our thought. The starting point for theology, for human knowledge of God, is the actual: God, who in His revelation is who He is. Barth thinks from eternity to time, never the other way around, not even in his doctrine of election. What then is the appropriate way to knowledge, which fits with this actuality? It is not without reason that in this context Barth refers to prayer, to the hearing of the Word of God, and speaking in Pauline terms, to the struggle between flesh and spirit. Only there can the real contest be won. On the human side, the primacy of hearing the Word, obedience and prayer as an answer by man to this Word fit with this facticity. The reality of knowing God thus plays itself out on a field that dogma designates as the reality of the Word is that is spoken and heard.

24 KD II/1, 344;ET,306. 25 KD II/1, 345;ET,307. the doctrine of god 329

7.5. Multiplicity and unity

The next major consideration to which Barth turns for the whole of the doctrine of God is the unity of God’s perfections with his being. The peculiarity of this approach is that the antithesis between diversity and unity, which in the tradition led to an assumption of God’s unity at the expense of diversity, does not hold true for God. God exists in the multiplicity and wealth of his perfections. Barth explicitly recalls the diﬀerence of opinion that has existed since 1351 between the West- ern and Eastern churches on this point. Eastern Orthodoxy, following George Palamas and the Hesychasts, teaches that man encounters God’s actions, with energies that are eternal, uncreated and yet communicable to the creature. However, according to Barth, the Hesychas- tic teaching separates that which cannot be separated. He prefers to hold fast to the idea that the perfections of God in their multiplicity, individuality and diversity from each other not only exist because of God’s relation to the world, but in his own being as the God who loves in freedom. This means that in thinking about God’s qualities, multiplicity and unity must be held together. It is precisely in a coherent unity that the multiplicity comes to its full expression. This coherence is however no static unity; it is a concrete unity through the act of God. In God’s dealings with man, man encounters a unity of act, with ultimately the one person who in all his acts is himself. Put in other words, there is no diﬀerence between the questions of who God is and how He is.

7.6. Revelation as self-revelation?

According to Barth, revelation is self-revelation. We here encounter the central substantive core of his doctrine of God: knowledge of God is nothing more or less than knowing God Himself. Negatively this means that it is not primarily insights, statements, articles of faith and promises and commandments that are given to us in revelation. At its deepest, the content of revelation must be expressed in the singular. Not that Barth leaves behind the multiplicity of concepts as components of that which is given in knowledge of God, but the one common denominator of all revelation is self-revelation. Promises and commandments are derived, further specifications of God’s self- revelation. In his revelation God makes known what is within Him, 330 chapter seven what constitutes his self,26 namely his love, his will to fellowship with man. Self-revelation is therefore much more than an expression of insights or truths; it is sharing in fellowship with God himself and thereby sharing with the salvific, good God, above whom no other good exists. For this reason the content of revelation can not be characterised in the plural, but in the singular. Knowing God is fellowship with him as a person. That is undeniably a shift, we must acknowledge, in comparison with Calvin’s substantive definition of knowledge of God. It is a concentration on the personal, relational element in knowing God. As a concen- trationitisproductivetotheextentthatitmakesitclearthatGod, in turning toward man and the world, places himself into relationship. To the extent that the focus on the singular implies a turn away from the plural, it is however also possibly a reduction, which runs the risk of impoverishment. This judgement of the shift deserves further discussion. The reduction in this second panel becomes obvious if we turn back to the first for a moment. In Calvin’s definition of faith the content of knowledge of God was at its deepest defined by knowledge of God’s gracious gifts to man, as bestowed in Christ. That implies plurality. The believer comes to realise the state of affairs in the visible and—to a modest degree—in the unseen world, knowledge of God’s care, of good and evil, of promises, commandments, of security with God in this life and the life to come. Calvin’s concept of faith is not, however, absorbed into this plurality. Faith is more pointed, focused on God’s will to salvation. In simple terms, communication goes together with information and these two can not be separated from one another. What God does in the cosmos, in human history, in dictates of conscience and commandment, in the Bible, in Christ, in the sacraments, clearly has to do with the triune God who desires to enter into fellowship with strayed man, to draw him to Himself as an adoptive child—but this is in itself not be to be characterised as self-revelation. Calvin’s definition of faith takes more account of a multiplicity of ways God speaks. With Calvin facts that point to God in a wider sense also belong to knowledge of God, thereby forming ways through which God comes to man, and alongside these, in a closer circle, commandments, precepts, promises and threats. These are ideas and distinctions which disappear

26 KD II/1, 308–309;ET,274. the doctrine of god 331 from the modern panel. Barth’s characterisation of revelation as self- revelation reflects a typically modern development in which revelation as revelation of truths was increasingly experienced as problematic, and revelation slowly came to be reduced to self-revelation. With Barth, human knowledge of God arises through personal communication. The informative aspect of revelation has been shoved to a lower shelf. It is still there, but as something implicit in the communication. Theologically and historically, the further definition of revelation as self-revelation, thus that God himself is the content of the revelation, runs through Hegel. Barth was conscious of the importance of the speculative, idealist tradition for his own theology, and experienced the direction that theologians such as Ph. Marheineke and I.A. Dorner took as they followed Hegel’s lead as compelling and productive in may respects. Parallels can be found particularly in Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity. In his description of the history of Protestant theology in the 19th century he has therefore written in remarkably positive terms of Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel’s thought is characterised by Barth as a philosophy of confidence.27 One might suggest that Barth brought

27 K. Barth, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (19603=) Hamburg 1975, 318– 350,esp.325, 330;ET,384–421, 391, 397. In their thinking, in their perception of the world, in forming a notion of the world and the multifarious stream of phenomena in it, men do not stand outside the mystery of reality, but are themselves a part of the process of the Absolute or the Spirit. Between the human mind and God there exists an ultimate identity, so that self-confidence and confidence in God coincide at their deepest. Hegel sought to reconcile Christianity and culture in his own manner. In Hegel’s system, and in the sense of life that bore the stamp of Romanticism, the chasm that prevailed in Kant between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between the world of freedom and humanity on the one side and reality as it is perceived in the sciences, was not acknowledged. Ultimately this reality arises from one source and becomes one again. Hegel would not accept the unhappy awareness which reason reached after Kant. Kant’s fundamental realisation was that human knowledge is still isolated in all of its constructions of this reality, having no knowledge of the Ding an sich. Although man is part of a higher order of life, that of practical reason, in a certain sense he moves around lost in a world which is strange and unknown to him. Hegel thinks from adifferent view of life, not that of dualism, but of one all-inclusive whole. History is a holistic process, where contradictions are overcome precisely by historical diversity. In terms borrowed from the hinge section on Kant, in Hegel’s philosophy the turn to the subject becomes even more profound. Thinking of historic reason is identified with the way of the divine Spirit itself. According to Barth, in Hegel culture was liberated once and for all from the power of the church. Barth felt that in his philosophy Hegel had been better able to defend and actualise the general truth that is locked up within Christian doctrine than was possible for Christian dogmatics. Thus, in his eyes, Hegel was the philosopher who avowed openly that knowledge which really matters and is universally valid, divine truth, is identical with the human self. 332 chapter seven this attitude of confidence over into the field of theology. The Word which resounds in the Bible and is heard in faith is the Word of God himself. In the Word, in revelation, God makes himself known. That is to say, the ridgepole of theological thought is the confidence that in the Word men are encountering God himself as the subject and content. As has been said, in terms of intellectual history the thesis of the self- revelation of God is unthinkable without the background of modern subject thinking. In modernity the notion of the subject, in connection with the concept of the person, has assumed primacy, a position that until then had been occupied by the concept of substance. The subject is the creating principle that realises itself in its acting and shapes a culture. At the end of a long development, the concept of substance is slowly dissolved in and superseded by the concept of the subject as a fundamental notion.28 Barth’s theology in the second panel is an example of this development. The increasing emphasis on the individual as a unique person is illustrated in the relation between the artist and his artwork. In medieval art the artist was in the background. He or she is hidden behind the artwork, or is wholly unknown. Since the Renaissance the accent has no longer been exclusively on the work of art, on the product, but more and more on the maker, the craftsman or artist in the foreground. Within some branches of handicraft the craftsman or woman has been renamed an ‘artist’. Art has freed itself from ordinary life. Notions such as authenticity, originality and genius are typically Romantic concepts which, via idealism, have lodged themselves in the centre of modern views of life. The artist is no longer anonymous, behind his or her work,

28 W. Pannenberg, ‘Person und Subjekt’, in: idem, Grundfragen systematischer Theologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze Bd. 2, Göttingen 1980, 80–95. The definition of person, as it is found in Boethius, still testifies to the prevalence of the concept of substance. A person is an ‘individual substance’ (persona rationalis naturae individua substantia). Under the influence of the Trinitarian and Christological debates the term hupostasis, person, gradually comes to be used more independently as a concept for which relationality is constitutive. With Richard of St. Victor this relationality and autonomy are confirmed in the definition of the divine persons: the persons possess an incommunicabilis existentia through their relation to one another. With that, according to Pannenberg, the step is taken that is analysed by Hegel, but that he essentially does not go beyond. The relation to the other is constitutive for the person. However, with Hegel the concept of substance is included in, and, with that, replaced by the concept of the subject. The primary function that was accorded to substance in the Aristotelian doctrine of categories is now taken over by the concept of the subject. the doctrine of god 333 but signs the work, and defends his or her authorship as a personal expression. The work is something from his or her self. Rather than a beautiful specimen of skill, it has become art. The artwork is part of the way of the subject, and is therefore his or her unalienable mental property. Earlier in this section the critique was already raised that the concept of self-revelation runs the risk of resulting is a certain impoverishment. It was first substantiated by noting that in comparison to the concept of revelation in Calvin there is historically a reduction. It is however also necessary to indicate the risk entailed by an unthinking use of the concept of self-revelation in the current system. The point is not to dispute the proposition that in its focus and intention revelation has to do with God and with his intention to bring us into his salvific presence, but to note that the modern identification of revelation with self-revelation reduces the perspective on the ways in which God in fact moves in his turn toward man. Already in the Bible we see that not all the speaking, commands and acts of God can immediately be labelled as self-revelation. The person of the Revelator is not in the foreground in all forms of His speaking and acting. When in the Bible there is the gift of the Law, when Israel gains experience with judgement and God’s absence, when harvests and seasons are received as a grace, when prophets bring their message to man in the name of God, men encounter the acts of God in diverse forms. But not all these things are immediately understandable as revelations that give us knowledge of God himself. In the course of coming to know God and the history of God’s dealings with man, for a long time human knowledge is in fact focused on knowledge of God’s will, his commands. The content of God’s speaking is not primarily God himself, but rather how man is to act. These forms of God’s speaking are indeed connected with who God is, but that connection frequently remains in the background. One can rightly speak of self-revelation only when this connection between the variety of God’s speaking and God in Himself is thematised. The revelation of the Name of God in Exodus 3, the numerous ‘I am’ pronouncements and other statements in the Gospel of John29 and in his epistles that concern the identity of Jesus Christ, where the connection and identification is made explicit, can rightly be termed self-revelation. It is not without reason that it is precisely in the latter

29 Jn. 1:14; 4:26; 6:35; 10:11; 15:5. 334 chapter seven text that we are expressly reminded that the eschatological completion of our knowledge of God is still to be awaited (IJohn 3:2). If we should stop here in our excursus regarding the concept of self-revelation, we would however miss the essential function of the notion. The concept of self-revelation has a—even the—key role in the anti-agnostic project of Barth’s theology. We have already noted that Barth characterised Hegel’s philosophy as a philosophy of conﬁdence. This adjective can be applied to Barth’s own theological concept. That is particularly true for his doctrine of God, when he deals with the theological assessment of the qualities of God, or as Barth deliberately puts it, the perfections of God. The term ‘perfection’ points in the direction that is taken in this doctrine. The classic terms (proprietates, attributa, virtutes) easily create the misunderstanding that one is dealing with qualities that if necessary can be done without. Of even more force is the objection against the term appellatio, or naming. By opting for the concept of perfection Barth opposes what we might term the nominalist tendency in doctrines of God: the wealth of God’s qualities disappears if what is basically an illegitimate manner of speaking of God is used, one which does not guard the unity of God as that which can ultimately be said of Him.30 Echoing behind the concept of perfections is the assertion that the diversity of qualities that we encounter in Scripture and tradition has another foundation in addition to our perception. It is not just a matter of human perception which may not correspond to something in God himself. Barth puts paid to a long tradition that he sees running from Eunomius to Ockham and Eckhart. The statement of the last may be held representative of this whole tradition: ‘It is not possible there be any distinctions in God himself, nor can we conceive them’.31 In the words of Thomas Aquinas, the diversity with which God appears to man has its ground in acceptatione intellectus nostri.32 Barth likewise detects this view in Calvin. It is revealing that in this context a pair of 19th century German theologians are introduced as positive exceptions, namely H.R. Francke and J.A. Dorner.33 Barth will, like them, consider the virtues or attributes of God as characteristics which really exist in God himself. Faith can hold together what for human understanding perhaps seems a contradiction, namely God’s unity and

30 KD II/1, 368–372;ET,327–330. 31 Cited in KD II/1, 368;ET,327. 32 KD II/1, 369;ET,328. 33 KD II/1, 371;ET,330. the doctrine of god 335 the multiplicity of terms in which God’s greatness is expressed. In other words, the qualities are immanent, have a fundamentum in re,andarenot only distinctions that merely have their being in God’s outward acting, in his approach to man. Thus we once again encounter the motif which we earlier identified. In revelation we encounter God himself, not as he is toward us, as Calvin put it, but as He is in himself. It is a decisive motif in Barth. When God does something in his works, in his revelation, he can do that because it has a ground in Him as He is. There is not something or someone different behind the revelation. God does not have two faces, one for the outside world and one for himself. God is no Janus-faced despot. Calvin’s addition quoad nos is a limitation, which in Barth’s eyes forms a straightforward threat to the reality and trustworthiness of revelation. At the same point Barth’s theology is a theology of confidence, that revelation is revelation of God’s essence, of how He himself is. In our knowledge of God we encounter Him as He ‘actually and unreservedly’ is.34 If man is to be able to trust God, God must enter his revelations without reservation. He must be there entirely, or not at all. Barth works this out in his doctrine of the qualities of God.

7.7. Two series

In accordance with the definition of God as ‘The One Who Loves in Freedom’, in this panel the two terms love and freedom form the two poles around which the whole of God’s acts can be considered. In sections 30 and 31 of KD the qualities of God—or in the term Barth uses, the perfections—of God are discussed as the perfections of his love and the perfections of his freedom. This creates two series of qualities, which traditionally have been conceived as opposites, namely as communicable and non-communicable qualities. The first series that Barth chooses consist of grace, mercy, patience, holiness, righteousness and wisdom—all communicable qualities, according to classical views. That is to say, man can also share in them, albeit to a lesser degree. Barth’s creative intervention is that he subdivides these six according to the previously mentioned division, namely love and freedom. The first three he qualifies as terms of God’s love, the second three as terms of God’s freedom. He discusses them in their mutual connections

34 KD II/1, 365;ET,325. 336 chapter seven in section 30 as the perfections of God’s love. In the second series he discusses qualities which have traditionally been regarded as non- communicable: unity, constancy, eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence and glory. Here too Barth applies his own principle for subdivision. The first three (unity, constancy and eternity) are qualities of God’s freedom. Omnipresence, omnipotence and glory are connected to these as qualifications of God’s love. What does Barth achieve with this rearrangement? First, in none of the qualities do we encounter a side of God which is turned away from us and unknowable for us. The qualities of his love are further qualified and the qualities of his freedom are qualities of a God who loves in his freedom. These two series delineate the whole field of God’s being and acting, as it were. Precisely in their mutual involvement with each other, each pair of terms gives a view of the whole of God’s being and act, each time however from a different perspective. It is like making a circuit around a mountain, which remains constantly in one’s field of vision, but always from a different vantage point. The circling movement is necessary to enable us in our thinking and speaking to do justice to— or, as Barth puts it, to follow—the dynamism and motion in which God is and acts as God. The asymmetry between our speaking and God’s act is expressed precisely in the verb ‘to follow’. Human thinking is following at a distance. The element of non-identity is maintained. Second, in this way it is made clear that in his outward works and revelation God is nothing other than in his being. Our time, our space, our history has its ground and possibilities in God. The choice of these two groups and the decision to place their elements in this particular order is very deliberate and reflects a critical approach of the orthodox Protestant heritage. In Lutheran orthodoxy there is a sharp distinction between attributa absoluta on the one side and attributa respectiva or operativa on the other. In the Reformed tradition the terms differ, the non-communicable qualities over against the communicable qualities, attributa incommunicabilia. In these old divisions the absolute, immanent, foundational or non-communicable qualities had primacy. They were in fact considered as the qualities that described the side of God that is hidden from us, and in Protestant orthodoxy were accounted the actual qualities. They are the terms ‘from above’. A deep reluctance and ultimate refusal to make the qualities of God too much a subject of reflection was typical of the first panel. In terms of chiaroscuro effects in the first panel, the qualities of God lie in the shadows, and the light falls on mankind, and the things of this earth. In the the doctrine of god 337 second panel one can conceive knowledge of God as a ray of light that penetrates from above to below through the one centre, Jesus Christ, so that one can follow the light in two directions, namely upwards and downwards. For Barth too knowledge of God is bipolar. Who God is becomes knowable through God’s self-revelation, and it also becomes clear who we are and what this world is. The question of how God is immanent is no longer a matter of satisfying curiosity, of our curiositas. It has an eminently practical significance. If one cannot take as one’s starting point that God in his own inner life is the same as He permits himself to be known in the history of Jesus Christ, then we are groping around in the dark. The light runs from above to below through the centre; clear colours predominating on both sides. In the following two sections (7.8 and 7.9) I provide a survey—albeit very summary—of several elements of Barth’s doctrine of the perfections of God. What is offered is neither comprehensive nor simple. It is an exercise in which several points of Barth’s reinterpretation of the doctrine of God are taken up. In this manner some insight is given into the development that led to the rearrangement of the qualities in KD II/1. These sections are not of the greatest importance in the whole of this study; they are a interlude which can perhaps be skipped by the reader who wishes to move directly ahead to what can be considered the heart of Barth’s doctrine of God, namely his doctrine of election (7.10—7.15).

7.8. The perfections of God’s love

7.8.1. Grace and holiness The first two qualities dealt with are grace and holiness. Grace obtains as the first perfection of God’s love, and is further specified by the perfection in which the high freedom of His love shows through, namely holiness. Grace is the fellowship seeking and creative act of God. Barth emphatically distinguishes this from the Roman Catholic doctrine of grace, because this has the inclination to consider grace as a tertium between God and his creation. No, in revelation, in God’s movement toward man, He makes himself the gift.35 With the concept of grace,

35 KD II/1, 397;ET,353–354. 338 chapter seven however, the fundamental point of departure in the construction of Barth’s doctrine of God, the rootage of God’s works in his being, immediately leads to a problem. How can it be said that grace is rooted in God himself, if there is no opposition or conflict in God himself ? Is there in God himself then a movement that is analogous to the grace that sinful creation experiences? Barth’s argument here takes the form of a postulate. If God’s grace toward us is revealed and operative in our midst as divine being and act, Barth proposes, it can not be denied that ‘it is real in God Himself in a form which is concealed from us and incomprehensible to us’, namely as ‘the pure love and grace which binds the Father with the Son and the Son with the Father by the Holy Spirit’.36 One can understand this to mean that God’s own being cannot be comprehended in neutral terms. God’s own Trinitarian life is salvific reality par excellence. Later, in KD II/2, in the doctrine of election, Barth will further specify this rootage of God’s gracious act as the original form of self-definition. The term grace is linked with the term holiness. The content of this term is not defined phenomenologically, but theologically as a perfection of God’s loving. It indicates that God, in his turn toward man, himself remains the Lord and presses ahead despite all resistance. Holiness is another designation for the high freedom that we find in God as he perseveres in his will to salvation.37 It is in this context that the idea of judgement is also taken up. When God in his holiness presses ahead in his grace, there arises a disjunction between God and man, a conflict between God and his creature. Faith recognises this disjunction and bows to it. In other words, the idea of judgement is only to be approached and examined from faith. Only from the internal perspective of knowing God does it become visible that God’s holiness, and thus also his judgement, at its deepest concerns the preservation of man. Barth is sharply critical of Ritschl, because the latter would turn the contingent event of God’s grace into a notion. If grace were to become a notion that could be developed further deductively, there is no room for something like judgement. Indeed, Barth says, if looked at from a definition of the concept of judgement that is separated from the act of God, the notion of judgement becomes unbearable.38 By however taking God’s act as the starting point, that act can be recounted as

36 KD II/1, 402;ET,357–558. 37 KD II/1, 404;ET,360. 38 KD II/1, 411;ET,366. the doctrine of god 339 a history that runs through a movement. In that act one perfection does not stand next to another, nor is one set oﬀ against another to its disadvantage, but the vitality of God becomes visible in it.

7.8.2. Mercy and righteousness Grace, as the will to fellowship, necessarily takes the form of mercy. We are literally dealing here with a forced intervention. The creature finds himself in distress and God’s will to fellowship with this creature moves Him to pity. An essential characteristic of God is also addressed in this movement. God has a heart and is touched, affected by the distress of man. What was previously said in regard to God’s primary and secondary absoluteness is important in this context. Can God be affected, touched, by the distress of man? Does God have feelings emotions? In this second panel this question is answered with a resounding yes. In the first panel offered hardly any possibility for thinking of the existence of emotions in God. This would make Him into a dependent, vulnerable being and rob Him of his divine freedom. If there is one being who does not get upset, it is God: that is how we understand the tradition. For the rest, Barth’s critique of the image of God that begins from general notions does not limit itself to pre-modern theology. Schleierma- cher’s understanding for the reluctance of tradition to ascribe emotions to God is met with the ironic remark that indeed God as the ‘source of the feeling of sheer dependence’ has no heart.39 Beyond this, however, Barth acknowledges the point that tradition wished to preserve: God’s emotions are not a sign of weakness. The foregoing also means that in this second panel an attempt is made to take anthropomorphism seriously theologically, in a manner entirely different from the tradition did. Barth’s basing anthropomorphism in the being of God has gained wide following in theology. Once again there is critique addressed to Schleiermacher, who still regarded it as impossible to think of God as one who could be moved by the suffering of another. In contrast, it is now proposed that God has a heart and can be touched or moved. For Barth however it obtains that this being touched by an outside force does not have priority. Sensibil- ity is peculiar to God. The distinction between primary and secondary absoluteness becomes productive with regard to anthropomorphisms.

39 KD II/1, 416;ET,370. 340 chapter seven

Sensibility, feelings and emotion all have their being in God himself, arise out of the depths of his own divine life, and are not just summoned up by a force outside Him.40 That is the first point. To that it must be added, that this being touched and moved does not take place in powerlessness; it is a matter of strength. According to Barth, that is where the difference with man lies. A man can be so affected that he sinks under the experience. Being too sensitive involves risks, which are met by the human mind by defensive responses and isolation. Among human beings, being excessively sensitive can lead to the destruction of the self. Is that not the case for God? In this respect there must be a distinction between God and man. God possesses the capacity for sympathy,sympathyinthehighestsenseofsyn-pathos or ‘suffering with’. He can therefore expose himself without risk. For him it is a matter of capacity. The preceding can be understood as an attempt to put paid to the image of God as the Great Outsider. That is the practical intent of the proposition that revelation is self-revelation and the ecumenical Trin- ity has its basis in the immanent Trinity. These theologoumena are the theological means for conceiving God’s real involvement. In short, we find here in the doctrine of revelation the building blocks for the theopaschitic position. God does not remain detached from suffering, but is involved in it in an original manner—and can, through the life and death of the Son, become involved in a new manner in that which would otherwise be foreign to Him. Before we have called down wrath upon ourselves, we have already encountered God, who permits himself to be touched by human resistance.41 In practical terms that means that the summons arises from this theology to stop regarding the suffering that men bear as divine, eternal or inescapable. Because human suffering becomes involved with the inner life of God himself, at the conceptual level Barth accomplishes a relativisation of the absoluteness and immutable blackness of all human darkness. Before man tastes and experiences this darkness—including the darkness they themselves cause—God, in his heart, has already been touched by their plight.42

40 KD II/1, 416;ET,370:‘Theaffection of God is different from all creaturely affections in that it originates in Himself ’. 41 KD II/1, 420;ET,374. 42 KD II/1, 420;ET,374: ‘In the recognition and confession of the mercy of God, what we are accustomed to take so serously as the tragedy of human existence is dissolved. There is something far more serious and tragic, viz., the fact that our distress—the anguish of our sin and guilt is freely accepted by God, and that in Him, the doctrine of god 341

Can one label this ‘idealism’? Are we dealing with a position that does not take evil and suffering seriously enough, theologically? Or should we esteem this position as a genuine Christian protest against our contemporary culture, which permits itself to be crushed under its own experience of suffering? It is also worth noting the development of the term righteousness and the polemic Barth repeatedly entered into with Ritschl. God’s righteousness is defined as a further qualification of God’s love. His righteousness is the perfection with which He accomplishes his search for fellowship with man in a way that is worthy of Himself. God retains his dignity in his love.43 The impression from the first panel is that God’s righteousness remains rather separate from his mercy. The connection between the two qualities is not visible there. The notion of judgement, punishment and wrath thereby becomes autonomous, creating a certain doubleness in the image of God. Barth has tried to understand God’s righteousness and judgement in light of His mercy. As a consequence of this, however, the notions of wrath, judgement and acquittal do not disappear as terms which no longer really have a place in a humane theology, and of which any humanely conceived theology should be ashamed. For Barth Ritschl’s theology is the paradigm of such a theology, tailored to human measure.44 For the rest it is however fascinating to see in how many respects Barth is connected with Ritschl. Both are undeniably heirs of the Enlightenment in a religiously defined ethos. Both proceed from the unity of mankind and could not accept there being an ultimate twofold division of humanity. The Enlightenment has a universalistic perspective in the search for the humanum, for meaning and the potentiality of life for all without distinctions of race or class. It accepts the equality of all men as its basic principle. This realisation of unity, which in Calvin’s theology and culture still obtained for only certain areas, namely within the sphere of creation, the law and civil authority, where all fall under the same regimen of God the Creator and sustainer, in post-Kantian theology expands to become dominant in the doctrines of salvation and God as well. The doubleness that is an intrinsic component of Calvin’s theology, namely that by decisions in God’s Counsel men are consigned to one of two groups, to wit the elect or repro- and only in Him, it becomes real agony.’ 43 KD II/1, 423;ET,376. 44 KD II/1, 429;ET,382. 342 chapter seven bate, and that, corresponding to this, two sorts of outcomes are possible for human existence, namely being definitively taken in or definitively cast away, contrasts sharply with the most fundamental realisation that modernity has made its own. All men are one before God, including in the intention for their salvation. The same unity that governs the realm of creation, also governs the order of salvation. Perhaps we must say that the Enlightenment, with its vision of lasting peace and prosperity for all, was the catalyst for the universal perspective on salvation that permeates the theology of the second panel. Both Ritschl and Barth are in their every atom a part of an intellectual culture that no longer has any inner capacity to think in terms of a double outcome for history. Even those forms of contemporary orthodox Protestant theology where it is the custom to buttress arguments by direct appeal to Scrip- ture are slowly losing their capacity to think in any other way than that salvation for all is the one aim and purpose of God.45 There is however a profound difference in the way in which Ritschl and Barth approach a solution to this problem. While Ritschl drops the idea of a wrathful judgement and sentence or permits it to evaporate in the light of God’s mercy and reconciliation, Barth attempts to hold the two together by plotting out the way in which God’s mercy develops toward its goal. In his discussion of the crucifixion of Christ Barth can even say, ‘The meaning of the death of Jesus Christ is that there God’s condemning and punishing righteousness broke out, really smiting and piercing human sin, man as sinner, and sinful Israel.’46 The righteousness of God can indeed properly be considered as a iustitia dis- tributiva. Man is there confronted with God’s verdict. He has forfeited his life, stands in that judgement stripped bare before God, all his fail- ings revealed.47 God’s mercy is not something alongside and apart from his righteousness, but it is precisely as the righteous God that He exercises mercy. He gives justice, absolves those who cannot clear themselves. Thus one cannot do without reward, punishment and judgement. Barth too does not see a double outcome for history,48 but that can only be the case if the Biblical relationship of this judgement with

45 A good example is J. Bonda, The One Purpose of God. An Answer to the Doctrine of eternal Punishment, Grand Rapids 1998. Cf. also the remarkable debate between D. Edwards and J. Stott in: D.L. Edwards/J. Stott, Essentials. A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue,London 1988, 312–319. 46 KD II/1, 446;ET,396. 47 KD II/1, 434;ET,386. 48 KD II/1, 441;ET,392–393. the doctrine of god 343

God’s mercy is recognised. The notion of judgement thus is not found on the periphery, but points to the depth of God’s mercy. According to this concept, the unity of this act of judgement, wrath and mercy must be read from Him in whom God’s mercy became visible, from Christ Jesus. In short, God’s righteousness can not be understood as an idea. It must be derived from the history of Good Friday. That is what it cost God to be righteous, without destroying us. Only through substitution without exception can man be saved. Barth reaches the perspective of universal salvation not through relativising the element of God’s wrath against human rebellion, but by having it fall in its totality on God himself. The figure of the enhypostasis functions practically as a key to illuminating two sides of the cross event. The humanity of Jesus has its existence in the person of the eternal Son. Our contrast with him is apparently so great so great that He enters into this opposition and must endure what is to be suffered in it. This means that on the cross the Son of God, and in Him God himself, bears the judgement. Barth literally speaks of it as ‘this sternness of God against Himself ’ (English, p. 397). But it is also true that God can in Christ subject Himself to this sternness and conflict precisely because He is God. The conflict is localised there, the only place where it can be localised productively and with hope.49 The conflict that plays itself out on the cross can be read as a conflict in God himself, without there being a split or division in God. The place given to the issues of theodicy in this concept should hardly be surprising any more. The question of Job, the question of the why of evil and suffering, does have a place, but it is a place that is bounded on all sides by the foregoing. That people and nations encounter God’s judgement does not have to be denied. There is a hidden connection between the judgement on Golgotha and what individuals, nations and the church suffer. But this suffering may no longer be seen as absolute, of itself. The cross of Christ offers a possibility

49 KD II/1, 449;ET,399: ‘It consists in an alienation from God, a rebellion against Him, which ought to be punished in a way, which involves our total destruction, and which apart from our annihilation can be punished only by God Himself taking our place, and in His Son taking to Himself and bearing and suffering the punishment. That is what is costs God to be righteous without annihilating us. The opposition to Him in which we find ourselves is so great that it can be overcome and rendered harmless to ourselves only by God and indeed only by His entering Himself into this opposition and bearing all the pain of it.’ And KD II/1, 450;ET,400:‘BecauseHewas God Himself, He could subject Himself to the severity of God. And because He was God Himself He did not have to succumb to the severity of God.’ 344 chapter seven to refigure all the other forms of judgement, namely as an announce- ment or as an aftershock of that one judgement. Around Golgotha all forms of suffering are still signs, foreshadowings or afterpains of that one judgement.50 In a Christian perspective, the history of the cross is the reason to reread one’s own history and world history. Again the question presents itself: is this not an idealisation, an attempt at amelioration, resulting in a distortion of what we experience in daily life? Has not grace here become a principle which is cast over all experiences of misery like a fire blanket tossed over a blaze to smother it?51 The fear that for Barth grace has become a principle through which concrete history in fact evaporates and is stripped of its decisive character, has followed this theology like a shadow. West- ern European, continental theology in the last decades has gone other directions and has, unlike Barth, taken the absence of God, suffering, Auschwitz, or temptation as its constant reference point. Barth leaves many with the impression that for him the experiences of emptiness, terror and temptation immediately lose their power once one is taken up into the movement of faith, of knowing God. His theology would then lead to a sort of pastoral naivety, because it leaves no room for the experience of suffering and temptation. Is this conclusion correct? One is at least bound to say that this does not have to be the consequence of the configuration in the second panel. Barth, in his answer to Berkouwer, resisted the suggestion vehemently. According to him, as man one can only think of these things if one thinks from the history of Jesus Christ.52 The disposition of facts that we encounter in Barth is a variation on the theme that the apostle Paul expounds in Romans 8:32–35: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? If, according to the proclamation of the Church, since the history of Christ the powers have lost their autonomy before God, then that is a judgement which can be applied in one of two ways. On the one hand, it can be taken as being an objective, established fact, which denies the reality of the experience, and indeed the existence, of suffering. But there is another direction possible, namely to regard this configuration as a matter of proclamation, a promise, which precisely as promissio does not pretend to be a description of the present, generally observable condition. It can

50 KD II/1, 456;ET,405–406. 51 G.C. Berkouwer, De triomf der genade in de theologie van Karl Barth,Kampen1954,ET, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids 1956. 52 KD IV/3, 198–206;ET,173–180. the doctrine of god 345 be a statement that has its existence and justification exclusively in the movement of faith, within the circle of what is reserved for us in Christ, and responded to in prayer and obedience. One more thing must be added for the interpretation of this theology: one should here take Barth strictly on his theological intention and not read him as psychology or pastoral psychology. He is not describing how believers feel, how they should feel, or how to approach them pastorally or in terms of promoting their personal well-being. It is, as we have said above, necessary to continually distinguish between the various fields of dogmatic reflection, psychology, pedagogy and pastoral care. Dogmatics or doctrine has consequences for pastoral theology and pedagogy, but the translation from the former to the latter is anything but a simple one-to-one matter. The question which is posed theologically is, what can be considered the horizon? If theology con- figures what it has to say in such a way that God at the most can be discussed as the horizon for personal experience and questions, then one’s own experiences are primary, and perhaps one’s own questions and temptations become understandable and bearable in light of this horizon. That is the way that the largest part of theology has proceeded, in keeping with the turn to the subject. With a rigor bordering on being uncompromising, Barth has begun on the other side. He takes the light which colours the horizon as his starting point. In reality the history of Christ is the centre around which the concentric circles of our life- histories spread. In reality it seems that man and his experiences are taken up within the horizon of God’s work. That is the objectivism which is at the heart of this configuration.

7.8.3. Patience and wisdom The third pair of terms with which the field of God’s operation is explored are patience and wisdom. Barth here broaches a question which is highly pertinent in light of Albert Schweitzer’s discussion of the failure of the imminent expectation of the Second Coming, and particularly in light of the concrete experience of suffering. Why has God allowed history to go on so long? One might suppose that God’s mercy would be realised through putting an immediate end to our history. The immediate destruction of all creation and its passing into non-being might well be a realisation of God’s mercy. According to Barth, the question of the meaning of the continuation of time after Easter and Ascension has its theological justification in Easter itself. It 346 chapter seven is a theological question, which is answered by—note carefully—the actual continuation of history. Again, the answer is given with reference to God’s acting in the world. Theological thinking is fundamentally a posteriori, not a priori. God’s patience means that God gives the other, creation, its time and space, grants it an existence next to His own being, and carries out his will with regard to this other so that he does not suspend or destroy this other, but accompanies and sustains it, and allows it to develop in freedom.53 The patience of God, his patientia,is thus defined as an extremely active quality. It is a patience that does not diminish his majesty; it is indeed a peculiar form of his majesty, of his being involved with mankind, that He gives them time and space in freedom. What Barth will later develop more broadly in his doctrines of creation and reconciliation we find here in outline in his doctrine of God. In this pair of concepts too the distinction between what God is in himself and what he does in history appears to be of practical importance. It becomes vital in the question of what within God’s own being corresponds to judgement being by turns carried through and suspended. It is fundamental throughout Barth’s doctrine of God that the motivation to act in God does not arise in response to man and his history. In the encounter between God and his creature God remains the one with power, who in his strength and power sustains man, and even permits him to go his way. In this connection Rendtorff has spoken of the autonomy of God, which for Barth is elevated to the dominant principle on the theological level.54 One can hardly deny this interpretation, although the term autonomy suggests a certain cold dominance. The way in which Barth fills in the concept of patience makes it possible to interpret the word autonomy as an inner divine attachment that expresses itself in fidelity to the creation and creature. The idea that creation and the creature is never without God is thus fundamental. The decisive element in God’s patience is that God sustains all things by his Word of power (cf. Heb. 1:3). Or to put it otherwise: He is not brought into action by our response, through what is visible on our side. He sustains all things through his own Word—that is, through his Son.

53 KD II/1, 461;ET,410. In fact, Barth has here entered into the subject of the doctrine of the convergence of all things, which he will discuss in KD III/3, 102–175; ET, 90–154. 54 See note 12. the doctrine of god 347

The patience that God exercises therefore serves not only for man’s salvation. This might be called a theocentric motif. Barth makes clear that the progression of time has its ground in God himself. God is the principle source of the latitude in which time develops, in his patience moves in ways that are fitting for Him and which do justice to Him. Barth expresses this in rather abstract and Platonic language. The progression of time means ‘time for eternity’. What he means by that is that God does not will that his acts should run out into nothingness, that his words be spoken to no effect. The contin- uance is for the satisfaction of God himself. It is not surprising that Barth should cite Isaiah 55:10–11: the Word which proceeds from God’s mouth shall not return to him without result. ‘It shall not return to me fruitless, without accomplishing its purpose’. God gives himself time and space to do what He wills to do with his creature. For his own sake God’s word is spoken effectively, and only then, once it is said that this is fitting for God, can it also be said that this is done for the sake of man.55 God’s honour implies the salvation of man. Against the background of the beginning of the Second World War Barth in this way provides a vision of history which is completely theological, and is reminiscent of the theocentric perspective of the first panel. The intention of God, and not the human experience of nonsense, senselessness, power run amok, must be definitive and dominant in all thought. Within this context of the patience of God Barth also then speaks of time: God’s yes to himself happens in such a manner that He also says yes to man. Because we are taken up in the will of God, we are given time. For the sake of Jesus Christ there is time for the multitude. That also defines the concept of time. Our time is participation in God’s time. The meaning of time is the active patience of God, through which he calls us to active participation, to assent. Anyone seeking a meaning for time outside of this definition of time as time for repentance, assent to God, in fact ignores God’s turn to mankind, and there is nothing else left then but to see the patience of God as a cruel game, unworthy of Him.56

55 KD II/1, 469;ET,417. 56 KD II/1, 469;ET,417. 348 chapter seven

7.9. The perfections of God’s freedom

7.9.1. Unity and omnipresence In section 31 Barth once again traverses the doctrine of God, now from the other perspective, namely that of God’s freedom. As has already been said, under the heading of freedom he takes up the qualities that classic doctrines of God term incommunicable. In fact, these qualities were held to be the true essence of God. Barth’s correction implies that he reinterprets these qualities—or, to remain within his own vocabulary, these perfections—as predicates that arise from the contingent revelation in Jesus Christ. Put differently, he attempts to extract these qualities from the embrace of a general, philosophical concept of God. One might also say that Barth’s doctrine of God in this way itself makes a contribution to the continuing differentiation and distinction of theology and philosophy. What can be said of God on the basis of the revelation events witnessed to by the Bible goes in a whole different direction from a general philosophical concept of God.57 As with the first series of qualities, the perfections of love, here too Barth constantly makes a connection between two qualities. The first particularly emphasises the freedom or the divinity of God’s act, and the second perfection God’s approach or love. The first quality of God’s freedom taken up is God’s unity, the simplicitas Dei. Barth wishes to consider the unity as a qualification that can be read from the revelation itself. That means that the unity as a perfection of God is not postulated as a reflection on being as such. It is not the unity which is divine. Unity is the conclusion of the encounter which is brought into being by God.58 In the previous panel it appeared that in the tradition the unity of God was directly linked with notions of indivisibility and constancy. Barth’s reinterpretation consists in no longer considering the unity as a

57 Barth in his own way participated in the consciousness that the god of the philosophers is other than that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To what degree theology is really able to go its own way in the freedom of the Gospel is a question in itself. It says something about the self-understanding of dogmatics that it will go this direction. For the rest, we have noted that in his concept of knowing God Barth is linked into his historical context in all sorts of ways. At the same time, his theology is precisely of paradigmatic value in the second panel because he reminds theology that it has its own sources for knowing God—albeit that it does not ‘have’ them, but must listen to them each time anew. 58 KD II, 507;ET,450. the doctrine of god 349 qualification of the first being,59 but as being linked with God’s love. God’s unity then becomes His trustworthiness, His faithfulness and fidelity.60 The unity of God therefore does not mean that God is a unique or single. His unity reveals itself precisely in the history of Jesus Christ. In this event, not only caused by God but also identical with his being and act, He reveals himself and He becomes known as the One. Unity thus is not in conflict with Trinity, but the confession of the unity of God is a description of the concrete unity of God in this history. The New Testament can speak of the one God in the same breath with faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ (cf. ICor. 8:6 and ITim. 2:5). The term omnipresence is linked with the unity of God. Omnipres- ence is among the qualities of God’s freedom because by virtue of this perfection He can be close to his creation. Barth develops this concept by presenting an analysis of the spatiality that is a factor with the concept of omnipresence, and then interpreting the term of love in spatial categories. Barth tells us that God’s omnipresence in fact means the confession of God’s capacity for proximity.61 Because God incorporates proximity into his own being, He can be close to his creature. For the spatiality of creation this means that there is no remoteness that is not without God’s proximity. Because this creation is God’s creation, there must already be a basis in God for the notions of remoteness and proximity. In God himself, however, remoteness and proximity are one. Things that are next to one another in creation, or far apart, are one for Him. There is no distance or proximity that is without His proximity. What Barth produces here is an analysis of spatiality which in its highest sense can be ascribed to God. In fact it is literally speculation, a reflection based on something known to us, being attributed to God himself. God is able to be present with the other, indeed with everything that is other. God does not coincide with the other; but He is nearby. God’s capacity for proximity is at its deepest founded in the theology of the Trinity. In the event of Father, Son and Spirit love is defined as a

59 E.P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvätern zu Karl Barth, 186 draws attention to a theological-historical idealisation on the part of Barth. Since Augustine the simplicitas Dei had metaphysical foundations; according to Barth that was not the case in the earliest Church. According to Meijering, that is an idealisation which has no historical foundation. The earliest Church too, when dealing with polytheism and Marcionism, always defended the unity of God with rational arguments. 60 KD II/1, 516;ET,458. 61 KD II/1, 519;ET,461. 350 chapter seven unity of remoteness and nearness.62 God not only exists, but co-exists in His Three-in-One being. Presence is defined as being together within a distance.63 In an extensive excursus Barth corrects Protestant orthodoxy when it makes God’s omnipresence and eternity derivatives of his infinity. The boundaries of time and space that apply for man do not apply to God, and thus man arrived at aeternitas and ubiquitas. Barth’s response is that in this way God’s being is again discussed in terms of human limitation, that is to say, in terms of a problematic within creation. In this manner eternity and omnipresence threaten to become only negations, namely timelessness and non-spatiality. It is this sort of abstract thinking about God that Barth criticises in Schleiermacher’s definition of eternity and omnipresence. For Schleiermacher God is ‘absolutely timeless (non-spatial) divine causality’.64 That is saying too little, or even false. Space and time as categories can not be handled in parallel with one another. God’s omnipresence is primarily a quality of God’s love. In contrast, unlike Schleiermacher Barth predicates God’s eternity as a perfection of God’s freedom, a perfection that expresses his sovereignty and permanence. God’s acting, internally and externally, has an abid- ing quality, and in analogy with this quality for his external operation God creates what we call time.65 Thus, for Barth time becomes predicated as the form of creation through which it becomes the scene of the acts of divine freedom. Precisely for this reason, creation is not eternal. Otherwise it could be no arena for the acts of God’s freedom. Barth will not say this latter about God’s omnipresence. Omnipres- ence too falls under the perfections of God’s freedom for Barth, but a further specification is necessary. God’s omnipresence is a perfection of the freedom at work in His love. Because this freedom works itself out in love inwardly and externally, in his external work God creates space. This space is the form of creation by virtue of which creation, as a reality which differs from God, can be an object of God’s love. Let us pause for a moment with this analysis. It is, as I said already, literally speculation, reflection, in which love is interpreted in terms of spatiality. Here we already find a prefiguration of Barth’s later doctrine of creation in nuce. Creation is the outward basis of the covenant, and

62 KD II/1, 521;ET,463. 63 KD II/1, 527;ET,468. 64 KD II/1, 524;ET,466. 65 KD II/1, 522–523;ET,464–465. the doctrine of god 351 within this creation there is again a distinction between the form of time and the form of space. Time is connected with God’s freedom acting in love, and space with God’s love acting in freedom. This reflection has no small consequence. In pre-Kantian theology, in the first panel, time and space were still absolute quantities. Eternity and omnipresence were in fact thought of as a negation of the limitations that time and space form for man. In Protestant orthodoxy these considerations of omnipresence and eternity led to the notions of non- spatiality and timelessness, thus to purely negative definitions. In the concept of God prevailing in Kant and taken over by Schleiermacher, God’s eternity is reduced to a timeless and non-spatial causality. Barth’s achievement is that God’s revelation in time and space, or better, His condescension, comes to be understood as a movement, a real coming that is not alien to God. The movement, the approach, the coming to man is to be conceived as an event that has its ground and the conditions for its possibility in God’s love. If from the beginning God has existed as Father and Son, as love, then co-existence, a confluence of nearness and distance, is characteristic of God’s being. This structure receives a consonant shape in one of the forms of creation, space. Why, we might ask, does Barth seek to so anchor the forms of creation, time and space, in the being of God, in his immanent life? Is it a hunger for speculation? Does Barth suffer from the (to quote Berkhof) South German disease of wanting to speculatively root everything in God’s being? It is striking that Calvin did not display this same need for speculative reflection. With him there was a rational handling of what he believed he found in Scripture, but no speculative reflection seeking to penetrate to the being of God. We would have to say that while Calvin could still call upon Scripture as a mirror, as the place where God’s will and disposition toward man could be seen, for Barth this territory as the last ground had become something relative. Human knowing of God can not rest until it has found an absolute, irreducible ground. That ground is only there when faith discovers its own peculiar knowledge, given in Christ, as a participation in God’s self-knowledge. Only then is what is known no longer something accidental, not a vagary, but something that is anchored in God’s own being. In regard to space, there is still a second difference between the two panels to be noted. For Calvin the world is the theatrum gloriae; existence itself, in its coherence and hierarchical construction, testifies clearly to God. For Barth the natural world can no longer be the point of departure for real knowledge of God. Only the life disclosed 352 chapter seven in revelation provides a theological siting for the concepts of space and time. Nature, or better, things from the world which surrounds us, cease to be primary concerns for theology. Only after the theme of revelation has been explicitly discussed can they re-enter theology and receive a place in theological discourse. Our space is thus not God’s space as such, but a creation of God. God can be in created space himself. According to Barth there is therefore a differentiation in the nature of divine presence, but God does not have to relinquish or diminish himself. It is worth noting that in this context Barth clearly separates himself from the concept of accommodation: ‘This differentiation of the divine presence does not depend on its adaptation to the nature of creation. To be sure, it is indeed adapted to it, but that is another matter. It is adapted to it because it is truly grounded in the essence of its Creator …’66 In other words, in his revelation God does not leave any part of Himself behind; he is fully Himself. He can be near the other because otherness has its basis in himself. God’s condescension, his approach to man, has nothing of the nature of concession. Barth ultimately gives omnipresence a Christological foundation. God is present with us gratia adoptionis,butwithJesushowevergratia unionis, and the latter is the foundation for the former.67 Barth draws from this the conclusion that he will later develop in his doctrine of reconciliation. If Jesus Christ is God’s dwelling in creation, then God not only gives space to the creation but the space that is most peculiar to Him. In doing that, God has elevated man to the throne. The most characteristic space is the space that man occupies near God. If the fullness of God dwells in Him physically, then man has in Christ shared in the space that is most peculiar to God. Then the manger becomes God’s space, thereby establishing a fact which can never be reversed.68 Barth’s exposition can be understood as a frontal attack on the modern axiom of the non-spatial essence of God. The perspective must be reversed. It is peculiar to God that he takes a place, or constitutes it a better place. He does this in our history in Jesus Christ, in his body. The God who dwells in heaven dwells by us symbolically, sacramentally, spiritually.

66 KD II/1, 532;ET,473. 67 KD II/1, 545;ET,485. 68 KD II/1, 546–547;ET,486. the doctrine of god 353

7.9.2. Constancy and omnipotence The concept of constancy as a quality of God is intended to transcend the opposition between movement and immovability. It is clear that this concept is intended to be both distinct from, and a reference to the concept immutabilitas. If God was really the one who was not moved, either by himself or by another, then, we read, this would be death par excellence. Barth accuses Protestant orthodoxy of having paved the way for the deterioration of the church and the anthropologising by Schleiermacher and Feuerbach by including the axiom of immutability among the qualities of God. In his life and action the living God is however also the one who remains and sustains himself. Therefore Barth very deliberately chooses another word than immutability. In Barth’s eyes the term immutabilitas is derived from the concept of being. He himself opts for the word ‘constancy’: it is more personal, and implies God is a willing, knowing and acting subject. God is the living Person who transcends the antithesis of changeable-unchangeable. In that, God is the Constant One, the one who in his deeds does not abandon or turn against himself, but in his love and freedom confirms and reiterates himself. It will not be surprising to here encounter a concept which we likewise found in the first panel, namely the repentance of God. In analogy with what was earlier discussed with regard to anthropomorphic language in the Bible, repentance is not regarded as an illegitimate manner of speaking, which only says something about the changed relation of man to God. If Calvin had the inclination to regard anthropopathic expressions as language secundum hominem recipientem andtofendoff the thought that something happened in God himself, Barth places the change firmly in God himself. If God repents of a judgement that previously had been declared over the residents of Nineveh, this indicates a movement and change in God himself. It is, Barth insists, blasphemous to deny God the capacity to change in his acts and intentions.69 God himself does not change when his intentions or plans change. Rather, in these changes He perseveres in his love and freedom. It is essential for Barth’s doctrine of God that he tries to find a solution to the problem with which classical theology always wrestled, namely in what way one can speak of a decision in God with regard

69 KD II/1, 560;ET,498. 354 chapter seven to, for instance, creation, if He at the same time is immutable. In order to synthesise both elements into a higher unity Barth opts for active constancy. Creating is a free act of God’s love. That means that this Setzung is not new in an absolute sense. It is not a surprise for God. God alone is the One who is eternally new, but in the choice between being and non-being God has chosen for being. Two elements follow from the fact that God has committed Himself to the creature. First, such a commitment is a free decision. God was not forced to do this. Second, it is a decision. That means that man, in thinking about God and man, cannot disregard this decision or decree.70 In Barth’s classification of perfections the term constancy is paired with the term omnipotence. With this concept we undeniably here touch upon a nerve in modern debates regarding God. That God should have the quality of might attributed to him was regarded as self-evident in the first panel. God’s might stood for God’s care. God could care for creation, because He was powerful. In contemporary theology such a prominent position for the concept of might would be unthinkable. Might stands for the power to make decisions regarding control, and therefore a God who has power can hardly be exempted from responsibility for excesses or atrocities and suffering. Nevertheless, this historical and cultural factor regarding this concept is no reason to abandon the concept of might as such. In fact, we might say it is anything but a reason to do so. There is however indeed a shift in perspective that has to do with this historical background. God’s might is not a concept which can be derived from cosmology, from the hierarchic design of a closed universe. The orientation has shifted to the history of Jesus Christ as the crossing point where all lines come together and, above all, proceed from. An abstract discussion of God’s omnipotence therefore is not in order. Theology can not reflect on omnipotence as such. What God’s omnipotence is, is to be filled in and limited by the subject, namely God himself. A second point reminds us of something which we also encountered in the first panel. God’s power there is not only a matter of potentia, of capacity, but also a matter of His right, legitimacy and authority, of potestas. The world is God’s world. God is the rightful owner of this world.71

70 KD II/1, 583;ET,518. 71 KD II/1, 591;ET,526. the doctrine of god 355

The third decision that Barth takes in his discussion of the concept of power is the most important, because it formulates his critique of the development of the power concept. The thesis runs that God’s power is not exhausted in his works. As usual, Barth chooses his direction by entering into discussion with Protestant orthodoxy and reinterpret- ing the definitions found there. He upbraids Polanus for identifying God’s omnipotence with his omnicausality. In so doing, omnipotence becomes a concept that is applicable in the realm of God’s opera ad extra. In Quenstedt’s definition the potentia Dei is the principium exsequens operationum divinarum. Polanus still distinguishes himself from this positively by speaking yet of a potentia personalis in addition to the omnipotence of God, thus of a power which prevails outside of the Trinity. Barth’s critical point is clear: by connecting omnipotence with God’s external works orthodoxy has contributed to power being considered as the characterisation of the highest world principle. In other words, orthodoxy is in part responsible for God’s omnipotence being labelled a might that has its place in his acting toward the world, in creation. In Barth’s view, with Schleiermacher this results in God vanishing as the defining subject, and becoming instead the concept of might. That is a tremendous reduction. Causality now becomes the only, real and comprehensive description of God’s power. God’s capacity is exhausted in God’s actual willing. Nature, that which is, henceforth coincides with God’s power. Barth descries a development which had become the dominant view in liberal theology, namely that God’s omnipotence and omnicausality were congruent qualities. It is precisely at this point in the second panel that the figuration is readjusted. Nature, that which is, the sum total of actuality, is not identical with God’s omnipotence. Certainly, God is the cause of all things. Let there be no misunderstanding that God’s knowing and willing must be discussed as part of the concept of omnipotence. His omnipotence is not however exhausted by his omnicausality. God’s acting and his being are not exhausted by what is. That would rob Him of his freedom. The liberal identification of omnipotence and omnicausality makes a fatal reversal possible. It becomes possible to simply interpret all power that man encounters as God’s will. This view leads to an apotheosis of history, nature, and of man himself.72 God becomes an exponent of history and nature, and that is precisely

72 KD II/1, 597;ET,531. 356 chapter seven what Barth is battling against. That which is salvific in God can be so precisely because He does not coincide with what we experience in this world. Finally, I would mention Barth’s view of the relation between potentia absoluta and ordinata. I would particularly note his critique of the thesis that there is a potentia ordinaria alongside a potentia extraordinaria.What has been understood under potentia extraordinaria also falls under the one power of God. He reproves the bringing of the potentia extraordinaria into the essence of God. This reproof tallies with Calvin’s critique. The real point for both is their objection to the idea that an actual, operational power of God is concealed behind the potentia ordinaria,namelyapotentia inordinata, or arbitrary power.73 Despite the altered configuration of elements, the doctrine of God in this second panel can in no way be labelled a polished extrapolation of the modern sense of life. The figures in this panel become contrary and stubborn when it comes to God’s knowing and willing. God’s omniscience, and the omnificience of his will, are maintained tenaciously. God’s will is also constitutive and determinative for what He does not will.74 In this respect Barth is no less radical than Calvin, when he derives everything from God’s knowing and willing. That does not however mean that God is the actor peccati. Death, the devil and sin would indeed have no existence outside God, but they are characterised as that which God has not willed, ant thus has rejected. As divine judgements, God’s yes and no are the constituents of all that is and occurs. There is no third, neutral realm outside the verdict of God. This means that God’s prescience is indeed the presupposition of evil and sin, but not the cause. Nothing escapes from God’s knowing and willing, but that does not mean that sin and the devil have their cause in God. That would express a positive relation.75 Godisinvolvedwith evil in a different manner than He is involved with good. In no case however can God’s involvement be considered as a form of response that does not do full justice to God’s sovereignty. One can indeed also speak of a God reacting, although that is not a reaction that is in the same plane as human action. Human acting and reacting are always

73 KD II/1, 609–610;ET,541–542. 74 KD II/1, 625;ET,556: ‘But it is by God’s refusing and rejecting will that the impossible and non-existent before Him is, since it is only by God’s rejecting will, His aversion, that it can have its particualr form of actuality and possibility.’ 75 KD II/1, 627, 630;ET,557, 560. the doctrine of god 357 encompassed by the wealth and depth that is peculiar to God. This means that on a very significant point the two panels do not diverge from one another. Although in different ways, all things are subject to God’s knowing and willing. The problems to which this proposition leads are no less strongly present in the second panel than they were in the first. If all is subject to God’s knowing and willing, can one still speak of man having any responsibility? Does not the foreknowledge of God cancel out the real possibility of human will and responsibility? It is not without good reason that Barth reiterates and endorses the distinctions that were made in Protestant orthodoxy between the various forms of knowing in God, because these explain that the relation of God’s knowing and willing to things varies in nature.76 But all these rational exercises are of little use in defending the proposition that man is really a subject if one rejects the fundamental proposition: divine and human action can not be involved on one and the same plane.77 God’s response to man is a real response, but is not purely a response as men respond to one another. It is encompassed by God’s Lordship, his glory, and that means that conceptually two things must be kept clearly in mind. God’s acting is true communicative acting, and to that extent reaction, and it is also more than human response to the extent that it is supported by and arises from God’s Lordship over and grasp of all things.

76 KD II/1, 638–639;ET,567–568. 77 It is for this reason that Barth rejects the post-Tridentine doctrine of the scientia media: KD II/1, 640–661 (ET, 567–586). Scientia media is a category between scientia neces- saria and scientia libera. God knows things that can happen under certain circumstances. Scientia media involves the collective result of God’s gratia preveniens and human freedom. The point of this concept is of course to secure the possibility of the real existence of human responsibility. Barth commends later Thomistic theology for not wanting to telescope the action of God and the action of man together in this manner. In the words of Aquinas, it obtains for God that ‘operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eius proprietatem’ S.Th I.q.83,art.1 ad r3. God’s knowing is never an empty exercise or envisaging. Doing, knowing and willing can not be separated from one another. In the argument about a scientia media the Molinists and Jesuits make the error of regarding God’s knowing and human acting on one level. Man therefore constitutes a riddle for divine knowledge (KD II/1, 654;ET,580). Man is what he is by God and before God. ‘In its relation to God it exists simply in virtue of the fact that God establishes and maintains this relationship, and therefore simply by the grace of God. This alone is the way in which the creature exists in its oneness with God in the person and work of Jesus Christ’ (ET, 585). God’s foreordination, his priority for all our acting, changes nothing in the deﬁnition of human existence as self-determination: ‘We are foreordained and perceived by God in our genuine human self-determination. That it is under divine foreordination does not alter the fact that it is genuine human self-determination.’ The 358 chapter seven

Analogous with the foregoing, we also find in this panel the distinction between a voluntas efficiens and a voluntas permittens.Obviously,the distinction between the two will play a prime role in the question of theodicy. On the basis of his voluntas permittens God takes up in his will evil, the revolt, the ‘limitation of being by non-being’ (English, 594). The voluntas permittens is however no less divine than the voluntas efficiens, for one is no less within the sphere of God within his ‘permitting’ than when one is within God’s voluntas efficiens, but only within it in a different form. What then is the purpose of this distinction? To excuse evil, or to attribute it to God in a terrible manner? That might be the conclusion if this concept were presented as a conclusion drawn from events in this world. There is, one must say, only one possibility for adequately reading this sort of distinction, namely from a concentration on the story of Jesus. Only when our gaze shifts from world history to the history of Jesus Christ can this distinction be read to say that God’s freedom does not stop at the point where we most need Him. The distinction formulates how God still has a relation to his creation when it finds itself in realms of horror.78 Barth even advances an argument which outside of the domain of faith, outside of the relation to God, must be seen as the greatest blasphemy, and that can only be understood from inside, from the way of prayer: God’s highest goodness blazes forth precisely where it appears that obedience and bliss are not simple nature, but that his goodness consists in rescue from the abyss.79

7.9.3. Eternity and glory In a last movement the perfections of God’s freedom are explored with the aid of the paired terms eternity and glory. Barth terms eternity the sovereignty and majesty of God’s love so far as this has and is pure duration. With God, beginning, succession and end are not three separate elements, floating apart from one another, but are one. Eter- nity is thereby characterised as the principle of God’s unity, uniqueness and simplicity. The thread of Barth’s critique of traditional doctrines of reverse is also true: ‘On the other hand, that it is genuine human self-determination does not alter the fact that it is completely under God’s foreordination and does not in any way include a foreordination of God by men’ (KD II/1, 660;ET,586). 78 Cf. the quotation from Augustine: ‘Nec dubitandum est, deum facere bene etiam sinendo fieri quaecunque fiunt male. Non enim hoc nisi iusto iudicio sinit; et profecto bonum est omne, quod iustum est.’ Augustine, Enchiridion 96, CCSL 46, 99–100. 79 KD II/1, 672;ET,596. the doctrine of god 359

God runs through his reflection on the concept of eternity: the concept must be freed from its Babylonian captivity to the absolute confrontation between time and eternity.80 Seen from a certain perspective, eternity can well be viewed as non-temporality. But this non-temporality is related to the fact that in time past, present and future are separated and pull apart from one another. The characteristic of duration that eludes them is precisely what accrues to God. Thus, as pure duration, God is free in his acting, constant and trustworthy. Eternity is therefore the principle of God’s inherent unity, uniqueness and simplicity. That this eternity must not be defined primarily in contrast to time, but rather says something positive about the wealth of life that is peculiar to God, can also be seen in Boethius’s famous definition: ‘Aeternitas est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio’. God’s eternity is a perfect and at the same time consummate quality of unlimited life. It is His principle of abundance, through which he can relate precisely to our time, and underpin the separate times. Again, the reversal of perspective is applied: God in himself is the foundation for time. If in Barth’s early theology the pregnant confrontation between time and eternity was in the foreground and revelation was only conceivable as a cancelling out of time, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik the opposition is replaced by something which underlies and connects. Therefore Barth can also say, ‘God has time for us’. In God’s self-revelation time participates in divine duration, in the abundance of God’s time at the moment of the revelation. The analogical form prevails. Thus there also remains adifference between God’s time and our time, but human time is not cancelled out, but rather receives a foundation and is brought to perfection. Barth has a Trinitarian foundation for eternity. God the Father is the source, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. That implies a unity of movement. Next, in the incarnation God not only gives time as the form of our existence, but God also takes time: He becomes time.81 He permits created time to become the form of his eternity. The lines which Barth later develops in his doctrine of reconciliation become visible here in this movement. Because God himself becomes creature—man—in his Son, He does not cease to exist in His glory, but at the same time He humbles himself. However, for man this move-

80 KD II/1, 689;ET,611. 81 KD II/1, 694;ET,614. 360 chapter seven ment, which has its ground in God himself, means an opposite movement of elevation. Barth therefore terms the incarnation a ‘fulfilling and surpassing of creation’ (English, 616). Time is elevated to a form of God’s eternity. The eternal God is clothed in time. Here too, I would once again note, it is no longer distance, but similarity, analogy, which prevails. Who God is, is made clear in time by his revelation. The Eter- nal is able to make time a form of his presence and in doing so exalts it. The differences from the first panel are obvious. Accommodation as the possibility for human knowledge of God is an adjustment to the low state of man. In view of Calvin’s emphasis on the majesty of God, accommodation has always also had the smack of condescension to lost mankind. With Barth the accent lies elsewhere. For him too revelation is a matter of grace from beginning to end, of benevolence, and here too the incarnation can be termed an estrangement with regard to God’s own being. This however does not detract from the fact that Barth’s concept tends first of all to understand revelation in time as something which is in keeping with God’s nature, something which does not run counter to but which tallies with God’s being. In being gracious God does something that is most deeply characteristic of Him, which has always been present in his own being. God is so powerful that He is able to do this. Thus eternity is no longer to be understood in opposition to time, but in Christ, in the incarnation, where God becomes the mystery of time. Time and space are not the forms in which in which man regards and shapes the world, but lie within God as structures of his omnipresence and eternity. Time is not alien to Him. With Kant time and space were ‘anthropologised’; Barth responds by ‘theologising’ them, understanding them as forms within God. Thus this concept fundamentally yields a positive relation between God’s eternity and our time. If God, in his unlimited life, did not embrace our time on all sides—thus before and behind, above and below—then, Barth tells us, this reality would be a dream, a reverie or a nightmare.82 Finally, a few words about the final term, the glory of God. If in the second panel there is anywhere that the meaning of creation is discussed, as opposed to our experience of emptiness and absurdity, it is on the basis of this perfection. The glory of God, Barth tells us, is His competence as the omnipresent to exercise His omnipotence.

82 KD II/1, 699;ET,620. the doctrine of god 361

Glory is to be understood as the inclusion of all God’s perfections, His capacity, rooted in himself, to make himself known. Among the terms given, it is striking how great the consequences of this perfection are for man. God’s glory is a joy which shares itself. The works of God are all performed as a movement of self-delight and the communication of joy. God desires his works, his creation, not because they would have meaning in themselves, but because however inadequate they are, they will still grant faithful passage for and respond to the joy that is in God himself. It is a strange and provocative thought in a world which has become, before all else, a riddle to itself: God willed creation, including man, in order for the communication and expansion of joy to become a fact. At the same time this throws light on the place that man and his being as a subject assumes in this configuration. Man is not an autonomous being, sufficient in himself. In this concept we encounter the modern humanist ideal, though from its formal aide; the content is however defined wholly by the concept of analogy. Formally, being human is to possess self-determination, Selbstbestimmung. The decisive question on thematerialsideisofcoursewhattheselfis.Throughtheworkofthe Holy Spirit, in faith this self-determination undergoes a change. The self-determination is not annulled; in the typical double meaning of the word Aufhebung (revocation and closure) it is fundamentally critiqued and at the same time taken up into a new context.83 Through the work of the Holy Spirit the human existence is ‘determined as the act of our self-determination in the totality of its possibilities’.84 God’s work does not force man to a halt, does not reduce him to an attitude of passivity. It is characteristic that the believer is characterised as a fully active and acting being. In his acting he is however no longer autonomous, but is taken up into the operation and acting of God. Barth reaches for the image of a choir member who comes too late to the weekly practise: the one who finds himself in the history of Jesus Christ is ‘like a late-comer slipping shamefacedly into creation’s choir in heaven and earth’.85 In this connection we encounter the metaphors of the mirror and theatre, though less frequently than we did in the first panel. It is in

83 Cf. also KD I/2, 342;ET,313; ‘Faith in the New Testament sense does not mean merely the superseding but the abolishing of man’s self-determination. It means that man’s self-determination is co-ordinated into the order of the divine perdertermina- tion.’ 84 KD I/2, 290;ET,266. 85 KD II/1, 731;ET,648. 362 chapter seven those elements in life which correspond with God’s acts that God is glorified, and only in those elements; then and only then is this existence a mirror. The differences from the first panel are considerable. There, in the light of revelation the whole of reality is intended to glorify God. As God is known, man begins to share in God and the whole of creation again begins to shine. Therefore the whole of creation can again become a mirror of God going his way.86 But, we must acknowledge, it is always the fleeting, pale movement of a shadow, which man can not grasp. Human existence is only the mirror of God in this movement, in the living connection that God creates between himself and things. For Barth it has ceased to be self-evident that creation is a mirror. He makes no appeal to evidences of God. It is an image that is only true to the extent that God’s claim is heard. Jesus Christ is the centre and compendium of this history. Reality is involved in a series of reflections or corresponding actions. In his doctrine of creation Barth develops this still further. The relation of the Father to the Son in the Spirit finds an analogy in God’s covenant with man, and this relation is the found of the humanity of Jesus Christ. It is this reality of a relation within God’s own being that is repeated as an analogia relationis in countless refractions and is reflected in a multitude of relations: man and wife, parent and child, man and fellow- man.87 In the concept in the second panel, man as homo faber is not fated to unemployment. The modern view of man as an active, acting being, who does not act under compulsion or as a slave to another, but acts in freedom in such a way that it gives shape to his own individuality, is not swept away. Rather, it is taken up into a larger context of God’s work, God’s self-determination. It is God’s choice to live in relation to man, in fidelity to and in solidarity with the human creature. That creates the horizon for the content of the human self. It is the identity of man, as revealed in Jesus Christ, to live in fellowship with the eternally abundant God. Thus there is a space indicated where man can learn to know himself better than he can understand himself outside of it.

86 KD II/1, 760;ET,674–675: ‘In this sense the way and thatre of the gloriﬁcation of god is neither more nor less than the total existence of the creature who knows God and oﬀers Him his life-obedience.’ 87 KD III/2, 261–263;ET,219–220. the doctrine of god 363

7.10. Election as a component of the doctrine of God

Who is God, with whom man is dealing? The discussion of God’s perfections served as a first round in answering this question; the discussion of the doctrine of election will be the occasion for a second round toward an answer. For Barth, the doctrine of God flows out into the doctrine of election, which is in its turn the core of the doctrine of reconciliation. As compared with the dogmatic tradition, Barth takes the far-reaching step of no longer dividing reflection on God’s being and on His acting into two separate compartments, instead considering the one as an extension of the other. Being and revelation do not coincide, because it must be assumed that God, by his nature, is not obliged to reveal himself. Once God has decided to reveal himself, this revelation takes the believer entirely into the mystery of God’s being. For Barth, God’s acting—concretely the acting in election in the history of Jesus of Nazareth—is the window through which one can look into the heart of God. As a result, as compared with the first panel, in Barth’s theology the concept of election has moved up to a place within the actual doctrine of God. Election describes not only God’s action toward man, but also his own being. We could also put that differently: the positioning of the doctrine of election within the doctrine of God is theologically the conceptual model for breaking the centrality of the human subject. After the turn to the subject, the only possibility left appeared to be to discuss God as an element within the human horizon. By making the doctrine of election the spearhead of the doctrine of God, a reversal takes place. Man and his world receive their place and meaning conceptually within God’s horizon.88 Barth never avoided making use of the word election theologically. In his early theology the word however does not function as a description of the content of revelation, but of the nature and manner of revelation. Election and rejection are the designations for the two categories into which man comes in the light of revelation. In the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans man is empirically—thus according to the visible order—never more than Esau, that is to say, the rejected, someone to whom God says no. In the light of revelation the same man can however become Jacob, the child of election, over whom the light of God’s love and eternal life shines, although this is never directly visible,

88 Cf. Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden,Tübingen 19763, 45;ET,46–47. 364 chapter seven but at the most being perceptible as the yes that lies hidden behind the visible no. Election and rejection in this way coincide with the actual reality in faith of man himself. In the ﬁrst parts of the Kirchliche Dogmatik election also functions as an element of God’s call, without that expressly referring to an eternal ground in God himself.89 That changes in the doctrine of God. In KD II/1 election refers to a content in God himself.90 In this process, in the second volume of his doctrine of God (KD II/2) Barth develops, of all things, precisely the concept that in theological history had been associated with an arbitrary and tyrannical God, with the threat of destruction and inhumanity and with the tragedy of Reformed theology,91 into the concept that serves as the summary of the Gospel. The formulation of the Leitsatz for §32 permits no possible mistake about it. It is a clarion call: ‘The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all the words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too the One who loves in freedom.’92 What Barth wants to achieve is that the word election become a concept of salvation without any darker associations.93 He accomplishes this by exercising a sharp critique on the Biblical exegesis of preceding theology. For a moment I would recall the undervaluation of the covenant in Calvin, how the covenant is there termed ‘something in the middle’ and all the drama of sacred history which is unfolded in Romans 9–11 is reduced to a decision about the salvation of individuals. Barth’s critique is as follows: there has been too little awareness in the tradition that in Scripture election is a category of sacred history, which must be wholly understood in light of the relation of God with his people. The core of this history is the ‘yes’ that speaks to this people, and through this people to the nations. The key to the exposition of the sections of the Bible that provided the traditional Biblical basis for the doctrine of predestination is God’s choosing for a relation with his people, their choice for discipleship or other, and God’s choosing to permit them to share in the messianic future. It is from this perspective that chapters 9–11 of the epistle of the Romans must be read. In these chapters God’s election and rejection

89 See also McCormack, Karl Barth’s critically realistic dialectical Theology, 456. 90 KD II/1, 308;ET,274. 91 C. Graaﬂand, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 593f. 92 KD II/2, 1;ET,3. 93 KD II/2, 12–13;ET,13–14. the doctrine of god 365 are in the service of his intention to salvation. For Barth this point— God’s intention for salvation for all mankind—is the reason to take election as the concept in which numerous threads of his theology come together and become interwoven. In this concept election has a topical function.94 Within his dogmatic concept the doctrine of election forms the transition and threshold from God’s own being to his works. As such, God’s election belongs in both subsets. Election is the core of the doctrine of reconciliation, which follows on the doctrine of God, but at thesametimethiselectionispartofGod’sfreeself-determination. It is important to note that as much as possible it is not the noun ‘election’ that Barth employs, instead constantly using the active verb. Barth speaks of God’s electing and willing. It is not a decision, a will, a choice that is central, but the emphasis lies on the acting, the movement: God is the One who himself chooses, wills. Pointing back to the acting of God in this way is characteristic. In faith, in our existence in the world, we are not dealing with a decision, with an intention that, once taken, becomes a self-standing entity apart from the living God. Strictly speaking, there is no decision that one can take from the press like a printed decree; one is dealing with the living God in his willing and decreeing. We see again what we have already noted: the reality to which dogmatics refers is a movement, an event, the acting of God. Human knowledge of God can therefore only be the result of this acting and willing of God, which becomes knowable in the history of the one person Jesus Christ. There, in a real sense, one sees into the heart of God.

7.11. Election as the basic decision of God

Barth calls this willing and deciding of God the primal history or primal fact.95 The term Urgeschichte had previously played a prominent role in Barth’s theological development. He derived the concept from the posthumous work of Fr. Overbeck, for whom Urgeschichte stood for a deﬁning phase in the life of a people or movement, which none the less remains shrouded in darkness.96 Barth took up the concept in the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans to denote the incomprehensibil-

94 KD II/2, 15;ET,15. 95 KD 11/2, 6;ET,8–9. 96 ‘Unerledigte Anfragen an die heutige Theologie’, 5. 366 chapter seven ity of revelation. It surfaces again in Kirchliche Dogmatik, in the doctrine of election, but now with more—and specifically theological—content. This electing and willing of God is primal history in the sense that it is there that the structure of God’s acting becomes visible. The prefix Ur- refers to the logical and objective priority of God’s electing of the man Jesus to live in unity with his Son. The history of Jesus Christ stands for this turning of God toward mankind. The history connected with the name of Jesus Christ thereby becomes a centre which is the defining origin of everything which lies around it. Jesus Christ is, Barth says quite literally, the centre of the cosmos,97 and as such the primal decision of God.98 The decision to be in relation to man in the person of Jesus Christ is the primal relation, which is fundamental to the being of God himself.99 Election thus becomes the word that represents the a priori of God’s gracious proximity to Jesus. The inclusion of the relation with man in the discussion of God can be termed fundamental for Barth’s theological concept, and has far-reaching consequences. First, the primal history taking place in the essence of God is definitive for those who are linked to this man Jesus as his fellow humans. The electing and filling of God is something which characterises man. In Jesus Christ, man is chosen as a partner in covenant.100 Cosmology falls away as the fixed space of orientation, to be replaced by a spiritual point, the decision in God in favour of man in Jesus Christ. The whole of reality is rebuilt anew, reconstituted around this point. Second, election is never an inherent religious or moral quality of man; it is anchored in God’s own being and can only be read from the history of Jesus Christ. Here too the term ‘primal’ in primal history and primal decision functions to indicate a movement that has its point of departure in God and remains a quality of God’s acting. The opposition to every attempt to make God’s reality psychologically or historically manifest and controllable is continued in the KD.Godand his salvation can not be represented directly. There is a sharp contrast here from the first panel. For the truth of double predestination Calvin called upon an ordinary observation, entirely perceptible: many are indifferent to the Gospel. There are

97 KD II/2, 6;ET,7. 98 KD II/2, 53;ET,51. 99 KD II/2, 55;ET,52. 100 KD II/2, 10;ET,11. the doctrine of god 367 only a handful of people who are conscientious in the service of God. Barth’s response to this is telling in many ways: he tries to respond on the theological level and at the same time he will not in any way disguise his aversion. He ascribes the fact that Calvin is able to draw the dividing line between the small flock of the elect on the one hand and the riffraff on the other to a streak of nastiness. Barth clearly sees little in Calvin’s personality to recommend him. His foremost objections however are theological in nature. According to Calvin, election is an immanent quality, a ‘private relationship’ between a particular person and God,101 while according to Barth election and rejection are first of all verbs that indicate the structure of God’s acting and manner of dealing with that one man, Jesus Christ. Only within the outlines of that one is there anything which can be said about all the others. Third, we must be aware that Barth, by including the election of Jesus Christ, and with it that of man, in the doctrine of God, makes a suggestion that has still other far-reaching consequences. It is an innovation in the doctrine of God that can be interpreted as the attempt to include the humanity of God definitively within the definition of God himself. In classical dogmatics the decisions to create, to redeem, and to send His Son into the world belonged to the doctrines of the decrees of God, which followed after discussions of God and his qualities. Barth breaks with that tradition. He borrows the notion from the Reformed tradition that election is the ultimate, or actually the first word that describes the salvific relation of God to man, but then makes this doctrine the heading under which all of the action of God can be subsumed. Creation and providence, including the vulnerability, the pains and the unbelievable risks of suffering and guilt that are attached to this human existence: these are all surveyed with God’s election of the man Jesus of Nazareth in mind. Put in other words: theologically this earthly reality can only be refigured as God’s work if one begins with the actions of God in Jesus Christ. The covenant is the inside, the point of God’s actions. That means that incarnation, the approach to man is not additional, not incidental to our world history. Since the name of Jesus Christ, since his history was given to the Church, thinking about God and about man and the world can no longer get around that name.102 Barth summarises this in two short assertions, namely that

101 KD 11/2, 40–42,ET,41–44. 102 KD II/2, 57;ET,54; ‘There is no greater depth in God’s being and work than 368 chapter seven

Jesus Christ is the electing God and He is the elect man.103 His doctrine of election is comprised of the further development of these two propositions.

7.12. Election as the core issue

One can consider Barth’s doctrine of election as the substantive core of his theology. If it is true for God as a person in the consummate sense of the term, that He determines himself, and that nothing external to Him defines him, then it is in the concept of election that we subsequently find the answer to the question of how God determines himself. He elects the man Jesus of Nazareth to be in unity with his Son. Thus, in the name of Jesus and in his history the Church discovers that God has chosen his Son to exist in unity with this man. With this, it becomes possible to interpret the concrete life history of Jesus from two perspectives. One can follow the ray of light that is this history in two directions, to God, and to mankind. In the former, this history offers an entry to God for those who go upward. One can no longer think of God outside of the history of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is not something extra for the Christian image of God, not an adjunct, but essential. Thus the proposition in §33 is ‘Jesus Christ is the electing God’.104 It is in his life that it becomes knowable who it really is from whom election proceeds. That is the ray of light which returns to the electing subject. But one can also follow the beam of light downwards to the elected object. The same light characterises Jesus of Nazareth and the people represented through him.105 The second proposition is therefore ‘Jesus Christ is elected man’.106 Through God’s election of the man Jesus of Nazareth he—and the people represented by him—becomes the object of God’s election. The gracious approach of God in Jesus of Nazareth becomes the decisive horizon for man’s existence. Through that electing and willing of God, man is the chosen one, says Barth, and who is chosen finds a Lord.107 Put in other words, in election the that revealed in these happenings and under this name. For in these happenings and under this name He has revealed Himself.’ 103 KD II/2, 63;ET,58. 104 KD II/2, 111;ET,103. 105 KD II/2, 5;ET,5. 106 KD II/2, 124;ET,116. 107 KD II/2, 11;ET,12. the doctrine of god 369 decisive lines are drawn for man and his destiny. God chooses to exist in proximity to mankind, and man is thereby the one for whom the proximity of this God has become the definitive factor. We will have to develop these brief pointers further. First, with regard to God: in Jesus Christ it becomes clear who God is and what He is like, to the very remotest corners of His being. That God chooses for man, turns His face toward him and seeks his life, is not a movement or decision that comes from God the Father alone. It is a decision, work that is attributed to the Father, Son and Spirit.108 Barth attempts to carry the Trinitarian perspective through to its extreme. The Son is not only the object of election. From one perspective it can appear that one must speak of the Son primarily in passive terms. It is indeed the case that the Son is elected through the Father to exist in unity with and in the same form as mankind. But the Son himself and the Spirit are also involved in this choosing. The term which here indicates the nature of the connection and structure of the relation of God in his acting to the man Jesus, and in Jesus to the whole of creation, is Entsprechung, analogy or correspondence. The movement in which the Son of God himself becomes a co-subject of the choice to exist in unity with the man Jesus corresponds to the obedience of Jesus Christ. Or, going the other direction, the choice of the eternal Son himself reflects Jesus’ obedience and the commitment of his life.109 Then the second proposition must be developed: Jesus Christ is elected man.110 Calling upon Ephesians 1:4 and John 1:1–2,Barthfirst argues, quite in line with tradition, that in the electing of the man Jesus we see what election is at its deepest. Because God through his Word decided to live in unity with this man, He shows what grace is, what impartation is to living, to glorification. In terms of content, electing means that God makes the life of the creature his own life, or metaphorically, God makes himself Father and man his child. This is yet too weakly expressed in words such as goodness and mercy; this is self-surrender. God gives himself in the fellowship. The most radical change that all of this brings with it for the second panel is the breadth of election. God’s decision does not involve an abstract entity such as humanity, mankind, or individuals as exemplars of mankind, but in the person of Jesus involves all the fellow men of this man. The electing of

108 KD II/2, 112;ET,105. 109 KD II/2, 112;ET,105. 110 KD II/2, 124;ET,116. 370 chapter seven all is mediated in the person of Jesus Christ. In this there is a corrective to Calvin, who was quite willing to speak of election of the human race, but emphatically stated that the preservation of the human race did not imply the preservation of all men. We must not only see this concept presented by Barth as a critique of the traditional doctrine of election which left space for the hidden decision of election; this consideration also tables a counterproposal to the ideal of our modern and post-modern culture. In modernity the subject begins with himself, and from there formulates his world. Barth’s doctrine of election permits itself to be read as the proposal that man and his world must be seen in light of divine electing, as that can be followed in the history of Jesus Christ. God does not ask us to realise or maintain ourselves; from the outset man is to be understood as the one who is the object of God’s electing and approach. Barth continues to think from eternity to time, from the a priori of grace. It is not absolute self-realisation that is asked of man, but acknowledgement of that which God in His grace has decided regarding him, and promised him. Thus there is a decision which precedes all else, a willing from God’s side. Before man searches for himself, seeks to unfold and fulfil his life, he is already in relation to Jesus, to this history. The history of Jesus is the space in which every human creature may discover that God already had reserved a place for him or her with himself. A formulation of this sort fits with Barth’s own exposition of John 1:1– 2. It would be an incorrect interpretation of matters to say that the history of Jesus is projected in God, and that history on earth is only an unreal, automatic representation of that. The Logos of John 1:1 holds a place open for Jesus. The houtos of verse 2 does not refer back to the logos,buttoJesus.111 His acting on earth (below) takes place by virtue of the mystery and proximity and power from above. Jesus fulfils the logos concept fully and totally. Man cannot speak of the above outside of that which happens on earth in this history. Here that which is from God, that which comes from above, takes place under our eyes. We must acknowledge that the doctrine of election developed in this manner provides a foundation for a theological anthropology. The secret of man and his humanity does not lie within himself. The mystery of man, of his being born, living and dying, is God’s coming toward us, is being addressed by name. Second, the uneasy dream

111 KD II/2, 105;ET,98. the doctrine of god 371 that man ultimately stands all alone in a cosmic void and in complete, bleak abandonment—and Barth himself had such dreams—goes hand in hand with this on the theological level.112 The history of Jesus shows that man has a place with God, that being human is from the very outset being together with God. Third, the human subject does not disappear if God’s Lordship is acknowledged. The alternative between life as a design and life as subjection is a false choice.

7.13. The decretum concretum

In conscious debate with the Reformed tradition, Barth no longer wished to begin with an eternal and unchanging decree in God’s Coun- sel with regard to salvation and damnation, from a decretum absolutum, but from Jesus Christ as decretum concretum.113 In this Christian speaking receives an orientation point which is not a vanishing point behind history, nor an idea, but one in the history which is connected with that name. Jesus Christ is the beginning of all things, from which God’s will, His eternal will, develops. It is God’s own decision, taken in his own eternity, to live in indissoluble relation with man. In Jesus Christ the eternal Son gives Himself to the Son of Man and the Son of Man is wholly one with the eternal Son.114 This movement, this decision, is a history, a history to which we can point, that in all its concreteness, all

112 It is not purely as a matter of biographical interest that we refer to Barth’s dreams here. Eberhard Busch tells of a dream from the last year of Barth’s life: Eines Morgens traf ich Karl Barth niedergeschlagen an. ‘Aber was ist Ihnen denn zugestoßen?’ fragte ich. Er sagte: ‘Denken Sie, ich hatte heute nacht einen argen Traum. Mir träumte, daß mich eine Stimme ansprach: ‘Willst du einmal die Hölle sehen?’ und ich antwortete noch wohlgelaunt: ‘Doch, das möchte ich gern einmal sehen; das hat mich schon lang interessiert.’ Da öffnete sich vor mir ein Fenster, und ich sah hinaus in eine endlose Wüste, deren Anblick Mark und Bein erschütterte; und mittendrin saß steineinsam ein einziger Mensch. Da schloß ich das Fenster, und die Stimme sprach: ‘Und das droht dir!’. Ich sagte etwas leichthin: ‘Ein Traum …’ er wehrte dem heftig: ‘O nein, Träume sind in der Regel ernst zu nehmen.’ Er schwieg eine geraume Weile und fuhr dann zögernd fort: ‘Und da gibt es noch Leute, die mir vorwerfen, bei mir fehle das Wissen um solche abgründige Bedrohung. Ich weiß nur zu gut davon. Aber was bleibt mir gerade darum anderes übrig, als alles darauf zu setzen: “Gott schwört bein seinem Leben, daß er dich nicht verläßt”?’ Cited with W. Schildmann, Was sind das für Zeichen? Karl Barths Träume im Kontext von Leben und Lehre,München1991, 168. 113 KD II/2, 172–173; Cf. the english translation 159, which by mistake reads ‘decretum absolutum’ for ‘decretum concretum’. 114 KD II/2, 171;ET,157. 372 chapter seven its mundanity, at the same time arises from and is grounded in the life of God himself. It is therefore this particular history, this concrete person, who becomes the centre for telling the story, thinking, doing, hop- ing and expecting. That is how one can characterise Barth’s concept of the decretum concretum. The speaking of the Church does not begin with an elusive above; the above makes itself known in the below, in the history of Jesus Christ. The a priori starting point that Barth once postulated outside of time in the concept of Ursprung, enters the world of time and space, in a concrete human history. In the early Barth the eye of faith is drawn to a point which itself no longer belongs to time or space; in the later Barth of the doctrine of election God’s eternal, sovereign Counsel coincides with a history in space and time. After the doctrine of election Barth will increasingly formulate his a priori in terms of the history of Jesus Christ, the living person himself. We must underscore that particularity continues to belong to the vexing, surprising and provocative points of Christian belief. When matters concern us, there are references to a specific people, Israel, and a specific person, Jesus of Nazareth, and his history. Does Chris- tian faith then have nothing more to offer, something that is closer, that happened yesterday? The concretely historical, that took place somewhere in time and space, which we know about through stories and texts, is the point of departure for thinking and speaking. For Kant Jesus was the exemplary figure for a moral ideal; with Hegel the concretely historical is taken up and elevated in the concept; with Barth the concretely historical is no longer something which must be transcended: it is the origin and criterion. Barth expresses the shift in perspective which the appearance of this point of departure brings with it by proposing that this starting point in the decretum concretum makes possible and activates human knowing and questioning.115 In his view, confrontation with a decretum absolutum as the final limit of belief and thought strikes us dumb. One can only flee into ethics or mysticism. Not-knowing is then the highest attainable. When howeverwehaveGodandhiswillbeforeusin concreto in Jesus Christ and his history, all knowing is a further occasion for new, and this time more specific questions. The believer does not silence questions, but is prepared to pose all questions anew in the light of this answer, and thus bring the space he or she inhabits, personally or collectively, into

115 KD II/2, 173–174;ET,160–161. the doctrine of god 373 the sphere of influence of this answer.116 I would conclude that it would be difficult to harness Barth to the wagon of the post-modern insight that men, for all their attempts to know reality, ultimately do not know. Certainly, beginning from themselves men can not reach the liberating and salutary truth of God. In Christ, in his person, however a door is opened for him to an open secret, an open mirror. In confrontation with this history we stand before a mystery that gives itself.Againthe perspective on the asymmetry between God and man opens up. The answer that is given in the Gospel is not the end of the questioning. Each answer is the overture to a new question; in each answer the space toward the source, toward the beginning, toward the abundance in God himself opens up, space which man never had, but which is given to him. Facing this source, man as the knower is always one who does not know. Revelation is thus a mystery that sets the process of knowing in motion, and keeps it going constantly. This means that knowing in faith, and theological reflection, can never reach a resting place, that no speculative leap will ever succeed in comprehending the coherence of God’s deeds, the meaning of the events. In the continuing orientation to the source, to the beginning of all knowledge of God, Barth in his way shows the limitations of human knowing. It remains dependent on God, on his Spirit. With the word mystery we encounter a concept that has been productive in more recent theology for characterising knowledge of God according to its structure.117 In Barth’s theology it is a concept that maintains the unity of veiling and unveiling, revelation and conceal- ing. In contrast to a riddle, a mystery is not something which can be solved by knowledge and then disappears. Once a solution is found, a

116 KD II/2, 174;ET,160: ‘Genuine and open questioning begins with the knowledge of the mystery of the election of Jesus Christ, for in this mystery we are confronted with an authority concerning which we cannot teach ourselves but must let ourselves be taught, and are taught, and can expect continually to be taught.’ 117 The word mysterion appears at various places in the Bible, indicating something which was hidden and has now been brought to light. It can be applied to the Kingdom (Mark 4:11) or God’s Counsel (ICor. 2:7,Col.1:27,Eph.3:4). In all cases mysterion is not the event of revelation itself, but refers primarily to the content of revelation. It is indeed however constitutive for the Biblical concept that at a certain time this content is unveiled through God’s gracious act. One does not come to see the content without being aware of God’s absolute power. The content of the knowing is not without a certain nature of knowing. It is in this more general sense, as a term for the relation between content and way in knowing God, that the term has taken root in contemporary theology. See, for instance, the title of E. Jüngel’s book Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. 374 chapter seven riddle ceases to be a riddle. A mystery is something that is always out of our reach.118 Mystery is characterised by an abundance that is not exhausted as one delves into it, but rather becomes deeper and vaster through new complications, new connections. Christian existence does not have its centre of gravity within itself, not in man as a subject; rather, this subject is determined by another reality which has come to light. Purpose can only be found by man time and again emerging from himself, venturing over the threshold of his being in a questioning attitude, in order to let himself be defined by the mystery of God’s good-pleasure, concretely through this history. This means that existence comes under the power and sphere of influence of what Barth further on in his doctrine of reconciliation will describe as the two movements of the one act of God. In Jesus Christ the Lord becomes servant. The way of the Son leads to a foreign land, and in unity with the man Jesus the Son himself bears the judgement (KD IV/1). At the same time the election of the Son to an existence in unity with the man Jesus has as its consequence that man is exalted to a royal dignity. The servant becomes Lord; man is elevated (KD IV/2). This structure is already found in the doctrine of election. In short: Man benefits, God assumes the risk. For God, the election of the man Jesus means placing a question mark after His might, His majesty, that these are placed in a danger zone. For man this choice, this election means a gain, an unheard-of advancement. In words that remind one of Irenaeus, God willed to lose, in order that man win.119 What is it that God’s decision will cost Him? He has, Barth says, given up something, namely His untouchability. Because of his divine nature, within his own sphere He Himself is not affected and threat- enedbyawillthatopposeshis.Man,whomHechoosesasapartner,is however the one who is overwhelmed by sin, and God exposes himself to this resistance, to these opposing powers. In Jesus Christ He himself moves into the field of the opposing powers, of rejection.120 The tendency toward theopaschitism in Barth’s theology is already patently obvious here in the doctrine of election.121 The choice for man means that God himself puts his majesty at stake and enters into confrontation

118 KD II/2, 172–175;ET,158–161. 119 KD II/2, 177;ET,162. 120 KD II/2, 177–178;ET,162–163. 121 See A. van Egmond, ‘Theopaschitische tendensen in de na-oorlogse protestantse theologie’ in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen,editedbyD.van Keulen and C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 9–23. the doctrine of god 375 with the opposing force. The opposing force of sin is therefore not just something that has its claims on earth, here below. It has an effect that reaches to the very being of God. The differences with the first panel of Calvin’s theology become very manifest at this point. With Calvin all emphasis lies on the proposition that the divine and human must remain separated. In his discussion of the ignorance of Christ, in the portrayal of his fear and of his death, the divinity of Christ is regarded as in abeyance or hidden.122 For Calvin too the crucified Christ is the most profound point of God’s mercy, but Christ bears sin and its punishment according to his human nature. With the suffering of Christ, Calvin emphasises the difference between the two natures. At this very crucial point Barth follows not Calvin, but Luther,123 thereby becoming an important marker in the present orientation to the Cross as the origin and criterion for Christian thinking about God.124 In this, Barth’s doctrine of God marks what may well be termed the great substantive difference between the first and second panel: the involvement of God in this world is not primarily understood in terms of creation theology and pneumatology, but begins from Christology, from the Cross and resurrection as the places where God decides about man and Himself. God’s choosing is conceived as a double predestination. Election and rejection, yes and no, do not however involve groups of men, nor are they qualities of God’s revelation; they refer to the content of salvation, namely God who in his Son brings down the judgement on Himself and thus precisely through the judgement maintains the fellowship and gives Himself. In Barth’s words, God himself tasted damnation, death and hell.125 It is still more radical when we read that the incarnation of God can mean nothing other than that ‘He declared Himself guilty of the contradiction against Himself in which man was involved’.126 From such formulations one might conclude that in this concept God

122 For the abeyance, see for instance Comm. ad Matth. 24:36; for being hidden or covered, see Comm. ad Matth. 27:45. See also Inst. 4.17.30. 123 Cf. G. Hunsinger, ‘What Karl Barth learned from Martin Luther’ in: Disruptive Grace. Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2000, 288. 124 One of course thinks of the theology of E. Jüngel, ‘Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes. Ein Plakat’, in: idem, Unterwegs zur Sache. Theologische Bemerkungen,München 1972, 105–125 and J. Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott,München1972.SeealsoA.van Egmond, De lijdende God in de britse theologie van de negentiende eeuw. De bijdrage van Newman, Maurice, McLeod Campbell en Gore aan de christelijke theopaschitische traditie,Amsterdam1986. 125 KD II/2, 179;ET,164. 126 KD II/2, 179;ET,164. 376 chapter seven declares himself responsible for the situation of man, and that God finds himself at fault for the failure of the project of man and creation. This idea, which can take root if the theodicy question dominates the discussion of the question of God,127 is not however to be found in Barth. He places the stress on the voluntary solidarity with which God declares himself guilty. It is assumed guilt, suffering born in solidarity, which is the result of the decision of election taken in full freedom. By now it should be clear that with questions of this sort we find ourselves in the centre of the themes that one deals with in every concept of Christian theology. How should we conceive God’s relation to human failure, human sin, human suffering? How does the decision to create man and the world relate to the fact that man as creature chooses his own way, to man’s freedom, that he can turn away from God? How does God’s plan for salvation relate to human obstinacy, to the closed nature of the vicious circles of evil? These are the great themes that man can indeed push around conceptually, but which can never be pushed away. Nor can one escape from the problem by not attributing the quality of power to God. Recent theological history teaches that man loses the concept of God if power is not in some way predicated to His acting, if one denies that He is Lord over time and space. That is not the case in either of the panels here. God’s Lordship defines the colour scheme for both Calvin and Barth. In both we find substantive lines that point in the direction of supralapsarianism. It is necessary to spend a few words going into the debate between infralapsarians and supralapsarians. Although from a distance the conflict between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism may largely seem a case of theological fatuity and inanity, examined more closely it is one of the battles in which fundamental judgements occur that have direct connections with the question of the boundaries of knowledge of God and spirituality. It is a difference in emphasis which transcends pure curiosity. In infralapsarianism election has more the nature of a response to the fall, of an action towards restoration. Creation, as a work of God, has greater independence. The spotlight is on the seriousness of sin, its absurdity and the deep lostness of the sinner. According to infralapsarianism the

127 This is the direction taken by A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De christologie als hart van de theologie,Kampen1998, 155–157;ET:Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology (Studies in Reformed Theology. Supplements I), translated by P.O. Postma, Zoetermeer 2004, 168–169. the doctrine of god 377 object of predestination is the homo creatus et lapsus.128 The decision about election follows the decision about creation. In supralapsarianism the accent is on election as a manner of glorifying God. In infralapsarianism the emphasis is on the variety of decisions and their causal order; in supralapsarianism the stress is on the unity of the decisions, and the other decisions are teleologically subordinate to election.129 In this case the object of predestination is the not-yet created man in all his fallibility, thus the homo creabilis en labilis. Barth’s theological concept is unmistakably in line with supralapsarianism. But for him that means that God makes the decision about the fall not so that man falls, but so that man in his fallen state is witness to His gracious acting, to His glory.130 Godwillsforusinthislifeasitislived,withallthegiven limitations and shadows. He wills an answer from man not beyond of this life; He places man within the boundaries of this existence, and in his revelation opens up this existence as the space for the covenant. In this respect too Barth’s theology ﬁts in with this second panel, in that it situates the covenant on earth, wanting to remain true to the earth in that way. For Barth, the foregoing implies an answer to theodicy. It implies that the shadow, the darkness does not fall outside the sphere of action and outside the proximity of God; but it equally implies that in no case do people themselves fall outside the presence and care of God. Therefore, in his extensive historical excursus on this dogmatic conﬂict he indicates his sympathy for supralapsarianism, after he has stripped it of its ‘inhumane’ characteristics.131 Double predestination no longer means that a part of humanity forever remains excluded from the proximity of the God who is rich in blessing. The phrases duriores,for which supralapsarianism became so notorious, and that the representatives of infralapsarianism sought to avoid by taking the boundaries of theological speaking more into account, become impossible in Barth. The severity in all its weight is absorbed by God himself in his Son. Barth’s concept of electing is a means of combining the relative truth of supralapsarianism with the universal perspective of salvation for all men who are born on earth alongside the one man Jesus of Nazareth. I speak here of relative truth, because supralapsarianism does not shrink

128 KD II/2, 144;ET,134. 129 See H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II,Kampen19082, 399;ET:The Doctrine of God, trans. and ed. by W. Hendriksen, Edinburgh/Carlisle 1979, 393. 130 KD II/2, 153;ET,134. 131 KD II/2, 136–157;ET,127–145. 378 chapter seven from the consequences of seeing all things in life, all decisions, as being under the sovereignty of God, under his dominion. Anyone who will not accept that inevitably arrives at a form of Pelagianism, in which God’s majesty is reduced or where in one way or another, precisely in the effort to safeguard God from every form of responsibility for evil, a form of dualism is created.132 In that case, the remedy for defending God’s moral inviolability is worse than the disease. Barth’s theology teaches that creation and the fall can not be spoken about other than from the perspective of deliverance. Anyone proposing to consider sin, the alienation of the world and the riddle it is, apart from the God who comes to meet us in Christ, is thinking in the abstract. According to Barth double predestination means that all people, as fellowmen of the man Jesus, as people under sin, are intended to become witnesses to His glory. The centre of gravity and core of this theology does not lie in the decision to create. Creation is not the last of God’s deeds. It has in it the potential for the fall, and is therefore not the highest achievable. This difference in the place and content of the concept of creation was among the issues which Barth himself in discussion with Brunner pointed to as noteworthy differences between Lutheran and Reformed thought.133 Lutheran theology can still think of grace as restitutio ad integrum, restoration of an original and sinless condition; in agreement with the old Augustinian line of thought, in the Reformed doctrine of a creation covenant with Adam and Eve the idea of the surplus of the eschaton, and with it the eschatological tenor, is

132 Calvin and Barth are both theologians for whom the theological perspective of the glory of God predominates. God is glorified in the salvation of his children. Calvin felt he had to speak of the extent of election to life in a restrictive sense, and therefore his theology appears so much more inhumane. Within dogmatic reflection however it is advisable to be careful with such judgements, which can result is a feeling of moral superiority. Even within the perspective of universal salvation in Barth’s theology the questions are no less serious, human existence no less enigmatic, and the dark place no less dark! Barth also must give a place to the darkness that pervades life, to the reality of sin, alienation, suffering, pain for what will not be fulfilled, was cut short, never came to be. Within his unitary perspective he postulates the darkness in the idea of the Nichtige, which is connected with God’s positive creative will under a negative portent. But his locating evil and sin in this way and defining it as the impossible and unreal as opposed to the reality of grace shows that Christian theology cannot avoid giving a place to sin and evil in some way or another. 133 See Karl Barth/Emil Brunner, Briefwechsel 1916–1966,hrsg.vonE.Busch,Zürich 2000, 135–141. Cf. also Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek II, 616;ET:In the Beginning. Foundations of Creation Theology, ed. by John Bolt and trans. by John Vriend, Grand Rapids 1999, 208. the doctrine of god 379 much more pregnant. With Barth the doctrine of creation is however so totally dominated by and integrated into thinking about salvation that creation can nowhere come to be discussed as an independent theme. It is here that, so far as I can see, a difference exists between Barth and Calvin. Barth never intended the thesis of creation as the external foundation for the covenant to suggest that creation would have been sufficient in itself. For Barth creation is a provisional and extremely vulnerable reality which, as he develops the idea in his creation doctrine in KD III, is undeniably endowed with beauty and praises the Creator. At the same time there is a fragility to it, it borders on the void and is an ambiguous entity. Creation implies the possibility of fall, ofrisk.Creationimpliesman,abeingwhichisnot-God,anexistence bordering on the possibility of non-being, which is exposed to a temptation that is excluded within God Himself through his divine nature, but that with regard to man can only be answered by the Word and commandment.134 However,Barthsaysinhisdefence,innocasecanthis incredible risk be raised as an accusation against God, because He has taken on Himself the rejection, the no that He has spoken against sin. Because in double predestination God himself stands in for man, lets theestrangementcomedownuponHimself,Heisjustifiedintaking that risk. It is in this light that Barth, later in his doctrine of creation, can discuss creation as justification: creation is good as it is. Within the order of creation, as space and outward ground for the covenant, creation is good, including the light and shadow sides that are givens within it.135 In light of revelation, the world of time and space becomes transparent with regard to the work of God, transparent with regard to the intention of the covenant, but precisely in the light of this revelation it becomes clear that deliverance can never consist of restoration of that which has been created. Brunner writes to Barth that for him creation is so ‘weak’, so separated from God, that creation itself, as creation, must already be delivered. Brunner’s insight was accurate. In Barth’s thought creation is so regarded as provisional, as separated from God, as an overture to His covenant, that deliverance can by no means be conceived as a mending or restoration. The heart of this theology lies not in creation, in so far as that is understood as an untroubled and blissful reality in childish naivety. Thinking about and experiencing the

134 KD II/2, 180;ET,165. 135 KD III/1, 418–476;ET,366–414. 380 chapter seven created world is entirely in the light of divine steadfastness, as that is seen in the history of Jesus Christ. Reconciliation is, Barth says literally, the deed by which God justified his own creative work of creation. God takes responsibility for the work that He himself has conceived.136 The possible accusation against God for his creating a world under threat is answered by Barth pointing to the fact that God in Jesus Christ lets the negative forces called up in the movement outward come down on himself. Double predestination therefore no longer means that people are lost for eternity, but that the threat to that which is created and the actual estrangement is taken on by God himself. In this way Barth makes it clear who, in his understanding, God is. Posited as a reality outside of God, this world is a threatened reality. In the double movement of election and rejection God takes responsibility for this reality. The double decree of election and rejection is the background in God Himself which becomes visible and transparent in the history of Jesus. It is characteristic of Barth’s theology that the exalted, God’s eternal glory, becomes visible, and more, transparent, in the lowly, in the history of Jesus. Jesus becomes the testimony to that which God wills and of that which he does not will, of God’s yes and no. This yes and no do not stand next to one another as equal judgements; the no is a consequence of His yes. Because God chooses for an existence in fellowship with man, He chooses for the creation of man; at the same time He draws a line against that which goes counter to fellowship, and wills its elimination. The points of departure for speaking of the steadfastness of God are provided by the resurrection and prayer of Jesus.137 These two elements are the windows, so to speak, the icons which afford a perspective on divine and human steadfastness. The content of predestination is this: that divine steadfastness regarding creation and the problems which accompany it comes first. According to Barth, Christian thinking and life therefore can only unfold as an answer to this steadfastness of God. That God unveils Himself in the history of Jesus as the One who defeats these problems becomes the foundation for this theology. Believing in Jesus, we read in Barth, means keeping his resurrection and his prayer in our minds and hearts.

136 KD II/2, 134–135;ET,126. 137 KD II/1, 135;ET,126–127. the doctrine of god 381

7.14. The critique of Calvin

Arriving at this point, we can try to understand why Barth exercised such a vehement critique on the way Calvin spoke of Christ as the mirror of election.138 The heart of the matter is that Christ is indeed referred to as the mirror of election, but that subsequently the actual electing still appears to be the work of God, dismissing Christ. Can it indeed be taken seriously theologically, he asks, when it is proclaimed to the people in the Church that they know their election in Christ? Is the reference to Christ as the mirror of election not a pastoral medium which keeps open the possibility that the real electing God is a God hidden behind Christ? Then Jesus Christ is an instrument or organ of election, and the real decision about salvation or doom comes in an eternal, absolute decree that is separate from the incarnation.139 In the first panel the freedom of God is powerfully emphasised, and that is positive. But the actual election is the hidden work of the Father. Christ does not come into the matter when the issue is the content of election. The electing itself is a work of God the Father and is hidden behind the concrete person of Jesus Christ. Calvin’s refusal to admit man to the depths of God’s Counsel meets with the sharpest critique from Barth. According to him, in this manner a space is opened up in the being of God behind revelation that is threatening, a space in which the rejection, a ‘no’ to concrete persons can echo. Then Jesus Christ is not God’s self-revelation. A revelation does take place, but God himself still remains the Unknown. Barth meets this obscurity with his proposition that Jesus Christ is the electing God. In the historical space between the two panels however quite a bit changed, certainly when it came to thinking about God and his being. For Calvin, the question of who God is in Himself was not thought to be answerable. It was still conceived as a question about God’s substance, as a question about the essential nature or quidditas of God’s being. All we knew of this essential nature, this nature peculiar to God, is that it was infinitely exalted above man, entirely different, spiritual. It was eminently possible though to say how God is in relation to us: how he presents himself to us, how he wishes to be served and worshipped. For Calvin God is the one who is ‘our Father’ par excellence, and in baptism and the Supper He enters the picture as

138 KD II/2, 66–68;ET,62–64. 139 KD II/2, 68–69;ET,63–65. 382 chapter seven

Father. That is how He wishes to be known by man; that is how He wishes to be addressed: as an Father who takes the elect into his family as adopted children. The questions about God’s substance and the inner structure of his Counsel are rejected as dangerous speculation. The final horizon for believing mankind is the will of God, the way in which he makes Himself known in the mirrors of his instruments of revelation. In the second panel we are in a different era. God as a person is thought about in frameworks and structures which were shaped by Romanticism and idealist philosophy. Increasingly the concept of ‘person’ is no longer thought about in terms of substance, but in terms of a subject with self-awareness and active self-determination. In the era of Romanticism and idealism the subject was the ground and source of all expressions in life. All such expressions of a higher order were considered as external expressions, creations of a person as a determining and self-determining being, realised in his acting. As Pannenberg and others rightly argue, with this development revelation became increasingly limited to self-revelation. The idea that God in His revelation also revealed matters that could not be situated directly under the heading of self-revelation was experienced as problematic by 19th century liberal theology. This legacy has become the collective inheritance of Western theology down to this day. Revelation can no longer be thought of as the revealing of values, of the state of affairs; revelation can only be thought of in terms of the teleological goal of God’s revelation, his self - revelation. Anything which falls short of being self-revelation does not deserve to be considered revelation. In view of these cultural-historical shifts and the need within theology to reflect explicitly on the concept of revelation, it is historically understandable that Barth takes the step to revelation as self-revelation. Once it is accepted in a culture that someone is only known when one can trace his or her expressions back to, and characterise them as providing insight into their person, then for that reason alone it will be understandable that in the field of theology too the question must be asked about the relationship between the expression of God’s will and his innermost self. In the language of the doctrine of election, it must be clear that the electing God is no deus absconditus,butthatJesus Christ must be thought of as the electing God. If the expression is not anchored in the self, that expression is accounted false. The surprise that Barth exhibits about the fact that in particular Calvin not only did not answer the questions which are here, but did not even expe- the doctrine of god 383 rience or see them as questions,140 says less about Calvin than it does about the changed cultural and intellectual constellation in the second panel. This is not to say that the identification of revelation with self- revelation in the second panel is wholly and totally a matter of changes in intellectual history involving culture and mentality. The development of the concept of revelation as self-revelation can also be connected with essential notions in the Old and New Testaments themselves. It is easy to defend the proposition that the altered constellation in intellectual history awakened a sensitivity which enabled theologians to see essential elements in Scripture and think through their implications. In the Christian tradition we have been taught to speak of God as a person. He is no ‘it’; He is approachable, we can call upon Him, and in this encounter man, for his part, also becomes more and more a person. In the second panel the final horizon for theological knowledge no longer coincides with the will of God, but is the person of God, His self-gift in Jesus Christ. Barth attempt to prevent that the will of God remain an abstract entity. Jesus Chris is not only the application in the ‘search function’ for man seeking salvation, but is also the content of this salvation. The will of God as the last horizon increasingly coincides with a concrete name, and a concrete history: Jesus Christ. Only by reading this story and taking it seriously theologically as the history in which the depths of God as a person speak to us, will all anxious doubt be banished. In this history, above and below, eternity and time coincide through God’s grace.141 The question of whether life will ultimately still end in darkness, is merely a bad dream in which man is unwanted and left behind alone in a bleak cosmos, is answered by pointing to that which came close to us in our reality. For the rest, the concretising of God’s will does not mean that the distinction between God’s eternal will and the decision of predestination falls away. Barth emphatically retains this distinction conceptually, because only in this way can the freedom of God be preserved. If the distinction was not there, God would be absorbed into his relation to man and the world. The difference from the first panel is however that Barth focuses this eternal will most precisely on the life story of Jesus

140 KD II/2, 119;ET,111. 141 B. Kamphuis, Boven en beneden. Het uitgangspunt van de christologie en de problematiek van de openbaring, nagegaan aan de hand van de ontwikkelingen bij Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeﬀer en Wolfhart Pannenberg,Kampen1999. 384 chapter seven

Christ. This story provides perspective and insight into the sovereignty and glory that God has in himself.142 The agreement with the tradition is that Barth wants to hold fast to the unsearchable majesty of divine good-pleasure. But he deviates from the same tradition by not considering this eternal will as an obscurity into which we cannot see. On the contrary, we can indeed see into it, we understand Barth to say. God’s eternal will is transparent in the history of Jesus Christ. It has taken concrete form there, and come to dwell among us.

7.15. Eternity, time and God’s acting today

Itwillbeclearthatintheabovetherelationoftimeandeternityhas been a constantly recurring theme. It is necessary here to briefly reach back to what was previously said about God as the Eternal One. For the concept of eternity it is essential that God’s being Lord of time is expressed. The words vorzeitlich, überzeitlich and nachzeitlich indicate in spatial terms that God transcends in all possible ways the time which is familiar to us, is involved with the forms of our existence, encompasses them—in short, is Lord of Time. For Barth eternity is not primarily a concept related to time; it is first and foremost a characterisation and indication of God’s majesty and sovereignty over the forms of our existence. That means, therefore, that any concept in which time and eternity are discussed as opposites to one another will from its inception fail to engage what is being said here. Barth’s actualism means that in God’s acting in time and space man encounters the dominion over our time and space that is peculiar to God. The fact that in the history of Jesus Christ God’s eternal will is made visible and comes about does not however imply that earthly history is only the performance of a scenario that is decided somewhere else. Barth terms that a deistic misconception. In deism the acting of God is something that precedes history, and not something which defines it in the here and now. The latter is however precisely what Barth wishes to express in his actualism: at every instant God is involved in every moment of time as the living, the choosing and judging One. In every moment of temporal existence we stand before the God who chooses, determines, surrounds and call us, and who precisely in that calling and determining summons man

142 KD II/2, 171;ET,157. the doctrine of god 385 to freedom. Never on any occasion does God become a principle, He never remains behind in the past, nor is He an element far in the future. God’s decree is His acting to us, so that every moment of our history is defined and surrounded by the depth of God’s glory and majesty.143 With his interpretation of the actuality of God’s eternal will, Barth seeks to resolve a dilemma to which the doctrine of predestination gave rise traditionally. The one horn of the dilemma is that the salvation of man in time could only be thought of as the outcome of a one time decision lying further behind it. In that case the relation of God’s active willing and deciding, and the decision as an effect of his will, is conceived as a mechanistic relation. The other horn of the dilemma is that one permits God’s deciding to become so wrapped up with the existential situation in which man is put by God’s summons, that actuality in this case means that God would progress from decision to decision and there would be no constancy or certainty. In the latter case God’s acting is coupled to the outcome of what man does in response to the appeal. In this view, which Barth in his doctrine of election discusses as a view defended by his brother Peter,144 it is also easy to recognise the vision that he himself still defended in the first and second editions of the Epistle to the Romans. Election is there still a quality of God’s acting. In this period election and rejection coincide with the moment of faith when God’s ‘yes’ breaks through the concealment and the ‘no’.145 Now he breaks with this concept. After all, it implies a refined form of synergism, and does not square with the relation between God and man. If it were true, the relation between God and man would have to be conceived as an ellipse with two foci, in which the human focus has the same sort of independence as God’s acting does. Barth opts for a different image that well represents the objectivist tenor of his theology: the circle, with one centre. The primacy of God’s electing act is preserved in this image, while human acting is conceived as the drawing of concentric circles around that one centre. In that way human action confirms and repeats God’s electing. What man is called to, is a life that has the structure of a corresponding answer, a life in

143 KD II/2, 170, 200–201;ET,157, 182–183. A good illustration is found in the words of O. Noordmans: ‘Eternity is precisely the string that drives the arrow of deliverance on to its target. God’s eternal decision is taken at the last moment.’ See O. Noordmans, Het koninkrijk der hemelen, (Nijkerk 1949, 110=) Verzamelde Werken II,Kampen1979, 493. 144 KD II/2, 207–214;ET,188–194. 145 See Karl Barth, Römerbrief 2, 331–332;ET,346–348. 386 chapter seven

Entsprechung. In the image of the circles, God’s gracious electing remains the a priori of human life, the axis with which every point of the circles remains involved. The thesis of the actuality of God’s willing means that God’s decree is a spiritual life charter, which on the one hand precedes all human acting, but which does not have the nature of a dead letter despite its priority.InChristitisnotonlyarevealedmystery,butalsoapresent mystery, which leads the way and remains close, as God preceded his people and remained close to them in the pillars of fire and cloud.146 This Counsel manifests itself in the history of Jesus Christ, is history in the life of Israel and the Church. It is at this point that Barth emphatically sets the priority of the events, of the concrete history of Jesus Christ, over against a form of thinking in which God’s Counsel and human acting are cast into a fixed system. This history is the reality of God’s electing, it is the history where the reality of God’s electing, his ruling and guidance take place. The earthly history of Jesus Christ thus has its anchorage in the life of God, forms one whole with God’s life and relates to it in a manner which further eludes us. Eternity, the fullness of the life of God, thus becomes the power of the proclamation of the Kingdom. The asymmetry between God and man forbids that man here, beginning from himself, creates a concept in which he has any hold on the relation of time and eternity. Thinking theologically means ascribing the priority, the glory, to God. Therefore Who or what He is cannot be regarded as a system, not simply embedded in a concept; it must be told to us again and again.147 The category of the story, history as narrative to be told, here comes explicitly into the picture for Barth as a theological category par excellence. The history of God’s acting itself is the object on which all theological reflection is focused. Narration, history, the Word is then not an illustration, a figure for eternal truth. The image, history, this narrative is the reality of God himself, of his ‘Being in Act’, of his coming. Knowledge of God arises when men permit themselves to become involved with this history,148 when men, hearing and answering, take their place as participants.

146 KD II/2, 210;ET,191. 147 KD II/2, 206;ET,188: ‘Who and what Jesus Christ is, is something which can only be told, not a system which can be considered and described.’ 148 Especially E. Jüngel has developed this notion into a theology where the conceiv- ability of God is made dependent on ‘speakability’. See Jüngel, God as Mystery of the World, 300. chapter eight

NEW SPACE FOR HUMAN ACTION: BARTH’S VIEW OF THE SACRAMENT

8.1. Doctrine of baptism as mirror

To round off the second panel we will discuss Barth’s doctrine of baptism as he himself had it published as a fragment of his doctrine of reconciliation. Paralleling the discussion of Calvin’s theology, we will also take a subject from the doctrine of the sacraments and use this as a mirror to reveal the tenor and direction of Barth’s theology. The parallel is not perfect, however. Unlike the first panel, it is not the doctrine of the Supper, but of baptism which will be discussed. An important reason for this change is simply the fact that we do not have before us a fragment from Barth’s later theology dealing with the Supper. There are other reasons, though. For Barth it was evidently of great importance to once again speak out on the theme of baptism. In his Preface he explains that the doctrine of reconciliation, like the doctrine of creation, would have been followed by a section specifically on ethics.1 For reconciliation, a section would have followed on man’s answer, beginning with baptism. It would then have been developed on the basis of the Lord’s Prayer,2 and closed with a discussion of the Supper. The introduction makes it clear that the context within which Barth wanted to discuss the sacraments was that of man’s response. Prayer is accounted the basis of that human response, and it is this basic attitude toward God which takes on paradigmatic form in the actions of baptism and the Supper. The choice of rounding off the examination of Barth’s view of knowing God with a discussion of his doctrine of baptism is thus not moti-

1 Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Das christliche Leben (Fragment). Die Taufe als Begründung des christlichen Lebens, IX; ET, VIII–IX. 2 These fragments were later published by H.A. Drewes and E. Jüngel under the title Das Christliche Leben. Die Kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4. Fragmente aus dem Nachlaß. Vorlesungen 1959–1961,Zürich1976. 388 chapter eight vated by the fact that Barth once again reaffirmed his reputation as an enfant terrible in the ecclesiastical and theological establishment by his rejection of infant baptism. It had been common knowledge for many years that Barth was extremely critical of infant baptism; he had already previously expressed himself on the subject in a document from 1943.3 At that time he had already connected the retention of infant baptism—and particularly the fact that it appeared to be a topic on which no discussion was possible—with the stubborn refusal to recognise that Christianity had ceased to be the corpus christianum,andaccept the sociological consequences of the new minority situation.4 That he later, in the present fragment from 1967, characterised infant baptism as an ‘abuse’5 and once again vehemently rejected the custom, was thus nothing new. As he had done in 1943, he suggests that the retention and defence of infant baptism, even in liberal theological circles where people acknowledged that the exegetical basis for infant baptism was shaky and open to dispute, had more to do with the fear of a sociological and social horror vacui than with faith. Infant baptism belongs too much to the structural pillars of a church for which the totality of the population was identical with the totality of its members, with a state church or a national church, than people would dare to admit.6 Although the continued debate on infant baptism is one of the in- triguing elements in this fragment, the importance of this text, which was in fact the capstone of the KD, is theological in nature. The structuring lines of Barth’s theology are radicalised in a direction which has left the theology which came after him with great questions. Is the rejection of the sacramental principle indeed the final consequence of this theology? Is it even perhaps the final consequence of the Reforma- tion, in which all knowledge of God depends on the Word, and this Word is characterised by discontinuity with respect to historical and

3 K. Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe,Zürich19473. 4 Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 39–40: ‘Irre ich mich nicht, wenn ich denke, daß der eigentliche und durchschlagende außersachliche Grund für die Kindertaufe schon bei den Reformatoren und seither immer wieder sehr schlicht der gewesen ist: Man wollte damals auf keinen Fall und um keinen Preis auf die Existenz der evangelischen Kirche im konstantinischen corpus christianum -und man will heute auf keinen Fall und um keinen Preis- auf die heutige Gestalt der Volkskirche verzichten? … Wo steht denn eigentlich geschrieben, daß die Christen nicht in der Minderheit, vielleicht sogar in einer sehr kleinen Minderheit sein dürften.’ 5 KD IV/4,XI;ET,X. 6 KD IV/4, 184–185;ET,168. barth’s view of the sacrament 389 mediating forms? Or can one with equal justification turn and go in another direction? Among the lines which structure Barth’s theology is the emphasis on the difference between God and man. In his revelation God remains free. In his gracious turning toward man, in his holiness, he is never determined by history. This means that the church or a social movement, a people or culture, may never under any circumstances declare itself the proud possessor of salvation and the humanum. In this respect the baptismal fragment is, as Schellong has correctly argued, a true continuation of one of Barth’s deepest purposes.7 But the reference to these fundamental lines must be supplemented with a second accent that received increasingly more focused form in the further development of Barth’s theology. Barth’s early theology, his rejection of liberal theology, was set out programmatically in two theses: ‘God is God’ and ‘Man is Man’.8 If in his early publications these tautological statements served primarily to prevent any possible annexation of the word ‘God’ and its content, now space is created for a change of course, to give man and his subjectivity a place in the room that is freed up. One can read the baptismal fragment as a treatise that makes the counterproposal to modernity more specific with regard to the place and space for man. The baptismal doctrine specified how, in view of the participation in the new being in Christ brought about through the Holy Spirit, human existence is broken open and man in baptism can commit himself to and become involved with this new being.

7 D. Schellong, ‘Karl Barth als Theologe der Neuzeit’ in: K.G. Steck/D. Schellong, Karl Barth und die Neuzeit,München1973, 72: ‘Ich bin der Meinung, daß KD IV/4 … die Probe aufs Exempel ist, oder man begriﬀen hat oder wenigstens ahnt, was in der theologischen Arbeit Karl Barths passiert und intendiert ist, welcher Weg es ist, den er suchte. Es geht um die Absage an das Verwirklichen und Haben des Göttlichen—um die Absage an die Vergegenwärtigung des Heilsgeschehens, wie man später zu sagen liebte und damit Neo-Orthodoxie trieb.’ 8 For all practical purposes, these two theses appear in a report of Barth’s Novem- ber, 1915, lecture in Basel, ‘Kriegszeit und Gottesreich’, that P. Wernle wrote to M. Rade. According to Wernle Barth described the Christian’s consciousness in faith as follows: ‘1. die Welt bleibt Welt, vom Teufel regiert, alle Versuche in allen verschieden- sten Richtungen, etwas zu bessern & helfen, sind wertlos & folglos, 2. Gott ist Gott, das Reich Gottes muß kommen, dann wird alles anders, 3. was haben wir zu thun, an Jesus Christus zu glauben & zu harren auf das Gottesreich.’ See F.W. Kantzenbach, ‘Zwis- chen Leonard Ragaz und Karl Barth. Die Beurteilung des 1.Weltkrieges in den Briefen des Basler Theologen Paul Wernle an Martin Rade’, ZSK 71 (1977), 393–417, 406.See for a discussion my Anfängliche Theologie. Der Denkweg des jungen Karl Barth (1909–1927), München 1987, 71–72. 390 chapter eight

Already in Barth’s early theology the emphasis on the freedom of God in his revelation, in the sense that God refuses to be annexed, is accompanied by an equally strong emphasis on the universality of God and Christ. Compelled by his experience at the time the First World War began and by renewed Bible study, around 1915 Barth came to the conviction that the big word ‘God’, with all its meanings of wholeness, deliverance and cancelling out alienation, might no longer be introduced as an integral part of any historical movement, ideology or church. The entities ‘God’, the ‘kingdom of God’ and ‘Christ’ are indeed present in Scripture, but almost as a sort of jamming apparatus, not as realities to be realised in human activity. That does not mean that God or Christ are dead. Quite on the contrary! Even as his liberal opponents do, Barth believes that Christ is at work in the society, is the secret source of power for human searching and the striving for humanity. The lecture Der Christ in der Gesellschaft, written against the background of a social situation in which a selection of groups and movements were calling for renewal, resounds with the hope that society is not abandoned to its own resources:9 Christ is the secret motor, the origin of human searching. The difference with other voices that are searching for the presence of God is that the divine, or the Spirit, can no longer be fit into the relation between God and man. The fundamental asymmetry in the relation between God and man surfaces in this lecture, so that Christ ‘in us’ is interpreted as ‘above us’, ‘behind us’ and ‘beyond us’. ‘The Christ in us is that which we are not.’10 Here it becomes visible for the first time that the relation between God and man is to be characterised as a relation of non-identity. There are all sorts of ways in which this lecture can be read productively alongside the baptismal fragment. The reason is not only that baptism with the Spirit is termed an ‘incommensurable’ element I am also referring to another aspect that continues to make the 1919 lecture fascinating reading, namely the universal perspective that is carried through in all directions. Christ involves everyone. He is free to be present with, and enter into relation with all men. What in the neo-Calvinist tradition was discussed under the term ‘catholicity’,11 also remained a cantus fir-

9 ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ (1919) in: Anfänge I, 3. 10 Anfänge I, 4. 11 H. Bavinck, De katholiciteit van kerk en christendom (1888), Kampen 1968; ET: ‘The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church’, trans. by John Bolt, Calvin Theological Journal 27 (1992), 220–251. barth’s view of the sacrament 391 mus in Barth’s theology. In the struggle with natural theology regarding the criterion and site of Christian knowledge of God, it might have appeared that this universal perspective was forgotten. An appeal to creation, to a wider concept of experience, is no longer possible. Subse- quently Barth attempted to comprehend under Christology all that for Calvin fell under the broader horizon of the work of the Spirit. And, as has already been said, through Christology and the doctrine of election Barth attempted to give shape to a view of creation and history. As a matter of fairness in judgement, we must acknowledge that the concentration on Jesus Christ as the only Word in life and death (Barmen) has as its point the question about the criterion for knowledge of God, not its range. In the sections which follow the doctrine of God in KD II, within this new starting point it really does appear that a vision of creation, man and history is possible. The doctrine of election offers the fundamental, substantive definition for the divinity of God. This means that man cannot overlook God’s proximity to all people in his Son Jesus Christ, but must regard this first as a theological fact, and only then in its anthropological and soteriological implications. The sending of Jesus Christ breaks through the isolation of man—through our human isolation; God has come near to all, all of mankind are brought within his actual sphere. These are the fundamental themes that bring this concept of human knowledge of God under the denominator of hope. More than in the preceding section of the KD,inKD IV/4 Barth wants to sharply distinguish between actions of God and actions of man. The doctrine of baptism is no alien element, but a ripe harvest of Barth’s theology. In sending his Son, God reverses man’s situation, and the reconciliation and forgiveness of sins this involves is made inwardly accessible to man through God’s Spirit. Then it is up to man to respond to this divine act. Man lets himself be baptised, lets himself become involved. This distinction between the acting of God and the acting of man has far-reaching consequences for the place and theological meaning of the sacraments. Barth breaks with the classic sacramental doctrines in which God is actively present in the administration of the sacraments by man, so that the sacrament is a means of salvation. With Barth, all the emphasis is placed on man, who permits himself to become involved with the sacrament, and in this passivity is himself active. The subjective element is given room within the objective work of Christ and the Spirit. 392 chapter eight

8.2. Developments

8.2.1. Regard for the humanity of Jesus Barth’s doctrine of baptism reflects the development in his thought. The question which is of theological interest is whether the conclusions drawn by Barth are necessary, and follow as a matter of course once one subscribes to an asymmetry in the relation between God and man. Within the doctrine of God in KD II the concept of the sacraments still has a full place. The humanity of Jesus Christ is termed the first sacrament.12 This is not to say that Jesus Christ is the one sacrament. There is a place for the sacraments of the Church alongside this first sacrament. As already emerged in 6.9, one can interpret Barth’s view of the relation between God and man with the pair of concepts from the early Church, anhypostasis and enhypostasis.Thetermenhypostasis is intended to comprehend the unity of the person of Jesus Christ according to the divine perspective. In Jesus Christ the divine Logos or the eternal Son is the supporting ground for the unity of divine and human nature which exists in Him. With Barth enhypostasis comes to characterise the dynamic of God’s veiled revelation in Christ. The man Jesus is the place where God reveals himself, and in the event of the revelation he can be characterised as the Son. For Barth anhypostasis is indicative of the revelation: it refers to the event of the Word, outside of which the man Jesus is nothing. In the first parts of the KD the humanity of Jesus fulfils no role of its own; the humanity, like all history, is predicated upon revelation.13 All the space is taken up by the God who acts. There is no room for the question of whether in Jesus Christ man also stands facing God. The stress on the revelation of God in Christ is in fact at the expense of attention for history, for mankind. The fact that in Jesus Christ God and man come together, and that therefore the person of Jesus Christ can be termed the mediator, is actually pushed aside. In the later parts of KD there comes more and more space for man as the partner of God. This can be seen in the terminology alone. If the first parts of the KD are dominated by the category of the Word, the later parts deal with Jesus Christ as a person,

12 KD II/1, 58;ET,53. 13 KD I/2, 178;ET,162: ‘His manhood is only the predicate of His Godhead, or better and more concretely, it is only the predicate, assumed on inconceivable condescension, of the Word acting upon us, the Word who is the Lord.’ barth’s view of the sacrament 393 or with the Son of God who is also the Son of Man. Within his concept of knowledge of God, in which the primacy continues to lie with God as subject, Barth attempts to expound the revelation as concrete history, the history of Jesus Christ, which must be understood as ‘the way of the Son of God into the far country’14 and as ‘the exaltation of the Son of Man’.15 Theological thought remains the ontological ground for faith, in an analogy for which no analogue can be identiﬁed in our world: the unio hypostatica as ‘the assuming and assumption of human nature into unity with the Son of God’ is an event which is self-evident and unparalleled.16 The development in Barth’s view of the sacraments runs parallel with his recognition of the humanity of Jesus. Baptism and the Supper are sacraments analogous to the anhypostasis of the man Jesus. For all practical purposes, the only place for that which is human is as an exponent of the event of revelation. The sacraments are human actions, which by virtue of God’s free and electing act can become a means for His revelation.

8.2.2. The one sacrament Barth undeniably intended the fragment on baptism as a retractatio of his earlier exposition of baptism in 1943. It was not without reason that he gave this earlier brochure the title Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe. Already at that time the title was critically intended. It becomes clear in the title how from the outset Barth intended the adjective kirchliche for his dogmatics as a critical term which invites one not to declare the status quo holy, but rather to repeatedly place the givens under the critique of the living Word of God. In Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe baptism is still called an Abbild of renewal through the Spirit.17 As an element of the proclamation of the church its power lies in its being a free Word and the work of Jesus Christ himself.18 The way in which the concept of the sacraments is forced into the background is documented in the fact that in KD IV/2 he terms the history of Jesus Christ the one sacrament. From this point the accent is placed on the singularity

14 KD IV/1,Par.59.1. 15 KD IV/2,Par.64. 16 KD IV/2, 62;ET,58. 17 Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 3, 8. 18 Barth, Die kirchliche Lehre von der Taufe, 11. 394 chapter eight of the self-witness and the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Risen One is present as a force in history, and makes all things testify to Him. With his power He is assured of a response, He opens a way with peoples and nations. Particularly in KD IV/3 this aspect is worked out in length under the heading of the prophetic office of Jesus Christ. This section is therefore important for Barth’s later theological epistemology. God makes his sovereign way through history in Christ as the Living One. Jesus as Prophet proclaims Himself and His own history. Sovereignly, he comes nearby, creates the link. Barth described the content of the history for which the name of Jesus Christ stands as being a double movement. He makes creative use of two doctrines distinguished by Protestant orthodoxy, namely the doctrines of the offices of Christ and of the estates of Christ. According to the doctrine of offices, one can regard the work of Christ under the three offices of prophet, priest and king; according to the doctrine of estates, Jesus moves from the state of humility to a state of exaltation.19 Barth interprets the doctrines of estates and offices together, in terms of each other. The priestly office of Christ is connected with his state of humility, and the office of king with the state of exaltation. By sending the Son into the world below, God does something with himself and to himself. He enters the depths, the Lord becomes Servant (KD IV/1). At the same time this history can also be regarded as an exaltation for man. What seen from the perspective of God is a road to the depths, for man it reveals itself in the opposite direction, namely a road to the heights: in the life of Jesus the outline of the royal man becomes visible (KD IV/2). Debasement and exaltation are both poles through which the history can be characterised. In addition, according to Barth in KD IV/3, there is a third aspect which can be distinguished in this history. The history of Jesus Christ finds its perfection, its peculiarity and its divine glory in the fact that He reveals Himself and makes Himself known.20 Independent of the question of whether this revelation will be understood and accepted by man subjectively or noetically, it is true of the history of Jesus Christ that it is in and of itself a communicative and transeunt event.21 This history is not only light, it is in itself a

19 Cf. Heppe/Bizer, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche,Neukirchen19582, 355–403: locus XVIII, De officio Iesu Christi mediatorio en locus XIX, De Iesu Christi statu exinanitionis et exaltationis. 20 KD IV/3, 6;ET,8. 21 KD IV/3, 7;ET,8. barth’s view of the sacrament 395 source of light. Put in other words, what Barth in this third part of the doctrine of reconciliation says under the heading of the prophetic office of Christ touches directly on the question of the way to knowing God: reconciliation is not a closed event, but a history which opens out from within itself, which shares itself. Reconciliation, the significance of Jesus Christ, does not still have to be applied; every application exists by virtue of the fact that Jesus Christ himself is the Living One who opens up the significance of reconciliation. What does Barth do with this? In the following sub-section two manners in which Barth develops this self-disclosure will de discussed.

8.2.3. The living Christ We will first here consider his Lichterlehre. Barth makes a distinction between, on the one hand, the direct testimony of apostles and prophets, the continued action of the Gospel and its effects, and on the one hand, lights which glow outside the circle of the Church and the Gospel.22 The confession that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God does not, according to Barth, prevent God in His freedom from proclaiming Himself elsewhere, outside the familiar circles. In Barth’s terms, Christ speaks this Word ‘directly’. The other true words and lights that men can descry extra muros ecclesiae23 in world history, among peoples and movements, do not take precedence over the one Word of God, but can only witness to that one Word. Barth’s Lichterlehre has provoked the question of whether he really here is saying something more than in the first sections of the KD.IstheLichterlehre only a further clarification of what was articulated in the Barmen Confession? Or does something thrust its way to the surface here for which there is hardly space in his theological concept?24 Do we not here run up against the limits of the fundamental Christocentrism, and would the concept not be better served here with a stronger distinction between

22 KD IV/3, 107;ET,96–97. 23 KD IV/3, 122;ET,110. 24 H. Berkhof, ‘Barths Lichterlehre im Rahmen der heutigen Theologie, Kirche und Welt’ in: H. Berkhof/H.J. Kraus, Karl Barths Lichterlehre,Zürich1978, 36, 48,Zurich 1978, 36, 48, is inclined to this view. Berkhof rightly points to remarks in the fragments from the years 1959–1961 published by H.A. Drewes and E. Jüngel, Das Christliche Leben, 197 on God being objectively known in the world. This concession, which sounds so much like Calvin, regarding objective acquaintance with God in the world and subjective ignorance of Him as a result of human slowness and fault, does not receive any theological development. 396 chapter eight

Christology and pneumatology? Whatever the case, the Lichterlehre is an indication that for Barth there is now more space than was implied by the statement in KD I/1, which sounds so much like a concession, that of course God can also reveal Himself in a Mozart concerto or through a dead dog.25 Evidently he regards the question regarding criteria for the speaking of God as answered now, and it must be said to the Church and Christianity that God has the freedom to reveal his truth outside the Church. Therefore one must take into account that there are lights which witness to this great Light.26 In short, however much believing Christians and the institutional Church may then feel themselves cornered in modernity, theologically it is the case that no ‘profane sphere left to its lot’ exists. It may therefore be true that while there are many people who live without God, within the concept of man and the world in Christian knowledge of God, God does not exist without man.27 One can detect a tone critical of the church in such remarks, but it is perhaps more productive to note how much the motif of the sovereignty of Christ and of hope sounds out. Christ as the Living One continues to lead us and go ahead of us. As a second development of this self-witnessing of Jesus Christ as the Living One, we can refer to the 1843 account of exorcism involving J.C. Blumhardt and Gottliebin Dittus of Möttlingen, which is cited by Barth. It is the story of a young woman who is freed from an alien power by which she has been overwhelmed and controlled. Barth considers it of particular importance that Blumhardt did not think of the phrase ‘Jesus ist Sieger’ himself, but heard the words from the mouth of Gottliebin’s sister Katharina. It is a desperate cry, uttered in the midst of a struggle with demonic forces.28 This experience led Blumhardt to once again take seriously the reality of the Living Lord and his dominion. Throughout his life Barth himself felt the appeal of this realism of belief, which in the midst of conﬂict places more faith in God and His gracious rule than in the powers, and in KD IV/3 he again reaches back to it. In this third part of Barth’s theology his a priori point of departure increasingly comes to coincide with the name Jesus Christ, the Living One who makes Himself present. His theology becomes more and

25 KD I/1, 55–56;ET,55. 26 KD IV/3, 128;ET,114. 27 KD IV/3, 133;ET,119. 28 KD IV/3, 192–196;ET,168–171. barth’s view of the sacrament 397 more a concentration on and exploration of the history of Jesus Christ as the Living Lord, and of His dealings with his people as a battle filled with the expectation of victory.29 The critical function that the category of the Word fulfils in the prolegomenon of the KD is specified in the doctrine of reconciliation as the self-witness of Jesus Christ. The same critical distance that in the prolegomenon distinguishes the category of the Word from all human words, in KD IV/3 accrues to Jesus Christ as the Living Lord of history.

8.2.4. The assistance of the Enlightenment Barth developed the concept of the prophetic office of Christ into a critical manner of dealing with the way that this had taken form in Protestant scholasticism. He critiqued the inclination to make Christ only the Revealer of a truth or principle. That is too little. By that a truth comes to occupy the place of the Person of Christ and his history. Barth explicitly attributes to the Enlightenment the role of having been a catalyst for reflection on self-revelation as the content of revelation. In his eyes, classical theology continued to deal with the authority of the Bible, dogma and tradition in a rather naive manner. A critical investigation of these givens, of their relation with the speaking of God, was lacking. According to Barth, a first realisation of the vital and living speaking of God could be seen in the Reformation, but the Enlightenment has to be given the honour of having forced the Church to press on to a deeper understanding of that living speaking.30 In fact, Barth deems that the development of modernity, far from being a misfortune for the church, the effects of which must be rectified as

29 The role of G.C. Berkouwer’s critique appears to have played in this connection is remarkable. In his book De triomf der genade in de theologie van Karl Barth,Kampen1954, (ET 1956) Berkouwer had accused Barth of turning grace into a principle. According to Berkouwer, for Barth grace had become so much the basis for all thinking that it in fact had led to a speculation about grace, eternity and sin. Berkouwer’s accusation was that Barth actually taught the resurrection of all things, and had trivialised the seriousness of sin and evil. In his reply Barth shows that this had hit home, and at the same time protests that it is a misunderstanding to say that in his thought grace has to do with a principle, and not a living Person. See KD IV/3, 198–206;ET,173–180.Seealso the discussion with the Tübinger Stiftlern in: Karl Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968,Zürich 1997, 80: ‘Ich habe es ja nicht umsonst als einen Kampf beschrieben, aber -als einen siegreichen Kampf.’ 30 KD IV/3, 33;ET,32. 398 chapter eight quickly as possible, is a way in which the church is being forced to better discern its identity. It goes without saying that the effect of the gap that modern times have created between the church and culture is positively assessed. Because the church was being driven ever more into isolation with its message, it sought a new entrance to this same world. In order to speak, it has to know. Furthermore, that knowing has to be a knowing with certainty.31 Now, according to Barth, that knowing can only be a certain knowing if it is based on the self-witness of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the one Light of all lives, the one Word that makes itself known. The difference with the first parts of the KD, it would appear from this, is that the word of man, including the speaking of the church in its preaching and dogma, is no longer characterised as a form of the Word, but exclusively as a sign and witness. In all its forms the word of man refers to Jesus Christ; it is not itself that speaking. This points to the way that Barth’s critique of the classical concept of the sacraments will go.

8.3. Baptism with the Spirit

Previously, in Chapter 6, we already noted that modern systematic theology is characterised by a relatively large and conscious liberty with regard to Biblical words and concepts. In the case of Barth, among the points where that liberty can be seen is in his terminological speciﬁcation of the concept of ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’. There is indeed some connection with texts which speak of baptism with the Spirit (Mark 1:8, ICor. 12:3 and Acts 1:5, 11:6 and 19:2), but Barth also acknowledges that he has permitted himself some exegetical freedom.32 For him, baptism with the Spirit refers to a work by God through which men become objectively and subjectively involved in salvation. Thus under this head fall both the objective revelation of the meaning of Jesus Christ in the resurrection and the work of the Spirit as the subjective application for particular individuals. It does not mean a separate gift of the Spirit that has an existence alongside faith. In this way Barth distinguishes between baptism with water and baptism with the Spirit. In contrast to baptism with the Spirit, water

31 KD IV/3, 34;ET,32. 32 KD IV/4, 33;ET,30. barth’s view of the sacrament 399 baptism is an act of man. By so separating baptism with the Holy Spirit and baptism with water, Barth has taken a radical step in comparison with the first panel. The doubleness that is so characteristic of the classical view of the sacraments is abolished. For the rest, with this terminological specification it is fitting to recall the critical commentary that Jüngel offers at this point. In a certain sense the collective term ‘baptism’ is a confusing word to use for both acts, because the meaning of the word ‘baptism’ is so different that as a collective term it has become almost empty. At first sight Barth appears to want to maintain that these are two sorts of the same class, but that seems to be precisely not his intention. He is using the same word to denote two entirely different actions, a divine and a human, which nonetheless together form one entity. It is however not easy to see what the unity is that would justify the collective term ‘baptism’.33 The terminological problem does not stand alone, however. It is symptomatic of a problem which becomes visible upon examination of the content of Barth’s concept. He wishes to make a clean distinction between the work of God and the work of man, so as to do justice to both. It is vague, though, whether Barth, in his desire to keep the relation clean and pure, does not ignore the symbolic power that is already connected with the elements water, bread and wine. Baptism and the Supper are actions of the Church which cannot be imagined without the symbolic power that these elements have as signs, and that they already had when they were transformed by the earliest communities into their own rituals. In the first part of this study we have already referred to the fact that any doctrine of the sacraments is interwoven with general semantics (4.2). Within the cultus the sign, the signum sacramentale, is on the one hand used to unlock the meaning and content of the sacrament, the res sacramenti. On the other hand, the story, the word, serves to focus the meaning of the sign more precisely. The cultic action of a sacramental event is already interpreted by Paul, being further defined in terms of God’s act in the cross and resurrection.34 That God can use the symbols of water, bread and wine, from the creation and ambivalent in themselves, is an idea that drops

33 Jüngel, Barth-Studien, 265. 34 Thus, for instance, in Romans 6:1–11. Baptism does not bring about death for the believer, but a dying to sin on the basis of the justification that the sinner receives from God. What is accomplished here is exclusively the work accomplished by God in Christ. 400 chapter eight out of the second panel. God’s acting is swallowed up in baptism with the Spirit. What does Barth mean by this? Barth understands the concept of baptism with the Spirit as meaning that an individual comes to faith. Put differently, and now in a manner which expresses that faith is secondary, it is the event through which a human being shows faithfulness towards God’s faithfulness to him.35 Faith, the fact that men know and acknowledge God in his faithfulness, is termed ‘incommensurable’, and we are told it ‘cannot be coordinated’.36 We have heard words like these before, and they will continue to appear in his theology. Once again the reader is made aware that faith in God is not a possibility that derives from already existent possibilities or capacities.37 It is characteristic of the concept of theology in this second panel that faith is a unique, irreducible element. Faith in God is not am expression of the possibilities of human existence in general or of man’s spirit in particular. The emphasis is on its irreducibility. Once the fundamental or irreducible character of knowledge of God is acknowledged, there is indeed space to acknowledge that all human possibilities are used in the process by which knowledge of God comes into being. There are also anthropological structures that are not damaged by, or have not disappeared in sin,38 but these structures are not the means through which man is able to respond to God’s Yes with faithfulness in return. Here too Barth is not interested in investigating the human capacities for knowing as such. The one thing it all comes down to, the one thing that is fundamental theologically, is God’s acting, through which man becomes the free subject of his faith. In his exposition Barth summarily reviews the positions that, according to him, have not succeeded in making it clear how one arrives at faith, at partnership with God. He first lists the Roman Catholic view of grace, which views the renewal as an infusion. The second view is that of liberal theology, namely grace as the actualisation of human impulses. Finally, Barth mentions a third way that he associates with the early Reformation view of Melanchthon and Luther: the renewal exists in a divine judgement, which introduces the otherwise unchanged man adjudged afresh and in grace: grace as a divine predicate. Barth’s own critical distance from the their way is interesting in theological-

35 KD IV/4, 4;ET,4. 36 KD IV/4, 3;ET,3. 37 KD IV/4, 12;ET,11. 38 KD IV/4, 4;ET,4. barth’s view of the sacrament 401 historical terms, because it at the same time means a distancing from his own earlier view in the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans.In the baptismal fragment his interest is in man, who as an empirical subject endorses God’s faithfulness. He now acknowledges that all of the previously listed views contain a particula veri that however can only be integrated if justice is done to that which is most important in the order of faith. Faith is in the first place a possibility of God himself that provides for man assenting to be a partner, ceasing to be an outsider and beginning to take part in the fellowship not only passively, but actively.39 Thus Barth identifies a divine initiative which turns man around, making his response possible, as the only origin of the Christian life. With this reality in mind, one can use the terms realism and objectivism. The Christian life becomes possible in answer to a new being that is created by God in Christ. The images in which the Biblical witness speaks of this new being are not merely images, Barth argues. The metaphors of the new garment, of being born again, of the transition from death to life, not only point to the radicality of the new state that God brings about, but it comes in them, according to Barth.40 Barth wishes to understand this turning by man which is brought about by God as different from other religious conventions that also involve renewal and change, but which he interprets as expressions of a general religiosity in which God or the divine is a normal component of a coherent world order. We can leave aside here the question of to what extent Barth here does justice to the self-understanding of other religions. The argument is obviously not phenomenological; Barth is arguing theologically, on the basis of the incommensurability of the turning about that only God himself produces. The intention is clear. Human knowing of a living God is not derived from being in general, not a conclusion on the basis of a desire for God, but a unique event, not derived from anything else, which is constituted by God himself. Barth terms this new being as ‘the history of Jesus Christ’. What does he mean by this? First, the content of this term must be distinguished from that which can be historically known of the earthly Jesus. With this ‘history’ Barth means not just a series of events that took place in the past. For Barth, ‘history of Jesus Christ’ is a theological term. Certainly, it also does refer back to events that took place in time and space—in other words, to earthly history—but since their confirmation

39 KD IV/4, 6;ET,5–6. 40 KD IV/4, 7;ET,6–7. 402 chapter eight by God the Father in the resurrection of Jesus, for faith they have come to be understood as the history of God’s acting and being. This history is the complete representation of the new being, because He is the one within time who answered the faithfulness of God in all places with his human faithfulness. That new being is the divine truth for all people, apart from the question of whether these people acknowledge and accept it in their own life.41 This new being is the objective reality that can be characterised as Christ pro nobis. Baptism with the Spirit implies a second step, namely the explicit acknowledgement from the side of man that the new being which has come into existence in Jesus Christ deﬁnes our lives. Barth characterises a Christian as ‘a man from whom it is not hidden that his own history took place along with the history of Jesus Christ … as the decisive event which establishes his life as a Christian. He himself in the midst of all other men can see himself as one of those for whom and in whose place Jesus Christ did what He did.’42 It is of fundamental importance here to realise the universal import of the history of Jesus Christ. Barth does not say that man potentially has a share in this history. Man’s participation is a fact,asituation brought about by God. However, through baptism with the Spirit, that which from the perspective of God we have pro nobis,isnowan event in us, in nobis. In an event faith becomes an actuality within man, a turning of the heart through which man becomes a believer, becomes an empirical subject of faith.43 In his discussion of baptism with the Spirit Barth in fact reaches back to what he had written in the preceding sections on the doctrine of reconciliation with regard to the ontological connection between Jesus Christ on the one side and all other human beings on the other. When God sends his Son, he objectively alters the situation of being human. Barth’s interpretation of the incarnation continues to make itself felt. The primary meaning of the incarnation is not assumptio hominis,butassumptio humanae naturae. The Son does not primarily take on the shape of a man, but of that which is human,ofhumanitas.44 It is the possibilities and givens that are inherent in our being human, in our humanitas, that God accepts in Christ. The early Church expressed this in the term anhypostasis.What

41 KD IV/4, 23;ET,21. 42 KD IV/4, 15;ET,13–14. 43 KD IV/4, 24;ET,22. 44 KD IV/2, 50–51;ET,47–48. barth’s view of the sacrament 403

God assumed was an impersonal human nature, the essence of being human, which however only can have its existence in a concrete person. In the case of Jesus Christ this human nature has its concrete existence in the person of the Son, expressed though the term enhypostasis.Itis this assumption of human nature by God in His Son that for Barth becomes the definite centre of nature and history. We have previously indicated that the nature of the unio hypostatica cannot be clarified by other analogies, but is itself the Grundwirklichkeit, the ground on which all other analogies are possible. In other words, the irreducibility of the unio personalis already required that Barth regard the incarnation as the one, unique sacrament performed once and for all, which can not repeated another time, or be represented in baptism or the Supper. It is well to pause here for a moment. Barth’s rejection of the sacramentality of baptism and the Supper does not rest on the premise that God really remains alone in the heights and does not take pity on our human condition. He presents it here as a consequence of the solus Christus, of the uniqueness of the incarnation. The question he poses is suggestive and rhetorical: ‘Was it a wise action on the part of the Church when it ceased to recognise in the incarnation, in the nativitas Jesu Christi, in the mystery of Christmas, the one and only sacrament, fulfilled once and for all, by whose actuality it lives as the one form of the one body of its Head, as the earthly-historical form of the existence of Jesus Christ in the time between His ascension and return? Is it really not enough to occupy it in the giving and receiving of this one sacrament’.45 These words would suggest that Barth saw the rejection of the doubleness in baptism and the Supper as an extension of the discoveries of the Reformers. The mediation of this one sacrament is entirely and totally the work of God. The divine and the human become hopelessly mixed if one suggests that in the actions of baptism and the Supper something extraordinary, something supra-human, something divine occurs. Barth’s desacramentalising raises no small questions: should we view this desacramentalising as an attempt at theological purification, in order to permit God to be God and man to be man? Or is it in fact a limitation of the condescension of God, who is also free to mediate himself in the ambiguity of the created symbol?

45 KD IV/2, 59;ET,55. 404 chapter eight

8.4. Baptism with water

Barth attempted to defend his rejection of baptism with water as a sacrament, that is, as a ritual in which God’s salvation is mediated and eﬀected, with exegetical arguments. An explicit discussion of Barth’s exegesis of familiar baptismal texts, such as Acts 22:16,Hebrews10:22, Eph. 5:25,etc.,Titus3:5,Romans6:3–4 and Mark 16:16, would take us outside the bounds of this study. I will limit myself here to the negative conclusion to which Barth comes: exegetically, there is no compelling reason to expound these texts sacramentally. The cleansing and rescue of man happens in the history of Jesus Christ, and the New Testament knows no duplicate of this event.46 With this he rejects the manner in which the tradition defended the sacrament with anthropological or Biblical arguments. Calvin and Luther broke with the anthropological orientation of the doctrine of the sacraments in the medieval church, in the conviction that the sacraments had an explicit ground in the Bible, or more precisely, must have had their foundation in the institution by Christ Himself.47 Barth’s altered attitude toward the Biblical texts and his acceptance of modern critical tools in Biblical studies clearly imply that he no longer subscribes to what is in his eyes a Biblicistic criteria of that sort. It is important to note that in his critique of the classical concept of the sacraments it is a theological argument which forms the touchstone, so to speak, for the Biblical argument. The theological argument is the insight that the only reality which can exist alongside the one new being that is reality in the history of Jesus Christ, is human witness. The classic view of the sacraments is characterised by a doubleness: the sacrament is both acting by man and acting by God. Calvin and Luther both took that over, although there are clear diﬀerences between them.48 For Barth this view arouses the suspicion that here something is being lifted heavenwards that can better be done justice to if one considers it exclusively as human acting.

46 KD IV/4, 140;ET,128. 47 Among the reasons Thomas Aquinas advances for the several sacraments are the underlying anthropological structures: Summa Theologiae III, q.65 a.1.Theseven sacraments are each in themselves symbols that form the bridge that runs from sensory and physical things to a spiritual world capable of being apprehended by the mind. 48 In baptism the diﬀerence between the Lutheran and Reformed views is striking. In his Small Catechism Luther makes a very immediate connection between baptism barth’s view of the sacrament 405

With Barth the rejection of the sacramentality of baptism and the Supper is accompanied by an astonishing absence of attention for the relation between symbol and sacrament. That water, bread and wine also have symbolic meanings and are profoundly related with creatureliness in all its ambiguity, receives no attention at all.49 He limits himself to several remarks that make it clear that he does not intend to go in the direction of a doctrine of the sacraments that makes use of symbol theory. The water of baptism is chosen because water is what one washes with. Water makes one wet; it does nothing more. The Bible oﬀers no basis for a theology of water, Barth declares.50 Barth’s opposition to a doctrine of the sacraments such as that of G. Van der Leeuw, which observes the ambivalences of phenomenon and makes use of them, is powerfully expressed in this rejection. However, I would suggest, it is not clear why phenomena, in all their symbolic power, can not be called upon in a concept of knowing God. In the classic view of the sacraments the language spoken by the elements of bread, wine and water is not a language that they speak purely of themselves. Their eloquence comes only because they are brought into relationship with the history of God’s acting and are employed to open up and translate the meaning of salvation. With Barth however this possibility disappears entirely. How is it then that God acts? God acts directly, we are told. What does that mean?

8.5. Directness

The question arises of what Barth had in mind with his pronouncement that Jesus Christ acts directly in baptism with the Spirit. Does he mean and the forgiveness of sins. Baptism ‘works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare’ (I, Baptism, II). In the Reformed tradition the Heidelberg Catechism follows the line of Calvin’s view of the sacraments by explicitly denying that the reception of the sacrament would be identical with the forgiveness of sins or participation in Christ. In baptism man is ‘reminded’ and ‘assured’ ‘that the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross avails for [him]’ (Q. 69). See Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1943), 16, and the ‘Heidelberg Catechism’, trans. Miller/Oosterhaven, as it appears in The Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America (New York: Reformed Church in America, 1968), 475. 49 See for example M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom. Ecumenical Essays on Creation and Sacrament, Justification and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999, 57–70. 50 KD IV/4, 50;ET,45. 406 chapter eight that in baptism through the Spirit no use of any instrument whatsoever is made? This possibility would turn baptism through the Spirit into a mystical event, not mediated by any earthly means. As it happens, the term ‘direct’ is anything but simple, and Barth fails to explain precisely what he is thinking of. When can we speak of direct contact? Is contact by means of a letter direct? Is telephonic contact direct? When we send a message to a friend through a another friend, we would say it is an indirect contact. Then there is another person who is an intermediary. Someone who maintains contact by letter could say that in this case the letters are the means by which the contact is made. The contact does not take place without this instrument, and in this sense it is not direct. Yet in this case it is not the medium through which the contact is made that is of decisive importance. The concept of immediacy generally does not involve the fact that certain technical means are used, such as paper, ink, a postman, or an electronic infrastructure. The concept of immediacy is rather related to the question of whether the contact is made via a third party. If the contact is not through a third person, then we are inclined to term it direct. Thus in the case of a power of attorney indirectness prevails. Power of attorney permits the person authorised the right to perform acts or proceed in the name of the person who grants it. In this case, indirectness means that another person represents the principal person. In the case of telephonic contact it is clear that it is not the infrastructure that is decisive in the question of immediacy. The telephone and the whole infrastructure that is connected with it serves as the instrument through which the contact is made. Yet in this case we still speak of direct contact, because the instrument acts as the conduit for a contact, by which a person to person conversation takes place. As we experience it, the directness of the contact is paramount. We could say that it is indirectly direct. To return to Barth. Must we interpret Barth’s speaking about directness as the absence of any conduit or mediation? The premise of his theology is always that there is a Church, which witnesses, and so acts. That would argue for indirect directness. In comparison to 1943,the way that acting is characterised has changed. We are told the church is present, ‘ministering’ and ‘assisting’. What changes is the way that acting is qualified. In the baptismal fragment this acting is now specifically distinguished from the acting of God. ‘The church is neither author, dispenser, nor mediator of grace and its salvation. It is the subject nei- barth’s view of the sacrament 407 ther of the work of salvation nor the Word of salvation.’51 The central concepts are Selbstbezeugung and Selbstmitteilung (translated as ‘self- attestation’ and ‘self-impartation’). Unmittelbar therefore does not mean that Barth denies witness and service by men. The immediacy of which Barth speaks, one can interpret, implies that he no longer wishes to give human service the theological qualification of a medium through which God makes Himself present in a hidden manner. Assistance is not representation. The concept of representation disappears. The intercourse between God and man has the form of directness, in which the earthly factors no longer are qualified theologically as representation, but at the most as assistance and reference. One can regard this as relieving the human actors. Human actions no longer have to represent. Offices and the sacrament lose their nimbus. Thus the direction of our question will also have to be reversed. Does Barth still offer the conceptual possibility of thinking of condescension? Are there still sufficient possibilities offered here to draw attention to God’s using various means to make Himself known, and taking persons into service as assistants?

8.6. Baptism with water as answer

Barth wished to emphatically distinguish baptism with water from baptism with the Spirit. For him water baptism is a secondary element in which man answers the new reality created by God. We now encounter concepts with a power and signiﬁcance that they did not have in his earlier theology, or to which they had not yet developed then. Man becomes a ‘partner’, a free subject in the covenant of grace.52 Man goes from being an outsider to being a participant. The participation consists in the fact that man chooses what God has chosen for him. We must not understand the word ‘partner’ to imply an equal com- peer. God remains the ﬁrst, from whom the covenant proceeds and by whom the new being of Christ is constituted. What is new here is the accent. The relation of God and man, with all the inequality between the two partners, is one of true bipolarity.53 Barth underscores the peculiar subjectivity of man in the relationship by the proposition that while according to Christian doctrine there is indeed an omnicausality of God

51 KD IV/4, 35;ET,32. 52 KD IV/4, 5–6;ET,5. 53 KD IV/4, 21;ET,20. 408 chapter eight posited, this must not be construed as His sole causality.54 The concept of partner implies that there is room for real intercourse between God and man, and for a real answer. Through the power of the Holy Spirit the history of Jesus Christ, which is revealed in the resurrection, is manifest for a particular individual. Barth rejects the objection that God’s omnicausality and the freedom of man are irreconcilable. A contradistinction of this sort betrays a way of thinking which places God and man on the same plane, thereby making them competitors. If one begins with God’s omnicausality, then there would be no room left for human freedom. If one begins with the assumption of human freedom, God’s omnicausality can not be maintained. In both cases, God’s omnicausality and the freedom of man are absolutely antithetical, and become abstractions which then can not tolerate each other’s existence. But this is thinking from outside. One only obtains insight into their polarity and mutual relationship by taking up the insider’s perspective of faith. It is the same point of departure that Barth takes in his actualism, by which the extremes of both determinism and a complete historisation are avoided in the doctrine of election. Dogmatic reflection has to proceed from the meeting between God and man in Jesus Christ. Such reflection must follow what is seen by the eye of faith in this encounter, namely God as the partner who appears within the horizon of man as the other partner in the covenant.55 Barth has blocked every idea of a mediating function for baptism with water. The acting subject in baptism by water is the community of Christ, which by its administration of baptism acknowledges that the baptismal candidate is someone who knows Jesus Christ.56 The candidate is also present in this event as subject, because he or she approaches and wishes to be baptised. In short, baptism is only conceivable as adult baptism. The ambiguity that is characteristic of the sacramental acts in Calvin and that is anchored in the classic doctrine of the sacraments is renounced in favour of man as subject. Baptism is an act of obedience, a first act with which the baptisand acknowledges that he or she wishes to respond to the history of Jesus Christ. As such, baptism is the beginning of ethics, and as such is also still an integral part of the doctrine of reconciliation.57 In receiving baptism,

54 KD IV/4, 25;ET,22. 55 KD IV/4, 22;ET,20. 56 KD IV/4, 54;ET,49–50. 57 KD IV/4, 94–97;ET,88–90. barth’s view of the sacrament 409 the candidate assents to the decision of God about his or her life, with its judgement and grace. Barth founds the dichotomy and distinction between God and man Christologically. In his judgement, the baptismal commission in Mat- thew 28:19 is in fact an extrapolation of Jesus’ own baptism by John the Baptist. Barth here adopts as his view an interpretation of the passage in question which is defended in Biblical studies by form- historical arguments. What is remarkable though is that he transposes this literary-historical judgement into a dogmatic argument without further discussion. For the rest, this form-critical manner of dealing with the baptismal commission is perfectly congruent with Barth’s vision of the resurrection. According to Barth, the resurrection adds nothing; it is the revelation or unveiling of the meaning of Jesus’ life. But to return to baptism: in this way baptism is anchored in the acting of Jesus. Jesus’ own entry into the water of the Jordan is an act of obedience, by which the man Jesus places himself under the command of God.58 In the way which he goes he confesses his sins. In this way Jesus applies God’s command to himself and thereby is exemplary for every human being. Baptism is not performed on the basis of the consideration that it is a means of salvation, a medium salutis,59 but because it is commanded by God, ex necessitate praecepti.60 In the same way that Jesus testifies to his obedience to God by his baptism by John, accepting God’s service and thereby fulfilling the covenant between God and man, so Christian baptism is to be understood as the step by which a person acknowledges living this new life, within the space of this history. In this way the community follows in the way that the Messiah himself went, taking up the command of God, acknowledging His judgement and grace. Barth no longer wants to understand the phrase ‘in the name of Jesus’, which frequently occurs in the New Testament in connection with baptism, as having sacramental implications. He suggests that this phrase does not have to be expounded sacramentally, and can simply mean to baptise with the name of Jesus in mind. With this exposition he creates room for his own non-sacramental interpretation. The baptismal formula is not an invocation, but a summons to the believer. It is of great importance to Barth that baptism—and, we might add, also the Supper—be qualified as an act of man. These

58 KD IV/4, 60;ET,54–55. 59 KD IV/4, 171;ET,156. 60 KD IV/4, 59;ET,54. 410 chapter eight actions are not channels of Christ’s gracious work, are no longer forms of the Word. Christ is not the subject of these actions; in baptism as an act of obedience man opens himself up and begins on the way to the Kingdom of God, or better, he opens himself up within the new existence brought about by Jesus Christ. Human subjectivity, man’s obedience and answer have their place within the realm created and controlled by God. It is one event with two subjects. This is a vision in which the things of this world do not take place outside of God. All disorder and horrors in history may not in themselves be viewed as if they were the only reality to be taken seriously. They must be seen in the light of God, who has come close to all men in the history of Jesus Christ. The worst thing that the Christian community can do is to live in denial of this new being. Faith means regarding and accepting the whole of human life, the darker sides no less than the bright spots, in the light of God’s approach in Christ. Can one accept this emphasis on man as the acting subject in the sacrament without adopting Barth’s rejection of the sacramentality of baptism and the Supper? In a critical sense, opposing Barth, the following could be said: If God reaches us by various means, through the power of the Spirit, through historical mediation, then the sacraments, in all their sensoriality and corporeity, could also be regarded as means through which we are given a share in something that is not other than that which we share in the proclamation and in faith. In the hearing of the Gospel, in Baptism and the Supper, the community lets itself be involved in that history of which Jesus Christ himself is the subject. That which was said in the ﬁrst panel can here be critically advanced against Barth. In the sacrament, as a condensed and sensory mediation of the story, we do not come in contact with anything other than the history of Jesus Christ, nor do we stand before a repetition or actualisation of the salvation event, but, to use Jüngel’s formulation, we come in contact with the same thing in a diﬀerent way.61 The notion of the sacramental has to do with the fact that God’s approach embraces and touches our spatial and temporal, physical existence. Should this not mean that a doctrine of the sacraments must have its place within pneumatology, and cannot be developed without consideration of anthropological notions?

61 E. Jüngel, ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’ in: idem, Barth-Studien, 310. barth’s view of the sacrament 411

8.7. The norm for humanity

The positive intention of Barth’s denial of the sacramentality of baptism and the Supper may be now be clear: he wants to take the characteristic nature of the acting of the community and the individual believers with utter seriousness. According to Barth the view that baptism and the Supper are in essence forms of divine expression obscures the ethical meaning of these actions. This leads to the human answer being muffled so that the peculiar subjectivity does not adequately come to light. One can interpret Barth on this point as being the figure who sought to fully honour modernity’s challenge to take man as subject seriously, and integrate the concept in theology. His view has massive consequences. This vision of the community, its offices and the sacraments breaks with the hierarchical way of thinking that is so definitive for Calvin and the tradition he shaped. The offices, sacraments and the life of the community: all are the work of man, through and through, human answers to the work that God has done in the history of Jesus Christ. Barth breaks with the basis on which the sacraments, and also the offices of the church, are built. But man is not left to his own devices as a result. After all, the answer of man will be structured, because it will be the answer to the history and work of Jesus Christ. Man and his answer are situated within a bigger story, into which man has been introduced by the incarnation. Barth confronts his era with the reminder that mankind must not be conceived in abstracto. The Christian vision of man is defined by the history of Jesus Christ. Being human is being together with Jesus Christ, finding our vocation within the covenant that God has established and brought to its fullness in Jesus Christ. Man finds his norms, arrives at his purpose, as he follows this act of God, responds to it, gives to his life the form that fits with this act of God. The possibilities that accompany that which is human are thereby actualised. It appears that the concept of analogy is productive in order to clarify the elementary structure of the view of knowing God and human life. When a man has learned to know God as nearby in Christ, and has discovered his own life as an existence that may be lived out within God’s proximity and sphere, it can result in arriving at answers and going along ways that correspond to this structure of proximity. Answering does not mean repetition or imitation. In his own place, as a creature, in his own culture, man is invited to assent to, receive and make use of the work that God has done for him. The theological primacy of the history of Jesus Christ 412 chapter eight as a history in which all men have a part preserves us from thinking that we must—or even could—establish the kingdom of God ourselves. Man does not have to be God, but man must let God be God. Letting God be God is submitting to the nearness of God in Jesus Christ. In the human perspective, it is letting oneself be defined by this history within the boundaries of time.

8.8. The meaning of the term ‘noetic’

In connection with the place that Barth wants to create in his late theology for man as subject, it is important to yet discuss the meaning of the term ‘noetic’. As was said above, in his doctrine of reconciliation Barth speaks of the ontological connection of Christ with all mankind. The difference between believers and non-believers is that the former have knowledge of this connection and the second group do not yet know of this correspondence. What they lack is not the real proximity to Christ. That is the hidden secret of every child of man. Jesus Christ as the ‘great Yes of the goodness of God’62 is the One through which every man is made a christianus designatus or christianus in spe.63 What is lacking is knowledge of the correspondence. But what is knowledge? Just how much territory does the intellectual-sounding word ‘noetic’ cover? Does it cover the necessity and evangelical demand for a personal answer? First, it must be noted that the term ‘noetic’ fits with the proposition that all salvation is given in Jesus Christ. All newness is contained in his history; nothing of substance has to be added. The work of the Spirit is not creative, but it unveils and implements. Pneumatology falls within the circle of Christology, or coincides with it. In those cases where a certain peculiarity is ascribed to the work of the Spirit and it is thought of as the wider perimeter of the acting of God, as is the case in Calvin, the term ‘noetic’ is insufficient. Next, in Barth’s case it will be well for us to not define the term ‘noetic’ too statically. As was the case for Calvin, it is also true for Barth’s theology that for him knowing is more than just an intellectual matter. Learning to know oneself in connection with Jesus Christ and discovering that one’s own existence plays itself out in the proximity of the living Christ is indeed a dangerous

62 KD IV/3, 922;ET,805. 63 KD IV/3, 927;ET,810. barth’s view of the sacrament 413 knowledge. It is a knowledge that produces conflict. How dangerous it is can be seen in Barth’s handling of the Lessingfrage. Lessing’s question regarding the historical chasm that separates us today from the earthly Jesus was interpreted by Barth as a denial of the fact that the Scripture tells us that Christ’s proximity to every man in time and space has long been a fact. In Barth’s eyes Lessing’s question was an escape hatch, because with this question people could provide themselves with space to keep the hazards of the proximity of Christ at bay.64 In fact, since then the questions of who man is and what his destiny is can no longer be answered in abstracto—that is to say, without taking into account the history of Jesus Christ. The witness of the Church and the content of Christian doctrine is that this question has already been answered, and can not be asked again quietly and philosophically, as though nothing had happened. The real issue which presents itself in the circle where the proximity of Christ is denied is the request of Peter: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’ For Barth then ‘noetic’ is not the same as having only intellectual knowledge of something. Anyone who learns to know Jesus Christ as the Yes of God discovers how much his own existence in fact con- tradicts this. I propose that at this point there has not been even a beginning made in digesting Barth’s theology. One can say that in fact Barth’s reinterpretation of the doctrine of election and his thesis of the universal meaning of salvation in Christ have had the effect of an anti- spasmodic, relieving the cramped situation into which the church and theology had come.65 That can be assessed positively. But the point of this theology is only just half understood, and thereby distorted into a total lie, if subsequently the necessity of communicating the Gospel also disappears under the table. As if it is no problem and maintaining a lie, if we close the door on this Yes of God! Barth’s irritated reaction when it was suggested to him in an interview, that for him faith was ‘merely’ a question of becoming acquainted with God’s eternal grace, is telling.66 In the first part of the doctrine of reconciliation we hear that it is one thing to acknowledge the pro nobis of Christ, and quite another to hear the pro nobis not merely as an assertion, but to explore its range and

64 KD IV/1, 320;ET,290–291. 65 For the effect on the Dutch situation, see C. Graafland, Van Calvijn tot Barth, 329– 365 en 533–592. 66 See the conversation already cited, in Gespräche 1964–1968, 74–80. 414 chapter eight implications as man, and let it resonate against the walls of one’s own life. Learning to know is making the first steps on a way; it is a battle, even though in the light of the priority of grace it is a ‘battle filled with the expectation of victory’.67

67 Gespräche 1964–1968, 80. EVALUATION

chapter nine

PROFIT AND LOSS

9.1. Christian theology as a counterproposal

What is profit and what is loss, as we draw up the closing balance? Looking back over both panels, what are lines that are important for today’s theology when it comes to the question of what knowing God means? What does Christian theology point to, and what does this mean for life as it is lived? First I would recall to mind the point of departure from which we began in the introduction. Christian theology does not start from zero; it exists within an historic space and therefore has to take into account the empirical fact of the Church, where God is invoked, where prayers are said and hymns are sung. It must deal with the fact that there are believers, half-believers and doubters who, sometimes in spite of themselves, can not stop speaking of God, seeking Him, suspecting His presence, who are responding to an appeal that has moved them. How can that be conceptually and theoretically explained theologically—that is to say, from within? And how can this theoretical and conceptual explanation be of use? It seems obvious to assume that the theology of the second panel will yield the most in such a closing evaluation. After all, that is closest to us; we are practically contemporaries of Barth. We are ourselves an active part of a cultural climate and intellectual framework for life that one can label post-Kantian, modern or post-modern. That already produces one immediate conclusion, which is of great importance for contemporary reflection: whatever the different responses to modernity, this much is certain: that Christian belief in God has lost its self-evident political, social and cultural dominance, so that the task of ‘accounting for the hope that is in us’ (see IPeter 3:15) is necessarily undertaken under conditions different from those in the first panel. Ours is a society which is dominated by the realisation that man is alone in his finiteness and left to his own devices. That is the context of this evaluation. Does the evaporation of that sense of life in the first panel, that ‘we belong not to ourselves, but to our Lord’, involve only the loss of a 418 chapter nine burdensome idea and a conviction that has become superfluous? Or is more at stake? Does this loss constitute a threat to humanity? Does a denial of this really do justice to man? What are the consequences if the horizon of personal life and the horizon of public space is no longer defined by the story of the Gospel, if man is thrown back entirely on himself and must write his own story? Or are these questions themselves already a testimony to unbelief, owing their existence to a Euro- pean culture grown weary? Barth’s theology is a voice in opposition when on theological grounds he announces that there ‘is no secular sphere abandoned by Him or withdrawn from His control [i.e., to Jesus Christ]’.1 Nothing profane in its origin is abandoned! If that is true, men can look at their world and themselves through different eyes, and cut short the lease that despondency and lethargy have taken out on their lives. To put it succinctly: Christian theology offers a counterproposal,a counterproposal in an agnostic climate, to a culture that believes that it has been abandoned to itself. That was the tenor of the preceding chapters on Barth, and that is worth bearing in mind. Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation does not end up as a lament, but as a theology of hope. Christian theology can fulfil that function as a theology of hope if it provides an elucidation of man and the world from the recognition that God is. And, to recall another quotation,2 that not only produces a certain explanation; it changes things. Knowing God means a transformation of the world. It means that men need no longer reflect, but that they have already been addressed, and thereby have become participants, figures in a narrative, a drama with various actors. Christian theology therefore refers to a story in which God acts for the benefit of man. This acting is not at the expense of man and the world. It rather gives it precisely the lustre that was intended. The story of Jesus Christ provides the possibilities for this life, in all its finiteness, as the object of God’s grace and care, possibilities to once again learn to know the world and ourselves in the presence of God. Formulated in terms of drama: by the actions of the protagonist the other actors find themselves in an altered position, and they are invited to explore their own positions anew as coram Deo.

1 KD IV/3, 133;ET,119. 2 KD II/1, 289;ET,258. profit and loss 419

9.2. Knowledge of God and theology

One of the most obvious differences between the pre-modern and post- Kantian panels involves the relation between faith and theology, or, in the language of this investigation, the relation between knowledge of God and theology. The manner in which a distinction is made in the second panel between the act of knowing God on the one hand and confession and dogmatic reflection on the other differs radically from the first panel. In this case, that means that the relation is regarded as qualitatively different. In the first panel what we now would call dogmatics or dogma is indeed present, but as a human activity it regards itself very differently, and much more modestly. That perhaps sounds strange and implausible, because at the mention of church dogma and confession one today thinks immediately of authority and imposed belief. With their incredible arrogance, doctrine and confession are superior to faith. Still, it is true and worth the efforttorecallwhatwassaidin Chapter 6 about the difference in the self-image of doctrine and reflection on doctrine. For Calvin, dogma, doctrina,isnotahumangiven,not doctrine; it is divine teaching. It definitely does not include all that is present in God’s thinking and willing; it is a deliberately limited but adequate selection of that which man must know to serve God, obtain blessing and live in a manner worthy of Him.3 Doctrine is not intended to know all things; it is intended to produce to the right attitude in man, a sincere disposition toward God. Man can closely follow what God has to say in revelation in Scripture itself. The discussion of the doctrine of election in the first panel afforded a striking example of this idea. To our mind, Calvin may have gone much too far by mirroring election in a negative decision which runs parallel to it, reprobation, but in his own view he was only providing a rational arrangement of Biblical data, a deduction which one simply could not avoid. If we ourselves no longer make such deductions, honesty compels us to say that this is something which was not decided merely on the basis of altered insights from Biblical studies. It is true that the discussion of election and reprobation in Romans 9–11 are categories in sacred history. It is true that the announcements of judgement and damnation as found in Matthew 22:1–14 can not be uncoupled from the situation of preaching, debate, threat and denial. But all these altered insights are not enough.

3 R.A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 101–117. 420 chapter nine

They are themselves already a sign that more is going on. The path from the Bible text to doctrine has for us become longer, more indirect. The character of the text as a human, historical product is prominently in the foreground. How the earthly, the human, can be a vehicle for God’s speaking, an instrument in His hands, is raised for discussion in the second panel. Barth provided an answer for this which gradually became still more radical. Must we follow him in this radicality, and is his position perhaps the most extreme consequence of the Reforma- tion choosing the free grace of God as its starting point?4 These are questions which not only continue to make Barth’s theology interesting for interconfessional discussion, but also point back to the fundamental questions for all Christian theology within the oecumene. As we have said, theology in the second panel begins from a sharp distinction between the reality of knowing God on the one side and the reality of human words, texts and reﬂection on the other. The realisation that knowledge of God is absolutely not self-evident runs like a thread through this thinking. Already in his early theology Barth cites Ecclesiastes 5:2: ‘God is in heaven, and thou upon the earth’.5 What we encountered in the fragment on baptism (KD IV/4)isa variant of the same theme: God’s grace is an incommensurable element that cannot be coordinated.6 The uniqueness and complete originality of the acting of God with respect to man recurs everywhere in the theological structure in the concept. This peculiarity does not preclude the presence of God and the reality of intercourse between God and man, any more than it supports an agnostic vision. The structure of the theological concept is already in itself a continual reminder: God as the object of human knowing is never negotiable, never at our disposal, never capable of being built into structures of wood, stone, language, liturgy, sacraments. His presence remains His deed, His holiness continues to be guarded by His mystery. Knowledge of God is a reality, a movement, the secret of God’s own dealings, and as such does not permit itself to be ﬁxed in words. Theology and preaching can point to that mystery and bear witness to it; they do not have the power in themselves to make it present or demonstrate it.

4 Zie H.U. von Balthasar, Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie,Olten 1951, 32: ‘Wir müssen Karl Barth zum Partner wählen, weil in ihm zum erstenmal der echte Protestantismus eine -seine- völlig konsequente Gestalt gefunden hat.’ 5 Römerbrief 2, XIII; ET, 10. 6 KD IV/4, 3;ET,3. profit and loss 421

It is not without reason that the pointing finger of John the Baptist on the Isenheim altarpiece, focusing attention on the suffering Christ, is the model for the relation that Barth conceives between theology and knowledge of God. Biblical texts testify to God’s dealings with man, and dogmatics also in its way points to this acting of God. In all its elements the reality of these dealings, of knowing God, remains a matter of grace and a gift. Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity in KD I/1, the doctrine of the analogia fidei in KD II/1 and the doctrine of election in KD II/2 are three attempts to point, from different vantage points, to the always elusive mystery of the relation initiated and constructed by God, to a becoming attentive to God who seizes man and the world for Himself in Christ. Dogmatic reflection must keep space open for this living reality. That is the anti-agnostic import of this theology. Theology no longer pretends to be a demonstration of this reality; it intends to be of service to faith and proclamation by providing a listening exercise in reflection, assuming an attitude toward the Bible that makes it possible to hear the Word in the dialogue with the texts. That is profit. I would wish to emphasise that in the presence of this second panel it is difficult to accept a view of dogmatics that isolates only one function that was very prominent in the first panel, namely a summary of all that God had made known about things visible and invisible. The function of ordering material, of distinguishing and connecting the content of belief, remains indispensable. But Christian doctrine and dogmatics as reflection on the body of belief is more than a classical garden where the paths and beds are laid out neatly and need only be raked and weeded by future generations. The word ‘dogmatics’ and the adjective ‘dogmatic’ still call up such associations. Barth’s concept of theology is modern in that it emphatically places the human and subservient nature of dogmatic reflection front and centre. Reflection on faith—and what is dogmatics other than thinking about faith in a more or less orderly way?—has to serve the knowing of God, to be useful to the relation between God and man, to equip people to name the experiences in their lives, and to bring these into connection with the story of God. That can not happen without all the great themes coming into play, being examined again with regard to their content and eloquence. But doctrine, and reflection on doctrine, do not have the function of binding the individual believer; their function is to point the way for people, to provide words and concepts that can help them unlock and name their own experience, and invite them to mindfulness. In this there is a parallel between Kant and Barth. The 422 chapter nine unusual emancipatory streak in Kant’s philosophy toward thinking for oneself is recoined by Barth as the consequently maintained invitation to discern for oneself, in the trust that the living Christ himself speaks, comes, presents himself and lets himself be known. In Barth’s theology there is an explicit distinction made between the specific gravity of knowledge of God as an event between God and man, the spiritual reality of trust, knowing and above all, being known by God on the one side, and on the other the levels of confession, dogma and theological doctrine derived from this. The latter do indeed share in that knowing, but at a distance. In the modern panel the difference between the reality of knowing God and all forms of mediation and objectification of knowledge of God is explicitly thematised as a gulf between the two. In Barth we therefore encounter a thoroughgoing relativisation of language, but this relativisation does not stand alone. All language we use is human language. As we heard in the preceding chapter, knowledge of God therefore exists only as God himself, without assistance, lets Himself be known in human words and terrestrial means. In this concept relativisation is paired with high regard. The high regard concerns the fact that God makes himself known; the relativisation concerns human power over God’s works. Human language and words are always and everywhere dependent on God’s Spirit, on God who makes himself available for man. That results in an enormous relativisation, and at the same time a relief in the service that man can perform. This is a double movement which we can place in the profit column. Words, sentences, stories and concepts must always be interrogated in regard to their content, with regard to the event which precipitated them and which can again become reality. Beginning from man, God’s truthcannotbemadepresent,bemadevisibleimmediately.Thatis the one side. But according to Barth this does not lead to there being no knowledge of God. Certainly, in knowing God the unveiling takes place in the modus of veiling. The veiling is not cancelled out in the unveiling, but the veiling or hiddenness is a qualification of the unveiling and revelation. However, it is fundamental that the veiling does not bolt the door to unveiling. Veiling and unveiling describe a movement, together reveal a teleological structure through which knowing God is an ‘undertaking which succeeds’.7 That is the other side.

7 KD II/1, 234;ET,208. profit and loss 423

For the rest, in my opinion this teleological structure of revelation in Barth, and with it the reality of knowledge of God, require the exercise of the utmost restraint in attaching the label of ‘postmodern’ to Barth’s thought. In any case, it is impossible to use that term for Barth’s concept of knowing God if postmodernism means that man, in his knowing, fundamentally remains confronted with an unknown and continues to fumble in the dark.8 Barth’s concept of knowing God indeed has a dimension of the hidden, of what withdraws from human grasp. But if postmodernism means the abandonment of a demonstrable centre from which reality is formulated and understood, then there is some sense to it.9 In that case it refers to the undemonstrable in knowledge of God, to the constant openness to correction, and does not refer to a period but to a theoretical critique of modernity itself. The stress must be on that which can be said positively here: that which is veiled here, or the One who is veiled here, withdraws in the furtherance of a new relation with man and the world. God’s self-concealment happens to further his coming. There is however a question which arises here. What does it mean when in Barth’s later theology all human actions are characterised as assistance? How does human acting participate in the acting of God? The term ‘assistance’ leads one to suppose that Barth wishes to emphasise that the role of man is extremely modest. It seems to me incorrect to interpret what Barth has to say about the immediacy of the work of the Spirit to mean that God, in his dealings with man, works entirely outside all that is human.10 For Barth human knowing of God also remains connected with language, with stories, is concrete in the Bible, in liturgy and its confessional language, but he is vigilant against

8 Cf.L.Karelse,Dwalen. Over Mark C. Taylor en Karl Barth, Zoetermeer 1999, 71, 106. 9 Used in this sense by W.S. Johnson, The Mystery of God, 184–191.G.Wardbaptises the meaning that Lyotard assigned to the term postmodernism and applies it critically to Barth. See ‘Barth, Modernity and Postmodernity’ in: J. Webster (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 276, 291 (= ‘K. Barths Postmodernism’, ZdTh 14[1998], 35, 49): ‘But “postmodernism” concerns that which Lyotard terms the unpresentable, the repressed, the forgotten other scene that modernity both needs and negates in what Barth will call its “will for form”, its absolutisms, its rational utopias … That which comes before, constitutes the other scene of and follows after the modern. In fact, this statement … pitches Christianity outside the stories of premodernity, modernity and postmodernity. Christianity … transcends our history-making with its epochs and periodizations.’ In this way the concept is placed in the service of an indeed very idiosyncratic supra-historical interpretation. 10 See 8.5. 424 chapter nine terms which would suggest God’s dependence. In neo-Calvinism the fundamental relativisation of the Bible and confession was initially— and I would add, quite understandably—subject to critique and distrust. After all, Barth’s theology abandoned the direct identification of the Bible as text and the Word of God. In the first parts of KD he indeed still speaks of an indirect identification between God’s Word and the Bible. This is however only really to the degree that God has himself taken these human words into his service. But Barth increasingly comes to emphasise the human character of all Scripture, and abandons the possibility of any identification. By his later theology there is no longer any suggestion of even an indirect identification of the word of man with God’s Word. The man or woman in the pulpit must not add anything, however weighty the element, however striking the word, however solemn the gesture. Proclamation is bearing witness. Barth has undeniably contributed to the desacralising of the Bible, church offices, preaching, sacrament and ritual. Has he ended up where one inevitably comes out once God and his Word are accepted as free gifts, as a purely spiritual event? Do we find in Barth the spirituality that Noordmans, with reference to Calvin and Kuyper and J.H. Gun- ning Jr., once characterised as a basic line in Reformed spirituality?11 For Barth, all things that lie on the historical, horizontal plane are the work of man. What one can learn from Barth is theological modesty with regard to human capacities and high esteem for the incompa- rabilityofGod.Yetitispreciselyatthispointthatthereissomething that Calvin can teach us. The first panel is dominated by the realisation of the incomparable majesty of God no less than the second. Because of this majesty it is necessary that God accommodate himself to the measure of man. Precisely this accommodation on the part of God, the movement from above to below, is for Calvin the foundation of his high esteem for and expectations of the earthly means through which God makes himself known. Accommodation means that God comes close up through His Spirit, not eschewing the sensory and terrestrial. In the first panel the gaze of the viewer is drawn from above to below, to the places where the earth is illuminated by divine light.

11 O. Noordmans, ‘Gereformeerd ethisch’ in: Verzameld Werk, deel 3,Kampen1981, 392: ‘This stance before God, without any mechanism, without arrangement, without solemn intermedium, gives Reformed life its characteristic seriousness. God is close by, because it is above all the work of the Holy Spirit that is in the foreground.’ For the whole argument see A. van der Kooi, Het Heilige en de Heilige Geest bij Noordmans. Een schets van zijn pneumatologisch ontwerp,Kampen1992. profit and loss 425

The means through which God speaks and the mirrors of His revelation are in direct relation to His acts. God instructs man through a range of means, among which Scripture as his Word takes first place. Scripture came into being under the direct auspices of the Holy Spirit, and God’s will is made public in it. For Calvin Scripture is indeed the criterion for knowledge of God, but not the only place where God lets himself be known. Under the guidance of the Spirit the whole of the world that surrounds us becomes an instrument of God’s dealings with man. The heavens, the firmament, birds, fish, the scent of flowers, these are the decor of the theatre in which Adam found himself. The natural world is not regarded as a product which came into being as part of an unimaginably long, mysterious and unrefined evolutionary process, as the result of an interaction of energies, forces and chance. Scripture is not the fruit of human reflection, not designed by a group or people which wished to promote its collective interest, but is the deliberate creation of the Spirit. Monarchs are given to rule and care for peoples and men; parents are given to care for and raise up their children; and all other groups have their place, and according to their responsibilities are to be mirrors of God’s goodness and care. In its every corner this world bears the stamp of divine intention and providence. The sheen of God’s favour and goodness lies over ordinary life.12 Here everyday living is still traditionally a part of a hierarchy of life, sacramental. How should be regard this? Is not Calvin too harmonious here, too hierarchical, and has his experience of life not become alien to us for precisely these reasons? Or, on the contrary, does his hierarchically structured theology not preserve for us the realisation of the goodness of God that one can encounter, precisely in the ordinary, the given? How different is Barth on this point! Barth’s preference for idealism above realism, noted in the introduction, is significant: there is no direct access to the reality of God. His theology is dominated by a fault line, by discontinuity. Knowing God consists of breaking with the ordinary, familiar, human. Making the difference between God and man an explicit theme however also presents an opportunity to integrate an insight into this concept that must be called modern, par excellence: namely the human character of all religion. No one would

12 It may be that a compelling connection between the Dutch masters of the 17th century and this idea cannot be conﬁrmed, but it did create the conditions under which ordinary life in its splendour and beauty could become the subject of attention. 426 chapter nine want to retreat from that insight. Nor would I deny the risk. Making a theme of the human nature of knowledge of God can call up the suggestion that there is no real reference in the whole of being who speaks and lets Himself be known. In this constellation, it can be readily understood why the concept of revelation has acquired such a key function in post-Kantian theology. That there is really something like human knowledge of God, ﬁnds its theological anchor in the concept of revelation becoming a theme. We will return to this shortly.

9.3. From cosmological rootage to self-suﬃciency

We practice Christian theology in a public space in which belief in God is not absent, but in which, from a cultural and sociological perspective, the plausibility structures of Christian belief are diminished or have even to a great extent disappeared.13 Whatever judgements one may wish to make further regarding the manner in which continental theology has processed the legacy of Kant,14 that is one of the great diﬀerences from the situation in which Calvin lived and worked. For Calvin knowledge of God was still rooted in a more or less generally accepted cosmological framework which comprehends God, man and the world in one overarching metaphysical concept. Nature in its various parts is considered as pointing to God as the highest Being, to the source of all good, from which all things come. We ﬁnd the direct recollections of this in Calvin. The inward and outward world are mirrors in which God in various ways makes Himself perceptible through His Spirit. Man is a microcosm which as such refers to the macro- cosmological coherence. Man is not just material. He is that as well, but that he is more than just material and has an immortal soul is to Calvin’s mind beyond question. Man in principle has access to the spiritual world through all his mental capacities, a world which cannot simply repose in itself, but betrays its origin and basis in a higher, eternal world. The rootage of existence in a higher coherence which points to God does not mean that man has free access to true—that is to

13 H.J. Adriaanse, Vom Christentum aus. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur Religionsphilosophie, Kampen 1995, 35–37, 243–247. 14 For a challenge to this assertion on purely epistemological grounds, see the work already mentioned by N. Wolterstorff en A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief,New York/Oxford 2000, 3–63, 412–419. profit and loss 427 say, salvific—knowledge of God. Calvin’s thought is dominated by the idea that sin has had a decisive noetic effect on life with God. Briefly summarised, his concept of knowing God is interwoven with a general cosmological framework, but this cosmological framework is dominated theologically by soteriology. Barth’s theology shares with modern theology the fact that the cosmological and metaphysical rootage has disappeared. What Christians have to say about knowing God no longer finds support in a generally shared horizon in which God is the self-evident keystone in a concept of life and the world. This process becomes visible in theology in the way that the concept of revelation becomes a key and central theme. One can only speak of knowledge on the human side if this knowing of God is not purely a matter of human guesswork and conjecture, but is really the fruit of divine revelation. The disappearance of a metaphysical framework has its counterpart in the promotion of the theme of revelation. It is no longer accounted as a support for a general doctrine of being; an irreversible differentiation has been made between the cosmological framework and theology.15 For the rest, that does not imply that Barth, in the manner in which he raises the theme of a knowing of God that is founded on revelation, has no debt to contemporary philosophy. We have noted the role that the neo-Kantian, critical-idealist philosophy of H. Cohen played in this regard. Barth derived a structure of thinking from this form of idealism which made it possible to acknowledge as theologically true and pure only that which is gained from returning to the ‘origin’ and ‘the judgement of the origin’. God is the origin which never coincides with that which is empirically perceptible in human experience, but which indeed occurs in this experience as a critical and productive element. Theological objectivity is achieved by going back to God in His revelation. The particulars of life in time and space, of man, of evil and alienation, are subjected to critical examination for their theological content, and reconstructed starting from the being and acting of God.

15 It is widely recognised that it would be incorrect to say that Barth puts paid to every form of ontology. Ill will toward ontology as such is simply not a part of this concept. Exactly when theology focuses on the concrete history of God with Israel and Jesus Christ for its knowledge of God, exactly when the object of theology thereby is the Word or story that God himself speaks in this history, it becomes possible to discover the ontological implications in this way of thinking, which itself leads to a new perception of reality. For such an attempt see I.U. Dalferth, Existenz Gottes und christlicher Glaube. Skizzen zu einer eschatologischen Ontologie,München1984. 428 chapter nine

Barth increasingly expressed this a priori in the structure of his theology too. The starting point in his early theology, of human questions about for God and human incapacity to speak of God, is in itself not a sign of a natural theology in which men try to find traces of God outside of revelation. In the dialectic period the human demand, the search for meaning and life is considered a signal of the hidden activity of Christ.16 Barth increasingly removed from his theology all that was a reminder of this starting point at the existential situation of man. The theme of the incapacity of man is no longer the point of departure in Kirchliche Dogmatik. The theology of Barth’s principle work is thus so much of a model for the second panel, because it begins with the acknowledgement that one can only speak of knowledge of God under the condition of God’s self-revelation. What was self-evident in the first panel, namely that God through his Spirit spoke through the mouths of the prophets and apostles and confirmed his Word by signs, in the second panel becomes the theme of the question about the basis of knowledge of God. That is to say, knowing God is only possible and real under the condition that God has revealed himself. Outside of that, it is nonsense.

9.4. The systematic function of the concept of revelation: guarantee for knowledge of God

How are we to appraise this making of the concept of revelation as a theme, indeed a principle, in the second panel? Is it something to be retained? Should we reject it because of its authoritarian implications? The critique by W. Pannenberg is well known. He has repeatedly pointed out that in the post-Kantian context the appeal to ‘revelation’ can not be regarded as anything other than a sublime form of subjectivism.17 Others, such as the Dutch theologian H.M. Kuitert, have joined in this critique and tried to ﬁnd a way out through seeking a criterion for good religion, for the truth of statements about God, ‘because all statements about above come from below, even the state-

16 See ‘Der Christ in der Gesellschaft’ in: J. Moltmann (Hrsg.), Anfänge der dialektischen Theologie,TeilI,München(Kaiser)19774, 3–37, for example. 4: ‘Christ der Retter ist da—sonst wäre die Frage nicht da, die der heimliche Sinn all der Bewegungen unserer Zeit ist …’ 17 For example W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie. Bd. I, 142;ET,127. profit and loss 429 ment that something comes from above.’18 The distance that has grown up in the culture of the Enlightenment with regard to all appeals to divine authority, and that was also posited as such in Barth’s concept, echoes through this aphorism. But does it get us anywhere? Applied consistently, it ultimately becomes meaningless and negates all religion, all affection, all life. It is a screw that ultimately turns but no longer holds. Even if one sustains an approach from history and comparative religion, based on texts and experience, for as long as possible, one must at some moment ask the question of their truth content. At some point one finds oneself facing the question of whether ‘god’ is the product of man’s creative faculties, of religious need, or whether there is a real referent.19 The word ‘revelation’ is, so to speak, the other side of the coin of ‘feeling spoken to’. In his concept of knowing God Barth took this step in all its radicality: knowledge of God is only true and real under the assumption that God himself is speaking, comes, makes Him- self present in all sorts of ways, reveals Himself and in this way makes Himself the object of human knowing. Where theology methodologically evades or refuses this step, it changes into the study of religion, literature or culture,20 and theology disappears as an entity. The profit of Barth’s doctrine of revelation is that it works out this circle of faith,

18 H.M Kuitert, Zonder geloof vaart niemand wel. Een plaatsbepaling van christendom en kerk, Baarn 1974, 28. Thus Kuitert began a long search which has run through a series of books, each of which begins in the field of the history of religions and ends in the field of Christian doctrine. In the repetition however it also becomes clear that in fact each time two books are being written which are published inside one cover, namely one on history of religion and one on dogma, in which the assertions that are made in the dogmatic section are no less reflections of subjective belief than what Barth is accused of. In a recent book, Over religie. Aan de liefhebbers onder haar beoefenaars, Baarn 2000, 188 he arrives at the experience of ‘feeling himself spoken to’ as the core and germ of Christian faith. 19 See Houtepen, God, een open vraag, 24;ET,10. 20 I will add a critical observation to this: theology which follows the example of Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays,NewYork1973 and G.A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine. Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Philadelphia 1984, in taking the nature of Christian faith as a cultural-liturgical phenomenon as its starting point, is in danger of becoming totally uninteresting theologically. An approach of this sort regards religion—and Christian religion—primarily as a human construction, and undoubtedly this perspective leads to a multitude of valuable insights regarding the anthropological and cultural function of religion. Christian faith affords, as do other philosophies and religions, an orientation in life and possibilities for action, and can therefore be studied meaningfully under this aspect. Such an approach can also however ignore the most fundamental assertion of Christian belief, namely that the rite, the prayer, the act at their deepest honour God and do justice to Him. In a culture where the attempt is made to define and understand all phenomena exclusively 430 chapter nine the circulus veritatis Dei, in a totally consequent manner, while pointing to its vulnerability. The profit from Barth’s concept lies in his having consistently taken the fundamental theological insight of God’s revelation as the point of departure for his theology. Knowledge of God finds its final basis in nothing other than in God himself. That does not exclude elements in creation playing a role in knowing God. The doctrine of the analogia fidei which Barth developed in the first parts of KD and which in the subsequent parts he gradually elaborated into the analogia relationis offers the possibility for anthropological and cultural phenomena to also have a function as witnesses. Quite properly, other theologians have followed Barth in this. I began this section with a positive evaluation and acknowledgement of the function of the concept of revelation. That said, there is however also room for critique. It can not be denied that the concept of self-revelation as principle of doctrine has become a shibboleth in contemporary theology. It is familiar to the initiates, and opaque to the rest. Without further explanation, the term cuts corners and is unclear. What threatens to remain unmentioned are the multiplicity of ways and means by which God relates to man and knowledge of God comes into being.

9.5. The place of the faculties of knowing

What are the paths by which we arrive at knowledge of God? Is it worthwhile to begin with a broad concept of experience, as is for instance the case in ‘Reformed epistemology’? According to this epistemological theory it is possible to start with a wide range of sensory and mental faculties, which if functioning well produce trustworthy knowledge.21 This approach to knowledge does not mean that all that people claim to be knowledge is warranted knowledge. This perspective does have the advantage that human knowledge cannot be reduced to a narrowly scientiﬁc or instrumental understanding of knowledge. There is a wide range of various kinds of faculties which all play a fundamental role in the acquisition of knowledge. in terms of human actions and capacities, theology, should it join in this point of departure, is doomed to speak of God only between inverted commas. 21 See A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief,NewYork/Oxford2000. profit and loss 431

It is characteristic of Barth that he avoids the general epistemological debate as much as possible. The goal of his theology is a strictly theological judgement regarding Christian knowledge of God. He does acknowledge that humans are indeed equipped with faculties for gathering knowledge, but this acknowledgement plays no fundamental role in his theology.22 The discussion of the problem of human knowledge of God by way of a theory of capacities is tainted by its association with experience-based theology in the line of Schleiermacher and W. Herr- mann. The question about human faculties is identified with natural theology, where man searches for points of anchorage for faith outside of the acting of God. As a student Barth had learned from Cohen that human faculties had to be regarded as the abstract conditions for human culture. Therefore already in his early theology the theological centre of gravity lay totally in the living reality of faith itself, in which man discovered himself as being in proximity to God, as being borne along in the Gottesgeschichte.InKD II/1 this theological method is given form as Barth begins with the reality of the ‘true knowledge of God’ where man stands before God and God before man. The reality of faith is not anchored in a general epistemology, but founded in a Trinitarian and Christological argument. In conformity with that point of departure, Barth has localised revelation, the place where human knowledge of God comes into being, in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ stands for the place where God makes Himself known. He is the symbol, the unique sacrament that speaks for God. Barth does not intend this to deny that other people also have knowledge of God; he only intends to focus the theological relationships sharply. Theologically, all of our knowledge of God can only be considered true when it is thought of as participation in God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. Outside of that first sacrament of Jesus Christ there are indeed extensions, premonitions and sequels, but these extensions are real because God makes Himself present in the testimony of men, of Israel and the Church. In KD II/1 Jesus Christ is designated as the first locus and, more important, the anchorage for Christian knowledge of God. The truth of human knowledge of God has its foundation in His history. As we said, with Barth this rigorous theological anchorage takes conceptual form in his interpretation of the doctrine of enhypostasis and

22 For a development of this, see C. van der Kooi, ‘The Assurance of Faith: A Theme in Reformed Dogmatics in Light of Alvin Plantinga’s Epistemology’, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 40 (1998), 77–92. 432 chapter nine anhypostasis. Negatively, these concepts are intended to say that no element in this world whatsoever, not even the man Jesus, is in itself capable of revealing God and leading to the knowledge of God. As a principle, all things are insufficient. For knowledge of God, it is necessary that God reveal himself. In Calvin we still find an interest in the various faculties of knowing because they are the channels which are links with God and the invisible world, even if man, under the influence of his alienation from God, suffers from what one might call a serious form of blindness. With Barth interest in a theory of epistemology has been entirely sidelined. Or better: interest in reflection on human capacities has disappeared from the pitch, onto the terraces. The real game is being played on a theological pitch, whereby only the fact that there are human faculties and that they are in principle insufficient, count as boundary conditions for the theological debate. The question of what these faculties are and how they are called upon in our knowing of God, is irrelevant. Against Brunner’s interest in man as the formal image of God, Barth says merely that it is entirely self-evident that man is man, and not a cat.23 In other words, according to Barth, that human beings possess certain capacities is beyond doubt, but it is theologically uninteresting. In agreement with neo-Kantian philosophy this is regarded as purely descriptive of various human functions, belonging to human self-definition. With this, as we said, Barth takes over an image of what it means to be human that has its roots in modern subjectivity thinking. The point of departure is the human subject, which through capacities of all sorts defines itself, is founded on itself, and gives shape to its own existence. Of course, this formal definition of what it means to be human still provides no answer to the question of human identity. According to Barth, investigation of the cognitive facil- ities, into psychological and pedagogical data in no way helps one to go further in the question about knowing God. Knowledge of God is a matter of grace, and theologically can be identified with the justification of sinners.24 Where men learn to know God, where God reveals himself in the countenance of Christ, is where men come into contact with salvation, with the most unexpected, new and surprising thing which can happen to them. That is what Barth intends when he grounds knowledge of God in grace or defines it as the most incommensurable event, ‘whereby everything [man] was before or is apart from this, though

23 K. Barth, Nein. Antwort an Emil Brunner,München1934, 25. 24 KD I/1, 2;ET,4. profit and loss 433 not expunged, is totally relativised, bracketed, and overshadowed’.25 At a conceptual level Barth’s notion of knowledge of God testiﬁes to the surprise and discovery that can overcome people when they perceive themselves as creatures on whom God’s eye has fallen, who have been known, who are no longer alone by themselves. That is where the proﬁt of this concept lies. That Barth’s theology gives minimal attention to the human faculties that play a role in faith coming into being, and maximum attention for that which is basic and constitutive in a theological perspective, namely the work of the Holy Spirit, thus has an internal-theological ground. The general-epistemological stands in the shadow of what must be said theologically. It is a form of theological ascesis. In the following section we will clarify this ascesis further, in order to critique it.

9.6. The theological element

In his later work Barth radicalises the fundamental distinction between God and man which defines the structure of his whole theology. In the first sections of KD the proclamation of the church in preaching can still coincide in an indirect way with the Word of God itself,26 in the doctrine of baptism the lines from the first portions of the doctrine of reconciliation are extended: the acting of the church is testimony. What men do, what the community does in all its expressions and actions, are termed assistance, aiding and abetting. The real work through which man is reached and comes to know God takes place in the immediacy of God’s acting. We do not have to take the meaning of immediacy here as if Barth denied that we come to know God within a web of human relations and events—in other words, through education, through the stories of others, through liturgy and music, in short through witness in history by concrete individuals. In the way that God deals with man, in His coming, these means are however not constitutive, but only of relative importance. It is a relation that is indirectly direct. An important difference between the two panels is to be found in the scant interest shown in human capacities, and the rigorous concen-

25 KD IV/4, 3;ET,3. 26 KD I/1, 52;ET,52: ‘Proclamation is human speech in and by which God Himself speaks like a king through the mout of his herald, and which is meant to be heard and accepted as speech in and by which God Himself speaks …’ 434 chapter nine tration on the theological element in knowledge of God. Anthropolog- ical, psychological and biological factors are indeed found in Barth’s theology, but officially only under the discipline of a theological judgement. A strong distinction is made between the theological and the non-theological. How different matters are in this regard in the first panel! For Calvin knowledge of God and its ground, structure and development can in a certain sense be indifferently spoken of in connection with created—in other words, cosmological, biological, psychological and pedagogical— structures and arrangements. We find this in the metaphors used to speak of the life of man in relation to God, his fellow man and himself. Metaphors of the theatre, school, pilgrimage, exile in a foreign land, the metaphor of God as a father, as an adoptive parent, as a mother with a baby at her breast, and of the unfathomable depths into which a mortal falls should he encounter God as his Judge in the severity of life and the chaos of his own psyche, are not merely decorative in Calvin, not adornment which could be left out. The metaphors and images are expressions of a theological perspective, namely that the Spirit seeks us in created structures and approaches us in that way. The metaphor of the theatre stands for the space in which we are actor and spectator, of the school for the interest in the phases of life and growth, that of the exile for the intense alienation which can overtake man and the desire that drives him as a pilgrim. Not to mention the frequent image of adoption, referring to the surprising fact that men do have a home they can go, a table to which they can pull up their chair, and as a particularisation of this, the image of the wet nurse: God as the giver of what is needed first, and most radically. These are images that are full of implicit attention for the biological and psychological, for the affective elements in knowledge of God. The presence of such picturesque and metaphorical elements is not only a result of biographical and cultural peculiarities. In part following on from the study by W. Bouwsma on Calvin, recently there have been the expectable claims made regarding Calvin’s person and his psychological make-up.27 Although the dangers of psychologising should not be underestimated, it is not wise to avoid questions about the connec-

27 See Oberman, Calvin’s Legacy, 125–134; Selderhuis, God in het midden, 23–48.See also A.J. Jelsma, De ziel van Calvijn,Kampen1998, who for the rest does not escape an extremely pedantic tone. For a critical consideration of the literary basis for Bouwsma’s thesis, see Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, 79–98. profit and loss 435 tion between a certain theology and psychological aspects. It is not hard to defend the fact that the web of sociological, anthropological, psychological connections within which we live are also theologically important. With Barth the emphasis on intellectuality and the immediacy of the Word is so strong that its ‘physicality’, its relation to our own life histories, is, to my mind, undervalued. Theologically, all these things still only ‘assist’. That the ‘physicality’ of the world in which we live can also become an instrument in God’s hand in its attendant role, and that in the sphere of influence of the Word it can begin to speak in a very real manner, thereby taking on a sacramental function, assisting in unlocking the mystery, is insufficiently expressed in his theology. That the Word of God is also ‘natural-physical’, enjoys sacramental mediation, is not something to be ashamed of, a pudendum,28 is a concession which in the first parts of KD is still at the edge of the table; by KD IV/4 it has fallen off the edge. For all the space that Barth in his doctrine of baptism wants to give to man as a subject of his history, the theological structure continues to be defined by the insight that man may not make that which is human, that which comes from his own life history, a factor that actually overshadows or annexes divine action. In Calvin’s theology the connections and factors are used theologically. Calvin makes a theme of the way to faith which men take. The paths along which man comes to the realisation of God’s power, God’s care, God’s command and justice, and is brought by the Holy Spirit as an inward preceptor to embrace Jesus Christ, have a fundamental place in his theology. God deals with man in a dynamic involvement of Word and Spirit.

9.7. Word and Spirit

With the paired concepts Word and Spirit, derived from Calvin’s theology, I take up two words with which some justice may be done to the way to knowing God and its actual intertwinement with human experience. The linking of these two concepts goes farther toward expressing the historic involvement of God’s turn toward man, and the diversity and plurality of various forms of revelation which arise from it, than does the single concept of self-revelation. The dominant position of the

28 For example KD I/1, 138;ET,134. 436 chapter nine concept of self-revelation with Barth and in contemporary theology is theresultofthethoughtthatallapproachbyGodatitsdeepestcoin- cides with a relation in which He is not only the subject, but in which He also is entirely present as object. God holds nothing of Himself back in His relation to man. The concept of self-revelation is to be assessed as a word that stands for the personal nature of the relation God creates, for the relationality of knowledge of God, and for God’s unconditional commitment to his relation to man. It is to be understood as a definitive putting paid to a deus absconditus,aGodwhoin fact still remains an unknown entity behind his revelation. We can cite several Biblical texts, such as Matthew 11:27,John1:1,John1:18 and Hebrews 1:1. With these texts in mind, one can indeed speak of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. God declares Himself in Jesus Christ, commits Himself to His history, the history of the Cross. But as a term for all revelation, this does not express the fact that many forms of the approach of God to man do not have Him Himself as their primary content, but rather His will, His care, His grace, His command, His demand for obedience, judgement and promise. In short, God is indeed the subject in all His speaking, but not necessarily the object. What men come into contact with in their lives is a multitude of ideas, notions, experiences of astonishment, perplexity and joy, an appeal. It is the task of theology to make this varied palette of experiences transparent, identifiable, perhaps not immediately but at least in retrospect, as moments in which we came in touch with God’s majesty, command, care, protest, wrath, promise. It is the task of theology to foster a critical attention to how in this varied palette of experiences we encounter God as Father, as Son and as Spirit. The pair of concepts, Word and Spirit, fit better with this diversity, this school, than only the concept of Word or self-revelation. In their continual involvement with each other, Word and Spirit describe the force-field of God’s acting. The concept of ‘Word’ has to do with the words of the prophets, with the person of Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word, with the words of the apostles, with the Bible as Word, with what the Church has to say about God. The concept implies a certain concreteness, because it refers to events, to the speaking of persons, to the acts and person of Jesus Christ, to the Bible as document. Beside it we have the concept of Spirit to indicate that this Word, in all His concrete forms, stands in the sphere of God’s acting and dealings. Not that the Word receives its content only through the Spirit. The paired concepts of Word and Spirit point to the dynamic profit and loss 437 conduct of God himself with man, by means of concrete instruments. The Spirit is the One who invokes this Word, points to it, binds those who hear the Word to it. It is the Spirit that binds the individual believer to Christ and Himself in a life-long journey of learning to believe, and, together with others, brings the believer further. The work of the Holy Spirit is necessary on the one hand to provide man with insight into the wealth and coherence of the truth of salvation, and on the other to inwardly assure the person that he or she participates in the reality of this salvation. Calvin’s view of the work of the Spirit can be theologically productive in this. The ‘work of the Sprit’ does not mean an experience that stands apart from the actual path of faith which a person travels. No, it is precisely in this path of life, in the processing of life experiences, in listening to the openings that God provides there, in hearing the stories and the message of the Scripture, that the Spirit calls up desires, breaks the unshaken self-image, and inclines the heart to an inward assent and thankful acceptance of the invitation to sonship and daughtership that God extends. The Holy Spirit is the inward perceptor under whose tutelage we sit throughout our whole lives, and under whose supervision we may grow toward competence. Thus the Spirit witnesses to the truth of the Gospel in an inward and hidden manner. Word and Spirit circumscribe the dynamic field of concrete life history and offer the possibility for integrating insights from other fields of knowledge. Through His Spirit God is also involved in the ‘horizontal’, with the orders and processes interwoven with creation, with events and phases in life.29 What must be accepted as a plus-point from the struggle against natural theology which must never be forfeited, is the criterion for Christian knowledge of God. According to the New Testament, Chris- tian knowledge of God finds its key and content in the person of Jesus Christ. ‘No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known’ (John 1:18). According to the apostle Paul the believers in Corinth are brought into relation with Jesus Christ through God’s action: ‘But of Him you are in Jesus Christ, who God has made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ (ICor. 1:30). Pointing out this criterion is a profit never

29 See the work of H.C.I. Andriessen, Volwassenheid in perspectief. Inleiding tot de psychologie van de volwassen levensloop, Nijmegen 1984,idem,Oorspronkelijk bestaan. Geestelijke begeleiding in onze tijd, Baarn 1996.A.Lanser-vanderVelde,Geloven leren. Een theoretisch en empirisch onderzoek naar wederkerig geloofsleren,Kampen2000, 206–208. 438 chapter nine to be given up. But this criterion is far from saying all there is to be said about the ways and places where man learns to know God. This is the question about the universality of God’s revelation.

9.8. Lights, lamps and their fuel

Anyone who interprets Barth’s Christological concentration to mean that according to this concept God would not make himself known anywhere except in the proclamation of the Church, has an all too meagre understanding of this theology. But that does not detract from the fact that with regard to the constellation in the first panel the fundamental Christocentrism of Barth at first sight appears to offer many fewer possibilities for conceiving God’s efficacious presence with all creation. That is precisely the reason why Barth’s theology is so attractive within the constellation of an agnostic or even atheistic climate. This theology resonates with the notions and assumptions of the surrounding culture. According to these notions the world, outside of explicit revelation, outside of the coming of God to his creation, is dumb, expres- sionless, and by far supports the preference for an agnostic or even materialistic worldview. It is undeniable that we find an echo of this modern attitude in Barth’s theology. That is what makes this theology attractive in a modern culture influenced by the shadow of Nietzsche. The discussion of knowledge of God no longer is approached through creation. Indeed, the world is not a ‘creation’ at all; it is primarily a strange, bizarre chaos of forces, energies, from which anything except the countenance of God as caring Father shines forth. The world in the second panel is different from in the first. It is no longer the mirror of an overarching, higher context. That the world is the creation of God, that this lump of rock circling in space is more than a God-forsaken bit of matter somewhere in a distant corner of the universe, that in its enigmatic finiteness it is actually a space in which God makes Him- self known, for a life in relation to Him, to the glory of God and the salvation of man: these are notions that are gained first by means of, through the only port of God’s revelation in Christ. In comparison with the first panel, Barth’s theology marks a shift in the relationships of the structural elements in theology. Calvin can still conceive God’s entering the world through the conscience of man, through self-knowledge that arises as soon as man engages in some introspection; Barth abandons this structure. His theology marks the movement to the central element profit and loss 439 of Christian theology, Christology, the history of Jesus Christ, as that which is fundamental for all speaking about God. Does this mean that for Barth God reveals himself nowhere else? It is easy to forget that Barth, with his making Christology fundamental, wanted to present a criterion for Christian proclamation. This criterion does not mean that God can not manifest Himself in all sorts of places and all in all sorts of ways. Barth explicitly opposed the understanding of this Christological concentration as a curtailment of the universality of God’s revelation. It does not mean that God can reveal Himself only within the Church, in its proclamation. That is a vulgar misunderstanding. What Barth writes about this universality in his Pro- legomena is both well-known, and enlightening: ‘God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog. We do well to listen to Him if He really does. But, unless we regard ourselves as the prophets and founders of a new Church, we cannot say that we are commisioned to pass on what have heard as independent proclamation.’30 Thecoreofthiscitationisintherejec- tion of an ‘independent proclamation’. The criterion here is not with regard to what God can do, but what the community is given as its standard. In both panels, for both Calvin and Barth, we find the productive distinction between the locations where knowledge of God can be obtained and criteria for knowing God. It is this line which, to my mind, deserves elaboration, both with an eye to events in life and experiences, and with an eye to discussions with other religions. In a certain sense Barth has himself already plotted out this line with his Lichterlehre.InhisLichterlehre he treats phenomena that speak, true words, which are found in the world outside the circle of the Church and its proclamation.31 These are not true words and lights that have their light in and of themselves. Barth wishes to understand these true words and lights as witnesses to Jesus Christ as the Light of the world.32 This Light shines in the world, the witness to itself. This one light nourishes all lamps and lights. With this Barth creates the conceptual possibility for considering the universality of God. Christian knowledge of God implies that men must be observant and open for all these places where truth is spoken, where light is spread, where life-giving insights break

30 KD I/1, 55–56;ET,55. 31 KD IV/3, 108;ET,97. 32 KD IV/3, 132;ET,118. 440 chapter nine through. In the world reconciled by God through Jesus Christ, there is, as we quoted earlier, no one abandoned to themselves, to a profaneness outside God’s dispensation.33 Barth’s acknowledgement of universality is nothing new. In his earlier theology too Barth ventured to trace personal questions about the meaning of life and the social dynamics of the search for justice, peace, political equality and personal happiness to God and Christ, by considering them as the unseen source and motor of these questions. That he withdrew from this position after the end of the 1920s, in the course of the debate over natural theology, almost goes without saying. Strategically, he no longer had room for it. The Church instructs the world, not the other way around. Only after the Second World War, in his doctrine of creation, is the attempt made to bring all sorts of general anthropological phenomena back into theology through Chris- tology. The various relations and arrangements in which man lives— man/woman, parent/child, fellow men—are understood through the analogia relationis. In the light of revelation they become mirrors of the way in which God relates to Himself within His own divine being, and has a place for ‘the other’ within Himself. Berkhof correctly suggested that Barth also wanted to give all these things, which for him had become places where divine light was found, a place in his theology. Speaking theologically, the work of the Spirit in creation and history is indeed involved with Christology, but does not wholly coincide with it. In fact a certain instruction of the Church by the world also does exist, and it is not only the opposite that is the case.34 Theologically this openness and acknowledgement does not lead to a relativisation of the criterion that the Church was given in the history of Jesus Christ. It does however throw light on the relation of pneumatology, the doctrine of creation, and Christology. To the very end Barth structured his thought so that theologically seen, all knowledge of God is derived from revelation in Christ. He had no intention of retreating even a step from the Barmen confession. Pneumatology is entirely comprehended in Christology. There is thus no room any more for a relatively independent place for the work of the Spirit, for an appeal to an order given in creation, as we saw that in Calvin. As we have said, it becomes clear in Barth’s own theological development that the comprehensive

33 KD IV/3, 133;ET,119. 34 H. Berkhof, ‘Barths Lichterlehre im Rahmen der heutigen Theologie, Kirche und Welt’ in: H. Berkhof/ H.-J. Kraus, Karl Barths Lichterlehre,Zürich1978, 46. profit and loss 441 centralisation in Christology as a matter of principle cannot be maintained. I would add to that, that it does not need to be maintained in order to nevertheless defend the position that Christian knowledge of God has its criterion in the revelation of Christ. In saying that, I am not arguing that we simply return to a forthright appeal to order. The straightforward appeal to creation and its order has become a problem, both historically and systematically. The notion has become compromised historically,35 and systematically a direct appeal to creation is connected with a theology in which the development from the starting point of creation defines its whole structure. When we realise that creation itself suffers from alienation from God and itself must be freed, there is good reason to join with Barth and define the structure of Christian theology from its centre, the appearance of God’s salvific proximity in Jesus Christ. Then creation is not only an extrapolation from the centre, but is theologically involved with the centre. A straightforward appeal to the notion of creation and the order in it yields numerous problems. The structures found often turn out to be fluid, malleable, hard to trace and strongly culturally defined. But this is not to say that we can afford to lose the notions of order or of wisdom as theological categories, or that they should continue to be suppressed because of previous abuse.36 An appeal to the idea of creation and a created order has returned again in the debate on ecology and theology, in the contention that there are limits, structures and systems which cannot be broken except at man’s peril. In the course of our lives we glean fragments of knowledge, notions of truth, of wisdom37 from outside the visible circle of light from the Gospel, which theologically can better be linked with the work of the Spirit. This does not separate the work of the Spirit from, or make it independent of Christ, but it points to Him, is subject to Him, and reaches its fulfilment in Him.

35 See for example J.C. Adonis, ‘The role of Abraham Kuyper in South Africa. A Critical Historical Evaluation’, in: C. van der Kooi/J. de Bruijn, Kuyper Reconsidered. Aspects of his Life and Work,Amsterdam1999, 259–273. 36 See C. van der Kooi/A. van Egmond, ‘Het beroep op scheppingsordeningen. Een wisselend getijde’ in: A. van Egmond, Heilzaam geloof. Verzamelde artikelen, bezorgd door D. van Keulen/C. van der Kooi, Kampen 2001, 157–172; ET, ‘The appeal to creation ordinances: a changing tide’, in: REC Theological Forum 21/4 (December 1993), 13–25. 37 That in the Old Testament the theme of creation has a certain autonomy alongside the motifs of exodus and liberation has been defended again for Biblical studies by G. von Rad, Weisheit in Israel,Neukirchen1970, 189–239.SeealsoJ.Barr,The Concept of Biblical Theology, 468–496. 442 chapter nine

In His history, in an order that is theologically marked by moments of resurrection and ascension, creation is not cancelled out, but its order is transformed and, in this transformation, conﬁrmed. With these questions, we stand before a challenge to ﬁnd a theological place for the debate about Church and world, faith and culture, which is actually going on. This debate is not new, something which has arisen only in a pluralistic situation. God’s message to men has never yet reached them without elements of witness, debate, opposition and unexpected assent, not in the course which proceeded the composition of Scripture38 and not in the course which the Gospel has taken among the nations. There are good theological reasons to proceed in openness with other philosophies and religions, from the realisation that Christ in His majesty is given the power to have men participate through His Spirit in His light and life, wherever He wills to do so. In dialogue with other religions, this fundamental theological distinction between places where true knowledge of God is found and the criterion for its truth can contribute to an attitude of openness and a realisation of the uniqueness of the Christian tradition of faith.

9.9. The content of knowledge of God: saving proximity

What is profit, and what loss, with regard to the content of knowledge of God? In both the first and second panel Christian knowledge of God has its substantive criterion in the history of Jesus Christ. For Calvin the promises that are contained in Jesus Christ, in his life and his death on the cross, form the content of faith. The believer is invited to behold God’s will and plan in this very limited mirror. The source of saving knowledge is in this way precisely localised: namely, the countenance of Christ. Particularly in the Cross of Christ God’s majesty shines forth the most, because it is here that it becomes clear that He desires to save sinners fallen into distress. One of the most significant images in the first panel is that of the Father with his adopted children. Outside of the Scripture and outside of Christ the world is alternatively a spectacle of retribution and obscure injustice, and a theatre of tender and wonderful care. But all these notions, of a strict judge and a caring king, undergo a refiguration when one has once learned to know God’s compassion

38 See, for instance, for the Old Testament, W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament. Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Minneapolis 1997. profit and loss 443 and mercy in the face of Christ. As the sources of knowledge about his salvation, Calvin wanted to pin the believer to Scripture and Christ as the mirrors which the Spirit held up for man. The possibility that the Counsel of God which lay behind them would become a threat would only arise when the Bible lost its status of evident divinity. The binding to the Biblical promises as mirrors of God’s mercy would then lose their its anchor. In the foregoing we have given one of the reasons why the concept of double predestination could undergo such fundamental correction in the second panel. Calvin’s view imposed a premature limitation on the seeking love that is held up to us by Scripture in the actions of Jesus and in his resurrection as the firstborn of all creation. Like the theology of his time, Calvin did not see that in the Bible election is first and foremost a category of sacred history. Election describes the way that God goes about searching for and recovering man. In this regard, the second panel of Barth’s theology represents a profit which can not be abandoned. As an extension of Barth’s reading of scripture we can say that God chooses for men, chooses for them in order to involve them in the things of His kingdom in the interplay of Word and Spirit. He invites them to this, urges them to this, and men stand under judgement if they turn aside. The word ‘election’ means that God in his own proximity makes room for man and the world. The relation between God and man can therefore be formally expressed as a creative proximity which realises itself in various forms of acting which are to be ascribed to the Father, Son and Spirit. In Christ as the Son the nearness of the one God becomes concrete in deliverance and liberation; in the Father the acting of the one God become concrete in creation and sustaining; in the Spirit the work of the one God becomes concrete as renewal and sanctification. Barth wanted to read God’s choice for man in terms of the history of Jesus Christ. The relation to the man Jesus is thus a part of the manner in which God elects to be God. With it God’s salvation is promised to man, the history of Jesus Christ becomes a symbol and sacrament of God’s choosing fellowship. At the same time, something is said about God. There is no longer anything that can be said about God outside of the history of Jesus, outside of his Cross, outside of the threat of death and ultimate abandonment. Such a change of tracks, as compared with the first panel, has abundant consequences, both for thinking about God and for thinking about man. I will enumerate several plus- points. 444 chapter nine

1. As opposed to the modern axiom of human self-determination, the second panel introduces the idea that everything is decided about man and his destiny in God’s self-determination in Christ. From God’s side being man is defined as being together with Jesus Christ, and as such, as being together with God. This being together of God and man is not a condition that man is entitled to on the basis of immanent qualities; it is exclusively the freedom of God to make this choice in love that is decisive, and that also maintains it against resistance. It is basic to this thought that the abundance of the divine being will be definitive for man, even as it was definitive in the appearance of Christ.

2. At the same time, the opposite must also be said. It is God’s choice not to will Himself without man. It is His choice not to will Himself without the consent of man. God exposes Himself and His love to consent by man, to rejection. In the doctrine of God it will have to be made clear that He is not an apathetic God, but that in the incarnation as the deepest point of identiﬁcation with the human condition, with His resurrection, God exposes Himself to rejection and defensive gestures by creation. If there is something in the abundance of His life that God may not be denied, it is the highest sensitivity. That means the possibility of injury, of suﬀering in God.

3. The content of Christian knowledge of God is filled in through the fact that within the Church the history of Jesus Christ is told as the history in which God gives Himself as the One in whose fellowship creation may exist definitively. Christian theology speaks about man as someone who lives and moves in the close proximity of God. Whether he experiences that, or desires it, is secondary. The principle secret of people’s lives is the closeness of God. Because the fellowship is with the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ, this fellowship can be called a salvific fellowship. True freedom is found only in this fellowship. If man is intended to be in this fellowship and to live from this reality, the origin and purpose of man has been decided.

4.God’selectinginhisSontobeinfellowshipwiththemanJesusis a decision that extends to all Jesus’ fellow men. Being a man is being together with this particular man. In this way Barth’s theology oﬀers a radical correction to the doctrine of election in Calvin, where election profit and loss 445 is ultimately the election of speciﬁc individuals, and the covenant is a link in sacred history between God’s Counsel and the election of individuals.

The decisions in God about man, about his salvation, death and life fall ultimately in the order of God’s eternity. In this choice Calvin and Barth stand side by side, and we stand before the spiritual and theological core of Reformed theology. However much accent may fall on further human responsibility, on renewal of life and the appeal to man to respond to God’s invitation, it remains a problem for contemporary theology as well how one can reconcile the subjectivity of God and the subjectivity of man without conceiving them as competing, in other words without the alternatives of determinism and historicising. Once one premises the primacy of eternity over time, are man’s actions not then determined, and does the order of time and history still have any weight? At a conceptual level, how can one keep human history and responsibility from being trivialised? And, from the other side, how can one prevent God from being trivialised? Or must we leave things with the observation that there are limits to our knowledge of God and our thinking about God? Of course the latter is true. The terms infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism were mentioned several times in preceding chapters. They are terms that theology has left to gather dust. Yet, like pales sticking out of the sand, they remind us of a tension that seems to be inherent in the spirituality of Reformed theology, namely the refusal to either trivialise God’s sovereignty and gracious supremacy, or to dispose of human responsibility. The historic debate between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism confronts us with the limits that we would rather avoid, but in fact always run up against. Barth sought to avoid the trivialising of the order of time by terming the decision for electing a decretum concretissimum. The eternal decision of God to live in fellowship with man is taken with an eye to a historically deﬁned person, the man Jesus Christ. Eternity is not primarily a concept of duration; it is primarily the designation for the order of God’s life and acting. Behind the words decretum concretissimum we hear again how Barth wished to think of God and His plans, proceeding from Jesus Christ and his history. There the order of God’s sovereignty and human history coincide, and that co-incidence must be the point of departure and criterion for Christian theology. This Name and this history are the counterweight that is necessary to prevent human history from become nothing more than a projection screen for an eternally 446 chapter nine established scenario. By calling upon the name of Jesus, Barth seeks to do justice to the peculiar weight of time. Thinking from the perspective of eternity coincides with the opposite movement, namely thinking from time toward eternity. That is what is properly called Barth’s actualism. By working this way Barth tries to avoid both the danger of determinism and that of historicisation, where everything depends on man. He does this by always taking the history of Jesus Christ as his starting point. His history is the moment, the point where time and eternity come together. His history is, as it were, the true icon from which we can read who God is, how He has chosen to live—and at the same time we can read from this history that which in the light of this history is the secret of God’s history with all men. At the same time it grants us an insight into the role of man in history.

9.10. The role of man in knowing God

If we compare the first and second panels with regard to the role of the human subject, the differences are immediately obvious. With Calvin the metaphors expressing man’s relation to the Holy Spirit are those of the school and pupil. A pupil deserves to pay careful attention to the material which is offered him. Man remains to the end of his days in the school of the Holy Spirit, who teaches and instructs him. At this point we touch another metaphor that is of great importance in Calvin, namely that of man as the alien, the pilgrim passing through a strange land. Here, unquestionably, lies a dynamic, eschatological feature in Calvin’s concept of knowing God. God showers his creatures with countless signs of His providence. Moreover, in the sacraments this care and grace is once more impressed upon man, by tangible means, not that this stop with the symbols, but that they might be mindful of the promise of solidarity with Christ and everlasting life in God. The purpose of these accommodations is that man now already reaches out for a life in perfect union with Christ in God’s glory. In the fellowship with Christ which is now already a hidden reality man is called to consecrate himself and practice a life that corresponds to that high purpose. In Calvin’s theology the person who knows God himself comes to renewed activity, to deeds of thanksgiving. Sanctification and progress thereby become one of the key elements in Calvin’s thought. Yet it is unmistakable that the role of man is worked out in a different manner profit and loss 447 in the second panel, namely through the modern ideal of human self- determination. The larger place which the Enlightenment demanded for the human subject is for Barth no misfortune, the effects of which must be rectified as quickly as possible. The place which is given to man as subject should be entered on the profit side of the ledger. There is increasing space given in Barth’s concept for man as an answering being. In the first two volumes of KD, in the development of the concept of revelation, the stress lies on the majesty of God, on God’s sovereignty. In that period Barth’s theology maintained something of a barrage that was to constantly remind its readers that man always, in various ways, had to deal with God as Lord in His turning toward man. The change that was already evident in KD II/1, the first volume of the doctrine of God, to electing as a movement that was ontologically decisive both for God Himself and for man, made it increasingly possible to develop the aspect of the humanity of God. The locus of knowledge of God is specified as the history of Jesus Christ, in which the concrete human person of Jesus Christ is distinguished from the Father, and is involved with Him. Characteristic of this new accent is that anhypostasis now no longer serves to disqualify every form on inquiry into the life of the earthly Jesus—in other words, every form of manifestation in history— as theologically unprofitable. It can be asked how the assumptio carnis— the assumption of what man is, of the condition humaine—takes form in this one person. In Barth’s later theology the unio naturarum or the unio hypostatica no longer mean that the life of the man Jesus is merely an enigma. God’s special relation with this man does not elbow out what happens in time and space, but creates room for it. All the theological constructions within Barth’s concept, such as the Trinity and election, that are used to impress upon us that in His plans and intentions God is not the dupe of our history, change in colour to concepts that remind us that God does not cease to seek man in his acting and aspirations and refuses to permit him to become the victim of his own conduct. Two terms define the image of the new man in Barth’s concept: self- determination and analogy (or correspondence). Self-determination is the formal concept under which man with all his capacities is understood; the concept of correspondence or analogy provides it its substantive content. Man and his capacities do not go by the wayside in grace, but are redefined.39 Maniscalledtogiveananswerinhisactionsthat

39 In KD 1/1, 213;ET,204 the experience that man becomes a participant under the influence of the Word is interpreted with the concept of self-determination. All 448 chapter nine agrees or corresponds with the choice for life that was made by God in His electing. The figure of analogy comes increasingly to the fore in Barth’s theology as a productive category for understanding the relation between divine and human acting.40 In this way it becomes clear that ethics is not a second field which lies next to dogmatics, but rather occupies the same space. In terms of structure, Barth has given shape to this insight by closing his doctrine of God, his doctrine of creation and his doctrine of reconciliation each with a section on ethics. In this study the altered position of man became visible in the doctrine of baptism. As we already said earlier, the desacramentalisation of baptism and the Supper was intended to give full measure to the answer from man, to his acting. Barth wished to distinguish more sharply than was possible in the traditional concept of the sacraments between the acting of man and the acting of God. Unquestionably this contains elements which connect with modern attitudes toward life. But in this counterproposal man does not realise himself in a vacuum. He is already in fellowship; the decision has already been made about him, and about his destiny. The sharp distinction in Barth between God’s work and man’s work is the result of the Christological concentration, through which the singularity and immediacy of Christ, the Word and the Spirit are powerfully emphasised over against the human work of testimony, proclamation, baptism and the Supper. The destiny of being man is known, namely existence in fellowship with God and his salvation,whichmeansinfellowshipwithJesusChrist.Thisinturnmeans that in this fellowship direction is given to self-determination. Can we take over this linkage with the principle of subjectivity just like that? I would make two observations, the first positive, the second critical. The continuing positive feature in the concept is first of all that man is regarded as actor. In a culture in which man as a responsible actor appears to be losing ground against the background of economic and social processes, technological advances and communities in change, an emphasis on the responsibility of man is quite necessary. Furthermore, we have already established that Barth has blunted the human capacities together form the possibility for self-determination. In faith this self- determination is redefined once again, namely by the Word. 40 See particularly the work of E. Jüngel, in particular his essay ‘Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogie. Eine Untersuchung zum Analogieverständnis Karl Barths’ in: idem, Barth-Studien,München1982, 210–245.Cf. also H. Veldhuis, Een verzegeld boek. Het natuurbegrip in de theologie van J.G. Hamann (1730– 1788),Dordrecht1990, 347–350. profit and loss 449 ideal of autonomy, or better, given it content. The contours of man’s self can be read from the history of Jesus Christ. Finally, it must be remembered that Barth, by giving a full measure to human subjectivity, has provided an answer to the problem of Pelagianism. Freedom is primarily defined by its content. People are free when they arrive at the point where the possibilities are realised that being human bears with it. Jesus Christ is the true man. From the very beginning Barth’s concept of being human is defined as being in fellowship with Jesus Christ. That means that human subjectivity, man’s acting and responsibility, do not exist outside of this relation, but only fit within it. Ethics as a question of human acting is found in the same space with dogmatics. In a Christian perspective, ethics is the question of how men must act now that they participate in the history of Jesus Christ. Man does not have to make or constitute the covenant that God has concluded in Jesus Christ; man is rather invited to take his place within this covenant. Thus one can not speak of a sole causality of God. The profit of Barth’s baptismal doctrine is that he gives a clear answer to the alternative of God’s omnicausality and synergism.41 The new reality in which the believer shares is constituted entirely and totally through by God in Christ, and the meaning of baptism is that it is the first answer from man to the revolution accomplished by God. Precisely this locating of human existence in answer to the history of Jesus Christ however raises the question of suitable terms. The question is whether the manner in which Barth takes over the principle of subjectivity can indeed be maintained. In modern culture self- determination and self-discovery are all too closely linked with frag- mentation and ecological problems. The terms have become compromised. When man takes himself as his point of departure for achieving his social or economic goals, there is no critical brake built in against economic and ecological exploitation. The concepts of correspondence and analogy imply that man does not enjoy primacy, but is in a subsidiary position. But this secondary position does not come through in the term self-determination. The Biblical concept of stewardship would fit better in this connection. The subsidiary role of man, and his nor- mative responsibility, are immediately clear in this image.42 It conjoins precisely with a concept which is strongly emphasised by Calvin. God

41 KD IV/4, 180;ET,163. 42 B. Goudzwaard, Kapitalisme en vooruitgang, Assen 19824, 293–297;ET:Capitalism and Progress: a Diagnosis of Western Society, Toronto/Grand Rapids 1979, 242–245. 450 chapter nine has the potestas, the power is His, and when man takes this in, it is clear that the freedom of man is not adequately conceived if it is thought of as only formal freedom of choice. Man becomes free when he goes in the ways that are already represented in the history of Jesus Christ. Man is free when his decisions bring him to the ways that correspond with the lines that were already set out by God himself in Jesus Christ.

9.11. Sacrament: the same thing, in a diﬀerent way

What is the role of the sacraments in knowing God? In the second panel of Barth’s theology we are dealing with a desacramentalising of baptism and the Supper; one could even speak of demythologisation. The denial of the sacramentality of baptism and the Table is, for Barth, closely connected with the greater accent on the subjectivity of man. Preaching, baptism and the Supper are acts of witness by man, and no longer means of grace, not a medium salutis, and just as little a confirmation and strengthening of human knowledge regarding God’s promises. The work of the Holy Spirit indeed does come to man with the assistance of means of all sorts, but Barth no longer wishes to term these sacraments. True baptism is performed by God, in the work of the Spirit, and what happens alongside that, through the community, through the baptisand, has the nature of a testimony or an answer. The acting of the community in the various forms of witness is not disowned in this concept; we must understand the contesting of the sacramental character of human actions as an attempt to give full room to human subjectivity as an answer to God’s work in the history of Jesus Christ. Are we forced to come to the same conclusions as Barth did? Could it not belong to the freedom of God in His turning toward man, in His speaking, to make use of the created as a means of approach, in such a way that the notion of the sacramental finds its justification precisely with this in mind? Calvin and Barth both agreed that neither baptism nor the Supper could be termed a medium salutis. Both also agreed that the fellowship with Christ is the centre and object of human knowledge of God. Faith involves us in the history that God wrote in this Name, and we are called to set forth our journey within the horizon of this history. What place do the sacraments have then in this way? In the introduction of this book I suggested that thought regarding the sacraments profit and loss 451 functions as a mirror for the whole of knowledge of God. That means that a vision of the sacraments must fit within the whole scheme of a conceptofknowingGod.IfitispartofthefreedomofGodtomake Himself known to men through a multiplicity of earthly means, in principle this provides space for a broad view of sacramentality. This is a breadth which we encountered in the first panel. God draws man to Himself through a wide range of means. In Calvin we found the paired concepts of Word and Sprit for this. This pair of concepts first point to the central element of the Word, the Bible and the history which is narrated in the Bible. At its deepest, the Word is the designation for the acting of God himself, who declares himself in his Son, who has written his history with man in the history of Jesus Christ. And, once again, by God we mean God who, through the power of His Spirit, involves us with Christ and what is concealed in His life. In order to bring us and the things of our lives in contact with Him, to give us a taste of it, God has various means. First, there is the narrative which refers to Jesus Christ as the Word of God in person, and that is told in a multiplicity of accounts, of Bible stories. Once these become Scripture they have a potency, through the work of the Spirit, to become alive, the Word of God speaking to the present, to become a Word that touches men, seeks them out, and takes them along into the secret of God’s dealing with man. The Scripture, as a literary reality, derives its high status in the Church from this: that by the grace of God it has the potential to become the Word of God ever anew. Calling the Bible the Word of God is only meaningful if we continue to focus on that way of exposition and proclamation as Word that gives life and direction. In the first panel we found that not all of the means that God uses can be termed sacraments. With the Reformation, Calvin reduced the number of sacraments to baptism and the Supper, with the argument that these were the two which were instituted by Christ Himself. Today it does not appear wise to take this argument over without giving it serious thought, if only because it has the result, as Berkhof correctly stressed, of very quickly placing baptism and the Supper in an isolated position. If we wish to give a place to the sacrament, this will have to happen in the context of a comprehensive concept of knowing God and a broader view of the sacramental, in which all of the acting of the Triune God in creation, reconciliation and renewal of life is reflected. The point of departure for the acceptance of baptism and the Sup- per as central acts of the Church is first the historical fact that in the 452 chapter nine early Church these acts had a place in connection with the account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The theological justification and found- ing of these acts as meaningful acts lies in that connection. They have their place in church life primarily with the salvation that was a gift in Christ and the promise of His kingdom in mind.43 Next, in the connection that is made in the actions of baptism and the Supper between ambivalent signs or symbols on the one hand and the history of Jesus Christ on the other, the symbol begins to speak a language that it does not possess of itself. That is the decisive, theological justification for these actions. They are actions in which an appeal is made to the senses as ways to knowledge, to contact. In the Supper the senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste are brought into service. In baptism by immersion it is particularly the sense of touch which plays a role, alongside hearing and sight. It is characteristic of these ritual actions that created elements are taken into service by the story. They interpret the history of Jesus Christ. The reverse is also true. In the Pauline letters we see that God’s acting in the Cross and resurrection interprets these rituals and thus protects against sacramental misunderstanding.44 A mutual hermeneutic involvement arises between story or word on the one side and the symbol on the other. In the dynamic between word and symbol God’s acting is made known, man is brought into the presence of God and his acting, and man commits himself to that acting by letting himself be baptised and by participating in the Supper. Created elements here fulfil the role of symbols, of visible words that refer to the thing, to God’s judging and life-giving proximity. The content of the sacraments, the ‘thing’ before which we stand, does not differ from that which is received in faith. In the sacramental mediation man comes in touch with the same thing, but the same thing in a different way. Precisely the sacraments in all

43 Discussions regarding a broad, theological, Trinitarian rootage of this sort for the sacraments are already well under way as a response to the BEM Report of the World Council of Churches and the reactions which followed it. See Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper no. 111), Geneva 1982; Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry 1982–1990. Report on the Process and Responses (Faith and Order Paper No. 149), Geneva 1990. For a similar broad treatment of the concept of the sacraments, see M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom. Ecumenical Essays on Creation and Sacrament. Justiﬁcation and Freedom, Zoetermeer 1999. 44 See the extensive note by E. Jüngel, Barth-Studien, 285–287. See also at greater length the article ‘Zur Kritik des sakramentalen Verständnisses der Taufe’, in: Barth- Studien, 295–314. profit and loss 453 their connections with the sensory and physical point to dimensions of knowing which go further than intellectual comprehension, because the aﬀective possibilities are brought into play and included too.

9.12. As in a mirror …

There is one ﬁnal step. That God lets Himself be known and therefore men can know God, is a vulnerable proposition. It is not vulnerable because something could go wrong with the epistemological status of knowledge of God. The warrant for belief in God and the epistemological grounds for defending it have gained rather than lost ground in recent years. When I speak of it being vulnerable, I just as little have in mind the implausibility of belief in God in Western culture. That is indeed manifest in important sectors of these cultural circles and it forces adherents of faith to adjust, willingly or unwillingly, to status as aminority.Howeverdiﬃcult that is, however much theologians, church members and people in social organisations often still act and think as though they are a majority, from the desire to occupy the cultural middle (or the illusion that they still do so), these are only side issues. The vulnerability that I have in mind has internal grounds. It is felt within the knowledge of God; it has to do with the fact that the promise of the perfect unveiling of God’s majesty and mercy is still outstanding. The concept of self-revelation expresses that in the appearance of Christ one is encountering God Himself. This does not exclude the incompleteness of knowing, the enigmas and things not yet understood, as this so pointedly is expressed in the image of the mirror in I. Cor. 13:12.Putin another way, Christian knowledge of God is vulnerable because it is a form of Christian hope. In this context vulnerability is not so much a sign of weakness, but is a sensitivity, a new attitude of discernment. In the mirror of the history of Christ, it appears that man and the world are not abandoned. Nourished by this hope, faith does not remain by itself, but reaches out. In Christian hope men reach out to the coming of Him who already came in Christ. That hope would not exist if God, through His Spirit, had not already reached man through his Word, through a multiplicity of ways and means. The hope would be extin- guished if mankind was not still constantly being invited and reached by God’s Spirit as the great bridge builder, the pontifex maximus,andin response, began moving toward the future.

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Aalders, M.A., XI Berkouwer, G.C., 12, 124, 163, 168, Adonis, J.C., 441, 456 209, 210, 344, 397 Adriaanse, H.J., XI, 10, 255, 426 Bernard of Clairveaux, 180 Agrippa of Nettesheim, 37, 54, 66 Beza, Th., 160 Agrippa d’ Aubigné, 57 Biel, Gabriel, 183 Ailly, Pierre d’, 183 Birkner, H.J., 312 Alston, W.P., 76 Blumhardt, J.C., 396 Andriessen, H.C.I., 437 Boer, Th. de, 136, 244 Anselm of Canterbury, 122, 179, 180, Boëthius, 332, 359 280, 281 Bohatec, J., 24, 36, 150 Anzinger, H., 261 Bolsec, Jérome, 23, 28, 74, 123, 160, Aristotle, 68, 88, 125, 134, 146, 154 161, 162 Asmussen, H., 258 Bonda, J., 342 Athanasius, 44 Bonhoeﬀer, D., 3, 308 Augustijn, C., XI, 162 Borght, E.A.J.G., 192 Augustine, 87, 117, 154, 155, 163, Bouwsma, W.J., 22, 28, 52, 55, 64, 168, 173, 174, 177, 178, 182, 195, 67, 78, 79, 102, 111, 121, 148 196, 199, 267, 274, 276, 349, Breen, Q., 55 358 Brink, G. van den, 178, 183 Austin, J.L., 11 Brinkman, M.E., 191, 195, 253, 255, 405, 452 Bacon, R., 58, 59, 227, 235 Brueggemann, W., 442 Bakker, N.T., 270 Brunfels, O., 54 Balke, W., 120 Brunner, E., 9, 81, 285, 313, 378– Balthasar, H.U. von, 420 379, 432 Barr, J., 270, 441 Brunner, P., 82 Barth, Karl, 29, 57, 102, 117, 124, Bucer, Martin, 26, 32, 192 153, 154, 156, 166, 173 passim Budé, Guillaume, 24, 36 Barth, P., 385 Bullinger, H., 162, 192, 214, 218 Battles, F.L., 25, 42, 56 Bultmann, R., 279, 318 Bauke, H., 28, 102 Burckhardt, Abel, 287 Baur, F.C., 28 Busch, E., 253, 371 Bavinck, H., 2, 7, 14, 52, 99, 107, Busson, Henry, 37 163, 276, 377, 378, 390 Beek,A.vande,273, 376 Caligula, 71 Beintker, M., 261, 279 Calvin, Antoine, 34 Benedict, Ph., 79 Cassirer, E., 64, 236 Benin, S.D., 49 Castellio, Sébastien, 23 Berkhof, H., 9, 134, 190, 191, 219, Chia, R., 261, 271 351, 395, 440, 451 Cicero, 24, 71 468 index of names

Clement of Alexandria, 49 Gay, P., 230, 235 Cohen, H., 289–292, 427, 431 Geertz, C., 12, 429 Courtenay, W.J., XI, 59, 123, 177– Gerhard, J., 117 183 Gerrish, B.A., 91, 94, 119, 198, Cusveller, B., 8 208 Cyril of Alexandria, 212 Gestrich, Chr., 312 Gloede, G., 82 Dalferth, I.U., 187, 427 Gogarten, Fr., 279 Damascene, John, 44, 125, 205 Gorringe, T.J., 257 Damian, Peter, 178, 180 Gosker, M., 191 Darwin, Ch., 306 Goudzwaard, B., 449 Dee, S.P., 99, 100, 108 Graaﬂand, C., 159, 194, 364, Descartes, R., 241 413 Desiderius, 178 Grabes, H., 60 Dittus, Gottliebin, 396 Gruet, Jacques, 23 Dolet, E., 37, 66 Grünewald, Mathias, XI, 286 Dorner, I.A., 331 Grynaeus, Simon, 53 Dorner, J.A., 334 Gunning J.H., 424 Dowey, E.A., 21, 85, 86, 91 Duintjer, O., 236 Hardy, D.W., 79 Dulk, M. den, 195, 270 Harnack, A., 144 Duns Scotus, 59, 68, 182 Hartvelt, G.P., 57, 198, 208, 209, 212, Dyrness, W.A., 79 216 Hegel, G.W.F., 27, 226, 247, 331, 334, Eckhart, 334 372 Edwards, D., 342 Hendrik of Gent, 182 Egmond,A.van,XI,374, 375, Heppe, H., 324, 394 441 Herrmann, W., 226, 248, 263, 292, Eicher, P., 21 318 Engel, M.P., 70, 87 Heshusius, T., 192 Erasmus, Desiderius, 24, 118 Hesselink, I.J., 74 Eunomius, 334 Hieronymus, 178 Holtrop, Ph.C., 162, 166 Farel, G., 189 Houtepen A., 9, 140, 244, 429 Fatio, O., 37 Hromádka, J.L., 257 Febvre, L., 37 Hugo of St. Victor, 180 Feuerbach, L., 312, 353 Hume, D., 230, 233, 234 Fert, Anne le, 34 Hunsinger, G., 273, 375 Fichte, J.G., 48, 49 Ficino, Marsilio, 69 Irenaeus of Lyon, 49, 62, 106, Franck, Sébastian, 51 374 Francke, H.R., 334 Francis I, 22, 23, 25, 133 Jansen, H., 144 Frederick the Great, 229 Jacobs, P., 28, 29, 163 Jehle, F., 257 Gadamer, Hans G., 68 Jeﬀerson, Th., 235 Ganoczy, A., 31, 96, 148, 202 Jelsma, A.J., 434 index of names 469

Johnson, W.S., 5, 423 Maas, W., 49, 146 Jones, S., 55 Major, John, 60, 122 Jong, J. de, 42 Marheineke, Ph., 321, 331 Jüngel, E., 9, 12, 13, 45, 48, 241, Marquard, R., 286 244, 294, 296, 300, 310, 318, 322, Marquardt, F.W., 255 363, 373, 375, 386, 399, 410, 448, Martyr, Peter, 216 452 Marx, K., 312 Maurer, E., 282 Kaiser, C.B., 134–135 McCormack, B.L., 3, 261, 304, 305, Kamphuis, B., 260, 383 364 Kant, I., 81, 123, 225–248, 314, 372 McFague, S., 12, 55 passim Mellin de Saint Gelais, 36 Karelse, L., 5, 423 Meijering, E.P., 118, 143, 320, 349 Kattenbusch, F., 3 Melanchthon, Ph., 119, 319, 400 Kingdon, R.M., XI, 33, 34, 35, Michel, K.H., 242 161 Millet, O., 36, 52, 55 Keulen,D.van,XI Moltmann, J., 129, 283, 375 Köhler, W., 192 Mozart, W.A., 8, 396 Köstlin, J., 85 Muller, R.A., 4, 5, 28, 55, 67, 68, 84, Kooi, A. van der, 424 90, 109, 110, 160, 419, 434 Kooi, C. van der, 8, 66, 261, 280, Myconius, O., 162 289, 389, 431, 441 Korsch, D., 5 Naphy, W.G., 34, 162 Krötke, W., 255 Natorp, P., 289 Kroon,M.de,26, 28 Nevin, J.W., 208 Krusche, W., 82, 99, 128 Nietzsche, Fr., 243, 306, 438 Küng, H., 227 Noordmans, O., 385, 424 Kuitert, H.M., 124, 145, 260, 286, Nösgen, D., 148 428–429 Kuyper, A., 7, 163, 175, 210, 424 Oakley, F., 178 Oberman, H.A., XI, 31, 32, 45, 61, Lanser-van der Velden, A., 437 104, 118, 122, 129, 130, 147, 159, Leeuw, G. van der, 405 163, 164, 174, 176–178, 215, 220, Lasco, Johannes à, 209 434 Leibnitz, G.W., 234, 236, 239 Ockham, William of, 60, 182, 183, Leisegang, H., 58 334 Lessing, G.E., 229, 287, 413 Oorthuys, G., 163 Lienhard, M., 51 Origen, 49 Lindbeck, G.A., 12, 429 Osiander, Andreas, 43, 45 Lindberg, D.C., XI, 58, 66, 130 Overbeck, Fr., 258, 259, 365 Link, Chr., 84 Locher, G.W., 192 Palamas, G., 329 Locke, J., 229, 230, 233 Pannenberg, W., 2, 21, 282, 283, 310, Lohmann, J.F., 261, 289 332, 382, 428 Lombard, Peter, 180, 204 Parker, T.H.L., 85, 86 Luther, Martin, 31, 47, 107, 118, 205, Parmenides, 146 206, 400, 404 Pascal, B., 232 470 index of names

Paschasius, Radbertus, 193 Siegele-Wenschkewitz, L., 254 Pﬂeiderer, G., 5, 254, 263 Siger of Brabant, 65 Phigius, A., 169 Simonides, 88 Philo of Alexandria, 49 Socrates, 118 Pico della Mirandola, 69 Sozino, Laelio, 154, 156 Pinnock, C.H., 28, 29 Speelman, H.A., 31, 33, 190 Plantinga, A., 7, 426, 430 Spieckermann, I., 261, 280 Plasger, G., XI Spinoza, Baruch de, 228 Plato, 146 Stancaro, Francesco, 44 Polanus, A., 355 Steck, K.G., 5, 228, 251, 389 Polman, A.D.R., 163 Stoevesandt, H., 248, 254 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 65, 69 Stoker, W., 9, 10, 242 Pott, H.J., 251 Stott, John, 342

Quenstedt, Andreas, 303, 304, 355 Tachau, K.H., 58, 59 Tempier, Etienne, 129 Rabelais, F., 37 Thomas Aquinas, 44, 60, 122, 125, Rad, G. von, 441 163, 334, 357, 404 Rade, M., 389 Tillet, Louis du, 31 Ragaz, L., 257 Torrance, Thomas F., 59, 60, 122 Rahtmann, Herman, 97 Tracy, D., 2 Randall Coats, C., 57 Trinkaus, Ch., 69 Rendtorff,T.,5, 251, 255, 323, 346 Tylenda, J.R., 192 Reuter, K., 122, 150 Richard, L.J., 25 Veenhof, J., 99, 100, 102 Richard of St. Victor, 332 Veldhuis, H., 448 Ritschl, A., 226, 247, 263, 312, 338, Verhoogt, J.P., 9 341, 342 Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 216 Ritschl, O., 28 Villeneuve, see Servet Rohkrämer, M., 257 Vroom, H.M., 10 Rorem, P.E., 214 Waldenfels, H., 21 Sadoletus, Jacopo, 40, 96 Ward, G., 5, 423 Sauter, G., 3, 76 Warfield, B.B., 89, 93 Schellong, D., 5, 228, 251, 389 Watt, James, 235 Schilder, K., 52, 163, 175 Weber, O., 32, 158, 217 Schildmann, W., 371 Weber, M., 76, 125, 140, 254 Schleiermacher, F.D.E., 119, 225, Welker, M., 281 226, 247, 248, 263, 284, 289, 339, Wendel, F., 24, 150 350, 351, 353, 355, 431 Wernle, P., 3, 389 Schreiner, S.E., 66, 68 Westphal, J., 192, 207, 208, 214 Schwab, Gustav, 296 Williams, G.H., 65, 66 Schweizer, Alexander, 28 Willis, E.D., 44, 215 Seguenny, A., 51 Wirth, J., 54 Selderhuis, H.J., 138, 434 Wissink, J., 261, 264 Selinger, S., 253 Wittgenstein, L., 282 Servet, Miguel, 23, 37, 65, 66, 74 Wolff,Chr.,234, 236 index of names 471

Wolterstorﬀ,N.,7, 11, 226, 233, 239, Zachman, R.C., 113 426 Zimmerli, W., 66 Woudenberg, R. van, XI, 8, 64 Zwingli, H., 31, 32, 192, 198, 201 Wright, D.F., 42

INDEX OF TERMS

Absoluteness, 309, 327 Barmen confession, 258, 311, 313, Accommodation, 41–48, 72, 145, 391, 395, 440 185–186, 299–300, 352, 360 Biblical studies, 270, 285, 404, 409, As a concession, 47, 185–186, 219 421, 441 Actualism, 17, 303, 383–384, 408, Biblicism, 102, 118, 171, 207, 404 446 Adoption, 100, 165, 186, 203, 434 Calvin’s personality, 76, 140, 161– Affects, 15, 94, 109, 144–147, 187, 163, 367, 434 339 Caro vivifica, 208–211 Agnosticism, 291, 418, 438 Categorical difference, 42, 43, 257, Agnosm, 12, 226, 319 286, 299, 389, 422 Anabaptism, 66 Categories, aristotelian, 123, 125, Analogy, 214, 265–268, 360–362 146, 236, 332 Analogia proportionalitatis, 244, Causality, 28, 127–130, 135, 155–156, 301 168–169, 447 Analogia fidei, 293, 300–301, 430 Certainty, 98–99, 108–115, 170, 398 Analogia entis, 298, 303 Christology, 43–45, 105–106, 204– Analogia attributionis, 303–305 210, 446 Angels, 46, 118, 126 Anhypostasy and enhypostasy, Anthropology, 45–46, 64–70, 88, 89, 273, 344, 392–393, 402–403, 132, 440 432, 447 Anthropologisation, 225–226, 238, Assumptio carnis, 43–44, 273, 360 352, 403 Anthropomorphism, 152, 185, 299, Communicatio idiomatum, 179, 303, 339, see also accommodation 206 Apriorism, 280, 428 Eternal son, 43 Arbitrariness, 133, 143 Light of life, 398 Artist, 75, 332–333 Logos ensarkos, 45 Ascend, 43 Mediator in creation, 43–44 Ascension, 42, 128, 206–207, 217 Mirror, 100, 114, 154, 381 Assistence, 406, 423, 435 Natures of, 44 Astronomy/astrology, 36, 126 Status exinanitionis et exaltatio- Asymmetry, 294, 299, 373, 385–386, nis, 394 390 Unio mystica, 106–108, 212 Atheism, 37, 38, 72, 263, 291, 396, 438 Unio personalis, 155, 210–211, 403 Augustianism, 64 Church Averroism, 37, 66, 130 And government, 30, 32, 34, 227, 254, 255 Baptism, 6, 387–414, 451–452 As institute, 194 Infant, 387–388 Authority, 103 474 index of terms

Cognitio intuitiva et abstractiva, 59– Empirism, 233–235 60 Epicurism, 37, 66, 127–128 Communicatio idiomatum, see Epistemology, 7–20, 64–65, 209, christology 232–250 Conscience, 35–39, 73, 105, 205 Reformed, 8, 74–75, 430–431 Consistory, 24, 32–34 Eschatology, 14, 27, 66, 107, 114, 132, Consubstantiation, 205 175, 259, 307 Contingency, 163, 174 Eternity, 358–360, 384 Corporality, 65, 107, 435 Ethics, 14, 26, 35, 133, 270 Cosmology, 78, 84, 126, 134–135, Ethos, 23 146–147, 232, 354, 366, 426 Excommunication, 35, 189 Cosmopolitism, 227 Ex opere operato, 204 Counsel of God, 27–29, 50, 57, 125, Extra calvinisticum, 44, 209, 215 141–142, 159, 166, 170, 173, 381 Extreme, 56, 118, 445 Covenant, 49–51, 164, 166, 172–174, 178–179, 194, 299, 304–307, 320, Faculties of knowing, 8, 59, 62, 67, 327, 350, 362, 364, 366–367, 377– 68, 109, 111, 225, 241, 260, 262, 379, 407–409, 411, 445, 449 275, 289, 299, 375, 428, 430–433 Creation, 195, 305–308, 440 Faith (ﬁdes), 104–106 Outward ground, 305, 379 Fides qua et ﬁdes quae, 3, 259 Vulnerable, 378–379 And knowing, 7–13, 268 Cross, 40, 41, 47, 105, 210, 375 Fall, 46, 87, 376–377 Curiositas, 49, 62, 118–119, 167, 172– Family, 165, 188, 203 173, 337, 376, 466 Fatalism, 143, 148–151 Fear, 39, 46, 131, 156–158 Deism, 37, 123, 384 Foundationalism, 240, 246 Descend, 38, 41–42, 47, 102, 105, Freedom, 29, 145 210 Freethinker, 37 Despotism, 133, 141, 161, 335, 364 Determinism, 27, 29, 122, 181, 385– God 386, 408, 445–446 Aseitas, 126, 326 Devotio moderna, 122 Being and act, 322 Ding an sich, 237–240, 332 Competency, 132, 348 Disputation and doubt, 309–310 Constancy, 51, 353 Docta ignorantia, 172, 174 Creator, 134 Doctrine, 11, 38, 94–95 Deus revelatus et absconditus, Dogmatics, 1, 11–12, 94, 240, 255– 118, 381, 436 256, 281–289, 417–426 Dynamism, 71, 127 Church, 10, 255–256 Essence, 125, 152–154, 175, 319– Loci, 90 320, 381 Training in listening, 321, 421 Father, 83, 131, 136–137, 145, 150– Dream, 69, 72, 267, 360, 370–371, 383 155, 187–188 Fountain, 25, 210 Eastern orthodoxy, 212, 329 Freedom, 175, 326–328 Eclecticism, 314 Glory, 42, 360–361 Election, 363–383 Goodness, 76–77, 121, 131 Shadow, 124, 143, 375 Grace, 157, 337–339 index of terms 475

Hiddenness, 139, 274–276 Speculative, 28–29, 267 Holiness, 46, 337–338 Images, ban on, 79–81 Immutability, 51, 141, 143–148, Immortality, 37, 64–70 181, 353 Incarnation, 38 Incomprehensibility, 126, 276 Insider’s perspective, 262 Judge, 131, 138–139 Inspiration, Doctrine of, 89–90 Judgement, 338 Instrument, 214, 218 Knowability, 12–13, 124–126, 225– Intellectualism, 22, 67, 92 226, 266–267, 271 Invitation, 3, 6, 15, 16, 27–29, 47, 55, Lord, 131–132 62–63, 84, 113, 116, 131, 157, 176, Love, 324–325 195, 206, 263, 307, 393, 411, 421, Mercy, 131, 151–158, 341 442–443, 449, 453 Mother, 144–145, 185–186 Nearness, 38–39, 106–107, 349, Jesus Christ, 40, 43, 45, 204, 205, 442 246, 252, 265, 271, 272, 393– Objectiﬁcation, 317 397 Omni-activity, 407–408 Orator, 48 Knowledge Patience, 345–347 Scientiﬁc, 7, 30 Personhood, 382–384 Construction, 239 Power, 131, 355 Cognitio et comprehensio, 109 Presence, 350 Relational, 8 Providence/Care, 76–77, 133–135, And senses, 77 143 Imitation, 57–62, 234 Qualities, 119, 130–131, 333, 334, Knowledge of God 336 Bipolarity, 14 Regret, 145 Clarity, 60 Righteousness, 131, 348 Cognitio dei, 7, 319 Self-binding, 155, 181, 183, 184 Cognitio duplex et simplex, 81, Sublimity, 47, 107, 126, 187, 302– 82, 85–86 303 Fountains, 14, 21, 424, 425, 439 Subtance and subject, 331–332, God known by God, 275, 282, 381 293 Unity, 348 Immediate, 75 Will, 105, 129, 143, 149–151 Notitia, 25 Wisdom, 141 Soteriological, 14–15, 40, 287 Partial, 13 Hierarchy of Being, 123, 200, 289 Participation in, 264–265, 347 Historisation, 385, 408, 445 Practical, 27 History of Jesus Christ, 11, 252, 373– Proofs of, 232, 241–242 374, 386, 394, 401–402, 444–445 Self-knowledge, 24 Hope, 115, 217 Senses, 8, 15, 75–84 Humanity, 1, 32, 227–228, 243, 417 Succeeding, 294 Humility, 171 Labyrinth, 167 Idealism, 238, 340, 341, 425 Language, 52–57, 282–283, 422 Critical, 17, 289–293, 427 Lex naturalis, 74 476 index of terms

Libertines, 54, 162 Office, 194, 393, 407 ‘Lichterlehre’, 395, 439, 440 Prophetic, 393–394 Limits, 16–17, 29, 115–116, 124 Ontological connection, 402, 412 Opacity, 139 Means, 74, 103, 184, 194, 271, 420, Optics, 59 425, 435, 451–452 Ordo/ordinatio, 59, 147, 155, 168, Mediator, 43 185, 440 Merits, 155–156, 171, 183 Ontologicalandmoralorder, Metaphysics, 10, 147, 233–236, 241, 231 321 Ordo salutis, 61, 62, 108, 122 Millenialism, 50 Minority, 228 Paris articles, 130, 182 Mirror, 6, 15–17, 45, 57, 63, 93, 100, Partner, 132, 270, 320–321, 366, 392, 105–106, 112–115, 117, 119, 122, 400–401, 407–408 124, 150, 152, 154, 156, 160, 172, Pedagogy, 49, 345 184–186, 199, 201, 204, 225, 228, Perlocution, 53 278, 292, 299, 301, 305–308, 314, Personalism, 191, 213 351, 361–362, 373, 381–382, 387, Persuasion, 53, 110, 310 419, 425–426, 438, 440, 442–443, Piety, 25–26, 75, 82 450, 453 Pilgrimage (peregrinatio), 60, Modality, 262–263 66, 79, 114, 116, 217, 229, 232, Modernity, 5, 226, 251, 256, 270, 434 417–418 Pneumatology, 2, 16–17, 84, 291, Early modern, 5, 64, 241 391, 440 Postmodern, 5, 422, 423 Postulates, 231, 237, 245 Premodern, 4, 5, 143, 144, 194, Potentia absoluta et ordinata, 123, 256 176, 185, 356 Mortificatio-vivificatio, 157 Oboedentialis, 78, 180 Mystagogy, 295 Decretum concretum, 371 Mystery, 266 Decretum horribile, 165 Predestination, 18, 27, 111, 138, 158– Nature, 240, 291–292, 303 174, 443 Natural theology, 81, 255, 274, 288, Parallelism, 164–166 299, 303, 308, 310–313, 391, 428, Reprobation, 161, 363–364 437, 440 Presentia realis, 107, 206, 213 Nature psalms, 306–307 Profane sphere, 396, 418 Necessity, 150, 168, 327, 328 Prolegomena, 21–22, 86, 259 Necessitas antecedens et conse- Providence, 128, 133–138, see also quens, 179 God Coactio, 150 Power, see potentia absoluta et Negative connection, 256, 261 ordinata Neo-orthodoxy, 4, 312, 389 Profit, 25–26, 110–121, 123, 139, 170– Noetic, 71, 279, 412–414 174 Noumenal world, 231 Psychology, 93, 113, 265, 269, 270, 345, 433–434 Obedience, 103, 328 Public interest, 18, 23, 30–31, 217, Objectivism, 12, 201, 293, 385 253–254, 417 index of terms 477

Rationalism, 37 Sensus conscientiae, 70, 73, 83 Realism, 248, 263, 292, 396, 401, Signum, 195–200, 399 425 Soul, 37, 64–70, 67–69 Regulative idea, 242 Spectacles, 62–63, 90 Relationality, 144–145, 212, 333 Speculation, 43, 56, 62, 116, 118–120, Reprobation, see predestination 124, 176, 301, 318, 321, 349–351, Respect, 25 382, 397 Rhetoric, 52, 93, 109 Spirit, 40–41, 45, 63, 78, 90, 93–103, Revelation 106, 127–128, 200, 218–219, 284, Dialectic of veiling and unveiling, 398, see also pneumatology and 276–278, 282, 296–297, 305, means 309, 373, 380, 409, 422– Inhabitation of the, 77–78 423 Sealed by the, 98, 108, 171 Encounter, 9, 10, 190–191, 211, Spiritualism, 51, 194, 201 219, 264, 294, 297, 320 Stoicism, 64, 75, 128–129 Mystery, 9, 266 Story, 386, 451 Plural, 92, 259, 266, 284, 331, Student, 186, 235 333, 382, 397 Subject, 11, 47, 56–57, 77–78, 99, Positivism, 4 103, 191, 227, 232, 258, 267, Propositional, 56, 94, 397 293, 313, 369, 401, 410, 447– Realism, 248, 293 448 Self-revelation, 11, 260, 265, 293, Absolute, 282 320, 329–335, 382, 436 Substitation motif, 73, 87 Singular, 272, 284 Supper, 46, 49, 189 Supra- and infralapsarianism, 376– Sacrament, 6, 44, 195–221, 271– 377, 445–446 272, 299, 387, 391–401, 450– Synergism, 385–386 453 Doubleness of, 404 Teaching, 56, 92, 94 Cognitive plus, 197–199 Terministic logic, 123 Flesh and blood, 196, 202, 208– Testimony, 11, 264, 398 213 Theater, 77–78, 111 Means of salvation, 409 Theodicy, 78, 140, 142, 341–443, Satire, 37 375–376 School, 83, 101–102 Theologia archetypa et ectypa, 271 Scientia media, 357 Time, 319, 347, 384–385 Scopus, 89, 105, 156, 184 Tolerance, 74, 228 Scotism, 122, 174 Transsubstantiation, 192–193, 204 Scripture, 55, 84–93, 102, 424 Trinity, 124, 129, 260, 282, 371– Authority, 91, 96–97 372 Mirror, 62 Trust, 131, 148, 156–158 Self-examination, 36–37, 111–112 Senses, 10, 47, 68–69, 75–84, 198, Ubiquity, 205, 216–217 219–220 Universality, 227, 341–342, 391 Sensibility, 339, 453 Of God, 83, 310, 440 Sensus divinitatis, 70–74, 83, Of grace, 369–370, 377–378, 413, 248 444 478 index of terms

Via moderna et antiqua, 122 Wet nurse, 47, 434 Visual Arts, 80–81, 332–333, Will (Voluntas), 67, 105, 356–358 425 Word, 89–95, 258, 392 Voluntarism, 67, 110, 174 And Spirit, 82, 95–103, 436–437 Studies in the History of Christian Traditions

(formerly Studies in the History of Christian Thought)

EDITED BY ROBERT J. BAST

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