Participation and Communicability © 2014 Wolter Huttinga Isbn 978-90-5881-829-4 (proefschrift) Isbn 978-90-5881-831-7 (handelseditie) Omslagillustratie: Jan van Eyk, Het Lam Gods (1432) THEOLOGISCHE UNIVERSITEIT VAN DE GEREFORMEERDE KERKEN IN NEDERLAND TE KAMPEN PARTICIPATION AND COMMUNICABILITY HERMAN BAVINCK AND JOHN MILBANK ON THE RELATION BETWEEN GOD AND THE WORLD ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT TER VERKRIJGING VAN DE GRAAD VAN DOCTOR IN DE THEOLOGIE, OP GEZAG VAN DE RECTOR DR. M. TE VELDE, HOOGLERAAR IN DE THEOLOGIE, ZO GOD WIL IN HET OPENBAAR TE VERDEDIGEN OP DINSDAG 25 NOVEMBER 2014 TE 15.00 UUR IN DE LEMKERZAAL, BROEDERSTRAAT 16 TE KAMPEN door Wolter Huttinga Promotor: Prof. dr. B. Kamphuis Co-promotor: Prof. dr. J. Boersma (Regent College, Vancouver) Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. dr. C. van der Kooi (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) Prof. dr. G.C. den Hertog (Theologische Universiteit Apeldoorn) Prof. dr. R.T. Michener (Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven) Deze studie werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door het Greijdanus-Kruithof Fonds en de Stichting Afbouw Kampen. You should be patient with the unsolved matters in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed chambers, and books that are written in a very strange language. The point is: to live everything. If you live the questions, you will gradually, without noticing, one strange day live into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke, From Letters to a young poet The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were fluttering in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness: ‘Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you.’ None of us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonoured it all and did not notice the beauty and glory. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, From The Brothers Karamazow Contents Acknowledgements 11 List of Abbreviations 14 1. Introduction 15 1.1 ‘Who are we to you?’ 15 1.2 Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition 16 1.2.1 Cambridge, Amsterdam, Kampen 16 1.2.2 Radical Orthodoxy 17 1.2.3 Conversation with the Reformed Tradition 21 1.2.4 Herman Bavinck 23 1.2.5 Main tasks 25 1.3 Method 25 1.3.1 Ontological questions 25 1.3.2 Difference in systematic degree 29 1.3.3 Difference in time 31 1.3.4 Fusing horizons 33 1.3.5 Belongingness and critical distance 35 2. Participation 39 2.1 Participatory family resemblances 39 2.2 Historical-conceptual survey 41 2.2.1 Plato 41 2.2.2 Neoplatonism 44 2.2.3 Church Fathers 47 2.2.4 Augustine 51 2.2.5 The double sign of the incarnation 55 2.2.6 Thomas Aquinas 58 2.2.7 The Reformed tradition 64 2.2.8 Conclusions 70 7 3. Herman Bavinck 76 3.1 Introduction 76 3.1.1 Biography 76 3.1.2 Reading Bavinck 77 3.1.3 Theological and philosophical context 79 3.2 The divine movement of knowing 81 3.2.1 Metaphysical necessities (1): Knowledge and truth 81 3.2.2 Metaphysical necessities (2): Unity 83 3.2.3 God’s being and our knowing 84 3.2.4 Outside and inside 88 3.3 Revelation 91 3.3.1 What is revelation? 92 3.3.2 General and special revelation 96 3.3.3 ‘The ongoing rapport between heaven and earth’ 98 3.3.4 Scripture and God’s communicability 100 3.3.5 God is only known by God 102 3.4 God’s being and creation 105 3.4.1 God is being 105 3.4.2 Trinity and communicability 109 3.4.3 Will and being 114 3.5 Man, Sin, Christ: the story of God’s communicability 117 3.5.1 Adam and Christ 117 3.5.2 Sin 117 3.5.3 The covenant of grace 120 3.5.4 Contexts of the incarnation 122 3.6 Provisional Conclusions 124 4. John Milbank 126 4.1 Introduction 126 4.1.1 Biography 126 4.1.2 Reading Milbank 127 4.1.3 Theological and philosophical context 128 4.2 Beyond the Secular 131 4.2.1 Theology and Social Theory 132 8 4.2.2 The necessity of evil 133 4.2.3 Enacting the fall 137 4.2.3 Fencing off the finite 138 4.3 Created being in relation to divine fullness 143 4.3.1 Knowing: journeying in expectancy 143 4.3.2 Acting: a glimpse of the eternal 148 4.3.3 Participating in divine difference 150 4.4 God and the world: guiding principles 155 4.4.1 Thinking the impossible middle 155 4.4.2 Incarnation 160 4.4.3 The priority of the made 164 4.5 Provisional Conclusions 169 5. Discussion 172 5.1 Introduction 172 5.2 God and the world 174 5.2.1 Pantheism? Panentheism? 175 5.2.2 Bavinck: between pantheism and deism 181 5.2.3 Participation in Bavinck 185 5.2.4 Participation as communicability 191 5.2.5 Again: how to read John Milbank 195 5.2.6 John Milbank: panentheism? 196 5.2.7 Beyond the tradition: Milbank’s anti-secular agenda 199 5.2.8 Conclusions 203 5.3 Ontology and Soteriology 207 5.3.1 Reformed uneasiness with ontological participation 207 5.3.2 Knowing and salvation 212 5.3.3 Sin and evil 216 5.3.4 Incarnation 220 5.3.5 Conclusions 228 5.4 Participation as humble ontology 229 5.4.1 The adoration of the Mystic Lamb 229 5.4.2 Humble ontology 230 9 Samenvatting 234 1. Introductie 234 2. Participatie 235 3. Herman Bavinck 238 4. John Milbank 241 5. Bespreking 244 Bibliography 250 Curriculum Vitae 263 10 Acknowledgements O Lord, open Thou our lips… Having finished this study, I am thankful in many ways. In the first place, I am thankful for the subject of my thesis and the persons I have been able to study. Herman Bavinck and John Milbank, different as they are in style, have both been great sources of wisdom and thought who will influence me for the rest of my life. Furthermore, the theme of participation connected me with the wisdom of the Fathers of the church and evoked my appreciation for the Platonic-Christian Catholic tradition. Thus a new world has been opened for me, for which I will always be grateful. Although I usually relish the task of writing (especially in Dutch), the scope of the study demanded by a dissertation, and the complexity, vastness and inherent mystery of my main questions often made me hesitant to write at all. This was a new experience for me. However, if even ‘the relation between God and the world’, around which this study revolves, does not cause a human being to hesitate, then what does? I thank Barend Kamphuis for giving me the opportunity and the space for this study, as well as his ongoing support and his answering of my many questions. His open-minded and stimulating attitude gave me the courage to go frankly on paths not often treaded by theologians in our own Reformed tradition. I am also very grateful for having been introduced to Hans Boersma. Both standing in the Reformed tradition, we share the intuition that in the Catholic tradition and particularly in its ‘sacramentality’ lies something of deep and abiding value for Reformed theology. Moreover, this study has been improved greatly by his sharp and thorough comments on earlier drafts. Kampen Theological University has been an oasis for study and reflection upon the themes of this study. In the past years, it seems to have realized anew what great minds, and what a great tradition it houses. Although not everyone will have realized that a highly ‘catholicizing’ thinker was working in their midst, I hope that the results and the ‘sphere’ of this study will add to the intellectual and spiritual climate that characterise the practice of Reformed theology in Kampen. 11 I thank many people whose company has supported me a lot, not only by discussing themes and parts of my dissertation, but also by their friendliness, their simply ‘being there’, and last but not least their ‘gezelligheid’. I will mention some of them (but definitely not all!) here. I thank my good and friendly colleagues in Kampen and particularly the different PhD students and Post-Docs with whom I have been privileged to work. Particularly I wish to mention Lammert Kamphuis, with whom I was able to work closely and discuss numerous insights, and with whom I have shared in joy and in suffering. I also mention James Eglinton, whose coming to Kampen has been a joy and blessing for me personally, but also for the Kampen University in general. I also thank these (and other) persons for sharing their many jokes with me: a huge source of inspiration. The research group in Systematic Theology shared between Kampen and Apeldoorn has been a stimulating and instructive context for learning how to do theology at a high academic level. The same can be said of the NOSTER seminar on Dogmatics, Ethics and Philosophy of Religion. I cherish the many seminars and Master Classes I have attended. Quite simply, I had a great time in participating in this group.