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God's self-specification: his being is his electing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2009

Aaron T. Smith
Aaron T. Smith*
Affiliation:
Marquette University, PO Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201aaron.t.smith@marquette.edu
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Abstract

The article considers the relationship between divine will and being as revealed in election, particularly according to Karl Barth's unique formulation of the doctrine. It comes at the salient features of this relationship by way of a public disagreement between Bruce McCormack and Paul Molnar. In agreement with McCormack, the author contends, on the basis of Barth's provocative claim that Jesus Christ is not just object but subject of election, that we cannot speak of God's being apart from his will for humanity, and this from all eternity, or in God's most intimate primordiality. Yet echoing Molnar, this observation does not entail the logical priority of grace to being. The author argues that a thoroughgoing commitment to conceiving of the being of God in the act of electing means affirming the eternal simultaneity and indeed reciprocity of will and being, as Jesus Christ is the full and total revelation of both. One cannot serve as ground for the other. As such, a preferable way of construing election is as the decisive statement of Godself – the primordial, eternal iteration of God for humanity – or the specification of divine being.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2008

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References

1 See McCormack, Bruce, ‘Grace and Being: The Role of God's Gracious Election in Karl Barth's Theological Ontology’, in Webster, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 92–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Molnar, Paul, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2002), pp. 61–81Google Scholar. For further elucidation of McCormack's position, see also Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 371–4, 455–62. For further background on Molnar's position on the place of the doctrine of the immanent Trinity for preserving divine freedom, see also ‘The Function of the Immanent Trinity in the Theology of Karl Barth: Implications for Today’, Scottish Journal of Theology 42/3 (1989), pp. 367–99.

Several publications have directly and indirectly taken up the article's subject matter but most have not altered the discourse in any substantive fashion. An exception is an exchange between McCormack and Edwin Chr. van Driel; cf. van Driel, ‘Karl Barth on the Eternal Existence of Jesus Christ’, and McCormack, ‘Seek God Where He May Be Found: A Response to Edwin Chr. van Driel’, Scottish Journal of Theology 60/1 (2007), pp. 45–61, 62–79, respectively. Van Driel appeals to classical christology in order to differentiate between the human identity of Christ and the eternal essence of God but the main gain, for me, is on McCormack's side, and it is twofold. First, McCormack thematically addresses the issue of time/eternity, as this bears on the ontology of God's ad extra activity (pp. 75–6), a matter I have raised with McCormack and Molnar, which I address below. Second, he concretely situates Barth's actualism relative to Hegelian history, allowing for God to be understood in terms of his temporal decision, not in general, but in the specific history of Jesus Christ.

2 Another voice ought to be acknowledged here. In ‘God's Triunity and Self-Determination’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 7/3 (July 2005), pp. 246–61, Kevin Hector argues a negative thesis that places him between McCormack and Molnar: contra McCormack, God's triunity logically precedes his gracious determination for the human, yet contra Molnar this does not entail the possibility of an unknown God or a species of freedom in which God remains apart from humankind. Both positions fail to grasp sufficiently the simultaneity of God's election and triunity. Inasmuch as we appreciate something of the respective cases at hand, and affirm the need for further emphasis on the simultaneity of God's essence and act, Hector and I work on parallel tracks, but there are two defining matters on which we disagree. First, in this initial offering Hector does not recognise the difference between McCormack's and Molnar's conceptions of time and eternity. Indeed, he critiques Molnar (p. 253 passim) for denying the eternality of God's self-determination. In fact Molnar does not do so if, as I show below, we acknowledge that he (with Barth) takes ‘eternity’ to connote ‘divine sphere of existence’ and not, like McCormack, ‘infinite time’. This distinction bears directly upon our understanding of key components of Barth's Trinitarianism. Second, Hector adjudicates between our two expositors by way of their fidelity to Barth. Materially, I think he errs by suggesting that ‘Barth's theology points mostly in McCormack's direction’ (p. 260). Ultimately this is accurate only insofar as McCormack is truer to Barth's intentions than Barth himself, which I think he is. Nevertheless, in terms of his stated position it is Molnar who holds the ‘party line’ and McCormack who offers the ‘critical correction’. Formally, then, a preferable aim (to judging McCormack and Molnar in light of Barth) would be to reconsider Barth in light of McCormack's suggestion and Molnar's critique. In this way, the merits and demerits of each position are seen clearly in their own right.

3 Barth treats election in §§32–5 of Church Dogmatics (II. 2, pp. 3–506). My concern being principally with the person of Christ, I focus here on §33, ‘The Election of Jesus Christ’; CD II. 2, pp. 94–194. §32 introduces the discussion of election, including its importance to dogmatics broadly and its centrality to the doctrine of God. §§34 and 35 consider the second (but simultaneous) moment in election: God elects not only Jesus Christ but also in him humanity, as the community of God (§34), and as individual members of that community (§35). Citations are from Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G. W. Bromiley, J. C. Campbell et al., ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2004). For a helpful summary of Barth's doctrine of election and its place in his larger theological programme, see Gunton, Colin, ‘Karl Barth's Doctrine of Election as Part of his Doctrine of God’, Journal of Theological Studies ns 25 (1974), pp. 381–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Those ‘few perceptive individuals’ include, specifically, Augustine and Coccejus (CD II.2, pp. 106–16). For a helpful review of how Barth himself came to this position, see McCormack, Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, pp. 456–7.

5 CD II.2, p. 146.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., p. 151.

8 Barth suggests the ‘older theologians’ may have deviated from an exegetical procedure they themselves taught and otherwise practised because of the decisive nature of the question asked in the sphere of predestination. ‘The question was not merely an incidental question, as the older theologians knew only too well. It was the question of the beginning of all things. . . . It was the question of the specific order of the kingdom or rule of God, with all that that means for the existence, the preservation, the history and the destiny of man. The question was in fact the actual and burning question: What is to become of us at the hand of God?’ (ibid., pp. 151–2). In light of the ultimacy of the question of divine determination, it may seem natural to appeal to ultimate mystery, an unsearchable corner of divine existence reserved for the particularly weighty and difficult matters of the God–world relation. But this is not a path open to the exegetically responsible theologian, the one who takes seriously the fact that ‘the Word of God [Jesus Christ] is the content of the whole Bible’ (ibid., p. 152). If we keep our hermeneutical lens correctly focused and understand that there is no God of scripture independent of Jesus Christ, then we must begin and end our discussion of even this most decisive issue with him.

9 Ibid., pp. 152–3.

10 Ibid., p. 153.

11 This is not to say that for Barth the mystery of election is solved. In removing the mystery of the who of election, Barth does not claim that election is now a doctrine laid bare, before which we no longer need be humble and adoring. He does not intend that by making elector and elected known he is somehow pulling back a curtain and exposing the inner workings of grace. What he is doing is putting the mystery of predestination on a surer footing, making it definite and thereby protecting it from any kind of mere speculation. ‘The mystery must have a definite character’, Barth writes, ‘[which provokes] an equally definite silence and humility and admiration. Otherwise, it is inevitable that we ourselves should try to fill in the gap’ (ibid., p. 147). The subject and object of election must be given not so that inscrutability is eliminated, but so our admiration for God's elective operations may be properly focused; so that, in other words, we do not set the parameters of the mystery ourselves and then reverence it. For Barth, if we are to think rightly of the mystery we must recognise it as something revealed to us and not as something of God which is not revealed. We affirm that Jesus Christ is the subject and object of election precisely ‘so that we may know before whom and what we must be silent and humble ourselves and adore’, and so avoid a ‘self-projected image’ of a hidden deity (ibid., p. 147). Such precision is helpful, not only to protect the integrity of our doctrinal formulation and the character of our piety, but also to buttress our sense of assurance in light of God's decision. Throughout §33, Barth consistently attacks the well-known decretum absolutum (see esp. pp. 100–15, 134–45, 158–60). He does so because to speak of any kind of absolute, unconditioned decree of elect and rejected effectively relegates God's decision not to a gracious act of overflowing love, but to an incomprehensible, fixed principle (see also CD II.2, p. 333). But such a principle is hardly revealed. It is a deduction, a capitulation on the part of humanity to our own uncertainty and doubt. Barth acknowledges that there might be a kind of ironic comfort in such a move (abandoning ourselves in an ‘[unsearchable] idea of God and man is no doubt very mysterious and exciting and in its own way consoling’, p. 158), but it is a move we must resist and reject. All pastoral consolation founded upon mystery and not revelation, upon unknown and not known, cannot but prove unsatisfying. ‘All the earnest statements concerning the majesty and mystery of God, all the well-meaning protestations of His fatherly loving-kindness, cannot in any way alter the fact that we necessarily remain anxious in respect of our election’ (p. 111). Our own assurance of election rests entirely on the fact that we know that God is not ‘electing elsewhere and in some other way’ (p. 111). Barth wants to define the mystery of God's election not only so that we might not ‘fill in the gaps’ ourselves, but also so that it can be assurance. Against, therefore, any decretum absolutum, against the possibility of losing ourselves in non-knowledge rather than knowledge of God, Barth concludes forcefully, ‘when we are called upon to define and name the first and decisive decision which transcends and includes all others, it is definitely not in order to answer with a mysterious shrug of the shoulders. . . . There is no such thing as a decretum absolutum. There is no such thing as a will of God apart from the will of Jesus Christ’ (pp. 104, 115).

12 On the implications of this construal for human election and the grounds of human freedom, see CD II.2, pp. 115–27, 175–80. For a discussion of the repercussions of Barth's formulation of the doctrine for the double nature of predestination (that in Christ God has ascribed to humanity salvation and to himself death), ibid., pp. 161–75. That this decision is a living decree and not a static outcome, that in it God remains free to continue to decide for his creature, that election is therefore actualistic, something continually dependent upon God's grace and realised in an ongoing way, ibid., pp. 185–94.

13 Ibid., p. 95.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p. 96.

17 Ibid., pp. 96–7.

18 McCormack, ‘Grace and Being’, p. 96.

19 Ibid., pp. 95, 100. In Barth's own words, ‘If it is true that God became man, then in this we have to recognize and respect His eternal will and purpose and resolve. . .behind which we do not have to reckon with any Son of God in Himself, with any logos asarkos, with any other Word of God than that which was made flesh. According to the free and gracious will of God the eternal Son of God is Jesus Christ as He lived and died and rose again in time, and none other. . . . We must not ignore [God's free decision] and imagine a “Logos in itself” which does not have this content and form [Jesus Christ]’. CD IV.1, p. 52.

20 Ibid., p. 100; emphasis in original.

21 Specifically, the modality of anticipation allows McCormack to understand God's determination to be for the human in the concrete person of Jesus Christ, without making the Hegelian move of collapsing divine existence into human history. See ibid., pp. 99–100.

22 Ibid., p. 103; emphasis in original.

23 Ibid., p. 104.

24 Ibid., pp. 101, 104; emphasis in original.

25 Ibid., pp. 101, 102.

26 Molnar, Divine Freedom, p. 63.

27 Ibid., p. 64.

28 Ibid., p. 63.

29 Besides McCormack, Molnar takes issue with Farrow, Douglas, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999)Google Scholar, and with Jenson, Robert, The Triune Identity: God According to the Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982)Google Scholar and Systematic Theology, vol.1, The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). See Molnar, Divine Freedom, pp. 64–81. As Molnar sees it, both of these latter figures represent a radicalised position on the logos asarkos, dismissing it entirely. It is for this reason that I chose to investigate Molnar's debate with McCormack, who, despite Molnar's conclusion to the contrary (ibid., p. 81) does not dispense with the logos asarkos entirely. He allows the doctrine a place in Barth's thought, albeit a secondary or insignificant place. The greater proximity of McCormack's thought to Molnar's makes the disagreement between these two the more fruitful to explore, as it touches the heart of the matter: not simply whether one acknowledges the existence of the logos asarkos, but the minimum conceptual and functional role that it must be accorded in our doctrine of God in order to think rightly about (the order of) election and triunity. In other words, setting Molnar against Farrow or Jenson could give the impression of a false dichotomy, as though in discussing the topic of God–world relation one either includes the logos asarkos or does not.

30 Ibid., p. 71.

31 One might charge that Molnar's position is open to critique insofar as he seems to hold to a particularly modernist (western post-Enlightenment) understanding of freedom, which is influenced by the notion of autonomous existence. Hector suggests something along these lines (‘God's Triunity’, pp. 255–7). To Molnar, freedom and contingency seem antithetically opposed, and as such God is not free unless in his essence he is utterly free from external relation in some primordial moment of selfhood. But how well does this accord with the biblical notion of freedom in self-deference to the other? Is it not the point of Genesis 3 that humankind fell by failing to grasp freedom-in-obedience, and instead opted for an ‘ideal’ of unconditioned autonomy, a free-from existence? Barth, of course, when not read as McCormack does, is accused of the same kind of modernist impulse. And, of course, this question raises the corollary as to whether freedom-as-essential-unbridled-autonomy is not really more scholastic than modern. (Does substantialist ontology not trade upon the same concept?) Nonetheless, it is instructive to consider whether Molnar and Barth are indeed concerned for divine freedom, or for an abstract notion of divine freedom. We must, however, at least honour Barth's intention, which is not to oppose freedom and contingency, but to contend for a kind of freedom that transcends this polarity, and in doing this grant a sympathetic reading to Molnar as following Barth here. God is indeed free of contingency, unrestrained by anything that is not him. But God is not free because he is independent. Rather, he is independent because he is free. His freedom is in essence threefold (this is my language, not Barth's): God is free from contingency, he is free for contingency, and he is free for relationship that is genuine yet not contingent. This last is the ultimate sense in which God is free; he is able to be in communion that finds its basis and fulfilment in nothing but himself. It is indeed genuine communion, genuine love, precisely because it is God's love. ‘It is His freedom not merely to be in the differentiation of His being from [created] being, but to be in Himself the One who can have and hold communion with this reality (as in fact He does) in spite of His utter distinction from it’; CD II. 1, p. 304.

32 This difference has not been sufficiently addressed by either McCormack or Molnar. Molnar indicates that he finds McCormack's definition of ‘eternal’ problematic: Divine Freedom, p. 62. Critiquing McCormack's position he states that ‘if God's election has always taken place, how then can it be construed as a decision; does it not then become a necessity?’ Apart from this rhetorical observation, though, Molnar offers no alternative definition.

33 Molnar, email message to the author, 28 March 2005. As noted, McCormack does take on the relationship between time and eternity more directly in his 2007 response to van Driel. Here, McCormack contends that Molnar errs in his understanding of McCormack's position: while God's election is eternal, it is not timeless, meaning there was a ‘time’ in God when it had not taken place. It seems to me McCormack's earlier and less-nuanced argument was the stronger. Yet the problem is not with McCormack, but Barth. Barth's three-tiered concept of time/eternity is biblically awkward and philosophically deficient. If God's being is in the act of electing from all eternity, and he overcomes the discontinuity between time and eternity in Christ (all the while sustaining the distinction between his being and ours in the an-enhypostatic dialectic), then it is correct to say that election has never not taken place, or positively, that is has always happened. But that implies necessity in God only to the extent that we bail out of the actualism underlying this observation. If God's being is and has always been act, then Christ's electing is nothing more than the specification of a subject that is already self-determining in perpetuity, by the objective content of that determination.

34 It is in this inward manner of being that God is pre-eminently ‘Lord’ of his life, and from which he acts as Lord a second time, out of which his love ‘overflows’ in a sovereign choice to be for humankind (CD II. 2, pp. 99–101, 121, 176).

35 That Barth does in fact conceptually distinguish between God's in se eternity and that of Jesus Christ is made clear by the following assertion: ‘As the subject and object of [election], Jesus Christ was at the beginning. He was not at the beginning of God, for God has indeed no beginning. But He was at the beginning of all things, at the beginning of God's dealings with the reality which is distinct from Himself’ (CD II. 2, p. 102); emphasis mine. In the sphere of God's primordial non-beginning, Jesus Christ was not; but he was in the eternity at which God begins to deal with all that is not God, reality distinct from himself.

36 See CD I. 2, pp. 878–9, ‘The content of the doctrine of the Trinity which the Church has formulated. . .is not that God in His relation to man is Creator, Mediator and Redeemer, but that God in Himself is eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit. . . . This Subject God Himself cannot be dissolved into His work and activity, but wills to be known and recognized as this Subject in His work and activity’.

37 On this issue Barth's thinking reflects basic Thomistic Trinitarianism. Thomas, for the very reason Molnar identifies – the preservation of an absolute species of divine freedom – insists on a logical (not material) distinction between God's operations ad extra and his inner triune existence (cf. Summa Theologica I, q. 39). This distinction has resurfaced as a hotly debated topic in contemporary theology since Karl Rahner's highly interpretable, axiomatic identification of the immanent and economic Trinity (cf. The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1997), pp. 21ff.). Molnar's assessment as to how Barth would have replied to Rahner is by now predictable: Barth would affirm that in reality the immanent Trinity is the economic, but insist on a conceptual distinction with respect to the vice versa of this reality, in order to preserve divine freedom (cf. Divine Freedom; and ‘The Function of the Immanent Trinity’, pp. 397–8). For a more recent study, which also understands Barth's thought as ultimately anchored in this freedom-preserving logical distinction, see Fred Sanders, The Image of the Immanent Trinity: Rahner's Rule and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Issues in Systematic Theology 12; New York: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 142–58.

38 This is my own construal of some challenging material in CD I. 2, II. 2 and IV. 1 relative to the logos and the Trinity. Once again, I have brought together Barth's comments with respect to these themes as follows: God in se is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Son being the logos asarkos. God ad extra is Creator, Mediator and Redeemer, the Mediator being the logos ensarkos. However, because there is a beginning of God ad extra above and beyond temporal reality and being, the ‘in the beginning’ of John 1, there is a ‘time’ when the Second Person of the Trinity is logos for humanity yet pre-flesh, what I (not Barth) have called the logos ensarkos anticipatorily. We might also call this ‘contingent logos asarkos’. The designation is not altogether important, so long as it is clear that the logos, at this stage, is utterly for humanity, which is not the case at the stage of the autonomy of the Son.

This is not, however, the only way to understand Barth's comments with respect to the logos and God's triune existence. If we take his exegesis of John 1 (CD II. 2, pp. 95–9) programmatically, then we would be forced to hold a conceptual distinction between the Son and the Word, so that the eternity of the Word (not that of the Son) is the logos asarkos and its temporal fulfilment is the logos ensarkos. The reasons I have not chosen this particular interpretation of Barth's work are (1) in CD IV. 1 he associates the Son with the logos asarkos (p. 52), and (2) that Molnar's argument is nonsensical in this structure. If there is no logos with God in his in se primordiality, then it can have nothing whatsoever to do with the preservation of divine freedom. The restriction of the Persons’ relationality to each other would be the only argument for maintaining divine autonomy from us, as the logos asarkos would not participate in this reality.

See also CD II. 2, p. 79. Barth here commends a simple distinction, between the internal and external operations of God, and is critical of any notion of God in se if it implies an abstract Trinity without definite direction and reference. God is always directed out of himself, in the realm beyond time and in time. Again, though, this singular differentiation is difficult to reconcile with prior and succeeding claims about the pre-fleshed logos and the autonomous being of God, which, if not suggesting an abstract deity, at least imply that God could have remained apart from his works, internal or external.

39 Cf. CD II. 2, p. 99, ‘God Himself in all His ways and works willed wholly and utterly to bear this name, and actually does bear it: the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son.’

40 ‘Qualified’ because Molnar does reserve a place for God's decision to determine his being; he simply insists that God makes this decision free from the human and therefore as he is in himself. His inner life, then, is what makes him God (constitutes his being) and grounds his decision for humanity (and not vice versa).

41 He elects and is elected, with ontological connotations.

42 I am not certain McCormack has completely carried through the implications of his own insight. If there never was a time that God was not in the decisive act of his being (i.e. deciding for humanity), then there is no logical possibility of ever speaking of the will of God prior to his being and vice versa. McCormack is correct to devote serious attention to the subject matter or content of election as Barth construes it, and on this level we might with him speak of the constitutive or determinative character of God's will: in a primal and ontological way God calls humanity to himself. But just as we are prepared to affirm the logical priority of divine will to being we must retreat from speaking thus, because the formal significance of Barth's position as McCormack puts it – there never was a time when this being-as-calling was not – refuses sequential statement and urges in its place the formulation of eternal reciprocity. There is no place conceptually prior to God's being for his will to inhabit, and the same is true the other way around, if there never was a time God was not being in the act of his decision.

43 Those of a scholastic mindset find this dictum to cheapen what takes place in the act of grace. It would seem the very nature of grace qua grace to involve the (abstractly conceived) self-determination of a free individual to give what he otherwise does not have to, and so to set himself relative to another in a way that he could otherwise not; to be in this way and not that. But this is to fix the meaning of grace in advance and then apply it to God. Grace is not the state of being-for rather than being-not-for, reflexively considered and named. Such could be nothing more than the hypostatisation of a desirable human dynamic, the altruistic decision not to be free-from but free-for writ infinite. Grace is not being-for, grace is God-for. To say grace is not to say ‘this state of being rather than that’. To say ‘grace’ is to say ‘God’, and Barth understood this perhaps better than any theologian before him, despite the fact that he seems occasionally to forget it.

44 ‘Substance’ is a term carefully employed. I am aware of its ontic implications, and in fact it is in light of these that I use it here (rather than, say, ‘content’). I am convinced that the trajectory of Barth's thought is not satisfied if we stop short of confirming that in election God affirms humanity in the very ‘stuff’, however conceived, of his existence. My conviction, further, is that Barth's actualism pushes us to understand this stuff and being in post-metaphysical terms, but that is a subject for another essay.

45 So stated, this is a protological conclusion; eschatologically, I affirm the converse: election reveals that the being of God reaches forward to the same non-ending as the grace of God and vice versa.

46 I am grateful to McCormack, Molnar and Hector for the pleasure of several conversations and written correspondences, which helped to consolidate my understanding of the issues at hand and their respective positions. Additionally, I owe a word of gratitude to John Webster and Ralph Del Colle, who read and commented on this article in an earlier draft. The work took shape during a seminar on christology with Del Colle at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI.