Bayer contra Barth, part 3

See part 1 here and part 2 here.

On Natural Theology/Unity of Reality:

       “In the service of the church, natural theology serves to articulate the universality of the gospel, which is to be proclaimed not only to all people, but also to all creatures (Mark 16:15).  Jesus is the one and only Lord.  'There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved' (Acts 4:12).This might seem to suggest that we should think of the person of Christ as the unity of reality or, conversely, of the unity of reality as the person of Christ, based on such key texts as the New Testament Christ-hymns, for example, Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-4, and the prologue of the Gospel of John.  It is in this sense that especially Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth have asserted that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God.  But in order to demonstrate its claim to truth or its claim to general theological validity, we do not have to begin with an indeterminate, general concept, which would have to be assumed or anticipated, but rather with the particularity of the Christ event….  

If we look to history for examples of a 'pure' [a priori] Christological argument, we could take Hegel’s philosophy of religion, with some modifications, but we also need to look at Karl Barth.  We recall that Barth’s initial treatment of the problem of natural theology resulted in his outright rejection of it with his famous 'No!' to Emil Brunner in 1943.  But then in 1961 Barth says, 'Later I retrieved natural theology via Christology.'  Therefore, we must examine his natural theology, which he rehabilitated on the basis of Christology, because of its connections with Hegel’s philosophy of religion…  

With Hegel, the way pioneered by Lessing and Kant reaches its completion.  The cross becomes 'rational' in that the historical Good Friday is understood as an idea and so is transformed into the speculative Good Friday, while Christ’s resurrection becomes the negation of negation.  The concrete attributes (concreta) of the being of Jesus Christ are tacitly transformed into abstract attributes (abstracta), into general definitions that delineate reality as a whole and as a unity. 

In the new form of natural theology perfected by Hegel after Lessing and Kant, the old distinction between theology [a general experience of God] and economy [a Christian experience of salvation] is set aside and transformed into the one reality of Christ.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, speaking wholly in the sense of the Hegelian philosophy of religion, says: 'There is…only one reality, and that is the reality of God, manifest in Christ, in the reality of the world.'  Karl Barth says the same thing, theologically, especially in his 'doctrine of lights' in Church Dogmatics IV/3.  Responding there to the problem endemic to the tradition of natural theology, he says that he retrieves 'natural theology via Christology' on the basis of Jesus Christ as the one Word of God…. 

While the distinction between Schleiermacher and Barth may be ever so great, they agree with each other in their thinking about unity.  While Schleiermacher, of course, thinks of unity anthropologically, as the one fundamental state [the feeling of absolute dependence], Barth approaches it Christologically, by holding that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God….  

If we criticize Barth’s thinking about unity, we will have to ask ourselves whether the unity of God is something that we can only confess, as when we confess Jesus to be the one and only Lord, or whether it is something that we can also conceive with our minds.  But this can happen only in the sense of 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 and of the prayer of the Isaiah Apocalypse: ‘O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but we acknowledge your name alone’ (Isa. 26:13; cf Micah 4:5)  Yahweh's lawsuit with the other gods must not be glossed over even by systematic theology through an abstract monism. At stake is the truth of the first commandment: 'I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods besides me!' Nevertheless, the other gods have their reality in their promises and enticements, as either something fascinating or frightening, in the sense of a power that is given to them by the human fabricating heart. 

The unity of God that we confess can only be believed.  It cannot be conceived, if that means to possess the idea of the unity of God as a datum that we could summon at will as we do our hopes and memories…. God’s unity is not like an idea that can be remembered or construed.  It will always be a matter of dispute.  Even thinking cannot escape this conflict between the one God with the many gods.  Therefore, this situation must be made clear also in thinking and in theology, especially in systematic theology.  We cannot skip over the distinction between law and gospel, which is at stake here, for the sake of the idea of the unity of gospel and law.” (p 192-198) 

“…God encounters us in ways that are irreducibly different.  [These are Law (accusation and instruction), Gospel (promise), and terrifying hiddenness (which contradicts Law and Gospel).]  We cannot therefore accept a monistic doctrine of the word of God, as advocated by Karl Barth.  In the midst of the contradictory and complementary ways in which God encounters us, which are laden with tension and conflict, the gospel stands out in its uniqueness as God’s decisive, final word.” (p.125) 

“The danger of an ethical approach to theology exists wherever the unity of law and gospel is stressed for the sake of truth.  We find this, for instance, in Karl Barth.” (p. 142) 

“In this sense ‘the Holy Spirit,’ who makes the old world and its old language new, ‘has his own grammar.’…  The formulas of the new language are a gift of the Holy Spirit.  They focus on the way we talk about the communication of attributes.  We must, however, protect them against rash generalizations, the work of enthusiastic eschatology, aided and abetted by human reason.  Again, Luther achieves this by thoroughly philosophical means: through the distinction between the concrete attributes (concreta) of Christ’s being and the abstract attributes (abstracta) of human nature in general, creation and the world as such.  Luther stresses the importance of this distinction, which seems to anticipate the criticism that is necessary today in the face of a post-Christian natural theology, with its distinctively Hegelian stamp, which dominates, for instance, the theology of Barth and Bonhoeffer.  The hallmark of these forms of post-Christian theology is the endless and lavish use they make of the proposition 'God is human' or 'the creature and the creator are one and the same.'  However, in what is surely a countermove to this, Luther pleads for a 'spare use' of this kind of talk.  The thesis that 'all words receive a new meaning in Christ' is not true if we expand it in a speculative way, but only 'if they have the same referent.'  People who do not see this clearly and who fail to distinguish between the concrete attributes of Christ’s being and the abstract attributes of humanity and the world, 'do not know how to distinguish between equivocal words.'  In their enthusiasm, they relish the fog of equivocation and refuse to let the cloud (Exod. 13:21f.) of the Holy Spirit and his grammar be their guide.” (p. 81-82, quotes from Luther)

I must admit, I don't fully understand everything that Bayer is advocating here, and I'm not sure I even agree with everything, but here's some of what I take away from it.  God speaks to us in Law and Gospel and encounters us in his hiddenness.  To try and subsume these very different types of relation under one broad category of God's self-revelation in Christ (as Barth does, I believe) is to eliminate the conflict that makes theology so dynamic and powerful over us.  Once these disparate relations are "united," theology becomes something dead which we have control over, rather than how the living God encounters us.  The Law tells us that we are damned, the Gospel tells us that we are redeemed.  Most conflicting of all, the suffering around us tell us nothing of God.  This is God's hiddenness.  When we try and peel back the mask with which God has hidden his face (Psalm 13), we are led into terrifying depersonalized abstractions which threaten to undo us.  Once we relegate God's unity to the status of a datum, we "save" ourselves from God's work.  It is the old self resisting the cross, trying to "get God off our back," to quote Forde.

This concludes Bayer's disagreement with Barth.  I know I need help unpacking all of this, still, so what do you think?  Let me know in the comments and maybe we can work through this together.

Bayer contra Barth, part 2

See part 1 here.

On the Scheme of Theory and Practice:

“The twofold scheme serves as a basic model right up to our own day.  An impressive example of this is the motto of Taizé: contemplation et lutte, ‘prayer and engagement.’…The Roman Catholic tradition has at its best maintained the twofold scheme up to the present in the sense of Meister Eckhart’s dialectic [that practice must be adopted in such a way that it does not exclude theory].  Karl Barth has also followed this twofold scheme in his strongly cognitive and contemplative understanding of faith, which of course is connected to the modern emphasis on construction.  However, this scheme, together with the Platonic-Aristotelian concept of science that always goes with it, was dealt a fatal blow by Luther’s concept of theology.  For him, faith is no longer subordinated to theory, but it is a unique and distinctive kind of life, a receptive life (vita passiva).  Theory and practice are no longer related to each other in a two-fold way.  Rather, both are related to faith, and it is this third element that determines whether they are true or false.” (p. 109) 

         “Festivals and holidays (holy days) make harsh demands on the old nature, for it means that we must cease from our work: ‘For our sinful nature is very unwilling to die and to be passive, and it is a bitter day of rest for it to cease from its own works and be dead.’  This has been a bitter pill for modern theological anthropology, right up to the theology of Barth and Bultmann, in which humans are always seen as active subjects, as doers (for Barth analogously to God)…. However, this overlooks the power of the Sabbath, of Sunday, to establish life, because on the Lord’s day human work ceases and God is active.  If we receive this power as a categorical gift, the urge to realize ourselves, not only in our work but also in our actions, even in the act of faith, must die…        

This kind of dying, however, makes room for life: ‘Keep hand and heart from labor free, that God may do his work in thee. (Lutheran Hymn)’…  Faith, of course, is nothing but ‘a divine work in us which changes us and makes us to be born anew of God, John 1 [12-13].  It kills the old Adam and makes us altogether new persons, in heart and spirit and mind and powers.’If it is true that we must rest from our work, die to the old self, to let God do his work, faith is primarily neither theory nor practice, neither a speculative life (vita contemplativa) nor an active life (vita activa), but, to use Luther’s term for it, a receptive life (vita passiva).” (p. 92-93, quotes from Luther)

Since Aristotle, discussion of science as an academic discipline has involved the distinction between theory and practice.  Theology has largely remained in this scheme throughout its history.  Bayer proposes that to remain within the scheme of theory and practice, of speculation and activity, is to succomb to the temptation to justify one's self and neglect the importance of faith, which is neither theory nor practice but something separate which God does to us.  Theory and practice are merely the outgrowth of that faith as it is challenged and seeks to establish itself.  Theology should not concern itself with striking the proper balance between theory and practice, but rather it should rest and be captured by God's work which kills and makes alive.

Bayer contra Barth, part 1

Since my inclusion of Karl Barth in my last post is generating some disagreement, and I am not knowledgeable enough to defend Bayer's critiques sufficiently, I am going to try and let Bayer speak for himself.  In reviewing where Bayer discusses Barth in his book, I have seen three primary criticisms.  The first is the program of "faith seeking understanding," the second is the classic scheme of theory and practice, and the third (by far the most in-depth) is Barth's "rehabilitation" of natural theology and its "unity of meaning."  Since the passages (particularly in the third critique) are long, I am dividing these up into three posts.

(Unless otherwise noted, quotes are from Oswald Bayer's Theology the Lutheran Way.)

On Fides Quaerens Intellectum:

       “What do we pray for as we journey along the pathway of theology?  What are we seeking when we pray it?  Assuming that we already have faith, are we asking for insight, along the lines of Anselm’s program of “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum)?  Luther emphasizes that the author of the psalm (the pray-er) asks to be instructed and taught, even though he would have been well acquainted with the text of Moses and the other books, and would have heard and read them daily.  Here we come to a difference which is crucial for Luther’s understanding of theology.  The theologian should try to understand through prayer what he or she already knows.
       What the theologian does not yet know and is still seeking is not knowledge and insights into texts.  Therefore, it is not a matter of discovering what a text is saying with the aid of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics (logic and philosophy in the wider sense) in order to be able to teach it in the school or academy.  For that, of course, "knowledge of the liberal arts" is necessary, and Luther stresses its importance for the study of theology as much as the "grace of the Spirit."  Although the work of the Holy Spirit, and therefore of the triune God to whom we pray, does not depend on human achievement and education, it does not exclude “knowledge of the liberal arts.”  The “grace of the Spirit” does not replace “knowledge of the liberal arts”; it sets it free.  In this way, prayer and work, God’s work and human work, find their proper relationship.  Theology as a human project is relieved of the need to reach above, to go in search of timeless pure principles, the absolute first and last, and to be enraptured by it in a pure vision.  Humans do not have to justify themselves by their knowledge any more than by their actions… What this learning receives and attains beyond what it knows is the certainty of what it knows, a certainty that cannot be given by knowledge and science.  This certainty is not within our power to create or possess.  We can only seek it and wait for it from him alone through prayer.” (p. 48-49) 

“Theology, then, is a way of life that is stamped by prayer, the study of scripture, and spiritual attack (oratio, meditatio, tentatio).  And to this we can also add death.  By the same token, the theologian – and every Christian is a theologian – is a person under attack seeking certainty (tentatus quaerens certitudinem).  This formula, which picks up Anselm’s programmatic formula and turns it inside out, illustrates the difference between Luther and Anselm in their understanding of theology.”  (p. 212)  

“Despite some points of contact, this formula represents a clear alternative to the program of ‘faith seeking understanding’ (fides quaerens intellectum) that has dominated theology from Augustine through Anselm to Hegel…and Karl Barth.  In contrast to the program of ‘faith seeking understanding,’ Luther’s formula takes into account the historical nature of theological existence, and gives due recognition to the fundamental importance of temptation (tentatio)….  Luther’s approach does not arbitrarily impose a general, a priori condition that makes possible the understanding of the gospel.  Rather it teaches us how meditation, and the use of the inexhaustible treasures of the Bible, can be a source of new experiences.”  (p. 34)

These three quotes illustrate a fundamental difference between Bayer (and Luther) and perhaps the majority of theological thinking throughout the history of the church, including Barth.  Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) sees the Christian life in more-or-less this way:  first, the Holy Spirit gives faith to the sinner, who then uses this grace to find out more about this faith.  In this picture, which is purely intellectual and lacking in emotion, the christian is seen as the do-er of theology.  Theology is a somewhat neutral enterprise, insofar as its effects on the christian are concerned.  Bayer's formula of tentatus quaerens certitudinem (a person under attack seeking certainty) paints a very different picture.  While both view faith as the gift of the Holy Spirit, Bayer's formula does not show understanding as the goal of theology, but rather a strong faith.  The christian finds her faith under attack by life events, the challenges of skeptics and the seeming absence of God, and laments, reaching to God for salvation: "How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13).  Bayer takes into account that God uses suffering to kill the old self and raise the new and that this is by no means an emotionally-neutral enterprise.  In this formula, God is the do-er of theology, not the christian.

The Death of Idols

Edit:  When discussing a "theology of the cross," "the cross" is shorthand for the entire story of Jesus, from OT anticipation to birth to crucifixion, resurrection, and glorification.
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I read this post over at Theology Out of Bounds, in which the author makes the case that monotheism (asserting the existence of only one god) is unbiblical.  He argues that the faith of Israel and of the early church was not so much monotheistic as it was monolatrous (monolatry: serving only one god regardless of the existence of others).  It reminded me of a passage from Oswlad Bayer's Theology the Lutheran Way and I thought I'd walk through it a bit.

Bayer is talking about the relation of philosophy (especially natural theology) to biblical theology and the attempt to unify them by what he calls "justifying thinking."  The attempts to do this can go two ways.  First, as in the case of the medieval scholastic theologians, it can start from abstract, general, rational truths derived purely from logic and try to end up with Christianity.  This approach starts with something like the god of Plato (omnibenevolent, omniscient, immutable, omnipotent, etc.) and moves to show how the god of the Bible is this god.  It tries to build a foundation of logic and then add revelation on top of it.  The second approach is more recent and finds proponents in Bonhoeffer and Barth.  This method begins with God's self-revelation and works from there to arrive at abstract, general, rational truths.  To Bayer, both of these approaches suffer from the same flaw: they both sacrifice the concrete revelation of God for the sake of general, abstract truths.

The temptation to engage in justifying thinking is especially strong for a systematic theologian, for this kind of thinking develops the idea of a "unity" of reality.  Justifying thinking is preoccupied with the desire to mediate and reconcile all things. It is driven by the compulsion to demonstrate that every individual and particular thing is based on something general...

As humans, we are driven to justify ourselves, both with our thinking and our actions.  By trying to find something that unifies human endeavors with God's revelation, we look to justify ourselves before God in our thinking.  It's not really any different than the person who acts morally in order to earn their way to heaven.  It's all part of the same motivation: Sin.  Sin causes us to try and show ourselves to be worthy, rather than accepting the entirely free gift of God.  This has to be eliminated, and the only way for that to happen is through the cross.  We have to die to ourselves.  God has to kill the "theologian of glory" (the person whose theology is captivated by the need to reserve some glory for humanity) to leave the "theologian of the cross" (the person whose theologies of glory have been broken and who realizes that all remains is the cross).

Insofar as metaphysics is justifying thinking, which is in league with morality in the sense of justifying action, it is put to death by the passive, donated righteousness of faith. The person who is reborn a Christian and a theologian through the word of the cross and is a "theologian of the cross" says what a thing is: "A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls a thing what it actually is. (Heidelberg Disputation)" Why is that so? People by nature have their own natural idea of God, in which they flatten everything out to make it fit the concept of the One, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. But the theologian of the cross has had that false idea of God shattered through painful disillusionment.

The death of the old self therefore also means that our illusion of a totality of meaning is destroyed, even if it was only hypothetically anticipated. Humans have a deep-seated need to engage in justifying thinking. But the theologian of the cross recognizes in this the "thinking and striving of the human heart," which is radically evil (Gen. 6:5 and 8:21). In its justifying thinking the human heart is a "fabricating" heart that constantly produces and projects images in the mind, idols, on which we hang our hearts, archetypes, prototypes, hopes of happiness and success. Each of us has such images on which we hang our heart, which the heart itself has produced. Therefore, Calvin, luke Luther, says that the human heart is an "idol factory."

And there it is: the conception of God as "the One, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good"-- this is an idol created by the human heart!  The search for a "totality of meaning" which can incorporate both our human reasoning and divine revelation (even if it is based in Christology, as in Barth) is just a symptom of our "fabricating heart!"  When we talk about the "one God" in the sense of monotheism, we gloss over the way he is presented in scripture.  The "God" of philosophy ends up usurping the God of revelation.  Bayer gives an example of this in the translation of God's name:

...this question was raised by the Greek form of the Hebrew name of God in the [Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture].  God's name in Hebrew has a verbal form that can be taken as a reliable promise that God is freely present with us: I am/will be who I am/will be (Exod. 3:14).  [There is no real tense in Biblical Hebrew, so 'ehyeh can mean both "I am" and "I will be."]  However, in Greek this dynamic is lost and the divine name is petrified into the self-predication of an absolute being: ego eimi ho on [lit. "I am the one who is" or "I am the being"] (where "on" is the word in Greek metaphysics for "being").

In Greek thinking, immortality, the absence of emotion and its accompanying impassibility (apathy), all belong to being, pure and simple, to being itself.  However, where the biblical texts are taken seriously, there will be a grave conflict with Greek metaphysics and ontology.  The event described in Hosea 11:7-11 is ontologically unthinkable.  Ancient metaphysics rejects it as mythology because it cannot abide the thought that there is a "coup," a change in God himself.  Here God is not identical with himself; he is not consistent with himself: "...My heart is changed within me, I am full of remorse. (9) I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal...."

Clearly, there is a strong tension between theology and philosophy that we cannot minimize or even try to harmonize.

When we think in terms of metaphysics, of some abstract, rational reality behind the presented reality, we are in danger of forgetting that God is a "living God" and not an abstract ideal.  God is not some generic "being" or  abstract emotion; he is a personal, living and active God, and he does things we hate.  To shield ourselves from this terrifying God, we create theories to set up idols so that we can have control.  Essentially, we set up gods that are lesser than God so that we can leave some room for our own freedom, our own morality, our own justification.  We can't help it.  We are in bondage to Sin and so we can't let God be God.  The only answer to this is the word of the Cross: the promise of death and new life, freely given by a God who we can't control and who won't submit to our quest for a "totality of meaning."  The theologian of glory must die so that the theologian of the cross can be raised.