God’s Being Towards Fellowship: Schleiermacher, Barth, and the Meaning of ‘God is Love’ 9780567685575, 9780567685605, 9780567685582

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Editorial board
Title page
Copyrights
Dedication
Contents
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION
Is divine love unique?
Love as a theological model
Contemporary assumptions
The Western inheritance
Augustine
Richard of St. Victor
Introduction to the study
General approach
The subjects of our study
Plan of study
Part I FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER AND THE ACTIVE GOD OF LOVE
Introduction to Part I
Chapter 1 GOD AS THE UNIVERSE IN ON RELIGION
Religion as the intuition of the universe
The universe as ‘God’
Summary
Chapter 2 GOD AS THE PRESUPPOSITION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE DIALEKTIK
The purpose of the Dialektik
Seeking the transcendental ground of knowing
The transcendental ground of the self
God and world
Summary
Chapter 3 GOD AS THE WHENCE OF THE FEELING OF ABSOLUTE DEPENDENCE IN THE INTRODUCTION TO THE GLAUBENSLEHRE
The status and function of the ‘borrowed propositions’ (§§ 3–14)
The propositions borrowed from ethics and the definition of ‘God’
Summary
Chapter 4 SCHLEIERMACHER’S DOCTRINE OF GOD
Introduction to the divine attributes
The ‘original’ attributes: eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience
The ‘derived’ attributes
Holiness and justice
Love and wisdom
Conclusion to Part I
Part II KARL BARTH AND THE PERSONAL GOD OF LOVE
Introduction to Part II
Chapter 5 KNOWING GOD
Theological method
The Trinity
Primary and secondary objectivity
Chapter 6 GOD AS THE ONE WHO LOVES IN FREEDOM
God’s being in act
Love as the seeking and creation of fellowship
The dialectic of love and freedom
Defining love
Divine personhood
Divine fellowship
Summary
Divine freedom
Divine personhood as free personhood
God’s freedom in transcendence
God’s freedom in immanence
The principle of divine immanence: Jesus Christ
Summary
Chapter 7 THE CHRISTOLOGICAL SHAPE OF THE DIVINE IDENTITY
Divine election
The specification of the dialectic of love and freedom
Jesus Christ as the centre-point of the doctrine of God
Election and time
Election as the overflow of God’s triune love
Summary
Divine obedience
God’s history in the history of Jesus Christ
The reality of Jesus Christ’s obedience as God
Divine obedience and the Trinity
Conclusion to Part II
Conclusion: God’s being towards fellowship
Comparison
A proposal
God is love
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

GOD’S BEING TOWARDS FELLOWSHIP

T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology Edited by John Webster Ian A. McFarland Ivor Davidson

GOD’S BEING TOWARDS FELLOWSHIP

Schleiermacher, Barth, and the Meaning of ‘God is Love’

Justin Stratis

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 This paperback edition published in 2021 Copyright © Justin Stratis, 2019 Justin Stratis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Terry Woodley All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Notes92 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stratis, Justin, author. Title: God’s being towards fellowship: Schleiermacher, Barth, and the meaning of ‘God is love’ / Justin Stratis. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York: T&T Clark, 2019. | Series: T&T Clark studies in systematic theology; 32 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019007555 | ISBN 9780567685575 (hardback) | ISBN 9780567685599 (epub) | ISBN 9780567685582 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: God (Christianity)–Love. | Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1768-1834. | Barth, Karl, 1886-1968. Classification: LCC BT140.S7885 2019 | DDC 231/.6–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007555 ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-8557-5 PB: 978-0-5676-9818-6 ePDF: 978-0-5676-8558-2 ePUB: 978-0-5676-8559-9 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For Melissa

CONTENTS Abbreviationsx INTRODUCTION1 Is divine love unique? 3 Love as a theological model 5 Contemporary assumptions 8 The Western inheritance 12 Augustine12 Richard of St. Victor 15 Introduction to the study 19 General approach 19 The subjects of our study 19 Plan of study 20 Part I FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER AND THE ACTIVE GOD OF LOVE Introduction to Part I

25

Chapter 1 GOD AS THE UNIVERSE IN ON RELIGION27 Religion as the intuition of the universe 28 The universe as ‘God’ 33 Summary37 Chapter 2 GOD AS THE PRESUPPOSITION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE DIALEKTIK39 The purpose of the Dialektik40 Seeking the transcendental ground of knowing 42 The transcendental ground of the self 47 God and world 51 Summary53 Chapter 3 GOD AS THE WHENCE OF THE FEELING OF ABSOLUTE DEPENDENCE IN THE INTRODUCTION TO THE GLAUBENSLEHRE55 The status and function of the ‘borrowed propositions’ (§§ 3–14) 55 The propositions borrowed from ethics and the definition of ‘God’ 62 Summary69

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Chapter 4 SCHLEIERMACHER’S DOCTRINE OF GOD71 Introduction to the divine attributes 72 The ‘original’ attributes: eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience 75 The ‘derived’ attributes 81 Holiness and justice 82 Love and wisdom 83 Conclusion to Part I

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Part II KARL BARTH AND THE PERSONAL GOD OF LOVE Introduction to Part II

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Chapter 5 KNOWING GOD93 Theological method 93 The Trinity 97 Primary and secondary objectivity 102 Chapter 6 GOD AS THE ONE WHO LOVES IN FREEDOM111 God’s being in act 111 Love as the seeking and creation of fellowship 121 The dialectic of love and freedom 121 Defining love 125 Divine personhood 129 Divine fellowship 132 Summary142 Divine freedom 143 Divine personhood as free personhood 143 God’s freedom in transcendence 144 God’s freedom in immanence 145 The principle of divine immanence: Jesus Christ 147 Summary148 Chapter 7 THE CHRISTOLOGICAL SHAPE OF THE DIVINE IDENTITY151 Divine election 151 The specification of the dialectic of love and freedom 152 Jesus Christ as the centre-point of the doctrine of God 154 Election and time 156

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Election as the overflow of God’s triune love 159 Summary162 Divine obedience 163 God’s history in the history of Jesus Christ 163 The reality of Jesus Christ’s obedience as God 165 Divine obedience and the Trinity 167 Conclusion to Part II

173

Conclusion: God’s being towards fellowship Comparison175 A proposal 177 God is love 183 Bibliography184 Index192

ABBREVIATIONS CD

Church Dogmatics

CF

The Christian Faith

CG1

Der christliche Glaube 1821/22

CG

Der christliche Glaube 1830/31

KD

Die kirchliche Dogmatik

KGA

Friedrich Schleiermacher Kritische Gesamtausgabe

ST

Summa Theologiæ

SW

Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Sämmtliche Werke

2

Full bibliographic information for these works may be found in the bibliography.

I N T R O DU C T IO N

Granted Karl Barth’s insistence that the Johannine claim ‘God is love’ should not be decontextualized into an abstract metaphysical equation,1 nevertheless, on its own, the phrase remains rather striking.2 The fact that the author of 1 John calls God not simply ‘loving’, but apparently love itself, seems to stretch the bounds of how the concept is typically used. As Regin Prenter observes, ‘One can … say of a person that they have love or practise love, or that they receive love, but not that they are love.’3 Indeed, at the very least, the phrase introduces a semantic tension which begs an interpretive resolution. For instance, should love be interpreted in light of God or should God be interpreted in light of love? Do God and love actually mean the same thing? And if so, why not simply jettison one of the terms altogether?4 In part, the strangeness of the claim reflects the perennial conundrum of religious language. How are we to make predications of God given his absolute transcendence from the world? Is it possible for something as finite and unstable as human language to refer to God?5 Indeed, the more direct the description, 1. ‘[It] is a forced exegesis to cite this sentence apart from its context and without the interpretation that is placed on it by its context, and to use it as the basis of a definition.’ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, II/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 275. Hereafter cited as CD II/1. 2. Emil Brunner goes so far as to label it ‘the most daring statement that has ever been made in human language’. Emil Brunner, Dogmatics, vol. I, The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1950), 185. 3. Regin Prenter, ‘Der Gott, der Liebe ist: Das Verhältnis der Gotteslehre zur Christologie’, Theologische Literaturzeitung 96, no. 6 (1971): 401, emphasis added. 4. So Ludwig Feuerbach: ‘Who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? God or love? Love; for God as God has not saved us, but Love…. As God has renounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce God.’ Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1989), 53. 5. Similarly, Markus Mühling writes, ‘Occupying oneself with the doctrine of God means investigating expressions about God. What status do these expressions have? Do they describe who are what God is? Or do they have another function?’ Gott ist Liebe: Studien zum Verständnis der Liebe als Modell des trinitarischen Redens von Gott (Marburg: N.G. Elwert, 2005), 3.

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it seems, the sharper these questions come into focus. For this reason, it is not surprising that recent literature on divine love often begins with a discussion of the indirect nature of theological language, whether this be in terms of metaphor, model, or analogy.6 A theological account of divine love, therefore, must grapple with the difficult matter of properly relating the historical ‘lives’ of our words and the God whom these words are employed to designate. Accordingly, some theologians argue that understanding God’s essence as love requires that we attend first to the meaning of love in non-theological contexts. Eberhard Jüngel, for example, suggests that while God’s being ought not to be simply ‘deduced from the logic of the essence of love’, nevertheless, the interpretive task ‘presupposes a pre-understanding of love’ which can then be ‘corrected or made more precise’ by careful consideration of God’s history in Christ. Hence, he argues, ‘we cannot regard ourselves as released from the task of first asking about the essential meaning of the word “love” as it is used in this statement.’7 Jüngel’s comments raise an important question. In seeking to establish a ‘theological’ account of God’s love, are we obliged to evacuate our language of all prior meaning in order to replace it with completely new semantic content? And if we assert the converse – that human words stand ready in their historically conditioned form to serve the task of dogmatics – does this imply that our language is a ‘point of contact’ between God and humanity? Certainly, in one sense, Jüngel is right: if we regard the term ‘love’ as nothing more than an empty shell, it is difficult to imagine how we might even begin the process of discerning its ‘theological’ meaning, no matter how attentive we are to God’s history. On the other hand, we ought not to circumscribe what the term could mean based on our assessment of its past or current usage; theological language – including that found in Scripture – should serve God’s self-revelation, not vice versa.8 Hence, a balance must be struck between the ‘natural’ history of love as a concept and its divinely appointed place in the revelation of the Word of God.9 6. For example, Vincent Brümmer, The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3–35; Markus Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 24–43; Wolf Krötke, Gottes Klarheiten: Eine Neuinterpretation der Lehre von Gottes ‘Eigenschaften’ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 26–33. 7. Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983), 316–17, emphasis original. 8. As Jüngel says elsewhere, the concern of theological language is ‘to change actuality so that it may be brought into correspondence with faith’s judgment about actuality’. Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays I, trans. John B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 18. Similarly, Vincent Brümmer: ‘We do not read the Bible merely to have our present ideas on love confirmed, but rather to have them informed and changed.’ The Model of Love, 33. 9. So, T.F. Torrance: ‘…theological statements have an orientation beyond themselves in the coming of the Word of God and through assimilation to that Word are taken up to a higher level of understanding where … they partake of a new dimension which they do

Introduction

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What is needed, then, is a way of assessing the ‘fittingness’ of the term vis-à-vis its employment to speak of God in Holy Scripture. Why, for instance, does the apostle identify God as ‘love’ and not ‘hate’? What is it about the concept of ‘love’ that makes it a more acceptable summary of God’s revealed identity than any other term? For instance, are God’s acts such that we can immediately recognize them as loving, or are there discontinuities between our conception of love and what we observe God doing for us in Jesus Christ? Furthermore, what does this mean for human conceptions of love? Ought we to designate a human act as loving only insofar as it corresponds to the nature of divine action? In this regard, Emil Brunner reasons that if God is love – that is, if love is not just something which God possesses incidentally, but actually is his nature – then to posit a role for a non-theological understanding of love in our theologies is tantamount to usurping God’s self-revelation: ‘It is not that we already know what “love” is, and can then apply it to God … Rather the situation is this: that the idea, the understanding of love – the Agape of the New Testament – can only be understood from what happens in revelation.’10 Assuming even a minimal doctrine of biblical authority, we can presuppose that the phrase ‘God is love’ is a fitting theological description. The question then becomes, ‘How is it fitting?’ Is it fitting, for instance, because a non-theological definition of love is all we need to know in order to designate the divine essence? And if this is true, which definition should we prefer? To begin to get a handle on these questions, we will focus on one particular matter, namely, the supposed uniqueness of divine love.

Is divine love unique? The philosophical theologian Charles Hartshorne once wrote, ‘Theologians have never taken really seriously the proposition that God is love.’11 The truth of the claim, of course, depends on the meaning of the term ‘seriously’. For Hartshorne, the concept of ‘love’, when attributed to God, ought naturally to imply certain things about God’s nature. In his book, The Divine Relativity, for example, Hartshorne argues that ‘all our experience’ warrants the notion that love requires mutually affective, real relations, since love, like knowledge, signifies a relation of the type whereby the lover/knower is constituted by the known/beloved and not not possess of their own accord…. On the other hand, theological statements must retain some genuine connection with our plain, straightforward language, for if the concepts they embody are completely detached from those found in our ordinary knowledge, the statements could no longer mean anything to us, far less convey anything to others.’ Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 19–20. 10. Brunner, Christian Doctrine of God, 185. 11. Charles Hartshorne, ‘Ethics and the New Theology’, International Journal of Ethics 15 (1934): 97.

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vice versa.12 In the sphere of human cognition and relationality, Hartshorne points out, this is uncontroversial. So why, he wonders, do the vast majority of classical philosophers and theologians reverse the direction of causality when it comes to the God–world relation, insisting instead that it is the beloved (creation) which is constituted by the lover (God)? The culprit, Hartshorne suggests, is quite simply orthodoxy’s ‘metaphysical snobbery toward relativity, dependence, or passivity’ combined with an undue ‘worship of mere absoluteness, independence, and one-sided activity or power’.13 There are, in other words, absolutely no religiously warranted reasons to say that God’s love is different from human love, except perhaps in terms of eminence.14 For Hartshorne, love essentially describes a relation of contingence which takes place between two different entities, one of which must possess a personality. Appeals to the Trinity as the locus of God’s identity as ‘love’ are therefore irrelevant, since ‘[p]ersons of the Trinity, of course, are non-contingent’.15 Yet, this insistence that an asymmetrically constitutive relationality must be the foundation of ‘real’ love assumes already that divine and human existence are basically univocal. Indeed, Hartshorne’s consternation that the order of causality regarding cognition and love would be reversed with respect to God highlights at the very least an unwillingness to take seriously any kind of qualitative distinction between God and the world.16 Should this distinction be embraced, however, the nature of the question obviously shifts. Thomas Aquinas, for example, readily admits that divine love differs from human love. Specifically, whereas our love is determined by the object to which our wills ultimately bend, ‘God’s love … pours out and creates the goodness in things.’17 Thus, the typical direction of causality identified by Hartshorne is reversed precisely because of the unique relationship God has with the world as its creator; whereas we love responsively, God loves creatively. Moreover, for Aquinas, God’s identity as love is not contingent upon the world; rather, it is the internal love of the Godhead, characterized as the procession of the Holy Spirit, 12. Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1948), 17. 13. Hartshorne, Divine Relativity, 50. 14. ‘We do not “love” literally, but with qualifications, and metaphorically. Love, defined as social awareness, taken literally, is God. It is much more true that we are socially unaware than that we are socially aware, and that by an infinite ratio. God is socially aware – period. Thus he is the literal instance (because the original one) of the categories; they are himself in his individual essence… ’ Hartshorne, Divine Relativity, 36. 15. Hartshorne, Divine Relativity, 33. 16. Hartshorne admits that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo could be a stumbling block to his proposal, but this he waves away as resting upon ‘a dubious interpretation of an obscure parable, the book of Genesis’. Hartshorne, Divine Relativity, 30. 17. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria, 1981), Ia, q.20, a.2. Hereafter cited as ST.

Introduction

5

which functions as the basis for God’s love towards creatures. Just as God knows all things by his Word, so God wills all things by his Spirit: ‘as the Father speaks Himself and every creature by His begotten Word, inasmuch as the Word begotten adequately represents the Father and every creature; so He loves Himself and every creature by the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love of the primal goodness whereby the Father loves Himself and every creature’.18 Note, however, that even though Aquinas is more willing than Hartshorne to foreground the dissimilarities between human and divine love, ultimately, both theologians regard God’s and our love as species of the same general phenomenon, namely, the functioning of the will. For Aquinas, the difference is that whereas human love requires an external beloved, God’s love is conceived in terms of an immanent act: the love between Father and Son. Nevertheless, in these two examples, it is easy to see how difficult it is for theologians to excise known concepts of love from their descriptions of the divine being. One way of dealing with this circumstance is to conceive of theological language as generally metaphorical, and hence, we turn our attention briefly to consider this option.

Love as a theological model Vincent Brümmer, in his volume, The Model of Love, suggests that systematic theology should be understood as a kind of metaphorical thinking controlled by the selection of a ‘key metaphor’ around which various theological topics are arranged. The resulting organizational structure is termed a ‘model’, which Brümmer defines simply as a ‘sustained and systemic metaphor’.19 Brümmer’s goal, therefore, is to argue that love is an adequate key metaphor for the construction of a theological model. At the root of this proposal are a number of assumptions. For example, Brümmer argues that not just theological speech, but in fact all speech functions comparatively, that is, it relates objects to one another by taking note of their common properties. And yet, Brümmer points out, amongst these common properties, there are also differences between the objects being compared. As Paul Ricoeur explains, comparative or metaphorical descriptions of the form ‘x is y’ are always laden with ‘tension in the relational function of the copula: between identity and difference in the interplay of resemblance’.20 Hence, Brümmer emphasizes, proper interpretation requires careful attention to both the ‘is’ and the ‘is not’ of every comparative statement. To understand systematic theology as an exercise 18. ST Ia, q.37, a.2. 19. Brümmer, The Model of Love, 10. 20. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The creation of meaning in language, trans. Robert Czerny (London: Routledge, 2003), 292. This is not to imply that ‘x is y’ is the privileged syntactical form for metaphorical speech. On this, see Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 19.

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in metaphor-based model building, therefore, is also to admit that whilst models are in one sense ‘true’, they cannot purport to tell the whole story of that which they are deployed to describe (here: Christianity). They are, in other words, merely interpretive tools and never comprehensive statements.21 In the sphere of Christian doctrine, according to Brümmer, the key comparison is between God and the world (i.e., that aspect of creation which is within the ken of human beings). Accordingly, all descriptions of God necessarily take the form of a comparison between the divine essence and something that we already know in the world. This observation is, of course, not new. Aquinas similarly defended the metaphorical character of Scripture by appeal to the immaterial nature of God: For God provides for everything according to the capacity of its nature. Now it is natural to man to attain to intellectual truths through sensible objects, because all our knowledge originates from sense. Hence in Holy Writ spiritual truths are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things.22

What is new in Brümmer, however, is the suggestion that systematic theology is a matter of arranging religious speech around particular Scriptural metaphors.23 Here he offers four criteria for the selection of a root metaphor or key biblical model: (1) consonance with tradition, (2) comprehensive coherence, (3) adequacy for the demands of life, and (4) personal authenticity.24 So, for example, the biblical metaphor ‘God is a rock’, whilst helpfully communicative of God’s dependability (and thus perhaps capable of meeting the fourth criterion), is a poor candidate for grounding a theological model because: (1) the tradition has not placed such an image in the foreground of theological reasoning, (2) it is insufficiently comprehensive of the plurality of theological description found in Scripture, and (3) it does not sufficiently address the complexities of a life endeavoured to be lived in faith. By contrast, Brümmer argues, the biblical statement ‘God is love’, with all due qualifications, meets these criteria and thus may be employed as an organizing concept for the work of theology. Brümmer’s work on theological model-making is clarified and expanded by Markus Mühling, whose book, Gott ist Liebe, ‘applies the methods of a relationallogical model theory’ in order to clarify ‘ontological questions’ concerning the 21. Cf. Ian G. Barbour’s definition of a model as ‘a symbolic representation of selected aspects of the behaviour of a complex system for particular purposes’. Myths, Models and Paradigms: The Nature of Scientific and Religious Language (London: SCM, 1974), 6, emphasis added. 22. ST 1a, q.1, a.9. 23. Here, Brümmer follows the work of Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1982). 24. Brümmer, The Model of Love, 22–9. Similarly, Markus Mühling suggests: ‘Theological model-building can be authentically Christian only if its fundamental root metaphors also carry great weight in Scripture and the church….’ Gott ist Liebe, 43.

Introduction

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essence of God.25 Specifically, Mühling’s aim is to render ‘a description of God with the help of the concept of love’.26 To this end, he offers a rigorous philosophical examination of both ‘God’ and ‘love’, concluding that ‘love’ is sufficiently comprehensive for speaking of God in the terms dictated by the contours of the Christian faith (i.e., as Trinity). At the heart of Mühling’s thesis, therefore, is the claim that when God encounters humanity, he does so by making himself objective as triune: ‘The individuated Trinity is the objectivity of love which God is.’27 Thus, rather than explaining away the diversity of God’s triune presence, we ought to conceive God’s essence in accord with how he discloses himself, namely, as ‘interaction and cooperation’, even ‘friendship’.28 Insofar as there is conceptual space in the term ‘love’ to capture these realities, the Johannine claim is properly interpretable and hence can be regarded as a reasonable candidate for denoting God’s triune nature. Naturally, the ‘model’ approach to Christian discourse calls for careful semantic and conceptual analysis. In the case of ‘God is love’, the analytical question becomes: how is ‘love’ – a term with a particular conceptual history – an adequate description of the divine being and how is it not? A benefit of this approach, therefore, is that one is not forced to commit to a particular view of love as universally valid; the goal of model making is communicative, not definitional (in an absolute sense).29 Consequently, whilst the theologian may grant a diversity of perspectives on the concept of love, only those perspectives which accord with the framework of Christian belief will ultimately concern her. For Mühling, socalled relational views of love are deemed more theologically serviceable than ‘dispositional’ views, a decision which he makes on the grounds of a particular construal of the nature of Christian experience (in particular, the experience of having been justified by grace alone and, by extension, the experience of being a creature). Generally speaking, the ‘model’ method seems to be a reasonable approach to the doctrine of God, particularly given its conceptual pliability. Moreover, we agree with Brümmer and Mühling that all theological language is, in a sense, metaphorical (or, classically speaking, analogical), as this seems to be a fairly straightforward implication the confession that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth.30 Nevertheless, where there is room for debate is the nature of Christian experience – that which functions as the criterion for selecting the particular aspects of ‘love’ for a particular model of God. It is at this level that our study will proceed. 25. Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 5. 26. Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 8. 27. Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 9. 28. Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 10. 29. Hence, ‘Models always remain revisable.’ Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 39. 30. Here, we would highlight the caveat – with Brümmer and Mühling – that theological language ought ultimately to be ruled by the language of Holy Scripture.

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Contemporary assumptions In contemporary theology, there appears to a be a general consensus concerning those aspects of ‘love’ which are particularly appropriate for speech about God. As Kevin Vanhoozer suggests, there is today a ‘new orthodoxy’ concerning the doctrine of God: what he labels ‘kenotic-perichoretic relational ontotheology’.31 Vanhoozer summarizes this ‘new orthodoxy’ according to three particular features: ‘(1) the divine persons are seen in not substantival but relational terms; (2) God’s love for the world is seen as perichoretic relationality; (3) God’s suffering is seen as a necessary consequence of this kenotic relatedness’.32 The ascendancy of this vision of God is attributed by Vanhoozer to a particular narrative concerning the development of Christian theology. According to this narrative (which we encountered earlier in the comments of Charles Hartshorne), the dominant conceptualities employed to speak of God throughout most of Christian history have been, in general, an adulteration of the pure biblical message by means of pagan, Greco-Roman philosophy. The pure message, this theory argues, concerns a radically ‘historical’ God – the God of Israel – who loved his people to such an extent that he opened himself to the real and horrific suffering of the cross. By contrast, Greek-minded theologians, motivated less by the narrative of Scripture and more by the possibility of using ‘God’ as an explanatory fundamental, effectively removed God from the stage of the drama by conceiving him according to the idea of the ‘perfect being’. One major contemporary proponent of the ‘Greek fall’ theory is the German Reformed theologian Jürgen Moltmann. In his landmark volume, Der gekreuzigte Gott, published in 1973, Moltmann writes, After the very long period during which the theologian has been confronted in the picture of Christ with the ‘unmoving, unemotional countenance of the God of Plato, bedecked with some features of Stoic ethics,’ the time has finally come for differentiating the Father of Jesus Christ from the God of the pagans and the philosophers (Pascal) in the interest of Christian faith.33

Specifically, Moltmann argues, this is to be done by reorienting theology to the event of the crucifixion, that is, by recognizing that ‘[t]he Christ event on the cross is a God event’.34 Indeed, at the cross, Moltmann continues, 31. Vanhoozer gets the term ‘new orthodoxy’ from Ronald Goetz, ‘The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy’, The Christian Century 103, no. 13 (16 April 1986): 385–9. 32. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 140. 33. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R.A. Wilson and John Bowden (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 215. 34. Moltmann, The Crucified God, 205.

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God has not just acted externally, in his unattainable glory and eternity. Here he has acted in himself and has gone on to suffer in himself. Here he himself is love with all his being.35

By identifying the cross as the key locus for the determination of God’s being, Moltmann also aims to challenge what he identifies as the fetishization of power and authority in humanity’s religious imagination. Nowhere is this obsession more prominent, he claims, than in the exaltation of ‘radical monotheism’ in classical models of God.36 This is particularly tragic, Moltmann observes, in that there were already resources within the Christian tradition that could have been used to liberate the church from its imprisonment to the pagan ideal. Hence, in a later volume, he suggests that instead of beginning with a ‘concept’ of deity and then ‘filling it in’ with reference to God’s triune economic history, we ought rather to take the opposite approach; we should ‘make the unity of the three divine Persons the problem, rather than to follow the reverse method – to start from the philosophical postulate of absolute unity, in order then to find the problem in the biblical testimony’.37 This leads Moltmann ultimately to commend what he calls a ‘social doctrine of the Trinity … based on salvation history.’38 In this model, he says, ‘The history of God’s trinitarian relationships of fellowship [with the world] corresponds to the eternal perichoresis of the Trinity’39 – and this to such an extent that ‘The economic Trinity not only reveals the immanent Trinity; it also has a retroactive effect on it.’40 These claims are, again, underwritten by Moltmann’s decision to take the gospels’ narration of Christ’s death as a ‘God event’: ‘What happens on Golgotha reaches into the innermost depths of the Godhead, putting its impress on the trinitarian life in eternity.’41 Moltmann is of course concerned to speak of the essence of God not as an end in itself (theologia gloriæ) but only for the sake of narrating what God has done for humanity in Christ (theologia crucis). As such, the classical tradition, with its alleged emphasis on oneness, substance, monarchy, and impassibility, is seen by 35. Moltmann, The Crucified God, 205. 36. ‘Christian faith is not “radical monotheism”…. Christian faith effects liberation from the childish projections of human needs for the riches of God; liberation from human impotence for the omnipotence of God; from human helplessness for the omnipotence of God; from human helplessness for the responsibility of God. It brings liberation from the divinized father-figures by which men seek to sustain their childhood.’ Moltmann, The Crucified God, 216. Cf. ‘Monotheism was and is the religion of patriarchy…’ Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 165. 37. Moltmann, The Trinity, 149. 38. Moltmann, The Trinity, 157. 39. Moltmann, The Trinity, 157. 40. Moltmann, The Trinity, 160. 41. Moltmann, The Trinity, 81.

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him to have nothing to do with the heart of the Christian gospel. For Moltmann, the doctrine of God cannot ignore the cross, not least if it is to exegete properly ‘God is love’. Indeed, he writes, ‘If God were incapable of suffering in every respect, then he would also be incapable of love.’42 This, at its heart, is one of the central intuitions of what Vanhoozer calls ‘the new orthodoxy’: ‘God is love’ means not only that God can suffer but that God has suffered. As mentioned briefly, a key element in Moltmann’s proposal is his emphasis on divine relationality – if God were simply one divine subject and not three persons in relation, it would be difficult to imagine the ‘rupture’ between Father and Son that Moltmann believes is implied in the passion narrative. There are, however, other reasons to posit a ‘relational’ model of the Trinity beside Moltmann’s theopaschite proposal. In recent years, the Greek Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas has made a noticeable impact in Anglo-American theology for proposing what has sometimes been called his ‘relational ontology’ occasioned by a particularly ‘Eastern’ doctrine of the Trinity.43 According to Zizioulas, the crowning achievement of the patristic era, particularly of the Cappadocians, was the overturning of a dominant ‘Greek monism’ by means of the uniquely Christian concept of the ‘person’ (hypostasis).44 The development of this concept, recognized specifically through the eucharistic being of the church, yielded the startling conclusion that ‘the ultimate ontological category which makes something really be, is neither an impersonal and incommunicable “substance,” nor a structure of communion existing by itself or imposed by necessity, but rather the person.’45 According to Zizioulas, the genius of the Greek approach was to interpret the Latin term persona with the Greek term hypostasis such that the personhood of God, conceived primarily in terms of the Father and derivatively as Son and Spirit, became the irreducible ground of God’s 42. Moltmann, The Trinity, 23. 43. Zizioulas became especially influential in Britain through his teaching at the University of Glasgow and through his interaction with prominent English theologians such as Colin Gunton at King’s College London. Relative to our concerns, it should also be noted that Zizioulas’ theology has left a mark on British Barthianism as well. See, for instance, Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (London: T&T Clark, 1997); Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation with special reference to Volume One of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); Trevor Hart, Regarding Karl Barth: Essays toward a Reading of his Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999); Peter S. Oh, Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Karl Barth’s Analogical Use of the Trinitarian Relation (London: T&T Clark, 2006); Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers, and John Zizioulas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 44. ‘The person both as a concept and as a living reality is purely the product of patristic thought.’ John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 27. 45. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 17–8.

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being, rather than a generic concept of ‘substance’ to which was subordinated both the being of God and the being of the world. Moreover, he argues, to the extent that the world exists eccentrically (following the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo), the Greek doctrine also entails a fundamental revisioning of ontology in general; because the ground of God’s being simply is his irreducibly personal act of communion, then created being is granted existence on nothing less than these same grounds – being is communion. As Zizioulas writes, ‘from an adjunct to a being (a kind of mask) the person becomes the being itself and is simultaneously – a most significant point – the constitutive element (the “principle” or “cause”) of beings’.46 As a corollary to this ‘person-based’ or ‘relational’ ontology, the doctrine of the Trinity naturally takes on a particular character. Instead of viewing God as a ‘single subject’ to which the three persons are subsequently ‘added’, the Greek approach, according to Zizioulas, conceives the unity of God as a function of God’s triune communion. God’s being, in other words, is strictly ‘identical with an act of communion’47 – an act which is undertaken in the freedom of the Father: ‘For this communion is a product of freedom as a result not of the substance of God but of a person, the Father … who is Trinity not because the divine nature is ecstatic, but because the Father as a person freely wills this communion.’48 Whilst it would be imprecise to categorize Zizioulas as a ‘social trinitarian’, then, nevertheless, it is clear that he considers it the consequence of the Father’s eternal will that God is a real fellowship of divine ‘persons’, that is, individuated existences who are constituted as such by their act of relating. Consequently, it is this eternal relational act which qualifies the life of God as ‘love’ – and insofar as God assumes humanity into this inner-trinitarian fellowship, so also is humanity ‘loved’ by God. As Zizioulas puts it, ‘The life of God is eternal because it is personal, that is to say, it is realized as an expression of free communion, or love.’49 Here we have, then, two rather different examples that embody, each in particular ways and for vastly different reasons, the so-called new orthodoxy concerning the doctrine of God. In particular, we might say that both Moltmann and Zizioulas offer contemporary responses to Hartshorne’s exhortation to ‘take seriously’ the proposition that ‘God is love’. And yet, we note also that bound up with both of their proposals is a thoroughgoing rejection of what might broadly be labelled ‘Augustinian’, ‘Western’, or ‘Latin’ trinitarianism. Indeed, this approach, which tends to consider God’s identity as love in terms of an ‘intrinsic, inner movement’ rather than in terms of communion, fellowship, or perichoresis, is considered to be, at best, a capitulation to pagan philosophy (Zizioulas) and, at worst, a religious authorization of oppressive politics (Moltmann). Indeed, given this narrative, it seems hard to imagine how this tradition could render any sort of acceptable interpretation of ‘God is love’, let alone take such a claim ‘seriously’. Hence, before 46. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 39. 47. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 44. 48. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 44. 49. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 49.

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concluding our introductory remarks, we will pause to examine briefly Augustine’s understanding of divine love, as well as a rather unique inheritor of the tradition he inaugurated, Richard of St. Victor, in order to explore whether the Western tradition might yet have a contribution to make to this discussion.

The Western inheritance Augustine The love theme is surely one of the most pervasive in St. Augustine’s voluminous corpus. Consequently, a full treatment is simply impossible given the primary foci of this study. Nevertheless, given the criticisms of Augustine levelled by much contemporary theology, a few introductory words are unavoidable. Essentially, Augustine’s chief contribution consists in his putting the concept of love as desire in the service of theological exposition. He does this chiefly with reference to the ordering of human loves; yet, significantly for our purposes, his treatment resonates to a certain degree with God’s intra-triune love as well. We begin, then, with some brief comments on the ordering of love as explained in Augustine’s work, De Doctrina Christiana, before casting our glance to his magisterial De Trinitate. In Book I of De Doctrina, Augustine introduces his famous distinction between things which are meant to be ‘used’ and things which are meant to be ‘enjoyed’. As he puts it: ‘To enjoy something is to hold fast to it in love for its own sake. To use something is to apply whatever it may be to the purpose of obtaining what you love – if indeed it is something that ought to be loved.’50 For Augustine, only God, who is the supreme good, is to be enjoyed as an object in himself, whilst all other things are to be used to the end of enjoying God. To do otherwise – that is, to desire the possession of non-divine objects as ends in themselves – would be to ‘exchange the glory of God’ for the worship of created things (Romans 1:23). Ignoring for the moment Augustine’s solution to the question of how to reconcile the ordering of human love exclusively to God with the double command to love both God and neighbour,51 what is clear is that, for Augustine, to love something means to desire to possess that thing, either for use or enjoyment. In other words, love, for Augustine, is a psychological category – it concerns the relation between the mind and the will. Keeping this in mind, we turn to Augustine’s mature treatment of love in De Trinitate. In Book VIII of De Trinitate, Augustine states that we only love those things which we understand to be ‘good’.52 What drives this desire, he argues, is the notion 50. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, trans. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), I.8, italics added. 51. For an excellent discussion of this, see Oliver O’Donovan, ‘Usus and Fruitio in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I’, Journal of Theological Studies 33 (1982): 361–97. 52. Augustine, The Trinity (De Trinitate), trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1991), VIII.4, emphasis added.

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of the ‘good itself ’, which, of course, is defined by the essence of God: ‘This is good and that is good. Take away this and that and see good itself if you can. In this way you will see God, not good with some other good, but the good of every good.’53 All things are therefore ‘good’ only to the extent that they are deemed to participate in the goodness that is God’s own nature. Hence, according to Augustine, our love for God is the presupposition for the proper love of all other things. The question driving the rest of the treatise, therefore, is this: ‘How can God be known in order to be loved?’54 Augustine’s answer is: by believing in the Trinity. Accordingly, the complex psychological analogies for which De Trinitate is known are offered precisely in order to direct the mind to that which must be believed. They are, in other words, simply tools intended to orient faith properly. This should be kept in mind as we turn to Augustine’s notion of love vis-à-vis the Trinity: the rational workings of the human soul are raised by Augustine primarily to guide our imaginations to the ineffable essence of God for the purpose of faith. Consequently, Augustine’s theology will not tolerate a simple one-to-one correlation between love as it is experienced in the human realm and God’s essence per se. Chapter 5 of Book VIII concerns the notion of love itself and is therefore especially pertinent to our concerns. Augustine’s definition of love is as follows: ‘True love … is that we should live justly by cleaving to the truth[.]’ As we have already seen, for Augustine, love (dilectio) is to be understood simply as properly ordered desire; love orients the living of life by directing the will towards that which is desirable. Yet, there is another element in this volitional calculus and that is the inherent desirability of true love itself. To love our neighbour, for example, we must not only know him but also know something of what it is to love him properly, since lesser loves are only deemed loveable in light of the greatest love. Hence, Augustine explains, when we love our neighbour, we are also loving – and primarily so – ‘love itself ’.55 Here, a window is opened into an analogy by which we might understand the inner essence of God. In the human realm, Augustine says, the act of love is primarily an internal act: when we love, we love not only the object of our love as it is represented in our minds, but also the love by which we love that object: ‘Just as a word indicates something and also indicates itself, but does not indicate itself as a word unless it indicates itself indicating something; so too charity certainly loves itself, but unless it loves itself loving something it does not love itself as charity.’56 The act of love, therefore, even in the human realm, requires a ‘Trinity’ of concepts, and this psychological understanding is what will drive Augustine’s analogical exploration of the human soul as a precursor to 53. Augustine, The Trinity, VIII.4. 54. On this point, see Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 281–5. 55. ‘…if a man loves his neighbour, it follows that above all he loves love itself.’ Augustine, The Trinity, VIII.10. ‘Love itself ’ is summarily identified with God on the grounds of 1 John 4:16. 56. Augustine, The Trinity, VIII.11.

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faith in the Trinity. Hence, again, for Augustine, the event of love requires three principal elements: ‘the lover, what is being loved, and love’.57 Here, the question arises: how might this understanding of love be applied analogically to the Trinity, particularly as a way of exegeting the Johannine phrase ‘God is love’? Essentially, Augustine’s goal is to translate the human psychological act of love into a commentary on the inner divine life: the Father (lover) loves the Son (beloved) through the Spirit (love). In this way, he explains, God is, in his own being, the totality of the event that is love.58 In other words, God, being possessed of a will, (1) knows himself as the highest good, (2) desires himself on these grounds, consequently (3) possessing himself and (4) enjoying the rest of his own self-possession. Hence, unlike the realm of creatures, God’s love is inherent, self-directed, and, in light of his identity as the summum bonum, identical with his very essence. Given the intellectual nature of the analogy, then, how does Augustine relate his interpretation of ‘God is love’ to the notion of communion – typically the first matter associated with the love of God in modern theology? Significantly, Augustine’s understanding of communion comes not from a treatment of the love shared equally between the three members of the Trinity (as is seen in many social analogies) but by an analysis of the Holy Spirit in particular as the shared principle of unity between the Father and the Son. Because the Father and Son are equally ‘holy’ as well as ‘spirit’, he points out, the Holy Spirit names that which is common to both. As he puts it: ‘[T]he Holy Spirit is a kind of inexpressible communion or fellowship of Father and Son…. He is properly called what they are called in common[.]’59 The communion of the Godhead, therefore, has more to do with commonality than distinction. In other words, talk of divine fellowship, for Augustine, is primarily a way of narrating the shared substance of the Trinity, principialized in the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and not about some kind of relational exchange, as our modern assumptions about personhood might lead us to believe. In sum, therefore, we offer the following three points. First, Augustine’s idea of love chiefly concerns the workings of the will in relation to an object. In this sense, his concept of love is essentially dispositional, or attitudinal – love describes a personal orientation. Second, for Augustine, God is love because he both desires and possesses himself perfectly. As such, God is unique amongst lovers in that he is at rest in the full enjoyment of the highest good – his own being.60 Thirdly, and finally, God’s love is defined as communion only to the extent that this refers to the commonality of the divine substance amongst the 57. Augustine, The Trinity, VIII.14. 58. This idea drives Richard of St. Victor’s trinitarian model, which will be explored in our next section. 59. Augustine, The Trinity, V.12. 60. For Augustine, ‘[God’s] love is immutable, that is, static, simple, immediate perfectio.’ Markus Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 94.

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trinitarian members. This means, importantly, that God’s intra-triune love is distinguishable from human love, primarily because God’s love actually lacks a certain relational aspect. As Markus Mühling points out, whereas Augustine’s account of human love always involves an ‘intentional relation’, God’s intratriune love is best construed as a kind ‘self-relation’, since the divine substance is held strictly in common by Father, Son, and Spirit.61 In other words, for Augustine, to say ‘God is love’ requires us to purge our minds in two particular ways: first, by recognizing the inherently analogical nature of the description, and second, by locating the dis-analogy in the decidedly non-social nature of the Godhead. Richard of St. Victor Augustine’s concept of love was, of course, massively influential. Nevertheless, his views did not yield a monochromatic tradition. One unique figure standing in the shadow of Augustine is Richard of St. Victor, a Scottish canon regular at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris who wrote in the twelfth century. Although Richard shares many intuitions with Augustine (and more proximately, with Anselm of Canterbury), his attempt to produce an exclusively rational argument for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, including especially his ‘argument from love’ in Book III of his De Trinitate, warrants particular attention in light of our interest in pre-modern Western understandings of ‘God is love’. In Books I and II of De Trinitate, Richard presents an account of the divine essence which accords with the Anselmian notion of a supremely perfect substance.62 By reasoning from what he calls ‘transient realities’ – or realities which we can know experientially – to ‘the eternal ones’ (which we cannot), he concludes that all substances which do not exist a se necessarily owe their existence to a singular substance which is both eternal and a se. There cannot be more than one supreme substance, Richard argues, because in order to be supreme, a substance must not only have power, but also be power, since the latter is clearly better than the former. As he puts it, ‘the power of being is nothing but the supreme substance’.63 With the singularity of the supreme substance firmly established, then, Richard is free to multiply further attributes without implying composition, since, via the argument from power, God must necessarily be his own attributes. Hence, in light of Books I and II, we ought to keep two points in mind as we engage Richard’s argument for divine intra-plurality: first, perfection must necessarily qualify each divine attribute, and second, the foundation of 61. Mühling, Gott ist Liebe, 93. 62. ‘…to those who are learned, the attribution of every highest conceivable thought to God constitutes a fundamental assumption, and to everybody this is a universally accepted concept’. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity: English Translation and Commentary, trans. Ruben Angelici (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), 87. 63. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 82.

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Richard’s doctrine of God is not actually love, but more accurately, perfection (or ‘supremity’), which for him is the basis of God’s simplicity. Book III, which includes Richard’s famous ‘argument from love’, proceeds as follows. God, being the most supreme substance, must by definition instantiate all those qualities which are entailed by the notion of the highest good. Indeed, if it were not the case that God manifested these qualities, then there would be no logical explanation for the existence of those lesser goods which are present in our temporal experience. Consequently, caritas, or love, cannot fail to be present in the definition of the highest good, since, according to Richard, ‘nothing is better or more perfect than charity-love’.64 This establishes the basic principle for Richard’s argument for plurality within the Godhead: in order for God to be designated the most perfect substance, he must likewise represent the perfection of charity-love within his own being. In particular, Richard argues that in order for charity-love to obtain in its ‘truest sense’, some form of alterity must also be present. Consequently, God’s identity as the highest substance, which necessitates the presence of perfect love, requires that that essence include a multiplicity of persons. Admittedly, this reasoning may seem intuitive given our contemporary context. As we saw in the case of, for instance, John Zizioulas, ‘God is love’ ought immediately to signal a multiplicity of persons, since love simply is a function of person-to-person relationality. Nevertheless, what makes Richard’s De Trinitate so distinctive, however, is that it actually seeks to establish divine intra-alterity via a dispositional view of love, rather than a straightforwardly relational view. For Richard, as with Augustine, love is simply that component of rational existence which inclines the will towards a particular object, based on that object’s perceived desirability. This is why, for instance, Richard believes that God’s identity as the supreme substance – a claim which entails both God’s goodness and rationality – also entails the presence of love, since God’s rational will cannot but be inclined to the highest good which is his own being (lest his divine happiness by stifled). In other words, Richard is using the term caritas in a highly technical, philosophical sense and in close coordination with his more (logically) basic claim that God is the highest substance. With this in mind, it becomes easier to see the original contribution in Richard’s thought, particularly given that, more so than Augustine, Richard was keen to explore caritas in terms of alterity. For Augustine, while the love of self per se is technically disordered, it is nevertheless genuinely love.65 For Richard, caritas actually requires the presence of an ‘other’. As he says, ‘None is said to possess charity-love in the truest sense of the word if he loves himself exclusively. It is, thus, necessary that love be aimed at someone else in order to be charity-love.’66 64. Richard of Saint Victor, On The Trinity, 116. 65. Ruben Angelici, ‘Introduction and Commentary’, in Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 43–4. 66. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 116.

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And so, working analogically from this creaturely principle, Richard begins to establish God’s threefold personhood. Having established that love requires some form of alterity, Richard next suggests that, if God’s love is indeed perfect, it must incline his will towards an object of ‘equal dignity’ to himself, lest his love be inordinate. To love a creature – even perfectly – would be an insufficient expression of divine caritas. Moreover, Richard argues, if God is the highest rational substance, then that worthy object must likewise be rational, that is, a person. God’s essence, therefore, must be multi-personal. Yet it must not only be multi-personal, for, according to Richard, unrequited love cannot accord with the happiness that God enjoys as the possessor of the highest good (i.e., himself). As he says, ‘there can be no joyful love that is not also reciprocal’.67 God’s essence must therefore include the presence of at least two divine persons who mutually incline towards and thus perfectly possess one another. The final, celebrated aspect of Richard’s argument concerns the Holy Spirit. As he argues, the mutual love obtaining between merely two persons is still not perfect love, because love, by definition, is not selfish. Rather, true charity seeks to share the relation it establishes with a third party.68 For Richard, love which is not communicable is not love at all, and love which can be communicated and yet is not, is simply imperfect. Hence, he introduces the term condilectio, or ‘co-love’, to describe the harmonious invitation of two persons in loving relation towards a third to share in their mutual possession of one another. Hence, Richard concludes: ‘As we can perceive, then, perfection of charity-love requires a Trinity of persons. In fact, without this, [charity-love] cannot subsist in the fullness of its totality. In summary, when everything that is universally perfect is present, neither absolute charity-love nor the very Trinity can be absent.’69 One final point worth mentioning concerning De Trinitate is Richard’s definition of personhood, located in Book IV.70 Therein, Richard notes that ‘in the supreme Trinity all [the persons] have the highest and supremely simple being in common, and … none [of them] is something different from any of the others’.71 Hence, he continues, ‘affirming that our God is one in substance and triune in persons is no contradiction at all’.72 In other words, if there is only one ‘something’ in the Trinity, nevertheless, there are also three ‘someones’. This raises the question 67. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 118. 68. On the value of community in the Abbey of St. Victor, see Nico den Bok, Communicating the Most High: A Systematic Study of Person and Trinity in the Theology of Richard of St. Victor (d.1173) (Paris: Brepols, 1996), 285–6. 69. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 126. 70. For more on Richard’s understanding of personhood, see my ‘A person’s a person, no matter how divine? The question of univocity and personhood in Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate’ Scottish Journal of Theology 70, no. 4 (2017): 377–89. 71. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 149. 72. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 149.

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of how ‘a persons’ [sic] otherness may exist without a substance’s otherness’73 – and here Richard offers a characteristically innovative argument. In order to designate ‘something’ a person, he argues, we must know, first, how this thing exists, and, second, whence this thing receives its nature. Both of these factors, Richard explains, are captured semantically by the term existere (‘to exist’): The term ex-sistere, on its part, not only expresses the possession of being, but also the [being’s] coming from outside. [It expresses] the fact that one possesses its being because of someone [else]. Indeed this is shown by the compounded verb, by the preposition that is added to it. What does exsistere mean, in fact, if not sistere ‘from’ (=ex) someone? … Consequently, with this single verb exsistere – or with the single noun ‘existence’ – we can intend both that which has to do with the object’s nature and that which refers to its origin.74

On the basis of this analysis, Richard therefore proposes a change to Boethius’ classic definition of a person as an ‘individual substance of a rational nature’. In particular, he rejects the classification of the triune persons as ‘individual substances’ because he believes that this ultimately threatens divine oneness. Indeed, he argues, if a person is defined as an ‘individual substance’, then the Trinity cannot be made up of persons, since the three share the same substance.75 What is needed, then, is not a definition of personhood in general, but rather a definition of personhood which attends first to the nature of divine existence, and only then to the ‘personhood’ of creatures. Hence, he proposes, ‘a divine person is an incommunicable existence of the divine nature’.76 The chief advantage of this definition is that it allows Richard to include the reality of the divine processions (‘ex-sistere’ = existence from) as the defining characteristic of each triune person, rather than, for instance, simply their nature as ‘individuated’ (per Boethius’ definition). Similarly, it allows him to explain how creaturely persons exist ‘from’ God in a different sense – that is, by will and not nature (i.e., contingently). In sum, then, Richard understands ‘God is love’ in some respects very similarly to Augustine – God is the one who, within his very being, perfectly possesses that which is most desirable in the form of the relations which define his essence. Richard’s unique contribution, however, consists in his claim that personhood in general is a function of divine personhood in particular – Father, Son, and Spirit ex-sist as one, singular, perfect substance, and all others ex-sist in relation to God. Richard therefore illustrates a pre-modern attempt within the Western tradition to explain the meaning of ‘God is love’, namely, as the logical entailment of God’s identity as the summa substantia.

73. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 150. 74. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 152. 75. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 163. 76. Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity, 163.

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Introduction to the study How, then, are we to understand the divine essence as love? In the foregoing discussion, we have raised some of the key issues implied by this question, highlighted some proposals in response to it, and presented several contemporary intuitions alongside a pair of more classical approaches. In particular, we have observed how pliable the concept of ‘love’ is and how modern and classical theologians use it in different ways to reach different sorts of conclusions concerning the essence of God. In the following section, we will briefly sketch our own approach to the question, as well as offer some reasons for selecting the particular subjects of our study. General approach This book concerns the doctrine of God. In particular, it uses the question of the love of God as a pathway into discerning how, on the basis of God’s relationship with humanity, we are to speak of the divine essence. Our goal, therefore, is not primarily to determine the meaning of divine benevolence (i.e., the ways in which God loves creation), but rather to understand the form of divine existence which is the basis for such benevolence. We want to know, in other words, what it means to say that God is love. As mentioned above, determining the meaning of ‘God is love’ is essentially a matter of discerning ‘what’ God is and then using the concept of love as tool for communicating this reality on the grounds that ‘love’ has the semantic potential to service this task (in fact, we will argue that this is precisely what is taking place in 1 John 4:8 and 16). Rather than framing our thesis in terms of which ‘theism/ trinitarianism’ best accounts for the meaning of ‘love’, we will instead approach the matter ‘from the ground up’, that is, beginning with the very basic question ‘what is God?’ and then working our way towards how love might somehow illuminate this idea. Our hypothesis is, in other words, that ‘love’ is better viewed as the conclusion to a consideration of the Christian God, rather than the starting point. To this end, we recruit the help of two particular theologians who take this very approach: Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and Karl Barth (1886–1968). The subjects of our study Our interest in Schleiermacher and Barth is threefold. First, they are both quintessentially modern theologians. This means that, generally speaking, while they respect the Christian tradition, they do not conceive of themselves as necessarily bound to the conceptualities of the past. Hence, if they come to conclusions that are either different from or consonant with classical perspectives, we can expect them to ‘show their work’ and thus help us to pinpoint the particular issues at stake along the way to a proper understanding of divine love. Second, as modern theologians, both figures display a tendency to ground theological statements with reference to concrete divine acts and, consequently,

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harbour a noticeable hyper-sensitivity to all forms of speculation. Such a characteristic, we suggest, is especially important when considering the doctrine of God, since the very ineffability of the subject poses a constant temptation to ‘fill in’ certain details by means of abstract inferences or deductive reasoning. Whilst each theologian offers a distinctive approach for avoiding these pitfalls, nevertheless, they are both careful to justify every dogmatic statement with reference to what each perceives to be the essence of the Christian religion. Whether or not Schleiermacher and Barth are justly termed ‘systematic’ theologians, then, their anti-systematic biases are particularly helpful as we attempt to follow their respective arguments step by step. Third, despite their (infamous) differences, Schleiermacher and Barth actually share a tradition, namely, modern Reformed theology. Therefore, the conclusions that we will reach on the basis of their work can represent much more of an integration than if they were radically distinct figures from vastly different time periods. Moreover, given that Barth actually represents an evolution of a particular stream of theology inaugurated by Schleiermacher (liberal Protestantism), we can regard their relationship as something of a continuing story, rather than two completely disparate approaches.77 Of course, our chosen approach to the matter of divine love is not the only one. We could have selected different figures, gathered more voices, and of course, attempted our own construction ‘from the ground up’ (involving a good deal more direct biblical exegesis than is represented in the following pages). Nevertheless, it is our belief that Schleiermacher and Barth represent two of the more competent and creative dogmatic thinkers of the last several centuries, and hence, a fresh interpretation of their work ought to produce helpful insights for dealing with the theological matters of today (as indeed the remainder of this book will demonstrate). Plan of study The following study takes a logical if somewhat predictable shape. The book is composed of two main parts. Part I concerns the theology of Friedrich 77. It is not the burden of this study to offer an argument on the precise theological relationship between Barth and Schleiermacher. For a fine example of this sort of project, see Dietmar Lütz, Homo Viator: Karl Barths Ringen mit Schleiermacher (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1988). In general, however, we tend to agree with the assessment of Robert Sherman, who writes, ‘Schleiermacher and Barth both stand on this side of the watershed between the premodern and modern eras, and this location suggests that there may be certain presuppositions, assumptions, or “moves” they share in doing their respective theologies.’ Hence, ‘even where Barth does obviously differ with Schleiermacher, it appears that many of these differences might be explained better as modifications within a continuity than as fundamentally opposed positions’. Robert Sherman, The Shift to Modernity: Christ and the Doctrine of Creation in the Theologies of Schleiermacher and Barth (New York; London: T&T Clark, 2005), 1–2.

Introduction

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Schleiermacher and represents a careful reading of some of his most important texts: the Speeches on Religion, the lectures on Dialektik, and the Glaubenslehre. Chapters 1 through 3 focus particularly on the ‘concept’ of God as it is present in a number of different scientific (wissenschaftlich) contexts, including the important Einleitung to the Glaubenslehre. Chapter 4 turns to the dogmatic portion of the Glaubenslehre in order to render an understanding of Schleiermacher’s ‘doctrine’ of God in terms of the type of confession he believes is demanded by the Christian experience of redemption in Jesus of Nazareth. In this chapter, we will also attempt to illuminate Schleiermacher’s brief yet arguably programmatic doctrinal claim that ‘love alone and no other attribute can be equated … with God’.78 Part II concerns the work of Karl Barth and is arranged largely as a commentary on the relevant sections of his Church Dogmatics. Chapter 5 focuses on Barth’s theological method, largely through an interaction with CD I/1 and II/1 (especially Chapter V). Chapter 6 offers a detailed and perhaps innovative reading of § 28 from CD II/1 and attempts to make the case that, for Barth, God’s ‘being-in-act’ refers to the uniquely eminent personhood of God – a claim that will be especially crucial for our conclusion. Chapter 7 turns to material from CD II/2 and IV/1 in order to demonstrate how Barth’s Christology determines and therefore coheres with his doctrine of God as presented in earlier volumes of the Dogmatics. Ultimately, we will argue that Barth’s understanding of divine love is trinitarian, yet not in the sense that his commitment to so-called single-subject trinitarianism is compromised. In the conclusion, we will gather material from the previous chapters to render a preliminary judgement on the value of Schleiermacher’s and Barth’s insights for answering the question of divine love. In the light of these insights, we will argue that God’s identity as love speaks to his ‘being-toward-fellowship’ and that this approach explains how his loving relationship with humanity can meaningfully speak to his essence without necessitating either the creation of the world or an intra-divine dyadic or triadic event of love that corresponds formally to the shape of creaturely love/belovedness.

78. CF, 730 (§ 167.1).

Part I F RIEDRICH S CHLEIERMACHER AND THE A CTIVE G OD OF L OVE

1 I N T R O DU C T IO N T O P A RT I

In Part I, we aim to explore Friedrich Schleiermacher’s understanding of God in order to observe how this influences his conception of divine love. One of the reasons why Schleiermacher is such an interesting theologian is that, for him, there are literally no doctrines which can be taken for granted; every doctrine must justify itself on the grounds of what he identifies as the ‘essence’ of the Christian religion, namely, the experience of being redeemed by Jesus Christ through the church. Accordingly, because Schleiermacher takes such a critical stance to the history of dogma, it becomes all the more important to understand exactly how his theological intuitions are formed. Hence, we are necessarily drawn to the core matter directing Schleiermacher’s account of the divine attributes, and that is the very meaning of the term ‘God’. In order to accomplish our task, we will look primarily at three of Schleiermacher’s most important texts: his massively influential On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799), his less known lectures on Dialektik (delivered at several points during his academic career), and his magnum opus, The Christian Faith (in particular, the second edition, published successively in two volumes in 1830 and 1831, alternatively referred to as the Glaubenslehre). There is, we suggest, a good deal of continuity between these three works. What makes them different, however, are the roles that ‘God’ plays in each respectively: in the Speeches, the undercurrent of all life, in the Dialektik, the transcendental ground of knowledge, and in The Christian Faith, the ultimate cause of Christian consciousness. By addressing Schleiermacher’s understanding of God from several angles, our hope is that by the time we arrive at his treatment of ‘God is love’ in the final paragraphs of the Glaubenslehre, it should be generally self-evident what he will be obligated to say on the topic. Consequently, we will have before us a rather explicit example of what it means to treat ‘God is love’ as a conclusion, rather than the presupposition of the doctrine of God. The first three chapters of this part concern what we are calling Schleiermacher’s ‘concept’ of God – that is, it addresses that which Schleiermacher thinks the word ‘God’ designates in particular contexts. Here, we will examine the first two speeches from On Religion, the transcendental part of the 1814/15 cycle of the Dialektik lectures, and the ethical propositions from the Einleitung to the Glaubenslehre. Our conclusion will be that, for Schleiermacher, God stands in a

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necessary relationship with the world, yet must also be strictly distinct from it in a number of important ways. Chapter 4 will concern Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God proper, as reflected in his treatment of the divine attributes in the Glaubenslehre. Here, we will be able to observe how Schleiermacher’s ‘religious’ understanding of God is utterly congruent with his ‘concept’ of God, even as it emerges from the soil of a particular religious community, the Christian Church. Further, we will encounter Schleiermacher’s interpretation of ‘God is love’ as the utterly active self-communication of the divine life in the redemption of the world.

1 G O D A S T H E U N I V E R SE I N ON R E L I G I ON

Schleiermacher’s first major publication, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799), was written as a response to the scepticism of his Romantic colleagues towards all things religious.1 As Jack Forstman observes, Schleiermacher was regarded as something of an enigma by the Berlin Romantics.2 In particular, they were curious as to why someone who shared with them such negative sentiments about traditional Christianity would persist in an ecclesial career. On Religion offers an intriguing apologia: what the cultured critics had despised was not actually religion at all. Indeed, were they to perceive the true essence of religion, they would find themselves not driven away but towards religion’s selfevident persuasiveness. Clearly, the five speeches comprising On Religion are substantial enough to warrant comprehensive study.3 Nevertheless, for the purposes of this chapter – to penetrate the meaning of Schleiermacher’s identification of love with the divine essence – we bring to this text a rather limited question: what is the meaning and 1. Defining early German Romanticism, a movement which flourished from approximately 1796 to 1802, is a highly contested affair. Nevertheless, certain contours of the movement, whose leading lights included, among others, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), are recognizable as a celebration of individuality, particularity, and uniqueness, an aversion to systematizing and idealism, and a preoccupation with the mysteries and depths of human self-consciousness. See Jack Forstman, A Romantic Triangle: Schleiermacher and Early German Romanticism (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1977), xii. 2. Forstman, A Romantic Triangle, 65. 3. This is particularly the case vis-à-vis the relation of On Religion’s many themes to Schleiermacher’s greater body of work. As Richard Crouter puts it, ‘Because the Speeches embody his deepest intuitions – about religion, self, art, church, deity, Jesus Christ, politics, history, antiquity, and life – the work stood him in good stead during the rest of his career. There is, in fact, a kind of tough intertextuality that runs through Schleiermacher’s various works. Such intertextuality is all the more challenging to ferret out since, while no single work (even his Dogmatics) encompasses the full range of his intellectual achievement, each work bears the traces of an orientation that is originally expressed in On Religion.’ Richard Crouter, Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 249.

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role of ‘God’ in Schleiermacher’s early account of religion? Admittedly, the most careful response would require attention to the subsequent revisions of the text, published in 1806, 1821, and 1831.4 Such a technical treatment, however, would exceed the modesty of our query. For this reason, and because we are especially interested in Schleiermacher’s early understanding of God, we will interact exclusively with the first edition, published in 1799, particularly the second speech, ‘On the Essence of Religion’.5

Religion as the intuition of the universe We begin our investigation with a brief glance at the first speech, the sonamed Apology. Here, Schleiermacher introduces an important theme which persists throughout his career, namely, that of the ‘two primal forces of nature’ which organize and animate all finite reality: ‘appropriation/attraction’ (Abneignen/Anziehen) and ‘repulsion/expansion’ (Abstoßen/Verbreiten).6 The human soul, as a constituent of finite reality, is recognized as an instantiation of this general polarity and thus serves as an entry point into Schleiermacher’s main argument.7 Every soul, he explains, possesses, on the one hand, a drive 4. Richard Crouter provides an excellent comparative study in the introduction to his translation of the 1799 text – something which is helpful not only for understanding Schleiermacher’s later development but also for bringing out the nuances in the original text as well. See Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Introduction’, in On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 55–73. 5. This is not to imply that the second speech is the heart of the work or that the other speeches should be interpreted primarily in its light. Friedrich Beißer is no doubt correct when he argues that Schleiermacher’s fundamental approach, both here and in later works, is to posit a relationship of mutual dependence between the universal and the particular, and that this basic posture should be kept in mind when relating the content of the second speech (on religion’s essence) to that of the fifth (on the manifestation of religion in the historically concrete instance of Christianity). See Friedrich Beißer, Schleiermachers Lehre von Gott dargestellt nach seinen Reden und seiner Glaubenslehre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 12–17. Nevertheless, it is in the context of the second speech that Schleiermacher gives his most explicit interpretation of the notion ‘God’, and for this reason it attracts our attention. 6. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 79–80; Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern’, in Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher: Schriften aus der Berliner Zeit 1796–1799, ed. Günther Meckenstock, vol. I/2 in Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Han-Joachim Birkner et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 191. (Hereafter cited as KGA with appropriate volume and part number, e.g., ‘KGA I/2’.) 7. A later expression of this initial insight can, for instance, be found in § 3 of The Christian Faith: ‘Life, then, is to be conceived as an alternation between an abiding-in-self (Insichbleiben) and a passing-beyond-self (Aussichheraustreten) on the part of the subject.’

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to appropriate that which is external, that is, to ‘draw into itself everything that surrounds it’ with the goal of ‘wholly absorbing it into its innermost being’.8 This drive, he says, tends towards enjoyment and is thus satisfied in possessing by way of reception that which presents itself to it. It is the posture of the soul which attends to the particulars of life; hence, it necessarily limits its vision to ‘whatever is at hand’.9 The second drive is marked by a different tendency, one which seeks to ‘extend its own inner self even further, thereby permeating and imparting to everything from within, while never being exhausted itself ’.10 Unlike the former, this latter drive inclines the soul to ‘overlook individual things’ as it seeks actively ‘to penetrate and to fill everything with reason and freedom’.11 This impulse, in contrast to its counterpart, prefers to see the world in its totality, regarding particulars only as possible receptors for the unifying principle that is the soul’s own self-assertion. Hence, whereas the first drive represents a passive impulse, the second is one of activity; whereas the former receives the world, the latter makes it. These twin forces – of which the human soul is but one instantiation – form the warp and woof of reality according to Schleiermacher. Understanding this dipolar construal of reality helps to illuminate with greater depth the reasons why Schleiermacher so strongly rejects the conception of religion as either ‘metaphysics’ or ‘morals’ in the second speech, ‘On the Essence of Religion’. Simply put, for Schleiermacher, metaphysics and morals (i.e., ethics) are disciplines which, respectively, attend to the forces of receptivity (Abneignen/Anziehen) and activity (Abstoßen/Verbreiten) laid out in the first speech. Metaphysics, in seeking to ‘determine and explain the universe according to its nature’,12 aims ultimately to reflect the world in the form of knowledge.13 As such, it is concerned with rightly receiving that which is external and hence corresponds to the power of attraction or receptivity. Morals, on the other hand, seek ‘to continue the universe’s development

Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928), 8 (hereafter cited as ‘CF’). It is perhaps also seen in the duality of ‘sensitiveness’ (i.e., inward receptivity) and ‘love’ (i.e., outward expressivity) discussed in the Monologen. See Horace Leland Friess, Schleiermacher’s Soliloquies: An English Translation of the Monologen with a Critical Introduction and Appendix (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002), 38–43. 8. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 80. 9. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 80. 10. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 80. 11. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 80. 12. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 101. 13. Schleiermacher later comes to define ‘knowledge’ (Wissen) explicitly in terms of correspondence in his lectures on dialectics: ‘That thinking is a knowing which … is depicted as corresponding to a being which is thought therein’. Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, in KGA II/10.1, ed. Andreas Arndt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 90. Such will be discussed in Chapter 2.

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and perfect it by the power of freedom’.14 As such, it struggles to direct properly the force of activity and expansion as it expresses itself in the human soul. Note that, for Schleiermacher, this distinction is strict: to confuse metaphysics with morals or vice versa is tantamount to circumventing the basic polarity of all finite reality. Further, to the extent that religion is called upon to facilitate such an illfated relation, it too propagates a fundamental error: the very confusion which Schleiermacher’s search for religion’s ‘essence’ is meant to correct.15 So because metaphysics and morals by nature attend only partially to reality, neither discipline can be regarded as a truly comprehensive science. Nevertheless, a comprehensive principle is, in Schleiermacher’s mind, absolutely necessary in order to explain how the two opposing forces co-inhere in that which confronts us as one basic reality. ‘Where, then, is the unity of this whole?’ he asks. ‘Where does the unifying principle lie for this dissimilar material?’16 The answer, surprisingly (at least for the original readers), lies in religion, for only in religion, Schleiermacher argues, is there any warrant for considering reality to be both ‘real’ and accessible. This is why Schleiermacher presents his revisioning of religion as the basis for what he terms ‘a higher realism’.17 But what is this principle of unity, and how is it that ‘religion’ gives us access to such a thing? To answer this question, we turn to a well-known and programmatic passage from the second speech. Therein, Schleiermacher states: Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling [Anschauung und Gefühl]. It wishes to intuit the universe, wishes devoutly to overhear the universe’s own manifestations and actions, longs to be grasped and filled by the universe’s immediate influences in childlike passivity.18

In this well-known declaration, what Schleiermacher considers to be the ground for speaking of reality as a basic unity becomes evident. It is, unambiguously, the universe (das Universum).19 In essence, the universe, for Schleiermacher, is simply that which exerts itself upon the whole of reality, thereby comprehending both the force of expansion and the force of attraction. It should be emphasized, 14. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 101. 15. ‘I find it very unjust if you yourselves stitch together something untenable out of such disparate things, call it religion, and then make so much needless ado about it.’ Schleiermacher, On Religion, 100. 16. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 99. 17. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 103. 18. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 102. 19. Although Schleiermacher tends to privilege ‘universe’ to describe the principle of the world’s unity, he does make use of several other terms. Martin Redeker catalogues the following synonyms: the genius of humanity, the sublime world spirit, eternal love, retribution, destiny, and deity. Schleiermacher: Life and Thought, trans. John Wallhausser (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1973), 36–37.

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therefore, that the universe is not simply another term for ‘the world’, understood as in, for example, ‘the whole of finite reality’, as the term might imply in our contemporary context. To the contrary, the universe is the very thing which makes the world a world by establishing the ultimate relatedness of all finite particulars. In other words, the world stands as one only insofar as all things are commonly subordinated to the force of the universe. As Redeker explains, ‘The universe is for [Schleiermacher] unity and wholeness in contrast to the multiplicity of natural and human events…. This wholeness and unity is not empirically perceived, nor is it the causal structure of nature in space and time; it is the ultimate, which acts upon men and things.’20 Our means of access to the universe, Schleiermacher explains, is not knowledge or action but rather intuition (Anschauung).21 For Schleiermacher, the faculty of intuition is conceived in much the same way as it is in Kant’s first Critique: to ‘intuit’ means essentially to perceive oneself to be the recipient of an action.22 As Schleiermacher explains, ‘All intuition proceeds from an influence of the intuited on the one who intuits, from an original and independent action of the former, which is then grasped, apprehended, and conceived by the latter according to one’s own nature.’23 Thus, we might point out that although the verb ‘to intuit’ functions transitively in a grammatical sense, its meaning actually implies a posture of receptivity and passivity for the subject of the intuitive act. To intuit means to be acted upon, not to act upon, as is ultimately the case, for instance, with the verb ‘to know’.24 When we intuit an object, it should be stressed, we are perceiving not its ‘substance’ or ‘essence’, but rather its action upon us. Indeed, Schleiermacher insists, ‘What you know or believe about the nature of things lies far beyond the realm of intuition.’25 Now, although what we are given in intuition is really the consciousness of an action rather than an essence, nevertheless, in perceiving the action of an object 20. Redeker, Schleiermacher, 37. 21. ‘Everything must proceed from intuition’ (Schleiermacher, On Religion, 103) – which is really to say that all theory and praxis is dependent upon religion: ‘To want to have speculation and praxis without religion is rash arrogance’ (102). This constitutes Schleiermacher’s ‘higher realism’, since for him, religion provides the basis for speaking coherently about the ‘reality’ of metaphysics and morals. 22. ‘It comes along with our nature that intuition can never be other than sensible, i.e., that it contains only the way in which we are affected by objects.’ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 193. 23. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 104. 24. Schleiermacher makes this point in § 3 of the Glaubenslehre: ‘…while Knowing, in the sense of possessing knowledge, is an abiding-in-self on the part of the subject, nevertheless as the act of knowing, it only becomes real by a passing-beyond-self of the subject, and in this sense it is a Doing.’ CF, 8 (§ 3.3). 25. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 104–5.

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through the faculty of intuition, a relationship is implied between ourselves and the source of that action. This implied relationship effects a change in our selfconsciousness, that is, it produces a feeling (Gefühl): the feeling of relatedness. We might say, then, that intuition produces feeling, even though, strictly speaking, in the sphere of religion, the two cannot be separated from one another in quite this way.26 The key insight, however, consists in Schleiermacher’s belief that there is something much deeper going on in this relational exchange. As mentioned above, for Schleiermacher, every finite particular stands in relation to all other finite particulars in virtue of their shared relationship to the universe. In other words, every finite particular is part of a world which is acted on by a universe. 26. There is some debate as to whether Schleiermacher distinguished Anschauung and Gefühl as strictly in the 1799 edition as he did in the later versions (see Beißer, Schleiermachers Lehre von Gott, 21–6; Crouter, ‘Introduction’, 58–64; Redeker, Schleiermacher, 42–3; Jörg Dierken, ‘“Daß eine Religion ohne Gott besser sein kann als eine andre mit Gott”: Der Beitrag von Schleiermachers “Reden” zu einer nichttheistischen Konzeption des Absoluten’, in 200 Jahre ‘Reden über die Religion’: Akten des 1. Internationalen Kongresses der SchleiermacherGesellschaft, Halle 14.-17. März 1999, ed. Ulrich Barth and Claus-Dieter Osthövener [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000], 672–81). It is our contention that the ambiguity stems from the fact that, in the sphere of religion, the distinction can only be analytical and hence technically inaccurate. When considered from the perspective of religion (i.e., with respect to unity), intuition and feeling can, in one sense, be viewed as one. When, however, they are considered from the perspective of multiplicity, they can be distinguished. This is evident in the famous ‘love scene’ passage wherein Schleiermacher describes ‘the natal hour of everything living in religion’ (113). For Schleiermacher, we arrive at the feeling of being in relation to the universe by means of our intuition of it through finite particulars. When this occurs, our intuition of the universe and our consciousness of being related to it are, essentially, one and the same thing: we are now simultaneously intuiting and feeling the universe. Yet, Schleiermacher also knows that intuition is not simply a matter of perceiving the universe through finite particulars; we are also capable of intuiting the particulars themselves. Hence, while it may be true that religion is birthed in that fleeting moment when we are both intuiting and feeling the universe at the same time, nonetheless, when intuition becomes crystallized into that of a particular object, a distinction is introduced: the source of an intuition is now divided, as it were, into both the universe and whatever particular thing is the object of one’s intuition. Although the religious feeling may persist (which is, for Schleiermacher, the definition of piety), the intuition which initially occasioned it does not. Hence, while religion is born of the moment when intuition and feeling are, in a sense, the same thing (thereby warranting Schleiermacher’s occasionally synonymous use of the terms), nevertheless, we can still justifiably distinguish the two concepts (as indeed, Schleiermacher does more explicitly in the revised editions). This is perhaps summarized best in the following quotation: ‘Intuition without feeling is nothing and can have neither the proper origin nor the proper force; feeling without intuition is also nothing; both are therefore something only when and because they are originally one and unseparated.’ Schleiermacher, On Religion, 112.

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Hence, when we intuit a particular object, we intuit not just the object in itself but also the entire web of causality which made the action of that object possible. This is what Schleiermacher means by ‘the intuition of the universe’. The change in consciousness which intuition effects, then, is the feeling that we are in relation not just with the particular object which was the immediate occasion for the intuition but with the entire world as a whole. This, then, is the crucial point: insofar as the universe is the active source behind all finite expressions of worldly activity, our intuition of the world may therefore be considered an intuition of the universe. The resultant feeling, then, is not merely that of our being in relation to the world but ultimately that of being in relation to the universe. In this way, Schleiermacher contends, the universe ‘reveals itself to us every moment’, such that ‘every form that it brings forth, every being to which it gives a separate existence according to the fullness of life, every occurrence that spills forth from its rich, ever-fruitful womb [i.e., every finite particular which we intuit], is an action of the same upon us’.27 The ‘essence’ of religion, therefore, is precisely this: it is the feeling of being a constituent member of that which is acted upon from without; it is the consciousness that one’s relation to the world ultimately expresses the world’s relation to the ‘uninterrupted activity’ of the universe.28

The universe as ‘God’ The obvious question therefore raises itself: is the universe simply another name for ‘God’ in the Speeches? At one level, the answer is ‘yes’, since, for Schleiermacher, the universe, like the traditional notion of ‘God’, is that which explains human religiousness. Similarly, like ‘God’, the universe ‘reveals itself ’ to us as humanity progresses towards deeper levels of religious consciousness.29 For reasons such as these, Beißer is at least partially correct in claiming that ‘that which has stepped into the place of the traditional God he calls the universe’.30 On the other hand, Schleiermacher is careful to distinguish between ‘God’ as merely one of many legitimate ways to express the feeling of being related to the universe, and ‘God’ as a term with a conceptual history that is not necessarily related to the essence of religion so defined. As he says, ‘for me divinity can be nothing other than a particular type of religious intuition’.31 Indeed, what matters most, for

27. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 105. 28. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 105. 29. On divine manifestation as the ultimate ‘purpose’ of religion, see Neal K. Keesee, ‘The Divine Purpose in On Religion’, Journal of Religion 78 (1998): 405–24. 30. Beißer, Schleiermachers Lehre von Gott, 37. 31. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 136.

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Schleiermacher, is the integrity of one’s religious feeling and not necessarily the way in which this feeling is expressed.32 To the extent, therefore, that the term ‘God’ is used to express our feeling of being related to the transcendent force implied in our intuition of the world, it is, according to Schleiermacher’s account, an appropriate religious expression. However, when we allow the expression itself – in this case, the concept ‘God’ – to function as a theological criterion in its own right rather than the original intuition, we necessarily depart from religion’s essence and re-enter the realm of primitive speculation. Hence, ‘To present all events in the world as the actions of a god is religion’ since ‘it expresses its connection to an infinite totality’. Nonetheless, ‘while brooding over the existence of this god before the world and outside of the world may be good and necessary in metaphysics, in religion even that becomes only empty mythology, a further development of that which is only the means of portrayal as if it were the essential itself ’, and, as such, ‘a complete departure from its characteristic ground’.33 So, for instance, a more traditional understanding of ‘God’ as a being existing in himself, who, having created the world, subsequently makes moral demands of his creatures, can neither be justified on the basis of an original religious intuition nor used as a canon for the interpretation of such intuitions, according to Schleiermacher.34 Indeed, on his account, all we can say of the deity on the basis of religious feeling is that it is the active spirit to which we are related in virtue of our constituency in the world which it directs. To imagine God ‘in himself ’, therefore, can be nothing more than gross speculation. Such is the meaning of Schleiermacher’s consistently held conviction that ‘you can have no God without the world’.35 A further implication of subordinating the concept of deity to religious feeling is that the authenticity of one’s piety is not necessarily tied to one’s belief in God.36 As Schleiermacher says, ‘From my standpoint and according to my conceptions that are known to you, the belief “No God, no religion” cannot

32. This is not to downplay the importance of religious expression, since Schleiermacher believes that (a) true religion will always express itself, and (b) the communities through which religious awakening is necessarily facilitated are predicated on the authenticity of religious expression. Such is evident in the fourth speech, ‘On the Social Element in Religion’. 33. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 105. 34. ‘…religion has nothing to do with the existing and commanding God…’ Schleiermacher, On Religion, 138. 35. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 138. This view persists in Schleiermacher’s thought, as seen in, for example, the 1828 lectures on dialectics: ‘There is no world without God and no God without the world’. KGA II/10.1, 306. 36. ‘God is not everything in religion, but one, and the universe is more…’ Schleiermacher, On Religion, 140.

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occur’.37 He defends this by contrasting the religion of the polytheist, who believes in the concept of deity, with that of the pantheist, who, while rejecting the notion of extramundane being, nevertheless perceives the inherent unity of the world far more acutely than a polytheist. On the basis of this comparison, Schleiermacher asks, ‘Should not the one who intuits [the world] as one and all thus have more religion, even without the idea of God, than the most cultured polytheist?’38 In other words, if the essence of religion is predicated on the perception that the world is essentially ‘one’ in its relation to the universe, then those who perceive this unity would apparently possess a keener religious sense than those for whom deity is related most basically to the world’s multiplicity (as is the case in polytheism).39 Among those who do perceive this ‘one and all’, however, the question thus becomes a matter of fidelity to that which gives birth to one’s concept of deity: religious feeling. To demonstrate this, Schleiermacher engages in a critical consideration of the idea that God is ‘personal’ – at the time a controversial issue in light of Johann Fichte’s recent dismissal from the University of Jena for his non-traditional views on the matter.40 Conceiving of the universe as ‘personal’, he explains, depends not on the inherent personality of the universe itself (after all, regarding the universe in its ‘substance’ rather than its ‘action’ is disallowed by the nature of religious intuition) but rather on ‘the direction

37. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 136. Dierken labels this move Schleiermacher’s ‘detheologizing of the concept of religion’. Jörg Dierken, ‘Der Beitrag von Schleiermachers “Reden” zu einer nichttheistischen Konzeption des Absoluten’, 669. 38. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 137. 39. According to Schleiermacher, polytheists experience the universe ‘as a multiplicity without unity’. On Religion, 137. 40. In what came to be known as ‘the atheism controversy’, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte was publicly charged by an anonymous pamphleteer with being an atheist on the grounds of certain statements made in his essay, ‘On the Basis of our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World’. Therein, he had argued, for example, that ‘This living and efficaciously acting moral order is itself God. We require no other God, nor can we grasp any other’ (J.G. Fichte, ‘On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World’, in Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings [1797–1800], ed. Daniel Breazeale [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994], 151, emphasis added). For controversial statements such as these, and no doubt for the ensuing public outcry, Fichte was dismissed from his post at Jena in 1799. This is certainly the background for Schleiermacher’s tongue-in-cheek quip about being ‘afraid’ to speak about God ‘before a judicially valid definition of God and existence had been brought to light and sanctioned in the German empire’. On Religion, 135. For more on the atheism controversy, see Curtis Bowman, ‘Fichte, Jacobi, and the Atheism Controversy’, in New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 279–98.

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of our imagination’.41 Those who conceptualize their intuition of the universe’s unceasing activity by means of the category of ‘freedom’ – a category made intelligible only by one’s own consciousness of freedom – Schleiermacher explains, will often ‘personify the spirit of the universe’, thereby regarding it too as a free being.42 This personification, perhaps surprisingly, is not immediately rejected by Schleiermacher. Indeed, in his mind, there is a justification of sorts for such a conceptuality. The warrant for this personification stems from the fact that the feeling of freedom experienced by finite beings is roughly analogous to the sort of absolute activity implied in the intuition of the infinite. To the extent that this analogy is recognized, it may be deemed a serviceable contact point for the expression of religious feeling. Nevertheless, it is not necessary, Schleiermacher insists. Again, what matters vis-à-vis the integrity of religion is the feeling which gives rise to the expression, not the content of the expression itself. Besides, in this case, there is, he contends, another way to express religious feeling which does not gesture towards the personality of the world spirit. If, for instance, one recognizes that one’s consciousness of freedom is characterized first and foremost by finitude – indeed, it is a freedom which is fundamentally relative to the ‘uninterrupted activity’ of the universe43 – then one will not necessarily feel inclined to import such a finite quality to the actions of the divine.44 ‘In religion’, Schleiermacher therefore concludes, ‘the idea of God does not rank as high as you think’.45 Indeed, he says, ‘God is not everything in religion, but one [thing], and the universe is more.’46

41. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 138. ‘…ob [jemand] zu seiner Anschauung einen Gott hat, das hängt ab von der Richtung seiner Fantasie’. KGA I/2, 245. Schleiermacher uses the term Fantasie or ‘imagination’ in a way similar to Kant. In Kant’s epistemology, the imagination is the faculty of the soul which pre-cognitively organizes the manifold into synthetic representations which may later be conceptualized and judged. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 210–1. 42. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 138. 43. Schleiermacher’s belief in a deterministic account of human action can be regarded as one of his first philosophical commitments. See his 1794 essay, On Freedom, trans. Albert L. Blackwell (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1992). 44. This argument, albeit in a much more muted way, does in fact approximate Fichte’s objection that belief in a personal God ultimately boils down to mere anthropomorphism. In his essay he asks, ‘How could what is finite ever grasp and comprehend infinity?’ concluding that ‘[S]o long as you use words like “personality” and “consciousness” [to describe God], you have not succeeded in thinking anything at all, but have merely set the air to vibrating with an empty sound.’ Fichte, ‘Divine Governance’, 152. The difference, of course, is that Schleiermacher thinks that such an anthropomorphism is justified if it understood only in the sense of an expression and not of a direct predication. 45. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 138. 46. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 140.

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Summary While we have admittedly not interacted with many of the important themes developed in the second speech (let alone the work as a whole), nevertheless, at this point, it should be clear that Schleiermacher has significantly revised the traditional concept of deity. While his mature theology surely boasts a clearer and more pliant conceptual vocabulary, it is important to recognize that the basic insights of this early account of God remain essentially unchanged throughout the rest of Schleiermacher’s corpus. Accordingly, getting a sense for just how deep these insights run will pay dividends as we enquire into his doctrine of God as it is explicitly presented in the Glaubenslehre. A brief summary of our findings thus far is in order. First, it is apparent that, for Schleiermacher, the conceptual history of the term ‘God’ cannot, on its own, generate religiously meaningful speech. Rather, religious feeling, which Schleiermacher identifies as religion’s ‘essence’, must be the principal criterion for interpreting religious expression.47 Broadly stated: theological language must be interpreted in light of religious experience, not vice versa.48 Here, Schleiermacher’s critical exegesis of the notion of the personal God foreshadows the sort of methodology to be applied more comprehensively to the scope of Christian doctrine in his dogmatics. This ordering of theological language and experience means, second, that in religious discourse, talk of ‘God’ can be justified only insofar as this term is equated with (and therefore judged by) that which is implied by religious feeling. Once more, religious feeling stems from the consciousness, occasioned by the intuition of finite particulars, that one is part of a ‘world’, where ‘world’ is understood as a web of mutually affecting relations bound together in unity as the collective object of an external force. The source of this extramundane (i.e., non-worldly) force, which Schleiermacher frequently calls ‘the universe’, is that which alone must be implied by the term ‘God’ if it is to be considered a theologically useful word. Needless to say, the identification of God with the universe and not the world renders mute the oft-repeated charge of pantheism. Schleiermacher’s God, we must emphasize, is consistently conceived as necessarily extramundane and therefore related to 47. Andrew Dole helpfully clarifies that, for Schleiermacher, religion’s ‘essence’, taken in its primary sense, functions not so much as an exposition of observed commonalities amongst supposedly religious communities but rather as an ideal which itself may be used for the evaluation of these communities. See Andrew Dole, Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 72–81. 48. Schleiermacher would later defend this position with reference to Luther: ‘[D]id he not begin to reflect about his piety only when he was hard pressed to strengthen his possession of it, so that his theology is plainly a daughter of his religion?’ Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letter to Dr. Lücke, trans. James Duke and Francis Fiorenza (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1981), 40–1.

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the world in a fundamentally different way than anything which is itself ‘worldly’ (which includes, of course, the totality of the world). Third, in this identification of God with the universe, we have been given hints as to what Schleiermacher might mean by theological predication – a topic which will prove highly relevant for interpreting his treatment of the divine attributes and love specifically. According to the theology of the Speeches, there is no religiously informed warrant for making direct claims concerning what God is or even what God is like. Indeed, what we ‘know’ of God is limited to that which is implied by God’s unceasing activity vis-à-vis the world as it is present to us in feeling. The question of God’s essence, therefore, is at best religiously insignificant and at worst a distraction to genuine religious formation. Again, if ‘[w]hat you know or believe about the nature of things lies far beyond the realm of intuition’,49 and if religion’s essence is located squarely within this realm, then it stands to reason that speculation concerning God’s nature lies ‘far beyond’ the realm of genuine religion as well. All of this raises the question: What does Schleiermacher think he is doing when he talks about God (as indeed he was obliged to do both as a professor of theology and as the pastor of a church)? In other words, does the very fact that he seems capable in his later writings and sermons of describing God imply that he eventually discovered a means for moving from the mere intuition of the universe to a conceptual representation of the universe (i.e., God) itself? Indeed, on the grounds of the Speeches, one could get the impression that theological predication, if not directly permissible, is at least inferentially warranted in light of religious feeling. In other words, even if all we can know of God is that we are acted upon by him, surely we could nevertheless profitably ask the question: What must God be like if these are in fact God’s actions? Indeed, could we not approximate a knowledge of God’s essence by means of transcendental reasoning? If God cannot be known objectively, perhaps he can be known conceptually. Such questions inevitably lead us to Schleiermacher’s epistemology, for unless we have a clear sense for what he means by terms like ‘knowledge’, ‘concept’, and ‘predication’, it will be difficult to understand exactly what he is up to when his God-talk moves into a more explicitly descriptive register. For this reason, we find it necessary to turn to Schleiermacher’s little-read lectures on dialectics as a prelude to our engagement with The Christian Faith.

49. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 104–5.

2 G O D A S T H E P R E SU P P O SI T IO N O F K N OW L E D G E I N T H E D IA L E K T I K

Whilst at the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher delivered lectures on dialectics six times between 1811 and 1831. Although he intended to produce a published version – a significant fact in light of the few monographs he actually published1 – he was unfortunately only able to pen a short Einleitung just before his death in 1834. Nevertheless, as with many of Schleiermacher’s writings, the lectures did posthumously migrate to print, beginning with the 1814/15 version under the editorship of Ludwig Jonas in the Sämmtliche Werke and culminating with the collected publication of all six lecture cycles in volume II/10.1 of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe.2 Given the brevity of this investigation, we will here interact primarily with the 1814/15 edition, first because of its generally mature form (as opposed to other, more fragmentary versions) and second, because it is the product of an editorship which Schleiermacher himself commissioned just before his death.3 1. Given the vast quantity of material included in the KGA, it is perhaps surprising that Schleiermacher published only the following six monographs during his lifetime: Über die Religion (1799), Monologen (1800), Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803), Die Weihnachtsfeier (1806), Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (1811), and Der christlische Glaube (1821/22). John E. Thiel, God and World in Schleiermacher’s Dialektik and Glaubenslehre: Criticism and the Methodology of Dogmatics (Bern: Peter Lang, 1981), 34–5. 2. Dialektik, in SW III/4.2, ed. L. Jonas (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1839); Vorlesungen über die Dialektik, in KGA II/10, ed. Andreas Arndt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002). The two other editions most often cited are: Dialektik, ed. Rudolph Odebrecht (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1942), which is based on the 1822 lectures, and Dialektik, ed. Isidor Halpern (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1903), which follows the 1831 course. To date, the only English translation available is Dialectic or, the Art of Doing Philosophy: A Study Edition of the 1811 Notes, trans. Terrence N. Tice (Atlanta: Scholars, 1996). 3. John Thiel argues for the primacy of the 1814/15 lectures in this way: ‘First, it is the work of Schleiermacher’s own student [Ludwig Jonas] whose mastery of Schleiermacher’s thought is evinced by the latter’s commissioning him with the task of editing and publishing the Dialektik. Second, the Jonas edition preserves the integrity of each lecture plan, thereby

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The purpose of the Dialektik The Dialektik was conceived in part as an alternative philosophical proposal to that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose appointment as founding chair of philosophy at Berlin helped concretize Schleiermacher’s long-held unease with the former’s thoroughgoing idealism.4 Indeed, the competitive nature of their views was perhaps best illustrated by the fact that both men were scheduled to deliver their lectures – Schleiermacher on Dialektik, Fichte on Wissenschaftslehre – at precisely the same hour in the summer semester of 1811.5 Yet, Schleiermacher’s Dialektik is by no means petty polemics; indeed, his larger goal was to cast a new vision for uniting the estranged disciplines of logic and metaphysics within the general strictures of post-Kantian thought.6 ‘Logic … without metaphysics’, Schleiermacher insists, ‘is not science, and metaphysics without logic can obtain no other form than that of something arbitrary and imaginary’.7 The latter claim, of course, reflects the standard Kantian permitting the reader to perceive the development undergone by the Dialektik in the course of its six deliveries.’ Thiel, God and World, 13. 4. Meckenstock suggests that, with the Dialektik, we witness the consummation of Schleiermacher’s discomfort with Fichtean philosophy, as ‘[his] attitude toward Fichte developed from being a different perspective to being an outright rejection which has the marks of a negative fixation’. Günter Meckenstock, ‘Schleiermachers Auseinandersetzung mit Fichte’, in Schleiermacher’s Philosophy and the Philosophical Tradition, ed. Sergio Sorrentino Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, (1992), 42. So Arndt comments in his introduction to the critical edition, ‘The Dialektik must be understood in the context of the era, above all as a critical engagement with the Fichtean Wissenschaftslehre which claimed to have transformed philosophy into science.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Historische Einführung’, IX–X. 5. Meckenstock, ‘Auseinandersetzung’, 31. 6. Vercellone traces this concern to Schleiermacher’s reading of Plato, while Arndt sees in this impulse a response to Kant. Manfred Frank, on the other hand, points to the influence of Schelling, with a view to Schleiermacher’s professed agreement with former’s readings of Spinoza and Leibniz. While Schleiermacher’s indebtedness to Plato is undeniable, nevertheless, we agree with Arndt vis-à-vis the larger structure of the Dialektik, a structure which appears to have been arranged with the Critique of Pure Reason in mind (see discussion below). Furthermore, Schleiermacher’s unique coordination of psychology, cosmology, and theology in the latter sections of the transcendental part appear to be in direct dialogue with Kant’s transcendental dialectic, as will be shown. Cf. Federico Vercellone, ‘Bemerkungen über Gott, Welt und Wissen in Schleiermachers Dialektik’, 208, and Andreas Arndt, ‘Die Metaphysik der Dialektik’, 137–41, both in Christine Helmer et al. eds., Schleiermachers Dialektik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2003); Manfred Frank, ‘Metaphysical Foundations: A Look at Schleiermacher’s Dialectic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, ed. Jacqueline Mariña (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 17–22. 7. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 77 (§ 16).

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rejection of ‘the former metaphysics’ of medieval scholasticism, but the former is directed squarely at transcendental idealists like Fichte, who, in his purported ‘science of knowledge’, had attempted to orient all knowledge to the self-evident Ich by the sheer analysis of its transcendental structures. In Schleiermacher’s view, neither of these approaches can claim to possess ‘knowledge’ since, for him, knowledge must be both knowledge of, thereby necessitating some sort of metaphysical account, as well as knowledge by, thereby demanding some means of relating particular knowledge claims.8 Hence, Schleiermacher clearly is no foundationalist; he is not interested in grounding knowledge as such. Instead, his concern is with the process of knowledge, a process which, as he sees it, always begins ‘in the middle’.9 Schleiermacher’s emphasis on knowledge as becoming explains in part why he prefers to describe philosophy in dialogical terms. Notably, a dialogue distinguishes itself by making two key demands of its participants. First, it requires that each bring something to the table. In other words, the subject matter of a dialogue never arises from the dialogue itself but rather is brought to the discussion by interlocutors who claim to possess some kind of knowledge already. Second, dialogues demand that participants proceed according to certain universal rules, lest they degenerate into empty rhetoric. For Schleiermacher, philosophy proceeds in the same way: purported claims to knowledge are coordinated by means of certain ‘rules of combination’ (die Regeln der Verknüpfung) for the sake of constructing fuller and more correspondent accounts of reality. In short, knowledge is always the product of interaction – the interaction of knowers ‘on the way’. In terms of organization, the Dialektik is arranged into two main sections. The first or ‘transcendental’ part of the lectures analyses the metaphysical side of knowledge, while the latter or ‘formal’ section lays out the supposed ‘rules of combination’ alluded to above. With respect to this order, we note particularly Schleiermacher’s explicit inversion of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, a work arguably in view throughout the lectures.10 Whereas Kant regarded his transcendental analytic as the basis for a thoroughgoing critique of ‘the former metaphysics’ in

8. ‘Every particular instance of knowing depends on a twofold mode of the philosophical inasmuch as it relates to an earlier instance of knowing as combination, and inasmuch as it relates to an object as the innermost ground of knowledge and its interconnection with that being which is subject to it.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 76 (§ 13). 9. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 186 (§ 62): ‘Das Anfangen aus der Mitte ist unvermeidlich.’ 10. While Schleiermacher’s views are indeed innovative, nevertheless, as Michael Eckert points out, the ‘philosophical problematic’ to which his Dialektik attends is provided by Kant, an interlocutor ‘who is always to be seen in the background of Schleiermacher’s thought’. Michael Eckert, Gott – Glauben und Wissen: Friedrich Schleiermachers Philosophische Theologie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987), 42.

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the transcendental dialectic, hence placing it first,11 Schleiermacher grounds his analysis of the categories of thought on the explicitly metaphysical foundation worked out via his own dialectical approach, thereby inverting Kant’s order of exposition. Admittedly, however, there is a great deal of overlap between the two sections since, for Schleiermacher, the structures of logic issue from the nature of reality just as intellectual categories are necessary in order for knowledge of that reality to be affirmed as such. Indeed, one of Schleiermacher’s key principles is the notion that if knowledge corresponds with being, so must the form of knowledge likewise reflect the form of being. As a result, pure knowledge, properly speaking, admits no distinction between its transcendental and formal aspects. Yet because the running assumption of the Dialektik is that knowledge can only be possessed in ‘approximation’, never in perfection,12 the formal analysis of knowing can only be that to which we aim rather than the ground upon which knowing itself is founded. In order to reflect this directionality, therefore, Schleiermacher begins his lectures with the transcendental part as an exploration of the presupposed ground of knowledge ensuring the possibility of knowledge in its actual, asymptotic state of becoming. As he concludes the introduction, ‘Because our actual goal is the construction [of knowledge], so our endpoint is also the formal [part] which we therefore place last. Yet precisely so that we can be aware of the formal’s identity with the transcendental in every procedure, we wish to seek first the transcendental.’13 For our purposes, the most relevant section of the transcendental part is the final few theses having to do with the relationship of God and world. Yet before discussing these directly, it is necessary first to explain a bit about Schleiermacher’s epistemology in general as well as his interest in ‘grounding’ the process of knowing by means of a transcendental idea in particular.

Seeking the transcendental ground of knowing Schleiermacher begins the transcendental part of his lectures by raising the question of how to distinguish thinking in general from that species of thinking

11. For Kant, the transcendental dialectic functioned as the critical side of the transcendental analytic. While the latter ‘expounds the elements of the pure cognition of the understanding and the principles without which no object can be thought at all’, the former serves as a ‘critique of the understanding and reason in regard to their hyperspherical use, in order to uncover the false illusion of their groundless pretensions and to reduce their claim to invention and amplification, putatively to be attained through transcendental principles, to the mere assessment and evaluation of the pure understanding, guarding it against sophistical tricks’. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 199–200. 12. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 93 (§ 105). 13. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 89 (§ 85).

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deemed knowing.14 To this end, he offers two criteria. The first criterion, he says, insists that knowledge must be ‘produced in the same way by all capable thinkers’.15 This is the principle of universality and once again alludes to Schleiermacher’s privileging of the dialogue as a model for approaching knowledge. Indeed, if knowledge were simply private, one would perpetually face of the conundrum of never knowing that one knows, of never reaching what Schleiermacher calls the state of ‘conviction’ (die Überzeugung) concerning one’s thinking.16 The second criterion states that an instance of knowing must also ‘correspond to a being which is thought therein’.17 Without aiming for correspondence, he says, the pursuit of knowledge quickly deteriorates into fantasy, since thinking must be anchored beyond the subject if it is to be anything more than arbitrary.18 Yet what is it that legitimates our pursuit of knowledge in general? Much like Kant insisted that right action approximates an ethical ideal attained by means of reason alone, so Schleiermacher believes that the act of coming to know must also be justified according to a transcendental idea. Such an idea may not simply be posited; however, for as mentioned already, the form of knowledge, that is, its logical arrangement, is ingredient to the definition of knowledge as such. Hence, Schleiermacher seeks the transcendental ground not by means of deduction but by presupposition. In other words, he asks, ‘What idea must be presupposed in order to justify not just knowledge as a static concept, but knowing as a process which is already underway?’ True to the philosophy of his day, Schleiermacher believes that knowledge requires the active engagement of the intellect. Accordingly, proper thinking 14. ‘Every instance of knowing is an instance of thinking, but not every instance of thinking is an instance of knowing.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 90 (§ 86). 15. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 90 (§ 87). 16. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 90 (§ 88). 17. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 90 (§ 87). 18. Schleiermacher’s commitment to metaphysical realism is clearly stated: ‘In every instance of thinking, an object of thought is posited beyond the act of thinking.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 91 (§ 94). Note also the anti-constructivist phrasing in these notes taken by an anonymous student present at the 1818/19 lectures: ‘That which is thought can exist within us and beyond us, but the state and the action nevertheless exist in us differently from thinking, for the state and the action can exist without their being thought. Hence the object, even if it is something internal, still exists beyond the act of thinking and exists in us not insofar as we exist in terms of thinking, but only insofar as we exist in terms of being.’ KGA II/10.2, ‘Kolleg 1818/19, Nachschrift Anonymous’, 144–5. In addition to highlighting the realism of the Dialektik, this passage also demonstrates Schleiermacher’s precision in positing a being beyond das Denken but not necessarily a being beyond der Denker. Such is key given his ultimate attempt to ground all metaphysical claims by means of rational psychology – particularly the organic unity of all finite being perceived therein.

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issues from the arrangement of indeterminate sense data by means of certain intellectual categories, the former being the concern of the ‘organic function’ (die Organisation), the latter that of the intellectual function or the ‘activity of reason’ (die Vernunftthätigkeit). As the organic function creates the possibility of correspondent knowledge, and the intellectual function the possibility of ‘conviction’ (i.e., knowing that one knows), so both functions must be active in a given instance of thinking in order for that thinking to be considered a proper basis for knowledge. As Schleiermacher explains, ‘The activity of the organic function absent the activity of reason is not yet thinking’, and likewise, ‘The activity of reason, if one posits it absent the activity of organisation, would not be an instance of thinking.’19 Hence, like Kant, Schleiermacher restricts the purview of reason to that which is intuitable. Contra Kant, however, Schleiermacher insists that the intellectual categories which organize incoming sense data persist in the nature of being itself, and hence also in the objects of perception themselves.20 Hence, when Schleiermacher identifies the twin categories of unity (die Einheit) and multiplicity (die Vielheit) as the structural parameters for real knowledge, he is simultaneously implying that being itself is likewise organized according to these two poles. As John Thiel points out, Schleiermacher’s preference for just two categories as opposed to Kant’s twelve does not suggest a less careful analysis. Rather, ‘For Schleiermacher, the categories of unity and multiplicity define the noetic poles of the Dialektik between which thinking constantly oscillates.’ Hence, he continues, ‘Unity and multiplicity are, as it were, interlocutors in the dialogue, presenting to each other their respectively real and ideal perspectives on the proper constitution of thinking.’21 In other words, if philosophy is simply an enquiry into ‘the inner connection of all knowledge’,22 then it must be assumed that there are both things to be known as well as grounds for relating such things to one another. The category of multiplicity secures the former and is hence ‘real’, while the category of unity secures the latter and is in this sense ‘ideal’. But again, what makes such categories serviceable for the pursuit of knowledge is the fact that they reflect not simply the structures of the intellect but the nature of reality itself. Indeed, for Schleiermacher, the form of knowledge can never be incidental

19. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 94 (§§ 108, 109). 20. No doubt Kant would have regarded this as a step backward, since he formulated his own method of transcendental deduction in explicit distinction from Locke and Hume, who (errantly in his view) attempted to derive the categories of reason from empirical objects themselves (Critique of Pure Reason, 225–6). Schleiermacher, of course, would certainly counter that his claim follows chiefly from an account of reality determined not by the analytic of knowledge itself but by a form of consciousness which allegedly transcends the modern subject–object dichotomy, as we will see. 21. Thiel, God and World, 22. 22. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 75 (§ 4).

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to its content, for it follows from the principle of correspondence that they are finally one and the same. Now, as mentioned, for Schleiermacher, thinking may only be considered proper when it involves both the organic and the intellectual functions. Hence, conceiving of one function without the other can only be analytic; there are no actual instances in which we are simply sensing or simply intellecting. Nevertheless, considering them separately does serve a purpose, according to Schleiermacher, and that is to establish the limits or boundaries of proper thinking. The downward limit, he says, is the domain of the pure organic function. This point is called chaos and is the real pole of proper thinking. The upward limit, by contrast, is the domain of the pure intellect. This point, importantly, is called God and is regarded as the ideal pole of proper thinking. Since neither of these ideas conform to the definition of proper thinking, naturally they must be posited transcendentally. As Schleiermacher puts it, Only in the transcendental sphere would a separation of these elements be posited. … In continuing to ascend, we are only able to posit in this sphere the concepts God and chaos. With regard to the former, all organic activity is negated; with regard to the latter, all intellectual activity is negated. In this way, they are together not actual thinking.23

As a point of clarification, we should mention that the ideal and real poles do not constitute two separate realities, the world being considered a hybrid of the two, so the speak. On the contrary, there is only one reality constituted by two ‘parallel modes’ of being.24 Indeed, for Schleiermacher, the world just is the co-inherence of these two modes. But note well that this metaphysical claim is ventured in this context for one purpose only: to make sense of knowing. Hence, Schleiermacher says, ‘The transcendental [is] the idea of being in itself according to two contrasting yet related kinds of forms and modes: the ideal and the real as the condition for the reality of knowing.’25 This again is a consequence of the principle of correspondence: if knowing aims genuinely to reflect being in thinking, then the twofold way in which we think, namely, by means of the organic and intellectual functions, must likewise correspond to being itself, namely, according to its ideal and real poles as God and chaos, respectively. At this point, the motivation behind Schleiermacher’s speculative thought is much clearer. As in the Speeches, so in the Dialektik, Schleiermacher requires a principle of unity which is comprehensive enough to explain the co-inherence of the Many and the One as it is reflected in our experience of the world. The unique contribution of these lectures is to pose this question for the express purpose of justifying the structures of human thinking. Thiel helpfully summarizes: ‘The 23. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 95–6 (§ 114). 24. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 100 (§ 132). 25. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 101–2 (§ 136).

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ground of knowing [which Schleiermacher seeks] is the transcendental root of thinking on the ideal side of experience’, and, as such, it is ‘the source of the ideality needed in all instances of epistemic determination’.26 This ground, to be sure, cannot be deduced or perceived precisely because it does not arise from proper thinking; rather it must be presupposed. In order to demonstrate this, though, Schleiermacher undertakes an analysis of the twofold formal structure of knowledge, to which we now turn. ‘Knowing as thinking exists under no other form that that of the concept and the judgment.’27 Concepts, Schleiermacher explains, pertain to our passive engagement with the world and serve to represent diverse objects of thought as they appear to exist in their static being. Judgements, on the other hand, pertain to our active engagement with the world and serve to expose relationships among concepts by means of predication. As such, judgements are what knowledge looks like in its concrete becoming. In practice, of course, the two are never separate, since making judgements presupposes the existence of concepts, and because concepts are useful only insofar as they are related to other concepts, the means of relation being the judgement.28 Nevertheless, just as he does in the case of the intellectual and organic functions, Schleiermacher insists that the two may be considered abstractly for the sake of clarifying the transcendental presuppositions of knowledge. Concepts, he explains, function on a spectrum ranging from the general to the particular. More general or higher concepts comprise a greater number of objects, while more particular or lower concepts comprise fewer objects. The lower limit of the concept, therefore, is simply ‘the inexhaustible manifold’ in which no relations whatsoever are posited among perceptions.29 The upper limit is just the opposite; it is the absolute identity of object and concept, an identity in which all conceptual relations (i.e., all judgements) are included without exception.30 This Schleiermacher calls, ‘the idea of absolute being’, that is, it is a speculative way of conceiving the whole of being in a manner disallowed by proper thinking.31 26. Thiel, God and World, 25. 27. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 102 (§ 138). 28. ‘We maintain that there is knowledge both under the form of the concept and under the form of the judgment…. The two cannot be separated, however, because all knowledge is one, and also because concept and judgment, according to their nature, are conditioned by one another.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 112 (§ 172). 29. ‘The sphere of the concept therefore terminates below in the possibility of a manifold of judgments, which again are able to be summarised diversely. That is, the downward limit of the concept is the inexhaustible manifold of perceptions.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 104 (§ 147). 30. ‘The sphere of the concept likewise terminates upwardly in the plurality (die Mehrheit) of possible judgments.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 105 (§ 152). 31. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 105 (§ 153).

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Hence, this point should be emphasized: the idea of absolute being is not a concept itself, since a concept presupposes a judgement, and a judgement presupposes difference (which is the very thing negated by the notion of absoluteness). Rather, with respect to proper thinking, absolute being is regarded strictly as a limit; it is a boundary beyond which proper thinking by definition cannot traverse. But it is more than simply a limit for Schleiermacher. Indeed, he says, as the complete coincidence of concept and object, as the ‘pure knowledge’ which lends its definition to our own imperfect knowing, it is also ‘the transcendental ground and form of all knowledge’.32 In addition to expressing this transcendental ground according to the concept, Schleiermacher also examines it from the side of the judgement. Essentially, judgements are the means for relating concepts, specifically, a subject to a predicate. And like concepts, judgements also function on a spectrum. On one end are judgements which predicate a higher concept to the subject, and hence a large amount of being, and on the other are those in which the subject is itself a higher concept; hence, it resists predication. The lower limit of the judgement is the chaotic manifold, since ‘the sheer mass of appearances abstracted from all rational activity is nothing but an aggregate of possible predicates’ with no specified subject.33 The upper limit is constituted by a single subject in which ‘all being is posited and of which, therefore, nothing is predicable’.34 In the case of judgements, therefore, not absolute being, but the absolute subject is identified as the transcendental ground of all knowing, for it is this subject which underwrites the validity of our own lesser judgements. Nevertheless, Schleiermacher concludes, ‘The absolute subject and the absolute unity of being are … genetically diverse thoughts, yet they express the same thing.’35 Indeed, ‘both are the transcendental root of all thinking and hence also of all knowing’.36 Now that we have a better understanding of both the identity and function of this transcendental root, we are now ready to examine how Schleiermacher coordinates it vis-à-vis the fields of psychology, cosmology, and theology in the latter sections of the transcendental part, paying particular attention to the identification of the transcendental ideal of knowledge with Gott.

The transcendental ground of the self Before engaging the matter of God and world in the final sections of the transcendental part, Schleiermacher revisits a theme we have already encountered 32. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 105 (§ 154). 33. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 108 (§ 164). 34. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 107 (§ 160). The full proposition states: ‘The more being is posited in a subject, the less is excluded by it, and hence, the less is posited by it as predicable. And the absolute subject is that in which all being is posited and by which therefore nothing is predicable.’ 35. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 113 (§ 174a). 36. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 108 (§ 165).

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in the context of the Speeches, namely, the ‘opposing forces’ of finite existence as manifested in thinking and willing. Human consciousness, he explains, consists in ‘an antithesis … between those actions wherein consciousness is passive … and those wherein it appears active’.37 This antithesis implies a twofold form of knowledge: the ethical and the physical.38 While the bulk of the Dialektik is given to an analysis of physical knowledge (i.e., knowledge of ‘objects’), the ethical aspect of knowledge, Schleiermacher claims, has in truth accompanied the discussion all along. Specifically, it has done so in the form of conviction. Conviction, we recall, is the state of knowing that one knows, that is, the recognition of epistemological correspondence by means of the integration of diverse thoughts according to the rules of combination. As such, conviction is only achieved by means of an outward, extensional act: it is what happens when one does something with what one purports to know. The approximation of knowledge, therefore, inasmuch as knowledge demands conviction, involves both active and passive forms of consciousness. Moreover, because knowledge by definition must correspond with being, so must willing, or ethical knowledge, reflect being as must physical knowledge. Accordingly, ‘an antithesis in being is simultaneously posited along with the idea of knowing insofar as it corresponds with being’,39 meaning that the dipolar nature of being itself is reflected in human consciousness inasmuch as that consciousness approximates to pure knowledge. Having established that willing, like thinking, must also correspond to being in order to be considered ethical knowledge, Schleiermacher now suggests that ‘we require a transcendental ground for our certainty in willing just as we did for our knowing’.40 Yet, crucially, he insists, ‘The two cannot be distinguished.’41 In other words, because physical and ethical knowledge reflect the polarity of opposing forces inherent to one unified reality, so must the transcendental ground of both forms of knowledge be one. Indeed, were there two transcendental grounds, one for each form of knowledge, this would be tantamount to ‘carving up’ reality, thereby precluding the possibility of conviction altogether (since conviction issues from a unified consciousness).42 Here again, Schleiermacher criticizes Kant for positing an ethical ideal as philosophically valid while simultaneously rejecting 37. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 139–40 (§ 211). 38. Note that Schleiermacher is here using the term ‘knowledge’ in the highly technical sense of ‘that form of consciousness which accurately reflects being’. 39. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 140 (§ 212.4). 40. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 141 (§ 214). 41. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 141 (§ 214). 42. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 142 (§ 214.2). Cf. the parallel passage in the 1822 lectures: ‘But the transcendent ground of both must be the same, for if they are not effective insofar as they are identical, or not identical insofar as they are effective, then there would never be any unity in us.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zum Kolleg 1822’, 263. Note also, ‘The unity of our essence rests on the identity of these grounds.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zum Kolleg 1822’, 265.

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the notion of a metaphysical ideal. On the other side, ‘natural theology’ is also criticized for the fact that it ‘wishes to ground consciousness of God merely on die Denkfunction’.43 On the contrary, Schleiermacher says, ‘it is unjustified to permit only one root to be valid and to reject the other’.44 Thus, what is needed is a transcendental ground which establishes the possibility of both ethical and physical knowledge alike. As in the Speeches, Schleiermacher justifies unifying the polar activities of thinking and willing in a single subject by appealing to feeling (die Gefühl). Accordingly, he acquires a new way to speak of the transcendent ground – not just as the basis for (physical) knowledge but of consciousness as such.45 Significantly, it is here that Schleiermacher transitions from speaking of the ‘transcendental ground’ of various human states to ‘God’ as the all-encompassing necessary condition for the flux of finite reality as reflected in the dipolar nature of human self-consciousness. ‘We have’, he explains, ‘no other identity of both [thinking and willing] than the feeling which, in flux, is, as the final end of thinking, also the starting point of the will’. Consequently, ‘We can say that God is given to us even in our consciousness as a component of our self-consciousness [i.e., extensional consciousness] as well as of our external consciousness [i.e., receptive consciousness].’46 Does this then mean that we literally ‘have’ God by means of a particularly well-suited faculty to which, incidentally, all other faculties are subordinated? By no means. For Schleiermacher, religious feeling ‘is never pure’. Rather, he says, ‘only in a particular is one conscious of totality, only in an antithesis (between one’s own being and that which is posited beyond ourselves) is one conscious of unity’.47 In other words, just as we cannot posit the co-inherence of thinking and willing in a single subject without appealing to feeling, neither can we speak of religious feeling outside of the operations of thinking and willing. This interplay of antithesis and unity, totality and particularity leads Schleiermacher to make a key claim concerning the knowledge of God and the human subject. As he says, ‘We know about the being of God only in ourselves and in things; in no way do we know about a being of God outside of the world or in himself.’48 Note that here, ‘knowledge’ is again being used in the technical sense of the criterion of correspondence: it is that state of consciousness which corresponds with being, whether that state be intensional (physical knowledge) or extensional (ethical knowledge). Consciousness of self, therefore, insofar as it corresponds with being, is irreducibly characterized by the antithesis of 43. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zum Kolleg 1822’, 265. 44. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 142 (§ 214.4). 45. ‘Accordingly, we now have also the transcendental ground only in the relative identity of thinking and willing, that is, feeling.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 142 (§215). 46. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 143 (§ 215.1). 47. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 143 (§ 215.2). 48. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 143 (§ 216).

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thinking and willing, of receptivity and activity. But God, identified earlier as both Absolute Being and Absolute Subject, admits of no such division. Accordingly, ‘no antithesis of concept and object nor any antithesis of willing and “can” or “ought” is posited in God’s being’.49 This means that if God is to be ‘known’ by us (i.e., in the sense of ‘reflected in us’), he must be ‘known’ in such a way that accords with the type of dipolar consciousness that we actually possess, that is, through consciousness of finite existence. Consequently, for Schleiermacher, God may only be known in and through the world. Were the alternative the case, ‘if a being of God were given to us outside of the world’, he explains, ‘then world and God would be provisionally separated for us, thereby destroying in every way the idea of God or the idea of the world’.50 Specifically, if God were to ‘outmatch’ the world, ‘a variation would be posited in God, and he would hence not be absolute unity’.51 In other words, for Schleiermacher, there cannot be one part of God which is grounding the finite world and one part of God which is sufficient in and for itself; given the absolute unity of God implied in feeling, either the whole of God is reflected in the world, or he is not reflected therein at all. Furthermore, inasmuch as the world is dependent upon God as an absolute unity, positing a division in God’s being would simultaneously cancel out the very transcendental ground by which the world’s existence is conditioned. Schleiermacher concludes his discussion of the grounding of the self in God by again stressing the implication of this claim for God’s (in)conceivability: ‘God’s being in itself cannot be given to us, for in him there is no concept other than the identity [of concept] with object.’ As a result, he says, ‘We have … a concept of [God] only insofar as we are God, that is, insofar as we have him within ourselves.’52 That is, the moment God is conceived by the intellectual faculties of human consciousness, God is simultaneously admitted into the realm of the antithesis and thereby divested of the essential attribute of divinity given in consciousness itself, namely, unity. Thus, speaking of God entails the employment of terms which are inherently improper to the nature of deity as such. Accordingly, all the terms heretofore used to describe God – the ‘Absolute’, the ‘Highest Unity’, the ‘Identity of the Ideal and the Real’ – are rightly regarded only as schemata, that is, as ‘rules’ for relating the transcendental ground of all knowledge to the process of knowing in its concrete state of becoming. Indeed, were these terms ‘real’ concepts, ‘they [would] enter again into the field of the finite and the antithesis’, thereby negating their facility for designating God.53 49. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 144 (§ 216.4). 50. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 144 (§ 216.7). 51. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 144 (§ 216.7). 52. ‘Wir haben also auch nur in so fern einen Begriff von ihm als wir Gott sind d.h. ihn in uns haben.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 145 (§ 216.8), emphasis added. 53. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 145 (§ 216.8).

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God and world The final few paragraphs of the transcendental part deal explicitly with the relation of God and world and thus are particularly relevant for our investigation. Having identified God as the transcendental ground undergirding the possibility of knowledge, Schleiermacher goes on to discuss the relation of this idea to the idea of the world. For our purposes, what we gain from this discussion is a foreshadowing of the God–world relation laid out in the Glaubenslehre, yet here expressed in terms of the metaphysics of epistemology. Schleiermacher begins this section by making the point that both the idea of God and the idea of the world are conceivable only transcendentally. To him, the point is worth emphasising, for while one might readily grant that God is a transcendental idea, nevertheless, the world may still be regarded as properly knowable, since, it is assumed, the world is plainly intuitable. Schleiermacher challenges this assumption, however, by drawing an important distinction between material reality, understood as the earth or even the totality of finite objects, and die Welt, understood as an idea which, along with divinity, is the condition for proper thinking.54 Yet, the point requires further clarification. What exactly makes these ideas transcendental? For an idea to be transcendental, Schleiermacher explains, it must satisfy two conditions: first, it must be a principle by which something is grounded,55 and second, it must function as the form which that thing takes.56 God and world are understood as transcendental ideas precisely because they satisfy these two conditions. With regard to the first condition, God, when equated with the notion of ‘unity without multiplicity’, is understood chiefly as ‘the principle of the possibility of knowledge in itself ’. Hence, Schleiermacher says, it is the terminus a quo of knowledge: the perfect unity of concept and object which makes all instances of knowledge possible. Note well that, for Schleiermacher, divinity is not simply the expression of pure knowledge, such that the more we know, the closer we approach the knowledge of God. Rather, as the principle of all knowledge, the idea of divinity accompanies all acts of knowledge in an equal way, making possible both minimal knowledge in the form of ‘lower’ concepts as well as more comprehensive knowledge in the form of ‘higher’ concepts. As Schleiermacher puts it, ‘The idea of divinity … is not the ground of our knowledge in terms of progression…. Rather, because divinity is given in every act of determinate knowing quite equally, it is the characteristic element of human consciousness generally.’57 54. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 147 (§ 218). 55. Cf. Kant’s discussion of principles, Critique of Pure Reason, 387–9. 56. Schleiermacher suggests that if the world is indeed ‘a true transcendental’, so ‘it must therefore be both principle and form’. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 149 (§ 221.2). 57. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 148 (§ 221.1).

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The world is likewise a principle, namely, that of ‘the reality of knowledge in its becoming’.58 As such it is the terminus ad quem of knowledge; it is that to which knowledge approximates in its progression towards greater correspondence with being. Once again, Schleiermacher is clear that this process is asymptotic and hence never properly terminates. As the notes to 1818/19 lectures state, ‘the totality of relations exists for all purposes only in the fulfilled idea of the world, an idea which we never actually possess perfectly but have only in approximation’.59 Hence, knowing, as Vercellone puts it, is essentially ‘an approximating of oneself to this totality which is the idea of the world’.60 With regard to the second condition, namely, that of the formal function of a transcendental idea, Schleiermacher sees in divinity ‘the form of all knowledge in and for itself ’ and in the world ‘the form of the combination of knowledge’.61 In other words, God, understood again as ‘unity without multiplicity’, establishes the form of the concept, while the world, understood as ‘multiplicity without unity’, establishes the form of the judgement.62 Hence, Schleiermacher concludes, both ideas, God and world, are to be taken as transcendental and hence in neither case an instance of real knowledge. Nevertheless, because God and world are conceived as the two necessary poles between which real knowing takes place, Schleiermacher insists on a further, important point: God and world, while being neither identical nor antithetical, are however correlata, which means that, bluntly, ‘One cannot … think of one without the other’. Indeed, he says, ‘The world does not exist without God’ just as ‘God is … not conceivable without the world’.63 At this point, it bears emphasising that, properly speaking, Schleiermacher is here considering the nature of the relation between two ideas derived transcendentally relative to the phenomenon of knowledge, not two entities or objects encountered independently of one another and subsequently related. In particular, we must remember that his primary concern is to establish the conditions under which knowing occurs, not to undertake what, in his mind,

58. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 149 (§ 222). 59. KGA II/10.2, ‘Kolleg 1818/19, Nachschrift Anonymous’, 269. 60. Vercellone, ‘Gott, Welt und Wissen’, 213. 61. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 151 (§ 226). 62. Note again that the ‘multiplicity’ (die Vielheit) is differentiated from ‘the manifold’ (die Mannigfaltigkeit). The world, therefore, is not identifiable with chaos but rather with the ordering of chaos in terms of a multiplicity of subjects and predicates. Properly speaking, our thinking progresses from chaos to world, not from the world to God. As Vercellone points out, ‘The two concepts [God and world] are understood as elements in the process of formation. This process is at the same time a path to ontological determination which takes as its starting point the highest complexity – herein similar to chaos – in order eventually to achieve an inherently differentiated ordering of the world.’ Vercellone, ‘Gott, Welt und Wissen’, 211. 63. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 147–8 (§ 219).

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would be the irreligious work of a speculative theological metaphysics.64 Indeed, given the terms of the Dialektik, we have no grounds for conceiving raw unity relative to the process of knowing without raw multiplicity and vice versa. As such, our thinking can only ‘hover between the one and the other’.65 In light of this, perhaps more sense can be made of Schleiermacher’s curious comment in the 1811 lectures that, ‘The deity is just as surely incomprehensible as the knowledge of it is the basis of all knowledge.’66

Summary In many ways, the Dialektik is an obscure work full of arguments which may not seem quite as relevant today as they were when Fichte was lecturing down the corridor. To make matters worse, the texts we have are, after all, only lecture outlines occasionally supplemented with student notes. Nevertheless, the foregoing analysis will prove itself highly useful for the proper exegesis of the Glaubenslehre, as many of Schleiermacher’s core theological intuitions concerning dogmatic speech have been worked out precisely here in these lectures (in some cases with greater care). This is particularly the case with respect to his understanding of God, which we will now attempt to summarize. First, we learn from these lectures that, for Schleiermacher, thinking about God can never be considered ‘proper’, since God is beyond the purview of the organic function. As a result, God cannot be objectively ‘known’, since knowing is a species of a mode of consciousness (thinking) in which the purely ideal can never be appropriately represented. Second, ‘God’ specifies not a concept but rather the perfect coincidence of concept and object. Hence, when Schleiermacher uses the term ‘God’, we cannot understand him to be referring. Unlike concepts, which by definition comprise a certain amount of being (including particular objects), there is no ‘object’ to which the term ‘God’ can refer, since such would imply a distinction in the unity that is absolute being – a contradiction in terms. Third, nothing is predicable to God, since, as absolute subject, the idea of God contains within itself every possible predicate already. Consequently, phrases 64. Terrence Tice’s comment is well taken: ‘Thus far, much of the literature on Schleiermacher’s dialectic concentrates on this idea of God, mostly because of its possible connections to theology. However important the term may be, he uses it quite sparingly, and his aim throughout is to do philosophy and to talk about how to do it, not to do theology.’ Schleiermacher, Dialectic or, the Art of Doing Philosophy, trans. Terrence N. Tice, 5n14. We add the caveat that while this may be true of the 1811 lectures, the later lectures cycles (particularly the 1814/15 version with which we have been interacting) include substantially more material on God. 65. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 150 (§ 224). 66. Schleiermacher, Dialectic, 31.

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such as ‘God is good’ or ‘God is powerful’, if they are to be meaningful, demand an interpretation which discerns a significance other than straightforward predication. Fourth, God is a correlate of the world, which means that God cannot be conceived in and for himself. As the principle of the possibility of knowledge, broadly conceived as the correspondence of self-consciousness with being, the idea of God requires the world in order to be coherent, for a principle without a corresponding actuality (here, the dialectical process of knowing) can only be a meaningless abstraction. Fifth, the only appropriate form of consciousness for perceiving God as the correlate of the world is feeling, since restricting the knowledge of God to either thinking or willing would improperly ‘carve up’ the co-inhering polarity of reality as expressed in the unity of the self. This does not negate the fact that God may only be ‘felt’ through the operations of thinking and willing as exercised in the realm of the antithesis, however. Sixth, the terms used to designate God are to be recognized only as schemata, that is, they are means of relating the transcendental co-determinate of feeling to the flux of concrete existence. Again, theological designations for the divine do not and cannot refer; they are rather rules for relating ideal reality to empirical reality as experienced in the realm of the antithesis. Of course, much more could be said concerning these lectures. In particular, we note the striking resemblance between the order of exposition of the Dialektik and that employed in the Glaubenslehre, which we will have occasion to point out in forthcoming sections of this part. For now, however, suffice it to say that, at this point, we have acquired a useful arsenal of concepts and impulses which will make our reading of the Glaubenslehre much easier than would have been the case were we to have ignored these earlier texts.

3 GOD AS THE WHENCE OF THE FEELING OF A B S O LU T E D E P E N D E N C E I N T H E I N T R O DU C T IO N T O T H E G L AU B E N S L E H R E

Schleiermacher’s description of God in the Introduction to the Glaubenslehre is arguably little more than a restatement of his earlier insights augmented by a conceptual arsenal gleaned from a decade of lecturing on other scientific topics.1 What makes it relevant for us, however, is the fact that it represents yet another place in Schleiermacher’s corpus wherein the notion of God is discussed outside the field of dogmatics proper. This may come as a surprise to some, since for many interpreters, the opening paragraphs of the Glaubenslehre are considered to be the material root of the entire enterprise. Suspicions are accordingly registered concerning the specifically Christian credentials of Schleiermacher’s theology, given its alleged emergence from the philosophical soil of his prolegomena. Naturally, therefore, we must attend to these suspicions if we are to assess properly the sense in which love can be the centrepiece of the Christian doctrine of God, as Schleiermacher claims.

The status and function of the ‘borrowed propositions’ (§§ 3–14) Those who assume that the first thirty-one paragraphs of the Glaubenslehre are materially determinative for Schleiermacher’s dogmatics typically fail to reckon

1. Schleiermacher began lecturing on the topic of dogmatics while a professor at Halle. He had intended to publish a textbook on the subject from at least 1810 but was delayed both by professional circumstances and by the seemingly interminable work of preparation for over a decade. In the meantime, he lectured on ethics, Christian ethics, dialectics, church history, philosophy, psychology, and biblical exegesis. After the initial publication of Der christliche Glaube (in two volumes) in 1821/22, the controversy surrounding the book warranted a second, revised edition, published in 1830/31, a work preceded by the immensely important Über die Glaubenslehre: Zwei Sendschreiben an Lücke (1829). The second edition is the basis for the English translation, entitled The Christian Faith.

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seriously with his oft-repeated assertion that the Introduction is not itself dogmatics, but rather an attempt to define the concept of dogmatics.2 In fact, in the second edition of the Glaubenslehre (occasioned in part by reviewers’ negative reactions to this section), Schleiermacher was quick to point out that the impetus for his Introduction was simply a lack of consensus concerning the definition of ‘dogmatics’ – a state of affairs which to him necessitated the clarification of his own view.3 Nevertheless, a good deal of discomfort with the Introduction is maintained, despite Schleiermacher’s protests, and this particularly in light of his use of certain non-dogmatic disciplines to define such typically Christian concepts as piety, church, and even redemption.4 These worries must be assessed, of course, since, in they end, they cast doubt on the Glaubenslehre as a properly theological work as well as represent a rejection of Schleiermacher’s own self-interpretation.5 For these reasons, we now aim to establish precisely what the role of the Introduction is for Schleiermacher’s dogmatics, particularly as it pertains to the seemingly ultimate theological category discussed therein: God. Understanding the Introduction as a strictly non-dogmatic prelude to the genuine discipline requires first of all an appreciation for how Schleiermacher sets the sciences in relation to one another. Indeed, as he mentions to Friedrich Lücke, ‘the proper task of the Introduction will have been met [if] it will be immediately evident how this particular theological discipline [i.e., dogmatics] relates – as it must because of its scientific form – to the sciences in general’.6 But why did Schleiermacher consider this orientational task necessary for the definitional task concerning the meaning of dogmatics? This is a crucial question, for in answering it, we will be able to assess the criticism that the material insights of his dogmatics

2. ‘The purpose of this Introduction is, first, to set forth the conception of Dogmatics which underlies the work itself; and secondly, to prepare the reader for the method and arrangement followed in it.’ CF, 1 (§1). Note also his comment in the second letter to Dr. Lücke concerning certain negative reviews of the first edition: ‘A host of significant misunderstandings has arisen because the critics thought of the Introduction too much as one with the dogmatics itself.’ Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letters to Dr. Lücke, trans. James Duke and Francis Fiorenza (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1981), 76. Technically speaking, §§ 3–19 pertain to the concept of Christian dogmatics, while §§ 20–7 have to do with dogmatic method. 3. CF, 1 (§ 1). 4. Such criticisms are found, for example, in Felix Flückiger, Philosophie und Theologie bei Schleiermacher (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag AG., 1947). 5. Doris Offermann’s interpretative posture is surely preferable when she insists that ‘above all and primarily, we [should] seek Schleiermacher himself; indeed we aim to allow the theologian to speak’. Doris Offermann, Schleiermachers Einleitung in die Glaubenslehre: Eine Untersuchung der ‘Lehnsätze’ (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969), 18. 6. Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre, 80.

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depend upon (in the sense of emerge from) the so-called borrowed propositions of the Introduction.7 In his lectures on philosophical ethics, Schleiermacher makes the point (which is restated in the Glaubenslehre) that particular sciences cannot define themselves on their own grounds but rather must be delimited by and with reference to other sciences.8 This is because, properly speaking, the definition of a science, for Schleiermacher, pertains chiefly to the establishment of a unique field of enquiry, and only then to the objects, methods, and aims which follow from this.9 Accordingly, defining a science without reference to its broader context (e.g., from its own material insights) becomes a rather arbitrary affair.10 In other words, the question at the head of any scientific endeavour must be: what justifies construing this science as a unique science? That is, how is this science attending to matters which are not and cannot be addressed by other sciences? As we have already seen in the Dialektik, for Schleiermacher, all discrete instances of knowledge participate in and contribute to the pursuit of the transcendental presupposition of pure knowledge (what he calls in his ethics lectures ‘the highest knowledge’).11 On these grounds, he surmises, all knowledge is ultimately related and hence relatable.12 Now, if pure knowledge is only approachable through particulars, as Schleiermacher consistently maintains, then sciences profitably serve the pursuit of truth only insofar as they attend to a particular aspect of reality. For Schleiermacher, there cannot be, nor is there any use for, a meta-science. For this reason, coordinating the sciences to one another becomes a crucial task, not 7. Schleiermacher called his introductory propositions Lehnsätzen, since their substance was derived from certain other sciences for the benefit of defining the science of dogmatics. 8. ‘If any one especial science is to be perfectly depicted, it cannot begin purely on its own but must be related to a higher knowledge, and finally to the highest knowledge, from which all individual knowledge must proceed.’ Likewise, ‘Even when it is derived from the highest knowledge, a subordinate science can only be perfectly understood when it is taken together with those which are coordinated with it and those which are opposed to it.’ Friedrich Schleiermacher, Lectures on Philosophical Ethics, trans. Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 136–7. This point is repeated in § 1 of the Glaubenslehre: ‘And since the preliminary process of defining a science cannot belong to the science itself, it follows that none of the propositions which will appear in this part [i.e., the Introduction] can themselves have a dogmatic character.’ CF, 2 (§ 1). 9. ‘If we wish to undertake a scientific investigation collaboratively, then we must first come to an agreement concerning two matters: first, the particular object of the investigation, and then the form and manner in which we will have or obtain this object, specifically in terms of knowledge.’ Friedrich Schleiermacher, Psychologie, SW III/6 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1862), 1. 10. Schleiermacher, Lectures on Philosophical Ethics, 137 (§ 3). 11. Schleiermacher, Lectures on Philosophical Ethics, 136 (§ 1). 12. Recall from the Dialektik the necessary relation inhering between all concepts and judgements.

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only so that different sciences can respect each other’s particular fields of enquiry but also in order to facilitate the constructive interdisciplinary dialogue which is the presupposition of the pursuit of knowledge in general.13 This point is perhaps best illustrated in Schleiermacher’s famous letter to Friedrich Jacobi concerning the relationship between philosophy and theology. In this letter, Schleiermacher likens the two disciplines in question (represented respectively by reason and feeling) to the foci of an ellipse. In an ellipse, one notices that while the two foci are necessarily distinct, they are also functionally related as the distance between them determines the shape of the geometrical figure as a whole. As such, they are by definition irreducible, since the nature of the figure in which they mutually participate depends on their maintaining distance. For Schleiermacher, the pursuit of knowledge is similar in that discrete sciences (here, theology and philosophy), while necessarily relatable, cannot ultimately be collapsed into one another. In fact, it is their very distinction which underwrites the legitimacy of their participation in pure knowledge as complementary dialogue partners. Hence, Schleiermacher insists, My philosophy and my dogmatics are thus resolved not to contradict one another. Yet precisely for this reason, neither will ever be complete, and as far as I can tell, they have always mutually harmonised with one another and even approximated one another more and more.14 13. This is demonstrated clearly in Schleiermacher’s account of the modern university: ‘In the domain of knowing, everything fits together and interrelates with sufficient exactness that one can say that to the degree something is presented for itself alone it is bound to be distorted and incomprehensible. This is true because, strictly speaking, every particular admits of thorough inspection only in combination with all the rest, and consequently even the improvement of each aspect is dependent on all the rest. This necessary, inner unity of all science is also generally discerned wherever distinct efforts of this kind appear. All scientific endeavors pull together, tending toward oneness.’ Friedrich Schleiermacher, Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German Sense, with an Appendix regarding a University Soon to be Established, trans. Terrence N. Tice and Edwina Lawler (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2005), 2–3. 14. ‘Schleiermacher an Jacobi’, in Aus Schleiermacher’s Leben: In Briefen, vol. II, ed. Wilhelm Dilthey (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1858), 343. Note that the point being made by the ‘approximation (annähern)’ of the two disciplines to one another does not imply their eventual merging into one meta-science. On the contrary, Schleiermacher is suggesting that the more philosophy and theology are permitted to attend to their own discrete fields of enquiry (‘feeling’ for religion, and ‘understanding [Verstand]’ for philosophy), the more both sciences will succeed in achieving greater and greater levels of knowledge, to the (technically unreachable) end that they both comprise being in its totality. One might also notice here the seeds of the so-called mediation theology which took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century. For more on Schleiermacher’s influence on this movement, see Kurt Nowak, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 469–70.

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The point is that sciences are profitably relatable (i.e., ‘harmonisable’) only insofar as they maintain their independent spheres of investigation. When we combine this notion with the idea that the sciences are mutually defining, we can see why Schleiermacher so confidently deploys the insights of other sciences vis-à-vis his conception of dogmatics. In his mind, such engagement is not only necessary for the definitional task, but it is also illustrative of the way sciences ought to relate in principle. So how does Schleiermacher do this in the context of the Einleitung? Briefly stated, the broad idea that the Introduction seeks to commend is that the unique field of enquiry to which the science of dogmatics attends is the church (Kirche), specifically the church’s speech.15 And so, naturally, the first question Schleiermacher asks is: what is the Christian church?16 The meaning of this question must be carefully interpreted. Here, Schleiermacher is not seeking a dogmatic definition of the Christian church (a goal which is ventured at length in the second part of the dogmatics).17 Rather, in this context, he is aiming only to delimit the boundaries of a particular science, namely, dogmatics.18 Schleiermacher sets himself to the task of defining the concept of the Christian church with the aid of three particular scientific disciplines – ethics, philosophy of religion, and apologetics – which together comprise the field of philosophical 15. This emerges more clearly in the first edition, wherein it is stated in the very first proposition: ‘Dogmatic theology is the science of the interconnection of doctrines which are prevalent in a Christian ecclesial community in a particular time.’ CG1, 9 (§ 1). In the second edition, Schleiermacher elected to move this proposition towards the end of the Introduction (§ 19) so as to avoid the impression that the material immediately following it was itself dogmatics. For his explanation, see On the Glaubenslehre, 79. Note also that the particular church Schleiermacher has in mind is alluded to in the full title of the volume: Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt (where evangelische indicates ‘Protestant’ – a terminological decision which is defended in the preface to the first edition; CG1, 6–8). 16. § 2 of the second edition states: ‘Since dogmatics is a theological discipline, and thus pertains solely to the Christian Church, we can only explain what it is when we have become clear as to the conception of the Christian Church.’ CF, 3 (§ 2). 17. The non-dogmatic nature of Schleiermacher’s aim is well described in § 3: ‘…we have no desire to keep the leaders of science from scrutinizing and passing judgment from their own point of view upon both piety itself and the community relating to it, and determining their proper place in the total field of human life; since piety and Church, like other things, are material for scientific knowledge. Indeed, we ourselves are here entering upon such a scrutiny.’ CF, 6 (§3.1), emphasis added. 18. This fact is somewhat obscured by Schleiermacher’s use in the second edition of the term Kirche, with all its traditionally dogmatic overtones. In the first edition, his preferred mode of expression (at least in the propositions) was Glaubensweise or Glaubensart (see, e.g., §§ 5–7 [CG1], which coordinate with § 2 in CG2) – phrases which immediately hearken to the Brief Outline and thus to Schleiermacher’s more idiosyncratic theory of religion.

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theology, understood in the Brief Outline19 as that branch of theological studies whose goal is to discern the ‘essence’ of Christianity by examining it ‘from above’20 and from various angles.21 Here, ‘ethics’ (Ethik), famously defined as ‘the science of the principles of history’,22 seeks to identify the transcendental root on the basis of which certain concrete events emerge in history.23 In the case of the Glaubenslehre, the historical event in question is the assembling of religious communities (one of which is the Christian church), and the principle which occasions it is religion (Frömmigkeit) or pious feeling. Now because ethics can only yield general results (since principles by definition are not conditioned by historical particularity, but rather vice versa),24 and because theology is considered by Schleiermacher to be a ‘positive science’,25 the work of philosophical theology is not complete until ethical analysis has been coupled with historical engagement. This latter task is apportioned to philosophy of religion, which attempts to relate and distinguish different religious communities to/from one another, as well as apologetics, which seeks to defend the uniqueness of a 19. Schleiermacher first published his Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums zum Behuf einleitender Vorlesungen entworfen in 1811 during his early period at the University of Berlin. He produced a second, revised edition in 1830 (appearing concurrently with new editions of the Speeches and the Glaubenslehre), which essentially rearranged the order of certain propositions and supplemented them with newly written small print explanations. His citations of the text in the Glaubenslehre pertain to the original edition. 20. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study: Translation of the 1811 and 1830 Editions, trans. and ed. Terrence N. Tice (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), 19–20 (§ 33). 21. Schleiermacher, Brief Outline, 14–15 (§ 24). In the Sendschreiben, Schleiermacher mentions that ‘the Introduction belongs to the realm I customarily call “philosophy of religion”’, though it is evident that by this he is actually referring to what he calls in the Brief Outline ‘philosophical theology’ – a broader category which includes the three subdisciplines (together with polemics) appearing in the Glaubenslehre. See On the Glaubenslehre, 78; cf. Brief Outline, 19–26 (§§ 32–42). 22. Schleiermacher, Brief Outline, 21 (§ 35). The original version of this proposition from the 1811 edition is worth quoting in full: ‘Ethics as the science of the principles of history must represent how, within a historical whole, that has come into being which is a pure expression of its idea. However, it can only do this in a general way.’ Ibid., 21n.4 (§ 6). 23. Note here that Schleiermacher’s conception of ethics is obviously more descriptive than prescriptive. For more on this point, see Robert B. Louden, ‘Introduction’, in Schleiermacher, Lectures on Philosophical Ethics, xxv–xxvi. 24. Schleiermacher, Brief Outline, 21n.4 (§ 6). 25. For Schleiermacher, a ‘positive science’ is distinguished from a ‘pure science’ in that it is undertaken for the accomplishment of a certain practical task and not for the sake of obtaining knowledge in and for itself. Christian theology in particular is a positive science because it terminates ultimately in practical theology (‘the crown of theological study’), that is, in the governing of the church. See Brief Outline, §1, §5, 21n.34 (§ 31).

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particular religious community vis-à-vis its peers.26 The goal of the procedure, therefore, is to zero in on a particular construal of the Christian church as a demonstrably unique religious community. In the Glaubenslehre, the fruit of the investigation is given in § 11, wherein Schleiermacher states: ‘Christianity is a monotheistic faith (Glaubensweise), belonging to the teleological type of religion (Richtung der Frömmigkeit), and is essentially distinguished from other such faiths by the fact that in it everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.’27 Obviously, there is much to be unpacked from this very careful definition, and it is beyond the scope of this section to tease out each of the moves which led to its construction.28 Nevertheless, it is important to bear this definition in mind as we deal with the so-called borrowed propositions, for to exegete them without reference to the role they play in reaching this terminus would inevitably lead to misinterpretation concerning the sorts of claims they are making. Schleiermacher is more than willing to debate the appropriateness of how he uses these sciences to the end he eventually reaches, so long as that end is ultimately reached.29 In short, the auxiliary disciplines employed in the Introduction are to be regarded as just that auxiliary.30 26. Note that, for Schleiermacher, apologetics does not mean mounting a defence of the faith against sceptical detractors. Rather, in his understanding, apologetics aims to justify for believers the authentic relation of their own faith to that of their community. In other words, it aims to ‘communicate the conviction’ that ‘the mode of faith propagated’ in a particular church is indeed true to itself (see Brief Outline, § 39). Accordingly, apologetics does admittedly have an outward orientation, but only in the sense of defending the uniqueness of the church vis-à-vis its context amongst other churches of its own level and kind (see CF, 31–4 [§ 7]). By contrast, polemics, as the counterpart to apologetics, seeks to maintain the proper centre of the church’s identity in the midst of internal challenges such as heresy (Brief Outline, § 41). 27. CF, 52 (§ 11). Note that ‘Christianity’ does not here imply a system of doctrine but rather the concrete reality of the church. 28. For a point-by-point commentary on the entire Introduction, consult Offermann, Schleiermachers Einleitung. 29. Note, for instance, how Schleiermacher prefaces his brief foray into psychology in § 3.3 with the (implied) caveat that his particular account cannot establish but only elucidate ‘the truth of the matter’, namely, ‘that piety is feeling’. It is likely that Schleiermacher conceived the three major auxiliary disciplines of the Introduction in a similar way, that is, that they are useful only insofar as they serve to explain a subject matter which is ultimately given beforehand. 30. Briefly, for Schleiermacher, non-theological sciences are not simply ‘baptised’ when they are assumed for the sake of church governance. On the contrary, the relationship which is established between certain sciences when they are recruited for theological service creates amongst them a uniquely fruitful interaction which produces a kind of knowledge which is wholly different from that which they could produce autonomously. In other words, the fact that the formal approaches of certain sciences are used for the sake

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The propositions borrowed from ethics and the definition of ‘God’ We have encountered much of the material included in § 3 of the Glaubenslehre before.31 Consequently, we need not offer more than a brief summary of its contents here. Schleiermacher’s chief concern is to reiterate his long-held conviction that feeling (Gefühl), as opposed to knowing and doing, is the proper seat of religion. For all the attention typically paid to the taxonomy of human consciousness laid out in this section, Schleiermacher is clear that it is wholly subordinate to his primary intent. Indeed, he says, ‘the truth of the matter (namely, that piety is feeling) remains entirely independent of the correctness of the following discussion’.32 The fundamental insight is stated clearly in the proposition: ‘The piety which forms the basis of all ecclesiastical communions is, considered purely in itself, neither a Knowing nor a Doing, but a modification of feeling [eine Bestimmtheit des Gefühls], or of immediate self-consciousness.’33 Importantly, Schleiermacher does not state that piety is feeling but rather (a) that piety is a particular determination of feeling, and (b) that this particular determination of feeling is that which motivates the formation of religious communities (kirchliche Gemeinschaften). This, then, answers the ethical question: piety, defined in terms of feeling, is the engine driving humanity’s religious life. By now, the motivation to locate religion in feeling should be obvious. For Schleiermacher, only feeling is adequate to comprehend the twin components of human existence, namely, knowing (=‘metaphysics’ in the Speeches, ‘physical knowledge’ in the Dialektik) and doing (=‘morals’ in the Speeches, ‘ethical knowledge’ in the Dialektik). In other words, the ‘unity’ which binds these poles together is simply ‘the essence of the subject itself ’,34 or immediate consciousness of self is that which renders coherent the attribution of a life to a particular

of theology does not necessarily entail that the material content which they collaboratively yield is produced from non-theological sources. Indeed, Schleiermacher is convinced that as long as the uniqueness of the object of theological studies is clearly established (and zealously guarded), theology has nothing to fear and everything to gain from interaction with auxiliary sciences. Note, for instance, the important conclusion of John Thiel: ‘It is the contention of this study that the influence of the Dialektik upon the Glaubenslehre is not material in nature but formal – an influence not merely allowed but required by Schleiermacher’s dogmatic method.’ God and World, 5. 31. In the text itself, Schleiermacher refers the reader to second speech from On Religion, discussed above in Chapter 1. 32. CF, 8 (§ 3.3). The fuller account of this taxonomy can be found in Schleiermacher’s lectures on psychology. See Schleiermacher, Psychologie, 182–216. 33. CF, 5 (§ 3); CG2, 19–20 (§ 3). 34. CF, 8 (§3.3). Cf. Jacqueline Mariña: ‘The problem of religion, and hence the problem of the ground of both self and world, stands at the fundamental root from which all human thinking and action spring.’ Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 115.

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individual. Consequently, to locate religion completely either in belief (the approach of orthodoxy) or action (the approach of rationalism) would be to deny the possibility of a religious person and hence religious communities – the very things which precipitate the study of religion in the first place. By contrast, Schleiermacher insists, because ‘there are both a Knowing and a Doing which pertain to piety’, we are required to posit feeling as a ‘mediating link’ between the two.35 To put it simply: what we think and what we do are intelligible only in terms of who we are, and ‘who we are’, for Schleiermacher, is established on the grounds of immediate self-consciousness. Therefore, he reasons, if we are to make sense of religion as an actual historical phenomenon (i.e., one which involves actual subjects living and moving within the finite realm of action and passion), then it must be described in terms of feeling. So what is this ‘particular modification’ of feeling which Schleiermacher labels ‘religious’? The answer is given in the proposition to § 4: it is ‘the consciousness of being absolutely dependent, or … of being in relation with God’.36 Now, before we venture an analysis of what this means, we ought to mention that what follows is necessarily speculative. In other words, what Schleiermacher is about to do is describe religious feeling without reference to any of its actual historical expressions. This is important to remember, since otherwise, one could get the impression that he is proffering an abstractly deduced hypothesis which is subsequently applied to the empirical phenomena of religious communities.37 Yet we must recall that, for Schleiermacher, all speculation takes place strictly in dialogue with concrete particularity. Indeed, as we observed in the Dialektik, science always begins ‘in the middle’.38 Thus, we must keep in mind that the full meaning of the ‘feeling of absolute dependence’ emerges only when it is dialectically oriented to an historical particularity, specifically the redemption effected by Jesus of Nazareth as mediated by the Holy Spirit through the church.39 As Schleiermacher explains in § 6, religious feeling arises as the result of a particular stimulus.40 Accordingly, 35. CF, 10 (§ 3.4); CF, 8 (§ 3.4). 36. CF, 12 (§ 4). 37. Georg Wehrung says as much when he writes: ‘To demonstrate [religion’s] origin a priori, that is, its transcendental genesis: that is the task of this part.’ Georg Wehrung, Die philosophisch-theologische Methode Schleiermachers: Eine Einführung in die Kurze Darstellung und in die Glaubenslehre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1911), 44. 38. KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 186 (§ 62). 39. Cf. the comment in § 2: ‘[N]o science can by means of mere ideas reach and elicit what is individual, but must always stop short with what is general. Just as all so-called a priori constructions in the realm of history come to grief over the task of showing that what has been such-and-such wise deduced from above is actually identical with the historically given – so is it undeniably here also.’ CF, 4 (§ 2.2). 40. ‘As regards the feeling of absolute dependence in particular, everyone will know that it was first awakened in him in the same way, by the communicative and stimulative power of expression or utterance.’ CF, 27 (§ 6.2).

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there would be no reason even to posit the feeling of absolute dependence absent its expression in history. It would be a mistake, therefore, to regard the abstractions of § 4 as somehow foundational for this important concept.41 With this in mind, we turn to our exposition. The presentation of the feeling of absolute dependence proceeds in the following way. ‘Actual self-consciousness’ (wirklich Selbstbewußtsein), Schleiermacher suggests, displays a vacillation between two oppositionally related states,42 that is, ‘in every self-consciousness there are two elements, which we might call respectively a self-caused element (ein Sichselbstsetzen) and a non-self-caused element (ein Sichselbstnichtsogesetzhaben)’.43 Considered temporally, these states could be described as moments of predominating ‘activity’ and ‘receptivity’ – moments which yield, on the one hand, a feeling of ‘freedom’, and, on the other, a feeling of ‘dependence’. Now, the import of locating this duality in the context of the self consists in the fact that, for Schleiermacher, the structures of consciousness indicate both the reality and form of the external world, that is, just as the ‘soul’ 41. Accordingly, Karl Barth’s quip that § 4 represents Schleiermacher’s ‘Holy of Holies’ may be regarded as somewhat misleading. Karl Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher: Lectures at Göttingen, Winter Semester of 1923/24, ed. Dietrich Ritschl, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1982), 212. 42. ‘Self-consciousness’ is not here to be taken as the equivalent of ‘feeling’, as Emil Brunner claims (‘Da nun Selbstbewußtsein = Gefühl ist…’; Die Mystik und das Wort: Der Gegensatz zwischen moderner Religionisauffasung und christlichem Glauben dargestellt an der Theologie Schleiermachers, 2nd ed. [Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1928], 64). Rather, Schleiermacher is clear that what is under discussion is ‘actual self-consciousness’ (wirklich Selbstbewußtsein; CF, 12 [§ 4.1]), that is, the form of self-consciousness which is reflective of finite reality. Offermann persuasively makes the case that it is actually the ‘sensible self-consciousness’ discussed in § 5 which Schleiermacher has in view in § 4.1–2 (see Schleiermachers Einleitung, 52.). Hence, the charge made by Georg Wehrung (following H. Schmid and picked up by Brunner) that there is a contradiction between ‘feeling’ as described in § 3 (i.e., as totally receptive) and ‘feeling’ (presupposed to be equivalent to ‘selfconsciousness’) in § 4 is unfounded. In reality, feeling or ‘self-consciousness’ is presented in a multivalent sense in § 4, with the feeling of absolute dependence being one particular determination of it. Offermann thus summarises: ‘Contrary to the relation “immediate selfconsciousness = higher self-consciousness,” we have made the claim that the Introduction posits the fundamental idea as a complex fact. By this we mean that “sensible” consciousness is not excluded, but is precisely included insofar as the “immediate” self-consciousness can present itself as differently “determined” in the various relations of the sensible to the higher.’ Schleiermachers Einleitung, 55. 43. CF, 13 (§ 4). Note the similarity to the ‘two forces’ described in the first speech of On Religion. For Schleiermacher, one of the benefits of recasting the discussion in terms of selfconsciousness was that it now represented an open rejection of Fichte, who posited the Ich itself as the transcendental principle grounding the external world. For helpful discussion on this point, see Wehrung, Die philosophisch-theologische Methode Schleiermachers, 40–3.

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exists in variable states of activity and passivity, so is the world an enclosed nexus of similarly related entities (what Schleiermacher calls the Naturzusammenhang, or the ‘nature system’).44 To put it another way: for Schleiermacher, the unity of the subject is the unity of the world, and insofar as the feelings of freedom and receptivity together comprise a feeling of reciprocity (Wechselwirkung), so the world itself can be construed as a system of relations marked by mutual causality. Consequently, there can be no such thing as a feeling of absolute freedom, since the unity of the subject demands that freedom and dependence be defined relatively, with dependence functioning as the substratum for consciousness generally.45 Here, we arrive at a crucial interpretive moment: the point at which Schleiermacher lays out the feeling of absolute dependence as the fundamental characteristic of self-consciousness. It is worth pointing out that he does not quite present this notion as the conclusion of a proof, as some have suggested.46 In fact, the matter is introduced quite undramatically by means of a simple appeal to the proposition (‘As regards the feeling of absolute dependence which, on the other hand, our proposition does postulate….’).47 Schleiermacher’s intent, therefore, is not to argue from the impossibility of absolute freedom to absolute dependence but rather to contrast the temporal fluctuations of self-consciousness with the basic nature of self-consciousness generally (i.e., with the immediate self-consciousness). To put the discussion in the context of Schleiermacher’s oeuvre, what we have here is essentially an abbreviated version of §§ 211–25 from the Dialektik (1814/15; a section discussed above), now presented in terms of the consciousness of freedom 44. It would, however, be inappropriate to regard the soul simply as a microcosm of the world. As Jacqueline Mariña observes, the proper ordering of this relationship represents one of Schleiermacher’s key early insights: ‘According to the Schleiermacher, at the heart of the self is consciousness, through which the self both stands in relation to the infinite and eternal and also opens out into the world. Yet no longer is the soul the mirror of the world [as Leibniz believed], but, rather, the world is the mirror of the soul.’ Mariña, Transformation of the Self, 126–7. 45. As Schleiermacher explains, being absolutely free would entail having the ability to create all objects (including oneself) ex nihilo, since otherwise, even those objects upon which we exert an influence demand our dependence by the sheer fact of their givenness. CF, 16 (§ 4.3). 46. ‘The feeling of absolute dependence is not itself a descriptive account of concrete human existence but rather a conclusion distilled from a complex analysis of observations concerning relative freedom and dependence.’ Jeremy J. Wynne, Wrath among the Perfections of God’s Life (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 22 n. 78. In fairness, Wynne is right to notice that Schleiermacher is describing the feeling of absolute dependence abstractly in this paragraph. This does not, however, mean that this concept is unrelated to ‘concrete human existence’. As Schleiermacher himself points out that ‘without any feeling of freedom [=a concretely experienced feeling] a feeling of absolute dependence would not be possible’. CF, 16 (§ 4.3). 47. CF, 16 (§ 4.3).

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and dependence rather than willing and thinking.48 Moreover, as in the Dialektik, so here, what is sought is the transcendental ground of the self as given in subjective consciousness. To this end, Schleiermacher observes that a feeling of absolute dependence, unlike the feeling of reciprocity (which includes both freedom and dependence), cannot be temporally discernible (e.g., by means of simple introspection), since the consciousness of a moment by definition pertains not to the whole but only to a slice of finite reality. Indeed, the temporal consciousness of self cannot help but be subject to the ‘antithesis’ of intramundane action and passion, that is, it cannot comprehend the world in its totality. Thus, if there is such a thing as absolute dependence, Schleiermacher reasons, it must be described in terms of the deepest and most comprehensive level of self-consciousness. And so, he writes: …the self-consciousness which accompanies our entire self-activity, hence also (since this is never zero) our entire existence, which negates absolute freedom, is already in and for itself a consciousness of absolute dependence, since it is the consciousness that our entire self-activity is likewise from elsewhere, just as that [consciousness] must be entirely from ourselves vis-à-vis that toward which we would expect to have a feeling of absolute freedom.49 48. As in the Dialektik, so here, Schleiermacher’s tactic is to begin by establishing first the nature of the self and then the world and God as the transcendental presuppositions of the former. In this respect, Emanuel Hirsch is no doubt correct to point out the clear continuities between the two texts. As he says, ‘Schleiermacher remained extremely true to his theories and never contradicted the insights of the Dialektik on God and world in the Glaubenslehre.’ Emanuel Hirsch, Geschichte der neuern evangelischen Theologie im Zusammenhang mit den allgemeinen Bewegungen des europäischen Denkens, vol. V (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1954), 299. Yet, Brunner surely goes too far when he claims that ‘the purified concepts of religion and feeling which form the foundations of the Glaubenslehre emerge from the dialectical work, that is, from its speculations concerning identity’. Emil Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort, 58. Offermann thus describes this interpretive tendency: ‘With what justification are certain representations brought into this discussion which Schleiermacher himself never expressly presupposed? Indeed, it is almost always the view that the sought-after “dark” concept of the “immediate self-consciousness” should be extracted from the Dialektik and that expressions of the Einleitung, particularly those in § 4, must first be understood in light of it.’ Offerman, Schleiermachers Einleitung, 49. The procedure of reading the Dialektik into the Einleitung without qualification is misguided, however, particularly given that in the latter Schleiermacher is clearly adapting his insights to specifically religious concerns as well as augmenting those insights with newly relevant distinctions. Accordingly, we would do well to follow Offermann in paying as close attention as possible to the text on its own terms, noting carefully Schleiermacher’s precise qualifications as he approaches the definition of God. 49. Original translation of the following passage: ‘Allein eben das unsere gesamte Selbstthätigkeit, also auch, weil diese niemals Null ist, unser ganzes Dasein begleitende, schlechthinige Freiheit verneinende, Selbstbewußtsein ist schon an und für sich ein

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Again, it is important to notice how Schleiermacher is presenting the notion of absolute dependence here. For instance, he is not suggesting that one can discern absolute dependence by observing the impossibility of absolute freedom and then ‘flipping it’,50 as it were, to infer the converse.51 Indeed, as he says in the previous section, ‘neither an absolute feeling of dependence … nor an absolute feeling of freedom … is to be found in this whole realm [i.e., the world]’.52 Moreover, in context, the argument cannot be this straightforward, for the simple fact that a sense for one’s individual dependence does not by itself implicate the rest of the world53 – something which must be implicated if a claim is being made about the nature of the immediate self-consciousness, that is, a form of self-consciousness which imagines the subject not in isolation, but as a constituent of finite reality as a whole.54 Rather, what he is doing is identifying the elemental undercurrent of Bewußtsein schlechthiniger Abhängigkeit, denn es ist das Bewußtsein, daß unsere ganze Selbstthätigkeit eben so von anderwärtsher ist, wie dasjenige ganz von uns her sein müßte, in Bezug worauf wir ein schlechthiniges Freiheitsgefühl haben sollten.’ CG2, 38 (§ 4.3). 50. Friedrich Beißer seems to present the argument in this way when he says: ‘…relative freedom is an absurdity. If we are only relatively free, never absolutely, then it immediately follows, according to Schleiermacher, that we are absolutely dependent.’ Friedrich Beißer, Schleiermachers Lehre von Gott dargestellt nach seinen Reden und seiner Glaubenslehre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 64. 51. On this point, the translators Mackintosh and Stewart are less than helpful. In particular, their interpretation of ‘schlechthinige Freiheit verneinende’ as ‘negatives absolute freedom’ seems to imply that absolute dependence is simply the ‘other side’ of our temporal self-consciousness. But given the nature of immediate self-consciousness as non-temporal, this cannot be the case. For this reason, the sense is better reflected in our translation, which suggests that immediate self-consciousness ‘negates’ absolute freedom, with the logic now running from the feeling of absolute dependence to the negation of absolute freedom, rather than vice versa. Cf. CF, 16 (§ 4.3) and CG2, 38 (§ 4.3). 52. CF, 15 (§ 4.3). 53. This is why, incidentally, Schleiermacher insists that ‘without any feeling of freedom a feeling of absolute dependence would be impossible’ (CF, 16 [§ 4.3]): because without a sense of freedom, we would have no grounds for inferring from individual dependence the absolute dependence of all finite reality (which is the condition for the immediate selfconsciousness of dependence). In other words, relative freedom exposes the fact that there is literally no mundane object capable of manifesting absolute activity. As Schleiermacher puts it: ‘towards all the forces of Nature – even, we may say, towards the heavenly bodies – we ourselves do, in the same sense in which they influence us, exercise a counter-influence, however minute’. CF, 15 (§ 4.2). 54. ‘For while [immediate self-consciousness] from its very nature [negates] absolute freedom (§ 4.3) … this is not the consciousness of ourselves as individuals of a particular description, but simply of ourselves as individual finite existence in general; so that we do not set ourselves against any other individual being, but, on the contrary, all antithesis between one individual and another is in this case done away.’ CF, 19 (§ 5.1).

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self-consciousness (i.e., ‘the self-consciousness which accompanies … our entire existence’) with dependence instead of freedom, on the grounds that absolute freedom cannot fulfil this role.55 The argument, therefore, is rather more like that employed in the transcendental part of the Dialektik – Schleiermacher is enquiring into the grounds for the unity of the self as whole, including both its active and passive components. Furthermore, his conclusion that ‘without any feeling of freedom a feeling of absolute dependence would not be possible’ is just a restatement of his familiar presupposition that the universal and the particular must be construed as dialectically related. In other words, were we to lack the feeling of (relative) freedom, it would be impossible to perceive ourselves as constituents of a world – and absent the ability to sense this constituency, it would be impossible to establish the larger context of our subjective existence as a relationship of absolute dependence. To summarise, then, for Schleiermacher, the consciousness that there is nothing in the world upon which I absolutely depend (on the grounds of the feeling of freedom), and conversely, nothing in the world which absolutely depends on me, is the feeling of absolute dependence, which is to say, the feeling that the world as a whole does not depend on itself. So, if I have a feeling of dependence, it is simultaneously the feeling that the world is dependent, and if the world is dependent, then it, and therefore I, am absolutely so. At the very least, then, Schleiermacher believes that he has established the coherence of ‘absolute dependence’ with the nature of the self as represented in the immediate self-consciousness. His next move – and this can be regarded as an ‘inference’ – is to posit a basis for the feeling of absolute dependence in a reality which he designates by the term ‘God’: As regards the identification of absolute dependence with ‘relation to God’ in our proposition: this is understood in the sense that the Whence [Woher] of our receptive and active existence, as implied in the self-consciousness, is to be designated by the word ‘God’, and that this is for us the really original signification of that word.56 55. The difference is subtle, but not incidental. The first argument, which Schleiermacher does not use, would go something like this: Because we are not absolutely free, therefore we must be absolutely dependent. But this cannot be his argument, since it does not satisfy his intent, which is (quite specifically) to establish the most fundamental level of consciousness. The reasoning which Schleiermacher actually does use, however, is more like this: The most fundamental level of consciousness must account for all its temporal expressions. Because freedom cannot do this (on account of the givenness of finite reality), therefore the most fundamental level of consciousness is one of dependence. 56. CF, 16 (§ 4.4). The middle portion is better translated: ‘the Whence of our receptive and active existence which is co-posited in this self-consciousness’ (das in diesem Selbstbewußtsein mit gesezte Woher unseres empfänglichen und selbstthätigen Dasein). CG2, 39 (§ 4.4).

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Here, we note that, according to this definition, God is not, in the first instance, an ‘idea’ in itself – still less an ‘object’ of knowledge; rather, noetically speaking, God is nothing more than the ‘co-determinant’ (das Mitbestimmende) of our immediate self-consciousness, particularly our feeling of absolute dependence. To utter the word ‘God’, therefore, ‘is nothing more than the expression [das Aussprechen] of the feeling of absolute dependence’.57 In this sense, then, human beings cannot be said to ‘know’ God, but more accurately to be ‘conscious’ of God – and yet even here, ‘God-consciousness’ is still somewhat of an imprecise phrase, since that of which we are actually conscious is our absolute dependence, and only then, derivatively and improperly speaking, that upon which our absolute dependence is predicated. This is why, as Schleiermacher goes on to set out his dogmatic method in §§ 20– 31, he insists that the ‘fundamental dogmatic form’ concerns very specifically ‘human states [menschliche Zustände]’, and that doctrines concerning God and the world must ultimately be considered alternative expressions of these phenomena.58 Indeed, he suggests, if a dogmatic system speaks of ‘God’ and the ‘world’ at all, it is only on account of the fact that such a system ‘could not fulfil the real purpose of Dogmatics’, which is to regulate and purify the Christian community with respect to its ‘essence’.59

Summary At this point, then, we can offer a summary of the meaning of ‘God’ in the Einleitung. As in the Dialektik, the concept of ‘God’ in the Glaubenslehre is simply a way of expressing the transcendental ground of the basic substructure of selfconsciousness, namely, the feeling of absolute dependence. As we have sought to emphasise, however, the feeling of absolute dependence is not something which is accessible by means of introspection, since any attempt to ‘find’ it in the Naturzusammenhang (including in the ‘self ’) would necessarily highlight reciprocity. If we ‘know’ that we are absolutely dependent, therefore, it is only because there are occasions in which particular actions emerge on the basis of this dependence, actions which, ultimately, lead to the formation of religious communities. This, of course, hearkens to Schleiermacher’s theory of sociality, an aspect of his thought which unfortunately lies beyond the scope of our concerns.60 57. CF, 17 (§ 4.4). 58. CF, 126 (§ 30.2); CG2, 194 (§ 30.2). 59. CF, 126–7 (§ 30.3). 60. For more on this, see ‘On the Social Element in Religion’, the fourth speech in On Religion, 162–88. Suffice it to say here that, for Schleiermacher, the Christian church is quite simply that religious community which traces its being to the expressive actions of Jesus of Nazareth, the only human being in history to have acted completely on the basis of his feeling of absolute dependence.

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Nevertheless, as we move into an account of Schleiermacher’s proper ‘doctrine of God’, we would do well to keep this in mind: all of Schleiermacher’s statements concerning God are, properly speaking, a way of talking about the particular religious feelings which emerge ultimately from the feeling of absolute dependence.

4 S C H L E I E R M AC H E R ’ S D O C T R I N E O F G O D

Unlike most systematic theologies, Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God is not restricted to one discrete section. Rather, it is distributed throughout the Glaubenslehre in the form of particular attributes which in turn relate to particular determinations of Christian self-consciousness.1 This is because, as we saw above, the doctrine of God is not actually a ‘fundamental’ dogmatic topic, but rather an accompanying commentary on the Christian journey from an inhibited to a liberated God-consciousness.2 Indeed, as Julia Lamm puts it, according to Schleiermacher, ‘we can never try to define who God is in Godself, but only who God is for us’.3 The order of Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God corresponds to the manner in which he sets out his theological system as a whole. The Glaubenslehre is arranged into two main parts: doctrines which are presupposed by Christian self-consciousness (Part I) and doctrines which are determined by Christian selfconsciousness (Part II). The relation between the two sections is a subject for debate, and we will address the matter as it arises in the course of our own interpretation. For now, however, we merely point out that Schleiermacher’s intention is for the two sections to relate in much the same way as the ‘transcendental’ and ‘formal’ sections of the Dialektik, that is, they are understood to be mutually definitive and therefore non-hierarchically related.4 Accordingly, the divine attributes treated 1. Schleiermacher defends this expositional decision in CF, 128 (§ 31.2). 2. In this sense, it is clearly an overstatement to say that on the grounds of the distribution of attributes, ‘the Glaubenslehre as a whole becomes one single exposition of the doctrine of God’. Gerhard Ebeling, ‘Schleiermacher’s Doctrine of the Divine Attributes’, in Schleiermacher as Contemporary, ed. Robert W. Funk (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 152. 3. Julia A. Lamm, The Living God: Schleiermacher’s Theological Appropriation of Spinoza (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 128. 4. Famously, Schleiermacher argues in his Sendschreiben that he could have actually reversed the order of the two parts, yet decided against it on the grounds that doing so would have represented an ‘anti-climax’ (Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letter to Dr. Lücke, trans. James Duke and Francis Fiorenza (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1981), 59). Note, however, that by ‘anti-climax’, Schleiermacher is not referring merely

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in Part I pertain, in some sense, to the ‘transcendental’ aspect of the Christian experience of God and are therefore categorized as the ‘original’ attributes. The attributes in Part II, by contrast, pertain to the ‘actual’ experience of Christian redemption and thus are labelled the ‘derived’ attributes.5 Again, however, we emphasize: the original attributes do not ‘determine’ the derived attributes nor do the derived attributes ‘determine’ the original; rather, for Schleiermacher, both sets of attributes are ultimately justified on the same grounds, namely, the utterly simple feeling of absolute dependence in its particularly Christian modification. In this sense, Schleiermacher is a decidedly non-systematic theologian; in the Glaubenslehre, doctrines do not beget doctrines. Instead, each doctrine is justified on its own and only to the extent that it demonstrably expresses a particular ‘religious affection’.6 Bearing all this in mind, then, we begin our treatment with a consideration of Schleiermacher’s introduction to the ‘original’ attributes, located in §§ 50–1.

Introduction to the divine attributes Schleiermacher begins his treatment of the divine attributes by emphasizing that all talk of God ultimately concerns a relationship – the relationship between God and the world as implied in Christian experience. In Part I, the ‘transcendental’ part, he is particularly interested in describing the nature of this relationship as given in the general religious consciousness presupposed by Christian redemption. Given that the feeling of absolute dependence reflects the world in its oneness (i.e., through consciousness of the self), so is the Whence of this feeling also conceived as absolutely simple. For this reason, Schleiermacher argues, ‘All attributes which we ascribe to God ought not to designate something particular to rhetorical effect, but to the fact that theology’s nature as a ‘positive science’ is better reflected if its ‘conclusion’ leads directly to the practical task of guiding the church in the context of its concrete experience of God. This represents, incidentally, Schleiermacher’s general approach across a diversity of works in his corpus, for example, his lectures on philosophical ethics, psychology, and the Dialektik. As we saw in our treatment of the latter work, for instance, Schleiermacher moves from the transcendental to the formal part not because the former is determinative; rather, he says, ‘Because our actual goal is the construction [knowledge], so our endpoint is the formal [part], which we therefore place last.’ KGA II/10.1, ‘Ausarbeitung zur Dialektik (1814/15)’, 89 (§ 85). 5. Schleiermacher calls the attributes in Part I ‘original’ (ursprünglich), in that they form the baseline consciousness out of which the historical consciousness of ‘pain and pleasure’ (Unlust und Lust, i.e., sin and redemption) emerges. The divine attributes determined on the grounds of this historical consciousness are thus labelled ‘derived’ (abgeleitet). CF, 200 (§ 50.4); CG2 308 (§ 50.4). 6. ‘Christian doctrines are accounts of the religious affections set forth in speech.’ CF, 76 (§ 15).

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in God, but only something particular in the way in which the feeling of absolute dependence relates to him.’7 To be clear, at stake here is not a concern for the simplicity of God’s being (as was the driving concern in the traditional debates about the attributes8), but rather the simplicity of that from which the idea of God emerges: the feeling of absolute dependence. As Gerhard Ebeling comments, ‘in [Schleiermacher’s] theory of the divine attributes, dogmatics observes the interests of piety and therein differs fundamentally from the interests of speculative thought’.9 Consequently, as we highlighted above, for Schleiermacher, if there is a multiplicity of attributes, each one must be justified immediately with reference to religious feeling, and never on the basis of an abstractly conceived ‘concept’ of divinity. Accordingly, Schleiermacher approaches the question of the derivation of the attributes in a similarly idiosyncratic manner. Classically, he observes, the attributes have been determined according to three particular methods: through the removal of limits (via eminentiæ), the denial of flaw (via negationis), and inference to a cause (via causalitatis).10 Of these three, the first two are deemed inadequate on their own, in that they are ultimately incapable of saying anything positive about God. Moreover, Schleiermacher argues, these two methods tend to operate in an arbitrary fashion, given that all they can actually do is qualify and expand upon a predetermined (i.e., speculative) idea of what God is (for instance, a particular sort of substance). Only the via causalitatis, he explains, directs our attention to the concrete activity of God in the world and hence redirects us back to the dogmatic Grundform: the modification of religious feeling. Indeed, for Schleiermacher, it is absolutely crucial to recognize that neither in isolation nor taken together do the attributes express the Being of God in itself (for the essence of that which has been active can never be known simply from its activity alone)11 – yet this at least is certain, that all the divine attributes … must somehow go back to the divine causality, since they are only meant to explain the feeling of absolute dependence.12

7. CF, 194 (§ 50), revised translation; CG2, 300 (§ 50). 8. For an excellent discussion of the doctrine of simplicity and its relation to debates concerning the divine attributes in the medieval period, see Richard A. Muller, PostReformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. III, The Divine Essence and Attributes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 38–44, 70–6. 9. Ebeling, ‘Schleiermacher’s Doctrine of the Divine Attributes’, 133. 10. CF, 197 (§ 50.3). 11. Recall our earlier comments concerning the nature of intuition in Chapter 1. For Schleiermacher (following Kant), intuition can never give us access to an object’s essence but only implies a relationship between ourselves and that which acts upon us. 12. CF, 198 (§ 50.3).

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Essentially, the via causalitatis works by designating God as the final explanation for all worldly realities. In this way, we can account for the diverse ways in which God is experienced whilst simultaneously maintaining that such plurality ‘correspond[s] to nothing real in God’.13 Hence, with respect to the diversity of the modifications of religious consciousness – which again, is the actual referent of the divine attributes – an organizational schema can be posited without threatening the simplicity of the feeling of absolute dependence. In this regard, Schleiermacher rejects the dominant classical approaches which, in general, classify the attributes according to a presupposed division between ‘God in himself ’ and ‘God for us’. For Schleiermacher, of course, the notion of ‘God in himself ’ is obviously speculative, since, as explained in the Einleitung, the term ‘God’ is coherent only as an expression of religious feeling: ‘here nothing can be taken as fundamental save that in the Divine Essence which explains the feeling of absolute dependence’.14 Clearly, then, the traditional divisions – natural/moral, active/inactive, absolute/ relative, et cetera – cannot be accepted, for they do not abide by this rule. Hence, Schleiermacher proposes a distinctive system of classification. On the basis of the feeling of absolute dependence, Schleiermacher posits two dialectically related ways of speaking of the divine causality. First, he observes, if ‘God’ signifies the ‘Whence’ of our absolute dependence, then this logically means that the entire world is subject to God’s causal activity. Moreover, if God is simply that upon which everything depends (and it is impossible to say anything more than this on the grounds of religious feeling), then it stands to reason that the divine causality is ‘equal in scope’ to its ‘effect’, namely, the totality of the world.15 This, Schleiermacher explains, is the dogmatically precise meaning of the term ‘omnipotence’: it refers specifically to the fact that ‘the divine causality is equivalent in compass to the sum-total of the natural order’.16 On the other hand, second, if God is simply that upon which everything depends, then the converse must also be true; not only is God equal in scope to the Naturzusammenhang, he is also ‘different in kind’. Indeed, as the Whence of the feeling of absolute dependence, God represents the only instance of absolute freedom – a form of causality which is simply impossible within the world. Whereas finite causality is characterized by internality, mutability, and hence temporality, God’s causality consists in one, simple act of external causality. The divine causality is, in other words, eternal. Consequently, ‘eternity’ and ‘omnipotence’ form the basic attributes treated in Part I.

13. CF, 198 (§ 50.3). 14. CF, 199 (§ 50.3). 15. ‘…the ground of our feeling of absolute dependence, i.e. the divine causality, extends as widely as the order of nature and the finite causality contained in it; consequently the divine causality is posited as equal in compass [Umfang nach gleich] to finite causality.’ CF, 201 (§ 51.1); CG2, 309 (§ 51.1). 16. CF, 201 (§ 51.1).

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At this point, Schleiermacher reiterates the fact that he is not actually predicating two different ‘attributes’ of a divine being. Rather, the two terms are meant to function together as a singular commentary on the relationship between God and world as implied by the feeling of absolute dependence. Indeed, Schleiermacher points out, the two terms are actually mutually definitive: one cannot conceive of a form of causality that is ‘equal in scope’ to a particular ‘effect’ without also recognizing its total distinction from that which it causes. Specifically, if God were ‘like [the world] in kind’, then this would obviously imply that God ‘would belong to the sphere of interaction and thus be part of the totality of the natural order’.17 Hence, the two basic features of the divine causality are best considered as components of a dialectical unity. God is not eternal and omnipotent, but rather ‘eternal omnipotence’ or ‘omnipotent eternity’.18

The ‘original’ attributes: eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience As suggested above, Schleiermacher’s dialectical account of the divine causality is briefly summarized with the axiom: ‘equal in scope, different in kind’. Accordingly, the first attribute Schleiermacher treats, divine eternity, relates to the second part of the axiom and thus highlights a particular way in which God is different from finite causality. In the proposition to § 52, Schleiermacher defines divine eternity as follows: ‘By the Eternity of God we understand the absolutely timeless causality of God, which conditions not only all that is temporal, but time itself as well.’19 The first noticeable feature of this definition is that, for Schleiermacher, divine eternity cannot be defined in abstraction from divine omnipotence. In other words, eternity cannot refer to an ‘immanent’ reality in God but only a specific way in which God is related to the world as its absolute cause. To speak of divine eternity is to highlight the fact that divine causality does not – and cannot – participate in the flux of relative causality which, for Schleiermacher, constitutes the passage of time.20 In this sense, it is not enough merely to say that God is ‘timeless’ or ‘outside’ of time, for such claims, whilst legitimately distinguishing God from the world, nevertheless say nothing of the God–world relationship which the divine attributes are ultimately meant to describe. On the contrary, if divine eternity concerns a particular way in which God relates to the world as a cause to an effect, we must also say that God is the cause of the conditions which underwrite succession and mutability in general, namely, the system of causality which characterizes the finite realm as a whole. 17. CF, 202 (§ 51.1). 18. CF, 202 (§ 51.1). 19. CF, 203 (§ 52). 20. ‘[T]ime is merely an adjunct to finite being in so far as it is caused, and to a less degree in so far as it is cause.’ CF, 206 (§ 52.2).

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For this reason, Schleiermacher continues, if we are to affirm that divine causality conditions the temporal nature of the world, we must also say that God conditions the world in its spatial aspects as well – God is omnipresent.21 In the finite realm, we can observe that causality functions at differing levels of intensity depending on the spatial location of a particular cause relative to other aspects of the world. In other words, the location of a cause is relevant to the way in which that cause affects its surroundings. God, however, not being a constituent of the world, is causally active wholly outwith the system of finite causality and hence cannot be said to relate to particular worldly events either proximately or remotely. Indeed, the divine causality actually conditions the world as a whole and thus, as in the case of eternity, is that which makes possible the disparate causalities affecting one another to greater and lesser degrees within the Naturzusammenhang. In this way, Schleiermacher explains, we can say that God is ‘everywhere’ – not in terms of a causality which is within the world (as this would entail pantheism22) but as the ultimate condition of all spatially defined causal relations. This, then, covers those features of absolute causality which distinguish God from the world – eternity and omnipresence. The next pair of attributes, by contrast, has to do with the ways in which the divine causality equals the world in scope, God’s omnipotence and omniscience. The first of these, omnipotence, represents perhaps one of Schleiermacher’s more controversial doctrines, as his interpretation of divine power in terms of omnicausality naturally entails a mutually definitive relationship between God and the world – an idea which we have already encountered in the Dialektik in the framing of God and world as correlata, and which is generally the source of the (false) charge of pantheism which has consistently burdened Schleiermacher’s theological legacy.23 For Schleiermacher, the fact that omnipotence refers specifically to the scope of the divine causality means that it does not actually concern a particular divine ‘ability’ – for instance, God’s ability to do that which is logically possible. In fact, on the grounds of the feeling of absolute dependence, such an idea is necessarily disallowed, since conceiving God as the ‘Whence’ of this feeling means that the activity which corresponds to the absolute receptivity of the world must likewise be absolute and hence fully realized. Consequently, if God is pure activity, as religious feeling suggests that he is, then what God does is not a matter of his choosing between options; rather, God simply is active, and the result of this activity is no more and no less than the preservation of the world. As Schleiermacher explains in the context of his doctrine of creation,

21. ‘By the Omnipresence of God we understand the absolutely spaceless causality of God, which conditions not only all that is spatial, but space itself as well.’ CF, 206 (§ 53). 22. CF, 209 (§ 53.2). 23. See Chapter 2. Karl Barth, for instance, is heavily critical of Schleiermacher on this point. See CD II/1, 528–32.

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[I]t is self-evident that He on Whom everything is absolutely dependent is absolutely free. But if we suppose that the free decision implies a prior deliberation followed by choice, or interpret freedom as meaning that God might equally well have not created the world (because we think that there must have been this possibility, otherwise God was compelled to create), we have then assumed an antithesis between freedom and necessity, and, by attributing this kind of freedom to God, have placed Him within the realm of antitheses.24

Similarly, if omnipotence means that God can but chooses not to actualize certain possibilities, then this entails a prioritization of God’s will over his activity. And if God’s will is prioritized over his activity, Schleiermacher reasons, then the ends towards which the will bends (e.g., certain desirable possibilities) represent causes affecting the divine causality. Obviously, Schleiermacher’s system cannot abide such a thought, since, again, the Whence of absolute dependence must be considered an absolute causality. Hence, Schleiermacher concludes, ‘We must … think of nothing in God as necessary without at the same time positing it as free, nor as free unless at the same time it is necessary.’25 Omnipotence, then, is fundamentally a way of describing divine causality as it relates to the world in its totality. It does not, therefore, obliterate the reality of the world as a system of interrelated, finite causes. God does not, in other words, condition the world by ‘entering into it’, thereby interrupting, so to speak, the natural order. Indeed, for Schleiermacher, such a ‘miraculous’ intervention would by definition deny the feeling of absolute dependence, since absolute dependence naturally demands an asymmetrically oriented counterpart. Indeed, the divine omnipotence can never in any way enter as a supplement … to the natural causes in their sphere; for then it must like them work temporally and spatially; and at one time working so, and then again not so, it would not be selfidentical and so would be neither eternal nor omnipresent. Rather everything is and becomes altogether by means of the natural order, so that each takes place though all and all wholly through the divine omnipotence, so that all indivisibly exists through One.26

In other words, divine and finite causality together represent the total set of conditions for self-consciousness; neither is reducible into the other, and both are required to render a comprehensive account of reality as it is actually experienced. As Schleiermacher put it in the 1828 lectures on Dialektik: ‘There is no world without God and no God without the world.’27

24. CF, 156, revised translation (§ 41, postscript); CG2, 240 (§ 41, Zusaz). 25. CF, 217 (§ 54.4). 26. CF, 212 (§ 54.1). 27. KGA II/10.1, 306.

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Lastly, then, Schleiermacher offers an account of the divine omniscience, which he defines simply as ‘the absolute spirituality [Geistigkeit] of the divine omnipotence’.28 By this attribute, Schleiermacher intends to highlight the fact that the divine causality is not merely a mechanistic ‘principle’ directing the motion of the finite realm but is instead a ‘living’ force. This follows from the feeling of absolute dependence, Schleiermacher explains, ‘for a lifeless and blind necessity would not really be something with which we could stand in relation’.29 In other words, if God were not a genuinely active force affecting the Naturzusammenhang from without, but rather a force within the world – what Schleiermacher calls a ‘dead’ force – then all causality would ultimately be reducible to finite causality, a thought which obviously contradicts the feeling of absolute dependence. By contrast, Schleiermacher insists, the divine causality is ‘fully active’ and hence completely removed from the reciprocity of the natural order. In classical terms, then, we might say that God’s knowledge is creative rather than perceptive.30 As Schleiermacher argues, ‘there are no objects of observation for [God] other than those which exist through His will’31 – by which is meant precisely the divine omnipotence as perfectly expressed in its consequent: the world. Hence, he concludes, ‘God knows all that is; and all that God knows is, and these two are not twofold but single; for His knowledge and His almighty will are one and the same.’32 If omnipotence and omniscience are ultimately the same, then, why posit the latter in the first place? As John Thiel explains, this likely has to do with Schleiermacher’s context: ‘In the intellectual climate of Schleiermacher’s day, such a stringent parallel between the divine and finite causalities could easily lead to the understanding of omnipotence as a blind or mechanistic necessity.’33 Similarly, Friedrich Beißer observes, the reduction of divine action to fatalism ultimately leads to the conclusion that ‘God is dead’, as seen in the philosophy of the early Fichte and later, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche.34 For this reason, Schleiermacher is zealous to clarify that the ‘equality of scope’ between divine and finite causality does not entail simple equality. God is not, in other words, merely the ‘principle’ of finite causality; rather, he is himself absolute causality – a genuine, extramundane

28. CF, 219 (§ 55); CG2, 335 (§ 55). 29. CF, 219 (§ 55.1). 30. Similarly, Thomas Aquinas argues, ‘[I]t is manifest that God causes things by His intellect, since His being is His act of understanding; and hence His knowledge must be the cause of things, in so far as His will is joined to it.’ ST Ia, q.14, a.8. 31. CF, 220 (§ 55.1). 32. CF, 221 (§ 55.1). 33. John E. Thiel, God and World in Schleiermacher’s Dialektik and Glaubenslehre: Criticism and the Methodology of Dogmatics (Bern: Peter Lang, 1981), 209. 34. Friedrich Beißer, Schleiermachers Lehre von Gott dargestellt nach seinen Reden und seiner Glaubenslehre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 162.

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force which is fully active with respect to that which it causes, namely, the world. For Schleiermacher, this is what the concept of omniscience attempts to express. As should now be evident, Schleiermacher’s construal of the ‘original’ attributes bears out his claim that divine attributes in general do not correspond to real distinctions in the divine causality; rather, as Ebeling suggests, they are perhaps best viewed as ‘modalities of divine causality’ with respect to the world.35 To the extent that God is considered absolutely distinct from the flux of worldly interactions, he is known as eternal and omnipresent; to the extent that God’s ‘nature’ is fully expressed in the receptivity of the world towards which he is active, he is omnipotent and omniscient. In other words, for Schleiermacher, God is both ‘absolutely inward’ (i.e., fully active in himself) as well as ‘absolutely living’ (i.e., fully active with respect to the world).36 This duality is fundamental for Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God, and as such, it is carried through to the second part of the Glaubenslehre as an implicit organizational substructure. At this point, it is worth mentioning a particular interpretive issue concerning the status of the ‘original’ attributes of Part I. As mentioned above, Schleiermacher considered reversing the two parts of the Glaubenslehre in order to avoid giving the impression that the first section was somehow insufficiently Christian. Nevertheless, he explains to Friedrich Lücke, Part I, although containing decidedly theological material, was actually conceived to be ‘only a portal and entrance hall’ to the second part. Thus, ‘the propositions there … could be no more than outlines that would be filled in with their true content from the ensuing discussion [i.e., Part II].’37 Indeed, he continues, An omnipotence, the aim and motive force of which I do not know, an omniscience, the structure and value of its contents I do not know, and an omnipresence of which I do not know what it emits from itself and attracts to itself, are merely vague and barely living ideas. It is quite different when omnipotence makes itself manifest in the consciousness of the new spiritual creation, omnipresence in the activity of the divine spirit, and omniscience in the consciousness of divine grace and favor.38

These comments have been taken by some to mean that the attributes contained in Part I are actually no more than completely indeterminate forms, deduced ultimately on the grounds of a non-specific religious feeling, and then, so to 35. Ebeling, ‘Schleiermacher’s Doctrine of the Divine Attributes’, 140. 36. ‘And this pair, inwardness and vitality, would be just as exhaustive a mode of presentation, and one perhaps even more secure against all admixture of alien elements.’ CF, 203 (§ 51.2). For a creative rendering of this dialectic in terms of God’s ‘hiddenness’ (inwardness) and ‘revealedness’ (vitality), see Robert R. Williams, Schleiermacher the Theologian: The Construction of the Doctrine of God (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1978), 83–4. 37. Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre, 57. 38. Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre, 57.

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speak, ‘supplemented’ by the specifically ‘Christian’ material in Part II. In this vein, Bruce McCormack, for instance, suggests that the attributes in Part I are ‘ideal in nature, being the consequence of a transcendental move that takes as its starting point the religious consciousness in its “pure” form, abstracted not only from the specifically Christian religious consciousness but from every actual moment of religious experience’.39 In one sense, of course, this observation is correct: the attributes in Part I are ‘abstracted’ from Christian experience – but certainly not in the sense of being ‘undetermined’ by it, as McCormack seems to think. Indeed, as we have observed time and again in the course of our study, for Schleiermacher, the transcendental aspect of reality is always dialectically related to ‘actual’ events. Again, reality stands in between two poles – unity and multiplicity, God and world – as the terminus ad quem and terminus a quo of our actual experience. In the case of the Glaubenslehre, the experience under consideration is that of being redeemed by Christ, and the two poles which render this experience coherent are God and the system of finite causality. Accordingly, the divine attributes which are related specifically to the ‘reflective self-consciousness’ (Part II) are no more ‘real’ than those related to the ‘immediate self-consciousness’ (Part I), since the grounds for speaking of both are identical: namely, the experience of Christian redemption. This seems fairly self-evident, given that Schleiermacher presents the original attributes as presupposed by Christian experience, and the derived attributes as determined by Christian experience. Hence, both sets of attributes are, in a sense, ‘abstracted’ from reality – but only for the sake of specifying in both cases the necessary conditions of the actual phenomenon of Christian piety. In the above quote, then, Schleiermacher is not saying that his doctrine of divine omnipotence as it appears in Part I actually narrates a universal property ‘the aim and motive force of which [he] does not know’. Rather, he is saying that, if this omnipotence were not grounded in a specifically Christian religious affection, then, it would be deemed a-theological and hence belong more properly to the Einleitung than the dogmatics. As it stands, however, this is not the case. Part I is just as ‘specifically Christian’ as Part II, yet in a different way. Similarly, and in accord with Schleiermacher’s general approach to scientific topics, Part II requires Part I just as much as Part I requires Part II – they are, again, mutually definitive.40 Hence, Schleiermacher concludes, ‘whatever additional divine attributes may 39. Bruce L. McCormack, ‘Not a Possible God but the God Who Is: Observations on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Doctrine of God’, in The Reality of Faith in Theology: Studies on Karl Barth; Princeton-Kampen Consultation 2005, ed. Bruce McCormack and Gerrit Neven (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 122. 40. On this point, Edwin Chr. van Driel correctly observes, ‘In the Christian life, the experience of redemption and the experience of absolute dependence go hand in hand. We cannot have one without the other. There is no general God-consciousness that is not bound up with a relation with Christ.’ Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10–11.

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emerge later, those described here will always have to be thought of as inhering in the others; so that an activity which does not admit of being conceived under the form of eternal omnipotence ought not to be posited as divine’.41 Accordingly, McCormack’s assertion that Schleiermacher’s account of, for instance, divine love and wisdom is in some sense determined by his account of God as absolute causality in Part I actually presents no cause for concern. The fact that this is the case does not entail that Schleiermacher’s God is ultimately ‘abstract’; it just means that Schleiermacher’s God is the ground both of the immediate and the reflective self-consciousness. With these clarifications in mind, then, we turn to consider two particular ‘derived’ attributes located in Part II – love and wisdom.

The ‘derived’ attributes As explained above, the ‘derived’ attributes stem directly from the Christian experience of redemption. It is beyond the scope of this study to render a full account of Schleiermacher’s doctrine of redemption but suffice it to say: for Schleiermacher, Christian redemption, understood as the experience of transitioning from the state of having one’s God-consciousness predominantly inhibited (i.e., sin) to the state of living one’s life more fully in light of one’s God-consciousness (i.e., grace), is a progression which is stimulated through contact with that particular community (the Christian Church) which traces its experience of God to the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the only human being to have ever lived his life fully in harmony with God (i.e., sinlessly).42 Accordingly, Schleiermacher identifies particular attributes which correspond to both sides of the ‘antithesis’ (Gegensatz) of Christian experience: sin and grace. With respect to the experience of ‘sin’, Schleiermacher discerns the attributes of holiness and justice; with respect to ‘grace’, he discerns the attributes of love and wisdom. We turn first to the attributes associated with the consciousness of sin.

41. CF, 232 (§ 56, postscript). 42. A helpful summary (and critique) of this account can be found in Walter E. Wyman, Jr., ‘Sin and redemption’, in The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, ed. Jacqueline Mariña (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 129–50. Schleiermacher’s own general summary of sin and grace can be found in the proposition to § 63: ‘While in general the manner in which the God-consciousness forms itself in and with the stimulated self-consciousness can be traced only to the action of the individual, the distinctive feature of Christian piety consists in the fact that whatever turning from God [Abwendung von Gott] there is in the phases of our own experience, we are conscious of it as an action originating in ourselves, which we call sin; but whatever communion with God there is, we are conscious of it as resting upon a communication from the Redeemer, which we call grace.’ CF, 262, revised translation (§ 63); CG2, 394–5 (§ 63).

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Holiness and justice The question which the attributes related to the consciousness of sin attempts to answer is this: how is the divine causality related to the individual act of ‘turning from God’ as an event taking place in the world? In response, Schleiermacher does not shrink from the typically avoided conclusion: if God is the world’s absolute cause, then he must, in a sense, also be the ‘author’ of sin.43 And yet, for Schleiermacher, God is not just the author of sin. Indeed, the more accurate description would be that God is the author of sin as the presupposition of redemption.44 As van Driel observes, for Schleiermacher, ‘Redemption is the goal of the divine causality. Sin is not; it is only a means.’45 Like the attributes in Part I, then, those in Part II ought to be read as mutually qualifying; we cannot understand the ‘sin’ attributes without reference to the ‘grace’ attributes, and vice versa.46 Accordingly, divine holiness is conceived as a way of ascribing moral innocence to God in light of God’s causal relation to sin. Although absolute causality is comprehensively related to the world, Schleiermacher explains, it never actually manifests itself in our conscience as a temptation to sin, but only in the form of moral demands which ‘[assert] themselves in our self-consciousness in such a way that any deviation of our conduct from them is apprehended as a hindrance of life, and therefore as sin’.47 In this way, God is not implicated as ‘evil’ on account of his relationship to sin, but only in terms of his relation to the conditions which make sin a possibility. Indeed, much like the Apostle Paul views the law as ‘good’ (Romans 7:7), Schleiermacher considers God’s holiness to be ‘good’, even as it presents the occasion for sin: Thus the holiness of God is the divine causality that legislates in the corporate life of man, and since the law, especially as traced to its inward source, is always for us absolutely holy, and the whole historical process is ordained by this divine causality, no exception can well be taken to our regarding that causality as a distinctive divine attribute, or to our designating it exclusively by the name ‘holiness’.48

43. CF, 325 (§ 79). 44. ‘…as we never have a consciousness of grace without a consciousness of sin, we must also assert that the existence of sin alongside of grace is ordained for us by God.’ CF, 325 (§ 80). 45. van Driel, Incarnation Anyway, 16. 46. ‘The conception of the divine attributes to be formulated here will … be posited only on the assumption of their being interwoven with those that come to us from an examination of the consciousness of grace.’ CF, 326 (§ 79.2). 47. CF, 341 (§ 83). 48. CF, 344 (§83.2).

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If holiness considers divine causality with respect to ‘actual sins’, then God’s ‘justice’ concerns his relationship to the fruit of sin, namely, ‘evil’.49 Essentially, divine justice refers to the way that absolute causality ‘rewards’ and ‘punishes’ sin by ordaining the world in such a way that, as a whole, sin begets circumstances which in turn present the opportunity for further sin. Here again, however, Schleiermacher is clear that this modality of the divine causality is only coherent in relation to redemption. In particular, the fact that God ordains ‘evil’ in the world illuminates our need for grace. Indeed, Schleiermacher says, ‘this divine causality reveal[s] itself in such a world-order that the hindrances to life that issue from sin cannot be averted or removed by any circumstance of the external world, however favourable’.50 Consequently, we are able to view the redemption we receive through the mediation of Christ as completely non-merit-based.51 In this way, therefore, holiness and justice together comprise absolute causality’s relationship with that human state of consciousness which recognizes a need for God’s grace. Love and wisdom Before we present Schleiermacher’s account of divine love, it is worth reminding ourselves again what exactly Schleiermacher believes he is doing in treating the divine attributes (and indeed, doctrine in general). For Schleiermacher, if doctrines are essentially ‘accounts of the religious affections set forth in speech’,52 then the primary question posed by the divine attributes is: why do Christians say certain things about God? Or, more precisely: in what ways are Christian statements about God related to the God-consciousness?53 In some cases, therefore, Schleiermacher will simply deny that a particular expression has a suitably direct relationship to Christian consciousness so as to warrant dogmatic specification (as in, e.g., statements about the ‘mercy’ of God54). The attributes that Schleiermacher does treat, then, are selected because he believes they have a demonstrably proximate connection to Christianity’s ‘essence’. The final two attributes – love and wisdom – are thus understood to be dogmatically warranted in just this way. The case of love, however, presents a unique question, since ‘love’ is the only attribute which Christian speech actually equates with God: God is love. Hence, the burden of

49. CF, 345 (§ 84): ‘The justice of God is that divine causality through which in the state of universal sinfulness there is ordained a connexion between evil and actual sin.’ 50. CF, 348 (§ 84.2). 51. CF, 346 (§ 84.1). 52. CF, 76 (§ 15). 53. In other words, ‘what Christians say’ is understood as the presenting occasion for undertaking work in the doctrine of God: ‘The second dogmatic form, which treats the divine attributes, is based proximately on the poetical and theoretical expressions which occur in hymns and sermons.’ CF, 140 (§ 35.2). 54. CF 353–4 (§ 85).

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Schleiermacher’s interpretation is not only to explain how love is a divine attribute but specifically how love, amongst all the attributes, is somehow comprehensively definitive for God as such. Schleiermacher begins his discussion by asserting, first, that, according to Christian self-consciousness, the ultimate purpose of worldly history is redemption: The Christian faith that all things were created for the Redeemer [Colossians 1:16] implies … that by creation all things (whether as prepared for or as overruled) were disposed with a view to the revelation of God in the flesh, and so as to secure the completest possible impartation thereof to the whole of human nature, and thus to form the kingdom of God.55

In other words, for Schleiermacher, history is going somewhere; the world has a telos. Moreover, because God is related to the world as its ultimate cause, it follows that not just the existence of the world but also its directionality is owed specifically to the divine causality. In this sense, Schleiermacher can speak of a divine ‘motive’ and ‘intent’ for the world as a feature of the Christian consciousness of God – and divine ‘love’ is precisely that attribute which speaks to this particular mode of consciousness. What makes love unique amongst the attributes, however, is the fact that it is the only one which expresses comprehensively both aspects of the God-consciousness: the consciousness that God is ‘equal in scope’ to the world (since God’s plan of redemption is universally realized56) and the consciousness that God is ‘different in kind’ from the world (since God’s intention is understood as his purely active self-communication). Divine wisdom, then, is understood simply as an aspect of the divine love; it is ‘the art … of realizing the divine love perfectly’.57 Given the interests of our thesis, we will not dwell too long on the nature of the divine wisdom, as it is ultimately just another way of saying ‘love’, now with an eye to the ‘harmonious’ way in which the particulars of the world’s existence add up to the telos of redemption.58 We must, however, enquire further into Schleiermacher’s definition of divine love. In particular, we must determine precisely what Schleiermacher means when he says that ‘love alone and no other attribute can be equated … with God’.59 Indeed, at first glance, this statement seems to contradict Schleiermacher’s earlier claim that in speaking of God, we are not referring to the 55. CF 723 (§ 164.1). 56. Schleiermacher rejects the distinctions between ‘general’ and ‘special’ providence: ‘In the divine causality there is no division or opposition anywhere, nor can we regard the government of the world as other than a unity, directed towards a single goal.’ CF, 725 (§ 164.3). 57. CF, 727 (§ 165.1). 58. ‘The divine wisdom is the principle which orders and determines the world for divine self-imparting which is evinced in redemption.’ CF, 732 (§ 168). 59. CF, 730, emphasis added (§ 167.1).

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divine nature as such, but only to a particular aspect of human consciousness. Whatever God ‘is’, then, this is not available in Christian experience – only what God is doing. As Jay Richards explains, ‘Strictly speaking, none of the divine attributes … have any descriptive quality with respect to the divine nature, and they should not be thought to refer to God.’ Rather, ‘[t]hey serve only as “pointers” to the “Whence” of the feeling of absolute dependence, in response to the diverse ways in which we interpret the excitations of the religious self-consciousness by the divine causality’.60 Consequently, what could Schleiermacher possibly mean when he says that ‘Love and wisdom alone … can claim to be not mere attributes but also expressions of the very essence of God’?61 Solving this puzzle requires taking note of two particular points: first, the definition of love, and second, the ‘problem’ of divine predication. With regard to the first point, we note that, for Schleiermacher, love, generally speaking, is defined as an act, specifically, the act of self-communication: ‘Love … is the impulse to unite self with neighbour and to will to be in neighbour.’62 Naturally, this definition reflects certain assumptions that were prevalent in Schleiermacher’s context.63 Nevertheless, consonant with his definition of dogmatics as ‘the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian Church at a given time’,64 Schleiermacher’s main concern is for an interpretation of Christian speech appropriate to his own period and location. Indeed, had he lived in a different era, one might just as well imagine him dismissing the concept of love as insufficiently communicative of the God-consciousness and thus not dogmatically helpful. Nevertheless, Schleiermacher believes that, in his own time and place, love communicates something which harmonizes quite helpfully with the Christian consciousness of God, and that is: God’s identity as the absolute causality directing the world towards a particular end. Given Schleiermacher’s definition of love, then, to say ‘God is love’ is to say ‘God is self-communication’, and given that the recipient of this self-communication is the world, one can say that God’s ‘essence’ is similarly manifest in this particular way. Again, we emphasize, for Schleiermacher, love is not an essential property predicated to a divine substance; rather, it is an essential act, the essential act which designates God as the ‘Whence’ of the feeling of absolute dependence. This brings us to our second point concerning the problem of divine predication. For all his divergence from the tradition, Schleiermacher conceives the difficulty in speaking of the divine attributes in fairly classical terms, that is, he is concerned

60. Jay Wesley Richards, ‘Schleiermacher’s Divine Attributes: Their Coherence and Reference’, Encounter 57, no. 2 (1996): 149. 61. CF, 731–2 (§ 167.2). 62. CF, 726 (§ 165.1). 63. On the notion of love in German Romanticism, see Irving Singer, The Nature of Love, vol. 2, Courtly and Romantic (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 376–411. 64. CF, 88 (§ 19), emphasis added.

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to explain how there can be a multiplicity of attributes given divine simplicity (understood in the Glaubenslehre not in terms of a simple substance, but of a simple activity). Here, we recall how he dealt with this question in § 50, that is, by positing that the attributes do not correspond to ‘real distinctions’ in God, but rather ‘something particular in the manner in which the feeling of absolute dependence is to be related to Him’.65 So, for instance, we can say that God ‘is’ omnipotent on the grounds that the God-consciousness presents itself to us in this way, even if, in truth, it is insufficiently comprehensive of absolute causality as a whole. In the case of love, however, all that the divine causality is is fully represented; God’s ‘absolute inwardness’ and ‘absolute vitality’ are alike comprehended in the notion of God’s love. Hence, with love, the ‘multiplicity’ problem dissipates, and thus, unlike the other attributes, we can say without qualification that God is love, as defined in Schleiermacher’s particular manner. As Richards points out, ‘With love, we are no longer speaking only of modifications of [the feeling of absolute dependence], but of the causality as causality’66 – since love as defined by Schleiermacher essentially designates a particular sort of causality. Love is, in other words, simply another way of saying ‘absolute causality’ – but now with reference not only to the existence of the world but also to its telos. Consequently, all the attributes ‘merge for us in the divine love’, and because ‘we have the sense of divine love directly in the consciousness of redemption, and as this is the basis on which all the rest of our God-consciousness is built up, it of course represents to us the essence of God’.

65. CF, 194 (§ 50). 66. Richards, ‘Schleiermacher’s Divine Attributes’, 165.

C O N C LU SIO N T O P A RT I

In Part I, we have observed that, for Schleiermacher, God and world are conceived as two poles of a mutually definitive relationship. This relationship is definitive, not determinative, since, technically speaking, it is only God who conditions the world and the world which receives its particular shape from God. Nevertheless, as Schleiermacher emphasizes throughout the three major works we have studied, God and world are correlata – there is no world without God, and no God without world – for both are needed to account for the basic faculty which grants human beings access to reality: self-consciousness. In the Glaubenslehre, we saw, further, how God can also be conceived as the ‘Whence’ of the feeling of absolute dependence, and with respect to the particularly Christian consciousness, the ‘Whence’ of the experience of redemption through the mediation of Jesus of Nazareth. We then explained how, for Schleiermacher, the ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ poles which make up Christian experience – the feeling of absolute dependence and the feeling of redemption – are together accounted for on the basis of a consciousness of God as the ‘absolute causality’ determining the world in every way. To the extent that our consciousness takes on multiple modalities, so may we also posit various ‘attributes’ with respect to the divine causality which correspond to the different facets of the relationship between God and the world. And finally, we saw how the comprehensive category for expressing the core feature of the divine causality is ‘love’, defined as divine self-communication. For Schleiermacher, then, ‘love’ can uniquely refer to God because only love expresses fully the dialectical fact that God is both ‘equal in scope’ and yet ‘different in kind’ to/from the world. God is love insofar as God is the absolute causality grounding the world in both its existence and telos – a fact which Schleiermacher believes is immediately justifiable on the grounds of Christian religious experience.

Part II K ARL B ARTH A ND THE P ERSONAL G OD OF L OVE

I N T R O DU C T IO N T O P A RT I I

Our aim in Part II is to expound Karl Barth’s understanding of the doctrine of God in order to render an interpretation of ‘God is love’ in his theology. In many ways, Barth is a very different kind of theologian from Friedrich Schleiermacher, and this has largely to do with the fact that he is less concerned with explaining doctrines and more with putting the doctrines themselves to work. Consequently, our approach to Barth’s texts will be decidedly different from that which we employed vis-à-vis Schleiermacher. In particular, it will be less pressing to establish, as we did with Schleiermacher, the philosophical basis of Barth’s thought. This is not, of course, to suggest that Barth’s theology is a-philosophical – indeed, philosophical matters are laced throughout his writings.1 It is rather to assume that the heart of Barth’s thought lies very specifically in his attempt to follow, as closely as possible, what he believes to be the content of the Christian faith. For this reason, our treatment will focus exclusively on Barth’s magnum opus, the Church Dogmatics, as a sufficient representation of his mature understanding of doctrine. The sheer volume of Barth’s published output makes it extremely difficult to render a comprehensive judgement on ‘what Barth thought’, even on a given topic. Hence, as mentioned above, we will be attending particularly to the Church Dogmatics in our own study. Our treatment will proceed in the following manner. Chapter 5, ‘Knowing God’, will begin with a brief introduction to Barth’s thoughts on theological method, continue with a brief consideration of his doctrine of the Trinity, and, finally, will conclude with a discussion of the way in which God makes himself known within the sphere of human perception. Chapter 6, ‘God as the One who Loves in Freedom’, consists essentially of a close engagement with § 28 from the first part volume of Church Dogmatics II: The Doctrine of God. Here, we will follow Barth’s own order of exposition, noting in particular the coherence of the paragraph with the ‘single subject’ trinitarianism espoused in the first volume of the CD. In Chapter 7, we will consider ‘The Christological Shape of the Divine Identity’, noting the coordination of Barth’s doctrine of God with two concrete moments in the life of Jesus Christ: election and the cross. 1. For a recent discussion on the relationship between Barth and philosophy, based commendably on Barth’s own comments on the matter, see Kenneth Oakes, Karl Barth on Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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By way of anticipation, our thesis will be as follows: for Barth, divine love is best considered under the rubric of God’s eminently personal being. In this sense, ‘God is love’ speaks to the particular sort of way that God lives his life, that is, in the full freedom of self-possession and self-affirmation. To express this in terms of what we have already encountered: by understanding the revelation of God in terms of self-revelation (a thought underwritten by a certain kind of Christology), Barth effectively turns the insights of modern liberal Protestantism back towards classical trinitarianism, cleaving to modernity’s concerns with history and epistemology, and yet vigorously reintroducing the central claim of traditional Christianity, namely, that God was in Christ.

5 K N OW I N G G O D

In this first chapter of Part II, we present Barth’s initial thoughts concerning the form in which God makes himself known to us, first as the Word, second as the Lord (i.e., as triune), and third in his secondary objectivity. Essentially, these thoughts will set the stage for Barth’s more substantial treatment of the doctrine of God, addressed in Chapter 6, and ultimately his argument concerning the Christological shape of the divine identity, addressed in Chapter 7. Of particular concern are Barth’s thoughts on the Holy Trinity, which, although covered briefly in this section, remain constant through to Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation in CD IV. We begin, then, with a few brief comments concerning Barth’s theological method as discussed in CD I/1.

Theological method An important key to understanding Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics lies in the recognition that his entire project rests on an article of faith, namely, the belief that there is a church. For Barth, the church is neither a ‘voluntary association’ of people who discover amongst themselves a shared form of piety (as Schleiermacher would have it) nor a steward of grace (as Barth’s understanding of Roman Catholicism suggests). Rather, the church is simply the specific and concrete place where, in virtue of the divine promise, the Word of God happens. As such, the ‘being of the Church’ – that is, the justification for its identity as that community which is addressed by the Word of God – is strictly Jesus Christ, who is ‘God in His gracious revealing and reconciling address to man’.1 For this reason, human speech about God is, for Barth, not the bubbling up of an internally seated piety into linguistic expression but properly a word of witness to the free and loving divine action which both precedes and superintends all testimony concerning it. Church speech, or God-talk, therefore, is always already a species of ‘confession’, since all dogmatic topics are ultimately an enquiry into a singular reality, accessible only by faith, namely, the reality that God speaks. Hence, Barth insists, ‘The Church confesses God as it talks about God’.2 1. CD I/1, 4. 2. CD I/1, 3, emphasis added.

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As confession, therefore, theology must always be considered a human word which is spoken in response to God’s Word. Indeed, Barth says, theology is ‘no more than human “talk about God,”’ which, consequently, ‘stands under the judgment that begins at the house of God and lives by the promise given to the Church’.3 Thus, theology can never be considered the Word of God in the modality of human possession. This, according to Barth, is the error of Roman Catholicism: because the Word of God is believed to have taken up permanent residence in the church’s midst, ‘grace here becomes nature’, that is, ‘the being of the Church, Jesus Christ, is no longer the free Lord of its existence’ wherever ‘the personal act of divine address becomes a constantly available relationship’.4 On the contrary, Barth says, dogmatics is a necessary work precisely because this relationship is not a given. Indeed, he writes, the ‘primary function [of dogmatics] consists in inviting and guiding the Church … to listen afresh to the Word of God’.5 The church, therefore, is not a receptacle into which God places his Word for human safekeeping; rather, it is a community whose responsibility is fundamentally to listen.6 Hence, ‘Dogmatics must always be undertaken as an act of penitence and obedience’,7 since its necessity arises only as the church attempts to do that which it cannot do in its own strength, namely, speak of God.8 It is, in other words, the vulnerability of church speech as human speech which gives rise to the dogmatic task.9 Dogmatic theology, therefore, is best understood as the church’s critical enquiry into that which establishes her identity – the Word of God – for the sake of testing whether or not her speech and action correspond to that which has been spoken to her. In the work of theology, the church ‘puts to itself the question of truth, i.e., it measures its action, its talk about God, against its being as the Church’.10 Consequently, the idea of theology as ‘science’ takes on a new and unique meaning (particularly vis-à-vis the treatment of this theme in the modern period). According to Barth, theology is distinguished from all other

3. CD I/1, 4. 4. CD I/1, 40, 41. 5. CD I/2, 797. 6. Barth claims that the Church’s ‘fundamental character’ is as a ‘hearing Church’. CD I/2, 797. 7. CD I/1, 22. 8. John Webster summarizes: ‘Because there is no automatic connection between divine revelation and human speech, proclamation always faces the question of its own authenticity: Is it responsible to its own commission? Dogmatics attempts an answer.’ John Webster, Barth, 2nd edn (London: Continuum, 2004), 55. 9. ‘Dogmatics is required because proclamation is a fallible human work.’ CD I/1, 82. 10. CD I/1, 4. Elsewhere: ‘[Theology’s] task, not in fact discharged to other sciences, is that of the criticism and correction of talk about God according to the criterion of the Church’s own principle.’ CD I/1, 6.

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sciences in that it possesses a unique accountability. Whereas other sciences relate to one another as differing perspectives on a singular reality, theology attends to an object which is utterly distinguished from all other candidates for human knowledge. In other words, theology does not justify its existence on the grounds that it attends to a particular aspect of the world – an aspect to which its method is especially adapted. On the contrary, Barth argues, ‘[theology] cannot think of itself as a link in an ordered cosmos, but only as a stop-gap [Lückenbüßer] in a disordered cosmos’.11 Theology occupies a space unto itself precisely because its object is fundamentally different from all others.12 Accordingly, its accountability is completely unlike that of the other sciences. Therefore, ‘Theology has no other recourse for proving its “scientific character” than to demonstrate what it precisely understands by “scientific” through actual attendance to the particular subject matter of its enquiry.’13 Here, the question naturally arises as to whether it is possible for theology to enter into dialogue with other sciences at all, particularly if the usual grounds for interdisciplinarity – the oneness of reality – are cut off by the supposed uniqueness of theology’s object. But on this point, it is important to note that it is not Barth’s concern simply to protect the independent integrity of theology as a discipline. Indeed, he writes, ‘Theology does not in fact possess special keys to special doors. Nor does it control a basis of knowledge which might not find actualisation in other sciences. Nor does it know an object of enquiry necessarily concealed from other sciences.’14 Rather than staking out a claim all to herself, the theologian’s responsibility is to ensure that the church is at all times in its speech and action faithful to Jesus Christ. Consequently, any sciences which are willing to deploy their unique methodological perspectives in service to this task are, in theory, welcome to do so. It is only due to the over-ambition of the other sciences, along with the church’s lamentable tendency to cede its heart to alien concerns, that dogmatics as a special faculty is warranted.15 To put it another way, the zeal of 11. CD I/1, 10; KD I/1, 8. 12. Notwithstanding the fact that God does, Barth is clear, present himself to us as an object – a theme which we will discuss below. 13. KD I/1, 9: ‘Die Theologie hat keine andere Möglichkeit, ihre “Wissenschaftlichkeit” zu erweisen, als die, in der faktisch stattfindenden, durch ihren Gegestand bestimmenten Arbeit an ihrer Erkenntnisaufgabe zu zeigen, was nun eben sie unter “Wissenschaftlichkeit” versteht.’ 14. CD I/1, 5. 15. ‘All sciences might ultimately be theology…. The separate existence of theology signifies the emergency measure on which the Church has had to resolve in view of the actual refusal of the other sciences’ to assume the task of ‘the criticism and correction of talk about God according to the criterion of the Church’s own principle’. CD I/1, 6, 7. For an exposition of this theme, including an interpretation of Barth’s thoughts on the possibility of a philosophia christiana, see Kenneth Oakes, Karl Barth on Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 162–8.

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the dogmatic theologian is not for theology as such but more particularly for the Word of God. As Christoph Schwöbel comments, the ‘independence’ of theology with respect to the principles of other sciences ‘is precisely not autonomy as a capacity for self-legislation, but faithfulness to its proper object of inquiry – the true subject-matter of theology, the triune God’.16 Because the church’s speech about God is predicated on God’s Word to the church, the theologian may attend to this speech with two expectations. First, she is obliged to expect that God’s Word is truly reflected therein, since, for Barth, to say ‘church’ is the same thing as saying ‘God has spoken’. But second, insofar as the church’s speech is genuinely human, the theologian must also expect a dissonance between the church’s commission to speak the Word of God and her execution of this task. Theology therefore aids the church by subjecting church proclamation to criticism according to the Word of God. In this way, Barth says, church proclamation may be rightly considered the ‘material’ (der Stoff) of dogmatics (in the sense that it presents the occasion and concern for dogmatic work). To be clear, however, for Barth, human talk about God becomes a proclamation of his Word only in grace and thus only terms of an event. ‘If the being of the Church, Jesus Christ, as the acting person of God, sanctifies the being of man in the visible sphere of human occurrence as being in the Church, then He also sanctifies its talk as talk about God taking place in the Church.’17 Theology itself is thus not an instance of proclamation, rather ‘Theology reflects upon proclamation’, particularly as ‘science, instruction and investigation’.18 When is church speech proclamation? Only ‘when it is directed to men with the definitive claim and expectation that it has to declare the Word of God to them’.19 In other words, church speech speaks the Word of God only at those times when it has been commanded to do so. The church is therefore not ‘given’ the Word of God but rather is only commissioned to speak that Word. When the church comes to speak of the ‘essence’ of God, therefore, it is especially important to recall this dynamic of gracious commissioning. As Barth puts it, ‘What God and His Word are, we can never establish by looking back and therewith by anticipating.’20 Rather, he says, ‘In this divine telling there is an encounter and fellowship between His nature and man but not an assuming of God’s nature into man’s knowing, only a fresh divine telling.’21 Practically speaking, this means that when theologians undertake work in the doctrine of God, they are not, for instance, ‘working with a set of data’ which can then be manipulated into a systematic statement – properly speaking, there are no data, because the Word of 16. Christoph Schwöbel, ‘Theology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 34, emphasis added. 17. CD I/1, 49. 18. CD I/1, 51. 19. CD I/1, 51. 20. CD I/1, 132. 21. CD I/1, 132.

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God is something which, for Barth, strictly happens. Rather, in speaking of God, we are constantly directed to fix our attention on the place where God actually speaks. This is why, as many have observed, Barth’s theological prose often takes a circular style – ‘constantly circling around his subject, in order to follow it in the dynamics which inheres in it’.22 If the Word of God is never something which can be possessed, but only heard and obeyed, this means that every point of doctrine is uniquely faced with the question of truth in a new way. In this sense, the church never actually overcomes the ‘How’ question (i.e., how may I say this?) to arrive at the ‘What’ question (i.e., what is God?), because the gracious nature of revelation means that God is always hidden even in his self-disclosure. Consequently, our claims about the nature of God must be necessarily indirect: [W]e can certainly say what God’s Word is, but we must say it indirectly. We must remember the forms in which it is real for us and learn from these form how it is. This How is the attainable human reflection of the unattainable divine What.23

This claim gestures towards a distinction that Barth makes later in his doctrine of God, namely, the distinction between God’s ‘secondary’ and ‘primary’ objectivity. Yet before we consider this distinction directly, it is necessary first to acquaint ourselves with what Barth claims to be the material principle of the knowledge of God, namely, the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Trinity As is well known, the doctrine of the Trinity is the first major dogmatic locus to be treated in the Church Dogmatics – an expositional decision which, as Fred Sanders points out, effectively ‘put the Trinity back on the agenda of selfconsciously modern theology’.24 Nevertheless, as bold as this decision was in Barth’s proximate context, the contours of Barth’s trinitarianism actually represent a fairly traditional species of Augustinianism: Barth conceives of God as a single subject who is internally differentiated by a certain set of relations. A key element in our interpretation of Barth, therefore, will be to demonstrate how this basic model perdures throughout his corpus, particularly concerning his understanding of divine love. Yet as Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity itself (i.e., without reference to genetic, developmental, or critical matters) is not typically debated, we need 22. Eberhard Busch, The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 39. 23. CD I/1, 132. 24. Fred Sanders, ‘The Trinity’, in Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 41.

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not dwell too long on this material. Instead, our present goal will be to set out the essential features of the doctrine in order to establish a reference point for more consequential interpretive decisions later on. Similarly, we will postpone assessing Barth’s exposition of the Spirit as the ‘love’ obtaining between Father and Son until the conclusion of this chapter, as it will best support our argument retrospectively rather than fundamentally. Barth begins his treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity with a brief apologia for placing it at the head of dogmatics. His reasoning is essentially as follows: if the church is truly called to speak on the grounds of hearing a particular Word, then three questions are immediately raised: (1) Who reveals this Word? (2) What is its content?, and (3) How is it that this Word is heard? The answer to all of these questions, Barth suggests, is identical; it is, in all three cases, God – and yet, God in three ways.25 This, for Barth, is the ‘root’ of the doctrine of the Trinity, and as such, it is the reason why the doctrine stands first in his order of exposition. Indeed, he says, if the doctrine of the Trinity were to be postponed – that is, if ‘the question [of] who God is … is held in reserve’ – then a door is opened to ‘irrelevant speculation’ at the very point where the greatest specificity is required.26 For Barth, trinitarian reflection begins with the basic affirmation that God speaks: ‘Revelation is Dei loquentis persona’.27 The fact that divine speech comes to humanity autonomously (i.e., it ‘has its reality and truth wholly and in every respect – ontically and noetically – within itself ’28) is captured by the summary statement: ‘God reveals Himself as the Lord.’29 What this means is that at no point in his communicative encounter with humanity does God surrender his essential selfpossession – a feature of God’s life which is implied by the character of revelation as an act of royal authority. In the words of the later Barth, ‘God gives Himself, but He does not give Himself away.’30 This entails that the three moments involved in the event of revelation (speaking, speech, and hearing) disclose an immanent differentiation within Godself – a differentiation which is nonetheless determined by the unity of revelation as a ‘self-contained novum’.31 Hence, ‘Generally and provisionally we mean by the doctrine of the Trinity the proposition that He whom the Christian Church calls God and proclaims as God, the God who has 25. ‘The biblical witness to God’s revelation sets us face to face with the possibility of interpreting the one statement that “God reveals Himself as the Lord” three times in different senses.’ CD I/1, 376. 26. CD I/1, 301. 27. CD I/1, 304. 28. CD I/1, 305. 29. CD I/1, 306. 30. CD IV/1, 185. Cf.: ‘God gives Himself entirely to man in His revelation, but not in such a way as to make Himself man’s prisoner. He remains free in His working, in giving Himself.’ CD I/1, 371. 31. CD I/1, 306.

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revealed Himself according to the witness of Scripture, is the same in unimpaired unity and yet also the same thrice in different ways in unimpaired distinction.’32 Barth understands this threefold form of revelation to be no less than the ‘selfinterpretation’ of God.33 It is self-interpretation because the form of revelation corresponds to the form in which God exists in himself. For Barth, then, a doctrine of the Trinity which is rooted in revelation does not merely narrate the way in which human beings perceive God but properly God in his immanent identity. For this reason, he writes, ‘We arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity by no other way than that of an analysis of the concept of revelation.’34 Barth’s decision to address the doctrine of the Trinity through the analysis of a ‘concept’ was controversial enough to warrant a small print excursus responding to critics of this move as it was initially published in his Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf.35 Accordingly, he is quick to point out that the particular concept he analyses – ‘God speaks’ – is not an abstract thought; Barth does not, in other words, derive the doctrine of the Trinity a priori via some sort of ‘grammatical proof ’.36 Rather, the concept of revelation follows precisely the form of its actual occurrence, and this form is identical to the person of Jesus Christ, the one whom Scripture calls explicitly the Word of God. Hence, as Eberhard Jüngel points out, ‘Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity is already christologically grounded – not only through the assertion that revelation is the root of the doctrine of the Trinity, but further and most especially through beginning with the event of God’s manifestation within the three distinct moments of the concept of revelation.’37 The fact that Jesus Christ is fully God, then, dissolves for Barth the supposed distinction between the form and content of revelation: ‘No matter who or what else the self-revealing God may be, it is beyond dispute that in His revelation according to the biblical witness He takes form, and this taking form is His selfunveiling.’38 And yet, even as God unveils himself in Jesus of Nazareth, the freedom

32. CD I/1, 307. 33. CD I/1, 311. 34. CD I/1, 312. 35. CD I/1, 296–7. Die christliche Dogmatik (1927) was the predecessor to CD I/1 and reflected Barth’s Münster dogmatics lectures. 36. CD I/1, 296. 37. Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase, trans. John Webster (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 30. Cf. Barth: ‘…the doctrine of the Trinity, when considered historically in its origin and development, is not equally interested in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Here too the theme is primarily the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, the deity of Christ.’ CD I/1, 315. This is why Barth begins §§ 10–12 (which treat the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively) alike with an explicit appeal to the New Testament confession, ‘Jesus is Lord.’ See CD I/1, 384, 399, 448. 38. CD I/1, 316.

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with which he does so means that he also veils himself in one and the same act. God’s ability to retain himself even in the act of self-giving highlights therefore the principle underlying the giving of the Word, and this principle is precisely God’s identity as Father: ‘God the Father is God who always, even in taking form in the Son, does not take form, God as the free ground and the free power of His being God the Son.’39 Nonetheless, an exposition of the event of revelation is not exhausted solely with reference to its origin and form. Because revelation terminates sovereignly (and thus inevitably) with a real impartation of the Word of God within the sphere of human knowledge (i.e., ‘history’), God’s identity is specified in yet another way: ‘The fact that God can do what the biblical witnesses ascribe to him, namely, not just take form and not just remain free in this form, but also in this form and freedom of His become God to specific men, eternity in a moment, this is the third meaning of His lordship in His revelation.’40 In this way, then, the doctrine of the Trinity is specified by the ‘concept’ of revelation: the Father is the sovereign principle of God’s taking form, the Son is the form which God takes, and the Spirit is the fulfilment of this communicative act in the reception of the human subject to whom God is revealed.41 As an analysis of revelation, then, the doctrine of the Trinity speaks to God’s existence in three different ways – a threefold form of existence which Barth observes is united in Scripture under a single name (‘Yahweh’ in the Old Testament; ‘Kyrios’ in the New): ‘This name is the name of a single being, of the one and only Willer and Doer whom the Bible calls God.’42 For this reason, Barth argues that ‘personality’ is an attribute which applies specifically to the divine essence as a whole, and not to the Father, Son, and Spirit individually (the latter option representing ‘the worst and most extreme expression of tritheism’43). Hence, the ‘personality’ of God is considered less a principle of distinction within the Godhead and more a way of expressing the fact that God’s will is identical to his being. Its special task, in other words, is to prevent ‘the divine He, or rather Thou, from becoming in any respect an It’.44 Consequently, the matter of divine personhood, ‘belongs … to the doctrine of God proper’.45 This, of course, is one of the more controversial of Barth’s claims, as it also functions as the grounds for his rejection of the traditional term ‘person’ as a way of describing the Father, Son, and Spirit.46 In its place, Barth offers ‘mode of being’ (Seinsweise) as a more pliable 39. CD I/1, 324. 40. CD I/1, 331. 41. As Barth puts it later, the Holy Spirit concerns ‘the subjective side in the event of revelation’. CD I/1, 449. 42. CD I/1, 348. 43. CD I/1, 351. 44. CD I/1, 351. 45. CD I/1, 358. 46. For example, Alan Torrance registers a thorough complaint against this move in his Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation with

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term for describing the ‘one God in threefold repetition’.47 In so doing, Barth aims to avoid granting dogmatic space to what he regards as the non-theological task of accommodating the doctrine of the Trinity to the natural implications of a common concept – and this all the more given the connotations of Persönlichkeit in terms of subjectivity (i.e., ‘I-hood’). Indeed, Barth insists, in attributing personality to God, ‘we are speaking not of three divine I’s, but thrice of the one divine I’.48 When Barth does posit a principle of distinction amongst God’s three modes of being, however, he returns to the classical idiom of ‘relations of origin’: ‘[T] he distinguishable fact of the three divine modes of being is to be understood in terms of their distinctive relations and indeed their distinctive genetic relations to one another.’49 The Father, then, is understood as the one who begets the Son, the Son as the begotten of the Father, and the Spirit as the one who proceeds from the Father and Son.50 In this way, Barth says, God ‘possesses Himself as Father, i.e., pure Giver, as Son, i.e., Receiver and Giver, and as Spirit, i.e., pure Receiver’.51 We will have occasion to reiterate this notion of divine ‘self-possession’ when we interpret Barth’s understanding of personhood in our next section. For now, however, we merely point out that Barth finds the traditional ‘Augustinian’ model to be fully in accord with his so-called revelational approach. CD I/1 concludes with an extended exegesis of the creed across three paragraphs, with a paragraph each devoted to the Father, Son, and Spirit and organized according to the thesis that what God is for us, he is already antecedently in himself. Each paragraph begins, therefore, with a consideration of God’s selfinterpretation ‘for us’ (as Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer) and concludes with an exposition of how these creation-ward acts directly ‘correspond’ to God’s life in himself (as Father, Son, and Spirit). It is unfortunately beyond our specific concerns to treat these paragraphs in greater detail; nevertheless, we note briefly that, far from being a mechanical restatement of classical trinitarianism, these paragraphs are meant to harmonize directly with Barth’s doctrine of revelation. That is, for Barth, the doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to express the reality that when God reveals himself, he really is providing the Church with the necessary and sufficient grounds for fulfilling its call to speak the Word of God. As such, the Trinity is a safeguard against the Feuerbachian suspicion that the knowledge of God is ultimately the knowledge of humanity. For Barth, God’s triune essence is at once the grounds, content, and fulfilment of the Church’s witness. In summary, then, we suggest that, even if Barth’s ‘revelational approach’ is considered innovative, the destination to which this approach carries him is fairly special reference to Volume One in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 225–62. 47. CD I/1, 350. 48. CD I/1, 351. 49. CD I/1, 363. 50. Barth is clear in his advocacy of the Western filioque. See CD I/1, 477–83. 51. CD I/1, 364.

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traditional. To be clear: the unique ways in which Barth uses the doctrine of the Trinity in the context of his own (often contextually driven) dogmatic concerns ought not to obscure the fact that, ultimately, he is a Western trinitarian planted firmly within the tradition of Augustine. Nevertheless, Barth does put this tradition ‘to the test’ in the later volumes of the Church Dogmatics, and this all the more as his Christology is pursued with greater focus and intensity. Accordingly, a major concern in our exposition will be to gauge whether or not Barth’s early framing of the doctrine of Trinity is robust enough to account for the reality of God’s identity as ‘love’ in these forthcoming contexts, particularly vis-à-vis the doctrine of God, the doctrine of election, and the cross of Christ. On our way to these matters, however, it is necessary first to consider Barth’s formal theological epistemology as it is found in CD II/1.

Primary and secondary objectivity In the famous lecture series published as Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert, Barth raises the question of how theology might respond to Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy.52 As he sees it, there are essentially three possibilities. The first, he says, is for theology simply to accept Kant’s philosophy of religion, thereby committing itself to developing ever newer and more creative ways of redescribing Christian doctrine in moral terms (a tactic he finds represented in the work of the early nineteenth century rationalists and, later, Albrecht Ritschl and Wilhelm Herrmann). The second possibility is for theology to ‘broaden and enrich the conception of reason’ in order to identify a locus wherein man’s religious life might more appropriately sit (for instance, the comprehensive category of ‘feeling’ found in Schleiermacher and his followers). The third possibility – obviously Barth’s own preference (and prefigured, he says, in theologians such as Isaak Dorner and Philipp Marheineke) – is to refuse to allow Kant’s philosophy to dictate a problem to which theology must respond: This third possibility would consist in theology resigning itself to stand on its own feet in relation to philosophy, in theology recognizing the point of departure for its method in revelation, just as decidedly as philosophy sees its point of departure in reason, and in theology conducting, therefore, a dialogue with philosophy, and not, wrapping itself up in the mantle of philosophy, a quasi-philosophical monologue.53

52. Thanks to Martin Westerholm, who brought the relevance of these lectures for this question to my attention in private conversation. 53. Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History (London: SCM, 2001), 293.

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For our purposes, the key point is the second, namely, the possibility that the work of theology might begin ‘in revelation’. It is particularly important to keep this in mind as we approach § 25, ‘The Fulfilment of the Knowledge of God’ – for even as Barth assumes a great deal of Kant’s epistemology (and he clearly does, as will be shown), it is not the case that he allows this epistemology to determine or restrict his claims about the knowledge of God. He is not, in other words, merely ‘responding to Kant’. Rather, as John Macken points out, ‘Barth makes use of the Kantian critique of human knowledge selectively in order to contrast human knowledge with Revelation, which comes from outside the created realm and originates in the free action of God.’54 Barth begins § 25 by reiterating an important theme from the first volume of the Church Dogmatics, namely, that God is already known in the Church of Jesus Christ.55 Consequently, he argues, we need not ask whether the knowledge of God is possible but rather ‘how far’ (inwiefern) God is known.56 The goal of Barth’s enquiry, therefore, is not to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions by which a supramundane being might be perceived by finite, world-bound human knowers; it is instead to examine the ways in which God is, as a matter of fact, both knowable and known so that we may ultimately learn ‘what we are saying when we say “God.”’57 Barth’s first claim concerning ‘how far’ God is known is that God has made himself an object of human knowledge. Now, having already encountered the post-Kantian theological epistemology of Schleiermacher in Part I, it should be apparent just how radically Barth is departing from his forebears with this claim. For Schleiermacher, we recall, God cannot be known objectively because this would entail his entry into the Naturzusammenhang, effectively contradicting his identity as the Whence of the feeling of absolute dependence. Similarly, as the presupposition of knowledge, God, for Schleiermacher, can never be conceptualized, for this would destroy the possibility that thinking could ever correspond with knowing. Barth, however, starting as always from the presupposition that revelation, conceived personally in the figure of Jesus Christ, must be the sole determinant for dogmatic thought, envisions the knowledge of God in completely different terms. He does this, first, by insisting that God is known by human beings in exactly the same way as any other object.58 So, in a striking passage, Barth claims, ‘If God gives Himself to man to be known in the revelation of His Word through the Holy Spirit, 54. John Macken, The Autonomy Theme in the Church Dogmatics: Karl Barth and His Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 79. 55. ‘All speaking and hearing in the Church of Jesus Christ entirely rests upon and is connected with the fact that God is known in the Church of Jesus Christ…’ CD II/1, 3. 56. CD II/1, 5. 57. CD II/1, 3. The placement of §§ 25–7 within the doctrine of God should not be forgotten. 58. ‘…God comes into the picture, the sphere, the field of man’s consideration and conception in exactly the same way that objects do…’ CD II/1, 13.

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it means that He encounters the human subject in the relation of an object.’59 In other words, God presents himself to the human knower not in some especially ‘religious manner’ but extremely typically – so typically, in fact, that in the event of revelation, Barth says, God is actually ‘intuited’ and ‘conceptualized’ by the human knower, the very modes of perception specifically denied to religious knowledge in the post-Kantian era.60 Here then, Barth agrees with Kant that genuine knowledge, including the knowledge of God, requires the presentation of an intuitable object to the human knower.61 For Barth, therefore, the knowledge of God is not distinguished from other forms of knowledge by its mode (as for instance, Schleiermacher insisted with recourse to the category of Gefühl). Again, he insists, if we did not know God in the same way as we know other objects, then it would not actually be we, as human beings, who know him. Instead, what makes the knowledge of God different from other kinds of knowledge is very specifically the uniqueness of its object.62 ‘For although God has genuine objectivity just like all other objects, His objectivity is different from theirs, and therefore knowledge of Him … is a particular and utterly unique occurrence in the range of all knowledge.’63 In other words, for Barth, God always stands at the helm of the worldly event by which he makes himself intuitable; 59. CD II/1, 9, revised translation. ‘…er tritt zum Menschen als Subjekt in das Verhältnis des Objektes.’ KD II/1, 8. 60. T.H.L. Parker’s translation of anschauen and begreifen with the philosophically bland ‘to consider’ and ‘to conceive’ is particularly unhelpful here (‘In His revelation He is considered and conceived by men.’ CD II/1, 9), since the German terms clearly hearken to the technical vocabulary of Kant’s first critique. For instance, Kant writes, ‘Vermittelst der Sinnlichkeit also werden uns Gegenstände gegeben, und sie allein liefert uns Anschauungen; durch den Verstand aber werden sie gedacht, und von ihm entspringen Begriffe’ (‘By means of sensibility, therefore, objects are given to us, and it alone renders to us intuitions; by the understanding, however, are [these intuitions] thought, and by it do concepts arise.’ Immanuel Kant, Critik der reinen Vernunft [1787] [London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1994], 33). God, of course, not being subject to sensibility, could never be intuited nor conceptualized in the manner of other objects according to Kant. 61. It should be noted that this was not exclusively Kant’s insight, as his thinking on this point was preceded, by his own admission, by such philosophers as Locke and Hume. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 225. Many thanks to Martin Westerholm for suggesting this caveat. 62. Eberhard Jüngel’s comment that ‘The mode of his being-as-object differentiates God as object from all other objects’ does not contradict this point, since it specifically describes the way that God retains his subjectivity even whilst permitting himself to be known as object. Nevertheless, Barth is resolute in his insistence that God is known by the same epistemological mechanisms by which other objects are known. It is the way that God is object that is unique, not the fact that he is objectively known. Cf. God’s Being is in Becoming, 57. 63. CD II/1, 14.

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God is subject even as he is object. Consequently, if Kant’s basic insight was the notion that knowledge issues from the processing of intuited data by categories immanent to the human mind, then Barth accommodates the phenomenon of revelation not by positing a ‘God-faculty’ within natural perception – as if there were in man a readiness to receive revelation – but rather by insisting that God himself establishes the capacity for the human reception of his Word. Whereas in post-Kantian epistemology, human subjecthood is taken to be the presupposition of the possibility of even religious knowledge, for Barth, ‘The believing subject exists only in the act of God’s own self-revelation.’64 This is why the knowledge of God is first and foremost a function of grace, a divine event whose human correlate must always be faith.65 As Barth would say in later years, ‘[God] is inaccessible to all human perception and thought as such, yet being the Lord also of the human capacities for thought and perception, He is not bound by these limits, but free to give Himself to be known by man within these limits.’66 Barth’s next move is to assert that the basis of the objectivity by which God makes himself known to us is the objectivity by which God knows himself, that is, God’s own self-knowledge. This is Barth’s famous distinction between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ objectivity, and if our goal is to make sense of predications to the divine essence made on the basis of God’s self-revelation – specifically ‘love’ – we would do well to pay careful attention here.67 The key lies in discerning the degrees of similarity and dissimilarity between the way or mode in which God knows himself and the way/mode in which we know God. Barth is explicit concerning one particular dissimilarity, but there is another which will require us to penetrate deeper into the logic of Barth’s doctrinal reasoning. First, we will examine the more obvious point. In establishing the basic scheme of primary and secondary objectivity, Barth writes, ‘In His triune life as such, objectivity, and with it knowledge, is divine reality before creaturely objectivity and knowledge exist. We call this the primary objectivity of God, and distinguish it from the secondary, i.e., the objectivity which He has for us too in His revelation, in which He gives Himself to be known by us as He knows Himself.’68 Note here the essential point: the way in which God knows himself – that is, objectively – determines the possibility that he may be 64. Cornelis van der Kooi, As in a Mirror: John Calvin and Karl Barth on Knowing God: A Diptych, trans. Donald Mader (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 267. 65. According to Christopher Asprey, this represents a dogmatic insight well realized in the context of Barth’s early Göttingen dogmatics cycle. See Christopher Asprey, Eschatological Presence in Karl Barth’s Göttingen Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 260–1. 66. KD IV/2, 164. 67. Incidentally, the connection between love and knowledge (i.e., only what is known perfectly can be loved perfectly) is made, for instance, by both Augustine and Aquinas. See, for example, ST Ia-IIæ, q.27, a.2 and The Trinity, VIII.3. 68. CD II/1, 16.

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known by human beings in the same manner. There is obviously a kind of circular reasoning at work here: because God is known in the Church objectively, and because this knowledge is the effect of God’s self-revelation, we therefore can infer that God, in his own immanent life, knows himself in like manner.69 Nevertheless, it is the inner life of God which ultimately determines the way in which God is known by us, even if this mode of divine self-knowledge is recognizable only by means of the latter.70 Barth identifies a difference, however, between God’s selfknowledge and the knowledge he effects by revelation in the fact that, for God, such knowledge is ‘direct’ and ‘immediate’, whereas for human beings it is always ‘indirect’ and ‘mediate’. Indeed, he says, ‘He is mediately objective to us in His revelation, in which He meets us under the sign and veil of other objects.’71 In other words, God makes himself available to human Anschauung and Begreifen not in his ‘bare deity’ but specifically through creaturely media. Moreover, if such creaturely objects become, as it were, communicative of the divine presence ‘in and with’ (but never ‘as’) their own creaturely essences, such an event is wholly dependent on the free and gracious decision of God.72 We might say, therefore, that, for Barth, revelation is a particularly pneumatological work in that it requires the sanctification of creaturely objects (including, paradigmatically, the humanity of Jesus Christ) to the end that they might, as Barth puts it, ‘bear witness to the divine objectivity’.73 Yet what specifically is this ‘divine objectivity’? To say that God’s selfknowledge is the basis of all non-divine knowledge of God is fairly standard

69. Jüngel calls this Barth’s ‘innertrinitarian inference’. God’s Being is in Becoming, 63. 70. In Reformed Scholastic terms, this might be illuminated by appeal to the distinction between the ordo cognoscendi and the ordo essendi. 71. CD II/1, 16. 72. This hearkens to the so-called dialectic of veiling and unveiling. Bruce McCormack, commenting on the second edition of the Römerbrief, captures the idea helpfully: ‘In revelation, God conceals himself in a creaturely medium. Yet the coming-together of God and the creaturely medium in no way results in a synthesis of the two. The “infinite qualitative difference” between God and the world is not set aside; it is preserved. And because it is, the unveiling which occurs in and through the veil remains the divine prerogative. God chooses where and when the veil becomes transparent and faith is created.’ Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 269. 73. CD II/1, 17. Here, John Webster’s definition of sanctification is illustrative (even if it is not necessarily strictly equivalent to Barth’s own view): ‘As the Holy Spirit’s work, sanctification is a process in which, in the limitless freedom of God, the creaturely element is given its own genuine reality as it is commanded and moulded to enter into the divine service.’ John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 27. Note also Eberhard Jüngel, who identifies the moment of revelation as a ‘sacramental reality’. God’s Being is in Becoming, 65.

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in the Protestant tradition.74 By adding the caveat that God’s self-knowledge is objective on the grounds that God makes himself known ‘in exactly the same way that [creaturely] objects do’, Barth commits himself to making a rather specific claim about the inner life of God. As he puts it: ‘[God] is immediately objective to Himself – for the Father is object to the Son, and the Son to the Father, without mediation.’75 Clearly, the emphasis here is on the contrast between the immediacy of God’s self-knowledge and the mediacy of human knowledge of God. But what exactly could it mean to say that the Father knows the Son ‘objectively’, and vice versa? Here, there is an obvious breakdown in the analogy between human and divine knowledge of God. Human beings, of course, come to know things according to their nature as human beings.76 For Barth, who in general accepts Kant’s epistemology, this means that human knowledge requires first the intuition of an object by means of Sinnlichkeit, and second, the organization of this intuition by the categories of the mind into a thinkable Begriff. But can such a scheme really be attributed to God? More specifically, will Barth’s particular brand of Augustinian trinitarianism abide such a scheme? Can a trinitarian ‘mode’ of the one being of God really be present as an ‘object’ to another trinitarian ‘mode of being’? Eberhard Jüngel’s account of Barth’s trinitarianism is instructive here. In building his doctrine of the Trinity from the event of revelation, Jüngel points out, Barth commits himself to taking as absolutely axiomatic the rule: opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa. This means that, for Barth, the relations of origin by which the divine persons are typically distinguished are only discernible by means of a ‘relational analogy’, that is, on the grounds that ‘revelation is to be differentiated into (a) a whence of revelation, (b) a becoming revealed of God which is grounded in this whence, and (c) a being revealed of God which is grounded in the whence and in the becoming revealed[.]’77 For Barth, this reality and only this reality provides the dogmatic warrant for speaking of three ‘modes of being’ within the Godhead and so prevents the inner-divine alius-alius-alius from becoming an aliud-aliud-

74. The Lutheran dogmatician David Hollazius, for example, writing in the period of high Lutheran Orthodoxy, explains, ‘Archetypal Theology is the knowledge which God has of Himself, and which in Him is the model of another Theology, which is communicated to intelligent creatures. Ectypal Theology is the science of God and divine things communicated to intelligent creatures by God, after His own Theology, as a pattern.’ Qtd. in Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Verified from the Original Sources, trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs (Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Publication Society, 1899), 16. 75. CD II/1, 16. ‘Er ist es sich selber unmittelbar; denn es ist der Vater dem Sohne, der Sohn dem Vater ohne Mittel Gegenstand.’ KD II/1, 16. 76. Cf. Thomas Aquinas: ‘…the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower.’ ST Ia, q.12, a.4. 77. Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming, 39.

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aliud. To put it another way: on Barth’s account, speculation concerning the inner life of God must be strictly limited to that which can be justified by the event of God’s self-revelation to humanity. To return to our discussion concerning primary objectivity, then, the idea that the Son is ‘object’ to the Father, at the very least, cannot mean that the Father ‘sees’ or ‘intuits’ the Son, thereby appropriating the Son into his divine knowledge as a distinct knower in himself, for such an account cannot analogically relate to the triune event of revelation.78 Instead, we propose, the objectivity of the Son to the Father (and vice versa) has to mean something to the effect that the Son is ‘immediately present’ to the Father such that the Father possesses the Son in one eternal and perfect act. As Jüngel puts it with regard to love, for instance, ‘The self-giving in which God is already ours in advance is the self-giving in which he belongs to himself.’79 Similarly, we might say, God’s selfobjectivity is the immediate presence and possession of Godself within the dynamics of the triune event that is God’s life. There are, therefore, at least two dis-analogies between God’s self-knowledge and our knowledge of God. The first, as Barth says, concerns the issue of mediacy: God knows himself immediately, while human beings do not. The second has to do with the fact that God is ‘objective’ to himself in a far different sense than the way in which he is objective for us (beyond the mediate/immediate distinction). Given Barth’s ‘single subject’ trinitarianism, the idea that the members of the Trinity ‘present themselves’ to one another – that is, the way that God offers himself to us, albeit in veiled form – would be incoherent. As Barth points out in CD I/1: ‘we are speaking not of three divine I’s, but thrice of the one divine I’.80 So, then, either Barth is radically revising his trinitarianism in this volume (which is not likely, since he will rely on single subject logic to bolster his claim that the Son is both Object and Subject of election in the subsequent volume) or the nature of the inference from secondary to primary objectivity must be heavily qualified. The qualification we are suggesting consists in redescribing ‘objectivity’ in terms of ‘presence’ and ‘possession’, as mentioned above. The Son is ‘object’ to the Father, then, in that God is fully realized in the generation, knowledge, and (logically) subsequent desire and possession of himself in his three modes of being.81 Conceived in this way, we can say not only that God knows himself perfectly (which is true) but also

78. In Barth’s trinitarianism, the members of the Trinity are not ‘distinct centres of consciousness’, as certain modern social trinitarians assert. As Barth writes in the first volume, ‘what we to-day call the “personality” of God belongs to the one unique essence of God which the doctrine of the Trinity does not seek to triple but rather to recognise in its simplicity’. CD I/1, 350. 79. Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming, 41. 80. CD I/1, 351. 81. This taxonomy is hinted at when Barth says that ‘in revelation itself we again see God’s self-knowledge, God’s own and original objectivity in the modes of being of the Father and Son through the mode of being of the Holy Spirit’. CD II/1, 51.

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that God actually is Truth – God is, within his own identity as God, the perfect correspondence and realization of thinking and being. The significance of this sort of qualification vis-à-vis divine knowledge for our interests in divine love, then, consists in the following: if it is possible to employ inferential reasoning such that one can posit (1) a real and immediate correspondence between God’s act and being, with the result that (2) human beings have genuine and, in a certain sense, full access to the being of God in God’s act of revelation, and simultaneously hold that (3) there are nevertheless formal differences between God’s life in himself and his life for us – then we might be better poised to hold together the claim that God is love with a decidedly non-social understanding of the inner divine life. But before this attempt is explicitly made, we must delve a bit deeper into a relationship which at first glance might seem to negate this account, namely, the relationship between God’s act and God’s being.

6 G O D A S T H E O N E W HO L OV E S I N F R E E D OM

In this chapter, our aim is to explore with some depth Barth’s first major treatment of the being of God in the Church Dogmatics: § 28. That is not to say that he leaves the subject behind after this section (CD II/2 continues the theme in extremely significant ways), nor should we assume that the doctrine of God has been held in reserve until this point (CD I/1, of course, establishes Barth’s dogmatic methodology precisely on the grounds of the Trinity). Nevertheless, § 28 brings to the surface some of Barth’s most decisive insights concerning God’s being, including especially his understanding of divine love. Hence, for our purposes, this particular paragraph of the Church Dogmatics demands sustained attention. Paragraph 28 is divided into three sections: ‘The Being of God in Act’, ‘The Being of God as the One who Loves’, and ‘The Being of God in Freedom’ – all intended to provide an analysis of the overarching theme with which Barth summarizes his doctrine of God: ‘God is the One who Loves in Freedom.’ In many ways, this section is the heart of our study of Karl Barth’s doctrine of God; for here, particularly in § 28.1, we are given a set of conceptualities which enable us to make the most sense of Barth’s language concerning God’s innermost essence. In particular, we will argue, the central concept directing Barth’s intuitions is precisely this: God alone is personal. Indeed, only after this radical thought is grasped properly will it be possible to interpret Barth’s later material claims concerning the concrete determination of God’s being in light of the humanity of Christ.

God’s being in act For all the apparent complexity of § 28, it is worth noticing that Barth’s treatment of the being of God begins with a simple recollection of the name revealed to Moses at Horeb: God is.1 As we work our way through the text, then, we would do well to keep in mind the fact that, for Barth, all talk of ‘divine ontology’ can ultimately mean nothing more than a repetition of this name as a consequence of recognizing its bearer’s subjecthood vis-à-vis the event of revelation.

1. CD II/1, 257.

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Nevertheless, according to Barth, the fact that theology (as a species of Christian witness) is essentially an exercise in specifying the particular actor behind a particular act means that more is required than blankly confessing that ‘God is’. Indeed, he argues, if revelation conveys not principally information, but rather a person, then the knowledge of this person must be considered the proper end of revelation. It is this fact which ‘authorises us and commands us … to consider specifically what we are saying when we make this hardest and most comprehensive statement that God is’.2 Consequently, to sidestep the matter of the doctrine of God – as, for example, Philip Melanchthon had attempted to do in the 1521 edition of his Loci Communes3 – is tantamount to misunderstanding precisely what is given to humanity in the event of revelation, namely, God himself. Barth begins his discussion, therefore, with a defence of the fact that God truly does reveal himself, expressed in the form of the maxim, ‘God is who He is in His works’.4 For Barth, this means that when God engages with created reality, he is free to do so as the subject he already is. God does not, in other words, need to obscure, supplement, or diminish his identity in order to relate beyond himself. The converse, therefore, also holds: God does not need his external works in order to be who he is. Indeed, for Barth, it is God’s imperturbable self-possession which actually guarantees his ability to make himself known fully in his works. Selfdisclosure poses no threat to God’s being because ‘He is the same even in Himself, even before and after and over His works, and without them’.5 Moreover, because God is the sole and single acting subject of his works, to deny a revelation of God’s nature through them is equivalent to denying a connection between God and his works altogether. Hence, Barth says, ‘We can and must ask about the being of God because as the Subject of His works God is so decisively characteristic for their nature and understanding that without this Subject they would be something quite different from what they are in accordance with God’s word[.]’6 But what exactly are ‘the works of God’? Such a question is necessary, Barth insists, because without casting our gaze in the proper direction, it will be impossible to specify the subject whose works are presumed to be a revelation of his being. Here, Barth is clear: ‘What God is as God, the divine individuality and characteristics, the essentia or “essence” of God, is something we shall encounter either at the place where God deals with us as Lord and Saviour, or not at all.’7 In this comment, Barth is obviously taking an anti-speculative stand – but beyond

2. CD II/1, 259. 3. ‘We do better to adore the mysteries of the Deity than to investigate them.’ Philip Melanchthon, ‘Loci Communes Theologici’, in Melanchton and Bucer, ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1969), 21. 4. CD II/1, 260. 5. CD II/1, 260. 6. CD II/1, 260. 7. CD II/1, 261.

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this, he is also positively affirming the fact that because God has made himself known in a particular way, we can and ought to enquire into God’s being. It is at this point that Barth deploys a cluster of terms which he believes captures the heart of what God actually gives us in terms of the revelation of his being in his works. Rather than identifying the ground of God’s works in terms of an ‘essence’ – a concept considered to be insufficiently comprehensive of God’s ‘act’ and ‘being’8 – Barth prefers instead to speak of God’s being as, for example, ‘act’ (Tat), ‘event’ (Ereignis), ‘happening’ (Geschehen), and even ‘decision’ (Entscheidung). In trying to understand what Barth means by these terms, we must exhibit a great amount of interpretive care. In particular, the counterintuitive nature (especially for those in the Western intellectual tradition) of describing something as conceptually basic as ‘being’ in terms of ‘event’ should not licence creative thinking about what such a thought, on its own, might mean. Barth reminds us: ‘our subject is God and not being’.9 Consequently, our own interpretation will proceed on the grounds of two fundamental assumptions: (1) Barth’s usage of ‘act’ language to describe God’s being is comprehensible only in light of how he uses this language, and (2) in using such conceptualities, Barth has not left the realm of Christian doctrine, and thus, the matter of placing Barth within the stream of general metaphysical reflection can only be considered of secondary importance. In immediate context, then, Barth introduces his ‘act’ language to accomplish two tasks. First, he speaks of God’s being as ‘event’ in order to identify God as closely as possible with his works (particularly the work of revelation) so that God’s subjecthood is secured as the full and embracing limit for the designation of these works as divine works. In other words, for Barth, divine works are wholly characterized by the agent working in them, and vice versa. Second, he uses this language to foreshadow an argument that is to come slightly later in this paragraph, namely, the argument that God is irreducibly personal. Regarding the first point: on the grounds of the doctrine of the Word of God expounded in CD I, Barth reasons that because God is active in his revelation – that is, because in revelation we bear witness to an agent – then so must God be active down to the very depths of his being: ‘Seeking and finding God in His revelation, we cannot escape the action of God for a God who is not active.’10 As we observe how Barth goes on to describe precisely what this means, we note in particular the significant presence of possessive pronouns. In the event of revelation, he stresses, we witness ‘not any event, not events in general, but the 8. CD II/1, 262. Barth’s relationship with the term Wesen is not totally antagonistic; the phrase Wesen Gottes appears frequently throughout this volume. Rather, he is particularly concerned with the concept to the extent that it conceives of ‘divinity’ simply as a cluster of attributes – that is, a particular substance – implying that God may be described without reference to his subjectivity. On the contrary, as we will demonstrate throughout the course of this chapter, for Barth, divine subjectivity (or personhood) is strictly irreducible. 9. CD II/1, 260. 10. CD II/1, 263.

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event of His action’.11 By highlighting the fact that God’s acts are his, Barth points out that there are absolutely no elements determining God’s activity other than the being of God itself. When God acts, in other words, he does so utterly from himself. Consequently, Barth says, ‘God’s being is life’12 – with the copula signifying not simply predication, but, astonishingly, identity. For Barth, God lives in the truest sense of the word, existing in a way which is qualitatively distinct from anything else known to human experience: In speaking of the essence of God we are concerned with an act which utterly surpasses the whole of the actuality that we have come to know as act, and compared with which all that we have come to know as act is no act at all, because as act it can be transcended. This is not the case with the act of God that happens in revelation…. God actually lives [Gott lebt wirklich].13

The utterly unique fact that God possesses his own life means, furthermore, that we are totally dependent upon God’s self-disclosure for all knowledge of God’s being. When God acts in the world, we recall from CD I/1, he retains his subjecthood – ‘God reveals himself as Lord.’ Hence, if the event of God’s action occurs in the midst of other events, it can only mean ‘a definite happening within a general happening’ and not, therefore, a dissipation of God’s life within life ‘in general’. On this point, Barth (implicitly) interacts with Thomas Aquinas, who, in appropriating Aristotle’s hylomorphic metaphysics, refers to God as actus purus, or ‘pure actuality’. In accordance with Aristotle, Thomas conceives reality along a continuum spanning between ‘pure potentiality’ and ‘pure actuality’. Throughout the course of its existence through time, a particular being may move up or down the continuum, tending on the one hand towards chaos or on the other towards realization – such is the mutability of finite existence. Consequently, Thomas reasons, if God really is the ‘primary being’ to which all other ‘being’ owes its existence (as he believes Scripture testifies), then ‘it is … impossible that in God there should be any potentiality’.14 For Thomas, it is the pure actuality of God’s being which is at once the ground of all reality as well as that to which all reality ultimately tends. For Barth, however, ‘the fact that the origin, reconciliation, and goal of all other happenings are simultaneously actual and visible in God’15 is significant precisely because it speaks to the separation of God from the act-potency continuum altogether. As Barth comments, ‘God is not merely differentiated from all other actuality as actuality generally and as such, or as its essence and principle, so that while He is differentiated from all other actuality, He is still connected to 11. CD II/1, 263, emphasis added. 12. CD II/1, 263. 13. CD II/1, 263; KD II/1, 295, Barth’s emphasis. 14. ST Ia, q.3, a.1. 15. CD II/1, 264 (revised); KD II/1, 296.

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it.’16 Rather, he says, ‘without prejudice to and yet without dependence upon His relationship to what is event, act and life outside Him, God is in Himself free event, free act and free life’.17 If God is ‘pure actuality’, then he is so only in an utterly unique and independent manner; he is, Barth insists, actus purus et singularis.18 Having established the uniqueness of the livingness that is God’s being-in-act, Barth goes to specify precisely that in which this uniqueness consists. He does this by first highlighting that in which it does not consist, specifically, the ‘spirituality’ of God. When God acts in the midst of his creation (i.e., when God reveals himself), Barth explains, he does so genuinely in creation. In other words, God’s transcendence does not designate him simply as the ‘counterpart’ to the natural world – its ‘principle of activity’, so to speak. Indeed, Barth insists, God is not exalted when he is hermetically sealed within the ‘spiritual’ side of an assumed oppositional dichotomy between ‘spirit’ (Geist) and ‘nature’ (Natur). On the contrary, ‘The divine being must be allowed to transcend both spirit and nature, yet also to overlap and comprehend both, as attested in His revelation according to the testimony of Holy Scripture.’19 This is because, Barth says, God is identified in the Bible as the source/creator of both spirit and nature and thus the proper possessor and Lord of both. Moreover, if God is simply Geist, then it actually places him in a relationship of contingency with the world; a purely ‘spiritual’ God cannot be act, because acts require natures in order to become real. Consequently, our conception of God can slip all-too-easily into the thought of an impersonal ‘force’ directing natural events in what is essentially a mutually definitive relationship. This does not comport with the reality of the self-revealing God, Barth says, because the sovereignty evident in the event of revelation entails the presence not of a force 16. CD II/1, 264. 17. CD II/1, 264. 18. CD II/1, 264. In the preceding description, it should be noted that given our interpretive priorities, we have described Thomas in such a way as to ‘play into Barth’s hand’. In truth, however – and assuming it really is Thomas whom Barth has in mind in this passage (he does not mention him explicitly, but Thomas is the figure most often associated with the phrase actus purus) – Barth is probably misunderstanding the medieval doctor on this point. As Thomas Weinandy explains: ‘Being pure act (pure verb) as ipsum esse does not mean that God is something fully in act, such as a creature might actualize its full potential, but rather that God is act pure and simple. Because God is ipsum esse he has no self-constituting potency which needs to be actualized in order for him to be more fully who he is, not because he is something fully in act, but again, because is act pure and simple. God is actus purus.’ If Weinandy is right in his interpretation (and we would suggest that he is), then it would seem that there is already implied an et singularis in Thomas’ description of God as actus purus. Whereas creatures have existence only in terms of an accidens, God possesses existence essentially as ‘He who is’. Ironically, this is actually quite close to what Barth wants to say. See Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 122. 19. CD II/1, 266.

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but a person. ‘Indeed’, he writes, ‘the peak of all happening in revelation, according to Holy Scripture, consists in the fact that God speaks as an I, and is heard by the thou who is addressed’.20 Consequently, Barth concludes, ‘In correspondence with the happening of revelation, we have … to understand God’s being as “being in person.”’21 Here, we reach what we identified above as the second reason for Barth’s use of ‘act’ terminology, as well as what we shall argue is really the conceptual heart of § 28 as a whole. We will have occasion to offer a more detailed engagement with Barth’s views concerning divine personhood in our next section, but for now, our goal is simply to coordinate Barth’s understanding of God’s Persönlichkeit with the notion of God’s ‘being-in-act’. In connection with his understanding of God as ‘life’ in himself (‘Gott lebt wirklich’), Barth here insists that the event-nature of revelation entails that God is also ‘person’ in himself: ‘Inasmuch as God’s being consists in God’s act, it reveals itself as being which is self-moved.’22 Moreover, he says, ‘God’s being is not only moved being, but being which is moved through itself [das durch sich selbst bewegte Sein].’23 This fact, for Barth, is what ultimately separates the being of God from the being of creatures. No matter how alive human beings are, no matter how active human beings are, no matter to what extent human beings are capable of I–Thou relationality, the fact remains that created personhood will always remain a function of contingence and finitude. We cannot be persons, in other words, without other persons (or, at the very least, without a world in which to be persons). God, however, simply is a person, and this is fundamentally what it means to say that God’s being is a being-in-act. Keeping all this in mind, then, it becomes much easier to make sense of the following passage: The fact that God’s being is event, the event of God’s act, necessarily (if, when we speak of it, we turn our eyes solely on His revelation) means that it is His own conscious, willed and executed decision…. No other being exists absolutely in its act. No other being is absolutely its own conscious, willed, and executed decision.24

If God’s being-in-act consists in the fact he is ‘self-moved being’, and therefore ‘being-in-person’, then the converse of this passage – that God is not his own ‘conscious, willed and executed decision’ – would be incoherent. If being a person is coterminous with the power of self-movement – that is, utterly non-contingent freedom of existence – then to fail to equate God’s being with his ‘decision’ would 20. CD II/1, 267. 21. CD II/1, 268, revised translation, Barth’s emphasis; KD II/1, 300. 22. CD II/1, 268. 23. CD II/1, 269, revised translation, Barth’s emphasis; KD II/1, 201. 24. CD II/1, 271.

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be to once again drive a wedge between what God does and what God is, which was the very thing Barth was zealous to avoid with his opening maxim, ‘God is who He is in His works’. The key to bringing together these two elements, which we may designate, casually, ‘person’ and ‘essence’ (elements which, incidentally, could be justifiably separated in every other case), is to conceive essence in terms of person and not vice versa. God’s essence, in other words, is his person; God’s being is his act. To the extent that being a person means being utterly self-moved, then God is his own conscious, willed, and executed decision. Or, as Walter Sparn puts it, for Barth, ‘there is no determination of God outside of his self-determination’.25 Hence, in more doctrinal terms, ‘Being in its own, conscious, willed and executed decision, and therefore personal being, is the being of God in the nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’26 – that is, ‘God lives from and by Himself ’.27 Before moving to our next section, there are two matters which must briefly be addressed. First, on the grounds of this passage, some have assumed that Barth is advocating a change from a ‘static’ to a ‘dynamic’ conception of theological ontology. For example, appealing to § 28, William Stacy Johnson writes: Perhaps it would be better to give up speaking statically about ‘Trinity’ and speak more dynamically about the ‘triune’ act of God. This emphasis on ‘act’ suggests that triunity is better addressed in adverbial than in nominal terms…. Instead of an abstract, reified ‘Trinity,’ Barth often spoke of God’s Dreieinigkeit, which means ‘triunity’ or ‘threefoldness’. It has more to do with the qualitative configuration of an act than with an abstract or static ‘thing’.28

While it is true that, for Barth, God’s life in himself consists in a certain sort of ‘movement’ – that is, God exists from the Father and through the Son and Holy Spirit29 – to describe God purely in terms of an act and not in terms of a nature is to miss Barth’s point that God exists as a spirit acting in nature, or ‘an I which controls nature [die Natur verfügenden Ich]’.30 As Wilfried Härle comments, Barth is able to define God not only as a ‘person’; he can also ascribe to God a ‘nature.’ This does not contradict the description of the divine being as act, but rather is possible because of it. Here it is crucial that the concepts of ‘person’ 25. Walter Sparn, ‘Die christologische Revision der Prädestinationslehre in Karl Barths Erwählungslehre’, in Die Realisierung der Freiheit: Beiträge zur Kritik der Theologie Karl Barths, ed. Trutz Rendtorff (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn, 1975), 48. 26. CD II/1, 271. 27. CD II/1, 272. 28. William Stacy Johnson, The Mystery of God: Karl Barth and the Postmodern Foundations of Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 46. 29. On this, see Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 172. 30. CD II/1, 267; KD II/1, 300.

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and ‘nature’ are not defined by a general, created understanding of person and nature, but … on the grounds of an analysis of the actual divine being as person and nature.31

In other words, Barth is not interested in establishing a new conceptuality for the divine being but rather in specifying the particular Subject who meets us in revelation. Here, we point out again the significance of the possessive pronoun: ‘God’s being is his act’. Whether or not God’s being is considered ‘static’ or ‘dynamic’, then, Barth’s deeper point is the radical fact that God’s nature is totally self-possessed: God’s personhood is his being. Second, much has been made of Eberhard Jüngel’s description of Barth’s divine ontology by means of the phrase ‘God’s being is in becoming’ (Gottes Sein ist im Werden), and so we offer a few comments regarding this rather abstruse idea.32 In one sense, Jüngel’s phrase is a gloss on Barth’s original expression, ‘God’s being is his act’. Hence, Jüngel stresses the fact that, for Barth, a strict equivalence between God’s will and essence entails that when God meets us in Jesus Christ, we are not beholding a ‘new’ modality of God’s essence (e.g., God-for-us) but rather God as he exists in his own being. Consequently, even if God does not need humanity in order to be who he is, there is a sense in which God is already ‘ours in advance [im voraus der unsrige]’ – the God who meets us in history (particularly, for Jüngel, at Golgotha) is identical to the God who exists from and to himself in his own triune being: God’s being is ‘in’ his becoming.33 Surely, it would be difficult to disagree with this basic point, particularly given what Barth says in § 28.1.34 31. Wilfried Härle, Sein und Gnade: Die Ontologie in Karl Barths Kirchliche Dogmatik (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975), 49. 32. Eberhard Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden: Verantwortliche Rede vom Sein Gottes bei Karl Barth; eine Paraphrase, 4th edn (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1986). ET: God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase, trans. John Webster (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001). Barth himself commented in regard to the title of Jüngel’s book: ‘What then is the meaning of this ominous word “becoming”? It has not become clear to me how this word is useful, let alone indispensable.’ Eberhard Busch, Meine Zeit mit Karl Barth: Tagebuch 1965–1968 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 14. 33. Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming, 78. Cf. CD I/1, 383: ‘As Father, Son and Spirit God is, so to speak, ours in advance.’ 34. The genius of Jüngel’s book is to interpret § 28 in terms of Barth’s trinitarianism from CD I/1. Accordingly, God can give himself – that is, his whole self – to humanity in time because within the eternal being of God, there is already self-correspondence in terms of the ‘repetition’ of God’s life in three modes of being. God’s being in time therefore ‘corresponds’ to his being in himself – a being which in turn corresponds to itself. The event of revelation is thus nothing more than the immanent self-repetition of God lived out in time. Hence, Jüngel summarizes the whole of the Church Dogmatics with the phrase: ‘God corresponds to himself.’ Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming, 36.

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There are, however, resources in Jüngel’s book for pushing Barth’s theology in more innovative directions. For instance, Jüngel claims that as a consequence of God’s being as decision, ‘God’s being is constituted through historicality’.35 The type of ‘historicality’ that Jüngel has in mind here concerns precisely what we have emphasized above, namely, God’s utterly personal existence. Yet, for Jüngel, the fact that God’s utterly personal existence includes living (and dying) as a human being adds new dimensions to the nature of this ‘historicality’. In particular, Jüngel sees in Barth’s definition of God’s being as ‘decision’ a formal description in need of a material specification. In other words, for Jüngel, Barth’s trinitarianism occasions the question: what is the decision which defines the particular ‘historicality’ by which God’s being is constituted? If this question is appropriate – and Jüngel defends it on the basis of revelation being God’s ‘self-interpretation’ – then it appears that there can only be one answer: the form of God’s being-as-decision is constituted (i.e., materially determined) by his Urentscheidung, that is, by his decision to elect humanity in Christ.36 In recent years, Bruce McCormack has become an influential advocate of this Jüngelian reading of Barth, and not without controversy.37 In particular, McCormack has championed Jüngel’s point that Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity, as an analysis of revelation, can only render ‘formal’ knowledge of God’s being. As such, it is inappropriate to use the Trinity itself as a hermeneutical canon for interpreting God’s acts. Instead, McCormack urges, the order should be reversed: it is the material constitution of God’s life, understood as God’s self-determination in Jesus Christ, which is the real key to ‘responsible speech about the being of God’.38 This has led him to propose a ‘critical correction’ to the order of Barth’s theological exposition, suggesting that had Barth perceived the ontological implications of Christology at an earlier point in his career, consistency would have dictated his treating the doctrine of election before the doctrine of the Trinity.39 It is this latter claim which has attracted the most criticism, particularly by those who feel that Barth’s belief in the immanent Trinity functions as a methodological lynchpin.40 35. Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming, 81, emphasis added; ‘Gottes Sein ist durch Geschichtlichkeit konstituiert.’ Jüngel, Gottes Sein ist im Werden, 80. 36. We will deal with Barth’s doctrine of election at greater length in the next chapter. 37. Several of the critical essays which McCormack’s thesis has precipitated have been helpfully collated in Michael T. Dempsey, ed., Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011). 38. This is the subtitle to Gottes Sein ist im Werden. 39. Bruce McCormack, ‘Grace and being: the role of God’s gracious election in Karl Barth’s theological ontology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 101–4. 40. For example, Paul D. Molnar: ‘For Barth, God exists eternally as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and would so exist even if there had been no creation, reconciliation or redemption. Thus the order between election and triunity cannot be logically reversed without in fact making creation, reconciliation and redemption necessary to God. It is

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While the nature of our task does not dictate an extended engagement on these matters, a couple of brief comments are in order. First, it seems fairly obvious that Jüngel and McCormack are right when they detect a certain formalism in Barth’s trinitarianism. Indeed, Barth rarely appeals to the immanent Trinity in order to justify a particular doctrinal claim. On the contrary, Barth’s reasoning is typically from revelation and/or Christology to the Trinity, and not vice versa. Moreover, in those places where he does actually refer to God’s life apart from his self-determined covenant identity, he typically does so counterfactually, which brings us to our second point. It is not an obscure observation that throughout the Church Dogmatics, Barth speaks freely of God’s life-in-himself in terms, of a scenario in which God does not enter into covenant with humanity.41 This can be taken in one of two ways. The first is to suppose that Barth is literally positing a time in which God’s relationship to humanity was undetermined. Consequently, the freedom with which God determines himself for humanity is viewed as a genuine revelation of the being of God in and for itself – that is, to know God is to know him in his bare divinity and with no reference to Jesus Christ (or rather: Jesus Christ is significant in that he gives us access to who God really is). Clearly, this is not representative of Barth’s theology. As we pointed out above, when Barth asserts that ‘[God] is the same even in Himself, even before and after and over His works, and without them,’42 his intention is not to separate the being of God from his works, but again to emphasize that what God does is a function of who (not what) he is. ‘Divinity’, therefore, is a completely indeterminate concept outside of God’s relationship to humanity because, as Barth repeatedly stresses, ‘He does not will to be Himself in any other way than He is in this relationship.’43 For Barth, we recall, God simply is who he is in his works: God’s being is in his act, or, in Jüngel’s terminology, in his becoming. Rather than viewing these statements negatively (or, as McCormack has occasionally suggested, as speculative44), we ought rather to view them counterfactually – they are statements concerning a non-actual scenario which are justified on account of, and for the sake of understanding, the actual. What God ‘could have’ been without humanity, therefore, is a thought precisely this critical error that is embodied in McCormack’s proposal.’ Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 63. 41. For example, ‘God loves us, and loves the world, in accordance with His revelation. But He loves us and the world as He who would still be One who loves without us and without the world; as He, therefore, who needs no other to form the prior ground of His existence as the One who loves and as God.’ CD II/1, 280. 42. CD II/1, 260. 43. CD II/1, 274. 44. Bruce L. McCormack, ‘The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism’, in Engaging the Doctrine of God, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 216.

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which, on Barthian grounds, cannot arise from any concept of deity which is not immediately located in the God who, in reality, has determined himself for humanity. In other words, it is not as if Barth knows that God would be triune without us simply because that is the sort of ‘being’ that God is. This is exactly the sort of crass substance-based thinking that Barth was trying to overcome.45 Rather, the claim emerges from the fact that what God actually gives to us in the covenant is himself – a gift which is more than simply a brute attitude which precipitates a self-constituting decision, but a self-commitment establishing an eternal relationship between a genuine I and Thou. Jüngel is correct, then, that God’s being is in his becoming – provided that it does not prejudice us against those statements concerning God’s life in himself which, far from denying, actually follow from Barth’s insistence that God is ‘his own conscious, willed and executed decision’.

Love as the seeking and creation of fellowship The second subsection of § 28, ‘The Being of God as the One who Loves’, obviously relates very closely to the concerns of our exposition and thus demands a good amount of our attention. Yet, in reality, it is only an entry point into our enquiry, since for Barth, the love of God can only be described concretely with specific reference to the acts of God for and in the midst of his creation. The definition of divine love described in this section, therefore, will ultimately require further specification than the immediate context of CD II/1 allows and such will be offered in the midst of our present exposition and later on in our discussion of the Christological shape of the divine identity in Chapter 7. Presently, however, we are concerned with exploring four particular issues raised by this section: (1) the nature of the dialectic of love and freedom and the significance of Barth’s decision to order love before freedom, (2) the priority of the being of God in the definition of love itself, (3) the expansion of the material regarding divine person/subjecthood first encountered in § 28.1, and (4) Barth’s somewhat opaque references to inner-divine fellowship (Gemeinschaft) on the grounds of the fellowship God establishes with humanity in the event of revelation. The dialectic of love and freedom First, we note Barth’s self-consciously unorthodox decision to place divine love before divine freedom in his dogmatic ordering – a move prescient of his treatment of the divine ‘perfections’ in §§ 29–31. Traditionally, the so-called incommunicable 45. After reading Jüngel’s book, which involved a criticism of Helmut Gollwitzer, Barth remarked that ‘Gollwitzer remains … stuck in the old idea of a static concept of substance’. Busch, Meine Zeit mit Karl Barth, 14.

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attributes (e.g., simplicity, independence, aseity, and the like) have been placed before the ‘communicable’ attributes (e.g., grace, mercy, compassion, wisdom, etc.), since the former were taken to be the proper qualifiers for the latter – as in, for instance, the fact that the doctrine of divine infinity creates a certain rule for interpreting the nature the other attributes.46 Barth, however, is intent to subvert this logic, since, in his opinion, it reinforces a false division between the being and activity of God – a division which he thinks leads to the prioritization of an abstract divine ‘essence’ over God’s person.47 A better approach, Barth argues, is to reverse the order of exposition, that is, to make the ‘personal’ attributes of God (i.e., the communicable attributes) the doorway into the supposedly ‘metaphysical’ attributes – that is, to make love the qualifier for freedom – as a means of upholding the unity of God’s being and act.48 In certain ways, therefore, Barth’s procedure is very similar to that of Hermann Cremer, who, in his book, Die christliche Lehre von den Eigenschaften Gottes, argues that an undue prioritization of the more metaphysical attributes ends up shackling God to worldly laws of logic, thus denying the inexplicably gracious way in which God meets us in his self-revelation.49 On the contrary, Cremer writes, ‘We know God by what he actually does, by his revelation, by his action for and in us, and by the redemption which he offers us.’50 Indeed, he insists, without designating

46. For example, the Reformed scholastic Johannes Braunius writes: ‘Infinity signifies God’s supreme perfections, so far as God recognises no limits in any of His perfections. Hence God’s essence and all His attributes ought to be called infinite.’ Cited in Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. G.T. Thomson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 64–5. 47. Barth reaches this conclusion after a long excursus in which he outlines various approaches to the division of the attributes. See CD II/1, 337–41. 48. In Barth’s previous attempts at dogmatics – the lectures delivered in Göttingen and Münster – his preferred terminology for the perfections of love were ‘attributes of personality or of the self-unveiling God’ (Göttingen) and ‘the personal perfections of God’ (Münster). His terms for the perfections of freedom were ‘attributes of aseity or of the hidden God’ (Göttingen) and ‘the asei-cal perfections of God’ (Münster). See Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion, vol. II, Die Lehre von Gott / Die Lehre vom Menschen 1924/1925, ed. Hinrich Stoevesandt (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1990), 78; Karl Barth, ‘Münster Dogmatics’, unpublished handwritten manuscript (Karl Barth Archive, Basel), §§ 32–3. 49. Cremer was clearly a dialogue partner in the composition of §§ 28–31. Barth regarded Cremer’s book as ‘bravely progressive in its basic direction’, even if ultimately flawed. CD II/1, 299. 50. ‘Wir kennen Gott durch durch sein tatsächliches Verhalten, durch seine Offenbarung, durch sein Handeln für uns und an uns, durch die Erlösung die er uns abietet.’ Hermann Cremer, Die christliche Lehre von den Eigenschaften Gottes, ed. Ernst Cremer, 2nd edn (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1917), 23.

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the precise God who makes himself known in revelation first, a metaphysical attribute such as, for instance, omnipotence can only function as a formal and thus insufficiently Christian concept.51 Consequently, he concludes, ‘[T]he predicate “God,” that is, the concept of God, receives its actual content primarily through the subject to which it exclusively belongs, the subject who is himself active as the “only true God” in his revelation and thereby discloses to us what it means to be God.’52 The dogmatic solution, therefore, is to place the ‘attributes which disclose themselves in revelation’ (i.e., holiness, righteousness, and wisdom) before what Cremer calls the ‘attributes included in the concept of God [considered] in the light of revelation’ (i.e., omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, eternity, and immutability) in order to enforce the proper parameters for interpreting the latter.53 Clearly, Barth and Cremer have some intuitions in common. Indeed, when Cremer suggests, for instance, that ‘[w]e are bound to revelation and must derive out of it the knowledge of God’s attributes’,54 it is not difficult to notice similarities to Barth’s general method. Nevertheless, Barth consciously breaks from Cremer in that while Cremer reverses the traditional order essentially to mute the influence of the metaphysical attributes, Barth does so in order to dispense with the oppositional framing of the division altogether. For Barth, we recall, one of the chief temptations in the construction of a doctrine of God is to separate logically God’s being from his works.55 Obviously, avoiding this temptation requires that strict attention be paid to the event of revelation in which God actively meets us. Yet by the same token, it also means that we ought not to shrink from talk of God’s essence, since in his works God actually does, in a sense, give us access to his being.56 Hence, the solution to the problem of an overly abstract doctrine of God cannot simply be a preference for a certain set of attributes over another, but rather a reimagining of the nature of the division itself. Christopher Holmes is only partially correct, then, when he implies that the significance of Barth’s reordering of the attributes lies in making the perfections of love somewhat determinative of 51. Cremer, Die christliche Lehre von den Eigenschaften Gottes, 33. 52. ‘…das Prädikat Gott, der Gottesbegriff, erst seinen wirklichen Inhalt erhält durch das Subjekt, dem allein es zukommt, der sich als der “allein wahre Gott” in seiner Offenbarung betätigt und dadurch uns erschließt, was Gott sein heißt.’ Cremer, Die christliche Lehre von den Eigenschaften Gottes, 32. 53. Cremer, Die christliche Lehre von den Eigenschaften Gottes, 32. In Cremer’s parlance, the Gottesbegriff appears to stand in for talk of the being of God. 54. Cremer, Die christliche Lehre von den Eigenschaften Gottes, 23. 55. The fact that Cremer ultimately sought to unify the attributes by means of the category of ‘glory’ in his final chapter apparently did not dispel Barth’s suspicion that he was still, in fact, working under the assumption of an opposition between being and activity. CD II/1, 341. 56. ‘…in these His works we do not have to do with any others, but with His works and therefore with God Himself, with His being as God.’ CD II/1, 261.

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the perfections of freedom.57 Again, if Barth’s consistent claim throughout § 28 is that God’s being is his act, why, then, would he then turn around and make God’s act somehow more fundamental than his being? Indeed, if there is any opposition between God’s being and act, it can only be with respect to our human knowledge of God as he gives himself to us in his secondary objectivity.58 This is why the ultimate division that Barth suggests for the attributes concerns not God’s being and activity but rather God in his ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘concealment’ – a division which concerns our epistemic appropriation of the attributes and not the attributes themselves.59 Thus, God both discloses and conceals himself in his revelation – that is, he is loving in his freedom and free in his love – because, as Barth explains vis-à-vis the Trinity, God always reveals himself as Lord.60 The fact that God reveals himself means that human beings have genuine access to the being of God in revelation; the fact that God reveals himself as Lord means that there can never be a moment in which the content of revelation becomes a human possession.61 There is, in other words, a relationship between the dynamics of the revelatory event in which God is known by human beings and the way in which the divine attributes are dogmatically arranged: ‘The unity of self-disclosure and concealment, of the knowability and unknowability of God, constitutes the biblical idea of the revelation of God, just as the unity of love and freedom constitutes the biblical idea of the being of God.’62 If love precedes freedom in the order of exposition, then, it is only because God reveals himself as free in the event of his love and not vice versa: ‘Only as He gives 57. ‘In effect, by treating The Being of God as One Who Loves prior to the being of God as One who is free Barth signals his intention to reverse the traditional treatment of God’s being. Instead of beginning with an (abstract) metaphysical account of being, Barth attends to God’s loving activity, and develops an ontology appropriate to it which occasions, in turn, an account of the freedom peculiar to his own self-demonstration.’ Christopher R.J. Holmes, Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes: In Dialogue with Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel, and Wolf Krötke (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 46. 58. Or, as Barth puts it in the Göttingen lectures, ‘The indirectness of our knowledge of God means that our concept of God breaks in two. Our definition can consist only of two pieces which are both meant to say both things and both the one thing, but which can say only something partial.’ Karl Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. I, ed. Hannelotte Reiffen, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 369. 59. CD II/1, 341–3. 60. This connection is also noted in Härle, Sein und Gnade, 56. 61. Coincidentally, in the Göttingen dogmatics cycle of 1924/25, Barth organized the dialectic of love and freedom (or, as it was then called, the dialectic of ‘personality’ and ‘aseity’) according to the biblical statement ‘I am the Lord’. Barth, Unterricht in der christlichen Religion II, 81. The phrase is present in the § 28 (in an excursus), but it no longer functions as an organizing thought. See CD II/1, 301–2. 62. CD II/1, 343.

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Himself to us as the One who loves does He withdraw from us also in His holy freedom.’63 In other words, for Barth, God’s love is the only possible entry point for perceiving the reality of God’s freedom, since, paradoxically, the reality that God is revealed is the presupposition for the recognition that God is concealed. Consequently, Barth’s decision to treat love first is simply a result of recognizing what he calls ‘the order intrinsic to the theme’, an order which ‘obtains even in the full reciprocity [between love and freedom], not signifying a difference of value between the two aspects of divinity, but the movement of life in which God is God, corresponding exactly to His revelation of Himself as God’.64 While there is, therefore, no opposition or ontological hierarchy between God’s love and freedom, there is, in Barth’s estimation, a proper order, and this is why his treatment takes the particular shape that it does.65 Defining love With an understanding of Barth’s general approach now established, we can engage in a more straightforward exposition of the text, attending especially to our second issue of concern: the priority of God’s being in Barth’s definition of love. Barth begins § 28.2 by pointing out that it is not enough simply to claim that God’s being ‘is’ act, as if God were merely a principle of actuality (especially given the fact that ‘God’s being in act’ refers most specifically to the subjecthood of the divine essence, as we have already argued). No, Barth says, we must go on to specify precisely the nature of the event that is God’s own essence, and this is, specifically, the event in which God seeks and creates fellowship with humanity – the event of God’s love.66 The presupposition guiding Barth’s approach is that when God reveals his ‘name’ to us – that is, the ‘I AM’ of Exodus 3:14, interpreted as the being of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – he is actually ‘making himself visible’ to us, by which is meant nothing less than the manifestation of his ‘innermost hidden essence’.67 Consequently, when we narrate God’s acts towards us, we are simultaneously 63. CD II/1, 349. 64. CD II/1, 350. 65. This is also why Barth could never agree with Hermann Cremer’s statement that ‘all attributes of God are just attributes of love, which is his essence’, for such would be to collapse the dialectic that the event of revelation always preserves. Cf. Cremer, Die christliche Lehre von den Eigenschaften Gottes, 26. 66. ‘We must now enquire further what is this act of His, the divine act which is the divine being, so that we have to conclude from it what is divine, i.e., what it is to be God, what makes God God, what God’s “essence” [Wesen] is.’ CD II/1, 273; Cf. CD II/1, 299. On this material, Härle comments: ‘Offenbarung wird also nicht nur Ereignis, sondern – und das ist das neue, zweite Moment – sie ist das Ereignis, in dem eine Beziehung (zwischen Gott und uns) gesetz wird und zustandekommt.’ Härle, Sein und Gnade, 56. 67. CD II/1, 273.

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narrating the being of God in and for itself. Hence, we observe the following definition, which may be read as a summary statement for the subsection as a whole: God is He who, without having to do so, seeks and creates fellowship between Himself and us. He does not have to do it, because in Himself without us, and therefore without this, He has that which He seeks and creates between Himself and us. It implies so to speak an overflow of His essence that He turns to us.68

Here again is an instance of Barth’s belief that the form of revelation is directly informative of the one who reveals. Hence, he reasons, as the act of revelation is itself a ‘seeking and creation of fellowship’, so does this manifest the nature of the being of God, described in terms of the counterfactual scenario in which God does not reveal himself.69 God’s love for humanity therefore represents an ‘overflow’ of his being, since the strict construal of revelation as self-revelation entails that the event by which we come to know God is always subsequent to God’s selfknowledge and thus not determinative of his immanent being.70 But here the question arises: what precisely is divine love? Wisely, Barth demurs a simplistic interpretation of 1 John 4:8 and 16, arguing that the contextual specification assigned to the phrase ‘God is love’ mitigates the ‘tempting’ prospect of a mere divine ‘equation’.71 Indeed, he writes, ‘If we say with I Jn. 4 that God is love, the converse that love is God is forbidden until it is mediated and clarified from God’s being and therefore from God’s act what the love is and which can and must be legitimately identified with God.’72 Clearly, then, a more narratival and, indeed, exegetical approach is necessary. Given Barth’s initial description of this act in terms of ‘fellowship’ (Gemeinschaft), as seen in the quote above, it is clear that his understanding of ‘love’ requires, in some sense, a concept of ‘relation’, since this 68. CD II/1, 273. Note also the following: ‘That He is God – the Godhead of God – consists in the fact that He loves, and it is the expression of His loving that He seeks and creates fellowship with us.’ CD II/1, 275. 69. For a defence of the non-speculative nature of Barth’s counterfactual claims, see my ‘Speculating about Divinity? God’s Immanent Life and Actualistic Ontology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 12 (2010): 20–32. Cf. Claus-Dieter Osthövener, Die Lehre von Gottes Eigenschaften bei Friedrich Schleiermacher und Karl Barth (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 168, n. 39. 70. Barth is clear that ‘overflow’ should not imply God giving a part of his being in revelation; rather, the term denotes the fact that God’s love for humanity ‘is not demanded or presupposed by any necessity, constraint, or obligation, least of all from outside, from our side, or by any law by which God Himself is bound and obliged’. CD II/1, 273. 71. CD II/1, 275. Also: ‘…I prefer not to use 1 John 4:16 as a basis for defining God as love, though this can also be given a good sense.’ Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 371. 72. CD II/1, 276. Cf. CD I/1, 483: ‘Love is God, the supreme law and ultimate reality, because God is love and not vice versa.’

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is precisely what the event of revelation establishes between God and humanity. Nevertheless, before we interpret what ‘relationality’ or ‘fellowship’ might mean with respect to God’s immanent life, we turn to Barth’s definition of ‘love’ itself – a definition which he claims attends specifically to the act of God visible in his revelation and not ‘a concomitant and suppositious general idea of love’.73 Briefly, Barth offers four caveats pertaining to the definition of love in light of God’s self-revelation. The first is that God’s love is not instrumental, that is, it is not simply a means for acquiring something of allegedly greater value, in particular, the Good. Here, Barth breaks from the Augustinian tradition which precedes him. As we saw in our Introduction, for Augustine, God’s love is a function of his recognition of himself as the summum bonum. It is, in other words, the analogical description of God’s will in the interplay between God’s knowledge and memory. According to this scheme, then, when God establishes fellowship with humanity, human beings are ‘loved’ only insofar as they are graciously permitted to participate in the movement of God’s own self-desire. Barth, however, takes issue with this approach by means of a disagreement with Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love as ‘willing the good for the other’. For Barth, this definition implies that the event in which God meets us as der Liebende is merely a stage on the way to revelation (conceived perhaps in terms of the beatific vision), rather than genuine revelation in itself. Instead, he argues, the event of God’s love should itself be conceived as the ‘good’ which God wills for humanity. In other words, God willing the good for humanity is coterminous with the event in which God establishes fellowship with humanity – and because the event of revelation is the moment in which this fellowship is established, there is no further good which this moment serves. Hence, ‘God’s loving is concerned with a seeking and creation of fellowship for its own sake.’74 Second, Barth argues that God’s love is self-initiated and, as such, bestows rather than responds to the loveliness of the beloved.75 The chief motivation for making this claim, significantly, lies not in a generally Protestant impulse to preserve the full graciousness of redemption (though this is of course related). Instead, Barth’s main concern is once again to ensure that God’s revelation is upheld as a genuine manifestation of the essence of God. Accordingly, he writes, ‘the basis of the love of God lies outside of the man loved by Him and in God Himself ’.76 If it were otherwise, then the fellowship God establishes with humanity would not be genuine fellowship, as God would be giving not himself but rather something less than or different than himself in his encounter with humanity. Similarly, God’s intra-triune love ought not to imply that God recognizes and subsequently responds to his own self-worthiness, since again, this would drive a wedge between who God is (the good) and what God does (love). Rather, Barth 73. CD II/1, 276. 74. CD II/1, 276. 75. ‘It is as amatus that the loved of God becomes amabilis.’ CD II/1, 278. 76. CD II/1, 279.

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comments, ‘He is worthy of love, and blessed in Himself, because in His life as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, He is eternal love.’77 Third, Barth says, God’s love for us must be considered an end in itself, since, as the divine name attests (‘I am that I am’), God is an end in Godself: ‘God loves because He loves; because this act is His being, His essence and His nature.’78 Here, Barth differentiates himself from Albrecht Ritschl in particular, for whom the end of God’s loving, identified as the establishment of the kingdom of God, is constitutive for God’s nature as love. In Barth’s estimation, this view amounts to little more than a crass anthropomorphizing of the love of God. Unlike human love, which admittedly does require the presence of an ‘other’, God’s love ‘has in itself not only its blessing and its ground, but also its purpose’.79 Lastly, Barth insists that God’s love is necessary in the sense that there are no contingencies upon which it is founded. Here again, we are reminded that God can reveal himself as der Liebende if and only if his identity as such is self-determined. Consequently, our experience of the love of God must be characterized as a wholly gratuitous ‘overflow’ of the divine life, and not in any sense a fulfilment of it. That is, for Barth, God loves as the one who already is love and so, in loving us, ‘is true to Himself ’.80 Indeed, even if, as Barth emphasizes, we ‘cannot go back behind’ the event of God’s love for humanity – that is, even if God’s decision to be our God is revealed to us as an eternal divine prerogative – even then, he says, ‘The eternal correlation [die ewige Korrelation] between God and us, as shown in God’s revelation, is grounded in God alone, and not partly in God and partly in us.’81 Of course, Barth admits, the notion that God can actually be love without sharing such an existence with a genuine other (i.e., an aliud) is counterintuitive. Hence, we will always be tempted to criticise this claim on the basis of a general definition of love. Nevertheless, what is at stake is nothing less than the deity of God. Indeed, the fact that God’s love ‘transcends all thought’ is the key to recognizing its divinity 77. CD II/1, 279. 78. CD II/1, 279. 79. CD II/1, 280. In fairness, Ritschl did attempt to ground God’s purposive love for the Christian community in a kind of ‘trinitarian’ calculus. As he says, ‘The community, as the object to which God’s love extends, cannot even be conceived apart from the presupposition that it is governed continually by its Founder as its Lord…. The community of Christ, therefore, is the correlative of the love of God, only because the love in which God embraces His Son and assures Him His unique position … comes through Him to act upon those likewise who belong to Him as His disciples or His community’ (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, vol. III, The Positive Development of the Doctrine, trans. H.R. Mackintosh and A.B. Macauley [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1900], 281). Nevertheless, it is clear that even in this scheme, God’s love for the Son is determined purely by the Son’s function, vis-à-vis the divine will for humanity, and not as such in God’s self-identity, as Barth is zealous to maintain. 80. CD II/1, 282. 81. CD II/1, 281.

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and to affirming that, above all, ‘we have to do with God’s being in revelation [and] the one true love to which all other love can only bear witness[.]’82 Divine personhood In our discussion of § 28.1, we noted that Barth deploys the notion of God’s being as ‘decision’ (Entscheidung) in order to foreground the personality of God over against a doctrinal tradition which viewed this idea as generally dispensable. Moreover, he emphasizes the idea that God’s being is ‘self-moved’ in order to distinguish God’s personhood from our personhood – a personhood which is defined, in some sense, reciprocally by and with other persons. In § 28.2, this understanding is greatly expanded, and given our intent to establish the meaning of inner-divine fellowship in Barth’s thought, it is necessary to make our way through this section with a good measure of care. In general, the fundamental elements of Barth’s understanding of personhood remained consistent from his 1913 lecture ‘Der Glaube an den persönlichen Gott’.83 According to this essay, a person is essentially ‘the unity of thinking and willing in an individual’, that is, ‘the individual, spiritual I’.84 Yet, as in the Church Dogmatics, the younger Barth also argues for the uniqueness of the divine personality compared with general notions of personhood. In particular, he says, ‘The essential distinction between God and man is the fact we do not think of God the Almighty as limited by the individuality of his personality[.]’85 This is because, 82. CD II/1, 283. 83. This essay was initially presented as a lecture to the Pastor’s Association in Canton Aargau, Switzerland, and later published in the Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche in 1914. It is now accessible in Karl Barth, Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1909–1914, vol. XXII in Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, ed. Hans-Anton Drewes and Hinrich Stoevesandt (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich,1993), 494–554. Osthövener comments: ‘Doch obwohl die Problemstellung dieser Jahre in der ersten Weimarer Zeit in den Hintergrund rückt, wird sie Karl Barth noch bis in die Zeit der “Kirchliche Dogmatik” begleiten und damit eine Kontinuität eigener Art setzen, trotz aller Korrekturen und Neuorientierungen.’ Osthövener, Die Lehre von Gottes Eigenschaften, 110–1. 84. Karl Barth, ‘Der Glaube an den persönlichen Gott, 1913’, in Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1909–1914, vol. XXII in Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, ed. Hans-Anton Drewes and Hinrich Stoevesandt (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1993), 511. This is Barth’s general definition. With respect to God, he clarifies the definition to read: ‘Persönlichkeit ist individuell geistiges (werdendes) Ich.’ Barth, ‘Der Glaube and den persönlichen Gott’, 514. 85. Barth, ‘Der Glaube in den persönlichen Gott’, 547. Note also Barth’s nervousness concerning projection: ‘Ein Gottesgedanke, der zugestandenermaßen zustande kommt durch die Projektion des menschlichen Selbstbewußtseins ins Transzendente, ein solcher Gottesgedanke kann die Wirklichkeit Gottes gar nicht erreichen, geschweige denn erschöpfend beschreiben.’ Ibid., 547–8.

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unlike human beings, for whom personhood is always a function of finitude, God is known to us in ‘religious experience’ through a dialectical tension of ‘das Absolute’ and ‘die Persönlichkeit’:86 Both are somehow contained in every religious expression about God: the thought that the Absolute, the eternally omnipresent ground of all things in all its fullness, faces my ‘I’ as a ‘Thou,’ as an individual thinker and willer – yet also the other thought, that the one who encounters me personally as One, the one who befriends me, who is wrathful and gracious to me, who hears me and speaks with me, that this one is simultaneously the Absolute, the Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Religion lives precisely in the tension, in the revealed mystery of the antithesis which comes to expression in these two thoughts.87

Here we see, in germ form, the insight that would eventually make its way into the Church Dogmatics as the dialectic of love and freedom – chiefly by way of the dialectic of ‘personality’ and ‘aseity’ found in the Göttingen and Münster dogmatics cycles.88 Nevertheless, in the Church Dogmatics, Barth clearly pushes this notion of personhood in a more explicitly theological direction. Whereas in this early essay, Barth’s main concern is simply to distinguish and thereby protect divine from human personality, in CD II/1, he takes the point a step further, arguing that personality itself is a uniquely divine attribute. Indeed, in the CD, ‘not God’s personhood, but man’s is problematic’.89 In § 28.2 of the CD, Barth reiterates his earlier definition of a person as a ‘knowing, willing, acting I’ and yet immediately adds the caveat that this definition ‘can have the meaning only of a confession of the person of God declared in His revelation, of the One who loves and who as such (loving in His own way) is the person’.90 In other words, for Barth, it is now not simply that divine and human personhood must be strictly distinguished, as he had maintained in 1913. Rather, now his belief is that divine personhood is the only legitimate form of personhood such that ‘to be a person means really and fundamentally to be what God is, to be, that is, the One who loves in God’s way’.91 It is important to note that Barth is not simply inferring this point from the fact that revelation, as address, requires 86. Bruce McCormack sees in this lecture one of the earliest instances of Barth’s dialectical approach, even if he may have learned this particular binary from Wilhelm Hermann. See Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 104–7. 87. Barth, ‘Der Glaube in den persönlichen Gott’, 519. 88. Osthövener, Die Lehre von Gottes Eigenschaften, 120. Cf. the pithy summary: ‘The I that addresses us in revelation is free.’ Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 369. 89. Härle, Sein und Gnade, 60. 90. CD II/1, 284. 91. CD II/1, 284.

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some sort of personal, agential basis. Instead, Barth’s main reason for asserting the primacy of divine personhood is the nature of revelation as an act of love. For Barth, when God ‘seeks and creates fellowship’ with humanity, the fact that he does so not on any other basis than the sheer reality of his own being entails that his acts are genuinely self-moved. Hence, even if the general definition of a ‘knowing, willing, and acting I’ is taken at face value, it becomes clear that a human person could never satisfy this definition in herself. Unlike God, a human being will always need an external object to know, an external good to will, and an external space in which to act. Human personhood is, in other words, inherently contingent. God, however, knows, wills, and acts completely within the span of his own being and thus is personal with respect to created beings only in the sense of an ‘overflow’. God, in other words, is personal ‘all the way down’ and thus is the only genuinely real person. This claim – that God alone is an ‘I’ – represents a new insight with respect to Barth’s 1913 lecture. In that essay, Barth posited a irresolvable paradox between God’s ‘personality’ and ‘absoluteness’ purely on the grounds of ‘religious experience’. In the Church Dogmatics, this tension is re-presented not in terms of a paradox obtaining between ideas but rather in terms of the counterintuitive nature in which God is independently personal vis-à-vis the contingent nature of human ‘personhood’.92 As Barth puts it: [T]he (to us) inexplicable paradox of the nature of God is the fact that He is primarily and properly all that our terms seek to mean, and yet of themselves cannot mean, that He has revealed Himself to us in His original and proper being, thus remaining incomprehensible to us even in His revelation, yet allowing and commanding us to put our concepts into the service of knowledge of Him, blessing our obedience, being truly known by us within our limits. It is the paradox of the combination of His grace and our lost condition, not the paradox of the combination of two for us logically irreconcilable concepts.93

If, then, we were to offer a definition of personhood according to Barth’s thinking, we might say that a person is one whose life is a function of their own existence.94 To speak of God’s personality, therefore, is to highlight the fact that God’s life is a function of his own free existence as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and thus simultaneously to identify this existence as the sole basis for God’s establishment of fellowship with humanity. Consequently, because no other being besides God lives as a function of their own existence, no other being can be said to be personal in a proper sense. This is why Barth no longer sees the ‘paradox’ between God’s ‘freedom’ and ‘love’ that he once saw: because in the 92. Osthövener, Die Lehre von Gottes Eigenschaften, 169. 93. CD II/1, 287. 94. In the next section, Barth describes the being of God as ‘life lived out of itself [das aus sich selbst lebende Leben]’. CD II/1, 300; KD II/1, 338.

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unique personhood that is God’s triune love, God’s freedom is his loving and vice versa. God is not free, then, in the strictly libertarian sense of ‘possessing an unconstrained will’; rather, God’s freedom consists in his non-dependent identity as der Liebende. Before we move on to consider the nature of this freedom specifically, however, we are faced with a matter which is particularly relevant for our study, namely, Barth’s frequent references to ‘fellowship’ within the Godhead. Given that we have now interpreted such key ideas as divine ‘love’ and ‘personhood’, it remains therefore to be seen just how these terms can be accommodated within Barth’s trinitarianism. To this final issue raised by § 28.2, we now turn. Divine fellowship In his essay, ‘Die Trinitätslehre als Rahmentheorie des christlichen Glaubens’, Christoph Schwöbel represents a fairly common logic in contemporary trinitarian theology: [I]f the statement ‘God is love’ ontologically expresses the relation of love in God, then it follows that the being of God must also be understood as a beingin-relation. Now if love is understood as a mutually personal relation, such a mutually personal relation of love must also be assumed for God’s being-inrelation. And if love should be defined as interpersonal relation, that is, as a relation to the other and not as self-relation, it follows that there must also be relata in the relation of love within the trinitarian being of God. Love must therefore be capable of being expressed as a personal relation between the trinitarian persons of Father, Son, and Spirit.95

Schwöbel’s reasoning is fairly straightforward: if God’s love for us is recognized as a species of relationality between two distinct subjects (i.e., relata), and if this love is itself taken to be an instance of divine self-disclosure, then we can infer that the same sort of relationality must inhere within God’s own trinitarian being. Our question, then, is this: is this sort of logic also at work in Karl Barth’s understanding of divine fellowship? Is this, in other words, what Barth means when he writes: ‘Gottes Sein ist sein Lieben’?96 To be sure, Barth is not hesitant to speak of God’s immanent life in terms of Gemeinschaft. To note just a few examples:

95. Christoph Schwöbel, ‘Die Trinitätslehre als Rahmentheorie des christlichen Glaubens’, in Gott in Beziehung: Studien zur Dogmatik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2002), 42–3. 96. KD II/1, 394. Note also, Barth’s later comment in the context of his anthropology: ‘Gott ist in Beziehung; in Beziehung ist auch der von ihm geschaffene Mensch.’ KD III/2, 391.

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He does not exist in solitude but in fellowship. Therefore what He seeks and creates between Himself and us is in fact nothing else but what He wills and completes and therefore is in Himself.97 God is the good in the fact that He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit … and that as such He takes us up into His fellowship, i.e., the fellowship which He has and is in Himself[…]98 Therefore His love for us is His eternal love, and our being loved by Him is our being taken up into the fellowship of His eternal love, in which He is Himself for ever and ever.99

And yet more explicitly (from CD III/2): God exists in relationship and fellowship. As the Father of the Son and the Son of the Father, He is Himself I and Thou, he is face-to-face with himself such that, at the same time, he is one and the same in the Holy Spirit.100

How might statements such as these be reconciled with Barth’s ascription of personhood not to the individual members of the Trinity, but explicitly to the single, self-moved Subject that is der Liebende? For instance, it would seem that, according to the definition of personhood offered above, the members of the Trinity are not individuated ‘persons’ because their lives are not functions of their own existence; rather, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are defined wholly with reference to each other, as the classical formulations which Barth affirms in CD I/1 maintain. And this is not even to mention Barth’s well-known rejection of the term ‘person’ for the members of Trinity altogether, preferring instead ‘mode of being’. Indeed, more proximately, Barth is clear that ‘the more the idea gained currency of three personalities in God, the less could the being of God be understood as the One who loves, and therefore as the One, in terms of the one life of the threefold God in His revelation and in Himself ’.101 It appears, then, that if we are to arrive at an interpretation that is faithful to Barth’s concerns, we must find a way to describe divine ‘fellowship’ without relying on the concept of persons.

97. CD II/1, 275. 98. CD II/1, 276. 99. CD II/1, 280. 100. ‘Gott existiert in Beziehung und Gemeinschaft: als der Vater des Sohnes, als der Sohn des Vaters ist er sich selbst Ich und Du, ist er sich selbst gegenüber, um im Heiligen Geist zugleich Einer und Derselbe zu sein.’ KD III/2, 390. 101. CD II/1, 288. Cf. also CD I/1, 350: ‘It well to note at this early stage that what we to-day call the “personality” of God belongs to the one unique essence of God which the doctrine of the Trinity does not seek to triple but rather recognise in its simplicity.’

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One possible clue to how this might be done lies in Barth’s statement that ‘precisely in himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is himself selfcommunicating life’.102 This could reasonably be interpreted according to the classical trinitarian framework that Barth defends in CD I/1. Therein, God is seen as internally ‘self-communicating’ only with particular reference to the relations of origin in which God’s three modes of being subsist. Consequently, any ‘fellowship’ between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would have to gesture towards something like the doctrine of perichoresis – which Barth describes as the necessary ‘co-presence’ (Mitgegenwart) of the trinitarians members with respect to one another.103 Indeed, it is this ‘participation of each mode of being in the other modes of being’ which, according to Barth, creates the minimally necessary condition for fellowship, since, as he puts it, ‘where there is distinction, there is also fellowship’.104 The key, then, lies in determining whether or not the kind of ‘distinctions’ that Barth imagines within the Godhead cohere, for instance, with his construal of divine fellowship in CD III/2 as an ‘I–Thou’ relationship. Of course, it could be the case that Barth has merely ‘painted himself into a corner’ by arguing for both a single-subject trinitarianism and inner-divine fellowship – and here, it is often Barth’s ‘revelatory model of the Trinity’ which is blamed for creating the impasse. Jürgen Moltmann, for instance, famously argues that Barth’s attribution of subjecthood solely to the divine essence and not to the individual ‘persons’ of the Trinity stems from his preoccupation with a type of divine sovereignty owing more to the ‘Absolute Subject’ of German Idealism than to the biblical witness. Indeed, Moltmann writes, Barth errs in that he ‘puts the divine lordship before the Trinity and uses the “doctrine of Trinity” to secure and interpret the divine subjectivity in that Lordship’.105 As a result, Moltmann claims, Barth is left with sparse resources for describing exactly how the three Seinsweisen relate, with particular damage being done to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The ultimate consequence of this approach, then, is that the prospect of genuine divine ‘fellowship’ with the world is actually cut off, as the strong construal of divine freedom which Barth’s ‘Idealistic reflection Trinity’ necessitates restricts the God– world dynamic to a one-sided power relation. Wolfhart Pannenberg, too, faults Barth for allegedly deriving his doctrine of the Trinity ‘from the formal concept of revelation as self-revelation’ and not ‘from the data of the historical revelation of God as Father, Son, and Spirit’.106 Given this starting point, he argues, it was inevitable that Barth would arrive at a single102. ‘…Gott ja gerade in sich selbst als Vater, Sohn und Heiliger Geist das sich selbst mitteilende Leben ist.’ KD II/1, 311. 103. CD I/1, 370. 104. CD I/1, 370; ‘…wo Unterschied ist, da ist auch Gemeinschaft…’ KD I/1, 390. 105. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 143–4. 106. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. I, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 296.

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subject model of the Trinity, as the singularity of the divine act of self-disclosure can only be attributed to one singular actor. Pannenberg also shares Moltmann’s suspicions concerning the ultimate root of the problem, suggesting that ‘This model of a Trinity of revelation is easily seen to be structurally identical with that of the self-conscious Absolute, especially when God’s revelation has to be viewed primarily as self-revelation.’107 A much more subtle critique, however, comes from Rowan Williams, who (rightly) recognizes that it is at least Barth’s intention not to interpret ‘an idea of revelation, but the concrete structure of revelation as it has in fact occurred and is in fact occurring’.108 Nevertheless, Williams argues that even when judged against this, his own chosen criterion, Barth falls short of his intentions, as his doctrine of revelation tends to ‘homogenize’ the personal plurality in which God discloses himself through his saving acts in history109 – not least in the humiliation of Jesus Christ. Once again, it is Barth’s alleged fealty to the concept of sovereignty which is blamed for his interpretive predisposition, and this to such an extent that the doctrine of revelation upon which Barth’s trinitarianism is founded is described by Williams simply as ‘Calvin’s doctrine of irresistible grace rendered into epistemological terms’.110 Rather than viewing Barth’s trinitarianism as irreparably flawed, however, Williams goes on to suggest that the more historically involved and thereby more genuinely differentiated Trinity entailed by the Christological material in CD IV/1 signals Barth’s willingness to leave behind some of the methodological decisions he made in the first volume (even if Barth himself never made this explicit). In CD IV/1, Williams argues, we observe not a trinitarian model based on the singular act of divine address, but rather a genuine ‘dialectic of Fatherhood and Sonship in God’ established by the order of God’s acts not simply for, but actually in his creation.111 And so, Williams asserts, ‘The whole movement of IV/1 is towards a very much more “pluralist” conception of the Trinity than is allowed for in I/1.’ 107. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 296. 108. Rowan Williams, ‘Barth on the triune God’, in Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology, ed. Mike Higton (London: SCM, 2007), 110. Cf. Barth’s response to negative reviews of the Münster dogmatics in CD I/1, 296: ‘The serious or mocking charge has been brought against me that here [in the phrase Deus dixit] is a grammatical and rationalistic proof of the Trinity, so that I am doing the very thing I attack elsewhere, namely, deriving the mysteries of revelation from the data of a generally discernible truth…. The words were obviously not meant to be a proof themselves…. Naturally it was not my thought then, nor is it now, that the truth of the dogma of Trinity can be derived from the general truth of such a formula. Rather it is from the truth of the dogma of the Trinity that the truth of such a formula can perhaps be derived in this specific application, namely, to the dogma of the Trinity.’ 109. Williams, ‘Barth on the triune God’, 114. 110. Williams, ‘Barth on the triune God’, 115. 111. Williams, ‘Barth on the triune God’, 120.

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Hence, ‘the attempt to harmonize the two models – or rather, to bring the former into line with the latter – produces one of the most unhelpful bits of hermetic mystification in the whole of the Dogmatics’.112 Vis-à-vis our enquiry into the meaning of divine fellowship, then, Williams states the critique succinctly: ‘not very much sense can be made of “modes” relating to each other in love’.113 The charges, then, seem to be as follows: Barth’s trinitarianism, as it is expressed in CD I/1, is incapable of bearing the weight of a genuinely ‘biblical’ doctrine of God because it is ultimately based on a monochromatic, unidirectional, and possibly philosophical understanding of revelation. Consequently, either Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity ought simply to be jettisoned as a resource for making sense of divine fellowship (Moltmann, Pannenberg) or Barth’s later claims concerning such fellowship in II/1 ought to be read as the first step towards a more ‘historical’ doctrine of God established on the Christological and soteriological grounds of IV/1 (Williams). Nevertheless, despite Williams’ concerns, we suggest that there are good reasons to press on towards a resolution, not simply out of blind allegiance to a ‘coherency thesis’ regarding the Church Dogmatics, but rather on the grounds that the trinitarian material in CD I/1 may actually provide a helpful context for speaking of divine fellowship in properly theological terms. As a preliminary response to the above critiques, then, it is important to point out that a reading of Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity which sees it as being primarily determined by idealistic intuitions about an ‘absolute subject’ fails to account for Barth’s explicitly theological understanding of personhood – an understanding which, as we have endeavoured to show, began to take shape very early in his academic writings. Moreover, in that theological understanding, as we have already seen, ‘personhood’ (and thus ‘subjecthood’) can never be understood simply as the seat of pure, libertarian freedom (as in Fichte’s selfpositing Ich114), but always in terms of the concrete existence of the particular person in question. To the extent, then, that the form of God’s existence (what 112. Williams, ‘Barth on the triune God’, 129. 113. Williams, ‘Barth on the triune God’, 134. It should be pointed out, however, that unlike Moltmann, Williams is not marshalling these critiques as a prelude to a full-blown endorsement of social trinitarianism. On this point, see Benjamin Myers, ‘Election, Trinity, and the History of Jesus: Reading Barth with Rowan Williams’, in Trinitarian Theology after Barth, ed. Myk Habets and Phillip Tolliday (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 124. 114. ‘That whose being or essence consists simply in the fact that it posits itself as existing, is the self as absolute subject. As it posits itself, so it is; and as it is, so it posits itself; and hence the self is absolute and necessary for the self. What does not exist for itself is not a self.’ J.G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, ed. and trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 98. The difference between Barth’s notion of divine personality and Fichte’s absolute Ich is stark. For Barth, God’s essence and existence are always a function of his necessary and triune identity as ‘the One who loves in freedom’ and do not ‘consist’ in a sheer and generic intellectual act of self-awareness. Hence, as Barth would later write, ‘There is freedom in God, but no caprice.’ CD III/2, 218.

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we referred to above as God’s ‘life’) is itself a function of that existence (i.e., is non-dependent with the respect to other ‘existences’), God is, in Barth’s conceptuality, personal. Hence, only a critique which already assumes that personhood is a function of social relations will fault Barth for failing to call Father, Son, and Spirit ‘persons’ on the grounds that, for instance, ‘modes of being’ cannot instantiate relations of love.115 Second, the obvious point ought to be mentioned that if Barth’s trinitarianism in CD I/1 appears to take its cues solely from the event of revelation (hence placing an accent on God’s unilateral action understood in terms of ‘lordship’), this is because it stands quite explicitly within Barth’s doctrine of the Word of God.116 Consequently, even if it is legitimate to posit material development in his trinitarianism on the basis of, for instance, his doctrine of reconciliation (as we will have occasion to explore in due course), this does not necessarily require a reformulation of that particular aspect of Barth’s trinitarianism which envisions God as a single subject. More to the point: the nature of divine self-differentiation as illuminated by, for example, a radically Christological account of the being of God need not be cashed out in terms of three ‘personalities’ or ‘subjects’ in the

115. This is the fundamental flaw in the otherwise sympathetic reading of Barth offered in Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers, and John Zizioulas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Collins’ refusal to imagine an account of divine fellowship according to Western trinitarianism leads him to see all sorts of ‘tensions’ within Barth’s writings, supposing, for example, that Barth’s insistence on holding to both the singularity of divine subjecthood and fellowship within the Godhead presents the reader with ‘a persistent paradox’ (131) and thus numerous interpretive ‘obstacles’ (83). Collins’ assumptions are particularly evident when he claims, for instance, that ‘unless love is shared and expressed by persons, then it remains the unrequited and unexpressed idea of a solitary person or a pre-personal decision’ (86). While Collins admits that he is reading Barth with the express goal of assessing Barth’s commonalities with the contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas (108), he nevertheless allows Zizioulas’ antiWestern trinitarianism to skew his interpretation of Barth such that the latter is presented as, for example, trying to ‘break free from the constraints of a static Western ontology’ and yet ‘fail[ing] to escape from the predominating influence of the Western conceptuality of the core ego’ (156). Our own interpretive methodology, by contrast, is much more willing to explore the resources of Barth’s trinitarianism, rather than assuming its inadequacies from the outset. 116. ‘Barth is seeking to answer a single question: who is the subject of revelation? What can be said of this subject on the basis of revelation alone? What is said here about the doctrine of the Trinity is thus controlled by the needs and requirements of Barth’s concept of revelation.’ Bruce L. McCormack, ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity after Barth: An Attempt to Reconstruct Barth’s Doctrine in the Light of His Later Christology’, in Trinitarian Theology after Barth, ed. Myk Habets and Phillip Tolliday (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 87.

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Trinity.117 Such is, admittedly, one explanatory model, but it is by no means the only one. So what, then, does it mean to say that there is ‘fellowship’ within the Trinity? Unfortunately, the material in CD II/1 is simply too ambiguous to provide a definitive answer. Hence, we turn briefly to CD III/2, a text published five years later, to fill in some of the details. Again, our goal is not merely to reconcile disparate texts in the Church Dogmatics in order to demonstrate coherence for its own sake. Our interest, instead, is to discover just how far one can stretch the trinitarianism of CD I/1 before the band snaps and we are forced to admit multiple subjects within the Godhead. Paragraph 45, ‘Man in his Determination as the Covenant-Partner of God’, appears in the midst of Barth’s theological exposition of the human being and aims particularly to demonstrate how the imago Dei consists in humanity’s identity as a ‘being in encounter’, that is, a being whose constitution is determined by the interplay between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’. As Barth writes, ‘Properly and at its deepest level, which is also its highest, human nature is not isolated but dual. It does not consist in the freedom of a heart closed to the fellow-man, but in that of a heart open to the fellow-man.’118 The material identity of humanity as this ‘constitutively open’ being is established, of course, by the one whom Barth identifies as ‘the real man’, namely, Jesus Christ, whose fellowship with his ‘brothers’ is irreducibly definitive for the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of human nature. The form that this identity takes is, according to Barth, the maleness and femaleness of the human race as the sole ‘structural differentiation of human existence’.119 In this sense, then, there is a ‘correspondence’ between humanity’s destiny to be the covenant partner of God and the essentially covenantal form which humanity takes in and of itself.120

117. For instance, Bruce McCormack, himself a strong proponent of a radically historicized divine ontology, offers the following response to Williams: ‘Armed with a Christology that understands receptivity as a personal property of the one divine Subject in his second mode of being, it becomes entirely possible to remain within the bounds of the single, Subject model. On this view, “command” and “obedience” in God are not to be taken as univocally related to what “command” and “obedience” mean on the plane of human to human relations, but analogically – as expressions of an eternal act of self-relating on the part of the one divine Subject which consists in a self-giving to the human covenant partner.’ McCormack, ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity after Barth’, 112, n. 69. 118. CD III/2, 278. 119. CD III/2, 286. Cf. also: ‘There is no being of man above the being of male and female.’ Ibid., 289. 120. A major difference between these two determinations consists in the fact that humanity’s immanently covenantal form is reciprocal, whilst the relationship between humanity and God is wholly determined by the latter. Moreover, because the true human being is actually Jesus Christ, the eternally elected man, the intra-covenantal nature of human being is ultimately derivative and thus a function of grace as well. CD III/2, 321–3.

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For Barth, the ultimate ground of humanity’s identity as a being-in-encounter is the being of God. As he explains, ‘If man is ordained to be God’s partner in this covenant, and if his nature is a likeness corresponding to this ordination, necessarily it corresponds in this respect to the nature of God Himself.’121 This, for Barth, is the essence of the imago Dei. ‘God is in relation; the human created by him is also in relation. That is the human’s divine likeness.’122 Such thinking is not, Barth stresses, an appeal to the analogia entis, but rather to what he calls the ‘analogia relationis’.123 There is, in other words, a correspondence between the manner of God’s own triune existence as Beziehung und Gemeinschaft and the essential relationality in which humanity’s capacity – or rather, destiny – for covenantal fellowship with God consists.124 It is in this inner-trinitarian Beziehung und Gemeinschaft to which the teleological aspect of human being corresponds that our interests lie. A key premise in Barth’s reasoning is that the relationship established between God and the elected man Jesus Christ is something which is appropriate and ‘not alien’ to God. Thus, he says, ‘In this relationship, God, so to speak, repeats a relationship which is particular to himself in his inner divine essence.’125

121. CD III/2, 232. 122. ‘Gott ist in Beziehung; in Beziehung ist auch der von ihm geschaffene Mensch. Das ist des Menschen Gottebenbildlichkeit.’ KD III/2, 391. 123. Barth first raises this point in § 41: ‘As God is free for man, so man is free for man; but only inasmuch as God is for him, so that the analogia relationis as the meaning of the divine likeness cannot be equated with an analogia entis.’ CD III/1, 195. Barth apparently appropriated the concept of the analogia relationis from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose Schöpfung und Fall was ‘the first and only book of Bonhoeffer’s on which Barth publicly expressed an opinion during the former’s lifetime’. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. and ed. Victoria J. Barnett (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000), 180. Cf. Bonhoeffer: ‘The likeness, the analogia, of humankind to God is not analogia entis but analogia relationis.’ Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, vol. 3 in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997), 65. For more on the analogia relationis with respect to Bonhoeffer, see Clifford J. Green, Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 192–7. 124. In reality, there are actually two analogies, as Eberhard Jüngel points out. There is, on the one hand, the analogy between God in his triune being and the relationship between God and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ and, on the other hand, the analogy between God and humanity in Jesus Christ and humanity in itself as being-in-encounter. In this way, the imago Dei as it obtains in ‘humanity in general’ is properly understood as an ‘analogy of an analogy’. See Jüngel, ‘Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grund der Analogie. Eine Untersuchung zum Analogieverständnis Karl Barths’, in Barth-Studien (Zürich-Koln: Benziger; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn, 1982), 214–15. 125. CD III/2, 218, revised translation; KD III/2, 260.

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Accordingly, Barth offers an incredibly illuminating description of this ‘inner divine essence’, which we will now quote at length in a new translation: Even in [God’s] own, inner divine being there is, so to speak, relationship [Beziehung]. It is also the case that, in himself, God is indeed one and singular. He is, however, not solitary on account of this. Indeed, in him, there is also a beingtogether, a being-with-another, and a being-for-another [ein Zusammensein, ein Miteinandersein, ein Füreinandersein]. Certainly, in himself, God is not only simple, but in the simplicity of his essence, he is also triune: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – God positing himself [sich selber setzend], God posited through himself [durch sich selber gesetzt], and God affirming himself in the two [sich selber in Beidem … bestätigend] as his own origin and goal. In himself, God is truly the eternal lover, the eternally beloved, [and] eternal love. And in this, his triunity, he is the archetypal image [Urbild] and source of all ‘I and Thou.’ He is the I which is eternally from and to Thou and precisely in this way is ‘I’ in the most eminent sense.126

Here, we have a description of relationality within the Godhead that retains, we suggest, the single subject understanding of CD I/1, whilst simultaneously expanding that understanding to include a more detailed account of the ‘three’. The key is in the concept of divine self-affirmation understood by a set of conceptualities, one linguistic and one generative. On the generative side, Barth speaks of the Father as ‘God positing himself ’, the Son as ‘God posited through himself ’, and the Spirit as ‘God affirming himself ’ (Gott sich selbst bestätigend). This is clearly a reference to the divine processions or relations of origin and stands firmly in line with Barth’s earlier intuitions concerning the Trinity. Divine differentiation, according to this model, is a matter of seeing God’s three modes of being as, in Thomistic terms, ‘subsistent relations’ – irreducibly distinct in their reciprocally definitive nature, and yet one in the essence which is at the same time defined by those relations. This, then, presents the occasion for Barth to repeat Augustine’s classic description of the Trinity as ‘lover, beloved, and love’,127 which here is simply taken to be an illumination of the relations of origin. Divine love is consequently taken to be God’s essential relationality in the sense of his necessary ‘self-positing’ – his identity as the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and Son. Barth is, in other words, still very clearly classical in his trinitarianism.128

126. KD III/2, 260–1. 127. Cf. Augustine, The Trinity, VIII.14. 128. During an interview later in life, Barth would comment, ‘In this particular doctrine [i.e., the Trinity] I am very close to the Roman Catholic doctrine. I think they would probably accept most of my doctrine.’ John D. Godsey, ed., Karl Barth’s Table Talk (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1963), 50.

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However, a second, linguistic conceptuality is also employed, and it consists in the divine ‘self-affirmation’ which is repeated and imaged in God’s affirmation of humanity in Jesus Christ. Eberhard Jüngel offers a helpful account: God says Yes to himself and, in that he affirms himself in the Son by the Spirit, speaks to his being. God corresponds to this, his saying-Yes to himself, in that he says Yes to the elect man in Jesus Christ. God corresponds to this, his saying-Yes to the elected man in Jesus, in that he determines man to be his covenant partner and so says Yes to him. God corresponds to this, his saying-Yes to the man determined to be his covenant partner, in that he creates this man as an affirmed creature. Every aforementioned anthropological correspondence therefore says this: that God corresponds to his Yes to himself.129

In this scheme, then, divine relationality is envisioned as an act of God’s will, with God’s triune essence being identical to his eternal decision to exist as such. It is this intentional ‘openness’ to the other – to the Thou – which establishes the possibility for a genuine analogia relationis between God’s life in himself and Godfor-humanity. As Barth puts it, The correspondence and similarity of the two relationships consists in the fact that the freedom in which God posits Himself as the Father, is posited by Himself as the Son and confirms Himself as the Holy Ghost, is the same freedom as that in which He is the Creator of man, in which man may be His creature, and in which the Creator-creature relationship is established by the Creator.130

In order to understand, then, what Barth means when he says that God ‘is Himself I and Thou’,131 it is tempting to suggest that, for instance, God is such only with respect to the eternal relationship he establishes with humanity in the election of Jesus Christ – that is to say, inner-divine ‘otherness’ can only be explained in terms of the two natures of Christ. But this would be to ignore the precisely three elements of the analogia relationis which Barth is endeavouring to coordinate, namely: (1) God’s triune life, (2) God’s relationship with Jesus Christ, and (3) God’s relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ. In this scheme, God’s decision to be God-for-humanity in Jesus Christ is itself analogically predicated on the ‘fellowship’ God enjoys within his own triune being. To ignore this is to obscure the logic of Barth’s anthropology – a logic which states clearly that the imago Dei is mediated to general humanity through the humanity of Christ. Moreover, it would be to address the question of divine fellowship by simply importing the nature of human personal relations into the divine identity. Barth, by contrast, is much more nuanced in that he clearly recognizes that wherever an analogy posits similarity, 129. Jüngel, ‘Die Möglichkeit’, 225. 130. CD III/2, 220. 131. CD III/2, 324.

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it also posits dissimilarity. As Barth writes, ‘If the humanity of Jesus is the image of God, this means that it is only indirectly and not directly identical with God.’ Consequently, he says, In it we have to do with God and man [=element (2) above] rather than God and God [=element (1) above]. There is a real difference in this respect. We cannot, therefore, expect more than correspondence and identity. Between God and God, the Father and the Son and the Son and the Father, there is unity of essence, the perfect satisfaction of self-grounded reality, and a blessedness eternally self-originated and self-renewed. But there can be no question of this between God and man, and it cannot therefore find expression in the humanity of Jesus, in His fellow-humanity as the image of God.132

In other words, if the nature of the analogia relationis is to be respected properly as an analogy, then it will not do to posit a one-to-one correspondence between human I–Thou relations and the Godhead. As Barth argues in the passages quoted above, divine fellowship is a function of the generative and self-affirming relations obtaining between God’s three modes of being. Accordingly, it is completely different from any sort of reality with which human beings are familiar. Human knowledge of divine fellowship is, in other words, a consequence of God’s secondary objectivity, and hence, the precise nature of the divine life in and for itself will always remain, in a sense, mysterious (i.e., hidden in its revealedness). What we can know, however, is that God’s ‘seeking and creation of fellowship’ with humanity in Christ is analogically related to his inner life as the die Liebende in der Freiheit, thereby maintaining the principle that God is always ‘true to Himself ’ in his revelation. Summary We may thus reiterate our conclusions before moving on to our final section concerning § 28, that which has to do specifically with God’s freedom. First, we noted that, according to Barth, love must precede freedom in the order of exposition not because God’s love is somehow more fundamental than God’s freedom, but because God’s freedom is only revealed in the act of God’s ‘seeking and creation of fellowship’ with human beings. Second, we saw how, for Barth, God’s love must be defined wholly by the acts of God in his revelation, and not in any way by a general notion of love perceived in, for example, human social relations. Third, and relatedly, we saw how ‘personhood’ is properly conceived as a divine attribute. Whereas in the human sphere, personhood is a function of contingency and finitude, in God, personhood is a function specifically of his aseity: as the only ‘self-moved being’, God is, as it were, ‘personal all the way down’. And lastly, we noticed how, for Barth, the idea of divine fellowship chiefly 132. CD III/2, 219.

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concerns God’s immanent processions and thus does not require a radical revision of the ‘single subject’ trinitarianism he develops in the first volume of the Church Dogmatics.

Divine freedom Given that Barth posits a non-competitive and indeed mutually determinative relationship between divine love and freedom, it should not be considered strange if we find ourselves covering similar ground to that which we encountered in our last section. Nevertheless, Barth offers some helpful clarifications in § 28.3, ‘The Being of God in Freedom’, and so we turn to examine these briefly before moving on to the more explicitly Christological material found in the later paragraphs. Our chief concerns vis-à-vis this section are (1) Barth’s appeal to freedom as a further means of highlighting the non-contingence of divine personhood, (2) God’s freedom in transcendence, (3) God’s freedom in immanence, and (4) the significance of Jesus Christ as the ‘key’ for talk of the being of God in light of his manifold immanence in the world. Divine personhood as free personhood As he begins the final section of § 28, Barth reiterates that what has already been discussed are not multiple ‘aspects’ of God’s being, but rather a single theme expanded in accordance with the discursive nature of theological enquiry. Indeed, he writes, ‘No change of theme was involved when we spoke first of God’s life and then of God’s love, first of His being in act and then of His being as the one who loves.’133 Similarly, concerning the topic of divine freedom, Barth is clear that we ought not to expect new material but rather a specification (Näherbestimmung) of the ‘distinctiveness of this particular living and loving … in view of the reality revealed to us by God Himself ’.134 To begin, then, Barth makes the point that, ultimately, divine freedom is a way of speaking to the uniqueness of God’s life in terms of his utter self-possession. Of course, we have already encountered this idea in Barth’s construal of Persönlichkeit as an exclusively divine attribute. Nevertheless, here he revisits the thought in order specifically to re-describe the predicate of ‘divinity’ according to the concrete way in which God distinguishes himself in revelation. Such is a necessary discussion, Barth insists; for here, in the place where God’s ‘transcendence’ is particularly in 133. CD II/1, 299. 134. CD II/1, 300, emphasis added. John Webster comments: ‘Divine freedom, because it is not abstract but takes form in the acts of creation, reconciliation and redemption, is the freedom in which God loves. Freedom is not anterior to God’s love but its divine depth; divine love is the actuality (not the surrender or compromise) of divine sovereignty.’ Barth, 86. Cf. also Härle, Sein und Gnade, 60.

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view, we especially face the temptation to bypass God’s self-revelation and rely instead on our natural assumptions about what divinity might mean. Should this happen, Barth warns, ‘we shall be enquiring in fact not about the idea of God, but … about the idea of man, about the sum of his wishes and longings, about the highest embodiment, in absolute form, of our own being’.135 According to Barth, then, what makes God’s living and loving ‘divine’ is the fact that he is the only ‘free’ person: ‘In this way … He is distinguished from other persons. He is the one, original and authentic person through whose creative power and will alone all other persons are and are sustained.’136 Hence, to be a free person is, for Barth, coterminous with being ‘the Lord’ – not merely in the sense of sitting at the top of a hierarchy, but more properly in terms of being completely self-moved: ‘[F]reedom in its positive and proper qualities means to be grounded in one’s own being, to be determined and moved by oneself.’137 Hence, for Barth, God must be all that he is without reference to any created being. This is why, in his treatment of the divine perfections, Barth is so careful to ensure that each perfection is defined non-comparatively – that is, wholly with reference to God’s life in himself first, and only subsequently with respect to creation.138 Such is Barth’s approach even in this paragraph, and so his first clarification concerning God’s free personhood is naturally an enquiry into its ‘positive’ aspect: God’s freedom in transcendence. God’s freedom in transcendence According to Barth, the ‘positive’ or ‘primary’ aspect of divine freedom (God’s ‘primary absoluteness’139) considers God’s transcendence not as determined by realities external to himself, but as a reality immanent to the being of God: ‘[T] he freedom of God is primarily and fundamentally defined as God’s freedom in Himself, and only from that point of view [is it] understood as His independence from the world[.]’140 This hearkens to the classical doctrine of divine aseity, the original terminology used by Barth for this half of the dialectic in the Göttingen Dogmatics. Accordingly, Barth argues, it is only in light of the divine aseity that the sovereignty of God’s self-disclosure becomes a coherent thought: ‘God has the prerogative to be free without being limited by His freedom from external conditioning, free also with regard to His freedom, free not to surrender Himself to 135. CD II/1, 299. 136. CD II/1, 301. 137. CD II/1, 301. Cf. CD I/1, 307: ‘Godhead in the Bible means freedom, ontic and noetic autonomy [ontische und noetische Eigenständigkeit].’ KD I/1, 323. 138. For example, with respect to divine eternity: ‘…we know eternity primarily and properly, not by the negation of the concept of time, but by the knowledge of God as the possessor interminabilis vitae’. CD II/1, 611. 139. CD II/1, 317. 140. CD II/1, 309.

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it, but to use it to give Himself to this communion and to practise this faithfulness in it, in this way being really free, free in Himself.’141 Once more, Barth emphasizes that the recognition of God’s freedom does not stem from a general concept of divinity, but specifically from the way in which God presents himself to us in his secondary objectivity. In other words, in his self-revelation, God discloses the fact that all his actions ‘begin with Himself ’. This, for Barth, is the true Beweis of the necessity of God’s existence – not in terms of a ‘proof ’ but more in terms of a ‘demonstration’: ‘The freedom in which He demonstrates His existence is the freedom of God in his revelation.’142 God’s wholly immanent freedom, then, raises the question of whether God should be described as an ens necessarium, that is, a being whose existence in all possible worlds cannot logically be denied. Here Barth is careful. On the one hand, he resists engaging in the type of speculative discourse which would try to imagine a scenario in which God does not exist, but on the other, he is careful not to make ‘existence’ a predicate which can be added to God’s irreducible subjectivity. As Barth puts it, The freedom in which God exists means that He does not need His own being in order to be who He is: because He already has His own being and is Himself; because nothing can accrue to Him from Himself which He had not or was not already; because, therefore, His being in its self-realisation or the actuality of His being answers to no external pressure but is only the affirmation of His own plenitude and a self-realisation in freedom.143

In sum, then, Barth’s understanding of God’s ‘primary’ freedom, or his ‘freedom in transcendence’ (as we have identified it), entails that God’s being is constrained by nothing other than the fact that, in accordance with Exodus 3:14, ‘God is who God is’. It is therefore only after this fact has been established that Barth approaches the matter of God’s relationship to the world, that is, of God’s ‘freedom in immanence’. God’s freedom in immanence The presupposition guiding Barth’s understanding of God’s ‘secondary absoluteness’ is, of course, the fact that God has acted not just upon but actually in his creation; God is, on the grounds of revelation and in the most eminently possible sense, immanent in the world. The fact that God can be immanent in the world is a function of the fact that God is he who in his freedom from the world actually sustains the world. Contrary to Idealist understandings of God which, in Barth’s 141. CD II/1, 303. 142. CD II/1, 305. ‘Die Freiheit seines Existenzbeweises ist die Freiheit Gottes in seiner Offenbarung.’ KD II/1, 343. 143. CD II/1, 306.

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estimation, conceive God’s absoluteness chiefly in terms of his opposition to the world, for Barth, ‘the existence of a reality distinct from God and confronting Him in its difference cannot imply any difficulty in relation to the absolute God’.144 This is because, as we have seen, God already possesses his freedom in his own being without any reference to the world. Consequently, the world is not ‘threatened with destruction’ as it faces the absoluteness of God because the world exists specifically on the grounds of the absolute activity of God on its behalf. The fact that God is both immanent in the world and yet free in his immanence implies several things. First, it implies the classical point that God is not in a genus (Deus non est in genere), that is, God is not subsumable into a category which can be applied with equal validity to created being. This Barth terms God’s ‘noetic’ absoluteness.145 On the other hand, second, God’s freedom in immanence implies what Barth calls an ‘ontic’ absoluteness – a notion which suggests that even if God is authentically present in the world, he does not on this account become ‘bound up’ with the world. Indeed, for Barth, God does not ‘mingle and blend’ Himself with created beings; rather, ‘Even in His relationship and connexion with them, He remains who He is.’146 Hence, in a passage wherein Barth sounds rather blatantly Thomistic, he writes: Every relationship into which God enters with that which is not Himself must be interpreted – however much this may disturb or correct our preconceived ideas of connexion and relationship [Beziehung und Verbindung] – as eventuating between two utterly unequal partners, the sheer inequality consisting in the fact that no self-determination of the second partner can influence the first, whereas the self-determination of the first, while not cancelling out the selfdetermination of the second, is the sovereign predetermination which precedes it absolutely.147

If this sounds like it puts God at a considerable distance from his creation, Barth reaches the exact opposite conclusion. Indeed, for Barth, the fact that God’s identity is in no way ‘threatened’ by his placing himself in relation to an ‘other’ means that he can in fact approach the other to a level of intimacy that is simply not possible amongst created beings. Created beings, as finite beings, Barth explains, obtain their particularity only in relation to other created

144. CD II/1, 309. 145. CD II/1, 310–1. 146. CD II/1, 312. 147. CD II/1, 312. Cf. the following passage from Thomas Aquinas: ‘Since therefore God is outside the whole order of creation, and all creatures are ordered to Him, and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are really related to God Himself; whereas in God there is no real relation to creatures, but a relation only in idea, inasmuch as creatures are referred to Him.’ ST Ia, q.13, a.7.

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beings. Hence, ‘It lies in the nature of the created being to have to be true to itself in such a way that with the best will in the world it simply cannot be true to another.’148 This is because a finite being ‘cannot affirm itself except by affirming itself against others’.149 God, on the other hand, is utterly free to give himself to the creature at no detriment or challenge to the identity which he already perfectly possesses in himself. Indeed, Barth insists, God can actually ‘bind himself ’ to the creature in a gesture that can perhaps best be described as pure gift.150 In this way, Barth is resolute that God’s freedom stands in no way as a barrier to his genuine relatedness to the creature – provided, of course, that this relationship is conceived in such a way that it is actually God who is at all times present as such. The principle of divine immanence: Jesus Christ Barth concludes § 28 by considering the diversity of ways in which God makes himself immanent to the world. Given his understanding of the aseity and unity of God’s personhood, it could be supposed that, according to Barth’s reasoning, divine action/presence in the world would occur in strict correspondence to the singularity of the divine being. Consequently, the manifold ways in which God’s action is depicted in Scripture would need to be reinterpreted, for instance, in some sort of metaphorical way. Barth, however, is quick to reject this possibility, insisting instead that God’s freedom is such that ‘in all His opus ad extra’, he can ‘remain the One who He is in an apparently inexhaustible abundance of distinctions’.151 Here, of course, Barth is setting the stage for a realist understanding of the multiplicity of the divine perfections as it is presented in subsequent paragraphs.152 Yet in this context, his concern is chiefly to foreground the necessity of theological attentiveness – for the moment in 148. CD II/1, 313. 149. CD II/1, 313. 150. CD II/1, 314. Stephen Webb comments: ‘More than any other modern theologian, Barth has preserved and intensified the traditional notion of the purely boundless, unrestrained, and excessive generosity of God’ (102). Ultimately, Webb faults Barth for portraying God’s generosity so unidirectionally as effectively to cancel out the significance of human religious action: ‘This excess is so singular, however, that it threatens to create a massive dependence that must be acknowledged but can never be rectified or even redressed’ (103). Stephen H. Webb, The Gifting God: A Trinitarian Ethics of Excess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). For a (successful) defence of the legitimacy of human action in Barth, however, see John Webster, Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)and Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought (London: T&T Clark, 1998). 151. CD II/1, 316. 152. Such is the observation of Robert B. Price in his Letters of the Divine Word: The Perfections of God in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 30–1.

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which we are tempted to flatten out the diversity of God’s self-manifestation, ‘we must consider whether we are not tilting against God himself ’.153 The key to grappling with the variety of God’s involvement with the world, Barth suggests, is to recognize its inherent order and pattern. Specifically, he argues, ‘all these possibilities of divine presence and action have a very definite centre, that is, they have their basis and their consummation, their meaning, their norm and their law in Jesus Christ’.154 Indeed, in Jesus, we discover ‘the principle and basis of God’s immanence in the world’.155 The reason that Jesus Christ can serve this noetic function is quite simply the reality of his identity as God.156 The basis for all of God’s various dealings with the world, that is, the principle of history, is not therefore a series of discrete and capricious decisions issuing from an abstractly free divine will. Rather, Barth insists, it lies very specifically in the person of Jesus Christ: ‘the divine immanence in all its varied possibilities has its origin in Jesus Christ and therefore its unity in Him, but only in Him, in the diversity of its actions and stages’.157 Here, Barth stands at the cusp of one of his greatest dogmatic formulations, namely, his Christocentric doctrine of election. In the doctrine of election, as we will see in our next chapter, Barth discovers a particular way to narrate the relationship between God’s ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ absoluteness such that it is given a much firmer material determination. Yet as we will see, the intuitions worked out in § 28 will play a significant role in pushing Barth to conceive of election in a decidedly non-traditional way.

Summary In this chapter, we have discovered something of the unique way in which Barth envisages the divine nature. Barth has insisted throughout § 28 that whilst commentary can indeed be offered on the divine nature, this can only be legitimate insofar as whatever is claimed is also demonstrably given in the event of revelation. Hence, the doctrine of God should not ‘qualify’ the narrative of God’s dealings with humanity but rather should emerge from them (here we are perhaps reminded of Schleiermacher’s relation of the ‘original’ and ‘derived’ attributes, or 153. CD II/1, 316. ‘It is fatal for the Church and a threat to the faith of each individual and his eternal felicity to overlook even a single one of the revealed variations of God’s immanence, to deny it, to efface it, or to level it out into something generalised which as such certainly cannot be divine.’ Ibid. 154. CD II/1, 316–7. 155. CD II/1, 317, revised translation: ‘…der Sohn Gottes, der in Jesus Christus Fleisch geworden ist, ist als ewige Seinsweise Gottes selbst nicht mehr und nicht weniger als das Prinzip aller Weltimmanenz Gottes und also das Prinzip dessen, was wir die sekundäre Absolutheit Gottes genannt haben.’ KD II/1, 356. 156. ‘God is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is God.’ CD II/1, 318. 157. CD II/1, 318.

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those doctrines ‘presupposed’ and ‘determined’ by Christian self-consciousness). The hinge that makes such an integrated theological approach possible is precisely the notion of God’s being-in-act, or the eminently personal aseity by which God lives solely as a function of his own existence. God is, in other words, personal in his very being, irrespective of his relation to other persons, in a way that is, in this respect, incommensurate with creaturely personhood. Even the love that God has for humanity, evident in his boundless covenantal benevolence, is grounded in an inner-trinitarian movement of love that operates in ways that simply cannot be reproduced amongst non-trinitarian persons. As Barth puts it, God is in Himself, I and Thou. There is, therefore, a notable dis-analogy between divine and human personhood, and so divine and human love, which must be acknowledged. If, however, Barth’s claim that God’s inner life really is ‘given’ in the concrete events of revelation and reconciliation, then this claim must be explicitly related to these events. Hence, our next chapter will attempt to assess whether the material from § 28 can be made to cohere with two particularly key redemptive moments: the eternal election of Jesus Christ and the obedience of the Son in the atonement.

7 T H E C H R I ST O L O G IC A L S HA P E O F T H E D I V I N E IDENTIT Y

To this point, we have seen how Barth’s doctrines of revelation and God are directed by Barth’s understanding of the way in which God presents himself to man, namely, in loving freedom, or personally. Moreover, at each juncture, we observed how Barth aims to justify his claims solely on the basis of what God actually does, and never with recourse to a general concept of divinity. Nevertheless, ‘what God actually does’ has been up until now assumed and not explicitly narrated with any concrete specificity. In this chapter, therefore, we will attend to how Barth gives material shape to his earlier claims through a unique rendering of Christology, specifically vis-à-vis the doctrines of election and atonement. The result of this engagement, we will demonstrate, enables Barth to describe God’s personal essence as ‘Christologically shaped’ – that is, as corresponding fully and fittingly with God’s essence as the one who loves in freedom.

Divine election Volume II/2 has often been regarded as a high point in Barth’s Church Dogmatics – and with good reason.1 In this volume, we witness Barth at the height of his creative powers, asserting his so-called Christocentrism with penetrating consistency and, for this reason, self-consciously breaking from many of the classic Reformed teachers at whose feet he had learned the craft of systematic theology in the 1920s. II/2 also represents one of the first occasions in the CD wherein Barth is forced to defend his unique views through direct appeal to the

1. Whether CD II/2 also marks a transition point in Barth’s theology will not be explicitly treated in this chapter. For the now-classic statement of this perspective, see Bruce McCormack, ‘Grace and being: the role of God’s gracious election in Karl Barth’s theological ontology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 101–4.

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Bible – the text by which he claims to have been (in a fittingly Calvinistic phrase) ‘driven irresistibly to reconstruction’.2 Once again, the scope of our study requires that we move somewhat swiftly through this material, extracting only a handful of relevant themes rather than offering a detailed account.3 In particular, we are concerned with four related issues: (1) the relationship between Barth’s doctrine of election and the dialectic of love and freedom, (2) the rendering of Jesus Christ as the centre-point of all doctrine, (3) the relationship between election and created time, and (4) election as the overflow of God’s triune love. The specification of the dialectic of love and freedom As we saw above, Barth concludes § 28 by appealing to Jesus Christ as the sole ground of the knowledge of God. Therein, for example, he insisted that ‘The legitimacy of every theory concerning the relationship of God and man or God and the world can be tested by considering whether it can be understood also as an interpretation of the relationship and fellowship created and sustained in Jesus Christ.’4 Consequently, he declared, ‘There are strictly speaking no Christian themes independent of Christology[.]’5 In Chapter VII, ‘The Election of God’, therefore, Barth offers a specific material defence of these statements by means of the bold claim that Jesus Christ is both the object and subject of election. The fact that Barth is here specifying (i.e., näherbestimmen) his previous claims ought not to imply, however, that in previous volumes, he was employing essentially abstract theological categories. When Barth, for instance, spoke of God as triune or of the being of God as the one who loves in freedom, it was not as if these concepts were simply ‘formal’ receptacles for later material claims. Rather, from the very first pages of the Church Dogmatics, Barth has insisted that it is the responsibility of dogmatics to remain attentive first and foremost to revelation, and that, significantly, ‘Revelation in fact does not differ from the person of Jesus Christ nor from the reconciliation accomplished in Him.’6 Nevertheless, in

2. CD II/2, x. For an assessment of Barth’s exegetical arguments, consult David Gibson, Reading the Decree: Exegesis, Election and Christology in Calvin and Barth (London: T&T Clark, 2009). 3. For a fine example of this, see Matthias Göckel, Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election: A Systematic-Theological Comparison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 158–97. 4. CD II/1, 320. 5. CD II/1, 320. 6. CD I/1, 119. Cf. from CD II/2: ‘Theology must begin with Jesus Christ, and not with general principles … as though He were a continuation of the knowledge and Word of God, and not its root and origin, not indeed the very Word of God itself ’ (4). On this point, Tom Greggs correctly observes that Barth’s doctrine of election ‘is worked out through the

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CD II/2, he finds it necessary to enquire deeper into the particular contours of this person whom Barth now identifies as himself the path chosen by God for both God and humanity. Accordingly, ‘It is here’, Barth writes, ‘that we make the decisive step, the transition from the knowledge of God to the knowledge of all His work’.7 Our first point regarding this doctrine, then, is that God’s decision to elect humanity in Jesus Christ is, according to Barth, the ground of the dialectic of love and freedom which he had previously deemed essential to the knowledge of God’s being. Barth’s intention is therefore not to leave behind or significantly revise the material from CD II/1 but rather to specify precisely how this material is fully present in Jesus Christ as the determinative nexus of the relationship between God and humanity. However, in order to make this claim – that is, in order to posit Jesus Christ as the centre-point of all theological knowledge – Barth realises that he must go further than merely analysing the idea of Jesus Christ. At best, this approach could only render a highly abstract account of divine–human relations and thus bypass the history shared between God and humanity. On the contrary, Barth aims to establish the definitive moment of this particular history, and this leads him to consider ‘the beginning of all the ways and works of God’:8 the election of grace. Barth’s selection of the phrase ‘election of grace’ (an appeal to Romans 11:5) is intentional, and he uses it specifically to build on CD II/1: ‘It is a question of grace, and that means the love of God. It is a question of election, and that means the freedom of God.’9 The grace of election speaks to the fact that its ground consists in nothing other than the being of God itself: ‘Generally speaking, it is the demonstration [Erweis], the overflowing of the love [Überströmen der Liebe] which is the being of God, that He who is entirely self-sufficient, who even within Himself cannot know isolation, willed even in all His divine glory to share His life with another, and to have that other as the witness of His glory.’10 On the other hand, this grace is also free in that it is predicated fully on God’s utterly personal and therefore self-moved life: ‘In all its manifestations, in all its activity, His grace is free grace. It is the Lord who is the Saviour and Helper. His taking to Himself of that other is an act of unconditional sovereignty.’11 In short, for Barth, the doctrine of election is the good news ‘that God is for man too the One who loves in freedom’.12 volumes of CD that follow alongside and in connection with the Trinitarianism espoused in Volume I’. Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 20. 7. CD II/2, 88. 8. CD II/2, 3. 9. CD II/2, 9. 10. CD II/2, 9–10. 11. CD II/2, 11. 12. CD II/2, 3.

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Jesus Christ as the centre-point of the doctrine of God Barth’s decision to place the doctrine of election after the divine attributes and before the doctrine of creation is not innovative in terms of his own oeuvre. In both the Göttingen and Münster dogmatics cycles, Barth locates election in exactly the same place.13 The new insight of the Church Dogmatics, however, is the idea that in the event of election, God is not only choosing a particular history for humanity but also a particular history for himself.14 Hence, election ought to be treated not after but within the doctrine of God. This is also the reason why the doctrine of election can function as a ‘transition point’ between the being and works of God – not because it is the first of God’s works, but because this doctrine actually tells the ‘whole story’ of the being and works of God at once: ‘The doctrine of election belongs to the doctrine of God Himself because God Himself does not will to be God, and is not God, except as the One who elects.’15 In claiming that ‘Jesus Christ is himself God’s gracious election’,16 Barth deliberately separates himself from his Reformed heritage – a tradition which he believes ultimately grounds election in a capricious act of the divine will in an unknowable moment in eternity past. Not only does this view verge towards the speculative, Barth says, but it also looks away from Scripture in favour of arguments which appeal to, for example, tradition, ‘practical concerns’, experience, or even the supposed majesty of divine inscrutability.17 By contrast, Barth insists, we ought not to presuppose confusion where clarity is given. Indeed, he writes, Scripture compels us to affirm ‘that in the mystery of election we have to do with light and not darkness, that the electing God and the elected man are known quantities and not unknown’.18

13. Göckel, Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election, 164. Barth shares this order with certain Reformed Orthodox writers. For example, Francis Turretin (1623–1687) also treated in succession the doctrine of God, the decrees of God, and the doctrine of creation. Cf. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. I, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. [Philippsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992], x–xv. 14. The story behind Barth’s change of mind regarding the doctrine of election is now well known. In 1936, Barth attended a conference in Geneva celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Reformation in that city. During the proceedings, he heard a paper given by the French Protestant theologian Pierre Maury, who argued that ‘Outside of Christ, we know neither of the electing God, nor of His elect, nor of the act of election.’ Barth would later reflect on the impact this presentation had on him: ‘One can certainly say that it was [Maury] who contributed decisively to giving my thoughts on this subject their fundamental direction.’ Both citations from Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 456–7. 15. CD II/2, 77. 16. CD II/2, 95. 17. CD II/2, 35–51. 18. CD II/2, 146.

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According to Barth, the problem with the classic Reformed doctrine of predestination consists in its tendency to dissipate these ‘known quantities’ into ambiguous generalities. We are given, in other words, a general notion of divinity electing a general notion of humanity in order to establish a relationship with an unknown community of individuals. By contrast, Barth believes that Scripture specifies all three of these elements when it tells us that election takes place ‘in Christ’ (Ephesians 1:4).19 Hence, he argues, the God who elects is the one who reveals his name as I AM, the humanity that is elected is precisely the man Jesus of Nazareth, and the relationship that is established is a covenantal fellowship between the triune God, Jesus Christ, and (derivatively) all those who are created in the image of Jesus Christ, namely, the totality of Adam’s descendants. Furthermore, when Barth says that Jesus Christ is God’s gracious election, he is highlighting the fact that the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, must be considered more than a mere instrument which God uses to actualise a prior decision. It is not, in other words, as if Jesus Christ is the first ‘step’ of a plan devised according to the hidden mind of God. Rather, Barth insists that the doctrine of election ‘must begin concretely with the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as both electing God and elected man’. Hence, ‘when we utter the name of Jesus Christ we really do speak the first and final word not only about the electing God but also about the elected man’.20 Here, Barth defends his position through repeated appeal to the prologue of John’s gospel, a passage which he believes places ‘Jesus Christ’ (and not an abstractly conceived ‘logos’) ‘in the beginning with God’.21 The doctrine of election thus becomes for Barth the cornerstone of his dogmatic edifice. Indeed, in this one divine decision all doctrines find their concrete determination. The fact that Jesus Christ is the subject of election answers the question of the electing God and therefore affords us an entry point into the first article of the creed. The fact that Jesus Christ is the object of election answers the 19. Barth’s account of the tradition’s failure to realise this point can be found in CD II/2, 60–76. 20. CD II/1, 76. 21. For Barth, the Greek term houtos (‘this one’) in John 1:2 looks forward to the enfleshed logos of v.14 (soon identified as ‘Jesus Christ’ in v.17) and not backward to the supposedly bare logos of v.1. Consequently, for Barth, it would be improper to speak of the logos asarkos (‘Word without flesh’) as the ground of the logos incarnatus (‘enfleshed Word’), since, according to Barth’s exegesis, the logos itself is identified by John as none other than Jesus Christ, the God-man. In the stream of the passage, therefore, the logos is best viewed as a conceptual ‘placeholder’ for Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ qualifies logos and not vice versa (CD II/2, 95–99). Here, Barth is reproducing an exegetical argument he first made whilst lecturing on the gospel of John in Münster during the winter semester of 1925/26. See Karl Barth, Erklärung des Johannesevangelium: Vorlesung Münster, Wintersemester 1925/1926, wiederholt in Bonn, Sommersemester 1930, ed. Walther Fürst, vol. II.9 in Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1999), 12–163. For more on Barth’s reasons for rejecting the logos asarkos, see CD III/1, 54.

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question of the elected ‘man’ and therefore enables us to speak coherently about God’s dealings with humanity vis-à-vis the second and third articles of the creed. In this sense, then, ‘Dogmatics has no more exalted or profound word – essentially, indeed, it has no other word – than this: that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.’22 Election and time Barth repeatedly refers to election as God’s ‘primal’ or ‘fundamental’ decision (Ur-/Grundentscheidung) taking place in the ‘primal history’ (Urgeschichte) of the relationship between God and humanity. Given the claim that God is his decision – and moreover that this decision is Jesus Christ – the matter of God’s relationship to created time is naturally raised. In this respect, it is important to recall that while Barth regards election as ‘the beginning of all the ways and works of God’, he also emphasises that this decision is eternal. Election is therefore not simply ‘the first thing that God does’; rather it is the fundamental work that founds, accompanies, and directs the entire history of God and humanity.23 The fact that election is deemed an eternal decision means that it takes place with respect to the God in whom the concept of eternity finds its sole and concrete meaning. Indeed, for Barth, the eternity of God refers most basically to the way in which God lives; it is, in other words, a quality of divine existence and as such it is one of God’s perfections. This is essentially the point that Barth makes in CD II/1, wherein he defines God’s eternity as the self-referential manner in which God experiences and grounds his own life: ‘Eternity is the principle of [God’s] freedom inwards.’24 Created or ‘temporal’ existence, therefore, can be understood as a derivative rendering of the ‘eternal’ existence that God enjoys in his own triune life.25 Consequently, Barth explains, we ought not to shrink from describing the manner of God’s life in successive terms – particularly given the order inherent in the divine processions26 – provided we keep in mind that, in God, such distinctions are always and uniquely a function of his freedom. This is admittedly a difficult thought, for in the created sphere, succession is defined in a very different way, namely, as a function of contingency. For example, in creation, temporal succession 22. CD II/2, 88. 23. ‘Before time and above time and at every moment of time God is the predestinating God, positing this beginning of all things with Himself, willing and ordaining, electing and deciding, pledging and committing (us and first of all Himself), establishing the letter of the law which rules over all creaturely life…. The predestination of God is unchanged and unchangeably God’s activity.’ CD II/2, 183. 24. CD II/1, 609. 25. CD II/1, 613. 26. CD II/1, 615. George Hunsinger explores this point in his essay ‘Mysterium Trinitatis: Karl Barth’s Conception of Eternity’, in Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), 186–209.

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always presupposes a set of finite and discrete relations: my ‘now’ is always relative to a massive set of circumstances beyond my control, as is my past and future. In this sense, to be temporal simply means to be finite; temporality concerns the way in which finite creatures exist as delimited by the totality of existence in which they are involuntarily caught up. In God, however, there is … no opposition or competition or conflict, but peace between origin, movement and goal, between present, past and future, between ‘not yet’, ‘now’ and ‘no more’, between rest and movement, potentiality and actuality, whither and whence, here and there, this and that. In Him all these things are simul, held together by the omnipotence of His knowing and willing, a totality without gap or rift, free from the threat of death under which time, our time, stands.27

In other words, to speak of God’s ‘eternal’ life is yet another way of indicating (or rather, specifying) God’s personhood – a divine attribute which we mentioned earlier refers to God’s life being a function of his own existence. Accordingly, just as God is supremely personal, so he is also supremely temporal – existing in a succession of past (pre-temporality), present (supra-temporality), and future (post-temporality), yet solely with reference to his own being (i.e., the meaning of simul in the above quotation). When Barth says that election is an ‘eternal’ decision, therefore, what he has in mind is a decision which has at its core nothing else but the free and sovereign self-movement of the utterly personal God.28 Possible ambiguities arise, however, when Barth says, for instance, that ‘God Himself does not will to be God, and is not God, except as the One who elects.’29 Here, one might ask, if God simply is the one who elects, does this not obliterate the contingency of creation (since, at the very least, the humanity of Christ is a necessary condition of election)?30 Certainly, it is not Barth’s intention to suggest this.31 In order to diffuse a potential inconsistency, therefore, we recall again the significance of Barth’s ‘being-in-act’ thesis from § 28.1. 27. CD II/1, 612. 28. In this respect, it is somewhat unhelpful when Bruce McCormack describes election in terms of its ‘never not having taken place’ (‘Grace and being’, 101, paraphrased for grammatical reasons). The fact that election is eternal alludes to the fact that it is a selfdetermining act of the personal God, not that divine election is some sort of interminable moment. 29. CD II/2, 77, emphasis added. 30. This is one of the major concerns of Edwin Chr. van Driel, namely, Bruce McCormack’s interpretation of Barth: ‘[I]f divine election is an essential act of the divine will, constitutive of the divine being, how can McCormack avoid the idea that creation is likewise essential to God and constitutive of the divine being?’ See van Driel, ‘Karl Barth on the Eternal Existence of Jesus Christ’, Scottish Journal of Theology 60 (2007): 54. 31. ‘Be it noted that this determination of the will of God, this content of predestination, is already grace, for God did not stand in need of any particular ways or works ad extra. He had no need of creation.’ CD II/2, 121.

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Previously, we suggested that God’s being-in-act means for Barth that God is eminently personal in the sense that his life is determined exclusively with reference to himself. Unlike human personhood, which is always relative, God is personal all the way down, that is, without reference to any other person, thing, or circumstance. This means, significantly, that God is also undetermined with respect to a supposed divine ‘essence’ which is conceived as the necessary condition of his acts. God’s act and being are united in the concept of his Persönlichkeit, and his Persönlichkeit is defined by the totality of his self-grounded existence, or life. Accordingly, to consider Barth’s account of election as if it narrated an event which takes place merely with reference to an otherwise unrelated entity called ‘God’s being’ (defined as a collection of certain properties32) is to subject Barth’s doctrine to a foreign theological ontology. In other words, to charge Barth with undoing the contingency of creation would require describing election in terms of an ‘essential property’ (i.e., in all possible worlds, God has the property ‘electing humanity in Jesus Christ’) – an essential property which logically entails the existence of the world. Yet, these are conceptualities which do not accord with Barth’s understanding of the doctrine of God. For Barth, God’s acts do not accrue to the divine essence (such that one could infer the essentiality of an act on the grounds of its eternality); rather God is simply the one who acts as God. Every way in which God can be described, therefore, whether ‘being’ or ‘act’, can only be a reiteration of the fundamental axiom given in the divine name: God is God. According to § 28, then, ‘what God is’ and ‘what God does’ are not hierarchically related; what God does, he does as himself, and who God is is the one who determines himself in particular ways. For this reason, the question of whether God’s essence is determined by his decision or his decision by his essence is incoherent. Here, Barth is clear that what God determines is himself, that is, election shapes the particular course of action (encapsulated in the concept of the ‘covenant’) which is constitutive of God’s personal existence: ‘In a free act of determination God has ordained concerning Himself: He has determined Himself.’33 In other words, the election of Jesus Christ has ramifications for God’s life (which is Barth’s shorthand for God’s being-in-act), not God’s being simpliciter (for again, in Barth’s theology, there is no such thing). The fact that election is ‘eternal’, then, does not invite us to consider the possible ‘essentiality’ of this decision, but rather its divine origin; election is eternal because it is an event which is inexplicable except in terms of a self-moved act of God. In this 32. Jay Wesley Richards, for example, defines God’s essence in terms of ‘a cluster of attributes or properties which God necessarily exemplifies and without which, God would not be God’. Consequently, ‘God’s essential attributes taken together constitute (or are included in) God’s sine qua non, his quidditas, his essence’. See The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity and Immutability (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 18n.1. 33. CD II/2, 101.

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sense, then, one might even say that all of God’s acts are eternal, ‘For God’s eternity is one’.34 Nevertheless, there is a sense in which election is set apart amongst God’s acts, and this is because election is God’s Urentscheidung – the original and unimpeachable decision to which all his other acts are subordinately related. Election stands, in other words, at the beginning – ‘the beginning which in respect of God’s relationship with the reality which is distinct from Himself is preceded by no other beginning … the beginning which everything else included or occurring within this relationship can only follow, proceeding from it and pointing back to it’.35 This is the significance of Barth’s exegesis of the Johannine prologue: that Jesus Christ was ‘in the beginning with God’ means that there is no divine prerogative that precedes the covenant of God and humanity. In this sense, it is appropriate to say that Jesus Christ, the God-man, is himself eternal – not in the sense of his ‘eternal pre-existence’ (as, for instance, Emil Brunner assumed in his criticisms of Barth36), but in the sense of his identity being the decision by which God has fundamentally determined himself (viz. all other subsequent decisions) and which therefore happens on no other grounds than the eternal life of the triune God. Again, we emphasise, however: divine self-determination is not a matter of God’s ‘assigning himself his own being’,37 as if there were some formless substratum of ‘divinity’ underlying God’s personal subjectivity. Rather, election is significant in the life of God simply because it directs the shape in which God’s personal being exists. Election as the overflow of God’s triune love Given Barth’s insistence on describing the nature of God solely in terms of his personal existence (or life), how, then, shall we interpret his descriptions of election as an ‘overflow’ of God’s triune essence? For instance, in one rather sermonic passage, Barth writes: [God] might well have been satisfied in the inner glory of his triune being, his freedom, and his love. The fact that he is not satisfied in this, that his inner glory overflows and becomes outward [seine innnere Herrlichkeit überströmt und äußerlich wird], and that he wills the creation and the man Jesus as the first34. CD II/2, 156. 35. CD II/2, 155. 36. ‘If the eternal pre-existence of the God-man were a fact, then the Incarnation would no longer be an Event at all … yet in this view of Barth’s, all this is now anticipated, as it were, torn out of the sphere of history, and set within the pre-temporal existence of the Logos.’ Emil Brunner, Dogmatics, vol. I, The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1950), 347. 37. ‘What Barth is suggesting is that election is the event in God’s life in which he assigns to himself the being he will have for all eternity.’ McCormack, ‘Grace and being’, 98.

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born of all creation, is grace, sovereign kindness, and an inconceivably tender condescension.38

If God’s inner glory is capable of ‘overflowing’, does this not imply that there is, after all, a divine ‘essence’ which precedes God’s decision to elect humanity in Christ? Indeed, what would there be to overflow if not a ‘reserve’ of divine being which is somehow more fundamental than the supposedly fundamental decision to elect? Here, we must exercise a good deal of interpretive care before resolving the matter by an appeal to inconsistency. There is, we suggest, a way of reading such statements such that we need not choose between ‘Barth the trinitarian’ and ‘Barth the radically Christocentric actualist’. First, we should point out that Barth’s emphasis on the self-involvement of God in election is deployed chiefly to avoid a particular doctrinal misstep, and that is, the decretum absolutum. According to Barth’s understanding of this doctrine, God’s decision to elect is considered nothing more than a capricious act of will whose consequences ultimately have no real bearing on God’s life (the incarnation being merely the ‘instrument’ for actualizing this prior moment). Consequently, it pushes the decision back into an ‘empty and undetermined sphere’ occupied by an unknown autonomous Subject – ‘a Subject which is furnished, of course, with supereminent divine attributes, but which differs from other such subjects only by the fact that in its election it is absolutely free’.39 This God, the God of the absolute decree, relates to the object of election only in the sense of deciding its fate. It is, in other words, all freedom and no love. Yet, in truth, the real error of the absolute decree is not simply that it regards election as a free decision (on this point, Barth actually agrees);40 the absolute decree is erroneous primarily because it posits that God can somehow make decisions which are unrelated to his being, that lying just below the surface of the divine life disclosed in the event of revelation, there is another, parallel divine life which is lived without reference to Jesus Christ. For Barth, such an approach is naturally unacceptable: ‘How can the choice in which God has decided for the being and existence of the creature, far from being absolute and autonomous, be understood other than as included in that choice in which he (obviously first!) has decided concerning himself, that is, decided for this, his conditioned-ness, for this, his being under this name, his being in Jesus Christ?’41 In other words, for Barth, the decision to elect is made not by a ‘will’, but a person, and persons are characterised by histories. To the extent that God is a person solely with reference to himself, then it follows that what he does bears 38. CD II/2, 121, revised translation; KD II/2, 130. 39. CD II/2, 100. 40. ‘In [election] God does something which He has no need to do, which He is not constrained to do. He does something which He alone can constrain Himself, and has in fact constrained Himself, to do.’ CD II/2, 10. 41. KD II/2, 108, Barth’s emphases; CD II/2, 101.

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immediate reference to who he is. For Barth, then, election cannot arise from an indeterminate background, even if this background is described in trinitarian terms. Second, if God is eminently personal, this means that he is eminently personal in his three modes of being as Father, Son, and Spirit. It does not make sense, then, to say that God is Trinity ‘by nature’ whilst he is Jesus Christ ‘by grace’. What God does, therefore, in his triune being – namely, begetting and spirating – no less involves his subjectivity than his works towards humanity. As Barth says, From all eternity God is within Himself the living God [i.e., personal]. The fact that God is means that from all eternity God is active in His inner relationships as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that He wills Himself and knows of Himself, that He loves, that He makes use of His sovereign freedom, that He maintains and exercises this freedom, and in so doing maintains and demonstrates Himself.42

Accordingly, God does not beget and spirate because that is what his nature dictates; he does so because that is his life, his being, and his act. Indeed, for Barth, there is no aspect of God’s life which is not his life: ‘In Himself God is rest, but this fact does not exclude but includes the fact that His being is decision’.43 The difference, then, between God’s life ad intra and God’s life ad extra consists in the fact that the latter involves an external reality whose existence is not coterminous with God’s and thus is radically contingent. As Barth repeatedly emphasises, the existence of humanity is not a necessary precondition for God being God, that is, for God possessing his own life. Nevertheless, the eternal God obliges himself to this external reality in election and hence determines the shape of his existence with reference to it. This is what it means to say that God’s ‘being and activity ad extra is merely an overflowing of His inward activity and being, of the inward vitality which He has in Himself ’44 – not that God’s ‘inward vitality’ is different from his ‘activity ad extra’, but that ‘He has caught up humanity into the sovereign presupposing of Himself ’.45 The fact that God includes within the sphere of his own life a reality external to himself allows Barth to qualify the act of election as an act of divine love. This does not mean, of course, that God divinises the creature, for ‘God could not be God if He willed and permitted any other individuality or autonomy side by side with His own’.46 Rather, God’s ‘assumption’ of humanity means simply that the histories of God and humanity are, as a result of God’s free decision, eternally

42. CD II/2, 175. 43. CD II/2, 175. 44. CD II/2, 175. 45. CD II/2, 176, revised translation: ‘…den Menschen hat Gott mitaufgenommen in die souveräne Voraussetzung seiner selbst.’ KD II/2, 193. 46. CD II/2, 178.

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intertwined, even if hierarchically related.47 This state of affairs is pure gift because God strictly gives and humanity strictly receives; it is love because what God gives is himself, and God is love. In that both the presupposition and content of God’s gift to humanity are precisely ‘God Himself in His triune being as free love’;48 it is thus appropriate to speak of the relationship established thereby as an ‘overflow’ of God’s triune being. Summary We have argued in this section that whilst there is a deeper ‘specification’ of the doctrine of God as it is described in CD II/1, the material found in CD II/2 does not essentially disturb its predecessor’s basic structure: God being is still conceived in terms of a dialectic of love and freedom. Second, we pointed out how, for Barth, the doctrine of election manifests how there is no Christian doctrine which is not, at its heart, Christologically determined. This is because, he consistently emphasises, election is ‘the beginning of all the ways and works of God’. Third, we explored the meaning of Barth’s insistence on election as an eternal decision and the ramifications that this claim has for the relationship between God and humanity. Once more, we discovered that a proper understanding of Barth’s ‘actualistic’ language presupposes that we take him as seriously as possible in his views concerning the personhood of God. And lastly, we offered an interpretation of Barth’s construal of election as an ‘overflow’ of the divine being, suggesting that, for Barth, the triune essence of God functions not as a deeper stratum of God’s life but rather as the presupposition for the graciousness of election: God does not need humanity to be God, but humanity requires God to be human. There is one final matter to be considered, therefore, before drawing this chapter to a close. In CD II/2, Barth is clear that God’s decision to elect humanity in Jesus Christ does not issue in an abstract or ideal relationship, but a particular history. Hence, Barth writes, ‘We must look to what God elected for Himself in His Son when in that Son He elected for Himself fellowship with man’.49 In particular, Barth suggests, the election of Jesus Christ committed God very specifically to humiliation: ‘This is the extent to which His election is an election of grace, an election of love, an election to give Himself, an election to empty and abase 47. As Bruce McCormack puts it: ‘Both true divinity and true humanity are – on the basis of a free, eternal decision – constituted in and through the same history.’ This statement by itself is correct as an interpretation of Barth, even if there are other aspects of McCormack’s argument – such as the claim that the essence of humanity and the essence of God are ‘made real’ in the incarnation – which seem to prioritise act over being (rather than strictly equate the two, as Barth does). See McCormack, ‘Participation in God, Yes; Deification, No: Two Modern Protestant Responses to an Ancient Question’, in Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 237, 246. 48. CD II/2, 184. 49. CD II/2, 165.

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Himself for the sake of the elect.’50 Therefore, before we render a final word on the meaning of divine love in Barth’s theology, it is necessary that we turn briefly to his account of the atonement, located in CD IV/1.

Divine obedience We conclude our study of Barth with a brief consideration of § 59.1, entitled, ‘The Way of the Son of God into the Far Country’. Barth’s concern in this section is to consider how precisely it is ‘fitting’ for God to humble himself in his second mode of being as the Son – how, in other words, God is ‘himself ’ even in this (we might initially assume) particularly human moment of his life. With an eye to our particular concerns, we will here extrapolate three themes: (1) God’s history in the history of Jesus Christ, (2) the reality of Christ’s obedience as God, and (3) the coherence of divine obedience with Barth’s ‘single-subject’ trinitarianism. God’s history in the history of Jesus Christ Barth’s treatment of the atonement in § 59 stands in many ways as the decisive test case for his earlier claim that ‘God is who He is in His works.’51 Indeed, if the cross – with all its horrors – were to expose at any point a limit or boundary to God’s capacity to exist in the full possession of his own life (i.e., to undermine his being-in-act), then the very principle around which the Church Dogmatics has been constructed – namely, that ‘God’s Word is God Himself in His revelation’52 – would crumble.53 For this reason, Barth argues that even and especially here, at the moment of the Son’s humiliation, God is true to himself. To defend this point, Barth begins by reiterating that in the person of Jesus Christ, we have to do with nothing less than God in the flesh – a confession he finds grounded in the New Testament’s repeated identification of Jesus Christ as ‘the Lord’ (Kyrios).54 Yet, this raises again the matter of God’s relationship to created time (i.e., history), particularly given that the doctrine of the atonement 50. CD II/2, 164–5. 51. CD II/1, 260. 52. CD I/1, 295. 53. Cf. Barth’s comments from the preface of CD IV/1: ‘I have been very conscious of the very special responsibility laid on the theologian at this centre of all Christian knowledge. To fail here is to fail everywhere. To be on the right track here makes it impossible to be completely mistaken in the whole.’ (ix) 54. ‘…the New Testament tradition calls Him the Messiah of Israel, the Kyrios, the second Adam come down from heaven, and, in a final approximation to what is meant by all this, the Son or the Word of God. It lifts Him right out of the list of other men, and as against this list (including Moses and the prophets, not to mention all the rest) it places Him at the side of God.’ CD IV/1, 160.

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purports to narrate a series of ‘historical’ events involving the ‘historical’ figure of Jesus of Nazareth. The key question, then, is this: was God himself actually the subject of this history? And if so, then what sort of history is this?55 For Barth, the basic context for the discussion is unavoidable: ‘The atonement is history.’56 Yet, it is more than simply ‘history’; it is fundamental history, ‘the very special history of God with man, the very special history of man with God’.57 Consequently, ‘To say atonement is to say Jesus Christ.’58 Here, we detect strong echoes of Barth’s doctrine of election, wherein God’s decision to elect humanity is bound up with God’s decision to elect himself as ‘God-for-us’ in Jesus Christ.59 In this respect, the atonement can be viewed simply as the actualizing of this, God’s first and basic decision, and as a result, the definitive event which constitutes created time as a whole.60 Indeed, Barth writes, in Jesus Christ ‘it comes to pass that God is the reconciling God and man is reconciled man’.61 Hence, ‘He is Himself this God and man, and therefore the presupposition, the author, in whom all human existence has its first and basic truth in relation to that of God.’62 In other words, for Barth, the question is not whether the atonement is historical, but rather how history itself can be ‘historical’ (i.e., geschichtlich) without the atonement. If God’s work in Christ is regarded as the basis of history, rather than an interruption of it, this means that Christology takes on a new task. Traditionally, Barth explains, the incarnation of the Son raised the question of how an eternal and immutable God can enter into the flux of human history without simultaneously surrendering his divinity. However, the problem with framing the question this way is that it assumes an abstract notion of divinity (‘furnished with all kinds of supreme attributes’) and thus leads us to posit an ‘arbitrary mystery of our own imagining, a false mystery’.63 By contrast, Barth insists, ‘the meaning of [Christ’s] 55. As many have pointed out, CD IV/1–2 represents a running implicit disagreement with Bultmann’s demythologization project, particularly its consideration of Christ as the ‘origin’ but not necessarily the ‘content’ of the church’s faith. For a discussion of this point, see Paul Dafydd Jones, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 194–5. 56. CD IV/1, 157. 57. CD IV/1, 157. 58. CD IV/1, 158. 59. Cf., ‘In Jesus Christ we really have to do with the first and eternal Word of God at the beginning of all things.’ CD IV/1, 50. 60. This point contrasts quite specifically with Bultmann, who suggests, for example, that ‘Geschichte wird konstituiert durch menschliche Handlungen’. Rudolf Bultmann, Geschichte und Eschatologie, 2nd edn (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1964), 165, emphasis added. On Barth’s understanding of the covenant as the ‘internal basis’ of creation (i.e., that for which creation exists), see CD III/1, 96–7. 61. CD IV/1, 158. 62. CD IV/1, 158. 63. CD IV/1, 177.

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deity – the only true deity in the New Testament sense – cannot be gathered from any notion of supreme, absolute, non-worldly being. It can be learned only from what took place in Christ’.64 Hence, he suggests, the real theological ‘mystery’ lies not in reconciling the humanity of Christ to his deity, but rather in defining his deity in light of his humanity, that is, in grounding the totality of his human life – including his suffering – in that which is already present in the God, the God who is shown therein to be ‘capable and willing and ready for this condescension, this act of extravagance, this far journey’.65 Barth’s subsequent discussion, therefore, represents an attempt to expand conceptually the history of Jesus Christ as God’s history – not assuming that Christ’s divinity lies somewhere in the background of his identity but that at all moments he is himself God in the flesh: ‘[T]he mirror in which it can be known (and is known) that He is God, and of the divine nature, is His becoming flesh and his existence in the flesh.’66 This, for Barth, elicits a new set of questions, in particular, the question of how Jesus Christ’s ‘obedience’ to the Father (seen especially, for instance, in Christ’s travails in Gethsemene67) is somehow a ‘fitting’ act with respect to God’s identity as the one who loves in freedom. In other words, if God himself is the subject of the history of reconciliation, and if the history of reconciliation is therefore God’s history, then what might this imply for understanding the God whose eminently personal being prohibits us from regarding any of his works as non-constitutive of his life? The reality of Jesus Christ’s obedience as God For Barth, the central mystery of the incarnation consists in the fact that ‘The true God – if the man Jesus is the true God – is obedient’.68 Indeed, he argues, it is particularly ‘the true God’ who is obedient, since ‘according to the New Testament it is not the being of the man Jesus which has this character [of servanthood] … the New Testament describes the Son of God as the servant, indeed as the suffering servant of God’.69 Consequently, Barth reasons, if it is God himself who is humiliated at the cross – that is, if the cross is a ‘work’ which is both mandated and personally undertaken by God – then the question naturally arises: ‘How is it that the life of God includes obedience?’ Barth realises that the reality of the Son’s obedience presents a challenge for traditional conceptions of deity. Nevertheless, he claims, if any tensions are felt 64. CD IV/1, 177. 65. CD IV/1, 159. 66. CD IV/1, 177. 67. Barth’s lengthy excursus on Gethsemene can be found in CD IV/1, 259–73. For a fine treatment of this passage of Barth, see Paul Dafydd Jones, ‘Karl Barth on Gethsemene’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 9 (2007): 148–71. 68. CD IV/1, 164. 69. CD IV/1, 164.

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between God’s deity and temporal abasement, this is only because our assumptions are sub-theological: ‘If we think that this is impossible it is because our concept of God is too narrow, too arbitrary, too human – far too human.’70 Indeed, the reason why the obedience of God is so counterintuitive to us is because, properly speaking, it highlights a type of existence which is completely unknown in the created realm, namely, the freedom of absolute self-motivation, or pure personhood. Hence, to restrict God’s ‘freedom’ such that his essence must be at all times ‘protected’ from external contamination betrays our tendency to regard personhood in relative terms. As we recall from CD II/1, it is only the finite creature who must ‘guard jealously the frontiers’ of her identity. The free one, the self-moved one, is simply not limited in this way;71 God can ‘give himself ’ without ‘giving himself away’.72 Consequently, Barth argues, to confess that God was ‘in Christ’ means recognizing that God’s precise being-in-act, his fundamental self-possession as the one who loves in freedom, is present without reserve in this particular history: The Almighty exists and acts and speaks here in the form of One who is weak and impotent, the eternal as One who is temporal and perishing, the Most High in deepest humility. The Holy One stands in the place and under the accusation of a sinner with other sinners. The glorious One is covered with shame. The One who lives for ever has fallen a prey to death. The Creator is subjected to and overcome by the onslaught of that which is not. In short, the Lord is a servant, a slave.73

The fact that God’s sovereignty consists in the freedom to make himself lowly represents the final entailment of Barth’s insistence on the irreducibly personal being of God. Here again, Barth emphasises that God’s being and act are to be understood as strictly equivalent: ‘What [God] is and does He is and does in full unity with Himself.’ Consequently, ‘In Him there is no paradox, no antinomy, no division, no inconsistency, not even the possibility of it.’74 For this reason, there is no need to qualify the suffering of God in Christ in order to resolve a supposed contradiction with his divine essence. Indeed, Barth writes, ‘It is not for us to speak of a contradiction and rift in the being of God, but to learn to correct our notions of the being of God, to reconstitute them in the light of the fact that He does this’.75 For Barth, then, the reality cannot be avoided: the one who undergoes the sufferings and humiliations of the cross is God himself. Jesus Christ obeys and thereby enacts the reconciliation to which he was destined in eternal election. This, Barth explains, constitutes the ‘outer moment’ of the divinity of Jesus Christ 70. CD IV/1, 186. 71. CD II/1, 313. 72. CD IV/1, 185. 73. CD IV/1, 176. 74. CD IV/1, 186. 75. CD IV/1, 186.

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– his life in and for the moment of reconciliation. And yet, he argues, if there is an ‘outer moment’, there is also an ‘inner moment’ – an aspect of the life of God to which his dealings with respect to humanity fittingly correspond.76 It is to this ‘inner moment’ that we now turn to consider. Divine obedience and the Trinity As we have already mentioned, for Barth, it is absolutely crucial, both for the reality of revelation and for the reality of reconciliation, that in Christ, we have to do with God himself.77 This means that the humiliation of the Son, his being in the forma servi, is not something which takes place in a realm that is abstracted from God’s being (e.g., in a crude version of kenosis78), nor is it an instance of ‘God against God’, that is, the introduction of a paradoxical ‘conflict’ in the being of God on account of the Son’s dereliction.79 Rather, Barth insists, the Son takes on the forma servi precisely as God.80 Yet if this account is correct, how is it that God is true to himself in this moment? How is it that ‘the humility in which [God] dwells and acts in Jesus Christ is not alien to Him, but proper to Him’?81 Barth’s answer is clear: if we are serious about regarding the obedience of Jesus Christ unto death as an act undertaken by God himself, and if the acts of God ad extra are not baseless but rather determined by his identity as the one who loves in freedom, then it stands to reason that there is within Godself a reality corresponding to this obedience, that is, an inner-divine obedience. Barth realises that such a conclusion presents a challenge: ‘Obedience as a possibility and actuality in God Himself seems at once to compromise the unity and then logically the equality of the divine being.’82 In particular, obedience seems to imply a hierarchy, ‘an above and a below, a prius and a posterius, a superior and a junior and subordinate’.83 Faced with this apparent problem, the tradition has often

76. CD IV/1, 192. 77. ‘The One who reconciles the world with God is necessarily the one God Himself in His true Godhead. Otherwise the world would not be reconciled to God. Otherwise it is still the world which is not reconciled with God.’ CD IV/1, 193. 78. ‘God is always God even in His humiliation. The divine being does not suffer any change, any diminution, any transformation into something else, any admixture with something else, let alone any cessation…. He humbled Himself, but He did not do it by ceasing to be who He is.’ CD IV/1, 180. 79. CD IV/1, 184–5: ‘On this view God in His incarnation would not merely give Himself, but give Himself away, give up being God … at this point what is meant to be supreme praise of God can in fact become supreme blasphemy.’ 80. CD IV/1, 187. 81. CD IV/1, 193. 82. CD IV/1, 195. 83. CD IV/1, 195.

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sought to circumvent the conclusion of inner-divine obedience by means of two particular heretical tendencies: subordinationism and modalism. According to Barth, subordinationism attempts to solve the ‘problem’ of the Son’s obedience by ‘dissolving’ his deity altogether.84 In other words, while taking seriously the real humiliation of the Son (contra, e.g., docetism), this view nevertheless is unwilling to consider God himself as capable of such an apparently demeaning act. Accordingly, subordinationism fails to describe a real reconciliation between God and humanity in that it insists that God must ultimately separate himself from the very act of setting himself in right relation to humanity. Modalism, on the other hand, posits an opposite error by suggesting that while it was really ‘God’ who suffered at Golgotha – who, in some sense, exhibits a prius and a posterius in the Garden of Gethsemene – this suffering servant was God in an exclusively ‘economic’ form. Here again, Barth explains, the desire to insulate the ‘true and proper and non-worldly being of God’ from his weakness in Jesus ultimately undermines the reality of reconciliation: ‘For if in His proper being as God God can only be unworldly, if He can be the humiliated and lowly and obedient One only in a mode of appearance and not in His proper being, what is the value of the true deity of Christ, what is its value for us?’85 Both modalism and subordinationism, therefore, err precisely where Christian theology should be most bold. Indeed, rather than downplaying or qualifying the reality of divine obedience, we should, according to Barth, ‘engage it in frontal assault’.86 The correct approach, Barth insists, ought to proceed on the basis of three ‘inalienable presuppositions’. First, and against subordinationism, we must affirm that, according to the New Testament, it is God himself – not a lesser being – who is the subject of reconciliation.87 Second, and against modalism, we must affirm that God himself was genuinely in Christ ‘as the most proper and direct and immediate presence and action of the one true God in the sphere of human and world history’.88 Third, and consequently, we must assume that God does all these things ‘without being in contradiction to His divine nature’.89 Taken together, these presuppositions lead Barth to make the bold claim that, far from sublating the obedience of the Son to a somehow more fundamental conception of divinity, ‘we cannot refuse to accept the humiliation and lowliness and decisively the obedience of Christ as precisely the dominating moment of his divinity’.90 For Barth, the principle guiding the proper interpretation of inner-divine obedience is that, at all points, God must be in full possession of his being. In other words, if the obedience we observe in the divine act of reconciliation is genuinely 84. CD IV/1, 196. 85. CD IV/1, 197. 86. CD IV/1, 197. 87. CD IV/1, 197–8. 88. CD IV/1, 198. 89. CD IV/1, 199. 90. CD IV/1, 199 (revised translation); KD IV/1, 218.

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God’s act, then it must stem purely from himself; it must not originate relative to the created realm. Here, Barth reminds us, ‘[God] does not will and posit the creature necessarily, but in freedom, as the basic act of His grace’.91 Consequently, if God acts in a particular way with respect to the creature, this particularity is only explainable in terms of the life that God has within himself. As Barth puts it, ‘For everything that the creature seems to offer Him – its otherness, its being in antithesis to Himself and therefore His own existence in co-existence – He has also in Himself as God, as the original and essential determination of His being and life as God’.92 Note, however, that this is not simply a species of crass inferential reasoning; Barth is not claiming that for every ‘economic’ representation of the divine being, there is also an equal ‘immanent’ version that is accessible only by means of some kind of transcendental deduction.93 Rather, as always, Barth is proceeding on the assumption that God’s acts are utterly self-moved.94 Accordingly, if God engages humanity in the form of a prius to humanity’s posterius (specifically in Jesus Christ), it is only because this kind of act emerges strictly from the person that God is, that is, from his free and loving life as Father, Son, and Spirit. To put it another way, to speak of God’s immanent life is another way of emphasizing 91. CD IV/1, 201. 92. CD IV/1, 201. 93. In one passage, the English translation gives the impression that Barth actually is ‘deducing’ God’s immanent life on the basis of his economic acts. Here, Barth is interpreted to say (on the grounds of Christ’s obedience), ‘…we have to draw the no less astounding deduction [Folgerung] that in equal Godhead the one God is, in fact, the One and also Another…’ . (CD IV/1, 202; KD IV/1, 221). This, however, is a misleading translation. Barth is not aiming to ‘deduce’ an otherwise unknowable divine nature on the basis of Jesus Christ, as this would effectively undermine the force of his consistent claim that ‘God was in Christ’. Barth’s point is rather that taking the incarnation seriously prohibits us from concluding (=a better rendering) otherwise that God is himself the one who is ready to be obedient on behalf of humanity. Torrance is therefore also misleading when he claims that Barth (along with Athanasius) displays an ‘anaphoral’ approach ‘in which we “read back” through the homoousion what God is in his saving acts as Father, Son and Holy Spirit into the one eternal being of God, and interpret the saving acts of God in his gracious condescension toward us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit by reference back to their transcendent ground in the eternal being of God’. To the contrary, Barth is not interested in coordinating God’s ‘immanent’ and ‘economic’ being (even if they are ultimately determined to relate in the closest possible way). Rather, for Barth, the proper hermeneutical question concerns precisely how the history of Jesus Christ is also God’s history. Cf. Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 195. 94. Jüngel judges the matter accurately: ‘This innertrinitarian ability of God must not, however, be thought of as a transcendental condition of possibility for the passion of God in Jesus Christ. Rather, God’s ability means that God is Lord.’ Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase, trans. John Webster (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 100.

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that God is always self-determined, and never world-determined. Hence, Barth says, ‘Primarily and originally and properly it is not the cosmos or man which is the other, the counterpart of God, that which co-exists with God. Primarily and originally and properly God is all this in Himself ’.95 The ‘ground’ of God’s reconciliatory obedience ad extra is therefore God himself in the triune relations in which his being-in-act also and originally consists. As already mentioned, Barth acknowledges that a potential stumbling block for conceiving obedience in God is the divine unity. This issue is amplified all the more given Barth’s ‘single subject’ trinitarianism – a conception which he reiterates without amendment within this very passage.96 Yet on this point, Barth is characteristically subversive: we do not know what ‘unity’ is to except by looking at who God is. ‘No other being, no created being, is one with itself as God is.’97 Hence, God’s unity is not simply ‘numerical oneness’, as Barth had emphasised early on,98 but instead ‘a unity which is open and free and active in itself – a unity in more than one mode of being, a unity of the One with Another, of a first with a second, an above with a below, an origin and its consequences’.99 Here, Barth is obviously alluding to the relationship between God’s first and second modes of being, between Father and Son – a relationship which is made possible by God’s third mode of being, the Holy Spirit, as the one who establishes the quality of the relation between the first two as ‘fellowship’, a reality which constitutes God’s life as ‘history’.100 When God humbles himself ad extra, therefore, he is essentially living his life – the life he has in himself – now with respect to humanity.101 The humility of Jesus Christ is thus undertaken not arbitrarily but rather ‘in the miraculously consistent and final consummation of just that history in which [God] is God’.102 Yet how is it that the particular history between the Father and Son may be described in terms of command and obedience? Naturally, Barth aims to answer this question with reference to Jesus Christ. In Jesus, Barth observes, there is evident an obedience which is unlike any other kind of obedience seen in the created realm. Whereas obedience in the created realm is contingent upon some form of external determination, Jesus obeys the Father ‘self-evidently [selbstverständlich], naturally, in His own freedom, and therefore perfectly’.103 In other words, Christ’s 95. CD IV/1, 201, Barth’s emphases; KD IV/1, 220. 96. CD IV/1, 205: ‘Christian faith and the Christian confession has one Subject, not three.’ Note also that Barth explicitly points the reader back to his treatment of the Trinity in CD I/1 for further clarification (204). 97. CD IV/1, 202. 98. CD I/1, 354. 99. CD IV/1, 202. 100. CD IV/1, 203. 101. ‘He is in and for the world what He is in and for Himself ’. CD IV/1, 204. 102. CD IV/1, 203 (revised translation); KD IV/1, 223: ‘…in wunderbar konsequenter letzter Fortsetzung eben der Geschichte, in der er Gott ist’. 103. CD IV/1, 208.

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acts of obedience are self-moved and therefore indicative of his uniquely personal being; Christ’s obedience is divine obedience. Hence, In the obedience he renders as a man, he manifests himself as the one he is. Thus, his unconditioned, self-evident, natural, internally free being-in-obedience is just as little the affair of a human being or of a creature in general as the unconditioned lordship which corresponds to this, which is reflected in his being, can be the affair of any one man or of any one creature. In that he renders obedience in this way, just as with regard to that lordship, he does something which precisely only God himself can do. The one who perfectly obeys the lordly God in such a way is the image which – in distinction from all human, creaturely form – is himself God by nature [von Art], God in his relation to himself, that is, God in the mode of being of the Son in relation to God in the mode of being of the Father, with this one, with this same essence.104

We reiterate, then, for Barth, only God can act personally – that is, from himself. Consequently, insofar as Jesus obeys the Father from himself, that is freely, so is his obedience just as much a mark of his divinity as his lordship. In fact, Barth points out, in Jesus Christ, we witness the perfect harmony of lordship and obedience, a seamless unity of self-movement which is not reactive but rather mutually determinative: ‘The Father as the origin is never apart from Him as the consequence, the obedient One…. The One who eternally begets is never apart from the One who is eternally begotten.’105 In other words, for Barth, the shape of God’s life as the perfect coincidence of command and submission in eternal and fulfilled fellowship is nothing more than a restatement of the classical Augustinian trinitarianism formulated in CD I/1. Just as God is one in the self-possession of the triune movement of begetting and spirating, so God is one as he freely commands, obeys, and thereby lives. In this sense, both modes of description are yet another way of elaborating on Barth’s fundamental definition for the divine essence: God is the one who loves in freedom. In our own terminology, God’s life is a function of God’s existence, and as such, he is himself the presupposition and ground of his readiness to give himself to and for humanity without giving himself away.

104. KD IV/1, 228 (CD IV/1, 208–9). 105. CD IV/1, 209.

C O N C LU SIO N T O P A RT I I

In Part II, we have argued that, beginning with Church Dogmatics I, Barth holds consistently to the idea that when God reveals himself to humanity, he does so utterly from himself. It is this unique capacity of self-determination which enables God to oblige himself eternally to humanity without, as it were, surrendering his divinity. This power of self-determination we have observed as definitive for God’s personhood – a divine perfection which summarizes comprehensively the otherwise discrete aspects of God’s being: God in himself and God for us; God as triune and God as Christologically shaped; God in his hiddenness and God in his self-disclosure; God as the one who loves and God as the one who is free. Tying all this together, then, we can now render an informed interpretation as to what the phrase ‘God is love’ means with respect to Barth’s mature theology. In essence, God’s identity as love speaks to the fact that, utterly from himself, without reference to the world which he creates, God is fully possessed of his own being. He is, in other words, complete. And yet, God is not complete to such an extent that he ceases to live such that his personhood has, so to speak, ‘run its course’.1 No, Barth says, unlike created being, God ‘actually lives’2 – that is, he lives from himself. Moreover, this life that God lives is not formless or abstract but has a particular shape – the very shape that is manifest in his self-revelation to humanity: the freely loving life of Father, Son, and Spirit, God in his three modes of being. In particular, it is God in his third mode of being which qualifies the life of God as a life of love. Indeed, Barth says, the Spirit is the principle which establishes way that God lives in his first and second modes of being: ‘as God is the Father of the Son, and, as Father, begets the Son, He also brings forth the Spirit and therefore the negation of isolation, the law and the reality of love’.3 The reality of the Spirit establishes the fact that the relation which exists between Father and Son is not the relation between two disparate subjects, but rather the one, perfect, and eternally affirming movement of the one divine subject that is the essence of God: ‘That the Father and the Son are the one God is the reason why they are 1. This, Barth explains, is uniquely a feature of finite life. See CD III/2, § 47.5, ‘Ending Time’. 2. CD II/1, 263. 3. CD I/1, 483.

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not just united but are united in the Spirit of love; it is the reason, then, why God is love and love is God.’4 To put it another way, the concrete way in which God lives is irreducibly triune: God’s life is eternally his, and so he exists in the mode of the Father; God’s life is actually lived, and so he exists in the mode of the Son; God’s life is actually lived in this way, and so he exists in the mode of the Spirit. To summarize, then, in Barth’s theology, ‘God is love’ describes the perfect harmony and self-possession of God’s life in his triune being. Insofar as God’s acts towards humanity arise utterly from this triune life, so it is that we are justifiably called ‘beloved of God’ (1 Thessalonians 1:4).

4. CD I/1, 487.

C O N C LU SIO N : G O D ’ S B E I N G T OWA R D S F E L L OWSH I P

In Parts I and II, we witnessed two highly creative theologians exhibiting what we regard to be the proper approach to the interpretation of ‘God is love’ – that is, both Schleiermacher and Barth start with a consideration of God as he makes himself present to humanity and only then venture to offer a description of what it means for God to ‘be’ love. In this way, they both exhibit the values noted earlier concerning the so-called model approach to theological language. With respect to speech about God, they both regard language as sufficiently communicative yet never definitive of the divine essence. Accordingly, the time has come for us briefly to compare our two subjects and subsequently to collate some conclusions drawn from our examination of their respective insights.

Comparison In our view, there are four main areas which invite fruitful comparison between Barth and Schleiermacher’s approach to the interpretation of ‘God is love’: (1) theological language, (2) the question of criteria, (3) the significance of the form of revelation, and (4) the extent of human access to the divine nature. We thus offer a few comments on each of these points. Theological language: Schleiermacher and Barth are similar in that they both tend to bring a critical eye to the phenomenon of Christian speech. This is not to imply that they are fundamentally deconstructive; rather, they are both concerned to establish the source of God-talk in order to establish its meaning. Consequently, their hermeneutical approaches take on a far more sophisticated hue than many contemporary theologies of love. For instance, in one recent offering, we are told that defining love is simply a matter of ‘find[ing] the dominant meaning of love in the Bible’ and then rendering a definition to reflect the resulting interpretation.1 Barth and Schleiermacher, by contrast, go much deeper, asking why the Bible speaks in particular ways about certain subjects, indeed down to the very words that are used. Put another way, both aim to uncover the ‘logic’ of Christian speech 1. Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis, MI: Chalice, 2010), 13.

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as an underlying substructure by which to interpret the ‘surface’ phenomenon of the words themselves. Where Barth and Schleiermacher diverge, of course, is in their specification of precisely what this logic is. In this regard, we might say that for Schleiermacher, the interpretive question we ought to bring to the matter of divine love is: ‘Why do Christians say that God is love?’ For Barth, by contrast, the question is rather: ‘Why does God tell us that he is love?’ In both cases, however, the question is not simply a matter of determining what ‘God is love’ means as a concept in its own right. Indeed, for both theologians, who is speaking and why they are saying it makes all the difference. The question of criteria: In attempting to uncover the logic of theological speech, both Barth and Schleiermacher end up establishing what we might call an account of Christianity’s ‘essence’. For Schleiermacher, this ‘essence’ is the Christian’s experience of being redeemed by Jesus Christ; for Barth, it is God’s eternal act of self-determination to be God as Jesus Christ. As we have observed, both theologians tend to utilize their respective understandings of Christianity’s essence as a dogmatic criterion, and in both cases with penetrating consistency. Accordingly, neither Barth nor Schleiermacher ought to be labelled a ‘systematic’ theologian, per se, in the sense of rendering a dogmatic ‘architecture’ in which various doctrines support and thus partially establish one another. Rather, their common approach is perhaps best likened to the spokes of a wheel, with each doctrine relating directly to the centre, and comprehensiveness achieved less in terms of internal coherence and more in terms of an ability to account for the varieties of theological speech in accordance with their ultimate ground. Consequently, the directness of the predication ‘God is love’ leads both theologians to locate ‘love’ as close to the centre of their respective dogmatics as possible – for Schleiermacher, as a comprehensive account of the divine causality implied in Christian self-consciousness, and for Barth, as a summary statement for the primal self-determinative act of God with respect to humanity. The form of revelation: Both Schleiermacher and Barth adhere to the principle that the way in which God presents himself to humanity is directly informative of the way in which God exists in himself. In this sense, both theologians are fiercely anti-speculative; there is neither for Barth nor Schleiermacher a God who is different from the one who gives himself to humanity in Christ. In the case of Schleiermacher, the definition of God as the ‘Whence’ of absolute dependence leads to the conclusion that God simply is absolute freedom and thus, in light of the telos of the world, is love. Schleiermacher does not ask any further questions concerning a supposed substantial ground for such a reality; he simply assumes that if God gives himself to us in just this way, then this simply is what God is. Similarly, for Barth, the fact that God is eminently personal means that there is no deeper substance behind God’s acts directing and in a certain sense constraining what he does. Rather, for Barth, God is what he does, and thus revelation means nothing less than the gift of Godself to humanity. Significantly, these two approaches contradict the simplistic inferential reasoning which is often employed in contemporary theology. For example, we need not establish the so-called transcendental ground of divine revelation in a corresponding ‘form’ of God’s immanent life, precisely

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because, for both Barth and Schleiermacher, God’s life – who God is – is fully on display in God’s activities towards the world. We see this, for example, in Barth’s understanding of divine obedience: if God obeys, then God is obedient. Similarly, in the Glaubenslehre, if God is fully active vis-à-vis the world, then there is nothing beyond the world that determines his activity. For both Barth and Schleiermacher, then, we see the extent to which the equation between God’s ‘being and act’ keeps Christian theology directly attentive to the real phenomenon of divine revelation as its criterion for God-talk. The question of God’s knowability: Barth and Schleiermacher are at one in their belief that God is essentially incomprehensible. Of course, for Barth, this is qualified with the distinction between God’s primary and secondary objectivity; yet nevertheless, the fact that God exists in such an utterly unique manner (i.e., as a fully self-possessed ‘I’) means that there is, properly speaking, no concept derivable from the world of human experience that could serve to accommodate the divine being in any sort of comprehensive way. For Schleiermacher, as well, the identification of God as the transcendental presupposition of human selfconsciousness means that conceptualizing God would be tantamount to denying the deity altogether. This, we suggest, is an important caveat to remember when we say that God is anything. In other words, both Barth and Schleiermacher realize that the proper referent of all theological speech can only be God for us – and that there must always be, to a certain extent, as aspect of God’s life which is not reproducible in human knowledge or experience. Hence, we ought not to think that simply uttering the phrase ‘God is love’ is the same as rendering a comprehensive account of the divine being, no matter how many particular doctrines are summed up therein.

A proposal Though Barth and Schleiermacher differ in significantly material ways, nevertheless they share certain formal similarities that can direct contemporary theology towards potentially fruitful avenues. As mentioned earlier in this book, both theologians regard the meaning of divine love as something of a concluding statement which follows from an analysis of the form and substance of revelation. As such, neither is constrained by prevailing assumptions about what it means to take love ‘seriously’, to borrow Hartshorne’s phrase. This leads both of them to develop rather unique understandings of love which may or may not conform to such assumptions. Whilst this approach could raise questions about the biblical use of the term ‘love’ in terms of its communicative fittingness, it does follow, we suggest, something of the logic that we find in the first Johannine epistle itself. In 1 John 4:12, for instance, the text states, ‘No one has ever beheld God, yet if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.’ On the grounds of this passage, we can affirm that God does retain his hiddenness even in his revelation, and this despite the fact that we cannot imagine what it would even mean for God to be the way he is without us (a point made by Schleiermacher

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and Barth, though in different ways). And yet, the writer insists, God’s identity also becomes a present reality as he draws near to us, reconciling us not only to himself but to one another as well. In this way, the God whom we know specifically through his act of loving us, in a sense, ‘completes’ (teleóō) himself in the very same act. Rather than engaging in speculation concerning how the fellowship we enjoy with God is somehow mirrored in God’s own life in every respect save the fact that it takes place immanently, we might instead conceive of God as a ‘being towards fellowship’. In other words, if we assume, with Barth, on the grounds of the fact that God speaks to us in Christ, that God is ‘I’ in a sense which is simply not known to us, then we can also say, with Barth, that God ‘is what God does’ – God’s being is in his becoming. And if God’s being is in his becoming, then who (not what) God is represents the necessary and sufficient grounds for what God does: God not only is what he does; God also is what he can do. Hence, counterfactually speaking, God is he who is eternally ready for fellowship with humanity in Christ. To say that God is love – where love refers to what God actually does with respect to us (as 1 John 4 emphasizes) – is therefore to designate God’s essence, God’s being, as a ‘being towards fellowship’. This, I suggest, is a promising way of taking to heart the best insights of Schleiermacher and Barth on the nature of divine love. Recently, Katherine Sonderegger, in the magisterial first volume of her Systematic Theology, has made a similar claim. Like the approach advocated here, Sonderegger is wary of presupposing creaturely love as the metric by which divine love ought to be measured. Moreover, insofar as she begins her systematics with divine ‘unicity’ (rather than Trinity), she is also committed to avoiding the implication that God’s immanent identity as love specifies God’s being as an eternal act of love, understood in terms of the interaction of subjects in ways that are mirrored in creaturely communion. Sonderegger’s own answer to the conundrum approaches ours closely enough as to warrant a brief interaction. Sonderegger’s work clearly emerges from ground that is very similar to that which we have explored. For instance, like Schleiermacher, Sonderegger insists that love is ‘the keystone of the Divine Perfections’ that ‘holds together, sums up, and makes lovely the entire Divine nature, all its Properties and its Glory’.2 Like Barth, she also emphasizes that divine love must be characterized at all points as ‘sovereign and free’.3 For Sonderegger herself, however, God’s love is best regarded as a ‘disposition’ that is coterminous with the divine substance. As she puts it: ‘the Love that just is God is dispositional, a State and Power, a Dynamism wholly at rest, wholly eternal and free … Love is a substance’.4 En route to this conclusion, Sonderegger registers two key concerns. First, as mentioned above, she is nervous about modern theology’s tendency to project creaturely understandings of love onto the divine nature, particularly the 2. Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology: Volume 1, The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2015), 469. 3. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 470. 4. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 482.

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assumption that love demands an object – a point that we have already encountered in the work of modern theologians like Moltmann, Zizioulas, and Hartshorne. Second, and relatedly, she is concerned that if love does demand an object, then the methodological decision to begin her systematics with divine ‘unicity’, rather than triunity, may be called into question. Whilst I resonate with Sonderegger’s first concern – indeed, worries about ‘projectionism’ have motivated in part this very study – the presupposition underlying the second invites a critical response. By contrast, we suggest that a doctrine of the Trinity interpreted in terms of love need not entail the kind of intradivine I-Thou relationality that Sonderegger argues is a symptom of projectionism. In fact, it is precisely the Trinity that enables love to be predicable to God without entailing the diminishment of divine oneness. Sonderegger presents the key question in terms of a traditional systematic category: is love a ‘communicable’ attribute of God? The fact that most theologians agree that love is communicable is not controversial, and Sonderegger is correct to point this out. Once this assumption has been made, however, a new question arises: how ought love to be understood in order to make it coherently applicable to both Creator and creature? This is Sonderegger’s account of the alleged consensus: ‘love itself, in its structure and intelligibility, is thought to be polar, relational, dyadic, and just this applies in every use of the word, in the cosmos and in the highest heaven too’.5 That this is a contemporary assumption is easily demonstrable,6 but Sonderegger also finds it to be pervasive in the tradition as well. Even Thomas Aquinas’s account of love as the inclination of the will to the good is deemed ultimately ‘object-related’, thereby necessitating an account of the divine nature that is likewise ‘fundamentally relative’ (insofar as God’s essence is the summum bonum to which his will inclines).7 Sonderegger’s more sustained critique, however, is directed at Karl Barth, who, in her estimation, reverts to a relational understanding of divine love despite a trinitarianism which would evidently disallow such a move. We have encountered this problematic in previous chapters; nevertheless, it is worth noting Sonderegger’s particular understanding of it here. Sonderegger’s interaction with Barth largely orbits § 68, ‘The Holy Spirit and Christian Love’, from CD IV/2. In this section, Barth explores the ways in which human love is made to ‘correspond’ to God’s love for humanity. Barth’s reasoning largely follows the approach taken in CD III/2, wherein the being of the human is found to be determined by the Creator–creature relation that obtains in the person of Jesus Christ. And yet, like the material in III/2, § 68 also gestures to the innertriune life as somehow formally determinative of this divine-human reality: 5. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 474. 6. One notable example is the work of Jean-Luc Marion, who straightforwardly insists that divine and human love must be entirely univocal. See Jean-Luc Marion, The Rigor of Things: Conversations with Dan Arbib, trans. Christina M. Gschwandtner (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 117. 7. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 474–5. Citing ST Ia, q.20, a.1.

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In [the] triunity of His essence God loves both as and before He loves us; both as and before He calls us to love. In this triunity of His essence God is eternal love. In Himself he is both the One and the Other.8

In response, Sonderegger wonders, ‘Must Christian theology ground divinehuman love in Inner Relations, in the Triune Persons?’9 Her answer is a provocative ‘no’: ‘Love can exist without an object; indeed, in God, we say, Love takes on and expresses this very form, pure, object-less Love.’10 For Sonderegger, modern theology has been hesitant to entertain this thought due to its preoccupation with the notion of love in terms of relation. And so, she asks, Could not the Divine Love be the utterly unique Reality, entire and eternal in itself, that pours down, full and free, upon our little loves? Should we not lift our eyes to the Transcendental Relation here too? Not equivocal, most certainly not univocal, not best as ‘analogical’ – at least in its technical armature – but transcendental: the one Beyond, the Source and Perfection and Blessing, showered down in its many forms, received in a creaturely way, hidden and humble among the good of our kind and ways. Could Love not be Mystery in just this way?11

Sonderegger goes on to explain this ‘transcendental relation’ using a series of metaphors. A piece of crystal, for instance, is fragile, whether or not this fragility is expressed in the event of its easily breaking upon impact. Indeed, fragility is the disposition of the crystal to break; the crystal is metaphysically disposed to break such that it will actually break given certain conditions. Similarly, she argues, we might say that God is love insofar as he is metaphysically disposed to love others, even if this disposition is not actually expressed in this way (whether economically or immanently). Note well, however, that for Sonderegger, God is not potentially love – his love for us is not merely a capacity to act which transitions from potency to actuality – because ‘love’ speaks particularly to an already fully present quality of the divine substance. It is God’s very nature which is ‘ready to love; prone to it, we might say’. Hence, ‘God is Love the way crystal is fragile: it is the very structure and metaphysical character of the Lord.’12 This characterization of God as ‘ready to love’ obviously approximates our understanding of God as a ‘being towards fellowship’, but there are some key differences. First, understanding love purely as a disposition tends to blunt the force and strangeness of the Johannine claim. As we pointed out earlier, the text 8. CD IV/2, 757. 9. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 479. 10. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 481. 11. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 486. 12. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 486.

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does not say that God is ‘loving’, but that God is love. In Sonderegger’s account, the metaphor of the crystal could be reproduced with any other attribute – for instance, divine faithfulness – without substantial change, provided the claim is phrased in certain ways. For instance, ‘God is faithful’ could mean that God’s essence is structured such that he will communicate to creatures the faithfulness that is his substance given certain circumstances. The same could be said for nearly any predication based on the following logic: God’s metaphysical structure is fitting for undertaking the actions he actually does undertake. Whilst this is not a theologically trivial point, nevertheless it does not capture the force of the particular scriptural claim, nor does it realize the kind of logic that would underwrite Sonderegger’s thesis that love ‘sums up … the entire Divine nature’ in a way that is unique vis-à-vis the other attributes.13 In fact, this approach could lead precisely to the kind of nominalistic apophaticism that Sonderegger rejects14 – one in which we can attribute properties to God’s nature, yet never really interrogate the concrete significance of the claim ‘God is God’.15 Sonderegger’s appeal to the ‘transcendental relation’ – the idea that God is ‘present’ to all creaturely forms and yet is ‘more’ than these – gestures towards a possible resolution, though it does so purely in the mode of confession rather than explanation.16 We believe that more can be said. In the context of this particular volume, Sonderegger is hesitant to relate the Trinity to her understanding of divine love.17 On this matter, she is (rightly) worried about a prevalent theological impulse that she calls ‘grounding’, or the idea that ‘God’s Communication of His own spiritual Perfection to creatures entails that the creaturely goods and faithful acts of the earthbound must find a likeness and representation in Almighty God’.18 Here, certain forms of medieval realism vis-à-vis the problem of universals are a potential target, but Sonderegger criticizes Barth as well. It is not difficult to surmise the reason for her suspicion in light of the quotation above – ‘in Himself [God] is both the One and Other’ – the implication being that it is this dynamic that enables ‘the triunity of the Divine 13. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 469. Granted, the logic would work in Schleiermacher’s scheme, as love speaks to the particular shape of God as Absolute Causality – though at the cost of regarding God and world as ‘correlata’, which Sonderegger wants to avoid. 14. ‘[T]he Divine Reality as Utterly Unique communicates His Being to creatures.’ Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 460. 15. ‘Tautologies, in the frank expression of the philosophers, are “true but trivial.” If the transcendentals underwrote this kind of identity predication only, we would be wise to use our time in other pursuits.’ Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 461. 16. And this admittedly so: ‘Holy Scripture … brings us to the edge of this abyss: Almighty God communicates His Perfections.’ Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 460. 17. The second volume of her Systematic Theology, which will treat the doctrine of the Trinity, unfortunately has not yet been published at the time of writing. 18. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, 450.

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Essence’ to be meaningfully equated with love. It is perhaps Sonderegger’s worries about this move in particular that lead her to avoid referring to the Trinity in her own ‘substantialist’ account of divine love as a disposition. There is, however, another way to interpret Barth on this point. Recall our earlier argument that, for Barth, God’s being-in-act refers specifically to the fact that, in a sense that is unique to the divine nature, other persons are not required in order for God to be personal; God is radically self-moved. Hence, God’s personhood is a se in a way that is simply incomparable to creaturely being; God requires no external context in which to live, move, and have his being. And yet, as Barth points out, God is not a ‘monad’ that exists principially, as if he were nothing more than a kind of metaphysical ‘anchor’ for creation (whether actual or possible). Rather, he insists, God actually lives. And so there is a shape and a movement to the divine life, a beginning, middle, and end, a taxis that is the form of God’s existence: the processions of the Holy Trinity. The Trinity, therefore, as the shape and substance of God’s uniquely autonomous life, is precisely what enables God to be ‘more than’ in his relationship with the world: God really lives, and so he can live with respect to us. Consequently, when we read the quotation from Barth, we ought to put the accent on the in Himself more so than on ‘He is both the One and the Other’. The point, then, is this: in Godself, God fulfils that which for creaturely being requires the presence of another. Hence, ‘How can God love without an object?’ is simply another form of the question ‘How can God be personal without an other?’ – and the answer to both of these questions must be because the one divine I is already personal in the unique mode of triune life. Put another way: God is disposed to relate to other persons because God is a person – a person who lives in and through the eternal movement of the divine processions. In short, the doctrine of the Trinity leads us to confess something rather more bold than ‘God exists’; the Christian confession is God lives. Sonderegger is entirely correct to insist that ‘God is love’ is not an invitation to apply the via eminentiæ in a flat-footed manner. We should not simply reproduce in God a more excellent version of creaturely love, with all its particular dynamics and parameters, for the sake of ‘grounding’ this earthly reality in the heavens. To put it plainly: God is not an ‘instance’ or an event of ‘I’s’ loving ‘Thou’s’. And yet, we should not allow our worries about such reasoning to dissuade us from the interpretation that 1 John 4:8 and 16 seems to demand: God is, somehow, love. He is not just loving, he is not merely disposed to love (though he is of course these as well); God’s life, not just God’s substance, is what love is. This is why, in the end, Barth is right to insist that love is an ‘act’ and a ‘movement’, and not just a state, because God is act and movement, his own ‘conscious, willed, and executed decision’. The question is: what is the nature of this ‘inner movement’ which is ‘the basis of love’ – and not just our creaturely love but also God’s love for the creature? And here, what can we do other than gesture in faith to the actual shape of the divine life? As Barth puts it, In His very essence He was the Father who loves the Son and the Son who loves the Father, and as such, in the communion and reciprocity of this love (in der

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Gemeinschaft und Wechselseitigkeit solcher Liebe), as God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the God who is self-moved, the living God, the One who loves eternally and as such moves to love.19

God is love ‘This is how we know love: he has laid down his life for us’ (1 John 3:16). This verse of scripture encapsulates the basic epistemological claim being made here. If God’s love is the basis of creaturely love, this conclusion should not be reached by purifying and/or amplifying the latter as an insight into the former. Indeed, as the text explicitly says, it is not our loving that is definitive, but God’s (1 John 4:10). Instead, we should look to what God has actually done and ask how this act determines what love really is. When we encounter the ontological claim in 1 John 4, therefore, this economic–epistemological orientation is not abandoned: ‘Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God has been revealed in our midst: God sent his only son into the world so that we might live’ (1 John 4:8–9). The question is raised, therefore, how can God be that which is described here only in terms of God’s love for us? No answer is given in 1 John, but the parameters for an answer are nevertheless clear. We must describe God’s identity as love in such a way that he is truly ‘himself ’ when he undertakes certain benevolent acts for the benefit of humanity, yet not in such a way that these acts become the necessary expression of his identity. It is God’s being towards fellowship that makes such a description possible. God is his love for us, because God’s being is his act. And God’s being is God’s act because of his perfectly fulfilled triune life – a life which already fully expresses all that he is, yet which can ‘overflow’ to others in ways that would be unthinkable for any form of contingent life. God is, therefore, that which he does for us, because he already is that which he does in his own triune being. God is God – whether for himself or for others. And it is for this reason that God is love.

19. CD IV/2, 759; KD IV/2, 862.

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INDEX analogia relationis 139, 141–2 analogy 2, 7, 13, 17, 107 Angelici, Ruben 16 n.65 Anselm of Canterbury 15 anthropomorphism 36 n.44, 128 Aristotle 114 Arndt, Andreas 40 n.4, 40 n.6 Asprey, Christopher 105 n.65 atheism controversy 35 n.40 Augustine of Hippo 12–15, 16, 18, 105, 127 Ayres, Lewis 13 n.54 Barbour, Ian G. 6 n.21 Beißer, Friedrich 28 n.5, 32 n.26, 33, 67 n.50, 78 Bethge, Eberhard 139 n.123 Boethius 18 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 139 n.123 Bowman, Curtis 35 n.40 Braunius, Johannes 122 n.46 Brümmer, Vincent 2 n.6, 5–7 Brunner, Emil 1 n.2, 3, 64 n.42, 66 n.48, 159 Bultmann, Rudolf 164 n.55, 164 n.60 Busch, Eberhard 97 n.22, 118 n.32, 121 n.45 Calvin, John 135 causality 33 church 59–60, 81, 93 Collins, Paul M. 10 n.43, 137 n.115 consciousness (Bewußtsein) 48, 64–6, 87 creation ex nihilo 4, 11 Cremer, Hermann 122–3, 125 n.65 cross 8 Crouter, Richard 27 n.3, 28 n.4, 32 n.26 den Bok, Nico 17 n.68 dialogue 41, 44, 63 Dierken, Jörg 32 n.26, 35 n.37

divine attributes eternity 15, 75, 156–7 holiness 82 justice 83 love 83–6 omnipotence 15, 76–7 omnipresence 75 omniscience 78 wisdom 83–6 Dole, Andrew 37 n.47 Dorner, Isaak 102 Ebeling, Gerhard 71 n.2, 73, 79 Eckert, Michael 41 n.10 election 119, 152–62 Ephesians 1:4 155 ethics, philosophical 29, 57, 60, 62 experience 7, 37, 80, 87, 130, 176 feeling (Gefühl) 32, 49, 54, 62, 104 absolute dependence 66–9, 72–3 Feuerbach, Ludwig 1 n.4, 101 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 35, 36 n.44, 40–1, 53, 64 n.43, 78, 136 finite 28, 32, 36, 130, 146–7, 173 n.1 1 John 1 1 John 3:16 183 1 John 4:8 19, 126, 182 1 John 4:8-9 183 1 John 4:10 183 1 John 4:12 177 1 John 4:16 19, 126, 182 1 Thessalonians 1:4 174 Flückiger, Felix 56 n.4 Forstman, Jack 27 Frank, Manfred 40 n.6 freedom 30, 36, 65, 144 Friess, Horace Leland 29 n.7 Gibson, David 152 n.2 Göckel, Matthias 152 n.3, 154 n.13

Index God aseity 15, 112, 142, 144 attributes 15, 25, 26, 54, 72–5, 83–4, 121–5, 147 (see also divine attributes) being in act 113, 116–17, 166, 177, 183 benevolence of 19, 125–7, 183 classical views of 9 concept 37–8, 45, 50–1, 55, 68 counterfactuals 120, 159–60, 178 doctrine 19, 21, 37, 154 essence 27, 86, 96, 112–4, 118, 125 n.66, 158 existence 4, 112, 145 history 100, 119, 135, 163–6 ineffability 13, 177 knowledge of 38, 49–50 nonobjectivity 38, 49–50, 53, 69, 85, 103 objectivity 103–9 ontology 10–11, 111 perfection 15, 16, 173 personhood 10, 17–18, 21, 36, 92, 100–1, 111, 129–42, 148–9, 157, 166, 182 predication 38, 177, 179 relation to humanity 127, 153, 155, 165 relation to world 4, 5, 26, 42, 50, 51–3, 72, 75, 77, 87, 112, 115, 145–8, 157–8, 168 suffering of 8, 10 ‘universe’ as 30–1, 33–8 Gollwitzer, Helmut 121 n.45 good (summum bonum) 12–14, 16, 127, 179 grace 81, 105, 127, 153, 169 Green, Clifford J. 139 n.123 Greggs, Tom 152 n.6 Gunton, Colin E. 10 n.43 Härle, Wilfried 117–18, 124 n.60, 125 n.66, 130, 143 n.134 Hart, Trevor 10 n.43 Hartshorne, Charles 3–5, 8, 11, 177, 179 Heppe, Heinrich 122 n.46 Herrmann, Wilhelm 102 Hirsch, Emanuel 66 n.48 Hollazius, David 107 n.74 Holmes, Christopher R.J. 124

193

Hume, David 44 n.20, 104 n.61 Hunsinger, George 156 n.26 idealism 40, 134, 145–6 Imago Dei 138–42 infinite 34 intuition (Anschauung) 30–1, 33, 34, 44, 104–6 Jacobi, Friedrich 58 Jesus atoning work 8, 163–5 person of 21, 61, 63, 81, 87, 99 John (Gospel of) 159 Johnson, William Stacy 117 Jonas, Ludwig 39 Jones, Paul Dafydd 164 n.55, 165 n.67 Jüngel, Eberhard 2, 99, 104 n.62, 106 n.69, 106 n.73, 107–8, 118–21, 139 n.124, 141, 169 n.94 Kant, Immanuel 31, 36 n.41, 40 n.6, 41–4, 48, 51 n.55, 73 n.11, 102–7 Keesee, Neal K. 33 n.29 knowledge 29, 41–2, 46, 103 Krötke, Wolf 2 n.6 Lamm, Julia A. 71 language, theological 1–3, 37, 50, 94, 175–6 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 40 n.6 Locke, John 44 n.20, 104 n.61 logic 40 Louden, Robert B. 60 n.23 love dispositional view 7, 12, 13, 14–16, 178 intratriune 5, 12, 14, 21 reciprocity 17 relational view 3, 7, 16, 126–7, 179 univocity of divine and human 4–5, 128, 178–9 Lücke, Friedrich 56, 79 Luther, Martin 37 n.48 Lütz, Dietmar 20 n.77 Macken, John 103 Marheineke, Philipp 102 Mariña, Jacqueline 62 n.34, 65 n.44 Marion, Jean-Luc 179 n.6

194

Index

Maury, Pierre 154 n.14 McCormack, Bruce L. 80–1, 106 n.72, 119–20, 130 n.86, 137 n.116, 138 n.117, 151 n.1, 154 n.14, 157 n.28, 159 n.37, 162 n.47 McFague, Sallie 6 n.23 Meckenstock, Günter 40 n.4 Melanchthon, Philip 112 metaphor 2, 5, 147, 180 metaphysics 29, 40–1, 62 modalism 168 model 2, 5–7 Molnar, Paul 119 n.40 Moltmann, Jürgen 8–10, 11, 134–6, 179 Mühling, Markus 1 n.5, 2 n.6, 6–7, 14 n.60, 15 Muller, Richard A. 73 n.8 Myers, Benjamin 136 n.113 Nietzsche, Friedrich 78 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 27 n.1 Nowak, Kurt 58 n.14 Oakes, Kenneth 91 n.1, 95 n.15 O’Donovan, Oliver 12 n.51 Offermann, Doris 56 n.5, 61 n.28, 64 n.42, 66 n.48 Oh, Peter S. 10 n.43 Oord, Thomas Jay 175 Osthövener, Claus-Dieter 126 n.69, 129 n.83, 130 n.88, 131 n.92 Pannenberg, Wolfhart 134–6 pantheism 35 Parker, T.H.L. 104 n.60 particulars 32 piety (Frömmigkeit) 60 Plato 40 n.6 polytheism 35 Prenter, Regin 1 Redeker, Martin 30 n.19 religion 30 essence 30, 33, 37 revelation 98, 112, 124 event 93, 96–7, 100, 148 form 99, 107, 126, 132, 176–7 Richard of St. Victor 12, 14, 15–18

Richards, Jay Wesley 85–6, 158 n.32 Ricoeur, Paul 5 Ritschl, Albrecht 102, 128 Roman Catholicism 93–4 Romans 1:23 12 Romanticism (German) 27, 85 sanctification 106 Sanders, Fred 97 Schelling, Friedrich 40 n.6 Schemata 50, 54 Schlegel, Friedrich 27 n.1 Schmid, Heinrich 64 n.42, 107 n.74 Schwöbel, Christoph 96, 132 science (Wissenschaft) 56–61, 94–6 Sherman, Robert 20 n.77 sin 81–3 Singer, Irving 85 n.63 Sonderegger, Katherine 178–83 Soskice, Janet Martin 5 n.20 Sparn, Walter 117 Spinoza, Benedict 40 n.6 Stratis, Justin 17 n.70, 126 n.69 subordinationism 168 theology christology 152 epistemology 38, 103 liberal Protestant 20 method 93–7 modern 19 proclamation 96 prolegomena 55–61 reformed 20, 151, 155 relation to philosophy 8, 58, 91, 95, 102–3 speculation in 20, 34, 63, 73–4, 112, 120 systematic nature 20, 71–2, 176 task 60 Thiel, John 39 n.1, 39 n.3, 44–6, 61 n.30, 78 Thomas Aquinas 4, 5, 78 n.30, 105 n.67, 107 n.76, 114, 115 n.18, 127, 146 n.147 Tice, Terrence N. 53 n.64 Torrance, Alan J. 10 n.43, 100 n.46 Torrance, T.F. 2 n.9, 117 n.29, 169 n.93

Index

195

transcendental reasoning 41, 43, 48–9, 51, 57, 80, 106, 181 Trinity 4, 7, 13, 97–102 Augustine’s doctrine 11–14, 97, 101–2, 107, 171 economic and immanent 9, 99, 101, 161, 170 indivisibility of external works 107 internal fellowship 7, 132–49 processions 5, 101, 107–8, 134, 140, 161, 173, 182 relationality 10, 14 relational views 10 single subject 10, 21, 91, 97, 100, 108–9, 134–7, 170 social doctrine 9, 11, 14, 108, 136 Turretin, Francis 154 n.13

van der Kooi, Cornelis 105 van Driel, Edwin Chr. 80 n.40, 82, 157 n.30 Vanhoozer, Kevin J. 8, 10 Vercellone, Federico 40 n.6, 52

unity and multiplicity 44–5, 49

Zizioulas, John 10–11, 16, 137 n.115, 179

Webb, Stephen H. 147 n.150 Webster, John 94 n.8, 106 n.73, 143 n.134, 147 n.150 Wehrung, Georg 63 n.37, 64 n.42 Weinandy, Thomas G. 115 n.18 Westerholm, Martin 102 n.52, 104 n.61 will 5, 160, 179 Williams, Robert R. 79 n.36 Williams, Rowan 135–6, 138 n.117 world (Welt) 33, 52 Wyman, Walter E. 81 n.42 Wynne, Jeremy J. 65 n.46