The One Who is Three, and the Three Who is One

In an effort to make headway on my Barth studies and to find a way to navigate Barth while pastoring a church and studying towards my MA in Theology and Culture, I have decided to tag along with another blog that is heading through the Church Dogmatics in a little over a year.  I will undoubtedly miss some readings (in fact I already have), but having a ready made reading schedule provided for me that appears doable and that provides a little camaraderie will, I hope, help me achieve my goals of interfacing Barth with Pentecostalism.

Having said all of that...

Last week's readings were from the end of CD I/1 and covered Barth's doctrine of the Trinity.  This aspect of Barth is actually quite controversial.  The reasons for this are Barth's insistence on the absolute unity of God and also on his decision to use the term "modes of being" rather than "persons" when discussing the three, ummm...., well, persons of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  (There are more recently other controversial readings of Barth that also argue that in some sense Barth believed the Son was at some point, so to speak, "created."  I both disagree with this and also do not believe it touches on what I am looking at here - it usually is based on Barth's later writings than volume 1).

Barth's trinitarianism is, however, from my reading profoundly orthodox.  He interacts extensively with both the church fathers and the biblical text.  His central concern is the biblical doctrine that there is only one God and that the God whom we meet in Christ is not another.  In detailed manner he dismantles Arianism and tri-theism (saying that either approach, which he looks at together, would make whoever worships the Son an idolater).  He also speaks extensively against modalism (which he is accused of teaching) as really being a theology of One in Four rather than One in Three (because in modalism the "true" God is not Father, Son, or Spirit, but another person altogether who merely appears as these persons at various times).

For Barth, one way of looking at the Trinity (and the main way for the purposes of volume 1, on the doctrine of revelation) is to see God's three "ways of being" as Revealer, Revelation, and Revealedness.  In revelation, the One True God reveals himself in his eternal Son and is "seen" when his Spirit creates faith in the believer.  This God which we meet in revelation is the eternal God, and thus we can deduce that the God who comes to us as the Father through the Son by the Spirit must therefore eternally also be Father, Son and Spirit.  We only know God as he reveals himself, but we can trust that whom God reveals himself to be, he truly is.  Thus God exists eternally in three ways, related to one another in love - the Father begetting the Son and the Father and Son together spirating the Spirit between them.  But, despite this eternal three-ness, there is only One God.  And more importantly, the Bible never says that God has three personalities.  There is only One God and this God is One Person.

Here is where Barth's theology gets tricky.  We are accustomed to think in our day and age, if we thin of the Trinity at all, as three individual persons not unlike three human beings sitting at a table.  From Barth's perspective, today's popular trinitarianism would border dangerously close to tritheism.  But it is important to note that Barth is expressly not a modalist, nor is he denying God's eternal "three-ness."  In fact, after adding signficant qualifiers and reservations to the term "relationship" to describe how the three "modes of being" in God are connected, he then goes on to use the term himself.  What Barth is careful to do is to maintain the mystery of the Trinity.  God is not three "persons" relating to one another in a tritheistic sense.  He is One God existing eternally as Father, Son and Spirit, and the only way we know that is because God meets us in his revelation as Father, Son, and Spirit.

If anything, I see Barth's trinitarianism as walking in step with ancient trinitarian thought precisely because he is so careful to avoid making the Trinity easy.  Barth keeps the One and the Three so closely connected that the doctrine remains mysterious and overwhelming, as it should be.  Barth does not, as his critics claim, sacrifice the Three for the sake of the One.  Nor does he, like many modern preachers and writers (including myself at times) sacrifice the One for the sake of the Three.  And how do I see this as helpful for us as Pentecostals?  Precisely in this: without slipping into a Oneness error, Barth's doctrine of the Trinity in divine revelation helps us to avoid pitting Jesus the Savior against God the Judge.  It also helps us to realize that the Spirit who dwells within us is not a force but the Eternal God himself - and not less of a God than the Father or the Son.  The Spirit in our midst is causing us to see Jesus, whom to see is to see the Father.

A couple of Barth blogs perhaps worth following...

I have recently have run across a couple of blogs both of which are doing series called "Wednesdays with Barth."

One is by Able Baker at Think Theology here.

The other is by a Johnny Walker at Freedom in Orthodoxy here.

I hope to follow these along as I do my own posting.

Happy reading!

Contemplative Prayer and Pentecostal Worship

I have been reading Roman Catholic author Hans Urs Von Balthasar's book Prayer. While this book does not directly relate to the intersection of Barth and Pentecostalism, I think some reflections in this forum are appropriate, as Balthasar was a contemporary of Barth and his RC spirituality might have some valuable things to say to Pentecostalism.

Balthasar's book is primarily about contemplative prayer. He grounds the practice both in the Triune God (ch.2) and within the broader, specifically Catholic, church (ch.3). For Balthasar, contemplative prayer is primarily about hearing the Word of God, by which he means both the text of Scripture and the Person of Jesus Christ. He grounds the act of contemplation in meditation on the biblical text and the person of Jesus, and places it within the broader church and tradition both in the sense that as believers we are not alone in our faith and also in that the broader tradition provides limits and direction to what we may or may not believe ourselves to be "hearing" from God.

There are twopoints which I think intersect Balthasar's book thus far with Pentecostal spirituality. First, by grounding the contemplative's meditations in the text and in Christ, and placing it within the bounds of the community and its confession, Balthasar simultaneously sets up the expectation that the pray-er will indeed hear from God while at the same time establishing some focus and boundaries which prevent some of the wilder, subjective, and/or heretical "revelations" sometimes present within Pentecostal, charismatic, and particularly neo-Pentecostal Christianity. 

Second, though Balthasar insists that contemplative prayer should normally be practiced alone for the psychological reason that others will provide a distraction (p.77), it seems to me that what Balthasar's contemplative both expects and experiences is rather akin to what the sincere, hungry Pentecostal experiences during fervent, normally public and corporate, worship.

What do you think? Does providing Christ as the focus and the great tradition of the church as guidelines rob personal spiritual revelation of it's truly revelatory character and freedom? Does the Pentecostal in public worship experience something akin to what the contemplative experiences alone?

Starting with God

Well, it has certainly been a long time since I have blogged anything, either here or here.  Having gone back to school to pursue my Master's in Theology and Culture at Northwest University in Kirkland, WA, I have not even had much time to think, much less read Barth, much less write about him.  But going back to school itself is actually related to my desire to link Pentecostalism and Barth in my own life and ministry, and possibly in the thinking, reading, and praying of others.

All that having been said, I have been re-reading Barth's Dogmatics in Outline these days as a mental break from paper writing and Greek homework.  Today I came across this classic Barthian thought:

"The mystery of creation on the Christian interpretation is not primarily - as the fools think in their heart - the problem whether there is a God as the originator of the world; for in the Christian sense it cannot be that first of all we presuppose the reality of the world and then ask whether there is also a God.  But the first thing, the thing we begin with, is God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  And from that standpoint the great Christian problem is propounded, whether it can really be the case that God wishes to be not only for Himself, but that outside Him there is the world, that we exist alongside and outside Him?  That is a riddle." (p.53)

 Classic Barth.  No room for apologetics.  No room for the question, Is there a God?  As in all Barth's thought, the unavoidable presupposition (not conclusion!) is the triune God - Father, Son and Spirit.  Does creation exist?  Do I exist?  Do you exist?  These are valid questions, but not the question, Is there a God?  The God we meet in Christ is the Great Presupposition which we know because of revelation.  And because of this Great Presupposition, we also know that creation and we ourselves are real too.  How do we know that?  The incarnation.  "Because God has become man, the existence of creation can no longer be doubted" (p.53).

What do you think?  Is Barth's confidence in God's existence and the unquestionableness of the divine revelation overstated?  Mis-stated?  Or profoundly right on target?

Brokenness

"This is how it happens between God and those who belong to him!  This is why they are all such broken, human, dissatisfying figures.  Each one is an anti-hero.  Their life histories are inconclusive.  Their life's work is incomplete.  The condition of their souls and their success are more than problematic..." - Barth, "Biblical Questions, Insights, and Vistas," in The Word of God and Theology, Kindle Location 2309

The above quote comes from a lecture by Barth to a group of students in 1920.  His lecture, apparently, was not well received and was criticized as being somewhat aimless.  As I read Barth's lecture, however, I felt that the meaning he wanted to convey to an audience seeking to know how the Bible could be "practical" or "relevant" in the modern age was that the Bible can only be practical and relevant by calling into question everything that we would consider practical and relevant.  Barth's lecture is more a thundering gospel sermon than a true lecture.  Perhaps that is why it was so poorly received.

Barth  himself was a picture of the contradiction that is the Christian believer.  We are simul iustus et peccator, simultaneously justified and sinful.  We hear God's "Yes" only by hearing God's "No."  Conversely, we only truly realize how sinful our sin is after we've come to the knowledge of our forgiveness in Jesus.  Barth was simultaneously proud and humble.  He was not faithful to his marriage.  In many ways, he was a poor disciple.  Yet he also grasped the gospel like few ever have.  He understood Christ.  He endeavored, in his own somewhat pathetic way, to maintain his marriage.  Barth was simul iustus et peccator.  Barth knew brokenness.  He saw the glory of God in the failures of the patriarchs and the shortcomings of the church.  Barth knew brokenness.

Within the Pentecostal community, with our rightly emphasized focus on holiness, what do we do with the continued brokenness of the church and of believers?  Do we continue our pattern of separation?  Do we call into question the salvation of those whose walk with Jesus is, lets be honest, a mess?  Do we quake within ourselves at our own ongoing sinfulness, ashamed and scared to admit how far we still have to go? 

As Pentecostals, what do we do with brokenness?

Is God "for" us?

"The grace of God is concealed under His sentence and judgment, His Yes under His No.  The man elected by God is the man who with his contradiction is broken and destroyed by the greater contradiction of God." Karl Barth, CD IV/1, p.173 (T&T Clark Edition)

Traditionally speaking, Pentecostalism is not Calvinistic.  Church of God (Cleveland) theologian Steven Jack Land states in his book, Pentecostal Spirituality, that Pentecostal Christianity which is true to the first ten years of the movement's existence (which he terms the movement's "heart" and not its "infancy") "is more Arminian than Calvinist in its approach to issues of human agency and perseverance" (p.18).  And after giving a further rundown of where Pentecostalism stands in relation to the other great traditions of the Christian faith (i.e. more Calvinist than Lutheran in its approach to the Law, more Eastern than Western in its approach to the spiritual life, and so on), Land states,

 "Pentecostalism, therefore, exists in continuity but differentiating discontinuity with other Christian spiritualities.  To the extent that it has a distinctive spirituality and theology, it may not be seen, used, or identified with an experience or experiential episodes.  There may be Pentecostal-like experiences but Pentecostal spirituality is another matter." (p.19, emphasis mine)

I am still working my way through Land's book, and was very excited to see him interacting with Barth quite a bit later on.  For now, my take on what Land is getting at is that Pentecostalism cannot be boiled down to "Spirit baptism."  A Christian piety that is in essence entirely Reformed, for example, but that "includes" a doctrine of Spirit-baptism as a second work of grace or that includes tongue-speaking and other sign gifts in prayer and worship, would not in Land's view qualify as "Pentecostal."  His book is an effort to both discover and prescribe a holistic picture of Pentecostal spirituality, indeed of Pentecostalism, that allows it to function as its own stream and not as an odd subset of the evangelical-fundamentalist camp.

At first, I was not sure if I would qualify as "Pentecostal" to Land.  I am still not sure, to be honest.  But then again, I have not gotten very far into his book.  I am also not reading it to find out if I am Pentecostal anyway, but to be guided in my own Pentecostal life, so I suppose its a moot point.  But working my way through his book reminded me of a significant intersection between the theology of Karl Barth and the best of what I know of as Pentecostalism: the question of God's fundamental attitude towards humanity.

In much of Reformed Christianity, particularly under the influence of the Puritans, the question of whether God is "for" me can almost sound idolatrous.  God is for himself, of course!  And I think that biblically, this is true.  God's fundamental stance is "for himself" - for his own glory, for his own will to be done, etc.  But sometimes this topic can degenerate into a picture of God as indifferent toward mankind, or even indignant.  He has given us much, we have squandered it, and God can't wait to crush most of us.  He has chosen to elect a few (for his own glory, of course), but damn the rest.  And even those of us who are pretty sure we might be elect better keep our house in order.  If we don't, we might find out after all that God has predestined us to hell and wants to damn us with the rest of the world.  It is an important lesson in God's unassailable sovereignty and of the fearfulness of his judgment, but the picture it gives us of God can be quite skewed.  It is a picture of a God who primarily wants to damn people.

In much of classical Pentecostalism we can get the same picture, but we come to it by an opposite route.  Just today, a woman posted a reminder for us all on a social media website that "faith without works is dead."  In other words, we better get our act in gear doing "good works" and avoiding sin, or in the end God may say that our trust in Christ is not good enough and will damn us anyway.  So here we have a picture of a God who perhaps does not want to damn people, but who is keeping track of our spiritual score-sheets and is certainly more than willing to damn us if we get lazy and watch a sitcom when we could be serving in a soup kitchen.

Something that is refreshing in Barth's understanding of the gospel is how he makes sense of humanity's plight and of God's answer to that plight.  For Barth, God's approach to man is always grace.  He has only ever had one covenant with man, one answer to man.  God's will for man is life.  Thus, sin is man's contradiction to God's Yes to man.  God offers life, man chooses death.

"He chooses a freedom which is no freedom.  He is therefore a prisoner of a world-process, of chance, of all-powerful natural and historical forces, above all of himself.  He tries to be his own master, and to control his relations to God and the world and his fellow-man.  And as he does so, the onslaught of nothingness prevails against him, controlling him in death in an irresistible and senseless way and to his own loss." (Barth, CD IV/1 p.173)

Barth's theology is a radical affirmation of the apostle John's statement that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5).  God is life, and offers us life.  Death is the result of humanity's refusal of life for a no-life. 

Barth's take on election (which changed in emphasis, but not necessarily in content, throughout his writing career) fits into this picture.  First, election means that God chooses to be God for man.  God is "for us."  God himself is elect.  Second, election means that humanity as a whole is chosen by God.  God has always only ever had one Word for mankind: grace.  So not only has God chosen to be God for man, God has chosen that man be man for God.  God has chosen this relationship.  But this also means that, from eternity past, God has chosen to be God for man and man for God in Christ.  Jesus was always God's plan, which is different than saying sin was always God's plan.  But because sin has happened (which God always knew would happen), Jesus Christ is also God for man and man for God as a solution to the sin problem.  In Barth's words, Jesus is "the Judge judged in our place."  He keeps the covenant for us and also takes the judgment we deserve.  Jesus has repaired the relationship between man and God.  He has reconciled us.  From then on, God has been at work in Christ by the Spirit applying that reconciliation to human lives by the ministry of the church.

But something that is fundamental to Barth's thought - something which he is willing to even risk speaking in contradictory and paradoxical terms to make "clear" - is that election is still relational and that God's fundamental stance is still always for man.  Grace is still always grace.  Wrath and judgment are simply what grace looks like when it confronts sin.  The elect are those who "realize" their predicament, who are "too weak" to fight off God's loving advance, and who accept who they are in Christ and walk into the new life that comes from knowing the Truth.

Despite its history of petty legalisms, name-it-and-claim-it preachers, Word of Faith "healers," and other aberrations, a fundamental feature of Pentecostal faith (as I understand it) is also the understanding that God is primarily for us.  For the early Pentecostals, God was a God of wrath and judgement, to be sure.  The God of the Bible is a God of wrath and judgement, so their understanding was solidly based.  But underlying all their other understandings was the primary realization that God is a generous God, a loving God who "baptizes us in the Spirit of his Love," who heals, who reconciles, who has regard for the poor, who wants many to be saved, who is no respecter of persons, who accepts all to who come to him by faith, who does not desire that any perish but that all come to repentance.  The God who we meet in Christ, the God who we meet in the Bible, is the God that the Pentecostals discovered is, radically, for us.  This is the same God who Barth discovered, and who we can discover too as we behold Christ, receive of his Spirit, and mediate on his written Word.  He is a God of grace.  He is a God of healing and hope.  He is a God who is for us!  Hallelujah! 

Lessons from Karl Barth's miraculous healing

"Mention may be made of one notable incident.  Shortly before Christmas 1964 I had a slight stroke which for half a day robbed me of speech - perhaps a sign in view of the much too much that I have said in my lifetime(1).  Then, possibly in unconscious protest against the undue disparagement of the third Evangelist by ruling New Testament scholars(2), and certainly to the edification of the deaconness [sic.] who was caring for me(3), the name Zacharias (Lk. 1:22) clearly passed over my lips in description of my state.  Quite soon afterwards I was able to say more about the situation.  Nothing like this has happened to me since - not yet(4)!"

- Karl Barth, in "Preface," Church Dogmatics p.viii (T&T Clark edition)

The above quote appears as one of Barth's many fine-print excursuses, and to me is one of the most amusing and fascinating.  Not only does this little portion testify to the elderly theologian's experience of what he clearly considers a miraculous healing, it also is a very revealing and (for me, at least) endearing piece to read.  There are several things that jump out to me from this little paragraph. . .

(1) Barth's ability to make fun of himself appears clearly in his speculation that the momentary loss of speech was some sort of chastisement for having already spoken too much in his life.  Barth was verbose and opinionated.  One fellow theologian once quipped that Barth's Dogmatics must have been written for the angels - because only angels had time to read it all!  And Barth himself once said that, while there may be great painters or great scientists, there can be no such thing as a "great theologian," because one can only be great in reference to his or her subject.  No one is great standing next to God.

(2) Barth's freedom to be critical of the critics is a freedom that we need to hold onto.  The present surge within Pentecostalism to cast off it's fundamentalistic roots (or perhaps shackles) is a glorious thing.  God has been gracious to our movement, and has used us as a mighty witness to the rest of the body of Christ that the Spirit is a very present and powerful Person.  During this time, Pentecostalism, at least in America, has generally been rather fundamentalistic in its outlook and approach to the Bible.  As we cast off this unhealthy burden and discover the real depths and heights of both Scripture and tradition, we need to joyfully retain the freedom that Barth had to affirm the truth of the message of scripture: that God is a living God who reconciles us to Himself through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit.

(3) Barth's joyful amusement at the circumstances of his healing, and at its effect on the woman caring for him, makes me appreciate him that much more.

(4) His happy anticipation at the age of 80 that God may still have some surprises awaiting the old theologian - not least of which, Barth would probably say, would be the resurrection of his body - witnesses to me that a man can be a profound thinker, a controversial theologian, a "doctor of the church," and still be a man of faith, hope, and love.

Lastly, I wonder if it is no coincidence that this story appears in the preface to his volume on Spirit baptism.  As I have said elsewhere, Barth actually wrote quite a bit about the Holy Spirit.  He also wrote in some places about the miraculous experiences of many in the days of the early church.  As a modern, and as an inheritor of the Reformed tradition, Barth seemed often to think of the miraculous experiences of the early believers as little more than interesting "phenomena" - and certainly not as phenomena that the contemporary church should be seeking in its own life.  But God has a sense of humor, and his grace is sufficient even for sinners like Barth.  Miracles do happen, and God is still at work in the world.  God has spoken once for all in his Son - but the reconciling and healing work of the Spirit goes on until the End.

Excellent reflection over at IHEARTBARTH on the faithfulness of Christ

There is some debate in the Protestant Christian world whether the Greek phrase in Paul, "pistis Christou" should be translated "faith in Christ" or "faithfulness of Christ." Fellow Barth blogger Rick Waldholm Jr. has a great reflection on Barth's take on that phrase here.

Much thanks to my fellow bloggers!

When I began this project, I hoped it would allow me to become part of the writing/blogging community of Christian thinkers and theologians out there, kindred spirits and obstinate debaters alike.  You have shared about my blog on your own pages, or created links, or written comments, or just plain been cool people.  So I want to thank you all and plug your own awesome blogs!

Monte Lee Rice: Monte Lee Rice - Proclaiming through word and deed for the healing of all creation

Amanda MacInnis: Cheesewearing Theology

Brian Fulthorp: συνεσταύρωμαι: living the crucified life

Rick Waldholm Jr: I Heart Barth

Brian LePort: Near Emmaus

And anyone else that I forgot!!

The non-bloggers who have been a blessing to me in this project would include: Marty Folsom (an excellent theologian and professor), Frank Macchia (for being willing to dialog a bit on my ideas), and my fellow pastors Dan Houston and Bjorn Meinhardt for their encouragement.

Thanks!!

Jesus Christ's Self-Attestation

³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹ And because of his words many more became believers.
⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” - John 4:39-42

As I continue my foray into Church Dogmatics IV, I am deluged by things I want to write about.  But something jumped out at me today that both reminded me of the above scripture in John's Gospel and of the Pentecostal emphasis on the need for a personal encounter with God.  

In the early pages of the section "The Way of the Son of God into the Far Country" (p.157ff in the T&T Clark Edition), Barth begins his threefold division of redemption that he has just spent 150-plus pages "introducing."  For Barth, the incarnate Son of God cannot be abstracted from the event of atonement.  The incarnation of the Son is the atonement.  But Barth does say that the event of atonement can be examined on three different levels: the God who reconciles, man who is reconciled, and God-and-man in reconciliation.  He begins his exploration of the God who reconciles with an examination of how Jesus appears in the New Testament, particularly the Synoptic Gospels.

In the Synoptics,

"He [Jesus] is not simply a better man, a more gifted, a more wise or noble or pious, in short a greater man.  But as against all other men and their differences we have in the person of this man One who is their Lord and Lawgiver and Judge." (p.160)

Barth goes on,

"The New Testament community does not merely think, but lives and acts in the knowledge and on the presupposition that in this man 'dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily' (Col. 2:9)" (p.160)

After spending some time reinforcing this, particularly in his own context, deeply important point, Barth makes some comments that are both very typical of his theology of revelation but also very significant for we Pentecostals who see ourselves as above all a missional community of Christ.

"He is to them [i.e., to the New Testament community] the Christ, the Kyrios, the Son of Man and the Son of God, the One who is absolutely different and exalted, even before they describe Him in this way.  And when they do describe Him in this way, they appeal in some sense to Himself - that He Himself continually attests to Himself as such.  And in relation to others they count on it happening that they too may accept - not their own representation and appraisal of a man honoured by them - but the Word of Jesus, His self-attestation of His majesty, of his unity with God...

"When the New Testament attests Him to be such, it speaks of His resurrection from the dead.  Only secondarily, and in this way, does it speak of the records of it.  And in relation to others His witnesses expect that the same Holy Spirit who has revealed this to them will not be silent to others." (pp.162-163, emphasis mine)

Within these observations by Barth, the first thing that can be seen is Barth's theology of scripture as a "witness to the Word of God" rather than the Word of God itself (or, himself).  The New Testament, for Barth, is the authoritative collection of documents by the community of Jesus' original witnesses.  But it is not the Word of God.  It is a witness to the Word, and by the Spirit can become the Word of God afresh.  But while the text is authoritative, ultimate sovereignty is not in the text but in the God who is witnessed to in the text and who is Lord over the text.  The Spirit witnesses to Jesus who shows us the Father.  Only God himself can be the Word of God.  Only God can reveal God.  Revelation is a trinitarian event.  And so the Bible becomes the Word of God only in the power of the Spirit of God, and only as it reveals Jesus. 

As Pentecostal Christians, we are people of the Spirit.  We believe that the Spirit of God is sovereign, active, and powerful.  We also believe that salvation is not simply adherence to particular doctrinal formulas or participation in particular sacramental rituals.  Doctrine matters, and the sacraments are beginning to be more deeply appreciated, but nothing takes the place of personally encountering Jesus Christ by faith.  Like the Samaritans, everyone needs to "hear for themselves" the voice of Christ by the Spirit.  And Barth reminds us not only that this is so, but that we can trust Jesus and the Spirit to introduce themselves to those who don't yet know their Lord.  He does so, first and foremost, through the Bible, but also through faithful preaching and witnessing.  But it is not ultimately us who reveal Jesus.  The self-revelation of God only happens when people personally meet this God.  And they meet this God when he introduces himself in Christ and by the Spirit.

October 29, 2010: the Day Brian LePort Called Me a Hipster

I do not know Brian LePort.  He also does not know me.  One way or another we have become Facebook friends, and I do at times peruse his blog nearemmaus.com, where he posts along with a couple other bloggers about theology, biblical studies, historical Jesus studies, and so on.  The other day I was googling Karl Barth and seeing what was around the blogosphere when I came upon this post.  The intentionally-funny piece is entitled "Karl Barth Madness" and lists ten reasons why Brian has no interest in reading Karl Barth.  Since the writing of this piece in 2010, he has posted a number of blogs about Barth, but that is beside the point.  I thought Brian's list was clever, at times very accurate, and (perhaps because of it's accuracy) somewhat insulting all at the same time.  And, as can be expected, a debate ensued on his blog.  I am not really a "get into debates on blogs" kind of guy, and I was over two years late to the game, so I did not get involved.  But I did ask Brian's permission to mention him and his post and to interact with it.  He very graciously said ok.

The title of this present piece gains it's title from his sixth reason for not reading Barth:

(6) There seem to be more people reading Barth than Scripture these days so I think I’ll buck the trend. It is very theologically hipster to read Barth. We’ll see where that is in ten years. [emphasis mine] 

So there it is.  Without ever meeting me, and two years before we somehow inadvertently became Facebook friends, Brian LePort called me a hipster.

Brian is also painfully correct.  He states as another reason not to read Barth that it is unnecessary for him to since he has no intentions of ever attending Princeton.  Well, in my experience, these two observation collapse into a painful truth.  For a few years my wife and I attended University Presbyterian Church in Seattle under the preaching of Earl F. Palmer.  Earl was an excellent preacher and theologian and an out-and-out, no-apologies Barthian.  The first sermon of his we ever heard included him busting out his old, tattered copy of Dogmatics in Outline and reading from it for five minutes or so.  And Earl made Barth fun.  Barth was relevant, reminding us to read our Bibles to see Jesus and to see everything as centered on Jesus.  He also was heavily involved in Princeton Seminary, having gone there himself, and UPC as a congregation probably shipped half a dozen seminarians off to Princeton single-handedly each year.  (I was almost one of them!)  But while attending UPC, I also got to know for a brief time a young man who embodied Brian's reason #6 sickeningly well.  This young man went to Princeton, was brilliant, loved Barth and Moltmann, and essentially disdained everything and everyone else (he was one of those, "all Christians are suckers but me" kinda guys).  In remarkably un-Barthian fashion, he considered the Bible there to be questioned, doubted, picked at, and of little value beyond being a source document for Jesus.  He was Barthianism gone sour.  He was also, absolutely, a theological hipster.

Not on to my other point...

In the comments section of the blog, Brian writes,

"Yes, it is a bummer he didn’t get to discuss the Holy Spirit. I may have been interested in at least reading that point."

Well, I am sure that by now Brian realizes that Barth wrote a LOT about the Holy Spirit, even if he passed away before completing his massive Church Dogmatics.  And, interestingly enough, it was precisely Barth's pneumatology that set me on this wild Barthian-Pentecostal goose chase.  I had always loved Barth and considered myself Reformed, but God seemed to be irresistibly (darn Calvinists!) drawing me back to my old AG congregation.  My spiritual life has included what could be called "Pentecostal experience," but I was having a very hard time being Pentecostal theologically.  And it was Barth's pneumatology, particularly in his Gottingen Dogmatics, that gave me a theology that both critiqued and (probably contrary to what Barth would have wanted) affirmed my Pentecostal experience.  For Barth, the Spirit's role in revelation is what he calls "the Subjective Reality of Revelation."  And since, for Barth, salvation does not happen over here in me but over there in Christ, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to illumine within the believer the reality of his or her salvation which is true in Christ.  And the work of the Spirit is a work that creates real response.  Barth even goes so far as to admit that it could be called experience.  I knew I had found something.  This was something that could both critique some of the bogus-ness I and other Pentecostals have been guilty of in understanding our experiences of the Spirit and could also affirm and even help clarify what exactly the Spirit is doing in and with us when he fills us, gives us gifts, and makes us aware of the reality and otherness of the God who loves us.

I have been on that road every since.  If it makes me a hipster, I guess I need to trade in my wire-frame glasses for some nice, thick black plastic frames that I see on the face of so many (*ahem!*) people, particularly all these Seattle hipsters...

Faith, Love, Hope, Eschatology, and Life in the Spirit

I am continuing my excursion through Church Dogmatics IV/1 "The Doctrine of Reconciliation."  And today I had an interesting dialog with a believer in my town who I never would have thought would show up in this blog.

I have a believing friend who has become deeply entrenched in the movement known as Hebrew Roots.  If you're not familiar with that movement, it is basically a modern day version of the Galatian heresy.  Adherents of the group believe that there is really not supposed to be anything called "the Christian church," and that gentile believers in Jesus (Yeshua) are supposed to live their lives according to Torah (the law of Moses).  Our conversation today went as most conversations do between him and me.  He said that Christians are inconsistent in adhering to the "moral law" while not observing things like the Sabbath.  I tried, unsuccessfully I think, to explain that the Christian has died and risen with Christ and thus lives in the eschaton (I didn't use that word), and thus are not bound by law.  We live by the law of love because that is how the kingdom of God works.  We no longer need a schoolmaster.  We live, through Christ, in the age to come, where the "forever" of the Mosaic covenant no longer holds.  He wasn't convinced.  Oh well. This, however, showed me something that is integral to New Testament Christianity that both Karl Barth and the best examples of Pentecostal Christianity have managed to understand and articulate in their own ways. 

In his massive work on the pneumatology of the apostle Paul, God's Empowering Presence, Gordon Fee repeatedly makes the case that the presence of the Spirit in the church meant for Paul that believers were already living in the age to come.  In fact, Fee regularly calls the Spirit the "eschatological Spirit."  In his own highly informed and scholarly manner, Fee is articulating exegetically something that is inherent to Pentecostal understanding of the Spirit.  From it's very beginning, the Pentecostal movement understood its reception of the Spirit and the gifts as an eschatological phenomenon.  They Spirit of the Last Days was being poured out to prepare the church and the world for the return of Christ.  Whereas the early Pentecostal leaders may have missed the eschatological significance of Christ's resurrection, and while they may have primarily been working within a dispensational framework, the connection between the reception of the charismatic Spirit and the age to come was not missed.  The pouring out of the Spirit meant that the end of the ages was, at the very least, immanent. 

In Church Dogmatics IV/1, in the section titled "The Being of Man in Jesus Christ" (pp.92-122 in the T&T Clark Edition), Barth applies the fulfillment of the covenant which has taken place in Christ alone to the existence of the believer.  Barth is insistent that salvation is entirely in Christ alone, and he means this in a far more radical sense that traditional Reformed theology.  For Barth, salvation happens there in Christ not here in me.  In traditional Christian theology - Reformed, Pentecostal, or otherwise - salvation is something that is accomplished both there in Christ and here in me.  Even Reformed theology speaks of the application of redemption in the believer by the Spirit.  But for Barth, he has already spent an entire section arguing that salvation has happened entirely in Christ.  He has fulfilled the covenant.  He has been rejected for us.  He is the elect man.  The covenant is fulfilled.  Man is now saved.  And, which will be discussed more in upcoming blogs, what the Spirit does is not to cause salvation to happen here in me, but to bring about realization of the salvation that has happened there in Jesus.  For Barth, the Spirit doesn't so much bring Jesus to me as he brings me to Jesus.  I like that distinction.  (And time does not permit me to rabbit trail into Barth's eschatological view of Christ's resurrection, which has caused un-careful readers to think Barth denied the historical nature of the resurrection.)

But in his section, "The Being of Man in Jesus Christ," Barth makes quite an interesting argument for how the salvation in Christ works within the believer.  He uses Paul's threefold list from 1 Corinthians 13 of faith, hope and love.  However, for his purposes, Barth reorders them as Faith, Love, and Hope.  Faith is, naturally enough, the realization of the reality of Christ and his atonement for me.  This is Barth's section on justification.  Then there is Love, which for Barth refers to obedience to Christ's commands, or his "direction," and is Barth's treatment of sanctification.  What is most interesting, however, is Barth's treatment of Hope.

Hope, for Barth, is eschatological.  And our hope is not in some disembodied beatific vision, but in an eternal service to and partnership with God.  It is the closest thing Barth with get to synergism.  Our salvation is entirely monergistic for Barth, but the life God saves us to is an eternal life of partnership with God.  This is a partnership in eternity, but which spills back and makes all the things we do today and tomorrow hope filled actions, too.  And this too, like Faith and Love, is a work of the Spirit, who makes us realize the truth of who we are in Christ.

For my Galatian friend, our salvation in Christ has almost nothing to do with eschatology.  Sure, maybe he keeps us out of hell and will rule from Jerusalem during the millennium.  But other than that, other than some eternal tomorrow, "Yeshua" has not brought us the kingdom or ushered us into the eschaton.  For Pentecostals, Jesus is the Spirit Baptizer, and the Spirit he pours out on us is the Spirit of the age to come - both equipping us to be witnesses to him as we usher in the end and also placing us into the kingdom that began with Christ but has not yet been consummated.  For Barth, Christ has changed the entire world.  The world just doesn't know it yet.  He has raised man from the dead and justified him before God.  Man is now God's servant and partner.  That is, he one day will be - and that means he already is.

Karl Barth, "the World," and Evangelism

I am continuing to take a break from my study of Hell in Barth's though, but look for a third installment soon(ish).  If you missed parts 1 and 2, they can be read here and here.  For now I am foraying into volume IV of the Church Dogmatics, the Doctrine of Reconciliation.

The Pentecostal movement, from the very beginning, has been a missionary movement.  Whenever Spirit-empowered missions and the planting of indigenous churches is lost from view, I think that the true essence of Pentecostal Christianity is lost.  The tongues, the healings, the miracles, and the exuberant worship, are simply pieces of this larger goal: the church, in the power of the Spirit, preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth, that every nation, tribe, and tongue may hear, believe, and so be saved.  So the preaching of the gospel is central to Pentecostalism.  So is the belief that hearing the gospel and responding to the gospel is needful for redemption in Christ.  I will not go so far as to say that the early Pentecostals were uniform in their views on the eternal fate of those who have never heard the gospel.  They may or may not have been.  I don't know.  But I know that what was central to the Pentecostal vision was the "lost-ness" of the world and the need people had to hear about Jesus.  If Barth's theology cannot speak to this missions mindset, then it is a poor companion to Pentecostal experience.

In Church Dogmatics IV/1, "The Doctrine of Reconciliation," Barth begins his book with the assertion that the Christian message can be summed up in the name Emmanuel, "God With Us."  He goes on to make clear that this "God With Us" is true, not because of us, but because of God.  Reconciliation with God is based on covenant.  God covenanted with mankind.  It was his purpose in creating us.  He created us to love us, but we broke faith with him.  We disobeyed and cancelled our "right" to the covenant relationship with God, but since God had already determined to have us, he kept both sides of the covenant, and he did this through Jesus Christ.  In Jesus Christ, God and man are reconciled.  And this is where Barth's implicit universalism appears (not so much in this section of the Dogmatics as in the logic).

But universalist or no, Barth is making a valuable point.  Redemption Proper, that is, redemption itself, takes place "over there" in Christ, not so much "over here" in us.  We have forfeited the covenant, but outside of us and on our behalf, God in Christ has restored and maintained it.  Later on, in volume IV/4, Barth will explain Christian experience of the Spirit (which he calls "baptism in the Holy Spirit") as being brought into, or made aware of, what has happened for us in Christ.  A strong case can be made from Barth's thought that what we generally mean by "being saved" doesn't take place until this conversion, or Spirit baptism.  But because Barth wants to downplay the subjectivism which he saw as the great enemy to the gospel, Barth threw all his weight on the actuality of the redemption that happened in Jesus.  Salvation really happened when Jesus lived, died, and rose again.  And because Barth rejected a classical Calvinistic view of "limited atonement" (Jesus only died for the elect), actual salvation has happened for the whole world and for every man in it already in Jesus.  He didn't make salvation possible, he saved us.  But what does this do with the need to preach the gospel to people, and to actually believe it ourselves?...

On pages 70-78 of Church Dogmatics IV/1 (T&T Clark edition), Barth spends time exegeting two important passages for his understanding of the gospel, John 3:16 and 2 Corinthians 5:19.

In the first passage, of course, we are told that God has "loved the world" by sending Jesus Christ, and for Barth this love is effective.  God has loved the world, which is to say, he has kept the covenant on behalf of the world in Christ.  And Barth emphasizes that, in John, "the world" is the wicked world.  God has loved the wicked world in Christ.  The whole thing is loved.  Is there any distinction then between believers and unbelievers?  Yes, it seems there is:

"Those who believe on the Son are the members of the cosmos who, while they necessarily participate as such in its opposition, and are therefore subject to perishing and have forfeited eternal life, in the sending of the Son and therefore in the self-offering of God can and must recognise [sic] God as God, and His will as a will of love, a will to rescue and to save...

"They are those who without being in any way different from others are under the forceful permission and command to affirm God and the will of God as it has been revealed to them.  This is not because, as distinct from others, they are disposed and able of themselves, but because God is too strong for them...

"What happens to them, and as such is only theirs, applies to the whole world, as we see from the verse which immediately follows [i.e. John 3:17], and is connected to v. 16 by a "gar" [Grk. for "for"]: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved" (v. 17).  Within the world, and therefore as a witness directed and appointed to it, there are men who belong to it, yet do not perish but have everlasting life.  In the setting up of this witness within the world the atonement is shown to be an atonement for the world." (p.73, emphasis mine)

So Barth's understanding of the distinction between believers and unbelievers is not one of righteousness (we are all rebels), or of personal qualities (if anything, we believe because we're weaker than our neighbors).  Those who believe are those who have actually entered into what is the real situation of the whole world.  The atonement that has taken place in Jesus really is an atonement for the whole world.  Using Barth's logic of sin and damnation as "nothingness" and "absurdity," then, I would conclude that Barth is saying that when we believe we enter into truth as opposed to continuing in the lie of sin and lost-ness.  Our salvation in Christ is true, and our continuing in an unreconciled state is a ridiculous lie.

And what is fascinating and beautiful about Barth's though here is the role believers thus take.  Because salvation is for the world, to be a believer is to be a witness.  This is evident from the above quotes, but comes out even more forcefully in Barth's exegesis of 2 Corinthians 5:19.  In typical Barthian fashion, and in keeping with his view of reconciliation in Christ, Barth takes the apostle Paul's statement that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself" and "not counting their sins against them" with utmost seriousness.  God has reconciled the world!  He has not counted our sin!  He has made us righteous in Jesus!  So where does preaching the gospel come into this?  In the "ministry of reconciliation":

"Between the apostle and the rest of the world there is the decisive difference that he has eyes and ears for the atonement which has been made, and therefore for the conversion of the world to God, for the new thing which has come and therefore for the passing of the old, whereas the world is still blind and deaf to it. . .But it is not this difference, and the tension of it, and the dynamic of this tension, which makes him an apostle.  What moves him in this difference, what prevents him from evading the tension as a kind of private person reconciled with God, what forces him to make it his own, to bear it in his own person, is the fact that what has come about for him in Christ as his reconciliation with God has come about for him for the sake of the world." (p.77, emphasis mine)

So for Barth, the salvation of the individual in Christ is part of the bigger whole: the real salvation that has taken place once and for all in Jesus Christ for every single person.  The individual's salvation is the actualization of this salvation, the entering by grace into a fact that is (potentially) true of all.  But when we enter into this fact, the joyful burden of being a witness to the world of it's salvation which has taken place in Christ becomes ours as well.  And in this way, Barth becomes a happy ally to the Pentecostal cause of missions and world evangelization.  Glory to God in the highest, and to his Son who has made salvation real.  Amen.

My Book Idea's Outline as of 1/13, with Some Explanation

For those who perhaps do not know, this blog started out as a project to pick up the pieces of a book idea that I have struggled with for about a year.  Barth is a heavyweight and not without his flaws.  Every time I read him I am simultaneously inspired and frustrated.  Whenever I take a break from him, I find myself utilizing his conclusions (even the frustrating ones!) in some pastoral context - usually in preaching.

The following outline actually dates back several months, since the last season of life when I wrestled with the book project idea.  It is the product of an incomplete thought running up against the patient and friendly wisdom of Barth scholar Marty Folsom, an adjunct at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington.  (He may or may not want his name attached to this, but oh well.  Hopefully he's a forgiving chap.)

So here is my outline thus far.  If you are familiar with Barth, you might (but only might!) already see what I am doing with some of these chapter divisions...

1. The Resurrected Christ – Acts 1:1-11
2. The Apostles – Acts 1:12-26
3. The Outpouring of the Spirit – Acts 2:1-13
4. Scripture and Preaching as Witnesses to Jesus Christ – Acts 2:14-36
    A. Scripture
    B. Preaching
5. The Disruption of Pentecost upon Gender, Class, and Politics – Acts 2:17-21
6. Election and Predestination – Acts 2:22-32
7. Pentecost as Trinitarian Reality – Acts 2:33
8. The Real Response of Free Humanity – Acts 2:37-40
9. The Church as the Place of Revelation – Acts 2:41-47
10. Reflection: The Sacramentality of “Pentecostal Experience” and Some Necessary
      Correctives

Out of my afternoon spent with Marty many months ago, the idea to give the book an exegetical structure came into being.  Specifically, of course, the narrative/text over which the book would lay would be the Pentecost narrative.  In that way I would be in a better position to actually put Barth into dialog with Pentecostalism as I know it, allowing them to discuss a key text together.  Of course, the danger of working with scholars (a danger which Marty did not necessarily impose but which others who also displayed brief interest in the idea did) is that they generally want a rather exhaustive study done on the topic.  After talking with academics, putting Barth into dialog with Pentecostalism doesn't seem possible without having both a thorough historical and sociological comprehension of every stream of Pentecostalism worldwide and a complete understanding of German academic theology since the enlightenment, including why exactly Barth took the positions he did and which European philosophers lay the groundwork for his epistemology.  Needless to say, I could never produce that book, and if I did produce it the only way I would get anyone to read it would be to teach a seminary class and require all my students to buy it.

As a pastor in the trenches of ministry, I think it is important that my book (if God allows it to be written, and I get myself to write it) reflect 1. my own knowledge and experience, with all their limitations, and 2. the practicality of what I am talking about.  I want this book to be doable and honest, and to answer real pastoral and theological questions.

I will expound a bit more in the future on each of these particular topics/chapters, hopefully making it even clearer where my "Barthianism" and my Pentecostalism meet.

"Tohu Wa-Bohu" or Karl Barth and Hell pt. 2

"Who knows what sort of "last" ones might turn out to be first again?  The proclamation of the Church must make allowance for this freedom of grace.  Apokastasis Panton?  No, for a grace which automatically would ultimately have to embrace each and every one would certainly not be free grace.  It would certainly not be God's grace.

 "But would it be God's free grace if we could absolutely deny that it could do that?  Has Christ been sacrificed only for our sins?  Has he not, according to 1 John 2:2, been sacrificed for the whole world?  Strange Christianity, whose most pressing anxiety seems to be that God's grace might prove to be all too free on this side, that hell, instead of being populated with so many people, might some day prove to be empty!" ("The Proclamation of God's Free Grace," from God Here and Now, Nook location pp.49-50).

As I wrote in my last piece, Karl Barth would certainly find it odd that I would set aside all other studies in his theology to try and find a "theology of damnation" in his thought.  And I will admit, it is not as enjoyable to dwell with Barth in the depths of sin and hell as it is to soar with him on the heights of Christ, his Person and his work.  But my respect for Barth is too deep not to press him on this point.  The beauty of Barth is his passion that the Bible be allowed to speak for itself, that the Spirit be given free reign to take the words of these witnesses and speak the Word of God to us again.  And the Word of God includes judgment.

I also mentioned that the beauty and challenge of Barth's thought lay in his total personal sense of freedom from any human constraints, such as the law of non-contradiction.  The Word of God assaults us from the outside, and all our petty little rules have no authority there.  This makes Barth's thought look like a five-sided square, or a square circle.  One constantly finds oneself arguing with Barth, not because he's wrong but because he's a rule breaker.  And in a different, frustrating, but beautiful sense, Barth is staggeringly consistent.

A lot is said about Barth's personal theological development, and how his theology changed over the years.  To me, what is remarkable is how much his theology stays the same.  I believe this is because Barth's theology is just the result of a constant return to Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever (hebrews 13:8).  My way of making sense of Barth's christocentrism is to say that, for Barth, God only goes one way.  All that God does is grace.  God himself is grace.  He is light.  He is life.  He is love.  And underlying all of the apparent tension in Barth's thought is this overwhelming singleness.  Barth's take on what God says and does, and who God is, seems contradictory according to our rules.  But if the revelation of God in Jesus Christ becomes the key to everything, then the apparent contradictions melt.  It is us who are the contradiction.  It is our sin that looks like a square circle.  And this leads me to an understanding of sin, hell, and damnation in Barth that personally, and I think pastorally, is becoming significant for me.  But it all begins with Barth's exegesis of Genesis 1:1-3.

In his Church Dogmatics III/1, The Doctrine of Creation, Barth spends a significant amount of time exegeting the opening verses of the Bible.  He is quite detailed in his thought and a pleasure to read.  As I was reading his take on Genesis 1 for a sermon I was preparing, it struck me that Barth's understanding of the phrase in Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was waste and void [Hebrew: tohu wa-bohu]," had profound implications for the doctrine of hell.

For Barth, creation does not begin in Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  That is a preamble to the following narrative.  It is a heading for what is about to be described.  And in verse 2, which he exegetes in the light of Babylonian and Egyptian myth (by way of contrast, not by way of comparison) and source-criticism, Barth takes the position that what is being described is a sort of negation.

"What v.2 offers...is in contradiction (we can only say, in glaring opposition) to the created reality of heaven and earth summarily described in v.1, and in glaring opposition to what is later described as God's 'good' creation.  There is only 'chaos'... In v.2 there is absolutely nothing as God willed and created and ordained it according to v.1 and the continuation.  There is only 'chaos.'" (CD III/1, p.104, T&T Clark Edition).

It's important to realize that Barth is approaching Genesis 1 as a theologically true saga.  He is not treating it as a "myth," but he is also not treating it as scientific history.  It is theological history.  What is important is what Genesis 1 tells us about God.  And Barth is careful to point out that God is never said to "create" the darkness, or even the waters (a biblical symbol of chaos).  In fact, says Barth, God is portrayed as placing limits on the darkness and chaos.  God never creates at night.  He only creates in the day.  God does not call the dark good, only the light.  And so on.  True, other Old Testament texts credit God with "creating" the darkness, but God only creates the darkness by creating light.  By creating something God in a sense "creates" the "nothing" that contrasts it.  Darkness is now "something," but only in contrast to the "light" that God has made.

All of this lined up with what I already knew about Barth's view of sin and evil as nihil, "nothing."  Sin is negation.  It is the "impossible possibility," to quote Barth.  And even in his own exegesis of Genesis 1:2, Barth already points forward to a doctrine of judgment when he observes that these ominous Hebrew words, tohu-wa-bohu, appear in the context of judgment elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.

"What tohu and bohu mean in practice can be gathered from the two prophetical passages where they are mentioned together as in Gen. 1:2.  All the horrors of the approaching final judgment are summed up in the vision of Jer. 4:23 : 'I beheld the earth, and, lo, wehinneh tohu wa-bohu, and the heavens, and they had no light.'  And, according to Is. 34:11, in the prophecy about Zion : 'And he shall stretch over it the line of tohu (confusion) and the plummet of bohu (emtpiness).'  Thus the condition of the earth depicted in v.2 [of Genesis 1] is identical of the whole horror of the final judgment." (Ibid., pp/104-105).

It is important to realize, of course, that Barth's focus is on God in all his exegesis.  The point, Barth would say, of Genesis 1:1-3 is that God says "No!" to the darkness and the chaos.  Genesis 1 is itself already gospel.  It is already redemption.  It is already pointing us to the God who shines the light of Christ into our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6).  Barth specifically denies that Genesis 1:2 posits a pre-creation evil that needed to be conquered, a la ancient myth.  What Barth affirms is, again, the theological point of the creation account - Who is this God?  He is the God who makes life, whoo creates light, who calls all things into being through his powerful Word, who says No! to chaos and who sets limits on the darkness. 

The question remains for us whether we will respond to this God, and say Yes to him who has already said Yes to us in Creation, in Covenant, and in his eternal Word, Jesus Christ.