“To deny the angels is to deny God Himself” (Barth)

When it comes to angels, Barth is normally quoted to the effect that angels are not the proper subject of theology, and so forth, as he demonstrates in CD III.3 § 51.1 (“The Limits of Angeology”). That is all well and true, but Barth’s point is that the activity of the angels is to reveal the proper subject of theology: God. Thus, he goes on to develop an incredibly positive and constructive angeology in § 51.2 and 51.3. In fact, I was a bit surprised (pleasantly) by the heightened role he gives to the angels in the economy of God. So we read:

All genuine witness to God lives by the witness and therefore the ministry of angels. For by this it becomes in a sense technically possible and real that God is genuinely present and may be genuinely known as God in the earthly sphere, that he genuinely and recognisably speaks and acts, and that He is genuinely honoured and loved and feared. In their so utterly selfless and undemanding and purely subservient passing, in their eloquently quiet pointing to God which is always a pointing away from themselves, heaven comes to earth. …

Without the angels God himself would not be revealed and perceptible. Without them He would be hopelessly confused with some earthly circumstance, whether in the form of a sublime idea or a golden calf. …

As such, although creatures as we are, they stand over against us at the side of God. The very thing which they lack in comparison with us includes within itself their infinite advantage over us. In face of God they have no cause of their own in the espousing of which they have to submit to His will. They do not exist in any reciprocal relationships which have to be conformed to the divine model. They do not sing any hymn of praise which well or badly they have to strike up. They are themselves an eternal hymn of praise. And their existence is not tedious, as tedious theologians usually imagine, because as the entourage accompanying God they have their hands full with what He wills and does and therefore with us. Their liturgy is their service to Him and therefore to us. But in this service they stand over against us at the side of God. They exist in His glory, speak in His truth and work with His power. We cannot rely on them as we do on God. But we must not forget that when we rely on God we can rely on them. We can as little dispute with them as with God; we can as little deny them as we can deny God. In faith in a God of theory or ethics or aesthetics we may well deny the angels, because in the company of this kind of God it makes no odds whether there are angels or not. But in faith in the heavenly Father of Jesus Christ, whose majesty is operative and revealed in His mercy; in faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the case is very different. To deny the angels is to deny God Himself.

[pp. 484-486]

Torrance on Barth’s non-Kantian critique of natural theology

I’m attempting to make my way through Thomas Torrance’s Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge, a ridiculously complex account of the history of science and philosophy. I’m exhausted after each three page burst of reading. Of course, I eventually skipped toward the end, to his essay on Barth. Torrance provides a very lucid telling of why Barth considered any natural knowledge of God as “invalid,” “illegitimate,” and proper to sinful and rebellious man. As I understand it, the benign spirits at Westminster Philly believe that Barth constructed his critique on the philosophical impossibility, a la Kant, of natural theology, instead of on a properly dogmatic impossibility. Thus, philosophy determines the limits in which theology can operate. These same benign spirits claim that Bruce McCormack has validated this thesis, but I’ll let the current generation of Princetonians debate that one.

Here is a snippet from Torrance’s essay:

Whatever may have been his earlier views, when he was doubtless affected by the Kantian critique of the possibility of the knowledge of God within the limits of the natural reason, Barth quickly left them behind to take up a very different position on the ground of actual knowledge of God based on his Word. Here as he looked out from within the perspective of Christian theology upon natural theology he did not reject the existence of natural knowledge or commit himself to any metaphysical refutation of it, but found himself trying to understand it as something that is ‘impossible’ and that nevertheless ‘exists’, i.e. something that exists in opposition to the actual knowledge of God mediated through his Word, and which must therefore be called in question by it as illegitimate and invalid in so far as it claims to be knowledge of God as he really is. Natural theology is not a phenomenon that can simply be brushed aside, for it has a strange vitality in virtue of which it persists in the history of human thought. Barth explains this vitality as that of the natural man, for natural theology as such arises out of man’s natural existence and is part of the whole movement in which he develops his own autonomy and seeks a naturalistic explanation for himself within the universe. It must therefore be taken seriously and be respected as the natural man’s ‘only hope and consolation in life and death’ which it would be unkind to take away from him in his natural state. Nor is it something that can or should be combated on its own ground, for as soon as one attempts to do that one has thereby conceded the ground on which it rests, namely the autonomous existence of estranged and sinful man. That is to say, the claim to a natural knowledge of God, as Barth understands it, cannot be separated out from a whole movement of man in which he seeks to justify himself over against the grace of God, and which can only develop into a natural theology that is antithetical to knowledge of God as he really is in his acts of revelation and grace.

“Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth,” Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge (Wipf & Stock 1998), pp. 289-290. Originally published in Religious Studies, vol. 6, 1970.

So, assuming that Torrance is right and Van Til is wrong, and putting that debate aside, the really interesting question becomes whether the Christian can discern any true content in this rebellious natural knowledge of God, or is it all necessarily compromised by the estrangement of the natural mind? Barth, it seems, takes an “all or nothing” position, whereas a sympathetic detractor like Brunner agrees yet while affirming a residual moral component. This moral component needs to be redeemed with true content, but the form remains and acts as a bridge between natural and redeemed man.

It’s Not About Supernaturalism: My Ultimate Salvo Against Creationism

My last post on Dr. Mohler’s article on evolution needs further clarification. Thanks for the feedback on that post. Mohler’s framework should be roundly rejected, and here’s why:

Dr. Mohler wants to frame the issue as a matter of naturalistic presuppositions in a systematic worldview: “The entire intellectual enterprise of evolution is based on naturalistic assumptions, and I do not share those presuppositions.” This is one of the most careless — and surely one of the most harmful — statements I’ve ever read on this issue. When geneticists discovered the cell degeneration in cancer victims, did they do this on “naturalistic assumptions”? Of course. When physicists discovered the speed of light and applied it in astronomy to gauge the distance of galaxies, did they do this on naturalistic assumptions? Of course. So, when these same geneticists measure the variations in the genetic code and determine enough variables that point toward hominid origins of millions of years past, are they working on naturalistic assumptions? Of course. When the astronomers measure the time it takes for light to reach us from distant stars (billions of years), are they using naturalistic assumptions? Of course. When geologists measure the substrata of the earth and create models (billions of years) to account for the accumulation, are they using naturalistic assumptions? YES!

I trust that you see where I’m going with this. Mohler discredits evolution because evolutionary conclusions arise from naturalistic assumptions, but Mohler would have to discredit all of natural science. The work of the scientist always follows upon naturalistic assumptions: that’s the whole point of what they’re doing — discerning properties and effects in nature. This has absolutely nothing to do with a belief in the reality of supernatural occurrences or divine governance: some scientists believe, some don’t. Whether they believe or not has nothing to do with their calculations as geneticists, astronomers, and geologists. Every example I provided in the previous paragraph stands regardless of whether you believe in supernatural agency.

Mohler’s epistemology of science is the quintessence of what we call “fundamentalist,” “sectarian,” or “anti-intellectual.” It is deeply harmful to the church. It creates suspicious and closed minds in the pews, and it forces any congregant, who wishes to pursue the great calling of being a scientist, to reject his or her faith. More importantly, the lordship of Christ in our lives does not require an Ancient Near-Eastern cosmology, nor does a modern cosmology harm our witness to his mighty works in Israel and the Church.

Yes, evolution, again.

I keep on promising myself that I’ll just let this topic go, but Al Mohler keeps on stupefying me. There is so much wrong with this paragraph from his latest article attacking Biologos:

As I have stated repeatedly, I accept without hesitation the fact that the world indeed looks old. Armed with naturalistic assumptions, I would almost assuredly come to the same conclusions as BioLogos and the evolutionary establishment, or I would at least find evolutionary arguments credible. But the most basic issue is, and has always been, that of worldview and basic presuppositions. The entire intellectual enterprise of evolution is based on naturalistic assumptions, and I do not share those presuppositions. Indeed, the entire enterprise of Christianity is based on supernaturalistic, rather than merely naturalistic, assumptions. There is absolutely no reason that a Christian theologian should accept the uniformitarian assumptions of evolution. In fact, given a plain reading of Scripture, there is every reason that Christians should reject a uniformitarian presupposition. The Bible itself offers a very different understanding of natural phenomena, with explanations that should be compelling to believers. In sum, there is every reason for Christians to view the appearance of the cosmos as graphic evidence of the ravages of sin and the catastrophic nature of God’s judgment upon sin.

Oh my! He really thinks the issue is as neat and tidy as choosing “supernaturalism” or “naturalism.” In case you missed it, here’s the thesis statement: “Indeed, the entire enterprise of Christianity is based on supernaturalistic, rather than merely naturalistic, assumptions.”

No, Christianity is not “based upon” the flow or suspension of physical properties and laws. Christianity is based upon the love of God in Jesus Christ. This love was revealed in covenants and promise-keeping which involved a new creation, circumventing the causal flow of our world’s natural laws. Thus, I don’t deny that God’s self-revelation from Abraham to Pentecost, before and after, involves a series of supernatural occurrences. But, this hardly requires some “supernatural” criteria for understanding biblical cosmology as normative for revelation and, thereby, for dogmatics. That’s an assumption which Mohler never proves and can’t prove. It’s an all-or-nothing “worldview” game for Mohler, requiring massive intellectual blinders.

Also, what the heck does the last sentence mean? “In sum, there is every reason for Christians to view the appearance of the cosmos as graphic evidence of the ravages of sin and the catastrophic nature of God’s judgment upon sin.” That’s how Mohler accounts for the incontrovertible evidence for an old earth? Really? How on earth does the “ravages of sin” have anything to do with the light-year span of distant galaxies or the decay of radioactive uranium?

The epistemic hole in Free Church ecclesiology

If we define the church as “a free association of believers gathered by the Holy Spirit before the Risen Lord,” how would such independent communities ever come to the recognition of a canon of Scripture?

I was watching a fundamentalist Baptist preacher the other day — yes, I should spend my time more fruitfully — and he was harping on and on about how he didn’t believe in denominations because the church is nothing more than an independent, local assembly of believers. The only authority for his church — and other “properly constituted” churches — is the Bible. This pastor actually left the Southern Baptist Convention because of his convictions about the independence of the local church…yes, the SBC is too denominational for him! In other words, this pastor and this church doesn’t need “the church.” Thus, in principle, no church has ever needed a church other than itself, much less does it need synods, councils, assemblies, and other compromises to the independence of the local church. Therefore, no creeds and no confessions are necessary; moreover, creeds and confessions are illegitimate bindings on the local church. The Bible alone can bind the local church.

Of course, this raises one striking curiosity: the Bible itself, as a particular canon of texts, is a confession. The same justifications that give a denomination the authority to bind churches according to a confession (e.g., Augsburg or Westminster) are the same justifications that gave rise to a canon of Scripture. The local church needs other churches. It needs the witness of other churches to know “where to look” for the promises of God. It needs the discernment and accountability of other churches when it points to these texts, and not other texts, as the Word of God. As such, the testimony of the early church is given priority even as the Reformation re-evaluated the discernment of the early church in this matter, as in other matters. The Reformation churches, through her confessions, recognized the authority of the prophetic and apostolic texts as they have been handed to us, with the assumption that the Word of God was to be found there and, indeed, it was found there! From generation to generation, this assumption and this awakening sustain the church’s confidence in her Holy Scripture.

I have always liked the definition of the church that I gave above, which is roughly taken from Brunner’s very fine volume on ecclesiology (Dogmatics, vol. 3). However, I don’t see how such a definition can account for the authority of the canon. I don’t see how such a definition does not logically entail the clear absurdity of the above fundamentalist Baptist preacher, who speaks for vast swaths of evangelicalism (not just the fundamentalist wing) when it comes to this understanding of the church and the Bible. If there can not be, in principle, any confession other than the Bible, then we would not have a Bible. If the early church had operated with this “freedom” of independent churches, there would not — could not — have been a canon formation. Herein, the Reformed position, with the rest of the magisterial Reformation, has definite advantages and greater coherency.

[By the way, I am a member of the Evangelical Free Church of America, and I was raised a Baptist. So I am writing this as a criticism from within my own tradition.]

“The last absurdity of the eighteenth century”

Here is a very fine reflection on Kant from John Baillie’s Our Knowledge of God (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939 / 1959). This dovetails nicely with my previous post (“Kant’s Protestant insight”).

Kant’s great rediscovery was that of the Primacy of the Practical Reason, as he called it. It is not in the realm of sense, he believed, that we are all really in touch with absolute objective reality, and certainly not in the realm of the supersensible objects of scientific and metaphysical speculation, but only in the realm of the practical claim that is made upon our wills by the Good. Ultimate reality meets us, not in the form of an object that invites speculation, but in the form of a demand that is made upon our obedience. We are confronted not with an absolute object of theoretical knowledge but with an absolute obligation. We reach the Unconditional only in an unconditional imperative that reaches us. There is here, as it seems to me, most precious and deeply Christian insight. But where Kant erred, and where his eighteenth-century education was too much for him, was in his analysis of this experience into mere respect for a law. The eighteenth century had its obvious limitations — limitations which could not, in fact, be better exemplified than in this proposal to make law at once the primary fact in the universe and the prime object of our respect. Something of this respect for law we can still conjure up as we stroll through the well-ordered palace and gardens of Versailles, or again as we wander at will through the equally well-ordered couplets of Alexander Pope’s poetry; yet between us and both of these experiences stands that Romantic Revival which, in spite of all its regrettable extravagances, has taught us a delight in fera natura of which we shall never again be able entirely to rid ourselves. The reduction of the spiritual life of mankind to the mere respectful acceptance of a formula was, in fact, the last absurdity of the eighteenth century. It is no mere formula with which the sons of men have ever found themselves faced as they approached life’s most solemn issues, but a Reality of an altogether more intimate and personal kind; and respect or Achtung is hardly an adequate name for all the fear and the holy dread, the love and the passionate self-surrender, with which they have responded to its presence. …Kant’s religion remained to the end a mere legalistic moralism plus a syllogism that allowed him to conceive of an eighteenth-century Legislator behind his eighteenth-century law. ‘Thus’, as — to take only one example — he himself most cogently concluded, ‘the purpose of prayer can only be to induce in us a moral disposition….To wish to converse with God is absurd: we cannot talk to one we cannot intuit; and as we cannot intuit God, but can only believe in him, we cannot converse with him.’ [Lectures on Ethics, trans. L. Infield, p. 99.]

Now it seems to me that it is precisely such a sense of converse with the Living God as Kant thus clearly saw to be excluded by his own system that lies at the root of all our spiritual life.

(pp. 157-159)

Kant’s Protestant insight

I’ve had a long-standing interest in Kant, though you wouldn’t know that judging from this blog. That’s because I’ve been trying to move beyond Kant, by way of dogmatics, for the last few years. But no philosopher, except maybe Plato or Simone Weil, impressed me more than Kant as an undergraduate. It was a real breakthrough, for me, to move beyond apologetics and proofs. It was freeing, strange as that may sound, and Kant played no small role in this new freedom. God is not a conclusion from our observations; he is always there, immediate to our moral framing of the universe, and needs no proof. He has a claim on our lives. To know God apart from this moral claim is to know, at best, a hypothesis — the probability of an object, x, at the beginning of empirical reality. This is not God; this is a theory. God is not a theory.

Kant’s philosophy can free our attention toward the God at our most profound expressions of worth — of responsibility. We know God because we know an “ought” that comes, not from within, but from without, even though it is only known within. The ultimate guarantee that there is a God outside of us can, thus, only come by faith, not by tangible proofs. God cannot be “demonstrated,” whether through sense-based proofs or through a succession of bishops. Kant, then, must turn to the subjective arbiter of truth — the will. This is his Protestant insight, namely, our inability to grasp God apart from the assent of faith, which depends upon the will.

Kant failed, however, to go one step further: the will depends upon God. Kant would not allow this, and thus we are left with a Law and a demand but no grace and no redemption. It was inevitable that Kant’s philosophy could not withstand the problem of sin and evil. Hegel did an even worse job of assimilating this problem, and, finally, Existentialism called a spade a spade.

Personal experience as “an entirely different authority”?

Dan Wallace has an intriguing post on “Charismata and the Authority of Personal Experience.” Apparently, there is an increasing number of scholars who are embracing the charismatic movement. My thoughts, heretofore, have been that the opposite is taking place, but let’s grant that there is some sort of increase, at ETS and other venues, of a charismatic intelligentsia. Wallace believes that these scholars have swung the pendulum from one extreme (rationalism) to the other (emotivism). The sum of his argument is that the Enlightenment injected a new emphasis on rational criteria into Evangelical Protestantism which caused a cognitive overload unable to bear the weight of personal (existential) crisis. Wallace has in mind those that come from a rigid fundamentalism, which is cast aside after some deep suffering and exchanged for a Vineyard fellowship (he explicitly names Vineyard). The result is that the (objective) authority of the Bible is exchanged for the (subjective) authority of personal experience, i.e., “an entirely different authority.”

[It should be noted that "charismatic" does not necessarily indicate speaking in tongues or extempore "prophesies," but, rather, is used more broadly for churches that have a praise & worship service, "practical" preaching, community groups, Bible studies, etc. and an overall emphasis on personal transformation.]

Now, Wallace does, in the last paragraph, make the concession that personal experience is vital and a necessary correlate to the reasons of faith. But, the entire thrust of the article is that the sort of personal experience emphasized by Vineyard et al. are detached from the God of the Bible, thus self-generated and self-serving.  Of course, there is abundant evidence that this does indeed take place. To use everyone’s favorite example, Joel Osteen does not preach the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (nor of Jesus Christ). That much is obvious. But can we really black label the entire Vineyard movement (and, presumably, the larger nondenominational phenomenon) and those scholars that associate with charismatic churches? Such a charge needs to deal with the actual churches in their particular (and typical) form of proclamation and worship. Have these churches abandoned the authority of Scripture — do they no longer proclaim Christ and his work of atonement — in favor of an increase of spiritual euphoria? Or is the euphoria and enthusiasm amidst a context of proclamation of the Word? Can it be said that the worship and preaching are a response to the God who makes all things new? I think, perhaps too optimistically, that we can still say yes, in most cases, to those last two questions. This will require some forgiveness, on our part as critics, for spiritual immaturity among clergy and pew-sitters alike, bearing in mind our own weakness and imbalance — a good reminder for those in the Calvinist camp. (After all, the case can be easily made, as I indicate below, that the “Calvinist resurgence” is working the pendulum back the other direction.)

My Counter-Proposal

One more point I’d like to make — a brief counter-proposal.

It has often been the case in the history of the church that suffering or spiritual crises have been a medium through which God draws us to his Son. In such cases, cognitive assurance can be supported and confirmed by emotional assurance, and, given the proper context of proclamation of the Word, will actually draw the person to a greater dependence on the God of her salvation. Prior to this, the person may have put her trust in reason (proofs) or the Bible (inerrancy abstracted from the God of salvation). The cognitive assurance, as such, was not “wrong” in its belief in the God of Israel and Jesus Christ, but it was wrongly grounded. In this sense, a charismatic church can actually claim a greater objectivity insofar as it relies on God to actualize his truth, and not human constructs (proofs or inerrancy). The church is thus used of God to effect the work of the Holy Spirit in drawing his beloved ones to the Son. This is not to say that proofs or inerrancy are inadmissible — they may be, but that’s not my point — rather, I am saying that they will always fail as epistemic foundations, which is to say, as foundations for faith. “Subjectivity” is not the problem. The problem is either a subjectivity or an objectivity disconnected (a dualism, as T. F. Torrance argues) from each other and made independent authorities. The former is the potential epistemic fallacy of the charismatics; the latter is the potential epistemic fallacy of the Calvinists.

Knowledge in Romans 1, per Barth

My contribution to the Barth Blog Conference was posted a couple days ago on Travis’ blog (click here). The topic is Barth’s rejection of natural theology in his Shorter Commentary on Romans. Shannon’s argument is that (1) Barth is doing exegesis, intending to let Paul speak for himself, and (2) Barth’s exegesis is correct, i.e., Paul and Barth are in agreement. In my response, I affirm the former and dispute the latter. Here is an excerpt, my argument in nuce:

And now we come to my criticism. Given this wholly foreign knowledge of God, hidden until the work of Christ, Barth declares that “it would be very strange indeed, if Paul suddenly regarded the Gentiles as being in full participation and possession of a genuine knowledge of God” (p.15). The difficulty I have with such a statement is that Barth is filling-in the idea of “knowledge” with such terms as “full participation” and “possession” of a “genuine knowledge” of God and contrasting this with the idea of knowledge in the first chapter of Romans, in particular, knowledge of God by the Gentiles “ever since the creation of the world.” This language of “full participation,” etc., heavily tilts the argument in Barth’s favor, but I believe Paul is working with a more limited understanding of knowledge: a genuine knowledge of God but without the soteriological value and definitional content. Thus, famously, Paul is able to say that God’s “eternal power and divine nature” is known through “the things he has made” (1:20), yet “though they knew God, they did not honor him as God (1:21). Also, more critically, Paul ends the section with, “They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die…” (1:32). A certain knowledge of God is made available to the Gentiles outside of Christ, though it is knowledge that only leaves them in condemnation. It lacks the object of saving faith.

Accountability and Apologetics

I occasionally engage in discussions on various intra-Christian blogs related to ecclesial apologetics. I have no problem with such apologetics. It is necessary that Catholics, Orthodox, and the varied Protestants defend their ecclesial stance and relate it to the average layperson. The problem is when the apologetic claims are untethered from what is known (or the related probabilities), which necessarily requires the work of scholars. If a Catholic claims that the “early Church” was under the juridical authority of the See of Rome, then something is wrong. That is akin to a Protestant claiming that scripture as canon and authority developed apart from a Church, with bishops, and an assumed tradition or rule of faith. That sort of ahistorical presentation may win converts to your church, but under a guise of misinformation (illusion).

The apologist, thus, must be held accountable to scholarship, as the scholars are held accountable by peer review (imperfect, to be sure). The apologist is, thus, a mediator between the scholar and the layperson. The typical layperson does not have the time or skill to engage with upper-level theology and historical research — nor should they, when responsibilities lay elsewhere. The apologist, however, must. If the apologist cannot or refuses to do so, he or she should not be an apologist. The average, inquiring layperson is, to some degree, at the mercy of the person mediating the information. We cannot expect the inquirer to fully adjudicate the information given, but we can expect the apologist to come under judgment from fellow apologists and scholars.

We cannot escape this need for the apologist nor the need for accountability. All truth is ultimately tested in the court of our subjectivity, but all truth inheres in reality — the real world “out there.” Attending to this reality is the only remedy for solipsism.