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! 

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.

"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.

 

 

"Tohu Wa-Bohu" or Karl Barth and Hell pt. 1

Well, this blog has been a lesson in approach avoidance.  (For those without psychological training, that is a technical term for "being scared to do something and so not doing it even though you want to").  I have wrestled with Barth off and on for several reasons.  One, I have been concerned over getting too sucked into ivory tower theologizing when I have real, life or death ministry to be doing.  I have had to conclude that this objection is bogus.  Barth wrote his theology for the church, and primarily for the sake of upholding good preaching in the church.  So Barth did his theology for the sake of "in the trenches" ministry.  The fact that he is primarily only dealt with in the academy is a tragedy.  That, I have concluded, was never his intent.  (You may have also noticed a decided lack of any posting about Calvin.  A fellow minister in my community expressed interest in reading Calvin together with me and blogging on it together.  Again, after some doubts, I am hoping to pursue this opportunity.  That frees me up for just dealing with Barth on this blog)...

My second real struggle with Barth is his implicit universalism.  That will be the subject of this and subsequent posts.  I am not a universalist.  My theology is thoroughly orthodox-evangelical in this sense: that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and that without faith in Christ there is no salvation.  I like how Bernard Ramm, the American Baptist, said it: every true evangelical is a universalist at heart.  That is, every true evangelical has a real desire that all be saved.  But Ramm also states, "At this point it is very difficult for the nonevangelical to really tune in on the wavelength of the evangelical.  If being saved or lost is a real distinction among men, then theology takes upon itself utmost seriousness. The evangelical believes that not only are theological issues at stake, but the very substance of his own eternal destiny" (The Evangelical Heritage, p.148).  So I have struggled with Barth's deliberate tendency to leave the door open to universal salvation, not because I "want" there to be people in hell, but because if hell is a very real destiny for those who reject Christ then I don't want to pat myself on the butt and tell myself not to worry about it - it seems so much "nicer" not to think such things.

But anyone familiar with Barth will know that Ramm's words about one's "eternal destiny" being at stake are actually quite Barthian. Allow me one quote (there are many like it):

"It is true that God is with us in Christ and that we are his children, even if we do not perceive it.  It is true from all eternity, for Jesus Christ who assumed our nature is the eternal Son of God.  And it is always true in time, even before we perceive it to be true.  It is still true even if we never perceive it to be true, except that in this case it is true to our eternal destruction." (Church Dogmatics I/2, T&T Clark Edition, p.238, italics mine)

Barth is paradoxical in his theologizing because he never felt the constraint from, and in fact intentionally rejected, the law of non-contradiction.  In dealing with God and his self-revelation, Barth would say, we cannot impose our own rules.  This makes a lot of Barth's theology come off like a five cornered square.  But that is precisely how Barth felt God's Word in Christ comes across.  It is inconceivable and at times even violent to our own efforts to control and dissect.  When we come to the Bible, it is not that we study God but that God (if he so chooses) speaks to us.  God is the Subject and we are the object, never the reverse.  True, God is the "object" of our studies as he reveals himself - but that is simply to say he is really no object at all, but a living Subject.  This being the case, it is natural to be overwhelmed by God's Word and limited in our own abilities to express it or even to feel that it "makes sense" according to our own categories.  The Word of God only makes sense as we accept it, yield to it, believe it, obey it.  It is self-authenticating.

And it is this seemingly self-contradicting theology of Barth that, I have discovered, gives us a powerful theology of damnation.  Barth would wonder, I imagine, why I am looking so hard for a theology of judgment and eternal destruction.  But because he and I agree on the Bible and on Jesus Christ, and because his theology of election has some profound implications for pastoral ministry, I want to follow his logic out to the end and find a powerful warning from the Word of God which Barth himself shows us.  It is found in Barth's doctrine of the "absurdity" of sin and in his doctrine of creation and exegesis of Genesis chapter 1.  More to follow, God willing, in the future...