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.

"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...