Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth : Essays in Honour of Abraham Van de Beek [1 ed.] 9789004224421, 9789004218840

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Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth

Studies in Reformed Theology Editor-in-chief

Eddy Van der Borght, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Editorial Board

Abraham van de Beek, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Martien Brinkman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Alasdair Heron, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg Dirk van Keulen, Protestant Theological University, Leiden Daniel Migliore, Princeton Theological Seminary Richard Mouw, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena Gerrit Singgih, Duta Wacana Christian University, Yogjakarta Conrad Wethmar, University of Pretoria

VOLUME 22

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/srt

Prof. A. van de Beek

Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth Essays in Honour of Abraham van de Beek

By

E. Van der Borght and P. van Geest

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012

Photo frontispiece: Maarten Buÿs The production and the presentation of this Festschrift became possible with the fijinancial support of the following funding agencies: Confessionele Vereniging binnen de PKN Evangelisch Werkverband binnen de PKN Gereformeerde Bond binnen de PKN Kerkrentmeesters Hervormde Gemeente Vriezenveen Kerkrentmeesters Hervormde Gemeente Lunteren Stichting Ad Pias Causas Stichting Draagt Elkanders Lasten Stichting Zonneweelde Van Coevorden Adriani Stichting This book is printed on acid-free paper.

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface. ISSN 1571-4799 ISBN 978 90 04 21884 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 22442 1 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhofff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS Preface: Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth  ................................................  Paul van Geest, Eduardus Van der Borght

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WORDS OF GREETING Learned and Wise. A Word of Greeting  ..................................................  Adrianus Cardinal Simonis

3

Church and State, Particularly in the Netherlands.  .............................  An Essay in Honour of Abraham van de Beek  Arjan Plaisier

7

PART ONE

ABRAHAM VAN DE BEEK: AN APPRAISAL Bram van de Beek: Viator in Fide  ...............................................................  Gerrit de Kruijf

17

“Alexamenos Worships His God”? An Attempt to Understand  Bram van de Beek’s Christology as the Heart of his Theology  ....  Dirkie Smit

37

Bibliography Prof. Dr. Abraham van de Beek  ........................................

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PART TWO

SPEAKING OF GOD: CHRIST AND ISRAEL Stranger on Earth and Divine Guest: Human and Divine  Hospitality in the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts  ...............  Adelbert Denaux

87

“The Word Became Jewish Flesh”: Christology and the Question of  the Sufffering of God  ..................................................................................  Daniel L. Migliore

101

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The Christology in the Heidelberg Catechism and in the Canones  of Dordt  .........................................................................................................  Wim Verboom

115

The Nature of Christ’s Atonement. A Defence of Penal Substitution  Theory  ...........................................................................................................  Nico Vorster

129

Nietzsche’s ‘The Antichrist’: An anti-Christian and anti-Jewish  Document .....................................................................................................  A.A.A. (Ad) Prosman

147

Has God Changed? An Inquiry on the Relationship between God  and Israel in the Theology of A.A. van Ruler  ....................................  André H. Drost

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Church and Israel, Church and the Jews in Hungarian Reformed  Theology and Practice  ..............................................................................  Ferenc Szűcs

175

Taoistic Implications for Christology: Grand Unity, datong (大同)  and Valley-god, gushen (谷神)  ..............................................................  Jaeseung Cha

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The Reciprocal Relation between Anthropology and Christology ....  Martien E. Brinkman John Calvin and Abraham van de Beek on the Church and  Israel—with Special Reference to Romans 9–11  ..............................  I. John Hesselink Israel as a Problem. The Promise of the Land by Bram van de  Beek in Confrontation with the Palestinian Kairos Document  and Augustine  .............................................................................................  Wessel ten Boom Some Developments in Contemporary Protestant Christology in  the Netherlands in the Light of the Schola Augustiniana.  Abraham van de Beek and Harry Kuitert Evaluated  ......................  Paul van Geest

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contents Blasphemy and the Sinlessness of Jesus. In Dialogue with  Abraham van de Beek  ..............................................................................  Johann Theron

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PART THREE

SPEAKING OF GOD: ESCHATOLOGY Cicero Meets Ambrose  ..................................................................................  Gerrit de Kruijf “It Shone with the Glory of the Lord”. On Beauty and Christian  Telos  ...............................................................................................................  Rian Venter Text, Tradition, Theology. The Example of the Book of Joel  ............  Eep Talstra ‘Euthanasia’ in the Seventeenth Century: Ars Moriendi in Dutch  Reformed Perspective  ...............................................................................  Jan Hoek Story, Eschatology and the Agnus Victor  .................................................  Paul Wells

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Eschatology: Some Theological, Apologetic and Pastoral  Reflections  ....................................................................................................  Alan P.F. Sell

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Striking Similarities. The Eschatological Orientation of Calvin,  Barth and Van de Beek  ............................................................................  Cornelis van der Kooi

371

Ascetism Only, or Ethics as Well? Oepke Noordmans’ View of  Eschatological Ascetism and Ethics as a Challenge for Bram  van de Beek  .................................................................................................  Gerard den Hertog

381

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Radical Eschatology: Comparing Bram van de Beek and Wolfhart  Pannenberg  ..................................................................................................  Christiaan Mostert

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Unio mystica cum Christo glorifijicato. In Dialogue with Van de Beek  about the Consequences of His Eschatology for Soteriology  .......  Willem van Vlastuin

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PART FOUR

THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH No Longer Strangers or Pilgrims in the Church? Socio-cultural  Identities in the Faith and Order Document: Nature and  Mission of the Church  ................................................................................  Eduardus A.J.G. Van der Borght The Church and the Unity of Humankind ..............................................  Jacobus (Sjaak M.) van ’t Kruis

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Two Church Fathers Review Charismatic Worship. Ambrosiaster’s  and Chrysostom’s Comments on 1 Corinthians 11–14  .....................  Riemer Roukema

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One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Baptism of Children in the  Letter to the Ephesians  ............................................................................  Jacob van Beelen

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The Welcoming Table? The Lord’s Supper, Exclusion, and the  Reformed Tradition  ...................................................................................  Robert R. Vosloo

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The Teaching Concerning the Lord’s Supper in the 1559 Hungarian  Reformed Confession of Marosvásárhely (Transylvania)  Botond Kund Gudor, István Pásztori-Kupán  .......................................

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Family-modeled Congregation  ...................................................................  Tamás Juhász

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Preaching the Word of God  .........................................................................  F. Gerrit Immink

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contents Minister as Witness  ........................................................................................  Allan J. Janssen Nearing the Brink of Death? Dying, Renewing, and Newly Born  Congregations in Protestant Amsterdam  ...........................................  Henk de Roest The Confessions and the Motif of the Stranger  .....................................  Matthias Smalbrugge “As a Deer Longs for Flowing Streams. . . .” The Challenges of  Postmodern Spirituality for Protestant Theology and the  Church  ...........................................................................................................  Szilveszter Füsti-Molnár Strange People. Toward a Realistic Ecclesiology  ..................................  René de Reuver

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Rome or Jerusalem? Bram van de Beek on the Unity of the Church  623  Henk van den Belt Living Law: Karl Barth, Bram van de Beek and the 2004 Protestant  Church Order  ...............................................................................................  Leon van den Broeke And They Recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread: Van de  Beek’s Contribution to the Necessary Rethinking on the  Protestant Eucharistic Practice ..............................................................  H. (Bert) de Leede

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PART FIVE

CREATION THEOLOGY No Creation Stories in Holy Scripture. Von Rad’s View on the  Relation between Covenant and Creation Revisited  ......................  Harm Goris

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An Alternative Creation Belief: An Interpretation of Job  36:26–37:13 ....................................................................................................  E. Gerrit Singgih

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contents

“What was God Doing before Making Heaven and Earth?”  Theological Reflections on the Doctrine of God in Traditional  African Religion and the North African Theologian Aurelius  Augustine ......................................................................................................  J.H. (Amie) Van Wijk

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To Which the Whole Creation Moves. Creation Theology in  Tennyson’s In Memoriam  ........................................................................  Frank Sawyer

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The Ebb and Flow of Creation Theology at Stellenbosch  University: A Story in Six Chapters  ......................................................  Ernst M. Conradie and J. Christofff Pauw

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Should We Drop the Fall? On Taking Evil Seriously  ...........................  Gijsbert van den Brink Epistemology, Ontology and Reciprocity. Bringing Bram van de  Beek into Dialogue with John Polkinghorne  .....................................  Johan Buitendag With a Little Help from Our Friend! A Systematic-Theological  Appreciation of Bram van de Beek’s Theology of Creation  as Contribution to the Contemporary Theology-Science  Dialogue  ........................................................................................................  Daniël P. Veldsman

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PART SIX

FREEDOM OF RELIGION A Christian Perspective on Human Dignity  ...........................................  J.(Koos) M. Vorster

817

Religious Freedom and a South African Charter of Religious Rights  and Freedoms  .............................................................................................  Pieter Coertzen

833

Divinely Approved Suicide-Terrorism? A Christian Critique of the  Death of Samson  ........................................................................................  Bernard Reitsma

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contents Simul justus ac peccator and Non-Self and/or Non-Self.  A Buddhist-Christian Dialogue  ..............................................................  Hendrik M. Vroom

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Public Theology in a Sufffering World? .....................................................  Nico Koopman

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List of Contributors  ........................................................................................ Index  ...................................................................................................................

897 905

PREFACE: STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS ON EARTH Paul van Geest and Eduardus Van der Borght In the ordering of time and space within which the Augustinian Canons Regular of the St. Agnietenberg knew their life to be structured, Thomas a Kempis blossomed as a very productive copyist and writer. Beginning in 1427, when the printing press was not yet in vogue, he made four copies of the entire Scriptures, as well as of a missal. Even so, he also wrote his own tracts. Four booklets—which were to be read together under one title, De imitatione Christi—became his best-known work: they had an tremendous influence on spirituality in the West. The manner in which he wrote his works is depicted by Thomas himself in a somewhat romantic manner. He says: O monache, quid facis in cella? Lego, scribo, colligo mella. Haec animae  meae solacia. Bene dixisti. Nam cella monachorum in labore et studio librorum flagrare  debet.1

Yet the research done by L. Delaissé with regard to Thomas’ autograph of 1441 clearly shows that Thomas took great pains to make stilistic improvements in his tractates. These were made not so much for his love of the beauty of Latin phrasing, the latinitas, as with a mystagogical eye for words that were better suited the rythm or improved inner rhyme, or accomplished a pleasing alternation of dactyles and iambs. For instance, the conclusion of his expositions were put in a verse form that greatly enhanced the ruminatio, the meditative repetition of the pious phrases or succinct sayings that thus received a solid basis from a mnemotechnical point of view. The fijirst sentence of the quote above is a good example of this deliberate care. Fashioning such writing must have taken its toll. An early version of De interna consolatione, part three of the entire work,

1  “O monk, what are you doing in your cell? I read, I write, I collect honey. These are the consolations of my soul. You are right. For the cell of monks must glow in work and study of books.” Thomas a Kempis, Breve epitaphium monachorum, in: Thomae a Kempis opera omnia, vol., 4, 143.

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circulated for a few decades in a quite unpolished form before the fijinal autograph edition appeared. It can be deduced from Thomas a Kempis’ way of working that the writing and copying of tractates was but one phase in a distinct process of formation. The scribe would internalize what was written and also prepared the tractate for the sake of the community. The process of reading, copying, and rewriting reflected an inner process in which the community at the end would fijinally share as well.2 Moreover, in this process of writing and internalized rewriting, Thomas became aware of the space in which, in a certain sense, Christians move beyond dimensions of time and physical space, and begin to surmise the power of salvation. As a result of lectio divina and choral prayer, and writing and rewriting, Jesus became more to him than a memory. Thus he developed a sense of life in which Jesus might be encountered, even though he could not touch Him in his side (like his biblical namesake patron). In this reading and writing process Thomas knew himself to be addressed by prophets and evangelists, Church Fathers, and especially by Christ himself. And without belitteling in any way the purifying awareness of his own imperfections by recalling the Last Judgement, he became embraced by, and liberated in, the space Jesus affforded him.3 It brought him no concrete solution to the problems of his time and world. It did bring him illumination. It is not surprising that De imitatione Christi begins with the words “Qui sequitur me non ambulat in tenebris” (Joh. 8:12): “Who follows me does not walk

2  See Th. Mertens, ‘Lezen met de pen: ontwikkeling in het laatmiddeleeuws geestelijk proza’ [‘Reading with the pen: developments in late midieval spiritual prose’], in: F.P. van Oostrom, a.o., (eds), De studie van de Middeleeuwse letterkunde: stand en toekomst. [The study of Medieval literature: current state and future] Symposium Antwerpen 22–24 september 1988. (Hilversum: 1989), 187–199; 212–217; N. Staubach, ‘Christianam sectam arripe. Devotio Moderna und Humanismus zwischen Zirkelbildung und gesellschaftlicher Integration’, in: K. Garber, H. Wissmann (eds), Europäische Sozietätsbewegung und demokratische Tradition. Die europäischen Akademien der Frühen Neuzeit zwischen Frührenaissance und Spätaufklärung (Tübingen: 1996), vol. 1, Frühen Neuzeit, 112–167. 3  “Qui vult bona nova audire, audiat Cristum loquentem de regno Dei, de iudicio futuro, de celesti Iherusalem, de felicitate ciuium supernorum, de ordinibus et choris angelorum letancium in secula seculorum; audiat prophetas misteria Christi nunciantes et peccatoribus penas intonantes; audiat apostolos et euangelistas opera et miracula Cristi aperte narrantes: audiat doctores et alios magistros pulchre sermocinantes”, Thomas a Kempis, Hortulus Rosarum, ed. van Geest, in: id. Thomas a Kempis. Een studie van zijn mens- en gods-beeld. Analyse en tekstuitgave van de Hortulus rosarum en de Vallis liliorum (Kampen: 1996), 363 [diss. Utrecht: A study of Th. A. Kempis’ image of human kind and God. Analysis and publication of the text of Hortulus rosarum and the Vallis liliorum].

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in darkness”. The imitation of Jesus is for Thomas not primarily an ascetic striving: it is a space which Jesus offfers and which brings light. The reverse of this is that such a state of being, in which century-old words are read and lived out within the community of interpretation and communication that is the Church, does not only unfold a space in which the essence of Christ is enlightening, but also brings about a tendency of estrangement from the world. One becomes estranged from the world and the forces that give it its prestige. Isaiah said it already, but certainly since Augustine it is noted that people, through their attraction to delicias, diuicias and honores (enjoyment, riches, and honour) slowly become subservient to tendencies that lead to a lack of freedom and that give the world (mundus) its prestige. Contrary to God’s beautiful, purifying creation (creatio), in which fauna and flora can be studied and admired—especially the brambles so loved by Van de Beek—that world, for Augustine, is a forcefijield fijilled with negative energy from which ‘structures of sin’ emerge, as Pope John Paul II says in Sollicitudo rei socialis.4 Through and because of these structures of sin, people are slowly taken in and eventually discover that prestige and honour do not lead to the freedom and fulfijillment everyone craves. The Canon Regular of Groenendaal, Jan van Schoonhoven describes this chokehold of the world in the stinging words: O infelix munde, qui sic solum noscis tuos amatores beatifijicare ut inimicos Dei constituas!5

Thus the space Thomas and his brethren experienced by knowing themselves addressed by prophets, church fathers, and especially Christ, also gave them a feeling of estrangement. Just like the spiritualities of many others in the history of Christianity, the spirituality of the Modern Devotion has also been nurtured by experiencing a passage from the Letter to the Hebrews: All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. they desire a better country, that

4  Cf. J. Schasching, In Sorge um Entwicklung und Frieden. Kommentar zur Enzyklika “Sollicitudo rei socialis” von Johannes Paul II (Wien-Zürich-Düsseldorf: 1988), passim. 5  [O unhappy world, which only knows how to make people happy in a way, so as to make enemies of God out of them!] A. Gruijs, Jean de Schoonhoven (1356–1432) Son interprétation de I Jean 2, 15 “N’aimez pas ce monde, ni ce qui est dans ce monde.” De contemptu huius mundi. Textes et études (Nimègue, 1967) 4 dln., dl. 3., 2–3.

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Abraham van de Beek, in the ordering of time and space in which he knew his public and private life to be structured, also developed into a very prolifijic writer. Whoever wants to understand him ought to study Thomas a Kempis. Like Thomas, in the process of writing and the interiorized rewriting within the interpretation and communication community that is the body of Christ, Abraham van de Beek must also have become aware of the space in which Christians are beyond the dimensions of physical space and time and have intimations of the power of salvation. In any case, in his writings it can be seen that for him too Jesus became more than a memory: Jesus can be encountered, and Abraham van de Beek—like Thomas—knew himself to be addressed by prophets, evangelists, Church Fathers and especially by Christ himself. Several of his academic and popular writings give testimony that his life is also marked by a tendency to be estranged from this world, as the passage from Hebrews aptly puts it—a tendency that is likely to have been intensifijied by his study of God’s creation. And what fijinally goes for Thomas is also true for Van de Beek: the process of reading, wrtiting, rewriting and more writing, mirrors an inner process that bears fruit ripening for the sake of the community. The fact that, on the deepest level, one is with the world rather than of the world, does not mean that one cannot shape the world. The space offfered by study and scripture reading increases a senseof exile, but at the same time it also contains a command to return to the world in order to be the salt of the earth and to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth. * * * In February 2010, we invited colleagues of Bram van de Beek in the Netherlands, former students whose dissertation he supervised, and many international colleagues and friends afffijiliated with the International Reformed Theological Institute (IRTI) to contribute to this Festschrift at the occasion of his planned retirement at the age of 65 in 2011. We received an overwhelming and positive response. A few months later he surprised us all with his announcement of an early retirement beginning in September 2010. Since it was impossible to shorten the production process of the volume by one whole year, we decided to continue with our original plan and offfer the volume at the occasion of his sixty-fijifth birthday.

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Studying the impressive bibliography of Abraham van de Beek, one begins to realize that he—as a christian and as an academic scholar—has taken very seriously the commandment to be the salt of the earth and proclaim the message of Christ to the ends of the earth. For his works have been translated in quite a few languages and he has actively nurtured and supported IRTI (the International Reformed theological Institute). And together with dr. Adelbert Denaux, dean of the Tilburg School of Theology, he established the Centre for Patristic Research (CPO). Through many academic venues he has published voluminously. Even so, also in a great many publications for a more general public he has explored and explicated Christ and the people of Israel, eschatology, ecclesiology and creation theology as well, both on a larger scale as well as in writings that dealt with specifijic facets. Already at the occasion of his inaugural lecture at Leiden University in 1982, it became clear that Bram van de Beek would follow his own theological path as an academic theologian, often in an untrendy way. Where that path would lead was still undecided, but the publication of Jezus Kurios in 1998 marked the moment that he had found his own theological voice. That volume would be the start of a series of monographs that would explore the consequences for other loci of systematic theology: Israel, and eschatology, respectively. Van de Beek is currently fijinishing his volume on the church and he plans to again address his earlier works on the topics of the Holy Spirit and on creation. Recently he edited a volume on freedom of religion. We invited the authors of this volume to contribute to these themes of his interests. All responded with articles covering the themes, and some authors used the opportunity to discuss Van de Beek’s specifijic positions in these fijields. The peer-reviewed articles in this Festschrift have been written by academic scholars from among his world-wide circle of friends and students. As editors we have organized their essays in such a way that the theological vision of Abraham van de Beek is done justice. Within this framework, the eschatology, ecclesiology can be traced to his christology, as well as to his doctrine of creation on which he, while gathering honey in his cell, continued to reflect. After some introductory essays in section I, the respective sections of this framework are as follows. Speaking about God: Christ and Israel (II), Eschatology (III), Theology of the Church (IV) (in which ecclesiology, worship, ecclesiastical structure, theology of offfijice, contemporary church history, and spirituality are placed), Creation theology (V), and fijinally, Freedom of Religion (VI). Within each grouping we fijirst placed contributions in which the particular theme was addressed in a more general

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manner. These are followed in each section by articles in which the work of Abraham van de Beek is treated more critically, albeit constructively, and in which further developments are suggested or initiated for further reflection. As editors we are honored by the words of greetings from Adrianus Cardinal Simonis of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands, and by Arjan Plaisier the secretary of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. A biographical essay follows that thoroughly covers the scope of Van de Beek’s highly productive and challenging career. Crucial events and circumstances of developments and challenges in the church, academia and personal life are placed in the perspective of a profound desire to engage the world as God’s gift of creation and as the crux of God’s love in Christ Jesus and the presence of Spirit that is Holy. The church, in the Netherlands and in places far away, can be truly grateful for the many encouragements and challenges Bram has and will continue to give to all who care about the world as a gift from God (De Kruijf). An attempt is made to listen closely in order to understand the truly radical nature of Bram van de Beek’s theology—especially his christology, including some of its far-reaching claims and implications—against the backdrop of the question about the deepest motivation behind his work. Here a fijine picture is drawn of the fundamental assumptions and convictions in his Christology as well as of the consistent way in which he pursues these assumptions in all aspects of his latest eschatological and pneumatological work and the possible reasons behind this Christology, biographical, theological and contextual (Smit). Luke presents Jesus as a stranger, God’s messenger, who visits his people to offfer them God’s salvation. Jesus is a stranger on earth and yet divine guest. The human and divine hospitality in the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts is relevant in the context of the need for local hospitality towards the millions of refugees and migrants all over the world (Denaux). Migliore returns to one of the themes of Van de Beek’s fijirst monograph after his dissertation, Waarom?: the question whether one can speak of the sufffering of God without compromising the divine transcendence, majesty, and sovereignty. The confessional diversity within the Reformed tradition becomes obvious if one compares the Christology of the Heidelberg Catechism with the Canones of Dordt. Verboom describes the diffference in relation to predestination. Nico Vorster revisits the understanding of Christ’s atonement taking into account the Socinians, Ritschl, Sölle and Milbank and fijinishes with a defense of the penal substitution theory.

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Nietzsche has challenged Christianity and Judaism in a fundamental manner in his The Antichrist. Prosman analyzes the way he posits Christ in his way of thinking. Van de Beek’s theology of Israel stands in a tradition of Dutch theology that gives ample attention to the theme of Israel. Drost describes how the manner in which the Dutch theologian van Ruler developed the relationship between God and Israel provokes the question whether God has changed. In a historic contribution Szücs describes how the theology of Karl Barth influenced some within the Hungarian Reformed Church to take action to protect Jews from persecution by the Nazis during World War II. Van de Beek inspired Moluccan theologians in the Netherlands to work on a contextualized Christology. Jaesung Cha, one of his Korean students whose dissertation he supervised, illustrates what a Christology within a Taoistic context might look like. Brinkman, who has written a volume on non-western Christology, reflects on the question whether anthropology informs Christology or the other way around. Panikhar illustrates an anthropological approach to Christology, while Barth provides a Christological approach to anthropology. Brinkman compares both with the method of Van de Beek. Hesselink compares the way Calvin and Van de Beek understand the relationship between the Church and Israel and comes to the conclusion that Van de Beek—more than Calvin—links both not only historically but also theologically. Ten Boom analyzes the way Van de Beek understands the land promise to Israel and brings it in dialogue with the perspectives of the Palestinian Kairos Document and of Augustine. Van Geest evaluates the christologies of Van de Beek and Dutch theologian Harry Kuitert against the context of the Schola Augustiana. Johann Theron engages with the Christology of Van de Beek when he tries to reconcile the sinlessness of Jesus with the scriptural attestation that Jesus became truly human. As a contribution to the development of Christian eschatology, de Kruijf compares the writings of Cicero on ethics with those of Ambrose, especially in relation to the theme of justice. Because of his eschatological perspective Ambrose is able to introduce the theme of benevolentia. Beauty is another theme with a specifijic—although often not recognized—link to eschatology. Edwards and Barth both had seen this link. Venter explores its importance for Christian hope. Eschatology is a well-known central theme in the book of Joel. Talstra illustrates from some difffijicult passages in Joel 2 that exclusive focus on textual transmission or on theological reflection are unfruitful if one tries to make sense of these verses. Hoek contributes with a historical article on the theme of eschatology by describing the approach to euthanasia in the seventeenth century Dutch Reformed

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tradition. Wells shows how the perspective of the end of the biblical story in the Agnus victor provides for a personal focus in eschatology. And Sell pleas for more theological, apologetic and pastoral reflections on eschatology instead of leaving it to the happy hunting-ground for eccentrics. But how to understand the eschatology of Van de Beek? Does the focus on heaven still leave room for promoting justice and the common good on earth (Van der Kooi)? What are the ethical consequences of his eschatological position (Den Hertog)? How does Van de Beek’s stance compare to the eschatological focus in the work of Pannenberg (Mostert)? What is the consequence of the eschatology of Van de Beek for soteriology (van Vlastuin)? Many authors have contributed to the theme of the theology of the church in anticipation of the soon to be published theology of the church of Van de Beek. Van der Borght reads the Faith and Order document Nature and Mission of the Church in relation to the meaning of socio-cultural identities within the church. Van ’t Kruis criticizes the way ecumenical texts relate the unity of the church to the unity of mankind. Roukema describes how Ambrosiaster and Chrysostom reviewed charismatic worship in their comments on 1 Corinthians 11–14. Van Beelen reads the Letter to the Ephesians as an almost direct proof of infant baptism. Vosloo explores how the Lord’s Supper can be a feast of radical inclusion and hospitality against the background of a history of separation at the Table on class and race ground in South Africa. Gudor and Pásztori-Kupán remind us of Transylvanian history and offfer a translation of the teaching on the Lord’ Supper in a 1559 confession. Another Transylvanian author, Tamás, pleas for family-modeled congregations. Imminck explores how preaching can be understood as Word of God in the intersection of divine Word and lived experience. Janssen, inspired by van Ruler, understands ordained ministry as witness, originating from the offfijice of the apostle. De Roest evaluates the results of the process of missionary renewal within the Protestant Church in Amsterdam. Smalbrugge analyses the way Petrarca used the Confession of Augustine. Füsti-Molnár reflects on the consequences of the current postmodern era for the theology and church. Although Van de Beek has not yet published his ecclesiology, many other works (his eschatology, his many articles and papers in relation to the church and the theology of the church, his work on church order, and his outspoken position in relation to the unity of the church) have challenged some authors to focus on what is available already. De Reuver challenges Van de Beek to move away from an idealistic to more realistic

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ecclesiology. Van de Belt explains how the emphasis on the institutional unity of the church has grown in the work of Van de Beek and wonders whether there is still room left for the eschatological hope for the people of Israel. Van den Broeke explores how Karl Barth and Van de Beek informed the 2004 Protestant Church Order in the Netherlands. De Leede reflects on the potential of Van de Beek’s understanding of the eucharist for a change in Protestant eucharistic practice. Van de Beek made a new start in 1998 with the fijirst volume of a series ‘Speaking of God’, with Jezus Kyrios. This has had as a consequence that he plans to rethink his works from before that time, among them the volume Schepping [Creation]. The contributions in this section, ‘Creation Theology,’ offfer inspiration. Goris revisits Von Rad’s view on the relation between covenant and creation. Singgih explains Job 36–37 as an alternative creation story in which humankind does not stand over against nature. God and nature stand over humankind, in order for humankind to appreciate its place in the world, which is Gods’ creation. Van Wijk compares the doctrine of God in traditional African religion with that of the African theologian Augustine. Sawyer introduces the theme of creation in the Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Conradie and Pauw describe the development of creation theology at the University of Stellenbosch. Van de Brink tries to make sense of the classical notion of the Fall and original sin within an evolutionary context. Buitendag is afraid that Van de Beek’s theology might fall victim to an ontological fallacy. In order to cure this he advises Van de Beek to start a dialogue with the position of Polkinghorne. His colleague in Pretoria, Veldsman, is charmed by Van de Beek’s discourse on creation and Intelligent Design. It deepens the theological discourse with integrity and strengthens the confession of God as creator. Recently Van de Beek edited a volume on freedom of religion. Koos Vorster confijirms the importance of the principle of human dignity, but at the same time distinguishes between a Christian-ethical and humanist interpretation of that fundamental value. Another South African, Pieter Coertzen, describes how in recent years a South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedom has been drafted, and how a South African Council for the Protection and Promotion of Religious Rights and Freedoms has been established. Reitsma deconstructs the arguments pro suicide-terrorism with a re-reading of Samson’s death. The recognition of freedom of religion is basic for a fruitful dialogue between religious

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traditions. Vroom illustrates this with an example of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in the fijield of anthropology. The last word is for a South African theologian. Koopman engages with the theology of Van de Beek from the perspective of public theology and observes a shift with his inaugural lecture at VU University Amsterdam. We would have liked one more South African voice to contribute: that of the Stellenbosch theologian and friend of Bram van de Beek, Philip Theron. He agreed to do so, but he was not able to do so due to his illness and his death in 2010. * * * “I sought quiet rest everywhere and found it nowhere but in a nook with a book,” is the adage that fully portrays Thomas a Kempis. The saying is not his own. Perhaps the words also apply to Abraham van de Beek. But if so, we can be sure that it does not primarily captures the desire of an honorable scholar whose love of books betrays a desire to flee the world. More likely it qualifijies as a border condition, necessary time and space to allow the desire for God to be determinate. Christians of all the ages have known to enter into a space of the essence and activity of Christ through the reading and re-reading of Scripture; a space that on the one hand brings estrangement from the world, and on the other hand a liberation of that same world. The tension between this estrangement and liberation may well have the efffect that such readers, during their stop-over in media vita, can be as salt of the earth, to the ends of the earth.

WORDS OF GREETING

LEARNED AND WISE. A WORD OF GREETING Adrianus Cardinal Simonis In discussions about the diffference between religious studies and theology, I noticed that the terms ‘inside perspective’ and ‘outside perspective’ were regularly used. The latter term suggests that it is possible to analyse a text or a phenomenon in a very clinical and distant way. In the case of the investigation of a text, a person or a religious tradition from an ‘inside perspective’, on the other hand, it is assumed that the investigators have an existential link with the topic, object or person they study. Of course this link may lead to prejudice. However, if one does not eliminate reason, the analysis of a text or person one is involved with, produces more knowledge and insight than an investigation based on reason alone. At the onset of this volume, a liber amicorum for an illustrious professor, Bram van de Beek, I want to give thanks in my word of greeting for the fact that theologians like him have so masterfully taken the inner perspective into account, in their reflections on God, the Four Last Things, the Church, etc. As Archbishop of Utrecht, I met Professor van de Beek several times, and it was always a great pleasure. We recognised one another in our faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that was nurtured by our lives in the Church of Christ. The way in which Professor van de Beek spoke to me about Jesus Kurios went straight to my heart and the way in which he writes about the Church of Christ in one of his latest publications has touched me. The social and ecclesial context in which I was educated in the 1950s was based on a clear concept of God, the Church and the world, which was further underpinned at the diffferent theological schools of higher learning that Professor van de Beek and I respectively attended. It is true that in this period we became more acquainted with for instance the new methods of Biblical exegesis, but still our education was mainly determined by neo-scholasticism. This school of thought arose as a reaction to social, economic, political and religious uncertainty, at the bottom of which lay the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Actually it is fascinating that the neo-scholastic handbooks provided clear and balanced concepts of the world, man and God. I am convinced that Professor van de Beek was also trained in a world with clear concepts of God and the world. His loyalty to the inside

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perspective, and to Christianity in general, will have taken root there. Nobody will be able to doubt that for him Christ has always meant the Truth, a Truth that addresses us and Whom we may encounter. I have the fijirm impression that in a number of his publications Professor van de Beek did not see the road to God as the Truth paved with brilliantly conceived arguments for the existence of God, or with certainties arisen after checking and verifijication. Like the psalmist he always implies that certainty about the existence of God is comparable to the certainty of people who have a relationship with one another on the basis of an unquantifijiable but still well-founded trust.1 In Een hart om te denken, I have expressed these thoughts: Faith in God is not a knowing for sure, something you can prove mathematically . . .; ‘There are various proofs of the existence of God, which are valid according to the First Vatican Council. These are, however, very theoretical; you must be able to think at a very abstract level in order to understand them. I myself learned that way of thinking in the course of my philosophical studies and sometimes these proofs appeal to me, but they still are and remain paper proofs . . . Our knowledge of God through reason remains extremely poor.2

In this quotation another aspect of your notion of God comes to light. The essence of God can never be adequately caught in words: how limited and poor are our words, especially with respect to the highest and deepest. Time and again we encounter the limits of the inefffable. So by means of our words we can never do justice to God, Who is beyond words. Jesus, the incarnate Word, brings God within the world of our experience. All the same we can only stammer even now. Dogmas that are very dear to me, in the end prove to be no more than an approximation of divine

1  For this train of thought cf. my article: ‘De bisschop als herder’ [The bishop as shepherd], in: Ph. Delhaye, L. Elders (eds), Episcopale munus. Recueil d’études sur le ministère épiscopal offfertes en hommage à Son Excellence Mgr. J. Gijsen. Avec une préface de Son Eminence le Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Assen 1982), 138–162; and also, Die Hirtenrede im Johannes-Evangelium. Versuch einer Analyse von Johannes 10, 1–18 nach Entstehung, Hintergrund und Inhalt. Rome, 1967 (Analecta Biblica 29). 2  H. Bouma, Adrianus kardinaal Simonis. Een hart om te denken. 50 jaar priester (Kampen, 2007), pp. 7–8: ‘Het geloof in God is geen zeker weten, dat je wiskundig kunt bewijzen. . . .; ‘Er bestaan verschillende godsbewijzen, die volgens het Eerste Vaticaans Concilie rechtsgeldig zijn. ze zijn wel erg theoretisch, je moet er wel heel abstract voor kunnen denken. Zelf heb ik tijdens mijn fijilosofijiestudie dat denken wel geleerd en soms spreken die bewijzen mij ook wel aan, maar het zijn en blijven papieren bewijzen. . . . Ons kennen van God met ons verstand blijft uitermate schamel’.

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reality. They do not express everything, but at least they provide us with a guideline.3 (p. 36)

I recognise this spirit in the way Professor Bram van de Beek theologises and for this I am grateful to him. As a reaction to the intellectualistic, rational approach to God in scholasticism, Bernard of Clairvaux fathered the so-called afffective theology. In this form of theology human experience, intuition and afffection are regarded as possibilities and moments of knowledge in which man may become susceptible to God. Bernard regarded the scholastic as a learned person, the afffective theologian as a wise person. In this spirit I do not hesitate to describe Professor van de Beek as both learned and wise.

3

 Ibidem, p. 36: ‘hoe beperkt en arm kunnen onze woorden zijn, vooral als het gaat om het hoogste en diepste. Steeds stuiten wij weer op de grenzen van het onzegbare. Zo kunnen wij met onze woorden nooit recht doen aan God, die onuitsprekelijk is. Het is Jezus, het vlees geworden Woord, die God binnen onze ervaringswereld brengt. Maar ook dan nog kunnen wij niet meer dan stamelen. Dogma’s die mij zeer dierbaar zijn, zijn uiteindelijk toch altijd maar een benadering van de goddelijke werkelijkheid. Niet alles wordt ermee uitgesproken. Maar we hebben zo een richtsnoer’.

CHURCH AND STATE, PARTICULARLY IN THE NETHERLANDS Arjan Plaisier Introduction From October 21 till 23, 2009 a conference was organised by the VU University about the relation between church and state and the role of religion in the public domain. The conference was made up by representatives of China, South-Africa, Turkey and the Netherlands. Prof. van de Beek was one of the driving forces behind this meeting. During these days I delivered a lecture about the relation between church and state, particularly in the Netherlands. It appeared that this lecture was received as a valuable contribution to the theme by Prof. van de Beek. So, I am pleased to offfer this lecture as my contribution to this Liber Amicorum. It is a way of honouring the great signifijicance of Prof. van de Beek for the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (and its predecessors). The scientifijic quality, and the breadth of themes in his theological oeuvre, have gone hand in hand with his full and passionate concern for the church. It has always been his particular drive to call the church (back) to its core business, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the crucifijied Lord, and the only basis of the church and its ministry. Of course, his theology was not uncontested, not even by myself at times. Good theology is not smooth but challenging theology. That is just the kind of theology we need. With this contribution I want to express, on behalf of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, my gratitude for his theological commitment. The Separation between Church and State The fijirst thing I want to say about church and state from a Christian perspective is the fact that they are two and not one. There is a principal difference between church and state. This diffference, and even separation, between church and state is not a thing which the church has to swallow as a bitter pill. On the contrary, it is deeply rooted in Christianity itself. When we read the New Testament, it becomes clear that the church is the community of people who acknowledges Christ as Lord of lords and King of kings. This He deserves because He was willing to bear the burden of this world and did not shrink back to take the most debased and weak position in this world that can be imagined: a naked man on a cross. He

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thus surrendered himself to the shame of the cross, not because he was forced to do so, but out of an act of sheer love and compassion. The early Christian community confessed Jesus as the real king. The one most meek is given the supreme authority by God. In Christ Gods kingdom has come. But his kingdom is a future reality. Christ is already reigning in this world, he now has a spiritual authority, which means, an authority without the sword. He is reigning in the lives of all those who are touched by his grace and have opened themselves for his Spirit. His kingdom becomes visible in the community of sisters and brothers in Christ name, the body of Christ. In the future the kingdom of Christ, which is at present ‘under cover’, will manifest itself universally and perfectly. Then there will be an end to the kingdoms of this world. There will no longer be need for them. Peace will cover the earth as the water covers the bottom of the sea. Up till that moment, Christians are called to follow their Lord in a life of dedication and love. They are not called to erect the Kingdom of God themselves. They are not called to install Christ as the present king of this world. Every attempt in that direction is a blunt betrayal of the Christian faith. If Christ were made a present and earthly king, it would in fact be a surrender to the temptation of the devil. He presented to Jesus all earthly kingdoms with power to reign over them in the present reality. Jesus rejected this ‘offfer’. In the same way the followers of Jesus must also reject this temptation. We expect Jesus as the coming king, and for the time being we live in the midst of the kingdoms of this world. The Kingdoms of This World and Their Limited Power These kingdoms have their function, their authority and their meaning. The coming age has dawned upon this earth, but its consummation is still an expectation. The status of the kingdoms of this world is one of being in-between. Christ has come, the new age has manifested itself, but the old age still lingers. In this in-between state there are, under the providence of God, of kings, and of governments, whatever the concrete form the latter may take. They have their authority and their power. Because of the presence and reality of Christ, and because of the presence and the reality of the church, the authority of these kingdoms are limited. Kings and governments are not (any longer) supposed to reign over the hearts and convictions of people. For it is Christ who governs over the hearts of his people. From the days of Christ who represents God, there is a limit set on the political powers. Humankind is neither owned by state or by kings. They are ruled by the governments as far as their

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secular existence is concerned. But they are not defijined by their relation to the state. They are images of God. Christians confess that they belong to Christ. They know what to give to Caesar, but they also know what to give to Christ. Therefore the governments are challenged in their thirst for power and dominion over the people. They are required to grant freedom of conscience, which means: freedom of conviction and religion, and freedom to live by the mandates of religion and conviction. More generally, governments have to grant private life as a realm that is not regulated by the state. Secondly, governments are not supposed to give salvation. They are not called to create universal salvation. Twice in Europe have we seen the complete disaster that this misguided idea brought upon millions of people. In the name of salvation, the ideology of national-socialism and communism were accepted as the tools in the hand of governments to develop an absolute structure of power. The post-war ideologies operated on a more modest scale, although even the welfare-state has woven a network of facilities around the people that now and then also had the pretension of giving salvation to its inhabitants. As a matter of course, this is not possible: the state and the government can give ‘bread and games’, but even that only to a certain extent. Care is always caring with limitations. Hopes and expectations which go beyond these limitations, create frustrations. And the latter, in turn, can pave the way for a search for a messianic politician, which is not without danger. Thirdly, governments are neither called to form or to construct the common good of a people. A common good is not a creation of a government. It existed already. It is the creation of a community, a people; and even this community strikes upon it rather than creates it. It is dangerous when governments want to construct the common good. Their powerful reach makes them authoritarian in such cases, and does not respect the traditions and identity of a given people. The Responsibility of the Governments These limitations do not make governments superfluous. They have a modest, but important task. They are called to do right, to defend the people against diverse form of social wickedness, to defend the poor, and to promote the common good of a nation. They have the power to do so. They have the power to enforce their decisions: they even have the power of the sword. This power is not a shame, but a necessity. Governments are called to use their power to defend the weak, and that is a necessity

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which never goes away. There is no secular domain in which governments can relax and simply do nothing. In fact there is a permanent tension between over-regulating and under-regulating, a tension between too much politics and too little politics. We have seen the danger of too little governmental exercise in oversight in the economic crisis which we experienced in 2008. Politics is about doing right, it is taking right decisions and making just judgements, to limit the impact of evil. That is the real task: no more, no less. The Government in the Netherlands How to do that? What are right decisions, what are just judgements? As a matter of fact that’s not such an easy question. Governments can open themselves to God. No universal law prohibits them from doing so. They can avail themselves of the social influence of the community of Christ. They can favour the mission of the church. This has happened in many countries in Europe. Nowadays, in a country like the Netherlands, this is not the case anymore. For a long time the reformed church was the favoured church in the Netherlands. This had much to do with the birth of the republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. It was the inspiration of the reformed convictions that was among the factors to resist against the intolerant and tyrannical rule of Philips II of Spain. In the 17th century it was not at all strange that a church was favoured: this happened all over Europe. This situation ended with the ‘French period’ in the Netherlands in the early 1800’s. After that period, there was a further separation between church and state, although it lasted a long time before we arrived at the situation of the strict separation of church and state of today. On the whole, the church has to cordially accept separation, and the model of separation as a fact. It has to accept the democratic constellation of political afffairs as presently the best and does indeed do so. The Attitude of the Church towards the Government To me, separation doesn’t mean ‘without relation’. To do so would be strange indeed. Of course the church has an influence on society, and therefore indirectly on the state and on politics. I do not favour a church which is addressing the state constantly; that has to be done in cases

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where the ‘to be or not to be’ of justice is at stake. Rather, I believe much more in the influence of a living community, in which people learn to live together, a social body, in which the power of the Spirit opens people to truth, justice and beauty. A community that enables people to live according to their respective calling and so helps people to take a critical yet positive attitude in the public sphere. Through the Spirit of Christ one is free to serve, not free from serving. Free to serve, and therefore also free to serve the common good, to serve the neighbour. Free to be obedient: this is a free obedience, given on the basis of an insight in the legitimate and limited authority of the government. Free to resist, because obedience is not unlimited, it stops at the moment obedience becomes disobedience to God. The Attitude of the Government towards the Church And of course the government as government has to open itself to society and public life. Without an open attitude towards movements, institutes, public manifestations of life—whether they be economic, cultural and religious—the state is becoming sterile. What is a state without getting inspiration? What is a state without a moral community, without moral communities, without morality in private and public life? Of course, government is not only receptive. It is also defensive. It can even be called to defend public space against religion. Religion can become tyrannical, it can become a negative influence, and it can make a threat upon the common good and the traditions of a people. I am the last to be naïve about religion: it can become an ideology. So, let government be a moral institute and even do theology. What is needed is a wise and prudent government, that is not overstating its theology, nor neglecting it. A government that is not only defensive, but receptive as well. Open to the role that religion plays in public life, open to the religious inspiration of people. It will be bad, if only one type of morality or theology is acceptable and comme il faut: that would be a questionable discrimination. I think the time is ripe for a more relaxed relation between religion and politics. The old secularization-thesis, which says that religion will be over, is already falsifijied. The presence of one million Muslims and one million Christian migrants proves that even in the West religion is not dead.

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A more important question is, ‘what is the morality of a nation?’ It is not enough to refer to democracy and to the right to vote as though you can ensure yourself of a real morality by voting. Therefore the question is, what is a state without the presence of moral communities and what is the state in a nation without real moral consciousness? This was precisely the theme that was raised by the former prime-minister Jan Peter Balkenende, when speaking about ‘values and norms’. Although in the beginning his approach met with much contempt, later on there was a broad feeling that he hit the mark with this now already famous pairing of the two notions. What would a society be that consist of individuals who are only interested in their own rights, their own welfare, their own projects? In the long run that would be a kind of society in which the common good is undermined. So, how are people motivated to invest themselves in society, and to make a real contribution to it? Certainly, humanism is a strong candidate. There is a type of humanism in which generosity is a specifijic hallmark. This can be formulated in a negative way: you have to live in such a way as to avoid doing harm to others. It can be formulated more positive: you have to promote the well-being of your fellow human beings. Maybe this will happen automatically when you are pursuing your own well-being, without hindering the effforts of other people. Maybe this is formulated in a more fulsome way: you have to foster generosity in yourself by helping other people in the project of their lives. Such humanism has a wide range, from liberalism to socialism. The question is, if there is nowadays a truly living humanistic tradition that inspires people to a commonwealth living? Solidarity isn’t a kind of natural phenomenon that will continue automatically. It may be that in post-modern times the morality of humanism is too weak to walk on its own legs. After all, we live in the aftermath of modernity, and this modernity has undergone a big crisis. The great story of modernity, with science, technology, democracy and colonialism as its core-elements, has been shaken offf its feet and has collapsed, although pieces of it that are scattered around still try to raise the passions of people and foster their hopes. In this situation the quest for sources which inspires people and helps them to form a society is very important. I think that Christianity, which has already faced many crises before, is such a source.

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The Contribution of Christian Religion I don’t think Christian faith has to see itself as a deliverer of morals for society. The core-business of Christianity is to follow Jesus Christ. This doesn’t mean that there is no relation at all between the morality of a society and Christian faith. To put the question from the view-point of society: can there be a real society in a political sense without religion? Can society sustain without openness to religious tradition; and in the case of the Netherlands, openness to the very tradition that had an important part in shaping its society? Can our institutions stand by themselves? Or do we have a crisis in legitimating them? Probably the latter is the case. For instance, the parliament, which has one of its roots in the congregation– where on the basis of parrèsia everyone has the freedom to speak for the wellbeing of the church—is now deteriorating. In the practices of the parliament the exchange of opinions in the search for the common good has given place to parliament as an arena for populism. Democracy needs a vision about common good. If there is none, politics is becoming the arena for particular concerns. Currently, government has to govern in a post-modern society. How to do so in a post-modern society? I have argued that there has to be a broad view of common life values in a society. Without the input of religion that will be a difffijicult job. I think that there is a certain poverty in vision on behalf of politics. Now and then this poverty becomes very clear. It is a sign of poverty when economics become the one and only measure of the strength of a nation. There is an economic crisis, for sure, because economics and a ‘money breeds money’ view have monopolized life. It is a sign of poverty when other values are devaluated; see for instance the discussion of the laws about closing times for shops. I want to make the case that there are more than just a few minor reasons to think long and hard about the relation between church and state, or even better: faith, politics and public life.

PART ONE

ABRAHAM VAN DE BEEK: AN APPRAISAL

BRAM VAN DE BEEK: VIATOR IN FIDE Gerrit de Kruijf What Do You Have That You Did Not Receive?1 From Lunteren to Leiden Bram van de Beek (born on October 9, 1946) grew up in an experiential (‘bevindelijke’) Reformed Church setting in Lunteren, a village in the Veluwe region of the Netherlands. Van Ruler once said of this region, located in the woody center of the country, that while its inhabitants were not known for extroverted frolicking, they knew of ‘inner amusement’. Van de Beek became one of those Reformed Christians of whom his promoter and predecessor Hendrikus Berkhof noted that when those with their well fed roots break through the confijines of their group, they are among the strongest forces in the church. Bram van de Beek indeed began crossing the boundaries of the conservative Reformed Union (Gereformeerde Bond) during the years of his parish ministry and he freely blossomed in the space of church and academics. Even so, he remained in touch with his heritage and is recognized and acknowledged in those experiential circles. Authorship of a history of the church in Lunteren also evidences familiarity with his roots. And in yet a very diffferent form, his rootedness shows through his life-long keen interest in nature, specifijically in flora. Prior to his promotion as doctor in theology, in 1974 he earned a doctorate in the natural sciences on a thesis on bramble berries. At important moments in his theological development he harvested insights from this fijield of knowledge.2

1  I Cor 4:7: Quid (autem) habes quod non recipisti? is Bram van de Beek’s motto; see Uit de chaos komt het licht. Paarlen van Leidse professoren [From chaos comes light. Pearls of Leiden professors], (Leiden: Universiteitsdrukkerij, 1995). 2  For instance: A. van de Beek, “Christelijk geloof en wetenschap” [Christian faith and science], Kerk en theologie 37 (1986), 199–215 and especially the article “Plantensystematiek en theologie—analogieën en verschillen” [Systematics of plants and theology—analogies and diffferences], Kerk en theologie 41 (1990), 26–40, in which he applies to theology the fact that the systematization of plants is skewed by exceptions (such as his example of ‘the bramble at the white gate’): neither reality nor God are harmonically experienced and therefore any dogmatic system is also marked by discontinuities.

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In 1964, Bram van de Beek began his theological studies in Utrecht— in his circles the university of choice by nearly all students who aspired to become preachers because of the orthodox tradition embedded in its faculty of theology, and the presence of the venerable student society called Voetius. At Utrecht U. he was especially impressed by the original thinker A.A. van Ruler, who, together with O. Noordmans and K.H. Miskotte, was at the top of the theological enterprise in the Netherlands in the twentieth century. Bram was quite taken by Van Ruler’s experimental and daring character of thought, determined to reflect radically, as well as by his concentration upon, and variations on orthodox themes such as predestination (which he provokingly referred to as the ‘double’ predestination). Much later, it was Van de Beek who provided the impetus for the publication of Van Ruler’s collected works.3 And meanwhile, he also begins to make double predestination a theme for himself. As to the spirit of Karl Barth, prominently present in Utrecht as well, Van de Beek never had much afffijinity, then or later.4 In 1970, at 23 years old, Bram van de Beek was ordained and installed as Minister of the Word in Lexmond, a good four years later he moved to Vriezenveen, and after another four years to Raamsdonksveer. The latter congregation did not consider itself as belonging to the conservative Reformed-Union within the larger church. In the personal and social dimensions of his life, Van de Beek was also precocious. In 1968 he married Nel de Bruijn, a teacher from Bodegraven. They have three children: their daughter Foka, who after her theological studies is serving the church in various positions of missionary work, presently at the university of Cluj, Romania; their son Willem Jan, a medical doctor employed as an internist in Veghel; and their son Remco who, following his father’s interest in the natural sciences, became a meteorologist. In 1980, Van de Beek earned his doctorate with a dissertation on anhypostasia: the notion that the person of Jesus does not have a separate human substance apart from his divinity. For this project, Van de Beek investigated a number of modern theologians. Besides Barth, he discusses Pannenberg, Moltmann, Rahner, Schoonenberg, and Robinson. After briefly surveying a great many scripture passages he concludes that Jesus is primarily to be identifijied with God, while he has ‘sufffijicient human 3

 See www.aavanruler.nl.  See A. van de Beek, “Die Leere des Wortes Gottes” [The Vacuity of the Word of God], in: A. van de Beek, M. den Dulk, G.G. de Kruijf (ed.), De zucht naar vrijheid. Ter Schegget doordacht [Yearning for freedom. Ter Schegget reflected] (Baarn: Ten Have, 1992) 96–109. 4

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characteristics’ to recognize him as a human being.5 Many years later, this theme brings him to the radical assertion that Jesus is God-self. By then his conversation with modern theologians has been moved to the background to give prominence to the Church Fathers. In his dissertation it had been the other way round. What remains the same for Van de Beek is the amount and the prominent function of scripture passages in his arguments. Even measured against the high standard of the milieu of his youth, his biblical knowledge has to be called ‘enormous.’ This feat quite tested his own capacity for accommodation in his later position as an examiner of students with regard to biblical knowledge. Only one year after his promotion, the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church (NHK) appointed him as Professor of dogmatics, biblical theology and church order at Leiden University, where he succeeded his promotor, H. Berkhof. He shared Berkhof’s (and Pannenberg’s) interest to make the category of history relevant for theology. However, a decade later, in 1994, he debates Berkhof on this approach with many more reservations than his fijirst few years as professor seemed to indicate.6 Toward a Believing University His inaugural oration dealt with a very diffferent topic: the relation between church and university. Based on the thesis that only a person of actual faith can do theology, he pleaded for a practiced spiritual foundation of both church and theology. This led to a very concrete conclusion: a faculty of theology should consist of professors who are appointed by the church (taken in an ecumenical sense) and who are open to support from faculty members from other disciplines such as literature and social sciences.7 Choosing such a position turned out to be ominous. Not only was this address an announcement of all sorts of initiatives, his own life and career was also afffected, sometimes painfully so. Immediately after his oration, his Leiden colleagues called him to task with their demand for a more responsible clarifijication. And after about ten years, the synod of the church supported him in a plan to re-organize the education of church

5  A. van de Beek, De menselijke persoon van Christus [The human person of Christ], (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1980), 186. 6  A. van de Beek, “Antiochië en Alexandrië in Leiden”, Waar is God in deze tijd? [Where is God today?], Leidse Lezingen (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1994) 11–28. 7  A. van de Beek, God kennen—met God leven [Knowing God—Living with God], (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1982).

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ministers. This was heavily criticized, also by the Leiden faculty, and at the end of the day it was not implemented. However, it created such momentum, that after another ten years the education of ministers was eventually given independent status through the Protestant Theological University. Furthermore, Van de Beek soon became active on the international scene and took the initiative to form a global network of Reformed academic institutions. This initiative must also be seen against the background of the end of the Cold War and of apartheid in South Africa. It blossomed as a viable institute, the International Reformed Theological Institute (IRTI). A conference is held every other year in early July. To date they have been hosted in Hungary Viségrad), South Africa (Stellenbosch), the Netherlands (Driebergen), the United States (Princeton), Indonesia (Bogor), Korea (Seoul), Romania (Cluj), France (Aix-en-Provence) and in 2011 the IRTI conference took place in South Africa (Potchefstroom). A conflict within the council of church professors in the reformed church (NHK) about allocating fijinancial means for IRTI, led to a change of position in the year 2000. Van de Beek’s credentials became afffijiliated with VU University in Amsterdam (called the Free University until recently), where IRTI moved as well. Among other things, it meant for the author of this article that a close working relationship that had existed since 1989 came to an end. Among other venues, our cooperation took form in a jointly shared venue of mentoring promovendi. It would take some time before a fijirst promotion took place,8 but once started, it was followed by a large group of others who showed interest to pursue an advanced degree under Van de Beek’s tutelage. He has guided 33 successful dissertation defenses as of early 2011. The energy and purposefulness of Van de Beek in all his endeavors are remarkable. If it seemed from the outside looking in that his effforts were directed at the organizational dimensions of his vision for theology (he even served as Dean of the theological faculty of VU University from 2005 to 2008), he very much kept his focus on the actual task of theology: to speak of God in one’s own context. This led to a veritable stream of publications some of whom will be reviewed in what follows. Controversial in academic circles for some of his opinions, his work did not go unnoticed

8

 J. van Beelen, Doet dit tot mijn gedachtenis. Een onderzoek naar de relaties tussen avondmaal en ambt [This do in remembrance of me. An investigation of the relations between the Lord’s Supper and Offfijice] (Leiden: Groen, 1996).

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on a national level. In 2004 he was nominated, and in 2005 was received, as member of the Royal Academy of Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW), which for a dogmatician is highly unusual. A Tonal Setting: Sufffering, Guilt and God Van de Beek’s fijirst great, independent, and original book was published in 1984 with the title Waarom? Over lijden, schuld en God.9 He posits that the problem of theodicy arises when we speak of God as being both almighty and good, but then go on to emphasize one or the other. Lucidly, and with reference to a great many bible passages, he structures the various takes on this quandary by means of numerous models: fijive are coupled to almightiness (the chastising father; God’s mysterious ways; God’s punishment; providence; God as potter) and fijive are coupled to goodness (humans do evil; God permits it; the Satan does evil; the world is evil; God is otherwise). He shows that each model has much to recommend itself (except for the gnostic idea that the world itself is evil). Van de Beek does not really aim to choose among them but rather seeks to relate them historically to Gods active presence, thereby acknowledging that God is changeable in certain ways in order to let the forward drive of God’s history with humanity really matter. Here we recognize the connection to both Berkhof (historical advancement) as Van Ruler (‘experimental’: ‘Now the Spirit tries this, then that’).10 Van de Beek himself even calls his own arrangement of issues a collage.11 This somewhat surprisingly dynamic viewpoint on God–given his roots and his later development–derives from the ur-reformed anchor of conviction that God has primacy with regard to both divine power and goodness: God is otherwise. Even so, here he is quick to distance himself from this other distinct Reformed thinker, Karl Barth, for Van de Beek does not intend for his treatment to be understood dialectically (too static!) but chronologically.12 With God there is an increasing bending toward grace and salvation, not harmoniously, but as a confounding zigzag on the way to the defijinitive turn in Jesus Christ.13 Here   9  A. van de Beek, Waarom? Over lijden, schuld and God (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1984), English translation: Why? On sufffering, guilt and God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990). The fijirst edition of the series Leidse Lezingen (www.leidselezingen.nl) was devoted to the fijirst edition of this book; see also its follow up Nogmaals: Waarom? [‘Yet again: Why?’] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1986). 10  Van de Beek, Waarom?, 292. 11  Van de Beek, Waarom?, 306. 12  Van de Beek, Waarom?, 283. 13  Van de Beek, Waarom?, 272.       

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God makes the choice ‘which he already harbored for all eternity. Yet it was a real choice. It was not a causal necessity for God to come to Jesus Christ. Until Easter morning God could have gone another way.’14 Van de Beek’s choice of the theme of sufffering is not by chance but is characteristic of all his work, indeed of his take on life itself. Often he shows glimpses of sufffering unto life. Later on he will even identify Christ by his sufffering and identify God by this sufffering Christ. At that point it all but dims the dynamic character of his thought. To Believe Is to Be Spoken to In his subsequent book, De adem van God (1987), Van de Beek is exploring the dogmatic terrain of pneumatology and trinity.15 Most remarkable is the title of his fijirst paragraph: To believe is to be spoken to. Befijitting his motto (quoted at the head of the present article), this confession is a thread throughout his work: God has the fijirst and last word; faith is sparked by God’s personally addressed call.16 Faith does not begin with the self-aware thinking subject, rather the listening subject is where it begins. This thesis is not a theological novelty. However, with Van de Beek it is a mystical moment that has absolute meaning.17 The implication is that, ultimately, faith is not explicable or to be defended: it can only be narrated.18 Witness and story have primacy over logic. However, it also implies a relativizing of all human relations: ‘It concerns Him and no one else. It is not about my partner or my parents; it is not even about myself, but it is all about Jesus. He entered my life and never lets go of me again. He is the one who indeed gives rest and trust.’19

14  Van de Beek, Waarom?, 284. de keuze: ‘die hij al van alle eeuwigheid in zich droeg. Maar het was een reële keus. Het was geen causale noodzakelijkheid voor God om te komen tot Jezus Christus. Hij had tot op de morgen van Pasen een andere weg kunnen gaan.’ 15  A. van de Beek, De adem van God [The breath of God], (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1987). 16  See also A. van de Beek, “To Be Created Precedes Our Creativity”, Louvain Studies 19 (1994), 34–45. 17  See A. van de Beek, “Calvinism as an Ascetic Movement,” in: W.M. Alston, M. Welker (eds), Reformed Theology: Identity and Ecumenicity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 18  A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie, Spreken over God 1,1 (Kampen: Kok, 1998) 266v. ET: Jesus Kurios. Christology as Heart of Theology, Speaking of God 1,1 (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002), 289. Studies in Reformed Theology, Supplements, Volume 1. 19  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 15. ‘Het gaat om Hemzelf en niemand anders. Het gaat niet om mijn partner en niet om mijn ouders, het gaat zelfs niet om mijzelf, maar het gaat om Hem. Hij is in mijn leven gekomen en Hij laat mij nooit meer los. Hij is het die mij inderdaad rust en vertrouwen geeft.’ [English translation: 15]

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Meanwhile, Bram van de Beek was quite involved in the church at large. He traveled throughout the Netherlands to lecture on views of offfijice, on ecclesial pluriformity, on infant baptism and on offfijicial pronouncements of the church.20 This activity took place in the wider context of his involvement with work toward establishing a new church order for the churches who were actively engaged in a process of unifijication, the so-called Together-on-the-way (Samen-op-weg) process. After all, at the university he also had to teach church law [church order]. Together with others, such as his colleague Gijs Dingemans, he sketched possibilities for a church in which initially much could be left open-ended (referred to as ‘lege huls’, or ’empty hull’ model). When several such attempts did not make it through the synod, he turned away from synodical work in disappointment. Even so, he now began channeling the same energy as before to synodical work, on the reorganization of pastoral education. A book that clearly showed the pleasure he took in writing it saw the light in 1991: Wonderen en wonderverhalen. Beside dogmatics and church law he also taught biblical theology. In that discipline his superb biblical knowledge, and his desire to theologize as close as possible to the scriptures, could really blossom. He used the occasion as well to make connections with his love for natural sciences. All of this resulted in a beautiful book about the hermeneutics of miracle stories. The highlight of this book consists in the explication of what he would later call his motto: the meaning of ‘reception’ as deepest awareness. He distinguishes the manner of thinking of Descartes and Pascal. That of Descartes can be called the mathematical type: from fijixed apriori axiomata a system is built in which one step logically follows another. (. . .) Pascal’s type can be called the natural one: it begins by receiving what is given. Subsequently the elements of the given are ordered. Paths of connections are traced. Yet at anytime, new data can disturb the previous results. Therefore, the researcher here has more of a receptive attitude than one of constructivity. (. . .) Even so, Pascal goes further. The attitude of receptivity includes an openness to the mystery that speaks to us in our experience. This is why—when all is said and done—it is not the spirit of the natural world that stands opposite to mathematics, but the spirit of delicate sensitivity.21

20  Collected in A. van de Beek, Tussen traditie en vervreemding [Between tradition and estrangement] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1985). 21  A. van de Beek, Wonderen en wonderverhalen [Miracles and Miracle Stories] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1991), 225; also see A. van de Beek, “Wat hebt gij dat gij niet hebt ontvangen?” [What do you have that you have not received] in: A. van de Beek (red.), Lichtgeraakt

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Van de Beek confesses that he belongs to the spirit of Pascal, and sees as his companions the likes of Hamann, Blumhardt, Kohlbrugge, and a small farmer known as Wulfert Floor, a so called ‘practisant’ (an ‘oefenaar’, pg. 226 of Wonderen), witnessing to what God had done to his soul. A direct result of his task in education was a book published about theologians since 1800.22 It replaced Berkhof’s book on the history of modern theology. 23 The latest edition of this book also treats theologians such as Plantinga, McGrath, Milbank, Hauerwas and Bediako in a rubric called “Beyond the Enlightenment” (De Verlichting voorbij). In the period that followed, Van de Beek continued on the theme of the tangent space of theology and natural sciences. Schepping (1996) [Creation] is the book he always wanted to write, but could not until his methodological search reached an equilibrium. In this book the methodological principle of ‘the receiving subject’ is consistently carried out to its consequences. Thus creation, over against the traditional idea of a historical-biological beginning, is defijined as our current human world of experience in relation to God. Because of the dominance of evil (both moral and physical), for Van de Beek creation is from the outset a broken creation in which the Crucifijied is the Creator.24 Precisely this will be the daring thesis that will guide him through his later work. Placing the accent upon creation as present experience has as consequence–especially for his vision of the relationship between theology and natural sciences–an enormous relativization of the problematic character of that relationship that had historically grown directed by an understanding that these disciplines were to be of diffferent worlds with diffferent histories. The upshot is that this theme is treated in only 60 pages of the 450-page book. As far as the conversation partners in the natural sciences are concerned, Van de Beek fijinds support in Peacocke’s observation that ‘every deistic moment has disappeared from the doctrine of creation,’ a view which our author fijinds to be a great gain for theology.

(Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1995), 124–148. The title is a double entendre: ‘Lightly touched (‘touchy’) & touched by light.’ 22  Bram van de Beek, Van Verlichting tot Verduistering? [From Enlightenment to Eclipse] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1994), revised edition: Van Kant tot Kuitert en verder [From Kant to Kuitert and beyond] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010). 23  H. Berkhof, Zweihundert Jahre Theologie. Ein Reisebericht (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985). ET: Two hundred Years of Theology: Report of a Personal Journey, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1993). 24  A. van de Beek, Schepping, [Creation] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1996), 47. [No English translation: condensed version in English manuscript with author only].

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The evolutionary thought—of which the geological/biological evolutionary model is the most prominent, made it possible to fashion theological designs that were impossible in a static understanding of creation such as in deism. God is continually engaged in the history of the earth and renews it day by day. This is his creative power at work, which was not only employed once in the beginning, but is at present the ground of our existence. Much more than in the past, creation has become a relational concept.25

The subtitle of the book states ‘the world as prelude to eternity’ (de wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid). This clarifijies something else: ultimately, creation is about a personal existence with God. All symbols of God’s goodness, which he creates in the world, are included in God’s Kingdom. They receive their full meaning, for which they are destined in the world, by being fulfijilled in heaven. One might even say that the eternal life is primary and that the earthly existence is a symbol of it, its expression in time and space.26

A Dogmatics in Fragments At this juncture, Van de Beek was ‘ready’ to write a dogmatics in the form of a series of monographs on ‘core themes of my confessing’.27 The series is titled ‘Speaking of God’ (‘Spreken over God’). The fijirst volume (1.1), concerning christology, was published in 1998 and was largely written in Stellenbosch (South Africa) where Bram and Nel have since lived for part of each year and deepened solid friendships, such as with Flip and Marianne Theron. Flip passed away in the summer of 2010. Among his publications Bram cherished especially his meditations.28

25  Van de Beek, Schepping, 106. ‘Het evolutionaire denken, waarvan het geologisch/ biologische evolutiemodel de meest opvallende vorm is, heeft het mogelijk gemaakt theologisch ontwerpen te vormen, die in het statische scheppingsontwerp van het deïsme onmogelijk waren. God is voortdurend met de geschiedenis van de aarde betrokken en draagt en vernieuwt haar dag aan dag. Dat is zijn scheppende kracht, die niet ooit in den beginne eens werd uitgeoefend, maar die in het heden de grond van ons bestaan is. Schepping is veel meer dan voorheen een relatiebegrip geworden.’ 26  Van de Beek, Schepping, ‘Alle symbolen van Gods goedheid die Hij schept in de wereld, worden in zijn Koninkrijk opgenomen. Ze krijgen hun volle betekenis waartoe ze voorbereid zijn in de wereld, door vervuld te worden in de hemel. Je zou zelfs kunnen zeggen dat dit eeuwige leven het primaat heeft en dat het aardse bestaan daarvan een symbool is, de expressie in tijd en ruimte.’ (231) See my “The Primacy of Eternity”, in A. van Egmond, D. van Keulen (eds), Christian Hope in Context Vol. 1, Studies in Reformed Theology 4, (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001), 222–230. 27  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 9: ‘kernthema’s van mijn belijden’; [English translation, 9]. 28  Flip Theron, Die somer kom saggies [The summer comes gently] (Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik, 1996).

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It is striking that in this book on christology, Jesus Kurios, contemporary theologians more or less give way to the church fathers as conversation partners. This shift was fijirst indicated in 1994 in a lecture on Berkhof.29 To Van de Beek’s mind, the battle between the Alexandrian and the Antioch school is the decisive clash in the church that is repeated again and again in western history.30 The Antiochenes, represented in Nestorius, do acknowledge an intimate relationship between God and Jesus but also like to keep in mind the distinction between God and humanity. They see Jesus as an example who deserves to be followed and indeed can be followed, rather than see Jesus as a savior from wretched misery. According to the Alexandrians (Athanasius, Cyril), Jesus is all about the incarnation of God: not a unity of Godself with an individual human being, but in and through that human being with human kind in the flesh. In Jesus, God saves and bears the world. We could see Van de Beek as an extreme follower of the Alexandrian school. He makes exaggerated statements, not only because in our era an Antiochene wind blows once again, but also because he feels that there is a lack of Alexandrinians nowadays! We have all become used to lay out all things in terms of the Enlightenment. And, above all, positive thoughts should reign; thus the resurrection is but a perfect godsend. Yet, according to Van de Beek, morally speaking there is nothing positive to be reported about present culture. There is no improvement: things are not getting better, nor was this ever promised to us. Because Golgotha shows both this debacle of human history as well as God’s redemption of that history, Van de Beek indentifijies God with the crucifijied Christ. The image of the Crucifijied is thus most prominent in this book. The cover of the Dutch edition shows a crucifijied ass. For Van de Beek this is “the symbol for God’s presence in the world. It is never quite clear whether it is about God at all. And if it were to be about him, he would be ridiculous. It is a weak God who allows his own death on the cross. That is no God—that is an ass. And who adores Him, is just like Him.”31 Van de Beek’s thesis appears to resemble modalism, in which Father and Son merge into each other. Yet he distances himself from that

29

 A. van de Beek, “Antiochië en Alexandrië in Leiden.” 11–28.  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 17–25; ET: 17–26. 31  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 4. “. . . het symbool voor Gods aanwezigheid in de wereld. Het is nooit helemaal duidelijk of het wel over Hem gaat. En als het over Hem gaat, is Hij bespottelijk. Hij is een zwakke God die zich aan het kruis laat doden. Dat is geen God, maar een ezel. En wie Hem aanbidt, is Hem gelijk.” The shocking and coarse ancient grafffijiti-like image scratched on a wall is not depicted in the English edition. Cf. Tom Holland, Rubicon, Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Empire (London: Little, Brown 2003), 235, where we are 30

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heresy.32 In an earlier article he stated clearly that he abided by a trinitarian doctrine of God, even while highlighting that within that doctrine the opera ad extra indivisa sunt.33 In the Netherlands, Jesus Kurios became the occasion for broad discussion about the theology of Van de Beek. All the more, because at the same time H.M Kuitert’s book, Jezus, nalatenschap van het christendom [Jesus, Heritage of Christianity], was published which took a polar opposite position on the subject. In 1999, the edition of Leidse Lezingen (Leiden Lectures) was devoted to these two divergent views. The reactions among theologians were largely critical: they contested Van de Beek’s over-emphasis on the crucifijixion of Jesus and his backwards projection of creation and cross upon God’s being (H. Veldhuis, A.J. Plaisier).34 In his 2002 book “De kring om de Messias. Israel als volk van de lijdende Heer,” the second volume (vol. 1.2) of his series, Van de Beek incorporates Israel in his identifijication of God and Jesus as well. Israel depicts the crucifijixion of Jesus: just as God is banned, so is Israel. The history of the sufffering of Israel is also the history of God’s sufffering. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that the land in which Israel lives has always been contested. And this will never get better! Not the land, but Godself is Israel’s ‘portion’. Thus Israel, God’s elect, must also be incorporated in Christ.35 This book again led to vehement discussions because Van de Beek undermined two prominent aspects of the cultural climate in the Netherlands by robbing them of their evidential presuppositions, namely: mission to the Jews is wrong and should be replaced by ‘conversation,’ and, secondly, the promise of the land has historical signifijicance as being fulfijilled and is deserving unconditional support. Be that as it may, in comparison to others who took positions similar to his, in all respects Van de Beek clearly lacks ecclesiastical triumphalism with regard to the notion that the church took the place of Israel. It is the aim of this book to

told that for more than three centuries dogs were crucifijied on the Capitol because they once failed to bark at intruders. 32  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 46–53; ET, section 4.1, ‘the Son is not the Father; pg. 49–51. 33  A. van de Beek, “God schiep geen God” [God did not create God], Kerk en theologie 48 (1997) 208. 34  Jesus: bij hoog en bij laag. De christologie van Van de Beek en Kuitert [Jesus: taken high and low. The christology of Van de Beek and Kuitert], Leidse Lezingen (Kampen: Kok, 1999); see www.leidselezingen.nl. 35  A. van de Beek, De kring om de Messias. Israel als volk van de lijdende Heer, [The circle around the Messiah. Israel as people of the sufffering Lord], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002), 177. Here Van de Beek chooses for the cover of his book the portrayal of Jesus, the so-called ‘white crucifijixion’ by a Jewish artist, Marc Chagall.

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intensify the claim of the singular point of view that determines all others. Van de Beek claims: it is the sufffering God who saves the world. This obviously raises the question what such ‘saving’ entails in concrete terms. Traditional answers are readily available, such as ‘going to heaven upon death,’ or ‘the apocalyptic promise of a new heaven and a new earth.’ Here too, Van de Beek’s message sounds both surprising and alienating in the modern western context. Even so, he claims that it is a Christian proclamation through and through: it is through baptism as incorporation into Christ that a transfer takes place to communion with Christ.36 This formulation is not in itself earthshaking; but it should be because Van de Beek sees that transfer in quite literal terms: in baptism you are withdrawn from the world as we know it. This is not about getting into heaven someday, and thus feeling somewhat uncomfortable because mentally and spiritually you have already emigrated. No, you are now, in person, with body and soul, part of the new creation; you are ’gone’, you have no business here anymore, and that should fijind expression in all the facets of life. In 2005 Van de Beek even published a small book with the edgy title, Hier beneden is het niet [ET: It is not here below]. You Make Me More and More a Stranger This concretization of a baptized life is the core of the third volume (2.1) in his projected series. This eschatological approach is titled God doet Recht [God does Justice; or even, God does (what is) Right] (2008). What strikes me in this book are the many hymns that are cited. Among them is a hymn by Ad den Besten (Hymn 484 in Liedboek voor de Kerken [Hymnbook for the churches] that best captures Van de Beek’s attitude to and self-understanding of life [what the Dutch call levensgevoel] that he may have always had, but that is articulated more and more in his theology. Waarom moest ik uw stem verstaan? Waarom, Heer, moet ik tot u gaan Zo ongewende paden? Waarom bracht Gij Die onrust mij In‘t bloed—is dat genade?

Why did I have to understand your  voice? Why, Lord, must I come to you Such unaccustomed paths? Why did You bring such unrest in me in my blood—is this now grace?

36  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, Eschatology als Christologie [God does right. Eschatology as Christology] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 359. Volume 2.1 of the series Spreken over God [Speaking of God].

viator in fide Gij maakt mij steeds meer  vreemdeling. Ontvreemdt Ge mij dan ding  voor ding, Al ’t oude en vertrouwde? O blinde schrik,— Mijn God mag ik Niet eens mijzelf behouden?

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You make me more and more a  stranger Will You estrange me bit by bit From all that’s old and trusted? Oh, blinding fear My God, may I Not even preserve myself ?

Want ik zie voor mij kruis na kruis Mijn weg langs en geen enkel huis

Before me I see cross upon cross Along my way, and not one  single home

Waar ik nog rust zou vinden. Kom ik zo echt Bij U terecht, Ben ik wel uw beminde?

Where I could still fijind rest Will I thus truly fijind Your Presence Am I really your beloved?

Spreek Gij dan in mijn hart en zeg, Dat het zo goed is, dat die weg Ook door uw Zoon gegaan is, En dat uw land Naar alle kant Niet ver bij mij vandaan is.

Speak Thou to me and tell my heart That it is good, that in this way your Son did trod as well And that your land where e’er I stand is not far away from me.

As persons of faith come to understand the deeper meaning of their baptism, they become more of a stranger, less attached to earthly existence. Nor are they pilgrims with a clear destination, but wander about, waiting for the dawn. The baptized person is ‘in’ Christ, and this means that he or she takes part in the appearing of Christ that lasts from his birth to his Parousia, which must be understood as the one eschatological intervention of God in the same way that a pregnancy is one movement from conception to birth.37 Eschatology is all about doing righteousness as the removal of evil through God’s judgment. God does right in Christ, and this judgment is still fully ongoing. Christ is a kairos which takes much chronos. The stance of Van de Beek becomes most clear when we see that, according to him, the ur-christian position of the early church (Athanasius) was more and more abandoned as the church gained a greater hold on the world after the fourth century (Augustine). A shift took place from the focus on the necessary transfer to Christ, to a concentration on the Christ who comes to meet us in the ecclesial distribution of the sacraments

37

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 155.

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to the world. The church thus is trying to change the world.38 As a factual consequence, the Antiochene theology made more common sense and the Alexandrian teachings became more marginal, only occasionally disturbing the dominant view, such as occurred in the Reformation. When and wherever secularization has encouraged theology and church to adjust or embrace Vermittlung, more credence is given to the Antiochene school. In view of this, Van de Beek has grown in his calling to echo the radical message of Athanasius within current Western culture. Critique of Culture and Church Van de Beek has sometimes made this pointed critique of culture and church more explicit and in fijiery ways. He did so particularly in his inaugural oration at the VU in 2001, entitled Ontmaskering [Unmasking]. On that occasion he did not tread lightly but proceeded head on, which evoked sharp reactions. Van de Beek seemed indiffferent to this, which made him both vulnerable and unperturbed, like a prophet. Over against the modern moralizing theology he posits his identifijication of creation and cross: we are created as crucifijied ones, with our sufffering and our guilt.39 Our salvation is only the transfer to the realm of Christ: ‘He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.’ (Col. 1:13v.) The great provocation of his oration lies with his use of a we—they scheme. The title puts it up and out front: the true believer has to unmask not only the world, but the church as well. According to Van de Beek theological education should be structured this way: know your own tradition and know your opponents.40 Theology should not be left to unbelievers.41 Armed with this two-fold scheme, he pulls the masks offf both the world and the church. The entire Dutch society is demonic, has no respect for anything. Especially the government is exposed: for instance it mimics God’s work by usurping the diaconal task of the church, and bureaucratizes it in order to destroy it.42

38

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 359.  A. van de Beek, Ontmaskering [Unmasking] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001) 43. [Unpublished version in English, held by the orator]. 40  Van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 38. 41  Van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 33. See also his inaugural oration at Leiden (footnote 7 above). 42  Van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 53. 39

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However, he focuses more on the church than the wider culture, as befijits his message of salvation from the world. Since the early 1990’s he has heckled the lax attitude of the church, its divisiveness and its modernity. In recent years he calls for a reformation of the church through a radical return to apostolic sources. Towards that end he is seeking contact with the Roman Catholic Church, and promotes patristic studies. In 2010 he published Is God terug? [Is God Back?], in which he passionately pleads for his approach and once again exposes the prevalence of cheerful sermonizing about being safe and protected.43 Nowhere else does he concentrate his critique of the church as intensely as toward a passage in a 2000 report of the PKN (Protestantse Kerk in Nederland–although at that time still called Samen-op-Weg churches, i.e. Together-on-the-Way churches). The report is titled, ‘Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Redeemer.’44 Here the church places its confession of Jesus in open daylight, to shine light on the backdrop of much uncertainty that was created by recent theological books. This report contains a passage that has to do with the core of Van de Beek’s christology. Since he reacted vehemently, and because it concerns the heart of his Alexandrian message we will excerpt it here: In the line of John and the tradition of the church we confess that God the Son became human. This requires a clear understanding of such terms. An expression such as ‘the divinity of Jesus Christ’ aims to refer to the unique origin of Jesus in the eternal God and the unique unity with the Father in which he lived, died and was raised. At the same time we need to recall that Jesus as the Son remains distinguished from the Father. The Son is not the Father. The Father is not the Son. Jesus “is” not God. He is the Son of God and in that sense divine. His unique unity with God remains a unique relationship with God.

The vials of wrath poured out by Van de Beek were prompted by the phrase, Jesus “is” not God.

43

 A. Van de Beek, Is God terug? [Is God back?] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010) 13–21.  At www.pkn.nl, search: Bestuur en organisatie/Generale Synode/Synodale rapporten/ Jesus Christus, onze Heer en Verlosser (2000). The passage translated in the main text is found on page 9: ‘In de lijn van Johannes en de traditie van de kerk belijden wij dat God de Zoon mens geworden is. Daarbij komt het er wel op aan dat wij dergelijke termen en zegswijzen goed verstaan. Met de uitdrukking “de godheid van Jezus Christus” wordt gedoeld op de unieke oorsprong van Jezus in het eeuwige leven van God en de unieke eenheid met zijn Vader waarin Hij heeft geleefd en waarin Hij is gestorven en opgewekt. Tegelijk dienen wij te bedenken dat Jezus als de Zoon onderscheiden blijft van de Vader. De Zoon is niet de Vader. De Vader is niet de Zoon. Jezus “is” niet God. Hij is de Zoon van God en in die zin goddelijk. Zijn unieke eenheid met God blijft een unieke relatie met God.’ 44

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gerrit de kruijf What is being said here? Is Jesus one of those heavenly intermediate beings? Does he have a divine emanation, like soccer players who are called ‘sons of gods’—provided they become champions? Of what is Jesus a champion? “Divine but not God” can mean anything and everything, except that Jesus is God in person. (. . .) This is something very diffferent from the lucid “being of the same substance with the Father” of the Nicene Creed. I still cannot condone that a church, which has this confession as her offfijicial credo, and does so together with all church from East and West, says the exact opposite in an offfijicial document. It is a negation of the heart of the Christian faith: Godself came into the world in the person of Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, the Lord of Glory, crucifijied, and proven to be the Son of God through the resurrection from the dead. (. . .) The truth is what the church of all ages confesses: that Godself became human for our sake and for our salvation, was crucifijied, dead and buried and raised on the third day. This happened in the concrete history of this world: under Pontius Pilate, the man who, when eye to eye with the Truth, shrugs and asks, ‘What is truth?’ Modern theologians have a closer kinship to this civilized, highly educated ruler of Jerusalem than to the foolishness that the Almighty Creator is standing there with shackled hands and a crown of thorns on his head.45

In this confrontation two things seem clear to me. In the fijirst place, while the church in earlier passages of its writing championed the closeness of Jesus’ relation with God over against the accentuation by many of Jesus’ humanity, the cited passage places a demarcation at the point of a total identifijication of Jesus with God, and does so in order to avoid that his humanity will be overshadowed. The church is just rejecting the identifijication of Father and Son. Secondly, while Van de Beek also afffijirms the latter,46 it does not sound very convincing as is testifijied by the last

45  Van de Beek, Is God terug?, 58f. ‘Wat wordt daarmee gezegd? Is Jezus een van die vele hemelse tussenwezens? Heeft Hij een goddelijke uitstraling, zoals voetballers “godenzonen” worden genoemd als ze tenminste kampioen worden? Waarvan is Jezus kampioen? “Goddelijk maar niet God” kan van alles betekenen, maar in elk geval niet dat Hij God zelf is in eigen persoon. (. . .) Dat is iets totaal anders dan het heldere “van hetzelfde wezen met de Vader” van de geloofsbelijdenis van Nicea. Ik kan het nog steeds niet plaatsen dat een kerk die deze belijdenis als haar offfijiciële credo heeft aanvaard, en dat doet samen met alle kerken van Oost en West, in een offfijicieel document precies het omgekeerde zegt. Het is een ontkenning van het hart van het christelijk geloof: dat God zelf in persoon in de wereld gekomen is in Jezus, Immanuël, God met ons, de Here der Heerlijkheid, gekruisigd, bewezen de Zoon van God te zijn door de opstanding uit de dood. (. . .) De waarheid is wat de kerk van alle eeuwen belijdt: dat God zelf mens is geworden om ons mensen en om onze redding, is gekruisigd, gestorven en begraven en opgewekt op de derde dag. Dat heeft plaatsgevonden in de concrete geschiedenis van deze wereld: onder Pontius Pilatus, de man die oog in oog met de Waarheid schouderophalend vraagt: “Wat is waarheid?” De beschaafde, hoog opgeleide stadhouder van Jeruzalem is de moderne theologen nader aan het hart dan de dwaasheid dat de Almachtige Schepper daar staat met geboeide handen en een doornenkroon op het hoofd.’ 46  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 46–49 [ET: 52–57].

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sentence of our quote: before Jesus with the crown of thorns on his head we stand eye to eye with the Creator of heaven and earth. He derives the good right of such a depiction from the dogmatic formulation opera ad extra indivisa sunt, but this has rarely led to this particular portrayal. The theology of Van de Beek unmistakable contains a hyperbolic dimension. He thereby tries to ensure that his readers will not be mistaken about the question of what truly matters for our salvation: in the crucifijied Jesus we meet the almighty God. Such ‘exaggeration’ is elicited by a moralizing Enlightenment theology (characteristically spread by the ecumenical theology of the World Council of Churches which he frequently blames) and by a soothing evangelical spirituality, both of which hold the present church captive indeed. In fact, Van de Beek’s position is rather like Karl Barth. The latter also leaned more to the Alexandrian than the Antiochene school, and likewise resisted Vermittlungstheologie. Even so, to Van de Beek, Barth is in fijinal analysis still too much of a modern theologian dressed in orthodox garb.47 According to Van de Beek, only by confessing predestination, inclusive of the double qualifijier and the implied we-they distinction, can we come close to the fijire of the apostles. The Solid Ground On September 16, 2010, Bram van de Beek gave his farewell oration as professor. Because of a serious illness of his wife Nel it took place a year earlier than intended. On that occasion he took up the thesis of his fijirst inaugural oration that created so much consternation at the time, i.e.: only a person of faith can practice theology. However, now that the track of his journey after retirement has come in view, he does not want to speak about how the discipline of theology should be organized, but wants to call attention to its source: what prompts a human being to speak in faith about God? In his exposition he begins on a fundamental level: neither God’s acts in history, nor Jesus, nor the testimony of the resurrection, nor the Bible can give us solid ground. Ultimately, only one phenomenon (but is it truly a phenomenon?) can offfer grounding for the practice of theology: faith. This is deep notion of trust that precedes all thought. It is a knowledge that presents itself as self-evident. It is a conviction that exists before we think about it. It is a way of knowing that reaches deeper than even hunger and

47

 A. van de Beek, Karl Barth—an ambivalente relatie (manuscript only).

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gerrit de kruijf thirst, also welling up in us. Awareness of hunger and thirst are not the result of discursive thought. They might make us think, ‘how does this happen? And even more, ‘what do I do about it?’ It prompts us toward action. It is a knowledge that does not touch only a part of our real world, but places everything in the perspective of this awareness and gives us an orientation for all our thinking and acting. It is not a result of our thought process, but the source of thought. It is in the company of love and trust.48

Thus this farewell address gives evidence of the consistency of his pneumatological theologizing throughout his course of life: both his inaugural oration and his motto make clear that it is the experiential, mystical dimension of his life which makes him a theologian. In the same vein that Barth once told Iwand that it is not christology that matters but Christ himself, so Van de Beek would without a doubt say that it is not pneumatology that matters but the work of the Holy Spirit within us. Conclusion In the oeuvre of Van de Beek it is his book Jezus Kurios that stands out the most. His christological concentration is no less than with Barth. However, with Van de Beek it is not the resurrection but the cross at the center which makes it increasingly difffijicult to speak positively about God’s acts in creation and history. Some may think that Van de Beek takes a purely traditionalist position in his fijield of theology, especially when he increasingly engages the church fathers as conversation partners rather than contemporary colleagues. Nothing could be further from the truth. Numerous passages in his many books are drenched in the criticisms of the Enlightenment. According to him, modern philosophers and academics are almost always correct on this score! Yet. . . . here is something that makes everything diffferent. So, his manner of doing theology is much more influenced by the context of

48  A. van de Beek, Spreken over God [Speaking of God] (Amsterdam: VU University, 2010). ‘Dat is een diep besef van vertrouwen dat aan elk denken voorafgaat. Het is een weten dat zich als vanzelfsprekend aan ons voordoet. Het is een overtuiging die er is voordat we gaan denken. Het is een weten dat zelfs dieper reikt dan bronervaringen als honger en dorst. Het besef van honger en dorst is ook niet het resultaat van discursief denken. Het zet eventueel aan tot denken: hoe is het zo gekomen? En veel meer: wat doen we eraan? Het zet aan tot handelen. Het gaat om kennis die niet een deel van onze werkelijkheid raakt, maar alles onder dat perspectief plaatst, aan al ons denken en handelen oriëntatie geeft. Het is niet het resultaat van denken, maar de bron van denken. Het bevindt zich in het gezelschap van liefde, van trouw.’

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modernity than seems to be the case at fijirst sight. Van den Brom noted, that Van de Beek in fact seeks for certainty of faith within the framework of the Enlightenment.49 Finally, we should call attention to the fact that his second successor as dogmatician in Leiden, Rick Benjamins, closes his Canon of the protestant spirituality in the Netherlands with a passage of Van de Beek concerning the question, ‘Why does God not Intervene?’—the question of Van de Beek’s fijirst book. However, the selected passage on the question was written in 2005, which signals Van de Beek’s persistent focus on that very question which our speaking of God challenges most radically.50

49  L.J. van den Brom, ‘Afscheidscollege professor Bram van de Beek’ [Valedictory of Professor Bram van de Beek], in: Kerk en Theologie 61 (2010), 382–384. 50  A. van de Beek, Hier beneden is het niet, 106–109, cited in Rick Benjamins, Canon van de protestantse spiritualiteit in Nederland (Kampen: Kok, 2010), 207–210.

“ALEXAMENOS WORSHIPS HIS GOD”? AN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND BRAM VAN DE BEEK’S CHRISTOLOGY AS THE HEART OF HIS THEOLOGY Dirkie Smit Jesus Kyrios? For as long as anyone can remember, an image of the grafffijito “Alexamenos worships his god” has been hanging in the dean’s offfijice of the Theology Faculty in Stellenbosch, a gift from an alumnus already in April 1901.1 Presumably a mocking depiction of a Christian, this rough and child-like inscription, carved into a wall on the Palatine Hill in Rome, portrays Jesus as crucifijied, with the head of a donkey, and a young man seemingly standing in worship before the fijigure on the cross.2 Here Bram van de Beek wrote most of Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als Hart van de Theologie, eventually dedicating it to the Faculty, with a picture of the grafffijito on the front cover.3 The choice of the title was deliberate, he explains. An early Christian hymn dares to apply this very Name “Lord,” “Kyrios” to Jesus, he says— “the Holy NAME by which God in an unspeakable way was made known to Israel.” This is how intends to use it too. He therefore did not choose the more common “Kyrios Christos”—“for that combination somewhat shelters the afffront of the confession” that Jesus is the Lord, since “Christ may refer to the highest ideal of humanity as well as the risen and glorifijied Lord,” which would obscure his own deepest intentions. He did not choose “Jesus Christ” either—“for that would invite too easily the selfevident Lordship of so many ecclesial pronouncements,” which would again contradict his own emphases. Rather, “my concern is the earthly human Jesus, with his human—all too human—history. This human from

1

 The hand-written inscription on the copy reads MUSEO KIRCHIRIANO ROME, Rome April 1901 A.D. Lückhofff. 2  Information concerning the grafffijito is scarce, unclear and controversial. A rough Greek inscription on the picture refers to Alexamenos, and although the translation is debated, many scholars presume that it refers to an Alexamenos who is worshipping (his) god. 3  The picture appears only on the Dutch original, Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als Hart van de Theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1998). In this paper, references are from the English translation, Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002).

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fijirst century Palestine is the one true God.” For this reason, he chose this particular title.4 Perhaps one could claim that these words already contain Van de Beek’s whole Christology, and since Christology is for him the heart of theology, his whole theology.5 His concern is with the earthly, human Jesus with his all too human history, since for him this human from the fijirst century Palestine is the one true God. He seems to have been intellectually occupied with the claims and questions embedded in this concern right through his academic career, since his doctoral dissertation on De Menselijke Persoon van Christus.6 These claims and concerns also determine the structure of Jesus Kyrios, in which the fijirst part deals extensively with the Christological debates of the fijifth century and with the question whether and how Christ is God, before he uses this in the second part as hermeneutical background when he returns to the New Testament and the credo, and later proceeds in the third and fourth parts to Jesus and other cultures and religions. There can be no doubt that when he speaks of “the earthly, human Jesus” he is also referring to the body, the flesh, the materiality, the human-ness, the human nature of Jesus, as “living human being.”7 For him, the body is of utmost importance, Jesus’ body as well as our bodies. After all, “flesh is the spindle of salvation.”8 Again and again this conviction comes to the fore.9 His theological project could be seen as an ongoing conflict with

4

 From the explanation in front, Abraham van die Beek, Jesus Kyrios, 2.  “Ook voor mij gaat het niet om de christologie, maar om de theologie. Maar juist de christologie is expressie van de theologie. Die is er zoals reeds gezegd het hart van. Ik kan ook zeggen: Jezus is het gelaat van God. God gaat niet in zijn gelaat op—en toch is Hij zijn gelaat zelf,” “De verre of de nabije God,” Jezus: bij hoog en bij laag [The far or near God, Jesus: on high and lowly], (Kok: Kampen, 1999, 13–24), 23. 6  Abraham van de Beek, De Menselijke Persoon van Christus: Een Onderzoek aangaande de Gedachte van de Anhypostasie van de Menselijke Natuur van Christus [The Human Person of Christ: An investigation about the Notion of the Anhypostasis of the Human Nature of Christ], (Leiden: Universiteit Leiden, 1980). 7  See for example Menselijke Persoon; Jesus Kyrios, esp. 113–114 [English translation: II I.1.3.c, 121–123]. He sometimes explains that the early debates concentrated on the question whether Jesus was “being human” or a “human being” and he strongly afffijirms the latter. 8  “Het vlees is de spil van de redding” is the theme of the key second chapter in his eschatology, where he begins to develop his answer to the both cynical and deeply personal questions raised in chapter one, Abraham van de Beek’, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie [God does right. Eschatology as christology], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 37–82. 9  “Men kan zelfs stellen dat de lijnen van orthodoxie of ketterij in de vroege kerk door het lichaam bepaald werden,” [‘One could posit that the tracing of orthodoxy or heresy in the early church were determined by the body’], Recht, 53. His discussion of several 5

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gnosticism, in its earliest and its many historical forms, but most certainly also in its widespread and influential contemporary forms.10 He afffijirms the importance of body and flesh. At the same time, his concern with the earthly Jesus is with more, namely also with his “human—all too human—history,” with his narrative, his life-story, his life, work and fate, in short, his history according to the Scriptures and the ancient credo.11 It would therefore be a serious misunderstanding to reduce Van de Beek’s intentions to an incarnationChristology, especially if the incarnation is primarily understood as revelation, since he often explicitly distances himself from such views.12 Central in Jesus’ life story, for him, is rather Jesus’ sufffering and death on the cross. Even the resurrection, crucially important as it is for him,13 should be seen in the light of the cross and in the light of the cross only.

doctrinal themes hinges on the importance of the body, for example heaven and hell, the last judgment, and the Lord’s Supper. 10  Even the Enlightenment, for him, shows characteristics of gnosticism. “Het lijkt me echter dat de moderne theologen van na de Aufklärung veel dichter bij de gnosis staan dan bij de vroegkerkelijke eschatologie. Uiteindelijk zijn de zingevingscategorieën, de eeuwige ideeën belangrijker dan de materiële werkelijkheid. Het Duitse idealisme is hiervan nooit losgekomen,” [It seems to me that the modern theologians from after the Enlightenment are much closer to gnosis than to the eschatology of the early church. Ultimately, the categories of meaning, the eternal ideas, are more important than the material reality. German idealism has never been able to detach itself from this] Recht, 49. 11  See especially Part II of Jesus Kyrios, although some New Testament colleagues seem critical of his treatment of Jesus‘ life according to the credo, rather than with the use of recent New Testament historical-critical scholarship. 12  Under the conditions of the Constantinian revolution, the incarnation became more central, he argues, with all kinds of implications. Christmas became the important feast in the West. The focus of attention now became the presence of holiness in the world— in many ways and in many forms, but together this loss of eschatology radically afffected Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and views on the Christian life, all changes that Van de Beek discerns and radically oppposes in his work; for a very instructive analysis within the context of sacramental theology, see Recht, 357–380. Amongst others, this new focus of attention also afffected views of revelation. The incarnation (rather than the cross) becomes central and it is understood as revelation. He refers to Barth as important representative of this view, and claims that for this reason John 1:14 is the most often cited Biblical text in the Church Dogmatics, Recht, 149. 13  “(M)et de verrijzenis van het lichaam staat of valt of God recht doet aan de mens die Hij schiep—en wel de hele mens zoals Hij die geschapen heeft. Daarmee staat en valt dus de godheid van God, en daarmee is dan ook de grens getrokken tussen orthodoxie en ketterij” [In the resurrection of the body lies the crux of whether God does right to the human being he created, and thus the line has been drawn between orthodoxy and heresy.”], Recht, 57. “Men kan dus stellen dat met de opstanding van het vlees het christelijk geloof staat of the flesh,” [“One can posit that the christian faith stands or falls concerning the resurrection”], Recht, 69. On the importance of the resurrection, see e.g. also Recht, 41–44,60–64, 130, and especially the fijinal chapter of Wonderen en Wonderverhalen (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1991), 228–268.

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Alexamenos worships his god on the cross, a human being with the head of a donkey. This is foolishness to the world. This is a scandal. Stupid people worship such a god. For him, this is the heart of the matter.14 His second and third studies on Christology further develop these convictions, with remarkable and often radical consistency. The subtitle of De Kring om de Messias is therefore “Israel as the people of the sufffering Lord.”15 Jesus belongs to the people of Israel as the sufffering Lord, as the rejected King.16 Again, the cover picture dramatically portrays this, namely Chagall’s “White Crucifijixion.”17 The painting on the third volume illustrates the same convictions. It is an image of the crucifijied Jesus from a Rumanian Orthodox church, but Van de Beek understands the face of Jesus to show not torment but full self-consciousness and even accusation and judgment, and accordingly interprets the picture in the spirit of the early church referring to Jesus as “the Lord who rules from the tree.”18 Together, these three expressions—Jesus is the Lord; the sufffering Lord; the Lord who rules from the cross—capture the heart of Van de Beek’s Christology and theology. One could probably read all three books, particularly also God doet recht, as one detailed exegesis of what it implies that Alexamenos worships his god. It is therefore also not enough to speak of Jesus as crucifijied. The deeper point is that he is crucifijied as a victim. Jesus sufffers as a victim of human power, human violence, human injustice. The cross is not a religious and spiritual symbol, but a harsh and cruel reality. Jesus is slain and slaugh-

14  “On an ancient wall in Rome a sketch of an ass on a cross is drawn. ‘Alexamenos worships his god,’ the inscription says . . . (I)t does indicate how some looked upon the Christians. Their God was no God. Only an ass would let himself be executed; no normal person would even allow such a thing willingly, only a stupid person. People who worship this God are just like their God. The grafffijiti illustrates what Paul writes about the cross as foolishness to the world,” Jesus Kyrios, 36. 15  De Kring om de Messias. Israël als volk van de lijdende Heer [The Circle around the Messiah. Israel as the people of the sufffering Lord.], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002). 16  Kring, 64–76. 17  Again, he explains the choice of the picture. It is impossible to understand Jesus without seeing him within the circle of his people. He taught as Jew and sufffered as Jew. On the cross he is the focus of everything Israel stands for. He dies according to the symbolism of Israel’s prayers, law and obedience. In this perspective, a theology of the cross and a theology of the shoah are one and the same—which is what Chagall’s painting expresses, Kring, 2. 18  Recht, 5, with a fuller explanation on 164, also note 105. The phrase was already used by Justin and Tertullian. They based it on a version of Psalm 96:10, but it might have been an early Christian addition.

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tered.19 Even more, the victim on the tree is innocent, he hangs there because he is cursed, unjustly judged, rejected—and this also by God. For Van de Beek, this is crucial. God is here at work, God is here judging Jesus. In Jesus Kyrios the key is that God is bearing, carrying the world,20 in God doet recht the key is that God is judging the world—in the Crucifijied. This judgment includes victims and perpetrators alike, moral and immoral, believers and unbelievers. These distinctions—so important for our moral, religious and spiritual sensibilities—all disappear in light of the cross, in fact, they become dangerous and misleading. Here, no-one is moral, no-one is just.21 One should therefore say even more. In the Crucifijied God is judging Godself. The Crucifijied is the Judge himself.22 It is the King of Israel hanging on the tree.23 It is the Lord hanging on the cross, the Lord of glory. It

19  It is easy for the church to forget this and to see even the cross in a positive, if not sentimental light. In Jesus Kyrios Van de Beek twice refers to Alexamenos. The second reference seems to refer to this kind of spiritual and religious misunderstanding. In the English, even the inscription is now translated diffferently (adores instead of worships; a capital G for God), probably to convey the misuse: “ ‘Alexamenos adores his God.’ We have become accustomed to speak about the cross as signifying salvation. We have lost touch with the scandal of preaching the cross. However, it is a scandal to proclaim anything but Jesus Christ and him crucifijied, as Paul did—and as the congregation is yet called to proclaim,” Jesus Kyrios, 167. 20  “This is why Athanasius insists that God did not come to morally improve the world but to bear it. Humanity is sick unto death, but Godself desires to bear those illnesses and injustices. Thus God bears our very selves and partakes of our existence in its brokenness. God bears the entire humanity and all that it entails. God is the greatest of sinners, Luther says, in the typical paradoxical manner that marks his style,” Jesus Kyrios, 27–28. 21  “God participeert in deze wereld . . . God is de God die slachtofffer is van de wereldgeschiedenis, in de schaar van kinderen, met een moeder die een zwaard door haar ziel heeft gekregen. Dat is het oordeel over onze wereld. Dat is onze diepste realiteit . . . Dit is de realiteit van de wereld . . . Dit is de realiteit van de slachtofffers en dit is de realiteit van de daders. Dit is de realiteit van de omstanders die erbij staan en ernaar kijken, en de realiteit van de omstanders die hun gezicht afwenden om het niet te zien, en hun oren om het niet te horen . . . De geschiedenis van Christus legt het wezen van de wereld bloot. Het is een veroordeelde wereld. Het is de wereld waarin God participeert. Hij is gekomen tot het zijne. Aan het kruis is haar God,” [God participates in this world . . . God is the God who is a victim of world history, through the multitude of children whose mother soul was pierced by a sword. That is the judgement on our world. This is our deepest reality . . . This is the reality of the crowds, who stand by and look on and of the crowds who turn away their face so they won’t see, and their ears so they won’t hear . . .  The history of Christ bares the essence of the world . . . It is a judged world. It is the world in which God participates. He came to his own. It is on the cross that we we fijind its God.] Recht, 283–284. 22  “Dan komen we bij de fundamentele gedachte van de eschatologie dat Christus zelf de rechter is en dat Hij dat juist als de gekruisigde is” [We then arrive at the fundamental notion of eschatology: that Christ Himself is the judge, and that He is such precisely as the crucifijied], Recht, 101, see also 128–129. 23  Recht, 129–140.

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is Godself carrying the judgment there. Van de Beek does not hesitate to use the strongest of expressions possible to make this point—because for him, this is the point.24 It is Godself hanging on the cross. This is the comfort of the gospel. God provides justice. God does deliver justice—in spite of all doubts, questions and fears to the contrary. The cries of the victims are not in vain. Their prayers have been answered. That is why the curse-psalms are not alien to the message of the gospel, but its climax. Whoever does not understand this, does not understand the gospel.25

24

 Discussing the modalists, accused of patripassianism, he says “I think it is wise to keep saying that it was the Son who sufffered and not the Father and that there is a diffference,” Jesus Kyrios, 50. In a very instructive paper in Namibia he deals with similar discussions which flared up after his fijirst Christological volume. He reflects on 1 Cor 2:8, “one of the most provocative texts in the Bible” which claims that they “crucifijied the Lord of glory.” “In Jewish ears and from a Jewish pen (Paul was a Jew), these words stand for the holy Name of Israel’s God.” When Paul says that this Lord of Glory was crucifijied, we must understand that for Paul the cross was not only sufffering, but moreover a curse. The reality of anyone crucifijied was the reality of the death of a criminal, of one cursed. “Here it is said that people have actively brought God under the curse . . . People had so much power over the glorious God that they crucifijied Him.” He is careful in how he formulates. “Now, it does not say in so many words that they crucifijied God. A discussion arose in response to Moltmann’s Der gekreuzigte Gott, which flared up again following my book Jezus Kurios, as to whether you can say this ”the crucifijied God.” The classic concept of God of philosophically trained people does not allow for that. “Such a God cannot be crucifijied.” Paul, however, says something slightly diffferent. “A concept of God cannot be crucifijied and a defijinition cannot sufffer; the Living One, who has life in and of Himself and is the source of life—can He be crucifijied? Can He who calls the stars by name sufffer? Can he who is the judge of the entire earth Himself die as one accursed? This is the God of whom Paul is thinking, and then he writes, ‘They have crucifijied the Lord of Glory’.” According to Van de Beek, this was even for Paul at fijirst “unimaginable,” “pure blasphemy,” but when he “met the glory of the Lord in the Crucifijied,” everything changed. Furthermore, this “paradoxical theology” is shared by the rest of the New Testament and “was taught in the fijirst centuries by the church fathers” against large parts of the church, like the gnostic movement and the Marcionites. The early church thus became “the scene for a bitter conflict over Christology, and in Christology, about the doctrine of God. To put it briefly, the conflict can be summarised as follows: Is God the Crucifijied or the Ideal?” After holding out for a long time, even Athanasius had to yield, he says, and “in the end, Plato won in the Church,” “The Lord of Glory Crucifijied,” Journal of Religion and Theology in Namibia, 2000/2, 54–71. 25  “Het is goed dat er een laaste oordeel is. Het is goed dat God het onrecht niet laat voortbestaan. Het is goed dat God recht doet aan hen aan wie de geschiedenis geen recht heeft gedaan . . . Wie dit afwijst als een te simpele vergeldingstheologie, kijkt niet met de ogen van de slachtofffers. Beschouwend en bespiegelend over God kunnen we wraak afwijzen. Wraak moeten we afwijzen voor mensen. Maar we wijzen die alleen af, omdat we weet dat God gerechtigheid doet en Hij rechtvaardiger dan wij kan wreken . . . Heering heeft gezegd dat het denken over het laatste oordeel resten zijn van wraakgedachten die hier en daar de psalmen ontzieren, Als we denken aan de gerechtigheid, dan zijn deze liederen een sier voor de psalmenbundel. Ze zijn zelfs een hoogtepunt in die Schrift, omdat ze gaan over de gerechtigheid van God. De meest verstrekkende wraakpsalm is daarin

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In the cross, the kingdom of God becomes visible in history,26 and only in the cross—not in the resurrection and most certainly not in our erecting any so-called signs of the kingdom. If there are signs of the kingdom, they are only to be found in sufffering and disasters, all caused by God.27 He does not tire of underlining that the cross is the visible mode of God’s reign. This is his central argument in God doet recht, in response to the questions of doubt and fear—not primarily from the skeptics, but more seriously in the heart of believers—whether God does anything at all. Alexamenos Worships His God? How do we respond to this presence of God in the world? How does Alexamenos worship this god? Traditionally, pneumatology provides the answer, and indeed, after his two Christological books on this presence of God in the world, Van de Beek therefore follows with his pneumatology. He now realizes, however, that pneumatology needs eschatology, no, stronger, pneumatology is eschatology. The outpouring of the Spirit is eschatological, except that this should not be understood as future nor the relationship between Christ and Spirit in historical terms, in linear succession, in terms of outworking, development or progress. In the tegelijk het meest helder . . . Psalm 137 is niet een psalm uit barbaarse tijden. Psalm 137 is een psalm voor barbaarse tijden—zoals onze tijd. [Psalm 137 is not a psalm that harkens back to barbaric times. Psalm 137 is a psalm befijitting barbaric times—such as ours]. Het is een psalm die roept om gerechtigheid en een gebed van een gemeente die gelooft dat God een wreker is die het recht der armen, der verdrukten gelden doet . . . Een theologie die geen raad weet met het laatste oordeel, is een theologie die niet geïnteresseerd is in de gerechtigheid (en dus in de God van Israël die in Christus tot ons gekomen is) of een theologie die geen weet heeft van de werkelijke wereld [A theology that does not know what to make of the last judgment, is a theology that is not interested in justice and righteousness (and thereby in the God who came unto us in Christ) or a theology that does not know of the real world.] . . . In de wereld van het onrecht en het geweld van de mensen, van het lijden van de slachtofffers en de tranen van moeders, kan men niet zonder een laatste oordeel,” Recht, 278–282. 26  “De enige wijze waarop Gods koninkrijk voor mensen van vlees en bloed toegankelijk is en zichtbaar gestalte heeft gekregen, is in Jezus te midden van zijn volk. De concentratie daarvan is aan het kruis, waar de Zoon des mensen verhoogd is. Daar is het koninkrijk zichtbaar, tastbaar, voelbaar aanwezig. Voor mensen in de aardse tijd is dit de gestalte van het koninkrijk waarin het zich aan ons openbaart . . . (N)u, zolang we in het vlees zijn, moeten wij ons richten op het kruis om het koningschap van God te verstaan[As long as we are in the flesh we must turn toward the cross in order to understand the kingship of God] . . . Eschatologie is christologie. Het is het spreken over Christus‘ koningschap. De wijze waarop dat aanwezig is in de aardse tijd . . . is die van de gekruisigde Koning der Joden,” Recht, 161–162. 27  Recht, 301–306.

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history of the church this is the common understanding—for example in his teacher Berkhof’s work, and also in his own earlier pneumatology, De Adem van God, but that is based on a misunderstanding28—that is understanding the Spirit anthropologically, optimistically, without crisis, and the cross only as intermezzo.29 No, the cross is the eschatological event, the in-breaking of God’s fijinal judgment in the world. Eschatology is therefore only to be understood as Christology—the subtitle of the third study in his dogmatics—which means that pneumatology is also only to be understood Christologically. “Cross and Pentecost cannot be separated.”30 The result is a “pneumatology of judgment”. “To a christologia crucis belongs a pneumatology of judgment, just as a pneumatology of progress belongs to an incarnation Christology”31 (whether understood in a personal or historical way, as progress in one’s own spiritual life or as progress towards a better future for the world). Therefore, his eschatology in the form of Christology deals with precisely those theological themes traditionally discussed as the work of the Spirit, following the credo’s of the early church—baptism, the life of faith in the world, the fijinal judgment, the Lord’s Supper—but now in the perspective of judgment.32 The logic of the work is consistent and impressive and the implications of the structure far-reaching and radical. The three introductory chapters of his eschatology deal with the traditional themes that readers expect, namely the questions of futuristic eschatology—our eschatological language, our questions about body, soul and future, and our symbolic portrayals of heaven and hell.33 These traditional themes lead to the key methodological chapters arguing that eschatology is Christology and that there is only one coming (and presence) of Christ, namely the all too human history of Jesus on the

28  Recht, 10. Sometimes he calls Berkhof ’s Christelijk Geloof the crown of this kind of theology, Recht, 170, sometimes he refers to Christus de zin der Geschiedenis as “the apex of this kind of thought,” in “A Christianized Society according to Reformed Principles: Theological Developments in the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century,” George Harinck & Dirk van Keulen (eds), Vicissitudes of Reformed Theology in the Twentieth Century (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2004, 69–86), 78. 29  Recht, 11: warning against “het risico van een antropologisering van die pneumatologie.” 30  Recht, 11. 31  Recht, 11. 32  Traditional pneumatological themes still to be discussed include Scripture and ecclesiology, Recht, 26, 219, 292. 33  Recht, 13–108.

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cross—which then fijinds some “extension in time” in that we see this one coming in diffferent moments, diffferent kairoi. After the cross, nothing further happens—but the one cross becomes visible in diffferent moments.34 In that light, the traditional pneumatological themes receive their content. What does the Spirit do? Or, which is the same question, how do believers respond to this one coming of Christ, this one presence of God in the world, this one visible mode of the kingdom, namely the cross? Since pneumatology is eschatology, and eschatology is Christology (of the cross), these traditional themes suddenly appear in (what seems to be) a radical perspective. The single eschatological question namely, for him, is the question whether God does justice.35 The judgment on the cross provides the visible answer. Yes, God does justice. God doet recht. Believers respond by being baptized, by living in the world, by waiting, by praying, by celebrating the eschatological meal—and in all fijive these forms of Alexamenos’ worship, the element of judgment provides the key, the conviction that the Crucifijied reigns from the tree.36 This is the argument of the rest of the work. Believers respond and worship like Alexamenos by being baptized.37 For Van de Beek, baptism (also) belongs to eschatology, not to ecclesiology, as it has often been misunderstood.38 Baptism belongs to the trajectory of being drowned, of rebirth, of recreation and of cosmic renewal.39 It implies sharing in the death of Jesus, yes, in the crucifijixion of Godself.40

34  “We kunnen de . . . problemen alleen oplossen als we de dood en opstanding van Christus en de parousie niet zien als twee gebeurtenissen, maar als één gebeurtenis . . . Dat betekent dat de chronos van de tijd Anno Domini één kairos is [That means that the chronos of Anno Domini time is but one kairos.] . . . Vanwege de uitgestrektheid in de tijd kan de ene kairos zelf weer verschillende kairoi hebben,” Recht, 155–159. Over against almost all of 19th and 20th century theology—from Weiss to Wright, from liberal theology to Cullmann and Pannenberg, from Bultmann to Barth—this means for Van de Beek that nothing new can happen in history. 35  Recht, 90, 109. 36  Precisely at this juncture, between the methodological and material chapters, he discusses the picture of the Lord who reigns from the tree, the Vexilla regis, Recht, 163–167. 37  Chapter 6, “De doop,” Recht, 168–220. 38  Recht, 168–169. In many theologies, but also in spiritual traditions (“traditionale gereformeerde discussies”; “de charismatische nadruk”) such changes in perspective occur, losing sight of the eschatological nature of baptism. For his criticism of the Reformed perspective of covenant (“onteschatologiseerd en gehistoriseerd”), see 175–178. 39  Recht, 169–175. “(D)e doop is dus het moment waarop mensen betrokken worden in de kosmische omwenteling die plaatsheeft in het komen van God in Christus . . . De doop is niet een individueel gebeuren, maar participatie aan een kosmische omwenteling, waarbij wij worden opgenomen in een nieuwe schepping die herschepping is van de oude schepping,” 174–175. 40  Recht, 184–185.

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In concentrated form, this theology of baptism is found in Col. 2:9–15, namely as participation in the death of Jesus.41 It has to do with a cosmic event, not with individualistic or pietistic experiences. The formula of baptism expresses this alien identity (“excentrische identiteit”) of believers, belonging not to themselves, but to the Lord who reigns from the tree and his Spirit.42 In short, baptism belongs within a theologia crucis, a pneumatology of judgment. “Baptism is God’s activity, bringing his kingdom over people”43—which means cross and death. Being baptized means accepting this judgment. In baptism, believers indeed receive and experience the “extension in time” of the cross of Jesus—and it is an extension of dying.44 Being baptized by God into this alien identity, believers participate in the eschatological judgment, yes, but in the fijirst place passively, by sharing the sufffering of the present time.45 Baptism shows that the cross is the normal form of the church46—there is no baptism without tears and waters that flood us.47

41

 Recht, 184–192.  Recht, 192–199. 43  Van de Beek, Recht, 219. This is what Barth did not understand, concerning baptism, although he stood with his views on adult baptism fully in the tradition of Protestantism and also fully in the tradition of the Enlightenment, says Van de Beek. This was the fruit of the “antropologische wending van de moderniteit” which Barth fully accepted and since 1956 explicitly integrated in his theology. He comments, “Blumhardt heeft gewonnen van Kohlbrugge,” 219–220. 44  Recht, 188–189. He qualifijies this “extension in time” again and again, in order to prevent possible misunderstandings. For example, it does not allow a (often positive and optimistic) church-historical interpretation of the (coming of the) kingdom, Recht, 254–258. It rather means sufffering and death. “We participeren in de ene parousie en door het geloof en de doop behoren we bij de gemeenschap van de geredden. Tegelijk heeft de parousie zolang we in het vlees zijn uitgestrektheid in de aardse tijd. De kairos heeft het karakter van chronos [The kairos has the character of chronos] . . . Het sterven aan het vlees is sterven in de tijd, juist omdat het sterven aan de tijd is, net als sterven aan het vlees sterven in het vlees is en daarom met veel leed gepaard gaan,” 188. 45  Discussing baptism, he dedicates a long section to “Het lijden van dit ogenblik,” Recht, 199–204, even before he deals with the traditional doctrinal questions of sacrament, faith and infant baptsim. For him, sufffering is the key aspect of baptism, this is how believers experience the kingdom. “Door de doop zijn we deelgenoot aan de eschatologiese werkelijkheid. We participeren in de gebeurtenis, de kairos, van het einde der tijden . . . We richten ons nu eerst op die passieve kant: wat we ervaren van het komen van het koninkrijk. Voorop staat het sterven met Christus,” 199. 46  “Eschatologie heeft in de wereld de gestalte van een lijdensgeschiedenis. Dat is de wijze waarop Gods ingrijpen zichtbaar is geworden in Christus en dat is de wijze waarop die ook gestalte krijgt in zijn gemeente . . . Het kruis is de normale gestalte van de gemeente in de aardse tijd en ruimte, zoals het kruis de zichtbare aanwezigheid was van de koning van de Joden . . . De gestalte van het kruis geldt dus ook voor het pneumatologisch perspectief,” Recht, 200–204. 47  Even the symbolism gives witness. “De ondergang van ons oude leven, en het ontvangen van een nieuw bestaan in Christus moet in het doopritueel tot uitdrukking gebracht 42

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Baptized believers worship like Alexamenos by living in the world.48 This is the active side of being baptized—but precisely therefore it is also a life of sufffering, death and cross, a life of participation in Jesus, the Crucifijied, a life led according to the Spirit of judgment. For Van de Beek this chapter offfers an important discussion, since it is in this respect that many critical (or at least very puzzled) questions have been put to his work in the past. Is there really place for an active Christian life in his Christology (and therefore in his eschatology and pneumatology)? He therefore takes time to explain and distinguish carefully. Firstly and perhaps also fijinally, living in the world means forsaking the world. There is little more to say. This is after all already the claim of the classic Reformed baptism formula.49 The Christian community is not—as many like to claim—a new community in the world, but a community that is free from the world (his italics). They are “people of the end of the world, who no longer belong with the world.”50 Whatever could be added about believers’ life in the world, should not contradict this fijirst and most fundamental claim. That is why the images of resident aliens and strangers are better suited to describe the Christian life than the image of pilgrims, because pilgrim falsely still suggests the idea of some purpose or goal, which believers do not have.51 Believers do not become strangers to the world, no, being baptized they are already strangers.52 Sadly, this radical separation is denied in many ways—by ecumenical Protestantism, by many forms of Christian humanism and by contemporary academic theology, which should rather not be called Christian faith and Christian theology, since Christian has to do with separation, with sufffering and death, with crisis.53

werden. Men moet kopje onder gaan . . . Dopen zonder dat men de ervaring heeft van ‘al uw golven en al uw baren slaan over mij heen’, doet geen recht aan de doop . . . Geen doop zonder tranen . . . (Heel hun leven) is een gestadige dood, een langzame dood in de uitgestrektheid van de aardse tijd. Het is een uitgestrekt martelaarschap,” Recht, 205–207. 48  Chapter 7, “Christenen in de wereld,” Recht, 221–266. 49  Recht, 221. 50  Recht, 221. 51  Recht, 222. 52  Recht, 225. 53  Recht, 223–225. These are the alternative positions which he very often critiques. Obviously, they miss his sense of “crisis,” see 224–225 for his use of this key term. All the ways in which they may use notions of separation, dialectic, tension, diffference, distance, duality are still too weak in his view to describe the real crisis, the radical and complete disjuncture between being baptised and living in this world, in history, society, culture, politics, yes, even in one’s own body and soul. Believers simply do not belong any longer. They are total strangers, even to themselves.

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Does this mean that Christians are not interested in the world?54 Not really, but since in Christ dying is the visible form (gestalte) of the kingdom of God in the world, mortifijicatio, the dying of the self, is the visible form (gestalte) of God’s children in the flesh, under the conditions of time and space55—which is the reason why he is skeptical about all attempts to describe the Christian life in terms of vivifijicatio;56 about any interest in exercising power;57 about the pervasive passion in church and theology for morality, social structures and history;58 about the so-called prophetic role of the church;59 about any so-called involvement of the church in politics;60 about the so-called erection of signs of the kingdom;61 about any so-called trajectory in history that points towards the eschatos.62 All these forms of interest in the world have to do with progress and improvement (whether personal or historical), with exercising power and making sense, with change, transformation and meaningful renewal— and all these he rejects. Over against all such claims, he underlines that glory can only be the glory of the cross.63 The cross offfers the only source of sense in life.64

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 Recht, 225–232.  Recht, 230. 56  Recht, 229–232. 57  Recht, 226–227. 58  Recht, 232. Again and again, this threefold—morality, structures, history—becomes the point of his critical attacks. 59  “Het koninkrijk van God heeft in deze wereld de gestalte van het kruis . . . Het is niet zo dat het christelijk leven de structuren van de maatschappij gaat bepalen. Wie denkt dat te kunnen bereiken, heeft niet ontdekt hoe zwaar de zonde is . . . Maar die maakt dan ook het kruis van Christus zinloos . . . Als we menen dat we op aarde gerechtigheid kunnen brengen door een profetische taak van de kerk, dan zeggen we eigenlijk dat Christus nog maar even had moeten wachten met zelf alles te vervullen[In this world the kingdom of God has the fijigure of the cross. . . . If we think that we can bring righteousness through a prophetic task of the church we are really saying that Christ should have waited a bit longer with fulfijilling everything himself.],” Recht, 240. 60  Recht, 240–248; similarly, many of his other essays, e.g. “Church and Politics—A Reformed Approach,” NGTT 49, 2008, 3/4, 317fff. 61  Recht, 248–249. 62  Recht, 249–258 against false ways of seeing the relationship between future and eschatos; 258–264 against all attempts to construct a trajectory to the eschatos; 265–266 for his own conviction that “De wereldgeschiedenis staat in het teken van het kruis.” 63  “Heerlijkheid is heerlijkheid van het kruis”, Recht, 234. 64  “Het kruis is de zin van ons leven,” Recht, 256. This is also the only sense in which Kuyper’s well-known word about Jesus‘ claim over every square inch is justifijied, 256. Apart from the cross, there is no glory and no sense in morality (whether personal or public), in social or political structures (whether in liberal attempts to build up or liberationist attempts to overthrow) or in history (whether individual or communal). 55

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Does this imply martyrdom? The answer seems ambiguous. On the one hand, Christians are called to seek Christ, not the cross,65 but on the other hand all their social relationships are relativized to such an extent that only ascetism seems to remain66 and everything else does seem to become completely irrelevant. It is possible to live within any structures, nothing really matters. After all, everyone—good and bad, victim and perpetrator—stand together under the judgment of God. Living in this world, believers therefore worship like Alexamenos by awaiting the fijinal judgment.67 Van de Beek describes the fijinal judgment as the day of God’s wrath, in direct contrast to all contemporary humanist attempts to see the day within the perspective of God’s—free and allinclusive—love.68 The proper Biblical paradigm for the doctrine of God, he argues, is not love, security and comfort (geborgenheid), but justice, and particularly justice for the oppressed.69 Both victims and perpetrators stand under this judgment, together all await this judgment of the One who did not even spare his own Son. In death, morality is irrelevant, and the Christian life is a life of death. In this context, he writes movingly about South African experiences of sufffering and injustice.70 65  On the one hand he explicitly distances himself from a martyrdom position. “Lijden is passio. Lijden staat altijd in de lijdende vorm . . . Het overkomt ons, zonder dat wij het gezocht hebben. Zodra we het gaan zoeken is het masochisme en dus zonde. Wij zoeken niet het lijden, we zoeken slechts Christus” [Sufffering is always conjugated in the passive form . . . It happens to us without looking for it. As soon as we look for sufffering it becomes masochism and thus sin. We do not look for sufffering, we look for Christ], Recht, 255. On the other hand, he quotes many voices from history who were positive about martyrdom (Recht, 255, note 207), he regularly describes the Christian life as a life of martyrdom (Recht, 207 as normal; 236 as exceptional) and much of what he says about the cross can hardly be understood diffferently. Describing the celebration of the eschatological meal, he is explicitly positive about Christian life as martyrdom, Recht, 339–340. 66  “Rust is ver te zoeken,” in: H. van Erkelens (ed.), Van Utopie naar Werkelijkheid [Rest leads to a far search, in: From Utopia to Reality] (Kampen: Kok, 1989), 42–52; “Calvinism as an Ascetic Movement,” in: W. Alston & M. Welker (eds), Reformed Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 205–222. 67  Chapter 8, “Het laatste oordeel,” Recht, 267–295. 68  Recht, 267–274. 69  Recht, 275–282. “Het paradigma voor die godsleer is niet geborgenheid, maar gerechtigheid,” 276. 70  Recht, 282–285. “Als het sterven de gestalte van Christus is, is het vóór alles participatie. Het is participatie in de dood van anderen. Het is deelname aan de lijden van de slachtofffers . . . De gestalte van het kruis is ook participatie in het schuld van de ander. We zijn geen betere mensen dan de beulen. In de dood telt de moraal niet meer . . . We identifijiceren ons met de daders, evenzeer als we ons identifijiceren met de slachtofffers, zoals Christus dat gedaan heeft . . . Dader zijn is iets vreselijks . . . Wie christen is, doorziet de ware aard van het daderschap . . . [To be a perpetrator is something horrible . . . One

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Awaiting the fijinal judgment of divine wrath, believers worship like Alexamenos by prayer, lament, invocation, yes, accusation.71 Such waiting is longing, but also more. It becomes calling on God, lament, urgent cries to God to act, to do justice. “Christology (and therefore pneumatology) does not soften the cries and the lament, but strengthens them.”72 Sufffering believers call Maranatha.73 The many disasters in history become further promises, assurances, that God does indeed act and do justice—since these disasters are all God’s works. They are the only positive signs of the coming of the kingdom. “The hunger in Africa, the epidemic of AIDS, the tsunami in Asia . . . This is what God has done.”74 This is how God is coming in the world. How do believers respond? The only possible response is conversion. Conversion means that they recognize God’s action in the Crucifijied and in the circle of all those who also carry their crosses, and that they join this circle, by willingly leaving the social, economic and political structures that determine the face of this world, even giving up their claims to morality—in short, that they leave everything and follow Christ.75 Ultimately, however, believers worship like Alexamenos by celebrating the eschatological meal.76 Sometimes, all the doubt and sufffering can become simply too much.77 Then believers need a community around

who is a christian discerns the true nature of being a perpetrator]. De wereld wil slechts ontkennen. De wereld zoekt naar verontschuldigingen. De wereld zoekt naar verzachtende omstandigheden . . . Christen zijn vraagt veel meer. Het vraagt de compassie om het slachtofffers te kennen en het vraagt de moed om de daders te bevrijden uit hun ban van ontkenning. Het laatste is wellicht nog moeilijker dan het eerste,” [The world wants to deny . . . to fijind excuses . . . mitigating circumstances . . . Being a christian is much more demanding. It asks for compassion in order to get to know the victims and it asks for the courage to free the perpetrators from the grip of denial. The latter may well be even more difffijicult than the former.] 286–287. 71  Chapter 9, “Maranatha,” Recht, 296–321. 72  Recht, 301. “De klacht kan daarom vervolgens de gestalte krijgen van een aanklacht” [The lament therefore can take the form of a accusation.], 300. 73  He often contrasts this eschatological spirituality and worship with contemporary forms of spirituality seeking comfort (geborgenheid), Christian morality and personal salvation, Recht, 296–299—these three counter-positions return again and again in his critical analyses. 74  Van de Beek, Recht, 303. 75  Recht, 304–320. “Heil is niet goedkoop. Dat geldt des te sterker in de gerechtigheid die Christus in de wereld heeft geopenbaard . . . Het betekend het verlies van onze religieuse identiteit en van onze morele gelijk, zelfs het morele gelijk tegen de onderdrukkers,” 306. 76  Chapter 10, “De eschatologiese maaltijd,” Recht, 322–392. 77  Within all the temptations of passing time (de aanvechtingen van de geschiedenis), there are brief moments of comfort by the Spirit, but he does not often mention or discuss them extensively, Recht, 320.

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them, a worshipping community. Together, they celebrate the meal which is the reality of his coming in the most real sense imaginable.78 The meal is seeing God.79 The meal is communion with Christ.80 The meal is the coming and presence of the kingdom.81 In the meal, believers are busy with their only meaningful activity, remembering and contemplating Jesus’ death and therefore their own death.82 There, and only there, they are truly at home. Here the radical and far-reaching implications of his theologia crucis, his Christology of the Lord who rules from the tree, his eschatology which is completely and utterly Christological and his pneumatology of judgment are fijinally revealed. The meal is not eschatological in the sense— for example developed by Wainwright in his ground-breaking ecumenical and liturgical Eucharist and Eschatology83—that it points toward the

78  “Dan kan men zelfs zeggen dat de viering van de eucharistie de realiteit van zijn komen is”, Recht, 329. He spends long, informed and very informative discussions on the traditional questions regarding the Lord’s Supper, namely sacrifijice and real presence, dealing with material from Bible and church history. Developing his own position, he does not hesitate to use the term ontology positively. “Veel belangrijker is dat (gelovigen) behoren aan Christus en in zijn gemeenschap eeuwig leven hebben. Dat is de realiteit van hun bestaan. Die realiteit is zo sterk dat het de ontologie van de christenen is. Zij zijn werkelijk nieuwe schepping. Ze zijn het lichaam van de Heer. Dat is wezenlijker dan hun aardse bestaan en de sterfelijkheid van hun lichaam. Ontologisch zijn ze een nieuwe schepping, ook al is hun uiterlijk nog aards. Zo is het brood ontologisch lichaam van Christus en de wijn essentieel zijn bloed, ook al is het uiterlijk en de chemie helemaal aards,” [Ontologically (Christians) are a new creation, even though their outer existence is still earthly. Thus the bread is ontologically the body of Christ and the wine is essentially his blood, even though outwardly and chemically they are fully of the earth.], Recht, 379. 79  “Daarom is de eucharistie het schouwen van God,” Recht, 330. 80  “In het Nieuwe Testament . . . ontstaat een beeld van een viering waarin christenen de gemeenschap met Christus vieren . . . Na kruis en opstanding is de vervulling van het koninkrijk realiteit geworden. Dat wordt gevierd in de maaltijden van Jezus met zijn discipelen en voortgezet in het avondmaal. Er is geen reden om angstig ‘Nog niet’ te roepen als we het messiaanse maal mogen vieren . . . Het avondmaal zelf is de viering van de komst van het koninkrijk. Dat dat in deze wereld in de gestalte van het kruis is, behoort bij de aard van het koninkrijk van wie de Koning in deze wereld de gekruisigde is,” Recht, 330–331. 81  “De realiteit van de eucharistie heeft uiteindelijk alles te maken met de realiteit van de opstanding. Het gaat om dit concrete bestaan dat eeuwig leven ontvangt. Binne de aardse context heeft dat de gestalte van het kruis, net als het koningschap van Christus in deze wereld de gestalte van het kruis heeft,” Recht, 379. 82  Recht, 339–343. “De praxis van het christelijke leven is dood te zijn voor de wereld. Het gedenken van de dood is zo de kern van de overgave aan Christus,” 340. 83  Geofffrey Wainwright, Eucharist and Eschatology (London: Epworth, 1978). “Wainwright brengt veel meer de eschatologie ter sprake als focus van de eucharistie. De focus blijft echter vanuit de eucharistie naar de eschatologie. De eucharistie is de voorsmaak van het koninkrijk. [The focal aim from eucharist toward eschatology remains, however. The eucharist is the forestaste of the kingdom] Het is een werkelijke smaak, maar nog niet de

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eschatos, but rather in the sense that it is already the future. A “conversion of thought” is necessary, to reverse the fundamental misunderstanding of the eucharist that dominated church history since Constantine. For the early church, eucharist is eschatology.84 There, believers worship Jesus Kyrios—and that is all there is. Why? Why does he do theology in this way? Those of us who studied with Willie Jonker show our respect by listening as carefully as possible, trying to understand and appreciate the truth of what moves and motivates others—before responding with criticism and objections. This may differ from Van de Beek’s own tradition,85 but in this spirit I offfer my deep appreciation in the form of this attempt simply to try to understand him, by rephrasing his argument. From afar, that is obviously much more diffijicult than for those who know him and his spiritual and scholarly context well, and the dangers of misunderstanding loom large. In the hope that this extremely brief abstract presents the structures of his Christology relatively fairly, the fijirst step of interpretation is therefore to try to understand why—why does he think like this? Why did he develop such an increasingly radical Christology? He is obviously serious and honest enough as a thinker to change his own mind and to acknowledge that publicly, even to rethink (and repudiate) his own earlier work.86 He is willing to face serious criticism from many friends

volheid waarheen de gehele schepping op weg is . . . terwijl het in de vroege kerk omgekeerd is: de gemeente vierd in de eucharistie hun bestaan als nieuwe schepping waardoor ze vreemdelingen op aarde zijn. Men zou kunnen zeggen: voor hen is eucharistie eschatologie” [. . . while in the early church it was the opposite: the congregation celebrated in the eucharist the new existence that made them strangers om earth. For them, one could say, the eucharist is eschatology], Recht, 376. 84  Recht, 376. 85  When he honours his teacher Hendrikus Berkhof, he also considers such a possibility ”Men kan natuurlijk proberen eerst zo congeniaal mogelijk bij de gesprekspartner te gaan staan en dan begrijpend met hem verder te gaan,” but then decides “Dat is niet de aard van gesprekken zoals Berkhof die gewend is. Hij houdt meer van het scherpe debat,” “Antiochië en Alexandrië in Leiden,” in the volume for Berkhof which he edited with others, Waar is God in deze tijd? [Where is God in these times?] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1994, 11–28), 12. From my own perspective and therefore from a further distance, with much more danger of misunderstanding, I would fijirst like to hear—congenially!—whether I at all understand his intentions, before any debate can begin. 86  He is particularly critical of De Adem van God, but also of some of his other earlier contributions and opinions, for example several ideas about God and time in Schepping.

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and colleagues on several positions that obviously seem unpopular today. He even considers the fact that some may regard him as narrow-minded and one-sided (geborneerd), although he obviously does not see himself that way.87 In short, there is hardly any critical question that will surprise him, that he is not aware of and did not consider—and still he develops and defends his radical positions, almost like a modern day Alexamenos, in spite of being mocked by the popular spirit. So, why? One could of course provide a theological answer. He feels touched by Irenaeus, Athanasius and Luther, and when their intensity—their commitment to causes, regardless of all costs: the martyr, the exile on the run, the outlaw under a papal ban—overwhelms him, he catches his breath in the company of Augustine and Calvin, he explains.88 One could probably understand his whole work as a consistent elaboration of Luther’s theologia crucis.89 Is it perhaps justifijied to conjecture that he is attempting to continue the Reformation, to do what Luther and Calvin failed to do, because it was too difffijicult to turn back the clock after a thousand years of church and political history?90

87  He often returns to this question of being geborneerd, narrow-minded. In his critical and counter-cultural inaugural lecture at the Vrije Universiteit, Ontmaskering (Zoetermeer; Meinema, 2001), he says that some people may perhaps compare him to “de geborneerde ketterjager Ephinanius,” but that he does not feel himself like this at all. He fijinds no pleasure in fijighting heresies. “Veel liever ben ik bezig met de positieve zijde van het geloof: uiteenzetten wie God is, de Almachtige die als de Gekruisigde zich ontfermt over de hopelozen van deze wereld. Het liefst ben ik bezig om na te denken over Gods nabijheid bij hen die niemand meer hebben die hun nabij is, vanwege hun lijden of vanwege hun schuld. Dan voel ik me thuis en daarin ben ik gelukkig,” 82. Elsewhere he argues that those who have replaced the eschatological presence of Christ with something else— like Rome, with too much ecclesiology, or Protestantism, with too much anthroplogy—are onuitstaanbaar geborneerd, onuitstaanbaar saai, unbearingly boring. Doing theology like his own, however, thinking about Christ and his work, is extremely joyous. “Denken over Christus en zijn werk, en in dit perspectief nadenken over de wereld, is echter uitermate vreugdevol. Theologie als christologie is werkelijk een ‘fröhliche Wissenschaft’,” [Theology as christology is truly a ‘joyful scholarly enterprise.’]. Recht, 213–214. Again elsewhere, all those who seek for some form of vivifijicatio, some meaningful continuity in this world and in history, are trapped in a geborneerd christendom, Recht, 230. 88  Van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios, 11. To all three applies the adage, Here I stand, I can do no other, he adds. 89  “It is the only God we know, Luther says, and ‘any other God than the one who died for me, I will not accept.’ This is folly to the world. It is a nonsensical confession, and even more foolish to stake your own theology on it. It is a position that will be assailed. That goes for me as well as for Luther,” Jesus Kyrios, 15–16. 90  One often gets the impression that he is sympathetic towards the Reformation, particularly Luther, but feels that they did not or could not go far enough, and that he sees himself as attempting to continue where they failed. See for example Vicissitudes, where he claims to represent “the classic undercurrent of the Reformation,” 86.

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A theological answer, however, would have to reach back further. After all, the Reformation was an attempt to return ad fontes, to the early church, with its faith and its Scriptures. He very deliberately sees himself in the Alexandrian tradition, in the theological footsteps of Athanasius—“(T)he Alexandrian theology becomes a theology for people who have nothing to lose. It is a theology for people whose entire life is one long Good Friday. It is the theology of people who have lost every illusion that tomorrow will be a better day.”91 In general, he takes the theological debates of the early church extremely seriously—increasingly so, much more than the debates from recent centuries, including his own time. His discussion partners are often those of the early church. This makes his work so interesting, since he recasts the history of the ancient church almost as present-day discussions, often passionately choosing sides himself, as if we still live as their contemporaries. He is full of critism of Western theology,92 of historical developments since Constantine, of major theological shifts occurring already with Augustine. Still, why does he make these theological choices? What motivates these theological decisions? Most probably, there are contextual factors that will help to explain the theological positions. Who are, for example, his real opponents? Against whom, against which kind of theology is he making his contributions? From afar, it is hard to know these answers. His immediate colleagues will be in better positions to provide these answers. From his own comments, one may perhaps conclude very generally that he rejects all forms of gnosticism, both in the early church and in its many diffferent forms in the history of the church and today. More specifijically, however, he seems to be deeply skeptical of the work of many of his contemporaries, colleagues, even teachers. Many of them represent what he calls ecumenical Protestantism—which is clearly on the wrong track, according to him. Why? Perhaps because they so uncritically bought into the Enlightenment project? Favourite terms from these critical encounters are history, progress, structures, social and political involvement, and morality. Even theologians with whom he obviously has—or had—much in common receive these critical descriptions,

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 Jesus Kyrios, 33.  However, “ ‛western’ and ‘eastern’ are not strictly bound to geography. One can live in the West and have an Alexandrian theology. Luther is a perfect example of this,” Jesus Kyrios, 83—and Van de Beek, one could add. See also his “Antiochië en Alexandrië in Leiden.” 92

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including Berkhof and the later Barth. He can after all paint a picture of theological developments since the 19th century entitled Van Verlichting tot Verduistering.93 Still, on an even deeper level, one could therefore ask why he is so critical of this Enlightenment spirit? Are there perhaps biographical factors at work, personal and existential aspects, spiritual convictions, experiential considerations, even character traits? He indeed sometimes describes his own negative experiences of the contemporary spirit of the time.94 He critically analyses the development of Reformed faith and theology in the Netherlands.95 He movingly describes his disillusionment with Europe.96 He speaks in painful ways about the contemporary church.97 He acknowledges his own spiritual questions in gripping ways.98 The titles of many

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 Van de Beek, Van Verlichting tot Verduistering (Kampen: Kok, 1999).  He can also describe the deepest motives behind his own theology in such terms. “Modern culture is ultimately atheistic. Therefore, Christians must be continuously conscious of being foreigners in the world. In a strict concentration on Christology, I try to develop a new theologia crucis. Motives from the patristic era, when Christianity was also a minority, from the early Reformation and from the ‘Ethische’ theology of the early twentieth century come together in this theological design. The world is not the kingdom of providence and blessing, and a Christian is not a gentleman farmer. We live in a world with immense sufffering, oppression and violence. Into that world Christ has come. The people around his cross are not for the most part noble and wise, but lost human beings, who are not able to straighten out the tangle of sufffering and guilt. Their only hope is Jesus Christ, and Him crucifijied. The church is a community of resident aliens,” Vicissitudes, 85–86. Very remarkable, at least in his own formulations, is the way that he describes his theology as a response to changed social realities (in the Netherlands). Christians have to accept atheism and secularism and then develop a theology, with motives from the tradition, that can respond to this social reality. 95  “A Christianized Society according to Reformed Principles,” Vicissitudes, 69–86. 96  See e.g. the radical critique on Western culture in Jesus Kyrios, 233–236. Is the conversion of white, Western men possible? He would like to say yes, but he really cannot. “In Western culture the problem remains that Christ does not fijit in . . . When I confess Christ as Lord, I confess that even a European can be saved. Although, whenever I think about this concrete Dutch person that I am—not only as an individual but along with the entire context in which I live and work—I don’t know whether that is true any longer; or I hope I don’t know for sure. For I do know this: Western people have killed God long ago and their churches are nothing but cemeteries. I would like to escape from the West but I can not do so, not only because I love my home, but also because I am a Westerner and take that with me everywhere,” 235–236. 97  With sadness and disappointment, he describes churches (de meerderheid van het hedendaagse christendom) as “graveyards of Christianity” and “lifeless monuments,” Recht, 316. 98  Writing on “our situation” on the threshold of the millennium, he uses fijive words to describe this time: oppression, guilt, anger, sufffering, and superfijiciality, Jesus Kyrios, 267–276—and from his other works, one could easily flesh out these characteristics. Writing on Berkhof, he describes himself as far less optimistic and much sadder, and adds that sadness does not necessarily makes one wiser, “Antiochië en Alexandrië in Leiden,” 94

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of his works point to his own struggles, with sufffering and God’s seeming absence.99 So, why? He obviously knows and shares these deeply spiritual questions himself. It is not without reason that he talks so often about a sense of crisis. It is nothing less than a spiritual crisis. It is the crisis of the possibility to talk about God at all100—without anything that happens, without anything visible, without any presence. He sometimes speaks movingly about the “slijtage van de tijd”—which one should not underestimate.101 Perhaps one could argue that his theology is much more contextual than it may seem, that it is secular, postmodern theology par excellence, expressing the Zeitgeist more radical and consistent than most?102 Perhaps it is even fair to claim—in spite of his own critique—that his theology is as much about sense-making (of complete senselessness) than any of the projects he rejects?

15. Writing on Kuitert, he describes his own motivation: “Ik richt me daarbij allereerst op mensen die geen enkele hoop meer hebben dat het morgen beter wordt in de wereld. Onder hen reken ik mij zelf. Het gaat om de God die ons gebroken bestaan wil delen tot het einde,” “De verre of de nabije God,” 22. 99  Waarom? Over Lijden, Schuld en God (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1984), Nogmaals, Waarom? (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1986), Tussen Traditie en Vervreemding; Over Kerk en Christenzijn in een Veranderende Cultuur (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1985), Waar is God in deze Tijd (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1994), Psalmen in de nacht (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1994), Rechtvaardiger dan God: gedachten bij het boek Job (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1992), Ontmaskering. Christelijk Geloof en Cultuur (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001), Hier beneden is het niet (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2005), Is God terug? (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010). 100  He has always been fascinated by the question whether and how we can talk about God. He calls his series of dogmatic studies Speaking of God. He also called his farewell speech at the Vrije Universiteit Spreken over God (September 2010) and in this speech he returned to the same theme taken up in his inaugural lecture already in 1982 in Leiden. 101  Recht, 317. 102  Van de Beek would not necessarily see this as criticism, on the contrary. He is very sensitive to the fact that all theologians think and work within their own particular, social and historical, contexts, in fact, some of his most exciting and instructive analyses are precisely based on this insight, and on the ways in which he explains their theological, even doctrinal positions in terms of their particular times and struggles. Why would it then have to be diffferent with him? In fact, on many occasions he makes clear how much he is aware of the situational nature of his own work, for example in his essay for Berkhof: “In de jaren zestig was het tij mee voor een Antiocheens type theologie, thans lijken de Alexandrijnen de wind mee te hebben. Maar het tij kan snel keren. De onmodieuze theologie van Athanasius zou thans bijna modieus kunnen zijn om morgen wellicht met Cyrillus en Van de Beek als ketter te worden veroordeeld. Wat je probeerd als theoloog is om in je eigen situatie te zeggen wat je in verantwoordelijkheid denkt te moeten zeggen over God en zijn relatie met ons. Dat doen twee mensen verschillend, dat doe je zelfs zelf telkens weer verschillend—en dat is maar goed ook. Want wij moeten ons niet verbeelden God met onze theologie te kunnen uitbeelden” [For we must not imagine that we can make an image of God with our theology], 25–26.

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It seems as if the most passionate, emotional sections in his whole Christology are those where he writes about his experiences in South Africa,103 as if all these years the ultimate existential question for him still remains the why?—question of his early study on sufffering. In the face of senseless violence and injustice, why? Does God not do justice? And if God does justice, then why is our world, our history, the way it is? How can the hopeless then live without hope? For South African theologians, these are indeed real questions. Even if his answers raise new questions for us, we thank and honour Bram van de Beek for his passion, his project and his presence, as one of us, as also our friend in our Faculty.

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 Recht, especially 281–287.

BIBLIOGRAPHY PROF. DR. ABRAHAM VAN DE BEEK 1. Theology Academic publications Academic monographies – De menselijke persoon van Christus. Een onderzoek aangaande de gedachte van de anhypostasie van de menselijke natuur van Christus [The human person of Christ. An inquiry to the concept of the anhypostasia of the human nature of Christ]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1980. 259 pp. [diss. Leiden]. – Waarom? Over lijden, schuld en God [Why? On sufffering, Guilt, and God]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1984. 354 pp. – Tussen traditie en vervreemding. Over kerk en christenzijn in een veranderende cultuur [In between tradition and estrangement. On being Christian and church in a changing culture]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1985. 144 pp. – De adem van God. De Heilige Geest in kerk en kosmos [The breath of God. The Holy Spirit in Church and cosmos]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1987. 334 pp. – Waarom? Over lijden, schuld en God [Why? On sufffering, Guilt, and God]. Second, extended edition. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1989. 360 pp. – Why? On sufffering, guilt, and God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. 349 pp. [transl. of Waarom? Over lijden schuld en God]. – Wonderen en wonderverhalen [Miracles and miracle stories]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1991. 276 pp. – Rechtvaardiger dan God. Gedachten bij het boek Job [More righteous than God. Reflections on the book Job]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1992. 97 pp. – Van verlichting tot verduistering? Theologen vanaf 1800 [From Enlightenment to endarkment? Theologians since 1800]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1993. 157 pp. – Mujizat dan cerita-cerita mujizat. Jakarta: Gunung Mulia, 1996. 327 pp. [Indonesian translation of Miracles and miracle stories].

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bibliography abraham van de beek – Schepping. De wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid [Creation. The world as a prelude to eternity]. Baarn: Callenbach, 1996. 459 pp. – Jezus Kurios. De christologie als hart van de theologie [ Jesus Kyrios. Christology as the heart of theology]. Kampen: Kok, 1998. 320 pp. – Gespannen liefde. Over de relatie van God en mens [Tensefull love. On the relation of God and human beings]. Kampen: Kok, 2000. 139 pp. – De kring om de Messias. Israël als volk van de lijdende Heer [The circle around the Messiah. Israel as the people of the sufffering Lord]. Zoetemeer: Meinema, 2002. 453 pp. – Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology, Studies in Reformed Theology, Supplement 1, Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002. 344 pp. [Translation of Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie]. – Kristus, Pusat Kehidupan Kita [Christ, The Center of our Life]. Jakarta: Gunung Mulia, 2003. 125 pp. – De kring om de Messias. Israël als volk van de lijdende Heer [The circle around the Messiah. Israel as the people of the sufffering Lord]. Second edition. Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2004. 453 pp. – Te veel gevraagd? Israël in het Christelijke denken [Too requiring? Israel in Christian Thought]. Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2004. 124 pp. – Hier beneden is het niet. Christelijke toekomstverwachting [It is not below. Future Expectations]. Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2005. 126 pp. – Toeval of schepping? Scheppingstheologie in de context van het moderne denken. [Coincidence or creation? Theology of creation in the context of modern thought] Kampen: Kok, 2005. 259 pp. – Van Kant tot Kuitert. De belangrijkste theologen uit de 19e en 20e eeuw. [From Kant to Kuitert. De main theologians from the 19th and the 20th century] Kampen: Kok, 2006. 256 pp. – God doet recht: Eschatologie als christologie. [God acts righteous: Eschatology as christology] Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008. 444 pp. – Van Kant tot Kuitert en verder. De belangrijkste theologen sinds 1800. [From Kant to Kuitert and beyond. De main theologians since 1800] Kampen: Kok, 2009. 294 pp. – Lichaam en Geest van Christus. De theologie van de Kerk en de Heilige Geest. Zoetermeer: Meinema, forthcoming.

(Inaugural) Lectures – God kennen—met God leven. Een pleidooi voor een bevindelijk-pneumatologische fundering van kerk en theologie [Knowing God—living with God. A plea for an existential and pneumatological foundation of

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church and theology]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1982. [Inaugural Lecture Leiden] – Ontmaskering. Christelijk geloof en cultuur [Unmasking. Christian faith and culture], Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001. 99 pp. [Inaugural Lecture VU University] – Het beloofde land: wie betaalt het cadeau? Israël tussen de volken van het Midden-Oosten [Promised land: who pays for the present? Israel amidst the people of the Near-East]. Mededelingen KNAW, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks 65, 8. Amsterdam, 2002. 26 pp. – Spreken over God. Over de bron van theologische kennis. Rede uitgesproken ter gelegenheid van zijn afscheid als hoogleraar Symboliek aan de Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid van de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam op 16 september 2010. [Speaking of God: About the source of theological knowledge. Farewell lecture as Professor at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam] Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2010. 11 pp. Academic articles In English: 1994 – ‘To be created precedes our creativity’, in: Louvain Studies 19, 34–45. 1996 – ‘A Life in Freedom’, in: A. van Egmond & D. van Keulen (eds), Freedom. Studies in Reformed Theology 1, 11–24. 1998 – ‘Origen as a Theologian of the Will’, in: Reformed Review 51, 242–254. – ‘Anhypostasia—Alexandrian Christology compared and discussed’, in: Studies in Reformed Theology 2, 11–32. – ‘Being Convinced: On the Foundations of the Christian Canon’, in: A. van der Kooij & K. van der Toorn, Canonization & Decanonization. Papers presented to the International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR) held at Leiden 9–10 January 1997. Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 331–350. 1999 – ‘The Church as Communion with Christ’, in: A. van Egmond & D. van Keulen (eds), Church and Ministry. Studies in Reformed Theology 3, 23–37.

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2000 – ‘Is God Detectable?’, in: H.A. Krop, A.L. Molendijk & H. de Vries (eds), Post-Theism: Reframing the Judeo-Christian Tradition. Leuven: Peeters, 2000, 209–221. – ‘The Lord of Glory Crucifijied’, in: Journal of Religion and Theology in Namibia 2, 54–71. 2001 – ‘The Kingdom of God: a Call for Worship and Obedience’, in: A. van Egmond & D. van Keulen (eds), Christian Hope in Context. Studies in Reformed Theology 4, 86–103. 2002 – ‘The Dis-unity of the Reformed Churches’, in: L. Vischer (ed.), The Church in Reformed Perspective: A European Reflection. John Knox Series 13. Geneva: John Knox Centre, 109–133. – ‘Marcionitism in To Diognetus: a plea for Christians at the expense of Jews’, in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 43, 593–605. – ‘In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek—or both Jew and Greek?’, in: E.A.J.G Van der Borght a.o. (eds), Faith and Ethnicity I. Studies in Reformed Theology 6, 21–36. – ‘God’s Omnipotence and Human Freedom’, in: D.F. Tolmie (ed.), Essentialia et Hodierna, oblata P.C. Potgieter. Acta Theologica 2002. Supplementum 3, 169–186. 2003 – ‘The Identity and Mission of the Church’, in: Journal of Systematic Theology 2, 31–50. – ‘Resurrection and corporality’, in: Journal of Systematic Theology 2, 69–88. – ‘Calvinism as an ascetic movement’, in: W.M. Alston & M. Welker (eds), Reformed Theology: Identity and Ecumenicity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 205–222. – ‘Scriptural Authority and the Incomprehensibility of God’, in: Verbum et Ecclesia 24, 204–215. 2004 – ‘Christians in the clash of civilizations’, in: M.E. Brinkman & D. van Keulen (eds), Christian Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Studies in Reformed Theology 8, 97–109. – ‘Christology in the Netherlands’, in: REC Focus 4 (2), 2004, 33–49. – ‘A Christianized Society according to Reformed Principles: theological developments in the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century’, in: G. Harinck & D. van Keulen (eds),

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Vicissitudes of Reformed Theology in the Twentieth Century. Studies in Reformed Theology 9, 69–86. – ‘The Church as our Mother: New Perspectives on the Apostolic Succession’, in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 45, 714–727. 2005 – ‘Religion without ulterior motive’, in: HTS Teologiese Studies 61 (1–2), 517–529. – ‘No violence in God? No violence in us?’, in: D. van Keulen & M.E. Brinkman (eds), Christian Faith and Violence. Studies in Reformed Theology 10, 12–27. – Mission among the Jews, in: Acta Theologica 25 (2), 160–176. 2006 – ‘Beyond the unfounded optimism of equity’, in: E. Van der Borght (ed.), Afffijirming and Living with Diffferences. Studies in Reformed Theology 12, 147–160. – ‘Credimus in Ecclesiam’, in: S. Füsti-Molnár (ed.), Genius Loci. Sárospataki Református Teológiai Akadémia. Sárospatak, 2006, 17–39. – ‘A new size of theology for a new South Africa’, in: G. Schutte & H. Wels (eds), The Vrije Universiteit and South Africa. From 1880 to the present and towards the future: images, practice and policies. Poem Proceedings I, Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2006, 65–68. – ‘Onward Christian Soldiers! Christians in the Army’, in: Acta Theologica 26(1), 159–179. – ‘Religion without ulterior motive’, in: E.A.J.G. Van der Borght (ed.), Religion without Ulterior Motive. Studies in Reformed Theology 13, 7–20. – ‘Reformed Theology in the 21th Century: a Call for Reformation’, in: International Journal of Christian Studies 1, 1, 35–68. 2007 – ‘The Person of Jesus’, in: G. Glas a.o. (eds), Hearing Visions and Seeing Voices. Psychological Aspects of Biblical Concepts and Personalities. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007, 169–181. – ‘Every foreign land is their native country, and every land of birth is a land of strangers’, in: Journal of Reformed Theology 1, 178–194. – ‘Theology as an Academic Discipline’, in: International Journal of Christian Studies 3, 47–78. 2008 – ‘A Shared Story for Reconciliation—Which Story? Conclusive Reflections’, in: Journal of Reformed Theology 2 (1), 17–27.

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– ‘Jesus and the Church as Vulnerable Strangers’, in: Journal of Reformed Theology 2 (2008) 3, 255–65. – ‘Christian Identity is Identity in Christ’, in: E. Van der Borght (ed.), Christian Identity. Studies in Reformed Theology 16, 17–30. – ‘Church and Politics’, in: Református Szemle 2008, 669–676. – ‘Christianity and Culture in the 21th Century’, in: Korea Reformed Theology 24, 293–310. 2009 – ‘The Land’, in: E. Van der Borght (ed.), ‘The God-given Land’: Religious Perspectives on Land Reform in South Africa. SAVUSA POEM Proceedings 2. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 45–52. – ‘Infant baptism debated in the Early Church’, in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 50, 254–267. – ‘One God and one Church: Considerations on the Unity of the Church from the Perspective of Biblical Theology’, in: E. Van der Borght (ed.), The Unity of the Church: A Theological State of the Art and Beyond. Studies in Reformed Theology 18, 249–66. – ‘Heretical Baptism in Debate’, in: In die Skriflig, 43(3), 537–561. – ‘Which conversion and whose conversion?’, in: Tydskrif vir Christelike Wetenskap/Journal for Christian Scholarship. Spesiale uitgawe 1/ 1 st Special edition 2009, 1–12. – [Review of] Douglas J. Davies, ‘A Theology of Death’, in: Journal of Reformed Theology 3(3), 367–368. 2010 – ‘To be free, religion should keep herself free’, in: A. van de Beek, E.A.J.G. Van der Borght, B.P. Vermeulen (eds), Freedom of Religion. Studies in Reformed Theology 19, 215–234. – ‘Challenges and Dilemmas’, in: A. van de Beek, E.A.J.G. Van der Borght, B.P. Vermeulen (eds), Freedom of Religion. Studies in Reformed Theology 19, 251–260. – ‘Cyprian on Baptism’, in: H. Bakker, P.J.J. van Geest, H. van Loon (eds), Cyprian of Carthage: Studies in His Life, Language and Thought. Late Antique History and Religion 3. Leuven-Paris-Walpole: Peeters, 143–164. – ‘The relevance of Athanasius in Dogmatics’, in: P.J.J. van Geest (ed.), Athanasius of Alexandria. New Perspectives on his Theology and Asceticism. Leiden: Brill, 2010 (= Church History and Religious Culture 90. Special Issue), 287–309. – ‘A Divided Church?—A Blasphemy!’, in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 51, 164–175.

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In Hungarian: 1999 – ‘Teremtés és krisztológia’ [Creation and Christology], in: Református Szemle 1999, 185–194. 2009 – Egyház és nemzet [Church and Nation], in: Református Szemle 2009, 327–335. In Korean: 2003 – ‘Han inkanyi oorilul mannada’ [A Person who meets us], in: Ministry and Theology 4, 220–225. – ‘Ansem: choongjokul tonghan hwahae. 1’ [Anselm: Reconciliation through Satisfaction 1], in: Ministry and Theology 5, 223–229. – ‘Ansem: choongjokul tonghan hwahae. 2’ [Anselm: Reconciliation through Satisfaction. 2], in: Ministry and Theology 6, 220–224. – ‘Goyhoiei Jungchesungkwa Samyung’ [The Identity and Mission of the Church], in: Journal of Systematic Theology 2, 12–30. – ‘Buhwalkwa Shinchesung’ [Resurrection and corporality], in: Journal of Systematic Theology 2, 51–68. – ‘Yesunim: ooridului chutbunjjae sunjo (Kwakurobute hyunjaero)’ [Jesus: Our fijirst Ancestor (From the past to the present)], in: Ministry and Theology 8, 204–215. 2004 – ‘Hananimun yuksaye chamyuhasinunka’ [Does God intervene in history?], in: Ministry and Theology 2, 204–213. – ‘Shibjaka apaesueu kongdongchae: ooriue konankwa hamkehashimuro oorilul daesinhasin yesunim’ [Community in front of the cross: Jesus who bears us by sharing our sufffering], in: Ministry and Theology 3, 212–223. – ‘Joonimeu oori kuseju’ [The Lord is our Saviour], in: Ministry and Theology 4, 202–209. In Indonesian: 1998 – ‘Seseorang masuk ke dalam kebudajaan kita’ [A Person comes into our culture], in: Mata Rantai 16.38, 39–46.

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In Dutch: 1982 – God met ons. [God with us]. Reaction on the report on the authority of the Scripture by the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands on behalf of the Board of the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. (together with C.P. van Andel, H. Berkhof, E. Flesseman-Van Leer and J. Hoek). 1983 – ‘Preëxistentie en postexistentie van Christus’ [Pre-existence and postexistence of Christ], in: Schrift 83, 181–186. – ‘Christus en Adam’ [Christ and Adam], in: In de waagschaal 12, 517–523. – ‘Geloof en ervaring. Een theologische benadering’ [Faith and experience in theological perspective], in: Wapenveld 33 (6), 199–205. 1984 – ‘Een vaderloze maatschappij’ [A fatherless society], in: Wapenveld 34 (3), 84–93. – ‘Wat is theologie?’ [What is theology?] in: Kerk en theologie 35, 212–222. 1986 – ‘Zonde’ [Sin] in: J. Firet (ed.), Zeven weerbarstige woorden van het christendom [Seven stubborn words in christian faith]. Delft: Meinema, 44–60. – ‘Om de levende God’ [For the sake of the living God], in: J.P. Heering e.a (eds), Nogmaals: Waarom? Artikelen over en reakties op het gelijknamige boek van Dr. A. van de Beek over lijden, schuld en God [Once again: Why? Articles and reactions on the book Why? of Dr. A. van de Beek on sufffering, guilt and God]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 105–123. – ‘De theologische faculteit tussen kerk en staat’ [The faculty of theology between church and state], in: In de Waagschaal 15, 420–424. – ‘De theologische faculteit tussen kerk en staat’ [The faculty of theology between church and state], in: In de Waagschaal 15, 461–464. 1987 – ‘Wie waagt die is. Paul Tillich en de moed om te zijn’ [Who dares, exists. Paul Tillich and the courage to be], in: In de Waagschaal 16 (1), 4–9. – ‘Godsbeeld en geschiedenis’, in: Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 87 (2), 67–83.

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– ‘Christelijk geloof en wetenschap’ [Christian faith and science], in: Kerk en theologie 37, 199–215. – ‘Apologie of verkondiging?’ [Apology or proclamation?], in: Kontekstueel 2/3, 9–12. – ‘Het efffect van Gods deugden in de geschiedenis’ [The efffect of God’s virtues in history], in: J. Veenhof e.a. (eds), De godsleer en de huidige West-Europese cultuur. Crisis en herleving van het godsgeloof [The doctrine of God in present West-European culture. Crisis and revival of the faith in God]. Kampen: Kok, 34–47. 1988 – ‘Het is niet goed dat de mens alleen zij’ [It is not good for the human being to be alone], in: Wapenveld 38, 174–183. – ‘De toegang tot het Heilig Avondmaal’ [The permission to the Lord’s Supper] in: Kontekstueel 3 (3), 16–23. – ‘Hermeneutiek van het kerkrecht’ [Hermeneutics of canonical law], in: W. van ’t Spijker, L.C. van Drimmelen (eds), Inleiding tot de studie van het kerkrecht [Introduction to the study of Canonical Law]. Kampen: Kok, 59–74. 1989 – ‘Descriptief en prescriptief in de ecologische discussie’ [Descriptive and prescriptive in the ecological discussion], in: Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 43, 21–30. – ‘De mens in de informatiemaatschappij’ [Human beings in the information society], in: In de Waagschaal 31, 551–557. – ‘Een christelijke visie’ [A Christian opinion], in: Computers naar ons beeld? [Computers in our image]. Report of the symposium at the Technische Universiteit Delft, 13 oktober 1988, 37–44. – ‘Klein—maar niet benauwd’ [Small—but not anxious], in: J.P. Heering e.a (eds), De kerk verbouwen. Dingemans’ ecclesiologie kritisch bekeken [Reconstructing the church. A critical debate on Dingemans’ ecclesiology]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 84–98. – ‘Rust is ver te zoeken’ [Rest is far away], in: H. van Erkelens (ed.), Van utopie naar werkelijkheid. Gebrokenheid van de schepping: Kernvragen van het conciliair proces [From utopia to reality. Brokenness of creation: core themes of the conciliarian process]. Kampen: Kok, 42–52. 1990 – ‘Plantensystematiek en theologie—analogieën en verschillen’ [Plant systematics and theology—analogies and diffferences], in: Kerk en Theologie 41, 26–40.

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1991 – ‘Fundamentalisme: excentriciteit en soliditeit van de geloofsgrond’ [Fundamentalism; excentricity and solidity of the base of faith], in: P. Boele van Hensbroek e.a. (eds), Naar de letter. Beschouwingen over fundamentalisme [According to the letter. Reflections on fundamentalism]. Utrecht: Grafijiet, 17–40. – ‘Iets anders te zeggen’ [Saying something diffferent], in: J. Spinder (ed.), Huiswerk voor de kerk [Homework for the church]. Hoevelaken: SGO, 25–36. – ‘De opstanding van Jezus en het Koninkrijk van God’ [The resurrection of Jesus and the kingdom of God], in: J.P. Heering e.a (eds), Jezus’ visie op Zichzelf. In discussie met De Jonge’s christologie [Jesus’ view on Himself. De Jonge’s christology debate]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 128–141. 1992 – ‘Ambtstheologie en salarisstructuur van de predikant’ [Theology of ministry and salary structure of pastors], in: Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 1991, 195–205. – ‘Het Nederlandse van de Nederlandse theologie’ [The Dutch of Dutch theology], in: Het hemd is nader dan de rok. Zes voordrachten over het eigene van de Nederlandse cultuur [Near is my shirt, but nearer is my skin. Six lectures on the characteristic features of Dutch culture]. Publikaties van de commissie Geesteswetenschappen van de Kon. Ned. Akad. van Wetenschappen 1. Assen-Maastricht, 1992, 108–120. – ‘Vervlogen hoop en een nieuwe start’ [Evaporated hope and a new beginning], in: Th. Klein (ed.), Veertig jaar orde in de Hervormde Kerk? Schetsen rond de hervormde kerkorde [Forty years of order in the Dutch Reformed Church? Essays on the Reformed church law]. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 70–106. – ‘Die Leere vom Wort Gottes’ [The emptiness of the Word of God], in: A. van de Beek e.a. (eds), De zucht naar vrijheid. Ter Schegget doordacht [Longing for freedom. Thinking on Ter Schegget]. Baarn: Ten Have, 96–108. – ‘Een jachtverbod op de snark’ [Snark hunting forbidden], in: W.B. Drees (ed.), Theologie en natuurwetenschap: op zoek naar een snark? [Theology and the Sciences: searching for a snark?]. Kampen: Kok, 19–28. – ‘De mens het beeld van God—of omgekeerd’ [Human beings in the image of God—or the other way around?], in: Kerk en Theologie 43, 310–321.

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1993 – ‘Hedendaagse schuld in bijbels-theologisch perspectief ’ [Present day guilt in biblical-theological perspective], in: Kontekstueel 8 (2), 7–19. – ‘Christelijke hoop in apocalyptisch perspectief’ [Christian hope in apocalyptic perspective], in: G. de Schrijver, R. Michiels, L. Boeve (eds), Hoop op opstanding [Hoping for resurrection]. Feestbundel bij het emeritaat van Herman-Emiel Mertens. Leuven-Amersfoort: Acco, 159–173. 1994 – ‘De hervormde kerk: administratieve eenheid of gemeenschap der heiligen?’ [The Dutch Reformed Church: administrative unit or community of saints?’ in: Th. Klein (red.), Geloven we in dezelfde God? Het gesprek in de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk [Do we believe in the same God? The discussion in the Dutch Reformed Church], Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 11–44. – ‘Secularisatie in het hoger onderwijs’ [Secularization in higher education], in: Wapenveld 44, 7–15. – ‘Een boek met prenten en verhalen’ [A book of pictures and stories], in: E. Dekker e.a. (ed.), Openbaring en werkelijkheid. Systematische theologie tussen empirische werkelijkheid en christelijke zinervaring [Revelation and reality. Systematic theology between empirical reality and Christian experience of meaning]. ’s-Gravenhage: Boekencentrum, 27–42. – ‘Antiochië en Alexandrië in Leiden’ [Antiochia and Alexandria in Leiden], in: J.P. Heering e.a (eds), Waar is God in deze tijd? De betekenis van de geschiedenis in de theologie van Dr. H. Berkhof [Where is God in this time? The meaning of history in the theology of Dr. H. Berkhof ]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 11–28. 1995 – ‘Christus, de Schrift en de cultuur’ [Christ, the Scripture, and culture], in: Moluks Theologisch Beraad, Piring Natzar. De waarde en betekenis van een oud Moluks religieus symbool in een geseculariseerde westerse wereld [Piring Natzar. The value and meaning of a traditional Moluccan religious symbol in a secularizised world]. Driebergen: MTB, 69–78. – ‘Wat hebt gij dat gij niet hebt ontvangen’ [What do you have that you did not receive?], in: A. van de Beek (ed.), Lichtgeraakt. Wetenschapsbeoefenaren over de relatie van hun gelovig christen-zijn en hun werk [Touchy and touched by light. Scientists about the relation of their work and being a Christian]. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 124–148.

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– ‘Mens van God op aarde’ [A human being of God dwelling on the earth], in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 36, 570–582. 1996 – ‘Zoon van God. Over de zijnswijze van Israël, Jezus en de christenen’ [Son of God. On the nature of Israel, Jesus and the Christians], in: Kerk en Theologie 47, 2–21. – ‘Eén in Christus’ [One in Christ], in: Lustrumbundel CSFR, Het brood dat wij breken. Om de eenheid van een verdeelde kerk [The bread we break. For the sake of the unity of a divided church]. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 44–58. – ‘Spiritualiteit, een must voor theologen’ [Spirituality: a must for theologians], in: Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 96, 3–10. – ‘Geschapen in Gods beeld’ [Created in the image of God], in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 37, 115–125. – ‘Cultuur uit angst geboren’ [Culture born from anxiety], in: Wijsgerig perspectief 36, 176–182. 1997 – ‘Feiten en belijden: over de betekenis van de geschiedenis voor godsdienstige teksten’ [Facts and confession: about the meaning of history in religious texts], in: Dieslezingen 1997: Prijswinnaars en Laureaten [Dies lectures 1997: Gainers of awards and laureates]. Leiden: LUF, 32–40. – ‘De defijinitie en de naam’ [The defijinition and the name] in: E. Dekker e.a. (eds), Solidair en solide: in gesprek met H.W. de Knijfff [Solidary and solide: in debate with H.W. de Knijfff ]. Kampen: Kok, 29–42. – ‘God schiep geen God’ [God did not create a god], in: Kerk en Theologie 48, 204–214. – [with J.K. Timmermans], ‘De vroomheid van de Blumhardts’ [The piety of the Blumhardts] in: Wapenveld 47, 125–131. – ‘Met de Geest is het allemaal begonnen’ [It all began with the Spirit], in: J. Beumer & A. Houtepen (eds), Kerk voor de nieuwe eeuw. Verkenningen in kerk, cultuur en oecumene [Church for the new century. Investigations in church, culture and ecumene]. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 23–32. 1998 – ‘Een persoon komt in onze cultuur’ [A person comes into our culture’, in: Mata Rantai 16.38, 38–45. – ‘Wiens canon accepteren wij? Een protestantse visie op de fundering van de bijbel als canon’ [Whose canon do we accept? A Protestant vision on the foundation of the Bible as canon] in: K.D. Jenner en

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G.A. Wiegers (eds), Heilig boek en religieus gezag. Ontstaan en functioneren van canonieke tradities [Holy book and religious authority. Origin and function of canonical traditions]. Kampen: Kok, 45–68. 1999 – ‘Kerk en macht’ [Church and power], in: J. Haers a.o. (eds), Volk van God en gemeenschap van gelovigen. Pleidooien voor een zorgzame kerkopbouw [People of God and community of believers. Pleas for a caring church structure] [in honour of Prof. Dr. R. Michiels at his retirement from the Catholic University of Louvain]. Averbode: Averbode, 499–511. – ‘Een eeuw theologie’ [A century theology], in: Wapenveld 49, 89–94. – ‘Gereformeerden: terug naar de Waarheid’, in: Wapenveld 49, 193–199. – ‘De verre of de nabije God’ [The far or the near God], in: H.M. Kuitert, A. van de Beek a.o., Jezus: bij hoog en bij laag [ Jesus: high and low by all that ’s holy]. Kampen: Kok, 13–24. 2000 – ‘Tijd voor bezinning: taak en toekomst van de systematische theologie’ [Time for reflection; task and future of systematic theology], in: De toekomst van de theologie in Nederland [The future of theology in the Netherlands]. Verkenningen van de KNAW 3, 29–44. – ‘God werd waarachtig mens’ [God became truly human], in: Theologia Reformata 43, 92–100. 2001 – ‘Kerkorde en kerkelijk beleid’ [Church law and church politics], in: W. Balke, A. van de Beek & J.D.Th. Wassenaar (eds), De kerk op orde? Vijftg jaar hervormd leven met de kerkorde van 1951 [The church well ordered? Fifty years Reformed life with the church law of 1951]. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 276–292. – ‘Niet afdoen van deze woorden. Een antwoord aan Barend Kamphuis’ [Do not take away words from these words. An answer to Barend Kamphuis], in: Radix 27, 51–64. – ‘Voorzienigheid en Verantwoordelijkheid’ [Providence and responsibility], in: In die Skriflig 35, 443–459. – ‘Denken vanuit Christus en dien gekruisigd’ [Thinking from the perspective of Christ and Him crucifijied], in: Kerk en Theologie 53, 19–36. – ‘De binnenkerkelijke situatie in Nederland’ [The situation in the churches in the Netherlands]’, in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 42, 416–428.

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2002 – ‘Theologen van de twintigste eeuw en de christologie’ [Theologians of the twentieth century and christology], in: Acta Theologica 22, 165–194. – ‘De kerk in een seculiere maatschappij’ [Church in a secular society], in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 43, 140–151. 2003 – ‘Onherleidbaar, ongescheiden’ [Irreducible, unseparated], in: Interdisciplinariteit: mode of noodzaak? Raad voor Geesteswetenschappen KNAW. Amsterdam, 57–70. – ‘Elia en Judas’ [Elijah and Judas], in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 44, 171–184. – ‘De Here is één’, in: Theologia Reformata 46, 197–209. 2004 – ‘De zonde van Jerobeam: Over de eenheid van de kerk’ [The sin of Jerobeam: about the unity of the church], in: A. van de Beek & W.M. van Laar (eds), Sola Gratia. Bron voor de Reformatie en uitdaging voor nu. Opstellen aangeboden aan Dr. W. Balke. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 180–198. – ‘Een aantrekkelijke kerk’ [An attractive church], in: Wapenveld 54 (4), 17–27. 2005 – ‘Mijn God, mag ik niet eens mijzelf behouden? Berkhof en Boer over de ware Godskennis’ [My God, can I not even preserve myself ? Berkhof and Boer about true knowledge of God], in: Wapenveld 55 (5), 19–25. – ‘Om niet en vergelding’, in: Schrift 218, 39–43. 2006 – ‘De spitsen maken het spel. De Gereformeerde Bond en de cultuur’ [The strikers make the game. The Reformed League and culture], in: P.J. Vergunst (ed.), Uw naam geef eer. Honderd jaar Gereformeerde Bond. 1906–2006. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 145–164. – [Review of] Alan Sell, Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Evangelism. Theological Themes and Thinkers 1550–2000, in: Kerk en Theologie 57, 89. – ‘Theologie in een plurale samenleving’ [Theology in a plural society], in: K. van Bekkum & G. Harinck (eds), 125 jaar Vrije Universiteit, Bavinck lezingen 2005, Nederlands Dagblad, Barneveld 2005, 59–70. 2007 – ‘Christelijk geloof als ware kennis’ [Christian faith as true knowledge], in: C. Dekker, R. van Woudenberg en G. Van den Brink (eds),

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Omhoog kijken in platland: over geloven in de wetenschap. Kampen: Ten Have, 23–35. – ‘Cultuur en katholiciteit: Vasthouden wat overal, altijd en door allen geleerd is’ [Culture and catholicity: hang onto what was taught everywhere, always and by everyone], in: J. Kronenburg & R. de Reuver (eds), Wij zijn ook katholiek: over protestantse Katholiciteit. Heerenveen: Protestantse Pers, 189–204. 2008 – ‘Waren Judas en Thomas gnostici?’ [Were Jude and Thomas gnostici?], in: Teologiese Studies HTS 64 (1), 395–413. – ‘Verantwoordelijk voor de liturgie’ [Responsible for liturgy], in: Tijdschrift voor Liturgie 92 (4), 204–211. – ‘Wetenschap als gave voor een leven in het geloof ’ [Science as a gift for a life in faith]’ in: C. Dekker (red.), Geleerd en gelovig: 22 wetenschappers over hun leven, werk en God. Kampen: Ten Have, 132–149. – ‘Elk vreemd land is hun vaderland en elk land is hun vreemd’ [Every foreign country is their home country, and every country is foreign], in: J.T. van den Berg (ed.), Religie in de samenleving: een botsing van ideologieën. Heerenveen: Jongbloed, 11–34. – ‘Verantwoordelijk voor de liturgie’ [Responsible for liturgy], in: Tijdschrift voor Liturgie 92(4), 204–211. 2009 – ‘De theologie van Van Ruler’ [The theology of van Ruler], in: D. van Keulen, G. Harinck, G. van den Brink (eds), Men moet telkens opnieuw de reuzenzwaai aan de rekstok maken: Verder met Van Ruler. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 13–22. 2010 – ‘Tentbewoners’ [Tent-dwellers], in: A. van de Beek, W. Visscher, B.J. Spruyt, Burgerschap en cultuurparticipatie. Heerenveen: Groen, 7–38. – ‘Diognetus: waar is een christen thuis?’ [Diognetus: where is a Christian at home?], in: J. Hoek (ed.), Vers christendom: Getuigenissen uit de vroege kerk. Heerenveen: Groen, 14–43. Secondary Publications Books, Independent Publications – Eén mens maakt het verschil. [One human being makes the diffference] Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2007, 168 pp. – Is God terug? Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010, 120 pp.

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Articles in Popular Reference Books, Magazines and Newspapers 1970 – ‘Natuurbehoud’, in: Op weg 10/1, 14–18. 1973 – Heiligheid. Bijbelstudie HGJB 334. – Gerechtigheid. Bijbelstudie HGJB 335. – Barmhartigheid. Bijbelstudie HGJB 336. – ‘Zingt den Here’, in: Op weg 12/11, 240–241. 1974 – ‘Mijn naam is Heere’, in: De waarheidsvriend [30 mei], 261. 1983. – ‘Pastoraat en geldwerving’, in: De kerkvoogdij 648 [juni 1983], 6274– 6278 [discussie in 649 [juli–aug]. – ‘Preekschetsen over Handelingen’, in: Postille 1983/84, 108–116. – ‘Als ambtsdragers niet aan tafel gaan’, in: Woord en Dienst 32, 5 (1983), 77. 1984 – Hervormde papieren uit Den Haag verdwijnen meestal in prullenbak’, in: Trouw [6 maart], 2. 1985 – ‘Niet getekend, toch tegen de raketten’, in: Trouw [29 oktober], 2. 1986 – ‘Godsbeelden’, in: Voorwerk nr. 2, december [adapted by H.G. Heusinkveld], 3–12. – ‘Bevrijding’, in: Omkeer 4 (1), 8–11. – ‘Komt er nog wat van? Vraaggesprek met H.P. de Roest’, in: In de Waagschaal 15 (1), 15–21. – ‘Godservaring. 1’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 97 (4867/68), 4–5. – ‘Godservaring. 2’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 97 (4869/70), 4–5. – ‘God en het lijden’, in: Soteria 3 (2 juni), 1–6. – ‘Theologie studeren in deze tijd’, in: Ruimzicht 111 (2), 8–10. – ‘Het laatste der dagen (1)’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 30 (10 oktober), 9. 1987 – ‘Godsbeeld’, in: Reagerenderwijs, 12 (mei–juni), 8. – ‘Preekschetsen over I Samuël’, in: Postille 1986/87, 137–145. – ‘Bijbels mensbeeld in beweging. Vraaggesprek met Dinus Grotenhuis en Hugo Visser’, in: Ons AVO-blad 67 (19), 303–305 [= NGL-weekblad 20 (17), 451–453]. – ‘Belijden in de leegte 1’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 98 (4928), 3–4.

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‘Belijden in de leegte 2’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 98 (4929), 4–5. ‘Belijden in de leegte 3’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 98 (4930), 7.

‘School en mensbeeld (1)’, in: Ons Avo-blad 68 (5), 74–79. ‘School en mensbeeld (2)’, in: Ons Avo-blad 68 (6), 97–100. ‘Christelijk agrarisch onderwijs moet kiezen voor brede algemene ACO’s (verslag conferentie 12 december 1987)’, in: Land- en tuinbouwonderwijs 30 (4), 24. – ‘Calvijn en de verkiezing’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 100 (1988/89), 4: 7; 5: 2. – ‘The revival of the unfijittest’, in: In de Waagschaal 17 (9), 280–281. – ‘Een menselijke kerst’, in: Ons Avo-blad 68 (19), 317v. 1989 – ‘Geloofsoverdracht’, in: Bulletin voor godsdienstonderwijs en catechese 17 (6), 23–28. – ‘Schaalvergroting en christelijk voortgezet onderwijs: Wat stelt die C voor?’, in: Ons Avo-blad 69 (18), 288–291. – ‘Kinderen en avondmaal. Een reaktie op reakties’, in: Kontekstueel 3 (6), 28–30. – ‘New Age’, in: In de Waagschaal 13, 393–398. 1990 – ‘Legerpredikant in de jaren negentig’, in: Over de drempel. De protestantse geestelijke verzorging in de negentiger jaren, 19–21. – ‘De Heer is waarlijk opgestaan—maar hoe?’, in: Trouw, 13 april, 17. – ‘Meer aandacht voor het Joodse Nieuwe Testament’, in: ‘Godgeleerd, wat gedaan?’ in: Trouw, 21 augustus, 8. – ‘Grondmotieven Christelijk onderwijs’, in: Verslag van de conferentie Identiteitsontwikkeling in het Christelijk Hoger Beroepsonderwijs, 21 en 22 juni 1990, 11–23. – ‘Preekschetsen over Handelingen’, in: Postille 90/91, 104–108. 1991 – ‘Een christen opleiden voor het bedrijfsleven’, in: In beweging. De christelijke school belicht. Bundel opstellen over her christelijk onderwijs aangeboden aan Klaas de Jong Ozn., voorzitter Unie ‘School en Evangelie’ 1982–1991. Amsterdam-Voorburg, 28–33. – ‘Christelijke identiteit in de concrete lessituatie’, in: Waardenontwikkeling in de christelijke school. Themanummer Bulletin Unie ‘School en Evangelie’ 20 (1), 11–19. – ‘Het wonder zet aan het denken’, in: Hervormd Nederland 47/38, 16–19.

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1992 – ‘De synode, zij vergadert voort’, in: Woord en Dienst 41 (2), 23, 24. – ‘Een open flexibele kerkelijke organisatie’, in: Woord en Dienst 41 (7), 145. – ‘Structuur Hervormde Kerk moet op z’n kop’ [interview in Trouw 1 februari], 11. – ‘Ontwerp-kerkorde: meer hoop dan vrees’, in: Woord en Dienst 41 (20, 24 oktober), 405–406. – ‘Lang leve Dordt! De Dordse leerregels en de moderne mens’, in: Woord en Dienst 41 (24), 513–514. – ‘Al of niet bevrijdend’, in: Rondom het Woord 34(4) 1992, 34–38. 1993 – ‘Jeugd in een veranderende cultuur’, in: W.P. van Kempen (ed.), Leerlingbegeleiding, Verslag bezinningsdag Guido de Breslyceum. Rotterdam, 3–9 – ‘Beelden van Jezus in de theologie’, in: Rondom het Woord 35 (2), 63–67. – ‘Uit het onweer geen antwoord’, in: Hervormd Nederland, 10 juli, 35. – ‘Bloeiende bomen’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 104 (35/36), 5. – ‘De heilige braam’, in: Hervormd Weekblad 104 (45/46), 5. – ‘Niet elke hoogleraar hoeft een “Bogerman” te zijn’, in: Woord en Dienst, 42 (15), 318. – ‘Symposium over normen in het Europese onderwijs van morgen’, in: INKOM 17 (6), 16–18 [report]. – ‘Inspiratie, een licht dat straalt’, in: Bulletin, 22 (1), 20–23 [interview with Dinus Grotenhuis]. – ‘Een fabel met een dubbele bodem. Woordkeus’, in: Hervormd Nederland 49 (41), 23. – ‘De ene mens’, in: De Reformatorische School 21 (10), 34. – ‘De openbare universiteit en God’, in: NRC 13–12–1993. – ‘Alles op zijn tijd’, in: Hervormd Nederland 49 (1993), 23. 1994 – ‘God als rechter’, in: Hervormd Nederland 50 (16), 25. – ‘Het nut van preken’, in: Hervormd Nederland 50 (29), 21. – ‘Waar doe je het allemaal voor’, in: Hervormd Nederland 50 (36), 23. – ‘Vanuit een ander bootje op de gereformeerde stroom’, in: 50 jaar Driestar in een veranderende samenleving. Kampen: De GrootGoudriaan, 184–193. – ‘Heil is dichtbij. Zelf werken aan het vrederijk’, in: Centraal Weekblad 42 (47), 3.

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‘De verwekkingen van Jezus’, in: Hervormd Nederland 50 (51/52), 42. ‘Het land aan gene zijde’, in: Centraal Weekblad 42 (51–52), 3.

‘Onbevangen spreken over de dood’, in: Friesch Dagblad 15 april, 18. ‘Geen redden aan’, in: Hervormd Nederland 51 (30/31), 34. ‘Lijden is niet eerlijk’, in: De open deur. Oekumenisch maandblad (9), 7–9. – ‘Soms doorzie je onverwacht het leven’, in: Hervormd Nederland 51 (44), 24. – ‘Ervaring met God en ervaring met de wereld’, in: Kontekstueel 10 (1), 31–34. 1996 – ‘Spiritualiteit’, in: Koornmarkt 1, 2 (1), 4–5. – ‘De Zoon en de andere kinderen’, in: Hervormd Nederland 52 (1), 24. – ‘Onze Vader’, in: Hervormd Nederland 52 (10), 21. – ‘God in déze wereld’, in: In de Waagschaal 25 (16), 487–491. 1997 – ‘God zal ons nooit laten vallen’, in: Rondom het Woord 39 (1), 55–59. – ‘Preekschetsen’, in: Postille 1997–1998, 212–217. 1998 – ‘Congres van systematisch theologen in Stellenbosch’, in: Kerk en Theologie 48(4), 349–350. – ‘Kerk-wees in dié wêreld: hoe gemaak?’, in: Die kerkbode, 19 juni, 12. – ‘Geloof in wonderen is onzin’, in: Centraal Weekblad 46 (42), 13. – ‘Karl Barth is niet radicaal genoeg: een ambivalente relatie met een groot theoloog’, in: Friesch Dagblad, 3 oktober, 19. – ‘Gods participatie in ons lijden’, in: Koers 30 oktober, 20–23 [interview with Emerson Vermaat]. – ‘Verenigende Kerk in Nederland’, in: Woord en Dienst 47 (23), 4. – ‘Je bent gek als je gelooft’, in: Zwolsche Courant, 12 december, 33 [Interview with Jenno Sijtsma]. 1999 – ‘Schepping als geschiedenis van de verzoening’, in: Zandschrift: Contactblad voor het justitiepastoraat 4 (1), 28–37. 2000 – ‘Doet God dwalen? Bijbelstudie over Jesaja 63:17’, in: Kontekstueel 15 (1), 4–6. – ‘Waarschuwingen niet gericht tegen ongelovigen maar gelovigen: Het gaat niet om de hel maar om Gods oordeel’ in: Friesch Dagblad 93 (98), 26 april, 2.

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– ‘God wil serieus genomen worden: Het gaat niet om de hel maar om Gods oordeel’, in: Friesch Dagblad 93 (102), 1 mei, 2. – ‘De belijdenis in het leven van de kerk’, in: I. Koole (ed.), De belijdenis een staf om te gaan of een blok aan het been. Gouda: Driestar, 1–7. 2001 – [Discussion with Wim Dekker], in: M. Wisse, ‘De tijdgeest een uitdaging?’ in: Visie (3), 1. – ‘Moet er nog gedoopt worden?’, in: Kontekstueel 15 (4), 15–20. – ‘Uit liefde lijden aan de cultuur’, in: Nederlands Dagblad, 24 oktober, 7. – ‘Christelijke identiteit in een godloze cultuur’, in: Koers 3 (10), 34–39 [Interview with Tjerk de Reus]. – ‘Geloven met de kerk van alle eeuwen: wat gereformeerden én evangelischen gemeen hebben met rooms-katholieken, meer dan met elkaar’, in: Nederlands Dagblad 9 november, 2 [interview with Wim Houtman]. – ‘Boodschap van de kerk: Jezus is Heer’, in: visie 3 (3), 7 [interview with Dirk van Schepen]. – ‘Tegen de schijn, het respectloze en het grote geld’, in: Trouw, 16 oktober, 14 [interview with Cocky van Liempt]. – ‘Christelijk geloof moet moderne cultuur durven ontmaskeren’, in: Centraal Weekblad 49 (38), 8–9. – ‘Theologie voor een minderheidskerk. Een gekerstende samenleving naar reformatorisch beginsel’, in: Centraal Weekblad 49 (46), 13. – ‘De tranen der onderdrukten’, in: Centraal Weekblad 49 (47), 13. – ‘Heidenen en Joden een in Christus’, in: Kruispunt, Veenendaal, 25.4.2001. 2002 – ‘De dominee: manager of verkondiger?’, in: Kerkbeheer 2 (2), 59–61. – ‘Ergernis en pluraliteit’, in: Kabats 2001/2002 (2), 31–33. 2003 – ‘Waaruit kent gij uw ellende? Wereldverbeteraar moet weet hebben van Gods heiligheid’, in: Reformatorisch Dagblad, 19 september, 13. – ‘Beste Tzvi.’ Open brief aan Tzvi Marx’, in: Woord en Dienst 52 (22), 14–15. – ‘We kunnen schuld niet wegredeneren’, in: Friesch Dagblad 1 februari, 2 [= Het goede leven 2 (6)], 17. – ‘De dingen die gezien worden zijn tijdelijk’, in: Israël en de Kerk 2 (3), 26–31. – ‘Niet zoeken naar een God die bij mij past: antwoord op open brief van dr Van der Linden’, in: Centraal Weekblad 51 (26), 12.

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– ‘Israël behoedt ons voor simpel christendom’, in: Koers 5 (4), 40–43 [interview with Tjerk de Reus]. 2004 – ‘De wereld als verbeelding’, in: Theologisch Debat 1, 4–13. – ‘De kerk wil te veel relevant zijn’, in: Nederlands Dagblad, 28 augustus, 12. – ‘De toerist in de kerk’, in: Nederlands Dagblad 20 december, 13 [Dubbelinterview with Alisdair McGrath by Aldwin Geluk and Wim Houtman]. 2005 – ‘Om niet en vergelding’, in: Schrift 218, 39–43. – ‘Aanpassen aan de cultuur is een doodlopende weg’, in: Centraal Weekblad, 3 juni, 7–8. 2006 – ‘Christelijke identiteit in een niet christelijke cultuur’, in: L.N. Rottier (ed.), Literatuur en Cultuur. Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan, 9–17. – ‘Niemand kan ten hemel opstijgen. Spanning tussen goedheid en almacht’, in: De Waarheidsvriend (19), 9. – ‘Gaan wij bepalen wat kwaad is? De boetseerder en het leem’, in: De Waarheidsvriend (21), 9. – ‘Gods Woord zegt wie wij zijn’, in: De Waarheidsvriend (23), 9. – ‘Geen zich ontvouwende wijsheid’, in: De Waarheidsvriend (25), 11. – ‘God niet in onze wereld trekken’, in: De Waarheidsvriend (27), 11. – ‘Christus als de Alpha en de Omega’, in: De Waarheidsvriend (29), 11. 2007 – ‘Gristelijke bio-ethiek’, in: Bionieuws 17/2 (3 februari), 12. – ‘Van de Beek over China: Contact jaagt theologen uit hun hok’, in: Volzin 6 (7), 6 april. – ‘Hier beneden is het niet(s)’, [Interview in Fundamenteel 14 (3)], 5–18. – ‘Gelovige theologiebeoefening maakt diep wetenschappelijk’, in: Herademing 15, 42–46. – ‘Mensen verknoeien hun macht’, in: IN » contact 200 (2), 22–25 [interview with Elco van Burg]. – ‘De heiligheid van de Naam’, in: M. de Blois, R. van den Poll, R. van Woudenberg (eds), Vloeken als een Hollander: Godslastering: religieuze, juridische en culturele aspecten. Amsterdam: Buijten Schipperhein-Motief, Amsterdam/Veenendaal: Bond tegen het Vloeken, 141–149.

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– ‘Christen voelt zich fundamenteel vreemdeling op aarde’ in Centraal Weekblad 55/47, 23 november 2007: 8–9. – ‘Blij met een beetje evenwicht’, in: Wapenveld 57 (4), 22–28 [interview]. – ‘Hier beneden is het niet(s)’, in: Fundamenteel 14 (3), 5–18 [interview]. – In de leer van de kerk gaat godheid van Jezus boven alles’, in: Trouw, 16 november, 9. – ‘Een constantijns China?’, in: Wereld en Zending (4), 82v. 2008 – ‘Landbelofte is voorbij’, in: De Waarheidsvriend, 24 april, 6v. – ‘Een bisschop is niet los verkrijgbaar’, in: Ouderlingenblad 85 (984), 10–14. – [Interview door Piet Koenes over God doet recht], in: Horizon 16 (17), 26–28. – [Interview door Piet Koenes over God doet recht], in: De Bron 9 (8), 21–28. – ‘De canon van Gods daden’, in: Kontekstueel 22 (4), 15–18. – ‘Wetenschap als gave voor een leven in het geloof ’, in: C. Dekker (ed.), Geleerd en gelovig: 22 wetenschappers over hun leven, werk en God. Kampen: Ten Have, 132–149. 2009 – ‘Inburgeren voor het rijk in de hemel.’ [Interview with Wim Scheltens en Koos Posthumus], in: Woord en Dienst 58 (12), 8–11. – ‘De man en zijn boek’, in: Pro ministerio 38 (1), 6–9. – ‘Toch een baptistische theologie?’, in: T. van der Leer (ed.), Zo zijn onze manieren! In gesprek over gemeentetheologie. Baptistica Reeks. Barneveld: Unie van Baptisten Gemeenten, 53–58. – ‘Geen martelende duivels, maar gerechtigheid van God’, in: M. van Veelen & C. Dekker (eds), Hete hangijzers. Antwoorden op 17 kritische vragen aan het christelijk geloof. Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn Motief, 159–170. – ‘Is het christelijk geloof slecht voor de natuur?’, in: Tussenruimte, Tijdschrift voor interculturele theologie 2009 (3), 23–31. – ‘Vroege kerk groeide in stilte. Laten christenen anno 2009 leren van christelijke minderheid in 209’, [interview in Reformatorisch Dagblad, 8 augustus], 13. 2010 – ‘In gesprek met Erik Borgman’, in: Radix 36 (2), 131–138. – ‘Thuisgeraakt inde wereld’, in: Terdege 27 (15), 34–39. – ‘Kerk mag moeite kosten’, in: De Waarheidsvriend 98 (21), 16–17.

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2011 – ‘Wat is “kerk”en waar vind je die?’, in: Kontekstueel 25(5), 13–17. 2. Botanics Academic Monography – Die Brombeeren des geldrischen Distriktes innerhalb der Flora der Niederlande [The brambles of the geldrian district of the flora of the Netherlands] Utrecht: Botanisch Instituut, 1974. [diss. Utrecht]. (Academic) Articles 1967 – [with: Floristenclub Gelderse Vallei], ‘Legeradventieven’ [Adventive plants by the army], in: Gorteria 3, 130–131. 1971 – Floristenclub Gelderse Vallei, ‘Neofijieten van Midden-Nederland’ (Neophytes in the Central Netherlands), in: Gorteria 5, 136–138. – [with F.M. Muller and S.E. de Jongh], ‘Het belang van de bramen voor floristiek en vegetatiekunde in Nederland’ (The importance of brambles for the study of flora and vegetation), in: Gorteria 5, 267. – [with S. E. de Jongh] Overzicht der Nederlandse bramen I [Review of the Brambles in the Netherlands], Leiden. – ‘Halofyten op onverwachte plaatsen’ [Halofytes at unexpected places], in: Jaarboek Koninklijke Nederlandse Botanische Vereniging 1971. 1972 – [Assistance to S.E. de Jongh] Overzicht der Nederlandse bramen IIa (Review of the Brambles in the Netherlands), Leiden. 1973 – [with S.E. de Jongh and F.M. Muller], Overzicht der Nederlandse bramen IIb [Review of the Brambles in the Netherlands], Leiden. 1977 – ‘Twee nieuwe Rubus-ondersoorten’ [Two new subspecies of Rubus], in: Gorteria 8, 124–126. – ‘Rubus L.’ in: Heukels-Van Ooststroom, Flora van Nederland, 19e ed., Groningen: Wolters-Noordhofff, 323–333. 1978 – ‘Rubus en de standaardlijst’ [Rubus and the standard list], in: Gorteria 9, 1–6.

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– ‘Bramen in Zuid-Limburg’ [Brambles in South-Limburg], in: Gorteria 9, 80–88. – ‘Bramen rond Arnhem’ [Brambles around Arnhem], in: Gorteria 9, 137–141. 1979 – ‘Taxonomie en nomenclatuur van de koebraam’ [Taxonomy and nomenclatrure of the Koebraam], in: Gorteria 9, 204–208. – ‘Rubus promachonicus Beek—een nieuwe naam voor R. lejeunei Weihe’ [Rubus promachonicus Beek—a new name for R. lejeunei Weihe], in: Gorteria 9, 281–283. 1980 – ‘Batologische notities 1’ [Batological notes], in: Gorteria 10, 14–24. 1981 – ‘Batologische notities 2. Nieuwe gegevens over Rubus L.’ [Batological notes. New data on Rubus L.], in: Gorteria 10, 147–150. – De flora van enkele kreken in de Biesbosch [The flora of some creeks in the Biesbosch], Tilburg: SBB. 1984 – ‘Bramen determineren en verzamelen’ [Identifying and collecting brambles], in: Natuurhistorisch maandblad 73, 115–119. – ‘Batologische notities 3. Nieuwe gegevens over Rubus L.’ [Batological notes. New data on Rubus L.], in: Gorteria 12, 56–61. 1986 – [with R.J. Bijlsma and F.M. Muller], ‘Rubus aurora—een nieuwe braam uit het IJsseldal’ [Rubus aurora—a new bramble from the IJsselvalley], in: Gorteria 13, 38–40. 1988 – ‘Batologische notities 4. Nieuwe gegevens over Rubus L.’ [Batological notes. New data on Rubus L.], in: Gorteria 14, 19–23. 1990 – [with K. Meijer], ‘Nieuwe bramen uit het Drentse district’ [New brambles from the Drenthe district], in: Gorteria 16, 93–101. 1993 – ‘Een nieuwe vindplaats van Prachtschubwortel’ [A new locality of Lathraea clandestina L.], in: Gorteria 19, 102–103. 1994 – [with H.E. Weber], ‘Rubus bovinus, spec. nov., en de identiteit van R. pyramidatus P.J. Müller’ [Rubus bovinus, spec. nov., and the identity of R. pyramidatus P.J. Müller] in: Gorteria 20, 120–132.

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1997 – ‘Nieuwe soorten uit het genus Rubus L. uit de binnenduinen’ [New species of the genus Rubus from the inner dunes], in: Gorteria 23, 5–13. – ‘Brombeeren aus den östlichen Niederlanden und angrenzenden Gebieten’ [Brambles from the eastern Netherlands and neighbouring regions], in: Osnabrücker Naturwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen 23 (1997), 37–55. 1998 – ‘Nieuwe bramen uit de sectie Rubus uit het zuiden van het land’ [New brambles of the section Rubus from the south of the country], in: Gorteria 24, 19–30. 2005 – ‘Nieuwe gegevens over de sectie Rubus uit het genus Rubus L. in Nederland’ [New data on the section Rubus of the genus Rubus L. in the Netherlands], in: Gorteria 31 (3–4), 68. 2006 – [with H. Vannerom], ‘Rubus vanwinkelii, een nieuwe bramensoort uit de sectie Corylifolii Lindley’ [Rubus vanwinkelii, a new bramble species of the section Corylifolii Lindley], in: Dumortiera 89, 4–7. 2010 – [Assistance to] A. Kurtto, H.E. Weber, R. Lampinen & A.N. Senniokov, Atlas Florae Europaeae: Distribution of Vascicular Plants in Europ. Rosaceae (Rubus). Helsinki: Tiedekirja. 2011 – ‘On the Identities of Rubus nessensis and Rubus scissus (Rosaceae)’, in: New Journal of Botany 1 (1), 1–5.

PART TWO

SPEAKING OF GOD: CHRIST AND ISRAEL

STRANGER ON EARTH AND DIVINE GUEST: HUMAN AND DIVINE HOSPITALITY IN THE GOSPEL OF LUKE AND THE BOOK OF ACTS Adelbert Denaux Introduction It is an honour and a pleasure to offfer this paper to my respected colleague, Prof. dr. Bram van de Beek. In the past years he has intensively explored the theme of our being strangers and pilgrims on earth, as is shown for example in his monograph Hier beneden is het niet. Christelijke toekomstverwachting, or in his valedictory lecture in 2010.1 In our paper, we want to show that Luke has used the motif of ‘stranger on earth’ to describe Jesus, the main character of his story. The Lukan scholar Henry Cadbury has pointed to some “secular interests” of Luke, one of them being his attention to the issues of lodging, hospitality and table-fellowship.2 A striking example of this can be seen in chapter 7 of the Book of Acts, in which Stephen gives a survey of the history of the salvation that God achieved for his people. It is worthy of note how Stephen narrates this history through the help of the motif of the stranger, who lives as a guest in a foreign land. The forefathers lived as strangers in a foreign land where they received some kind of hospitality: Abraham in Haran, Joseph in Egypt, Moses in Midian. The narrative begins with Abraham, “our father,” who was called by God to leave his land, Mesopotamia, and to go to the land God would show him, namely Haran, “where you are now living’ (7:4). Abraham lived there as a stranger, because God gave him no inheritance there, “not even a foot of ground”

1  A. van de Beek, Hier beneden is het niet. Christelijke toekomstverwachting. [It is’t here below. Christian expectation of the future] (Meinema: Zoetermeer, 2005); id., Spreken over God. Rede uitgeproken ter gelegenheid van de aanvaarding van zijn afscheid als hoogleraar Symboliek aan de Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid van de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. [Speaking of God. Oration given on the occasion of the acceptance of the farewell as professor of Symbolics at the Faculty of theology of the VU University] (Vrije Universiteit: Amsterdam, 2010). 2  H.J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts (New York, 1927; London, 21961), 249–253.

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(7:5). The idea behind Abraham’s “landlessness” is that Jews live in a land that is not their own: only God is the owner of the land in which they live. Furthermore, God says to Abraham that his “descendants will be strangers in a country not their own,” “and (where) they will be enslaved and ill-treated for four hundred years” (7:6), that is, Egypt. The irony is that Jacob and his family were fijirst received hospitably in Egypt by their own brother Joseph, whom they had cast away, but who had became a ruler there. They were saved by an enemy stranger, who turned out to be their brother. In short, in this story, the Israelites are characterised as strangers in Egypt. Even though they now live in the Promised Land, they continue to live as strangers in the land, because it is the Lord’s (cp. Lev. 25:23).3 In this Promised Land, they enjoy the protection of their divine host; therefore, they should also be hospitable towards strangers: “Do not ill-treat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt” (Ex. 22:21). Hospitality What do we mean by hospitality? In common language, being hospitable means “offfering or afffording welcome and entertainment to strangers; extending a generous hospitality to guests and visitors,” and hospitality means “the act or practice of being hospitable; the reception and entertainment of guests or strangers with liberality and goodwill.”4 Hospitality normally implies offfering lodging and/or food, so that table fellowship, meals or even symposia constitute aspects of hospitality. According to Malina, in the Mediterranean world, hospitality might be defijined as “the process by means of which an outsider’s status is exchanged from stranger to guest . . . it difffers from entertaining family and friends.”5 Given the human tendency to treat outsiders as simply non-human, which eventually forms the basis for torture, racism, genocide, etc., this process is crucial: strangers are ‘received,’ or shown hospitality, instead of being eliminated whether this is a form of physical or social exclusion or expulsion. This is because every stranger is a potential enemy or hostile outside force, who might try to gain access to the ‘inside’ through subterfuge.

3  Lev 25:23: “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.” 4  The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. I (Oxford, 31973), 988. 5  B.J. Malina, “The Received View and What It Cannot Do: III John and Hospitality”, Semeia 35 (1986) 171–189 (= id., The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels [London/New York, 1996], 217–241), 181.

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By offfering hospitality, the stranger “must be transformed from being a potential threat to becoming ally.”6 Malina certainly points to an important dimension of hospitality, but his defijinition may be too narrow when he claims that receiving family and friends has nothing to do with hospitality. It is our belief that ‘hospitality’ primarily designates the benevolent and receiving attitude one takes towards ‘outsiders,’ who come to visit or who one meets along the way, i.e. persons belonging to a group other than the reference group. Given that the reference group can be understood in diffferent ways and can point to such various categories such as family, kinship, members of the household, social group, city, country, race, religion, culture, etc., accordingly, the notions of ‘outsider’ and of ‘hospitality’ can take on a more or less strict meaning. The outsider can be known or unknown, a friend, a family member or a complete stranger. He may be an invited or an unexpected guest. Moreover, even when one might speak of a possible trans-cultural law of hospitality, the code of hospitality difffers from time to time and from region to region.7 For Luke, hospitality is a key to understanding and describing reality; it is an integral part of human life; it is the way God cares for his people and Jesus deals with men and women. That this is the case is shown by the fact that many aspects of Luke’s message are explained by means of hospitality. In this article, we will describe the four main fijields of application: (1) ethics; (2) theology and Christology; (3) Church and mission and (4) eschatology. Before developing aspect 2 more extensively, we will fijirst briefly discuss the three other domains. The Ethical Dimension of True Hospitality The fijirst fijield is of an ethical nature. In Lk 14:1–24, which takes the form of a symposium, Jesus addresses a parable to both guests and hosts. Guests should take the lowest places instead of the places of honour (vv. 7–10). Hosts should not invite friends, brothers, relatives or wealthy neighbours,

6

 V.H. Matthews, “Hospitality and Hostility in Judges 4”, BTB 21 (1991) 13–21, p. 14.  Cf. J. Pitt-Stengers, “The Stranger, the Guest, and the Hostile Host: Introduction to the Study of the Laws of Hospitality”, J.G. Peristiany (ed.), Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology (Paris, 1968), 13–30; V.H. Matthews, “Hospitality and Hostility in Genesis 19 and Judges 19”, BTB 22 (1992) 3–11; and B.J. Malina, “Received View” (n. 4), 217–241. The authors all try to describe the protocol of hospitality customs in the Ancient Near East or in Mediterraean societies. Maybe the text basis on which they construct this protocol is too small. See T.R. Hobbs, “Man, Woman, and Hospitality—2 Kings 4:8–36”, BTB 23 (1993) 91–100. 7

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“lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid” (μήποτε καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀντικαλέσωσίν σε καὶ γένηται ἀνταπόδομά σοι); they should rather invite poor, crippled, lame and blind people, “because they cannot repay you” (ὅτι οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἀνταποδοῦναί σοι) (vv. 12–13). In other words, real hospitality has nothing to do with seeking honour; moreover, it does not belong to the realm of reciprocity. Jesus behaves here like a wisdom teacher (cp. Prov. 25:6–7), reminding his audience about the true nature of hospitality. This parable, which is peculiar to Luke, is one of the rare texts reflecting on the essence of hospitality. Jesus’ moral teaching concerns human behaviour and points to the ethical dimension of hospitality. His view on hospitality remarkably runs counter to common conceptions held in Greco-Roman culture.8 While receiving a guest was considered to be an honour for the host, guests were also shown honour when they were invited. The Lucan Jesus, however, rebukes guests seeking honour. Moreover, in the GrecoRoman world, hosts often offfered hospitality to someone because they had had the same positive experience or because they hoped to receive an invitation in return. In Luke, Jesus reacts against this ethics of reciprocity, just as he does in the Sermon on the plain (Lk 6:32–35).9 Jesus’ lesson to both guest and host in Lk 14:7–14 thus primarily provides ethical wisdom: it pleads for a reversal of the common human approach to hospitality. At some time, however, his lesson also contains an eschatological meaning: the motivation for this “conversion” is the attainment of a future eschatological reward for genuine hospitality (v. 14: ἀνταποδοθήσεται γάρ σοι ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει τῶν δικαίων). Hospitality as a Space for the Mission of the Early Church A second area in which the hospitality motif plays a considerable role is the reality of mission and ecclesiology.10 Luke may have thought that, because

 8  See references in A. Denaux, “The Theme of Divine Visits and Human (In)hospitality in Luke-Acts. Its Old Testament and Graeco-Roman Antecedents”, in J. Verheyden (ed.), The Unity of Luke-Acts (BETL, 142) (University Press – Peeters: Leuven, 1999), 255–279, spec. 258–260.  9  Cf. W.C. van Unnik, “Die Motivierung der Feindesliebe in Lukas VI 32–35”, NT 8 (1966) 284–300: “Lukas hat hier formell hellenisiert, aber zugleich die griechische Moral aufs schärfste kritisiert.” 10  Cf. R.J. Dillon, From Eye-Witnesses to Ministers of the Word: Tradition and Composition in Luke 24 (AnBib, 82) (Rome, 1978), 228–249; J. Koenig, New Testament Hospitality: Partnership with Strangers as Promise and Mission (Philadelphia, 1985), 85–123 (Chapter 4): “Guest and Hosts, Together in Mission (Luke)”; H. Rusche, Gastfreundschaft in der Verkündigung des Neuen Testaments und ihr Verhältnis zur Mission (Veröfffentlichungen des

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Jesus himself was a wandering prophet Messiah, his disciples must have also experienced an existence resembling wandering prophets. In the stories of the commissioning of the Twelve (Lk 9:1–6) and of the Seventy (Lk 10:1–16), the mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal (9:2) is to be fulfijilled in the context of hospitality and table fellowship. The messengers should take nothing for their journey (9:3; 10:4). This implies that, as foreign visitors, they are totally dependent on the hospitality of the towns and houses they pass through. The instructions envisage two possible responses from the side of the people addressed: either they are well received (9:4; 10:6–9), or they are refused hospitality (9:5; 10:10–11). In accordance with the way people react, the messengers either have to stay where they are (9:4; 10:7), enjoying the table fellowship offfered to them (10:7), bringing the blessings of the kingdom (peace, healings: 9:6; 10:6a,9), or they should leave the place and testify against the city (9:5; 10:10b–11). Jesus even threatens the inhospitable cities (Chorazin, Bethlehem, Capernaum) with an eschatological punishment. Their destiny will be worse than that of the citizens of Sodom. They had violated the laws of hospitality by trying to abuse the two angels of the Lord, who were the guests of Lot (Gen. 19) (Lk 10:12–15). The messengers are clearly identifijied with their commissioner, Jesus, and fijinally with God, who sent Jesus (Lk 10:16 par. Mt 10:40). Their coming is the human way God visits the cities and offfers salvation. What is done to them, is done to Jesus, even to God himself. The fijinal retribution, therefore, comes from God and is eschatological in nature. In the Book of Acts, the Early Christian mission is often performed within a network of hospitality: evangelists wandering about in Mediterranean areas receive hospitality in local churches (Acts 21:4; 10:48; 18:20; 21:7, 17; 28:14) or with persons mentioned by name (e.g. Acts 9:43; 10:6.23b–28, 32; 16:13–15, 33–34; 17:6–7; 18:1–4, 26; 21:8, 10, 16; 28:7) and prosperous Christians place their houses at the disposal of the local churches for their meetings (the so-called ’house churches’ in Acts 2:1.44– 47; 4:23, 31; 5:42; 12:12; 16:40; 20:7–8). For Luke, this feature of the early Church is not without relation to the experience of the people of God in the past. When Stephen is giving a survey of the history of the salvation God brought to his people, he links this history to the forefathers, who lived as strangers in a foreign land and received some kind of hospitality (Acts 7:2fff.). On occasion, the Apostle Paul seems to make an exception

Instituts für Missionswissenschaft der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster Westfalen, 7) (Münster, 1957).

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to the rule of hospitality in the Early Church. On his missionary journeys, he does not always make use of his right to maintenance and works for his lodging (Acts 18:3; cf. 1 Cor 9:3–6), but at other times, he enjoys the hospitality of the disciples (Acts 21:16). After his arrival in Rome, he is allowed to stay by himself, albeit under the guardianship of a soldier. For two years he lives there at his own expense. As a host, he receives people all day, testifying to the Kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus (Acts 28:16, 23, 25, 30). Hospitality a Metaphor of the Kingdom of God In Luke’s Gospel, hospitality also functions as a metaphor to describe the Kingdom of God. In the parable of the narrow door (Lk 13:22–30), the reality of the Kingdom is described as an eschatological Banquet, to which entry is not easy to achieve. The Lord Jesus will open the door for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the prophets and people coming from every corner of the earth, but the door will remain closed for Jews, who ate and drank with him, who heard his teachings but were nevertheless evildoers. In the future, the earthly Jesus will be the Lord/host who offfers or refuses hospitality and table-fellowship in the guest-room of God’s eschatological kingdom. Within the framework of the symposium we mentioned already, Jesus tells another parable about the great banquet that symbolises the Kingdom of God (Lk 14:15–24). Those who were invited fijirst make all kind of excuses, whereas the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame, and even the people wandering along the roads and lanes are compelled to enter the Master’s room. There is a similar shift from the fijirst candidates for the kingdom to those who, according to normal expectations, have no chance to enter the divine guest-room. The foregoing discussion makes clear that Luke has used the motif of hospitality in diffferent ways. The most striking usage, however, is the one related to the mission of Jesus as a whole. Luke depicts him as a stranger and a divine guest, visiting God’s people to offfer salvation, but who in the fijinal analysis is refused. We will deal with this theme more extensively in the following section. Jesus the Stranger In the last chapter of his Gospel, which describes the resurrection of the murdered Jesus, the evangelist tells the beautiful story of the two disciples

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on their way to Emmaus (Lk 24:13–25). The two disciples had followed Jesus on his journeys through Israel. Based on their experience of his behaviour, they call him “a prophet, powerful in word and deed.” They had put their hopes in him, that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. But by that time, it was the third day since Jesus had been handed over to the Roman leaders in order to be sentenced to the most shameful death one could imagine: death on a cross. Their hope had vanished. In sad disappointment, they began their return journey to the place they left in order to follow him, the village Emmaus. On their way home, they are engaged in a lively discussion when they suddenly fijind themselves accompanied by an unknown person. He asks them what they are talking about. They respond with the question: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” (Lk 24:18). Luke puts a question in the mouth of the disciples which, in the context of his story, has a very ironic efffect on his readers. The irony of the disciple’s question has at least two aspects. First, the disciples characterize the stranger as ignorant, while in the context of the story, they themselves seem to be ignorant. Cleopas and his companion, who seem “to know,” inform the ignorant stranger about the things that happened “there,” that is in Jerusalem. Luke’s irony suggests that the reality is precisely the opposite of their perception. If there is one person who is well informed about what had happened in Jerusalem it is this “stranger,” since he is the main character of the story, to which everything had happened. The truth, as suggested by Luke, is that the two disciples are ignorant indeed. They do not really see the man, who had joined them on their way to Emmaus, nor do they grasp the meaning of the events that had happened to him. In other words, their ignorance is Christological by nature. They do not know the identity of Jesus, nor do they understand the true nature of the dramatic events that put a violent end to his short prophetic career. In this, they are not diffferent from the Twelve, whose complete lack of understanding Luke notes in a threefold parallelism at the occasion of Jesus’ third prediction of the passion and resurrection (Lk 18:34): But they understood none of these things (καὶ αὐτοὶ οὐδὲν τούτων συνῆκαν) this saying was hid from them (καὶ ἦν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο κεκρυμμένον ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν), and they did not grasp what was said (καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκον τὰ λεγόμενα).

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In the narrator’s eyes, Jesus is not an unknowing stranger, but rather a stranger unknown to the disciples. The lack of knowledge is on their side, but not on his. The narrator expresses the same assessment with the image of not seeing/recognizing vs. seeing/recognizing: 24: 16: But their eyes were kept from recognizing him  (οἱ δὲ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν ἐκρατοῦντο τοῦ μὴ ἐπιγνῶναι αὐτόν). 24: 31: And their eyes were opened and they recognized him  (οἱ δὲ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν ἐκρατοῦντο τοῦ μὴ ἐπιγνῶναι αὐτόν).

In the Emmaus pericope Luke also explains how the disciples’ Christological ignorance is removed through the intervention of the stranger himself. In successive steps, he discloses his true identity: by listening attentively to their life story, by teaching them to read the Scriptures christologically, by asking them to be hospitable to the stranger, and through the breaking the bread with them. Secondly, the two disciples address Jesus as a “visitor” or “stranger.” The verb used here by Luke, παροικέω) may be translated as ‘to dwell as/to be a visitor’11 or ‘to dwell as/to be a stranger.’12 This characterization might be understood as an expression of their ignorance about Jesus’ identity, but it is, nonetheless, more accurate than they think. And this shows the depth of Luke’s irony: in their ignorance, the disciples are telling something really true about Jesus. For Luke, that Jesus is a stranger is not just a detail valid for this episode, but is an essential aspect of Jesus’ mission and identity. We will try to make this clear by looking back through the Gospel. As a cultural townsman and citizen of a world empire, Luke seems to have been sensitive to questions like: Where do you come from? Where do you stay? To whom do you belong? When he heard the story of Jesus’ life, more than the other evangelists, he was struck by the remarkable fact that Jesus was homeless! When in his own way, Luke tells the story of Jesus’ life, he portrays him as a stranger, born in a place far from his hometown (Lk 2:4) and in poor circumstances (2:7). Moreover, Jesus’ even admonishes his parents when he says: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (2:49) This already shows the child Jesus is aware that his parents’ house in Nazareth (2:39) is not his natural habitat. For Luke, this stranger is nowhere completely at home, always wandering through

11

 So NASB, NIV, NAB.  So KJV, Amplifijied Bible, Rheims NT, NRSV.

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cities and villages (Lk 8:1: “He went on through cities and villages;” 13:22: “He went on his way through towns and villages”), and dependent upon the hospitality of other people. Jesus is a man living on the borders and crossing them. It may be that Luke wants to express this idea in that enigmatic text, which has caused so much trouble to exegetes: “On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between (διήρχετο διὰ μέσον) Samaria and Galilee” (Lk 17:11). And to the people who try to keep him from leaving them, Jesus the wandering preacher answers: “I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (4:42). His prophetic freedom does not allow him to stick to one place or to identify himself with one single group. This attitude may be the reason why he is rejected by his fellow-townsmen (Lk 4:29–30) or by the Samaritans (9:53). And to a would-be follower, who declares that he will follow Jesus wherever he goes (Lk 9:57), Jesus stresses his radically homeless existence: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk 9:58). Markan texts suggesting that Jesus had a home in Capernaum (cf. Mk 2:1 “And when he turned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home [Καὶ εἰσελθὼν πάλιν εἰς Καφαρναοὺμ δι᾽ ἡμερῶν ἠκούσθη ὅτι ἐν οἴκῳ ἐστίν.]” and Mk 3:20: “Then he went home [Καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς οἶκον] and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat”) are accordingly omitted by Luke. In short, even when ‘stranger’ is not a Christological title in Luke, we can nevertheless assert that this notion aptly summarizes Luke’s narrative characterization of the main character of his Gospel “story” (διήγησιν: Lk 1:1). Jesus, Divine Guest Visiting God’s People and Offfering His Salvation The notions of ‘stranger’ and ‘hospitality’ are connected. Luke often uses the latter motif with respect to Jesus. As a wandering stranger, Jesus is dependent on the hospitality of people. Through him, God brings salvation to the city of men. When at the gate of the city Nain, Jesus brings the son of the widow to life again, the accompanying crowd praise God (καὶ ἐδόξαζον τὸν θεὸν), because “A great prophet has appeared among us” (ὅτι προφήτης μέγας ἠγέρθη ἐν ἡμῖν) and because “God has visited his people (through him)” (καὶ ὅτι ἐπεσκέψατο ὁ θεὸς τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ.) (Lk 7:16). Jesus’ “prophetic” action becomes manifest in his rising someone from the dead. The prophet appears to be a divine guest, who offfers God’s salvation, i.e. liberation from the power of death. Elsewhere, the content of the salvation Jesus will bring to the people (1:77: τοῦ δοῦναι γνῶσιν σωτηρίας) is

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qualifijied as “liberation (σωτηρίαν) from the enemies and from the hand of all who hate them” (1:71) and as “forgiveness of their sins” (1:77: ἐν ἀφέσει ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν); cp. 24:47). By some, like Zacchaeus (19:1–10), Jesus is given a warm welcome, by others, like Simon the Pharisee (7:36–50), Jesus is received with ambiguous intentions. Most of the time, however, he is not received: at his birth, there was no room for him in the inn (2:7); he was driven out of his own hometown (4:29–30), and in a Samaritan village he was not welcome (9:53). This motif of the visit of the stranger Jesus and the refusal to receive him reaches its narrative climax in the relationship between Jesus and the city of Jerusalem. As is well known, the whole dynamic of the Gospel story is focused on Jesus’ confrontation with Jerusalem. In the fijirst section of the Gospel (3:21–9:50), Jesus is a wandering preacher, having no precise geographic destination in mind. As from 9:51, this changes: Jesus fijixes his eyes very consciously on a defijinite purpose, the city of Jerusalem (καὶ αὐτὸς τὸ πρόσωπον ἐστήρισεν τοῦ πορεύεσθαι εἰς Ἰερουσαλήμ.). He never loses sight of his goal. The repeated travel notices (13:22; 17:11; 19:11, 28, 41) suggest that Jesus carries out the decision he has taken once and for all. For that reason, the section Lk 9:51–19:44 has been called the ‘Travel Narrative’. Jesus goes up to the city as God’s messenger, equipped with God’s saving power (1:68–69). He wants to offfer the city God’s peace and salvation. Nevertheless, Jerusalem has a decisive choice to make: receive or refuse the divine guest. Normally Jesus’ travel to Jerusalem should end with a royal entry, whereby the city wholeheartedly accepts Jesus’ offfer. But the citizens (19:14) and the religious leaders (19:39) refuse to receive God’s prophet and Davidic king. Only the disciples hail him as the king who comes in the name of the Lord (19:38: εὐλογημένος ὁ ἐρχόμενος, ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐν ὀνόματι κυρίου). Jerusalem has not recognized the importance of the moment of God’s ‘visitation’ through Jesus (19:44: οὐκ ἔγνως τὸν καιρὸν τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς σου.) Instead of the salvation that God was eager to offfer through Jesus, now punishment will come to the city: Jerusalem will be destroyed by the armies of the (Roman) enemy (Lk 19:43–44). In short, in his Gospel story, Luke has deployed a specifijic narrative scheme: through the stranger Jesus, God visits his people, and more specifijically, the city of God, Jerusalem. Only when the stranger Jesus is received as a welcome guest, can God offfer his salvation. To those who refuse to receive him, however, God will send his punishment. Jesus’ homelessness also points to his inner freedom. He does not let himself be bound; he does not really belong to any social or religious group (4:16–30, 42–43; 9:51–56). But there is more. Jesus’ homelessness

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has a Christological point. The fact that Jesus is at home nowhere on earth, also implicitly points to his supra-human origin. The stranger on earth is at the same time a heavenly stranger. He never is completely at home in this world. His coming into the world is depicted with the spatial image of “rising sun visiting us from on high” (1:78: ἐν οἷς ἐπισκέψεται ἡμᾶς ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους) as the fruit of the Holy Spirit “coming upon” and “overshadowing” the Virgin Mary (1:35: πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐπελεύσεται ἐπὶ σὲ καὶ δύναμις ὑψίστου ἐπισκιάσει σοι). The end of his life is equally depicted with a spatial, but inverted metaphor: Jesus prepares his “exodus” (9:31), in order to be “taken up,” through sufffering and death, in his heavenly glory (9:51; 24:50–53), where he really is at home. Hellenistic Overtones Why did Luke rewrite so thoroughly the Jesus story he found in his Markan source? One of the reasons seems to be that Luke wanted to present the Jesus story and its Christological implications to his Hellenistic readers in a more approachable and convincing way. By using the motif of a divine stranger, who visits humans, Luke touches a register that has deep resonances in the collective memory and the hearts of his Greco-Roman contemporaries. As a Hellenistic author, Luke was acquainted with the well know literary pattern in Greco-Roman literature, i.e. of gods visiting humans on earth.13 That Luke knew the motif of the divine κατάβασις in bodily or human form is clear from texts such as Lk 3:22 (“and the Holy Spirit descended [καταβῆναι] upon him in bodily form”) and in the Book of Acts. In Acts 14:8–18, Luke tells the story of Paul and Barnabas healing a cripple man in the city of Lystra. Seeing this, the crowds shout out (in Lycaonian dialect): “The gods have come down to us in human form” (οἱ θεοὶ ὁμοιωθέντες ἀνθρώποις κατέβησαν πρὸς ἡμᾶς) (v. 11). They identify Barnabas with Zeus and Paul with Hermes. Paul and Barnabas have to do everything possible to prevent the crowds, presided over by the priest of “Zeus before the City,” from offfering sacrifijice to them. A similar story is told in Acts 28:1–6. The natives of the island Malta kindly offfer hospitality to Paul and his companions after they have escaped from a shipwreck (v. 2: οἵ τε βάρβαροι παρεῖχον οὐ τὴν τυχοῦσαν φιλανθρωπίαν ἡμῖν, ἅψαντες γὰρ πυρὰν προσελάβοντο πάντας ἡμᾶς διὰ τὸν ὑετὸν τὸν ἐφεστῶτα καὶ διὰ τὸ ψῦχος.).

13

 Cf. Homer, Iliad 1,44.194–195; 4,73–88; 6,128–129; 7,17–25; 8,41–52; 11,181–184.

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When a viper bites Paul’s hand, they fijirst think he is a murderer. When they see he does not sufffer any harm, however, they change their minds and begin to say that he is a god (αὐτὸν εἶναι θεόν). These two texts (and probably also Acts 10:25–26) unmistakably show Luke’s knowledge of a wide spread feature of Greco-Roman religiosity: “the conviction that the membrane separating the realms of the human and the divine was a permeable one, with trafffijic possible in both directions. Not by accident is Ovid’s great compendium of Greco-Roman mythology called simply Metamorphoses.”14 Most commentators on Acts 14:8–18 refer to the story of Philemon and Baucis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 8:611–724, which indeed shows a striking parallel. Ovid tells a tale about Jupiter and Mercurius, the Roman counterparts of the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes, who come down in human form and seek hospitality with the poor and aged couple Philemon and Baucis. The couple kindly welcomes them in their humble cottage “in the Phrygian hills.” As a reward for their hospitality they are made priests of a temple of Jupiter. In Greco-Roman literature, there are many texts illustrating the idea of gods descending to the earth, disguised in human form and visiting mortals.15 The theme of gods visiting men and of men receiving them goes back to the beginnings of Greek literature. The two Homerian classics, which were compulsory reading in Hellenistic education, offfer several examples.16 The pattern of a “divine visit” consists of several motifs: (1) a descent (κατάβασις) or an ascension (when the gods come from Hades or out of the water), and/or a wandering; (2) a transfijiguration or a disguise of the divine; (3) an appearance of the god(dess) and/or a divine being seen through human beings; (4) the (potential) host offfers hospitality or refuses it; (5) in return, the divine guest brings salvation or disaster;

14  Cf. L.T. Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Sacra Pagina Series, 5) (Collegeville, MN, 1992), 248. He refers to some examples in Metamophoses 1: 390–779; 2: 466–495. 15  For the Greek world, see footnote 12 and J.H. Rose, “Divine Disguisings”, HTR 49 (1956) 63–72; S. Murnaghan, Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton, NJ, 1987). For the Latin world, see e.g. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1,35.213; 4,231; 7,125.642; 8,181.626; 11,203; Fasti 5,495–504; F. Bömer, P. Ovidius Naso. Metamorphosen. Kommentar. Buch VIII–IX (Heidelberg, 1977), p. 198 offfers even further parallels. For parallels in texts from the Ancient Near East, see D. Irvin, Mytharion. The Comparison of Tales from the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East (Alter Orient und Altes Testament, 32) (Kevelaer/Neukirchen/Vluyn, 1978), p. 137. Cf. S. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, 6 vols. (Copenhagen/Bloomington, IN, 1955–1958): Motif D 42 (God in guise of a mortal); and K 1811 (Gods in disguise visit mortals). 16  See e.g. Homer, Il. 3,385; 6,128–129; 13,43–45; 24,338fff.; Od. 1,105; 2,382–383.399–401; 3,13–24; 7,19–20.199–200; 17,484–487.

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(6) disappearance of the divine visitor (in a normal or an extraordinary way); an ascension into heaven (ἀνάβασις), or a descent (when the gods go back to Hades or into the water). (7) sometimes at that moment (or before the disappearance), the gods are recognized by the host. The fijirst chapter of the Odyssey has all the topoi of a divine visit. It tells the story of the goddess Athena, who descends from the Mount Olympus (1:102) in the appearance of a male stranger (1:105) to visit Telemachus, Odysseus’s son. The latter kindly offfers her hospitality and in return, the stranger provides him with some hints on how to fijind his lost father. When the goddess, “flashing-eyed Athena, departs, flying upward as a bird” (ἀπέβη γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη, ὄρνις δ’ ὣς ἀνόπαια διέπτατο: 1:319–20), Telemachus recognizes the true identity of the stranger: “And in his mind he marked her and marvelled, for he deemed that she was a god” (ὀίσατο γὰρ θεὸν εἶναι: 1:322–23). This type of story is not exceptional: there are many other examples to be given. The same scheme also occurs in the Septuagint, however, adapted to a monotheistic context. This is clear from the story of Abraham in Genesis 18–19, who offfers hospitality to three angelic strangers. Christology in Dialogue with the Surrounding Culture The pericope of the disciples of Emmaus (Lk 24:13–35) also shows clear agreements with the scheme expounded above: the risen Lord presents himself as a stranger; the disciples offfer him hospitality and in return, he offfers them the bread of life; he suddenly vanishes from their side, and at the very moment that the disciples recognize him, he disappears: “Their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (αὐτῶν δὲ διηνοίχθησαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ καὶ ἐπέγνωσαν αὐτόν: 24:31a). The resemblances are unmistakable. Luke has told the Emmaus story in such a way that his Hellenistic readers could easily identify with the story because of their recollection of a well known pattern. Not only in this story, but also in the Gospel story at large, Luke has integrated the Greco-Roman scheme of the visitation of the gods to humans in his Christological concept. In this way, Luke re-shapes the narration of the life of Jesus and intertwines the Hellenistic pattern of ‘the divine stranger visiting the humans’ with the Jewish tradition of the ‘violent death of the prophets.’ Jesus’ tragic end is in line with those of the prophets of old, and similarly, the result of Jerusalem’s refusal to receive the heavenly stranger hospitably. The soteriological dimension of the dynamics of this

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divine visitation, namely that the stranger Jesus offfers salvation, fijinds its expression in the titles ‘Christ’ and especially ‘Saviour.’ Furthermore, the special relation of the stranger with the mystery of God is summarized in the titles ‘Lord’ and ‘Son of God.’ Luke’s narrative Christology thus enters into a dialogue with the surrounding Greco-Roman culture, and displays a universal, ecumenical openness, which still can inspire Christians in the 21st century. Relevance of Luke’s Image of Jesus for Today Stranger on earth, yet divine guest, who is dependent on our hospitality, both then and now! It seems to us that Luke’s paradigm of Jesus, the ‘stranger in the city,’ is especially relevant for today’s world, with its millions of refugees and migrants, who live as strangers in foreign lands. They are dependent upon the hospitality of locals, and often become victims of violence committed by people who see them as a threat. On the one hand, Jesus is a paradigm for human existence as such. Every human being is ultimately a defenseless stranger, who expects that the successful and the rich will offfer him/her lodging and food, or even more, a decent human existence. Christians are duty-bound to show hospitality towards strangers and refugees. The author of the letter to the Hebrews says it thus: “Do not neglect hospitality (τῆς φιλοξενίας μὴ ἐπιλανθάνεσθε) to strangers, for thereby some have entertained (ξενίσαντες) angels unaware” (13:3). In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus the eschatological Judge gives a Christological focus to this exhortation “And when did we see you a stranger (ξένον) and welcome you?”; “As you did to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:38, 40). Hospitality given to the stranger is an essential characteristic of Christian life as such. On the other hand, by taking the status of a ‘stranger,’ Jesus provides a paradigm for the existence and behaviour of Christians and their place on earth. Long ago, the author of the letter to Diognetus described the life of Christians as follows: “They live in fatherlands of their own, but as aliens (ὡς παροίκοι). They share all things as citizens, and sufffer all things as strangers (ὡς ξένοι). Every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land (πᾶσα ξένη πάτρι ἔστιν αὐτῶν, καὶ πᾶσα πάτρι ξένη) . . . They pass their days on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven” (5:5–9). Through this text, the author suggests that Christians are ‘strangers’ on earth, not by accident but by ‘nature,’ ultimately, because their true home is in heaven. In this way, they are somehow akin to their master and example, Jesus Christ.

“THE WORD BECAME JEWISH FLESH”: CHRISTOLOGY AND THE QUESTION OF THE SUFFERING OF GOD Daniel L. Migliore Among the most hotly debated questions in recent theology is whether God sufffers. On one side of the issue are the passibilists who argue that God can and does sufffer. They reject the traditional doctrine of divine impassibility as contrary to the biblical witness and its culmination in the gospel narrative of the passion and crucifijixion of Jesus.1 On the other side are the impassibilists who vigorously defend the impassibility doctrine. They charge its critics with misunderstanding the intent of the doctrine and its abiding signifijicance.2 Since Christians confess that Jesus Christ is God with us as one of us, and that his ministry, crucifijixion, and resurrection stand at the center of the gospel, the question of whether it is proper to speak of the sufffering of God is inescapable. The horrors of modern history, most especially the Holocaust, have only intensifijied the debate about divine passibility. For many people today, the idea that God is somehow immune to sufffering seems spiritually bankrupt. As Bonhoefffer famously wrote from his prison cell, “Only the sufffering God can help.”3 Still, the question persists: Can one speak of the sufffering of God without compromising the divine transcendence, majesty, and sovereignty? If God is subject to sufffering, can God be God? In this paper, in agreement with Karl Barth, I will argue that how one answers this question depends on the presuppositions that inform the inquiry. The God of the gospel is not the immutable and impassible deity of classical metaphysics but the God of the biblical witness, the Holy One of Israel, the Lord who became a sufffering servant for the salvation of the world. As A. van de Beek, in whose honor this article is written, asks: If we have difffijiculty with the thought of a God who can sufffer, “is that because

1  See Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucifijied God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1974). 2  See Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Sufffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000). 3  Dietrich Bonhoefffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 361.

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we have in mind the God of Israel, or because we are thinking of the God of Marcion, of Plato, or of Aristotle?”4 Christology and the Sufffering of God in Patristic Theology The question whether God can sufffer is not new. Already early in the third century A.D., Tertullian opposed the patripassionist doctrine of Praxeus, who taught that the Father had emptied himself into the person of Christ and was crucifijied. Only a later, carefully diffferentiated trinitarian understanding of the unity of God would enable the church to endorse the formula, “One of the Trinity sufffered in the flesh.” The complexity of this debate about the passibility of God in the patristic era has often been overlooked. According to the widely influential work of Adolf von Harnack, the simple gospel of Jesus underwent a process of Hellenization in the patristic era. A signifijicant part of this accommodation of the gospel to the philosophical tradition of Greek antiquity was the adoption of the idea that God cannot be touched by the change and sufffering that affflicts creaturely existence. The marks of true deity are immutability and impassibility. Recent scholarship, however, questions this simplistic interpretation of the patristic doctrine of God. According to Thomas G. Weinandy, “The Fathers, in their account of the impassibility of God, were more influenced by and more faithful to biblical revelation than those contemporary theologians who champion God’s passibility.”5 Robert Jenson, who strongly disagrees with Weinandy on the substantive issues of the debate, nevertheless concurs that the cavalier dismissal of the patristic theologians for uncritically accommodating the gospel to Hellenistic philosophy is erroneous: “Adolf von Harnack notoriously taught several generations of theologians to suppose that what the Fathers were doing was the Hellenizing of the gospel, whereas what they in fact were working on was the Gospelizing of Hellenism.”6 A closely argued book by Paul Gavrilyuk provides ample documentation for a more complex reading of the Fathers than the one offfered

4  A. van de Beek, Why? On Sufffering, Guilt, and God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 274. 5  Weinandy, Does God Sufffer? 84. 6  Robert W. Jenson, “Ipse Pater Non Est Impassibilis,” [The Father Himself cannot suffer] in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Sufffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 118, n. 1.

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by Harnack and his heirs.7 According to Gavrilyuk, the patristic writers, intent on remaining faithful to scripture, employed the doctrine of divine impassibility in a carefully restricted manner to point to God’s majesty and freedom. At the same time, they afffijirmed the passibility of God within the framework of the incarnation. As Gavrilyuk explains, the Fathers were in fact engaged in a highly dialectical way of speaking of the sufffering of God. Their dialectical mode of thinking about divine impasssibility/passibility is expressed most succinctly in the claim of Cyril of Alexandria that the Son of God “sufffered impassibly.” Gavrilyuk understands the doctrine of divine impassibility in the thought of the patristic writers to function as “an apophatic qualifijier.” By this he means that in speaking of God’s impassibility the Fathers wanted only to guard “God’s unlikeness to everything created, his transcendence and supremacy over all things,” and in this way to hold fast to God’s “undiminished divinity.”8 Cyril of Alexandria is the key witness in Gavrilyuk’s account. According to Gavrilyuk, while Cyril rejected any unqualifijied notion of God’s “naked” sufffering outside the incarnation, he afffijirmed at the same time “the free and salvifijic sufffering of the incarnate God, who had accepted the limitations of human existence for the sake of salvation”9 Cyril made much of the kenotic passage of Phil. 2:5–11 to show what was at stake in the incarnation: The Son of God “emptied” himself. This act of self-emptying in the incarnation is unique and can only be expressed paradoxically in the form: “The Word sufffered impassibly.” Nestorius, the arch-enemy of Cyril, rejected the Alexandrian’s paradoxical resolution of the issue of divine sufffering. For Nestorius, the doctrine of divine impassibility was an unquestionable axiom. He insisted that the divine nature must not be assigned any of the human experiences of the incarnate Lord and that “it was above all else unworthy of God to suffer and die as a mere mortal.”10 Hence Nestorius found himself driven to a two-subjects Christology, the one divine, the other human. While the humanity conjoined with the Word sufffered, the Word itself remained impassible. In Nestorius’ view, Cyril’s dictum of the Word’s “sufffering impassibly” was a desperate smokescreen to cover up the Alexandrian’s real intention

 7  Paul Gavrilyuk, The Sufffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).  8  Gavrilyuk, Sufffering, 48.  9  Gavrilyuk, Sufffering, 19. 10  Gavrilyuk, Sufffering, 146.

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to deny divine impassibility altogether. Accordingly, Nestorius accused Cyril of resorting to a kind of “doubletalk.”11 For his part, Cyril believed that the language of paradox was unavoidable, a necessary way of coming to terms with the radical newness of the incarnation. In Cyril’s words: “We see in Christ the strange and rare paradox of Lordship in servant’s form and divine glory in human abasement.”12 Gavrilyuk has made a strong case against an overly simplifijied account of the understanding of divine impassibility in the patristic sources. The picture is clearly much more complicated than Harnack’s theory of Hellenization suggests. Nevertheless, the question persists whether the Fathers, including Cyril, in rightly refuting Nestorius’ flat- footed rejection of the sufffering of God, satisfactorily resolved the issue, as Gavrilyuk seems to believe. How are we to understand the paradox of the “impassible sufffering” of the Word of God? As Jenson comments, “We are of course dealing with a paradox. But if someone asks “How do you mean this paradox? “it does not help simply to repeat, “It is a paradox.”13 When, for example, the tradition afffijirms, “one of the Trinity sufffered in the flesh,” does this mean that the humanity assumed by the Word is capable of sufffering but that the Word in its divine nature is properly described as impassible? Or does it mean that the Father remains impassible while the Son of God sufffers? In brief, is the cross of Christ a true disclosure of God’s eternal reality, or does it reveal something less than the innermost being of God? We may agree with Weinandy and Gavrilyuk that the patristic doctrine of God intends to adhere to the biblical witness and has an emphatic kenotic thrust. But are we not left with troubling ambiguities? Does the patristic resolution of the question go far enough? Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology If the patristic theologians should not be summarily dismissed as uncritically dependent on the idea of divine impassibility present in the metaphysics of antiquity, it is nevertheless true that elements of this philosophical tradition have continued to influence later theology. Although this fact could be documented in a survey of medieval, Reformation, and postReformation theologies, such a task would take us far beyond the limits of

11

 Gavrilyuk, Sufffering, 148.  Citation by Guvrilyuk, Sufffering, 156. 13  Jenson, “Ipse Pater,” 120. 12

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the present paper. In this section I will focus on the kenotic theologians of the nineteenth century and their efffort to secure the full humanity of Jesus while upholding traditional understandings of the attributes of God. For these kenotic theologians, it is clear that a metaphysical understanding of divinity provides the controlling assumptions of how to reconcile the afffijirmations of the full humanity and full divinity of Christ. Nineteenth-century kenotic Christology was primarily driven not by the question whether God is capable of sufffering (they assumed the traditional doctrine of divine impassibility) but by the question whether the incarnate Son of God was truly human. At heart it was an efffort to give credibility to the afffijirmation of the full humanity of Jesus within the framework of classical two-natures Christology. The problem addressed by these kenotic theologians can be stated this way: How are we to think of Jesus Christ as fully human if in his person are united divine and human natures, each of which is characterized by a very distinctive and even contrary set of attributes? How, for example, could the incarnate Lord have a genuinely human experience if in his divine nature he possessed such attributes as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, impassibility, and immutability? How could the incarnate Lord have a genuinely human experience if as a baby in the manger of Bethlehem, he knew Einstein’s theory of relativity infijinitely better than Einstein? How could the incarnate Lord have a genuinely human experience of anxiety if, in the face of the sufffering and loneliness of his passion and death, he knew he was omnipotent and would surely rise again from the dead? How could the incarnate Lord have a genuinely human experience of growth and development—physically, mentally, and spiritually—if he shared in the immutable nature of God? How could the incarnate Lord have a genuinely human experience of freedom if his decisions and actions were at every moment determined by the will of God? The kenotic theologians proposed a seemingly brilliant solution to these difffijicult questions. They did so while trying, on the one hand, to remain within the framework of classical Chalcedonian Christology, and attempting, on the other hand, to avoid the attribution to Jesus of a structure of personal life that undermined the reality of his humanity. It may be recalled that in the patristic period Apollinarius tried to render the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus intelligible by proposing that the nous (mind) of Jesus was replaced by the eternal Word. Room was thereby made in the humanity for the presence of the Word. The church, however, eventually judged this proposal heretical. Important for our purposes is the fact that the solution offfered by kenotic Christology to the Christological

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puzzle was structurally similar to that of Apollinarius. Instead of subtracting, as it were, from the full humanity of Jesus, kenotic Christology in efffect subtracted from the full divinity. Something had to be left behind in the event of the incarnation if the divinity of God were to be honored and the humanity of Jesus made credible in the modern era. As in the case of many of the Fathers, the modern kenotic theory took the Christological hymn of Phil. 2:5–11 as its chief biblical basis: Christ Jesus, though equal with God, did not grasp at this equality, but “emptied himself ” and took the form of a servant, humbling himself even to death on a cross. Whereas patristic theologians like Cyril appealed to the Philippian Christological hymn in support of the paradoxical afffijirmation of the “impassible sufffering” of the incarnate Word, modern kenotic theologians often cited this Philippian passage in support of their theory of an ontological divestment of some of the divine attributes by the incarnate Word. The fullest expression of kenotic Christology was advanced by Gottfried Thomasius.14 He held that the eternal Word engaged in a self-limitation of his divinity by renouncing the so-called metaphysical attributes of divinity (e.g., omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability) while retaining the so-called moral attributes of divinity (e.g., holiness, truth, love). On the surface, this solution to the Christological problematic has many attractive features. It seems to provide a foundation for the afffijirmation of the full humanity of Jesus. Also attractive is its portrayal of the act of incarnation as a wondrous gesture of self-sacrifijice on the part of the eternal Word. The problem, however, is that this version of kenotic Christology raises the question whether in Jesus Christ it is fully God who is present and active. Who can save us but God? But is God really all there in Jesus, so to speak, if certain attributes of divinity are left behind? If God has divested self of essential attributes of divinity in the incarnation, how can we have confijidence that what is revealed of God in Jesus Christ is reliable and sufffijicient? Is there perhaps another side to God than what is revealed in Christ, and if so, does this not shatter the confijidence of Christian faith that Jesus Christ is God with and for us? Is it not a rock bottom truth of the Christian gospel that in the incarnation God truly gives Godself to the world for its salvation? In this amazing self-gift of God, God does not cease

14

 Gottfried Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk (Erlangen: A. Deichert, 1886–1888).

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to be God. On the contrary, God remains faithful to Godself. In Christ God reveals and confijirms rather than hides or only partially discloses his true identity. God is nowhere more truly God than in the freedom of his grace embodied in the self-humbling of the incarnate Lord and in his obedience unto death for human salvation. Thus the error of nineteenth-century kenotic Christology is not that it was too radical but that it was not radical enough. It brought to its inquiry a number of unquestioned metaphysical assumptions. It assumed that God in the fullness of God’s being is antithetical to humanity. It assumed that the interaction of divinity and humanity must be a zero sum encounter, with one side necessarily losing if the other side gains. Furthermore, the kenotic theologians assumed that they knew very well what the omnipotence, immutability, and all the other attributes of divinity were apart from what God has actually revealed of Godself in his history with the people of Israel and above all in the event of incarnation. Likewise, they assumed that they knew what real human being is apart from the actual reality of the man Jesus. On the basis of these assumptions, they decided to what extent God could be incarnate in a human life without violating its integrity and freedom. In brief, this kenotic Christology thought it knew what true humanity and its dignity and freedom are, and what the power and freedom of God are, apart from the event of God’s act of free grace in Jesus Christ. But what if a thoroughgoing redefijinition of divine and human freedom, divine and human power, is demanded by the proclamation of God’s presence and activity in the ministry, crucifijixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ? What if, redefijined by what God has actually done in Christ, God’s power includes the capacity to come to us in the foolishness and weakness of the cross (I Cor. 1:26), and God’s freedom includes the capacity to be a humble servant? And what if, in the light of the gospel narrative, true humanity is to be understood as living freely by, and in obedience to, the will of the gracious God, not by the Enlightenment conception of human freedom as limitless autonomy and self-realization? The Kenotic Christology of Karl Barth Consistent with the whole of his theology, Karl Barth levels a blistering critique of nineteenth-century kenotic Christology in volume IV of the Church Dogmatics. He allows that the intention of these theologians was admirable. “They wanted to clear away the difffijiculties of the traditional

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teaching and make possible a ‘historical’ consideration of the life of Jesus. But they succeeded only in calling in question the “God was in Christ” and in that way damaging the nerve of a Christology orientated by the Old and the New Testaments.”15 Barth continues: “There are many things we can try to say in understanding the Christological mystery. But we cannot possibly understand or estimate it if we try to explain it by a self-limitation or de-divinization of God in the uniting of the Son of God with the man Jesus. If in Christ—even in the humiliated Christ born in a manger at Bethlehem and crucifijied on the cross of Golgotha—God is not unchanged and wholly God, then everything that we may say about the reconciliation of the world made by God in this humiliated One is left hanging in the air.”16 From this passage it is clear that the fatal flaw Barth fijinds in the theory of the nineteenth-century kenoticists is the idea that in the incarnation an ontological change occurred in the very being of God. God did indeed do something astonishingly new in Christ, but he did not have to enter into contradiction to himself in order to come among us as a humble servant and to sufffer and die for our salvation. Barth rejects this assumption of a necessary ontological change in God to make the incarnation possible, and in so doing he rejects the metaphysical framework in which this assumption is rooted. For the nineteenth-century kenoticists, the incarnation, sufffering, and death of the Son of God require some sort of divestment of divine properties. Only in this way can God be said to be present in Christ, and then only in a diminished form. In his incarnate form, he may continue to possess the moral attributes of divinity since these attributes can presumably be actualized to some degree in a human life. However, the incarnate Lord must divest himself of the metaphysical attributes that belong inherently and incommunicably to God alone. For Barth, the conundrum driving modern kenotic theories stems from unexamined metaphysical presuppositions about the immutability and impassibility of God and indeed of all the traditional attributes of divinity. In arguing that the incarnation of the Word does not require some kind of metaphysical truncation of the divine nature, Barth upholds the language of divine immutability. However, he assigns to this term its proper biblical meaning. According to the biblical witness, the true meaning of

15  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), 183. Hereafter cited CD. 16  Barth, CD IV/1, 183.

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God’s immutability is not metaphysically defijined changelessness—which Barth says is more description of a corpse than of the living God—but constancy and faithfulness. God remains true to Godself and to God’s decision to be God for us—the God of mercy and self-giving love—in becoming one of us and in sufffering and dying for our salvation. God does not contradict Godself or does not have to become less than God in the person and work of Jesus Christ. God is true to God’s eternal being in his action and his sufffering on our behalf. According to Barth, when we confess that God is present and active in this man Jesus without any change or reduction of his divine nature, we say something “so bold that we dare not make it unless we consider seriously in what sense we can do so.”17 Simply to say that it is mystery, or miracle, or paradox will not do for Barth. We must do more than simply repeat the creed. Rather, “We must be able to answer for this confession and its statement about God with a good conscience and with good reason. We must be able to show that God is honored and not dishonored by this confession. And at this point the traditional theology of the church gives rise to an ambiguity. One service to which we cannot deny to earlier and more recent discussion of the kenosis is that they drew attention to this ambiguity. The ambiguity is one which needs to be removed.”18 So while Barth rejects nineteenth-century versions of kenotic Christology, he does not do so only to return to the ambiguity of the traditional theology of the church and its unreformed, or only partially reformed, metaphysical assumptions. Instead, he offfers a kenotic Christology on thoroughly biblical soil and in continuity with the classical Trinitarian and Christological afffijirmations of the church. He does so by contending that the event of God’s becoming a creature in Jesus Christ is grounded in, and is in correspondence with, the eternal triune life of God. In light of what God has done in Christ, we have “to learn to correct our notions of the being of God, to reconstitute them in the light of the fact that He does this.”19 In one of the fijinest paragraphs of the Church Dogmatics, Barth writes, “We may believe that God can and must only be absolute in contrast to all that is relative, exalted in contrast to all that is lowly, active in contrast to all sufffering, inviolable in contrast to all temptation, transcendent in contrast to all immanence, and therefore divine in contrast

17

 Barth, CD IV/1, 183.  Barth, CD IV/1, 183–184. 19  Barth, CD IV/1, 186. 18

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to everything human, in short that He can and must be only the ‘Wholly Other.’ But such beliefs are shown to be quite untenable, and corrupt and pagan, by the fact that God does in fact be and do this in Jesus Christ.”20 Barth is not here simply reveling in a cascade of paradoxes. He is contending that a Christian doctrine of God is not a matter of holding together a false idea of God with an understanding of God rooted in the gospel narrative. In God’s becoming a creature in Jesus Christ, God does not contradict the divine nature but is true to it. God acts in correspondence to his eternal triune being in humbling himself in Jesus Christ for our sake. In efffect, Barth takes the kenotic thematic of Phil. 2:5–11 into territory unexplored by either the Fathers of the early church or the nineteenth-century kenotic theologians in their exegesis of this passage. Barth fijinds the ground of the self-giving act described in the Philippian text in God’s eternal triune being. When we allow the humility and obedience of the Son of God in history as attested in scripture to control our understanding of the being of God, we fijind that it is not only proper but necessary to speak of an “above” and a “below” in God, of one who sends and one who is sent, of one who commands and one who obeys, of the Father and the Son bound in the love of the Holy Spirit. That the living God abides in an eternal movement of freely given love is the basis of the event of the self-humbling of the Son of God even to death on a cross. In this event, God corresponds to God’s own eternal triune reality rather than contradicting it. When Barth speaks of a dynamic of super/subordination in the triune life, it is important to understand that this has nothing to do with ontological subordinationism. Barth does not give an inch to any suggestion that there is less than full equality of essence between the Father and the Son. But Barth sees the relationships of the triune persons as dynamic and diffferentiated. “God is both One and also Another, His own counterpart, co-existent with Himself. We can say quite calmly: He exists as a fijirst and a second, above and below . . .” The unity of the triune God is a “peculiar unity,” one that is “open and free and active . . . a dynamic and living unity, not a dead and static.”21 In an unprecedented and breathtaking manner, Barth takes the import of the Philippian Christological hymn to the innermost depths of the divine life. There is majesty and humility in the eternal being of God. In perfect unity and equality, Father and Son in the fellowship

20 21

 Barth, CD IV/1, 186.  Barth, CD IV/1, 202.

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of the Spirit are one God, “the One who lives in His freedom and is free in His love.”22 Further evidence that Barth is no subordinationist in the sense rejected by church dogma is the fact that he can speak of the Father as the one who especially sufffers on our behalf in the economy of salvation. “It is not at all the case that God has no part in the sufffering of Jesus Christ even in His mode of being as the Father. No, there is a particula veri in the teaching of the early Patripassians. This is that primarily it is God the Father who sufffers in the offfering and sending of His Son, in His abasement. The sufffering is not His own, but the alien sufffering of the creature, of man, which He takes to Himself in Him. But He does sufffer it in the humiliation of His Son . . .”23 “The Word Became Jewish Flesh” Barth’s radical revision of kenotic Christology calls for a thoroughgoing rethinking of the doctrine of God and especially of the divine attributes in light of the revelation of God in the ministry, passion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.24 Terms like impassible and passible, immutable and mutable, omnipotence and weakness may be unavoidable in a Christian doctrine of God, but they must not be played offf against each other if our thinking is to be in correspondence with the event of Jesus Christ. That way leads only to an impasse: the champions of passibility vs. the defenders of impassibility, the open theists vs. the closed theists, and so on. Every word that we use to speak of God is fijinite and fallible. Every word must be reformed and refijined as far as possible in the light of God’s presence and action in Jesus Christ. As ascribed to God, impassibility can have at least two related meanings.25 On the one hand, it can mean God is passionless, lacking all afffect or feeling. On the other hand, it can mean God is free from sufffering at the hands of creatures. If God is impassible in the fijirst sense, God’s own being is devoid of all afffect or emotion, whether negative or positive.

22

 Barth, CD IV/1, 203.  Barth, CD IV/2, 357. 24  See the fijine efffort in this direction by Wolf Krötke, Gottes Klarheiten: Eine Neuinterpretation der Lehre von Gottes “Eigenschaften” {God’s Lucidities. A new interpretation of the doctrine of God’s ‘attributes.’] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). 25  For a more extended discussion of the ideas of the following paragraphs, see Daniel L. Migliore, The Power of God and the gods of Power (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008). 23

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Gavrilyuk cites many passages that show the Fathers do not intend the term to be understood in this way. If God is said to be impassible in the second sense, then the meaning is that God is never passive in relation to the creation. What happens in the creation can have no impact on God. Gavrilyuk has shown convincingly that the Fathers intended the ascription of impassibility to God to refer to the divine transcendence of, and diffference from, the world. Nevertheless, Gavrilyuk’s qualifijied defense of impassibility does not sufffijiciently attend to the biblical depiction of God as freely choosing to be afffected by the world. If God calls us to pray and promises to hear our prayer, does this not call for careful rethinking and revision of the traditional doctrine of divine impassibility? The literal meaning of immutability is changelessness. God does not move, or undergo change, or have a history. God is perfect, and what is perfect never changes or becomes something other than it was before. If what is perfect changed, it could only change for the better (in which case it was not perfect before), or for the worse (in which case it is no longer perfect). What is true in this doctrine is that God is not fijickle. God is not capricious. God is not unstable, wavering between yes and no, this and that. However, the biblical understanding of God’s “changelessness” is something entirely positive. God is completely steadfast and faithful in character and purpose. It is the constancy and faithfulness of Yahweh’s steadfast love that the psalmist praises. It is also what the author of Hebrews has in mind in declaring that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). We can count on the God revealed in Jesus Christ because he is ever faithful and remains true to his promises.26 God is indeed omnipotent. But what sort of power is the power of God? Power in itself, mere almightiness, might better describe the power of the demonic rather than the power of God revealed in the ministry and cross of Christ. According to the gospel, God’s omnipotence is the omnipotence of love and mercy, the omnipotence of free grace. God has all the power necessary to create, redeem, and complete the world in a personal and non-coercive way. The power of God made known in Jesus Christ is not sheer omnipotence but omnipotent love that judges, heals, and redeems. The intent of classical afffijirmations of God’s impassibility, immutability, omnipotence, and other attributes of God is to praise God in the highest 26  On Barth’s understanding of divine immutability, see Bruce L. McCormack, “Divine Impassibility or Simply Divine Constancy? Implications of Karl Barth’s Later Christology for Debates over Impassibility,” in Divine Impassibility, and the Mystery of Human Sufffering, ed. James Keating and Thomas White, O.P., (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 150–186.

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terms possible. But the terms bewitch us when they float free from the gospel story. This story demands a complete overhaul of our thinking about God and humanity that is always far too much influenced by our prior conceptions of what constitutes the truly divine and the truly human. It is important to allow our thinking of God and of ourselves to be guided from beginning to end and in every respect by the particularity of the biblical witness rather than seeking to fijit our thinking into a speculative framework of one sort or another. This is the real point of the title of this essay taken from a passage of Barth which reads in full: “The Word did not simply become any ‘flesh,’ any man humbled and sufffering. It became Jewish flesh. The church’s whole doctrine of the incarnation and the atonement becomes abstract and valueless and meaningless to the extent that this comes to be regarded as something accidental and incidental. The New Testament witness to Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, stands on the soil of the Old Testament and cannot be separated from it.”27 According to the Old Testament witness, the history of Yahweh with the people of Israel is a history of sufffering both on the part of Israel and on the part of Yahweh. As the biblical story of Exodus recounts, Yahweh hears and is moved by the cries of his people (Ex. 3:7–8). The Lord is neither immune from the sufffering of his people nor unafffected by their disobedience: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?. . . . My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hos. 11:8).28 By further specifying the Johannine “The Word became flesh” (Jn. 1:14) and the Pauline “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3) with the assertion, “The Word became Jewish flesh,” Barth is far from wanting to divinize Jewish ethnic identity. The apostle Paul broke free of the idea that Gentiles must in efffect adopt Jewish rituals and customs in order to be partakers of the promises of God to Abraham that come to their fulfijillment in Christ. Rather, Barth’s concern is to insist that the event of Christ with and for us be understood in all its particularity. Its particularity is irreducible. It cannot be captured within some metaphysical framework, whether ancient Greek philosophy, Hegelian speculation, or modern process metaphysics. Barth rightly claims, “The Christian kerygma as it is addressed to the world has this statement about an Israelite at its very

27

 Barth, CD IV/1, 166.  On the theme of divine sufffering in the Old Testament, see Terrence E. Fretheim, The Sufffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984). 28

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heart. This means nothing more or less than the bringing of the world into the sphere of the divine dealings with the people Israel.”29 There is indeed a universality of the gospel but a universality that is inseparable from this particularity. Encasing the particularity of the gospel in some metaphysical system deemed regulative for thinking and speaking of God inevitably results in the obscuring of the gospel in all its radicality. Barth sums up the matter: “In spite of all the allegorizing and generalizing interpretation which it has not escaped to soften the offfence, the Old Testament still remains from generation to generation to ensure that the particularist aspect of the Christian message directed to the world, the simple truth that Jesus Christ was born a Jew, is never lost sight of, but constantly survives the irruption of all too generalized views of the man Jesus.”30 And we might add, all-too-generalized views of God and his attributes. Bram van de Beek, in a diffferent way from Barth but in material agreement with him, also sees Christology and God’s history with the people of Israel as totally inseparable. He writes: “Without Israel, the meaning of Jesus cannot be understood.”31 Furthermore, van de Beek powerfully articulates the practical signifijicance of afffijirming God’s participation in human sufffering in the event of Jesus Christ: “If God is the sufffering one, then the signs of his presence on earth are not to be found in power, beauty, and achievement. It is the sufffering needy person who points to the true God. The tears on the human face of the other, are more the signs of God’s nearness than the spires of a Gothic cathedral.”32 Earlier I quoted Robert Jenson’s contention that what was going on among the patristic theologians was not the “Hellenizing” of the gospel but the efffort to “Gospelize” Hellenism, to take seriously the God who humbled himself for our salvation. That efffort continues today in relationship to the various philosophies and worldviews of our own time. “Gospelizing” our understandings of God, the world, and ourselves is nothing less than the task of theology in every age.

29

 Barth, CD IV/1, 167.  Barth, CD IV/1, 167. 31  Abraham van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios: Christology as Heart of Theology (Zoetermeer: Meinema), 300. 32  A. van de Beek, Why? On sufffering, Guilt, and God, 244. 30

THE CHRISTOLOGY IN THE HEIDELBERG CATECHISM AND IN THE CANONES OF DORDT Wim Verboom Introduction This article can be considered as a personal confession of faith. It concerns the faith that is expressed in the Heidelberg Catechism (HC) (1563). Stated as a formula: I belong to Jesus Christ of which my baptism is the sign and seal. In the Canones of Dordt (CD) (1619), the deepest source of such a reality has been put into words. It portrays the eternal electing love of God for fallen sinners. In my reading of the CD from the point of view of the HC, I see a reliable and well-balanced way to personally profess the confession as drawn up by the fathers of the Canons of Dordt. In this article I listen to the beating heart of the HC—its christology—doing the same with the CD. After treating each, I assess my comparison and round it offf by relating how dr. A. van de Beek was a guide for me. The Beating Heart of the HC One can read the HC in diffferent ways. One speaks of a Trinitarian interpretation of the Word of God by paying attention to the manner in which the Word of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit has been treated. With just as much right, one could refer to the ground and way of salvation in the HC with the triad of guilt, grace, and gratitude. Yet, in my opinion, these twofold common interpretations hide the most characteristic feature of the HC. The beating heart of the HC is formed by its Christology. In other words: Jesus Christ, his person and his work form the theological center of this textbook. Doing so, the HC reads the Scriptures.1 This is the characteristic feature of the HC. In this respect, the HC difffers from all other reformed textbooks and confessions

1  W.E. Korn, “Die Lehre von Christi Person und Werk”, L. Coenen, Handbuch zum Heidelberger Katechismus, (Neukirchen, 1963) 92: “Summe und Fundament der ganzen Schrift ist Christus.’’

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from the time of the Reformation.2 For this reason, the HC rightly qualifijies as a book of faith.3 If we pay attention to how often the person and the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, occurs in the HC, we would not fijind any question and answer that does not directly or indirectly refer to Christ. To put it even stronger: the issue here is not the repetition, but how christology also pervades the whole woof and warp of the HC. This is why the fijirst question and answer form the soul of this faith primer. Read in a very personal way, I confess that ‘I’ belong to Jesus Christ, and so, as a very critical reality, I belong no longer to myself and to the devil. Moreover, now I know that the Father of Jesus Christ protects me as his child. Finally, the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ makes me into a new human being. The HC works out this theme consistently; it forms the polyphonic love song. First, we read the confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that accordingly Jesus Christ is God Himself. Here a spiritual climate is created that speaks with full reverence and dedication about Jesus Christ. Then the HC goes on to represent Jesus Christ as the Mediator between God and man. In my opinion, Ursinus drew this central thought from his Catechismus Maior and gave it a central place in the HC as well.4 For Jesus Christ to be the Mediator not only denotes having a particular position between God and man, but also that He Himself is God ànd man. This implies the thought that the work of Jesus Christ must be seen against the background of the gap between God and his creatures, that came about as described in Genesis 3. The reality established since Genesis 3 is a reality full of Jesus Christ. If this reality would not exist, then the misery of human kind wherein he had immersed himself would be fatal forever.5 Since the ‘mother-promise’ in Genesis 3, the dome of God’s

2  For example the Short Catechism of Leo Juda (1541), the Catechismus Minor by Micron (1559), the Catechism by Calvin (1542). 3  In de most real meaning, a ‘confession of faith’. 4  In the Catechismus Maior, Christ is called the Mediator of the covenant. It is notable that the term covenant in the HC occurs only in q. and a. 74 and 82. However, the point itself is also inextricably connected in the HC with the mediatorship of Christ. Korn says: “Jesus Christus ist der Mittler, nicht der Vermittler; er vermittelt nicht etwas, was von seiner Person und seinem Werk getrennt werden könnte’’, W.E. Korn, “Die Lehre von Christi Person und Werk”, L. Coenen, Handbuch, 95. See also L. Coenen, “Gottes Bund und Erwählung’’, Handbuch, 128–130. In the Explicationes Catecheticae (1584, the later Schatboeck) of Ursinus the locus of the convenant is discussed after the explication of the questions and answers 15–18 about the mediatorship of Christ. 5  In the HC we do not read about the manner in which the Mediator Jesus Christ as the Son of God relates to the creation.

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faithfulness curves over all of created reality. It is delineated by the incarnation, the cross and resurrection of Christ, and reaches the eschaton that has already come. We continue by characterizing the Christology in the HC as a soteriological Christology. The HC portrays redemption as achieved by Christ. This redemption has three interconnected core notions. The fijirst notion is the reconciliation that Christ has brought about of men and women with God by means of his sacrifijice. This core is expressed in various phrases. For example: as deliverance from the dominion of the devil.6 What transpires with humans is regarded as the justifijication for the sake of Jesus Christ. Persons then are placed in the right position before God. The second core notion of the redemption is the renewal, conversion, or regeneration of men and women. Complementing the initial core of reconciliation, this exercise of faith counts as the second core work accomplished through the Spirit of Christ.7 Seen as the fruits of Christ as the Vine, living the new life according to the commandments of God is now urged upon us by gratitude. Prayers by the redeemed believers for their gratitude bloom through the miracle that God is our Father for the sake of Christ. The third core notion entails a future glory of the faithful: their eternal life that will become reality as complete redemption when Jesus Christ comes back to judge the living and the dead. It is in the resurrection of Christ that my resurrection is anchored. In Christ we may become a new reality. Those who are in Christ are new creations. This they are through faith as knowledge of the Word of God and by their trust in Christ.8 The promise of his redemption is present as the holy gospel in the entire Holy Scripture.9 The believer shares in the fulfijillment of that promise through one’s surrender to Him. From

6  Other terms are: redeem from everlasting damnation (q&a 37); set us free from the judgment of God (q&a 38); redeemed from hellish anxieties and torment (q&a 44), et cetera. 7  In Q&A 70 it is not only said that we receive forgiveness of sin for the sake of the blood of Christ, but also that we are renewed by his Spirit. See also Q&A 86. 8  Question 21: “What is true Faith? It is not only a certain knowledge by which I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word, but also a wholehearted trust which the Holy Spirit creates in me through the gospel, that not only to others, but to me also God has given the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation, out of sheer grace solely for the sake of Christ’s saving work.’’ 9  Question 19: “Whence do you know this? From the holy gospel, which God himself revealed in the beginning in the Garden of Eden, afterwards proclaimed through the holy patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed through the sacrifijices and other rites of the Old Covenant, and fijinally fulfijilled through his own well-beloved Son.’’

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then on, one belongs to Him, one is incorporated in Him.10 The believer belongs also to the body of Christ, is a living member of it. Throughout the entire HC, we encounter the metaphor of the Head and the Body.11 Belonging to Christ pervades the whole existence of the believer.12 Because of this, one is called to be a Christian, one lives in a Christian reality (the reality of Christ).13 Of this, baptism is the sign and seal.14 To be baptized, to be of Christ, to be a Christian—these form the new identity of the faithful. Surveying this sketch, we can say that the HC certainly is a Christocentric confession. It is striking that predestination takes up so little room in the HC. Only answers fijifty-two and fijifty-four deal with election.15 In this respect, the HC clearly difffers from the Catechismus Maior by Ursinus, in which predestination has a more integrated place.16 In the HC the matter of election has a christological hue. Christ gathers unto Himself the elect (q&a 52) and so the congregation which is gathered by Him, is then deemed to be the elect congregation (q&a 54). It is on this issue that the Canones of Dordt demonstrate a diffferent theological approach. The Beating Heart of the Canones of Dordt In the CD, the work of Christ takes up an essential and indispensable place in the redemption of man as well. We fijind a strong christological undertone at the point where the CD speaks about believers’ participation

10  Question 20: “Will all men then be saved through Christ as they became lost through Adam? No. Only those who by true faith are incorporated into Him and accept all his benefijits.’’ 11  Q&A 32, 49, 50, 76. 12  ‘‘Die insertio (Einpflanzung) in Christus ist auch zugleich die participatio (Teilhabe) und communcatio (Gemeinschaft) Christi’’, W.E. Korn: “Die Lehre von Christi Person und Werk”, L. Coenen, Handbuch, 98. 13  This is also a reality of faith struggle, because there are so many opposing forces of the devil. 14  The place of the HC in the church order of the Palatinate (1563), namely between the baptism and the holy communion, legitimates the idea that Sunday 1 as the confession of the child that he is ‘of Jesus’, concerns his baptism. Lutheran catechisms often started with a question, treating the relation between being a Christian and becoming baptized. In the HC one can also read this relation between being a Christian, to ‘belong to Jesus’ and to be baptized. To be baptized is the most fundamental and most essential event in our life. 15  Q&A 52: “Me, together with all his elect.” Q&A 54: “A congregation chosen for eternal life.’’ 16  Catechismus Maior (1562), q&a 33, 38, 109, 110, 113, 123, 216, 217, 218, 219, 224, 266, 267, 278.

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in their salvation by God. It is as if we hear echoes of the HC, particularly when Christ is designated as the Mediator between God and man.17 The mediatorship of Christ connects with the new covenant.18 God draws up this covenant as a covenant of grace with fallen, sinful men and women. In Canon II of the CD, we read that God the Father, through the atoning death of Christ, makes the new covenant of grace with human kind.19 It pertains to a humanity that became totally perverted by the fall of our fijirst parents in the Garden of Eden. Humanity and their descendants are now conceived and born in the state of sin (the original sin).20 When God makes his covenant with them, this cannot be anything else than a covenant of grace. Another name for Christ as Mediator is the name Surety; that is, the person takes responsibility for the total payment of our guilt of sin. He has granted us expiation and in our place became sin and curse on the cross.21 His work is of infijinite worth and value, and is abundantly sufffijicient to expiate the sins of the whole world.22 When it concerns the content of the salvation that Christ has brought about by his expiation, then certain common expressions are used in CD, such as deliverance from sin and from destruction.23 Persons share in this salvation through faith in Christ.24 He is offfered to them in the gospel. People are called to his saving work.25 If they accept the gospel, this is held to be God’s work. If they do not accept the gospel—and thereby do not share salvation—then that is their own fault.26 The Holy Spirit leads people to respond to the call for salvation. He creates faith, which is infused by Him in the believer’s heart.27 In other words: faith is the fruit of regeneration, it is the making alive of a person.28 The sanctifijication of believers is not so much considered to be a benefijit of Christ, but more a specifijic work of the Holy Spirit;29 that is,

17

 Canon I,7.  Canon II, Rejection of errors 2. I,17: children are holy, because they belong to the covenant of grace, in which they are comprehended together with their parents. 19  Canon II, Rejection of errors 4. 20  Canon III/IV,3,4,5. 21  Canon II,2; in II, 3 and 4 this is discussed in more detail. 22  Canon II,3. In Canon I, Rejection of errors 3, the Remonstrant idea is rejected, that persons themselves contribute to their salvation. This would mean a reduction of the work of Christ. 23  Canon II,7. 24  Canon III/IV,14 and Rejection of errors 6. 25  Canon III/IV,8. 26  Canon III/IV,9. 27  Canon III/IV,14 and Rejection of errors 6. 28  Canon III/IV,12. Regeneration is not the same as sanctifijication. 29  Canon III/IV,16. 18

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as a work of God by the Holy Spirit.30 Concluding this review, we can say that christology in the CD plays an indispensable role when and where it concerns the realization of, and the sharing in, salvation by believers. The question now before us is whether Christology functions similarly in both confessions. If we were to pay attention to the essence of what the progenitors of CD have written in this confession, we would have to conclude that this is not the case. In the Canones it is not so much a matter of how the salvation of God for men has been achieved, as for whom this salvation has been achieved. And, in connection with this, it shows in what manner humans share in that salvation. At a certain point, the CD turns the spotlight away from the work of Christ and illuminates the eternal decree by God. Here the concern is what God has willed in his good pleasure.31 This means, it is not the will of God that all who fell in Adam shall be saved. Only those who share in the salvation of Christ, i.e. those who have been elected by God from eternity.32 God then decided to deliver from their perdition only those persons who have been elected by God from eternity. The others God leaves in their fallen state. They themselves are accountable for that.33 Although the work of Christ is suffijicient for the reconciliation of sins of the whole of humanity, even so it is efffective only for the elect.34 The latter have not only been called externally by the gospel, but they also have been internally drawn by the Holy Spirit. That happens in the regeneration, as treated above. The fruit of the regeneration, such as faith and conversion, are signs of election.35 God preserves his elect, so that they do not come to apostasy and perdition. Through their salvation in Christ they shall be kept in spite of weakness by which they can fall back into sin. Thus they shall be saved absolutely.36 Nonetheless, in his sovereign good pleasure from eternity, God has also deemed that some people will not be saved. He does not grant them a saving faith.37 Therefore, they do not share in his salvation and they shall perish. To be sure, this happens through their own guilt, because of their

30

 Canon V,1.  Canon I,10 and III/IV,7. 32  Canon II,8. 33  The CD teaches the double predestination. However, no supralapsarism, but infralapsarism (Canon I,15). 34  Canon II,8. It regards the diffference between sufffijiciency (sufffijiciënter) and efffijiciency (efffijiciënter). 35  Canon I,12 en 13. 36  Canon V: Of the perseverance of the saints. 37  Canon I,15. 31

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unbelief.38 This is the extent of this sketch of the subjects of salvation and damnation in the CD. When we now continue by comparing the place of Christology in the HC with its place in the CD, we see an alteration. Whereas the HC gives Christology a central place, in the CD that has changed. The Christology that once fijigured strongly in the HC is placed in another framework in the CD, thereby losing its prominance. Christology makes room for predestination. In the CD Christology becomes a means of election in God’s hands in order to realize his aims. This change entails a reduction of the importance that christology had originally provided within the HC. While the CD holds as essential that we are saved by Christ, even so it is most essential that we are saved by election. The CD thereby emphasizes the expression that ‘one is elected in Christ’ (Eph. 1:4). It means thereby that God elects certain persons and that He brings them by the work of Christ to salvation, for which they have been designated.39 Here Christ is not the foundation of the election, but in the CD the election is necessarily the foundation of the participation in the salvation of Christ. Reviewing the above, we can now say that predestination is the beating heart of the CD. The diffference in christology with regard to the HC involves all sort of other changes. For instance, the work of the Holy Spirit is less bound to the person and the work of Christ. Furthermore, instead of fruits of faith, we often read of the marks of regeneration, which are the fruits of election.40 In short, the christology of the HC has been absorbed in the doctrine of predestination. Whereas in the HC we could speak of a christological predestination, in de CD we could speak of a predestinational Christology. Change in Context The question now suggests itself: how could the theological positions regarding christology have changed so much in the span of hardly half a century (1563 to 1619)? In my view, this can be attributed to the two very diffferent contexts in which the church had to confess her faith. The dissimilarity in contexts required diffferent theological priorities.

38

 Canon I,15.  At the synod of Dordt, Gomarus gave a lecture on Ephesians 1:4–6; W. Verboom, De belijdenis van een gebroken kerk (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2006), 206. 40  Canon III/IV,17. 39

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The HC came about in 1563 in Heidelberg in the Palatinate. The Elector Friedrich III (1515–1576) had previously distanced himself from Lutheran beliefs and had been converted to reformed Protestantism. The HC was to become the textbook by which he would teach his people the new reformed religion. In this context, it was also urgent that the new faith could be confessed against the reigning heresy of the Roman Catholic Church. Because of this, we see the three solae (the sola gratia, the sola fijide and the sola scriptura) well illuminated in the HC. At the same time, Friedrich needed to accommodate the Lutherans as much as possible. Leadership was exercised here by the reformer Philippus Melanchthon. We take into account that Ursinus, holding a theological professorate at Heidelberg and the drafter of the fijirst concept for the HC, served as a follower of Melanchthon.41 All sorts of theological expressions in the HC provide evidence that Friedrich III sought to create as broad a base as possible between the reformed and the Lutherans, so that the HC may be called a ‘consensus-catechism’.42 With this strategy, the central position of christology in the HC—as an expression of the joint faith of Lutherans and reformed—is quite fijitting for that context. Also relevant is that in 1566 the translation of the HC by Petrus Datheen was published in a Dutch language psalterof his rhymed version of the psalms. Thereby the HC soon gained a central place in the Low Countries as textbook and as confession. Here, in the context of the early Gereformeerde Kerk in the Netherlands, we see from the very beginning of the Reformation difffering religious movements arise. Beside the Calvinistic ones, a more liberal and tolerant movement grew, influenced by ideas of Erasmus and Coornhert. Here we also mention the names of Caspar Jansz. Coolhaes, Anastasius Veluanus, Angelus Merula, Kornelis Kooltuin, Gellius Snecanus and later, Johannes Wtenbogaert, Jacobus Arminius, Herman Herberts, and other persons. They opted for an optimistic view of human beings and they all disagreed with the manner in which the HC spoke of the radical corruption of humans. The publication of the Goudse Catechismus in 1607 is an example of this theology.43 In this

41  See W. Verboom, De theologie van de Heidelbergse Catechismus (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1996), 16. Also W. Verboom, ‘‘De totstandkoming van de Heidelbergse Catechismus’’, W. van ’t Spijker, Het troostboek van de kerk. Over de Heidelbergse Catechismus (Houten: Den Hertog, 2005), 73. 42  That the Lutherans did not agree proves—from their criticism of the HC—that the reformed were seen as breakaways. See W. van ’t Spijker, Troostboek, 73fff. 43  About the Goudse Catechismus: see G. Glismeijer in ‘Een tekst vanuit het ‘t rattennest’, unpublished MA thesis (2010).

christology in heidelberg catechism & in canones of dordt 123 mindset, anthropology is intimately connected with soteriology. Given this, it becomes an important point what the contribution of humans could be in their own salvation. Does a person contribute to it in an essential way, as taught in the Roman Catholic Church, or is salvation exclusively the work of God? Is faith—as a human possibility—a condition of sharing in the salvation of Christ, or is it (only) an instrument by which one receives salvation? The orthodox-reformed position was quite clear on this. Being saved is entirely and only the work of God. Should one’s sharing in the salvation even for a little part be dependent of what human being must do, then salvation would be impossible.44 For this reason, the doctrine of predestination became the most fundamental response to the liberal humanistic ideas. One must start not from the believing human being but from the Sovereign God, who does what pleases Him. Not the free will of humans, but the free will of God must be the starting point of theological thinking.45 This would explain that predestination—as an expression of thinking from God’s point of view and not that of man—occupied such a central place in the DC. Beza and Ursinus As is well known, the doctrine of predestination was not something that had been devised by the Synod of Dordrecht. On the contrary, the doctrine of predestination belongs to the confession of the fijirst generation of the reformed thinkers. With diffferent nuances, the presupposition that God elects some to his salvation, and designates other persons to perdition (passes them over), was taught by Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, De Bres, and others. Especially Beza had paid much attention to this doctrine. His Confession de la foy chrestienne (1559/1560) shows this par example. In part III, chapter VI fff, Beza considers predestination in a somewhat supralapsarian way. He formulates it as follows: There shall be people who are saved and people who are damned—and that all to the honor of God, like the whole of scripture teaches us. The consequence of this is that—while nothing happens by chance and God never

44  Wim Verboom, ‘‘Alles of niets’’, Koen Holtzapfffel and Marius van Leeuwen, De Remonstrantie 400 jaar. Ontstaan, historie, actualiteit (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010), 64fff. 45  A.J. Kunz, Gods kennis en wil volgens de jonge Gomarus. De plaats van Gods kennis en wil in de predestinatieleer van de jonge Gomarus (1559–1609), unpublished paper, (Utrecht: University Utrecht, s.a.). The Canones of Dordt think along this line, albeit less supralapsarian.

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wim verboom changes his decisions—God has not only looked forward, but also Himself has determined from eternity that He would create human beings to show his glory (1 Cor. 11:7). He does this by saving them, in whom He should have pleasure (Rom. 9:23; Eph. 1:5–7), while He damns others according to his just decision (Ex. 9:16; Rom. 9:22; 2 Tim. 2:20).46

The Confession de la foy chrestienne by Beza had been an important source for drawing up the HC.47 We encounter dozens of expressions and thoughts from this confession in the HC. It is even more striking therefore that precisely Beza’s statements regarding predestination had not been adopted in the HC. The makers of the HC must have deliberately not adopted them. The HC offfers ‘half’ a Beza and revises him in this way, so to speak. In my opinion, this selective use can be attributed to the ‘consensus-character’ of the HC. In comparison, where the CD deals with predestination its progenitors honor the ‘whole’ Beza. We can deem this an implicit correction of the HC. At the same time, the writings by Beza and of the CD difffer in that Beza had considered predestination as a locus while the writers of DC treated it as a central thought. Ursinus What holds for Beza can, mutatis mutandis, also be held for Ursinus. As we know, he wrote two catechisms, the Maior and the Minor,48 prior to the HC. In both catechisms, predestination is discussed. When we consider the Maior, we see a repeated reference to the doctrine of election and reprobation. An example of two questions clearly demonstrates this. Question 216: Does this grace come to all or is it offfered to all? Answer: No, only to those whom God from eternity has chosen in Christ for eternal life to reveal his mercy in them. Question 217: Then isn’t God unjust when he condemns those to whom he does not give this grace so that they can repent and believe?

46  See M. Ter velde, Confessies. Gereformeerde geloofsverantwoording in zestiende-eeuws Europa (Heerenveen: Groen, 2009), 148; see also pp. 176, 189, 205–206, 215–216. 47  Walter Hollweg, Neue Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Lehre des Heidelberger Katechismus, Zweite Folge, (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968), 38. W. Verboom, ‘‘Bezielde geloofsverantwoording’’, Theologia Reformata, 53 (2010), 160–161. 48  Catechismus Major and Catechismus Minor, both in 1562. De Major for theological education, de Minor for faith-education of the congregation.

christology in heidelberg catechism & in canones of dordt 125 Answer: No. First, because no one has given anything to God fijirst so that he should pay him back. Rather, God may do with his own whatever He wants.’’49

Because the Maior is also an important source for the HC, it is all the more striking again—as in the Confession by Beza—that the numerous extracts of the Maior on predestination have not been replicated in the HC. Again, this cannot be a matter of mere chance. Here too, it concerns the ‘consensus character’ of the HC. The doctrine of predestination simply did not match with the climate of faith prevalent in the Palatinate, where diffferent movements had to be accommodated. That in 1563 the HC shows a conscious choice for this selection is buttressed by the fact that, when Ursinus gave lectures later in Neustadt, he indeed made predestination a theme.50 This reduction of the Maior as found in the HC can also be considered as a contextual correction. In the same vein, the expansion found in the CD concerning predestination can in turn be considered as a correction of the HC. Whereas, in the Maior predestination is not discussed as a locus, in the Explicationes (the lectures in Neustadt) this is distinctly the case. To be sure, either document does not attribute a dominating central place to predestination, as we fijind it in the CD. The novelty regarding predestination in the CD was caused by the context. Later Developments Using this short overview, I arrive at the observation that no single confession of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands attributes to christology such a central place as does the HC. The Confessio Augustana (1530) and the Confessio Belgica (1561) have the Loci-method. The Small Catechism by Luther (1529) and the Catechism by Calvin are ordered around the catechetical items of belief, command, prayer and sacraments.51 At the same time, it can be observed that in none of these documents does the issue of predestination occupy as central a place as is found in the Canones of Dordt. In later publications concerning the Canones, the central

49  Dr. Zacharias Ursinus, Large and Small Catechism with the Heidelberg Catechism. Translated by Fred H. Klooster and John Medendorp, s.l., s.a. 50  See Explicationes Catecheticae or Het Schat-boeck, edition by Festus Hommius, 1641, 253fff. 51  In diffferent order, but not bound together by the Christology.

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theme of predestination was honored—as could be expected.52 In later writings on the HC, we see that the central place that christology once held in the HC, has not been maintained. In many catechism sermons and explications on the HC in the reformed tradition in the Netherlands since the Reformation, the predestination-laden theology of the CD has become imposed on the christology of the HC. This practice violates the unique character of the HC. The influence of the Schatboeck by Ursinus, which had been widely spread by way of the editions of Festus Hommius, Johannes Spiljardus and Joan van den Honert, plays a crucial role here.53 This ‘CD’-manner of reading of the HC is also found in the Voetian54 and the Coccejan55 explications as well. An explication of the HC which has gone very far here is that of Abraham Kuyper. He even named his catechism explication: E Voto Dordraceno.56 This author writes: “May the explication of the HC, which I publish hereby separately, be connected with the events in Dordrecht.”57 Only in the last century have catechism explications been published that indeed do justice to the unique Christocentric character of the HC. One can think of the explications by H.F. Kohlbrugge,58 G. Oorthuys,59 Th.L. Haitjema,60 and others.61

52

 See for publications about the Canons of Dordt: W. Verboom, De belijdenis van een gebroken kerk, (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2005), 14. 53  Edition of Festus Hommius: a.o. 1641; of Spiljardus: a.o. 1664; of J. van den Honert: 1736; later editions: f.e. of C. van Proosdij (1886) and of J. van der Haar (1977). 54  For example in Justus Vermeer, De Leere der Waarheid, unchanged edition, (Gorinchem 1926), 443fff; in Carolus Tuinman, De Toevlucht en Sterkte van het ware Christendom, (Amsterdam 1739), 376fff; Johannes Beukelman, De Leere der Waarheid, (’s-Gravenhage, 1774), 432fff. 55  For example in Henricus Groenewegen, Oefeningen over den Heidelbergschen Catechismus, (Leyden 1688), 349 fff; and the later so called ‘Ernstige Coccejanen’ like Johannes D’Outrein, Het Gouden Kleinoot van de Leere der Waarheid, 9e druk, (Amsterdam, 1770), 307fff. 56  A. Kuyper, E Voto Dordraceno. Toelichting op den Heidebergschen Catechismus, 3e ed., 4 v., (Kampen, s.a.). 57  Volume I, Foreword. 58  H.F. Kohlbrugge, De eenvoudige Heidelberger. Catechismuspreken, 2e ed., (Franeker: Wever s.a.). 59  G. Oorthuys, De eeuwige jeugd van Heidelberg. De Heidelbergsche Catechismus een leerboek voor onzen tijd, 2e ed., (Amsterdam: Uitgeversmaatschappij Holland, 1948). 60  Th. L. Haitjema, De Heidelbergse Catechismus als klankbodem en inhoud van het actuele belijden onzer kerk, (Wageningen: H. Veenman & Zonen, 1962) (influence of K. Barth). 61  For example J.H. van de Bank e.a., Kennen en vertrouwen. Handreiking bij de prediking van de Heidelbergse Catechismus, (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1993).

christology in heidelberg catechism & in canones of dordt 127 The HC and Bram van de Beek At the end of this short study, I have a confession to make. Bram van de Beek opened my eyes for christology as the heart of theology.62 Theology means the doctrine concerning God. Well then, God has revealed Himself most deeply in his Son Jesus Christ. Diffferent from the christomonism of Karl Barth,63 for whom the revelation of God is largely ‘absorbed’ by the revelation in Christ, we see with Van de Beek how christology forms the beating heart of the faith of the church. The confession of the congregations in the New Testament is that Jesus is Kurios.64 This confession is the breath of faith in the Early Church. In all sorts of manner, this belief—that is so strong because it is so weak, that is so high, because it is so deep— has been exposed to the temptation of reaching for worldly power. The church as the community of people that belong to Jesus65 has to train herself in guarding against succumbing to this temptation. Repeatedly, she ought to learn to follow her Savior as the slain Lamb (Rev. 5:6). She has to seek and sing her glory song of the cross. Well then, it is this christological passion as held by Van de Beek, which I found in the HC. The deepest, and at the same time the plainest and also the most critical confession is that of Sunday 1: I belong to Jesus; I do not belong to myself. Here my old self shatters and I become a new creature in Jesus Christ. One of the most beautiful phrases that I learned from Van de Beek concerns the clarifijication of the ‘extra calvinisticum:’ Thus the Heidelberg Catechism wants to express that the love by which Christ loved us unto death, continues to surround us even after the ascension. This God is always with us and has always been with us, albeit present in another manner than when the Lord bore our our guilt and our sufffering in the flesh. For there is no other God than this God.66

62  A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie, (Kampen: Kok, 1998) 13); [ Jesus Kurios, Christology as Heart of Theology; Studies in Reformed theology, Supplements 1 (Zoetermeer, Meinema, 2002), 13] “A Christian theology hat does not begin with Christology, is a detour.’’ 63  Karl Barth, Die christliche Lehre nach dem Heidelberger Katechismus, (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag A.G. Zollikon, 1948). 64  Fil. 2:11. 65  A. van den Beek, Gespannen Liefde. De relatie van God en mens, (Kampen: Kok, 2000), 122. Also A. van de Beek, “The Church as Communion with Christ’’, A. van Egmond and D. van Keulen (eds), Church and Ministry, Studies in Reformed Theology, Volume 3, (Kampen: Kok, 1999) 23fff. 66  A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 50; [ Jesus Kyrios, 53].

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In the midst of the secular demolition, and in the labyrinth of religions, this confession of the love of God shows us the way towards God’s future. Because of the sufffering and the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but also because of his resurrection of the dead, there is hope for all people who have loved his appearance. More than Van de Beek, I hold with the HC the vision in faith of the contours of the kingdom of Christ as a reality promised by God. As far as the relation between the HC and de CD goes, we may confess the core of the Canones in a most fertile way, but do so from the Christocentric faith found in the HC. This is the opposite of the title of Kuyper’s catechism-explication. Jesus Christ, his person and his work form the theological centre of the HC, and also of our faith today.

THE NATURE OF CHRIST’S ATONEMENT. A DEFENCE OF PENAL SUBSTITUTION THEORY Nico Vorster The Historical Origin of Satisfaction Theory Anselm’s work Cur Deus Homo (1098) was the fijirst serious attempt to set forth a comprehensive and systematic doctrine of atonement. His main purpose was to provide an objective doctrine of atonement that would reject, on the one hand, the idea of a forgiveness of sin which would be a bare remission of penalty; and on the other, an optimistic conception of the human’s capacity to perform all that is needed.1 According to Anselm sin offfends the honor of God, because sin is in essence the failure to give God what is due to God.2 Sin also mars the beauty of the universe by disrupting the order and beauty of creation.3 In order for God’s honor to be kept intact, two possibilities exist: either a balancing of scales through retributive punishment, or satisfaction that remits the penalty through a means other than punishment.4 Because God is holy, human guilt necessitates a sacrifijice that is undefijiled. However, humankind is unable to offfer a sufffijicient sacrifijice because there exists no human without sin. In addition, only the penalty of death is sufffijicient to restore God’s honor, because it is the greatest possible satisfaction.5 A fijinite being’s greatest compensation or satisfaction are at best fijinite and cannot restore the eternal dignity of God.6 Atonement, therefore needs to be made by an eternal being who is greater than anything other but God, but who is simultaneously truly human, since humans have to compensate for their own sins. The only person who can make such a satisfaction is a God-man who partakes in human nature, but is not sinful.7 1  Gustav Aulén, Christus victor: an historical study of the three main types of the idea of atonement, (SPCK: London, 1931 repub. 2010), 85. 2  Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo”, in: St. Anselm Basic writings. Ed. S.N. Deane (Open Court: Chicago, 1962), 216. 3  Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo”, 223, 224. 4  Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo”, 216–217, 221. 5  Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo”, 245, 272. 6  Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo”, 246–247. 7  Anselm, “Cur Deus Homo”, 260.

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Anselm’s doctrine shows similarities with the feudal philosophy of his time and with Neo-Platonism. God is depicted as a feudal overlord bound above all things to safeguard His honor and to demand adequate satisfaction for any infringement of it, while the universe is viewed as a hiërarchic constellation of beauty that fijinds its prototype in divine nature.8 These influences cause him to focus upon an abstract code of honour that functions apart from God’s being. In his book Jesus Kurios, Bram van Beek rightly criticizes the rational nature of Anselm’s discourse. He notes that Anselm emphasizes the objective reality of guilt, but the relational aspect of reconciliation is underemphasized. Surely over and against God’s wrath as an emotion stands not only rational payment in blood, but an equally emotional love that embraces the sinner. Furthermore, if Anselm’s rational method is followed to its full conclusions several loopholes appear. Van de Beek asks: How is it that a fijinite human being can mar the glory of an infijinite God? Anselm’s view on sin and merit is also, according to Van de Beek, unbalanced. When it comes to human sin the infijinite consequences are highlighted, while on the side of merit fijinitude is highlighted. Van de Beek rightly states that Anselm tends to see the human and divine natures of Christ in opposition to each other. For Anselm only the death of Jesus has real meaning. Jesus’ life is necessary only to make it possible to die as a divine human being. The unio personalis only become important in his death.9 Despite some shortcomings, Anselm provided a foundation that the Reformers later built upon. Whereas Anselm attempted to give a rational philosophical explanation of atonement, the reformers were more concerned with the actual biblical data. They regarded the sacrifijicial and penal models that are found in Scripture as the unifying center of the Christian doctrine of the atonement.10 Whereas Anselm argued that offfended honor calls for atonement, the Reformers changed the focus to offfended righteousness.11 They did not view sin in terms of dishonour, but in terms of guilt and punishment satisfaction poenalis (satisfaction through punishment). The Reformers also did not distinguish between

 8  Cf. Frank. A James III, “The atonement in church history”, in: Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds The glory of atonement. (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 246.  9  Van de Beek, A. Jesus Kurios: Christology as heart of Theology. Speaking of God. Vol 1. Studies in Reformed Theology. (Meinema: Zoetemeer, 2003), 208–210. 10  Cf. Willem J. van Asselt, “Christ’s atonement: a multi-dimensional approach” Calvin Theological Journal 38 (2003): 52–67. 61. 11  John D. Hannah, “Anselm on the doctrine of atonement” Biblioteca Sacra (1978): 333–344. Okt.–Dec. 342.

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either punishment or satisfaction, but believed that satisfaction takes place through punishment. God’s justice demands that sin must be punished, hence the idea of penal substitution. It is penal in the sense that Christ’s death is a penalty for sin, it is substitutionary in the sense that Christ served as a substitute sacrifijice on behalf of sinners. Satisfaction is not merely made by the death of Christ, but by his voluntary and obedient fulfijilment of God’s law throughout life in an active and passive sense. His incarnation and morally blameless life constitute together with his vicarious penitence one act of reparation sufffijicient to atone for the sin of fallen beings.12 The Father accepts Christ’s sacrifijice out of love for the Son and has compassion with sinners. Though Christ is punished in the place of humanity, Christ’s sacrifijice only becomes efffective through the union of faith between the sinner and Christ which is the result of the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. John Calvin understood Christ’s death as a mysterious encounter between God’s love and justice. He regarded God’s love as the supreme motif behind God’s work of redemption. In the second book of the 1559 edition of his Institutes Calvin describes his understanding of atonement in vivid terms of penal substitution combined with a strong sense of Christ as the source of God’s love.13 Henri Blocher14 notes that Calvin mainly uses two main language-sets when speaking about the atonement. One is the religious cultic language of sacrifijice with such terms as expiation, curse, propitiation, uncleanness and purifijication by means of the shedding of blood. The second one is forensic or judicial language of condemnation with terms such as guilt, imputation, judgment, penalty and remission. Clearly Calvin saw the sacrifijicial and legal images in Scripture as the core foundation for a doctrine on atonement. Calvin insisted that the justice which is made ours in justifijication is an acquired justice which the God-man acquired through the acts of obedience performed throughout Jesus’ life in his divine-human unity. We are made participants in the righteousness of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.15

12

 Cf. Jean Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis. (Berolini: London, s.a.). 2.16.6.  Cf. Institutio 2.16.2. 14  Henri Blochner, “The atonement in John Calvin’s theology”, Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds, The glory of atonement (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 283. 15  Cf. Bruce L. McCormack, “For us and our salvation: Incarnation and atonement in the Reformed Tradition”, The Greek Ortodox Theological Review 43(1993), 281–316. 298. 13

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Central to Calvin’s doctrine of atonement was his understanding of Christ as mediator. He gave new depth to the Reformed doctrine of atonement by introducing the threefold distinction between the offfijices of Christ as King, Priest and Prophet. Christ’s work on the cross is mediatorial, that is Christ intercedes between God and humankind and reconciles the broken relationship. As King he establishes God’s reign on earth and restores the original dominion of humankind, as Priest he represents humanity before God and as Prophet Christ reveals God’s will to humanity.16 Calvin combined the notion of penal satisfaction with the motif of victory. He regarded the cross at once as the scene of the Satan’s defijinite defeat and the objective basis of justifijication. Christ conquered sin, death and the devil, yet his victory contains a paradox, because Christ conquers by being weak.17 Satan and death draw their power from the administration of divine justice, yet are disarmed by the satisfaction of that justice.18 The Reformed Confessions follow Calvin in distinguishing between a twofold satisfaction, namely a satisfaction of the righteous demands of the law and a satisfaction of the penalty due to sin. Article 21 of the Belgic Confession thus states that Christ’s death is a payment for our sins, while article 23 afffijirms that our sins are forgiven because of Christ’s obedience that covers our unrighteousness. The Heidelberg Catechism also asserts in Sunday 6, (answer 17) that Christ came to bear the wrath of God, while Sunday 24 (answer 62) states that God’s justice demands full obedience to the law. Unfortunately, the victory motif which is quite prevalent in the writings of Calvin is absent in the Reformed Confessions. Critisism of the Satisfaction Theory on Atonement Critisism of the penal satisfaction theory of Christ’s death was fijirst launched in the seventeenth century by the followers of Socinus. Since then it has also been severely attacked, among others, by enlightenment theologians, liberal Protestant theologians, feminist theologians, and postmodern theologians. The Socinians followed a rationalist method of inquiry that attempted to interpret Christianity in such a way that it would accommodate the views

16

 Cf. Institutio, 2.5.1–2.5.6.  Cf. Institutio, 2.12.2. 18  Cf. Institutes 2.12.2 2.16.11, 2.16.15 Blochner, “The atonement in John Calvin’s theology”, 290. 17

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of the Renaissance with its optimistic view of humanity.19 They rejected the notion that God needs satisfaction in order to forgive. Whether God forgives or punishes sin does not depend upon his nature but God’s will. God is, therefore, perfectly able to forgive without demanding satisfaction. To say that God must be satisfijied before forgiveness can be possible is to demean God’s grace and omnipotence. As a matter of fact, the notion of satisfaction is impossible because personal guilt cannot be transferred, as is the case with fijinancial debt, to another person. To punish one person for the sins of another is cruel and unjust. Even if it were possible for one person’s guilt to be transferred to another, it would not be possible for all human people’s guilt to be transferred to one individual.20 In the nineteenth and early twentieth century liberal German Protestantism advocated an ethical understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death. Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) stated that God’s reconciliative work in Christ must not be understood as a judicial act. Notions such as judgement, punishment, satisfaction and compensation belong to the juridical realm, whereas the Christian religion is concerned with the ethical idea of moral guilt.21 According to Ritschl, since God is love, divine righteousness exists therein that God attempts to bring humankind to salvation. Because of its sin, however, humankind sufffers under a sense of guilt and debt. Christ came to free us of this complex of guilt and to obliterate existing feelings of mistrust through his faithfulness which is an expression of Divine love.22 Christ does not act as a mediator or substitute, but Christ’s work is ethical in nature. Through his passion Christ reveals God’s gracious love and imputes his justice to humankind so that humankind can be taken up in the love of God.23 Christ’s obedience has no efffect upon God, because God bears no anger that needs to be placated. Neither is Christ’s work an attempt to free us from the bondage of Satan. Christ’s passion serves us. He attempts to free us from a guilt ridden consciousness that beliefs that atonement is only possible through punishment or satisfaction, and to establish a new universal ethical community of humankind

 19  Cf. Joel R. Beeke, “The atonement in Herman Bavinck’s theology”, in: Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds, The glory of atonement (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 340. 20  Cf. Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek. Derde deel (Kampen: Kok, 1929), 331.  21  Cf. Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian doctrine of justifijication and reconciliation (Edinburgh: T &T Clark, 1902), 55, 88. 22  Ritschl, The Christian doctrine of justifijication and reconciliation, 53–54, 120. 23  The Christian doctrine of justifijication and reconciliation, 71, 446.

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that enters into a new relationship with God and a new relationship to the world that is characterised by self-realisation.24 In 1931, Gustav Aulén (1879–1977) published his classical work Christus Victor. In this study Aulén distinguishes between the classic type of atonement, commonly held by the Church Fathers, which stated that the essence of Christ’s work lies in His victory over the forces of evil. The subjective type, fijirst formulated by Abelard, viewed Christ’s work as an ethical example of perfect love that serves to extract a responsive love from humanity. The objective account of atonement, fijirst developed by Anselm, states that God demands satisfaction for the sins that humanity committed. Aulén questions the biblical foundation of the Latin view of atonement, by stating that the sacrifijicial images in the New Testament in reality belongs to the victory line of thought, and not to satisfaction. According to Aulén the essential point in the Latin theory is missing in the New Testament’s sacrifijicial imagery, namely the idea that divine justice was to receive adequate satisfaction for man’s default, through the payment made by Christ on man’s behalf. The New Testament, according to Aulén, understands the sacrifijice in a double-sided manner as both an act of God and an act towards God, whereas the Latin satisfaction doctrine understands the sacrifijice from below as an offfering made from the human to God.25 Aulén claims that the Latin idea of Atonement gradually grew up in a Western Christendom with its typical rationalist Latin understandings of penance, legal relationships, and justice. This is totally diffferent from the New Testament setting within which the classical idea of atonement developed.26 He also questions the Latin notion that God is willing to accept a satisfaction for sins committed, because such a view fails to guard the truth of God’s enmity towards sin and weakens down God’s radical opposition to sin. The notion that Christ’s merits can be imputed to human beings is based, according to Aulén, on a materialist view of sin.27 At the end of the twentieth century, feminist theology attacked the notion of penal satisfaction with intense rigour. According to this stance, the penal satisfaction theory portrays God the Father as a violent child abuser. It’s adherents are also critical of the notion of Christ as a universal

24  The Christian doctrine of justifijication and reconciliation, 449, 474, cf. Aulén, Christus victor, 138. 25  Aulén, Christus victor, 72, 77. 26  Aulén, Christus victor, 78, 82. 27  Aulén, Christus victor, 92, 147.

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substitute. Dorothee Sölle presents the most substantial criticism in this regard. According to Sölle, a person who acts as a replacement fully takes the place of the one for whose sake the substitution takes place. Such a substitution, though, depersonalises the relationship, because the one who is replaced is treated as if no longer alive. Substitution theory is, according to Sölle, no longer acceptable for the autonomous modern human, because the autonomous decision whereby human beings burden themselves with guilt cannot be undone from outside.28 The notion that guilt can be transferred to someone else and that someone else can compensate for my mistakes is false.29 For Sölle substitution theory in essence is an insult to human self-awareness. The notion that God’s wrath must be satisfijied by the sacrifijice of Christ, before God can show grace has, according to Sölle, no foundation in the New Testament. It is derived from a depiction of God as an antic eastern Despot and leads to an insolvable tension between God’s justice and grace.30 Satisfaction theory limits the spontaneity of God by making God the object of reconciliation not the subject; it limits the work of Christ to a mere judicial act and thus is exclusive because Christ brings salvation totally independent of us.31 Christ’s representation can only be temporary, because the human being is irreplaceable.32 Contemporary postmodern theologians follow the broad premises of feminism in dismissing the rationalist epistemology behind satisfaction theories of the atonement, because it reduces, in their view, otherness by attempting to explain something beyond our conceptual grasp. The radical-orthodoxy theologian John Milbank recently attempted to provide a postmodern variation on the classical doctrine of atonement through a metaphorical understanding of Christ’s work. He suggests that Jesus’s death must not be seen as a redemptive act that brings reconciliation and eternal life, but as a foundational act that allows for new modes of being.33 The Gospel narratives must be read, not as the story of Jesus, but as the story of the foundation of a new city that practise new politics and new

28  Cf. Dorothee Sölle, Plaatsbekleding. Een hoofstuk theologie na de dood van God. (Utrecht: Amboboeken, 1965), 17–62. ET: Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology After the ‚Death of God‘, (London: SCM Press, 1967). 29  Sölle, Plaatsbekleding. 83, 112 -113. 30  Sölle, Plaatsbekleding. 80, 132–133. 31  Sölle, Plaatsbekleding. 80, 132–133. 32  Sölle, Plaatsbekleding. 115. 33  John Milbank, “The name of Jesus: incarnation, atonement, ecclesiology”, Modern theology 7.4 (1991): 311–332. 314, 315.

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forms of communion based upon Christ’s example of forgiveness.34 Jesus is simply the founder, the beginning, the fijirst of many.35 His death is efffijicious not because it satisfijies God, but because it inaugurates a new political practise of forgiveness which in itself is continuing atonement.36 Any cultic understanding of Christ’s death is objectionable, because a single death cannot be universally efffijicacious, nor can a mere belief in the factual event of atonement be uniquely transformative for the individual.37 The abovementioned criticisms can, in conclusion, be summarised as follow: 1) Moral guilt cannot be transferred to someone else. 2) Cultic understandings of Christ’s death depict God as a violent God. 3) The notion of a single substitute for the sins of many is an afffront to individual responsibility. 4) Penal satisfaction theory use legal categories to rationalise an event which is essentially ethical in nature and beyond conceptual grasp. Understanding Christ’s Sacrifijice The Multi-Dimensionality of Biblical Images The New Testament does not provide a systematic theory of the signifijicance of Christ’s death on the cross, but it uses various rich, multifaceted and interrelated images to explain the necessity of Christ’s atonement. These images or metaphors point to much more than mere symbolism. They are powerful cognitive instruments that depict reality truly, albeit in an indirect way. In so doing they explain to us the saving signifijicance of Christ’s death. The following images can be discerned: 1) Victory images. The atonement is portrayed as a divine struggle and victory in which Christ triumphs on the cross over the evil powers of this world that hold humanity in spiritual bondage. God reconciles Godself to the whole of the cosmos in Christ. Central texts in this regard are Colossians 2, 1 Corinthians 15:24 and Philipians 2:10 where Christ are portrayed as the Cosmic Redeemer who conquers the principalities 34

 Milbank, “The name of Jesus”, 317.  Milbank, “The name of Jesus”, 317. 36  Milbank, “The name of Jesus”, 327. 37  Milbank, “The name of Jesus”, 315. 35

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and powers of this world; the miracle narratives in the Gospels where Christ probes the deepest realms of dark demonic powers and passages in Revelation that depict the defeat of Satan and his expulsion from heaven.38 2) Financial images. The depiction of God’s rescue of God’s people in the language of a fijinancial transaction is very common both in the Old and New Testament. Christ’s death is portrayed in the New Testament as a payment for sins that secures the release of the individual sinner, conceived of as a slave, debtor or condemned prisoner.39 In 2 Peter 2:1 the notion of ‘buying’ is combined with the idea that the believers are now Christ’s slaves by virtue of purchasing them out of slavery to sin. Often these fijinancial images are used in combination with images derived from other spheres, especially the legal and sacrifijicial realms.40 3) Cultic images. The sacrifijicial realm accounts for much of the Bible’s atonement language. Christ’s death is portrayed as a sacrifijicial death for the sins of the world. Through his sacrifijicial death Christ remits the sins of humanity and reconciles human beings with God.41 Christ is often called the Lamb, the Paschal sacrifijice, that is slain for the sins of the world and whose blood propitiates the sins of humanity.42 Other key sacrifijicial terms that are used are ἰλασµος, ἰλαστεριον and καταλλαγη. Ιλασµος denotes the objective means by which sins are forgiven. It expresses the idea that Christ covers sin and takes it away through Christ’s sacrifijice.43 According to Kistemaker it can communicate both the sense of propitiation and expiation and thus express a double meaning, namely to reconcile by appeasing God’s anger, and to remove sin.44 Ιλαστεριον alludes to the location or place where sins are forgiven. In several places in the New Testament the cross is called ιλαστεριον denoting the place where human beings are delivered from guilt and purifijied from sin.45 καταλλαγη and καταλασσειν constitute the broad framework within which the idea of sacrifijice as ἰλασµος and 38

 Cf. Rev 1:6, 5:10, 12:11, 15:2–3.  Cf. 1 Peter 1:18–19, Mark 10:45, Tit 2:14, Rev 1:5, 5:9; Rom 3:9. 40  Cf. 1 Peter 1:18–19; Rev 1:5. 41  Cf. Rom 3:24–26, Mat 26:28, 1 Cor 15:3, Gal 1:4. 42  Cf. John 1:29;19:14; 19:29;19:36; Rev 5:5–6. 43  1 John 2.2; 4:10, Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic domains. Volume 1. (Cape Town: Bible Society of South Africa, 1989), 504. 44  Simon J. Kistemaker, “Atonement in Hebrews”, in: Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds, The glory of atonement (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 146. 45  Louw & Nida, Semantic domains, 504. 39

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ιλαστεριον can arise.46 It denotes the restoration of original friendly relations. Christ terminates the hostility and estrangement beween God and humanity and thereby brings reconciliation.47 Through his sacrifijice he renews the covenant between God and human beings and becomes the mediator of a better covenant.48 The New Testament’s depiction of Christ’s death as a sacrifijice is metaphorical, not in the sense that Christ’s death on the cross is unreal, but in the sense that language from the context of the Old Testament is transferred to the New Testament to explain the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. Christ’s death cannot be a sacrifijice in the cultic sense because He is not sacrifijiced on an altar by a priest, but it is a sacrifijice in the theological sense, in that He paid the penalty for the sins of humankind. 4) Legal images. Whereas the cultic images relate Christ’s death on the cross to a sacrifijice, legal imagery understands Christ’s death in relation to the law of God and the renewal of the covenant. Galatians 3:13, for instance, states that Christ redeemed the faithful from the curse of the law, by becoming the cursed in our place. Christ thus not only died for our sins, but actively fulfijilled the entire law of God, thereby deserving to be the mediator of the new covenant.49 At times legal imagery coincides with sacrifijicial imagery. 5) Exemplarist images. Exemplarist images are found in the Gospels, Pauline epistles, and the epistle of 1 Peter. Jesus’ death on the cross is viewed as a demonstration of God’s love for humanity. The faithful are called upon to follow the example of Christ in their own lives by imitating the example of Christ. The Gospels primarily use the word ακολουθειν, while the Pauline epistles use µιµητηζ. Ακολουθειν denotes a participation in Christ’s legacy through an unconditional obedience to Christ,50 while µιµητηζ in a similar fashion alludes to an obedience based upon the sacrifijice of Christ that is manifested in true discipleship.51 The intent of these words is not that believers can redeem themselves by following the example of Christ, but that they must partake as already redeemed people in the legacy of Christ.

46

 Van Asselt, “Christ’s atonement: a multi-dimensional approach”, 59.  Cf. Romans 5:10, 11; Hebrews 10:28. 48  Hebrews 8. 49  Cf. Hebrews 5:8, 9. 50  Cf. John 12:25, 26, Luke 9:26, Mat 8:22. 51    Cf. 1 Cor 11:1, 1 Tess 1:6, Eph 5:1. 47

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The question is: How should the various images used in the New Testament for the atoning work of Christ is approached? Van Asselt52 distinguishes between the relativist, pluralist and complementarist theological approaches in history and then endorses a multi-dimensional approach that was fijirst developed by Luco van den Brom. Though Van Asselt primarily refers to the diffferent theological models found in church history, his approach can also be applied to the diffferent images in Scripture. The relativist model, according to Van Asselt, suggests that the meaning of Christ’s death should be located in the culture in which they were fijirst put forward. It assumes that the truth of a particular model is always contextually determined and that there is no context-independent standard that is universally applicable. The problem with this model according to Van Asselt is that a particular model may in fact subvert the context in which it originated. The notion of a sacrifijice that sacrifijices itself is a good example. The pluralistic view, in contrast, allows the diverse models to stand alongside one another as equally valid theories without making any judgement. Each model is true in its own way. Van Asselt, though, is of the view that possible conflicts between the models cannot be settled with reference to the models themselves. A complementary model entails that the diffferent models supplement each other and together offfer the complete picture of the signifijicance of Christ’s death. However, the idea of complementarity is problematic because the various images concerning Christ’s death interact and interpret each other. Instead Van Asselt proposes a multi-dimensional approach. All the models together constitute an extended chain or family from which one cannot isolate or eliminate a single model. According to Van Asselt, the substitution theory offfers many possibilities for integrating the dimensions of other models. When we employ the substitution model to organize or structure our perspective on atonement, the other models fall in place automatically and become visible in their own, albeit limited, validity. A multi-dimensional approach opens up the possibility of a more encompassing model that includes other models as lower dimensions that are successful in their own right. Van Asselt’s approach seems to be the most adequate, especially since the New Testament itself uses the various images in an intertwined way. Hebrews 2:14–17 for example, mixes the victory motif of the Devil’s defeat with the sacrifijicial image of Christ’s priesthood; Colossians 2:14–15 conjoins the victory motif of Christ triumph with the image of legal debt;

52

 Van Asselt, “Christ’s atonement”, 63–67.

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Romans 3:24–26 uses the law-court language of justifijication and redemption but also makes sacrifijicial mention of “blood”; and 1 Peter 1:18–19 employs economic images in combination with sacrifijicial terms. Numerous other texts follow the same technique. The intertwined way in which New Testament texts use these images suggests an underlying doctrinal scheme. The images fijittingly complement each other; they exhibit the same structure, so that they naturally translate into one another—hence the intertwining in so many passages.53 There seems to be no disunity between the key images. Yet all of the images are not of the same importance. The cultic, victorious and legal images are used most frequently, whereas the fijinancial and exemplarist images are usually mentioned in relation to the other images. The economic, victorious and exemplarist images, furthermore, lacks objective foundation without the added signifijicance of the cultic and legal images. It seems therefore that the diffferent images must be interpreted in terms of each other and that the cultic and legal images must be regarded as providing the objective foundation of a doctrine of atonement, whereas the economic, victorious and exemplarist images deepens the meaning of Christ’s atoning work. The idea of substitution and representation links the diffferent images together. In my view, the Reformed doctrine of penal substitution with its dependence upon the cultic and legal images provides the most extensive and biblically responsible theory on atonement. Yet the classical Reformed doctrine of penal substitution displays an element of one-sidedness, due to its under-emphasis of the victory motif. Because emphasis is placed upon Christ as mediator, the call on faithful is to trust and believe, whereas the importance for obedience and allegiance to Christ, which is prevalent in the victory motif, is often neglected. The atonement, furthermore, entails more than reconciling the broken relationship between God and human beings. As Aulén54 rightly indicated, salvation and atonement cannot be separated as two distinct ideas. Atonement between God and the world is only possible, because Christ broke the power of evil and death through his victory on the cross.

53  Cf. Henri Blocher, “Biblical metaphors and the doctrine of the atonement”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 2004, 47(4):629–645. Dec. 643–644. 54  Cf. Aulén, Christus Victor, 71.

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God and Sin Christ’s death is seen in relation to sin, especially in the Pauline epistles. Sin is inherently a violation of God’s self expressed will and is by nature directed against God’s person who is holy and righteous. The law as the revealed will of God is, according to Paul, the criterion for sin.55 It accuses the human and establishes guilt with the forthcoming liability to punishment. The issue of atonement is therefore unavoidably legal and penal. Though God’s atoning work must not be exclusively viewed in legal terms, we cannot speak about sin and atonement without using legal categories of thinking. The law is an expression of God’s being, and therefore cannot be simply nullifijied by the free grace of God as the Socinians seem to think. The purely ethical approach which rejects the notion of Christ’s death as punishment for our sins is also unacceptable, because implies that the issue of sin is either irrelevant or not that serious in nature. Ritschl’s notion that Christ came to free us from our sense of guilt through his example of love, and Milbank’s understanding of the work of Christ as inaugurating a new community based upon the principle of forgiveness, fails to comprehend the serious nature of sin and God’s radical hostility to evil. They overemphasizes God’s love at the expense of God’s righteousness, and separate God’s reconciliative acts from God’s justifying acts, by not reflecting sufffijiciently on the issue of accountability. The notion of sin implies a need for accountability, for if no person is called to account for his actions, the notion of sin becomes a misnomer. If punishment is not necessary, God’s will would be arbitrary and inconsistent in nature, because God would possess no need to uphold the law which is an expression of God’s will. The New Testament, in contrast, emphasizes the seriousness of sin. It defijines sin not merely as a subjective phenomenon, but also as an objective reality that systemically penetrates God’s creation and human nature. Paul emphasizes that sin entails more than a mere personal choice; it is an enslaving power that is systemic in nature and cosmic in range.56 Sin brings bondage and debt, it causes defijilement, incurs legal guilt and deserves the ultimate punishment of death.57 Since the legal efffects of sin

55  Cf. Richard Gafffijin, “Atonement in the Pauline corpus ”, in: Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds, The glory of atonement (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 147. Romans 3:20. 56  Romans 3. 57  Cf. Rom 1:32.

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are both personal and universal in nature, nothing can escape God’s punishment. Christ, therefore, has to act as Substitute, because humankind is not able to compensate for something that is part of its very nature. By doing this Christ voluntarily serves the general benefijit of all parties concerned in the covenant. Sölle’s criticism that the idea of an substitute is an insult to human autonomy is not valid, because she displays an idealistic view of freedom as a human characteristic that is universally embedded in the autonomy of the human being and not dependent upon prior historical events. Sin, however, is systemic in nature and its efffects cannot be avoided through autonomous decision-making. It is precisely because of the objective systemic nature of sin, that the idea of an universal substitute makes perfect reasonable sense. Love and Justice No conception of the atonement can escape reflection about the Divine nature. When we speak about God’s reconciliatory actions we are, after all, speaking about the coherence of his attributes, especially the relationship between his love and righteousness. God’s omnipotence and sovereignty does not mean that God acts randomly or arbitrarily. God is a law in Godself, and acts according to God’s attributes. This does not mean that God is unfree, but that God’s actions according to God’s attributes are the expression of the highest form of freedom. Scripture reflects upon God righteousness within a covenantal rather than merely legal framework. Vanhoozer58 rightly notes that in the context of God’s covenant with Israel, the law served the purpose of regulating relationships, both within the covenant community and between the covenant community and God. From a biblical perspective then, God’s justice is a matter of his preserving right covenantal relationships, and of doing so with integrity as a holy, just and loving God. If God should show love without justice, Divine holiness would not be served. If he shows justice without compassion his love is compromised. God therefore can only be true to Godself by exercising justice in love and love in justice. True justice demands some kind of penalty for the infraction of law. A

58  Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “The atonement in postmodernity”, in: Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds, The glory of atonement (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 380–381.

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law that carries no sanctions is a misnomer and has no authority. The atonement makes the broken covenantal relations right, but this restoration is both legal and interpersonal in nature. God’s justice, however does not bring annihilation, but in correspondence with God’s loving nature brings reconciliation. This becomes evident in the New Testament’s claim that Christ did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfijil it.59 The relation between God’s justice and love exist therein that God’s love is the motivating cause in exercising justice. God judges in order to reconcile. God’s judgement is an instrument of salvation and falls within the framework of divine compassion. On the other hand God’s love co-exists with God’s holiness and veracity and is therefore a righteous love that God exercises in a way that is faithful to Godself. A love that ignores wrong is unholy, unjust and not perfect love. The satisfaction of Christ thus displays a twofold direction: it satisfijies God’s demand for justice, but it also satisfijies God’s love by making redemption possible. Christ as Priest and Sacrifijice Waltke60 states that the removal of sins in the Old Testament involved two aspects: the external liturgical sacrifijices such as the sin and guilt offferings that through the shedding of blood made payment in expiation for a life which was forfeit, and the internal spiritual factors involved in forgiveness which included the personal willingness of God to forgive sin and the offfender’s willingness to renounce his wrongdoing. The atonement efffected by the sacrifijices for atonement remained highly restricted. They did not cover the whole of life nor all types of sins, but served only to arouse a sense of guilt. In fact, some Old Testament passages express an awareness that external offferings are not spiritually adequate and could ultimately not be efffectual.61 Bavinck rightly notes that the ceremonial dispensation in the Old Testament was temporary in nature and that it merely served a symbolic and typical purpose. God used the ceremonies to uphold the redemptive-historical purposes and anticipations of the law.62

59

 Cf. Mat 5:17.  Bruce, K. Waltke, “Atonement in Psalm 51”, in: Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds The glory of atonement (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 51. 61  Cf. Ps 40:6, Mic 6:6–7, Heb 10:4, Isaiah 1:11, 12. 62  Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 315. Cf. Carson, “Atonement in Romans 3:21–26”, Charles E. Hill & Frank A. James III. eds The glory of atonement (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2004). 139. 60

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The New Testament depicts Christ as the fulfijilment of the promises and anticipations of the Old Testament. Christ’s sacrifijice is a sign of God’s great love, but also of the reality of God’s judgement on sin. God acts as the complete antitype of the old sacrifijicial order in that God is both subject and object in the outpouring of God’s wrath. Christ is subject (priest) in the sense that the punishment for sin is an act of the triune God; Christ is object (sacrifijice) in the sense that he takes the consequence of human sin upon himself and thereby substitutes and represents the faithful. As such Christ is both the expiation that covers sin and the propitiation that turns away God’s anger; He is both victor and victim.63 Christ secures permanent purity, thereby eradicating the efffects of sin and making God’s judgement of God’s people obsolete. In doing so, Christ embodies and personalises the old sacrifijicial order in Himself but at the same time brings the repetitive old sacrifijicial order to its conclusion by being the perfect sacrifijice that satisfijies God’s holiness. Christ’s shed blood is a sign that God has proved covenantal faithfulness precisely by undergoing the sanctions, legal and relational, for covenant disobedience.64 God in Christ thereby subverts not only the old sacrifijicial system, but also the legal logic of human law, because God sacrifijices God; God placates God; God is both the subject and object of reconciliation; God is both Judge and advocate. The question is: is this manner of speaking rationally coherent? Carson65 importantly notes that a distinction must be made between a human judicial system where the judge is an administrator of a system and thus serves something bigger than himself. In such a system it would be a perversion of justice if the Judge takes the place of the offfender because the Judge would act against the laws of the land. Yet God as Judge is never administrator of a system external to Godself: God is the offfended party as well as the impartial Judge. Thus, to force the categories of human law on divine realities is bound to lead to distortion. Though God is a righteous Judge, He is not a dispassionate or distanced Judge. Since humanity cannot bear the penalty through to the end he sends a Substitute, through whom God simultaneously wipes out the sins of the offfenders and keeps His own justice intact. He accomplishes this dual act by making the human nature part of his own nature. Christ’s conflict and victory is thus the conflict and victory of God Himself.

63

 Cf. Heb 2:17, Rom 3:25, 1 John 2:1–2.  Vanhoozer, “Atonement in postmodernity”, 399. 65  D.A. Carson, “Atonement in Romans 3:21–26”, 132–133. 64

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The notion of Socianism―that God would be unfair to transfer guilt to an innocent person―and the critism of feminism―that the penal satisfaction theory depicts God as a child abuser that acts violently upon his own Son―is founded upon a triteïstic understanding of the operation of the triune God. The ontological premise seems to be that God the Father acts as a separate individual upon his Son who is a second distinct individual that operates apart from the triune divine nature. The passion of Christ, however, is a triune event in which the triune God pours his wrath out upon himself through in and through his second nature that he has made his own in his second mode of being. God the Father is thus not doing something to someone else, but God takes the human experience of forsakenness into his own existence through God the Son in a selfsacrifijicial love. God is not an angry God from whom forgiveness must be elicited by someone who is able to change his attitude and turn his anger into compassion through a violent death.66 Forgiveness is rather efffected by God the Father through his Son. God fijirst loves us, then God reconciles us. Human beings respond to God’s grace through the Spirit and participate through the Spirit in the life of the Trinity. In this way human life is conformed to God’s own life, without jeopardizing the transcendence of God. The criticism of postmodernist philosophers that the penal satisfaction theory legitimates a violent circle of retaliation misses the point. God has to deal with the illegality of sin. By taking the human experience into God’s own existence through Christ, God in actual fact ends the cycle of retaliation, and negates the need for judgement on every individual without ignoring the illegality of sin. The transference of human guilt to Christ must be understood from the perspective of the covenant that is eternal, divine and collective in nature and transcends the individualistic characteristics of modern human law. Christ acts as Head of the covenant community who in union with him constitutes one corporate body that is collectively accountable before God.67 Even though sin did not inhere in the person of Christ, God imputed guilt to Christ because God did not punish a single individual in a subjective sense, but human nature as such which, because of the objective nature of sin, shares a collective guilt. In his bearing of the punishment for sin, Christ, though sinless, does not act as an innocent human

66

 Cf. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 353, 384. Joh 3:16, Rom 5:8, 8:32, 1 Joh 4:9, 10.  Cf. 1 Cor 12; Ephes 4.

67

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being, but voluntarily represent sinful human nature in a generic sense as the Second Adam, who as God-man takes the human experience into the life of the triune Godself in order to restore the integrity of the covenant between God and the faithful. Sölle’s view that substitution necessarily entails depersonalisation, in actual fact, stands in opposition to the biblical notion of substitution that entails precisely the contrary, namely that the faithful discover their true identity through the transference of guilt and punishment to their representative Jesus Christ. Conclusion The diffference between the penal substitutionary doctrine of atonement and other theories of atonement exists therein that it provides a Scriptural-founded model that succeeds in unifying the diffferent metaphors of Scripture by using the sacrifijicial and legal images as the objective core. The moral-influence type models that were advanced by diffferent theological traditions throughout history; lacks an objective foundation because of its denial of the sacrifijicial and substitutionary nature of Christ’s death and the radical consequences of sin. As a result they risk setting Old Testament and New Testament, law and salvation, justice and love, sin and redemption against each other as irreconcilable features. The sacrifijicial and substitutionary feature of Christ’s death is both a mystery and gift and therefore falls in a certain sense beyond our conceptual grasp. Yet, Christ’s work is not irrational nor unexplainable, but makes sufffijicient sense if we understand that sin is both a subjective and objective reality; that Christ represents on the cross sinful human nature in a generic sense; that God punishes in order to reconcile; and that Christ is not a third party that placates God’s anger, but that Chris is both priest and sacrifijice that takes the human experience into the triune God’s existence. At the cross we encounter, as Van de Beek duly reminds us, not only of God’s wrath against sin, but also of God’s embracing love. The atoning work of Christ is therefore objective in nature, but also very personal in nature. When we understand both the objective as well as the very relational side of the atonement in unity, the doctrine of atonement can be safeguarded against one-sidedness.

NIETZSCHE’S ‘THE ANTICHRIST’: AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN AND ANTI-JEWISH DOCUMENT A.A.A. (Ad) Prosman Introduction This article discusses the question of how Nietzsche approaches the relation between Jewry and Christianity in The Antichrist.1 Many subjects are at stake in The Antichrist, but Nietzsche’s views on Jews and Jewry as they are presented in this book have until now not received the attention they deserve.2 To see this relationship in the right perspective, it is important to know something about 19th century German culture and its relation to the Jews. This article, therefore, begins with a brief orientation. The next section concerns the content of The Antichrist. How exactly does Nietzsche speak about the Jew, Judaism, and Jewry? It will be explicated that the notion of instinct is crucial in the relationship between Christianity and Jewry. The article fijinishes with some remarks about the notions of stranger, pariah, and parasite. In Van de Beek’s theology, the Christian is a stranger and sojourner on earth. This ‘location’ of the Christian in the theology of A. van de Beek acquires a special meaning. The Historical Context When we discuss and evaluate The Antichrist, it is essential to see that it is written in a period in which Christendom was seen as the highest level

1

 Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christenthum. See: Kritische Studienausgabe (KSA). Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds), Vol. 6 (München: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 165–254. The digital edition of the KSA: http://www.nietzschesource. Literature on The Antichrist: An older publication is, Gerard Brom, Nietzsche’s Antichrist (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgeversmaatschappij 1946); J. Salaquarda, “Der Antichrist”, Nietzsche-Studien, Internationales Jahrbuch für die Nietzsche-Forschung, Vol. 2, (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), 91–136. A thorough commentary on The Antichrist is the research of Andreas Urs Sommer, Friedrich Nietzsches “Der Antichrist”. Ein philosophisch-historischer Kommentar (Basel: Schwabe & Co., 2000). 2  Brom pays no attention to this theme. Salaquarda passes by this subject completely. He does not even mention the word Jew or Jewry. Sommer, in his careful investigation, has the problems in view but does not discuss the relation Jewry-Christianity.

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of civilization. The whole of culture was impregnated with a more enlightened, or a more orthodox, Christendom. The publication of The Antichrist was experienced as an afffront to the whole of culture. But, in spite of that, Nietzsche’s negative approach of Jewry was in line with public opinion. At the end of the 19th century, anti-Semitism was growing in Europe; in Germany but also in France, Austria and Hungary. The Jewish world was deeply concerned by certain outbursts of hatred. The emancipationprocess of the Jews, by which they were obtaining all civil rights, did not lead not to the diminishing of anti-Semitism.3 In 1829, in Germany, there were the so-called Hep Hep riots.4 They were the consequence of a long spell of anti-Jewish propaganda.5 In 1879, anti-Semitism received a new impulse. Katz writes, ‘the year 1879 is a turning point in modern Jewish history: it marks the beginning of modern anti-Semitism’.6 In the period of 1848–1880, the Jewish emancipation was almost completed. But the expectation that the Jews would then abuse their own identity and would no longer distinguish themselves from other citizens was not realized. As a result, these old stereotypes, which the Jews for centuries had been dealing with, were refreshed.7 It is not by accident that exactly in these years the Zionist longing for a national home was awakened and a renewed Zionism was formed. In 1896, the publication of Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) by Theodor Herzl was an important event. The following year, the fijirst Zionists-congress gathered. These remarks about growing anti-Semitism in Germany show that Nietzsche lived in an era in which the position of the Jews became more and more problematic. This is an important point that helps us to come to a balanced interpretation of The Antichrist.

3  The Jewish philosopher Emil L. Fackenheim considered the Jewish emancipation in the 19th century as a danger for Jewish identity. The loud cry was: ‘(. . .) come out of the ghetto and join us’. Fackenheim asks: ‘But emancipation from what and for what? Like the promise of the serpent, philosophy’s promise of “equality” was a deception. All the European Jews ever wanted was to be like everyone else and fijit in. But that is precisely what God asks the Jews not to do’, David Patterson: Emil L. Fackenheim, A Jewish Philosopher’s Response to the Holocaust (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 59. 4  Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction. Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933 (Cambridge – London: Harvard University Press, 19945), 97–104. 5  After leaving the ghettos, the Jews were regarded as competitors: “(. . .) the Jew was considered a competitor—all the more so since some had grown rich after leaving the ghetto”, Walter Laqueur, The Changing of Anti-Semitism. From Ancient Times to the Present Day (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 77. 6  Katz, Prejudice, 245. 7  The pamphlet of Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum, published in 1879, was reprinted twelve times within a year. Growing anti-Semitism was also a consequence of an unexpected economic depression in Europe that began in 1873.

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The Antichrist The Antichrist and Ecce Homo were written nearly at the same time, at the end of 1888. September 30th, 1888, not long before his mental collapse, Nietzsche completed The Antichrist.8 The book, however, was not published until 1895. More than in any other publication, we get to know Nietzsche as a former Christian who not only says farewell to the Christian religion, but even curses Christianity. But the book offfers more than that. It aims at a construction of a foundation for Western culture; another foundation than it had for many centuries. It is his strong conviction that a ‘revaluation of all values’ is needed. Not by accident, Nietzsche fijinishes The Antichrist with these words (paragraph 62). The Antichrist is an embarrassing book on a delicate subject. Every selfrespecting philosopher will be reluctant to study this text. He will see it as an obscure pamphlet, not due to the subject, but because of the lack of academic distance. For Christians the book is not acceptable because of the contents. They see it as an awful distortion of the Christian faith; a caricature of all what is precious to them. To modern disbelieving people, The Antichrist is barely interesting; for them it is an exotic and strange book. In a secular context, the title is almost meaningless. In the circle of Church members, the word antichrist has the meaning of bitter hatred of the Christian faith—outside the Church it does not. All of this means that the contexts of 1888 and 2011 are totally diffferent. The Subject The short book consists of 62 paragraphs9 and ends with an appendix: Gesetz wider das Christenthum (Law against Christianity), with seven articles. Despite the fact that this document has a clear subject (namely, a curse on Christianity), it is not constructed as a clear, continuous argument.10 That applies, however, to most books of Nietzsche. Several books are compilations of aphorisms, but The Antichrist has more coherence

8  KSA 15, 177. The date of the completion of The Antichrist is also the beginning of a new calendar. The book was completed on the day of salvation, on the fijirst day of the year one (KSA 6, 254). It was Nietzsche’s intention that The Antichrist would be the fijirst part of the book Revaluation of All Values. KSA 13, 545 (September 1888). 9  These are paragraphs, not aphorisms. 10  P.J.M. van Tongeren, Reinterpreting modern Culture. An Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philosophy (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2000), 262.

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because of the fact that there is a clear subject which connects the diffferent parts. The subject of The Antichrist is the condemnation of Christianity. Nietzsche makes it clear with the subtitle: Curse on Christianity.11 What does Nietzsche mean with this condemnation, this curse? We read in par. 39 that he intends to tell the authentic history of Christianity. It seems that he is presenting himself to the reader as an apologist, and that he is not trying to destroy Christianity. He is always pressing the same point, namely that Christianity was disloyal to itself. It should have followed in the tracks of the one Christian who ever lived: the tracks of Jesus. Nietzsche has the conviction that “to this day such a life is still possible, and for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain possible in all ages” (par. 39). When reading these words, we can imagine that Nietzsche’s critique would be expressed in the form of a call to conversion, purifijication, and self-reflection. Why then this curse on Christianity? The next section further enlightens this point. The Contents of The Antichrist The Antichrist 12 starts with a declaration (par. 1) and fijinishes with a condemnation (par. 62). The introduction (par. 1) functions as the inauguration of the people13 who are considered to be capable of passing a judgment on Europe, on culture, and particularly on Christianity. The fijirst paragraph is put in the fijirst person plural. “Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how remote our place is”.14 About these mysterious Hyperboreans, a mythical people of whom Pindarus writes, Nietzsche says that they had found a way out, a way out from the labyrinth that had maintained itself for many centuries. What makes the subject even more mysterious is the fact that Nietzsche does not only introduce a vague, mythical past, but that he connects it with the expression: “We are Hyperboreans”. Who is this “we”? These Hyperboreans are the bridge which connects the myth and 11  Originally, the subtitle was, “Versuch einer Kritik des Christenthums” (Attempt of a Criticism on Christianity). 12  In the German language Der Antichrist can point to one person who appears in the apocalyptic future, as to an anti-Christian. 13  Sommer says that this paragraph has the character of an initiation of novices in the mystery cult of the Hyperboreans. In his opinion, we may also interpret it as a confijirmation. Sommer, Der Antichrist, 88. 14  Translation of the Antichrist in this article: Walter Kaufmann, http://www.davemckay .co.uk/philosophy/nietzsche.

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the modern era. By doing this, the present time obtains a mythical glance. Nietzsche makes it clear that these “new” Hyperboreans live in modernity, but do not belong to modernity. For about these Hyperboreans (the “we”), it is said that they have found a way out of the labyrinth, whereas the man of modernity has not succeeded in that endeavor. Modern man sighs: “I have gotten lost; I am everything that has gotten lost.” The modern era is the age of indecisiveness: “This modernity was our sickness: lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous uncleanliness of the modern Yes and No” (par. 1). Concerning this still mysterious “we”, it is said, that they did not have a way. The moderns do not know of a way; the present Hyperboreans have no way, though they know the way out. They know the way, but are so choked by modernity that they cannot go that way. The Hyperboreans lived far in the North, they lived in a world of ice. And so it will be with the new Hyperboreans. It will be very hard for them, when they, with so much courage, push forward to get out of the labyrinth. This introduction produces some points of view. Nietzsche lives with the conviction that a new era dawns, by which he means a way back to the mythical past that had been unreachable for thousands of years, owing to Christianity and modernity. We notice that Nietzsche speaks of a way back and not of “progress”: We must fijind out the way to get to the Hyperboreans. They live beyond the ice and beyond death; there we fijind our life, our happiness . . . . Briefly and to the point: the future lies behind us. The way back: that “program” difffers from that of the Enlightenment.15 Clearly, Nietzsche’s views clash with the Enlightenment and modernity. Therefore it may come as no surprise that the fijirst line of the Preface is: “This book belongs to the very few”. Nietzsche is the exponent of “a new conscience for truths that have so far remained mute” (Preface). It is diffijicult to fijind the way, because modernity is an obstacle. The struggle is not only against Christianity, but also (and not least) against modernity, because modernity was the result of this Christianity. The battle front is much broader: not only Christianity and modernity are at the frontlines, but so is Jewry, because Christianity (and thus modernity) came out of Jewry. Christianity is the “ultimate Jewish consequence” (par. 24, italics of Nietzsche). That is the reason Nietzsche reacts 15  “ ‘Progress’ is merely a modern idea, that is, a false idea. The European of today is vastly inferior in value to the European of the Renaissance: further development is altogether not according to any necessity in the direction of elevation, enhancement, or strength” (par. 4).

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against anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism creates an opposite to Christianity (the Church) and to Jewry, but this opposition does not exist at all. The one who is an anti-Semite and a Christian shoots his own foot. In Nietzsche’s text, one specifijic, personal antichrist is never mentioned, as opposed to the book of Revelation.16 It seems remarkable that no picture is painted of the adversaries of Christianity. But this lack of clarity disappears at the moment we realize that Christianity is its own adversary. There is no more dangerous enemy of Christianity, culture, and society than Christianity. So the notion of Antichrist is very ambiguous. In the last period of his healthy life—thus a short time after he fijinished The Antichrist—Nietzsche wrote his so-called madness-letters, which he alternately signed with the Crucifijied, Dionysus, or Caesar. Some short letters, from which only the concepts have survived, Nietzsche signed as the Antichrist.17 Did Nietzsche see himself as the Antichrist? In a letter to Malwida von Meysenbug, he writes, “Do you want a new name for me? The church-language has one: I am . . . the Antichrist”. Not without reason, Nietzsche adds: “Let us not forget to laugh!”18 We must not forget to laugh; neither must we forget that, at the moment Nietzsche brings himself to the fore, he puts on a mask. “Everything profound loves masks”. (. . .) “There are processes of such a delicate sort that people do well to bury them in something crude in order to make them unrecognizable”.19 We have to consider the possibility that at precisely the moment it seems Nietzsche takes offf all of his masks, he puts one on. That is the ambivalence that characterizes Nietzsche.

16  Wladimir Solowjew’s Übermensch und Antichrist. Über das Ende der Weltgeschichte (Freiburg: Herder, 1958), contains the “Kurze Erzählung vom Antichrist” (Short Story of the Antichrist), which he published in 1900. See pp. 100–133. Solowjew describes the Antichrist as a person. 17  Letter of the beginning of December, 1888, to Bismarck, and a letter of 25 December 1888 to Cosima Wagner. Kritische Studienausgabe sämtlicher Briefe Nietzsches (KSB), Vol. 8 (München: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 504, 551. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche declares: “Ich bin der Antiesel par excellence und damit ein welthistorisches Unthier,–ich bin, auf griechisch, und nicht nur auf griechisch, der Antichrist. . .” (I am the anti-donkey par excellence and therefore a worldhistorical monster,—I am in a Greek way and in a non-Greek way, the Antichrist. . . .). KSA 6, 302. Sietschek comments: “(. . .) Nietzsche(s) steht im Spannungsfeld zwischen einer völligen Selbstidentifijikation mit Jesus und einer völligen Ablehnung und sogar Vernichtung von ihm” (Nietzsche stands in the tension between a complete selfidentifijication with Jesus and a complete negation and even destruction of Him). Hans Otto Seitschek, “Nietzsches Blick auf Jesus”, Zeitenwende—Wertewende. Internationaler Kongress der Nietzsche-Gesellschaft zum 100. Todestag Friedrich Nietzsches vom 24.–27. August 2000 in Naumburg (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 214. 18  KSB 6, 357 (letter of 1883). 19  KSA 5, 57. transl. Ian C. Johnston. http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/nietzsche.

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According to paragraph 1, the point is to fijind a way out of the labyrinth. It is not explained what that labyrinth is. It is not illogical to suppose that the following 61 paragraphs give a description of the labyrinth. The labyrinth is Christianity. The antichrist is the guide who knows the way out and shows people the right direction. For Nietzsche it was shocking to see that the way out was blocked. In the Renaissance, the way out was nearly reached for the fijirst time in Western history. But just then Luther appeared on the European scene and he closed the door. Thinking and writing about what happened, Nietzsche uses a multicoloured metaphorical palette; he can fijind no words to express his bewilderment (par. 61). The labyrinth is a metaphor of imprisonment and endless seeking. We would expect that Nietzsche would hold on to this image and elaborate on it, but for Nietzsche this metaphor lacks sufffijicient strength. The metaphor of sickness is more apt for his goal; it describes a process, a long during process of the degeneration of Christianity. The next summary of The Antichrist shows the importance of this metaphor. Nietzsche presents an analysis of the sickness of culture. Culture is terminally ill, because man is ill. Man is weakened, he is tamed, he is a pet, and, moreover, a herd animal. In order to prevent man from being ruined, it is necessary that another, higher, type of man comes into existence. However, it is Christianity that frustrated this development. More explicitly, Christianity waged a war on life and death against the healthy life (par. 5). Nietzsche’s implacable attitude towards Christianity (and towards the church) does not originate in hatred, but is inevitable and a defense against the rancour of Christianity toward life. Completely opposite to Christianity, Nietzsche presents Buddhism as a healthy religion (par. 20–23). In par. 24–28, Nietzsche goes one step further; for the problem is not that Christianity stands in the way of the healing of man and of culture, or that Christianity is sick, but that Christianity itself is the sickness. This radicalism and its diffference with other forms of criticism of church and Christianity, marks the book. Christianity (the Christian Church) is not damaged so that it might need a reformation; it is not derailed, so that it might need prophets to show the right way; it is not sick so that healing might be possible. Christianity itself cannot be healed—it is the illness. It is not the patient, but the illness. To reform the Church, to yet again inspire Christianity, would mean that we do not resist the sickness, but that we stimulate it. Christianity is the infection which must be exterminated. That is the bleak, crude core of the book. Some authors moderate this view.

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The centre of the book, paragraphs 29–35, contains a psychology of the Saviour. Van Tongeren20 and Sommer21 highly value this part of the book. They prefer not to interpret the book solely by the end—the curse on Christianity—but from the middle part. The one who accentuates the centre deprives the text of its hardness and bitterness. For at the end of the book Nietzsche utters his deepest anti-Christian feelings. Indeed, the centre of The Antichrist is crucial. It contains Nietzsche’s interpretation of the gospel and, fijirst of all, he sketches a picture of Jesus’ epiphany to Israel and His acts among His people. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche spends respectful words on Jesus—He is the Bringer of glad tidings. Perhaps it astonishes us that he is saying these things in a book with the title The Antichrist. But here too, Nietzsche is consistent in his approach to Jesus and his respect for Him. He disconnects Jesus from the New Testament church and from Israel. This last disconnection we see again many times, especially in the 19th century,22 but not the former.23 By disconnecting Jesus from the context in which He was living and acting, Nietzsche, on the one hand, creates the possibility to express respect for Jesus and, on the other hand, he is free to criticize, uncompromisingly, both Jews and Christians. Starting with par. 39, Nietzsche tells the story of the real history of Christianity: How the gospel has been changed in a dys-gospel, an antigospel. Nietzsche unfolds how theological concepts, derived from the Old Testament, were used by the New Testament Church, and eminently by Paul, as an instrument to bind humanity for many centuries.24 We realize

20

 Van Tongeren, Reinterpreting, 262–263.  Sommer accentuates the ‘Scharnierstellung’ (the hinge-position) of the psychology of the Saviour in the Antichrist. Sommer, Der Antichrist, 293. 22  About the relation of Old Testament to New Testament, Schleiermacher writes: “In jedem Fall war der Rekurs der ersten christlichen Gemeinden auf das Alte Testament eine Übergangserscheinung” (In any case, the appeal of the early Christian church to the Old Testament was a transitional phenomenon). And about Judaism he declares in a letter to F. Lücke: “Diese Überzeugung dass das lebendige Christentum in seinem Fortgange gar keines Stützpunktes aus dem Judentum bedürfe, ist mir so alt als mein religiöses Bewusstsein überhaupt” (This conviction that the vital Christianity in its progress does not need support from Judaism is so old as my religious consciousness itself), H.J. Kraus, Die Biblische Theologie. Ihre Geschichte und Problematik (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970), 21. 23  The critical method of New Testament scholars diffferentiates between Jesus and the early church, but Nietzsche separates them en makes them into radical opponents. 24  Completely against the theological trend of his time, Nietzsche draws an unbroken line between Judaism and Paul. Paul does not liberate from Jewish laws and prescripts. Christianity duplicates Judaism because it continues to turn round the ‘natural values’. 21

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the unsound climate of thinking in the Bible, when we compare it with the codex of Manu (par. 56–57). Nietzsche’s argument explodes in par. 62. We see that in par. 62 the foregoing paragraphs reach a culminating point of emotions, which fall down as a heavy flood on the reader. These emotions make a rational argument impossible. The book ends with something that is stronger and bitterer and more irreconcilable than a condemnation. Nietzsche brings an eternal charge against Christianity: “I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, stealthy, subterranean, small enough—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind”. Earliest Christianity Falsifijies the Gospel The Church is not ill, but is itself the sickness. Nietzsche enumerates several falsifijications: Jesus’ death as a sacrifijice and the belief in His resurrection; the belief in the immortal soul—both of these two articles of the Christian faith shift the emphasis and the value of life to the life hereafter. The most shocking forgery is the fact that faith must control the basic instincts of man. Nietzsche uses the word instinct many times in The Antichrist. This notion plays an important role in Nietzsche’s argument. It functions as a hinge that connects Judaism and Christianity to each other. When Nietzsche speaks about the birth of Christianity, he does so in terms of instinct.25 To get a taste for how important this notion is in Nietzsche’s Antichrist, I will display some citations of par. 24 here. (The italics are Nietzsche’s.) Nietzsche on Instincts Here I merely touch on the problem of the genesis of Christianity. The fijirst principle for its solution is: Christianity can be understood only in terms of

25  The interpretation of the notion “instinct” in the work of Nietzsche is very difffijicult. Vinzens, who published a study on that subject, has the opinion that an unambiguous interpretation of this word is ‘nahezu hofffnungslos’ (nearly hopeless). Albert Vinzens, Friedrich Nietzsches Instinktverwandlung. Quellen, Studien und Texte zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung Friedrich Nietzsches. Vol. 1 (Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1999), 91.

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a.a.a. (ad) prosman the soil out of which it grew—it is not a counter-movement to the Jewish instinct, it is its very consequence (. . .). The Christian church cannot make the slightest claim to originality when compared with the “holy people.” That is precisely why the Jews are the most catastrophic people of world history: by their after-efffect they have made mankind so thoroughly false that even today the Christian can feel antiJewish without realizing that he himself is the ultimate Jewish consequence. In my Genealogy of Morals I offfered the fijirst psychological analysis of the counter-concepts of a noble morality and a morality of ressentiment—the latter born of the No to the former: but this is the Judaeo-Christian morality pure and simple.26 Psychologically considered, the Jewish people are a people endowed with the toughest vital energy, who, placed in impossible circumstances, voluntarily and out of the most profound prudence of self-preservation, take sides with all the instincts of decadence (. . .).

When we compare this to Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, it is necessary to make two remarks: 1. Nietzsche diffferentiates between instincts upwards and downwards, thus negative and positive instincts. They are in competition but they also need each other. In Genealogy, Nietzsche posits this struggle and correlation in a cultural context,27 whereas in The Antichrist, he discusses this subject in a religious context. In Geneology, Nietzsche blames the Christian God for repressing the instincts, but the religious context is here less obvious than in The Antichrist. 2. Another diffference between Genealogy and The Antichrist is that in Genealogy the Jews are not mentioned, whereas in The Antichrist Nietzsche stresses the relation Jewry—Christianity. I will make fijive remarks regarding this theme. Jew and Christian are Tschandalas 1. Nietzsche distances himself from anti-Semitism and opposes it. In his letters, he mentions the Jews and anti-Semitism only in passing. Some26  Consider here that Nietzsche goes in the track of, among others, the Old Testament scholar Julius Wellhausen, who sees the origins of Christianity in the after-exilic Judaism. See Sommer, Der Antichrist, 234. 27  KSA 5, 321–324. Nietzsche uses the image of the transition of sea animals to land animals. ‘Just like the things water animals must have gone though when they were forced either to become land animals or to die offf, so events must have played themselves out with this half-beast so happily adapted to the wilderness, war, wandering around, adventure—suddenly all its instincts were devalued and “disengaged.” In a comparable way the instincts of former periods sublimated in man and they were interiorized, with all consequences of it: the bad conscience, resentment.’

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times he expresses himself more clearly. In a concept-letter to his sister Elisabeth, who was married to Dr. Förster, an anti-Semite, he writes that it would be a good thing if the anti-Semites were requested to leave the country.28 Elsewhere, he remarks that among his friends he has neither Jews nor anti-Semites.29 In spite of this, his relation to Jewry is not without problems.30 2. Nietzsche defijines Jews as pariahs. He uses the remarkable word Tschandala (chandala) to describe the position of the Jews.31 The word Tschandala—in Tamil: sandala—is employed by Tamils as a curse. Tschandala applies to people who live outside the caste-system: the pariahs, the untouchables. Nietzsche writes (par. 57): The order of castes, the supreme, the dominant law, is merely the sanction of a natural order, a natural lawfulness of the fijirst rank, over which no arbitrariness, no “modern idea” has any power. — Indignation is the privilege of the chandalas; pessimism too. “The world is perfect”—thus says the instinct of the most spiritual, the Yes-saying instinct; “imperfection, whatever is beneath us, distance, the pathos of distance— even the chandala still belongs to this perfection” (italics mine).32

About Paul he writes (par. 58): Paul, the chandala hatred against Rome, against “the world,” become flesh, become genius, the Jew, the eternal Wandering Jew par excellence. . .

The Jews had to accept their fate just as the Indian pariahs. In a fatal manner they have influenced world history by the development of their

28

 KSB 8, 82.  KSB 8, 46. 30  Peter Heller describes Nietzsche’s attitude to Jews and Jewry in careful words as an ambivalent mixture in which the negative sentiment remained somewhat preponderant, though it was perhaps increasingly interspersed and mingled with respect, admiration, and sympathy, especially for individual Jews: Peter Heller, “Nietzsche and the Jews”, Nietzsche Heute. Die Rezeption seines Werks nach 1988, S. Bauschinger a.o. (eds) (Bern/Stuttgart: Francke Verlag, 1988), 151. 31  “Nietzsche verwendet ihn (the notion Tschandala, AP) in idealtypischer und bewusst verletzender Weise für alle Unterprivilegierten” (Nietzsche uses it in an ideal-typical and deliberately hurting manner for all under-privileged people), Nietzsche-Lexikon, Christian Niemeyer (ed.) (Darmstadt: WBG, 2009), 352. 32  This perfection provides no feeling of satisfaction. The highest caste, “the most spiritual men, as the strongest, fijind their happiness where others would fijind their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others (. . .)”, (par. 57). 29

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hatred-instinct, as there is sin, guilt, sacrifijice, conversion, obedience to God, and so on. 3. Nietzsche asserts that there is no antithesis between Judaism and Christianity. Here Nietzsche’s view is the opposite of the liberal theology of the 19th century.33 Nietzsche’s totally deviant remarks on this subject must have hurt the ears of the leading theologians. 4. Jesus receives quite another position in this discussion. He is no genius, not a hero, and neither an Old Testament prophet. His way of life is very diffferent than the deeds of the priests. He does not humiliate people by sin and neither does He make them dependent on the grace of God. Jesus abolishes sin and, at the same time, grace. Jesus does not belong to the Jews; neither is He the founder of the Christian Church. Nietzsche disconnects Jesus from His historical and religious roots. Jesus is a ‘free spirit’, a kind of role model. In this way, Nietzsche can hurt the Jew, condemn the Church, and yet be respectful to Jesus.34 5. In Christianity—particularly in the New Testament Church and by Paul—the Jew grows to full maturity. Nietzsche condemns anti-Semitism, not because he is concerned about the Jews, but because he meets the Jew especially in the Christian. He resents the degenerated and perverted Christians who do not recognize the Jew in themselves and do not see that they have developed the Jewish decadence-instincts to perfection. “The Christian, this ultima ratio of the lie, is the Jew once more—even three times more” (par. 44). From all of this, we can conclude two things. Firstly, Nietzsche stands nearly alone in his opinion that Christianity is a direct continuation of after-exile Jewry.35 Secondly, his approach of Jews is not very diffferent than

33

 See note 23.  See the Antichrist par. 29. For ‘free spirit’: par. 32. 35  The Jewish philosopher Sarah Kofman summarizes Nietzsche’s view, as he proposes it in The Antichrist, as follows: “Zwischen Judentum und Christentum gibt es also eine vollkommene Kontinuität, den das authentische Christentum ist nur das Ans-Ziel-Gelangen der jüdischen Instinkte und das gefälschte Christentum eine Rückkehr zu den jüdischen Instinkten” (Between Judaism and Christianity there is a complete continuation, for authentic Christianity is only the coming-to-the-goal of the Jewish instincts, and the falsifijied Christianity is a return to the Jewish instincts), Sarah Kofman, Die Verachtung der Juden. Nietzsche, die Juden, der Antisemitismus (Berlin: Diaphanes, 2002), 83. 34

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that of his contemporaries. His attitude is negative. He despises the Jews who repress the sound instincts.36 In their resentment, Nietzsche recognizes the small man who takes revenge on the powerful people. Nietzsche displays an aversion to anti-Semites, but not because he has sympathy for Jews. Nietzsche is not an anti-Semite, but he is anti-Jewish and antiJudaism. We might say, Nietzsche does not attack persons, or a race—as do the anti-Semites—he only attacks a poisoned religion. The comparison of Jews and Christians with outcasts, however, is insulting to both. Stranger, Pariah, and Parasite What is, in light of the above exposition, the message of Nietzsche concerning the position of Jew and Christian in the world? And how does Christian theology see its position? Can we compare the positions of Jews and Christians? When we ask the question, “What is a Christian,” in the context of the theology of Van de Beek, there are several possibilities. One can see the Christian as pilgrim, as stranger or as sojourner.37 Pilgrims have a goal for their pilgrimage. Concerning strangers, the emphasis lies on the fact they are uprooted. They do not belong to society. This point is even truer for the sojourner. Strangers do know where their domicile is; but sojourners are totally out of place. The Jew knows of the Promised Land, but Christians do not have a native land on earth. ‘Christians are not a new community within the world, but belong to the eschatological reality, that is not of this world’.38 That does not mean Christians pull their hands offf of this world. Van de Beek will also undoubtedly agree with, for example, Moltmann, that the ‘messianic style of life’ is the mission of a Christian. The striking point is, however, that the coming Kingdom does not lie inside history, but on the other side of history—beyond history. This explains the hesitation Van de Beek has in considering the Christian as a pilgrim. A pilgrim has a goal and it is very well possible that this goal lies inside history. This goes for the Christian as a stranger too. It 36  Nietzsche says of Pilatus that he was right that he did not want to be involved in a Jewish afffair: “To take a Jewish afffair seriously—he does not persuade himself to do that. One Jew more or less—what does it matter? The noble scorn of a Roman” (par. 46). Another example: “We would no more choose the ‘fijirst Christians’ to associate with than Polish Jews—not that one even required any objection to them: they both do not smell good” (par. 46). 37  A. van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 222. 38  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 222.

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is much better to compare the Christian with a pariah, an outcast. Nevertheless, this comparison is not entirely apt to explain the position of the Christian and Jew. Pariahs live outside of society. Society does not accept them, despises them, and excludes them. Pariahs do not choose this position, it is their fate. The situation of Christians and Jews difffer from pariahs. Their positions as an eschatological reality mean that to live as outcasts is neither their fate, nor their choice: it is their vocation. Nietzsche, throughout his work, describes the identity of Jew and Christian as characterized by resentment. They do not accept their fate. The Christians organize the slave-revolt. They are dominated and reigned by their bad, repressing instincts. Nietzsche fails to see or does not want to see, that vocation liberates from resentment. Vocation is not a choice or a fate; it liberates from fate and therefore from feelings of resentment. One last point has to be mentioned. The position of Christians and Jews is not that of pariahs. Pariahs are, despite their very hard life as outcasts, useful for society. The most dirty work is done by them. Nietzsche calls Jews and Christians parasites and, therefore, they are not useful. Why not useful? “The beginning of the Bible contains the whole psychology of the priest” (par. 49). It deserves our attention that Nietzsche sees the beginning of the Bible as the starting point of the degeneration of life. Already there—and not just in the post-exile era—he identifijies the psychology of the priest. And the priestly psychology is an attempt against life; it is a priestly attempt, an attempt of parasites, it is vampirism! (par. 49). By saying this, Nietzsche adds something that throws a blazing light on the position of the Christian, namely the element of harm. Jews and Christians live at the expense of healthy life. They are parasites, and parasites are harmful and must be exterminated. Nietzsche is very cynical when he discusses the usefulness of Christianity. “Let anyone dare to speak to me of its ‘humanitarian’ blessings!” (. . .) “Parasitism as the only practice of the church (. . .)” (par. 62). Jews were harmful: recent history shows it. For Nietzsche, Christians are also harmful, even more so than Jews. To the above-mentioned remark, that Nietzsche’s comparison of Jews and Christians with outcasts is hurtful for both, must be added a second remark. Characterizing Jews and Christians as parasites is not only insulting but, just as much, threatening. Nietzsche’s The Antichrist is indeed anti-Christian, anti-Jewish and anti-Judaism, but also against Christians and against Jews.

HAS GOD CHANGED? AN INQUIRY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOD AND ISRAEL IN THE THEOLOGY OF A.A. VAN RULER André H. Drost Introduction In the Confession as well as in the Church Order of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands the relationship of the church with Israel is considered as a fundamental article of faith. In the confessional articles it reads: “The church is called to express its not-to-be-surrendered alliance with the people of Israel. As a Christ-confessing community the church seeks a dialogue with Israel on the understanding of Scripture, especially concerning the Kingdom of God”.1 This article has its direct background in the theology of A.A. van Ruler (1908–1970). Although this relationship is stated in the basic articles of the Confession, it is not as self-evident as one would assume. There seems to be a problem in the approach of Van Ruler, although it had, and still has, a great influence on the Protestant Church. Its influence is still felt: it led to a great respect for Judaism. But when it comes to the actual relationship with the people of Israel—in the ethnic meaning—then Van Ruler’s approach does not succeed. This is partly a result of the identifijication of the people of Israel with the state of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The question to be answered is: should Israel as a people—in an ethnic sense—feature permanently in Christian theology; and if so, where and how could this be anchored and integrated? A positive answer to this question would mean that Israel in its ethnic appearance had, still has, and will always have, a special place and meaning, with consequences for the speaking and acting of the church. Examining the approach of Van Ruler can help us further in answering this question and it urges us

1  Kerkorde en ordinanties van de Protestantse Kerk in Nederland inclusief de overgangsbepalingen (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum 2003), 10.

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to develop new answers on current questions concerning the relation church-Israel.2 Van Ruler translated his point of view on the apostleship of the church in his contribution to the church order (of 1951) of the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church), one of the predecessors of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Van Ruler pleaded for articles that would express the special relationship of the church with Israel—something in which he succeeded. The contacts with the Jews have since been described in terms of the ‘dialogue’. It is a recognition that Israel’s position difffers from that of other peoples in the apostolic mission of the church and it indicates openness for the critical questions to the church from Jewish side. In short, there seems to be a tension in Van Rulers approach. On the one hand, he states that the Old Testament illustrates that Israel did not live according to the objectives of its election and even rebelled against God; he considers the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah from this perspective. At the same time he acknowledges the election of Israel by God as a given fact which has consequences from the past to the present, and for the future. How does Van Ruler deal with this tension? The best way to get a clear picture is to approach it from the point of view of God’s election of Israel. The question to be answered then is: Has God changed? If God has given up on his election of Israel one could say that God has changed; but what does that imply for the preaching of the faithfulness of God by the church? If God insists on divine election of Israel, what consequences should that have for how the church regards its own position in relation to God and Israel? To examine these questions in the theology of Van Ruler, two sets of concepts have been developed: theological (dis)continuity and historical (dis)continuity in God’s relationship with Israel. Theological continuity means: there has been no change in God in relation to Godself and God’s former intentions. Theological discontinuity means, that there has been a change in God. Historical continuity means: God has remained faithful to Israel in its historical appearance as the people of God. Historical discontinuity means that the relationship of God with Israel in its ethnic appearance has come to an end or has been interrupted. 2

 A complete study on this theme is presented in A.H. Drost, Is God veranderd? Een onderzoek naar de relatie God-Israël in de theologie van K.H. Miskotte, A.A. van Ruler en H. Berkhof [Has God changed? An investigation of the God-Israel relation in the theology of Miskotte, Van Ruler and Berkhof]. (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2007. IRTI Research Publications 5). http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/1871/10805/5/7957.pdf.

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By studying the literature in which Van Ruler explicitly expounds his view on Israel it is possible to get a clear image of what he does with the relationship of God with Israel, measured against the standards of theological and historical (dis)continuity. In so doing, it is taken as a premise that there might be an inconsistency in the approach of Van Ruler, related to the aspects of theological and historical continuity. Thus, if there would be theological or historical discontinuity, it would have consequences for the consistency of Van Ruler’s approach to Israel and the relationship of the church with Israel. Focus on Van Ruler a. Van Ruler and the Old Testament Van Ruler values the Old Testament very positively. From the Old Testament we learn that the grace and salvation of God are earthly, tangible, and concrete. This is demonstrated in the revelation of God in, and throughout, the history of Israel. Whereas the New Testament concentrates on the salvation from sin and the spiritual gifts in Christ, the Old Testament makes clear that God wants to establish his kingdom on the earth. Van Ruler stresses that God’s election of Israel and God’s covenant with Israel are fundamental for the understanding of the plan of God with the world. As Van Ruler says: “God elected Israel. With this, the whole Old Testament resonates”.3 Moreover, he considers the coming of Christ as a new act of God in his relationship with Israel. That relationship changed due to the rejection of Jesus by Israel: “In the rejection of Jesus, Israel rejected God and thus rejected itself—because only in the presence of God is Israel what it is (the people of God)”.4 Israel—like all of humankind—became entangled in the problems of sin and guilt. It is God who solved that problem by sending Jesus as the Savior of the world. Jesus had to be rejected, to become the sacrifijice by which God would be atoned with humankind. In this, the rejection of Jesus by Israel was used by God. Van Ruler considers this as necessary. But although this rejection means also that Israel has put itself aside, God can

3  A.A. van Ruler, “Perspectieven voor de gereformeerde theologie” [Perspectives for Reformed Theology], Theologisch Werk II (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1971), 89. 4  A.A. van Ruler, “De waarde van het Oude Testament” [The worth of the Old Testament], Religie en Politiek (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1945), 145.

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always return to Israel; this possibility cannot be excluded.5 Even so, this new turning can be based only on the faithfulness of God to his own will to save mankind, not on his history and covenant with Israel as such. On this point one can see how the criteria of historical and theological continuity and discontinuity function in the approach of Van Ruler. God wants to fulfijil his plan with the world. To do so, God goes on with a new Israel, founded in the twelve apostles; as Van Ruler says: “their dozen is an image of the new Israel”.6 This can be denoted as theological continuity. At the same time, this means a historical discontinuity in God’s relationship with Israel. As van Ruler puts it: “The christological-imputative fijilling of the new covenant can surely be directed from the New Testament. But it is not found in Jeremiah 31”.7 b. The Fulfijilment of the Thora A more specifijic inquiry into Van Ruler’s interpretation of the fulfijilment of the Thora helps to make the picture more clear especially on the point on which this historical discontinuity arises. Van Ruler wrote his thesis on the fulfijilment of the Thora: De vervulling van de wet.8 The subtitle of his thesis (“a dogmatic study on the relationship of revelation and existence”) indicates the direction in which Van Ruler worked out his view. His focus is on how God, by means of Mosaic Law, permeates human existence: God wants to extend his kingdom in the world; therefore he gave his law to Israel. This gift of the law to Israel is the paradigm for the Kingdom of God. Van Ruler does not interpret this in a geographical sense, but in terms of what God does.9 The salvation of the world is God’s ultimate purpose, and it will be achieved by the fulfijilment of the Thora. Everything that God does represents this aim. It is pars pro toto [parts anticipate the whole], and has a universal extent. Importantly, Israel is not the sole means by which God works on this aim, he also uses

5  Comp. A.A. van Ruler, Die christliche Kirche und das Alte Testament (München: Kaiser, 1955), 78 (cited as ChrK), 33. 6  Van Ruler, ChrK, 50. 7  Van Ruler, ChrK, 48. 8  A.A. van Ruler, De vervulling van de wet. Een dogmatische studie over de verhouding van openbaring en existentie [The fulfijilment of the Law. A dogmatic study about the relationship of revelation and existence], Nijkerk: Callenbach 1945; cited as VervWet. 9  Van Ruler, VervWet, 40: “In the biblical theological sense of the word the kingdom of God means: the ultimate act of God’s salvation for the world”.

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Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the church. In this approach then, the revelation of God in Israel is something of the past.10 Van Ruler himself feels a tension on this point. On the one hand he stresses that the church should always reckon with and acknowledge the importance and everlasting meaning of Israel: in Israel it becomes clear how the Thora forms and constitutes the individual and the collective existence. Although the Kingdom of God moves out from Israel towards the other peoples of the earth, the Thora has never been disposed of by God. From the existence of Israel the church can learn how the Thora has its “national-symbolic meaning”.11 For anyone who confesses the meaning of the sacrifijice of Jesus on Golgotha, the blessing of the Thora will come to its fulfijilment, not only in its individual sense, but also in its “ongoing national-political meaning” as it is resembled in Israel.12 But when it comes down to Israel as a people (concrete, in its ethnical appearance) Van Ruler observes, that an unexpected discontinuity arises: God establishes the fulfijilment of the Thora (in Christ, through the Holy Spirit), but he moves away from Israel as a people. A transformation takes place: “the true people of God only exists en pneumati [in the Spirit]”13 and “the new, spiritual Israel is the literal denotation of the reality of the pneumatic, i.e. historical-eschatological acting of God”.14 The notion of “people” is no longer “national-limited” to Israel, but it denotes the total existence in which God works.15 On the discontinuity Van Ruler says: “Only from an apostolic point of view can one follow how God acts. He does something with Israel, with the Old Testament, with the Thora. He fulfijils everything and brings it into efffect. But literally-rationally there is hardly any continuity in this. It is only held by Godself, and then in an historical-spiritual way, which is in the reality of history and in the power of the Holy Spirit”.16 To get this point more clearly we should look at Van Ruler’s exegesis of the epistle to the Hebrews, especially chapters 8 and 10. In these chapters, the priestly work of Jesus is linked to the old and new covenant. The sacrifijice of Jesus had the power both to reconcile sin and to purify the conscience. His sacrifijice created the possibility of a complete fulfijilment 10

 Cf. Van Ruler, VervWet, 40, 60, 95, 158.  Van Ruler, VervWet, 282. 12  Van Ruler, VervWet, 295. 13  Van Ruler, VervWet, 158. 14  Van Ruler, VervWet, 337. 15  Van Ruler, VervWet, 337. 16  Van Ruler, VervWet, 528. 11

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of the Thora. According to Van Ruler this marks the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. Although reconciliation also had a key-role in the Old Covenant, no sacrifijice had the power of the sacrifijice Jesus made. In this sacrifijice (and the acceptance of it) Godself performed a new (crucial) act as part of the fulfijilment of the Thora in the existence of humankind. Van Ruler remarks, that apparently the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews considered this as something that was already foreseen and enclosed in the Old Covenant. For him one can “note a full continuity, namely the continuity of the miracle and the loyalty of God between the old and new”.17 According to Van Ruler this explains the ease with which the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews alters his quotation from Jeremiah 31; instead of God who will “make” the new covenant he writes that God will “fulfijil” the covenant (Hebr. 8:8). At the same time, Van Ruler observes that the Old Covenant has still not disappeared. It is not far from disappearance (“ready to vanish” as the King James reads), but it is still there. On this Van Ruler says: “Indeed, these are curious phrases. They seem to suggest that the abolition of the old covenant is a process that the Christian community is still in the midst of; that in the meantime the old retains its meaning for it”.18 This explains for Van Ruler why the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews speaks with great respect and piety about the people of Israel, the old covenant, and the Old Testament scripture: God made and meant the old covenant as the foreshadowing (prefijiguration) of the new covenant.19 So, the church is in a situation of transition: the old covenant has not yet vanished and the new covenant is already efffective. It is a process, and in this process the church is on a pilgrim’s journey to the completeness, together with the fathers of the Old Covenant. In this situation the church should be aware of its own imperfection: “The Christian church is more or less placed in the situation of the people of Israel. At the very least it is also placed in the anticipation”.20 And in that which the church does (in the process of Christianization) and in that in which the church fails, “the Christian Commonwealth is an incidental recurrence of Israel”.21 It is evident, that Van Ruler thinks in terms of theological continuity: God is faithful to himself in the process of realization of his salvation on 17

 Van Ruler, VervWet, 430.  Van Ruler, VervWet, 433. 19  Van Ruler, VervWet, 428. 20  Van Ruler, VervWet, 433. 21  Van Ruler, VervWet, 529. 18

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earth, by means of the fulfijilment of his Thora. But at the same time there arises historical discontinuity towards Israel as a people, in its ethnical appearance: Van Ruler distances himself from Israel as a people. His own explanation for this is the paradigmatic character of the fulfijilment of the law in the Messiah: “In the messiah the people of God are brought together in one man, and this one man experiences what he must endure, as a substitute for others. [. . .] In his mediation the messiah is the model for all of existence”.22 The historical discontinuity in the approach of Van Ruler becomes clear exactly on this point. Van Ruler does not refer back to Israel; he does not relate the reconciliation in Christ to Israel as a people. In one stroke he draws the line from Christ to all of existence. There is no application of this meaning of the fulfijilment of the Thora in Christ in relation to Israel. So although Van Ruler (in his outlook on the Old Testament) is at pains to explain the coming of Jesus in a direct relationship with Israel as a people—he does not connect the meditation and reconciliation of Christ to Israel as a people. He moves from an historical approach to a paradigmatic approach. In doing so, historical discontinuity arises in his outlook on the fulfijilment of the Thora. c. Israel in Past, Present and Future What are the consequences for Van Ruler’s view on Israel in the past, the present, and the future? To Van Ruler, Israel in the past (as the people of God known through the Old Testament) is the people to whom God revealed himself—and this revelation in Israel is of eminent importance for the church. In his writings on the apostleship of the church, Van Ruler puts the revelation in Christ and the revelation of God in Israel on one line. We can learn from God’s revelation in Israel who God is. As for Israel in the present, Van Ruler is relatively mild in his regard of the Jewish people: he does not condemn them as the people of God for the rejection of Christ and states that the church is not any better than Israel. He also values the Jewish knowledge of the Old Testament, especially on the fulfijilment of the prophecies concerning the Messiah. For this reason he estimates that the model of dialogue should be the way to convert the Jewish people to Christ. That is what he pleaded for in the Church Order—and with success.

22

 Van Ruler, VervWet, 319.

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With regard to the state of Israel and the promise of land, Van Ruler has reservations about any conclusive rights that can be claimed. God’s choice for a specifijic territory for the fulfijilment of his Thora is interpreted by Van Ruler as pars pro toto for the whole world. Due to his reluctance to historicize salvation Van Ruler is very hesitant to consider the state of Israel as such as a fulfijilment of Old Testament prophecy. Because of his openness to God’s interference in the world he does not want tot exclude it. “Non liquet mihi”—he says (“I am not allowed to speak conclusively on this”).23 Regarding Van Ruler’s outlook on the people of Israel in the future one can be even shorter: he does not leave room for a special place for Israel as the elect people of God in the coming of God in completeness. In his soteriology the covenant of God with Israel is already globalized (interpreted as a worldwide covenant, fulfijilled in Christ). In his eschatology Van Ruler is focused on the completion of the world and human existence in general; Israel as a people disappears from that perspective. Brief Analysis of Van Ruler’s Approach This overall picture of the structure of Van Ruler’s concept of Israel and the relationship between God and Israel as a people can be related to the current uneasiness that is felt towards confessional articles in the Church Order of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands concerning the ‘not to be surrendered relationship with the people of Israel.’ Van Ruler’s theology of the apostleship, and the place of Israel in it, bears an inconsistency that complicates this confession. The main problem is that in Van Ruler’s approach Israel is used as a model for the apostleship of the church. He hardly ever combines his speaking about ‘the revelation of God in Israel’ with remarks on Israel in its contemporary appearance (Judaism, Jewish people, state of Israel, Israel in the Diaspora, etc.). In his model of analogy Israel becomes a fijixed point of analogy in the past. A gap arises between the past en the present, let alone the future. This can be explained from his Christ-centred view on the plan of God with the world; Van Ruler is more Christ-centred than he seems to be at

23  Sermon 809: “De bijbelse boodschap en de staat Israël” [The biblical message and the state of Israel] (25th of september 1960, Rotterdam), recorded in the Archive of Prof. Dr. Arnold van Ruler at the Utrecht University Library (The Netherlands).

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fijirst sight. The revelation of God in Israel is something of the past. It is due to his Christology that Van Ruler gives a universal interpretation of the covenant of God with Israel; and thereby a special place for Israel as the elect people disappears. In Van Ruler’s approach the Thora comes to fulfijilment in Christ, through the Spirit. But the question is: can the fulfijilment of the Thora be achieved without the participation of Israel in its ethnical form? After all, the original context of the Thora is that of the relationship of God with Israel as a people, a relationship that has never been revoked by God in later times. Nevertheless, Van Ruler does move away from Israel in its ethnic appearance: historical discontinuity arises when he does not apply the mediating work of Christ to Israel as a people. This historical discontinuity is linked to Van Ruler’s interpretation of the rejection of Christ. Van Ruler explains the rejection of Christ from the view that Israel made its election into an absolute and therefore did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Because of the rejection of Jesus, a new people of God were formed called the ‘true’ Israel, i.e. the church. In his interpretation of the rejection of Christ, Van Ruler does not take into account that Israel as a whole did not live in Palestine during the lifetime of Jesus. He also uses a narrowed conception of Israel, namely as ‘the Jewish people.’ This reduces Israel from twelve to two tribes, whereas in the Old and the New Testament Israel as a whole is indicated as consisting of twelve tribes, dispersed in the Diaspora since the Assyrian and Babylonian Exile. Taking the Diaspora into account has direct consequences for Christology, especially on the point of ascribing the rejection of Jesus as the Christ to Israel as a whole: how could Israel as a whole reject Jesus, when they actually could not have heard about him everywhere in the Diaspora? And what to do with the evident awareness of the absence of the ten lost tribes of the house of Israel as can be derived from the Old and New Testament24 and from Jewish Eschatology? In his narrowed conception of Israel, Van Ruler disregards the Old Testament prophecies about a future return of all the (twelve) tribes of Israel to the land of inheritance. The historical discontinuity on this point 24  For instance, Matt. 15:24 reads: ‘But he [Jesus] answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ And Acts 26:6–7 reads: ‘And now I [Paul] stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come.’

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has consequences for the place given to Israel in the relationship of God with the world, for the special place of Israel as the elect people of God disappears. Although Van Ruler states that the coming of Jesus should be interpreted in direct relation with Israel, he does not integrate the notion of the Diaspora of Israel (in its ethnical appearance of twelve tribes) into the foundations of his Christology. He does not even apply Christ’s mediation to Israel as a people in the perspective of the Old Testament prophecies. This can be denoted as an inconsistency. The same can be said of his Pneumatology. In his Pneumatology Van Ruler relates the fulfijilment of the promise of the Holy Spirit to the fulfijilment of the promise of the new covenant. It was a promise made to Israel as a whole (Jeremiah 31), but in Van Ruler’s approach it is no longer applied to Israel in its ethnical appearance and in the sense of the twelve tribes. Van Ruler’s paradigmatic interpretation of the revelation of God in Israel leads him away from Israel as the elect people whom God proceeds with his plan. Because of the everlasting importance of the revelation of God in Israel Van Ruler does give a special place to Israel in his concept of Apostleship: the apostleship of the Church has its origin in Israel, so Israel should not be made an object of mission, but should be acknowledged as a partner in dialogue. Israel should be given this special place because of its past—having been the context of the revelation of God. Again, Van Ruler interprets the revelation of God in Israel as pars pro toto: the election of Israel is meant as a pars pro toto for mankind; the promise of the land indicates that God chose the whole earth to be his kingdom. In this way, Israel in its current historic and ethnic appearance is relativized. And it is this approach of Van Ruler that complicates the possibility to underpin the “not-to-be-surrended alliance with the people of Israel” as stated in the Church Order of the Protestant Church. Personal Reflection25 Is there an alternative for the approach of Van Ruler, or can it be supplemented in order to underpin the special relation that the Protestant 25  This personal reflection is based on a thorough inquiry into the approach of Van Ruler as presented in A.H. Drost, Is God veranderd? [Has God changed?], 113–218, 340–350, 359–369.

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Church in the Netherlands confesses to have with the people of Israel? A tension arises between the theological continuity and the historical discontinuity in the approach of Van Ruler. If this historical discontinuity cannot be solved it consequently implies a break in a direct relationship between the church and Israel as a people, as the elect people of God. The lack of historical continuity in the concept of Van Ruler weakens the base for the explicitly confessed alliance with the people of Israel in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. If God would not go on with the people of Israel, then the church has no special reason to do so. Then the question to be answered here is: has God changed or not? In order to answer this question properly, one should not take the starting-point in Christology. One should reason from the properties of God’s nature: from grace, for instance. This point of departure is handled indeed by Van Ruler. His reflection on the rejection of Christ by Israel leads Van Ruler to be deeply impressed by the fact that God encounters human guilt in grace. This aspect of grace should be applied to the relationship of God with Israel. In divine grace and love for Israel, God remains faithful to his unconditional election of Abraham and his descendants. This election was afffijirmed by God in the covenant of Sinai. The blessing of that covenant could only be experienced by obeying the Thora; to that extent it is conditional. But God’s election of Israel was never made dependent on how Israel would act. Why not? Because of God’s own objective for the election of Israel: the election of Israel is directive for God’s relationship with the world and for the expansion of his blessing throughout the world, not only in an existential manner, but also in time and space (in a historical and geographical sense). So, God would come into conflict with God’s own loyalty, if the relationship with Israel were to be terminated. From the Old and New Testament it becomes clear, that Israel did not fulfijil the Thora and disappointed the Lord God in that. It even caused God’s punishment of the people of Israel; the Old Testament prophecies are clear about that. But already in the Old Testament writings, even in the Thora itself, the promise is given by God that he would withdraw from his anger and restore Israel to its key position in God’s plan to establish and restore the kingdom on earth. Even so, something had to be done to pave the road for that: God sent his son. The coming of Christ anticipated the fulfijilment of the prophecies and promises to Israel in the Diaspora. By reaching Israel in the Diaspora, all peoples would hear the good news of this act of God in Jesus; in that way they would share in the mercy of God towards Israel. But it has to be taken into account that it will take

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time to reach Israel as a whole. This gives an eschatological perspective to the task that Jesus puts on the shoulders of his disciples: their apostleship is part of the way in which God will fulfijil his promises towards Israel. Seen from this perspective, there has not been any change in God concerning his relationship with the people of Israel. Yet in the theology of Van Ruler the concept of historical discontinuity arises because he ranks the election of Israel with the covenant of Sinai. In this, he makes the continuation of the election dependent on the fulfijilment of the covenant by Israel.26 That is why Van Ruler can say that Israel condemned itself and broke up with God, and that God therefore passed on his promises from Israel to the world as a whole and moved the apostleship from Israel to the church. But did God ever give up his covenant with Israel? Nowhere in the Old and New Testament can a basis be found to support such way of thinking. Of course, this leads to many questions—as already was the case in New Testament times, for, the apostle Paul deals with questions on this in his epistle to the Romans. With, as an echo in it, “For the gifts and calling of God (concerning Israel) are without repentance” (Rom. 11:29). This is a perspective of hope for Israel and the basis for Paul’s conviction that “all Israel shall be saved—until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25–26). In other words: by means of the spreading of the gospel all twelve tribes of Israel in the Diaspora will be reached—and saved. This organic concept of the fulfijilment of the promises of God results in an approach of historical and theological continuity. In this approach the Old Covenant (the Covenant of Sinai) is still efffective. But when is the New Covenant fulfijilled? The gift of the Spirit, linked to the New Covenant (Ez. 37, Jer. 31), seems to indicate that this fulfijilment has already taken place. However, when taking a closer look at the Old Testament context of the promise of the New Covenant and comparing that to the current situation in the Middle East, it becomes clear that the situation of peace and restoration of Israel has not yet taken place. The New Covenant would include the return to the land of inheritance and the reunion of the twelve tribes under a Davidic king who would reign over them in peace (Ez. 34). But: when did this situation occur in the history of Israel? No such moment can be denoted. But neither was 26  The same can be said about the concepts of K.H. Miskotte (1894–1960) and H. Berkhof (1914–1995). Their influence also forms the background of the confessional articles on the relationship of the Protestant Church with the people of Israel. Cf. A.H. Drost, Is God veranderd?

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there a moment in which the promises belonging to the new covenant were revoked by God. So, the conclusion seems to be inevitable, that the promise of the new covenant has not yet come to its fulfijilment and still awaits its fulfijilment for Israel in the future.27 How does the gift of the Spirit relate to this? The gift of the Spirit can be considered as the confijirmation of the promise of God to Israel, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:5: “the Spirit is given as an earnest” (King James), as “a guarantee” (NRSV and Good News Bible). So the gift of the Spirit is part of the eschatological perspective, a perspective in which the relationship of God with Israel goes on. The church should be more aware of its own position in this: those who confess Jesus as their Savior receive the Holy Spirit, who makes us able to serve the New Covenant; he makes us ‘able ministers of the New Testament’ (2 Cor. 3:6). This ministry of the New Covenant brings the church in a direct relationship with Israel and it should use that position for the benefijit of God’s own people.28 It is a ministry of hope, including all other peoples together with the people of Israel.29 Conclusion The Protestant Church in the Netherlands confesses a “not-to-be surrendered alliance with the people of Israel”.30 To a considerable extent this confession was based on the theology of A.A. Van Ruler. This confession has become more and more problematic and it is difffijicult to meet the criticism by means of an appeal to the approach of Van Ruler. The best way to underpin the not-to-be-surrended alliance of the church with Israel would be from both a theological and historical continuity in the relationship between God and the people Israel. However, as is demonstrated in this article, although Van Ruler’s approach can be characterized in terms of theological continuity, it lacks historical continuity. Such a historical

27  A theological legitimation of land claims by Jewish colonists or Christian zionists is rejected with this approach; it is a misunderstanding to interpret the promise of the land in terms of possession (like “promised land” suggests). 28  In this one should make a distinction between Israel as a people (represented by the Jews) and the state of Israel; this leaves room for a critical position towards the defense and safety policy of the state of Israel and its consequences for the Palestinian people. 29  Campare for instance Paul’s reference to Deuteronomy 32:43 in Romans 15:10: “Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people” (King James Version). 30  Kerkorde en ordinanties van de Protestantse Kerk in Nederland inclusief de overgangsbepalingen (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2003), 10.

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continuity can be developed from an eschatological point of view, in which the faithfulness and love of God towards the people of Israel in its ethnical appearance is accounted for. This connects the church to Israel as the elect people in a ministry of hope. This perspective might be helpful for the Protestant Church in the Netherlands to formulate anew the basis for confessing its relationship with the people of Israel.

CHURCH AND ISRAEL, CHURCH AND THE JEWS IN HUNGARIAN REFORMED THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE Ferenc Szűcs* In his 1998 book Jesus Kyrios, A. van de Beek already insisted “that a Christology is not complete unless Israel is discussed.”1 He explained this in more detailed in the book De kring om de Messias, connecting the suffering of Christ with the compassionate God of Israel and the historic persecutions of God’s people.2 The soteriological explanation of the suffering servant in Deutero-Isaiah does not exclude a wider hermeneutic view which is used by the author.3 The fate of one of the largest Jewish communities in Central Europe, and the tragic loss of 600, 000 Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust, is a convincing fact on which to argue that a Post– Holocaust Christology ‘cannot be complete unless it is discussed. ‘A. van de Beek has had a deep and sincere interest in the Hungarian Reformed theology and church practice. The following comments are intended to give a small contribution to his favorite research. The issue of Israel as a problem appeared in the very beginning of the spreading of reformation in sixteenth century Hungary. An analogy between the Old Testament history and the Hungarian historic situation of that time was used frequently, both in the preaching of the early Reformers and in the contemporary literature. It had started even earlier than when Calvinism became dominant in the Hungarian Protestantism, for this view of history was brought from Wittenberg. Luther himself accepted the medieval concept of dispensations of human history according to the apocalyptic vision of the Book of Daniel. The fijirst period goes from Adam to Moses, the second is from Moses to Jesus, the third

* On behalf of the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary we express our best wishes and congratulation to Prof. Abraham van de Beek who has been our honorary doctor since 2005.   1  Dr. Abraham van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios Christology as Hearth of Theology (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema, 2002), 300.  2  Dr. A. van de Beek, De kring om de Messias, Israel als volk van de lijdende Heer [The Circle around the Messiah, Israel as people of the sufffering Lord] (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema, Zoetermeer, 2002), 77–143.  3  Op. cit. 49–54.

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one—which includes our age—began with Jesus.4 The decline of the Roman Empire showed apocalyptic signs, especially with the appearance of the twofold Antichrists. For the pope was regarded as the spiritual Antichrist and the Turks were regarded as the bodily Antichrist. The Calvinist teaching altered this view of history in the direction of the prophetic Deuteronomist concept of history: i.e. a judgment and grace scheme. According to the Old Testament analogy, the Turks were regarded as the means of God’s punishment for our sins. It is important to state that in this concept the biblical analogy never became a salvation historic identifijication of the Hungarian nation with the chosen people of Israel.5 But the parallelism between the fate of the Jews and the Hungarian people could easily be read from the stories of ancient Israel and of its surrounding empires: Assyria, Babylonia and Persia. This was a common view among reformed theologians at that time, as we see for instance from one of the letters of Bullinger to the Hungarian pastors, who analyzed the reason for the Turkish occupation in the same way.6 But the reformers also found justifijication of their struggle against the idolatry of the Roman church in the Old Testament. The most frequently used paraphrases used the story of Elijah and Achab7 or David and his enemies, both of which teach us to fijight for the true faith.8 They also took over the term ‘providential liberator’ from Calvin’s teaching and applied it to the Transylvanian Reformed Princes and called Bocskay and Bethlen the “Moses or Gideon of the Hungarians.”9 Moreover, there is no doubt that when singing the Geneva Psalms in worship, the old Israelite names like Zion or Jerusalem were applied to the present church following the substitution theory of the church tradition. Even so, there are few exceptions. In the Hungarian

4  Győri L. János, A magyar reformáció irodalmi hagyományai [The Literary Traditions of the Hungarian Reformation] (Budapest: Református Köznevelési és Közoktatási Intézet, 1997), 38. 5  Dr. Czeglédy Sándor, A választott nép [The Chosen People] (Budapest: Debreceni M. Kir. Tisza István Tudományegyetem 1940), 12. 6  Heinrichi Bullingeri, Epistola ad ecclesias Hungaricas earumque pastore scripta, (MDLI), (Budapest: N.P. 1967), 51. 7  Csikei István, Az Illés profétáról és Akháb királyról való historia (1542) [History of prophet Elijah and king Achab] in: Szabó András: “Bízd az jövendőkre érdemed jutalmát” Magyar Protestáns Irodalmi Szöveggyűjtemény 1. (16–17. század) [“Let the Award of your Merit extend to the Future,” Textbook of the Hungarian Protestant Literature] (Budapest: Mundus, 1998), 189–194. 8  The poem of Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos, which is now a hymn in the Hymnbook of The Reformed Church in Hungary: Énekeskönyv Magyar Reformátusok Használatára (Budapest: Magyarországi Református Egyház, 1948), No. 161. 9  Calvin, Institutes, 4.20.30.

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Reformed Hymnbook used presently, we fijind a hymn from the 16th century where Jerusalem and Zion are regarded as an Israel that is a parallel to the church.10 The highly qualifijied theologian-poet Tinódi, Lantos, likely knew about Calvin’s more flexible view on Israel, who could sometimes step away from the strict substitution model. However, he was consistent in integrating his eschatological view when insisting that the church is the fulfijillment of Israel, even while in the foreword of the fourth edition of the fijirst French Bible translation, he—together with Farael and Viret—addressed the “people of the Zion–covenant” as fellow-covenanters.11 This recognition of Israel as a ‘denomination,’ living together with the church, exhibits that there had been no anti-Semitic manifestations in the reformed churches in Hungary until the 19th century. Jewish pupils readily attended the Reformed schools in towns where they did not have their own. Jews and Protestants had almost a similar precarious status during the Habsburg Counter-Reformation which was relaxed only by the Edict of Tolerance of Joseph II and the laws of the Diet in 1790–91.12 This is why Jews in Hungary got the greatest support from the Protestant politicians to achieve their emancipation. The Diet in 1840 was another step towards it, which assured more possibilities of free migration and suspended the toleration tax. The early 19th century brought another change in Jewish-Christian relations with the appearance of the Scottish Mission in the city of Pest. It happened by chance, but later became a providential event. One of the members of a Scottish deputation to Palestine was seriously injured in 1839. He therefore had to return by the shortest route, which was by ship on the Danube. He and his accompanied friend had to stop in Pest where they were introduced to the Archduchess Maria Dorothea, the wife of Count Palatine. She came from Württemberg from a Protestant pietist family but neither her new home, nor the situation of liberal Protestantism in Hungary could give her spiritual satisfaction, so she had prayed for an awakening for seven years. She felt that the meeting with these Scotsmen was the answer to her prayers and asked them to establish a mission in Pest.13 The Church of Scotland accepted the request and sent missionaries to work 10

 Énekeskönyv, 450. v. 5.  Tatai István, Kálvin és a zsidóság, [Calvin and the Jews] Collegium Doctorum (VI. 2010), 60. 12  Papp Vilmos, Protestantizmus és zsidóság (Protestantism and the Jews) Theologiai Szemle (XXXI 1988 3), 158. 13  Dr. A.M. Kool, God Moves in a Mysterious Way, The Hungarian Protestant Foreign Mission Movement (1756–1951) (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum B.V., 1993), 98–103. 11

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among the Jews whose number was about 240,000 people in Hungary, of which 10,000 were living in Pest. This number increased to about 200,000 in Budapest alone by the beginning of the 20th century.14 (Three former independent cities united under the present name in 1873.) The Scottish Mission started its work in 1841 with the primary aim to work among the Jews, but they helped the poor as well. They also established an English speaking congregation which fulfijilled the urgent religious need of those Scottish workers and their families who were engaged in building the fijirst bridge over the Danube in Budapest, called the ‘Chain Bridge.’ But on the other hand, the Scottish Mission became a “catalyst for awakening in Protestant churches” and gained more and more respect in the main line churches.15 Many of the converted Jews themselves became devoted workers of the inner mission of the Reformed church. We can mention here the famous and expanded Victor family, who came from Germany and also had some Jewish origins. They were not the direct fruits of the Scottish Mission, but János I (1860–1937), “father” of the Sunday School movement joined it and became a leading fijigure of the inner mission. His eldest son, János II (1888–1954), became the organizer of the Evangelical Student Movement (MKDSZ) and later professor of the chair of Systematic Theology in Budapest.16 From later times the names of Emil Hajós, Imre Kádár and József Éliás could be mentioned among others. * * * In 1867 the emancipation of the Jews became regulated. The XVII Law declared that “Israelite inhabitants of the country have equal title with Christian inhabitants to practice all civil and political rights.”17 But it was regulation which was not able to handle the social and ethnic tensions of the country. In this environment the so called ‘Jewish question’ became a lightning rod. The year 1875 became another milestone in the parliamentarian democracy of the country when one of the exponents of a Roman Catholic party demanded the withdrawal of the law of 1867 in a long antiSemitic speech in the Parliament.18 Journals written from a protestant perspective defijinitely rejected this propaganda, causing a long debate in the

14

 Kósa László (szerk), Reformátusok Budapesten [Reformed People in Budapest] Vol. I (Budapest: Argumentum, 2006), 76. 15  Dr. A.M. Kool, God Moves in a Mysterious Way, 107. 16  Kósa László, Reformátusok Budapesten 1.723–727. 17  Benoschofsky Ilona, Scheiber Sándor (eds) A Budapesti zsidó múzeum [The Jewish Museum in Budapest] (Budapest, Corvina, 1987), 17. 18  Papp Vilmos, “Protestantizmus,” 161.

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contemporary media. These papers also sharply condemned the pogroms in Russia, explaining its real reasons, i.e. diverting the political crisis to other channels. Bálint Révész, Reformed Bishop of Debrecen, organized humanitarian aid to the Russian-Jewish refugees, supporting opening the state borders to them.19 The famous legal proceedings of Tiszaeszlár were started in 1882. The subject of the charge was a fabricated story that the blood of a young Christian girl was used for religious ceremonies in the local Synagogue. Another vehement debate started both in the Parliament and in the newspapers. Unfortunately, the Reformed papers offfered a very weak argumentation against this propaganda, defijined mainly by their “missionary” idea that suggested a quick assimilation of the Jews.20 Yet, the trial itself can be regarded as a unique European phenomenon, and also as a victory of civil rights because it ended with a total exemption. The lawyer, Károly Eötvös, was an alumnus and former professor of the Reformed Academy of Law in Pápa. An obvious question may arise at this point. Why did these events not echo more in Reformed theology? One answer can refer to the domination of the liberal theology of that time. The question of human rights was raised less from the background of the Gospel than that these debates were influenced by the humanism of the Enlightenment. The real battlefijield was not in the church any longer, but in the Parliament and in the public sphere. Another reason can be found in the influence of the Religion-historic school of German theology. Perhaps, one of the good examples may be the case of Mór Ballagi (formerly Bloch), the founding professor of the youngest Theological Academy of Hungary in Pest (1855– 1877). He was born as a Jew and converted in Tübingen, Germany, and was influenced by Hegel and Ch. Baur. He believed that Protestantism— and especially the Reformed faith—had been the highest point of religious development since Old Testament monotheism.21 The 19th century idea of the development of history coincided with the emancipation and assimilation of the Jews. Assimilation did not necessarily mean the conversion to Christianity. A unique phenomenon appeared among the Hungarian Jewish communities, namely the division between the orthodox and

 19

 Papp Vilmos, “Protestantizmus,” 163.  Papp Vilmos, “Protestantizmus,” 165.  21  Szűcs Ferenc, Rendszeres Teológiai Tanszék [The Chair of Systematic Theology], Ladányi Sándor (ed.) A Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem Hittudományi Karának története 1855–2005 [The History of the Theological Faculty of the Károli Gáspár Reformed University 1855–2005] (Budapest: KRE, 2005), 244. 20

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neologue directions.22 The latter one broke away from some former customs like wearing special dress or hair style, brought pipeorgans to the Synagogues, but kept their ancient liturgy and other traditions. The neologism emphasized the cultural identity of Judaism but has as well contributed a lot to the Hungarian culture. A great number of Hungarian scientists, writers and musicians came from this background. In this atmosphere a special Israel-theology could not be developed. The Jewish communities were regarded as fijields for Christian mission, and at most it was emphasized that they are the fijirst ones who were invited to the Kingdom of God.23 The name ‘Israelites’ became more and more a designation of a denomination in society rather than a name of an ethnic group or race. However, against these trends of assimilation in the second half of 19th century, a new movement—Zionism—appeared, which was rooted very much in Hungarian Judaism. Two of the fathers of this nationalistic movement and ideology were Rabbi Joseph Natonek and Tivadar Herzl.24 Although the aim of the Zionist World Congress in Basel (1897) was to establish a secular Jewish state, it also renewed the theological question of God’s promises to gather his people in the Holy Land again. The classic orthodox Reformed reaction combined this latter possibility at once with the millenialist views in theology which were condemned in the Second Helvetic Confession: “We reject the Jewish dream of a millennium ( judaica somnia), or golden age on earth, before the last judgment.”25 Professor Jenő Sebestyén, a representative fijigure of the “historic Calvinism” in Budapest, stated the following: “The idea, that Jews collectively, as a people and nation, will return to Christ, leads directly to the heresy of chiliasmus or millenialism. We can only say that only those who will have been converted until Christ’ return will participate in the electing grace of God.”26 According to Sebestyén, this philo-Semite optimism can be compared to the messianic expectations of the fijirst century. So he rejects the idea of an earthly Christocracy on the basis of a double parousia and a double resurrection. At the same time he acknowledges that moderated chiliasm could be found among some Reformed theologian as well: Alstedt, Pisca22

 Benda Kálmán (ed.) Magyarország történeti kronológiája III. [Historical Chronology of Hungary III.] (Budapest: Akadémia, 1983), 746. 23  Romans 2:10. 24  Daniel Gimeno (ed.), A zsidóság, [The Jews] (N.P. 2010.) 48. (Barcelona: El Pueblo Hebreo, 2008). 25  Chapter XI. 26  Dr. Sebestyén Jenő, Eschatologia, (Budapest: Typed copy, 1941), 48.

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tor, Coccejus, and Brakel.27 He agrees with A. Kuyper that Israel was only a phase in salvation history, but that after Christ it has no signifijicance any longer.28 It is quite interesting that he totally omits references to Romans 9, 10, and 11. It is also true that thinking of the existence of an independent Jewish state in Palestine was not yet realistic in the early 20th century. We have to add that—much later, in 1940—Sebestyén also sharply criticized Hitler’s totalitarian regime in his Ethics and condemned anti-Semitic tendencies in theology.29 * * * The breaking out of World War I was the beginning of a tragedy, both for the Hungarian nation and the Reformed Church. The war itself was bad enough, but the conclusion even more far-reaching. For as a fijinal consequence of the Peace Treaty of Trianon in 1920, Hungary lost two thirds of its territory, and the Reformed Church lost one third of its members. In the last phase of the war it was the chaos and the social tensions in the country that led to a “civil revolution” (1918) which also had many anticlerical characteristics. This tumult only increased during the 133 days of the ‘Red Terror’ as the actions of the Soviet Republic (1919) were called.30 The Red Terror was followed by a ‘White Terror’, leading to a time of consolidation in which ‘Christian Nationalism’ was the guiding principle of the government. Since the leaders of the short-lived communist regime were mainly secularized Jews, a general distrust and anti-Semitic feelings were generated in society, but there was no political discrimination until 1938. In that year the Parliament accepted the fijirst Jewish Law, the so called ‘numerus clausus’ or ‘balance’ law, which limited the participation of Jews in certain professions, starting with university students. Only those who belonged to the Israelite religion were regarded as Jews.31 For the time being, conversion to Christianity meant protection for them. This law did not afffect church life, the denominational institutions, and the Jewish press. It was obviously forced upon the nation as a consequence of the German occupation of Austria (Anschluss). The representatives of the churches voted for it in the Upper House. Their dilemma was echoed

27

 Dr. Sebestyén Jenő, Eschatologia, 52.  Dr. Sebestyén Jenő, Eschatologia, 55. 29  Sebestyén Jenő, Református etika [Reformed Ethics] (Budapest-Gödöllő: Iránytű, 1993), 380. 30  Szilveszter Füsti Molnár, Ecclesia sine macula et ruga (Sárospatak: Sárospatak Reformed Theological Academy, 2008), 120–126. 31  Benda Kálmán, Magyarország történeti kronológiája, 955. 28

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in the precarious stability of the Teleki government. On the one hand cover was sought from attacks of extremists who wanted to introduce more open terrorism, on the other hand moderates wanted to safeguard protection to the church members who came from Jewish background.32 Only later did it become clear that this delimitation law was only the fijirst step on the demonic road that led to the deportations and concentration camps. The German political and military pressure increased, which in 1939 provoked the second Jewish law that more openly reflected the Nazi spirit, for it handled the Jewish question on a racial basis and consisted of anti-humane resolutions. The third Jewish Law in 1941 came into full collision with the resistance of church representatives, including Bishop László Ravasz. In spite of these laws, the government resisted full execution of all the demands of Nazi Germany. It is now taken as a matter of fact that large numbers of Jews found refuge in Hungary from neighboring countries until the full occupation of the country in 1944.33 It stands to reason that these regulations increased the number of Jewish applicants for Christian baptism. The Reformed church had to confront the dilemma of either taking seriously the catechism training before baptism, or else for humanitarian reasons making it easier to enter the church. The church published a shorter catechism to this end and established a Mission Foundation called Jó Pásztor (Good Shepherd) in 1942.34 The fijirst aim of it was the pastoral care of the newly converted Jewish– Christians, but later it had a great role in saving the persecuted. In fact, the latter role of this new foundation gradually became more important, even while the Scottish Mission became more limited because of restrictions in the changed political situation. * * * Two main theological views could be discerned behind this ecclesiastical work. The fijirst one was that of Emil Brunner who saw a solution of the situation in the total assimilation of the Jews.35 Many of the church leaders shared this view. The main weakness of this substitution theory was that all the blessings of the Old Testament were applied either to the church, or to the Hungarian nation even, but all the curses were left upon the Jews. There is some truth in the observation that the aim of this spiritual 32  Albert Bereczky, Hungarian Protestantism and the Persecution of Jews (Budapest: Sylvester, N.D.), 8–9. 33  Albert Bereczky, Hungarian Protestantism, 10. 34  Dr. Kádár Imre, Az egyház felelőssége Izraelért [The Responsibility of the church towards Israel] (Budapest: Jó Pásztor, 1948?), 20. 35  Dr. Kádár Imre, Az egyház felelőssége . . . 5.

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annihilation of the Jews could be compared with the aim of their physical annihilation.36 More signifijicant influences came from Barthian theology. Dialectical theology was dominant in four of the theological academies in Hungary, simply because some of the professors were the former Bonn students of Barth, or others just were convinced by his theology. (In Kolozsvár: Sándor Tavaszy, and Sándor Makkay; in Debrecen: Imre Vasady and also Bishop Imre Révész; in Pápa: István Török; in Budapest: Sándor Czeglédy and János Victor). Barth paid a personal visit to Hungary in 1936 as well. His theology emphasized the signifijicance of Romans 9–11 as more of a warning to the Christian church than to the Jews. One of the practical consequences of this recognition was the realization that the church is distorted without Israel. The lack of a Jewish Mission demonstrates the crisis of the church.37 József Éliás, one of the leading pastors of the Jewish Mission, spoke of a double crisis: a crisis of the Jews and a crisis of the church. Both crises come from disobedience. The church had not seen the nation as part of God‘s plan with the Jews for centuries, so it helped poison the political atmosphere.38 The role of Israel is to be the sign of God‘s electing grace among the nations. This is why they have not been assimilated, and have sufffered from their being scattered. In one of his books (in 1943), he uses a reverse typology, stating that the Jewish question can be compared with the Samaritan question in the Bible.39 From this analogy he derived a double conclusion. On the one hand he identifijied the contemporary Jews with those who did not have the exodus experience and chose the way of assimilation.40 On the other hand he saw similarities between the behavior of the Jews in the time of Jesus toward the Samaritans, and the behavior of the Christian majority towards the Jews in his own days. Éliás followed the popular exegesis of Matthew 25: 31–46, saying that the last judgment of the nations will happen on the basis of their relationship to Israel. Apart from these rather pragmatic approaches, a deep theological analysis was published in 1940 by Professor Sándor Czeglédy under the title A választott nép (The chosen people). Czeglédy recognized the problems of the so called ‘Nation Theology’ in Germany which could become a double

36

 Dr. Kádár Imre, Az egyház felelőssége . . . 6.  Keresztyéneknek a zsidóságról, zsidóknak a keresztyénségről, [To Christians about the Jews, to Jews about Christians] (Budapest: Jó Pásztor, 1946), 56–57. 38  Keresztyéneknek a zsidóságról 58. 39  Éliás József, A samaritánus kérdés [The Samaritan Question] (Budapest: Ádvent, 1943). 40  Éliás József, A samaritánus kérdés, 36–37. He refered to 2 Kings 17:27–41. 37

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temptation in the Reformed Church of Hungary also. One form was the rejection, or an at least underestimation of the Old Testament. The other temptation was the identifijication of ‘our’ people with the ‘chosen’ people.41 He insisted that the notion ‘people’ is indeed a worldly entity, but is not a profane entity.42 There is a correlation between people and the people of God. Peoples of the earth live under the ‘sacrament of the rainbow’, but its light comes from God’s eternal purpose which has been revealed in the life of the ‘chosen people’, i.e. Israel and the church. Thus, the direction of understanding the meaning of ‘people-ness’ was to understand the meaning of ‘chosen-ness.’ Jesus himself was a member of the Jewish people and his mission was primarily directed to his own people.43 God did not break his covenant with Israel and, indeed, shall fulfijill it when Christ returns. Czeglédy followed the Barthian exegesis of Romans 9–11, explaining that the timely hardening of Israel was for the sake of the salvation of the Gentiles. He concludes with the warning: “let the church truly be church among its nation”!44 * * * On March 19, 1944 the Germans invaded Hungary, and Governor Miklós Horthy regarded himself as a prisoner. The deportation of the Jewish people began, excepting the city of Budapest initially. The Ghetto of Budapest could remain safe only because of the public protest of the Governor. Soon a Nazi puppet government was appointed and terror started openly against the Jews. The Reformed leaders tried to intervene and, with the Lutheran bishops, protested against it with little success. Many churches and parsonages took the risk to become secret hiding places of the refugees. Pastors tried to liaison with the protective wings of the Swedish Red Cross which had a kind of freedom at that time.45 Many lives were saved, but many more were lost in the various concentration camps. Among them, the Matron of the Girls Home of the Scottish Mission, Miss Jane Haining, who was taken to Auschwitz and would die there. There was another martyr of the Reformed church, a young talented pastor, Zsigmond Varga, who was arrested by the Gestapo in Vienna during a Hungarian Reformed service because of his brave prophetic preaching.

41

 Dr. Czeglédy Sándor, A választott nép.  Dr. Czeglédy Sándor, A választott nép 7. 43  Dr. Czeglédy Sándor, A választott nép 71. 44  Dr. Czeglédy Sándor, A választott nép 134. 45  Bereczky Albert, Hungarian Protestantism 41. 42

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Recognition of the spiritual earthquake of the Shoah after World War II coincided with the experience of the national tragedies of the Hungarian people during and after the war. Six hundred thousand people were taken into Soviet prison camps, many of them civilians and only half of them returned home. In Vojvodina circa 40,000 civil Hungarians were massacred by Tito partisans; 119,000 inhabitants were relocated from Czechoslovakia to Hungary as a collective punishment.46 The devastation of the war and the occupation of the country by the Red Army caused tremendous sufffering for the people. In this situation, the theological evaluation of the past became a complex and paradoxical task. One of the views was represented by Albert Bereczky and also by some of the revivalists: the sin, judgment, and repentance model. Bereczky, who belonged to the resistance movement during the war and saved many Jews in his congregation, used the terminology of the Book of Jeremiah even before the war. After the war there was a time of a great Awakening, so the concept of repentance, both individual and communal, had a general acceptance in the Reformed congregations. The situation of the country after the war could be regarded as the fulfijillment of Bereczky’s prophesy concerning the judgment of God. In 1946 an assembly of the so-called National Reformed Free Council convened in Nyíregyháza. One of its main tasks was to formulate a declaration of the confession of sin for the negligence of the church in the past. The assembly sent a message to the Reformed Synod, forcing such a confession which was received with ambivalent feelings. According to Bishop Ravasz, it was not right to confess those sins that we had not committed as a Synod. Yet fijinally a declaration was accepted which declared the weaknesses of the church during the Nazi times. Later, Bishop Ravasz also acknowledged his own moral responsibility for voting for the two Jewish laws, apart from the above mentioned more pragmatic reasons. He believed the evil should have been resisted at the very fijirst step.47 The Free Council dealt with the new tasks of the Jewish Mission. Their main concern was the life of the Christian church itself which could make the Jews jealous of salvation. The other task was the struggle against anti-Semitism and the work toward reconciliation between Jews and

46  Szilveszter Füsti Molnár, Ecclesia sine macula et ruga, 134. The number of 400,000 instead of 40,000 is a misprint in the book. 47  Ravasz László, Emlékezéseim, [My Memories] (Budapest: Református Zsinati Iroda, 1992), 220.

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Christians.48 Unfortunately, there was also a hidden aim of the assembly, namely preparing a change in the leadership of the church. The communist government prohibited all the missionary societies in 1951, yet the idea of the Jewish Mission could survive. We see this in a study paper which was sent to the World Council of Churches in 1956. (In that year the Central Committee had its meeting in Hungary.) The second part of the paper dealt with the topic ‘Israel and the Church’49 This was the continuation of the process of the committee work which started after the Evanston Assembly (1954) where some Hungarian delegates also participated.50 The study urged the WCC to pay more attention to the Jewish Mission because it could only be handled as a theological question. (In Evanston it was taken out of the Agenda because of the disagreement on the ‘Israeli State’.) The authors argued that without a biblical clarifijication of the Israel problem, our preaching, our Christology, our anthropology, our ecclesiology and our eschatology would become false. The mystery of the Bible and the mystery of the Jews are the same. We can only speak of Christ as the Messiah of the Jews and as the Redeemer of the Gentiles. But we also cannot speak of humanness without the homo verus Iudaeus. The report rejects the ecclesiology of the substitution model and also urges to change the arrogant ecclesiological attitude within the Jewish Mission. Finally, authors confessed their hope about saving the pas Israel (without explaining the meaning of all Israel), for Israel and the church share the heritage of the same promise. A further explanation or exploration of the phrase ‘same promise’ is also missing. They urged the Hungarian Reformed Church to rethink its theological heritage. The Reformed members would include this in their confessional documents, while the Lutherans did not see the need of this revision of their confessions because they were regarded as unscriptural. As for the Israeli State, the document used a dialectical language. It acknowledged the fulfijillment of God’s promises on the one hand, but also some worries were expressed concerning the impatient actions of this young state on the other hand. In their view, the Israelite–Jewish community had a wider meaning than the political state of Israel. 48

 Kádár Imre, “Zsidónak először, meg görögnek” [“To the Jews fijirst then to the Greeks”] (Budapest: Evangéliumi Megújulás Munkaközössége, N.D.), 89. 49  Izráel és az egyház, [Israel and the Church], Református Egyház, (1956/9.), 197–199. The paper was written by an ecumenical team, but the majority of the participants were Reformed professors and it was published in a Reformed periodical as well. 50  Dr. Tatai István Az egyház és Izrael [The Church and Israel] (Budapest: HarmatKálvin-KMTI, 2009), 15.

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* * * In the following years, mission in general, but also Jewish Mission, has had many political restrictions. Although the Scottish Mission has formally been in existence in Budapest for many years, it became a place for an English speaking congregation, rather than a center of the Jewish Mission. After the political change in 1990, the dialogue model became prominent. A Christian Jewish Society organizes interdenominational dialogues and publishes the documents. Two doctoral dissertations have been published on this subject. Mihály Antal Nagy defended his thesis at Debrecen under the title ‘Örök szövetség’ (Eternal covenant).51 The book is a complex critical review of ‘Israelology’ in the history of theology. It follows the one-covenant-model which has remained valid apart from the human responses.52 Its most original part is the criticism on Barth’s Israel-Church typology which has been a dominant theme in Hungarian Reformed theology.53 His eschatology is questionable in as much as it goes in the direction of dispensationalism.54 István Tatai wrote his doctoral thesis on the Church and Israel and defended it at the Theological Faculty of the Károli Gáspár Reformed University.55 He chose this word order of his topic to point to the ecclesiological character of his work. He examined six models in the history of theology and created his own as a correlational model of the paradoxical existence of Israel.56 He insists on the paradoxical nature of the mystery. The mystery of Israel can be understood only in the tension of the contrasts of the temporal and eternal, local and universal etc. It can be illustrated by the metaphor of the olive tree. He made an important contribution to understand the Pauline metaphor, pointing out that probably this kind of method of grafting was used for the renewal of old olive trees. Both authors expressed their gratitude to their late professor László Pákozdy for his inspiration on this subject. He was an active worker in the resistance movement and saved many Jewish lives during World War II. The famous Old Testament scholar was born in 1911, exactly hundred years ago at the date of submitting this overview.

51

 It was published in a reduced form. Nagy Antal Mihály, Örök szövetség [Eternal Covenant] (Budapest: Kálvin, 1995). 52  Nagy Antal Mihály, Örök szövetség, 145–177. 53  Nagy Antal Mihály, Örök szövetség, 100–101. 54  Nagy Antal Mihály, Örök szövetség, 193–198. 55  Tatai István, Az egyház és Izrael, (See footnote 47). 56  Tatai István, Az egyház és Izrael, 227–238.

TAOISTIC IMPLICATIONS FOR CHRISTOLOGY: GRAND UNITY, DATONG (大同) AND VALLEY-GOD, GUSHEN (谷神)1 Jaeseung Cha Introduction The argument that Christ is the Tao2 may provoke various responses because Christ and the Tao in Taoism show both surprising similarities and substantial diffferences.3 The view that the transcendent Tao is immanent in its in-naturation4 can throw a new light on the theology of Christ’s incarnation. The divine Logos, however, is concretely and historically embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, which is substantially diffferent from the Tao’s in-naturation. The Tao can be a way to Christ but Christ cannot be a way to the Tao. There is no way in Taoism that can fully reflect the central contents of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. What is missing in the Tao of Taoism—the divine incarnation in the historical person Jesus, the divine self-sacrifijice in Christ’s death, and the new humanity in Christ’s resurrection—seems to preclude a genuine dialogue between Christ and the Tao. We must remember, in the last analysis, that Christ is the way (qua) for us to reach Christ himself (quo).5

1  The provisional form of this paper was originally presented at the Free University in the Netherlands in May of 2010, sponsored by its Research in Residence program. Taoism in this paper denotes Lao-Chuang Philosophy (老莊思想) that has been developed with and represented in two major texts of Chinese philosophy: Tao Te Ching (道德經) and Chuang Tzu (莊子). 2  The Tao (道) literally means The Way, which can be related to Christ’s declaration in John 14:6, “I am the Way.” Michael Amaladoss begins the chapter ‘Jesus, the Way’ with John 14:6 and proceeds to explain the Tao in Tao Te Ching and Confucianism (The Asian Jesus [Maryknoll: Orbis, 2006], 51–5). 3  Heup Young Kim uses the word ‘Christotao,’ stressing the comprehensive idea of Christ combined with the concept of the Tao (Christ and the Tao [Christian Conference of Asia, 2002], 166–176). While his view of Christotao extends to the Tao conceived in Chinese philosophy and society in general, this paper limits its scope to the Tao in Taoism. 4  In-naturation means the Tao’s presence in nature, which can be compared with Christ’s incarnation. 5  “[H]e teaches that we must know our destination and the way to it (sciendum esse tradit quo sit eundum et qua). . . . Both are found in Christ alone” (Calvin, Institutes, III.2.1, Corpus Reformatorum 30.398).

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On the other hand, it is possible for the Christian dialogue partner to gain insight into his or her Christology by attending to what is afffijirmed of the Tao. Taoism has much to commend itself to Christological reflection. The Tao’s presence in the cosmos and humanity produces the great sense of union of all things, anchored in non-being, and creates all things from the One. It transcends all cosmic and human boundaries in unlimited freedom, but it is embedded in nature and in such natural realities as women, infants, bamboo trees, and water. The cosmic Tao unites nonbeing and all beings in heaven and on earth. Moreover, the Tao has a sacrifijicial attribute since the Tao produces but does not possess. In what follows, we will construct an interpretative paradigm in which we unfold these implications. We will begin by discussing what the Taoistic concept of the ‘Grand Unity’ can contribute to theologies of Christ’s incarnation. We will emphasize here the Tao’s presence in nature, as well as the Tao’s harmony and unity with the world. It will include Taoistic implications for the Christology developed by the Church Fathers. Next, we will deal with the personal and sacrifijicial attributes of the Tao that the idea of the concept of the ‘Valley-god’ represents. A critical question here is whether the Valley-god personally and sacrifijicially penetrates into the cosmos, world, and humanity, or corresponds to an impersonal phenomenon as an abstract principle. The limitations of Taoism will be more apparent in this part. Finally, we will draw the conclusion that the Tao may enrich various Christologies but cannot substitute for Christ himself. The unique Christ, Christus unicus, shares sufffering with and bears all, not least in East Asia, who have not been living in harmonious unity with the world but have been sufffering from its broken reality. 1. The Tao’s In-naturation: Harmony and Unity One of the most valuable Taoistic implications for Christology is that the Tao reveals to human beings the great openness of the creator, cosmos, nature, animals, and all things in the world, with which all human beings are to be united. Whoever wants to understand the Tao, however, encounters the fundamental difffijiculty of tremendously diverse and complicated reality. Ontologically, the Tao is a being as the source of all things and a non-being conceived as the principle of nature; epistemologically it is hidden in itself yet known in nature, humans, and things; and ethically it is fulfijilled in virtue, de (德, virtue, generous mind) yet returns to its origin by non-action, wuwei (無爲). We can fijind Christological relevance here, however, by focusing on two points: (1) the transcendent and apophatic

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Tao as identifijied with the world and (2) the Tao’s in-naturation as harmony and unity. The Tao is, fijirst of all, transcendent yet united with the world. A variety of images and words both in Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu uncover an apophatic aspect of the Tao. The Tao is dark and obscure,6 and indescribably deep and unrecognizably indistinct.7 Whoever thinks he or she knows the Tao in fact does not know what the Tao is because the Tao cannot be heard, seen, and spoken of, and if we understand that the formless Tao gives forms to all things we must not name it.8 More critically, the Tao is related to nothingness, wu (無), of name and form. The unknown feature of the Tao leads us to a question about the ontological status of the Tao: Is it because the Tao does not exist that the Tao cannot be seen, heard, and spoken of? Chapter 14 of Tao Te Ching states, We look at it, but we do not see it, and we name it ‘the Equable.’ We listen to it, but we do not hear it, and we name it ‘the Inaudible.’ We try to reach, but do not obtain it, and we name it ‘the Subtle.’ With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One. Its upper part is not bright, and its lower part is not obscure. Ceaseless in its action, it yet cannot be named, and then it again returns and becomes nothing. This is called the form of the formless, and the semblance of the invisible; this is called the Fleeting and Indeterminable (emphasis mine).9

If the formless Tao negates its existence as it returns to nothingness, all theological concerns would seem to be of irrelevance to Taoism. But it must be noted that philosophical and cultural expressions of Taoism may

6  沌沌 Tao Te Ching 20. The original text of Tao Te Ching is from Sang Dae Kim, Dodukkyung Kangui (Lectures of Tao Te Ching) (Kukhakjaroywon, 1996). The English translation is my own with reference to R.L. Wing’s The Tao of Power, included in Sang Dae Kim’s, and Stephen Mitchel’s tao te ching (New York: HarperCollins, 1988). 7  窅然難言, 冥冥 Chuang Tzu 22 (知北遊).7. Dong Lim An ed. and trans. Chuang Tzu (Hyunamsa, 1993), 541. The original text of Chuang Tzu is from Dong Lim An’s Chuang Tzu, and the English translation is my own with reference to Dong Lim An’s and Hak Chu Kim’s complete Korean translation (Yunamseoka, 2010). 8  “孰知不知之知 无始曰 道不可聞 聞而非也 道不可見 見而非也 道不可言 言 而非也 知形形之不形乎 道不當名” Chuang Tzu 22 (知北遊).15, Dong Lim An, 552. The literal translation is, “Who knows that not knowing is knowing? Wushi (without beginning) says, ‘The Tao cannot be heard; if it is heard, it is not. The Tao is not seen; if it is seen, it is not. The Tao is not spoken of; if it is spoken of, it is not. If we know that the one who gives forms to forms is formless, it is unnatural to name the Tao.’ ” 9  “視之不見 名曰夷 聽之不聞 名曰希 搏之不得 名曰微 此三者不可致詰 故混 而爲一 其上不曒 其下不昧 繩繩不可名 復歸於無物 是謂無狀之狀 無物之象 是 謂惚恍. . . .”

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not be fully apprehended by a strict dualism in which distinctions between being and non-being, ontology and epistemology, and humanity and the cosmos are not easily reconciled. The Tao as non-being reaches negation of nothingness,10 exists before the creator,11 and produces all beings.12 It is the very nature of the Tao that it freely crosses over the boundaries between non-being and being.13 In the metaphor of a human body, nonbeing is the head and becomes one with being.14 It would be fair to say that the nothingness of the Tao is rather closer to its transcendent reality than an ontological negation,15 and existing beings, you (有 exist, have) are the manifestation of the Tao.16 The Tao’s in-naturation corresponds to the Tao’s own nature that overflows into the cosmos and things in it: The great Tao extends to everywhere and is on the left and the right; all things depend on it for growth, and it does not deny them.17 More importantly, the way the Tao is innaturated surpasses ‘a staying with things.’ It identifijies with them, tong (同 sameness and harmony), as we read in the fijirst chapter of Tao Te Ching: The Tao that can be expressed is not the absolute (eternal) Tao. The name that can be named is not the absolute name. The nameless originated Heaven and Earth (eternal things) while the named is the mother of all things (manifested things). Free from desire one sees the mystery and caught with desire one sees only the manifestation. Yet, mystery and manifestation arise from the same source with diffferent names, both of which are called profundity. . . .18

10  The book 22 (知北遊).16 of Chuang Tzu uses two intriguing expressions in relation to the concept of nothingness (無): youwu (有無, there is nothingness) and wuwu (无无, there is no nothingness, Dong Lim An, 553). The latter uncovers a dimension that even nothingness cannot contain, which may be close to the idea of negatio negationis. 11  象帝之先, Tao Te Ching 4. 12  有生於無, Tao Te Ching 40. 13  Sung Hae Kim, “What is Taoistic culture?: From Christian perspective” in Taoism and Christianity (Seoul: Pauline, 2003), 26, Gu Ying Chen (陳鼓應), A New Perspective of LaoChuang (老莊新論), trans. Jin Sik Choi (Seoul: Sonamu, 1997), 23–4. 14  “以无有爲首 . . . 孰知有无死生之一守者” Chuang Tzu 23 (庚桑楚).13, Dong Lim An, 580. A similar idea is seen in 6 (大宗師).22, Dong Lim An, 197. 15  “Nothingness in the Western world is diffferent from non-being of Taoism in that nonbeing in Taoism conceives beings,” (Se Hyung Lee, Theology of the Tao: A Taoistic Reinterpretation of Christian God and Evil [Seoul: Handul, 2002], 136–7, fn. 16). 16  Bang Xiong Wang (王邦雄), Lao-Tzu: Philosophy of Life (老子的哲學, Taoistic Philosophy), trans. Byung Don Chun (Kleine Iyaghi, 2007), 113. 17  “大道氾兮 其可左右 萬物恃之而生而不辭” Tao Te Ching 34. 18  “道可道非常道 名可名非常名 無名天地之始 有名萬物之母 故常無欲以觀其 妙 常有欲以觀其徼 此兩者同出而異名 同謂之玄” Tao Te Ching 1.

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The Tao reveals a dual aspect that it is beyond any defijinition but identifijied with what is manifested. Both the hidden Tao and its manifestation equally (同) belong to profundity, xuan (玄 black, mysterious, calm). In this sense, in-naturation implies that the Tao’s being in nature is the Tao’s identifijication with nature. In other words, the Tao is nature as it is in nature. The mysterious identifijication of the Tao with the world comprehends even dust: The Tao is the most honored ancestor (or superiority) of all things (萬物之宗) that unravels the complications, harmonizes the brightness, and identifijies even with dust (or same as the lowest part, 同 其塵).19 The profundity of the Tao lies in the reality that a supreme being is united with the lowest part of the world. What is at stake here is that the Tao’s in-naturation in the world and identifijication with dust is understood not as paradox but as profundity. It is profoundly, not paradoxically, identifijied with the world, xuantong (玄同 profound identifijication).20 With these features of the Tao in mind we need to, secondly, further discuss the actual contents of the Tao’s in-naturation. Generally speaking, religious cosmologies seldom rule out the possibility that the divine being’s presence in the world may create radical and violent changes of the world, if the world is under deteriorated condition. One of the unique features of Taoism is that harmony, he (和), and unity, tong (同), is the essential reality of the Tao’s in-naturation. Here again, the problem is that harmony reconciles realities that are too diverse for even eastern Asians to defijine, although harmony is one of the most respected values in East Asia. Harmony is a comprehensive, abstract, and metaphorical concept, and at the same time it is expressed in—and experienced by—concrete and individual things. The divine sages can scarcely reach the dimension of harmony, whereas harmony can be found in little infants. Three points regarding the concept of harmony and unity are worth noting for further Taoistic implications for Christology. First of all, harmony, is the energy of the whole creation, as we read:

19  “解其紛 和其光 同其塵” Tao Te Ching 4. The Tao’s immanent reality is well described in this chapter with the expressions of jie (解 literally means untie and resolve), he (和 represents harmony that is one of the most important concepts of Taoism), and tong (同 conveys a Taoistic ideology of unifijication and identifijication). 20  Tao Te Ching 56. The expressions, 解其分 和其光 同其塵, we have read in chapter 4 above, are repeated in chapter 56, and this aspect of the Tao is defijined as the profound identifijication, 是謂玄同. The same idea of the profound identifijication (玄同) appears in book 10 (胠篋).9 of Chuang Tzu (Dong Lim An, 275).

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jaeseung cha The Tao produced the One, the One produced the Two, the Two produced the Three, the Three produced all things. All things carry yin and hold to yang. Their blended influence (沖氣, literally vacant energy between them) brings Harmony (和, or they are harmonized by the vacant energy between yin and yang).21

When yin and yang (陰陽 shade and sunny side) work together with each other in harmony, all things are created, the Tao being the initiator of the One that produces the whole creation.22 The One (一) is not so much pointing out a numerically single source as delineating the Tao’s power and energy to unite all things into the One: Heaven in harmony with the One becomes clear, earth in harmony with the One becomes stable, mind in harmony with the One becomes inspired, and the valleys in harmony with the One become full.23

This unifying energy of the Tao is called ‘One energy’ (一氣) of heaven and earth.24 Secondly, harmony is more than an abstract energy. Thus another aspect that is noteworthy in Taoism is that harmony in tiandi (天地 heaven and earth) and ziran (自然 naturally so, or nature) represents the most evident reality of the Tao. One of the simple answers to the question, “What is the Tao?” would be, “It is harmony and unity of and in tiandi and ziran,” or “It is harmonious tiandi and ziran.” The Tao is often understood as heaven (tian 天);25 heaven and earth is impartial,26 so that the Tao of heaven keeps harmony between what is excessive and what is insufffijicient, by taking out some from what is excessive and adding it to what is insufffijicient.27 When heaven and earth are harmoniously united together (相合), it rains sweet

 “道生一 一生二 二生三 三生萬物 萬物負陰而抱陽 沖氣以爲和” Tao Te Ching

21

42. 22  According to Jung Young Lee, Jesus-Christ means that Jesus and Christ are diffferent but united together just like yin and yang (The Trinity in Asian Perspective [Nashville: Abingdon, 1996], 74). The relevance of the yin and yang perspective to Christology may be one of the most peculiar features of Taoistic Christology, and because of its importance it should be treated in a separate paper. 23  “天得一以淸 地得一以寧 神得一以靈 谷得一以盈” Tao Te Ching 39. 24  “天地之一氣” Chuang Tzu 6 (大宗師).31, Dong Lim An, 206. 25  Tao Te Ching 16 includes the notion of 天乃道, which means, “Heaven is the very Tao.” 26  “天地不仁” Tao Te Ching 5, it literally means that heaven and earth is not benevolent, but ren (仁, benevolence, broad-minded) in Taoism is often regarded as one of human artifijicial effforts that destroy ‘naturally so’ or harmony. For this reason, Wing translates 不仁 as ‘impartial.’ 27  “天之道 損有餘而補不足” Tao Te Ching 77.

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dew.28 Nature is also the reality of the harmonious Tao or the place where the Tao is revealed harmoniously. Harmony in the four seasons is vivid evidence of the Tao’s reality in nature. Chuang Tzu illustrates it in the sixth book (大宗師): If the balance between yin and yang is broken (陰陽幷毗), the balance of the seasons is disturbed according to which of the four seasons (四時) cannot accomplish the harmony (和) between cold and hot, which harms human bodies.29

As explained previously,30 the Tao produces all things that carry yin and hold to yang. We see here in this passage that the harmony of yin and yang, the harmony of the four seasons, and the sound body of humans are all interrelated. Yin yang si shi (陰陽四時 the presence and work of yin and yang in the four seasons) is the predominant reality or power that upholds the harmony of the Tao while all things are in ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ without keeping their old status.31 The Tao, metaphorically and actually, dwells in well-balanced nature such as water, valley, and bamboo trees.32 Thirdly, more evident relevance to Christology can be found in the fact that harmony of the Tao includes harmony and unity between the Tao and humans. The organic unity between the Tao and the one who obtains it is well explicated in chapter 23 of Tao Te Ching: “Those who cultivate the Tao identify with the Tao. . . . Those who identify with the Tao are likewise welcomed by the Tao.”33 The Tao is in infants, women, and mothers (which we will further discuss in the next section). A point at stake here is that the presence of the Tao in human beings becomes part of the Tao’s in-naturation. In addition, the Grand Unity between the Tao and  “天地相合 以降甘露” Tao Te Ching 32.  “陰陽幷毗 四時不至 寒暑之和不成” Dong Lim An, 283. 30  Tao Te Ching 42, see footnote 21 above. 31  “天下莫不沈浮 終身不故 陰陽四時” Chuang Tzu 22 (知北遊).4, Dong Lim An, 537. 32  “上善若水 水善利萬物而不爭 (The highest value is like water. The value in water benefijits all things and yet it does not contend)” Tao Te Ching 8. Sung Hae Kim asserts that since the Tao is not easily known to us, Lao Tzu uses a variety of metaphorical expressions (“The Tao and the Kingdom of God,” 58). The word ruo, (若 like or if) supports her view. We must also note that one of the most essential natures of the transcendent Tao is its actual immanence in this world, as we already read above. The Tao exists everywhere as all things maintain their own nature and remain in harmony with others. According to book 22 (知北遊) of Chuang Tzu, the Tao is omnipresent (无所不在), existing in ants, grass, blocks, and even excrements, nothing can run away from the Tao (无乎逃物), and three words, 周徧咸 (everywhere, every time, and everyone) are the same expressions of the omnipresent Tao (Dong Lim An, 546). 33  “故從事於道者 同於道. . .同於道者, 道亦樂得之” Tao Te Ching 23. 28

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humans is more lucidly disclosed in Chuang Tzu: “Heaven and I (a true human) exist together, and all things and I become united.”34 Chuang Tzu continues to unveil a mediating dimension of the true human, Zhenren (眞人 a sage, or a true human), the one who harmonizes oneself both with heaven and with people; for heaven and humans do not compete with each other.35 Harmony by humans extends to the creator and animals. The true human is a friend of the creator (造物者),36 while paozheng (庖 丁 a male cook) can obtain this dimension by following the natural Tao in oxen’s bones and flesh as he cuts oxen.37 Ultimately, the true human’s body becomes part of the cosmos, resulting in a cosmic harmony: (A holy human) leans on sun and moon, has cosmos under his/her arms, and becomes closed lips (tightly united with the cosmos). A holy human (聖人) is dull and foolish, and mixed with all things but keeps them as they are, so that they and a holy human embrace each other.38

Here, we see a visualized image in which a grand and holy body puts the cosmos in its own arms, embracing all things on its chest and leaning its shoulder on sun and moon, but that this grand person is mixed with all things in this world. Humans are one body, yiti (一體), with non-being, life, death, existence, and disappearance, as non-being is their head, life is their spine, and death is their tails.39 All these aspects of the harmonized unity of humans with the cosmos, life and death, animals, and all things in the world can be summarized as one expression, the Grand Unity, datong (大同), in which humans freely communicate with the omnipresent and eternal Tao and become friends of heaven and earth.40 Four principles that are famous for the values of a true human in East Asia reflect the Grand Unity as well: Tie in with spiritual destiny; comply with heaven

 “天地與我竝生 而萬物與我爲一” 2 (齊物論).18, Dong Ling An, 70.  “故其好之也一 其弗好之也一 其一也一 其不一也一 其一 與天爲徒 其不一 與人爲徒 天與人不相勝也 是之謂眞人 (Liking is one and disliking is one, and one is the same and the other is the same. When the sage takes the former, he or she becomes united with heaven, when the sage takes the latter, he or she becomes united with people. Heaven and the human do not compete with each other, that one is called the true human)” Chuang Tzu 6 (大宗師).10, Dong Lim An, 185. 36  “彼方且造物者爲人” Chuang Tzu 6 (大宗師).31, Dong Lim An, 206. 37  Chuang Tzu 3 (養生主).3–6, Dong Lim An, 92–95. 38  “旁日月 挾宇宙 爲其吻合 . . . 聖人愚芚 參萬歲而一成純 萬物盡然 而以是相 蘊” Chuang Tzu 2 (齊物論).25, Dong Lim An, 78. 39  “孰能以無爲首 以生爲脊 以死爲尻 孰知生死存亡之一體者” Chuang Tzu 6 (大 宗師).22, Dong Lim An, 197. 40  “行乎无方 . . . 以遊无端 出入无旁 與日无始 . . . 合乎大同 大同而无己 . . . 天地 之友” Chuang Tzu 11(在宥).17, Dong Lim An, 303. 34 35

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and earth; nourish all things; and be harmonized with people on earth.41 It turns out that in Taoism taology (study of the Tao), anthropology, cosmology, and ethics are all interconnected. Taoistic implications for Christology are rich and profound. The Grand Unity may provide us with a wider spectrum within which to interpret the mysteries of Christ’s incarnation, his twofold nature, and his cosmic recapitulation of all things in heaven and on earth. The signifijicance of the extended spectrum is centered in the fact that taology naturally produces anthropology that is seamlessly connected to cosmology. We can summarize the Taoistic relevance to Christology in three ways. First of all, Christ’s incarnation seriously perplexed the early Church Fathers who were influenced by the Greco-roman distinction between the divine and the human. Origen eloquently and outspokenly confesses his limitation in understanding the mystery of Christ’s incarnation.42 In essence, the divine incarnation in Christ is a deep mystery, as Scripture proclaims, and will challenge any human cultural and philosophical imaginations. Still, it would have been even more critical in a cultural setting in which it is highly respected that the divine nature cannot experience any change and accidental events. Taoism shares with Christianity the mysterious nature of the Tao and the Tao’s in-naturation, as we read above in the expression of xuantong (玄同, profound identifijication). On the other hand, the Tao’s in-naturation is part of the Tao’s own nature, ziran (自然 naturally so, or nature) that can be manifested in the cosmos, in nature, and in humans. That the Tao freely and harmoniously crosses boundaries between non-being and beings, between the cosmos and humans, and between nature and things in it, is itself Tao’s nature. Thus, it is likely that for Taoists Christ’s incarnation is mysterious and natural. Secondly, the view of the Tao’s in-naturation may shed new light on the notion of Christ’s incarnation and on that of the twofold nature of Christ. The Tao is not only in-naturated in and harmonized with the world but

 “配神明 醇天地 育萬物 和天下” Chuang Tzu 33 (天下).2, Dong Lim An, 778.  “But . . . this altogether surpasses human admiration, and is beyond the power of mortal frailness to understand or feel, how that mighty power of divine majesty, that very Word of the Father, and that very wisdom of God, in which were created all things, visible and invisible, can be believed to have existed within the limits of that man who appeared in Judea. . . . To utter these things in human ears, and to explain them in words, far surpasses the powers either of our rank, or of our intellect and language. I think that it surpasses the power even of the holy apostles; nay, the explanation of that mystery may perhaps be beyond the grasp of the entire creation of celestial powers,” (De Principiis II.6.2, Anti-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4 [Peabody: Hendrickson, 1885], 281–2). 41

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the Tao is the same as the world, when the Tao is identifijied with dust (同 其塵). Two concepts must be included in Tao’s in-naturation: harmony, he (和), and unity, tong (同). The Tao as the creator of the world remains harmonized with the world, allowing yin and yang to actualize harmony in their energy, and at the same time the Tao remains completely united with the world. A certain sense of distance between the Tao and the world can be seen in the concept of he,43 but it disappears in that of tong. With this aspect of the Tao’s in-naturation in mind, Christological development of the early church can be revisited regarding how harmoniously the Logos is united with humanity and the human being Jesus. In this connection we need to introduce the Christology of the Antiochene School. The idea of Christ’s incarnation in the Antiochene School needs to be viewed in two diffferent ways. As for the completeness of Christ’s humanity, Christ’s incarnation is real and faithful. But the more critical problem is that the divine Logos may not be completely and harmoniously united with humanity because of the School’s strict view of the unchangeable and impassible divinity that cannot be united with accidental humanity.44 Even in Theodore of Mopsuestia, one of the moderate Antiochenes, who develops the idea of prosopic union—God the Word and the assumed one are simultaneously the same person whose two natures are not to be confused (inconfusa) nor the person to be perversely divided (indiuisa)45—we still can see an unavoidable ontological gap between the assuming one and the assumed one.46 The unity of the Logos with humanity in the Alexandrian School is viewed as truly substantial, to the extent that the divine unity with humanity is faithfully actualized even in Christ’s sufffering on the cross.47 How harmoniously and completely the Logos is united with humanity, however, may not be fully ascertained as long as it

43  The statement in Tao Te Ching 55 that “終日號而不嗄 和之至也 (The reason why a newborn child does not become hoarse even after he or she cries out all day long is because the harmony in him or her is at its greatest)” may allude to the fact that harmony in the Tao’s in-naturation can vary in its completeness. 44  Abraham van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios: Christology as Heart of Theology, trans. P.O. Postma (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002), 19. 45  On the Incarnation 5, Theodore of Mopsuestia, trans. Frederick G. McLeod (London: Routledge, 2009) 128, Theodori Episcopi Mopsuesteni in Epistolas B. Pauli Commentarii, ed. H.B. Swete, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1882), 292. 46  Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Philippians 2, McLeod, Theodore, 115–6. 47  “For since he is the Word of the Father and above everyone, consequently he alone was both able to recreate the universe, and be worthy to sufffer for all and to be an advocate on behalf of all before the Father” De Incarnatione 7, Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Oxford University, 1971), 151.

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is argued that the Logos dwells (ενοιϰέω) in a body (σῶμα), a temple (ναός), or an instrument (ὄργανον), and the Logos takes to himself a body (ἔλαβεν ἑαυτῶ σώμα)48 in which humanity is soteriologically objectifijied and teleologically possessed, but not harmoniously united. The primary nature of the incarnational mystery is its direction, from God to humanity, namely, ‘the Logos became flesh,’ but in Athanasius the direction of ‘the Logos’ taking us up to himself ’ seems to be so predominant that the true reality of Christ’s incarnation may be jeopardized: “For as he is in creation, yet in no way partakes (μεταλαμβάνει) of creation, but rather everything partakes of his power, so also, although he used (χρώμενος) the body as an instrument, he partook of none of the body’s attributes but rather himself sanctifijied the body.”49 In Cyril, the unity of the Logos with humanity is more intensifijied as he maintains that “[T]there is one Son, and that he has one nature even when he is considered as having assumed flesh endowed with a rational soul,”50 but the idea of the unchangeable Logos’ appropriation of humanity is not negligible in his view of Christ’s incarnation.51 The distinction between Christ’s nature and his persona, which is not fully matured in Cyril,52 later originates the idea of anhypostatic humanity of Christ. It should be noted that anhypostasis does not negate the individuality of his own but accentuates the enfleshed Word of God who bears humanity itself.53 While not ignoring the theological intentions in the use of this term, we must admit that it presupposes a dualistically distinctive frameworks between nature and persona and between humanity and a human being. The Grand Unity of Tao’s in-naturation with the ideas of he and tong may give us a new insight according to which the mystery of Christ’s incarnation may embrace both its harmonious distance from and complete oneness with humanity; thus, the idea of Christ’s divine initiative 48

 Athanasius, De Incarnatione 20, Athanasius, 182–4. The idea of body as temple is expressed in De Incarnatione 8, 9, 20, and 22, and that of instrument in De Incarnatione 8, 9, 41, 42, and especially in 43. 49  De Incarnatione 43, Athanasius, 243. 50  On the Unity of Christ, Popular Patristics Series 13, trans. John Anthony McGuckin (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary, 1995), 77, cf. Van de Beek, Jesus, 23. 51  “But how could that be the case unless he himself became flesh, that is became man, appropriating a human body to himself in such an indissoluble union that it has to be considered as his very own body and no one else’s?” (On the Unity, 63), “To the same one we attribute both the divine and human characteristics, and we also say that to the same one belongs the birth and the sufffering on the cross since he appropriated everything that belonged to his own flesh, while ever remaining impassible in the nature of the Godhead” (On the Unity, 131). 52  Van de Beek, Jesus, 23. 53  Van de Beek, Jesus, 47.

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for the whole of humanity—the idea of appropriation in Cyril, that of ‘taking us up to Christ himself ’ in Athanasius, and that of anhypostatic humanity of Christ— may be reconciled with that of Christ’s complete unity with humanity, even with a human being. Thirdly, the Grand Unity of Tao’s in-naturation turns us to be open to the cosmic Christ, since Taoistic anthropology is naturally connected to cosmology.54 This never implies that Scripture overlooks the human reality in the cosmos, nature, and animals. On the contrary, Job chapters 38 and 39, and Psalm 104 uncover how limited humans are in nature and the cosmos. Aside from the implicit evidences of the human creation from dust in Genesis 2:7 and of the cursed ground due to the human fall in Genesis 3:17, it is not easy to fijind a notion of cosmic humans in Scripture. Athanasius avers that the cosmos is a great body (σῶμα μέγα) according to Greek philosophers, and that it is suitable for the Word to come into the cosmos, which is a body and to appear in a human body (ἐν ἀνθρωπίνω σώματι) because the human race is a part of the whole universe and so the Word uses a human body as an instrument for the true revelation of the Father.55 Theodore of Mopsuestia also develops the idea that God made the whole of creation one cosmic body and made human beings a visible body that unites creation, and that Christ in his body restored the dissolved body of human beings to maintain the universal bond.56 Yet, neither in Athanasius or in Theodore is it clear how the human body can be connected to the cosmic body except by the use of the same word, σῶμα. For this reason, a challenge and difffijiculty is unavoidable when we attempt to comprehend how the incarnated Christ turns out to be the cosmic Christ who restores the whole creation,57 recapitulates omnia in heaven and on earth,58 and reconciles to himself all things on earth and in heaven.59 In Taoism, the openness of humans toward the cosmos may illuminate for us the tight correlation of Christ’s bodily incarnation with his cosmic work embracing all things.

54  “The Taoistic metaphysics has an inseparable system between anthropology and cosmology,” Se Hyung Lee, Theology of the Tao, 244, “In East Asia, anthropology is a part of cosmology; a human being is regarded as a microcosm of the cosmos” (Jung Young Lee, The Trinity, 18). 55  De Incarnatione 41–2, Athanasius, 236–241. 56  The Creation of Adam and Eve, McLeod, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 92–3. 57  Rom. 8:21. 58  Eph. 1:10. 59  Col. 1:20.

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Granted, the Taoistic concept of the Grand Unity can hardly disentangle all the problems of Christology. Moreover, the complexity of historical developments in Christology has exposed how restricted human understanding is coram Christo and how subtly the theology of Christ’s incarnation relates to various aspects of the relationship between God and humanity. While not ignoring the values of diverse Christologies developed in history, it is yet worth noting that the concept of the Grand Unity in Taoism may give us a fijirmer grasp of the biblical simplicity of Christ’s incarnation. Notwithstanding these Taoistic insights for Christology, a deeper question remains: What is the nature of the Tao and what is the Tao doing in nature? Is the Tao in the Grand Unity and harmony an idealistic and abstract principle that we must obtain by looking into heaven, the cosmos, nature and humans? Or is it a concrete and personal being who can penetrate into and transform our life? An idea, a new paradigm, or a cultural identity can impact the way we develop diverse Christologies and change the world once we learn signifijicant lessons from it. Even so, it cannot create a living relationship with us and take up human sufffering and limitation. A simple conceptual principle by which to put the divine, world, and humans in the setting of ‘both A and B’ can never solve problems in this chaotic world we live in. In fact, the cosmos itself is neither absolutely unifijied nor always harmonious. Nature is often fijilled with violence from which humans sufffer. The question of whether the Taoistic in-naturation is a mere principle will lead us to the next subject. 2. Is a Valley-god (谷神) a Personal and Sacrifijicial being or an Impersonal and Natural Principle? Many scholars of Taoism view the Tao as an impersonal source of the cosmos and nature. Gu Ying Chen argues that the notion of the Tao rules out the idea of a personal creator because Lao claims that the Tao exists before the creator.60 He further maintains that this cosmic notion of the Tao liberates human beings who sufffer from the superstitious faith in a personal being as their creator.61 Huai Jin Nan also views the divine reality not as a personal being but as a metaphysical reality or principle of nature

60

 “象帝之先,” Tao Te Ching 4, Gu Ying Chen (陳鼓應), A New Perspective, 72–3.  A New Perspective, 73.

61

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that is not known to us.62 Apparently, this is precisely the point that they highlight to show the superiority of Taoism to what they call western Christianity. If we follow this interpretation, the incarnational aspect of the Tao would have nothing to do with Christ’s personal incarnation. Whether the Tao is personal or impersonal, however, is not a straightforward question. The Christian notion of a personal God must not be blindly applied to the Taoistic idea of the divine, since the Tao surpasses even the criterion between being and non-being. Nor can a metaphysical principle be regarded as superior to a human-centered perspective without its contents being examined. What should be noted here is that as far as the Tao’s in-naturation is concerned, an abstract and impersonal innaturation would hardly go beyond an edifying principle. In other words, if the Tao’s in-naturation consists in impersonal principles, that would be nothing more than natural law; and, therefore, what makes them valuable depends on how correct that natural law turns out to be and how much we can learn from that principle of the Tao, hidden and revealed in nature, the cosmos, and humans. Learning lessons from the cosmos and humans are part of Christian theology as well. According to John Calvin, the universe is a spectacle of God’s glory,63 a dazzling theater manifesting God’s works,64 and a spacious and splendid house with the most exquisite and abundant furnishing,65 and the frame of the universe is the school where we learn piety.66 Moreover, humans are a clear mirror of God’s works and infants are eloquent speakers who preach the glory of God.67 Christians believe that God is present in the universe and in infants. Then, what would be the genuinely Taoistic relevance to Christ and his work? Or, must Christ share and bear all the suffferings, sinfulness, and limitation Taoists encounter in their life and death? It is not incorrect that the Tao is depicted as an impersonal principle in most chapters of both Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu.68 Nevertheless, personal characteristics of the Tao are not totally ruled out in them.

62  南懷瑾, Lectures on I Ching Xi Chuan (易經繫傳別講 ), trans. Won Bong Sin (Seoul: Moonye, 1997), 36. 63  Institutes, I.5.5. 64  Institutes, I.5.8, I.14.20. 65  Institutes, I.14.20. 66  Institutes, II.6.1. 67  Institutes, I.5.3. 68  Li (理) is one of the most common words to signify a principle as we can read in 依 乎天理 (according to heavenly principle, Chuang Tzu 3 [養生主].4, Dong Lim An, 93), 道 理也 (the Tao is principle, Chuang Tzu 16 [繕性].1, Dong Lim An, 407).

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Because of this uncertainty, Sung Hae Kim—while admitting that the Tao has personality at a certain point69—confesses her difffijiculty to fijind any relevance of Taoism to Christianity due to the impersonal nature of the Tao.70 What is more critical is that it is very difffijicult to fijigure out whether all the expressions with personal attributes of the Tao are simply metaphorical or whether they truly signify a living being who is in-natured in humans. Unlike the ontological reality of the Tao’s in-naturation,71 the personal characteristics according to which the Tao is infants72 and mother,73 heaven is father,74 humans are offfspring of heaven,75 and the creator is a blacksmith,76 seem to be fijigures of speech rather than the Tao’s personal attributes, when the words such as ru (如), ruo (若), pi (譬), and you (猶) are used along with these personal expressions in order to denote ‘likeness,’ ‘if,’ ‘metaphorically,’ and ‘be like.’ The Tao can be better described in metaphorical ways (譬猶).77 Still the personal attribute of the Tao can be seen in Tao Te Ching 23: When people cultivate the Tao and identify themselves with the Tao, the Tao in return, yi (亦), welcomes, lede (樂得 pleasingly accept), them.78 A personal interaction of the Tao with people following the Tao is suggested in the expressions, ‘in return’ and ‘welcome or pleasingly accept.’ The Tao reveals a personal and even a sacrifijicial nature: The Great Tao overflows into everything and is present in the left and right. All things depend on it for growth, and it does not deny them. It achieves its purpose but it does not have a name. It loves and takes care of all things, but it does not act as master. Always without desire it can be even named small. All things return to but do not recognize that the Tao is the master . . . (emphasis mine).79

In East Asia, aiyang (愛養, love, care, and nurture) is one of the most common ways the parents should act as they bring up their children. The

69

 “The Tao and the Kingdom of God,” 84.  “The Tao and the Kingdom of God,” 68. 71  See footnote 32 above. 72  Tao Te Ching 20, 28, 49, and 55. 73  Tao Te Ching 20, 51, and 52. 74  Chuang Tzu 6 (大宗師).11, Dong Lim An, 186. 75  Chuang Tzu 4 (人間世).8, Dong Lim An, 110. 76  Chuang Tzu 6 (大宗師).27, Dong Lim An, 202. 77  “譬道之在天下 猶川谷之於江海 (In analogy the presence of the Tao in the world is like the valley stream joining the rivers and seas)” Tao Te Ching 32. 78  “故從事於道者 同於道 . . . 同於道者, 道亦樂得之” Tao Te Ching 23. 79  “大道氾兮 其可左右 萬物恃之而生而不辭 功成不名有 衣養萬物而不爲主 常無欲 可名於小萬物歸焉 而不爲主” Tao Te Ching 34. 70

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Tao is the creator in whose parental love and care all things are sustained and nurtured. Unfortunately, those two chapters vaguely represent the entire Taoistic writings and values, and no further details are concretely explicated in them as to how the Tao works out its love and care for all things. So what of the sacrifijicial nature of the Tao? Yongtao Chen relates Jesus Christ to a sufffering mother as he explains the Asian perspective of the Tao: “We can see from this that tao is like a mother who cares for and loves her children with a self-giving love.”80 Sung Hae Kim also points out a great similarity between Jesus and the Taoistic sage in that both of them deny themselves.81 Tao Te Ching repeats the profound thought that the Tao produces but does not possess (生而 不有): The Tao produces (all things); its virtue nourishes them . . . . Therefore, the Tao produces (all things), nourishes them, brings them to their full growth, nurses them, completes them, matures them, maintains them, and protects them. (The Tao) produces but does not possess.82

It is clear that the Tao is characterized as self-giving nature but, again, that does not explain how this nature of the Tao can be worked out in this world and humans. It declares the loving nature itself but does not proceed to disclose its actual contents and mechanism. Eventually, keen attention must be paid to the concept of a Valley-god along with other notions that represent the sacrifijicial aspect of the Tao, so that we may fijind out whether the Tao is truly personal and sacrifijicial. Chapter six of Tao Te Ching states: A Valley-god never dies. This is called profound female. The gateway of the profound female is the root of heaven and earth. It seems to barely manage to exist in a long and unbroken way but its usefulness never reaches any pain.

The sacrifijicial image of a Valley-god lies in a natural phenomenon that valleys make streams and rivers in a long process in which it—water— produces all things. The dimension of the Tao is ‘like valleys (若谷)’ that receive water with their wide openness and emptiness,83 and valleys are

80

 Yong Tao Chen, “Toward a Tao Christology: Rethinking Christology in the Chinese Context,” Chinese Theological Review 17 (2003), 44. 81  “The Sage of Lao-Tzu and Jesus,” in Taoism and Christianity, 120–121. 82  “道生之 德畜之 . . . 故道生之 德畜之 長之育之 亭之毒之 養之覆之 生而不 有 . . .” 51. The same expression of 生而不有 (it produces but does not possesses) is in the chapters 2 and 10 as well. 83  “曠兮其若谷” Tao Te Ching 15.

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fijilled as they gain the One (Tao, or by their nature of emptiness) without which valleys would dry up in the future.84 Thus, a Valley-god seems to demonstrate a receptivity of valleys rather than signify a personifijied god of valleys. Females, water, empty vessel, and bamboo tree all share with a Valley-god the receptive, calm, and humble nature of the Tao. Females can open and shut the gate of heaven,85 and a great nation is (like) water flowing downward and a female of heaven and earth, because females always overcome males by stillness.86 The highest goodness is like water because water’s goodness benefijits all things but does not contend,87 and in this skilful humbleness river and sea can receive all the streams.88 Receptivity also means usefulness just as the emptiness of a vessel enables it to be used: “The Tao is (like) an empty (vessel), and even though it is used, it never fijills up.”89 A bamboo tree, pu (樸 it also means simplicity, honesty, and essence) is frequently mentioned to explain the nature of the Tao’s receptivity, humbleness, simplicity, and passivity. When it is argued that the sage is candid and simple like a bamboo tree,90 and the Tao is a nameless bamboo tree,91 the Tao is understood as analogous to a bamboo tree in its simplicity and passivity which signify nature’s own uprightness in itself, zizheng (自正), just as muddy water gradually arrives at clarity.92 The usefulness of the simplicity and receptivity of a bamboo tree is well rendered in this expression: “When a bamboo tree is cut and broken up, it becomes a useful container.”93 Accordingly, the sacrifijicial attribute of the Tao, ‘the Tao produces but does not possesses,’ needs to be viewed in the sense that the receptive and humble principle of nature and humans embodied in females, water, valleys, infants, and a bamboo tree, can produce all things. The sages naturally follow and unify themselves with this humble nature of the Tao. In conclusion, we must not deny the personal nature of the Tao in the sense that the Tao welcomes, loves, and takes care of those who follow the Tao. Yet it is not sufffijiciently developed in what sense this personal Tao  “谷得一以盈 . . . 谷無以盈 將恐竭” Tao Te Ching 39.  “天門開闔能爲雌乎” Tao Te Ching 10. 86  “大國者下流 . . . 天下之牝 牝常以靜勝牡” Tao Te Ching 61. 87  “上善若水 水善利萬物而不爭” Tao Te Ching 8. 88  “江海之所以能爲百谷王者 以其善下之” Tao Te Ching 66. 89  “道沖而用之或不盈” Tao Te Ching 4. 90  “敦兮其若樸” Tao Te Ching 15. 91  “無名之樸” Tao Te Ching 37. 92  “孰能濁以靜之徐淸 (Who can harmonize with muddy water and gradually arrive at clarity?)” Tao Te Ching 15. 93  “樸散則爲器” Tao Te Ching 28. 84 85

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approaches humans and acts out its love and care. All that we can grasp is the presence of the Tao in the cosmos, nature and humans and the simple fact that the Tao interacts with us.94 The lack of actual content remains problematic as to whether the Tao is truly personal or not. In comparison, we have a lot of references regarding the sacrifijicial aspect of the Tao. The problem is that since the Tao is not truly personal and we do not know how the Tao acts in the world and within humans, a Valley-god seems to be an essential principle of the Tao in nature and humans rather than a sacrifijicial and personal god in valleys in the world. Because of this, what the Tao is doing for the world is close to what the Tao teaches us by its humble and sacrifijicial nature. Finding a principle of sacrifijice in nature and humans is one of the most profound values of Taoism. Yet, the Tao’s sacrifijice hardly fulfijills the defijinition and nature of ‘sacrifijice,’ if the Tao simply invites us to fijind sacrifijicial aspects in nature rather than to see how the Tao sacrifijices the Tao’s self for the world and humans. 3. Conclusion: Extended Christology and the Unique Christ Taoistic openness toward the cosmos and humans indicates that details in Christology can be revisited by the new paradigm of the Taoistic in-naturation together with the idea of the Grand Unity. In Taoistic perspective, Christ’s incarnation is a deep mystery and yet is not incongruent with the divine nature that overflows and unites even with dust. The concept of ‘both/and’ can extend both to Christ’s harmonious otherness from humanity and to his complete unity with humanity. ‘Christ’s becoming flesh’ can be both in his nature and persona, without fear of ‘two sons,’ ‘one nature,’ or ‘tertium quid.’ Christ’s cosmic reality is more readily acceptable to those who regard humanity as part of the cosmos. Whatever benefijits we can obtain from the Taoistic paradigm, we must remember that its interpretative potential extends to Christology, not to Christ himself. This limitation is exposed in the concept of the Valleygod. The personal and sacrifijicial aspects of the Tao notwithstanding, it seems that the Valley-god is not so much a living being but a natural phenomenon from which we learn humility, receptivity, and sacrifijice. That is because the way that the Tao works out the Tao’s harmonious unity with the world is deeply hidden. A simple pronouncement that the transcen94  It is stated only in two chapters, Tao Te Ching 23 and 34. See footnotes 78 and 79 above.

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dent Tao is harmoniously present in nature and that the Tao loves and cares the world may not prove that the Tao is actually and sacrifijicially at work in the world. What remains is the extent to which we fijind, obtain, and act out the Tao. Christ pronounces the love of God, remains in our sufffering, and sacrifijicially takes up the chaotic world. What the Tao teaches us is that the ultimate reality of the divine is in harmony with nature or is nature itself. If that is true, either our perception of empirical reality is incorrect or the Tao’s work is only in the realm of the ideal. Who can reconcile the dichotomy between the Grand Unity of the cosmos and the broken reality of the world in which humans strive to survive? Jesus Christ is incarnated not in an ideal society or nature but in a chaotic and sorrowful world where people sufffer from all sorts of pain, disease, selfijishness, sin, poverty, religious and political persecution, and death. Death and sin in Scripture open up the unbridgeable gap between the immortal, eternal God and mortal, corruptible, transient creation. Jesus is abandoned into this creation on the cross and, at the same time, embraces all humanity as we are crucifijied in him. The radical break between life and death and between God and humanity on the cross must radically challenge the Taoistic idea of the harmonious union if that harmony is a ‘harmony by harmony,’ or a ‘harmony as lessons,’ and not a ‘harmony by sacrifijice.’ Jesus Christ liberates cultural and philosophical values, not by showing harmony in nature but by sacrifijicing and uniting himself with us. Apart from Christ, these values can neither express sufffijiciently nor acknowledge sincerely the spiritual and moral brokenness that has manifested itself cosmically and individually, not in the least in East Asia, in perennial violence and sufffering. It is of great importance to understand the historical and social settings in which Taoism was formulated in China: People greatly sufffered from all sorts of political and social instabilities in the days of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. The Tao was not the reality that ordinary people enjoyed but an idealistic vision that they held on to in order to escape their hardships in life.95 The idea of non-action, wuwei (無爲) reflects this aspect of the Tao, although wuwei means not ‘doing nothing’ but rather following the natural flow or movement through which artifijicial manipulations must be overcome. In Taoism, nature and the Tao reflect and reveal cosmology,

95  Gu Ying Chen (陳鼓應), A New Perspective, 73–4. Franciscus Verellen also points out that a doctrine of liberation through submission is one of Taoistic characteristics (“Taoism,” The Journal of Asian Studies 54/2 [1995], 322).

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political and social order, and moral values, but they do not sincerely account for the painful reality of broken nature and humanity. Prima facie, Taoism shows a tendency toward realism in its conception of a harmonious continuity between nature and human beings and between the ideal human being and all individuals. But, in essence, it is closer to a ‘realism’ of abstract universals rather than the biblical realism according to which Christ shares and bears all by being a concrete person in history. A. van de Beek writes: Jesus is present in situations of powerlessness. He is not fijirst and foremost present in order to change everything but to share in it . . . . Christ is with me to bear my stressed and oppressed life. Christ shares my sorrow and my loneliness . . . . Christ is not present as a male or as an Asian. Christ is present as a human being; and in that human being Christ is present as God . . . . What matters ultimately is the loss of self . . . . That is why the above threats essentially are all fijigures of death, the all-embracing category of not-being. Yet in that loss of self we encounter Jesus the Christ.96

Here, it is not clear how the presence of Christ with ‘me’ may not be reconciled with the presence of the concretely historical Jesus as a male Jew. What is clear in Van de Beek is that Jesus Christ shares our loneliness, with all, males and females, Westerns and Asians, and bears humanity, even non-being, wu (無), in his death. In Taoism, we can see philosophical paradigms that the transcendent is harmoniously unifijied with dust of the world and that a human being is connected to the cosmos. In Christ, the divine is personally, sacrifijicially, and concretely present in this world.

96

 Jesus Kyrios, 272–4.

THE RECIPROCAL RELATION BETWEEN ANTHROPOLOGY AND CHRISTOLOGY Martien E. Brinkman An Anthropological Approach to Christology The Christology of most Indian theologians can be called a cosmic Christology.1 Strongly inspired by the prologue of the Gospel of John, they prefer to speak about Christ as the divine light that permeates whole the earth and every individual human. In this Christological approach, Christ, as the Logos of God, is seen not only as the logos of every individual person but also as the logos of the whole universe.2 Raymond Panikkar is an illustrative example of such a Christology. In my book, The Non-Western Jesus, I label his approach as an anthropological one.3 That is a quite unusual qualifijication. Often only an Christological approach ‘from below’ is qualifijied as ‘anthropological,’ in contrast to an approach ‘from above’ which is often qualifijied as ‘divine’. In this contribution, however, I will show that even a Christology ‘from above’ like that of Panikkar presumes already existing anthropological categories. Hence, I call it an anthropological approach. In Panikkar’s Christology the Christ beyond us (extra nos) is considered to be the Christ in us (in nobis) as well, based upon the patristic (and among Asian theologian popular) idea that the makro-cosmos mirrors itself in the micro-cosmos of every individual human person. Cosmology and anthropology are here closely connected. For Panikkar, Christ is the symbol of the mediation between the relative (the human) and the absolute (the divine), a bi-unity that he considers characteristic of each religion. He represents the position that Christ 1  J.P. Schouten, Jesus as Guru: The Image of Christ among Hindus and Christians in India (Currents of Encounter 36) (Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2008), 264–265 and 277–279. Cf. also M. Amaladoss, “Jesus Christ in the Midst of Religions: An Indian Perspective” in T. Merrigan and J. Haers (eds), The Myriad Christ: Plurality and the Quest for Unity in Contemporary Christology (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 219–233. 2  Cf. J. Pelikan, Jesus Christ Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1985 (repr. 1999), 57–70 (‘The Cosmic Christ’). 3  M.E. Brinkman, The Non-Western Jesus: Jesus as Bodhisattva, Avatara, Guru, Prophet, Ancestor or Healer? (London: Equinox, 2009), 261–262 and 149–154.

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is not the Jesus of Christianity as much as he is the symbol of theandric (often also called cosmotheandric) human existence.4 As such, this Christ transcends Christianity and therefore the adherents of other religions do not need to refer to him necessarily by a name derived from Christianity. That is not necessary, because not only can it be said that brahman is the ‘unknown Christ’ of Hinduism, but also that Christ is the ‘unknown brahman’ of Christianity. In both cases, at issue is a reality whose full weight the individual religions can articulate gropingly only.5 Pannikar thus interprets Christ as an ontological (i.e. something that is not conceivable apart from human existence) mediator who models the connectedness of the relative and absolute in all religions. In this way he can speak of the ‘universal Christ’ and of the ‘christic principle’ that lies at the foundation of the whole of reality. Each living creature is called in him and by him into existence and each exists in and participates in the Son; each living creature is thus essentially a Christophany.6 He states that Jesus is an epiphany (appearance) of Christ but underscores that this statement is only partially true. This Christ of the Christophany is not exhausted in Jesus. For Panikkar, this does not deny the historicity of Jesus’ life and the reality of the divine incarnation in him, but only puts it in a larger context. The historicity of Jesus’ life and belief in God’s incarnation in him is necessary to come to faith in Christ. But the appearance (epiphany) of Christ is not limited to Jesus. For him, Jesus’ uniqueness is not at issue here because he characterizes the concept of uniqueness as a qualitative concept. Thus, there can be other epiphanies of Christ— such as, for example, in Hindu avataras or Buddhist bodhisattvas—but no single one surpasses the epiphany that Jesus embodies. So, the historical Jesus plays an essential role, but he does not exhaust the meaning of the transhistorical Christ.7 This is an insight that is repeatedly emphasized by Asian theologians and artists—not only in a Hindu context but also in a Buddhist one. As such, one can agree with this insight—Christ is more than the historical

4  See for the patristic background (e.g. Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor) of the reference to a micro- and macro-cosmos, and to the adjective ‘theandric’, e.g. L. Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St Maximus The Confessor (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985). 5  R. Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany (Maryknoll: Orbis Book, 1981), 92. 6  R. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1973), 54 and 68. 7  R. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 53–55.

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Jesus (John 1:1–4; Ephesians. 1:9–10 and Colossians 1:15–20)—, but if it is placed too emphatically in the foreground, it will inevitably lead to the trivialization of the importance of Jesus’ earthly life. For Panikkar, historical mediators are more or less fortuitous manifestations of the second person of the Trinity who represents the (ontic) relation between the human and the divine. They are important as appearances but not essential for the relation in question. One could, however, critically ask if the identifijication of the divine (the Father) with the concrete life of Jesus of Nazareth is not so strong that the medium (his life, his humanity) is in fact the most authentic expression of the message (divine nearness). Moreover, one could ask if it is not precisely this identifijication that also challenges us to become aware of the divine presence within the constraints of our own historical existence. In other words, is human confijidence in the historical concrete not precisely the very characteristic of the human answer to God’s desire to make his ‘dwelling among us’ (John 1:14)?8 It was always the intention of the Christian tradition to show that Jesus’ earthly existence was essential for the way in which he was connected with the divine. If his earthly life had been more like that of Stalin, Hitler, Hirohito, Idi Amin or Pol Pot, then the way in which he could have been brought into connection with the divine would also have been diffferent. So, his earthly life matters. It is a concrete human existence revelation. Especially the Dutch Roman Catholic theologian Piet Schoonenberg (1911–1999) struggled his whole life to underscore the importance of Jesus’ earthly life for the way in which he embodied God as Word (divine Logos). He did this by showing how the Word as focus of a Christology ‘from above’ and the Spirit as focus of a Christology ‘from below’ presuppose each other in Jesus’ life. He speaks about Jesus who in his entire human existence was ‘supported by the Word and driven by the Spirit’. ‘Both make Jesus the Son of God, so that Word and Spirit Christology have the same rights as explanation of Jesus’ divine sonship’9 Here, the Spirit

8  W. Strolz, ‘Panikkar’s Encounter with Hinduism’ in: J.D. Gort et al. (eds), Dialogue and Syncretism: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Currents of Encounter, Vol. I) (Amsterdam – Grand Rapids: Rodopi – Eerdmans, 1989) 151 (146–152); V. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 87 and A. Karokaran, ‘Raymond Panikkar’s Theology of Religions: A Critique,’ Vidyajyoti 59 (1994) 670 (663–672). 9  P. Schoonenberg, De Geest, het Woord en de Zoon. Theologische overdenkingen over Geest-christologie [The Spirit, the Word and the Son: Theological Reflections on Spirit Christology] (Averbode – Kampen: Altiora – Kok, 1991), 134: “In zijn hele menselijke

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represents the divine power that inspired Jesus to his concrete life choices, and the Word represents everything that he heard from the Law (Torah) and Prophets as coming from God. Without Jesus’ concrete life driven by the Spirit, that Word would be a dead letter and without that Word, Jesus’ concrete life could be applied to anything and could be subject to the wildest interpretations.10 One could say that Schoonenberg thought thoroughly about the perichoresis of which Panikkar also speaks. The term is derived from the Greek verb chorein and means ‘to stride’ or ‘to dance’. Both aspects of Jesus (Word and Spirit) ‘dance’ with and through each other. They penetrate each other without damage or loss and enrich the other in what is unique to each. The Word is ‘completely divine in a human way’ in Jesus, and the human led by the Holy Spirit is ‘completely human in a divine way’.11 Or, to state it more simply: Jesus’ earthly life belongs inseparably to the way in which we know God. And the converse applies as well: God reveals Godself only in Jesus’ earthly existence. It is striking that it is precisely in the dalits’ (the untouchable’s) view of Jesus that the importance of the historical concreteness of God’s presence among us receives major attention in current Indian theology. If God wants to be present in Jesus’ earthly life, with the ‘impure’ family tree containing two prostitutes (Rahab and Tamar), four ‘foreign’ women (Rebecca, Rachel, Rahab and Ruth), someone who committed adultery (Bathsheba), a mother who had a child out of wedlock, a father belonging to the working class, whereas Jesus himself led a life fijilled with ‘impure’ contacts with Samaritans, adulterous women and tax collectors, he would all the more want to be present among the dalits.12 This presence reveals how he wants to be divine. His earthly existence is not just illustration: it is revelation. In line with this emphasis on Jesus’ earthly life and his sufffering and crucifijixion, and as interpretation of the way in which the

werkelijkheid wordt Jezus door het Woord gedragen en door de Geest gedreven. Beide maken Jezus tot Zoon van God, zodat Woord- en Geest-christologie beide gelijke rechten hebben als uitleg van Jezus’ goddelijk zoonschap.” 10  P. Schoonenberg, De Geest, het Woord en de Zoon, 133: “Woord zonder Geest kan dode letter worden, maar Geest zonder Woord kan tot verwildering leiden, . . . . .”. 11  P. Schoonenberg, De Geest, het Woord en de Zoon, 167: “Het Woord is in Christus op menselijke wijze volledig goddelijk (. . . .) en de mens is op goddelijke wijze volledig menselijk (. . . .).” 12  M.E. Prabhakar, ‘Christology in Dalit Perspective’ in: V. Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology (New Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1997), 414–417 (402–432) and G. Robinson, ‘Jesus Christ, the Open Way and the Fellow-Struggler: A Look into the Christologies in India’, Asia Journal of Theology 3/2 (1989) 411–413 (403–415).

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Word became flesh, the Indian theologian Thomas Thangaraj speaks of the ‘crucifijied guru’.13 Here Word and Spirit come together and in Jesus happens indeed what Schoonenberg had in mind when he spoke about the perichoresis of Word and Spirit. In this perichoresis existing anthropological concepts like substitution, forgiveness, sacrifijice, kenosis, grace, hope (beyond death), righteousness, love, etc. are indeed transformed and have obtained a new meaning. It will be difffijicult to state that Panikkar’s Christology creates its own anthropological categories. His Christology fijits quite well into already existing Hindu philosophical-anthropological approaches. For Panikkar the macro-cosmos and the micro-cosmos are so closely related, that neither can be given priority. Cosmology and anthropology are universal phenomena, only illustrated by the diffferent religions. These are just eyeopeners to an already existing universal order. Also Christology has its place in this order. With its emphasis on kenosis it fijits smoothly into the Hindu anthropology with its emphasis on self-emptiness. It is, however, an anthropological approach in which it is difffijicult to account for the revelatory character of Jesus’ earthly existence. His earthly existence is just an illustration—even if it may be the best one—of an already existing ontological order. Therefore, what the Swedish theologian Lars Thunberg was saying about the anthropology of Maximus the Confessor holds true for Panikkar as well, namely that “man’s microcosmic constitution” can be interpreted “as an anticipatory sign of God’s incarnation” so that “the created constitution of man” can be considered “as an ontological preparation for the eschatological mystery of theandrism”.14 Therefore, one of the main conclusions that can be drawn from the abovementioned example of Panikkar’s Christology is that a Christology ‘from above’ often also presupposes an anthropology as well. Hence, the point of a discussion needs not to be the relation Christology-anthropology as such. That relation is usually uncontested in Christian theology. Instead, the point of discussion must be the question where the priority lies: in Christology or in anthropology? Of course, any Christology needs anthropological categories to explain the impact of Christ upon human life. Thus, for soteriological reasons, an anthropological focus is indispensable. But

13  M.T. Thangaraj, The Crucifijied Guru: An Experiment in Crosscultural Christology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994) and M.T. Thangaraj, “The Word Made Flesh: The Crucifijied Guru” in M.A. Oduyoye and H.M. Vroom (eds), One Gospel—Many Cultures: Case Studies and Reflection on Cross-Cultural Theology (Currents of Encounter Vol. 21) (Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2003), 107–127. 14  L. Thunsberg, Man and the Cosmos, 73.

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the question is as to what extent such anthropological ‘tools’ determine already fully the content of our Christology. Is there still any space left for creative transformation because of the revealing character of God’s presence in Jesus’ life? Here, let us turn to Barth’s anthropology. He is walking in the reverse direction and takes his starting point for his anthropology immediately in Christology. Would that be a more adequate approach? An Christological Approach to Anthropology It is clear that in Christ it became impossible to divide his human nature from his divine nature and vice versa. According to Chalcedon, however, the negation of a strict division does not imply a confusion of natures. Therefore, we are not expected to declare the humane divine—the risk of an approach ‘from below’—or the divine humane—the risk of an approach ‘from above’. The only solution out of such a dilemma seems to be to concentrate on what kind of anthropology has to be involved when we reflect upon Jesus’ natures. That will be an anthropology in which we cannot speak about God without reference to human beings, and in which we cannot be speak about them without reference to God. The knowledge of God cannot be separated from the knowledge of man, and vice versa, something Calvin already endorsed in the fijirst sentences of his Institutes (I.1.1): ‘Nearly all the wisdom we posses, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other, is not easy to discern.’15 This connectedness is already given in the decree that humans are created in the image of God. We are theomorphic. In that declaration our inviolability—and that means simultaneously: our equality—is founded in what God promises after the Flood: ‘He that sheds the blood of a man, for that man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God has God made man’ (Gen. 9:6). Therefore, our humanity (inviolability and equality) has a transcendental basis. Another convincing basis for these fundamental human rights has not been presented thus far.16 Hence, the 15  Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.1.1 (transl. F.L. Battles) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, reissued Loiusville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), Vol. I,35. 16  See for an anthropological elaboration of the idea of the ‘image of God’, M.E. Brinkman, The Tragedy of Human Freedom. The Failure and Promise of the Christian Concept of Freedom in Western Culture (Currents of Encounter 20) (Amsterdam – New York, 2003),

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Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor—dealing with the sources of our ‘Self ’—could speak about ‘the given ontology of the human’.17 So, our Self has already a creational basis as image of God. But what it fully means to be created in the image of God is only revealed in Christology. That implies that not only all our anthropological but also all our Christological talk has a circular character with regard to the God-human relation. The reciprocal conditioning of the concepts of God and human nature is indeed the methodological premise of every sound Christology. Therefore, this virtual circle is not defective, but sound. It concerns a real mutual understanding.18 Karl Barth’s Christology and anthropology can here be an excellent case in point. Karl Barth articulates in his doctrine of creation the following circular statement about human persons as image of God: ‘He would not be man if he were not the image of God. He is the image of God in the fact that he is man.’19 God and man are here so closely related because of the ontological consequences of the reconciliation in Christ. Barth argues, later on in his doctrine of reconciliation, that ontologically speaking, it is impossible to call even the ‘fallen’, sinful human person a person without God, because it is impossible to speak of God as God without human beings.20 The German theologian Eberhard Jüngel dedicated two articles to the elaboration of the impact of these words of Karl Barth. Their titles are a good indication of their content: ‘Humanity in correspondence to God. Remarks on the image of God as basic concept in theological anthropology’ and ‘No God without man. Barth’s theology in-between theism and atheism’.21 Jüngel’s well-documented interpretation of Barth makes

28 and 35 (27–36: ‘Humankind as the Counterpart of God’). Cf. also A. Lacocque, ‘Cracks in the Wall’ in: A. LaCocque and P. Ricoeur, Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 9: ‘So, if God is anthropomorphic, man is theomorphic’ (3–29). 17  Ch. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern identity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 5. 18  W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, Bd. II (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1991), 329 (316–336: ‘Die Methode der Christologie’). Engl. transl. Systematic Theology, Vol. II (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 290 (278–297: “The Method of Christology”). 19  K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1958), 184. 20  K. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), 534. 21  E. Jüngel, ‘Humanity in correspondence to God. Remarks on the image of God as basic concept in theological anthropology’, Theological Essays, Vol. I (Edinburgh: Clark, 1989), 124–153 [in German: ‘Der Gott entsprechende Mensch. Bemerkungen zur Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen als Grundfijigur theologischer Anthropologie’, Entsprechungen: Gott—Wahrheit—Mensch (München: Kaiser Verlag, 1980), 290–317] and E. Jüngel, ‘. . . keine Menschenlosigkeit Gottes . . . Zur Theologie Karl Barths zwischen Theismus und Atheismus’,

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clear that Barth indeed paradoxically—in spite of (or better: thanks to) his emphasis on the totally other-character of God—can be read as the twentieth century theologian who in his Christology and consequently in his anthropology stricter than any other theologian of his time related the divine to the humane. Barth’s anthropological insights have nothing to do with a phenomenological analysis of the basic conditions of human existence, but are predominantly based upon his interpretation of God’s revelation in Christ. In Christ the God-given potentialities of humankind are revealed. When Barth, therefore, speaks about the ‘humanity of God’, he applies not a ‘foreign’ or external idea to God, but he points to what belongs to the kernel of God’s revelation in Christ. Consequently, speaking about the ‘humanity of God’ is tautological talk. The main characteristics of God’s humanity are the same as those of his divineness, but we cannot argue the other way around.22 In spite of their connectedness we cannot declare God and human identical. Then we wouldn’t say anything new by referring to their relationship. The God-human relation presupposes always otherness. Therefore, we have to keep God and human distinct. Nonetheless, at the question of Augustine in his Confessions ‘What is therefore my God? Or what can any man say when he speaks of thee?’ (I,4) and ‘What now do I love, whenever I love thee?’ (X,6),23 we can— according to Barth—only give the answer that we in Christ have to seek the true human in God and the true God in a human person. Or to say the same in the paradoxical words of the Norwegian theologian Jan-Olav Henriksen: “In Jesus, we realize who God is when and if God is a human.”24 Jesus as Son of God reveals what it is to be human and God is defijined by his presence in the life and work of this human.

Barth-Studied (Ökumenische Theologie, Bd.9) (Zürich-Köln-Gütersloh: Benziger VerlagGütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1982), 332–347. 22  In four brochures, all of them published in the fijifties, Barth elaborated his Christological-anthropological insights. Cf. K. Barth, Humanismus (Theologische Studien 28) (Zürich: Zollikon, 1950), Engl. transl. K. Barth, God, here and now (Religious Perspectives 9) (London: Routledge, 1964), 94–108; K. Barth, Die Wirklichkeit des neuen Menschen (Theologische Studien 27) (Zürich: Zollikon, 1950); K. Barth, Christus und Adam nach Röm. 5 (Theologische Studien 35) (Zürich: Zollikon, 1952), Engl. transl K. Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5 (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1956) and K. Barth, Die Menschlichkeit Gottes (Theologische Studien 48) (Zürich: Zollikon, 1956), Engl. transl. K. Barth, The Humanity of God (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960), 35–65. 23  Augustine, Confessions (transl. W. Watts) (Cambridge MA – London: Harvard University Press – Heinemann, 1968 and 1970), Vol. I,9 and Vol. II,87. 24  J.-O. Henriksen, Desire, Gift, and Recognition: Christology and Postmodern Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009, 208 and 333 where Henriksen paraphrases his own words as following: “As the Son of God, Jesus is what God is like when God is a human”.

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Unfortunately, however, Barth didn’t elaborate his Christologicalanthropological insights in clear-cut anthropological concepts or ideas. One of the reasons of that omission might be his lack of involvement into an intense dialogue with other representatives of the humanities. That could have been a creative dialogue in which Barth might have been able to convince his dialogue partners of the adequate anthropological character of his Christological insights. But that didn’t happen. Barth was more concerned to emphasize that Christology and anthropology are closely related than to show how they are related. And, of course, his reluctance had everything to do with the historical setting of the genesis of his theology. The content of his theology is historically determined by his refusal to integrate ‘foreign’ (in the sense of not rooted in God’s revelation) elements into his theological reflection, scared as he was that these elements would overrule God’s own authentic Word. Anthropology like philosophy or psychology were considered to be such ‘foreign’ elements. Hence, it was for him impossible to account methodologically for the—also for him— indispensable use of existing anthropological categories. Of course, he had soteriological reasons to use them, but he never used these categories deliberately according to an explicit theological method. Our point is that nowadays things are changed considerably. Barth needed an antagonistic attitude over against existing (idealistic, Marxist, existentialist, etc.) anthropologies to be able to claim the necessary freedom for his own search for the authentic roots of Christian anthropology. In our secular times, however, theology is put into isolation and runs the risk to become ghetto theology. Current theology needs the dialogue with other sciences, and the other sciences often show the preparedness to be engaged in such a dialogue because of their own search for meaning. Thus, they have a common interest. Theology and anthropology (like philosophy and psychology) cannot anymore be considered as separated blocks.25 The best illustration of this development can be found in the lecture of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion about ‘saturated phenomena’. Saturated phenomena are characterized by a ‘surplus’, an ‘excess’ of intuition

25  Cf. T. Waap, Gottebenbildlichkeit und Identität: Zum Verhältnis von theologischer Anthropologie und Humanwissenschaft bei Karl Barth und Wolfhart Pannenberg [Image of God and Identity: The relation of theological anthropology and the humanities with Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg] (Forschungen zum systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie, Bd.121) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 473–490, who characterizes the anthropological concepts of both as too abstract, not recognizing the open character of many modern anthropological concepts.

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and come eventually close to what theologians call ‘revelation’. Next to phenomena that are deprived of intuition or that are poor in intuition (formal languages, mathematical idealities and common-law phenomena), he discerns two kinds of saturated phenomena: historical events (that often surpasses in meaning not only the constituents but also the witnesses) and the phenomena of revelation. Marion speaks here deliberately of ‘phenomena of revelation’: such as they really appear. He has then in mind phenomena like expressions of art, the face of the beloved, and the theophany (which he describes as the paradoxical experience in which an invisible gaze visibly envisages me and loves me). In all these cases it concerns the classical experience of ‘that which none greater can be conceived’ (aliquid quo majus cogitari nequit).26 They exceed the well-known criteria of quantity, quality, modality and relationality. The conditions under which phenomenology can be able to do justice to the possibility of revelation, can according to Marion be expressed in this way, a) “that the ‘I’ admits its non-original character and thinks it all the way to an inherent givenness; b) that the horizon allows itself to be saturated by givenness instead of insisting on determining it apriori, and c) that truth accordingly changes from the evidence of doxa to the paradox of the revealed.”27 Freeing the possibility of revelation will force phenomenology to liberate itself from its pretensions to self-constitution.28 The experience of being only in a limited way self-constitutive, creates the main condition for the recognition that all our ideas of what humanity is have to be transcended: our ideas of forgiveness, sacrifijice, kenosis, substitution, grace, hope beyond death, righteousness and love. All these concepts receive their richest meaning only in Christology. They refer to a specifijic history, the history of Jesus of Nazareth, that reveals our divine destiny. By opening up the immanence of our earthly existence, philosophers like Marion, Taylor and Ricoeur transcend the more or less classic boundaries between anthropology and theology. They do not offfer a kind of ‘anthropological proof of God’, but show how theology, and in this case Christology, can help to disentangle and clarify anthropological aporia’s.29

26

 J.-L. Marion, The Visible and the Revealed (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy) (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 47–48 and 121. 27  J.-L. Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, 16. 28  J.-L. Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, 17. 29  Cf. P. Ricoeur, ‘Thinking Creation’ in: A. LaCocque and P. Ricoeur, Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 31–67.

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We can conclude that an Christological approach of anthropology more than an anthropological approach of Christology is able to account for the transformation that anthropological ideas undergo when applied Christologically. To some extent it can even be said that Christology ‘invents’ its own anthropological categories. The risk of imposing existing anthropological categories upon Christology can be avoided because of the transforming power of Jesus’ life, culminating in his cross and resurrection. Of course, every Christological approach has to include existing anthropological categories. Otherwise human communication would be impossible. Salvation in Christ concerns humans (but not only) and has, therefore, to be explained in a terminology that touches the central questions of human life. Christology as soteriology therefore, has to deal with anthropological issues. These issues are—and that’s the crucial point here—only partly known to our mind, however. Their real meaning has to be revealed. It is the merit of Marion to have shown that human core experiences themselves require a clear(er) insight into the limited role of the self-constitutive character of the human ‘I’. Just arguing anthropologically, it can be shown that these issues are longing for a salvifijic breakthrough. Many modern fijilms such as—among many—Babette’s Feast (1987), and As it is in Heaven (2004), are excellent indications of that desire.30 In sum, we can conclude that an Christological approach of anthropology is in the end more convincing than an anthropological approach of Christology because it leaves more space for the transformative character of God’s presence in Jesus’ life. In order to show that it really concerns anthropology and not just Christology—and theology respectively—the link between Christology and anthropology needs to be an explicit object of an intense dialogue between theology and the humanities. Without that dialogue the Christological presuppositions remain just pretentions and untested assertions.

30  Babette’s Feast is a fijilm of the Danish producer Gabriel Axel, based upon the longish tale ‘Babette’s Feast’ (1950) of the Danish female writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen). Cf. W.M. Wright, ‘Babette’s Feast: A Religious Film’, Journal of Religion and Film 1/2 (1997), 1–28. As it is in Heaven is a Swedish fijilm by Kay Pollak. In both fijilms the breakthrough in decades-long fijixed circumstances comes from elsewhere and is focused upon the transformation of existing values.

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What are the main characteristics of Van de Beek’s position? Like his position in other doctrinal debates, his stance does not fijit into a given model. Of course, his sympathy for the Alexandrian approach makes that his Christology has the flavor of a Christology ‘from above’. It never, however, took on the characteristics of the classic approach of a real cosmic Christology. His remarkably strong stress on Christ’s identifijication with us human creatures, culminating at the cross, prevents him from that position. Paradoxically, it is especially his emphasis on Jesus’ divine origin that enables him to speak about the radical character of Jesus’ kenosis, expressed in his solidarity with our plight. This solidarity is—precisely because of his divine character—far more radical than an approach ‘from below’ would have been able to articulate. It expresses the spirituality of the author of Psalm 113:5–6 who writes: “There is none like the Lord our God in heaven and on earth, who sets his throne so high, but deigns to look down so low”. Van de Beek has no hesitation to call Jesus God. He begins his Christology immediately with the strong afffijirmation that Jesus is God and then continues with the subsequent afffijirmation that this God became human. It therefore does not concern a deifijication of a human person, but the incarnation of our God.31 Godself is in our midst: Emmanuel. He is with us without any mediation of angels, saints, ancestors or church sacraments. A Christology ‘from below’ presupposes always a development: Jesus is more and more becoming God. It is often a ‘degree Christology’ in which Jesus reaches the supreme degree of what we as humans in principle already are.32 With Van de Beek, however, Jesus’ divine nature is ‘a non-scaling property’. The property ‘being God incarnate’ does not admit of degrees.33 Jesus’ divine nature forms not a quantitative, but a qualitative distinction between him and us. Van de Beek detects in many contemporary Western Christologies the same idealistic character that characterizes the whole Western culture.

31  A. van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios: De Christologie als hart van de theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1998), 116. English Translation A. van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios: Christology as Heart of Theology (Studies in Reformed Theology, Supplements, Vol. I) (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2003), 124–125 and 13–113 (‘Thís God: Jesus Christ’). 32  Cf. C.E. Gunton, Yesterday & Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983), 15–18. 33  Cf. for the expression ‘non-scaling property’, O.D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity (Current Issues in Theology) (Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 177.

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Its keywords are ‘progress’ and ‘development’. Jesus is seen as the ideal human being, as intended by God. Christology becomes then the “hitching post for anthropology”. In this pneumatological approach God’s presence in the human existence of Jesus is the focal point.34 Van de Beek is inclined to assess such a Christology of progress as an expression of Western culture for people who have the opportunity to develop themselves.35 This Christology is, however, clearly not his own Christology. The latter is considerably less optimistic. It accounts with more seriousness for the destructive character of sin, not only in individual human lives, but also in history as a whole. His Christ does not fijit in Western culture. It is Christ who as God shares our plight and bears our sins. He does not follow a development program. He is fully the expression of God’s concern for us as lost people ultimately evidenced at the cross.36 Does this Christology have any link with anthropology? If anthropology is defijined as the description of the human situation, full of guilt and sin, then it defijinitely does. It deals with God’s descent into that situation. God identifijies Godself with us and we, especially as cross bearers, can identify ourselves with such a God. Van de Beek’s Christology is a specimen of a ‘cross theology’ par excellence. Even so, whether it can integrate Paul’s admonition to be more christomorphic as a real gift of liberation (freedom: Romans 8) and not only of solidarity in sufffering, is still an unanswered question in Van de Beek’s Christology. Van de Beek identifijies our mortifijication, our death in Christ, with our glorifijication. His incarnation theology is actually a kenosis theology. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of the crucifijied and leads us to self-emptying.37 Whether this, however, is what Paul had in mind in Romans 8 remains an open question.38 Because of his focus on the cross his incarnation theology has quite another structure than, for example, many Anglican theologies.39 The latter always have

34

 Van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios, 226–228.  Van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios, 233–236. 36  Van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios, 297–298. 37  A. van de Beek, ‘God werd waarachtig mens’ [‘God became truly human”], Theologia Reformata 43/2 (2000) 100 (92–100). 38  Cf. B.J.G. Reitsma, Geest and schepping: Een bijbels-theologische bijdrage aan de systematische doordenking van de verhouding van de Geest van God en de geschapen werkelijkheid [Spirit and Creation: a biblical-theological contribution to the systematic reflection on the relation between the Spirit of God and the created world], (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1997). 39  Cf. M.E. Brinkman, Sacraments of Freedom: Ecumenical Essays on Creation and Sacrament—Justifijication and Freedom (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 1999), 57–70 (‘Creation and Sacrament’). 35

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the tendency to interpret the creation as an extension of the incarnation. Such is defijinitely not the case with Van de Beek. His focus upon the cross as kenosis prevents him from any sacramentalization of the created world. Although his Christology uses existing anthropological categories as well, of course, it is obvious that these categories are really transformed when applied to Christ. Christ reveals the real meaning of words like sufffering, sacrifijice, substitution, kenosis, grace, hope (beyond death), righteousness and love. Conclusions Our main conclusion as to the relation Christology-anthropology is, that it is Christology that gives anthropology its specifijic character and not the other way around. The reciprocal relation between Christology and anthropology is of a special kind in which Christology transforms the applied anthropological categories. The real meaning of these categories (sufffering, sacrifijice, substitution, forgiveness, kenosis, righteousness, grace, hope and love) can only be explained with the help of the history of Jesus of Nazareth as embodiment of God’s descent to us. This Christological approach of anthropology implies that humans must primarily be called theomorphic or (better) christomorphic. This conclusion comes remarkably close to Panikkar’s talk about the theandric character of human beings including its christic principle with, however, this huge diffference that with Panikkar the afffijirmation of this theandric character or christic principle is based upon a long standing philosophical and anthropological reflection and not upon a thorough-going reflection upon the meaning of Jesus’ earthly life, his death and his resurrection. Only this latest reflection leads to the Christological transformation of well-known anthropological categories. Jesus’ life reveals to us the meaning of these categories and implies that his humanity, especially his cross, is the eye-opener to our humanity. This insight, however, so strongly endorsed by Barth, is not merely a joyful insight. Hence, Van de Beek points repeatedly to the ambiguities of all our effforts to be like Christ and emphasizes that this identifijication primarily concerns the cross. It reminds us of the fact that all Paul’s talk about self-fulfijillment in Christ presupposes his talk about our self-emptying in Christ. But, it might be said to Van de Beek, the converse holds true as well.

JOHN CALVIN AND ABRAHAM VAN DE BEEK ON THE CHURCH AND ISRAEL—WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ROMANS 9–11 I. John Hesselink Introduction Few theologians, ancient or modern, have devoted as much space to the subject of the relationship of Israel and the church as A. (Bram) van de Beek. The sequel to his Christology, Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology,1 was followed by a second volume in the [planned series] Spreken over God [speaking about God], by a provocative work called De kring om de Messias. Israel als volk van de lijdende Heer,2 [The Circle about the Messiah. Israel as the People of the Sufffering Lord], a tome of 453 pages. Unfortunately, there is as yet no English (or German) translation of the latter work. The relation between this book and the earlier Christology is described with a fijine, but important, distinction: In Jesus Kurios the theme was “Jesus as the God of Israel in our midst.” In this sequel the theme is “Jesus as the God of Israel in our midst.”3 As a Reformed theologian I want to put van de Beek’s approach to this issue in a wider perspective. Hence I will relate his perspective to another Reformed theologian of a very diffferent sort and diffferent period of history viz., John Calvin. In order to keep this subject within manageable limits I am limiting my discussion to the understanding of these theologians of Romans 9–11, especially the relation of Israel and the church and 1  Jesus Kyrios: Christology as Heart of Theology (Zoetermeer: Meinema, [2002]) is the English translation by Okke Postma of Bram Van de Beek’s: Jezus Kurios: Christologie: als hart van de theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1998). The third volume in the series appeared in 2008: “God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie.” [God does justice. Eschatology as Christology]. Spreken over God 2.1., (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008) 2  Uitgeverij Meinema, Zoetermeer, 2002. Another provocative book by van de Beek is Why? On Sufffering, Guilt, and God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 19900. Translation by John Vriend. The original Dutch edition evoked a great response published in a book Nogmaals Waarom? English readers who are not familiar with van de Beek’s theology will fijind an article by Allan Janssen helpful: “God Engaged. An Introduction to the thought of Abraham van de Beek” in Perspectives, December, 1998, 11–13, 23. 3  De kring om de Messias, 7. Henceforth designated as De kring. All translations are mine, but I acknowledge the assistance of my friend Eugene Heideman.

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the future of Israel in God’s plan of salvation. This is a large topic, which, in the case of Calvin has been discussed at length by other authors.4 All I can do is give brief summaries of their respective positions and make some comparisons. Although Calvin and van de Beek are Reformed theologians and accordingly view the Old Testament and the law (Torah) positively and have strong views of election, their historical circumstances inevitably shape their approach to this subject. Calvin’s direct contact with Judaism was limited whereas van de Beek is writing after World War II, the Holocaust, and the establishment of Israel as a state. This colors his thinking—perhaps too much—for he has to deal with a virulent anti-Semitism unknown to Calvin. Another factor to keep in mind is that Calvin wrote a commentary on Romans and discusses these chapters in the Institutes whereas the only discussion of Romans 9–11 by van de Beek is found in De kring om de Messias and they are mostly found in the chapter on election. However, this whole book deals in one way or another with the theme of the church and Israel. What I fijind disappointing is that van de Beek seems to feel that Calvin has little to contribute to this subject. Calvin To a certain degree Calvin represents a breakthrough with the older traditional view that God was fijinished with the Jews because of their involvement in the crucifijixion of Christ and their subsequent unbelief. Therefore, it was commonly held that the Jews’ role in the history of redemption had come to an end. Heiko Oberman, in his brief study, The Roots of Anti-Semitism: In the Age of Renaissance and Reformation5 treats “three strange bedfellows”—Reuchlin, Erasmus and Luther—and concludes that these three did not progress much beyond the traditional medieval antiJudaism that was characteristic of the Middle Ages.6 Inexplicably, here he deals with Calvin only in passing.7 However, Oberman points out that

4  For Calvin, see the dissertation by Mary Sweetland Laver, “Calvin, Jews and IntraChristian Polemics” (Temple University Dissertation, 1987). I have also published an essay on this subject: “Calvin’s Understanding of the Relation of the Church and Israel Based Largely on His Interpretation of Romans 9–11” in Ex Auditu, edited by Robert Guelich, Vol. IV, 1988, 59–69. 5  Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984. 6  Roots, 22. 7  Cf. his essay “Calvijn en de Joden” in Kerk en Israel 17 (’s Gravenhage, 1963).

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one reason Calvin and Calvinists were more tolerant of the Jews than their Protestant counterparts was the fact that they too were often refugees and like the Jews of old were forced to live a diaspora existence. According to Oberman, in the late sermons of Calvin on Jeremiah and Lamentations there can be found “a growing sense of the fate shared by Christians and Jews in their homeless state of persecution and homelessness.”8 That may be, but more important for Calvin’s positive view of Israel, its past, present and future, is his emphasis on the substantial unity of the covenants in Jesus Christ. Also, in contrast to Luther, he did not view the law and gospel as being antithetical.9 All of this contributes to Calvin’s more positive view of Israel, although his opinion of Jews as individuals and the exegesis of some Jewish scholars is another matter. In chapters IX–XI of Book I of the Institutes, where Calvin discusses the relation of law and gospel and the similarities and diffferences between the Old and New Testaments, there are nothing but positive references to the Jews and the ‘saints’ of the old dispensation. In this context he cites John 8:56: “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Calvin comments, “Who, then, dares to separate the Jews from Christ since with them . . . was made the covenant of the gospel, the sole foundation of which was Christ” (II.10.4).10 He follows up this discussion with allusions to Luke 1:54–5, 72–3 and concludes, “If the Lord, in manifesting his Christ, discharged his ancient oath, one cannot but say that the Old Testament always had its end ( fijinis) in Christ and in eternal life” (Inst. II.10.4). However, at one point in this discussion Calvin sees a parallel between the Jewish people of his day and those of the New Testament era whose minds were hardened so that when they read Moses a veil lay over their eyes and they failed to see the glory of God in Christ (2 Cor. 3:13–15). Calvin makes his only negative comment in this connection. “Nor would the obtuseness (stoliditas) of the whole Jewish nation today in awaiting the Messiah’s earthly kingdom be less monstrous, had the Scriptures not

 8

 Roots, 141.  In relation to law and gospel Calvin makes a threefold distinction: unity of the substance of the doctrine, a distinction in the mode of instruction, and an antithesis of letter and spirit. I have elaborated this distinction in my book Calvin’s Concept of the Law (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1992; now distributed by Wipf and Stock in Eugene, Oregon), Chapter 4. 10  I am using the translation by Ford Lewis Battles in the Library of Christian Classics, Vols. XX–XXI, edited by John T. Mc Neill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960).  9

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foretold long before that they would receive this punishment for having rejected the gospel” (II.10.23). It is strange that in the Institutes the reformer who had such a high view of the Old Testament and the revelation and promises given to Israel is so indiffferent about the abiding signifijicance of Israel as a nation and the place of the Jews as a chosen people in God’s plan of salvation. Calvin does not even raise this question in the Institutes, nor is there any reference here to Romans 11:1: “Has God rejected his people?” The answer to Paul’s question in 11:2 is discussed only in passing in the chapter on election (III.2.26) where Calvin’s only interest is in Paul’s use of the verb “foreknow” (“God has not rejected the people whom he foreknew”). For Calvin’s understanding of the continuing signifijicance of Israel and her place in the economy of salvation one must turn to his commentary on Romans 9–11 (Another illustration of why one must go beyond the Institutes to get a full picture of the reformer’s theology). In his discussion of the theme (Argumentum) of the Epistle (CO 49, 1–6) he follows the apostle’s argument that both Jews and Gentiles, each in their own way, are guilty before God. Here Calvin shows no animus towards the Jews, but at the same time he does not attribute any superiority to the Jews. In his summary of Romans 4, for example, he states that “the Jews have no reason to exalt themselves above the Gentiles, since this blessedness is common to both.”11 When he comes to his analysis of Romans 9, Calvin makes a point that will be crucial later on, viz., that biological descent means little as far as salvation history is concerned. For the apostle in these chapters “divides the children of Abraham into two classes (duplex genus) to show that all those who were physical descendants are to be regarded as his seed and share in the grace of the covenant. On the contrary, even strangers become his children if they are brought into the covenant by faith.”12 In this argumentum Calvin tends to minimize the distinctiveness of being Jewish; rather it is the faith connection that is important. In the last analysis, it is God’s gracious election, not one’s blood line, that counts. Nevertheless, Calvin does not totally ignore the signifijicance of being a Jew. He combines both motifs—God’s election and the signifijicance of being a Jew—in the following summary of Romans 11: “Finally, Paul asserts

11  The Epistles of Paul to the Romans and Thessalonians, translated by R. Mackenzie (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 7. 12  Comm. Romans Argumentum, 9 (CO 49, 5).

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that the covenant remains even in the physical descendants of Abraham, but only in those whom the Lord has predestined by his free election.”13 This qualifijication is important. In reference to Romans 9:6—“For they are not all Israel”—Calvin makes an interesting distinction between “the general election (communis electio) of the people of Israel” and a “second election (secunda electio) which is restricted to a part of the nation only.” Here God’s “hidden grace is more evident.”14 At the same time Calvin stresses that the destruction of the nation Israel and the passing over of the Jews as an ethnic group does not in any way render the covenant with Israel invalid. For “God by his covenant had so highly exalted them [the Jews] that if they fell, the faithfulness and truth of God himself would also fail in the world. The covenant would have been made void . . . .”15 But God will be faithful even though his people prove faithless. The infijidelity of the Jews as a whole cannot undercut or break the covenant whose stability depends on God’s faithfulness, his gracious election and sure promise. For although the Jews had blasphemously separated themselves from God by their defection, yet the light of the grace of God had not wholly been extinguished among them, as he has said in Rom. 3:3. Although they were unbelievers and had broken his covenant, yet their perfijidy had not rendered the faithfulness of God void, not only because he preserved for himself some seed as a remnant from the whole multitude, but also because the name of a church still continued among them by right of inheritance.16

Because of space limitations I must skip over to chapter 11 where the apostle opens by asking, “Has God rejected his people?” According to Calvin, the apostle now “qualifijies what he had previously stated concerning the repudiation of the Jews in such a way as to prevent any from supposing that the covenant which had formerly been made with Abraham was now

13

 Comm. Romans Argumentum, 10 (CO 49, 5).  Comm. Romans 9:6 (CO 49, 175). Emphasis mine. In his commentary on Hosea 12:3 Calvin says that in regard to Israel, “the election of God was twofold: the one was general, the other special, that Jacob was specially elect and his seed generally elect in that God offfered his covenant to them.” Nevertheless, “they were not all regenerated or gifted with the Spirit of adoption. This general election then was not efffijicacious in all” (CO 42, 454–5). Cf. Inst. III.21.6. 15  Comm. Romans 9:3 (CO 49, 170). 16  Comm. Romans 9:4 (CO 49, 172). 14

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abrogated , or that the Jews were now completely estranged from his kingdom, as the Gentiles were before the coming of Christ.”17 The difffijiculty here is in reconciling what seem to be contradictory assertions. On the one hand, because the Jews had rejected God’s way of righteousness, they were “repudiated,” “cut offf ” (excidisse) from the covenant,” and rejected. On the other hand, Calvin maintains that the covenant with the Jews was not “abrogated.” The solution to this apparent contradiction is found in two important qualifijications Calvin makes on several occasions. The fijirst is that while Israel, as a whole, may be cut offf and rejected by God because of their idolatry and faithlessness, from God’s side the covenant “stands fijirm and inviolable.”18 “The rejection of the Jews, therefore, is not of such a character as to render void the promise of God.”19 The second qualifijication or distinction is one noted earlier, viz., that whereas Israel after the flesh was rejected, the true or spiritual Israel, the ecclesiola in ecclesia, so to speak, by virtue of God’s secret election, continues to enjoy God’s favor. As Calvin puts it, God has by no means rejected the whole race of Abraham, by acting contrary to the trustworthiness of his covenant. The efffect, however, of his adoption, is not found in all children of the flesh, because his secret election precedes adoption. Thus the general rejection was not able to prevent some seed from being saved, for the visible body of the people was rejected in such a way that no member of the spiritual body of Christ was lost.20

Note how this principle is at work not only among the Jews but also among members of the church. Whether Jew or Gentile, it is not the external calling but the inward that counts, and where the latter obtains, there true faith will be found. We come now to the crux of this whole section, for in 11:11–12 Paul treats fijirst the role the Jews play in making possible the salvation of the Gentiles and then turns the argument around by pointing out that the fijinal result will be the conversion of Israel. The argument is a complicated one and need not be repeated here, nor Calvin’s particular exegesis of these fascinating verses. Two points, however, have a special bearing on our subject. The fijirst is that Calvin does not understand the rejection of Christ by the Jews

17

 Comm. Romans 11:1 (CO 49, 211).  Comm. Romans 11:1 (CO 49, 211). 19  Comm. Romans 11:2 (CO 49, 211). 20  Comm. Romans 11:2 (CO 49, 212). 18

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as having infijinite and universal consequences. To do so—and this has been done throughout the ages in certain Christian circles—would be a rationalization for anti-Judaism and the alleged reason for the curse upon the Jews. Calvin, on the contrary, in commenting on 11:11–12, fijirst warns against confusing the Jewish nation with Jews as individuals. Even though “the majority of Jews were opposed to Christ, “this does not mean that there is no hope of repentance” for the Jews. Paul, he says, “rightly denies here (11:11) that the salvation of the Jews was to be despaired of, or that they were so rejected by God that there was no restoration to come, or that the covenant of grace, which God had once made with them, was completely abolished, since there always continued to remain in the nation the seed of blessing” (semen benedictionis).21 It is true that some Jews found Christ to be a stumbling stone (9:32–33), and were hardened and blind to the truth (11:7–10), but “the nation itself has not so fallen that one who is a Jew must necessarily perish or be estranged from God.”22 Not only that, on the basis of 11:16–21—“if the root is holy, so are the branches”—Calvin does not hesitate to afffijirm that “because the Lord sanctifijied Abraham to himself on condition that his seed also should be holy, and therefore bestowed holiness not only upon the person of Abraham, but also upon his whole race, Paul rightly argues from this that all Jews have been sanctifijied in their father Abraham”23 (italics mine). One could say this is the obvious meaning of the text, but more than one interpreter takes a less inclusive view of the term “branches” and interprets them to mean not Israel as a whole but the faithful remnant represented by the church. This may be the majority view among contemporary commentators, but quite apart from the correctness of Calvin’s interpretation, it shows a positive view toward the whole Jewish race. When it comes to the other crux interpretum, however, viz. 11:26—“And so all Israel shall be saved”—Calvin takes a view which is both narrower and broader. Most modern interpreters understand “all Israel” not to mean every last Israelite or Jew but in a general corporate sense, i.e., the nation of Israel as a whole.24

21

 Comm. Romans 11:11 (CO 49, 218).  Comm. Romans 11:11 (CO 49, 218). 23  Comm. Romans 11:16 (CO 49, 220–1). 24  So C.E.B. Cranfijield, F.F. Bruce, and Ernst Käsemann in their respective commentaries. 22

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Calvin, however, interprets “all Israel” to include “all the people of God,” by which he means both Jews and Gentiles. “The salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be drawn from both, will thus be completed, and yet in such a way that the Jews, as the fijirst born of the family of God, may obtain the fijirst place.”25 Calvin thus does not narrow the scope of the passage, but rather broadens it so that the new, eschatological Israel includes both Jew and Gentile! However, a few lines later Calvin makes a qualifijication: Although in this prophecy [verse 26] deliverance is promised to the spiritual people of God, among whom the Gentiles are also included, yet because the Jews are the fijirstborn, it was necessary that what the prophet declares should be fulfijilled particularly in them. The fact that Scripture calls all the people of God Israelites is ascribed to the excellency of that nation, which God preferred to all others.26

It is evident from comments on verses 11:28–34 that Calvin does not intend to spiritualize away the signifijicance of Israel as an ethnic entity. Concerning 11:29, for example—“The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable”— he comments: “If, therefore, it is completely impossible for the Lord to depart from the covenant which he made with Abraham . . . , then he has not wholly turned his kindness away from the Jewish nation.” Moreover, in this context he also qualifijies an earlier assertion to the efffect that Israel had been “cut offf from the covenant” (on 11:1), for here he adds that Israel “has not been cut offf by the roots (a radice excise non fuit”—italics mine).27 Thus, despite some qualifijications and his distinction between general election and particular election, Calvin turns out to be surprisingly positive about the relation of Israel and the church. It also appears that he has transcended, in large part, the anti-Judaism which the Reformers inherited from their late medieval predecessors. Even though Calvin did not fully appreciate the eschatological signifijicance of Israel in Heilsgeschichte, particularly in the Institutes, in his exegesis of Romans 9–11 he shows considerable appreciation for the signifijicance of Israel, not only for an elect remnant which has become part of the church, but for the people as a whole, for all the seed of Abraham.

25

 Comm. Romans 11:26 (CO 49, 226).  Comm. Romans 11:26 (CO 49, 227). 27  Comm. Romans 11:29 (CO 49, 228–9). 26

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Van de Beek As noted earlier, van de Beek pays little attention to Calvin in De kring concerning this subject. He isn’t critical of Calvin’s handling of this theme; rather, one has the impression that he feels that Calvin is not relevant to the present day discussion. In the ‘Inleiding’ to De kring he lists various dogmatics that discuss the church and Israel, but it becomes apparent that he is largely interested in those studies that discuss the subject in the light of the Holocaust. Thus, even though his mentor Hendrikus Berkhof devotes two chapters to Israel in the second edition (1985) of his Christian Faith, he only refers in passing to Auschwitz.28 Consequently van de Beek is not as interested in his predecessor in Leiden as in people like Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquard and W.H. ten Boom. In any case, De kring is a remarkable work, for it is an aspect of Christology but deals with it exclusively from the perspective of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. After discussing briefly the place of Israel in Christian dogmatics, the following chapters discuss Jesus as the Messiah, the Lord and God of Israel; sufffering and anti-Semitism, election, the law, the role of cultus in the Old Testament, circumcision and the Sabbath, and the signifijicance of the land for Israel. The relationship between all of this and christology is explained briefly at the end of Jesus Kyrios: Jesus has a special relationship with Israel . . . . Without Israel, the meaning of Jesus cannot be understood. Jesus is the Christ: the Messiah of Israel. That means that a Christology is not complete unless Israel is discussed. A theology of Israel is not an optional subject in dogmatics (usually skipped) but belongs to Christology and thus to the very heart of a confessing faith.29

However, even though De kring deals with this subject in a very comprehensive way, the discussion of Romans 9–11 is relatively brief. It takes place largely in the chapter on election (“De verkiezing”). Van de Beek begins by saying, “We have looked at Israel from the perspective of Christology. Israel is the circle (kring) around the Messiah in its sufffering and in its bearing the weight of guilt.” Van de Beek then considers Israel as the chosen people (verkoren volk). However, in only three places is Jesus

28  De kring, 13. See Berkhof, Christian Faith, revised edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), chapter 31, “The Way of Israel in the New Testament.” 29  Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology, translated by P.O. Postma (Zoetermeer: Meinema, n.d.), 300.

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spoken of as the chosen one30 (Matthew 12:18; Luke 23:35, and Luke 9:35). It is important that Jesus is the subject, not the object of election. Here van de Beek objects to Karl Barth’s thesis that Jesus Christ “is the Rejected, as and because He is the Elect.”31 That, says van de Beek, in the light of Scripture passages just cited, “is inaccurate (onjuist). There is no dialectic. Jesus is the electing God and he has around himself a chosen people.”32 This forms the prologue for the discussion of the matter at hand, viz., the church and Israel in Romans 9–11. Fundamental is the fact that “God is fijirst of all the God of the Jews.” The almighty creator of heaven and earth “in the fijirst instance has bound himself to this group of people.”33 God, of course is also the God of the Gentiles (Rom. 3:29), but the paradox of revelation is that God’s special relation to the Jews helps us to maintain a proper doctrine of God. Van de Beek even goes so far as to say that “Whoever wishes to know God can better justly do so by going to orthodox rabbis with a Torah scroll rather than by the most far reaching scholarship about the dimensions of the big bang.”34 Turning to Romans 9 and 11 van de Beek begins by pointing out that in Romans 9:5 there is an “explicit formula” that Jesus is connected (verbonden) with Israel. God has become human in Jesus Christ, but he has become human in his fellowship (gemeenschap) with the Jews. “What happens in Romans 9, is, in terms of the teaching of the two natures, that it is argumented that human nature may not be set forth individually. It includes the people among which he lives.”35 Hence, theologically Jews can no longer exist independently as such. For “from them, according to the flesh comes the Messiah, who is over all (or “the Christ who is God over all,” ESV), God blessed forever” (Rom. 9:5). This, according to van de Beek, is what was intended in the previous discussion by the expression, “the circle around the Messiah.”36 In short, a Christology that will not be docetic, cannot do otherwise than reckon with an everlasting special position of Israel.”37 30

 De kring, 144.  KD II, 2, 389; English translation Church Dogmatics, Vol. II, 2, The Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1957), 353. 32  De kring, 146. There is only one other reference to Barth is this chapter. I would have expected a serious discussion with Barth on the subject of the church and Israel, given Barth’s lengthy discussions of that subject in various contexts. But van de Beek has his own agenda and apparently does not want to get further involved with the great Basler. 33  De kring, 197. 34  De kring, 197. 35  De kring, 199. 36  De kring, 198. 37  De kring, 200. 31

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In Romans 11:1 the key question is, “has God rejected his people?” The clear answer is, “By no means!” God cannot be unfaithful to his beloved. This is the argument that is the core of Paul’s discussion in Romans 9–11. Moreover, in Romans 9 and 10 the Apostle makes a distinction within Israel. For within the descendants of Abraham a distinction is made between the true Israel and the others. “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offfspring . . .” (Rom. 9:7). It was this way from the beginning, says van de Beek; Isaac has priority and Jacob is chosen rather than Esau. It is clear in Romans 4 that election takes place within the fleshly lineage. But as far as Israel after the flesh is concerned, the majority of Israelites were faithless. Nevertheless, God does not forsake his people. As M. Hess points out, “The number is not the point. Judaism has never been represented by a numerous people (Volk): the golden calf has always attracted the greater number.”38 Van de Beek adds, “It is not the quantity but the quality that has the primacy.”39 The question of the salvation of the Jews is for Paul an existential problem. For he is also according to the flesh a Jew. They are his brothers, teachers, and fellow pupils. Paul has apparently solved the problem in 9:1–5, but it crops up again in 10:1: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God is that they may be saved.” However his prayer is not answered with a rational theological answer. A prayer is answered by hearing (verhoring).”40 Van de Beek returns again to the question, “Has God rejected his people?” Van de Beek suggests that for Paul this is autobiographical, for it raises the question of his place in Israel. He is a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, and cannot separate himself from his people. Van de Beek then summarizes the argument in the rest of chapter 11 and concludes that it is clear that despite their unbelief Israel continues to be God’s people. That is evident from the history of Israel. This is obvious, but van de Beek follows this statement with a surprising conclusion: God has revealed himself in Christ in the bearing of his cross. Therein he has fulfijilled all that Israel was. We recognize the sufffering servant of the Lord in Isaiah. But the opposite is also true; we recognize in the history of Israel the sufffering Messiah of Golgotha. In the story of this people we fijind the continuing revelation of the God of Israel. It appears indeed that God

38

 Jüdische Schriften (Lamm, Berlin, 1905), 49. Cited by van de Beek on page 201.  De kring, 201. 40  De kring, 202. 39

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i. john hesselink has not repudiated his people. It appears in their sufffering. The Holocaust is no argument against the existence (bestaan) of God, but it is rather proof of the ‘God-ness’ (Godheid-Divinity) of God . . . . The best proof that God has not repudiated his people is the Holocaust.41

These are striking afffijirmations. One will not even fijind in Karl Barth, who also took a christological approach to the question of Israel, anything quite like this. To get the full picture, however, one should read the whole of the De kring om de Messias. One more key text must be considered, albeit briefly, viz., Romans 11:26, that “all Israel shall be saved.” What is surprising is that van de Beek relegates the discussion of this question to one paragraph and a footnote whereas almost all the Romans commentaries propose a variety of possibilities in response to this question. In the footnote, van de Beek points out that the question is whether “all Israel” should be understood as a corporate unity or as including all Jews. He agrees with Schmithals who believes that “all Israel” does not mean every individual Israelite but “the corporate election of the people of Israel, which naturally does not exclude the rejection of the unjust.”42 Van de Beek then adds that in this phrase “there is a stark accent on God’s faithfulness to the last Jew, of whom we would not have expected that God still had him in view.”43 Here again our author does not settle for a traditional understanding but contributes his own special angle. Toward the end of this chapter on election van de Beek simply asks whether in regard to “all Israel” we must “not take this as a qualitative, instead of quantitative concept.”44 But van de Beek does not spell out what ‘qualitative’ means in this case. However, this must be seen in the context of van de Beek’s rather traditional perspective concerning the salvation of the Jews. He does not agree with those interpreters who suggest that God deals with the Jews diffferently from the Gentiles45 and those who propose that the latter require 41  De kring, 205, 6. The expression “de Godheid van God,” van de Beek fijinds also in Pannenberg. 42  W. Schmithals, Der Römerbrief: ein Kommentar (Gütersloh: Gutersloher Verlag, 1988), 404; cited by van de Beek on page 203, n. 322. 43  De kring, 203, n. 322. 44  De kring, 220. 45  See, for example, J. Coert Rylaarsdam, “Jewish-Christian Relationships: The Two Covenants and the Dilemmas of Christology,” in Grace Upon Grace. Essays in Honor of Lester J. Kuyper, edited by James I. Cook (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975). Cf. a critique of this idea by David E. Holwerda, Jesus and Israel. One Covenant or Two? (Grand Rapid: Eerdmans, 1995).

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Christ for their salvation; the former don’t. In reference to Romans 9:4 van de Beek says, “If Jews and Gentiles have been saved through Christ alone, the question arises whether it is still important that Jews be a Jew . . . . Or to put the question more sharply, is it theologically important whether he is still a Jew or not?”46 The answer is that Jews do have a special role in the history of salvation. The order is still important: fijirst the Jew and then the Greek. The order cannot be reversed. “Remember it is not you [Gentiles] who support the root, but the root [Israel] supports you” (Romans 11:18b). Nevertheless, in the last analysis, one must come back to Romans 3:23– 4: “. . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justifijied by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . . .”47 To suggest that there are two ways of salvation, one for the Jew, another for the Gentile, implies that ultimately we have two churches, not one. As van de Beek observes in a later essay, “it is difffijicult to speak about the one people of God” if one takes this approach—“God’s very unity is at stake.” On the other hand, van de Beek will not countenance the idea of a “replacement of Israel by the church,” a notion that is common in Christian theology. “Neither Gentiles nor Jews are God’s people. The fijirst because they never were so, and the latter due to their sin . . . .” Finally, “It is only in Christ that Jews and Gentiles are saved, and it is only by him that they are the people of God.”48 Conclusion I have not been able to do justice to van de Beek’s fascinating approach to the question of the relation of Israel and the church, partially because I could not discuss the whole book—“The Circle Around the Messiah. Israel as the People of the Sufffering Lord.” Where van de Beek discusses Romans 9–11 in Chapter IV (and rarely elsewhere) he rarely refers to Calvin, as I have noted. The reason, I suspect, is that Calvin and most theologians prior to World War II naturally do not discuss this question in the light of the Holocaust. Calvin and the other sixteenth century reformers inherited a certain prejudice against the Jews but it was not of the intensity of the 46

 De kring, 193.  See De kring, 222–3. 48  Van de Beek, “One God and One Church—Considerations on the Unity of the Church from the Perspective of Biblical Theology,” in: E. Van der Borght (ed.), The Unity of the Church. A Theological State of the Art and Beyond, (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 251, 3. 47

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virulent anti-Semitism fostered by Nazi Germany. Calvin’s view of Israel does not difffer fundamentally from van de Beek’s, although in his exegetical writings he sometimes “accuses the Jews of blindness, deceptiveness, obstinacy, and malice in their effforts to twist scripture away from its true Christological meaning . . . . In short, the Jews do not understand scripture because they do not know Christ, who is the substance of Scripture.”49 Van de Beek is more generous in this regard and does not fault Jewish interpreters for not recognizing Christ in the Old Testament. Yet, it is noteworthy that toward the end of the sixteenth century Aegidius Hunnius, a prominent Lutheran theologian, wrote a nasty piece entitled: “Calvin the Judaizer: Judaistic Glosses and Corruptions by which John Calvin Did Not Fear to Corrupt the Clearest Passages of Sacred Scripture . . . .”50 Thus Calvin is caught between two opposed criticisms. Some modern interpreters do not fijind him sympathetic enough to the cause of Israel whereas some Lutherans in particular criticize him for being a ‘Judaizer.’ When it comes to the matter of “all Israel” being saved (Romans 11:26), Calvin expands the word ‘Israel’ to include all the people of God made up of Jews and Gentiles, with Jews as “the fijirst born of the family of God,” having the fijirst place. Van de Beek understands “all Israel” as a ‘qualitative’ expression by which he apparently also means the one people of God. In neither case, does “all Israel” mean simply the elect remnant of Jews, nor every last individual Jew. Neither Calvin nor van de Beek is clear as to how and when the “full inclusion” of the Jews (Romans 11:12b) will take place. Strangely, neither Calvin nor van de Beek discuss the phrase. Van de Beek offfers several striking new insights into the relation of Israel and the church which should be viewed in the light of the context of his whole book. Calvin’s understanding of the question is more prosaic, not having the advantage of later centuries of study of this subject, but it is still worth considering. In any case, both Calvin and van de Beek afffijirm the special place of the people of Israel as a whole in the history of God’s salvation. Beyond that it is best not to be dogmatic, for what Hendrikus Berkhof wrote in 1985 is still true: “A theological concensus about the relationship of the church to Israel is not yet in sight.”51

49  David L. Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 142–3. 50  Cited in Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis, 1. 51  H. Berkhof, Christian Faith, revised edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 270. This statement is not in the second Dutch edition of Christelijk Geloof, which was published thirteen years earlier.

ISRAEL AS A PROBLEM THE PROMISE OF THE LAND BY BRAM VAN DE BEEK IN CONFRONTATION WITH THE PALESTINIAN KAIROS DOCUMENT AND AUGUSTINE Wessel ten Boom Introduction In 1996, when I applied to Bram van de Beek as my promotor of a dissertation on the subject of ‘Israel and eschatology,’ he referred me to his article ‘Son of God’ that had just been published.1 In it he wrote: ‘in the gas chambers of Auschwitz lies the deepest essence of the church.’ If the church is, like Jesus, like Israel, son of God, then the church must also unconditionally die unto God. Therefore, his article ends with the sentence: ‘Auschwitz is the foreshore of the church.’ This sentence indicates how I have always understood Van de Beek: not as a form of new orthodoxy, but rather as a postmodern theology which precisely in its completely anti-utopian form offfers solidarity with the ‘victims of this century.’ I am very grateful for my promoter’s way of thinking. Yet our ways never became the same. In this article, by focusing on the problematic of the ‘promised land,’ I will attempt to somewhat clarify this by comparing his thoughts on Israel with the published ‘Kairos-document’ by Palestinian Christians as well as with the Church Father Augustine.

I A moment of truth. A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian sufffering, was published in Arabic in December of 2009. This document, calling itself ‘Palestinian Kairos’ as well, was formulated by some fijifteen ‘Palestinian Christians,’ among whom Naim Ateek is probably best known in the Netherlands. It is prefaced by an accompanying piece by thirteen leading clergy of several churches. It has been noted that its translation

1  A. van de Beek, ‘Zoon van God. Over de zijnswijze van Israël, Jezus en de christenen’ [‘Son of God. About the manner of being of Israel, Jesus and the Christians], Kerk en Theologie 47/1 (1996), 2–21.

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in many languages shows marked diffferences. For our purposes we will quote from the English translation.2 We will have to consider this Kairos document at face value: a confession of faith, hope, and love, in the midst of great sufffering―‘in the absence of all hope, we cry out our cry of hope.’ (10)3 This paradox captures the smarting pain of the document. At the same time, it confronts the reader either to settle for hopeless dismissal or to enter the fray. Here we encounter the very scope of the problematic situation that marks the ‘Palestinian Question.’ It serves to make us aware that this document does not offfer a theological contribution to ‘a very complex problem,’ but as the birth of a theology of hope and struggle within ‘the heart of the Palestinian sufffering,’ as stated in the subtitle. ‘Hope is the capacity to see God in the midst of trouble, and to be co-workers with the Holy Spirit who is dwelling in us.’ (3.2) The document begins with great passion: all speak of peace, but there is no peace; ‘the reality is one of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the privation of our freedom and all that results from this situation.’ (1.1) This reality of the occupied land colors the entire document, and it means that ‘the land’ is also the most signifijicant theological category. On the one hand the document is oriented towards the territories that were conquered by Israel in 1967. The reality articulated here is that of sufffering caused by the increasing occupation, which leads to calls upon Israel to end this occupation. On the other hand, the document has much more of the land in view, as becomes immediately clear when it speaks theologically. The confession of God as Creator implies that people are not born to fijight one another, but ‘together build up the land in mutual love and mutual respect.’ (2.1) ‘We believe that our land has a universal mission.’ ‘. . . the promise of the land has never been a political program, but rather the prelude to complete universal salvation. It was the initiation of the fulfijillment of the kingdom of God on earth.’ (2,3,1). This creates obligation for land: ‘It is the duty of those of us who live here, to respect the will of God for this land. It is the duty of those of us who live here, to respect the will of God for this land. It is our duty to liberate it from the evil of injustice and war . . . It is God’s land, and therefore must be a land of reconciliation, peace, and love.’ (2.3.1). Such concord is possible if the will is present:

2

 http://www.kairospalestine.ps/?q=content/document  Also 1,5: ‘Again, we repeat and proclaim that our Christian word in the midst of all this, in the midst of our catastrophe, is a word of faith, hope and love.’ 3

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‘This is indeed possible. God has put us here as two peoples, and God has given us the capacity, if we have the will, to live together and establish it in justice and in peace, making it in reality God’s land.’ (2.3.1) Thus on the one hand we hear the demand upon Israel to ‘return’ the occupied territories. The document is quite clear that this demand must be met if there is to be any reconciliation.4 On the other hand this return is put in the messianic perspective of a society of two peoples who live in ‘our land,’ and it is clear that this promise applies to the entire Palestinian land promised to Abraham. The obvious question is how these two demands can be wholly squared. It seems to me that this is addressed in the following manner. The document posits that the fear of the Jews and the lack of security of the Palestinians will disappear as soon as the occupation has been lifted. ‘Then they will see a new world in which there is no fear, no threat but rather security, justice, and peace.’ (1.4) This echoes the Messianic promise that the free life of the Palestinians signifijies the norm of a true commonwealth society. However, because this freed life is connected to the retreat of Israel from all the land, the realization of the vision for the entire Palestinian land directly implies the actual retreat of Israel from the entire land. How we then can imagine what the promised land would look like for both is unclear; but it seems that the line of thought in any case in this document is that Israel as a fijirst step, from ‘Dan to Beersheba,’ must relinquish any and all particular claim to the land in favor of the Palestinians. Perhaps we can best interpret this as saying that the Palestinians deserve governance of this biblical Israel, while the Jews play the role of ‘strangers and foreigners.’ This is thus a reversal of the relationships of both present and biblical times. This makes clear that, according to the document, Israel and the Palestinians are not equal parties. The existence of Israel betrays an essential injustice, while the Palestinians should be allowed to be who they truly are. Why this is the case, is not a question: the Palestinians are the natural dwellers in the land, and the Jews are intruders. And indeed, we saw how the messianic role of the Palestinians as the way to vision of peace is founded upon their natural possession of the land.5 In order to

4  See 3.3.4: ‘to be ready for reconciliation once justice has been restored.’ Also, see 4.2.6, 5.4.2 and 7. 5  Cf. it is the ‘fundamentalist Biblical interpretation (read: the Jewish reading of the Old Testament) that makes the word of God a weapon in our present history in order to deprive us in our rights in our own land.’ (2.2) ‘Our presence in this land, as Christian

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fully understand the Palestinian sufffering of which this document speaks, I think we must say that the pain concerning the occupied territories is an expression of a much deeper ache underneath: the hurt caused by blocking the possibility of the entire Palestinian land to be a kingdom of God for its natural inhabitants. It smarts deeply that, of all places, it is Israel that keeps the Palestinians from entering God’s kingdom. What right does Israel have to exist, as state, as land, as a people? This question, from the experience of deeds of injustice to the Palestinians by Israel, is posed here in all its acuity. How this question can be answered is made clear in this document where Israel is only mentioned as an illegal occupier or aggressor, and is seen as having no right to exist even within pre-1967 borders. Israel has no right to exist except as Jews who live in peace. It is the theology of Palestinian soil that makes any language about a state of Israel―or indeed about Israel at all―impossible per defijinition.6 Possibly even worse than the occupation itself is its theological legitimization: it denies the universal hallowing of the Palestinian land for both peoples. That this Holy Land is also confessed as applying to the Jews is expressly stated. Yet they themselves are in the way of this outcome, so to speak, because they make a particular private claim for themselves. In the following we will take a look at Van de Beek, who stands in very diffferent tradition. II Van de Beek’s book, De kring om de messias. Israel als volk van de lijdende Heer [The circle around the Messiah. Israel as people of the sufffering Lord], was published in 2002. It is a poignant book. Perhaps it is even too heartrending. Few theological books take the sufffering of Israel as God’s own people theologically as seriously to such an extent on the one hand, while at the same time scolding the Jews in such sharp terms. This took courage.

and Muslim Palestinians is not accidental, but deeply rooted in the history and geography of this land (. . .). It was an injustice when we were driven out. The West sought to make amends for what Jews had endured in the countries of Europe, but it made amends in our country and our land.’ (2.3.2) See also 2.3.4: ‘Our connectedness to this land is a natural right.’ 6  Cf. ‘We also declare that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity because it deprives the Palestinians of their basic human rights, bestowed by God.’ (2.5) Indeed, anyone who legitimizes the occupation theologically, ‘is far from Christian teachings, because it calls for violence and holy war in the name of God Almighty, subordinating God to temporary human interests (. . .)’ (2,5).

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It substantiates the original, but also lonely path Van de Beek is forging with his project ‘Speaking of God.’ Van de Beek’s thoughts about God and Israel are evidence that, through his close reading of the Church Fathers, he consciously distances himself from his remark about Auschwitz being the foreland of the church. The cross becomes more and more problematic in his analogy. Christ is not crucifijied daily, the Gulag is no modern Golgotha, even in Auschwitz people have faces. When we take seriously God’s revelation in his Son as sufffering Lord and sufffering God, all symbolism of the cross falls away, and truly becomes for once the throne from which God reigns. Thereby Israel, in all its historicity, edges in between the cross and the sufffering church. For, after all, Israel is God’s own people. To be Son of God, Israel’s flesh was willingly taken, and for Van de Beek that signifijies a willingness to be the sufffering servant among those who are God’s people. In the midst of Israel as the people that of old had to sufffer as God’s chosen people, Godself was willing to sufffer and die as a despised being in order to reveal God’s own being to the utmost depths and as the sole sufffering one-with-us. An order of some sort suggests itself. Spatially this is represented in concentric circles: around God on the cross we fijind Israel, and only further out around them the church and all the nations. A bullet for someone named Cohen is somehow not the same than a bullet for Ten Boom or Van de Beek. We are not all that equal as people. It almost goes without saying that Van de Beek’s theology is not on good terms with the Enlightenment and its ideals. Precisely here the empirical scientist wants to think in concrete terms and shuns any great, metaphysical story. ‘Israel, as such, is a problem for Christian theology. There is no solution,’ we are told plainly in the foreword of his book. To what extent this Israel is a problem among all other peoples becomes gradually clearer until, in the last chapter, only as sort of broken speech remains. Following Augustine, who deliberately speaks about the Jews from several vantage points, Van de Beek now also speaks about the ‘land promise’ from three points of view.7 The promise of the land to Israel―and to Israel alone, for whom the land is as necessary as Thora―is fulfijilled in Christ alone. In Christ God revealed once and for all how any land and nation only exists as a result of violence against other nations. Any landholding is sin. It was

7  Dr. A. van de Beek, De kring om de Messias [The circle around the Messiah] (Kampen: Kok, 2002), 358. See 358–385 for what follows in the main text.

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thus in Israel, in all the nations, and it is still sin today―everywhere, and not only in the Middle-East. This is the fijirst point. At the same time, for the time being, we cannot live without a perspective of an earthly realization that puts living in a land on the agenda again. On this, Irenaeus had it right, if we do not want to fall prey to Marcionism. That is why Israel as God’s people still keeps its old papers in the present age. That is the second point. But clinging to the land, by Israel or any other people, is a sign of a lack of faith. Israel is called by name to surrender this selfmaintenance, and step out of the closed circle of violence, because its share is the Lord God. This means we cannot have any illusions about what awaits Israel on this earth, but God will be faithful to his people in the sufffering it brings, because God’s gifts of grace and promises will never falter or fail. This is the way in which Israel as a people stands in the fijirst circle around the sufffering Lord. Even so, when Van de Beek comes to the point where he speaks of Jesus’ resurrection body in its hidden form here on earth, he cannot escape thinking of Israel as continuing as well in its form as people of God. That is quite a challenge for a theology that seeks to be without any prescribed form. That is why his ‘middle’ perspective, that if the earthly realization of the landpromise to Israel, is the most interesting. How can the promise of the land to Israel be fulfijilled if it must also die to this landpromise?8 Obviously, Van de Beek can never agree with the contention of the Kairos document that the promises in essence did not apply to Israel, but instead always applied to the Palestinian land for all peoples. This robs God of God’s concrete history with this people and this land in which God’s cross was planted. From the beginning, sinful Israel was chosen to reveal the Lord God. Therefore, almost more than a son of David, Jesus seems to be a son of Saul.9 Even so, the twentieth century ‘placed the question of the land fully on the agenda again. It is impossible for theology to ignore this and to pretend that there is no relationship with the Old Testament, which is in the canon used by the church.10 Israel is a problem for theology because it continues to force the church to think about the fulfijillment of the promises in material ways. Van de Beek reaches the following observation. The fulfijillment of this promise can be seen in an Israel in its own land that has died to the law   8  Cf., ‘Joden moeten zich tot Christus bekeren en met Hem sterven, ook sterven aan het land’ [Jews must convert to Christ and die with Him, even dying to the land], 364.   9  See the very beautiful and lengthy paragraph on this, Kring, 64–76. 10  Kring, 370.

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and is open to the nations. An Israel that does not aim for maintenance of self, but from which―there, in that place―blessings reach out to all peoples, fijirst and foremost to the peoples in its own land: ‘concretely that means that Israel seeks to serve others in such a manner that others do not only gain a place, but that all benefijit from the presence of this people. For just as its Messiah, it positions itself in the form of a servant.’ ‘They should have laws that are aimed at such justice, that it will be so good to live under such governance that other peoples voluntary subject themselves to them.’11 Here, Van de Beek reaches back to Calvin when he says that, just like the cultus, the land promise also knows two administrationes: one of Moses and one of Jesus. One is directed toward self-preservation and drawing boundaries, the other is aimed at forsaking oneself at an open gate. Yes, these are things that shall disappear in the last perspective, but this land with this people also belongs to the fulfijillment of God’s promises. To read these sort of passages by Van de Beek is a good thing. Also for the time being, until the last day, his theologia crucis takes real form. But the greatest theological gain seems to me that this provides a way to think about Israel as a people after the resurrection without pushing it aside as a relic or as unapproachable. This Israel remains relevant to its God and Lord. And, just as the Church Fathers saw the disappearance of Israel from its land as the actual hand of God, so Van de Beek sees the hand of God as well in the fact that this same Israel lives in the land again. Let no one misunderstand that Zionism is grab of power that is built on force. There can be no defijinitive winners in the Middle-East, only a defijinitive loser, and that is Israel.12 Even so, it now lives there in the land, in God’s hand, as people of its sufffering Lord. When we compare the Kairos paper and Van de Beek’s writings, we see how they touch upon one another, but also how they part ways. Both speak in earthly and concrete terms about the promises of the land. Their respective fulfijillment, however, stands in stark contrast. For Van de Beek the promises are for Israel, and Israel shall die in their fulfijillment. For ‘Kairos’ the promises apply to the Palestinians above all, and their fulfijillment will allow both peoples to live together. Both writings aim for a messianic co-existence. For Van de Beek, in the sense that Israel will serve other peoples in the form of a slave. That does not imply a change in the political

11

 Kring, 372.  Kring, 392.

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status quo, but a return to its own Lord and the neighbour. ‘Kairos’ sees the future messianic in the sense that the liberation of the Palestinians will open the way to a future of co-existence. This will mean a downfall of the political status quo in favor of a land liberated from Israel. Here we clearly see how these two messianic lines of land promises clash with one another in the middle of the land itself. Both are radically diffferent in answering the question who may dwell in this land. The respective means of co-existence are conceived from diffferent dominant perspectives. The choice is: only one of the peoples is entitled to manage peace. And it will be the people who have the right to claim the land that once was called Canaan.13 Even so, both agree in this that they see the existence of Israel as a problem. In fact, Israel is in the way of God’s salvation. Kairos seems to want to solve this problem by denying Israel’s own right to exist. Van de Beek does it by letting Israel die of its own will. But whether one way or the other, the present Israel does not allow for God’s actual and universal salvation for all. Israel is, as Van de Beek said, a problem. In the following section we will take a closer look at Van de Beek’s treatment of the present Israel as a problem. We will focus on what he says about the Palestinian Christians in the last paragraph which is devoted to the land. III To his credit, Van de Beek speaks in concrete terms about the Palestinians as well. He does so in clear solidarity with them, with more of an eye for their misery than Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, for instance. Even so, something is skewed, it seems. According to Van de Beek, the land as gift of God is a theological core notion for both Israel and Islam. Both claim Palestine in its entirety. That makes for a struggle that led to violence, in which Christians are also completely compromised. By way of international politics Christendom tries 13  It may be too much to ask how we should imagine this co-existence in time and space. Yet it is compelling because both writings think in concrete and earthly terms. Van de Beek should be asked, since it did not succeed with the woodsmen and watercarriers of Moses and his guarantees for the strangers, if it will ever succeed in remaining Israel. ‘Kairos’ condems every form of theocracy (‘Trying to make the state a religious state, Jewish or Islamic, sufffocates the state. . .(. . .) We appeal to both religious Jews and Muslims: let the state be a state for all its citizens. . .’, 9.3), but does not address the question of what Palestinian dominance would mean; the power of numbers within a parliamentary democracy?

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to maintain and enlarge its own power, which in efffect means that it is turned against Israel. Palestinian Christians do not play a role in this at all, even though they live there and their daily living conditions only grow worse. They feel deserted by Western christendom―and rightly so― because it will not give attention to the sufffering that Israel causes. Some emigrate. Other join the anti-Israel forces because they did not want to be seen as a fijifth column, the enemy within the land. Yet violence cannot be the choice for Christians. Even less so, violence against Israel: ‘People have always paid a heavy price for that. For whoever touches God’s people, touches the apple of God’s eye. That remains true, even when his people are disobedient.’14 We see how a new circle comes into existence around the Messiah. Israel is the fijirst circle, while the Palestinian Christians make up the immediate next circle: ‘Palestinian Christians form the fijirst ring of people around Israel.’15 If we do not spiritualize the land, these people may share in it as fijirst representatives of the nations. They live in the midst of the land. But they also live in the middle of a fijire with catastrophic consequences if Israel is disobedient. And if the danger comes from the outside, they, as the ring around Israel, are the fijirst victims. ‘Palestinians are caught between both parties under God’s judgment of an unrepentant people that in despair resists the unrepentability of the peoples.’16 The question is whether there is a perspective of these theological frontlines other than sufffering: ‘They, (the Palestinians) should be the fijirst to call Israel to repentance, not with words alone, but in deed, by taking the lead in carrying the cross.’17 It is they who will be the fijirst among the gentiles to share in God’s glory. In the kingdom they will be close to Jesus, around the people of Jerusalem, as kings and priests in their midst.18 Many Palestinians will be pleased to read how a western theologian such as Van de Beek sees Israel as the main culprit of the Palestinian suffering, indeed as a sufffering given with the very existence of the state of

14  Kring: ‘En dat is mensen nog altijd duur te komen staan. Want wie Gods volk aanraakt, die raakt zijn oogappel aan. Dat blijft ook gelden als zijn volk ongehoorzaam is (. .),’ 394. 15  Kring: ‘Palestijnse christenen zijn de eerste kring van mensen rond Israel,’ 395. 16  Kring: ‘Palestijnen zitten ingeklemd tussen beide partijen in het oordeel van God over een onbekeerd volk dat zich in wanhoop te weer stelt tegen de onbekeerlijkheid van de volken.’, 395. 17  Cf. Kring, 395. 18  Cf. Kring, 396.

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Israel. That he at the same time maintains that this Israel is God’s own will, however, be a severe blow. The question may be raised whether an Eastern Orthodox theology can even begin to comprehend this position; not foremost because of its proximity to Israel as much as because of the theological way of thinking that is the foundation of such faithfulness. Essential to the latter is Van de Beek’s exegesis of Joshua 24:19, the key to his book, where the covenant with Israel stands in a mode that foreshadows its own failing.19 This ‘supralapsarian’ notion is squarely at odds with the notion of free will as confessed in orthodoxy and which we also encountered in our document. Here, Van de Beek is a true son of Augustine. One of the fundamental notions of nearly all Church Fathers is that the role of Israel as a people of God has run its course, no matter their expectation of its ultimate conversion.20 Other than naming Israel as the occupier, perhaps the general silence about Israel in the Kairos document should be seen as a wise form of silence that seeks to be an outstretched hand rather than a fijist. Likely the most intriguing aspect is Van de Beek’s call upon the Palestinian Christians to sufffer. Sufffer Israel’s lack of conversion, sufffer the western power plays, sufffer the violence of Islam. A Christian Palestinian can do no other than sufffer. One does not stand in a circle around one’s Lord for nothing. Obviously, Van de Beek here draws consequences, and those who do not want to go this path have understood nothing of how he speaks of Israel and of its Messiah. In eschatology, not by coincidence his next book, these lines of thought are drawn even further toward the church as a whole, which dies in this world as seed and experiences convulsions of birth pangs in order to be bodily resurrected in glory.21 Can the church in essence be other than a church of martyrs? We see how Jesus Kyrios fijinds a consequent form in the dimension of time. God sufffers with us in the

19

 Cf. Kring, 103.  That many early christian authors, alongside their vehement outbursts against the Jews, also spoke about their future conversion is a lesser known fact. An example: ‘But Enoch and Elias the Thesbite shall be sent and shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, that is, the synagogue to our Lord Jesus Christ and the preaching of the apostles; and they will be destroyed by him.’ (John of Damascus, Exposition of the orthodox faith, XXVI; ed. Schafff, Sec. Ser., IX, 99). In the latter the problems around the ‘end of the Jews’ can be heard as well. We are convinced that the Kairos document mirrors precisely this fundamental pattern of eastern orthodoxy. Nevertheless, Kurt Hruby, Juden und Judentum bei den Kirchenvätern (Zurich: TVZ, 1971) shows the necessary diffferentiations. 21  See Dr. A. van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie [God does justice. Eschatology as christology] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 265–266. 20

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very depths, and that forces us into our own time of sufffering. Here on earth, this is the form of glory which we will receive later. One might even say: the deeper the sufffering, the greater the glory. Thus we do not sufffer as much primarily because of our faith but because of this God who is the Lord on the cross, the God who is connected most closely to us especially in the depths of death. How helpless, even innocent, then are these words of the Kairos-document: ‘We sufffer from the occupation of our land because we are Palestinians. And as Christian Palestinians we sufffer from the wrong interpretations of some theologians. Faced with this, our task is to safeguard the Word of God as a source of life and not of death, so that ‘the good news’ remains what it is: ‘good news’ for us and for all’ (2.3.4). That God was willing to sufffer in Israel on the cross is thus not only valid for this Israel but also for the Palestinian Christians. Like Israel, they will sufffer in their circle around the Lord. How bitter and sour does this become when the concrete sufffering comes because of this same Israel! Does the deepest compassion of God with Israel, in its sin that makes Israel sufffer, in turn necessarily bring sufffering to other peoples, perhaps because of their sins? Israel: thus not only as called to sufffer, but also to cause more sufffering? ‘You have to sufffer.’ Here Van de Beek stammers a bit. “See, I go before you to Galilee,” said the risen Lord to his disciples. That sounds like a Lord who is near and faithful not in his sufffering but in his glory. As a God who is not erased at the cross to only pour out his glory in the eschaton, but as a Lord and God who also here on earth has made a place in the midst of his own, a God who reigns there as risen Lord and king. The Kairos document has deliberately been written in that very tone.22 We now have to ask: does the document not do just a little bit more justice to the Palestinian churches than Van de Beek? It is the tonality of faith that precedes the sufffering. ‘Kairos’ too, like Van de Beek, rejects the way of violence. It too, knows of the prospectlessness of this land. Yet is says a bit more than that we must sufffer: ‘We will remain a witnessing, steadfast and active Church in the land of the Resurrection.’ (3.5) Such Easter strains are lacking in the theology of Van de Beek, because he immediately resounds with eschatology. We all know this, and are annoyed by it at times. The Kairos document has been written, just as Van de Beek wants, emerging from the concrete sufffering of human beings.

22  Cf. ‘The Resurrection is the source of our hope. Just as Christ rose in victory over death and devil, so too we are able, as each inhabitant of this land is able to vanquish the evil of war.’ (3.5) In spite of the ‘Pelagianism’ of these thoughts, they stay in force.

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Nonetheless, it asks whether this lack of the ‘resurrection’ is not closely related to his speaking about Israel as a problem. The faith that is put into words in ‘Kairos’―in God who desires our life and not our death―fijinds it concrete expression in the vision of the ultimate co-habitation of Gentiles and Jews on Palestinian soil. The vision, as problematic as it is, witnesses to a truly eschatological atonement, offfering a sketch of a way to overcome the sufffering of the Palestinians. It is in the spirit of Van de Beek to see in this vision only utopian and thus worldly desires to bring the kingdom of earth ourselves. But that is too easy. This vision seems before all to be the concrete expression of the faith that the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile is torn down (Eph. 2:14), through which for both in principle another relationship to the land Israel has come into being. That Jesus’ arms on the cross precisely there blessed both peoples fijinds form in this vision.23 This vision from Kairos makes us realize how Van de Beek lacks the christological notion of two people who fijind one another precisely there, and hence forward will continue together. To be sure, the breaking of the wall of division has for him concrete consequences: Israel must be open to the peoples. Jewish Christians should be the fijirst to support the Palestinians.24 Yet a new community of Jews and Gentiles does not come about. What governs is the great “no” of the cross against Israel, which will remain a problem until the end. Indeed, even for the eschaton it remains a question whether we as Jew and Gentile will truly share in one another’s salvation: it appears as though the circles of our sufffering will mirror each other. With Van de Beek the cross seems to afffijirm the old state of afffairs before all else, and thus maintain separation. As God’s disobedient people, Israel is forever nailed to the stake of shame. The Gentiles will know forever how great God’s love is for this people, and that they themselves are but strangers. Jews and Palestinians are close together in their circles around the Lord. But it is as if both are doomed to live in their own domain, and are locked into their own sufffering; nota bene, sufffering one another without a way to reconcile. Whether faith is also found on earth that overcomes the wall―in Israel itself, or with the Palestinians―does not seem to matter. Is it the case that because of Christ, Israel in fact only

23  See Irenaeus citation in Adversus Haereses V,17,4: ‘When he stretched out his hands (on the cross), Christ gathered the two peoples (Jews and Gentiles) in the one God. The two hands signify the two peoples, while the head in the middle shows that there is but One God.’ (cited in Hruby, Juden, 56). 24  Cf. Kring, 396.

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becomes a greater problem because as a sinful people of God it is thrown back upon itself? Instead, the Kairos document, speaking of faith, hope and love, sees in Christ something of a genuine break-through for Jew and Gentile in which they are reconciled. However far away eschatologically, the future of the land is seen under the sign of this reconciliation. Van de Beek posits that we can only think of the resurrection ‘on the other side’ because it is the ‘vindication’ of the cross.25 That makes it sound as a noetic problem. Yet we could formulate is diffferently as well: is it not the case that for Van de Beek the resurrection cannot be imagined because no reconciliation with Israel has taken place? Can we not think of the resurrection or may we not do so? It rather seems that here the resurrection is an ontic problem, because Jesus, Israel and the peoples do not actually meet one another in the cross and are not open to one another. Therefore we see how with Van de Beek the resurrection removes eschatological force from theology, rather than imbue it with that power. For instance, the eschatological force that can be unleashed to make enemies into friends because they know themselves to be grasped by a new communion. Because from the place of the cross they now stand in a new expectation. Because of his defijinition of Israel, such an ‘eschatological brake’ must be built in. For if the ‘true Israel’ is the sufffering people of the Messiah; if Israel is thus defijined not by faith but purely by sufffering, and only thereby can enter into glory, then all of that implies a moratorium on any talk about resurrection, yes, on the language of faith itself― a moratorium for Israel itself as well as for all who received their glory from the God of Israel.26 One is driven to ask: was there―because God took our sufffering upon Godself on the cross by taking it away from us―a

25  Cf. Kring, 98: ‘Aan het kruis, daar is Hij de Zoon van God. De opstanding aan gene zijde van de dood legt ons dat uit.’ 26  See Augustine instead, The city of God, XVIII,46; Ed. Schafff II (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1973–2), 389: ‘And very many of them, considering this, even before his Passion, but chiefly after his Resurrection, believed on Him . . .’, and idem, Enarrationes in Psalmos 58,II,7; Ed. Schafff VIII (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1973–2), 243: ‘See ye the Corner exulting, now with both walls reyoicing. (. . .) from diffferent parts let them come, but with difffering not come, those of Circumcision, these of uncircumcision. Far apart were the walls, but before that to the Corner they came: but in the Corner let them hold themselves, and now let the Church say from the walls, say what? But I will sing of Thy power, and I will exult in the morning of Thy mercy.’ That Jewish christians, as in most modern theology, play no consitutive role for Van de Beek is no surprise.

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‘happy exchange’ (Luther) after all, or is God’s co-sufffering an afffijirmation of everyone’s own particular sufffering?27 When Van de Beek says that christian-Palestinians must sufffer, something skips a beat, not because they should not take up their cross, not because there can never be a justifijied moment for the sufffering caused by Israel because of Israel’s own sufffering, but because the dividing wall, now breeched, may not be considered already shattered. Because the resurrection of Christ does not raise them as a people reconciled with the Jews, but oppresses them all the more and confijirms them in their unreconciled state. Because―there is no other way to say it―Israel as God’s people, and thus as a problem, stands as the fijirst circle between them and their risen Lord. This is expressed in a principled way in Van de Beek’s theology of the land, in which the promise of the land to Israel becomes the only biblical legitimation for the Palestinians to dwell somewhere. Any and all attempts to maintain a hold on the land are radically seen as an act of unbelief. Essentially we all are as Cain, wandering in the land of Nod, and can only temporarily fijind biblical soil under our feet. For, principally, we are strangers and sojourners on this earth. Thereby, for Van de Beek, the Palestinian Christian with his lack of statehood is in a certain sense the ‘true Christian,’ at most directed to the one little piece of soil. The fulfijillment of the land promise that in Christ all peoples have a certain right to live in a land of their own, wherever in the world, and that from that right the Jews and Palestinians also receive a relative right in Israel and the occupied territories, is a way of thinking that Van de Beek fijinds not travel-worthy. For Israel is God’s people and remains a problem. Yet for the Kairos-document this way is not passible either: the Palestinian land calls for an immediate removal of this problem. These two writings sketch the impasse. The question arises: should theology cling to the earthly promise of the land when speaking of fulfijillment? In the last section I will close with the same theologian that Van de Beek explicitly calls as witness, but one who none-the-less spoke difffer-

27  We touch here upon the very core of his doctrine of God. We cannot here pursue that further. The main question seems to me to be whether the sufffering throughout this theology is as evident and incontrovertible as Van de Beek suggests with his empirical method. To proclaim the death of Christ is something other than to observe as dead man on the cross. We cannot speak other than in faith or in doubt about the cross either. However, given his farewell oration on September 16, 2010 ‘Spreken over God. Over de bron van theologische kennis’ [Speaking about God. About the source of theological knowledge] I would not be surprised if Van de Beek will afffijirm precisely this in his a doctrine of the Holy Ghost that he may possibly yet write.

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ently about Israel: Augustine. It is how the latter speaks about the Jews that ultimately became the subject of my promotion. IV One of the basic qualities of Augustine (354–430) is that he develops his theology according to biblical material. In this he resembles the other Church Fathers. Where he difffers from them is in the place appointed for Israel in history. Tertullian saw Israel as a negative forerunner28 of the church while Eusebius was more positive. With Origen, Israel is as a bygone entity, but provides allegorical material for the church. However, Augustine treats Israel with an understanding that its history is not yet fulfijilled, and serves as it own best witness. We see this especially in De civitate Dei, where Augustine speaks of the city of God, ‘a city surpassing glorious, whether we view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell in the fijixed stability of the eternal seat for which it now waits in, expecting that time when righteousness shall return unto judge men (. .)’.29 We see how Augustine in his great book tells the history of the city of God by using a framework of the history of Israel in its various periods: fijive days until the coming of Christ who inaugurated the sixth day. With utmost skill he weaves world history through these categories of time. He often uses the earthly city as image of the civitas terrena (secular society), which from an absolutist point of view can also be called the ‘city of the devil’, but as a precursor is none-the-less never without salvation. In this way the history of Israel becomes a prophetic witness of the eternal destiny of every human, a witness that reached beyond Christ into the seventh day, on which he will pronounce his righteous judgment on this world. This history is at least as essential for Augustine as the ‘here and now’ of the church that through the coming of Christ stands nearer to the end of time. For no matter how much the things of God have come to light in Christ―for instance by Jews and Gentiles coming to faith in Him, or the expansion of the church on earth, or by seeing everything in the light of the coming judgment―it is nevertheless the prophetic witness of Israel

28  See his Adversus Judaeos II–V, in which the law of Moses is treated as the antithesis of eternal law. Van de Beek moves close to Tertullian a few times. 29  Augustine, The city of God, I preface, 1.

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the teaches us to understand this Christ in all his fullness. It is not the evident ‘new time’ that began with Rome which rules in Augustine’s thinking but the Word of God that witnesses to Christ from the beginning, and is currently being fulfijilled in him. To be sure, it is a work in progress and thus not yet fully fulfijilled but is currently being completed for all of us. And Augustine sees a special place reserved for the Jews. For it was the Jews who fijirst came to faith by giving proof of Jesus as Messiah and the fulfijillment of the Old and the New.30 But also for the Jews who do not have that faith but―because of their own Scriptures that witness to Christ’s fulfijillment―serve nonetheless as ‘witnesses to christian truth.’31 Even in their rejection they play a role in eternal salvation. In what way does the history of Israel tell the story of our salvation, according to Augustine? In line with Paul32 he distinguishes two ways of being in their history. He sees ‘Israel according to the flesh’ and ‘Israel according to the spirit,’ and moreover Israel as ‘a symbol and foreshadowing image of this city, which served the purpose of reminding men that such a city was to be, rather than of making it present.’33 Over against Cain, as the fijirst dweller of the city of the earth, stands Isaac ‘born according to the promise.’ The concrete history of Israel with its endless ‘pairs’ and ‘splits’ is utilized by Augustine to distinguish ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit.’ In the background we discern the eternal judgment of God with regard to faith and disbelief. But be careful: the children ‘according to the promise’ also share in the same earthly time and belong to the civitas terrena; for the time being they remain ‘praefijigurae’ of salvation. These two ‘Israels’ remain correlated just as the earthly Jerusalem poses two fijigures: Jerusalem that will pass away and Jerusalem ‘from above.’ In the one we see the other reflected. Augustine can do this because as neo-platonist he sees the essence of things not in themselves but hidden in God until God’s last judgment brings separation between ‘spirit’ and ‘flesh.’ In chapter 20 of book XVI of his De civitate Dei we read the following: ‘. . . although the Israelites are expelled from Jerusalem, they still remain in other cities in the land of

30

 Civ. Dei XX, 30.  Cf. The city of God, XVI,37, 332: ‘Christ, I say, who is ours is blessed, that is, truly spoken of out of the mouths of the Jews, when, although erring, they yet sing the law and the prophets, and think they are blessing another for whom they erringly hope.’ For a listing of such citations see: Wessel H. ten Boom, Provocatie. Augustinus’ preek tegen de Joden [Provocation. Augustine’s sermon against the Jews], (Kampen: Kok, 2006), 248, noot 529. 32  Especially Gal. 4:21–31. 33  The city of God, XV,2, 285, In this chapter Augustine lucidly explains his method. 31

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Canaan, and shall remain even to the end; and when that whole land is inhabited by Christians, they also are the very seed of Abraham.’34 How are we to understand this? In an earlier section (XVI,16), Augustine interpreted God’s promise of Gen. 12:1–3 in such a way that Abraham receives two things: a people according to the flesh and a people according to the spirit; there is the promise of the physical seed of Israel and the promise of the spiritual seed of all who will come to faith. Therefore, he explains the promise of Gen 13:14–17 strictly in the manner of the flesh.35 The prior promise of the spiritual seed (certainly ‘more excellent’ than the one of one physical people), is accompanied by the earthly promise of land for that one people alone. Thus this land does not prefijigure salvation. But it offfers room to Abraham’s offfspring in the midst of the church, and thus ‘etiam ipsum semen est Abraham.’ Remarkably enough, Augustine writes this within the context of the early church that assumed that God had rejected Israel forever. Yet to these Jews in the land of Canaan (Augustine does not adopt the Roman designation!) God’s Word is fulfijilled in an unspoken manner. How could Augustine write about fulfijillment of the Jews in this way while their entire history seemed all but ended since Massada? He could do this because for him the Israel of the flesh does not coincide with the true Israel. He does not place the Israel of the promise after the Israel according to the flesh, but along side of it, by which God’s one promise to Abraham is fulfijilled in two ways. We now see that is precisely Augustine’s ‘spiritualization’ of Israel as the name or notion for all those who share in God’s eternal salvation, that makes room for an Israel according to the flesh in God’s temporal plan. Thus this Israel is no longer a problem for the eternal and universal salvation of God. Diffferent than with Van de Beek and the Kairos document, the promise of living in the land is radically uncoupled from the one messianic perspective of two peoples who are united in Christ. They can co-exist precisely because they are radically distinguished from one another. Here we see Israel come to the surface in something of a profane, secularized form, albeit that it receives it rights from God. We can also say: for Augustine the Jews and their land belong essentially under the regimen of

34

 The city of God, XVI,21, 323.  Cf. same section as above: ‘Certainly no one questions that only that land is meant that which is Canaan.’ 35

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the temporary, i.e. Rome, the city of the earth that perishes, and not under the regimen of the Thousand-year Reign which he saw received and represented in the church. Here we are far removed from the theology of Van de Beek and the Kairos document. Both want to see the landpromise in no other manner than under the sign of God’s singular, defijinitive salvation. It is food for thought, however, that precisely through this decoupling of Augustine (whose world of thought is fijilled with the abundant salvation of God) Israel no longer appears as a huge problem but as what it is meant to be: not God’s people, not anti-people of God, but heirs of Abraham in the flesh, no more, no less, descendents who, if you look closely, never completely left their land. Could such an overture perhaps throw light on a better comprehension of the resent state of Israel and all its inhabitants? It may well help the Palestinians to accept the Jews also in a nonmessianic and un-eschatological manner. I began by saying that I wanted to show something of a diffference between Van de Beek and me. Now at the end, I would like to say that the closed categories he maintains as a modern theologian raise questions for me. Sitting at his feet, the classical way of Augustine in which he spiritualizes salvation became precious to me as a way to recognize sufffering without ontologizing it. That is why I am extra grateful to my promotor.

SOME DEVELOPMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY PROTESTANT CHRISTOLOGY IN THE NETHERLANDS IN THE LIGHT OF THE SCHOLA AUGUSTINIANA. ABRAHAM VAN DE BEEK AND HARRY KUITERT EVALUATED Paul van Geest Preamble It was on January 5, 2004, that I received my fijirst email from Bram van de Beek. I had just written an article for Gregorianum about the Christology of H. Kuitert and that of Bram van de Beek.1 Although this contribution was not directly related to my teaching commitment, I thought it worthwhile to draw the attention of mainly Roman Catholic theologians from all over the world to the merits and challenges of the Christology of professor Van de Beek. I received many reactions. A bishop from Polynesia informed me that he was happy about the purport of Jesus Kyrios, because now he knew that orthodoxy need not degenerate into orthophony. And then there was the reaction of the person to whom this festschrift is dedicated. He agreed with me that the ‘experientia,’ shared and passed on in a faith community is fundamental for faith in God, and that both doctrinal conservatism and enlightened rationalism tend to lose view of this. He added that searching for certainties in scholarly knowledge can only lead to secularisation. He could not have realised how perfectly he had expressed my own feelings. My suggestion in Gregorianum, to emphasise the community aspect of the Church in the context of actualising the ‘experience’ of Christ as it has been passed on, has in the mean time been superseded.2 However, this does not alter the fact that, now that I know that Catholics in Polynesia feel encouraged by Bram van de Beek’s Christology, I also want to present my article that was published in Gregorianum to Protestants in the Netherlands. The article has been slightly revised in some places, but it 1  P. van Geest, ‘The Schola Augustiniana and recent developments in contemporary Protestant Christology in the Netherlands’, in: Gregorianum 83 (2002), 767–775. 2  Cf. for instance A. van de Beek, Spreken over God. Rede uitgesproken ter gelegenheid van de aanvaarding van zijn afscheid als hoogleraar Symboliek aan de Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid van de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2010) [Speaking of God; valedictory oration VU University]

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remains what it was: an expression of appreciation of, and joy over, the perspectives that Van de Beek’s Christology has to offfer, urbi et orbi. 1. The Schola Augustiniana In the year 397, Augustine of Hippo prepared, for the community in which he then lived, his Rule, called the Praeceptum.3 The regulation of life which he describes in this work, came into being after a long period of searching. Already in 388, on returning from Italy, he had founded a monastery in his parental home at Thagaste. However, only around 397 did the purpose of communal living become clear to him. Only then it became clear to him that the wholeness and sanctity of the individual is correlated to the sanctity of the community. He opens his work therefore with the incitement to live together in harmony “one of heart and mind, on our way to God” (Praeceptum I,2). With this, he refers to the ideal of the Christian community in Jerusalem (Acts 4:21–35). This high ideal, however, did not appear out of the blue. This may be deduced from the following praecepta viuendi concerning the hours of prayer, fasting, household chores, the correctio fraterna and obedience. One may also conclude from these precepts that Augustine had a rule of life in mind that would lead to inner peace. The social interaction should be noted for its mutual trust and transparency (cf. Praeceptum IV). On these pillars, the true unity of heart and mind are based. The order within the individual and harmony in the community now lead to an almost sensory awareness of the life-giving and redemptive power of Christ. The fijinal goal is to become receptive to God’s grace and to tune in, so to speak, to the wave-length of the life-giving power of Christ. For Augustine this receptivity would be impossible in a community characterised by individualism: ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. In this, a longing for spiritual Beauty ideally catches one up: The Lord giveth that you, caught by the longing for spiritual beauty (Sirach 44:6), maintain all this in love. Live in such a way that your life spreads the life-giving aroma of Christ (2 Cor. 2:15). Do not go forth as slaves weighed down by the law, but live as free people under grace” (Praeceptum VIII,1).

Elsewhere, Augustine shows that this Beauty is Christ . . .4 3  Published by L. Verheijen, La Règle de saint Augustin. Paris, 1967. 2 parts; I. Tradition manuscrite; II. Recherches historiques (Etudes Augustiniennes), vol. 1, 417–437. 4  P. Agaësse, intr. in Augustinus, ‘In epistola Johanni ad Parthos,’ in: Commentaire de la première épître de S. Jean, 75, cf. 31–36. Cf. also Confessiones X, 27, 38, in: “Late I have loved

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The experience of Christ is an event in and through the Spirit. However, for Augustine, the sensitivity to the power of the redemption of Christ, and receptiveness to grace, grow through a proper interaction with each other. Augustine’s Praeceptum is thus permeated by an appreciation for the experientia. Medieval theologians of the Schola Augustiniana thus wondered whether theology could keep the experientia out of the theological introduction. They saw that knowledge came from the cognitio but wisdom from the cognitio and the experientia. Because theology is wisdom, the experientia should be honoured.5 This insight is a good point of departure for appraising two methods of studying Christ in current Dutch Protestant theology. In the light of the via Augustini, the hristologies of Prof. Dr. H.M. Kuitert and Prof. Dr. A. van Beek will be studied.6 Their opposing Christologies have been discussed at length in scholarly circles and even in newspapers from 1998 onwards.7 Just as Schillebeeckx was important for thoughts on Christ a decade ago in the Netherlands, so Kuitert and Van de Beek are now. Both have met with a wide response in the Netherlands.

Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late I have loved Thee! For behold Thou wert within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my loveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou hast made. Thou wert with me and I was not with Thee.”, in: Sancti Avrelii Avgvstini Confessionum libri XIII, in: CC Series Latina XXVII (Turnhout, 1981 ss), 175. 5  M. Schrama, ‘Dertiende eeuwse problematiek inzake het statuut van de theologie’ in Bijdragen. Tijdschrift voor fijilosofijie en theologie 60 (1999) 249–278, esp. 254–259, 266. 6  It concerns the books of H.M. Kuitert, Jezus: nalatenschap van het christendom. Schets voor een christologie (Baarn 19982) [ Jesus: legacy of christendom. Sketch of a christology]; H.M. Kuitert, Over religie. Aan de liefhebbers onder haar beoefenaars (Baarn 2000) [On religion. To those who like to practice it]; A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie. (Kampen 19992) (Published translation: Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology. (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002) (Studies in Reformed Theology. Supplements 1) The present article refers to the original Dutch text. A. van de Beek, Gespannen Liefde. De relatie van God en mens (Kampen 2000) [Tensored Love. The relation of God and human] includes a number of themes which had already been addressed in Jezus Kurios but needed further explanation. Thus the relationship of the Christian to Scripture, culture (whether Christian or not), the world, church and relationship of man to God are further explained. Van de Beek does not start here from patristics but from the questions posed by the searching individual today. Dr. H.M. Kuitert was until his retirement in 1999 professor in Ethics and Introduction to Dogmatics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Dr. A. van Beek was professor of the Dutch Reformed Church in Dogmatics and Biblical theology at Leiden University, and professor at the Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam. 7  Cf. for example, H.M. Kuitert, A, van de Beek, a.o. Jezus: bij hoog en bij laag. De Christologie van Van de Beek en Kuitert (Kampen: Kok, 1999) [Jesus: from on high or from below. The christology of Van de Beek and Kuitert]. In this book the commentaries and discussions of their christologies have been placed together.

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As a starting point for Kuitert’s draft for a Christology, the insights of the exegete Rudolf Bultmann are needed. Bultmann assumed that the historical Jesus, a Jew, was of no importance for Christian belief, and cannot be of any interest, because the belief in Jesus Christ only began at Easter.8 There is a discontinuity between the historical rabbi Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ, who was proclaimed risen by the community, formed after Easter.9 Contrary to the exegete Bultmann, the theologian Bultmann was not so much interested in the ipsissima verba Jesu as in the kerygma in which Word of God resounds. The existential “Verstehen” happens when the community is addressed and afffected. The “Verstehen” eventually leads to humility.10 Bultmann, however, continued to wonder why the kerygma was not content with repeating Jesus’ preaching. It remained unclear to him why the preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, was replaced by the proclaimed Christ.11 Bultmann’s students, however, tried to fijind the continuity and discontinuity between the pre-paschal Jesus and the post-paschal Christ; the historical Jesus and the kerygma.12 The “Bekenntniskontinuität” in the community was of importance to them. Kuitert writes in his Jezus: nalatenschap ( Jesus: legacy) 13 book that one can only do justice to the person of Jesus, if one tries to discover Jesus’ (religious) self-awareness: the “Religion Christi. Jesus derived his identity and mission from the Jewish vision of God. “Historical research shows that in the teaching of Jesus there was nothing that was not also in Jewish teaching; there is nothing in Christianity that is not also in

  8

 Cf. R. Bultmann Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Tübingen 1948–1953; 19686 ), 1.  “Die Leben-Jesu-Forschung des 19. Jahrhunderts und darüber hinaus suchte ein Bild des historischen Jesus zu rekonstruieren, befreit von der Übermalung durch das Christusbild der urchristlichen Verkündigung.”, R. Bultmann, ‘Das Verhältnis des urchristlichen Christuskerugmas zum historischen Jesus’, in: Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische Christus. Beiträge zum Christusverständnis in Forschung end Verkündigung. Ed. H. Ristow und K. Matthiae (Berlin 1964), 233. 10  R. Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen. Gesämmelte Aufsätze (Tübingen, 19727 ), pt. 1, 118–213. 11  “Und wenn gar die echte historische Interpretation des Wirkens Jesu schon in die existentielle Entscheidung führt, wozu überhaupt noch das Kerugma?”, Glauben und Verstehen, 235. 12  In 1959 Bültmann himself concluded: “Heute ist die Forschung umgekerht daran interessiert, die Einheit des historischen Jesus und des vom urchristlichen Kerygma verkündigten Christus zu entdecken.”, R. Bultmann, ‘Das Verhältnis des urchristlichen Christuskerugmas’, 233. 13  Jezus: nalatenschap, 113, 145, 161, 196, 316.   9

some developments in contemporary protestant christology 259 Judaism”.14 Every approximation of Jesus must keep account of the historical Jesus. This will then exclude the possibility that Jesus is lost in the defijinition that people give him through their own religious or intellectual needs (113, 136–138). When the evangelists wanted to make Jesus “of importance” (“van betekenis”) to people with diffferent expectations, they attributed to his personality the predicate “God”. Kuitert states that Jesus would never have given himself this defijinition, because it was not based on his own religious conviction (cf. 144–146). Because the Jewish faith teaches that there is but one God, the dogmas of the Trinity and two natures of Nicea and Chalcedon, respectively, would never have agreed with Jesus’ self-awareness. They served the purpose of “a downright ecclesiastical Christ” (“een ronduit kerkelijke Christus”; 11, 130–133) and are untrue (206–207). Kuitert notes that Bultmann uses “a bit of dogmatics” (“een beetje dogmatiek”) in the “Verstehen” of Scripture (90–101, esp. 91). As an exegete, Bultmann was interested in the ipsissima verba, but as a theologian only in the message of the New Testament, where people hear the voice of God. This discrepancy is unintelligible for Kuitert (194–195; 198–199). He gives no further thought to the “Bekenntniskontinuität”. Kuitert’s approach to Jesus seems indestructible because it is such a reasonable approach. It is easy to assume that the expectations and needs of a tortured person would create an illusion such as the resurrection. This is Kuitert’s opinion. It is more difffijicult for a reasonable person to assume that the Lord has truly risen from the dead. For Kuitert the belief in the Resurrection is nothing but the foundation of the realization of the “ecclesiastical Christ”, who is far removed from the Jewish Jesus. Kuitert’s approach to Christ is a massive attack on who He is and how He was experienced by the apostles. Therefore, it is a massive attack on His true signifijicance for the community of believers. It may be enlightening to reduce someone’s being and work to social and religious factors that have influenced his self-awareness. However, environment and time are not the only influences on someone’s self-awareness. Besides, insight into this self-awareness cannot be the only explanation for the meaning someone has for others. After all this meaning is determined by the experience others have of the person. Jesus’ being and activity, the way in which He is experienced by His followers but also by the believers who were not

14  Jezus: nalatenschap, 161: “Historisch onderzoek laat zien dat er in het onderwijs van Jezus niets was dat niet in het onderwijs van de joden was; er is niets in het christendom dat ook niet in het jodendom is.”

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witnesses of the Resurrection, cannot be explained only by reconstructing His self-awareness. Kuitert reduces the shared and traditional experience of the fijirst Christians to the patterns of their needs. He does not allow for the space which Bultmann drew. Bultmann the theologian pointed out to Bultmann the exegete that the resurrection was as unbelievable for the contemporaries of the apostles as it is for modern man.15 Kuitert excludes the possibility that the fijirst Christians had experienced the risen Lord. He does not believe this because the resurrection cannot be deduced from Jesus’ self-awareness. He furthermore excludes the possibility that people remain sensitive to the power of this experience through the way in which they are community: one of heart and mind, one on our way to God. His over-appreciation of the cognitio leaves no room for the appreciation of the experiential, which is necessary to come to believe in the Risen One. It is remarkable that Kuitert in his book Over Religie. Aan de liefhebbers onder haar beoefenaars sees the “religious primal experience” (“religieuze oerervaring”), which exceeds the subject (cf. 85–111; 115; 241–254), as an experience of dependence and as an experience of “knowing you are being addressed” (“je aangesproken weten” 188–191). He sees this experience as opposing Church teaching: “In the Christian Churches doctrine is important. (. .) God, as He is taught, is no longer experienced by the generations now growing up”.16 That is why he considers it important to fijind out “why Jesus made such an impact on his surroundings, that later followers . . . [felt] God’s address in what they experienced with Jesus”.17 He concludes: “We who live today do not see Jesus any more, so we cannot experience Him anymore as the Word. We depend on hearsay”.18 The question arises why Kuitert honours the experience of creation, but not the “hearsay” experience of Jesus as a moment of knowing. In his Christological study he identifijies the “experience of Jesus” with the way in which Jesus is associated with in pietistic and methodical circles.19 In liturgical formulas however, the experience of the risen Christ is passed on. People may become sensitive to and draw hope from the power of

15  Cf. his Kerugma und Mythos (Hamburg – Bergstedt 1948–1966) 9 parts, 3 suppl., pt. 3,12. 16  “In de christelijke kerken is de leer troef. ( . . . ) God, zoals Hij geleerd wordt, wordt niet meer ervaren door de generaties die vandaag opgroeien”, 185–186. 17  “waarom Jezus op zijn omgeving zo’n indruk maakte, dat latere navolgers . . . Gods ‘aanspraak’ [voelden] in wat ze met Jezus beleefden,” 232. 18  “Wij die vandaag leven maken Jezus niet meer mee, kunnen hem dus ook niet meer ervaren als het Woord. Wij moeten alles van horen zeggen hebben”, 232. 19  Cf. Nalatenschap, 216–224.

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these words. The formulas have a power which is stronger than can be grasped with cognition only. This power is released even more strongly when the formulas sound in communities that are one of heart and mind. Augustine assumed that the situation in the early Church was defijined by the basic power of caritas: the sincere, unselfijish love for the individual, the other and God.20 As may also be seen in his Praeceptum, the caritas was the wavelength on which the person became receptive to Caritas, understood as the love of God for mankind. Caritas made receptive to (divine) Caritas. Here the experientia is seen as a dimension where people may become sensitive to the mystery of Christ. In a Christological draft it cannot be ignored that people in a community may experience the lifegiving power of Christ and become susceptible to grace. This is what Kuitert does. Kuitert shows that an exercise with only reason yields a meagre image of Jesus’ being and activities. 3. A. van de Beek In his Jezus Kurios. De christologie als hart van de theologie ( Jesus Kyrios. Christology as Heart of Theology) A. van de Beek assumes that theology does need to keep account of the experientia. For him the New Testament is the history of Christ Jesus, in which Jesus is identifijied with God. After all, He was known, experienced, and worshipped in this way (111, 113–114, 145). In Christianity, it is most important that “Christ comes into our lives as a person and speaks to us”.21 Possibly because “faith experience” is received somewhat sceptically by, amongst others, K. Barth, he does not consider this moment as an experience. Nevertheless, in a footnote he agrees with A. Ngindi Mushete who says: “The human and religious experience is the preferred place from where Africans can encounter and get to know Christ.”22 People will comprehend the faith of the apostles not through academic speculation, but through experiencing sufffering and death in this deplorable, sinful world. The apostles believed that God had accepted humanity, that Jesus had taken upon Him the responsibility for sufffering and human

20

 R. Canning, The unity of God and neighbour in St. Augustine. Louvain – Heverlee, 1993.  ET, 196, n. 4 Christus als persoon in ons leven komt en ons aan spreekt” (translated in Dutch edition, 182, n. 4). 22  “Die menschliche und religiöse Erfahrung ist der bevorzugte Ort, von dem her die Afrikaner Christus begegnen und erkennen können.” (182, n. 4 in Dutch edition; 196, n. 4 in English edition) 21

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sin, and had thus actually delivered mankind (155, 159). A theologian should witness in a manner appropriate for his time and culture to this faith in the redeeming solidarity of God with man. If one reduces Jesus to a human being who is only connected to the divine Logos through love (cf. 49, 50, 79), or who is only a world-changing revolutionary (216–219), one does injustice to the mystery of redemption. If one denies the incarnation, one also denies the salvation through sufffering and death (141–146; 161; 169). Whereas Kuitert is led by his thorough knowledge of the Leben-JesuForschung, Van de Beek is led by his preference for the (so-called) Alexandrian school. The (so-called) Antiochene followers attempted to put reality into their abstract ideas about God and man in order to control the world (22). In Van de Beek’s view the Alexandrians arrived at a less optimistic view of man because they started from the reality as experienced. This was defijined by the decadence of the rich and the frustration of the poor, “for whom life is one long Good Friday”23). Of course, the appreciation of the experience of the world and other humans had a negative efffect on philosophical and methodological clarity. However, according to Van de Beek, the Alexandrians made it very clear that God, as true Redeemer, had accepted humanity. After all, what is not accepted cannot be redeemed (20). Recalling experience, they intensifijied the realisation that God carries man in all his weakness (passim), that Jesus shares in the depth of our being and existence (98) and that “God as God—God as Creator and Redeemer—participates completely in this world and thus carries the responsibility to the end.”24 At the basis of Van de Beek’s scholarly approach lies the conviction that the core of every theology must be supported by the apostolic experience of Jesus, the Son of God, as it is explained and handed down in Scripture. This experience appears in personal experience. It is especially through the experience of human sufffering that people may become aware of the surprising and purifying apostolic experience of Jesus’ being and activity, His life, sufffering, death and resurrection. Contrary to Kuitert, Van de Beek teaches us that Jesus’ being and activities do not always become imaginable and radical if carried through in a consistent way in a plausible scholarly method (which is only relevant in 23  “voor wie het hele leven één lange Goede Vrijdag is”, 31, n. 96; quoting Buthelezi (“Violence and Cross,” 1979: 53). 24  . . . dat God als God, als Schepper en Redder, volledig participeert in deze wereld en daarvoor tot het eind de verantwoordelijkheid draagt, 94.

some developments in contemporary protestant christology 263 a certain culture). The disadvantage of his Christological design is that he regards sufffering as the exclusive way in which people become sensitive to and set their hopes on God as the Redeemer. Christ may become an idol. With Augustine the sensitivity for the redeeming power of Christ, and the receptivity for grace, grow in and through a proper relationship with each other. For him the relation to the other based on God means an increase in sensitivity to the life-giving power of Christ. This communal dimension is somewhat absent in Van de Beek’s Christology. However, his strong point is that he considers the experience of the world and the experience of the fijirst Christians as recorded in the New Testament, as a foundation for his thoughts on Christ. He goes to great pains, using methods of expression typical for his culture, to invite participation in this concrete faith of the apostles, based on their unique experience of the Lord. 4. Conclusion H. de Lubac has pointed out that the treatment of Scripture as a historical document takes away the interpellating character.25 He concluded that in the Middle Ages, both Testaments were considered writings in which the concrete experiences of the fijirst Christians with Jesus had been put into words. Without a complex exegetical translation, it was assumed that the experience of the fijirst Christians for the Medieval faithful was not only imaginable but also their own. One needs to distinguish between personal experience and the fijirst Christians’ experience of Christ. Nonetheless, it is the task of theologians to translate this experience, as seen in the New Testament, as experience. To approach Scripture as a liber experientiae is to accept as genuine the witness of the apostles. The redeeming power of the Person of Christ remains imaginable and radical if an appeal is made to the human capability for experience. The commitment of the experience of the apostles is linked to this. It is an interesting exercise of mind to reduce Christ’s being and activities to factors that influenced his self-awareness. However, it is also misleading,

25  D’autre part, si l’on jette une vue d’ensemble sur l’histoire d’exégèse chrétienne en ces derniers siècles, on observe que ce qui a longtemps, et hier encore, barré la route au travail critique, ce n’est pas- sauf exceptions minimes- l’interprétation spirituelle. C’est la fausse science; c’est le mauvais littéralisme, prenant tout à la lettre, à force de vouloir suivre uniquement le sens littéral’, H. de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit: l’intelligence de l’Ecriture d’après Origène (Paris, 1950), 377.

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because insight into this self-awareness need not be an explanation for His experienced being and activity. Augustine’s Praeceptum, as well as his many other reflections on the objective of communal life, give insight into the fact that not only sufffering but also the order in and wholeness of the community make the community receptive to the Person of Christ.26 The community is a purifying society in which people, through a proper way of life with themselves and each other, desire God. It is a tuning in to the wavelength on which persons become receptive to grace. If the community becomes superfijicial, the receptivity for God’s grace flags and the experience of the redeeming power of Christ fades out.

26  L. Verheijen, ‘La Règle de saint Augustin comme prisme pour une lecture « orientée » de ses œuvres’, in : id., Nouvelle approche de la Règle de saint Augustin, vol. 2 (Louvain, 1988), 60–73. Cf. also : « Les idées n’y sont guère développées, bien au contraire, elles sont présentées de façon très concise (. . .) Pour les familiers de saint Augustin, la Regula a certainement été une sorte d’aide-mémoire renvoyant et faisant suite à un enseignement oral habituel »; T. van Bavel ‘Parallèles vocabulaire et citations bibliques de la Regula sancti Augustini. Contribution au problème de son authenticité, in: Augustiniana 9 (1959), 12–77, quote 75.

BLASPHEMY AND THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS Johann Theron Introduction It is generally accepted among most orthodox and liberal theologians, albeit for diffferent reasons, that the sinlessness of Jesus is an outright and fijinal truth beyond any dispute. This study will attempt to show that there are convincing reasons to view this truth afresh. To argue that Jesus became a human being and sinned like any other human being in his personal capacity would seem not only un-orthodox, but might seem immediately blasphemous and it would be disregarded outright. In order to fijind a diffferent perspective, I shall look at Christology not from above, nor from below, but sideways, which would look at how the opponents or contemporaries of Jesus regarded him. To do this, and allow for the possibility of other perspectives one will have to suspend the idea of sinlessness for the moment. To explore how Jesus’ contemporaries viewed him, the case of blasphemy will be used by way of illustration. The Sinlessness of Jesus In Heb. 4:15 we read that Jesus was tempted like us, but without sin. Paul says that he did not know sin,1 and Peter that he committed no sin.2 Berkouwer goes as far as saying that the voices proclaiming the complete holiness of Jesus are so numerous that there can be no real convincing argument to the contrary.3 The orthodox soteriological argument for the sinlessness of Jesus goes as follows: humans are all sinful and incapable of making atonement for their own sin. To save humanity, Jesus became a sinless human being in order to bear humanity’s sinfulness and redeem humans from death and the judgement of God as the fijinal result of sin. He can only bear humanity’s sin on the cross if he himself is without his own personal sin, 1

 2 Cor. 5:21.  1 Pet. 2:22. 3  Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer, De persoon van Christus (Kampen: Kok, 1952), 204. English translation: The Person of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954). 2

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otherwise he would not be an acceptable offfering to God. However, if he is not truly human, he cannot bear the sin of humanity, because God would not accept an offfering other than a human being for the sin of humanity.4 On the other hand, if he is not truly God he would not be able to bear the sin of humanity. This argument does propose some difffijiculties. Firstly, how can God become a human being without sin if sin is a necessary characteristic of our human condition. Secondly, if he were to become the sinfulness of man,5 does this not detract from his divine holiness and his ability to save us from sin? If he is to become a human who does not actively sin and only bears the consequences of sin, is he still truly human? If he does actively do sin, how can he be an unblemished offfering to God, saving humanity from sin? This problem is indeed key to our understanding of who Jesus Christ is and has wide ranging implications for soteriology. Van de Beek admits that the problem of the sinlessness of Jesus has long troubled him.6 He poses the question whether one can be truly human if one does not experience guilt and the struggle against sin. If Jesus Christ was sinless, how could he then be truly human? He resolves this problem to some degree by pointing out that humanity’s experience of freedom of will points toward the fact that sin is not a necessary condition for humanity, but that humanity has fallen into sin. Jesus took on our humanity without our sinfulness and in that capacity he bore our whole humanity and in doing so took the responsibility of the guilt of the whole world on himself. Therefore, he did not personally sin,7 but was made sin in the sense of taking humanity’s sin on himself and resisted temptation to the end to save humanity. He could not bear another’s sin if he had to bear his own. Van de Beek proposes that Jesus is not just a human next to other humans, so he did not have to become a Dutchman for the Dutch, a woman for a woman etc. He rather took 4  It is quite interesting that animals have born the sin of the Israelites to a great degree in the offferings demanded by the Old Testament law (Lev. 4:28; 5:6; 9:3; 16:10, 15). 5  2 Cor. 5:21 states that “God made him who had no sin, to be sin for us. . .” (NIV). 6  Abraham van de Beek, Jezus Kurios: de Christologie als hart van de theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1998), 39. 7  Van de Beek does say that one cannot historically prove whether Jesus sinned or not, but only theologically conclude his sinlessness from his resurrection. Moreover, his sinlessness would have been expressed quite diffferently to what we would suppose to be sinless. He continues to point out the unexplainable behaviour of Jesus in predicting the destruction of the temple, efffectively calling the Syrophoenician woman a dog, and mixing with the lawless rabble and drunkards, Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 126, 129, 130.

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humanity on himself. That is why the human person in Christ is anhypostatic, whereby the person of the Logos bears our humanity. Only in this way is he neither merely a divine person nor the ideal human being whose ethical example humans must follow.8 Karl Barth concurs with this view since he is of the opinion that the non peccare and the non posse peccare of Jesus confijirms his brotherhood with us as the fellowship with our true human essence. He bore our guilt, an alien guilt, without any guilt of his own.9 Berkouwer discusses the problem that if one were to say that it was impossible for him to sin, this would detract from the human struggle against temptation that would need to be part of his humanity and this would lessen the truthful character of the temptations in the desert and his struggle in Gethsemane.10 He attempts to uphold the scriptural attestation that Jesus was both sinless and struggled against temptation, suffering and death, without wanting to dabble in psychological speculation about how this could be possible. Furthermore, he sees Jesus’ resisting of temptation not as general human resistance against an ethical temptation, but as a resistance against being disobedience to his unique messianic calling.11 Jonker says that one has to understand the sinlessness of Jesus by seeing the Spirit as the bond of unity between the two natures, so that through the work of the Spirit Jesus was able to conquer sin on each point.12 The obvious problem with these perspectives is whether the proper honour is done to the true humanity of Jesus. Van de Beek proposes that Jesus became really human not ideally human and that this does not mean that he did not have any individuality. However, saying that he was

  8

 Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 40–45.  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol IV part 2 trans. G.W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 93. Barth does have some difffijiculty with the texts that refer to Jesus’ limited ability as man in Luke 2:52, where he grew in wisdom, Mark 13:32 where the day and the hour is withheld from him, the stories of temptation and Gethsemane, his wrath against the temple violation and his sharpness against the Pharisees. He proposes that our view of what is divine must change to bridge the gap between the seeming discrepancies, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 95. 10  Interestingly enough Satan does not tempt Jesus to be more human, but to prove that he is God (“If you are the Son of God. . .” in Luke 4:3, 9). This in itself comments critically on the necessity of his holiness and the leaning towards the personhood of the Logos taking primacy over that of Jesus’ human person. One could say Satan tempts the Logos to control the person of Jesus.   11  Berkouwer, De persoon van Christus, 214–224. 12  Willem Daniel Jonker, Christus, die Middelaar (Pretoria: NG Kerkboekhandel, 1977) 192.   9

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not a human next to me like another and that he bore humanity through the personhood of the Logos, does not seem to do justice to the baby of flesh and blood that was born in a manger. Also Berkouwer’s attempt at maintaining both the sinlessness and the struggle of Jesus, does not allow for a sinful struggle of a human being of flesh and blood in real life. It is much easier to speak of Jesus’ corporeality than to speak of his sinlessness. Everyone would agree that he sufffered like a human being, but when one wants to relate his humanity to his sin it becomes much more complicated. Van de Beek himself says that Appolinaris’ view that Christ took on only a body in becoming flesh, does not do justice to him becoming truly human. In the fijinal analysis it seems that the enhupostatic relation of the humanity of Christ with the Logos, does seem to reflect this view of Appolinaris, only in a bit more complex way. Although Van de Beek sees the merit in the modern Christologies from below in that it criticises the Western emphasis on transcendence, he admits that he prefers a Christology which emphasises the divinity of Jesus.13 Weinandy points out the importance of the statement by Gregory of Nazianzus that “what is not assumed, is not saved.”14 Van de Beek quotes Tertullian in proposing that Christ took on the material of humanity not the condition.15 Against this Leo the Great says that Christ assumed not only our substance, but also the condition of our sinfulness.16 Weinandy indicates a related question concerning the assumption of a pre-lapsarian or the post-lapsarian nature of man.17 It would seem that Van de Beek’s view would presuppose that the Logos took on a pre-lapsarian nature in order to safe-guard Jesus from sin.

13  Abraham van de Beek, De adem van God (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1987), 157. One wonders if Van de Beek’s criticism of Barth that Christ became the true man rather than a concrete real human being, does not touch on his own view as well, Abraham van de Beek, “God’s omnipotence and human freedom,” Acta Theologica 3, Essentialia et Hodierna (2002), 183. If He became the true eschatological man is this not the same as given the human person in Christ a enhupostatic union with the Logos. 14  Thomas Weinandy, In the likeness of sinfull flesh (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 27. Van de Beek refers to this, but 15  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 41. 16  Leo preached: “we must greatly rejoice over this change, whereby we are translated from earthly degradation to heavenly dignity through His unspeakable mercy, Who descended into our estate that He might promote us to His, by assuming not only the substance but also the conditions of sinful nature, and by allowing the impassibility of Godhead to be afffected by all the miseries which are the lot of mortal manhood,” Leo the Great, Sermon LXXI: On the Lord’s Resurrection, trans. Philip Schafff, http://www.ccel.org/ ccel. See also Thomas Weinandy, In the likeness, 36. 17  See also Thomas Weinandy, In the likeness, 36.

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Van de Beek refers to Origenes in saying that Christ’s sinlessness is not a natural necessity18 and proposes that the use of Christ’s Godly power enabled him to bear humanity. However, to see the Godly person in Christ making sinless choices, does point to the necessary or “natural” characteristics of God. Van de Beek further rejects the kenosis19 of Christ (as his giving up of his complete knowledge). The problem that arises is: the greater the claim on Christ’s assumption of the sin of general humanity, the lesser becomes the truth of his bodily presence as a real human person Jesus born as a baby in Palestine some 2000 years ago. Blasphemy To fijind another perspective on the problem one might attempt to look at the events of salvation history and then move towards a perspective on his alleged sinlessness. That is why I will attempt a Christology from the side, looking at the person of Jesus from the perspective of his contemporaries,20 before making claims as to his sinlessness and his being the Son of God. Van de Beek says that within the enhypostatic relation between the human nature and the Logos, one can never speak of the human Jesus without speaking about him as the Word that became Flesh. Let us suspend this truth for a moment in an attempt to glean a new perspective on the person of Jesus, especially in regard to the charge of blasphemy brought against him. Most exegetical study on Mark 14:64 also revolves around the problem that Jesus did not actually pronounce the Name of God during his interrogation. Many scholars refer to m. Sanh 7.5 to point out that that a person is culpable of blasphemy only on pronouncing the Name of God itself. Most commentators look for a broader defijinition for blasphemy to explain the charge.21

18

 Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 41 note 145.  Van de Beek, Jezus Kurios, 41 note 147. 20  Scot McKnight, Joseph B. Modica, Who do my opponents say I am? (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 1. They follow Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey in this regard. 21  Adela Yarbro Collins, “The charge of blasphemy in Mark 14.64,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 26 (4) (2004), 381. Darrell L. Bock, Key Jewish texts on blasphemy and exaltation and the Jewish examination of Jesus. Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, 36 (1997), 118. Darrell L. Bock, Blasphemy and exaltation in Judaism and the Final Examination of Jesus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 2,3. David Catchpole, “ ‘You have heard his blasphemy’,” Tyndale House Bulletin, 16 (1965), 10. 19

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Darryl Bock did thorough research on what blasphemy would entail for the Jews in the time of Jesus.22 He concludes from his research that certain activities, not just verbal utterances, could be viewed as blasphemous. For example, blasphemy can reside in an explicit act of idolatry, or a display of arrogance toward God or his temple, or any way of comparing oneself to God, or an insult directed at leaders of God’s covenant community in such a way that God’s honour is implicated in the critique.23 In Lev. 24:10–26, one fijinds a classical case where the half-Israelite halfEgyptian man blasphemed the name of the Lord and was subsequently stoned for it. The law against the blaspheming of the name of the Lord is also proclaimed on this occasion by Moses. Several texts in the Old Testament relate to the broader defijinition of blasphemy. Num. 15:30–36 speaks of the reviling (blaspheming) of the Lord with the subsequent violation of the Sabbath, which led to the execution of an Israelite. The blaspheming of God and the concomitant reviling of the leader of the people is also condemned in Ex. 22:27. Bock shows that the blasphemy in Mark 14 is not just an incidental happening, but that it actually forms part of what he calls a “battle of blasphemies,” where Jesus is accused of blasphemy because he forgives sins in Mark 2:7 (which is something only God can do) to which Jesus replies in Mark 3:29 that it is blasphemy against the Spirit to accuse Jesus of having an unclean spirit. Bock further points out that the blasphemy charge must be seen in relation to Ps. 110:1 and Dan. 7:9–13. The son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds, refers to Jesus’ taking the authoritative seat of power next to God as not only the Messiah, but as the son of God himself, under whose feet his enemies (the religious leaders) would be

22  It is quite interesting to see that the term ‘blasphemy’ is still used in secular society. In an article in the Neuen Zürcher Zeitung of April 14 2009, Navid Kermani expresses his dislike of crosses. He fijinds it offfensive because it is barbaric, not life afffijirming, it does not express thankfulness for creation, for which we must rejoice, which we must enjoy and wherein we can see God’s presence. He wants to formulate his dissatisfaction with the theology of the cross in stronger terms than are generally used by calling it “blasphemy and idolatry.” Navid Kermani, Warum hast du uns verlassen (Neuen Zürcher Zeitung April 14, 2009) http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/literatur_und_kunst/.html (accessed 4 October 2010). 23  Darrell L. Bock, “Blasphemy and the Jewish Examination of Jesus,” Bulletin for Biblical Research, 17 (1). (2007), 110, 111.

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placed.24 Catchpole says this would have been abhorrent to the Jews and would have amounted to saying that there are more than one God.25 Another aspect to consider is the use of euphemisms in Israel. Ford convincingly argues that the term ‘son of man’ was a euphemism for ‘son of God’ efffectively equating himself with God.26 Bock says that the euphemism used by the high priest, “Blessed One” was equal to Jesus’ use of “the Power.”27 Gundry claims on the basis of the use of euphemism that the one reporting the speech probably used the euphemism, while Jesus probably used the Name of God.28 The fact that the High Priest was allowed to pronounce the tetragrammaton once a year on the Day of Atonement while reading from Lev. 16:30,29 places this possible pronunciation of the Name of God in a fascinating light. Jesus’ use of “I am”30 is both an answer to the question of the High Priest and a possible veiled reference to his being equal to the “I am” from Ex. 3:14. These aspects, together with the the attestation in John 10:33 that the Jews wanted to kill Jesus not because of a good deed, but because he blasphemed as a man in making himself as God, point toward the reason why the high priest rent his clothes and Jesus was condemned to die. In an attempt to portray Jesus as the chief priest’s saw him, one could propose the following: Jesus, like the man in Lev. 24, the half Israelite half Egyptian,31 got into a fijight with an Israelite, in this case with the religious leaders, and in this fijight committed the blasphemy of not only pronouncing the Name of God, but also placing himself at the right hand of power as an equal to God to judge over the appointed religious leaders (against Ex. 22:27), coming on the clouds as was a prerogative of God. This 24

 Bock, Blasphemy and exaltation, 23, 203.  Catchpole, “You have heard his blasphemy,” 17. 26  J. Massingberd Ford, “‘The son of man’—A Euphemism?” Journal of Biblical Literature, 87 (3) (1968), 266. Numerous text in the Old Testament emphasise that God accepts no other Gods before him (Ex. 20:3; Deut. 4:35, 39; 2 Ki. 17:35) leading to the confession of the Jews as basis of the covenant: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one”. 27  Bock, “Blasphemy and the Jewish Examination of Jesus,” 95. 28  Robert H. Gundry, “Jesus’ Supposed Blasphemy (Mark 14:61b-64),” Bulletin for Biblical Research, 18 (1) (2008), 132, 133. 29  Bock, Blasphemy and exaltation, 198. Lev. 16:30: “for on this day atonement is to be made for you to cleanse you from all your sins; you must be clean before the LORD.” Both the atonement to be done by Jesus and him taking on the sin of the people come into play in this verse. The fact that he is placing himself in the position of the High Priest in pronouncing the Name of God, does also not contribute to his winning favour in the trial. 30  Both in Mar. 14:62 and Luk. 22:70 does the words ἐγώ εἰμι appear, in Mark as the words of Jesus and in Luke Jesus place them in the mouth of his accusers. 31  Jesus also came out of Egypt with his parents, while Joseph’s paternity was questionable. 25

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in conjunction with the pronunciations Jesus made against the temple of God and his blatant disregard for the law of God concerning the Sabbath like the man in Num. 15:30–36, for which the Pharisees caught him more than once, aggravated his position.32 In Mat. 27:62–63 we read that the chief priests and the Pharisees assembled before Pilate and spoke of Jesus as the deceiver.33 In the Lukan version they accuse him before Pilate of being a perverter of the nation. If one considers this along with his sayings that God will take away the Kingdom from the chosen people and give it to another people,34 it all fijits in well with the multitude of reasons why the chief priest wanted Jesus dead. One could say that Jesus had a rap-sheet of religious transgressions a mile long. This is the case even before considering his dubious activities and friends—no less than a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of prostitutes and sinners.35 However difffijicult it is to try and place oneself in the position of the high priest, in light of these very valid reasons to kill Jesus, one would have to say that despite the discrepancies in the exact reason for condemning Jesus, it was within their perspective justifijied. Jesus spoke against the leaders, against the temple, against the Chosen People, against the Law and ultimately against the one and only God. He proposes himself as an idol to be worshipped, transgressing the very fijirst rule of the Law.36 Viewing Jesus from the side in this way does complicate the whole discussion concerning his sinlessness. Jesus, Blasphemous or Sinless? Throughout the history the Christological problem has been hotly disputed. The church has found some stability at Chalcedon by stating that the Son is at the same time homoousios with the father and homoousios with man.37 The pendulum between vere homo and vere deus38 swings

32

 Mark 2:24; 3:2.  The Greek is πλάνος. Already in John 7:12, 47 they speak of Jesus’ deception. See Bock’s discussion of the deception in Bock, Blasphemy and exaltation, 211. 34  Mat. 21:41. 35  Luke 7:33. 36  Their view would concur with Celsus’ view that Jesus is an evil, godless man, Godhating and unworthy magician, Bock, “Blasphemy and the Jewish Examination of Jesus,” 87. 37  Weinandy, In the likeness, 35. 38  It is interesting to note that the blasphemy of a man claiming to be God was as great for the chief priest in the time of Jesus as the idea that God could become human 33

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throughout the history of theology, but the question concerning Jesus’ sinlessness remains. Considering the charge of blasphemy does nudge the discussion in the direction of the vere homo, but still does not sufffijiciently explain the relation between the man Jesus and the divine Logos. Oepke Noordmans provides an interesting proposal, namely that the Christ in us is the historical Christ.39 Thus Jesus is not historically speaking only a part of antiquity nor is he the spiritualised eternal Christ in us nor yet a part of some lifeless teaching on two natures. He proposes that the presence of God in Jesus’ humanity remains a mystery. To search for a fascinating divinity in Jesus he calls heathen faith. He sees Christ’s becoming sin from another angle. It is as if Jesus meets us from the other side of sin, from the below human side.40 In a discussion about Kohlbrugge, Noordmans proposes that the sinlessness of Jesus must not be seen as an ethical concept, but can only be spoken about by way of religious paradoxes. Jesus, in the situation of sin kept the state of sinlessness. He who was made sin kept sin, that is himself, directed towards God and thus killed sin. In doing so he did not try to evade sin or hide his sin from God like us.41 In this line of thought one could say Jesus is the only true sinner. In continuation of this view, this essay would propose that the relation between the human person of Jesus born into our sin and Christ the sinless God, is not something to be stated outright, but is rather an issue of faith that must be mediated by the Holy Spirit. From a confessional approach, no doctrine on Jesus has fijixed aspects and therefore one cannot see Jesus as sinless outright. Through faith the believer sees Jesus from the perspective of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must convince a person that the one who disobeys the law of the Sabbath, brings the true Sabbath rest of God. The Spirit must teach a person that the one who breaks down the temple, is the true temple of God and that the one who puts himself in the position of the high priest on the day of Atonement by pronouncing the name of God and

for the Greeks. Van de Beek Jezus Kurios, 157, speaks of how blasphemous the idea would sound to them that God could be crucifijied and accursed. Jesus’ blasphemy of claiming, as a man, to be God in the Jewish trial, fijinds its inverse in the Greek problem of how God can become a man. 39  Oepke Noordmans, Verzamelde Werken Deel 3. (J.M. Hasselaar, & anderen, Red.) (Kampen: Kok, 1981), 195. 40  Oepke Noordmans, Verzamelde Werken Deel 2. (J.M. Hasselaar, & anderen, Red.) (Kampen: Kok, 1979), 274. 41  Oepke Noordmans, Verzamelde Werken Deel 3, 514.

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even calls himself “I am,” is actually the true High Priest who became the Atonement of the people—the true “I am”. Through the attestation of the Holy Spirit, the naughty child who was disobedient to his mother and father in Luke 2:48, was obedient to his Father in heaven. The Holy Spirit alone can invoke the belief that a seemingly idolatrous, blasphemer is in reality Christ the Lord sitting at the right hand of the power of God at the very moment when he was condemned to die as a criminal (as most people would have judged him). The Holy Spirit brings about the change in heart from the condemnation: “we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and affflicted,” to the confession: “he bore our iniquities and through his stripes we are healed.”42 It is only the Spirit that can assure a person that the man who sufffered for his own sin, actually sufffered for the sin of the world. One could say that the Spirit convinces a person to believe in the unholy Jesus. It is only through the Spirit that one can see in Jesus, who was made sin, the one who knew no sin. Maybe it is not for nothing that the only unforgivable sin is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Conclusion The sinlessness of Jesus forms a crucial part in the soteriological argument that Christ could make atonement for the sins of humanity with God, because Jesus needs to be sinless to accomplish such an atonement. The problem that arises is how Jesus can be sinless and truly human all at once. Van de Beek along with others want to do justice both to the sinlessness of Jesus and the struggle he had against sin and temptation. It would, however, seem that the anhupostatic character of the human person in Christ, where the personhood of the Logos assures the sinlessness of Jesus, does still detract from Jesus becoming a truly post-lapsarian sinful human being such as humans are. Having pointed out the problem of Jesus’ sinlessness, this essay attempted to look at a Christology from the side, where Jesus is viewed from the perspective of some of his contemporaries in the context in which he lived. His blasphemy was taken as a test case to show how his alleged sinlessness was viewed by the Chief Priests and the Pharisees.

42

 Isa. 53:4,5, Quotation from the NIV.

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Their judgement of him as being a blasphemer points to the paradoxical value of his sinlessness. In continuation of the thoughts of Noordmans and Kohlbrugge, Jesus’ sinlessness cannot be stated outright. It is rather through the mediation of the Holy Spirit that one is convinced to believe that the blasphemous sinner Jesus is the Godly Christ atoning for the sins of the world.

PART THREE

SPEAKING OF GOD: ESCHATOLOGY

CICERO MEETS AMBROSE Gerrit de Kruijf Introduction Usually, the metaphors of the pilgrim and the stranger are applied to indicate the similar experience of Christians: in some sense being as outsiders in the world, not fijitting in with current schemes, being ‘diffferent’. Sometimes it feels like an adequate description of the manner of living in one’s actual community. Sometimes the double description is meant to evoke the moral standard that a Christian community should be willing to live up to. Bram van de Beek, however, makes a distinction between the pilgrim and the stranger. Although he does not polarize them, he perceives some distance between them: the pilgrim has an aim in this earthly life, while the stranger is wandering around without a clear direction. Pilgrims know what they want, they have a mission. The stranger is just longing to be taken home. According to Van de Beek, the experience of being a stranger in this sense is characteristic of original Christian life, it is the early, indeed the authentic form of it. After Constantine, when ‘the church began settling down for the ages to come instead of being totally devoted to the new age to come’ (Noordmans), the stranger made room for the pilgrim according to Van de Beek. Ambrose and Augustine are the stepping stones which mark this transition. Van de Beek wants to join the strangers of the past in our time again.1 In fact he does not make a diffference between the second and the twentieth century: they both belong to the kairos of Christ’s act of salvation. The world in which Christians live—in the second as well as in the twentieth century—is a past world, to which we should not devote our energy.2 Van de Beek’s siding with the early church fijits in with the actual Western context, in which the church has become marginal. Seen from the perspective of a ‘rich’ past she can now seek her

1

 A. van de Beek, God doet recht [God Does Justice], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 222, 225–232, 359. 2  A. van de Beek, Hier beneden is het niet [It’s not here below], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2005), 48fff.

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refuge in the richness of her original position.3 Even so, Van de Beek does not seem to be driven by this contextual motive, he claims that the church should always have adhered to this character of strangeness. Now, if I myself were forced to choose between the pilgrim and the stranger, I would defijinitely opt for the pilgrim. The Christian has an aim in this world: it is what we call a vocation; it is the response to the voice that comes from the other side, from the Kingdom of God, coming into this world. The aim is not to christianize the world or to save the world; it is merely to witness to the gospel in life and work, to seek the form of life that is in accordance with the gospel in ever changing contexts. In this essay I do not wish to comment critically on Van de Beek’s preference for the strangeness, but I do hope to be convincing as to the authentic Christian character of Christian life understood as a pilgrimage. I am going to do this by entering the domain where Van de Beek likes to dwell so much: the early stage of Christianity, close to the fijire, where the important decisions had to be made concerning the forms of Christian life. I want to pay attention to Ambrose of Milan, which, at the end of the fourth century, admittedly is a bit late considering Van de Beek’s preference; but in fact we will focus on the entire period of the fijirst four centuries, because we will discuss Ambrose’s rewriting of Cicero, the man with singular gifts from the century just before Christ. Obviously, Cicero never met Ambrose. Nor is the title of this paper meant to set the bishop as a standard for the philosopher. Yet I am curious what Cicero’s response would have been after reading Ambrose’s christianized version of his own De offfijiciis. At the end of this essay I will make a sophisticated guess about it. While underway, what we will see of this thought experiment is a breathtaking efffort by a man educated in the world of the Stoa, who is going to make a pilgrimage to the Kingdom of God. As the authoritative representation of classical ethics, it was the notions and argumentations in Cicero’s book that lead him on the way, since they apparently constitute the basis of his own moral life. But after his turn in life from governor to bishop, he comes to acknowledge that he needs to deviate with each step. After having set the stage, I will describe Ambrose’s way with Cicero, and then I will give an example of Ambrose’s deviation. Finally, I will

3  Cf. Stanley Hauerwas, William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989).

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speculate about Cicero’s response, again briefly considering the spiritual resources of both men. Ambrose Takes Up Cicero Ambrose (339–397) grew up in a social environment of public service. He himself also became a provincial governor in Milan and was called to the offfijice of bishop even before he was baptized. Although not impossible, of course, such a man is not likely to become a ‘stranger’ in Milan. Taking care of his new responsibilities, he would probably try to clear a pathway, confronting the wisdom of his education with the gospel. Cicero (106–43 B.C.) was a lawyer, a statesman, and a philosopher in the Stoic tradition. After his exile he set himself to transferring the spiritual heritage that inspired his own life to a new generation, or, seen from a broader perspective: the Greek heritage to the Roman context. For him the acquisition of philosophical insight fulfijils the role that faith in Christ has for Ambrose. This philosophizing also has a religious dimension: there is divine mystery, there is the idea of immortality of the soul. Cicero wrote De offfijiciis4 with the image of his son before his eyes. It is a book that obviously must have been very dear and familiar to Ambrose. He tells us that the plan for writing an outline of ethics himself on the basis of Cicero’s book came to his mind while he was meditating upon Psalm 39. There he comes across the most important fundamentals of moral life: silence,5 speech from silence, and the contempt of riches.6 He too is writing for his sons, spiritual sons to be sure, but, so he says, “nature does not make us love more ardently than grace.”7 What Ambrose does not pay attention to, but what is none-the-less interesting in the context of the introduction to my essay, is the fact that Psalm 39 also contains the notion of the stranger: “For I am a passing

4  Cicero, De offfijiciis, with an English translation by Walter Miller, in the Loeb Classical Library, Cicero XXI (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005, fijirst published 1913). I also use the more recent translation by M.T. Grifffijin and E.M. Atkins; Cicero, On Duties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 5  “Silence, wherein all the other virtues rest, is the chief act of modesty” [Silentium in quo est reliquarum virtutum otium, maximus actus verecundiae est], Ambrosius, De offfijiciis, Corpus Christianorum SL XV, ed. M. Testard (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), I,68. English: H. de Romestin, St. Ambrose, in: The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d series, Vol. X (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989). 6  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, 23. 7  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, 24.

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guest, a sojourner, like all my fathers.” With respect to our discussion with Van de Beek we note that in the Hebrew Bible this notion does not refer to heaven as the home of God’s children, but to the confession that God owns the land, so that consequently Israel fijinds itself coram deo in the same position as the strangers whom it should be hosting itself.8 Right from the start of his writing, the bishop leaves no room for misunderstanding the point at which his way parts from the statesman: eternal life. Although Cicero also warns against a wealthy life, he defijinitely considers the goods (commoda) of life as belonging to the honourable (honestum) and the useful (utile), while Ambrose lists them with the unprofijitable (detrimentum).9 But we measure nothing at all but that which is fijitting and virtuous, and that by the rule of things future rather than of things present; and we state nothing to be useful but what will help us to the blessing of eternal life; certainly not that which will help us enjoy merely the present time. Nor do we recognize any advantages in opportunities and in the wealth of earthly goods, but consider them as disadvantages if not put aside, and to be looked on as a burden, when we have them, rather than as a loss when expended.10

This, then, turns the former public offfijicer into a pilgrim, but he will show that along his way as a pilgrim, he is deeply involved in political life. He does not only do what his hand fijinds to do. He is constantly trying to connect the eschatological end of his way with the problems with which he is confronted while underway. He offfers concrete social guidelines. The pilgrim sees the future, like the sun, shedding its light on the present day, unmasking evil, but at the same time revealing what is right. Justice, Benefijicence, and Benevolence I will exemplify this by elaborating on the cardinal virtue of justice. First we will read Cicero on justice.11 20. The principle by which society and the communal life are held together consists of two parts: justice and charity (benefijicence), which may also be called kindness or generosity (liberality).

  8  Cf. O. Noordmans, Verzamelde werken [Collected Works] 8, (Kampen: Kok, 1980), 171–174.   9  See for the warning against a wealthy life Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,106. 10  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,28. 11  Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,20–29, translation Miller and Grifffijin/Atkins, combined.

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21.

22.

23.

24. 28.

29.

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The main function of justice is that no man should harm another unless he has been provoked by wrong. The next that one should treat common goods as common and private ones as one’s own. Now no property is private by nature, but rather by long occupation (as when men moved into some empty property in the past), or by victory (when they acquired it in war), or by law, by settlement, by agreement, or by lot. Each man should hold on to whatever has fallen to him. If anyone else should seek any of it for himself, he will be violating the law of human society. But since we are not born for ourselves alone, as Plato splendidly wrote (Letter IX 358a), and our country as well as our friends claim a share of our being (ortus). And since, as the Stoics believe, everything that the earth produces is created for the use of mankind, but men are born for the sake of men so that they may be able to assist one another— we ought to follow nature as our leader, and thus to contribute to the common stock the things that benefijit everyone together, and by the exchange of dutiful services, by giving and receiving expertise and efffort and means, to cement human society more closely together. The foundation of justice, moreover, is good faith—that is, truth and fijidelity to promises and agreements. (. . .) Of injustice there are two types: men may inflict injury; or else, when it is inflicted upon others, they may fail to deflect it, even though they could. (. . .) (. . .) In most cases, those injustices are committed in order to secure something that they desire; in this fault avarice is widespread. (. . .) As for neglecting to defend others and deserting one’s duty, there tend to be several causes for this. For some men do not wish to incur enmities, or toil, or expense; others are hindered by indiffference, laziness, inactivity or some pursuits or business of their own, to the extent that they allow the people whom they ought to protect to be abandoned. (. . .) There are also some who, whether through devotion to preserving their personal wealth or through some kind of dislike of mankind, claim to be attending to their own business, and appear to do no one any injustice. But though they are free from one type of injustice, they run into another: such men abandon the fellowship of life, because they contribute to it nothing of their devotion, nothing of their efffort, nothing of their means.

According to Cicero, justice is the main virtue and he defijines it predominantly by negative formulations, of which the most important one is: do no harm to other people. For the determination of ‘harm’ it is necessary to distinguish properly between public goods and private property: it is private property that should be respected at all times. Elsewhere, Cicero (in line with Ulpian) shapes the defijinition of justice that has become so

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influential in Western history. In the quotation I embed the short and famous defijinition in the wider passage, which will clarify the connection with my next paragraph. But in the whole moral sphere of which we are speaking there is nothing more glorious nor of wider range than the solidarity of mankind, that species of alliance and partnership of interests and that actual afffection which exists between man and man, which, coming into existence immediately upon our birth, owing to the fact that children are loved by their parents and the family as a whole is bound together by the ties of marriage and parenthood, gradually spreads its influence beyond the home, fijirst by blood relationships, then by connections through marriage, later by friendships, afterwards by the bonds of neighbourhood, then to fellow-citizens and political allies and friends, and lastly by embracing the whole of the human race. This sentiment, assigning each his own and maintaining with generosity and equity that human solidarity and alliance of which I speak, is termed justice; connected with it are dutiful afffection, kindness, liberality, good-will, courtesy and the other graces of the same kind.12

So, justice turns out not to be as ‘cold’ or formal a concept as we often think. According to Cicero offfering help to other people also forms part of doing justice, and elaborating on this he writes in De offfijiciis about benefijicentia: nothing is more suited to human nature than this. But, he warns, there are many caveats. He sums up three of them: benefaction must really help and not harm, it must be proportional with regard to the resources of the benefactor, and the receiver must be dignifijied.13 Ambrose has more prolegomena than Cicero before arriving at the theme of justice. For him it is not, as for Cicero, the doctrine of oikeiosis that forms the basis, deducing the virtues from human nature. He starts out with verecundia, the reverence for God. Grace comes fijirst, meaning the personal touch by the spirit of God. This brings about a remarkable diffference throughout the treatise. For Cicero the ars, the acquisition of wisdom, is characteristic of his ethics, and sometimes he adds illustrations by telling stories. To Ambrose, however, the exempla are more important than the reasoning, because they show how God in fact has moved men to do the good things. The fijinal paragraph of Ambrose’s book reads as follows:

12  Cicero, De fijinibus bonorum et malorum, with an English translation by Harris Rackam, in the Loeb Classical Library XVII (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971; fijirst published 1914) V, 65; the short defijinition reads there: iustitia est animi afffectio suum cuique tribuere. 13  Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,42, cf. also II,9–22.

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These things I have left with you, my children, that you may guard them in your minds—you yourselves will prove whether they will be of any advantage. Meanwhile they offfer you a large number of examples, for almost all the examples drawn from our forefathers, and also many a word of theirs, are included within these three books; so that, although the language may not be graceful, yet a succession of old-time examples set down in such small compass may offfer much instruction.14

The exempla, then, will also lead to changes in Cicero’s defijinitions, as we will see. Here follows what Ambrose says on justice.15 28. Justice, then, enables the association of the human race and its community. For the social principle can be analyzed under two heads, justice and goodwill (also called ‘liberality’ and ‘kindness’). Justice seems to me to be the higher, liberality the more attractive. The one has to do with criticism, the other with generosity. But we dismiss what philosophers take to be the fundamental exercise of justice: for they present it as the primary criterion of justice that we do no harm except in return for harm done. This is refuted by the authority of the gospel, for Scripture would have us indwelt by the Spirit of the Son of Man, who came to bring grace, not to inflict harm. The secondary criterion of justice they identify is to treat common or public property as public, private as private. But this is not even natural. Nature’s bounty is universal, for the common use of all. God has so ordained the law of universal generation that there is common food for all and that the earth is a kind of common possession. Nature, therefore, is the source of common right; it was greed that created private right. In this connection we are told that the Stoics taught that everything produced from the earth was created for the use of men, but that men come forth for men’s sake, to be of help to another. (. . .) So in keeping with the will of God (or, to put it another way, with the natural law of association) we ought to be of help to one another and to vie with each other in rendering services; we ought to put all our advantages in the common pool, as it were, and be a ‘helper’ (as Scripture says) by sympathetic interest, by discharging responsibilities, by giving money, by performing tasks, or however; so that the attractiveness of human fellowship may be seen among us to the best advantage. (. . .)

14  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,138; cf. Maria Becker, Die Kardinaltugenden bei Cicero und Ambrosius: De offfijiciis [The cardinal virtues by Cicero and Ambrose], (Basel: Schwabe & Co, 1994), 19fff. 15  Translation in Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan (ed.), From Irenaeus to Grotius. A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 84–86.

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gerrit de kruijf Justice, then, is a resplendent quality. By serving the good of others rather than self, it makes community and association possible. It holds the highest place, has everything subject to its judgment, offfers help, supplies resources, does not refuse responsibility but accepts the risks that others bring. Here, surely, is a veritable fortress of virtue, which any strategist would be glad to hold—but for that elemental greed which can weaken and drain the resistance even of a virtue so well defended? For while our policy is to expand our capital, accumulate resources, include new territories in our acquisitions, achieve a commanding fijinancial standing, we have stripped away the formal condition of justice by letting go the practice of mutual assistance. How can anyone be just whose goal is to get something for himself which someone else has? Hunger for power, too, gives a womanly weakness to the masculine contours of justice. How can one take the part of others, when one’s purpose is to make them subject to oneself? How can one aid the weak against the strong, when one’s aim is power to subvert their liberty?

Considering what we read on justice, it comes as no surprise that Ambrose renders a less cautious discussion of benefijicence than Cicero. 143. Now we can go on to speak of kindness, which breaks up into two parts, goodwill and liberality. Kindness to exist in perfection must consist of these two qualities. It is not enough just to wish well; we must also do well. Nor, again, is it enough to do well, unless this springs from a good source, even from a good will. (. . .) 144. It is thus a glorious thing to wish well, and to give freely, with the one desire to do good and not to do harm. For if we were to think it our duty to give the means to an extravagant man to live extravagantly, or to an adulterer to pay for his adultery, it would not be an act of kindness, for there would be no good-will in it. We should be doing harm, not good, to another if we gave him money to aid him in plotting against his country, or in attempting to get together at our expense some abandoned men to attack the Church. Nor, again, does it look like liberality to help one who presses very hardly on widows and orphans, or attempts to seize on their property with any show of violence.16

When we compare the accounts of Cicero and Ambrose, we can summarize as follows.17 According to Cicero, the social virtue (described by making use of the word communitas) is the most important one, with the broadest scope. It is composed of two sub-virtues: iustitia and benefijicentia (liberalitas). Iustitia has two functions: the injunction to do no harm (if not provoked), and the protection of private and public goods. 16 17

 Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,143f.  Cf. Becker, Cicero und Ambrosius, 41fff.

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According to Ambrose, the social virtue is iustitia, composed of two subvirtues: iustitia taken strictly, and benefijicentia (liberalitas). For Cicero iustitia is the most radiant virtue, while Ambrose values iustitia and benefijicentia equally. Ambrose denounces the restriction that Cicero makes (‘unless it is provoked’) as to the injunction to do no harm; appealing to the example of Christ he recommends help instead of retaliation. The belief ‘that all goods are public goods because nature is their universal provider,’ functions with Cicero only as the stage for the historical development of the acquisition of private goods, which is justifijied as occupatio, while according to Ambrose it means that the acquisition of private goods is a usurpatio of creation.18 Consequently Cicero wants all to participate in common goods, while Ambrose wants all to participate in all goods. This corresponds with Cicero’s defijinition of bonum commune for the principle of reciprocity, which leads to a process of exchange of goods, while Ambrose calls for reciprocal assistance, a competition of charity. According to Cicero, one has to be concerned with others after having cared for oneself, while Ambrose demands that one should be totally devoted to others. While Cicero states that we are not born for ourselves alone, Ambrose says that the others even have priority.19 According to Cicero, greed is a vice that afffects iustitia, but not in a radical way. Striving to increase one’s wealth is justifijied as long as it brings no harm to others, and as long it is not an expression of infijinite greed. According to Ambrose iustitia is unattainable, because its original form has been radically corrupted by greed. He rejects each striving for the increase of property as an expression of greed. Given the phenomenon of private property, it should be used to help people who are in need. Cicero defijines iustitia predominantly negatively. Ambrose connects iustitia and benefijicentia closely, by which iustitia gets a more positive image. Iustitia is only seen as pure in paradise and in eternal life, while in

18  Cf. E. Brunner, Gerechtigkeit, (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag 1943) 317: ‘Die bei vielen Kirchenvätern vorkommende Anschauung, schöpfungsgemäss sei nicht das Privat-, sondern das Gemeineigentum, stammt aus ihrem mönchischen Asketismus. Bei den Reformatoren ist überall das Privateigentum—obschon nirgends das unbegrenzte, absolute—selbstverständlich.’ [ET: Justice and the Social Order (U.K: Lutterworth Press, 1945)]. 19  Cicero: non nobis solum nati; Ambrose: aliis potius quam sibi nati. See Becker, Cicero und Ambrosius, 53f.

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between those two eras, we can strive for iustitia through acts of benefijicentia. Benefijicentia moreover forms the attack on avarice. According to Cicero, benefijicence is the virtue that appeals most to human nature, but he sees many caveats, as we mentioned: benefaction must really help and not harm, it must be proportional with regard to the resources of the benefactor, and the receiver must be dignifijied. We already saw above that, according to Ambrose, benefijicence is central within the concept of justice. But when he discusses it in more detail, it turns out that there is a precondition of benefijicence, which constitutes its real measure, viz. benevolentia: there has to be afffection from the side of the benefactor towards the receiver. This dimension is present in Cicero’s argument as well, but in a more concealed way.20 The emphasis on the distinction between afffection and act, then, is a new element in comparison with Cicero. According to Ambrose benevolentia is condicio sine qua non of benefijicentia.21 As to the cautiones: Ambrose does not use the term (although he does go into the matter), because the presupposed benevolence makes restrictions unnecessary. The emphasis on benevolentia is related to the end of Christian life (as is demonstrated in his discussion of the examples of Zacheus and of Ananias and Saphira): the fijinal judgement and eternal life. While Cicero considers one’s own conscience as judge, according to Ambrose God is the judge.22 According to Ambrose the reward is eternal life with God, whereas according to Cicero it is the glory that society brings to the virtuous man. After this brief analysis, I will now go into the matter in some more detail. In the view of Ambrose, justice is the standard, the ideal; it is characterized by sharing all goods in communal life without envy. In earthly life, therefore, justice is not realizable but only approachable.23 This is caused by the change in defijinition with respect to Cicero: the virtue of justice

20  benevolentia erga nos in the discussion of the third cautio; and voluntate benefijica benivolentia movetur, Cicero, De offfijiciis, II,32. 21  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,144. 22  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,147. 23  Cf. in modern times the work of Reinhold Niebuhr.

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is seen as reaching out gracefully, even to wrongdoers and the privatization of goods is seen as a usurpation of public goods. This change in defijinition causes a shift in emphasis from justice to benefijicence. Justice cannot be realized, but benefijicence as the correction of private ownership, is seen as the way to ‘heaven’. Ambrose is a pilgrim who is expecting justice and therefore concentrates on benefijicence as the way to reach justice. For Cicero benefijicence is mainly a matter of private philanthropy, while for Ambrose it is unequivocally an exercise of stewardship. Precisely on the point where Cicero is cautious, Ambrose broadens the mind. One should not give away too much, says Cicero. “Why not?”, Ambrose asks. Likewise, “Is the receiver of well-doing a person of dignity?” Cicero asks. And Ambrose answers that everyone is of course dignifijied enough to be helped out! Over against the liberality of the ‘grandseigneur’ (Pohlenz) here the working caritas appears on the stage. Notice that this diffference in attitude and defijinition forms a major turning point in the history of Western social morality, because it leads to ‘a transformation of ideals of private benefijicence into systems of public benefaction, made possible on a large scale by ecclesial organization.’24 But even more can be said. Ambrose does not only shift the emphasis to benefijicence, he has also added a new element: benevolentia. Not only does the act count, the will as inner disposition that generates the act counts as well, and even more so. This has to do with the belief in a fijinal judgement of the person: where admittance to the fijinal goal is at stake. The person is not just the sum of his acts, it is the heart as the hidden place, where God is being met, which assembles all aspects of a person who responds to his creator. And the end of life carries also the aspect of remuneratio, the reward in eternal life, whereas in the Stoic tradition, the reward is seen as ‘limited’ (seen from the perspective of Ambrose) to the satisfaction and fame that a virtuous life provides.25 Spritual Resources This point leads us to the question by which spiritual sources the two men live.

24  James Gafffney, “Comparitive Religious Ethics in the Service of Historical Interpretation: Ambrose’s Use of Cicero”, Journal of Reliious Ethics 9 (1981) 43f. 25  Cf. Becker, Cicero and Ambrose, 78f.

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The prime spiritual source for Cicero in the Stoic tradition, of course, is life itself as it actually occurs; the world and nature that encompasses our human lives. We have to ‘deal’ with life. The function of philosophy is to provide us with knowledge of life by reasoning. This is what ‘most closely relates to human nature. For all of us feel the pull that leads us to desire to learn and to know.’26 O philosophy, thou guide of life, o thou explorer of virtue and expeller of vice! (. . .) To thee I fly for refuge, from thee I look for aid, to thee I entrust myself, as once in ample measure, so now wholly and entirely. Moreover, one day well spent and in accordance with thy lessons is to be preferred to an eternity of error.27

What strikes me as possibly Cicero’s most basic conviction within this experience of nature is the necessity of devotion to public life that he feels, the commitment to the salus publica.28 In Offf. I,22 he quotes the ‘splendid words’ of Plato (IXth Letter, 358a): ‘We are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims for itself one part of our birth, and our friends another.’ This corresponds with the fact that he considers the social virtue as the most important one, as we saw above. And it is rooted in the belief that nature is structured as communal.29

All this includes a religious dimension as well, but we should take this as a rather vague aspect of Cicero’s personality. He endorses the conventional forms of religious life, although he does not show great commitment to them, and he tends to abstract from them a very general kind of religious conscience, ‘a vague deism’ that leads him straight on to philosophy.30 It is the world that is God. The world is virtuous. To live a religious life means

26

 Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,18.  ‘O vitae philosophia dux, o virtutis indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! (. . .) Ad te confugimus, a te opem petimus, tibi nos, ut antea magna ex parte, sic nunc penitus totosque tradimus. Est autem unus dies bene et ex preaceptis tuis actus peccanti immortalitati anteponendus.’ Tusculan Disputations, V, 5, Loeb, XVIII, J.E. King, Harvard 1971 Compare. this ‘unus dies’ with the one in Psalm 84:10: ‘For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere’! 28  Becker, Cicero and Ambrose, 211. Cf. in modern times Helmut Schmidt, Ausser Dienst, Műnchen 2008, 8. 29  Cf. Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,158f: ‘haec communitas, quae maxime est apta naturae’. 30  Andrew Lintott, Cicero as Evidence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 354–358; Cf. Beukers, Cicero’s godsdienstigheid [Cicero’s religiosity] (Nijmegen: Dekker en Van de Vegt, 1942), 200f. 27

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to Cicero to live a moral life, that is to say a life in which the virtues are practiced and the duties respected. 39: Therefore (the world) is wise, and consequently divine. 46: Now clearly nothing can be more excellent than the world. Nor can it be doubted that a living being endowed with sensation, reason and intelligence must excel a being devoid of those attributes; hence it follows that the world is a living being and possesses sensation, intelligence and reason; and this argument leads to the conclusion that the world is god.31

Now, when we look at Ambrose’s version of De offfijiciis for the way in which he explicitly introduces his spiritual resources, we fijind that he ‘imports faith under the sponsorship of prudence’, as Gafffney aptly writes.32 Ambrose connects to Cicero’s use of fijides, but whereas Cicero thereby refers to ‘in good faith’ in respect to contracts, Ambrose fijills the term with the personal God incarnated in Jesus Christ and then states: fundamentum iustitiae fijides.33 Thereby he provides the criterion missing in the Stoic logic to indicate clearly how men could fijind a basis for hope from the knowledge of the universe as it is.34 As a consequence, prudence, taken as trust in God, becomes the basic virtue with Ambrose, whereas for Cicero the social virtue is pre-eminent.35 We explicitly note that both have relations in their basis, and do not focus on the abstract self! Whereas Cicero connects the self right from its birth to other humans, Ambrose talks about prayer, and about our conscience where we open up to the encounter with God.36 And hence in Ambrose, faith in eternal life with God is predominant, which thus marks the real diffference with Cicero in the way life is experienced. Cicero would not

31

 ‘Mundus sapiens est igitur et propter ea deus.’ There must be something ‘qua nihil sit melius’. Mundo autem nihil est melius; nec dubium, quin, quod animans sit habeatque sensum et rationem et mentem, id sit melius quam id, quod iis careat. Ita efffijicitur animantem, sensus, mentis, rationis mundum esse compotem; qua ratione deum esse mundum concluditur.’ Cicero, De natura deorum, Loeb, XIX, H. Rackham(ed.) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) II, 39, 46, 47. 32  Gafffney, “Ambrose’s Use of Cicero”, 41. 33  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,142. 34  E. Vernon Arnold, 1958, quoted by Gafffney, “Ambroses Use of Cicero”, 41f. 35  Becker, Cicero and Ambrose, 39, cf. Ambrose I,252f. At this point Cicero deviates from the older Stoic tradtion in which wisdom was the fundamental virtue. 36  Ambrose, De offfijiciis, III,1: ‘David the prophet taught us that we should go about in our heart as though in a large house; that we should converse with it as with some trusted companion.’ Cf. Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 305.

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understand the metaphor of life as a pilgrimage, because he is totally at home in the present world. Even so, in all this, we should not lose sight of a fundamental line of correspondence between Ambrose and Cicero. Like Cicero, Ambrose starts out with a careful consideration of the natural order. The fact that this brings him, unlike Cicero, to the confession of God as the creator and of his providence, and of the fijinal judgment,37 does not keep him from following the path of Cicero’s book as closely as possible. We could even say, I think, that Ambrose continues to feel at home in Cicero’s reasoning, even though he provides sufffijicient evidence of the fundamental diffference that Christian faith brings about in his philosophical scheme. Note that Ambrose’s most catching words are also found with Cicero: pietas fundamentum est virtutum omnium.38 Even so, Cicero has piety for ancestors in mind, and Ambrose piety for God. Cicero’s Review of Ambrose, Briefly Fantasized39 Now, how would Cicero respond to the changes that Ambrose proposes? This question is of course impossible to answer with any degree of probability. It is an anachronistic question, and it is a question on the existential level where outcomes are unpredictable anyway. Yet I would like to fantasize about it briefly. I do not want to speculate on the question whether Cicero would be impressed by Ambrose’s message about Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the eternal life that he announces, because I believe in the disorienting power of this message. We can only assume that within Cicero’s framework it would be normal for him to be skeptical about the idea of a personal God incarnate in one man. Given his trust in the power of philosophy and the vagueness of his religious involvement, it seems that he would not have taken Paul seriously, if he would have arrived in Rome in Cicero’s days. But let’s leave that possibility open—just like we hope that present skeptics could be touched by the gospel! When we take a look, then, at several elements in Ambrose’s argumentation where he deviates from Cicero, there are some that are so closely connected with the gospel, that we can hardly imagine that Cicero would 37

 Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,124.  [piety is the foundation of all the virtues] Ambrose, De offfijiciis, I,126, Cicero, Pro Plancio, 12, 29; cf. Becker, Cicero and Ambrose, 33. 39  I want to thank my Leiden colleague Rick Benjamins for his comments on this risky enterprise. 38

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approve of them without having converted to Jesus. I am thinking in particular of the belief in grace for sinners as belonging to the concept of justice. And also, the focus on benevolence as the nucleus of benefijicence must have been very strange to Cicero, because it presupposes a conversation with God within the inner life, which is practically unknown to Cicero. And then there is the matter of private ownership (usurpatio versus occopatio), as well as the matter of benefijicence as correction of this private ownership versus the restriction of benefijicence to ‘charity’ (connected with the cautiones). Considering the fact that Cicero views the community as the basic structure of nature,40 and that he himself is not attracted by luxury,41 I could imagine that Cicero would be prepared to correct his concept of justice into a more social one–or to put it diffferently: to institutionalize benefijicence. Touched by Ambrose’s moving argument, he might say farewell to his cautiones, and propose a more positive content for justice than by just stating ‘do no harm’. In modern terms: under the influence of Ambrose, Cicero would not necessarily have been a protagonist of individualistic liberalism, but rather some kind of socialist. Conclusion Confronted with the era of Ambrose, Cicero would certainly have been disappointed with the diminution of political commitment among citizens. The change from Republic to Empire had discouraged people to engage in public discourse. Salus publica suprema lex, a famous adage of Cicero (De legibus), was no longer what philosophers would preach. Their interest was more of a mystical nature. And by the era of Ambrose’s life, rich people would no longer consider it an honour to invest in public buildings. Cicero would certainly also be aware that Ambrose would never agree with him that the salus publica must be seen as the lex suprema. But, on the other hand, he certainly would appreciate—and even be surprised— that a bishop in the totally diffferent context of the fourth century takes up his argument and perseveres in carefully considering all his defijinitions, for Ambrose shows more interest in the salus publica than many philosophers

40

 Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,159, cf. also the text cited earlier in note 12.  Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,106: ‘If we wish to reflect on the excellence and worthiness of our nature, we shall realize how dishonorable it is to sink into luxury’. 41

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of Cicero’s own time. What both men have in common is that submission lies at the bottom of their hearts, the one to philosophy, the other to God. This submission generates in both men a mission to be at service to the salus publica. The fact that Cicero, driven by his love of philosophy, recommends a disdain for human matters,42 and that Ambrose, driven by his love of God, strongly believes in eternal life, did not keep them from engaging in social life—on the contrary, it inspired them to think thoroughly about social life, and to take a stance accordingly. In the end the resident Cicero might have made friends with the pilgrim Ambrose, while he would perhaps not have felt at home with many other people in late antiquity, considering them rather as fugitives, leaving the public square to the imperial administration. I take it that after all the stranger Van de Beek would join the pilgrim Ambrose, and that he would even greet Cicero and discuss public matters with him, preferring his company to the company of mystic fugitives. Or wouldn’t he?

42  Cicero, De offfijiciis, I,13: humanarum rerum contemptio (!) [contempt toward all human afffairs].

“IT SHONE WITH THE GLORY OF THE LORD”: ON BEAUTY AND CHRISTIAN TELOS Rian Venter What Kind of Telos? Questions about a fijinal end to the history of the cosmos continue to fascinate people. Whether it is prompted by the quest for fundamentalist certainty, or the anticipated ecological disaster, or the faith-science dialogue—it remains one of life’s ‘big questions’, signifying the selftranscending nature of mankind. The Christian faith as a comprehensive tradition has always advanced confessional statements about ultimate matters, such as origin and end. This article is interested in whether two fijields of study which have received considerable attention by theology— eschatology and aesthetics—have intersected fruitfully enough. During its two thousand year journey, Christian theology has developed sophisticated proposals about the afterlife. The question is whether these visions have paid sufffijicient attention to beauty as a primary quality of the end. This exploration will focus on the relation between telos and beauty. The working assumption is that beauty may allow theology to probe with greater depth the horizon of the end, and may potentially disclose a fruitful way of informing an ethic based on hope. The argument will proceed in fijive moves. A brief historical section will seek theological precedents to the question. A short hermeneutical reflection will set some parameters for an eventual constructive proposal. To develop a systematic view on telos and beauty, attention to Scripture and theology is necessary. Paragraph four offfers a concise reading of a relevant biblical passage: the Book of Revelation’s vision of the end in terms of glory. The central role of beauty in the Early Church will be pointed out; this will be followed by a reading of two prominent Reformed theologians who courageously spoke about God in terms of beauty. The article ends with some proposals. The aim is to make a small contribution to a Christian answer about the nature of the end.

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‘Heaven’ is arguably the best shorthand description of the Christian telos. Simplistically put—at the end of history with the return of Christ, faithful believers will ‘go to heaven’, a ‘place’ of eternal happiness in the presence of God. The complication for theological reflection is that heaven as central symbol denoting Christian hope does not have stable and uniform content. Theology with a historical consciousness has become increasingly aware that there are a great variety of heavens envisioned by Christian thinkers, most often the product of social and cultural conditions. It is fashionable to speak of the history of heaven. A typical example is the informative work by McDannell and Lang: Heaven: A History,1 which traces the changing imaginings of the Christian telos. Looking for patterns amidst the rich diversity of notions of eternity, McDannell and Lang identifijied two major models: a theocentric and an anthropocentric image.2 The one focuses exclusively on God, with an emphasis on contemplation; the other one has a much greater emphasis on sensuality and on social relations and activity. Throughout history the eschatological imagination vacillated between these two directions, with ever new confijigurations. They are emphatic that at stake was not a simplistic choice between wishful thinking and biblical faithfulness, but rather diverging needs and creativity. Two specifijic traditions require brief attention. To “see God’s face” is a biblical motif, attested in various layers of canonical tradition. Although it is forbidden (e.g. Ex 33:20), some texts imply that the holy and pure may see His face (e.g. Ps 11:7, Matt 5:8), and it is given as an eschatological promise (e.g. 1 John 3:2, Rev 22:3–4). Too often the discussion centred on whether the seeing is literal or fijigurative, and whether it is possible at all. Aquinas’s notion of the beatifijic vision has been influential in history since Medieval times.3 According to him, ultimate happiness can result only from intellectual contemplation of the divine. Employing a visual metaphor, he referred to a unique kind of seeing, unmediated by the senses—a direct knowledge of God. The highest vision would bring the highest happiness, hence beatifijic vision.

1  See Colleen McDannell & Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History. 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 2  For a good summary of their work, see McDannell & Lang, Heaven, 353–358. 3  See McDannell & Lang, Heaven, 88–93.

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The question may be put whether these two long traditions of seeking His face, and the notion of a beatifijic vision, have adequately given expression to beauty as corollary to the visual metaphor. The delight of the eye should correspond to the beauty of the Divine. In the various images of the Christian telos, this I believe has not received enough attention. In recent scholarship, two recent proposals deserve closer scrutiny. Viladesau connects two areas of contemporary interest: that of theosis and beauty, which have seen an eclipse after the high scholastic period.4 He points out that much of the content of beauty is contained in the idea of God’s glory, and discusses the important contributions of Barth and Von Balthasar in this regards. Theosis means, to Viladesau, becoming beautiful in the way that God is beautiful. The failure by him to link beauty explicitly to a fijinal eschatological horizon, is redressed by Cootsona who develops intentionally a teleology in terms of beauty.5 Beauty as telos is, according to him, a common quest for both theology and science. As a Reformed theologian, he believes that God’s glory, which includes divine beauty, constitutes the ultimate goal of creation. Beauty as telos, provides a basis for dialogue among scientists, theologians, philosophers and artists. Hermeneutics and Responsible Eschatological Imagining Situating the central theme in the larger discourse on Christian hope is but one step towards developing a persuasive argument. The very nature of the question under investigation and the perennial danger of projecting one’s own interests into the notion of an ultimate end, requires a careful account of the process of interpretation. In his monumental work on the history of the afterlife in Western religion, the conclusions of Segal are rather disturbing.6 Imaginings of heaven throughout history have been socially determined. Notions of the afterlife have benefijited specifijic social classes, and tended to mirror social goals: “The notion of heaven and the afterlife reflects what is most valuable to culture”.7 Despite the fact that this militates against the literal truth of these notions, Segal still values

4

 See Richard Viladesau, “Theosis and Beauty”, Theology Today 65 (2008), 180–190.  See Gregory S. Cootsona, “The Telos of Beauty: A Common Quest for Theologians and Scientists”, The Global Spiral 9/10 (2009), no pages—e-publication of Metanexus Institute. 6  Alan F. Segal, Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 697–731. 7  Segal, Afterlife, 710. 5

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these constructions as expressions of ultimate signifijicance. Notions of heaven are fijinally based on understandings of transcendence. The interplay between ideas and societal values cannot be easily dismissed. When this is linked to postmodern concerns about knowledge and power, and to the constructionist character of human language and its intrinsic metaphoric nature, one realizes how crucial epistemological self-examination becomes, especially regarding eschatological investigation. The very nature of human knowledge and language requires a critical hermeneutical consciousness when truth-claims about fijinal destiny are made. The seminal essay by Rahner on The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions has rendered a valuable service in articulating the contours of such a consciousness.8 He stresses that eschatological knowledge is the experience of God’s salvifijic action in Jesus Christ: “Christ himself is the hermeneutical principle of all eschatological assertions”.9 Following Rahner, several scholars have started to explicate theological principles which control eschatological exploration.10 In this article, and for the question being considered about telos and beauty, the following fijive hermeneutical considerations will apply to account for responsibility in theological construction: the triune identity of the Christian God; the surplus of meaning in the canonical traditions; the ethical impact of theological construals; the interdisciplinary nature of theology; and the dialectic of the imagination. These will be briefly explained. How one understands the end will be fundamentally informed by one’s vision of God. Walls is correct when he asserts: “Now if the hope of heaven is a function of belief in God, then how heaven is conceived accordingly will be shaped by how God is understood”.11 The identity of the Christian God as triune, is the primary source for eschatological exploration. This obviously includes the central importance of Jesus Christ and the Holy

  8  Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” in Theological Investigations vol. iv (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), 323–346.   9  Rahner, “Hermeneutics”, 342f. 10  See for example Christoph Schwöbel, “Last Things First? The Century of Eschatology in Retrospect”, in The Future as God’s Gift (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 217–241, esp. 237–241, edited by David Fergusson & Marcel Sarot. See also Richard Bauckham, “Emerging Issues in Eschatology in the Twenty-First Century”, in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 671–689, esp. 672, edited by Jerry L. Walls. 11  Jerry L. Walls, “Heaven” in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2008), 400.

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Spirit. The question in this article is whether the character of the end could be determined by the beauty of this God. Biblical traditions are authoritative for theology. The diversity of intracanonical voices should be reflected in systematic theological endeavour. The question is whether motifs like beauty are part of these eschatological traditions. Visions of the afterlife have served as powerful resources for moral formation.12 Eschatology and ethics can never be divorced. The question is what potential ethical impact beauty could have. The interdisciplinary nature of theology has become increasingly important in recent years. Some of the most fascinating work on eschatology is being done in conversation with natural science.13 Visions of the end have been explored by artists throughout history. The question is not so much about the End and Art, but whether aesthetic reflection on beauty as such can heuristically open new perspectives on the Christian telos. The great transcendentals—truth, goodness and beauty—have played a major role in theology; the question is whether beauty has informed Christian eschatology productively enough. By proposing that questions about the fijinal end be engaged by human imagination, is to make a critical statement. The very mystery of God and the elusive nature of the future can never be addressed by propositional cognition. Eschatology requires imagination. The claim by Avis that “the role of imagination is crucial in understanding the true nature of Christianity”14 is uniquely applicable to eschatology. Only a consistent trinitarian imagination can sufffijiciently inform one about the end. The human imagination is at the same time constrained and inspired by the inexhaustible identity of this God. The end is the fulfijilment of the drama of this God with creation. The question is whether the imagination can fathom something of the beauty of the surprising faithfulness of the triune God to his promises. Revelation, the New Earth and the Glory of God The description of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation, especially chapters 21:1–22:5, is relevant to the basic thesis of this article. At stake is

12

 Walls, “Heaven”, 408.  See for example the volume edited by John Polkinghorne & Michael Welker, The End of the World and the Ends of God (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2000). 14  Paul Avis, God and the Creative Imagination (London: Routledge, 1999), 3. 13

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not only the telos according to the Johannine community, but the very position of the book in the Christian canon renders it a unique status: here is a rich symbolic rendering of the content of the ultimate Christian hope as such. Heuristically the text, with its surplus of meaning, opens the possibility to the eschatological imagination to explore some intimations of the fijinal telos of the creation. Amidst the myriad interpretations of Revelation, contemporary sociorhetorical readings have proven to be particularly helpful.15 Rhetorically, the text should be situated in a context of Empire, and the conflictual dilemmas experienced by a small Christian community in Asia Minor at the end of the fijirst century. An issue was the question of allegiance and accommodation. The rhetorical aim was obvious: perseverance and resistance, and the rhetorical strategy employed was ingenuous: the construction of an apocalyptic world, with a focus on the central symbol of power—the throne. With impressive artistic and imaginative skill, the prophet moved the original hearers to remain faithful, by promising the victory of the One on the throne and the Lamb who has been slain. The culmination of this apocalyptic drama is to be found in the vision of the new heaven and the new earth. The features of the New Jerusalem are deeply moving and intellectually striking. It is radically theocentric—the end is God and his unmediated presence; there is no need for a temple. It is fully inclusive: it is populated by the ‘nations’. It is remarkably integrated; the river of life flows from the throne and the tree of life heals the nations. It is impressively material; the splendour of the nations have been honoured. What is often overlooked in New Testament interpretation of this passage is aesthetic contrast as rhetorical devise. That Revelation is a tale of two cities—Babylon versus the New Jerusalem—is widely recognized,16 but the most obvious is often overlooked: Babylon is ugly and the New Jerusalem is beautiful. Rev 21 is steeped in aesthetic language and motifs: the New Jerusalem has been “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (vs 2); “it shone with the glory of God” (vs 11); “the glory of God gives it light” (vs 23); the “splendour”, and the “glory and honour of the nations” (vs 24, 26) have been brought into it. These three motifs—the

15  For an excellent example, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision of a Just World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). 16  See for example Jan A. du Rand, “The New Jerusalem as Pinnacle of Salvation; Text (Rev 21:1–22:5) and Intertext”, Neotestamentica 38/2 (2004), 288 for detail about the antithetical parallelism between the two cities.

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wedding, the glory of God, the cultural artefacts of the nations—together with the excessive reference to precious gemstones (vs 11, 18–21) amount to an aestheticed vision of the telos. As a vision, it appeals to the eye. The end will be utterly beautiful. In a provocative article, Moore raised the question who the God of Revelation is.17 According to him, here God is not revealed through Jesus Christ as much as through the Roman emperor, and views the God of Revelation as a hypermasculine God. The rhetoric of Revelation does not entail countering the imperial cult with yet a more magnifijicent heavenly cult as Moore contends,18 but rather redefijining the central symbols. Barr has recently called attention to the pervasive irony in the Book of Revelation;19 the alternative empire is in fact an ironic empire, it does not reinscribe Roman hegemony. The glory of the God of Revelation fijinds its face in the slaughtered lamb, in a throne with a rainbow and a river of life. This God is beautiful in his self-surrender and his love. This inversion of conventional notions of glory deserves careful attention. Historical Voices on God and Beauty The interpretation of ‘glory’ in terms of aesthetics, and then specifijically as beauty is not an obvious theological reflex. Often glory is not even mentioned when the traditional divine attributes are treated by systematic theologians; and when it is discussed, the aesthetic dimension is lamentably neglected.20 For the thrust of the argument, this should be pursued more thoroughly. In this limited space brief attention will be given to the Patristic Era and then two Reformed theologians—Edwards and Barth— will be discussed for their pioneering work on the glory of God and beauty. This does not mean that others have not sensed that glory refers to beauty. For example, Moltmann has interpreted Rev 21–22 exactly in

17  See Stephen D. Moore, “The Beatifijic Vision as a Posing Exhibition: Revelation’s Hypermasculine Deity”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 60 (1995), 27–55. 18  Moore, “The Beatifijic Vision”, 49. 19  David, R. Barr, “John’s Ironic Empire”, Interpretation 63/1 (2009), 20–30. 20  This can be clearly seen in the recent study of divine attributes by Christopher R.J. Holmes, Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes (New York: Peter Lang, 2007). This study of Barth, Jüngel and Krötke focuses on the attributes with special attention to glory. Although the issue of beauty is mentioned in a treatment of Barth, in a summarizing conclusion the aesthetic is totally ignored.

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this manner, viewing glory as the “inexhaustible beauty” of God.21 The magisterial work of the Roman Catholic scholar Hans Urs von Balthasar cannot be discussed here, but it should be mentioned that he—arguably more than anyone else—has recognized not only the aesthetic quality of the ‘glory’ of the Lord, but the primacy of beauty in understanding the nature of the Christian Faith.22 .

Patristic Era It should be pointed out that beauty as description of God was part of Christian imagination from the Patristic Era. When the question of the knowledge of God was raised, primacy was given to the metaphor of seeing. Seeking the face of God, seeing God was a dominant motif in earliest thinking. Wilken correctly emphasizes that beauty corresponds to seeing: “many of the key terms used of God’s self-disclosure, words such as glory, splendor, light, image and face, have to do with the delight of the eye”.23 The pleasure of the eye naturally evokes notions of beauty. The ‘vision of God’ eventually became one of the great Christian themes, especially in Christian expectation of the fijinal end. The reflection of the Early Church on beauty and the divine was at the same time deeply influenced by Platonic philosophy, but also radically innovative. Notions like purifijication as requirement for any seeing, betrays her indebtedness to Greek influence. On the other hand the incarnation and the crystallization of Trinitarian faith wrought an essential change.

21  See Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God (London: SCM, 1996), 317fff for a most perceptive treatment of the New Jerusalem. He explicitly emphasizes the aesthetic dimension of cosmic eschatology. 22  The work on theology and beauty by this Swiss scholar is arguably the most important produced in the 20th century. With his multi-volume trilogy—The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama and Theo-Logic—he inverted the Kantian epistemological order: he posited aesthetics before ethics and reason. The true and the good should be informed by beauty. He distinguishes between form and expression; form is always material and particular. Thus his vision is deeply christocentric: the beauty of divine love is seen in the passion of the cross. Ultimately, beauty is the glory of kenosis. For a good secondary overview see: Oliver Davies, “The theological aesthetics” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 131–142, edited by Edwards T. Oakes & David Moss. For a balanced assessment from a Protestant perspective see Lee Barrett, “Von Balthasar and Protestant Aesthetics: a Mutually Corrective Conversation”, in Theological Aesthetics after Von Balthasar (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 97–105, edited by Oleg V. Bychkov & James Fodor. 23  Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 20.

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The Son is the image of the invisible God, the light of the truth. The Spirit, instead of the Platonic forms, communicates the beauty of God.24 Especially the thought of Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius profoundly influenced later generations. Brief attention can be given to each. — The well-known words from the Confessions (10.27)—“Late have I loved You, Beauty so ancient and so new”—are usually cited to underline the identifijication of beauty with God by Augustine. The theological importance of aesthetics for interpreting Augustine has been recognized.25 An appreciation of beauty in the temporal, sensible realm as revelation of the Supreme Beauty—God—served to modify Platonic dualism in his theology. What is beautiful in creation derives its beauty solely from Ultimate Beauty. This gives beauty an objective and ontological status. The beauty of the Son, as based on His ability to reflect, image, and represent the Father has been especially influential in later aesthetics. The critical phrase here is ‘beautiful form in the image’ as found in the De Trinitate (6.10.11).26 Beauty is associated with the personal relations of procession. — Pseudo-Dionysius might represent the most developed reflection on beauty in the Patristic Era. Especially in The Divine Names a certain synthesis between of Neo-Platonist, biblical and Patristic views are found. The Good and the Beautiful are the cause, source and goal of everything: “In short, every source, all preservation and ending, everything in fact, derives from the Beautiful and the Good”.27 Beauty is the ‘great creating cause’ of all harmony and splendor. Jonathan Edwards The work of the eighteenth-century New England Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is surprisingly of particular relevance to twentyfijirst-century theology. One of his many intellectual achievements deserves attention: his consistent thinking about God in terms of beauty. Farley even claims that in the literary output of Edwards “beauty is more central and more pervasive than in any other text in the history of Christian

24

 For a brief summary of the aesthetics of the Early Church, see Gesa E. Thiessen, Theological Aesthetics: A Reader (London: SCM, 2004), 9–13. 25  See the standard secondary source on Augustine in this regard: Carol Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). 26  For a full discussion see Oleg V Bychkov, “What does beauty have to do with the Trinity? From Augustine to Duns Scotus”, Franciscan Studies 66 (2008), 206–208. 27  Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 79.

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theology”.28 A variety of words that belong to the semantic fijield of beauty is found in his work: excellency, glory, symmetry, proportion, harmony, consent, union, love and holiness.29 His well-known defijinition of primary beauty is consent to being.30 At the centre of Edwards’s aesthetic vision is God, the beginning and end of beauty. Being and beauty are one in God. The very divinity of God should be understood in terms of beauty. The traditional divine perfections must be viewed in this light. For Edwards, there is a close connection between beauty and holiness. Holiness is the sum of the moral perfections. For Edwards, beauty and the divine glory are virtually identical; glory is a more comprehensive term than holiness and includes all the good in God; beauty conveys what is peculiar to this glory.31 The divine majesty was for him a lovely rather than an awesome majesty. According to Edwards, beauty is inherently relational; simplicity cannot qualify for being beautiful; beauty requires complexity: “Again, we have shown that one alone cannot be excellent, inasmuch as, in such case, there can be no consent. Therefore, if God is excellent, there must be a plurality in God; otherwise, there can be no consent in him”.32 The world of Edwards was one of personal relationships. The perfection, the excellency, the beauty of God is found in the loving and harmonious relations of consent in the triune life. Only where there is sociality, complex harmony and consent, does beauty emerge: “His infijinite beauty is his infijinite mutual love of himself ”.33 With his major study on beauty in the thought of Edwards, Delattre highlights the special role of the Holy Spirit.34 The Holy Spirit is God’s eternal consent to being; the Holy Spirit is God’s intra-trinitarian love. The Holy Spirit ís the beauty of God.35 In Edwards, beauty has both an objective and subjective dimension. Beauty as trinitarian perfection and beauty as gift to creation should be experienced. The pressing issue of his day—the nature of genuine religious experience— received light from this perspective. Mitchell emphasised that beauty is

28

 Edward Farley, Faith and Beauty: A Theological Aesthetic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 43.  See Louis J. Mitchell, Johathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2003), esp 1–15 on the language of beauty. 30  Jonathan Edwards, Scientifijic and Philosophical Writings. WJE Online vol. 6 (New Haven: Jonathan Edwards Center, 2008), 336. Ed. Wallace E. Anderson. 31  Roland A. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1968/2006), 136. 32  Jonathan Edwards, The ‘Miscellanies’ (Entry nos a–z, aa–zz, 1–500). WJE Online vol. 13 (New Haven: Jonathan Edwards Centre, 2008), 284. 33  Edwards, Scientifijic, 363. 34  Delattre, Beauty, 152–156. 35  Edwards, Miscellanies, 293. 29

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the structure of religious experience. The sense of the heart is “an experience of God’s beauty that is manifested in beautiful afffections”.36 The life of the Christian is a life of beauty, experienced and embodied. Primary beauty becomes the foundation of all virtue and ethics. True virtue is nothing but “benevolence to being”.37 The contribution of Edwards is wide-ranging and there is increasing appreciation for his work today. For theological Aesthetics, his consistent reflection on God in terms of beauty, the equation of glory and beauty, the critical importance of relationality, the centrality of the Holy Spirit and the reconceptualization of Spirituality and Ethics informed by beauty— all deserve careful attention. Karl Barth For an understanding of glory in terms of beauty, the signifijicance of Karl Barth (1886–1968) cannot be stressed enough. The treatment of glory is part of his discussion of the perfections of God.38 For the focus of this article, some of his emphases are particularly relevant. ‘Glory’ refers to the fullness of God’s deity, the sum of all divine perfections.39 It is the truth, the power and act of God’s self-demonstration. This super-abundance is shared and communicated. Glory refers to God’s power, but contains something which is not covered by it; God is more than power. The missing element in God’s glory is beauty. Barth is well aware of the neglect of the category ‘beauty’ as a description of God in the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy. In his treatment of beauty, Barth utilizes some provisos and associations which one should take note of. It is unjustifijiable to establish beauty as denominator for all the knowledge of God, as it has no independent signifijicance in the Bible. It is a subordinate and auxiliary idea to achieve a specifijic clarifijication of the glory of God.40 Beauty is the form of God’s glory. Thus Barth’s preferred manner of speaking is, “God is ‘also’ beautiful”.41 Because the glory of God is efffective, it awakens joy, desire and pleasure. For this very reason, God is worthy of love—He is

36  Louis J. Mitchell, “The Theological Aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards”, Theology Today 64 (2007), 42 no 26. 37  Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings. WJE Online 8 (New Haven: Jonathan Edwards Centre, 2008), 571. 38  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1957), 640–677. 39  Barth, Dogmatics II/1,643. 40  Barth, Dogmatics II/1,653. 41  Barth, Dogmatics II/1,655.

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beautiful.42 Beauty is here explicitly associated with enjoyment by Barth. A pre-conceived idea of beauty is not operative here; we should learn from God what beauty is: “he is the basis and the standard of everything that is beautiful and of all ideas of the beautiful”.43 It is critical to note that the persuasive form of the divine being, that is the beauty of God, is connected to relationality by Barth. God is in Himself relationship, the basis and prototype of all relationship. The triunity of God creates the form of the divine being. The plurality of the divine mode of being in perichoretic relations is the form which is radiant, creates joy, attracts and is beautiful: “the triunity of God is the secret of his beauty”.44 In a typical Barthian manner, beauty also receives strong Christological determination. The beauty of God is not only seen in the incarnation and the self-condescension of God, but also in the unity and diffferentiation of the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. The brief summary of Barth’s perspectives obviously cannot do justice to his rich treatment and fijine nuancing. However, a number of insights have crystallized: glory and beauty cannot be divorced; glory generates positive experiences, and beauty and ecstatic self-giving relationships are intimately linked. Beauty is radically informed by trinitarian and Christological relations. Gathering Fragments In a horizon of postmodern sensitivities, one is fortunately relieved from the demand to formulate fijinal and totalizing conclusions. The suggestion by Tracy that we are merely gathering fragments is delightfully helpful.45 In this concluding section such fragments on telos and beauty can be identifijied. Beauty has been marginalized in theology and eschatology. Despite commendable work by a number of thinkers, the theological retrieval of the aesthetic remains an incomplete task. The resulting impoverishment of such neglect is conspicuous in reflection,46 especially in eschatological

42

 Barth, Dogmatics II/1,651.  Barth, Dogmatics II/1,656. 44  Barth, Dogmatics II/1,661. 45  David Tracy, “Fragments: The Spiritual Situation of Our Times” in God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 170–181. 46  Farley, Beauty, 118 identifijies a number of ways in which theology has been impoverished, e.g. the neglect of the category satisfaction and the primacy given to literalism over metaphor and mystery. 43

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exploration. Although the Christian tradition has recognized the motif of vision, a full aesthetic development is still outstanding. The cardinal insight by the few, and talented, theologians who show appreciation for the reality of the aesthetic, point to the beauty of the trinitarian identity of God. Entrance to the mystery of God’s glory is found when the doors of trinitarian and aesthetic modes of thinking are unlocked. And this has crucial ramifijications for probing the ultimate end: the end is God, the end is the triune God, the end is the beauty of the life of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. True beauty, Hart argues aptly, is the “termless dynamism of the Trinity’s life”.47 When the end is viewed from this perspective, content and form coalesce. The end is the revelation, the manifestation of the glory of the triune God. The end is the celebration of participation in this inexhaustible mystery. It is a gift of hospitality to the very communal life of God. A particular quality of relationship becomes paramount. The end is beautiful because it is permeated by love. This is the primordial face of the end: a community of love, and of beauty. This acceptance into the triune life of God, is the triumph of His salvation. The play of soteriological metaphors comes to an end. Reconciliation, deifijication, liberation and redemption assume the face of beauty. Maybe glorifijication conveys something of the transformation into the beauty of the triune God. Bauckham is arguably correct: a fully Trinitarian eschatology is still an incomplete task.48 Much has been written on Christ as the End. But a consistent pneumatologically informed eschatology has not yet been developed. The fijinal end as glorifijication, as participating in the beauty of the divine loving relations is the creative gift of the Spirit. Spirit and end, Spirit and beauty belong together.49 The Spirit as love establishes selfgifting relations. A pneumatologically determined telos also addresses a perennial question in eschatology: the tedium of immortality.50 A telos viewed along trinitarian and aesthetic lines is not tedious at all. Such an end is marked

47

 See David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infijinite (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 177.  Bauckham, Emerging Issues, 672. 49  See the important suggestions by Patrick Sherry, Spirit and Beauty 2nd ed. (London: SCM, 2002), 142–159. 50  See e.g. Jeremy J. Wisnewski, “Is the Immortal Life Worth Living?”, International Journal for Philosophy and Religion 58 (2005), 27–36. 48

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by the inexhaustibility, the ever-increasing possibilities of love. Relations in such an end grow in complexity. Approaching the telos as beauty, addresses another question: what level and nature of cognition is appropriate for the ultimate end with unmediated relations? Both Edwards and Barth realizes that beauty is encompassing; beauty speaks the language of sensibility, of joy and of desire. Beauty is accompanied by creativity and open-endedness. Maybe beauty requires the category of worship; maybe the language of music, as Jenson so intriguingly suggests: “The end is music”.51 Beauty releases truth from the narrow and sterile confijines of propositions. Viewing the end as the mystery of God’s welcoming and generous beauty, could potentially impact a corresponding notion of an ethic. The beauty of ecstatic relations, of self-surrendering love, could be mirrored in a world of greed, violence, and narcissism. An ugly world could be resisted and confronted by an alternative world: the world of the beauty of the triune God. Approaching the Christian hope of a fijinal end as beauty, suggests new avenues to questions of what is true and what is good. By informing our deepest quests by the living triune God, by the beauty of his surprising love, generates new possibilities for a cynical world. The Christian end is a beautiful life with a glorious God.

51  See Robert W. Jenson, “The End is Music” in: Edwards in Our Time (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 170f.

TEXT, TRADITION, THEOLOGY THE EXAMPLE OF THE BOOK OF JOEL Eep Talstra 1. Biblical Studies and Systematic Theology Some time earlier this year I was confronted with a comment on the theological impact of biblical scholarship. The remark was made during a friendly dialogue about exegesis by an expert in homiletics: ‘the mountain of exegetical analyses has given birth to a homiletical mouse.’ Occasionally, statements about the degree of cooperation between the various disciplines of theology are expressed in a somewhat more hopeful tone. However, to many theologians, it is a classical issue: once the exegetes have taken their time for extensive textual analysis, what can one do in systematic theology or in homiletics with their results? Thus, a next step is often expressed in a way similar to the following: ‘since the exegetes continue to have their difffijiculties in reaching agreement on the interpretation of particular texts, as systematic theologians we can’t affford to wait too long for useful answers, so we rather prefer to proceed reading the Bible along the methods of our own discipline.’ From my personal experience, when moving back and forth between desk and pulpit, there is truth in such critical comments, albeit not the fijinal truth. The question is whether it is correct to assume that some disciplines of theology exist just to produce the materials to be used, refijined and applied by other disciplines. It is to the credit of professor Bram van de Beek, to whom this contribution is offfered as a token of friendship, that he always was ready to postpone the request for directly applicable exegetical results in order to embark together with biblical scholars upon the reading of biblical texts as a common project. As a result, even in cases in which we did not easily agree on the answers, we had no problem in agreeing on the questions the texts themselves pose to us by their very form and history,. It is this experience, originating from our shared supervision of PhD projects, that I want to take as the starting point for some reflections on textual analysis and theology in this paper.

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The claim made by this paper is the following: Since biblical texts, as we have them, are the outcome of an ongoing interaction of textual transmission and theological reflection, it is impossible to divide the study of Bible and theology in such a way that one discipline would exclusively focus on textual transmission and another discipline on theological reflection. In my experience, systematic theology is aware, as much as biblical scholarship is, of the fact that biblical texts are the products of both design and transmission and show the signs of a complex interaction of reading and writing, a process of reception and production.1 The problem facing interdisciplinary work, however, is the assumption underlying the critical comments as those mentioned above: i.e. the request that the riddle of the historically grown complexity of biblical texts should be solved fijirst, before biblical exegesis can be usefully integrated into systematic or hermeneutical theology. I make rather the opposite claim: the historical complexity of biblical texts and their transmission is not to be considered a difffijiculty, external to theology or homiletics; instead, it is to be welcomed as an interesting and a fundamental characteristic of the Bible, a basic impulse to systematic theological thinking about history, revelation, God and Scripture. This means that the collaboration of systematic theology and historical critical biblical scholarship is a mutual requirement, since it fijits the characteristics of the texts themselves. I am aware of the fact that actual procedures of fijinancing academic research and the mechanisms of so-called quality control efffectively block much of the interdisciplinary collaboration I propose here, but now and then stubborn characters in theology ignore these factors and work hard in the research domain they actually share. 2. The Domain We Share: Language, History and Text The booklet of the prophet Joel, the discussion of its composition and the practice of its translation and reception may serve as a good example of the joy and profijit of interdisciplinary reading, discussion and interpretation. The book presents the interaction of a plurality of voices, in such a way that one has difffijiculties in establishing its textual composition or in understanding the situation and the background of the various voices, or even to determine how to translate certain verses. That may be clear from 1  Cf. K. Schmid, Literaturgeschichte des Alten Testaments. Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008).

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the example presented here: a few lines from Joel 2:18, a text on which I elaborate below. I present them in the New International Version and the New Revised Standard Version: 2:18 NIV: The Lord will be jealous . . . 2:23 NIV: He sends you abundant showers (cf. NBV 2004)

NRSV: Then the Lord became jealous . . . NRSV: He has poured down for you abundant rain. (cf. NBG 1951)

The question is why we fijind such diffferent translations of the same lines, one using future and present tense, while the other one uses past and perfect tense. What do these lines in Hebrew express: promises of what God will do or reports of what God has done? How do we determine that? Could this diffference of opinion not easily be solved by a study of Hebrew verbal syntax? In my view, that is indeed the case. In Hebrew both verse lines have a ‘wayyiqtol’, the so-called narrative tense that is used to refer to ‘past actions’ (i.e., actions prior to the moment of communication that the text represents). Should this not settle the matter and force us to agree upon the ‘past tense’ translation in the NRSV? But if so, then why does this diffference of interpretation―promise versus report―even exist? In the end I will argue that indeed knowledge of verbal syntax settles the question of grammatical and literary interpretation: in Joel 2 the ‘wayyiqtol’ also refers to ‘past actions’. But for the moment it is more important to use the contrasting translations as an example of the interaction of textual and systematic theological viewpoints in textual interpretation. As the translations in the NIV and NBV of Joel 2:18 as a ‘promise’ show, occasionally a broader, theological view of the overall textual composition simply overrules the primary linguistic signals presented by Hebrew morphology or syntax. Many exegetes consider Joel 2:18 as the basic turning point in the book.2 Several of them argue that we fijind divine judgement present in Joel 1 and in 2:1–17 (the land’s devastation by locusts), and from 2:18 on the text shifts to a divine action of salvation. So they translate: Yhwh will be jealous for his land.’ This rendering implies the overruling of the linguistic signals, not according to the views of systematic theologians, but according to the views of exegetes and translators themselves. The question

2  See the discussion in L.C. Allen, The Book of Joel (the New International Commentary on the OT), 1976 and J.L. Crenshaw, Joel. A new Translation with Introduction and Commentary [Anchor Bible] (New Haven/London, 1995). A diffferent view is expressed by C. van Leeuwen, Joël [Prediking van het Oude Testament] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1993).

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remains however of whether we really have reason to read the book of Joel from the perspective of a theology of judgement and salvation. In fact, there is no clue in the text to suggest that we should do so.3 Since one can observe that the exegetes also must struggle here with language and theology, one may conclude that the division of labour between biblical scholars and systematic theology does not appear to be that obvious after all. The texts force all of us to reconsider the methodological order of language and theology. Therefore, if this interaction of linguistic and of theological viewpoints actually is present in all disciplines, why not make it explicit in a common debate about text and method in which both biblical scholars and systematic theologians participate? In addition to this, one can observe that new options for cooperation are developing. A changing paradigm in exegetical methodology allows for more interdisciplinary reading. Biblical scholars are reconsidering the methodological order of language, history and theology.4 Previous generations of exegetes struggled with the historical complexity of biblical texts as much as today’s exegetes do. However, to them the history of texts and traditions was primarily a problem to be overcome before one could enter the domain of theology. Proper textual analysis, according to Steck, should try to distinguish between what in a text is historically limited and what in it is compelling or demanding.5 Only the latter can be made useful for doing ‘theology’. Comparable to this is the view expressed in an introduction to exegetical method by Fohrer, Hofffmann and others.6 They see it as the task of textual analysis ‘to zero in on a singular meaning of a text, i.e. to most likely understand how by one’s listening or reading the author can and will be understood.’ Exegesis, therefore, should test the validity of actual Bible reading in church and theology against a text’s original meaning. That agenda has no doubt become the place where the homiletic mouse quoted above was born. To avoid misunderstanding: in my view historical research and textual reconstruction remain fundamental 3  Joel has words for shame, fasting, turning and compassion, but no words for sin, guilt or forgiving. 4  E. Talstra, Oude en Nieuwe lezers. Een inleiding in de Methoden van Uitleg van het Oude Testament (Ontwerpen 2) (Kampen: Kok, 2002); chapter 3, p. 99fff. 5  O.H. Steck, Exegese des Alten Testaments. Leitfaden der Methodik (Neukirchen–Vluyn: 1971) (199313) = Old Testament Exegesis. A Guide to the Methodology [SBL Resources for Biblical Study 33], (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), pp. 162, 172. 6  G. Fohrer – H.W. Hofffmann e.a., Exegese des Alten Testaments, Einführung in die Methodik (UTB 267), (Heidelberg: 1973), pp. 23, 156; ‘um einen Text auf Eindeutigkeit ein zu engen, d.h. ihn möglichst so zu verstehen, wie ihn der Verfasser von seinen Hörern oder Lesern verstanden wissen konnte und wollte.’

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tasks for biblical exegesis. However, the theological agenda that used to come with it―to strip from the texts what is historically determined and fijind a unique meaning or general truth in them―has failed. That agenda prevented or even excused systematic and hermeneutical theology from fijinding any positive role for historical processes of text production and text reception in their thinking about God, revelation and the history of texts. Today’s biblical scholarship, for good reasons, continues to concentrate on historical research. But it also exhibits a much more constructive attitude to historical analysis of textual compositions. The recent introduction to Old Testament, ‘Literaturgeschichte’, by Konrad Schmid is witness to that. It shows how the agenda to argue backwards from historical complexity towards the desired original and unambiguous clarity of the author’s intentions has been changed into an agenda that demonstrates a real theological curiosity regarding processes of textual change, historical reorientation and inner biblical exegesis.7 Theology is not to be purifijied from those processes; rather these processes are theology.8 The actual debate on exegetical method creates a good opportunity for further interdisciplinary research, provided biblical scholarship and systematic theology both are ready to participate in this dialogue on method. That is important on both sides. First, since exegetes and translators themselves are in search of a proper balance of language, history and theology, their search for method in textual interpretation makes them also enter the realm of systematic theological questions. Second, since the literary and redactional complexity of biblical texts is not just a historically generated inconvenience exclusively to be solved by exegetes, systematic theology has to deal with it as a basic feature of the texts. As

7

 Konrad Schmid, Literaturgeschichte, 37fff., 55fff.  See: Chr. Hardmeier, ‘Die Textur als Gegenstand der Textbeschreibung und ihre Komponente’ [The textuality as opponent of text, TextWelten der Bibel entdecken. Grundlagen und Verfahren einer textpragmatischen Literaturwissenschaft der Bibel [Textpragmatische Studien zur Hebräischen Bibel 1/1], (Gütersloh, 2003), S. 78fff.; S. 59f. Elaborated in, for example, Hardmeier C., ‚Geschichte und Erfahrung in Jer 2–6. Zur theologischen Notwendigkeit einer geschichts- und erfahrungsbezogenen Exegese und ihre methodischen Neuorientierung‘ [Concerning the theological necessity of a historically and experientially engaged exegesis and its novel methodological orientation], Evangelische Theologie 56 (1996) 3–29. Also present in Chr. Hardmeier, Realitätssinn und Gottesbezug. Geschichtstheologische und erkenntnissanthropologische Studien zu Genesis 22 und Jeremia 2–6 [Reality sensibility and God oriented. Historical theology and cognitive anthropological studie of Genesis 22 and Jeremiah 2–6], [Biblisch-Theologische Studien 79] (Neukirchener Verlag: Neukirchen–Vluyn, 2006). 8

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such, it is therefore also as a basic feature of God’s speaking―not to be solved or transcended by the excuse that God is always greater than our language, but to be studied in collaboration. God is not hiding in or even behind human language; this is how God speaks. If that is the case, the interaction of theological disciplines simply is a requirement resulting from the very characteristics of the texts we study. It should not depend on the question of whether biblical scholars and systematic theologians can spare a free moment to study the Bible together, somewhere outside the world of offfijicially funded research projects and after the obligatory hunt for academic credit points. 3. Reading a Biblical Text Would cooperation of systematic theology and biblical scholarship in the domain of reading the book of Joel change the classical research questions? Clearly, as colleagues in dogmatics rightly observe, exegetes difffer quite strongly in opinion about how to read a prophetic book, such as Joel, as a literary and a theological composition. Is its origin pre exilic or post exilic?9 Is its composition expressing judgement or hope? Is it hope after judgement, and is this hope universal or is it for Judah and Jerusalem exclusively?10 Is the booklet presenting us the oracles of a cultic prophet or is it just a literary composition of prophetic and poetic texts?11 In other words, is it telling its readers about God being present in the cultic and ritual language of the temple community? Or is it actually combining the language of worship, experience, history and reflection into a new theological composition?12 Indeed, these research questions would not change. But the main point to be considered here is that not only the answers to these questions count in our theological thinking about Bible, history or the speaking of God. It is these questions that are to be addressed by various groups of Bible readers together. That means

  9  Th.C. Vriezen – A.S. van der Woude, Oudisraëlitische en Vroegjoodse Literatuur (Ontwerpen 1), (Kampen: 2001), 289–292. 10  R. Rendtorfff, Das Alte Testament. Eine Einführung, Neukirchener Verlag, NeukirchenVluyn, 20016, 230–232; [Rolf Rendtorfff, The Old Testament: An Introduction (AugsburgFortress Press, 1991); J.L. Crenshaw, Joel, 44–45. 11  H.W. Wolfff, Dodekapropheton 2: Joel, Amos (BKAT XIV/2) (Neukirchener Verlag: Neukirchen, 1969), 10fff.; Schmid, Literaturgeschichte, 40, 94, 161. 12  B.S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, SCM Press: London, 1983, 385–394; W. van der Meer, Oude woorden worden nieuw. De opbouw van het boek Joël, [Old words become new. The structure of the book Joel] (Kok: Kampen, 1989), 253–269.

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researching how the processes of textual composition and the resulting texts actually show, rather than hide or complicate, the speaking of God. The book of Joel is an instructive domain for interdisciplinary research of biblical texts, since it exhibits clearly the characteristics of textual complexity that need to be discussed: i.e., both the phenomenon of intertextuality and the phenomenon of redaction. Below I will only summarize the phenomenon of intertextuality by discussing a few examples from chapter 2 and after that, in § 4 of this writing, I will deal more extensively with the phenomenon of language and redactional activity, since the latter is more closely related to the questions of translation mentioned above. In the book of Joel one fijinds a relatively large amount of expressions that actually appear to be a reapplication of sayings known from other, mainly prophetic, books.13 Not necessarily direct quotations, they can also be regarded as comments upon or reactions to existing traditions. Probably the best known example is in Joel 4:10 (3:10) where the warriors of the nations are challenged to pick up their plowshares and beat them into swords, and change their pruning knifes into spears, to fijight the Lord who will sit in judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat. It is an ironic summons to battle for those threatening Zion, at the same time a parody and a reversal of the peaceful imagery of Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3 about God and the nations meeting in Zion. For, if Zion continues to be threatened, how could the vision of Isaiah ever come true? The considerable number of quotations from or allusions to other prophetic books illustrates that the composition of a biblical book in several aspects is a matter of reception, too: writers start by being readers. Here below are some passages about two themes in chapter 2, as examples. a. The Theme: The Day of the Lord A quote, but with a diffferent function 2:1 ‘because the day of Yhwh is coming, indeed, it is near’. This is a quote of Zephaniah 1:14f. ‘the great day of the Lord is near, is coming in haste.’14 Diffferent from what people might expect (Amos 5:18fff ), Yhwh’s presence

13

 A list is presented in J.L. Crenshaw, Joel, p. 27.  J. Jeremias, Die Propheten Joel, Obadja, Jona, Micha (ATD 24.3), Göttingen 2007, p. 23–24. 14

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is dangerous, a threat to Jerusalem. In Joel the expression is not used to qualify what happens as a punishment, but as a disaster. The plague of the locusts is part of the experiences to be told to the next generations. A quote as a reversal 2:3 ‘like a garden of Eden the land in front of it, like a desolate wilderness, that behind it’. This is a reversal of an expression found in Isaiah 51:3 ‘The Lord comforts Zion . . . and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord’ and also in Ezek 36:35 ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden.’ Comparable to what happens in Joel 4:10, the texts of restoration in other prophets are reversed into texts of destruction in Joel. A quote with a change of address 2:6 ‘before them nations tremble, every face turns pale’ parallels Nahum 2:11 ‘Devastation, desolation . . . all loins quake, all faces grow pale.’ There the expression that refers to the cosmic dimensions of God’s army coming is applied to Nineveh. 2:10 ‘in front of them the earth trembles, the sky quakes, sun and moon are darkened . . .’ parallels Isaiah 13:10 ‘For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark in its rising.’ And Isaiah 13:13, as well: ‘Therefore I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken out of its place.’ There the expression is applied to Babylon. b. The Theme: Who is the Lord? A quote, but with diffferent elements 2:13 ‘Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, repenting concerning harm’. This is a partial parallel to the classical expression in Exodus 34:6 ‘The Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love . . . forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin.’ The parallel to Jonah 4:2 is even closer: ‘You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and ready to repent of the disaster.’ Jeremias translates the last words with “one who rues the disaster”15 which would mean an actualisation in the context of Joel and Jonah. According to Jere-

15

 J. Jeremias, Joel, p 31: ‘einer der das Unheil reut’; see 107f.:

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mias any reference to punishment has been deleted: “Jegliche Anspielung auf Strafe bewusst getilgt.” 2:14 ‘Who knows he will turn and relent . . .’ runs parallel to the words of the citizens of Nineveh in Jona 3:9 ‘Who knows? God may relent and change his mind’. Quotes from Israel’s Liturgical and Prophetic Tradition 2:17 ‘Why would they say among the peoples: “Where is their God?” ’ is a direct quote from Psalm 79:10 ‘Why should the nations say: “Where is their God?” ’ 2:21 ‘Soil, be glad and rejoice. For Yhwh has done great things’. The prophetic summon runs parallel to the liturgical one in Psalm 126:3 ‘The Lord has done great things for us and we rejoiced.’ 2:27 ‘You shall know that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.’ Here the goal of God’s actions is expressed the same way as in Isaiah 45: i.e., knowledge of God. Isaiah 45.5 ‘I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.’ Such language that is being used in Joel is part of a common tradition of idiom, re-applied or quoted in a new composition. This locates the text of Joel in the domain of learned tradition and textual transmission, and at the same time being in dialogue with it, as is clear from the parallels with Jonah 3 and 4. This dialogue is an important feature of intertextuality, because it confronts us as readers with both the strength of the biblical language and its flexibility. The elements of ‘forgiving’ and ‘sin’ in Exodus 34 are skipped in the quote in Joel 2:13. The book of Joel does not focus on sin, guilt and forgiveness as, for example, the books of Exodus and Jeremiah do. So studying the phenomenon of intertextuality may help us to avoid the reading of texts from the perspective of one general theological paradigm, such as punishment and salvation. Van de Beek himself gives an example of this in his recent book on God and religion in modern churches.16 In chapter 6 he states, and rightly so, that modern churches easily avoid speaking of sin, but then, probably with too much determination, Van de Beek claims that wherever one opens up the Bible it always speaks of ‘sin’. This certainly does not apply to the book of Joel. One fijinds words about fasting and weeping, about compassion and the end of shame for Israel, but not about sin and forgiveness. Therefore,

16

 A. van de Beek, Is God terug? [Did God come back?] (Meinema: Zoetermeer, 2010).

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compositions like the book of Joel actually present what Steck, according to his methodology, would call ‘the historically determined’. But it may be clear that these observations of intertextuality are not something incidental to a minor prophet, something that theologians, in search of ‘the message’, could easily skip. Rather this use of language is an interesting topic both for biblical scholars and for systematic theology. Joel is not just another prophetic book expressing the classical model: human sin, then divine wrath and after that mercy. It is about the experience that devastating things have happened: i.e., the Day of the Lord, called judgement in some books, and disaster in Joel. One is to tell this to the next generations, tell them about fasting and mourning and about the fact that God did not forget about us and made the disaster stop and with that made an end to us being ashamed with the peoples. And, as Joel 2:28 (3:1) announces, the addressees will experience the next step: the Spirit on all of the people and judgment over the nations. God will live in Zion. Based on the textual data one may claim that God’s speaking to his people is not to be abstracted into a theological model cleansed from any historically added extras. Rather all the work writers did to preserve language and texts and to re-actualize them, is a fundamental characteristic of God’s speech to his people. Nursed by this methodological insight in exegetical method the homiletic mouse is hopefully beginning to grow up somewhat. Apart from the quotations, other complexities of the textual composition are also important in this context. A text itself becomes a tradition to be reworked, reapplied to the experiences of a new context. Redactional work, to be discussed below, is a continuation of the process of intertextuality in the composition of biblical texts. Once again I will claim that this is how God’s word has been composed. 4. A Closer Look at the Translations of Joel 2:18–25: Language and Redaction The common programme of theological disciplines to reconsider the balance of language, history and theology can be experimented with by taking a closer look at the diffferent translations of Joel 2:18 and 19. A strong tradition of interpretation reads all of the verses from v. 18f as a promise. The efffect, however, is that one can apparently feel quite free in the grammatical interpretation of the verbal tenses used. It implies that a theological concept, ‘salvation after judgment’, overrules the linguistic

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markers of the text. But what if one, in line with good Reformed practice, reverses the order of text and theology? The various translations of Joel 2:18 proposed in modern Bibles, imply various text level grammatical interpretations. So they can be tested by examining them in terms of language and syntax. Below I present some translations of Joel 2:18–25 (selected lines). Translation as a promise by NIV (idem the modern Dutch translation NBV) Ln     Verbs

Vs

Textual hierarchy (clauses, sentences)

interpretation

081  Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 083 Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 085 Participle 1 sg. + 2 pl.

18 19

The Lord will be jealous . . . The Lord will reply to them:  I am sending you grain . . .

future

102  NEG + Yiqtol 2 pl. 107  Imperative 2 pl. 111     KJ + Qatal 3 sg. 112   Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 113   W + Qatal 3 pl. 114   W + Qatal 3 pl.

22 23

24

115   W + Qatal 1 sg. + 2 pl. 25

present

  Do not fear, O wild animals . .   Be glad, O people of Zion . .   For he has given you the autumn rains   He sends you abundant showers,      The threshing floors will be fijilled      The vats will overflow

instruction past perfect present future future

 I will repay you for the years the locusts have . . .

future

Translation as a report by NRSV (with some promises in the direct speech section) Ln     Verbs

Vs

Textual hierarchy (clauses, sentences)

interpretation

081  Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 083 Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 085 Participle 1 sg. + 2 pl.

18 19

Then the Lord became jealous . . . In response . . the Lord said:  I am sending you grain . . .

past

102  NEG + Yiqtol 2 pl. 107  Imperative 2 pl. 111     KJ + Qatal 3 sg. 112   Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 113   W + Qatal 3 pl. 114   W + Qatal 3 pl.

22 23

  Do not fear, you animals . .   O children of Zion, be glad . .      For he has given you the early rain . .      He has poured down for you . . .   The threshing floors shall be full . .   The vats shall overflow . .

instruction past perfect past perfect future future

 I will repay you for the years that the locusts . .

future

115   W + Qatal 1 sg.

24 25

present

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Translation as a report by Buber (and a goal being expressed in the direct speech section) Ln     Verbs

Vs

Textual hierarchy (clauses, sentences)

interpretation

081  Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 083 Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 085 Participle 1 sg. + 2 pl.

18 19

Da eiferte Er um sein Land Er antwortete:  Wohlan, ich sende euch Getreide . . .

past

102  NEG + Yiqtol 2 pl. 107  Imperative 2 pl. 111    KJ + Qatal 3 sg. 112   Wayyiqtol 3 sg. 113   W + Qatal 3 pl. 114   W + Qatal 3 pl.

22 23

115   W + Qatal 1 sg.

24 25

present

  Getier des Feldes, fürchtet euch nimmer, . .   Und ihr, Söhne Zions, jubelt . .      Denn er hat euch gegeben . .      Er ließ euch nieder die Feuchtung . .      daß mit Korn die Tennen sich füllen . .      die Kufen Most und Oil schwemmen . .

instruction past perfect past fijinal/future fijinal/future

Nun erstatte ich euch die Jahre, die Heuschreck . .

performative

These presentations allow for two general observations. First, all translations struggle with the proper balance of language and theology. Once the theological schema of ‘divine judgement followed by salvation’ has resulted in the disputable translation of the wayyiqtol’s of verse 18f. (line 81–84) by a future tense (“Then the Lord will become jealous”), one is unable to escape from the next problem, especially visible in the NIV and NBV, of what the functions of the wayyiqtol and the Qatals in verse 23–24 (line 111–115) are. Do they refer to past, present or future? Are they a description or an announcement? As one can observe, the NIV takes the liberty of applying all options in translating line 111–114: past, present and future, as if grammar allows for any interpretation one might ‘need’.17 Interestingly, in commentaries one also observes some hesitation about where exactly the turning point in the book of Joel has to be located. Crenshaw, in his commentary to the book of Joel18 writes that with verse 17 the turning point is reached. So from verse 18, “Yhwh became zealous”, a new section begins. But he also states19 that the wayyiqtols link verse 18 back to the initial command of Joel 1:3 to tell the next generations about what has happened. This suggests continuity rather than a break in the text, for now verse 18 is regarded as part of the story to be told. It is

17  Cf. the influence of theology on grammar reported in P. Joüon, T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Subsidia Biblica 14/1–2), Rome, 1991; § 112.h.N, with reference to Joel 2:18 and the work of Ibn Ezra. 18  Crenshaw, Joel, 143. 19  Ibid., p. 147.

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not surprising that somewhat later20 Crenshaw suggests that one should “downplay any real break in the text” and that “on the basis of the subject matter alone, the decisive shift takes place in 4:1 [3:1]” . That is where the book tells about the Spirit of God being poured out, about the restoration of Jerusalem and the judgment of the nations. The second observation is the presence of two dialogues in these verses. The main dialogue following verse 18 is by Yhwh to a 2nd plural audience. It starts in verse 19 and is continued in verse 25. God announces food and compensation. The second dialogue (verse 21–24) is by another speaker (who one may assume to be the prophet), who addresses a multiple audience: the land, the animals and especially the ‘children of Zion’. This second dialogue is embedded into the fijirst one. Here the prophet invites his own audience to rejoice, since the Lord has given rain. God’s acts all are narrated in Qatal and one wayyiqtol. So these lines should also be translated to reflect that. However, the interpretation of verse 18 as a future action has also influenced some translations of these prophetic short stories in verses 23–24. They also become interpreted as future or as fijinal forms in the translations mentioned above. Exegetes preferring rhetorical analysis over linguistic analysis often follow this path, as if artistic skill and theological message do not basically rely on patterns of linguistic communication.21 Proper linguistic analysis, however, by its very concentration on grammatical markers, also reveals the traces of redactional changes or inserted prophetic comments. So the challenge of our project of common Bible reading by exegetes and systematic theologians is whether we can—for a moment—postpone questions of ‘the original’ historical context of the book, since we have voices of more generations here (as suggested by the command in 1:3 to tell the coming generations). Can we, for a moment, also postpone interest in ‘the’ message of the book, since we appear to have multiple voices here: the narrator, the speeches of God and the prophetic comments? Can we together concentrate on the language and the text fijirst? Analysis of its language allows for entering the text and observing processes of textual growth and of inner biblical exegesis. Paul may be right, claiming (2 Cor 3:6)

20

 Ibid., p. 161.  An example is the handling of Joel 2:18fff in the textual analysis by E.R. Wendland, The Discourse Analysis of Hebrew Prophetic Literature. Demarcating the Larger Textual Units of Hosea and Joel (Mellen Biblical Press Series 40), Lewiston-Queenston-Lampeter, 1995. 21

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that the γράμμα kills and the Spirit, as in Joel 3:1 (2:28), gives life. But what about grammar? Would the Spirit object to solid analytical work? 5. On Calculation and Interpretation. Computer Assisted Text Syntactic Analysis of Joel 2:18–25 Text and language fijirst. For many years now I have frequently been confronted with statements like ‘the computer assisted textual research done by Talstra with his team may be too technical and too linguistic, but, to our relief, he appears to be interested in theology as well.’ Stimulated by long term cooperation with systematic theologians like Van de Beek, Van der Kooi and others,22 I fijinally dare to reverse that argument: without a detailed linguistic analysis of biblical texts, both in terms of their structure and their history, a vital systematic theology cannot be built. So I incorporate some of this ‘too technical’ research into this article, since there is a clear connection with the study of the Bible in the reformed tradition. From the very start of the discipline, Computing and Humanities, scholars from both Reformed and Jewish traditions have demonstrated a clear interest in methods of Bible and computing, as has been repeatedly emphasised by Christof Hardmeier, my early colleague in this research.23 The task of (computer assisted) textual analysis is to help us understand the reading of a text as entering a process of information being presented to us. Linguistic software has been developed to calculate the segmentation of a text into clauses and to calculate a syntactic hierarchy of these clauses, based on grammatical and lexical information, such as the verbal forms, the person, number and gender of participants in those clauses, the clause types, the start of direct speech sections, and the lexical repetitions. This is done in a semi interactive procedure.24 As a result, one is able to propose a syntactically based textual structure, to study patterns of text syntax and discuss cases where, in translations and exegesis, theological interpretation tends to overrule grammar and syntax. To demonstrate

22  E. Talstra, ‘De exegeet als geadresseerde. Over de rolverdeling rond de bijbel’, in: G.C. den Hertog, C. van der Kooi (red.), Tussen Leer en Lezen. De spanning tussen Bijbelwetenschap en geloofsleer, Kok: Kampen, 2007, pp. 87–113. 23  Chr. Hardmeier, ‚Die Textur’, 59f. and 78fff. 24  E. Talstra, ‘In the Beginning, when Making Copies Used to be an Art . . . The Bible among poets and engineers’, in: Peursen, W.Th. van, E.D. Thoutenhoofd and A.H. van der Weel (ed.), Text Comparison and Digital Creativity. The Production of Presence and Meaning in Digital Text Scholarship, Brill, Leiden, 2010, pp. 31–56.

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some of this text grammatical ‘testing’, I list some sections of the text of Joel 2:18-25, according to its clausal hierarchy as it was produced for our text data base. The textual structure below presents: (Cl) Clauses with clause constituent labels: [Subject] [Predicate] [Complement], etc., (Ln) Line number, (Tt) Text type, (ClT) Clause type, (Png) Person-number-gender of the verb, (Vs) Verse number. Cl Ln

Tt

Clt

[ ‫ ‫ ‫ ‫ ]ו‬L81 QN WayX [ ‫ ‫ ‫ | ]ו‬L82 QN Way0 [ ‫ ‫ ‫ ]ו‬L83 QN WayX [ ‫ ‫ ‫  ]ו‬L84 QN Way0 =======================================   ======== [ ‫ ‫ ‫ ‫ ]הנני‬L85 QNQ PtcA [ ‫ ‫‫| |   ]ו‬ L86 QNQ WQtl [ ‫‫‫‫‫| | ]ו‬ L87 QNQ WxYq [ ‫ ‫]חרפה‬ [ ‫ ‫|  ]אל‬ [ ‫| ]אדמה‬ | | | | [ ‫| ]גילי‬ | | |

Png 3sgM 3sgM 3sgM 3sgM

Vs 18 18 19 19

-sgM 19 2plM 19 1sg- 19

……….. L96 QNQ xYqt 2sgF 21 L97 QNQ Voct ---- 21 L98 QNQ Impv 2sgF 21

………… [ ‫ ‫ |  ]אל‬L102 [ ‫|  ]בהמות שׂדי‬ | | L103 [ ‫ ‫ ‫ | |  ]כי‬L104 [ ‫ ‫ ‫ ‫ | |  ]כי‬L105 [ ‫ ‫ ‫ | |    ]תאנה וגפן‬L106 [‫ | ]ו‬L107 [ ‫| ]בני ציון‬ | L108 [ ‫ |  ]גילו‬L109 [ ‫ אלהיכם‬/ ‫ ‫‫ |  ]ו‬L110 [ ‫ ‫ ‫ ‫]כי‬ | L111 [ ‫]לצדקה‬ | | ‫ מורה‬/ ‫ ‫ ‫‫]ו‬ | | L112 [ ‫ ‫ומלקושׁ‬ | | [ ‫ ‫ ‫‫ | ]ו‬L113 [ ‫ ‫ ‫‫ | ]ו‬L114 [ ‫ ‫ ‫‫ ]ו‬L115 ‫ ‫ ‫]אשׁר‬ L116 [ ‫ חילי הגדול‬/ [ ‫ ‫ ‫      ]אשׁר‬L117

QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ

xYqt Voct xQtl xQtl XQtl Defc Voct Impv Impv xQtl

2plM ---3pl3sgM 3pl------2plM 2plM 3sgM

QNQNWay0 3sgM QNQ QNQ QNQ QNQ

WQtl 3plWQtl 3plWQtl 1sgxQtl 3sgM

22 22 22 22 22 23 23 23 23 23 .. 23 .. 24 24 25 25

... QNQ xQtl 1sg- 25

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This syntactic hierarchy shows the direct connection of clause 85 (I am sending you grain) and 115 (I will compensate you); thus, there is a connection between the main clauses of the direct speech section where Yhwh speaks, as well as the three short sections, starting in lines 96, 102 and 107 (do not fear, rejoice), where the prophet interrupts this speech by giving his own comments to his various audiences. The following additional details are important for the discussion of existing translations: The clause in line 115, much to the surprise of the reader, takes up again the direct speech of “I” (Yhwh) to a ‘you’ (plural) from the text segment in lines 85–95. In the sections in between, Yhwh is presented as “he” (lines 111 and 112). The computer program, calculating linguistic data to propose a textual structure, will connect line 115, where we have ‘I’ and ‘you’ (plural), back to the segment 85–87 where it fijinds the same participants in the text. The efffect is that the section with the prophetic instructions not to fear, but to rejoice (lines 96–114) is now put in between, as a separate dialogue of the prophet and his addressees about Yhwh, thus interrupting the direct speech by Yhwh. The connection of line 115 with line 85 determines the grammatical interpretation of line 115: it is an announcement. The WeQatal (1st person) of line 115 (‘Then I will send’) continues the participle clause of line 85. As a result of the separate position of the prophetic speeches of lines 96–114 in between these lines, one should not extend the announcement of line 115 to the WeQatals (3rd person) of lines 113 and 114, as translators often do. The syntax is diffferent. The Qatals of lines 113 and 114 continue the ‫ ִכּי‬+ Qatal of line 111: ‘For he has given’. Therefore, these lines do not make promises; they describe what, according to the prophetic interruption, can already be seen as a matter of fact (the threshing floors have been fijilled). Based on this analysis of its syntactic hierarchy, section 2:19-25 can be translated as follows: Ln Verbs 083 Wayyiqtol 3sg. 084 Wayyiqtol 3sg. + 3sg.

textual hierarchy 19 Yhwh responded . . and said to his people: ---------------------------------------------------------------------

--085 Participle 1 sg.+2 plur. ---

. . I am about to send to you grain . . .   | ------------------------------------------------------------

text, tradition, theology 102 Neg + yiqt. 2 plur. . . . . 107 Imperative 2 plur. . . . . 111 KJ + Qatal 3 sg.+2 plur. 112 Wayyiqtol 3 sg.+2 plur. 113 W + Qatal 3 pl. 114 W + Qatal 3 pl. --115 W + Qatal 1 sg.+2 plur.

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21   | You should not fear, land . . 22 | You should not fear, animals of the fijield . . . .   | | 23  | And children of Zion, you must be glad . . . .   | |      | For he has given you the early rain . .      |   |   and poured down for you abundant rain 24 |  and the threshing floors have been fijilled . .      |  and the vats have become overflowing . .      | ---------------------------------------------------------25 And I will repay you the years the locusts have eaten

This analysis implies that, in agreement with the classical Hebrew verbal system, verses 18 and 19 should be translated in past tense, for they are part of the story to be told: the disaster, the day of the Lord, the people’s weeping and mourning, and God’s reaction. Verses 21–24 can be best explained as an inserted prophetic comment, comparable to similar words in 2:13f. and in 3:5 (2:32), where the prophet also takes over the direct speech of Yhwh. According to Van der Meer25 and others, this is a signal of an elaboration of the text, addressing a new audience. God, seeing the devastation of his people and his land, became jealous and spoke to the generation of the disaster with promises. The prophet picks up that theme and comments upon it to his own audience, those who have heard the poems about the locusts and about the Lord who had become jealous about his land. The audience is invited to remember its own literary tradition and be encouraged by it. Yhwh has acted before and great things are yet to happen, 3:1 and 4:1, (2:28 3:1). The discussion of these texts demonstrates that linguistic analysis and the search for textual structure does not cover up the efffect of textual transmission and rereading, but rather detects the markers of such processes. A biblical text such as the book of Joel is not in itself a free theological composition with a ‘new’ message, rather it is a recycling of a substantial amount of traditional material to create a relatively new composition being applied and re-applied in changing contexts. When these processes are studied by the disciplines of biblical and systematic theology

25  W. van der Meer, Oude woorden worden nieuw. De opbouw van het boek Joël, Kok: Kampen, 1989, 286f.

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together, the common research question is about textual reconstruction and text reception: can we understand the mechanisms of text production and text reception, detected not as an unwelcome complication but as the actual ways of God’s speaking? 6. Text, Tradition and Theology—An Interdisciplinary Domain The reflections and the practical exercises in this paper started from the observation that a conversation between biblical scholars and colleagues in systematic theology often starts from a hidden or openly expressed assumption: the diffferences of opinion about textual reconstruction in biblical scholarship should be simply skipped or should be solved fijirst before the analysis of a biblical book, such as Joel, can contribute meaningful material to the reflections of systematic theology or homiletics. No doubt biblical scholarship itself has also created difffijiculties for interdisciplinary cooperation by its ongoing interest in the original or the unambiguous. The recent methodological turn in biblical scholarship to linguistic analysis of texts may be of assistance in our project of common reading. Linguistic analysis is in search of the language phenomena to get access to the text as a discourse (i.e., a presentation of an actual dialogue, a dialogue of participants in the text as well as a dialogue of writers and readers). Text linguistic analysis enables us to elaborate the structure of the canonical text being read and also fijind linguistic markers of its continuing adaptations and applications, marks that are features of the canonical texts as well. By turning to linguistics biblical scholarship combines the interest in textual reconstruction and in textual reception. This combination should give us insight into processes of textual design, inner biblical exegesis and theological reflection in history. The question addressed here is whether we, when asking systematic theological questions about God, humans and culture, could not more joyfully accept that the real Bible is the historically complex Bible. Is not the gradual updating and reworking of biblical texts also an answer to a continuing history? If that is true, one may conclude that God also speaks by way of this continuing reworking and editing. Searching for a ‘message’ or discussing the cognitive conditions according to which we could continue to speak about God is an approach inherited from the non-biblical idea that human language and history, the Bible included, are too complex and too limited to produce clear theological concepts, so that the answers for our questions about God and religious truth should be sought behind or before the texts rather than in them.

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Do I defend a simple Bible? I defend good Reformed method. One ought to deal with the text as it presents itself: as an ancient monumental building, showing all the traces of the many generations that lived in it. As in Childs’ proposal of ‘canonical reading’,26 frequently referred to in systematic theology, processes of redactional reworking are not excluded but included. My contention is that even the so-called technical questions about textual structure and textual reconstruction belong to the area shared by the theological disciplines. Researching the characteristics of the biblical text means researching how the texts mirror the continuous interaction of communities of faith and experiences in history. It means researching how these processes and the resulting texts actually present, rather than hide or complicate, the speaking of God. Stimulated by the experience of cooperation with colleagues in systematic theology I see the following main research question as a common task in theology: can we study biblical texts as literary texts, as historical artefacts produced by context and design and by actions of rewriting and transmission and, as such, study them as the way God is speaking to many generations, including us, as their readers?

26  B.S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, SCM Press: London, 1983, 385–394.

‘EUTHANASIA’ IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: ARS MORIENDI IN DUTCH REFORMED PERSPECTIVE Jan Hoek Introductory Remarks When writing about ‘euthanasia,’ in the 17th and 18th century, Reformed authors do not, as present day readers in the 21th century might expect, address primarily the medical-ethical issues involved. In his book, Euthanasia (1741), the Dutch Reformed pastor, Wilhelmus van Eenhoorn,1 refers to the Roman Caesar Augustus, who-when informed of someone’s passing away quickly and without pain—said that he wished such an “euthanasia”, preferably in a distant future of course. But according to Van Eenhoorn for a Christian “euthanasia” must be “εν κυριῳ αποθανειν”, the fruit of a life with the Lord (Phil. 1:21; Rev. 14:13). Euthanasia in this latter sense is the desirable outcome of the ars moriendi, the art of dying well. The lively interest in the process of Christian dying as well as the pastoral care of the dying, is a remarkable aspect of classical Reformed piety.2 In today’s systematic theology, eschatology is evidently not a forgotten item. In the Twentieth century Jürgen Moltmann widely influenced theology and church by his Theology of Hope (1964). He “enabled theologians to think once more of eschatology as speaking of the real future of the

1  Biografijisch Lexicon voor de Geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Protestantisme (BLGNP) III, 99–101; J.M. van der Linde, “Wilhelmus van Eenhoorn (1691–1759)—een hoorn van overvloed”, W. Balke, C. Graafland, H. Harkema, ed., Wegen en gestalten in het gereformeerd protestantisme. Een bundel studies over de geschiedenis van het Gereformeerd Protestantisme aangeboden aan prof. dr. S. van der Linde bij zijn afscheid als gewoon hoogleraar aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht [Ways and fijigures in reformed protestantism. Collected studies concerning reformed protestantism offfered to Prof. Dr. S. van der Linde at his farewell as full professor at the State University of Utrecht] (Amsterdam: Ton Bolland, 1976), 25–34. 2  Cf. K. Exalto, De dood ontmaskerd [Death unmasked] (Amsterdam: Ton Bolland 1975), passim; J. Hoek, “Over de hemel in de gereformeerde spirituele traditie” [On heaven in the reformed spiritual tradition], Bert L. van der Woude, ed., Wie kan er aarden hier beneden? Over de betekenis van de hemel [Who can thrive here below? concerning the meaning of heaven] (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2008), 53–66; J. Hoek, Hoe kom ik in de hemel? De betekenis van klassiek—gereformeerde stervensbegeleiding [How do I get to heaven? The signifijicance of classical-reformed guidance for the dying] (Apeldoorn: Willem de Zwijgerstichting, 2010).

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World and thereby also to envisage its relevance to the present not just in terms of the destiny of the individual but also in terms of the church’s engagement with the world on its way to the kingdom of God.”3 Theologians like Wolfhart Pannenberg, Johann-Baptist Metz and Gerhard Sauter followed in his footsteps, albeit in their own ways. This contemporaneous, eschatological thinking embraces a holistic vision of redemption and the transfijiguration for the whole of God’s creation and strives to overcome all kinds of dualism. Nevertheless, in my view, a new danger emerges here. Nowadays, the Biblical accent on the pilgrimage of Christians on earth as people who already have become citizens of heaven seems to get too little attention.4 Therefore, a renewed emphasis on the relevance of peregrinatio seems to be certainly justifijied. Bram van de Beek clearly voices such a view in his books on eschatology, thereby making a strong appeal to the mentality of early Christians as exemplary and corrective for us, modern Christians.5 In this contribution I want to support his intentions by calling attention to the relevance of the ars moriendi, the art of dying well. The well-known fijirst question of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563): “What is your only comfort in life and death?”, has not lost its relevance and actuality at all; neither has the answer: “That I with body and soul, both in life and death, are not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” This view of the human as a pilgrim on his way to eternity, generates a life in earnestness, and sheds a mild light upon ageing and dying believers. They may leave the storms of life defijinitely behind them and are well prepared to anchor in the harbour of eternal rest.6

3  Richard Bauckham, “Conclusion: Emerging Issues in Eschatology in the Twenty-First Century”, Jerry L. Walls, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford: University Press, 2008), 671 (671–689). 4  Cf. Calvin P. Van Reken, “Christians in This World: Pilgrims or Settlers?”, Calvin Theological Journal 43 (2008), 234–256, who describes the ‘Old Vision’ in this way: ‘The idea was that this world is not the Christian’s home but a time of spiritual struggle and, by God’s power, some measure of sanctifijication until the day God calls one to his eternal home. What seemed most apparent was the transient nature of our earthly lives, and what made its many trials tolerable was the hope of a glorious future in a home that was far away.’ (237) 5  A. van de Beek, Hier beneden is het niet—Christelijke toekomstverwachting [It is not here below-Christian expectancy of the future] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2005); God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie [God does right. Eschatology as christology] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008). 6  Cf. Andreas Rivet, Goede ouderdom. Uitgebeelt in een Latijnsche Brief aan de heer Welhelm Rivet [Aging well. Pictured in a Latin letter to Mister Welhelm Rivet] (Utrecht: Johannes van Waasberge 1657), 53.

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Medieval Roots of the Ars Moriendi The reader may know that the late Middle Ages were very fruitful in developing the ars moriendi. The ritual of preparing for death was one of the focal points of the late-medieval culture of death.7 Many books from that time contain vivid descriptions of the hour of dying and the dramatic battle to save the soul from eternal flames in hell. Writings of, for instance, Heinrich Suso, Johannes Gerson, Anselmus van Canterbury and the popular Bilderars (“Ars of the Images”, a kind of strip or picture story)8 had great impact. From the fijifteenth century onward, books about pastoral care for the dying were widely dispersed. In this period many epidemics occurred and people were confronted time and again with the harsh reality of death.9 These books, originally written to instruct the clergy for the practice of pastoral care, gained a great popularity after their translation into the vernacular.10 The quattuor novissima, the four extremes (death, last judgment, heaven and hell) held the centre of public interest. Many people were constrained by the fear of death, purgatory and hell. This anguish could be overcome only by a constant struggle against all kinds of worldly temptations and a strong concentration upon the heavenly future, even though sometimes the most pious people would not enjoy the privilege of a peaceful death-bed.11 No one could be assured of his or

  7

 See Austra Reinis, Reforming the Art of Dying. The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519–1528) (Aldershot 2007: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 2.   8  Cf. Rainer Rudolf, Ars moriendi—Von der Kunst des heilsamen Lebens und Sterbens [Art of dying—About the art of wholesome living and dying] (Köln-Graz: Böhlau, 1957), 69–74; Helmuth Rolfes, “Ars moriendi. Eine Sterbekunst aus der Sorge um das ewige Heil” [An art of dying for the sake of eternal salvation], in Hans—Martin Barth, hgb., Ars moriendi. Erwägungen zur Kunst des Sterbens [Considerations regarding the art of dying] (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Verlag, 1988), 15–44, 32–35.   9  R. Rudolf, TRE 5, 143: “Von 1326 bis 1500 zählte man 75 Pestjahre. Daher die Angst vor einem jähen, unvorbereiteten Tod, denn die sittliche Verfassung des Menschen in der Todesstunde bedingt sein ewiges Geschick”. [Between 1326 and 1500 one counted 75 years of pestilence. Hence the fear of a sudden, unprepared death, since the present condition of humans in their hour of death decided their eternal fate]. 10  Johan Huizinga, “The Vision of Death”, in The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Art, and Thought in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: St. Martin, 1924), 124–35; R. Rudolf /R. Mohr /G. Heinz–Mohr, “Ars moriendi” in TRE 5, 143–156; Philippe Ariës, The Hour of our Death (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1980); Philippe Ariës, Western Attitudes toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1974); L. Klein, Die Bereitung zum Sterben. Studien zu den frühen reformatorischen Sterbebüchern [The preparation for death. Studies of the early reformed books for the dying] (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag 1958). 11  Cf. Bernhard van Clairvaux, Epistola 105 ad Romanum Romanae Curiae Subdiaconum, MPL 170, 240f.

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her eternal salvation. Their hour of dying itself remained decisive.12 Therefore, a mors subita, making a good preparation for the encounter with God impossible, was heavily feared. The ars moriendi cannot in this mindset be detached from the ars vivendi. Life and death belong inseparably together. As a result of the practice of memento mori, man had to choose for a good, godly life without any delay or hesitation. The admonitions and evocations of, for instance, Heinrich Suso (1295–1366) or Anselm of Canterbury (1034–1109) are meant to focus the attention of the dying upon the redeeming death of Christ. Jean Gerson (1363–1429) elaborates the exhortationes (admonitions regarding dying in a godly way, thus diminishing the duration of the stay in purgatory), the interrogationes (investigation into the spiritual disposition of the sick and dying), orationes (prayers to God, Christ, Mary, all the saints, especially the personal guardian angel of the dying and to Michael who weighs the souls), observationes (directions for the assistants of the dying regarding reading of biblical passages, prayers and supplications for the patient, the use of images of the cross and of saints, the ways of detracting the dying from worldly afffairs), tentationes (the satanic temptations of at the one hand securitas, spiritual pride, and on the other hand desperatio, despair), and the communicatio passionis Christi (the recitation of and meditation upon the seven words Christ spoke on the cross, the imitation of the death of Christ). Luther and Calvin on the Ars Moriendi In his pastoral approach to the dying, Martin Luther (1483–1546) displays a high measure of continuity with the medieval writings noted above. Yet, some essential diffferences are unmistakably present.13 Luther him-

12  Cf. Maria Meertens, De godsvrucht in de Nederlanden, Naar handschriften en gebedenboeken der XV e eeuw [Godliness in the Low Countries, According to manuscripts and prayer books of the 15th century] (Leuven: Leuvense Studiën en Tekstuitgaven, I, 1930), 56. 13  Cf. A. de Reuver, Sweet Communion—Trajectories of Spirituality from the Middle Ages through the Further Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 2007), who underscores the common orientation of both the reformed and medieval theology to the sources of the early Church. See also Hans-Martin Barth, “Leben und sterben können. Brechungen der spätmittelalterlichen ‘ars moriendi’ in der Theologie Martin Luthers” [Able to live and die. Breaks in the late medieval ‘art of dying’ in the theology of Martin Luther], in Harald Wagner & Torsten Kruze, ed., Ars moriendi, Erwägungen zur Kunst des Sterbens [Considerations ragrding the art of dying] (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Verlag, 1989), 45–66; Hans-Martin Kirn, “Martin Luther en de ars moriendi”, in Sabine Hiebsch en Martin L. van Wijngaarden,

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self was rather critical regarding the tradition: “Many books have been written . . . on how we are to prepare for death: nothing but error, and people have only become more downcast.”14 In his Ein Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben (1519) he focuses clearly on the Person and work of Christ. Luther consoles the dying by drawing their attention to the work and the passion vicariously made and sustained by Christ for us, but without us. The Christian may consider death as a new birth, a gateway to heaven, a porta coeli. In this sermon Luther intends to let the comforting image of Christ prevail over all the terrifying images of death, sin and hell. Christ has triumphed over them. For the believer it is not decisive to what extent he can imitate or follow Christ, but more so of being able to fully rely on the accomplished, redeeming work of Christ. Center stage are not devils, angels, saints or Mother Mary, but the dominant presence of Christ alone. Luther reduces the many temptations found in the medieval treatises to the one and only temptation of doubt, unbelief and despair. Luther’s conviction that the Christian is to believe the promises of Christ, and so may appropriate the benefijits of Christ’s work, sets him apart from much of the medieval ars moriendi tradition. By looking upon the merciful image of the dying Christ, the dying Christian no longer needs to fear the judgment of God and may be assured of his or her salvation. John Calvin (1509–1564) did not write any specifijic treatise on the ars moriendi, but his considerations from his Institutes about future life, the meditatio futurae vitae, and the contempt of this present life, contemptus huius vitae, have influenced the Reformed tradition deeply. The life of a Christian in this world is a life of battle, pilgrimage and hope (sub custodia spei): Therefore, although Christ offfers us in the Gospel a present fullness of spiritual blessings, fruition remains in the keeping of hope, until we are divested of corruptible flesh, and transformed into the glory of him who has gone before us. . . . Indeed, we have no enjoyment of Christ, unless by embracing him as clothed with his own promises. Hence it is, that he indeed dwells in our hearts, and yet we are as pilgrims in regard to him, because ‘we walk by faith, not by sight’ (1 Cor. V, 6,7).15

red., Martin Luther-zijn leven, zijn werk [Martin Luther—his life, his work] (Kampen: Kok 2008), 200–202. 14  M. Luther, WA 41, 699: “Multi libri . . . scripti, quomodo ad mortem praeparare debeamus: merus error et homines bedrubter worden.” This sermon is carefully analysed by Austra Reinis, Reforming the Art of Dying. 15  Institutes II, 9.3 (transl. Henry Beveridge, Grand Rapids1975, repr); “quamvis ergo praesentem spiritualium bonorum plenitudinem nobis in Evangelio Christus offferat, fruitio

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In this perspective, everyone who has made good progress in the school of Christ will joyfully expect the day of their death and of the last resurrection. Calvin has often been accused of a negative evaluation of corporality or earthly life as such. It is true indeed that he more than once in his Institutes and commentaries sketches the lives of the believers in this earthly dispensation with very dark colours. However, we may not neglect the way he honours the material world as creation of God and as therefore intrinsically good. He speaks very positively about the bodily resurrection on the Last Day. At the same time, Calvin constantly underscores that the ritual of a meditation of one’s future life will stamp its efffect on the life of the Christian, thereby making it a life of battle, pilgrimage and hope. We are not yet in our homeland, we are in exile as long as we live in this transient world. They will turn their eyes to that day on which the Lord will receive his faithful servants, wipe away all tears from their eyes, clothe them in a robe of glory and joy, feed them with the inefffable sweetness of his pleasures, exalt them to share with him in his greatness; in fijine, admit them to a participation in his happiness.16

Spranckhuysen and the Triumph Over Death Dionysius Spranckhuysen (1587–1650)17 wrote several treatise on the spiritual warfare against death and the triumph over death. His book Geestelijke Triumf (Spiritual Triumph)18 describes in eleven chapters the reasons for comfort that encourage believers to confijidently look forward to coming

tamen sub custodio spei semper latet, donec corruptibili carne exuti, transfijiguremur in eius qui nos praecedit gloriam . . . Nec vero aliter Christo fruimur, nisi quatenus amplectimur promissionibus suis vestitum. Quo fijit ut habitet ipse quidem in cordibus nostris, et tamen ab ipso peregrinemur: quia per fijidem ambulamus, et non per aspectum.” (O.S. III, 401) 16  Institutes III, 9. 6 (transl. Henry Beveridge, Grand Rapids 1975, repr.): “Erit enim sub oculis dies ille, quo Dominus in regni sui quietem fijideles suos recipiet, absterget ab eorum oculis omnem lachrymam, stola gloriae et laetitiae ipsos induet, deliciarum suarum inerrabili suavitate pascet, in suae altitudinis societatem evehet, denique foelicitis suae participatione dignabitur.” (O.S. IV, 176) 17  K. Exalto, De dood ontmaskerd [Death unmasked], 123–139; G.H. Leurdijk, “Dionysius Spranckhuysen (1587–1650)” in T. Brienen i.a., ed., Figuren en thema’s van de Nadere Reformatie [Figures and themes of the Nearer Reformation], I, (Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan, 1987), 27–42. 18  Geestelijke Triumf over den laatsten vijand, den dood: of eene heilzame onderrichting om getroost en blijmoedig te sterven [Spiritual triumph over the last enemy, death: or a salutary instruction in order to die comforted and cheerful] (Leiden: D. Donner, 1856).

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death. In the twelfth and last chapter, he addresses questions about an early death, a sudden death and a painful death and he sums up no less than eleven reasons for comfort. He makes use of moving images. For true Christians, death is no longer a ladder going down to hell, but a ladder going up to heaven. The comfort of heathen people on the contrary is like a watercolor. A true Christian dies with consolation since his faith is like an eye and his hope like a telescope. Dying believers sometimes see the gates of heaven wide opened in front of their eyes and it seems to them as if they have already entered it. A comparison may be drawn with a sailor coming home from Western or Eastern India after having experienced many dangers and problems. He climbs the mast and looks ahead to his homeland and at the very moment he sees it his heart jumps for joy. It is obvious that Spranckhuysen displays Platonic influences in his valuation of soul and body, especially when he uses the well-known dualistic image of the body as the prison of the soul. He recalls that even the heathen philosopher Plato already knew that death brings the release of the soul from the body, much like a prisoner released from jail enjoys freedom at last.19 But Plato did not know as Christians do what death makes really useful. Like Plato Christians know very well the misery of this temporal life and do indeed long to be freed from their bodily, earthly existence. But most ardently they look forward to be released from sin, which sticks to them during all their life, and also from the miserable efffects of sin. Spranckhuysen is certainly not a full-blown Platonist. He is clear and outspoken regarding the essential unity of body and soul and deals in a very positive way with the resurrection of the body on the Youngest Day. Then body and soul will be joyfully reunited to participate in the eternal beatitude.20 The material world is not bad or sinful as such. The human soul is in his view not like a divine spark fettered in material bonds. No less than

19  D. Spranckhuysen, Geestelijke Triumf, 35: ‘Een vogel is gaarne in de vrije lucht. Als het zijn deurtje open vindt, het snapt uit zijne kooi en het zingt met vreugde, vliegende waar het wil.’s Menschen ziel, zoolang hij hier op aarde leeft, zit ook besloten in het lichaam, gelijk een vogel in de kooi. Maar de dood opent de deur. Zou dan de ziel niet gewillig daaruit gaan, zich verblijdende in de gulden vrijheid? In de heerlijk en volmaakte vrijheid der kinderen Gods? . . . Deze overweging heeft insgelijks den wijzen Plato bewogen, om een zeker jonkman, die groote zorg droeg voor de gezondheid zijns lichaams, te vragen, waarom dat hij zijn gevangenhuis zoo sterk maakte? te kennen gevende dat ’s menschen lichaam niets anders is als een kerker voor de ziel.’ So the soul is in the body like a bird in a cage and death liberates the soul from bondage and leads it into liberty. 20  Spranckhuysen, Geestelijke Triumf, 106: ‘Maar onze vervallen lichamen zal God wederom in een heerlijker staat uit her stof oprichten door de kracht zijns Geestes, gelijk de apostel Paulus ons leert Rom. 8’

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the body also the soul is created by God, and thus not eternal nor immortal in the strict sense of the word, and destined to live in union with the body. Rich consolation provides our belief in the resurrection of the dead and in eternal life. Christians not only highly value their immortal souls, but also respect their mortal bodies. The Spirit even accompanies our dead bodies into the graves and keeps the bones, even the dust thereof until the day of the blessed resurrection. In this way, the love of the Spirit of God for our bodies is even much greater than the love of our own spirit, since our own spirit separates from our body in the hour of death. The Spirit of God will never separate from them, however deformed and horrible they may be. The Spirit is with these bones and with this dust like a costly balm, a balm with a lovely scent and eminent vigour.21 Therefore, the bodies will not get lost even when they have become decomposed. Like the linen clothes left behind in the grave at the resurrection of Christ, all imperfections, fragilities and defects of our bodies will also stay behind at the moment of our resurrection. Our bodies will even be much more beautiful than the bodies of Adam and Eve before the Fall, then being identical to the glorifijied body of Christ. Our bodies are now committed to the grave like impure gold in the melting-pot yet to be purifijied of its dirtiness and stains, in order that they can shine much more brilliantly afterwards. Like a fijine and pure, eastern diamond, the soul will be mounted into a body purer than gold. By his adherence to the Creed of the Church including the future resurrection of the body Spranckhuysen eventually has left Plato at a far distance. The truly catholic character of Spranckhuysen’s pastoral instructions is clearly demonstrated by the role which the Apostolic Creed plays in it. The believer’s personal experience is fijirmly rooted in the confession of the Church of all ages.22 He has no other foothold than the grace of the triune God alone. Every article of Faith adds to the consolation of the dying Christian. In the fijirst place his or her belief in God, the almighty Father. When He is with us, who can be against us? Our belief in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of man, is an additional rich source of consolation. Spranckhuysen in this context tells the story of a certain

21  Spranckhuysen, Geestelijke Triumf, 107: ‘Onze dode lichamen mogen zoo mismaakt, vervallen, en afschuwelijk zijn als zij kunnen, niettemin God de H. Geest woont daarin. En die is in dezelve als een kostelijke balsem, een balsem van zeer liefelijken reuk, een balsem van zeer uitnemende kracht, van zulk eene kracht dat dezelve daardoor altoos worden bewaard, om in de verderving liggende niet te verderven noch verloren te gaan.’ 22  Exalto, De dood ontmaskerd [Death unmasked], 138.

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offfijicer who had brought the anger of the king of Macedonia upon himself. He then appeared before the king with the king’s only son, the young Alexander, in his arms, trying to win the favour of the king with the sight of his beloved child. So we as Christians may approach the God, whom we have made angry with our sins, having God’s beloved Son Jesus with us. Spranckhuysen quotes spiritual authorities such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine, Athanasius and Tertullian to stress the importance of this consideration. Also our belief in the Holy Spirit consoles us in the hour of death. In the fijirst place, the Spirit moves the hearts of the Christians to patience, in order that they submit themselves willingly in life and death to the providence of the Lord. Then He evokes in their hearts an earnest desire for eternal beatitude. He gives them a sweet foretaste of the eternal bliss that has been prepared for them in heaven. By this sweetness all the bitterness of death is eliminated and driven away. The Holy Spirit does not stay with the believers in the manner of a guest in a tavern who is constantly coming and going. He abides eternally with them like in his own house that He never will leave. The eternal life is full of happiness caused by the vision of God (visio Dei). Believers will see God as He is (1 Joh. 3). This clear knowledge of God will produce an ardent love towards Him. What is unknown is not loved, and the contrary is also true. We will have a complete enjoyment and satisfaction in God, so that we will covet nothing anymore except Him alone. The sun of God’s glory will be the light in our eyes, his voice the music in our ears, his eternal power and goodness the bed of our rest, the fullness of his constant presence the manna to feed us, the wine to quench us, the garment to cover us. God will be all in all. The conclusion must be: In this World what one calls “life” is in reality “death” and what one calls “death” is actually “life”. Real, eternal life can only be found above in heaven, and the only way to get it is to put down this temporal life at one’s death. That is why upright Christians can say to death: We no longer call you “Mara”, bitterness, but we call you “Naomi”, loveliness. In the third place, Spranckhuysen instructions are directed to practical piety. An upright Christian dies with consolation since he has a clear conscience as the fruit of true belief. Faith and a clear conscience belong together like sun and light, like musk and a good smell. A clear conscience softens the death-bed and brings peace into the heart. Sin is in the conscience like poisoned food in the stomach. When one keeps it in the stomach and does not vomit it up, death will be the result. Sin is like the pistol bullet in the body of a wounded man. That arrow, that bullet or iron point

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must be removed from the wound before it can heal. In this way, we have to investigate and reform our consciences on a daily basis. If we have a clear conscience by our faith in the justice of Christ, we enjoy inner rest and boldness. This piety is not individualistic. Spranckhuysen’s underlining of the community of the saints is remarkable. The dying fijinds oneself not left in isolation, but surrounded by the prayers and love of the brethren and sisters. He never walks alone. One of the sources of consolation for the dying is his belief in the catholic Christian church. Is there really anything in the world that could mutilate the body of Christ? Or that could insult the Bride of Heaven? Or that could overpower the city of the living God? Our belief in the community of the saints and the forgiving of sins also comforts us. When a Christian becomes ill, there will always be some saints coming to his home, visiting him, gathering around his bed, in order that he may enjoy the support of a holy company to his good and benefijit. They have upright and heartfelt pity for him. They encourage and strengthen the sick man with passages from God’s Holy Word. They also actually help him, they are ready to watch over him, to lend him a helping hand, to nurse him and to serve him in all possible ways. They help him particularly in a spiritual manner by their unanimous prayers. Being assured of the forgiveness of sins, the believer is also reassured that the way to heaven is open and cleared for him. He knows for sure that the angels will bring his soul into heaven and will guard his body in the grave. In conclusion we submit that Spranckhuysen’s spiritual and pastoral approach certainly shows Platonic influences. At the same it appears to be thoroughly catholic in content and clearly directed to practical piety. Saldenus and Life from Death Guiljelmus Saldenus (1627–1694) was a practical and irenic theologian of the Dutch Further Reformation.23 At the theological faculty of Utrecht Gisbertus Voetius instructed him that theology must serve the practical edifijication of the believers personally and of the church in general. Another theologian, Johannes Hoornbeeck, imparted the love and care for 23  G. van den End, Guiljelmus Saldenus, een praktisch en irenisch theoloog uit de Nadere Reformatie [William Saldenus, a practical and irenic theologian of the Nearer Reformation] (Leiden: Groen, 1991); cf. BLGNP III, 317–320; A. de Reuver, Sweet Communion. Trajectories of Spirituality from the Middle Ages through the Nearer Reformation (Translated by James A. De Jong), (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 200–228.

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preaching to him. Other influences upon Saldenus came from the Puritans (such as William Perkins, Isaäc Ambrosius, Guilelmus Amesius, Thomas Goodwin) and Medieval mystics (Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas à Kempis, Wessel Gansfort). His popular book Leven uyt de Doodt [Life from the Death, 1667] was written shortly after the death of his wife.24 A few months earlier their little son Justus also had passed away. In these troubled times of his personal life, Saldenus preached frequently about (the preparation of) death and dying. This made such an impression upon his congregation that several members urged him to publish these sermons in a book. In his treatise, Saldenus tries to be concise where others have dwelt at length. He mentions many names of earlier and contemporary authors.25 The form Saldenus chooses for his own approach consists of fourteen lessons, divided into two areas: in the fijirst place what one has to do to prepare one’s own death, and in the second place the importance of taking advantage of the death of others. Whoever desires to die well, must learn to count his days. He must live godly and use the world only as a pilgrim. Who desires to die without fear has to fear for sinning against the Lord.26 He must conduct himself on earth as a citizen of heaven and he has to consider well how God Almighty reigns over himself and the whole world. Further he must consider well the advantages and profijits of death and frequently evoke his reliance upon the Lord. He must armour himself with spiritual bravery against death, depending with all his heart on the Lord, his God, with perpetual sighs. At the end of his journey through life on earth, he must timely commit his soul into the hands of his God. Regarding another’s death, he who desires to die well must mourn in a modest and proper way. He must learn to consider the vanity of all

24  Guiljelmus Saldenus, Leven uyt de Doodt Of Allemans—pligt, Om saligh te worden door zijn eygen en heyliger te worden door eens anders Doodt, [Life out of death, or, Everyone’s duty: to be saved by one’s own death and to be edifijied by the death of another] Utrecht, By Jacob van Doeyenborgh, Boekverkooper op denhoek van de Zaal-straat [Bookseller at de corner of the Zaal street], 1669. 25  Like Ambrose, Cyprian, Mornay, Mollerus, Spinaeus, Bifijield, Couper, Bolton, Perkins, Pagetus, Cythraeus, Hall, R. Hill, Drelincourt, Fr. de Vry, Voetius, Hoornbeeck, Gathaker, Spranckhuysen, Jac. Lydius, Borstius, Ridderus, ‘and among the papalists nearly countless’). Saldenus peculiarly estimates the work of the French pastor Charles Drelincourt. 26  Guiljelmus Saldenus, Leven uyt de Doodt, 195, 196: ‘Vreest oock voor de zonde / en ghy sult de doodt niet vreesen: Chrysostomus van de keyserin Eudoxia ghedreyght zijnde / antwoorde/ dat hy niets en vreesde als de sonde; Traght ghijlieden oock soo te doen, want de prickel des doods is de zonde; die maeckt al het spel en alarm in uw herte.’

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worldly afffairs and to seek his satisfaction only in the communion with God. Thereby he has to try to follow the virtues of his late friends.27 In Saldenus’ view the desire for heaven is a constitutive feature of piety and a distinguishing mark of the Christian life. That means that this special “homesickness” does not just occur now and then, but it permanently accompanies the life of the Christian. Actuality and Relevancy of the (Reformed) Ars Moriendi It seems rather easy to criticise authors like Spranckhuysen and Saldenus and to judge their eschatological expectation as far too individualistic and spiritualistic. The desire for the entrance into heaven immediately after death seems to prevail over the expectation of the Parousia of Christ and the universal glory of the coming kingdom of God. To be sure, Platonic misunderstandings of the biblical message occur not infrequently. In times of sickness, there is a tendency to precipitated resignation, expecting little from the healing power of the Spirit. The global and universal dimensions of Christian hope seem to be nearly totally absent. The evaluation of the world as a valley of tears sounds unthankful towards God the Creator and the Fountain of countless blessings in this temporal life. Nevertheless, we are missing the point when we neglect the message of these Christian witnesses. We may enjoy the fact that the church of our days has refrained from the pedagogy of anguish, by which she has for so many ages been trying to bind people (who were made afraid of hell and damnation) to herself and to her sacraments of salvation. But on the other hand we have good reasons to maintain together with Helmuth Rolfes that the classical Christian ars moriendi provides a “Gegenentwurf zur Utopie vom natürlichen Tod und vom Sterben als friedlichen Verlöschen”.28 The Christocentric spirituality of the Reformed ars moriendi, moving within the best tradition of sola fijide and sola gratia, is permeated by the notion that man does not die in the same way as do plants and animals. For man, life on earth is a preparation for the most important that has yet to come. Such an emphasis on this life as a passing experience―during which Christian as pilgrims, look forward to the day when Christ will

27  Guiljelmus Saldenus, Leven uyt de Doodt, 198: ‘Wel voorgaan doet wel navolgen; en hoe on-eyndig is ’t ghetal derghenen / wiens voetstappen u hiert ot moed-gevingh dienen kunnen! Leest Godts Woordt; leest de Martelaer-boeken; leest andere gheschiedenissen van de doodt der heylighen.’ 28  Helmuth Rolfes, “Ars moriendi”, 43. [A counter design of natural death as an utopia and of dying as a peaceful redemption.]

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return and all things will be made new―seems as realistic as it is biblically warranted. Therefore, death must not be considered a taboo. To confront ourselves with our own mortality in the light of the gospel is useful and good. This personal and pastoral approach towards the dying is highly valuable. Western Christians live in the culture of the “forbidden death” (Philippe Ariës).29 In modern secular societies, death and dying seem to be a new taboo. Richard Bauckham rightly remarks that the specifijic topics of traditional theology like death, resurrection, Parousia, judgment, heaven and hell have not engaged much theological attention in the recent past. He also states that all of these omissions could become central issues again in the coming decades.30 I think this would be of great importance and therefore urge and look forward to a fair reappraisal of the classical ars moriendi. Summary This contribution argues that nowadays the Biblical accent on the pilgrimage of Christians on earth as people who already have become citizens of heaven, gets too little attention. A renewed emphasis on the relevance of peregrinatio seems to be justifijied. After a short glimpse at the medieval roots of the ars moriendi, the art of dying well, and on the way Luther and Calvin approached the dying, attention is given to two representatives of the Dutch Further Reformation, to wit Spranckhuysen and Saldenus. Though Spranckhuysen’s spiritual and pastoral approach shows certain Platonic influences, his instructions nevertheless appear to be thoroughly catholic in content and are clearly directed to practical piety. In the view of Saldenus the desire for heaven is a constitutive feature of piety and a distinguishing mark of Christian life. This approach to death and the process of dying is highly valuable. In modern secular societies, death and dying seem to be a new taboo. Specifijic topics of traditional theology such as death, resurrection, Parousia, judgment, heaven and hell, have not engaged much theological attention in the recent past. A fair reappraisal of the classical ars moriendi hopefully will provide a salutary counterbalance against the one-sided attention to life here and now in this world which passes away. 29

 Philippe Ariës, Met het oog op de dood, (Amsterdam, 1980), 105, 106.  Richard Bauckham, “Conclusion”, 684.

30

STORY, ESCHATOLOGY AND THE AGNUS VICTOR Paul Wells The temptation for eschatology in the period of modernism was to focus on penultimate rather than ultimate things in a way that is foreign to the broad Christian tradition with its emphasis on life eternal.1 Eschatology, the science of the last things (ta eschata), was associated with teleological events and the end of history. This limited understanding contributed to a one-sided emphasis on the impersonal aspect of eschatology, with much ado about chronologies or signs of the end. This approach, which has become highly lucrative in some species of evangelicalism, is an echo of the reifijied factuality of modernism and its approaches to history, criticised by Karl Popper in his Poverty of Historicism. An alternative understanding might do well to focus on the One who is eschatos, Jesus Christ in person, the one who is awaited, whose presence as the “last” marks the peak of the salvation-historical designs of God.2 Eschatology, in this perspective, would present the story in which God enacts the history of man’s salvation from beginning to end. Its principal actor is Jesus Christ, the alpha and the omega, the Creator, the incarnate servant, the risen Saviour and the King of the new creation. Centred on the person of Christ, eschatology can be broadly defijined as the direction and objective of the active faithfulness of God to his covenant with the created order. From this angle, eschatology is not limited to the presentation of the penultimate things of systematic theology but transcends them in an allembracing personalism. It seeks to show how, in Christ, the ultimate reality of God’s plan breaks into history and directs the progressing story. At each stage the Trinitarian project unfolds with heightening intensity.

1

 Cf. Bernard Sesboüe, La resurrection et la vie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998).  The theme of a fijine work by Adrio König, The Eclipse of Christ in Eschatology. Toward a Christ-centred Approach (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1989). 2

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The theological presupposition that directs eschatological science is the goodness of the God whose plan is accomplished throughout history, to its end and even beyond it. Divine goodness has as its correlates the power and wisdom expressed in the divine plan of salvation for the universe and humanity. In the Creed the new covenant people of God confesses the ongoing presence of salvation in every era of the history. The personalising axis of incarnation, cross and resurrection already bespeak the guaranteed end in proleptic fashion, as fruitfully described in the work of Jürgen Moltmann or Wolfhart Pannenberg. Eschatology fijinds its full meaning within the body of Christian doctrine and especially in the context of the doctrine of the economic Trinity. Impersonal determinism and indeterminism are equally destructive for eschatology. The former causes the dynamics and the contingency that characterise the unfolding process of salvation history to disappear from view. In determinism the development of the temporal process is less meaningful than the forces governing it, as Greek tragedy amply demonstrates. History loses its characteristic of novelty, of the unexpected, its freedom and ultimately its poignant human tragedy. Everything becomes fatalistic rather than personal: c’est la faute de la fatalité, as Gustave Flaubert put it. If biblical prophecy announces future events, the accomplishment always goes beyond the factually foreseen. It is the opposite of eternal return or impersonal fatalism. Indeterminism, on the other hand, tends to remove rationality from the process. Chance eliminates the possibility of a future, whose outcome could have been foreseen as the end of current events. In other words, there is no plan and there is nothing to be accomplished. Radical contingency makes history look like a puzzle lacking ultimate design, made up of random events without form. It is no wonder that those who have been heavily preoccupied by questions of historicity, such as Ernst Troeltsch, have been concerned to articulate the interrelatedness of rationality and mystery.3 Contrary to these ideas and their correlations—pure rationalism or irrationalism—Christian eschatology seeks to recognise both divine sovereignty and human liberty, each in its own place, and the

3  Ernst Troeltsch, in J. Hastings, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1913), “Contingency”, IV, 87–89, “Historiography”, VI, 716–723.

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complementary nature of the divine and the human. God accomplishes his plan by respecting human liberty and actions arising from it as well as the conditions and laws that govern impersonal nature. Auguste Lecerf pushed language to its limits when he sought to articulate the duality of historical constituents in such a way as to recognise both: “we believe, he often said, in a God powerful enough—because he is all-powerful—to efffect on the level of creatures through their total freedom what he wills necessarily in so far as he is concerned.”4 The counsel of God concerns “all things”: this embraces aspects of the development of spatio-temporal history, human responsibility, as well as responses to divine Revelation in which human liberty is exercised in a particular environment and at a particular time.5 The framework of eschatology fijinds its development by means of the covenant in which divine action and human response are constituent elements.6 The eschatological development of the history of salvation depends upon complementary factors: the divine presence, the vertical axis and the human response, along horizontal lines, with its religious and cultural aspects. In this complex framework divine sovereignty and human responsibility are linked. Methodological Perspectives In the traditional approach of Biblical theology discussions about eschatology invariably begin with an account of beginnings, progress diachronically and culminate with heaven, the paradise of the new creation.7 This approach is understandable. On the one hand, the Bible is a narrative with a movement that goes from one beginning to a new beginning; on the other hand, the structure of the biblical account justifijies the idea that God does not abandon his creation, but institutes the process of restoration and renewal in its place. Biblical history develops like a story; it is also normal to take its unique development seriously; theology and preaching have always sought to do so.

4

 Quoted by Pierre Marcel in La Revue réformée (1950: 1), 44.  Paul Helm, “God and Whatever Comes to Pass”, Religious Studies 14, (1978), 315–323. 6  Cf. Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology. The Divine Drama, (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2002). 7  Cf. William J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation. An Old Testament Covenantal Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1984). 5

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However, on the methodological level, there are other possible approaches useful for structuring a Christian eschatology. One could begin with ‘the fullness of time’, Oscar Cullmann’s middle-point brought to light by the coming of Christ.8 The ‘already—not yet’ structure has heavily influenced modern eschatological discussion, looking ahead from the already to the promise of the coming and the fijinal accomplishment. As Oliver O’Donovan stated: “The triumph of the Son of man prepares the way for the future triumph of his ‘brethren’, mankind as a whole. But this eschatological triumph of mankind is not an innovative order that has nothing to do with the primal ordering of man as creature to his Creator. It fulfijils and vindicates the primal order in a way that was always implied, but which could not be realized in the fallen state of man and the universe.”9 Another interesting possibility would be to consider the eschatological events of history as constituting a ‘proleptic’ anticipation of the great fijinal accomplishment, along the lines suggested by Moltmann and Pannenberg.10 Ultimate truth is found in fijinality. To consider ongoing events in their complexities and developments in the light of the end highlights the dynamic and the meaning of their unfolding. Such an approach is satisfactory on the phenomenological level, since we know from experience that the end is more captivating than particular stages of development, or than the process in and of itself. An oak tree is more interesting than an acorn, the tulip than the bulb, even if, from an historic perspective, the latter have precedence. Looking at the tulip and the bulb we marvel and say, how did such beauty come from that? For this reason, it does not seem illegitimate, on the methodological level, to consider the eschatology of the biblical history of salvation from the perspective of fijinal revelation, the end point. We might gain more understanding of the biblical witness by reading it from the end backwards, rather than the other way round, which is the accepted way of doing things. After all, we already know many elements of the future from this revelation, although they are still a long way offf happening and shrouded in mystery. It could, of course, be objected that there is a danger

  8  Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time (London: SCM Press, 1962), Salvation in History (London: SCM Press, 1967).   9  Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 2nd ed. (Leicester: Apollos; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 54. 10  Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God (London: SCM Press, 1996), Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. III (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

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of reading the ‘not yet’ into the ‘already’ and of imposing the still to come onto the present realities. Like secular utopians, eschatologically oriented religious visionaries throughout history have invariably wanted to get the future into the here and now. They act as if the kingdom were already on earth, or at least just round the corner. However, it is neither impossible nor problematic, from this perspective, to recognise historical developments for what they really are, in so far as their outlines already have something of the future realities revealed through prophetic biblical revelation.11 A reflection on the link between the resurrection of Christ and its New Testament function as the beginning of the end, Christ being the ‘new man’ and the fijirst to enter the new creation, argues for the legitimacy of such an approach. As Pannenberg said, “with the eschatological future God’s eternity comes into time and it is thus creatively present to all the temporal things that precede this future.”12 A Personal Eschatological Telos Just as the kingdom of God manifests the future reign of God in the present world, heaven manifests this presence throughout the history of salvation. Heaven is not a place distant from the present world, but an aspect, normally kept secret, of present reality. It is the divine dimension of reality and appears when the normally present veil is suddenly and unexpectedly lifted and what is ordinarily invisible becomes visible to the eye of faith.13 The eschatological future of the new creation is determined by the fact that the covenant between God, creation and men will arrive at its terminus and, as a completed reality, will be the foundation of a new eternal development. The covenant is realised in perfect, eternal and permanent communion between God and his creatures. Communion with God throughout the history of salvation, even under the new covenant with the efffusion of the Spirit, is only ever a foretaste of this eternal glory. The promise “I will be their God, they will be my people” repeated time and again throughout the history of redemption awaits a durable realisation.14

11  See Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope Against Hope (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1999), on the rhetoric of the unsayable and images of hope. 12  Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, III, 531. 13  N. Tom Wright, Following Jesus (London: SPCK., 1994), the chapter on heaven. 14  Rev. 21:3, cf. Lev. 26:12 etc.

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When God “makes all things new” he becomes the “all in all” of the new creation.15 If the present world is an allusion to this perfection, the new world reaches a fullness of joy, life, knowledge, holiness and justice in the new Jerusalem. Sion is the dwelling of God; all that is non-conform to this perfection has no existence in the city.16 The presence of the eschatological future is supremely manifested in the person of Christ.17 In the days of his incarnation and victory over the antagonistic forces that obscure the reign of God, Christ was a microcosm of God’s future, summing up the hope of human spiritual history. He came from our future to lead us to it. John Tauler had a fijine image for this, although he was using it in a mystical not in an eschatological perspective: As the loadstone draws the iron after itself, so does Christ draw all hearts after Himself which have once been touched by Him; and as when the iron is impregnated with the energy of the loadstone that has touched it, it follows the stone uphill, although that is contrary to its nature, and cannot rest in its own proper place, but strives to rise above itself on high; so all the souls which have been touched by this loadstone, Christ, can neither be chained down by joy or grief but are ever rising up to God out of themselves.18

Jesus Christ, the mediator, “author and fijinisher of our faith19” is at the same time the craftsman and the substance of the consummation. As loadstone he draws history up to himself. “I am alpha and omega” is his visiting card, in the fijirst person singular. The title indicates his sovereignty over all history,20 but it also points to the summit and the beginning of a new economy of created things. The Revelation of John takes up an old theme in the context of fijirst century paganism and persecution, recalling Isaiah’s diatribe on the folly of idolatry: Thus said the Lord, the King of Israel, Their Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts: I am the fijirst and I am the last, And there is no God but Me. Who like Me can announce, Can foretell it—and match Me thereby?21

15

 Rom. 11:38, 1 Cor. 8:6, 15:28 and Rev. 21:5, 6.  Ps. 24, Rev. 21:27. 17  Hendrikus Berkhof, Christus de zin der geschiedenis [Christ, the Meaning of History] (Callenbach: Nijkerk, 1962), chap. 3. 18  John Tauler, quoted by Richard de Bary, ed., Mystical Fellowship. The Science of Christliness (London: Longmans, Green, 1907), 56. 19  Heb. 12:2. 20  Rev. 1:8, 11, 21:6, 22:13. 21  Isa. 44:6, 7, Tanakh Translation. 16

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By using the expression alpha and omega, the Revelation indicates that redemption encompasses, under the sovereignty of Christ, the created order in its fijinal revival. As in the words of Isaiah, the future accomplishment scans back to the beginning and captures the whole creation in His embrace: I am He—I am the fijirst, And I am the last as well. My own hand founded the earth My right hand spread out the skies . . . From the beginning I did not speak in secret, From the time anything existed, I was there. And now the Lord God has sent me, endowed with his Spirit.22

God, as the one who declares “the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done,”23 acts through the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the author (archē) of the creation of God, who is “preeminent”, and reigns over the universe.24 Calvin thought that Christ would not remain eternally as mediator of communion between God and his people in the new creation.25 We think the opposite, perhaps because the conditions of eschatological fijinality are not impersonal but are found in the life, wisdom and justice of Christ the Lord. The kingdom of God will be characterised by life, knowledge and justice in a personal sense; the ontological, epistemological and ethical attributes of God will have their reflection in the eternal Jubilee centred on the reign of the Agnus victor. Life. The Son is not only the alpha in creation but is also the One who “grants to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.26” What is this mysterious tree of life? Referring to the kethuvim: “(wisdom) is a tree of life to those who grasp her/ And whoever holds on to her is happy.27” It symbolises nothing less than “communion with God, the source of

22

 Isa. 48:12,16.  Isa. 46:10, cf. Prov. 8:22. 24  Col. 1:18. 25  John Calvin states in two passages, in the Institutes (2.14.3) and in his Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:28 that when the Father will be “all in all”, it is because Christ relinquishes his mediatorship into the Father’s hand. It is one of the unelucidated aspects of the Reformer’s teaching, and seems rather to run against his argument in Institutes 2.12 (as well as his exchange with Stancaro) that Christ mediates in both natures. 26  Rev. 2:7. 27  Prov. 3:18. 23

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inexhaustible life.”28 What is this wisdom if it is not Jesus Christ himself? From the throne of the Lamb the river of the water of life flows, the river that feeds the tree of life, the leaves of which serve “for the healing of the nations.”29 It is legitimate to consider that the covenant between God and man, which will be realised in fijine in the New Jerusalem, is nothing less than the summation of the covenant of life presented in the paradisiacal garden of creation. The tale of two paradises is dramatic because it is the story of “the knowledge of good and evil”. However the tragedy is tempered by life-knowledge, as the person of Christ embodies the wisdom and the substance of life that link these two moments pregnant with divine presence. Heaven, with its wisdom-life principle, is present from the beginning of creation and accompanies the whole life of man to the heavenly home. For this reason it is permissible to envisage creation as a primal parousia of God. “The Glory-Spirit was present at the beginning of creation as a sign of the telos of creation, as the Alpha-archetype of the Omega-Sabbath that was the goal of creation history.”30 The telos is God’s kingdom of life. Like all creation it depends on divine ontological presence and eternity. From the spiritual point of view, heaven is a supernatural realm of visible and invisible realities within the whole created reality. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, heaven is a sanctuary where the high priest dwells in the spiritual tabernacle.31 Heaven is also the place where martyrs, having reached perfection, are alive awaiting the end.32 Christ dwells therein to prepare for his own,33 an image of the promised land. New creation follows the old. 2 Peter 3:10, 12 and Revelation 20:11 announce the dissolution of the elements coinciding with the moment of the new creation. The reign is divinely established by Christ’s act and will, not by natural means. The old world will pass with crisis. The present reality will be dissolved at the moment of the appearing of Christ and transformed, by the Spirit, into another reality. This metamorphosis is neither natural, nor evolutional, but a cataclysmic work of the Spirit. It calls

28

 Henri Blocher, Révélation des origines (Lausanne: Presses Bibliques Universitaires, 1979), 121. 29  Rev. 22:1–5, cf. Ez. 47:12. 30  Meredith J. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), 20. 31  Heb. 8:1–2. 32  Rev. 20:1, 4. 33  Jn. 14:1–2.

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for violence, a diastasis as Klaas Schilder called it: the death of the old, the disappearance of present reality and the appearing of newness. Strangely for our platonic way of thinking, heaven is never presented in the Scriptures other than materially. This is not a form of primitive or mythical naïveté, but an expression of the fact that this is the only way a spiritual reality could be humanly depicted. Biblical symbols are often used to show that heaven is a location not still station–for example, the Biblical metaphors of the city, the promise of Jesus in John 14 announcing the preparing of a “dwelling”, the ascension described in Ephesians 4 as the passage from one reality to another, the welcome of the brigand to paradise on Golgotha. For the apostle, the christic resurrection described in 1 Corinthians 15 is the rising of a glorifijied body; it precedes the general resurrection as the fijirst-fruits announce the harvest. Heaven is therefore the fijinal destination of creation where Jesus is now in spiritualised-bodily form, as the omega in person. Renewal of heaven and earth has already taken place in Him, and demonstrates the new physical form as a prototype and pioneer of the new life. The symbols serve to unfold in the present the end of the story that is our story, a story of spiritual fellowship. As Thomas Torrance asks: “Do not the resurrection as a historical fact (in Martin Kähler’s sense) and the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension mean that the reality of the new creation is temporal fact now though its reality is veiled since the ascended Lord is yet to be unveiled in the parousia?”34 Knowledge. The present state of the knowledge of God, in our world, is partial and childlike. But Christ in person is “all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge.”35 The apostle indicates that, in the “adult” stage to come, “I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” At present, knowing God is like seeing “in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.”36 In contrast with the mysterious nature of the present knowledge of the kingdom, our future knowledge will be characterised by directness, proximity and the alleviation of ignorance. If the ontological diffference between God and the creature will be undiminished, faith freed from sin, resurrected to new life, will be resourced by a new vision of God. That is why the Revelation says, in a symbolic way, that the heavenly lights will no longer have their 34  Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation. The Person and Life of Christ (Paternoster/IVP Academic: Downers Grove, Ill., 2008), 333. 35  Col. 2.3. 36  1 Cor. 13:11, 12.

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function “for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.37” The eternal city itself is “transparent as glass.” The knowledge of God will be a transformed faith, as the prophet anticipated: “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”38 The new covenant in which “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest”39 already anticipates this glorious reality. Here, too, is found the foundation of heavenly praise: “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns . . .”, a song which includes a past reference, since the head of new mankind is also the Lamb that was slain.40 Justice. In paradise blessing and judgement are the fulfijilment of divine law and that law is fulfijilled in Christ “the end (telos) of the law.”41 The fijinal condition of the new creation is perfect ethical conformity with divine holiness. For the kingdom of justice to come, the infijidel Babylon and the great prostitute are judged and annihilated.42 God demonstrates “his judgments as true and just.” The devil, the antichrist, the false prophet are condemned to the lake of fijire and, with them, the “dead” and the “idolaters” sufffer “the second death.”43 Judgment is the purifijication of creation and the establishment of divine justice. Without it God’s reign would not be achieved. Divine justice expresses itself in the parousia of the Word of God, the Faithful and True, the Lord of lords. Seated on a white horse, a sword coming from his mouth, he judges the nations with a rod of iron— symbols of retribution and God’s anger against sin. However, even judgment may be a reason for rejoicing—“Hallelujah, for his judgments are true and just.”44 The agnus is the victor who reigns over the new creation by abolishing the perversity of evil that plagues creation. Entering new creation is likened to attending a wedding feast, a covenantal image of communion.45 The marriage of the Lamb is consummated with a bride, the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven, clothed in fijine linen, “the righteous deeds of the saints”, and its inhabitants “who are

37

 Rev. 21:2 3.  Isa. 11:9, Hab. 2:14. 39  Jer. 31:31–34, Heb. 8:11. 40  Rev. 19:6, 5:6–14. 41  Rom. 13:10. 42  Rev. 18:21, 19:2. 43  Rev. 20:10, 19:12, 21:7–8. 44  Rev. 19:2. 45  Matt. 22:1–14. 38

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written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Thus begins the story of the new creation where “his servants will worship him. They will see his face.”46 The cultural mandate entrusted to Adam will be carried on eternally in God’s presence by the kin of the last Adam, in justice, holiness and love. The Person of Jesus and Eschatology Since the beginning of Christian tradition, Jesus has been presented as ho eschatos, the last. The person of Jesus himself is the goal towards which all creation and the covenant progresses, to fijind accomplishment in him.47 “The Son fully identifijies with the order of creation.”48 Moreover, the incarnation causes the end of history to enter time. In Jesus the divine intention of salvation and judgment is unveiled, both being crystallised at the cross. The divine plan is personally completed in the coming of the Son, who for this reason is eschatology in person. As Torrance said, “the reality of our salvation is anchored on the divine side of reality, that the lamb is slain before the foundation of the world, that he has ascended to the right hand of God the Father almighty, and sits down with God on his own throne because he is God. Everything depends upon the fact that the cross is lodged in the heart of the Father.”49 Jesus Christ is therefore the telos in person, for he accomplishes God’s eschatological aim historically. The incarnation of Christ is an event where Jesus, by his appearance, marks the arrival of the eschatological day and begins a diffferent time. Not only does the coming of Christ mark the last period of time, it inaugurates the end-time. In 1 Peter 1:20 Christ is said to be “foreknown before the foundation of the world but made manifest in the last times (ep’ eschatou tōn chronōn) for your sake.” This text presents a contrast between two events opposed but complementary: the foundation of the world and the end of time. The link between the two is established by the presence of the incarnate Christ. In the person of Christ and because of his coming, the end of time is transparent. Consequently, “since Jesus in his incarnate life is the truth of God made manifest in human history, the judgment of the last day is in a sense already taking place in people’s response to him. . . The astonishing coincidence

46

 Rev. 21:2, 10, 19:7–8, 21:27, 22:3–4.  Col 1:15–17. 48  Cf. Colin Gunton, Christ and Creation (Paternoster: Carlisle, 1992), chaps. 2, 3. 49  Torrance, Incarnation, 189. 47

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of God’s utter condemnation of sinners and his radical grace for sinners occurs defijinitively in the cross and will recur at the last judgment. The last judgment will implement what has been decided once and for all at the cross.”50 These thoughts serve to show that the incarnation of Jesus is the culmination of the magnalia Dei. All that is going to happen at the end has already happened in Jesus and continues to determine the relationship between God and man. The appearance of the Messiah, “the last” inaugurates the “last days”, when the power of God is shown by his presence. The coming of God in Christ is the long-awaited climax of history. All history concerning Jesus, past and present, as well as his return in glory, is eschatological. The coherence of history is found in the unity of the person of Christ. Jesus himself marks the end. In one sense, the end is nearer with his coming but, in another, the end is already there. Every person united to Christ is united, in principle, to the end and to the presence of the kingdom to come. Conclusion Scripture is a book with a story, which is quite diffferent from saying that it is a storybook. The vital thing about a good story is the contrast between the beginning and the end and what happens between the two. It is often pointed out that the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a glorious city, which itself implies construction and progression. From a Christian perspective there is someone behind what is going on in the cosmos. Between the “there is not nothing” at the start and “there will not be nothing” at the end, something happens, a story in which God speaks and interacts with human beings. Scripture is the covenant story that moves between the start and the end. There is someone there who gives life ultimate meaning. For this reason, the important thing for understanding the story is its end. We already know many things about the future from what the Bible tells us, even if many of them remain mysterious and unexplained. However, the future gives a meaning to time from the perspective of eternity. In this respect the Scripture presents a story unlike any other. We read a story or see a fijilm once, twice perhaps, if we really enjoy it. However every 50  Bauckham and Hart, Hope, 141, 143–144. Cf., also Ben Witherington III, Jesus, Paul and the End of the World (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1992).

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time we open the Book, we already know what the end is and understand what we read in that perspective. What could be more engaging? This is our life in the perspective of eternity and our future too. To trace the story line of the Bible we will start at the end, with what we know about the future. Then we will see the vital place of Jesus in the middle, as the one who prepares this astonishing future. There is an ‘after Jesus’ before the end comes, the intermezzo of the years A.D. we live in at present. Before Jesus, B.C., in the mists of the past there is the creation and the time of promise and unfulfijilled hope. Jesus himself is the fulcrum of the whole story. The hour may be late, but the clock is still ticking because the Agnus victor is “alive for evermore” and holds not only the keys to death and hell,51 but also the key that keeps the clock wound.

51

 Rev. 1:18.

ESCHATOLOGY: SOME THEOLOGICAL, APOLOGETIC AND PASTORAL REFLECTIONS Alan P.F. Sell One of my most regularly intoned mantras is to the efffect that the most satisfactory theology derives from what God has been pleased to reveal, and not from what he has not. This cautionary word is nowhere more appropriate than when eschatology is under discussion, as Arnobius (3rd/4th cent.) well knew. Of those inclined to probe beyond the capacities of the human mind he wrote, “Your reason is not permitted to involve you in such questions, and to be busied to no purpose about things out of reach.”1 The caution has not been universally heeded, and hence throughout the Christian ages eschatology has been a happy hunting-ground for apocalyptically-minded persons. People have ransacked the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation for information concerning Armageddon; the date of the end of the world (notwithstanding that Jesus said that this is not ours to know); the identity of the Beast (Luther/sundry Popes/ Napoleon/Hitler―or anyone else who does not take the searcher’s fancy); the mechanics of Christ’s return, and much more besides. Indeed, three days before I began to type this paper Britain’s oldest and most highly regarded Sunday newspaper carried the headline, “Americans stock up for the end of the world.”2 The theme of the news item is that in response to terrorism and the economic recession a legion of “preppers” has been spawned―people who are determined to be prepared for whatever disaster may strike. “Preppers”, apparently, are not all of one kind. At one end of the spectrum are those seeking a more self-sufffijicient lifestyle; at the other are those who are stocking up for Armageddon (though one might be tempted to think it imprudent to stockpile millions of tins of baked beans in readiness for a great conflagration). As if all this were not enough, I have it on good authority that there are “people who have bumperstickers on their cars that say, ‘Warning: In case of the rapture, the driver of

1  Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, II.lxi. I have used the translations of the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. 2  The Observer, 14 February 2010, 48.

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this car will disappear.’ Lately I have been seeing some others that say, “When the rapture comes, can I have your car?”3 Whether we regard such eschatological activity and responses as amusing or disturbing, they do at least underline the point that reflections of an eschatological kind (whether bizarre or sober) are more readily prompted by particular events than is reflection on most other Christian doctrines. The fall of Jerusalem, the collapse of the Roman empire, the rise of Islam, the Reformation, the inauguration of the slave trade, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the French Revolution, the First World War, the advent of the atom bomb, and now the threat of terrorism and the global warming: all of these and many others have caused the thought of many to turn to the last things. It is as if eschatological reflection is existentially engendered to a degree that reflection on the Trinity or the Virgin Birth, for example, is not. It is this fact, I think, that helps to explain both the growth of interest in eschatology at particular times, and also the recycling, modifijication, and supplementation of eschatological doctrines through time. All of which gives rise to some theological, apologetic and pastoral reflections. Theological Reflections First, I must confess to an almost complete inability to work up interest concerning the millennium. I cannot easily bring myself to dwell upon the excitements which some have found in pre-, post- or a-millennial theorizing. Origen hinted that the source of millennial expectation was in Jewish speculation during the centuries surrounding the birth of Christ and, given the evidence of the Messianic expectation in the fijirst century book, II Enoch (the Slavonic Enoch), I think that he was right to do so.4 The subject is not mentioned by Jesus, nor does it appear in any of the classical creeds or the Reformed confessions of faith and catechisms known to me. The explanation for this, surely, is that with Christ the kingdom is already present; at Pentecost the Spirit of Christ returns, and in the ascension Christ’s universal sway is confijirmed; accordingly, there is no room for of a millennial reign.

3  Barbara Brown Taylor, “Expecting the Second Coming. Don’t say when,” The Christian Century (21 September 2004), 35. 4  See Origen, De Principiis II.xi.2.

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This is not to say that in God’s good time there will not be a winding up of history, a consummation―the event witnessed to by the doctrine of the Second Coming: “Salvation covers more than individual destiny,” wrote H.R. Mackintosh, “it is perfected only in the perfecting of the Kingdom, and Christ’s perfecting of the Kingdom, coinciding with the end of this world, is His Advent.”5 But here again we need to be circumspect. Notwithstanding numerous of our disappointed forebears whose calendrical calculations came to nought, we do not know the time when this will occur, and we should be ill advised to think of it in too literalistic terms. Some theologians and preachers still make much of the fact that Christ will come visibly on the clouds. The twentieth-century New Testament scholar J.J. Müller said this, though he declined to speculate whether television would be the means whereby the event would be universally witnessed.6 The advice of the Puritan, William Gurnall (1616–1679) is more to the point: “The servant that looks for his master will be loath to be found in bed when he comes; . . . Christ hath told us he ‘will come’; but not when, that we might never put offf our clothes or put out the candle.”7 “Take Christ now as you Saviour or meet Him later as your Judge.”8 Thus spoke the celebrated Methodist preacher, W.E. Sangster. I fear, however, that he propounded a false dichotomy, for Christ cannot be now judge, later saviour: he is always both judge and saviour, and according as our response to him is positive or negative, we are judged favourably or adversely. But to say that judgment is here and now is not to deny a fijinal judgment. The latter idea is too prominent in the New Testament to be ignored. What may, I think, be said with confijidence is this: Our Judge will be the God whose glory we have seen in the face of Jesus Christ. In judgement as in redemption, Christ is the image of the Father, and so we know that judgement will not be arbitrary or purposeless. It will be the judgment of love like the love of Christ.9

But if judgment is here and now, and to come, so is heaven. It was a great step forward when C.H. Dodd (1884–1973), pre-eminently in Britain, drew 5  H.R. Mackintosh, Immortality and the Future (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917), 140. 6  J.J Müller, When Christ Comes Again (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1956), 35. 7  W. Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour; A Treatise of the Saint’s War against the Devil (1655–1662), (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1964), II, 507. 8  W.E. Sangster, “The probation of life,” in H.V. Hodson, ed., The Great Mystery of Life Hereafter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1957), 105. 9  S. Cave, The Doctrines of the Christian Faith (1931), (London: Independent Press, 1952, 301.

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renewed attention to what he called “realized eschatology”―the idea conveyed in the New Testament that the kingdom of heaven is here now, and to come in its fullness. Dodd developed this theme in relation to Acts, Paul’s letters and, above all, to the parables of the kingdom. With the coming of Jesus God’s kingly reign is inaugurated, and the whole of his life and ministry testifijies to the fact. In somewhat diffferent ways more recent theologians such as Moltmann and Pannenberg have developed this idea. Heaven is life in the presence of God now; it is not a location the passport to which is death. But, we believe, our fellowship with God will be more wonderful hereafter; and it is all of grace. The questions of hell and the fate of the wicked cannot, however, be sidestepped. As has often been remarked, we cannot describe the furniture of heaven or take the temperature of hell. We are bound to have recourse to symbolism, but we should not be misled by it. There is much that we do not know. There is New Testament evidence to support the view that if heaven begins here and now, so too does hell; that hell is to be understood as the agony of separation from God. As Calvin wrote, “[W]e ought especially to fijix our thoughts upon this: how wretched it is to be cut offf from all fellowship with God.”10 But this holy God, in whose presence sin cannot stand, is also the God who does not desire the death of the wicked but rather that they repent and live. What are we to make of this? There are, in my opinion, sufffijicient warnings in the New Testament to preclude the dogmatic assertion of universalism (however much one might hope that it is true, and that God’s relentless seeking will be rewarded with ultimate fijinding). Perhaps the parson-poet George Crabbe (1754–1832) put it most succinctly when―with reference to the Swedenborgian universalism, but it applies more widely―he wrote, The view is happy, we may think it just; It may be true—but who shall add, it must?11

In H.R. Mackintosh’s opinion, “No one certainly is in a position to afffijirm that there must be those who eternally remain unsaved. This would be much more than to admit the possibility of eternal sin; it would plant intrinsic moral dualism at the heart of things.”12 On the other hand, would God override his gift of freedom―even the freedom doggedly to refuse his

10  J. Calvin, Institutes, ed. J.T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), III.xxv.12. 11  G. Crabbe, “The Borough, Letter IV.” 12  H.R. Mackintosh, Immortality and the Future, 211.

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love eternally? Or should we be swayed by Sydney Cave’s suggestion that ‘if any be lost, it will be because they have so identifijied themselves with evil that they have lost the power of choice; they have ceased to be persons, and as things may pass into the void”? He immediately adds, “Such surmises deal with what lies beyond our knowledge.”13 Is there anything that we can say with some degree of certainty? What seems clear from the New Testament is that the religious will have some surprises when they see who are enjoying the afterlife in heaven―and who are conspicuous by their absence therefrom! Precisely because of our limited knowledge and the numerous interpretations of eschatological matters that have been advanced, we should be ill advised to elevate assent to particular aspects of eschatological doctrine into terms of Christian fellowship or church membership. With reference to one particularly contentious issue the prominent Baptist, Robert Hall (1764–1831), saw the point in the early nineteenth century: “[I]n my humble opinion, the doctrine of the eternal duration of future misery, metaphysically considered, is not an essential article of faith, nor is the belief of it ever proposed as a term of salvation.”14 Apologetic Reflections When we have done our best to wrestle with the Bible’s eschatological pronouncements, and have cut a path through literalism and lurid and eccentric interpretations, we are still not out of the wood if we would commend the faith to others. The eschatological assertions we wish to make remain susceptible to challenge by sincere enquirers no less than by sceptical opponents. It is fijirst of all necessary to show that Christianity is not committed to the doctrine of immortality understood as the human being’s natural right. On the contrary, as John Baillie insisted, “It is time there was an end to the expectation that anything even remotely corresponding to the Christian hope may be extracted from premises of a purely humanistic kind.”15 Christianity is not concerned with the mere survival of an aspect of our selves deemed indestructible―the escape, in Platonic fashion, of the soul from its body-tomb; or with the post-mortem re-assembling of our body

13

 S. Cave, The Doctrines of the Christian Faith, 301.  The Works of Robert Hall, A.M. (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1833), V, 528–9. 15  J. Baillie, And the Life Everlasting, (1934), (London: Epworth Press, 1961), 123. 14

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parts; or with the pantheistic absorption of our selves in the Absolute;16 or with our “living on” in the memories of those who knew us (though we may hope that some may remember us―but for how long?). The One into whose fellowship we are called by grace is the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that relationship means a new life which begins in the present and continues after death, and joy and peace that know no end; and all of this because Jesus Christ was raised, and those who are united to him are raised with him. Death has no power over them, for it was defeated once-for-all at the Cross. As Geofffrey Nuttall wrote, “The New Testament begins and ends with Christ: He is the Alpha and the Omega . . . And the Church begins and ends with the Resurrection.”17 But already I have used a number of terms, and made some huge assumptions, which many fijind problematic. I have spoken of new life but not, of course, of absolutely novel life. There is continuity between what Paul thought of as the old life and the new―not least the continuity marked by the fact that those who are saints by calling are also sinners. The newness rather consists in the fact that the saint has a new outlook, new motives, new attitudes, new power, new friends in the Church― God’s adopted family, and a new song of praise and glory to God.18 Hear P.T. Forsyth: Eternal life is a new gift to us by a new act, a new creation. It is a second birth. It is not the development of a power or an ideal immanent to the world or Humanity. It is a gift of God, through an act of God. To evade that act of God is to turn religion to a piece of aesthetic. In an ethical religion we are redeemed. We do not glide into heaven; we are taken, not to say plucked, into it.19

As if this were not enough, there is the biblical promise of a new heaven and a new earth. There is to be a redemption of the physical as well as of the spiritual. Hence Paul’s use of the prima facie contradictory term “spiritual body” (I Corinthians 15:4). Nothing that God has created is beyond the reach of his re-creative power. This returns us to the assertion that Christ’s resurrection, confijirmatory of his victory at the Cross over all that

16

 See further Alan P.F. Sell, Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief (Cardifff: University of Wales Press, 1995; and Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006.) 17  G.F. Nuttall, “The heirs of heaven,” The Congregational Quarterly, XXXV no. 1 (January 1957), 9. 18  For a fuller exposition of these points see Alan P.F. Sell, The Spirit Our Life (Shippensburg, PA: Ragged Edge Press), 2000, 24–5. 19  P.T. Forsyth, This Life and the Next (1918) (London: Independent Press, 1953), 86.

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is opposed to God, is of cosmic signifijicance.20 What is clear from this is that Christianity takes a linear view of history with teleology at its heart: a purpose is being worked out. This cannot but puzzle those who take a cyclic view of history and, to the best of my knowledge, this is marks a chasm between the Christian faith and some other faiths which thus far seems insurmountable. I have said that the new life begins now and continues more wonderfully hereafter. Many Christians would endorse this claim, among them the blacksmith who, having heard Brownlow North (1810–1875) preach, said, “Surely a believing sense of the presence and favour of God enjoyed is heaven begun on earth.”21 “The Christian’s assurance of life after death,” wrote Geofffrey Nuttall, “is . . . never a sheer datum, it is always consequent upon his faith, an inference from it, we might say, albeit a necessary inference.”22 No doubt; but the problem for some is that the alleged post mortem life is said to be the believer’s life, but it does not involve the bodily and other features whereby others would recognize us in this present life, or by which we would recognize ourselves in a mirror or in accurate pictorial representations of ourselves. The question thus presses whether the believer’s life now and the life hereafter is the life of the same person.23 Furthermore, the new life is said to involve a relationship with a God deemed to be personal. But God, being, according to Christian doctrine, omnipresent spirit, seems to be an odd entity with whom to have a personal relationship. Here we must refer at once to God’s supreme revelation in Jesus Christ. From him we learn that God is our Father; in Jesus we see God’s love―as holy and righteous as it is merciful and free. We can rest in this knowledge; any other thoughts about One who inhabits eternity conceived as an environment not conditioned by space and time are quite beyond our powers of comprehension. Yet again, the new life is said to be a life of union with Christ and within the communion of saints which begins here and continues hereafter. How might such a claim be defended? We can without difffijiculty understand that Christians may associate in this life with other believers in the

20  See further Abraham van de Beek, Why? On Sufffering, Guilt and God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), ch. 23. 21  K. Moody Stewart, Brownlow North. His Life and Work (1878), (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1971), 53. 22  G.F. Nuttall, “The heirs of heaven,” 17. 23  For a fuller discussion of this point see A.G.N. Flew, “Death,” in A.G.N. Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, eds, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955), 267–272.

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fellowship of the Church. An unbeliever might understand this fellowship as analogous to the fellowship others fijind in a darts club or a bee-keeping society. The Christian would then be tempted to complicate matters by explaining that the analogy in imperfect because Christian fellowship is vertically inaugurated whereas other human associations are horizontally inaugurated. That is to say, in the latter case enthusiasts band together, raise money, appoint committees, and promote their interest. In the former case the saints are called by God into his new family. But this does not settle the problem of communion with the saints hereafter. I do not see that we can say more than this: If we are to assume any kind of continuity of personality (and apart from this assumption the resurrection of Jesus has no meaning either for Himself or for anyone else), it would seem unreal, as well and unnecessary, to rule out some kind of continuity in those personal relationships out of which the stufff of personality is shaped and nurtured . . .24

What, then, of union with Christ? The Westminster Larger Catechism (1648) afffijirms that The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God’s grace, by which they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their Head and Husband, which is done in their efffectual calling.25

Behind this claim lies, once more, the fact of Christ’s resurrection: not so much the empty tomb, for no amount of empirical evidence of the most reliable kind would by itself convey the Gospel. The disciples experienced the risen Christ and proclaimed their Good News to all who would hear. But I have just used the term “experience”, and this leads us to the heart of the matter of commending the faith to others. For clearly a person’s religious experience is properly a matter of testimony, but it is not a matter of demonstrative proof which could convince a sceptic. Moreover, we cannot bestow our faith on another. If we are charged, as we may well be, with being deluded, or at least with being liable to error (if we can be mistaken where relations with other humans are concerned―how much more where God is the subject of our experience), we can but take our stand. As Ronald Hepburn put it, “There seems no way, at the experiential level, of settling the really urgent questions, most of all the following: Do

24

 G.F. Nuttall, The Reality of Heaven (London: Independent Press, 1951) 79–80.  T.F. Torrance, ed., The School of Faith (London: James Clarke, 1959) 197.

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we have in theistic experience mere projection? Or do we have a projection matched by an objectively existing God?”26 What has become clear as this part of our discussion has progressed is that the idea of the supernatural runs throughout. I am not, of course, thinking in terms of Hollywood “spookery.” Rather, if I may quote myself, “I understand the saving act to be supernatural in two respects: fijirst, its provision is not from nature, least of all from human beings, but from the holy God of all grace. Secondly, it has to restore nature, especially ours.”27 The Christian’s calling; our new life here and now and to come; our relations with God and the communion of saints here and now and to come: all of this turns on the action of God at the Cross on the very stage of that history, human and material, which is in the process of being redeemed. If our honest enquirers and equally honest (however sceptical) opponents cannot see this (and apart from the approach of the Holy Spirit they will not), there is no more that we can do by way of testimony. We cannot, for example, convince them by showing how coherent our system of thought is (though we should strive for coherence), because they will simply retort that the Nazi and the Alice in Wonderland world views are coherent: the question is whether or not they are true. The upshot is that what is at issue here is a clash of world views. To espouse one is to reject another; to move from one to another is to be converted, because what is at issue is the “total assertion” that a person makes about the world, and not simply a change of mind on one or more particular points of belief. Thus, for example, in the heyday of logical positivism, some maintained that those propositions only are meaningful which are either analytic or, at least in principle, empirically verifijiable. They thereby ruled out aesthetic, moral and religious propositions as literally non-sensical, meaningless. So long as a person maintains this view, all Christian claims (amongst many others) are ruled out ab initio. Or if a Christian and a member of an eastern religion were discussing the philosophy of history, the Christian would presumably wish to assert a linear view of history, whereby there is a forward movement through time and a teleological objective in view, whereas the other person would advocate a cyclic view of history with all that that entails in terms of the transmigration of souls, reincarnation and the like. Clearly such stances difffer 26  R.W. Hepburn, “Religious experience. Argument for the existence of God,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), VII, 168. 27  Alan P.F. Sell, Confessing and Commending the Faith (Cardifff: University of Wales Press, 2002; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 180. The point is elaborated on pp. 177–184.

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signifijicantly from straightforward diffferences of opinion among those who espouse the same world view on matters on which one might legitimately be persuaded to change one’s mind (the date of the Second Coming, for example!). All that can be done in such cases is to commend one’s own stance, and to seek to show that, by adopting his or her world view, the other person is precluded from accommodating matters of importance. What cannot be done, I suggest, is to declare that, however it may be with other world views, the Christian world view derives from revelation and is thereby utterly divorced from metaphysical assumptions. The fact is that even those, whether philosophers or theologians, who have eschewed metaphysics are ipso facto indebted to it in that they are making claims to the efffect that the world is, or is not, such and such. As has been well said, Even the violently anti-metaphysical theology of Karl Barth and his neoCalvinist followers fijinds itself involved in self-contradiction when it denies all validity to metaphysics. Such a denial is itself metaphysical and, ironically, an uncompromising revelational theology has implicit metaphysical foundations which are concealed only by a kind of theological sleight of hand.28

Pastoral Reflections So much for Christian eschatological testimony vis-à-vis honest enquirers and sceptical opponents. What, fijinally, is the importance of eschatology for Christians themselves? It is my belief that eschatological themes are crucial to our Christian living. This may not always be readily apparent, and this is at least in part because eschatological themes are, in some quarters, seldom touched upon in churches except at funerals (by which time is it too late for the deceased). As long ago as 1915 H.R. Mackintosh felt able to declare that “Sermons on the joys of heaven or future retribution are tolerably rare.”29 It would be a gross exaggeration to say that there has been any improvement in this regard in most of the churches with which I am acquainted. This is the more disturbing because at the present time death is in the news. We hear much of euthanasia (not in Augustus Montague Toplady’s sense of the “happy death” of Christians), and of “assisted suicide.” Death regularly confronts us on television when 28  H.E. Root, “The logic of eschatology,” The Modern Churchman, III no. 1 (December 1959), 95. 29  H.R. Mackintosh, Immortality and the Future, 100.

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we, as it were, visit war zones or scenes of devastating natural disaster. Christian applied ethicists do seem to be busy in the fijields of abortion and euthanasia, and I have seen copies of the Journal of Thanatology. But systematicians and, especially perhaps, preachers, do not always give to eschatological themes the place that they deserve, and this is unfortunate for a number of reasons. Our pulpits ought to be places in which, over a period of time, the Bible is expounded in such a way as to cover the major issues of life, not excluding death. I can perfectly well understand why preachers may feel a certain reluctance to broach eschatological matters with their church members. The record of pulpit activity in this fijield has not been an unmixed blessing. For too long a “carrot and stick” approach was employed by some, the carrot being the joys of heaven, the stick the flames of hell. I, however, am convinced that preachers are well advised to eschew any attempt to play upon fears with a view to frightening people to Christ. If the Gospel is not heard as Good News it will not be heard at all, and people generally only begin to be aware of their needy condition as sinners when they begin grasp what God has done to rescue them. Perhaps partly as a reaction against ill-conceived applications of the doctrine of hell there is, among many church members today, the conviction that the churches must be “inclusive” in the sense of being open and welcoming to all, regardless of race, sex, culture and the like. This is as it should be.30 But the open door approach can have the efffect of blunting the angularity of the Gospel, so that people are not challenged to consider that there is a distinction of eternal signifijicance between those who are regenerate and those who are not. Yet it is the former who comprise the “matter” of the Church. In the absence of this challenge local churches can so take the colour of the communities in which they are set that when a counter-cultural witness is called for, they are impotent. Whatever may be the cause of the decline in presenting the eschatological challenge to our congregations (that is, not only to our churches), I believe it to be a pastoral failure not to expound the necessity of repentance and faith as leading to the eternal life of fellowship with Christ and his saints. Only if they are living in what one might call the atmosphere of heaven can our people be equipped to face death. As Thomas Doolittle (1630/33?–1707) insisted, “We live to learn to die. Our business is not to

30  For further reflections on inclusivity and exclusivity see Alan P.F. Sell, Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Evangel: Theological Themes and Thinkers 1550–2000. (Studies in Christian History and Thought) (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2004), 325–375.

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get riches, honours, or pleasures, but that we may depart in peace with God. Every corpse is a sermon; every tomb a teacher; every funeral an oration―to persuade you to learn to die.”31 Only if prepared will believers regard death (except where loss of faculties or sudden fatal accident intervene) as the last occasion of earthly witness to God’s grace. Of that act of witness the Puritan John Flavel (bap. 1630, d. 1691) wrote, “At death the saints are engaged in the last and one of the most eminent works of faith, even the committing themselves into the hands of God when they are launching forth into that vast eternity and entering into that new state which will make so great a change to us in a moment. In this, Christ sets us a pattern: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ ”32 Only as forgiven and redeemed can they experience the hopefulness to which Flavel’s contemporary, Thomas Watson (d. 1686), testifijied: “He may look on Death with Joy, who can look on Forgiveness with Faith.”33 Only so can they adopt the matter of fact attitude of Richard Baxter (1615–1691), of whom William Bates (1625–1699) said that he “was conversant in the Invisible world.”34 Baxter famously drew up a list of sixty-two saints whom he was eager to meet in heaven. His list includes Abraham, Moses, Peter, Paul and John, Bernard of Clairvaux, Calvin (not Luther), and some of his contemporaries.35 Of such he wrote, As for my friends, they are not lost; The several vessels of thy fleet, Though parted now by tempests tossed, Shall safely in the haven meet.36

Only if ministers of religion live in what I have called the atmosphere of heaven will they be able to speak to the condition of their people in times of trial and at the approach of death. “Death can do thee no harm,” said

31  T. Doolittle in a funeral sermon preached on 19 September 1690 on the occasion of the death of Matthew Henry’s cousin, Robert Bosier. Quoted by J.B. Williams, Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of the Rev. Matthew Henry, (1828) (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1974, 12. 32  J. Flavel, The Mystery of Providence (1678) (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1963), 175. Cf. John Owen (1616–1683), The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (1850–53), (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), I, 281. 33  T. Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity (London: printed for Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 824. 34  W. Bates, “Epistle Dedicatory” to his A Funeral-Sermon for the Reverend, Holy and Excellent Divine, Mr. Richard Baxter, who deceased Decemb. 8. 1691 (London: Printed for Brab. Aylmer, 1692). 35  See Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. M. Sylvester (1696), 71.ii.143. 36  From the hymn, “He wants not friends that hath thy love.”

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John Bunyan, “It is only a passage out of a prison into a haven of rest, out of a crowd of enemies to an innumerable company of true, loving, and faithful friends.”37 As Abraham van de Beek put it, “Where the fear of death is gone, where anxiety over guilt is gone, where the ambivalence of choice is gone, there is freedom.”38 It is the minister’s high calling to lead and encourage the saints towards that freedom. The ministers’ qualifijication for doing this is the call of God and their own experience of that grace-given freedom. It need hardly be added that the same qualifijications alone will enable ministers to comfort those who mourn the loss of loved ones. As Bernard Lord Manning drily remarked, “The mourner is not to be put offf with descriptions of the architecture and climate of the new Jerusalem.”39 Finally, only if the Church lives in the atmosphere of heaven will its worship be as fijitting as it ought to be. We join our praise with the saints of the ages; we keep the Lord’s Supper until he come; and we know that for all of us, what William Jay said to his people at Argyle Church, Bath, is true: “You will soon change your place, but not your employment; only you will worship without weariness, imperfection, or end.”40 In the meantime, to echo the title of this celebratory volume, we are “Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth.” Why? Because as the old evangelical hymn has it: I’m but a stranger here, Heaven is my home.41

37

 Quoted by John Brown, John Bunyan. His Life Times and Work (London: Isbister [1885]), 119. 38  A. van de Beek, Why? 347. 39  Quoted by F. Brittain, Bernard Lord Manning. A Memoir (Cambridge: W. Hefffer, n.d.). 40  Autobiography of William Jay, 67. 41  By Thomas Rawson Taylor (1807–1835).

STRIKING SIMILARITIES: THE ESCHATOLOGICAL ORIENTATION OF CALVIN, BARTH AND VAN DE BEEK Cornelis van der Kooi Introduction The author of the Letter to the Hebrews says of the saints: “They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. They desire a better country, that is a heavenly one.” (Hebrews 11:13–14.) Peter addresses his readers as “aliens and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11). Christians hope for a kingdom, a city, a resting place where the righteousness and love of God reign. In the shining light of this eschatological hope all else becomes something preliminary, something passing. For all too many people living in the world today, the language of being an exile or alien is not fijigurative but literal: it describes their very life. We live in a time with large and billowing currents of migration. In the last twenty years a vast stream of migration has moved from the Mediterranean to the countries in Northern Europe, in search of employment and prosperity in strange and sometimes unwelcoming lands. Yet these refugees are not the only ones who feel an acute sense of homelessness in the west. One could also mention the many young people in the western world feel lost in their own culture and society. They feel the pressure to meet all the challenges and claims that are put on them by their society—one has to be successful, independent, smart and popular—in short, to develop a personal identity, a self that can not only survive and to fijind a place to live, to get a job, but to flourish in a vast and rapidly changing world. How can a Reformed perspective on eschatology address this modern world with its dynamism and power and its alienation and estrangement that is exhibited daily in modern media and in cultural artefacts of movies, plays, novels? In this contribution I will outline the witness of three eschatologically orientated theologians: John Calvin, Abraham van de Beek and Karl Barth. Following this outline I will then consider how their rich eschatological witness can contribute to Christian discipleship in an estranged world.

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cornelis van der kooi Calvin: Dual Existence

Let me start with some essentials. Essential for Calvin’s theology is the distinction between heaven and earth, the fundamental otherness of this world and the coming world. Calvin’s sharp distinction between the two gives his theology a deeply eschatological orientation. The eschatological identity of the believer is fundamentally determined by his adoption as a child of God into a heavenly citizenship. It is, however, important to recognize that for Calvin, this heavenly citizenship has a bearing on one’s life in this world. Calvin’s critique in his Institutes of the Anabaptist’s more world-denying eschatology provides an important insight into his perspective on how Christians should handle the question of the “already” and the “not yet.” In response to the radical reformation, Calvin argued that the civil authorities had a fundamental responsibility to serve and protect these pilgrims on their way to their eschatological destiny. Careful Distinctions The main thread of Calvin’s critique of the Anabaptists in the fijirst edition of the Institutes is that they cannot distinguish properly between the revealed and the hidden church. According to Calvin, it is a premature intrusion on God’s eschatological action for Anabaptists to demand that the church be without spot or wrinkle. The church, according to Calvin, lives between the ascension and the triumphant return, the weeds and the grain. It is God’s will that the church, for the time being, be intermixed with the world. Christ’s reign has a spiritual and in many ways a hidden nature. According to Calvin the Anabaptist denial of this truth leads to two problems—apparently opposite ones, but in reality arising from the same source. On the one hand they have the inclination to despise everything that serves the maintaining of life in this broken dispensation. The breach between creation and salvation is total, and salvation can be considered only be understood in terms of re-creation in the sense of a new and different creation. The second problem that this failure of distinctions created was the Anabaptist vision of the present as a time of revolutionary liberation. They believed that God had fully unveiled his lordship and that the church and state (as in Munster) should become one. Against this Anabaptist conflation of the hidden and the revealed, Calvin argues that between the ascension and the return of Christ the believer lives in two domains. Calvin here follows Luther when he argues that, while both domains have their source in God, we have to carefully distin-

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guish between the two. According to a person’s spiritual state, they live in the presence of God’s grace and under God’s rule (regimen spirituale). But they are also a part of this visible world, and here their citizenship is determined by earthly ordinances (regimen politicum). These distinctions have a direct bearing for Calvin’s theological concept of the state. For Calvin, the magistrates have a responsibility to secure both ‘aequitas’ and ‘humanitas’ on earth. They must enforce both justice and godliness.1 Calvin’s articulation of a dual existence in the fijirst edition of his Institutes recurs again and again his later editions. According to Calvin, this dual citizenship is a distinctive mark of the Christian believer. The believers already live in communion with Christ and this communion is of a spiritual nature. Their heart is “above.” Here we fijind the heart of Calvin’s faith and theology—not primarily in election but in the communion between humans and God, a communion which is created by the Holy Spirit and bound to the Word. In the beginning of the third book of the Institutes we read: First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has sufffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value to us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us. For this reason he is called our Head (Eph. 4:15), and ‘the fijirst-born among many brothers’ (Rom. 8:29). We also, in turn, are said to be ‘engrafted into him’ (Rom. 11:17), and to ‘put on Christ’ (Gal. 3:27); for, as I have already said, all that he possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him.

These words demonstrate what the core of our faith for Calvin is: communion with Christ, with whom a human person is united through the hidden work of the Holy Spirit, and of which he is reminded in the sursum corda at the Lord’s Supper. But this heavenly citizenship does not diminish or erases the fact of a dual existence and the obligation of obedience to God in both regiments. Van de Beek: Eschatology as Christology Van de Beek’s recent provocative and stimulating God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie2 echoes the eschatological orientation of Calvin in a 1  John Calvin, Institution 4.20.2. See further H. Höpfl, The Christian Polity of Calvin. Cambridge, 1982. 2  A. van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als Christologie. Zoetermeer, 2008.

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number of important and insightful ways. One might even argue that Van de Beek presents a radicalized Calvinist eschatology in which he tightly binds Christology to Eschatology so that the two nearly become one. Van de Beek vehemently resists what he calls a ‘historizing pneumatology’. By this he means: any kind of theology that claims that with the coming of the Spirit the new reality of the Kingdom has become an identifijiable power in our history. The Spirit of Christ in such a ‘historizing pneumatology’ is turned into a historical power, which renews human beings and transforms societal structures. According to Van de Beek, such a theology will lead the church astray, by suggesting that Christians can overcome their eschatological status as strangers and sojourners. In taking this position Van de Beek not only breaks with Hendrikus Berkhof’s perspective on the work of the Spirit in historical cultural development, but with a position that he himself held earlier on in his theological career. One witnesses this radical turn in Van de Beek’s work between his 1987 book on pneumatology, De adem van God (Breath of God),3 and his inaugural lecture in 2001 at the VU University Amsterdam entitled Ontmaskering, (The Unmasking).4 In his 2008 book God doet recht Van de Beek argues that the outpouring of the Spirit is an eschatological event. Van de Beek binds the eschatological events of Pentecost and the Cross, Pneumatology and Christology, close together. The Spirit is the Lord and this Lord is the crucifijied One.5 The mission of the Spirit, Van de Beek argues, may not become a mission of its own, apart from the event of Jesus’ passion and crucifijixion, but should be treated as a mission that is ruled by the narrative of the cross. Van de Beek’s close connection between the cross and Pentecost, Christology and eschatology, evokes some questions. What is the theological signifijicance of our ongoing history and cultural development? What is the theological signifijicance of the existing orders and institutions in our society? Van de Beek’s short tethering of the Spirit to the cross does not allow us to regard the mission of the Spirit advancing beyond the cross of Christ. Van de Beek leaves little room for a Spirit-inspired engagement in cultural or political afffairs.

3

 A. van de Beek, De adem van God: De Heilige Geest in kerk en kosmos. Nijkerk, 1987.  A. van de Beek, Ontmaskering. Christelijk geloof en cultuur. Zoetermeer, 2001. 5  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 11. 4

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Karl Barth: ‘Deprive Them of Their Pathos’ Many of the central contours of Van de Beek’s eschatology echo important facets of the work of the magisterial Karl Barth. For the purposes of this essay I will focus my comments on Barth’s on Paul’s Letter to the Romans in his second commentary that shook the foundations of the theological world. One has only to recall Barth’s famous comment on Romans 8:24: hope that is seen is not hope.’’: Direct communication from God is no divine communication. If Christianity be not altogether thoroughgoing eschatology, there remains in it no relationship whatever with Christ. Spirit which does not at every moment point from death to the new life is not the Holy Spirit.6

There is a remarkable resonance between Barth’s critical theology and Van de Beek’s prophetic theology. Our knowledge of God is stamped and qualifijied by the crucifijied Christ. The cross is the prism for all the other loci of christian theology. For, according to Barth, Were we to know more of God than the groans of the creation and our own groaning; were we to know Jesus Christ otherwise than as crucifijied; were we to know the Holy Spirit otherwise that as the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus from the dead; were the incognito in which salvation has come to us, does come to us, and will come to us, broken through—then there would be no salvation.7

The Christian identity ought not to be identifijied with what can be seen. As with Van de Beek, according to Barth the identity of the believer is located outside of history, and is determined by the sovereign judgment of God. In place of us all He stands there, delivered up for us all, patently submerged in the flood. And if He was delivered up, how much more are we all submerged with Him in the flood, dragged down into the depth, and included in the Nein which God utters over the men of this world and from which there is no escape!8

Echoing Barth’s “Nein!” Van de Beek opposes those branches of evangelical and liberation theology which suggests that a life lived in the line of the Kingdom will be blessed by power, wealth and prosperity. Van de Beek’s

6  K. Barth, Der Römerbrief (Zweite Fassung) 1922; Ed. by Cornelis van der Kooi and Katja Tolstaja (Zürich: 2010), 428; [English translation: (Oxford, 1933), 314]. 7  Barth, ibidem. 8  Barth, Römerbrief, 447; [English translation: 327].

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prophetic critique of easy alliances with the world has only intensifijied in recent years. For Van de Beek, the place in which we fijind our correct orientation to the world is in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Table reminds us that our place is with Christ in heaven, and that we are heirs of a kingdom that has not yet become visible in this world. As evidenced in the new critical commentary, Barth’s principal opponents in the Letter to the Romans were not only the liberal theologians of Ritschl and Schleirmacher but all kinds of burgeoning renewal movements that were drawing the increasing attention of the European public. Barth’s allusions to these movements are manifold and wide-ranging. He alludes to the youth movement,9 the feminist movement,10 and numerous critics of the dehumanizing efffects of urbanization and modernization. Barth explicitly refers to public fijigures who called for a return to the immediacy of the inner life, like Johannes Muller,11 to movements seeking reconciliation with the body.12 References to all kinds of religious renewal movements, such as those who advocated silent worship, sacred dance, and the apparition of esoteric movement, appear throughout the work. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the anthroposophical movement also falls under Barth’s critique.13 Steiner’s suggestion that the human being can ascend to a higher religious existence through training and ascetics is labelled by Barth as nothing other than deceit. For to Barth, the revelation of the living God launches a disturbance, which lies far deeper and is infijinitely more than mere unrest, for it reaches out to a peace which is beyond the experience of normal human life. . . . It is determined by a genuine refusal to be deceived by those penultimate and antepenultimate truths with which human research has to be content.14

That said, Barth saved his harshest criticism for the religious-socialist movement, represented in Leonhard Ragaz and his comrades. Already in 1922, Barth is responding to the (now common) critique that his theology was stuck in ‘intellectualism’ and had little to say to the very real societal problems in the public arena. Alfred Dedo Müller, a socialist friend of   9

 Barth, Römerbrief, 551; [English translation: 409].  Barth, Römerbrief, XXIV–XXV. 11  Barth, Römerbrief, XIV, 331; [English translation: 241]. 12  Barth, Römerbrief, 551; [English translation: 409]. 13  Barth, Römerbrief, 137, 255, 397 and XIV; [English translation: 185, 289]. 14  Barth, Römebrief, 123; [English translation: 87]. 10

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Ragaz attacked Barth’s theology as dangerous not for religious-socialist movement but for any kind of public involvement at all. According to Müller, God is waiting for humankind. God is not waiting for a theology of the kingdom, but a kingdom. God is not waiting for thoughts, but for acts. Chapters 12–15 of the second edition, written in August 1921, contain Barth’s potent response to this critique.15 Barth argues that no one should imagine that their worldly endeavours build the eschatological kingdom of God. In commenting on Romans 13:1 ‘Let every man be in subjection to the existing ruling powers’ Barth writes: It is evident that there can be no more devastating undermining of the existing order than the recognition of it which is here recommended, a recognition rid of illusion and devoid of all the joy of triumph. State, Church, Society, Positive Right, Family, Organized Research, etc., live of the credulity of those who have been nurtured upon vigorous sermons-delivered-on-thefijield-of-battle and upon other suchlike solemn humbug. Deprive them of their Pathos, and they will be starved out; but stir up revolution against them, and their Pathos is provided with fresh fodder. No-Revolution is the best preparation for the true Revolution.16

At the end of the Great War Barth argues that neither the revolutionaries nor the defenders of the established order of society may identify their position with an absolute halo. His sympathy was with the revolutionaries, but that was not theologically decisive: The revolutionary Titan is far more godless, far more dangerous, than his reactionary counterpart—because he is so much nearer to the truth. To us, at least, the reactionary presents little danger; with his Red brother it is far otherwise. With this danger we are vitally concerned.17

Barth does not deny the task and place of the existing orders, nor does he identify them with evil as such. His main goal in 1922 was to undo any easy identifijication and glorifijication of the existing orders with the living God. That said, this break does not release us from the burden of public and ethical responsibilities, in Barth’s mind it only puts them in the right context.

15

 See Barth, Römerbrief, 571, annotation 1.  See Barth, Römerbrief, 647; [English Translation, 483]. 17  Barth, Römerbrief, 640; [English Translation, 478]. 16

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1. There clearly are numerous similarities between Calvin, Barth and Van de Beek’s eschatological orientations. Each are worth exploring in depth and yet in the interest of space I will limit myself to a number of preliminary comments on those I see as the most fruitful for future Reformed explorations into eschatology. All three theologians emphasize the radical nature of God’s judgement of the world. Our history belongs to the old world, which was condemned in the cross. According to Calvin, the new heaven and the new earth are hidden from us. The new being is not here, but there. Barth takes this transcendence and newness in an even more radical direction by arguing that we can only speak of this new reality in terms of non-identity. It cannot be articulated in positive terms. This does not mean that the new life and new world are not real, but that the disparity between the old and the new can never be forgotten. 2. What does this radical newness mean for ethics, for politics? Should we retreat from society and societal renewal because this world lies under God’s judgment? At times, Barth’s and Van de Beek’s work can give this impression. They refuse to give a warm appraisal of those who wish to use theological language for the formation or even transformation of society. They fear the confusion of the kingdom of God with societal and political programs. As to this concern, there is an analogy with Calvin when he criticises Anabaptists who fail to distinguish between heaven and earth. Calvin’s strong eschatological orientation does not inhibit him from articulating a theological description of the orders and the state. Their power has its source in God and this does not make them divine as such, but brings them under the mandate of God. The Anabaptist retreat is rejected for theological, not practical reasons. 3. Barth’s and Van de Beek’s work is similar in that they both argue for a prophetic, rather than a priestly or kingly vocation for the theologian. Priestly and kingly theology, in their way of thinking, aims at the continuation of society rather than faithfulness to the eschatological rupture of the Cross and Pentecost. They serve as a stark warning to theologians who would function as servants of the royal or imperial court. Rather than standing at the center of society, Barth and Van de Beek advocate a marginal or peripheral position in which theologians can serve as critical prophets.

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4. Calvin actively engaged in the daily running of Geneva and he declared the magistrates responsible for the spiritual wellbeing of its citizens. His stark vision and eschatological judgement did not result in a breach with active cultural and political involvement. Likewise, it is important to note that Barth’s thoughts did not stop with his early critical theology either. Later in his development he elaborated a theology, in which God’s revelation in Jesus Christ functions as a counterproposal for modernity. That said, the critical power of Barth’s “Nein!” remained. What can be said of Van de Beek’s theology in this respect? Does the commonality with Calvin and Barth here fijind its limit? If this is the case at least the efffect of his theology would have to be an Anabaptist retreat from the world. I do not believe he wants his theology to be put in that corner. Van de Beek’s theology reflects the modern situation in which the place of the church and its critical distance from the state and society as theme in theology has risen in importance. Van de Beek focuses on the Holy Supper as the formative space in which Christians fijind their identity. Their identity is no longer characterized by strong ties with a Christian state, nation or culture. The church has its center in the preaching of the gospel, the cup, and the bread. It is around this table that believers discover whom they belong to and how they are to live. But if that is the case, then something should be added that I fijind lacking in Van de Beek. It is around the Lord’s Table that Christians learn what Wolterstorfff calls “the biblical contour of justice.”18 There they learn that the fallen world also is the world of God, and there they learn never to grow weary of insisting that it is the task of societal orders like the state “to promote the justice and serve the common good.”19 I would like to invite Van de Beek to elaborate on that.

18  N. Wolterstorfff, Hearing the Call. Liturgy, Justice, Church, and World (ed. by Mark R. Gornik and Gregory Thompson) (Grand Rapids/Cambridge (UK), 2011), 365. 19  Wolterstorfff, Hearing the Call, 365.

ASCETISM ONLY, OR ETHICS AS WELL? OEPKE NOORDMANS’ VIEW OF ESCHATOLOGICAL ASCETISM AND ETHICS AS A CHALLENGE FOR BRAM VAN DE BEEK Gerard den Hertog Surely, Bram van de Beek knew what he was doing when he incorporated a line from a well-known hymn by the Dutch ‘puritan’ Jodocus van Lodenstein in the title of his book on eschatology: “It isn’t here below”.1 Van de Beek has rigorously distanced himself from the idea that there might be a continual advance in history toward the direction of God’s kingdom. From his point of view, the implication of Easter is not that the Resurrected One manifests Himself in history as the Victor, and the One Who accomplishes salvation; rather, the resurrection seals the judgement of the cross. In Jesus Kyrios, in the chapter which bears the title: “Jesus: Inspirer for a better world,” he controversially writes: “Things will not be any better tomorrow.”2 And in his major work on eschatology he states this in more detail, but not less distinctly: “The real countenance of God in this world is that He partakes in our history of sufffering and guilt, and does not take the lead in advancing the progress of the world.”3 To be sure, this farewell to any kind of expectation of progress does not at all imply for Van de Beek that all our actions are insignifijicant. Abandoning the idea of the realization of a realm of peace and justice in history, in which we people participate, does not necessarily produce the efffect that the poor are left to fend for themselves. On the contrary, the facts sometimes speak a diffferent language: “It appears that in Latin America, Christians who are directed towards eternal life in fijinal analysis contribute more to relief of social needs than social-critical basic communities do.”4

1  A. van de Beek, Hier beneden is het niet. Christelijke toekomstverwachting [It isn’t here below. Christian expectation of the future], (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2005). 2  A. van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios: Christology as Heart of Theology, Speaking of God 1.1, Studies in Reformed Theology Supplements, Vol. 1 (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002), 234. 3  A. van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie. Spreken over God 2.1. [God does right. Eschatology as christology. Speaking of God 2.1], (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2008), 262. 4  A. van de Beek, “The Kingdom of God: A Call for Worship and Obedience”, in: A. van Egmond & D. van Keulen (eds), Christian Hope in Context I, Studies in Reformed Theology Volume 4 (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001), 102.

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With this, Van de Beek indicates that the orientation towards heaven certainly does efffectuate something in this world, and that this is also good. Yet he particularly objects to thinking primarily of relevance: apparently things are that way, but that can not be incorporated into a program. Van de Beek is not the fijirst person to part with thinking in terms of ‘progress’ and to place history under the sign of God’s judgement. Prior to him, Oepke Noordmans (1871–1956) regarded the crucifijixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ to signify judgement, subsequently made manifest in history by the Spirit. This latter observation enables him to take up a question to which—if my observation is correct—Van de Beek does not pay attention. Noordmans inquires what will happen when the church begins to focus herself on her journey through the ages. If she does not want to retreat from the judgement of the Spirit, “ascesis must occur”. Noordmans comments in his well-known book Herschepping (Recreation) that “life exists (. . .) beneath the judgement of eternity” and can therefore only be endorsed “under reservation.”5 Life is only possible as an ascetic relaxation of faith in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Until the Second Coming of Christ the only perspective on earth is from within the church. (. . .) Puritanism is not a culturally outdated point of view, but a profound perception of the nature of life.6

It is clear that Noordmans—like Van de Beek—does not agree to a view of God’s redemptive activity in which history acquires a hopeful perspective in and of itself. Only when we believe in the reality of the communion of the Spirit can we speak of an “ascetic relaxation”. For that reason he also refers to puritanism in a positive way, which does not merely shun the world—“It isn’t here below”—but provides a unique, essential and more profound perception of what may be called life in the true sense of the word. Based on this, Noordmans—in contrast to Van de Beek—is able to connect eschatology with ethics. For this reason, in this volume dedicated to Bram van de Beek, I want to call attention to the manner in which Noordmans—during an Apocalyptical time!—discovered and made this connection.

5  O. Noordmans, Herschepping [Recreation] (1934), in: Verzamelde werken deel II. Dogmatische peilingen. Rondom Schrift en Belijdenis [Collected Works, vol. II, Dogmatic soundings. Around Scripture and Confession], (Kampen: Kok, 1979), 228. 6  Noordmans, Herschepping, 315. Cf. Herschepping, 228: “The church can not flourish on a natural root.”

ascetism only, or ethics as well

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“God has Moved Our Lives” In a lecture from the year 1932, with the puritan-like title “Austerity”, Noordmans contends that the eschatological aspect must not solely be regarded as “the power of the coming world”, for it also manifests itself in the questions and problems of his own time.7 Still mindful of the First World War he remarks regarding “the problem of the war”: It can hardly be called a moral issue anymore and its eschatological dimensions can not be denied.—This is slightly less the case with the social issues in which the difffijiculties also point to certain boundaries, where the moral reflection must incorporate something of the end, if it wants to consider all facts. (. . .) To my awareness these semi-eschatological questions are engaged in pushing our more forced and deliberately probing theoretical difffijiculties from a former period to the background.8

Even though the problem of war obviously is not unrelated to ethics, from Noordman’s point of view it is “hardly” a moral issue anymore. For it has acquired proportions that far excel the measure of ethics—which is by defijinition a reflection on human activity. The same counts for the social issue: the revolutions that sweep across Europe, and communism’s and fascism’s titanic struggle for the soul of the labourer. In this context Noordmans reaches for the term ‘eschatological,’ and contends: “The moral reflection must incorporate something of the end, if all facts are to be taken into account.” Noordmans does not intend to introduce a strange element into the ethical discourse with this remark, one that could evoke disapproving looks from the other participants in the social debate. No, apparently the current practice of ethics has to a large extent become a construction which is foreign to life and has acquired—in Noordmans’ terminology—a “forced” and “deliberately elaborated” nature. Ethics needs to take the eschatological into account, in order to be able to speak in a relevant way. Noordmans speaks about “semi-eschatological questions,” which is perhaps not the most felicitous designation. The intention likely is: such questions do not concern eschatology in the proper sense of the word

7  Cf. G.W. Neven, Tijdgenoot en getuige. Opstellen over de theologie van Dr O. Noordmans [Contemporary and witness. Essays on the theology of Dr. O. Noordmans], (Kampen: Kok, 1980), 68, 71. 8  O. Noordmans, “Soberheid” [Austerity], in: Verzamelde Werken deel VI. De kerk en het leven [Collected Works vol. VI. Church and life], (Kampen: Kok, 1986), 460 (italics in the text).

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(which is present in the Spirit’s judgements in this world), but echo and refer to it. The Second World War even intensifijies the ethical issue. Shortly after this war’s termination Noordmans writes his well-known meditation “Sinner and beggar” and remarks in November of 1945: God has moved our lives in a perplexing way. His kingdom has come near. It covertly has appeared in our existence. It has revealed us its two sides, each with its own power. But we can not combine what we have seen of it into one doctrine which could apply to every sermon, at every moment, and for everyone. There is more in the gospel than that which the church has appropriated from it.9

Again: eschatology already is reality, and bitter at that: “God has moved our lives in a perplexing way.” At the time, this brief sentence voiced many people’s attitude towards life, although the content of their thoughts differed considerably. In their thoughts “God” could be considered to be a terrifying God, a God who is playing a cruel and irrational game with us. However, Noordmans speaks of two words. There is the incredibly horrible, apocalyptical aspect which confounds, but God’s Kingdom also has another identity, which also “has its own authority.” Actually, this may give an impression of things that is too harmless, as though we should regard it as our task to do equal justice to two opposite sides. According to Noordmans this is defijinitely out of the question, for “we can not combine what we have seen of it into one doctrine which could apply to every sermon, at every moment, and for everyone.” We are not concerned with the theory, which—however involved it is with life— is yet contrary to life itself. Instead we are concerned with that which forces itself upon us, strikes us dumb, and simultaneously provokes us to speak. The theory of ethics does not provide us with any footing for that. Then Noordmans follows with a sentence which is a signal for elaboration on at least one aspect which he has perceived: “There is more in the gospel than that which the church has appropriated from it.” God Himself has given the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus an “application” that is new to us. In the usual explanation of the parable, Christ does not “sit on His throne”.10 Here the characters of Lazarus and the rich man remain at a distance, which is diffferent from the parable itself. For, “there

  9  O. Noordmans, “Zondaar en bedelaar” [Sinner and beggar], in: Verzamelde werken deel VIII. Meditaties (Kampen: Kok, 1980), 25. 10  Noordmans, “Zondaar en bedelaar”, 16.

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the characters moved from their places.”11 It seems like God “desired to make a change”12 in the suspenseless manner of reading, which contrasts sharply with the suspenseful way in which the parable of the Pharisee and the publican from Luke 18 has usually been understood. God confronts Europe with the same dialectic that is present in the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus. That is what Noordmans observes to be taking place in the fijirst half of the twentieth century. In the Gospels, physical needs are directly related to the coming of the Kingdom. Nowadays, God is teaching us in all kind of ways that this is also the case in the world. He is busy breaking down the natural theology surrounding the Gospel. The dialectics, long neglected, of the parable from Luke 16 have burst upon us and forced us to make a new reflection.13

Once more we read here that God with his eschatological Kingdom exerts pressure on this world: “the dialectics” of the relationship between the rich and the poor “burst upon us”. So the righteousness of the Kingdom of God is not restricted to man’s inner self. It has cosmic dimensions. In this meditation Noordmans refers on the Lord’s Day 10 of the Heidelberg Catechism—dealing with providence. His intention is to show why the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke 18:9–14 has been able to efffectuate something in the history of the church, quite contrary to that of the rich man and the poor Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31. Difffering from the dialectic of the rich man and the poor Lazarus, the dialectic of the Pharisee and the publican can to a large extent be unfolded against the background of a world in which a fijixed social order is presumed, and where the powers of the kingdom of God remain unobserved. Conversely, the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus can only acquire a voice where the social contrasts are taken into account in view of their universal dimensions and in the light of God’s righteousness. For that reason this later parable should be heard together with the earlier one of the Pharisee and the publican. When we read in Luke 18:14 that the publican went back to his house justifijied, this relates to God’s justice which actuates all relationships in the world and renews the face of the earth. According to Noordmans, God sufffijiciently indicates aspects of these things in the history of our day and age.

11

 Noordmans, “Zondaar en bedelaar”, 18.  Noordmans, “Zondaar en bedelaar”, 15. 13  Noordmans, “Zondaar en bedelaar”, 21. 12

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In his explanation of the Lord’s Days 7 to 22 in the Heidelberg Catechism, Noordmans notes that a good confijidence in God the Father that corresponds to his providence (. . .) is not the same as what Jesus means when He urges us to fijirst of all seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt 6:33). When Jesus does this, his intention is not to quiet our concerns, but rather to raise them. Not those which could also be expected to occur with good gentiles concerning food, drink and clothing, but other concerns, those that belong to a citizen of the kingdom of God.14

In this quotation, the contrast between ‘quieting concerns’ and ‘raising concerns’ is striking. The fijirst occurs, according to Noordmans, where people are called to commend themselves to a resting state of universal order. However, this is not the case in Matthew 6:25–34. Before Jesus commands his disciples not to take thought for the day of tomorrow, He has fijirst made them uneasy with the relentless observation that no one can simultaneously serve God and mammon. In this way, Jesus ‘raises’ a diffferent care-issue, namely that of seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness. When in the intermediate verses He calls his disciples to entrust themselves to God’s care, it is presumed that their whole life has been actuated by seeking the kingdom of God and the righteousness belonging to it. Noordmans’ objection to Lord’s Day 10 of the Heidelberg Catechism therefore is that it does not convey the universal dimensions of the righteousness of the kingdom of God, which do emerge in the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus. That is the background of his observation that there are “unpaid debts” here for the church of the Reformation.15 “Great” and “Small Religion” In the preceding section we have observed how Noordmans, like Van de Beek, opposes an optimistic thinking in terms of progress, and thus the ethics based on it. God’s eschatological dealings thwart, and interfere with, the scope of ethics. However, there is a diffference between Van de Beek and Noordmans. Van de Beek considers the history that unfolds between

14  O. Noordmans, Het Koninkrijk der hemelen. Toelichting op de Heidelbergse catechismus zondag 7–22 [The Kingdom of heaven. Elucidation of the Heidelberg catechism, Sunday 7–22], (1949), in: Verzamelde Werken deel II, 460f (italics in the original text). 15  Noordmans, Het Koninkrijk der hemelen, 462.

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the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the one hand, and the Second Coming on the other, to be one vast kairos. God’s presence in history is nothing but the confijirmation of the judgement on this world in the cross and resurrection of Christ. Since history has de facto become empty in this take on things, it is impossible that the Spirit would manifest God’s judgement in Jesus Christ in the history of our time in order to summon us to actual conversion. Even though Noordmans puts equal emphasis on God’s judgement in cross and resurrection, he still goes a step further than Van de Beek when he states that the dialectics of the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus “have burst upon us” and that God’s justice moves all of the relationships in the world. That evokes the question in what kind of ethics this results. In view of a reply to this question we fijirst consider the way in which Noordmans criticizes Karl Barth on this point. Although he is congenial with him, Noordmans chooses his own path here. Where Barth feels compelled to radically distance himself from his liberal past, the development of the European culture induces Noordmans to a reorientation which certainly is no less profound. However, the break with “ethical theology”, among which he was beginning to count himself, is of a diffferent nature. This could not be otherwise, for the ethical theology of someone like D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, or J.H. Gunning Jr., difffered considerably from the liberal theology which Barth had accepted initially. In the article, “The Swiss theology” from 1926, Noordmans protects Barth against the criticism from the neo-calvinistic side, but simultaneously shows—he particularly refers to the Römerbrief—where they difffer from each other: For that reason I do not believe that we are allowed to say that Barth afffronts God’s work in conversion and regeneration. The determination of the relationship between pure theology and theological ethics, indeed constitutes the weak side of his book.16

Noordmans conceives “pure theology” to be a theology which has liberated itself from all kinds of foreign deposits. However, Barth has carried out the cleansing so rigorously that the ethical dimension has become nearly impossible—as is the case with Van de Beek. At the close of his article Noordmans elaborates his objections in more detail:

16  O. Noordmans, “De Zwitserse theologie” [The Swiss theology], in: Verzamelde werken deel III. Ontmoetingen. De actualiteit der historie I Collected Works vol. III. Encounters. [The actuality of history], (Kampen: Kok, 1981), 571 (italics in the text).

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gerard den hertog Barth (. . .) omits (. . .) to prove in which manner (considering that the ethical process does not afffect God’s thinking) our ethical and cultural life is set into motion between the poles of God’s judgement. Consequently, although God’s dialectics do not operate in a void, with him the ethical process to a certain extent ends up in a void.17

Thus Noordmans repeats what Barth’s critics also state: in his case ethics is a problem. Of course it is all too easy to judge Barth harshly on this. We also heard Noordmans state that the problem of modern war supersedes the limits of contemporary ethics. So it is not surprising that Barth experiences difffijiculty in developing a theological ethics. The life of European culture endures a heavy crisis, for in the trenches the personal aspect was forced back to its natural basis.18

The ‘personal aspect’ points to the nineteenth century, with humanity as a cultural factor. The First World War rid the personal aspect of all grandeur and brought humanity back down to earth. In the tension between this world—which includes us as people—on the one hand, and the new world in the Bible on the other, all but one fijigure remains: the paradox. This is the case in the dialectics of the young Barth. The theology of Kohlbrugge does not desire a spiritual center for empirical man within himself. God is his center. He is altogether outside. He is only within in the image.—It does not desire ontological, half-religious relationships; in other words no ethics. It desires the great religion, the doctrine of divine grace and in fact does not tolerate small religion, the ethics, since that disturbs the fijirst.19

Grace is here not a continuation of creation, but a new act of God’s creation by means of which He takes humanity out of sin. For sin—both Barth and Noordmans repeat what Luther stated—‘is not in man, but man is in sin.’20 Sin is not a moral defijiciency about the nature of which we can come to an agreement on to a large extent as people. There is no “I”, which can detect sin and turn away from it. Sin is the existential element of human life, in which his “personality” submerges.

17

 Noordmans, “De Zwitserse theologie”, 581f (italics in the text).  O. Noordmans, “De betekenis van Kohlbrugge voor de theologie van onze tijd” [The meaning of Kohlbrugge for theology of our day], in: Verzamelde werken deel III, 525. 19  O. Noordmans, “De betekenis van Kohlbrugge voor de theologie van onze tijd”, in: Verzamelde werken deel III, 525. 20  See a.o. Herschepping, 260 and “Psychologie en Evangelie” [Psychology and Gospel], Verzamelde Werken deel II, 116. 18

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It immediately becomes clear that in this way ethics is allotted her rightful place. It can no longer be regarded as a more or less free development of civilized man. A dark zone becomes visible in the spectrum between creation and redemption. ‘Great religion’ can only disturb morality. Ethics can only be sanctifijication and saints are nothing more than disturbed sinners. Creation is good and does not need to be made good. The question is merely if it can be the basis for redemption. That is denied by Kohlbrugge and also by Luther. God is again the basis. (. . .) In the ‘great religion’ God treads in redemption completely independently with regard to creation; He does not repeat or improve his work, for it was good.21

With Kohlbrugge there is no mediation, no spiritual atmosphere in which God and man can abide together. The ‘great religion’ thwarts this thought. For that reason it can be stated of these “unholy saints”: They do not serve God with their morality, their knowledge of good and evil, the ‘small religion’, but with the ‘great religion’. They cling to Him with their entire existence, their sinful existence, and the high morality of His counsel is accomplished onto them rather than within them.22

However much Noordmans agrees to and maintains the good biblical right of this emphasis on the justifijication of the ungodly (and also places himself in the line Luther – Kohlbrugge – Barth), yet as an ethical theologian (he himself calls it ‘reformed,’ in distinction of the ‘lutheran’ approach which he sees with Kohlbrugge and Barth) he places a diffferent accent. There is not only the “great religion”, but also the “small religion”. There should be a careful distinction between both of them. From the ‘small religion’, which God has ordained to humans, we shall not recklessly plunge into the ‘great’. But we are permitted to remind ourselves that the last encompasses the fijirst.23

By this it is stated that the “great religion” does not just thwart or even destroy the “small religion”. It also “encompasses” the “small religion”, but it does not do this without altering its essence. In a lecture from 1937, entitled “The work of the Holy Spirit”, Noordmans remarks:

21  Noordmans, “De betekenis van Kohlbrugge voor de theologie van onze tijd”, 517 (italics in the text). 22  Noordmans, “De betekenis van Kohlbrugge voor de theologie van onze tijd”, 512 (italics in the text). 23  Noordmans, “De betekenis van Kohlbrugge voor de theologie van onze tijd”, 525.

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gerard den hertog The resurrection of the new man is a sincere joy in God through Christ, and a desire and love to live according to the will of God in all good works. The work of the Holy Spirit is a work which, as it were, goes right through us into the world. It is not performed outside of us. It is a new creation. It passes through our heart, but also through our hands and feet. It brings forth faith, but also works. It does not leave the world as it is. But we do not yet discern what God’s Kingdom will be like now. We also can not see how the work of the Spirit begins. We believe and live between two eternities.24

This quote demonstrates how Noordmans thinks: the work of the Holy Spirit passes as it were right through us people into the world. It passes through our heart, and in saying this he proves that he is and remains a “ethical theologian”. And it also passes through our hands and feet—in this we can discern that Noordmans himself has distinguished the eschatological aspects in reality itself. The things which we believe belong to a new creation, and consequently have an eschatological nature. They are promises of God; but these promises are not quiet entities, but encroach deeply into the essence of life and set everything into motion.25

In the meditation “Sinner and beggar” we heard Noordmans speak in similar terms: “God has moved our lives in a perplexing way.”26 Yet there is a slight, but unmistakable diffference between both “movements”. The movement that God’s promises sets liberty into motion and releases moral energy; that God has moved life in a perplexing way is indeed connected to the coming of his Kingdom, but then as its reverse. The eschatological nature of this history was illuminated and exposed, but we can not derive an ethos from it. “Divine” and “Human Ethics” After this look at Barth, we consider the following question: ‘What does all of this avail with regard to ethics?’ Is there any benefijit—in the sense of an ethical orientation? I will consult the lecture, “The background to the Sermon on the Mount” from 1925 in order to fijind a response to this question. Here Noordmans rejects the thought that the Sermon on the 24  O. Noordmans, “Het werk van de Heilige Geest” [The work of the Holy Spirit], in: O. Noordmans, Verzamelde Werken deel II, 425. 25  Noordmans, Herschepping, 313. Noordmans had just previously described faith— answer to the “voice of the Holy Spirit”—as “a coming into motion of all life.” 26  Noordmans, “Zondaar en bedelaar”, 25.

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Mount “in a normal ethical sense (. . .) forms a suitable foundation for the coexistence of people”.27 Here he defijinitely refers to the manner in which some used to read the Sermon on the Mount according to the view of the Enlightenment: as a manifest of a high-principled moral ideal. Such an ideal exceeds the category of time and thus throws us mortals back upon our own resources. Here the Kingdom of God fades to something unreal. However, the Sermon on the Mount can not be engaged for this view, for it is written in the Gospel and partakes in the purport which the issues discussed in the Gospel have. (. . .) The Sermon on the Mount is under great pressure because of the eschatological nature of the Gospel.28

With “purport” he means that the lines which are important in theology do not run from this reality to the future, but in the reverse direction. Thus, in His coming the Holy Spirit puts this reality under pressure and sets everything into motion. In this lecture we also recognize—although it is in diffferent words—the distinction between “great religion” and “small religion.” The Sermon on the Mount is divine ethics. (. . .) That is not positive ethics. Nor an ideal ethics. No high-flying morality, eiher. It could be called passive morality. (. . .) One who is familiar with the Gospels immediately discerns the people of the negative Sermon on the Mount-ethics around Jesus. They are not bearers of morality, but recipients.29

What is elsewhere called “great religion,” is here called “divine ethics.” This does not refer to high hopes or ideals that aids human attempts to surpass oneself. Then all emphasis would be on the human, who is sure to collapse under this pressure. ‘Divine ethics’ has a diffferent purport, as appears from the following comprehensive quotation: Jesus regarded divine ethics with bloody seriousness. And it is exactly this seriousness which gives the Gospel its character. Jesus regarded divine ethics with deadly seriousness: not my will, but Thy will be done. This implies that the divine ethics can not be completely accomplished in our lives, but is for the most part accomplished onto our lives. Jesus does not cry out “It is fijinished!” after a well-spent day in his life in which He has fed fijive thousand

27  O. Noordmans, “De achtergrond van de bergrede” [“The backdrop of the Sermon on the Mount”], in: Verzamelde Werken deel II, 41. 28  Noordmans, “De achtergrond van de bergrede”, 40. 29  Noordmans, “De achtergrond van de bergrede”, 52.

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gerard den hertog men or healed numerous sick people or preached, but does so when He has passively undergone and endured the will, the ethics of God. There is a line from each Beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount to the cross, much like going from the circumference of a circle to its centre. In Jesus’ mouth the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount are also Words from the Cross, just as much as the seven well-known latter ones are. (. . .) The fulfijilment on the cross is a fact which chiefly throws its light on the other side and acquires reality in the resurrection of Jesus. From the invisible world this ethics then comes back as a spirit, invisible. Subsequently, the Gospel is repeated up to a certain extent. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, the Spirit of Christ, is God’s ethics. It can not be completely incorporated into human life, into worldly afffairs.30

This “divine ethics”, which “is for the most part accomplished onto us”, “can not be fully incorporated” into the reality of our world. Nevertheless this reality of our world is set into motion. There is not only justifijication in the Gospel, but also “regeneration”. “Regeneration” is an “eschatological concept” which can “be associated with justifijication by faith”,31 but does not coincide with it. That it “can be associated” with justifijication implies that, when considered from the viewpoint of creation, it can not be regarded as a new vital force or something of that nature. “On the contrary, it expresses the mystery of God’s judgements.”32 The Spirit passes judgement; the Spirit is God’s ethics. Not in a manner that does not involve the accomplished work of Jesus Christ, but precisely because it proceeds from it. The lofty words from the Sermon on the Mount— “but I say unto you”—are, and remain, ‘words from the cross’, Noordmans states in more than one instance.33 However, “from the invisible world”, the world of the resurrection of Him who was crucifijied, “this ethics then comes back as a spirit, invisible.” Active, alive, as judgement of the Spirit, our reality is placed in a diffferent light. We as people cannot do without it, our ethics cannot do without it, for: Whoever does not feel the the Sermon on the Mount, the roof of the moral world, above him is morally dead. You are the salt of the earth, Jesus says to

30

 Noordmans, “De achtergrond van de bergrede”, 51.  Noordmans, Herschepping, 308f. 32  Noordmans, Herschepping, 309 (italics in the text). 33  Noordmans, “De achtergrond van de bergrede”, 51; idem, “De Zwitserse theologie”, 564; idem, “De navolging van Christus” [The following of Christ], in: Verzamelde werken deel VIII, 74.  31

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his disciples (Matth. 5:13). He who does not have a grain of that salt in his life, has no moral future.34

Again we encounter an interwoven pattern of essential theological reflections and keen observations of what is going on in the own time. The “roof” of the world of morality is nothing else than the “divine ethics”, which is for the most part “accomplished onto us”. He who does not “feel” this high tension is—according to Noordmans—morally “dead”. This is an unprecedented harsh judgement. It is a matter of life and death to be familiar with the boundaries of our moral possibilities; what is more: to experience the pressure of a diffferent “world” which judges our “world,” and to turn it upside down, and simultaneously to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide their feet into the way of peace (Lk. 1:79). Noordmans characterizes this link between eschatology and ethics as a “passive morality”, possibly referring to Luther’s characterization of the existence of a Christian as “vita passiva”, as a new existence which is efffectuated in him by the Spirit, in which morality is “received”. The “innerweltliche Askese”35 (Max Weber) that has taken shape in puritan calvinism is, and remains, the “inside” of the link between eschatology and ethics as seen by Noordmans. The Christian is permanently crippled in the thigh. Nevertheless, this does not prevent him to walk along a path with and for others, beneath the sun which rises upon him (Gen. 32:32). Balance After what has been stated above, the conclusion could be that Noordmans’ approach of the relationship of the coming Kingdom on the one hand, and our existence in this world on the other, shows sufffijicient similarities to that of Van de Beek. Both discern the gap between God’s coming world and this world, which makes it impossible to transform the message of the Kingdom of God in simple directions for our actions. With all those gaps—if this is the case—is there any light which shines from God’s coming Kingdom on our earthly reality, such as with regard to the gap between rich and poor, between the oppressors and those oppressed? And if and when that light shines on it, do we discern a way to walk along in it?

34

 Noordmans, “De achtergrond van de bergrede”, 54.  See A. van de Beek, “Calvinism as an Ascetic Movement”, in: Wallace M. Alston Jr. & Michael Welker (eds), Reformed Theology. Identity and Ecumenicity (Wm. B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids/Cambridge, 2003), 206. 35

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When Noordmans observes the Spirit to be active in His judgements in this world, he does not conceive of this as an abstract reality and as one beyond time. On the way of the Spirit, snd thus proceeding from the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, old images are broken down and new ones are created. This implies for Noordmans that in the reality of the twentieth century the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus emerges and unavoidably confronts the church with criticism of the “divine ethics” in social and economical issues. The “great religion,” as the mystery of the judgement of the Spirit, does not merely criticize “small religion” and “human ethics”, but it is exactly this criticism which makes “human ethics” possible and even points out its longitude and offfers it latitude. To what extent would Van de Beek concur with Noordmans? His theological view on time difffers considerably from that of Noordmans. This has consequences, certainly regarding the ethical issues. In his train of thought, time as chronos has always been devoured as it were, and left bereft of all signifijicance in the cross of Christ; for since then, history is always dominated by the vast kairos of the judgement in the cross of Christ, which is merely confijirmed in His resurrection.36 Consequently, “things do not get better in this world. (. . .) There is no new humanity and no better world.”37 In the same article, “Calvinism as an Ascetic Movement,” from which the former sentence is taken, Van de Beek opposes the view that makes a distinct separation between creation and christology in Calvin’s theology. For in Calvin’s theology “creation, commandments, and Christ, are intrinsically involved with each other.”38 This does not only concern his interpretation of Calvin, he himself agrees with this as well. However, in the same article Van de Beek strongly stresses that “the life of Christ in communion with Christ” is “clearly to be distinguished from the public realm. (. . .) The growth of a Christian is not only for the purpose of building a better society, but is an efffort to learn to love God.”39 My question is: Doesn’t Van de Beek reintroduce the distinction between creation and redemption here, right up to an almost complete separation?

36  Cf. for this in more detail, “ ‘Want Hij regeert en zal zijn almacht tonen’ [For He reigns and shall show his almight]. Focus discussion of A. van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie”, in Theologia Reformata 51 (2008) 354–359. 37  Van de Beek, “Calvinism as an Ascetic Movement”, 218. 38  Van de Beek, “Calvinism as an Ascetic Movement”, 209. 39  Van de Beek, “Calvinism as an Ascetic Movement”, 216f.

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Earlier, I allowed Van de Beek to express himself in the quote where he ascertained with apparent gratifijication that the Latin American Pentecostal Christians contribute more to the alleviation of social needs than those base-communities who are inspired by liberation theology. In my opinion, such an observation demands that more must be said. If the personal sanctifijication of Pentecostal believers in Latin America is good for their families and communities, is this but an unintentional side-efffect of their inner regeneration by the Spirit of God—and if so, should it remain this way? Certainly, if God’s grace is merely regarded as a means of social renewal, its real nature is misunderstood. On the other hand, if this grace renews people, there is nothing wrong with taking a sensible look at what this implies for their personal lives and for the people around them. Or should we expect of Pentecostal believers that they refrain from dedicating a single critical thought to the social-economical structures in which they live? And if they were to do that, would they be supposed to keep this notion strictly separate from their faith? Would not people become inwardly divided and dissociated? Does not human reason require the cleansing and sanctifijication of the Spirit of Christ? It will be clear that I am looking forward to the next volume in Van de Beek’s series Speaking about God which will be dedicated to pneumatology.

RADICAL ESCHATOLOGY: COMPARING BRAM VAN DE BEEK AND WOLFHART PANNENBERG Christiaan Mostert I1 To read the book God doet recht is to be drawn into a robust theological eschatology that states the content of Christian faith and hope in uncompromising but also nuanced terms.2 His strongest claim is that God has already come, has already decisively intervened, in the incarnation and the cross, as he adumbrated in the short precursor of this major work, Hier beneden is het niet.3 His eschatology is therefore a realised eschatology of a certain kind, though not of the kind proposed by C.H. Dodd in the middle third of the 20th century,4 in which the accent is completely on the realisation of God’s kingdom in history and the presence of the eschaton, not its future coming. Although van de Beek’s eschatology is characterised by an unusually strong accentuation of the present reality of the eschaton, there is in his work no muting of the hope for the future coming of the kingdom in its fulness. It would be misleading, therefore, to describe it as a realised eschatology without qualifijication. However, the sense that the eschaton is present and that Christians are therefore strangers and pilgrims on this earth is pervasive in God doet recht.

1  It is a privilege to be a contributor to this collection of essays in honour of Bram van de Beek. I am grateful for his many kindnesses to me during a semester I spent in Leiden in 1999 and have appreciated the challenges of his theology in his publications and his lectures at IRTI conferences since that time. 2  A. van de Beek, God doet recht: Eschatologie als christologie (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008). It is difffijicult to translate this title despite its apparent simplicity. Normally one might translate it as God Acts Justly, but in the context of a theodicy, with its questions about the power of evil and the pervasiveness of sufffering, which recur frequently in this book, one might prefer something like God Sets Things Right. 3  See Abraham van de Beek, Hier beneden is het niet: Christelijke toekomstverwachting (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema, 2005), 26–27. “God heeft al ingegrepen. Hij is al gekomen.” 4  C.H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1961). Van de Beek does not refer to this work, which had considerable influence on English language theology.

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Precisely because of this strong sense that God has already appeared and intervened decisively in the afffairs of this world in the cross—after the crucifijixion of Jesus “nothing more can happen”5—a comparison of this eschatology with that of Pannenberg may be instructive. Of greatest interest is a comparison of their ways of articulating the tension between the kingdom’s presence already here and now and its future coming in its fulness. Clearly it has come in the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, yet Christians of every time and place pray daily and weekly that the kingdom will come. How Christians understand and live in this tension has far-reaching implications for their beliefs, their hopes and their ethics. Before embarking on this comparison, however, several more general points should be made. As one would expect of a Reformed theologian, this eschatology is strongly biblically grounded; the index of biblical references is impressively long and challenging passages are tackled head-on. More surprising is the author’s wide knowledge of, and constant interaction with, patristic writers of both East and West. Reformed he may be, but his commitment to the ‘catholic’ substance of the faith is striking. Although a wide range of modern authors is consulted, the real inspiration, apart from that of the biblical writers, comes from the theologians of the fijirst fijive centuries. His love of the patres is abundantly evident. Classically, Christians have hoped that God will bring the whole creation, human history and the existence of every individual creature, to completion in the kingdom of God and in this way to take it up into God’s eternal life.6 This typically formed the last chapter in the theological textbooks, for these were the last things in the divine economy. For personal life the topics were death and resurrection, the return of Jesus Christ, the judgment, heaven and hell. For the life of the cosmos there was the great question of its future, answered in very diffferent terms from the scenarios proposed by cosmologists today. Recently eschatology has come to be understood more broadly than the content of these topics. In the mid1960s Moltmann described these as “a loosely attached appendix . . . that bore no relation to the doctrines of the cross and resurrection, the exaltation and sovereignty of Christ . . .”7 Instead, the whole of the Christian faith

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 “Nadien kan er niets meer gebeuren.” Van de Beek, God doet recht, 148.  See Medard Kehl, Und was kommt nach dem Ende?, 2nd ed. (Kevelaer: Topos Plus, 2008), 25. 7  Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope; On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. J.W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1967), 15. 6

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should be seen as eschatology, the key in which everything is set. “. . . the eschatological outlook is characteristic of all Christian proclamation, of every Christian existence and of the whole Church.”8 Whether or not van de Beek is sympathetic to the way in which Moltmann developed his own eschatological theology, his work is premised on exactly this broader understanding of the nature and scope of eschatology.9 II The New Testament writers variously employ the verb ‘to save’ in the past (aorist or perfect), present (middle) and future (passive) tenses.10 People have been saved, are (or were) being saved, and will be saved. If salvation is not a matter of degree—a person is not at one time a little saved and at another more saved—there are presumably diffferent senses in which people have been saved, are being saved and are yet to be saved, even if (as in Rom. 5:9) they have already been justifijied. Salvation is an eschatological reality—we will fijinally be saved from the wrath of God—but this does not prevent it from being already a reality in some way. In the strongest objective sense, we have been saved through grace, in the place and at the time of Jesus’ death on the cross. There both the judgment and the salvation of the world took place, a theme strongly sounded in van de Beek’s theology. As becomes apparent in the raising of the crucifijied one from the dead, God has intervened decisively on the cross to seek out (and save) the lost.11 This is the eschatological moment par excellence. There the king of the Jews exercises his paradoxical kingship; there the glory of God is strangely apparent; there the economy of salvation is accomplished.12 On this basis Van de Beek claims that eschatology is essentially christology.13 Although the ministry of Jesus has been full of the signs of

  8  Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 16. See also Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. G.W. Bromiley, Vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 531.   9  In the foreword to God doet recht, 11, with particular reference to pneumatology and the cross, he illustrates the need to interpret everything in the economy of salvation through an eschatological lens. “Het kruis is zelf een eschatologisch gebeuren als inbreken van Gods laatste oordeel in de wereld.” 10  See respectively Eph. 2:5, 8; 2 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 3:5; Acts 2:47; 1 Cor. 1:18, 15:2; 2 Cor. 2:15; Acts 11:14, 16:31 and Rom. 5:9. In addition, Rom. 8:24 speaks of being saved “in hope”. 11  Van de Beek, God doet recht, esp. 135. 12  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 142. 13  Van de Beek, God doet recht, esp. 4.1, 115–29. One could add ‘soteriology’.

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the kingdom of God—he manifest in his person God’s kingship14—the decisive eschatological intervention takes place on Golgotha. The cross, for Van de Beek, marks the inauguration of the eschatological age. This is a bold eschatological proposal. The claim hinges on the plausibility of the eschatological age as unitary. Van de Beek sees no difffijiculty with this, citing as an analogy the way we typically speak of the War.15 Like all human events, it had extension in time. Viewed as one event, it comprised a vast number of events. Comparably, we speak of the ‘Christ-event’, even though it too included a whole sequence of events which together constitute the identity of Jesus. Yet in a sense the whole period from Jesus’ birth to his ascension is one event. Events in history, even if of long duration, may be considered as single events, e.g. the reign of a monarch. For Van de Beek the same must be said of the decisive acts of God, since they take place in history. In a key passage he contrasts seeing things as earthly events and seeing them in the perspective of the glorifijied life. In the latter the categories of time and space do not apply; only in the former do we distinguish, for example, the time of death and the time of resurrection.16 The same applies to other distinctions which, on the basis of our experience of time, we instinctively make when thinking about the eschaton. When considering things eschatologically, however, the content of what happens needs to be accentuated, not the duration of its happening.17 The concern is now with kairos, not chronos, though the one kairos of God’s eschatological intervention can also be thought of in terms of a number of kairoi.18 This point is supported by another: eschatology is not to be reduced to the parousia. “The parousia is the fijinal scene in God’s appearance as king to put things right in the world, not an isolated return as a new eschatological event. It is about Jesus’ appearance as the king who has gone to the utmost limits on the cross and now seals it with his triumphal procession.”19 At issue in eschatology is Jesus Christ himself, the omega (and the alpha). Eschatology is ultimately about Jesus Christ, the eschatos, not about the eschaton or the eschata. If he is indeed the eschatos, then

14

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 114–15.  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 156. By ‘the War’ most Europeans still mean the World War of 1939–45. 16  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 156. 17  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 157. 18  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 159. 19  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 165. 15

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the whole of his history is the end-time.20 Long ago Bultmann made the then quite remarkable statement that “Jesus—that is to say, his coming, his cross, and his resurrection or exaltation—has for Paul, and still more radically for John, the meaning of eschatological occurrence.”21 Some of the implications of this for the nature of Christian existence and for the earliest Christian community will be considered in due course. There is much in the foregoing with which Pannenberg, one of the most strongly eschatological theologians in the modern history of theology, would be in agreement. In this book Van de Beek mostly refers to Pannenberg in a critical way. He includes him in a group of theologians who, though taking up the early Christian thinking about the kingdom of God, do not take seriously the apocalyptic thinking which provides the matrix for Jesus’ (and the fijirst Christians’) understanding of the kingdom. Curiously, he later commends Pannenberg for his emphasis on the continuing importance of apocalyptic.22 Certainly his theology difffers signifijicantly from those whom van de Beek criticises in this regard. He regards the change from understanding Jesus’ kingdom proclamation in eschatological rather than ethical terms, precipitated by Johannes Weiss in 1892, as of major importance. Few other theologians have viewed apocalyptic as positively as Pannenberg.23 For him Jesus’ message of the imminent kingdom of God underlies every christology and every Christian understanding of human existence; both must be judged by it. It is the key to the whole of Christian theology.24 Pannenberg sees Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom’s imminent arrival—indeed its presence in Jesus’ ministry—as the proleptic inbreaking of the eschatological reign of God. In his theology the

20  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 165. Here he is reminiscent of Gerhard Sauter who also insists that eschatology is about the confession of Jesus Christ as the one who is to come, about the eschatos, not the eschata, the things that exist on the horizon of theology. Ultimately, of course, eschatology is about God, not about events. Gerhard Sauter, What Dare We Hope? Reconsidering Eschatology (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), 48. 21  Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, Vol. 1 (London: SCM Press, 1965), 36 (italics original). The fact that Bultmann unfolds this insight in a purely existential way should not detract from the importance of his remark. 22  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 22–23 & 117. 23  See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, trans. G.H. Kehm, Vol. 1 (London: S.C.M. Press, 1970), 181; also the Afterword to the 2nd English edition of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, trans. L.L. Wilkins and D.A. Priebe (London: SCM, 1968), 400–01. The fijinal chapter of his theological ‘system’ should sufffijice to show that some of van de Beek’s criticisms of Pannenberg are not justifijied. See Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, ch. 15, esp. §3 & 4. 24  Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God, ed. R.J. Neuhaus (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 52–3.

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concepts of ‘prolepsis’ and ‘anticipation’ assume a decisive importance as ways of both distinguishing and connecting what took place in the history of Jesus, including his resurrection, and what is yet to take place in the consummation of all things.25 Instead of Van de Beek’s distinction between an event that extends in time and the events that comprise it, Pannenberg distinguishes between an event’s proleptic presence and its fijinal appearance in its fulness. Such diffferentiation is especially important for understanding the kingdom of God and the eschatological age, both of which the New Testament describes as present and future. Van de Beek notes Pannenberg’s use of the concept of prolepsis, the appearance of something ahead of its time, but makes no comment at this point about the choice of this concept as such. (Later he remarks on the strength of the concept of prolepsis.)26 Yet he remains suspicious of Pannenberg’s use of it, interpreting it as part of Pannenberg’s reduction of the Christian claim from a strong ontic one to a claim about the possibility of anticipating the fijinal meaning of history within historical events.27 He is critical of a number of theologians, including Pannenberg, for emphasising present history (in which salvation is present in some way) rather more than the completion of history and the fijinal judgment.28 He is suspicious of any suggestion of a theology of history, probably because of the danger of falling in to a hegelian hole. Pannenberg is indeed strongly influenced by Hegel, but in his eschatology his theology difffers most sharply from the theological philosophy of Hegel. Whether Van de Beek’s uneasiness about Pannenberg’s eschatology can be justifijied depends on the fruitfulness of the concept of prolepsis (or anticipation) in Christian eschatology.29 These terms have a long history in philosophy and theology, notably in epistemology, where they have the sense of pre-conception; Clement of Alexandria makes use of the idea of

25  For a discussion of these terms in Annenberg’s theology see Christiaan Mostert, God and the Future: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Eschatological Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2002), 51–52, 112–26, and Christiaan Mostert, “The Kingdom Anticipated: The Church and Eschatology”, International Journal of Systematic Theology 13, no. 1 (2011), 34–36. 26  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 21–22; cf., 152. 27  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 153. He is certainly wrong to say that the uniqueness of the resurrection in Pannenberg’s theology is only relative. For a discussion of Pannenberg’s view of Jesus’ resurrection, including its proleptic character, see Mostert, God and the Future, 43–52. 28  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 22. 29  Pannenberg uses these terms interchangeably.

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prolepsis in Books 2 and 5 of the Stromateis.30 However, Pannenberg uses these terms mostly in their ontic rather than their noetic sense, to denote a real state of afffairs, not merely an element in the process of cognition. Thus we can say that in the ministry of Jesus the kingdom of God was actually present, though it is essentially a future reality. A child prodigy (in any area of human endeavour) may truly be said to anticipate (in the ontic sense) the brilliant musician or linguist that she turns out to be in the future. In the phrase, ‘dead man walking’ (the title of a famous 1995 movie), the man walking is not yet dead but the reality of his death is very much present. Something essentially future is already present in an anticipatory manner, ahead of its time. Thus the idea of prolepsis or anticipation is the correlate of a future-oriented, eschatological theology. By means of it present and future can be conceived as being in a relation of identity-in-diffference. It establishes both the connection and the difference between the resurrection of Jesus and the general resurrection of the end-time. It also makes intelligible the claim of the church that in the particularity of the Christ-event the eschatologically fijinal salvation and revelation of God have appeared. As well, it begins to make intelligible the sense of the empirically disputable Christian claim that in the lives of flawed and fallible people the eschatological life of the new creation is already present. The concept of prolepsis or anticipation is thus of great value in addressing the question of the eschatological tension, the relation and distinction of the now and the not yet of salvation. Van de Beek does face this problem head-on.31 Jesus Christ, he believes, is God’s defijinitive answer to the injustice of the world, sufffered by humankind’s victims.32 In him the glory of God has appeared.33 The coming of Jesus is the coming of the kingdom of God.34 His death is an atoning death and in his resurrection from the dead God vindicated him and his claims.35 But the glory of God has to be seen as the glory of the cross.36 The power and glory of the cross are manifest in weakness. Yet the power of God is the power of God’s compassion, in which God loves his own to the end.37

30  See Lothar Kugelmann, Antizipation: Eine begrifffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 110–25. 31  Van de Beek, God doet recht, ch. 5, esp. 155. 32  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 109. 33  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 113. 34  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 118. 35  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 123, 129–34. 36  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 135. 37  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 142; cf. John 13:1.

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On the one hand, the world lives in the time of fulfijilment. On the other, the time after Good Friday and Easter has gone on as before; the world is not qualitatively diffferent from what it was, certainly not more peaceful; we still await the day of the Lord.38 How are we to think of the time between Christ’s coming and his parousia? Van de Beek’s basic point is that, whatever the world may look like, God has intervened in its history once for all on the cross. The cross marks the point of division between the old age and the new (eschatological) age. There the world has its judgment and its salvation and there the eschatological age began. We must speak of the total presence of God’s kingdom in Jesus and the total presence of God’s kingdom at the parousia; neither must be allowed to relativise the other.39 They are one event.40 Any further diffferentiation is secondary.41 Here we see both the strength of Van de Beek’s proposal and a problem. God’s salvifijic act in Jesus Christ is indeed to be understood as a single divine economy. The eschatological age has arrived with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; to be in Christ is to be a new creation, everything old having passed away.42 The new order has indeed begun. But the church still lives between Pentecost and Parousia. It looks back to the one and forward to the other, backward to the fijirst fruits of the resurrection and forward to the full harvest. We enjoy the Spirit’s power and gift as a fijirst instalment even as we look with hope to the fijinal instalment. We live in remembrance and in hope, and the diffference between these, though part of a single divine economy, is not to be diminished. As van de Beek constantly reiterates, the cry, “how long, O Lord?”, is still heard. We still pray for the kingdom’s coming and for God’s will to be done on earth. This present in-between time is difffijicult for all Christians, and unbearably painful for many. Without dissolving the unity and identity of the salvation that is already made real and that which is yet to be made real, a meaningful distinction between them has to be made if we are to make sense of the eschatological tension. Far from denying the profoundly eschatological character of the time since Easter and Pentecost, Pannenberg’s use of the concept of prolepsis makes it intelligible and enriches it.

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 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 148.  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 150. 40  “Niet . . . twee gebeurtenissen maar . . . één gebeurtenis.” Van de Beek, God doet recht, 155. 41  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 159. 42  2 Cor. 5:17. 39

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III One of the most attractive features of God doet recht, as we have seen, is its strong emphasis on the present time, the time after the cross, as the eschatological age and thus on the Christian life as eschatological existence. The eschatological theology set out in this work is at once an ecclesiology, a theology of the sacraments, a theological anthropology and, at least in nuce, a missiology. All of these are read through an eschatological lens. As noted earlier, there is nothing narrow about this eschatology. Although God doet recht cannot be neatly divided into two halves, much of the second half is concerned with the church, baptism, Christian life in the world and the eucharist.43 Van de Beek begins with a discussion of baptism, but we shall begin here with the nature of the Christian community, with ecclesial existence, which is eschatological existence. Christians do not belong to a new community within the world, says Van de Beek, but to the eschatological reality, which is not of this world.44 They no longer belong to the old world but to the new. He sees this diffference in very stark terms, reminiscent of a kierkegaardian either/or. We are either in the old or the new age. For Christians, according to Van de Beek, “our old existence is completely past . . . the old is gone and will never return.”45 He qualifijies this by recognising that this theological truth does involve us in a profound struggle, for we live in the crisis precipitated by the breaking in of the new while the old still retains a strong hold on us. The apostle Paul speaks eloquently of this struggle, which self-aware Christians cannot fail to recognise in themselves.46 The strength of van de Beek’s formulation is its clear description of the reality of the new and its unwillingness to settle for a dialectic of new and old in which there is no resolution. Its limitation is that, even though it recognises the struggle against sin in our lived experience, the either/or is not really modifijied by the both/and of the old and the new. Theologically, this could be achieved by the use of the concept

43

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, chs 6, 7 & 10. Ch. 8 deals with one of the traditional eschatological subjects, the judgment, and ch 9 combines the certainty of death and of an end to the process of history with the question of theodicy: how long before we see justice? Is there a sign that God is alive and just? 44  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 222. 45  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 224. 46  Cf. for example Rom 6:6–7 and Rom 7:14–24.

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of prolepsis or anticipation, as Pannenberg employs it, or making room in one’s view of time for an overlap of the old age and the new.47 If we may not speak of continuity between the old and the new, we may—indeed we must—speak of living concurrently in both the old and the new age. This is a diffferent approach to the problem of the eschatological tension from Van de Beek’s. N.T. Wright answers the question, “what time is it?”, this way: “The ‘age to come’ has been inaugurated, but the ‘present age’ still continues. We live between resurrection and resurrection, that of Jesus and that of ourselves; between the victory over death at Easter and the fijinal victory when Jesus ‘appears’ again. This now/not yet tension runs right through Paul’s vision of the Christian life . . .”48 The power of sin may have been broken on the cross, but temptation, sufffering and death are not yet conquered in our daily experience. The new age is proleptically present, truly present, but not present in its eschatological fulness. We know all too well the pull of the old age. In Cullmann’s terms, the decisive victory was won on D-day, but V-day has not yet arrived.49 Van de Beek’s view of the church is of a new fellowship or communion (gemeenschap) in Christ, baptised (ingedoopt) in him. This is no ordinary human society; it is “the eschatological fellowship of the kingdom of God,”50 the fellowship of the Spirit, the body of Christ. Later this community is also described as “the presence of the kingdom on earth.” As such, it is involved in the ‘happening’ (gebeuren) of the parousia.51 Both these statement make very strong claims for the church, which surely stand in need of some qualifijication. The latter claim is not further explained. Van de Beek is confijident that the parousia does not simply happen to the church; the church is an active participant. This claim surprises because it is usual to claim of the kingdom that it is God’s kingdom, not in any sense the creation of the church. Correspondingly, one supposes that the parousia is the coming of Christ to the world at the end of the age and that the church ‘participates’ in this receptively rather than actively. At the core of this lies Van de Beek’s ambiguous use of the term ‘parousia’. It is usual to equate

47  For a brief discussion of an overlap between the old aeon and the new—and thus a third temporal location of the resurrection—see Mostert, “The Kingdom Anticipated: The Church and Eschatology”, 30–31. 48  N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003), 275. 49  Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson (London: SCM Press, 1951), 84. Van de Beek discusses this idea in God doet recht, 147, 153–59. 50  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 237.  51  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 188, 292 & 258.

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the parousia with the day of Christ’s coming in glory, the end of all events; Van de Beek certainly accepts this.52 However, in keeping with his strong sense of the ‘already’ of God’s coming, Van de Beek mostly uses the term with reference to the cross. God has intervened defijinitively in the person of Jesus Christ; his coming had the form of the cross. Far from the parousia’s delay, it has arrived in the death of Jesus; there the kingdom of God is revealed.53 Van de Beek uses parousia virtually as a synonym of kairos. Only in this unusual context does it make sense to say that the church is a participant in the parousia. The question it leaves for the reader is whether the tension between the parousia that has already arrived and the one that is yet to come is adequately accounted for by saying that events have extension in time. As to the other claim, that the church is “the presence of the kingdom of God on earth,” this too seems somewhat over-stated, especially by not being in any way qualifijied. The church is indeed an eschatological fellowship, but the relation of the church and the kingdom of God requires more nuanced statement. Confusion of the church and the kingdom, not unknown in the history of theology, is problematic.54 The relation between them is neither one of identity nor one of dissociation. Küng sees the church as “an anticipatory sign of the defijinitive reign of God: a sign of the reality of the reign of God already present in Jesus Christ, a sign of the coming completion of the reign of God.”55 The qualifying adjective ‘anticipatory’ avoids an over-identifijication of the church and the kingdom of God, safeguarding both the connection and the distinction between the two. Pannenberg provides further clarifijication of the relation between the church and the kingdom of God.56 The church is an eschatological community and as such “an anticipatory sign of God’s coming rule and its salvation for all humanity.”57 Although the sign and what it signifijies are not to be confused, what is signifijied is in a certain sense already present in the sign. In distinguishing itself from the kingdom of God in its futurity,

52

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 258; ‘het einde van alle gebeuren.’  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 141–43. “The day of the crucifijixion is the day of God’s power. That is inconceivable. It is much more unthinkable than paradise.” (143) “The fulness of time has come.” (147) 54  Hans Küng, The Church, trans. R. Ockenden and R. Ockenden (London: Search Press, 1971), 90–93. 55  Küng, The Church, 96. 56  Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 27–38. 57  Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 32. 53

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thus acknowledging that fijinality belongs to the kingdom rather than the church, the church is yet able to be a sign of the kingdom, and through the sign the kingdom’s salvifijic future is already present.58 The church must be very careful in making claims for the particular form of its life in any given time or place; it can easily fail to be a sign of the universal scope of God’s reign and an instrument of the reconciliation of people with each other and with God. However, the reign of God is at work in the life of the church, as it was in the ministry of Jesus. In particular, it comes of efffect in the church’s proclamation, its liturgical (especially its sacramental) life, and in its many kinds of service in the face of human need.59 IV With this we come to the discussion of baptism and the eucharist, both of which Van de Beek rightly discusses in robust eschatological terms. Because of its connection with the forgiveness of sins, baptism must be seen in an eschatological light; it “places people in the eschatological reality.”60 Although this aspect of baptism is scarcely apparent in the theology and liturgy of baptism in many churches, it is of central importance. The well-known World Council of Churches statement on Baptism makes the eschatological meaning of baptism clear, but places it last in the fijivefold meaning of baptism. For van de Beek the eschatological meaning of baptism is primary.61 To be baptised is to die, to die with Christ, to participate in his death. It is to enter the judgment of God. But it is also to participate in his resurrection, to rise to new life, a life of forgiveness, regeneration and redemption. This participation in Christ through baptism can only be grasped “if we see it in the eschatological perspective of the one coming of God,”62 for through baptism we are brought into the new eschatological creation.63 It is an eschatological event because

58

 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 32.  Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 37. See also The Nature and Mission of the Church, Faith and Order Paper 198 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005), §36. On the basis of Col. 1:13–14, Pannenberg writes that through the church’s life and work “Christians are already translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son by the Spirit of the Father . . . so that by him they are already redeemed from sin.” (37) 60  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 168.  61  Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith & Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982) §7. Also Van de Beek, God doet recht, ch. 6, passim & ch. 10, 376. 62  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 188. 63  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 193. 59

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in baptism we are bought to the end of one existence and the beginning of another. Thus “the water of baptism is ordinary water, but baptism is holy.”64 It is a way in which the kingdom of God makes itself present in the world. Regrettably, the baptism as practised in many churches today typically conveys little if anything of this; it is a travesty of what it should be. Van de Beek is right to lament the loss of the eschatological perspective as a major cause of this. Contrary to what we might expect, in Pannenberg’s discussion of baptism we do not fijind the same strong eschatological language as in Van de Beek. This is not to say that the eschatological perspective is absent. As the sacrament of Christian identity, it is the sacrament of a new belonging, a belonging to God or Christ, not to ourselves.65 To be assured that we belong to Christ and have received the seal of the Spirit is to be assured of “eschatological deliverance” in the coming judgment. Baptism is by no means simply a rite of initiation or entry into the church; not something from which we move on. “Baptism is there all our lives.”66 It is to be appropriated again and again so that our new identity as Christians can absorb our empirical humanity and transform it. Thus we live into our baptism as much as we live from it. Baptism sets us in relation to the death and resurrection of Jesus and actualises it; this is the gift of God. It calls for our response of faith, the reception and appropriation of what is given. Baptism is an anticipatory sacrament inasmuch as it anticipates our death and rising to new life, bringing it into our present. It converts us to Christ, giving us our baptismal identity, which we are invited and enabled to make our own existentially throughout the ensuing years. Theologically, the objectivity of baptism, expressing the objectivity of Jesus’ death and resurrection, precedes the subjectivity of faith, even though it may be the case for many Christians—those not baptised in infancy—that their faith chronologically precedes their baptism. In the sacrament of baptism, and no less in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we are given a share in the mystery of salvation efffected by Jesus on the cross and in his resurrection, a salvation which will be complete only when the kingdom of God comes in its full power and glory but which is already made real proleptically in the community of the church. In this sense, whether it is implicit or explicit, both sacraments are eschatological

64

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 205.  Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 239. 66  Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 253. 65

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events. They look to the forgiveness of sins, the fulness of salvation, the resurrection of the body and the coming of the kingdom. As the sacramental sign is enacted, including the particular words that accompany it in each case, the mystery of salvation that is signifijied is present to the gathered community.67 The terms in which Pannenberg expresses this theology of the sacraments may difffer from that of Van de Beek, but its eschatological core is essentially the same. The major exception again is that whereas Van de Beek emphasises the oneness of God’s eschatological act, focussed on the cross, Pannenberg stresses the proleptic presence here and now of God’s essentially future salvation. It is beyond the scope of this essay to consider in detail the eucharistic theology of Van de Beek and Pannenberg. Broadly speaking, there is an even greater area of overlap in their theology of the eucharist than is the case in their baptismal theology. Each of them writes in clear and strong terms of the eucharist as an eschatological sacrament. The fijirst heading in the fijinal chapter of God doet recht is “Eucharist as eschatological celebration”68 and the point is made repeatedly. This sacrament is rich in eschatological associations; Van de Beek and Pannenberg cover much of the same ground here. Pannenberg adds that the table fellowship Jesus shared with many during his ministry was already “a sign of the presence of God’s kingdom that he proclaimed and a sign of the acceptance of the other participants into the future community of salvation . . . table fellowship was a real symbol of fellowship with God himself and of participation in the future of his kingdom.”69 This is an important part of the background to the sacrament. The earliest Christians met on the fijirst day of the week, not the Sabbath; but this is also the eighth day, the eschatological day of days. The Supper was a fellowship with Christ, to whom they belonged; it signifijied that they were part of the eschatological life which he had inaugurated.70 Van de Beek emphasises that this life placed them sharply at odds with the practices and politics of the world. The eucharist was the central liturgical act of a contrast-society. Pannenberg makes less of this but gives equal prominence to the eschatological character of the eucharist.

67

 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 353.  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 322. 69  Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 285. 70  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 345. 68

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As the fellowship that celebrates the Lord’s Supper the church is the sign and instrument of humanity’s eschatological ordination for fellowship in God’s kingdom . . . Hence it is primarily in its liturgical life that the church is what it is essentially, namely, the ‘eschatological community,’ a provisional representation of humanity’s eschatological fellowship in the future of the divine reign.71

Van de Beek mourns the marginalisation of the eucharist in the life of Reformed Churches in particular. He laments even more the serious loss of the eschatological sense in the church today, expressed not only in our baptismal and eucharistic theology and liturgy but also in the absence of any sense that as Christians we are strangers in the world. Yet through baptism we have a new identity, for which the eucharist nourishes us and to which it recalls us as often as we celebrate it; he rightly asserts that this should be weekly, such is our need of it. For gathered around word and table, we celebrate our salvation, both its ‘now’ and its ‘future’ reality. Here, as we receive the body of Christ in bread and wine, we are reconstituted as the ecclesial body of Christ in the world.72 Here we are recalled to the church’s mission, which is none other than the mission of God. Here we give thanks to God, eucharistia, for the divine economy in which God has created humankind for communion with Godself and given us even now, through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit, a clear foretaste of the glory that is to come. V Van de Beek’s God doet recht is a powerful statement of the church’s eschatological faith, understood not simply as a set of beliefs about the ultimate future of the cosmos and of God’s human creatures. It is a work that describes the essential character of the Christian faith, as belief, as doctrine and as praxis. As noted at the outset, it is very richly informed by the biblical writers and illuminated by the insights of the patristic theologians. It is a rich scholarly work, but the voice that is heard most is that of the preacher. The author is passionately committed to proclaiming the liberating truth of the gospel and exhorting his readers to discover this truth. He understands this gospel in radical terms, so the voice we hear is also prophetic. The radical newness of what has been given to the world

71

 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 292.  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 388 and Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 102.

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in the incarnation and sealed in the cross and the resurrection makes the author particularly attentive to the eschatological character of the gospel. It is about a new world radically discontinuous with the old, about an identity given to those who receive this gospel which is powerfully transformative of who they were. In short, it is about the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.73 God has done this and will do this; Van de Beek places the accent fijirmly on the decisive eschatological action of God in the past, on the cross. This radical, strongly realised eschatology has been put in conversation, as it were, with another major writer on eschatology of the last century. The voice heard from this quarter is not that of the preacher or the prophet but of the apologist, the philosopher. His interest is, of course, in the same gospel of the God who is intent on bringing the cosmos into reconciliation with itself and with God as its source and goal. In a culture increasingly less interested in what the church has to say about the world and our life in it, he explores the truth-claims implicit in this gospel, arguing for their credibility and fijirmly persuaded that the truth of the gospel can illuminate both the practical and theoretical problems we struggle with in today’s world. If Van de Beek resembles Luther, with his uncompromising statements, Pannenberg writes more in the style of the consensus-seeking Calvin.74 Pannenberg, no less persuaded of the eschatological nature of the gospel, has wrestled with the implications of futurity for ontology, anthropology and epistemology, as well as systematic theology. Diffferences of style and divergent interests notwithstanding, there is much on which their respective eschatologies could fijind agreement. Beneath the surface, however, the matter is less straightforward. Some of the diffferences between them have been noted in this essay: Pannenberg’s description of the eschatological tension is theoretically more nuanced; Van de Beek’s view of the tension is more in terms of a struggle between our eschatological existence in Christ and our ongoing location in the world. Pannenberg’s instinct is to accentuate the future unity of a reconciled humanity in the kingdom of God, while Van de Beek’s is to accentuate the division between those who know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and those who do not. From both there is much to learn about the ways of God and God’s reconciling and liberating action in the world.

73

 Rom. 4:17.  The analogy is taken from the comparison of the two great Reformers; Van de Beek, God doet recht, 370. 74

UNIO MYSTICA CUM CHRISTO GLORIFICATO. IN DIALOGUE WITH VAN DE BEEK ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS ESCHATOLOGY FOR SOTERIOLOGY Willem van Vlastuin We thank Van de Beek for calling a renewed attention for Christology and stimulating theological reflection in this fijield.1 Personally I am indebted to Van de Beek’s theological research especially because of its exciting and sometimes provoking character. This exciting and provoking character is also present in his book God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie [God fulfijils justice. Eschatology as Christology].2 The central thesis of this book is that eschatology has to be understood as Christology. The dialogue with Van de Beek’s about his same central thesis in this article is a way to express my gratitude for his theological contributions, also in my personal theological development. In this article I concentrate on the consequences for soteriology of this thesis. My central question is: What does Van de Beek’s eschatology mean for soteriology? To develop this question, I fijirst want to analyse structural elements in the framework of his eschatology. Secondly, I will analyse the consequences of the kairos-approach of Van de Beek for soteriology. Thirdly, I will expand on the suggestion to make a distinction between Christ’s fijirst and second coming in the area of soteriology. The Structures in Van de Beek’s Eschatology According to Van de Beek it is essential that we acknowledge that the eschaton and God’s judgement have already arrived.3 In opposition to Cullmann, Van de Beek asserts that Christ is not only decisive for the history 1  A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1998). [ET: Jesus Kyrios. Christology as heart of theology (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002) was a milestone in asking new attention for christology. 2  A. van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008). 3  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 109–113. Compare J.D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 180; N.T. Wright, Christian Origins and the Question of God 3: The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 272–276; Paul: Fresh Perspectives (London: SPCK, 2005), 130–153.

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of the world, but that the reality of the eschaton is present in Jesus.4 Jesus is the defijinitive act of God in history. The fullness of time and the fulfijilment of history, covenant, law and prophecies is to be found in Christ.5 In Jesus Christ the kingdom of God is present. The Christological dimension of eschatology is not the fijirst thing Van de Beek has to say about eschatology. After introducing the problems and the possibilities of speaking about the eschaton, he has thereby given a kind of prolegomena for eschatology. Knowing that Van de Beek does not like prolegomena’s, we listen extra intensively to his explanation.6 His prolegomena concern the body. God’s eschatological acts cannot be spiritualized. We are not united to Christ by our souls, but by our bodies.7 That the body belongs to the essence of God’s redemptive work is confijirmed by Van de Beek in the dialogue with Van Gennep.8 The real physical resurrection and recreation of the body is not only a characteristic of eschatology, but the essence of it, as expressed in the signifijicant title of the second chapter of his book Het vlees is de spil van de redding [The body as the pivot of redemption]. In relation to the bodily character of the eschaton, Van de Beek underlines the transcendent character of the eschatological reality. At diffferent points in his book he rejects the idea of an ‘innerworldly’ and immanent redemption as he sees it in Moltmann, Pannenberg, Bultmann, Van Ruler, Berkhof and Wright.9 According to Van de Beek, God does not only act correctively within human history, but He will judge history.10 History as we know it will come to an end and Christians are longing for that end, because God will bring justice to pass.11 If we are not interested in the last

4  Compare O. Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit. Die urchristliche Zeit- und Geschichtsauffassung (Zollikon – Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1946), 70–72, 78–81, 124. 5  Already in 2002 Van de Beek wrote about the ‘fulness of time’ in Gal. 4:4, De kring om de Messias. Israël als volk van de lijdende Heer [The Circle around the Messiah] (Zoetermeer: Meinema), 20, 311–313. Earlier, H. Ridderbos drew attention to this expression, Paulus. Ontwerp van zijn theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1966), 40–45. 6  Van de Beek expresses his distaste for prolegomena’s in the introduction of his book Jesus Kurios. 7  In the seventh chapter Van de Beek says: “Niet de ziel staat dus in het brandpunt van de continuïteit tussen het aardse bestaan en het bestaan in Christus, maar het lichaam (. . .) Ons lichaam verbindt ons met de gekruisigde Christus,” God doet recht, 236. 8  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 44, 48. 9  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 22–23, 46–47, 123, 146. 10  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 277. 11  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 296. Van de Beek cites De Jonge who asserts that the coming of Jesus in the New Testament is related to the last judgement instead of redemption, 271–272.

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judgement, we are not interested in justice. By way of judgement God’s redemption comes to fulfijilment in the new heaven and the new earth, beyond the borders of this history.12 Stressing the bodily character of eschatology brings about great tensions in eschatology. Van de Beek discerns this and stresses that it is not enough to make the distinction between ‘already’ and ‘not yet.’13 It is also necessary to clarify the actual relationship between ‘already’ and ‘not yet.’ His clarifijication about this relationship brings the tension in his eschatology to a climax. These tensions can be explained as follows. Van de Beek wants to speak about one eschatological kairos (decisive moment). We should not separate God’s acts in the diffferent acts of incarnation, cross, resurrection, ascension and the second coming of Christ, because these diffferent acts belong to the one decisive act of God.14 From a certain indulgence Van de Beek speaks about diffferent kairoi within the one kairos of God, but it is easy to perceive that this does not have his heart. According to Van de Beek God has acted defijinitively in the cross of Christ. The resurrection of Christ is not to be understood as an addition to the cross, but as a confijirmation of the cross.15 This implies that the defijinite act of God is qualifijied by the cross of Christ. Van de Beek criticises every theology that goes further than the cross. The cross of Christ is not in opposition to God’s glory, but it is the revelation of God’s glory and the presence of God’s kingdom. This theologia crucis (theology of the cross) censures liberal theology that sees Christ’s work only as an initiation of God’s liberating acts in history.16 It is not necessary to set up tokens of God’s kingdom, because God’s kingdom has already arrived in Christ’s cross. Much protestant theology sufffers from the same problem in separating the purchase of redemption and the application of redemption.17 The substantializing of the application of redemption is an Arminian tendency in much protestant theology.

12

 A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 339.  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 150. 14  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 155–159, 188. In 1997 Van de Beek published meditations under the title Alle feesten tegelijk. Overdenkingen over Gods bevrijdende nabijheid (Nijkerk, Callenbach). The title illustrates that the unity of the acts of God in Christ belongs to the basic principles of Van de Beek. 15  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 130, 135. 16  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 148–149. 17  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 212–213. 13

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Speaking about the one kairos centred in the cross of Christ and vindicated by his resurrection underlines the ‘already’ character of the kingdom of God. This approach evokes another problem, namely how to deal with the fact that history still continues and we do not see its conclusion. Van de Beek makes the distinction between kairos and chronos (space of time), distinguishing God’s time and our time. This is another characteristic of Van de Beek’s Christ-centred eschatology. God’s one kairos is extended human time. The extended human time is a way to express the ‘not yet.’ From God’s point of view redemption is a fact, humanly spoken redemption is still in process and we are waiting for the solution of history. To explain the relation between kairos and chronos Van de Beek uses the metaphor of birth. The time until Jesus can be typifijied as the time of expectation (of a child).18 From the point of the incarnation and the cross we live in the time of birth. The metaphor of birth is useful in three ways. In the fijirst place it is a way to bring an extended period of time back to one point. Even if the birth of our child took three days, we only speak about one moment of birth. Next, the metaphor of birth is used to indicate the tensions, wars and pains in history and personal human life. In this context Romans 8:22 is important. Thirdly, the metaphor of birth expresses the new age in which we live.19 We do not live any longer in the old age, but we are in the process of passing into the new age. We come to a conclusion. Speaking about the one kairos of God has at the fijirst glance a self-evident and convincing power. The New Testament speaks about God’s decisive moment. The apostle Paul concentrates God’s work in Christ’s cross to glory in it, which would be impossible if God’s redemptive work could be seen as an addition sum of diffferent and separated acts. The use of the one decisive moment of kairos confijirms that we should not separate what God brings together. We can understand Van de Beek’s preference for speaking about one coming of Christ instead of two comings of Christ. It is in agreement with his total theological paradigm to underline in an anti-dualistic way the unity of God in Christ: God is one, Christ is one person and Christ’s work is a unity. It has also to do with the typical and justifijiable Van de Beek distinction between God and men. We should not think about God in human terms and vice versa. Therefore the highly paradox concept of one kairos from God’s point of

18  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 166–167. See also Hier beneden is het niet. Christelijke toekomstverwachting (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2005), 28–30. 19  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 224.

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view and diffferent kairoi from the human point of view is not solved. In Van de Beek’s approach, meeting paradoxes is a confijirmation of the truth. He likes them and he dislikes smooth theological concepts without tensions. Going deeper in the structure of one kairos we encounter some tensions in Van de Beek’s eschatology. On the one hand Van de Beek asserts the bodily and transcendent character of eschatology, on the other hand he asserts that God has acted already defijinitively in the cross of Christ in such a way that his eschatological act is qualifijied by the cross. The question arises how the resurrection of the body in the eschaton relates to God’s eschatological acting qualifijied by cross and death. The distinction between kairos and chronos does not solve this problem, because it does not seem Van de Beek’s purpose to implicate the bodily resurrection in the one kairos of God. In speaking about God’s kairos and men’s chronos Van de Beek asserts that we live already in the new age, on the other hand he denies the presence of the new age because our age is qualifijied by death due to the theology of the cross. This tension brings me to a deeper investigation into the consequences of Van de Beek’s kairos-concept for soteriology. The Consequences of Van de Beek’s Kairos-approach for Soteriology Van de Beek develops his eschatological Christology—or his Christological eschatology—within the framework of one kairos.20 Here my dialogue with Van de Beek starts. I am interested in the consequences of this approach for soteriology. For that reason I would like to look at this approach from two sides, fijirst from the inside and second from the outside. First, I like to investigate the consequence of this approach for soteriological aspects which can be summarized in the forgiveness of sins and the Christian life. This investigation is as it were from the inside of kairos. The second way of investigation is just the opposite. I would like to look as it were from the outside of kairos to investigate the consequence of this approach for the soteriological aspects which can be summarized in the resurrection of the body. First, the investigation of the kairos-approach from the inside. If the one kairos of God is for human experience in an ongoing fulfijilment, the 20  Chapter 4 is called ‘Eschatologie is christologie’, chapter 4.3 is called ‘Christology is eschatologie.’ It seems that both eschatology and Christology can be seen as framework.

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question concerning the forgiveness of sins arises. Can we speak about the forgiveness of sins if God’s kairos is not yet fijinished for us? Van de Beek refers to the apostolic confession of faith to assert that forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body are united to each other.21 The consequence of this approach is that forgiveness is related to the future resurrection of the dead, so forgiveness belongs to the future. Nobody will question that forgiveness of sins has a future eschatological aspect, but that is not the same as saying that forgiveness is reserved for the future. With this approach we get the impression that it is impossible to speak about forgiveness of sins as long as our human chronos is not fijinished. This implies that it is not possible to speak in a defijinite way about the forgiveness of sins, a consequence that is of great importance for the Christian life, for reformed theology and for our understanding of the New Testament.22 There is another problematic issue in relation to soteriology, namely the relation between mortifijicatio (mortifijication) and vivifijicatio (making alive). Van de Beek asserts that we cannot speak about vivifijicatio in the present Christian life. His argument for this position is his conviction that the cross is the shape of God’s kingdom in this age.23 Vivifijicatio does not belong to the shape of the cross. According to him vivifijicatio is reserved for the future age when our bodies are glorifijied in the recreated creation. We hear in this approach the decisive characteristic of his eschatology. The resurrected and glorifijied body belongs undeniably to the eschaton. We can appreciate the problematic character of this conclusion for theology. This position also has a great impact on the spiritual and practical life of Christians, it creates tensions with the reformed tradition and it leads to conflicts with the New Testament, because vivifijicatio is present in the New Testament, both as position and as process.24 The theological problem behind this issue is our position in Christ. If I have understood Van de Beek correctly, thinking from our position in Christ is most important. We do not only believe in Jesus, we are not only saved by Christ, but we belong to him. Van de Beek’s starting point from our position in Christ would bring us to the conclusion that there is an inseparable unity between Christ and us. If we are united to Christ, we are in a relationship to the crucifijied and resurrected Saviour. It is impossible 21

 A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 168.  Mark 2:5; Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38; Rom. 5:1; Hebr. 10:18. 23  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 229. 24  Eph. 2:5–6, 4:22–24; Col. 3:1, 3; 2 Peter 3:18. 22

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to separate crucifijixion and resurrection from each other. Thinking from the unity and integrity of Christ’s person makes the separation between mortifijicatio and vivifijicatio problematic. How does Van de Beek reconcile his thinking from our position in Christ with the fact that the efffect of the resurrection is not relevant for us in this age? Concerning our relationship in Christ three things are to be considered concerning Van de Beek’s theology. First, the resurrection of Jesus is a vindication of his crucifijixion and not an in himself present victory over death and sin in Van de Beek.25 We can agree that the cross of Jesus is not a completed phase in Christology. After his resurrection Jesus bore the scars of his sufffering. In heaven the Lamb stands in the midst of the throne as it had been slain.26 At the same time we have to acknowledge that the Lamb stands and the scars belong to a glorifijied body. In the cross God has defijinitively completed the old aeon (age). Paul can say that the resurrection is more than the crucifijixion.27 In Christ the new creation is present.28 We have also to do justice to this aspect of scripture. Secondly, according Van de Beek vivifijicatio is tied to the resurrection of our bodies, because he does not like to speak about redemption without redemption of the body.29 Van de Beek is right in stressing the importance of the body. We can go one step further and admit that we cannot overestimate the importance of the physical resurrection and the implied ‘transphysical’ character of Jesus’ resurrection. God’s redemption is not within the borders of this history and our human expectations, but it is totaliter aliter (totally diffferent).30 The truth of the importance of the body does not take away the fact that scripture also offfers other considerations. From scripture we also learn that our bodies should not be absolutized.

25  I found also that Van de Beek speaks about the triumphant presence of Jesus in the fulfijilment of God’s kingdom, God doet recht, 201. I read it as an exception, because it has no function for our position in Christ. 26  Rev. 5:6. 27  Rom. 8:34. 28  N.T. Wright makes clear that Christ’s resurrection is not one of the themes of the New Testament, but decisive for the structure of it, Resurrection, 309. 29  A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 236. Sin is always bodily sin, 348. S. Lorenzen connects the image of the Son with the body. For that reason she speaks about a future salvation, because of the future resurrection, Das paulinische Eikon-Konzept. Semantische Analyse zur Sapientia Salomonis zu Philo und den Paulusbriefen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 157– 159, 195–198, 205, 262. On the contrary G.H. van Kooten stresses the pneumatic character of the image of the Son in Paul, Paul’s Anthropology in Context. The Image of God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 379, 391–392. He sees Greek influence on Paul, 218–219. 30  1 Cor. 2:9.

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There are indications in scripture that we can have a relationship with God and sin against God, in distinction from our bodies.31 Thirdly, in Van de Beek our participation in Christ does not imply that we share in the efffects of his resurrection in our present life, because he shrinks back from the consequence that we participate in the resurrected Christ and share his defijinite victory. According him we have passed from the old age of expectation in the Old Testament, but we are still in the process of birth. The process of birth is a process of dying before we can speak about living.32 This leads to the question as to whether we take seriously the new position in the glorifijied Christ. Why it is not possible to speak about a parallelism between mortifijicatio and vivifijicatio? If the judgement of God was fulfijilled in the cross, why can we only speak about judgement and mortifijication in history? If we really share Christ’s position we should expect that the efffect upon us would be that of both mortifijication and renewal. This separation between mortifijicatio and vivifijicatio gives the impression that Van de Beek is not consistent in his own stress on the unity and integrity of the person of Christ. He wants to think from our position in Christ, but he does not accept the consequences of Jesus’ victory for ourselves. Stated in another way: he looks more at the process in us and our history than that he looks to and lives out the complete and defijinitive redemption in Christ. Again stated in another way: chronos is taken more seriously than kairos. Van de Beek speaks about the kingdom as sub contrarie specie (under the appearance of the opposite), but the question arises where the opposite kingdom is.33 Is the shade of the cross of God’s kingdom the real shade of God’s kingdom, or is it the opposite of the real shade of God’s kingdom? I conclude that it is a very strong argument in Van de Beek to speak about the kairos-character of Christ’s work. Taking the consequence of the kairos-character of Christ’s work would lead to the conclusion that we participate in the crucifijied and resurrected Christ. Secondly, I would like to investigate God’s one kairos in extended human time as it were from the outside. According to Van de Beek the

31  Phil. 1:21–24. Compare Mat. 10:28. Spiritual people are aware of the transcendent spiritual reality in Christ, G.H. van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology, 302, 306, 308. 32  Van de Beek does not argue from the reality that we have defijinitively died with Christ, but he speaks about the process of dying, God doet recht, 188, 197, 199. 33  Van de Beek speaks about the presence of the kingdom, God doet recht, 262. See also page 230.

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one kairos of God includes God’s judgement, the end of time and the fulfijilment of the recreation of all things. Van de Beek stresses that the cross is the central act of God and that the glory of God is revealed in the cross. In the cross God’s judgement has been fulfijilled, because God’s kingdom is present sub contrarie specie. The things which happen in history can be seen as efffects of the cross.34 The question arises if it is possible to think about the bodily resurrection at the end of time. If the things that happen in history are the efffect of God’s act in Christ’s cross, how is it possible to expect something that is of another order than we see in history? If God’s one act in Christ is qualifijied by the cross, how is it possible to think and speak about the glorifijication of this earth? It is unimaginable to expect transcendent acts of God which are the (immanent) result of this history, neither is it plausible that Christ’s cross will have diffferent efffects to the efffects of the cross which we see already in history. Is it possible to work from the efffects of the one kairos of God and at the same time think of something outside history? It is not clear what will bring the great change of history at the end of time if God has acted defijinitively in the cross. It seems that thinking and theologizing from the one kairos of God in the cross gives no room for the end of time, a recreation after this era, or the resurrection of the dead. Thinking from the one kairos of God must imply ultimately that we expect the fulfijilment of time within the borders of this human history. In short, theologizing from the one kairos of God extended in human time is theologically problematic in relation to the transcendent aspects of the new age. If God has acted defijinitively in the cross of Christ does a theological possibility remain to speak again about the last things of judgement, resurrection and recreation of heaven and earth? It is not clear from Van de Beek’s eschatology how these aspects function in his concept of eschatology. This lack of clarity arises from the bound of Christology and eschatology in his theology. When eschatology is to be understood as Christology it is difffijicult to distinguish between eschatology and Christology. The fulfijilment of Christ’s redemptive work leads to and seems to imply the fulfijilment of history. A greater distinction between eschatology and Christology would give room for fijiner nuances.

34  Van de Beek can say that history is the extent of God’s judgement, at the same time he can say that God’s judgement has been fulfijilled in the death of Christ, Hier beneden is het niet, 110–111.

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We saw already that Van de Beek at diffferent moments in his book criticizes theologians who expect the kingdom within time. Van de Beek denies the immanent way into the kingdom and defends the position that God’s kingdom has a transcendent character. The question is if he really has an alternative to these theological concepts. In the beginning of his book Van de Beek discusses and defends the theological consideration of the cosmological crisis in 2 Peter 3.35 During the development of his thoughts this drama seems to have disappeared.36 Which place has this drama in his theological concept? Is this drama implied in the drama of the cross or do we expect another drama at the end of time? If the eschaton has arrived it is difffijicult to see how we can expect another drama. It is also possible that I understood Van de Beek in the wrong way. Reading his book I sometimes wondered if we have to understand him in a complete diffferent way.37 If the cross is the ultimate revelation of God’s glory, then we should not expect things of another quality. At the same time I must reject this thought. Van de Beek speaks clearly about a new reality for this created realm, a glorifijication of creation. We draw a conclusion. We have seen that Van de Beek’s Christology is eschatologically framed, more specifijically kairos-framed. This character is stressed so much that it is impossible to distinguish between the fijirst and the second coming of Christ. We should expect that the consequence of this strong kairos-approach would be a theology with a strong accent on God’s defijinitive act of redemption in Christ and a defijinite soteriology. Looking at the working out of Van de Beek’s theology we do not fijind a fulfijilled soteriology. Instead of the new creation in Christ as a theological starting point we fijind a soteriology in process, which will be fulfijilled in future. The question remains if this problem can be solved with reference to theological paradoxes. Luther liked paradoxes, but sometimes he had to agree that good theologians are characterized by their fijine distinctions. God’s revelation is not an ‘absurdum.’ If He reveals Himself in Christ and his Word, then it is a revelation for human beings which will really reveal the things of

35

 A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 19.  J.M. Burger sees a lack of cosmology in Van de Beek, Being in Christ. A Biblical and Systematic Investigation in a Reformed Perspective (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 525. 37  On page 138 of his God doet recht Van de Beek appears to state that the paradise for the murder was hanging at the cross. The transcendental character of redemption has disappeared. 36

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God to us.38 This brings me to the question whether or not it is necessary to make a distinction between Christ’s fijirst coming and his second coming in the context of the decisive kairos-character of Christ’s work. A Suggestion for an Alternative Structure of Van de Beek’s Eschatology In the analysis of Abraham van de Beek’s eschatology we encountered an indefijinite soteriology. Listening to the message of the early church we can learn many things. When we turn to the Niceanum as amplifijied in Constantinople we fijind Christ’s coming again with glory to judge.39 This confession understands the coming of Jesus in scripture in two ways: a coming in humiliation and a coming in glory.40 Speaking about the coming in glory the early church has understood this as a second coming of Christ. The diffference is clear. Van de Beek speaks about one coming of Christ and the early church believed in two comings of Christ. Van de Beek sees the glory of Christ in the cross, while the early church saw the glory of Christ in his return. Van de Beek supposes the judgement of God at the cross, and the symbolicum of Nicea-Constantinople supposes the judgement of God in a distinct act at the end of history. The fijirst coming of Jesus included crucifijixion and resurrection, and was understood to obtain redemption, while the second coming was understood to manifest himself and to glorify his church on the one side, and to judge the world on the other side. This distinction cannot be made absolute. There is biblical truth in the view that the glory of Christ was revealed at the cross.41 There is also biblical truth in the conviction that the gospel itself contains judgement in separating believers and unbelievers.42 Despite these nuances it can be said that the glory of Christ is still a hidden glory and that in his future return he will judge the world and reveal his glory in which his church and his creation will participate.43 The distinction between the fijirst and the second coming of Christ does not imply a reduction of the eschatological character of Christ’s coming. 38  This the message of M.D. Thompson, A Clear and Present Word. The clarity of Scripture (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 2006). 39  ‘πάλιν έρχόμενον μετα δόξης κρίναι,’ P. Schafff, The Creeds of Christendom (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996) II,57. Matth. 24:14 indicates that the end has to come. 40  In the time of the New Testament the coming of Christ is spoken of, John 14:18; Acts 1:11; Phil. 3:20; 1 Thes. 4:13–18; 2 Thes. 2:2–3; Rev. 1:1, 4, 7, 4:8, 22:20. 41  Especially in John we fijind this approach, see John 3:14, 8:28, 12:32. 42  John 3:18, 12:31. 43  Matth. 12:41–42, 23:14; Rom. 8:18; Col. 3:4; 1 John 3:2.

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Jesus rose on the other side of human history. In Christ the old aeon has passed and the new aeon is reality. This has important implications for our participation in Christ. Our participation in Christ means a participation in the crucifijied and risen Saviour. We cannot say that we participate only in the crucifijied Christ while we belong to this age and that we participate only in the glorifijied Christ in the new age. Van de Beek is right in stressing the enduring reality of the cross. I would add that the shade of the cross is not only for this age, but for eternity, if—due to Christ’s resurrection—understood as the glorifijied cross. The history of the cross will never become past tense, but in the new heavens and the new earth we will know that we participate in Christ’s redemption through the cross. Because of Christ’s resurrection we participate in the glorifijied crucifijied Christ. The distinction between the fijirst and the second coming of Christ does not reduce the eschatological character of Christ’s fijirst coming, but it explains two shades of the one eschatological reality in Christ. That is the truth in Van de Beek’s stress on the one kairos. Perhaps we can say that there is not a Christological diffference, but a chronological diffference between the fijirst and second coming of Christ. In Christ’s fijirst coming redemption is fulfijilled, in Christ’s second coming the already fulfijilled redemption will be disclosed. Distinguishing between the fijirst and second coming of Christ has advantages for soteriology, because it gives the theological framework to speak about the fulfijilled redemption in Christ.44 Because of our participation in the complete Christ, we participate both in his crucifijixion and in his resurrection. The fulfijilled redemption in cross and resurrection is the basis of assured trust. In this way it can be understood that the apostle Paul speaks in defijinite terms about the forgiveness of sins and triumphs in the victory of Christ.45 The strongest confession of Paul is that our position in Christ implies that old things are passed away, we are already a new creature and all things are become new.46 Our participation in Christ even makes it possible to state that we belong to heaven and we have our treasures laid up in heaven.47 In this

44  John 19:30. In his commentary on John 13:31 Calvin asserted that the world is renewed, Calvini Opera XLVII,317. Compare also his commentary on Hebr. 1:1, Calvini Opera LV,10. He could even say that the new heaven and earth are already in Christ, Calvini Opera XXXVII,453 (commentary on Is. 66:22). 45  Rom. 8:35–37. 46  2 Cor. 5:17. Compare Eph. 1:3. 47  Matth. 6:20; Eph. 2:6; Phil. 3:20.

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concept the alienship of the Christian on earth is not motivated negatively by the judgement of God over this world, but positively by belonging to and therefore expecting a better world. Because we belong to the risen and ascended Christ, we already belong to the future age. The ‘already’ in this concept has to do with the participation in the complete eschatological redemption in Christ. The ‘not yet’ in this concept does not mean that the efffects and fruits of Christ’s resurrection are still outstanding.48 No, we are united to Christ, even the bodily resurrected Christ.49 We do not expect an addition to Christ’s complete redemption, but we expect the complete revelation of the already existing complete redemption and recreation in him.50 This complete revelation of our redemption in the second coming of Jesus, the cosmological drama, the judgement of God and the glorifijication of our bodies and God’s creation is not an addition to Christ’s redemptive work, it is not a new aspect proceeding from Christ’s redemption, but it is efffecting of Christ’s redemption. In this approach it is impossible not to speak about faith in distinction to the Christian hope. By faith we participate ‘already’ in the complete redemption in Christ, our hope is longing for the revelation of our redemption and the manifestation of God’s kingdom. Faith is our union with and our participation in Christ, characterized by the invisibility of this union. We belong to God’s victorious, invisible and everlasting kingdom sub contrarie specie. This does not imply that we are only related to the crucifijied Christ, but it expresses that we belong to the glorifijied crucifijied Christ although the opposite appears to be the case. We see that we are conquered in this world, but by faith we are sure of our victory in him. We experience that we live in a world of death, but by faith we know that death is behind us. Our union with Christ means that we have passed from death to life and share in his everlasting life.51 While we have to die, we are sure that we participate in the bodily living Christ. The last sentence is somewhat problematic. Therefore it is an occasion to seek a deeper understanding of the relation between the bodily resurrected Christ and our mortality. In this context we have to speak about the unio mystica cum Christo (spiritual union with Christ).52 By faith 48

 J.P. Versteeg explained that the ‘not yet’ is not Christologically qualifijied, but temporally, Christus en de Geest. Een exegetisch onderzoek naar de verhouding van de opgestane Christus en de Geest van God volgens de brieven van Paulus (Kok: Kampen, 1980), 370. 49  Stephen, Paul and John saw or met the glorifijied Christ, Acts 7:55–56; Acts 9:3–6; Rev. 1:9–20. Compare 2 Cor. 4:6; Hebr. 2:9. We have the Spirit of glory, 1 Peter 4:14. 50  Rom. 8:18; 1 Cor. 13: 12; 1 John 3:2. 51  John 5:24; Gal. 2:19–20; 1 John 3:14. 52  Compare J.M. Burger, Being in Christ.

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we are spiritually united to the bodily risen Christ. This leads to diffferent considerations. First, the resurrection of the body is not denied, spiritualized or relativised. Van de Beek is right in stressing the centrality of the bodily resurrection. Without resurrection we are without forgiveness and redemption, or anything else. Our union with the bodily risen Christ is the guarantee of our bodily resurrection. Secondly, our union with Christ is a spiritual union by the Holy Spirit. The word ‘mystica’ should not be understood in a mystical way as if our personalities are denied, or this world is rejected for a higher spiritualized life, but as a way to express the transcendental character of redemption in which we share. It is a way to explain the character of our participation in the redemption of Christ, namely through our complete existence connected with Jesus by faith in our souls.53 So we can say that we are spiritually united to the bodily risen Christ. This has nothing to do with spiritualizing Christ’s body, but it is the acknowledgement of his glorifijied spiritual body as the basis to expect our participation in the glorifijied creation. A third consideration has to do with the efffects of our spiritual union with Christ. Because our spiritual union is a union with the person of Christ, we share the efffects of his work in crucifijixion and resurrection, namely mortifijicatio and vivifijicatio. These benefijits of our union with Christ cannot be separated. Because of faith this duplex gratia (double grace) is present in our lives. We die more and more to ourselves and we are daily renewed by the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. The fijirst fruits of the eschatological life are already in us, the fruit of and the unspeakable joy in the Spirit.54 Concluding Remarks Instead of understanding God’s work in Christ as an addition sum of separate acts of Christ or interpreting Christ’s cross and resurrection from a dualistic point of view, Van de Beek has learned me to understand and interpret God’s work in Christ from the one decisive kairos-

53  J. Veenhof has tried to apply the perfectum of Christ’s redemption to our bodies and health in speaking about ‘Christus Medicus’, Vrij gereformeerd. Verzamelde artikelen bezorgd door Dirk van Keulen, Kees van der Kooi, Aad van Egmond en Martien Brinkman (Kampen: Kok, 2005), 241–277. 54  Rom. 8:23; Gal. 5:22. What is eschatologically realised in Christ will be realised by the Spirit, J.P. Versteeg, Christus en de Geest, 381.

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point of view. Only in this way we can understand and join the apostle Paul glorying exclusively in the cross. Thinking from God’s defijinitive act in Christ has helped me to grasp the Christ-centred and defijinitive character of Christology and in its track the defijinitive character of soteriology, because of our unio mystica cum Christo. The consequence of Van de Beek’s Christology for soteriology must be our spiritual union with the crucifijied and resurrected Christ. In a certain way we have to speak about the unio mystica cum Christo glorifijicato. The plea in the article for a distinction between the fijirst and the second coming of Christ cannot be understood as a denial of the fundamental unity of Christ’s work, neither can the second coming of Christ be interpreted as an addition to the redemption achieved in Christ’s fijirst coming, but the distinction between the fijirst and the second coming of Christ is to be valued as a modal distinction in speaking about the kairos-character of Christ’s coming to the world. The agreement with the kairos-character of Christ’s coming to this world and the fijiner distinctions in speaking about the coming of Christ indicate the stimulus which Van de Beek has given to theologians working in systematic theology in general and Christology in particular.

PART FOUR

THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH

NO LONGER STRANGERS OR PILGRIMS IN THE CHURCH? SOCIO-CULTURAL IDENTITIES IN THE FAITH AND ORDER DOCUMENT NATURE AND MISSION OF THE CHURCH Eduardus A.J.G. Van der Borght Background The 20th century ecumenical movement is an expression of the desire for visible unity among the divided churches. In this context, Faith and Order, the theological commission of the Word Council of Churches, understands its task as a work of removing theological stumbling blocks on the way to a greater visible unity of the church. For most participants in this process, these theological hurdles can be identifijied as longstanding, theological disagreements on aspects of the faith among the Christian confessional traditions. As a consequence, the 20th century has witnessed an organized sustained theological dialogue among a steady growing number of confessional traditions in order to overcome the confessional stalemate that has been blamed for much of the division among the churches. The continuing hope is that these dialogues will lead to a deeper and fuller understanding of the issues that have divided them until now, a richer insight that helps the confessional traditions to go beyond the traditional formulations and practices within the churches. Generally it is recognized that the 1982 document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (BEM) is the most successful outcome of multilateral dialogues within Faith and Order. By focusing on baptism, eucharist and ministry since its First World Conference in 1927, Faith and Order has from the start put these three issues with their theological justifijications and church dividing practices in the center of its work. From the responses of the churches to BEM it became clear that the next step in the theological dialogue would have to focus on the ecclesiology that is behind these sacramental disagreements. In 1998 Faith and Order published the fijirst draft on ecclesiology with the title The Nature and the Purpose of the Church (NPC), and in 2005 it published the second draft under the title The Nature and the Mission of the Church (NMC).1 1  For a short description of the evolution from BEM to NMC, see J.W. Hind, ‘Afterword’, in P.M. Collins and M.A. Fahey (eds), Receiving ‘The Nature and the Mission of the Church’—Ecclesial Reality and Ecumenical Horizons for the Twenty-First Century (London /

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During the same 20th century―in which churches tried to come to terms with their church dividing confessional identities that had been used to justify the opposing claims of groups of people in society―the world has witnessed war on a global scale driven by opposing socio-cultural identities. People referred to nation, ethnicity, tribe, and race to diffferentiate themselves from other groups of people and used these as justifijication for exclusion of others and if necessary for violence against outsiders. The socially orientated Life and Work commission of the ecumenical movement has traditionally reacted to these developments. So, for instance, in 1937, it challenged the practice of exclusion mechanisms in society based on national or racial identity. Faith and Order met in the same year. But it refused to deal with issues of nation and race in relation to the unity of the church, since these were labeled ‘non-theological factors’, and thus thought to be not relevant to deal with for Faith and Order as a theological commission.2 It would take until the end of the 20th century after almost a full decade of new violence and atrocities motivated by socio-cultural identities before Faith and Order recognized the importance of the issue for its theological work in relation to the unity of the church. In 1997 Faith and Order started a new project entitled Ethnic Identity, National Identity and Unity of the Church, abbreviated as ETHNAT. It took Faith and Order sixty years to come to the recognition that the church is not only divided because of outstanding confessional and ecclesiological diffferences, but also by potentially destructive divisions within the human community. For many Orthodox and Protestant churches the links with their nation states were strong, self-evident, and believed to be fundamental, and for this reason difffijicult to question. The threat that they pose for the unity of the church is also of a theological nature. In 2006 this would result in the study document Participating in God’s Mission of Reconciliation: a Resource for Churches in Situations of Conflict. Comparing the title of the project with the title of the fijinal document, it becomes clear that the focus of the project has shifted from an ecclesiological dilemma to an ethical challenge.3

New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 102–09. NPC was published as F&O Paper 181 (Geneva: WCC, 1998) and NMC as F&O Paper 198 (Geneva: WCC, 2005). Both can be downloaded from the WCC website www.oikumene.org. 2  See on this L. Hodgson (ed.), The Second World Conference on Faith and Order held at Edinburgh, August 3–18, 1937 (London, 1938), 258–59. 3  The study is published as F&O Paper 201 (Geneva: WCC, 2006). An analysis of the document will be a chapter in my forth coming monograph on socio-cultural identities and the unity of the church within the ecumenical movement. The part of my analysis in

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The work on the ETHNAT project as well as the work on the redrafting of the initial text of the ecclesiological document of Faith and Order has been going on during the same period of time, that is the fijinal years of the 1990’s and the fijirst fijive years of the new millennium. This gives rise to the question whether both projects of Faith and Order have influenced one another, and more specifijically whether the second draft of the ecclesiological project, The Nature and the Mission of the Church, has taken into account the growing awareness of the socio-cultural identities for the unity of the church. I offfer the following analysis to my colleague Bram van de Beek who has been a mentor in my theological development, as contribution to his current work on ecclesiology. For van de Beek, there is no doubt that Christians can only be strangers and pilgrims on the earth. But what about the church in this world? Can Christian make themselves at home there? Many are convinced they can, referring not only to confessional confijirmation, but also to language and cultural aspects in general. So is the church the place where Christians no longer have to be strangers and pilgrims? It is a complex issue that requires a nuanced answer. But my own intuition is to have reservations concerning the suggestion that socio-cultural identities are a valuable reason to feel at home in the church. In the context of this contribution, I cannot provide a full answer to the question. But what I can do is to indicate, through the analysis of NMC, at which point ecclesiology should take the question of the role of socio-cultural identities seriously. The Introduction The introduction of the document (§§1–8) provides us with a fijirst indication of the potential influence of the ETHNAT project on the ecclesiology study. Paragraph two of NMC mentions specifijic documents of Faith and Order that have contributed to the understanding of the nature and the mission of the church, and refers to recent studies, among them the one on ‘ethnic identity’. But that seems to be the only specifijic reference to this study. Paragraph three motivates with some extra arguments that the

relation to race can be found in E. Van der Borght, Sunday Morning—The Most Segregated Hour: On racial reconciliation as unfijinished business for theology in South Africa and beyond, (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2009), 19–22.

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time is ripe for the study. One of these―‘particular challenges in many regions call out for Christians to address together what it means to be the Church in that place’―can, among others, be understood as a reference to situations where ethnic strife prevents the unity of the church in a region.4 But when paragraph four enumerates examples of local conditions that may influence the understanding of the church, a reference to church dividing ethnic divisions is lacking. The Church of the Triune God The fijirst part, The Church of the Triune God (§§ 9–47), explains the nature and the mission of the church. She owes her existence to the Triune God. As a creation of the Word and of the Holy Spirit the church is a gift of God.5 This free gift approach defijines the creedal qualifijications of the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, and the qualifijication of the church as communion that has become central in the Faith and Order theology in recent decades. Whether the existing communal structuring of societies according to socio-cultural identity markers bears any influence on this new God given community is left open. The nature of the church is further explored through four biblical metaphors and insights: the church as people of God, as body of Christ, as temple of the Holy Spirit, and as koinonia/communion. The fijirst and the last of these biblical indications draw our attention. The description of the church as people of God starts with a reference to Abraham. ‘In the call of Abraham, God was choosing for himself a holy people . . . God fashioned one from among the nations.’ (§ 18) Later, ‘. . . God sent his Son to bring the possibility of communion for each person with others and with God, thus manifesting the gift of God for the whole world. (§ 18) Comparing NMC with NPC, one observes in the new draft a few lines on the relationship between Israel and the new community, a new people in Christ. But the shift in the way God deals with humans from calling one nation Israel

4  Thomas F. Best, the secretary of Faith and Order during the era of the drafting of NPC and NMC, refers in his preface to volume P.M. Collins and M.A. Fahey, Receiving ‘The Nature and Mission of the Church’, 3 to the divisions of race as one of the divisions of human community that seek to impose themselves upon the life of the church. 5  On the development of the bi-focal source of the church in ecumenical dialogues, see P. De Mey, ‘The Church as “Creation of the World and of the Holy Spirit” in: Ecumenical Documents on the Church: A Roman Catholic Exercise in Receptive Ecumenism’, Receiving ‘The Nature and the Mission of the Church’, 42–54.

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to calling individuals to become part of this new community in the development of the salvation history is left unexplained. The next paragraph on the pilgrimage nature of the people of God mentions the universal scope of both, the fijirst and the second people of God: ‘. . . in Abraham all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. In Christ, the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile is broken down (cf. Eph 2:14). The Church, embracing both Jew and Gentile, is a “chosen race”, a royal priesthood, a holy nation”, “God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9–10).’ By focusing on the universal scope of the covenant with Abraham, the exclusive nature of the calling of Israel, and the discontinuity between fijirst and second people of God are left untouched. The description of church as koinonia (§§ 24–33) might offfer new opportunities for exploring whether communities built on socio-cultural identities have an impact on the understanding of the church.6 The section indeed acknowledges the creational aspect of communion. ‘Communion is rooted in the order of creation itself and is realized, in part, in natural relationships of family and kinship, of tribe and people.’ (§ 25) But this creational communion is broken. ‘God’s purpose in creation is distorted by human sin, failure and disobedience to God’s will and by rebellion against him (cf. Gen 3–4, Rom 1:18–3:20). Sin damages the relationship between God, human beings and the created order.’ (§ 26) After recalling the faithfulness of God, the paragraph ends with a hopeful eschatological perspective. ‘The dynamic history of God’s restoring and increasing koinonia reaches its culmination and fulfijillment in the perfect communion of a new heaven and a new earth established by Jesus Christ (cf. Rev 21).’ This statement raises questions in relation to communities identifijied by socio-cultural markers. Does the restoring activity of the faithful God imply that there is a lasting future for these communities that are part of the created order? And if so, does that mean that we have to consider the impact of these communities on the Christian Church? An answer to these questions is not provided. The other paragraphs in the section exclusively focus on the new community in Christ, the church. The analysis of the biblical images is followed by a section on the mission of the church (§ 34). From the fijirst sentence of this part, creation is in the picture. ‘It is God’s design to gather all creation under the Lordship

6  On the coherence of the use of koinonia in respect of the Godhead, church, and created order, see P. Collins, ‘Communion: God, Creation and Church’, in Receiving ‘The Nature and the Mission of the Church’, 21–41.

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of Christ, and to bring humanity and all creation into communion.’ (§ 34) and it ends with the already mentioned eschatological perspective: ‘Through redeemed humanity the whole world is meant to be drawn to the goal of restoration and salvation. This divine plan reaches its fulfijillment in the new heaven and the new earth. . . .’ (§ 47) The church is involved in God’s restoration process for humanity and for creation. The church even embodies in its own life the transfijiguration of humanity. (§ 36) But once more, when discussing the mission of the church, questions about what that means for communities of the created order, and what if any is the impact for the new community in Christ remain open. The labeling of the church as prophetic sign, as representative, as mysterion, or as instrument (§§ 43–6) in the next session is not providing us any clue to the answers either. The Church in History The subject of the second part of the document, The Church in History (§§ 48–66), provides extra opportunities to reflect on the relation between socio-cultural identities and the church. It starts with a subsection that reflects on the historical nature of the church (§§ 48–56). Paragraph 55 indicates three aspect of the church in its human dimension as subject of the conditions of the world. It is open to change, positive or negative; to individual, cultural and historical conditioning, and it is afffected by the power of sin. It remains uncertain whether more or less attention for socio-cultural identities is to be brought under a more neutral cultural contextualization or whether they should be understood as sin. The text continues with a description of the consequences of the historical contextualization for the oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the church. The essential oneness of the church is contrasted with the actual divisions. (§ 53) It remains unclear whether division along sociocultural lines in the church should be understood as a consequence of sin, or whether this is part of trying to be faithful to the creational truth. The essential catholicity of the Church is confronted with divisions between and within the Christian communities regarding their life and preaching of the Gospel. Its catholicity transcends all barriers and proclaims God’s word to all peoples: where the whole mystery of Christ is present, there too is the Church catholic. However, the catholicity of the Church is challenged by the fact that the integrity of the Gospel is not adequately preached to all: the fullness of communion is not offfered to all. (§ 55)

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Here we ask, are national churches, or ethnic churches or tribal churches contextual expressions of the church in history? Or are they in contrast to the ‘essential catholicity’? Do they undermine the fullness of communion offfered in Christ? The next subsection (§§ 57–9) offfers a further exploration of ‘being in Christ, but not yet in full communion’, with a paragraph on the scandal of division as an hinder to efffective mission (§ 57), with a paragraph on the communion of saints as expression of the church as a communion which extends back into the past and forward into the future (§ 58), and a paragraph on the natural bonds between human beings (§ 59). The coherence between the three paragraphs is lacking but in relation to the question central in this contribution, paragraph 59 goes to the heart of the problem. Because of its importance, the full text of the paragraph is quoted: There remains by virtue of creation a natural bond between human beings and between humanity and creation. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). The new life of communion builds upon and transforms, but never wholly replaces, what was fijirst given in creation; within history, it never completely overcomes the distortions of the relationship between human beings caused by sin. Sharing in Christ is often restricted and only partially realised. The new life therefore entails the constant need for repentance, mutual forgiveness and restoration. It belongs to the essence of fellowship with God that the members of Christ’s body pray day after day “Forgive us our sins” (Lk 11:4; cf. Mt 6:12). But the Father cleanses us from our sins in the blood of his son Jesus and, if we acknowledge our sins, we will be forgiven (cf. 1 Jn 1:7–10). Nonetheless, there is a genuine enjoyment of new life here and now and a confijident anticipation of sharing in the fullness of communion in the life to come.

The development of the argument is not fully consistent. It starts with the observation of the creational, natural bonds between humans. The biblical reference to 2 Cor 5:17 at this place introduces the new community in Christ.7 The fijirst part of the third sentence follows the observation in the fijirst sentence. The new life of communion in Christ builds upon and transforms, but never wholly replaces the natural bonds. To make it specifijic to our topic, the sentence says that our natural communions based

7  Where in the context of the letter to the Corinthians the discontinuity with the old is stressed, the newness that it seems to be introducing in the NMC after the fijirst sentences is more of a newness that adds to, builds on the old communion. In the fijirst draft, the NPC text, the quote was absent. The insertion of the quote seems not to have been a fortunate choice. For the smoothness of the argument it seems better to delete it.

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on socio-cultural identities are building blocks of the new communion in Christ, building blocks that are transformed, but never wholly replaced. So the text seems to suggest―in quite abstract phrasing―a substantial continuity between national, ethnic, tribally organized communities and the church. But while the fijirst part of the third sentences seems to tilt in the direction of continuity, the second part with reference to distortion of human relationships due to sin emphasizes the discontinuity. The following sentences continue this discontinuity discourse with the request for repeated repentance for sins. And the paragraph ends with the eschatological perspective of fullness of communion that we have already encountered in paragraph 26 on the biblical concept of koinonia/communion. In the NPC draft, the paragraph was the fijinal paragraph of the section ‘Communion, real but not fully realized’ in which the paragraphs on koinonia/communion, had central stage. These paragraphs were transferred to the fijirst part―more specifijically to the section on biblical insights―in the NMC draft.8 As a consequence, the section ‘In Christ—but not yet in full communion’ in NMC has lost its central argument on communion, and the link between the three remaining paragraphs is weak. Paragraph 59 offfers the most explicit description within NMC of the old, natural bonds between humans and the new communion in Christ. The argument has two elements: A continuity aspect, explaining that the old communal bonds are used in the new communion in a transformed way, and a discontinuity element that refers to sin and expresses hope for full communion in the eschaton. The problem is that is has not yet become clear where the transformation becomes distortion. The third section of part II Communion and Diversity offfers another perspective to approach the issue we research. Indeed, ‘[T]he Gospel has to be rooted and lived authentically in each and every place. It has to be proclaimed in language, symbols, and images that engage with, and are relevant to, particular times and particular contexts. (§ 61) Within the World Council of Churches from the 1990ties onwards, the shift of focus from unity to diversity has become prominent. The background for this change is the post-modern turn in Western culture, less focused on the one story, 8

 R. Saarinen, ‘Unity, Catholicity and Identity: The Unity Statements of the World Council of Church and Their Reception in The Nature and Mission of the Church’, in Receiving ‘The Nature and Mission of the Church’, 16 observes the diffference between the quantitative language in relation to more or less communion in the §§ 57–9, and the Trinitarian passages in the §§ 24–33 which lack this quantitative terminology. My analysis contradicts his observations. § 26 also uses terminology such as distortion, restoring, and increasing in relation to communion.

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the one concept, the one mechanism that can offfer an explanation for everything. In this context diversity is no longer an indication of inability to offfer the one fijinal answer, but an expression of richness of answers to complex challenges.9 As a consequence the aim of the WCC to contribute to the unity of the visible church was modifijied to include diversity.10 ‘Diversity in unity and unity in diversity are gifts of God to the Church.’ (§ 60) The problem is situated in this subsection on the level of the relationship between culture and Gospel (§ 61), and on the level of the local church, which must safeguard unity and legitimate diversity at the same time with the help of a pastoral ministry (§ 62). But two areas are left untouched. The fijirst is related to the other communions that influence our lives. They are also formed through, and constructed with, the help of cultures. How do our communions based on national, ethnic, tribal, racial identity relate to the ecclesial communion? This is exactly the fundamental question for which clues to an answer are sought in NMC. The second area is related to what the relation between community and diversity spells out for the universal church. As here described, it is understood as a challenge for the local church only. But how should a culture of mutual accountability on the level of the universal church be realized, taken into account the ethnic identities that have such a powerful influence on community formation? The fourth and last subsection of part two, The Church as Communion of Local Churches, afffijirms the historical practice of communion between local churches (§ 64), the non-optional character of this communion, and the necessity of common elements of Scripture, sacraments, and common ministry. Even so, it is silent on how this communion of local churches is able to go beyond the communities based on ethnicity. The Life of the Communion in and for the World Part three, The Life of the Communion in and for the World, discusses the ‘gifts and resources’ (§ 67) God has provided for the life and the mission of the church, such as the grace of apostolic faith, baptism and eucharist, and ministries. In reading this part we search for clues of the awareness

9  See Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Diffference (London: Continuum, 2002), 60 who understands taking diffference seriously as a powerful antidote both to neo-tribalism as well as to universalism. 10  For an analysis of the ecumenical movement as an expression of an era of modernism, see the influential analysis of K. Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition. A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? (Geneva: WCC, 1991).

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how these ‘instruments’ can help to deal with the challenge of being members of Christian community while at the same time being member of communities marked by various socio-cultural identities. The subsection on baptism explains the meaning of the one baptism into Christ as an urgent call to overcome divisions. (§ 74) But the implied divisions seem to refer to confessional disagreements. The next paragraph emphasizes the newness of life through Jesus Christ as expressed in baptism. ‘Baptism consecrates the believers as a member of “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” ’, but what this ‘consecration’ means for our existing identities remains in the dark. It abstains from language in terms of ‘leaving behind’ as used in Participating in God’s Mission of Reconciliation.11 In the subsection on the eucharist, the Lord’s Supper is linked to reconciliation and ‘. . . is a constant challenge in the search for appropriate relationships in social, economic and political life. . . . Because the Lord’s Supper is the Sacrament which builds up community, all kinds of injustice, racism, estrangement, and lack of freedom are radically challenged when we share in the body and blood of Christ.’ (§ 81) Through the link with reconciliation, the eucharist becomes a place and a moment with a powerful ethical claim. Racism is mentioned explicitly, and the immediate example that comes to mind is the division of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa into racially segregated denominations in the 20th century, a polity that started with the exclusion of non-whites at the Table of the Lord in all white congregations in the 19th century. Indeed, the eucharist is instead a place to express our common calling by the one Lord and Saviour, overcoming all exclusions that exist in societies and communities on the basis of socio-economic and socio-cultural identity markers. But this ethical claim and practice at the Lord’s Table does not take away the urgent need to rethink and reformulate what happens with our existing national, ethnic, tribal, or racial identities we have interiorized and use. To put it bluntly, even when Christians denounce racism, or nationalism, they still have a racial or national identity. We cannot answer this challenge by only giving an ethical answer. For this reason the ethical answer given in Participating in God’s Mission of Reconciliation to the challenge in the ETHNAT project of Faith and Order is not satisfying. A call

11  See §§ 116–7, and my analysis of this baptismal language in Sunday Morning—The Most Segregated Hour, 21–2.

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for reconciliation does not solve the issue of the socio-cultural identities in relation to the unity of the church. A large number of paragraphs are given to the role of ordained ministry: personal, communal and regional forms of oversight, and to forms of conciliarity and primacy. Again and again, it is explained how leadership in the church on local and universal level is service to the visible unity, catholicity and apostolicity of the church. But one important problem many church leaders have to deal with remains untouched. How can the Russian patriarch distinguish between his role as leader of the Russian Orthodox Church and his identifijication with the Russian people? A similar question can be applied to the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church of Poland, the Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England, the moderator of the Church of Scotland, etc. Even as it is a question for all individual Christians how their loyalty to Christ relates to the loyalty to their nation or ethnic afffijiliation, it is an urgent question especially in the case of leadership. Because it is so important that the faithful hear the voice of Christ, and not the national sentiments, it is essential that the ministers themselves are able to distinguish between both. This of course not only holds for national church leaders, it is important as well for the minister in charge of the local parish. Distinguishing between various identities is complicated and difffijicult, and it will require spiritual growth, sometimes by learning to distinguish better between both loyalties, and often as well by strengthening of our loyalty to Christ, and a weakening of our ethnical afffijiliations. The risk of identifying with nations and peoples is greater for leaders in the case of churches without universal structures of accountability. But next to a need for an ethical and spiritual approach, there is an urgent need for a theology of the church that provides theological answers. It is clear by now that NMC is not providing this. In and for the World The fijinal part, In and for the World, reflects on the way the church can contribute to the transformation of the world. The document states that ‘Christians must advocate for peace, especially by seeking to overcome the causes of war (principal among which are economic injustice, racism, ethnic and religious hatred, nationalism, and the use of violence to resolve diffferences and oppression). (§ 112) This statement expresses the awareness of the potential destructive power of socio-cultural diffferences, next to socio-economic variations among people. The danger is that they are

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seen as an issue in the world outside the church, and not as challenges for the unity of the church. A classical and still very important question in the relation of the church to the outside world is the issue of the relationship between church and state. Various models are discussed in paragraph 115. What we need is the development of a theological tradition that reflects on the relationship between church and nation, people, ethnic group, etc. Just as a rich tradition on thinking on the relationship between church and state has grown with various theories and practices, the complicated relations of churches with socio-cultural identities require the development of various lines of theological thinking in reaction to such a complex issue. Conclusions Notwithstanding the reference to the ethnicity project in one of the fijirst paragraph, the ETHNAT project has not influenced the ecclesiology project of Faith and Order in any meaningful way. In none of the parts of the study has the challenge that socio-cultural identities pose for the unity of the church been explored. Apparently, the awareness has not yet been generally stirred that there is a theological challenge within ecclesiology related to this issue―especially for an organization that makes contributing to the visible unity the core business of its activity. The discussions of divisions continue to be mainly or exclusively motivated by confessional disagreements. Socio-cultural identities are not mentioned explicitly, but they are referred to in an indirect way as part of the created order in paragraphs 25–6 and 59. Our natural human communities are in principle positive entities being part of the created order. Paragraph 59 contains the strongest suggestion that the natural bonds between humans are not fully replaced by the church, and that the church builds upon and transforms the natural bonds. Sin had distorted not only the relationship with God but also within and among human communities. But the eschaton offfers hope for the restoration. The reading of NMC reveals several aspects of the theology of the church that have a direct connection with the issue of the theological reflection on socio-cultural identities. Taking these into account will enrich and deepen ecclesiology.

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1.  Socio-cultural identities in relation to the unity and the catholicity of the church. The discussion of the marks of the church, especially the reflection on unity and catholicity, will receive more profijile if the reality of the natural communions based on national and ethnic identity markers are taken into consideration. Is the co-marking of ecclesial communities a threat to the unity of the church of is it an expression of the contextual nature of the local church? Is a national church an indication of the catholic intention of the church or is it a denial of the catholic nature of the church? 2. The calling of Israel in relation to the calling of individuals into the church. The understanding of the church as people of God invites reflection on the relationship with Israel as that specifijic other people of God. Do we have to imply that God has changed his modus operandus from calling a people (Israel) to calling individuals into a new communion? 3. The communion within the church in relation to the communion within a socio-cultural community. The central concept of koinonia is not only used for the relation within God and between God and the church but also for the creational community among people. What is the link between the creational community and the new community in Christ? 4. Mission to people or to individuals. The mission of the church begs the question whether the divine restoration process for humanity and for creation also implies a transformation and an eschatological future for communities based on socio-cultural identities. 5. Communion and diversity of socio-cultural communities. The theme of communion and diversity challenges the question what the diversity of socio-cultural identities means for the one communion of the church. 6. Local churches and socio-cultural identities. The subsection on the church as communion of local churches begs the question whether a communion of local churches is feasible when local churches are co-marked by ethnic identities. 7. The newness of baptism in relation to socio-cultural identities. What does baptism as expression of the newness of the life in Christ mean for the existing socio-cultural identities? 8. The eucharist and the socio-cultural identities. Is the richness of the eucharistic communion symbol only expressed in a mere call for reconciliation?

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9. Episcopos and accountability to socio-cultural identities. How can the role of ‘episcopos’ be exercised in such a way that the distinction between loyalty to Christ and the church is not blurred with loyalty to one people? 10. Nationalism as division in the church. Should ethnic hatred and nationalism as possible reasons for war also be understood as divisive sentiments within the church?

THE CHURCH AND THE UNITY OF HUMANKIND Jacobus (Sjaak M.) van ’t Kruis Introduction The stated themes of the general assemblies of worldwide ecumenical organizations are a good indicator of the actual operative paradigms in church and theology in a certain period. At the same time, however, we should be aware of the fact that the reality of the ecumenical world does not necessarily reflect the situation at the grass root level of the churches. It may well be more correct to state that the themes and the discussions at ecumenical assemblies reflect the vision of a small ecumenical elite. The themes and the corresponding papers at ecumenical assemblies are written by a rather small stafff, most of them sharing the same building in Geneva. This is true for the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Communion of Reformed Churches. When elaborating on the developments in ecumenical theology, we should be aware of this reality. That does not mean that, in order to catch sight of developments in ecumenical thinking, studying the material of the successive ecumenical assemblies is without meaning. The picture we do get, however, is partial and limited. With that restriction in mind, this article wants to describe some of the important developments in ecumenical thinking on the issue of globalisation. One Church, One World When the World Council of Churches held its fijirst assembly in Amsterdam (1948), the theme was: Men’s Disorder and God’s Design. The world of those days was a world in turmoil indeed. The end of the Second World War was also the beginning of a global process of decolonisation. The end of the war did not create a safer world. A great many political tensions flared up, among them a world divided in the free world and the world behind the Iron Curtain. These disorders in the world called for, and were, challenged by the churches. Apparently, the newly formed World Council of Churches was confijident that the Christian tradition was strong enough to proclaim God’s order. The greatest obstacle was the growing division

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between churches. In that perspective, ‘Amsterdam’ was a strong advocate for the universal church. Christianity had the power to overcome the disorder in the world. This theme of ‘disorder’ and the disunity of the churches is again the challenge at the assembly in Evanston (1954). The ecclesiological disunity is challenged from a Christological perspective. The unity in Christ does not only challenge the disunity of the churches however, it is seen as also opening up a powerful perspective for the unity of the world. Unity is seen as the outcome of the mission and the service of the church. Unity, mission, and service are―so to speak―the ecumenical trinity. This triune paradigm then takes the unity of the world as its focus. This strong faith in the power of Christianity is remarkable. It is also noteworthy that the potential of the Christian tradition to heal the disorder in the world is strongly connected to the power of the oneness in Christ. The theme of one of the sections in Evanston is: ‘Our oneness in Christ and our disunity as churches’. This Christological assumption itself is not challenged at the assembly, however. The oneness in Christ seems to be a premise beyond all doubt. At the assembly in 1961 in New Delhi the incorporation of the International Missionary Council into the World Council of Churches is realized. The mission of the church and the unity of the world are regarded as strongly intertwined. The Christological perspective is mainly seen within its universal and unifying aspects. This universal view on Christ leads to a radical approach at the assembly in Uppsala (1968) under the theme: ‘Behold, I Make All Things New’. According to the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement,1 Uppsala set the unity and catholicity of the church squarely within the sphere of God’s activity in history. Stating that ‘the church is bold in speaking of itself as the sign of the coming unity of mankind’, the assembly admitted that secular ‘instruments of conciliation and unifijication . . . often seem more efffective than the church itself ’. Therefore, ‘churches need a new openness to the world in its aspirations, its achievements, its restlessness and its despair’.

This focus on the unity of the world and the unity of humankind as the goals of the mission, the service, and the unity of the church, remains fundamental for the successive assemblies of the World Council of Churches.

1  Dictionary of the Ecumencial Movement, 2nd edition, (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2002).

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In Nairobi (1975) the active participation of the church in economic structures is emphasized. The disunity of the churches is challenged in the so called BEM report on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. However, this ecclesiological document has to be read also within the perspective of the strong relationship of the unity of the church and of the human community at large. The Problem of Ideology The use of Christology as the fundamental principle for the oneness of the church in relationship to the oneness of the world is quite remarkable. The Lordship of Christ is universalized in order to provide a framework that in fact has turned into an ideology. This ideology however, does insuffijiciently take into account the big ruptures in this world: the unbridgeable gaps between religions and cultures, the economic gaps, etc. The Christological paradigm that is used seems to have lost the relationship with Jesus Christ as preached by the evangelists and the apostles. Hence the concreteness of the work of Christ seems to dissolve. The same holds true in the fijield of ecclesiology. The picture of the church as the people who are brought into the communion with Christ is blurred. The proclamation of the church is reduced to general messages to the world that do not count the costs of following Christ Jesus. There is still another problem that is rooted in the same ideological use of Christology. The universal Christological approach is linked with a vision in which the project of Western modernization and secularization are regarded as universal civilization. “The technological revolution is the evident and inescapable form in which the whole world is now confronted with the most recent phase of Christian history. In and through this form Christian history becomes World history’’.2 According to A. Th. van Leeuwen and Harvey Cox Western technological development and secularization are steps towards the ‘global city’.3 This universal vision on the progress towards one global secular city brings the Asian theologian Aloysius Pieris to the conclusion that these types of universal theological approaches are examples of using theology

2  A. Th. van Leeuwen, Christianity in World History (London/NewYork: Scribner, 1964), 408. 3  H. Cox, The Secular City: a Celebration of its Liberties and an Invitation to its Discipline (New York: McMillan Co., 1965).

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for the sake of Western colonialism.4 Or, to put it even sharper: “The history of the world could be told as the story of successive effforts to bring unity to the world, and of course the name we give to these effforts is ‘imperialism.’ ”5 The ideological use of Christology tends to leave out of consideration its own position. That is exactly what each ideology does. “(. . .) ideological discourse (. . .) displays a certain ratio between empirical propositions and what we might roughly term a ‘world view’, in which the latter has the edge over the former”.6 The ‘world view’ at stake in universal Christological ideology is in fact an elaboration of the idealistic Hegelian worldview. In this view “the prospect of an eschatological future was completely abolished.”7 In Hegelian perspective there is no room for eschatological future, because the (eschatological) future is already realized. “(. . .) the union of God and man, of divine and human nature in the incarnation of the divine Son in Jesus Christ (is) the ultimate achievement of reconciliation and communion of God and humanity”.8 The consequence of the loss of an eschatological future is, moreover, that the atrocities in this world are in fact perceived as mere ‘disturbances’ of the realized eschatology. Injustice, poverty, marginalization―all are aspects of life that will have to be overcome. Liberation The universal Christological approach is strongly criticized by liberation theology. Liberation theology focuses on the concrete reality of poverty and oppression. The universal paradigm used in the ecumenical debates is rejected. Liberation theology is suspicious of universal views on reality. Hence it focuses on the concrete meaning of Christology.9 According to

4  ‘Ein klassisches Beispiel sich der Theologie zu bedienen, um der westlichen Kolonialismus durchzusetzen,’ D. Werner, Mission für das Leben—Mission im Kontext, Ökumenische Perspektiven missionarischer Präsenz in der Diskussion des ÖRK 1961–1991), [Mission for Life—Mission in Context, Ecumenical perspectives on missionary Presence in the discussions of the ÖRK 1961–1991 (Rothenburg, 1993), 152. 5  Alister E. McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader (Oxford, 2007), 638. 6  Terry Eagleton, Ideology: an Introduction (London, 1991), 22. 7  Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘Modernity, History and Eschatology’ in: Jerry L. Walls, The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford, 2008), 496. 8  Cf note 7. 9  Cf. Jon Sobrino S.J., Christology at the Crossroads, A Latin American Approach (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993).

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Jon Sobrino: “(. . .) it is the historical Jesus who is the key providing access to the total Christ’’.10 Sobrino states that each Christology has to start at the concrete reality of sufffering mankind. The sufffering people reflect the cross of Christ. But Christ is not only the sufffering man on the cross, He is also the Son of God. More correctly: He has proven to be the Son of God by being faithful to the Father. This means that, faced by reality, we can only speak about Jesus (. . .) through following his historical life: i.e., through real praxis of faith motivated by hope and love’.11 When people resist the powers of suppression the verifijication of this confession becomes a reality. “It is reality that must be reconciled with the kingdom of God (. . .)’’.12 The message of the Kingdom of God is not a message of a transcendent utopia, “(. . .) it indicates the road to arrive there, and that road is simply the steadfast intent to render that reign a reality in history’’.13 The critique rendered by liberation theology challenges the universal aspects of Christology as it is used in ecumenical theology. It does not provide however, a sufffijicient answer to the eschatological aspects of Christology. Unity and Uniformity The unity as it is proclaimed in the universal Christological paradigm is challenged by theologians from the Global South. The unity that is defended has a strong tendency towards uniformity. Many theologians from the South who want to defend the intrinsic value of each culture are opposed to the dominancy of one universal worldview by drawing attention to God’s revelation or incarnation in each culture. According to the Gambian theologian Lamin Sanneh, God’s activity in history is God’s permanent incarnation in each culture.14 This means that in each culture there are reflections of God’s revelation. This point of view does not only lead to a higher valuation of nonWestern cultures, it also fosters cultural plurality. It no longer assumes that unity of the world has to be seen from the perspective of uniformity (the uniformity as fruit of modernization), but it gives space for numerous contextual approaches towards the Gospel.

10

 Jon Sonbrino S.J., Christology at the Crossroads, 8, 9, and 352.  Jon Sonbrino S.J., Christology at the Crossroads, 352. 12  Jon Sonbrino S.J., Christology at the Crossroads, 36. 13  J. Sobrino, Spirituality of liberation: toward political holiness (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), 131. 14  Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message, The missionary impact on culture (Maryknoll, 1989). 11

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If the Bangkok meeting of the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism (1973) was correct in stating that ‘culture shapes the human voice that answers the voice of Christ’, then it should be clear that theologies designed and developed in Europe can claim no superiority over theologies emerging in other parts of the world. Theologians from the Global South make us aware of the immanent character of suppression in Western Enlightenment-thinking with its ideal of unity. This even more so because it is clear that this unity is not a unity that is already present. To reach this unity, struggle is needed and even conquest. It is remarkable that the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ as described in Samuel P. Huntington’s famous 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute (which he developed in 1996 in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order) focuses on a future that in fact has already be present for decades. This reality however is not a reality of clashes of civilizations only, it appears also (and maybe even primarily) to be a clash of interests and (economic) power. If we take into account cultural and contextual plurality as fruits of the interaction between God’s revelation and concrete human history, our vision towards unity has to be enhanced. The unity or the catholicity of the church is not oneness in the sense of uniformity, but unity in diversity. Koinonia is the keyword to understand this unity. Koinonia is not merely fellowship, but it has the strong notion of communion. Communion should be understood from its rootedness in the communion with Christ, who is the ultimate Other. The ‘otherness’ of the Other and the others is a presupposition in the Biblical thinking of communion. Koinonia does not mean that the ‘otherness’ of the ‘Other’ is lifted or neutralized at a certain point. It is on the contrary maintained! Even when koinonia is referred to as the (growing) unity with Christ, this is the case. Koinonia is the communion of dissimilar and unequal parties. One World, One ‘Empire’ The ecumenical paradigm of unity, which in fact has been at the core of the ecumenical movement since its beginnings, becomes more and more perilous after the collapse of communism. The Berlin wall was dismantled. In Prague the students demonstrated and initiated a process which led to the appointment of a new government. In Romania the ruler Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were subjected to ad hoc trial and executed. Over a period of two years the Soviet bloc with its

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alliances (the Warsaw Pact and COMECON) went out of existence. The socalled “second world” ceased to exist. The bipolar world was replaced by a unipolar world, in which the driving force of globalization is the free-market economy.15

This driving force of the ecumenical movement suddenly becomes problematic. In a certain sense it can even be defended that unity was also at the core of the missionary movement with its emphasis on civilization. After all there was the strong conviction that mission and civilization were two sides of the same coin. And, as we saw earlier, civilization was strongly connected with Western modernisation as a universal paradigm. It is remarkable, that the collapse of communism also leads to a critical approach towards globalization in the whole of the ecumenical movement. The focus of the publications and the assemblies of the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (since July 2010 the World Communion of Reformed Churches) show a remarkable consensus on this point.16 Globalization is almost seen only from a negative point of view as a category inseparable from the global market as it is shaped by liberal economics. Such globalization could also have been welcomed however, as the corollary of the Christological universalism as it was applied in the ecumenical and the missionary movement. After all, from a historical perspective globalization can be described as ‘the process of increasing integration in world civilization’.17 If we understand globalization as a development that ultimately will lead to the shaping of the world into one village, then the question can be posed if globalization as such is the actual shape of oikoumene as it was perceived in the ecumenical bodies. The reason for this shift in ecumenical thinking is that one of the strongest driving forces behind globalization is liberal capitalism and its constant drive for profijit. This relentless search for higher profijitability and growing wealth ultimately leads to the loss of human lives. The unity it provides is the unity of the shareholders. The discussions within the World Alliance of Reformed Churches on globalization focus on the concept of ‘Empire’. According to offfijicial documents of WARC, there is one omnipotent force behind globalization (in 15

 http://warc.ch/where/fsd/fstd.html  Cf. Jordan J. Bailor, Ecumenical Babel, Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church’s Social Witness (Grand Rapids: 2010). 17  B. Kogut and M. Gittelman, ‘Globalization’, in: R. Tung (ed.), The IEBM Handbook of International Business (London: 1999), 200–214. 16

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its economic aspects). This force is not only universal, it is also transcendent as it applies its power not only in present, but also in the past. This ‘Empire language’ used within WARC is apocalyptic language: In the name of peace and security, the global empire is exercising ‘omnipotent’ power through its military weapons systems of mass destruction and its intensive, totalistic warfare. Already, wars such as the Crusades, the conquest of the Americas, and the colonial wars against the racial and ethnic peoples in Asia and Africa have caused massive victimization of peoples. This historical process of systematic, massive conquest and destruction of people and the earth has extended into modern times. World Wars I and II, the US atomic bombing of the Korean and Japanese peoples, the US Cold Wars against the Korean and Vietnamese people, and the Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq wars against those people and their communities have evolved into total wars of omnicide. Current developments by the empire in global militarization threaten the total destruction of earth as a living abode. The nature of war has been radically transformed into limitless war in time and space under the geo-politics of global empire. But the omnipotent power of empire can never obtain ‘total security’. Its absolute power through modern military technocracy—omnicidal weapons systems and the claim of omnipotent power—constitutes a tyranny over all living beings.18

The use of the paradigm of ‘Empire’ is not only over-simplistic in its approach towards reality. In this presentation it does not account for opposite interests among the players on the global market. It does not discern between the interests of the state and that of bankers, of that of shareholders and entrepreneurs. It does not take into account the growing influence of emerging new economies (India, China). It seems to be blind towards the ‘neo-colonial’ behaviour of e.g. China in Africa. And more importantly, it does not provide a critical attitude towards nepotism, corruption, and ethnic conflicts in contexts outside the USA. Unless ‘Empire’ is indeed to blame for all evil in this world. That presupposition however, is not even taking into account the role of the individual and his or her responsibility. Even so, the real problem is that the totalitarian power of globalization as it criticised by the concept of ‘Empire’ is not very far removed from the Christ-centric universalism that had been at the core of successive discussions in the ecumenical bodies from the beginning, and which were in fact a theological translation of Enlightenment ideology. Is the actual globalized world (with liberal capitalism at its core) not the outcome of

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 http://warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side.jsp?news_id=809&part_id=0&navi=6

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Western modernization? And was this process of modernity not seen as the shape of the universal Reign of Christ? Unity Challenged Anyhow, the ecumenical concept of ‘unity’ is challenged in a profound way by the paradigm of ‘Empire’. In fact, the ‘Empire’ paradigm undermines the universal Christological paradigm that had been so fundamental for the ecumenical and the missionary movement: Western Christianity has been closely related to empire since the Roman days and has thus spread throughout the world. It is now being used to provide ideological legitimization for today’s empire. Globalized Christendom and the ‘crusades’ it embarks upon today are symbiotically intertwined with global capital and the power of the global empire. In its triumphalistic pursuits, it discounts if not condemns all other religious faiths and cultures. The indigenous religions of many communities are destroyed and Islam is vilifijied. The convergence of Christian religion with Western modernity has destroyed the religious and cultural life of peoples and their communities throughout the world. The powers and principalities of the global market and empire are being baptized by these theological distortions of ‘Christianity,’ which promote religious conflicts and bigotry globally. The Christian religion of empire treats others as ‘gentiles’ to be conquered, as the ‘evil empire’ to be destroyed or as the ‘axis of evil’ to be eradicated from the earth. The empire claims that the ‘goodness’ of the empire must overcome these ‘evils’. Its false messianic spirit is imbued with the demonic. These false claims destroy the integrity of faith(s), and radically erode the identity of Christian faith in Jesus Christ. As the spirit of empire penetrates souls, the power of global empire possesses the bodies of all living beings. Lord of its domain, it builds temples for the global market to serve Mammon.19

The Church as the Alternative World Community The crisis of the universal Christocentric approach led to the shift towards ecclesiology in the ecumenical movement. WARC’s so called ‘Accra Confession’ which rejects ‘Empire’ is perceived as ‘a call to courage to change

19  http://www.canaac.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/manila-declaration-fijinaledition-31–08–06.doc, 5

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the world’.20 The transformation of the world here seems to depend on the church. However, given the history of the church, this perspective is not very promising.. The question arises how we validate the present shape of the world. This world as it is today is a world in which Christianity is present. Does this mean that until know the church has failed and that the church will act in a better way in the future? Another important question is that of the role of the victims in our world: the oppressed, the poor, the marginalized people. How do they become agents of change? Do we suffijiciently understand the dehumanizing aspects of poverty, of oppression, of injustice? In this respect, WARC’s Declaration of Debrecen (1997) was in fact far more radical than the Accra Confession, since it focuses on the personal relationship with the living Christ.21

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 http://warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/side.jsp?news_id=1289&part_id=0&navi=6  We belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to ourselves but to our faithful saviour Jesus Christ. We confess our theological and moral failures, our complicity in adding to the world’s burdens, our inadequate witness to God’s purposes. We ask forgiveness from God and from each other for these transgressions, and also for the injuries we have done to one another. Claiming the new life which forgiveness makes possible, and relying on God’s promises that the chains of injustice can be broken, we declare: We are not our own. We belong to the living God who made all things and declared them to be very good. We will not exploit and destroy that creation. We will be stewards of creation for God. We are not our own. We believe in Jesus Christ, who died for us and was raised for our salvation. We confess that no human ideology or agenda holds the secret to the ultimate direction of history. We are in all things dependent on our Redeemer. We are not our own. We know that in Jesus Christ we were bought with a price. We will not patronize, exclude, or ignore the gifts of any person, male or female, young or old. We declare our solidarity with the poor, and with all who are sufffering, oppressed, or excluded. We are not our own. We believe in the Holy Spirit who will guide us into all truth. We refuse the false assumption that everything, including human beings and their labour, is a commodity and has a price. We are not our own. We are called to be built into a new community in the Spirit of God. We pledge ourselves to a simple life-style which bears witness to God’s ordering of the household of life. We are not our own. We do not despair, for God reigns. We will continue to struggle against injustice in this world. We look forward to the Holy City in which God will dwell with human beings and be their God. We are not our own. With Christians of the Reformed faith through the centuries, and with the whole people of God, we join our voices to proclaim Soli Deo gloria! (http://warc.ch/where/23gc/declar.html). 21

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The Universal Lordship of Christ In the person of Christ, the age to come, which alone will endure for all eternity, has arrived. It arrived in his person and was redemptively present in his work on the cross. The cross of Christ is the judgment of the end of time now exhausted within time. For the people of God the ‘end time’ judgment has already happened. ‘Empire’ has already been conquered. The cross of Christ is the ultimate judgement on the powers in this world. This radical message means that we are liberated from all powers. We do not depend on them. We are free. Christian hope means learning to live in freedom. We are also freed of the burden to realize salvation in this world or to even change the world. The church does not change the world. The church proclaims that this world and its powers have been judged by the death and the resurrection of Christ. “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). This creed is the most radical criticism of ‘Empire-like’ powers. Are these just words? The church lives from this reality and in doing so she gives shape to this new era. That is why the proclamation of the realm of Christ will inevitably lead to ‘signs’ in which the new reality of the Reign of God becomes apparent. Moltmann calls these signs ‘anticipations’: they are sacraments of God’s real presence in reality. These sacraments are provisional: they remind us of the eschatological reality, yet they are not that reality itself. They also have a character of ambiguity. The road towards the future is not linear and progressive. This has to do with the character of the eschatological reality itself also. God’s reign is not the reality present at the end of the road of human history. The eschaton is not the result of human enterprise and/or the effforts of the church, just as the resurrection of Christ is not the foundation for the progress of history. On the contrary, it is the ultimate crisis of history. The cross and the resurrection of Christ point to the eschaton as the transcendent reality of God, breaking in into our history. We should also note that the signs or the sacraments of the Reign of God bear the shape of the cross. Not only because they are controversial and critical, but also because the character they bear is not a triumphant one. They bear the signs of struggle, of tears and sometimes even blood. The resurrection of Christ cannot be regarded without the perspective of the cross. That is why the Reign of God is primarily visible among the outcasts and the marginalized, among the victims of history. But the signs

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of God’s Reign will always be provisional. Even if we would succeed to save the present victims of our history, we are not able to save the victims of the past. Is there hope for those who we cannot save? Or do we leave them as garbage at the refuse dump of history? Theology should be able to answer such burning questions. It can only do so if it does not look upon eschatology as a fijinal reality only. It also has to elaborate on the transcendent character of eschatology. The new reality of God fuels our hope even when hope is beyond our horizon and our possibilities.

TWO CHURCH FATHERS REVIEW CHARISMATIC WORSHIP AMBROSIASTER’S AND CHRYSOSTOM’S COMMENTS ON 1 CORINTHIANS 11–14 Riemer Roukema Introduction Since in view of his systematic reflections Bram van de Beek displayed a keen interest in the Church Fathers and actively stimulated research into their writings, it is with pleasure that I offfer a patristic contribution to the Festschrift in his honour. As part of my research on patristic interpretation of 1 Corinthians1 I will give an impression of the way in which two church fathers of the last decades of the fourth century C.E. commented on 1 Corinthians 11–14. In these chapters Paul deals with the worship of the fijirst Christians in Corinth. Using Ambrosiaster’s and John Chrysostom’s running commentaries on this epistle as my sources, I will show how these authors looked back on the charismatic meetings of the fijirst Corinthian Christians.2 Analysis of 1 Corinthians 11–14 First, I will briefly analyse the information about the Corinthians’ worship that can be deduced from these chapters. From 1 Corinthians 11–14 we learn that in the fijirst Corinthian congregation all Christians could contribute something to their common worship. Paul writes: “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.”3 A thanksgiving uttered by

1  I am preparing a book on patristic interpretations of 1 Corinthians in the series Novum Testamentum Patristicum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht). Apart from articles in this fijield, I published De uitleg van Paulus’ eerste brief aan de Corinthiërs in de tweede en derde eeuw [The Interpretation of Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians in the Second and Third Centuries] (Kampen: Kok, 1996). 2  Previous versions of this paper served as lectures in the Református Kollegium in Debrecen, Hungary, on 18 June 2010 and at the international conference of the Society of Biblical Studies and the European Association of Biblical Studies in Tartu, Estonia, on 27 July 2010. 3  1 Cor. 14:26. I will generally use the New Revised Standard Version (anglicized edition) of the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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one member could be confijirmed by others saying “Amen.”4 Paul reckons speaking in tongues among the gifts of God’s Spirit, but since it is unintelligible he prescribes that in the assembly it has to be interpreted either by the speaker himself or by someone who has the gift of interpretation.5 Paul criticizes the fact that several members spoke in tongues at the same time and without interpretation. Therefore he writes that the number of those who speak in tongues should be limited to two or three, and that they should speak in turn.6 Rather than speaking in tongues in common worship he prefers the gift of prophecy, which he describes as “speaking to other people for their building up and encouragement and consolation.”7 Prophecy, in any case, is understandable. In order to prevent confusion, however, Paul does not allow that several prophets speak at the same time. Therefore he writes: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.”8 We learn that women too were entitled to pray and to prophesy, although Paul’s point is not to inform us about that, but to admonish the women that, contrary to men, they had to veil their heads.9 It is striking that in spite of the evidence of prayers and prophecies uttered by women, the canonical text of 1 Corinthians also says that women were to be silent in the churches, that they were not permitted to speak, and that they should ask their husbands at home in case they desired to know something.10 Most probably this text was a gloss added by an early editor of Paul’s epistles,11 which has subsequently been inserted into the text of the epistle itself. Thus we can understand why several manuscripts and ancient commentaries have these words at the end of this chapter, after 1 Corinthians 14:40.12 This means that in the earliest textual transmission the marginal note about women has been inserted in two diffferent places. Furthermore, we learn that the Corinthians held common meals at the end of the workdays, and that, when some members had eaten and drunk

4

 1 Cor. 14:16.  1 Cor. 12:10; 14:2, 5, 9, 13 etc. 6  1 Cor. 14:27. 7  1 Cor. 14:3–5. 8  1 Cor. 14:29. 9  1 Cor. 11:4–6, 13. 10  1 Cor. 14:34–35. 11  For the contents, cf. 1 Tim. 2:11–15, which is often considered deutero- (or pseudo-) Pauline. 12  See the excursus in G.D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence. The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, Mass., 1994), 272–281. To the textual testimonies that he mentions one may add the anonymous commentary published by H.J. Frede, Ein neuer Paulustext und Kommentar II. Die Texte (AGLB 8; Freiburg: Herder, 1974), 161, which dates from 396–405 C.E. 5

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already, others were still hungry. Apparently, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper was part of these common meals, but Paul’s criticism of the Corinthians’ practice is so fijierce that he writes that when they come together it is not the Lord’s Supper.13 We can deduce from his remarks that the well-to-do used to start the meal without waiting for the poor who had to work hard and could not come earlier. Paul instructs the rich to eat and drink in their own houses if they cannot wait for the others.14 Interestingly, Paul quotes the tradition concerning the institution of the Lord’s Supper which, partly in other words, is also found in the synoptic Gospels.15 He does not inform us on which days the Corinthians had their common meals. In 1 Corinthians 16:2, however, he suggests that they put aside something for the collection for the church in Jerusalem “on the fijirst day of every week,” and this most probably implies that the Christians came together on that day at least, but he does not say so explicitly. Neither does Paul clarify how the common meals discussed in 1 Corinthians 11:20– 34 are related to the charismatic worship described in 1 Corinthians 14. We may assume that the gatherings started with the meal and were continued by prophecies, teachings, speaking in tongues etcetera.16 Another observation is, that Paul reckons with the possibility that unbelieving outsiders may enter the meeting in which Christians spoke in tongues and prophesied, and might be either critical about the lack of order, or impressed by the presence of God in their midst.17 It is noteworthy, that in this epistle Paul does not address the leaders of the Corinthian congregation in particular, although among the different functions in the church he does enumerate “teachers” and “forms of leadership.”18 Probably the Christians met in a spacious private house belonging to one of the rich members. The host may have conducted the meal and may have served as the leader of the charismatic worship to the extent this was considered necessary, but nowhere does Paul clearly say so.19 However, at the end of his epistle he refers to the household of 13  1 Cor. 11:20–21. See W.A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians. The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1983), 157–162. 14  1 Cor. 11:22; cf. 1:26–28. 15  1 Cor. 11:23–25; cf. especially Luke 22:19–24; also Mat. 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24. 16  See V.A. Alikin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries (VigChr.S 102; Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2010), 57–65. 17  1 Cor. 14:23–25. 18  1 Cor. 12:28. 19  See B.J. Capper, “To Keep Silent, Ask Husbands at Home, and not to Have Authority over Men,” Theologische Zeitschrift 61 (2005), 113–131; 301–319 (124–125); idem, “Apôtres, maîtres de maison et domestiques : les origines du ministère tripartite,” [Apostles,

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Stephanas, whose members had “devoted themselves to the service of the saints,” and he urges the Corinthians to put themselves “at the service of such people, and of everyone who works and toils with them.”20 Perhaps Stephanas was the host and the leader of the fijirst Corinthian church, but Paul does not say so explicitly. We have to be aware that he did not write a church order, but an occasional letter in which he reacted to a situation that was known to his readers and in which, therefore, he could pass over in silence everything that he took for granted. It would not be wise to assume that everywhere in earliest Christianity the local churches practised the same charismatic worship as Paul describes in his fijirst epistle to the Corinthians, but there are a number of texts that do remind us of such meetings.21 In the course of the centuries, however, such free worship hardly continued in the ‘catholic’ church, but it has been maintained by Montanists and other smaller groups.22 We will now proceed to concentrate on the commentaries of two church fathers from the period in which the catholic church had obtained a privileged position in the Roman empire. I will present them in a chronological order. Ambrosiaster The fijirst complete extant commentary on 1 Corinthians was written in Latin, during the period in which Damasus was bishop of Rome (366–384 C.E.). Unfortunately we do not know the name of its author who, by the way, wrote commentaries on all of the Pauline epistles collected in the New Testament canon. Erasmus of Rotterdam proved that the Medieval attribution of these commentaries to Ambrose of Milan could not be maintained, and hence the author is called Ambrosiaster, which means pseudo-Ambrose. The author most likely lived in Rome.23

housemasters and servants: the origins of the three-fold ministry] Études Théologiques et Religieuses 81 (2006), 395–428 (397; 411–417). 20  1 Cor. 16:15–16; cf. 1:16. 21  See, e.g., 1 Thess. 5:19–21; Acts 11:27–28; 13:1–2; 15:32; 21:8–9; Didache 10:7; 11:7–12. 22  See, e.g., Tertullian, De Anima 9, 3–4 (CCSL 2); The Interpretation of Knowledge (Nag Hammadi Codex XI, 1; NHS 28). 23  H.J. Vogels (ed.), Ambrosiastri qui dicitur Commentarius in Epistulas Paulinas (CSEL 81, 1–3; Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1968); see A. di Bernardino (ed.), Patrology IV (translated into English by P. Solari; Westminster: Christian Classics, 1988), 180–184;

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Although Ambrosiaster is aware of the time that had elapsed since Paul, in general he is inclined to interpret 1 Corinthians 11–14 as if Paul’s admonitions apply directly to his own church, and to pass over the differences. He explains that the “varieties of gifts”24 refer to the ministries of the church, which are inspired by the Spirit and cannot be attributed to human merits. The fact that in 1 Corinthians 12:4–6 Paul mentions the Spirit, the Lord and God parallel to each other, elicits Ambrosiaster’s comment on contemporaneous debates on God’s trinity; he says that each of the three are God and that the three are one God.25 In his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:4 he explains that “to prophesy” means to proclaim the coming of the Lord with the words of the creed (symbolum) after prayer, which undoubtedly refers to prayer in the liturgy.26 Elsewhere, however, he says that a prophet is someone who foretells the future, such as Agabus,27 or someone who interprets the scriptures.28 Ambrosiaster explains that someone who speaks in tongues speaks to God in an unknown language that is known to God, and he underlines Paul’s view that, when all speak in diffferent tongues, the result is a tumult of people sufffering from frenzy.29 He faithfully repeats Paul’s admonition that two or three are allowed to speak in tongues one by one, and then only if their words are translated; he adds that speaking in tongues may not last the whole day, so that the prophets would have no time to explain the scriptures.30 However, he does not give the impression that these phenomena occur in the church of his own time in the way in which Paul describes them. Ambrosiaster assumes that those who, in Paul’s time, boasted of their Hebrew descent,31 spoke Aramaic or Hebrew in their sermons and offfertories, by way of recommendation. In his own time these

S. Döpp, W. Geerlings (eds), Lexikon der antiken christlichen Literatur. (Freiburg: Herder, 20023), 18–19. 24  1 Cor. 12:4. 25  Ad Corinthios prima 12, 4–6 (CSEL 81, 2, 132–134); cf. Ad Corinthios prima 14, 21, 1 (CSEL 81, 2, 155) for an allusion to the Nicene creed (Christum de deo deum praedicari). 26  Ad Corinthios prima 11, 4 (CSEL 81, 2, 121). The Nicene creed reads: “who will come to judge the living and the dead.” See L.H. Westra, “How Did Symbolum Come to Mean ‘Creed’?” in J. Baun et al. (eds), Studia Patristica 45. Papers Presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2007 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 85–91. 27  See Acts 11:28. 28  Ad Corinthios prima 12, 28; 14, 4; 14, 32; 14, 39 (CSEL 81, 2, 141; 150; 160; 162). 29  Ad Corinthios prima 14, 2; 14, 23 (CSEL 81, 1, 150; 157). Remarkably, Ambrosiaster omits the words “to another [are given] various kinds of tongues” from 1 Cor. 12:10 and does not comment on this gift in that context. 30  Ad Corinthios prima 14, 27 (CSEL 81, 2, 158–159). 31  Cf. 2 Cor. 11:22.

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Hebrews are imitated, according to Ambrosiaster, by those Christians who prefer to speak a foreign language in the church. Thus he applies Paul’s instruction about speaking in tongues to those whose native language is Latin, but who prefer to recite the creed or to sing hymns in Greek because they enjoy the sound of the words although they do not understand them.32 In Rome, Greek had been the language for worship up to the third century, during which Latin gradually became more common.33 We see here, however, that Greek elements of Christian worship survived in Roman worship until the second half of the fourth century, and that this use of the Greek language was cherished by some of the Christians. Commenting on the institution of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23–25, Ambrosiaster does not explain that in Corinth the eucharist used to be part of the common meal. On the contrary, he writes that the mystery of the eucharist is not a meal, but a spiritual medicine which, if tasted with reverence, purifijies the one who is devoted to it.34 He characterizes this meal as an “oblation” or “oblations;”35 this term refers to the sacrifijicial understanding of the eucharist that was common in the early church. Commenting on the possibility that an unbeliever or outsider enters the meeting,36 Ambrosiaster says that contrary to the pagan celebrations, in which the eyes are veiled so that the sacred objects are not perceived, in Christian worship nothing is hidden, and nothing is veiled (nihil sub velamine).37 In his view, the apostles mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 are represented by the bishops of his own time, and Paul’s rhetorical question “Are all apostles?”38 refers to the fact that in a church there is only one bishop. Ambrosiaster explains that the “teachers” mentioned in the same context are those who teach the boys to read and familiarize them with the readings from scripture, in the same way as is done in the synagogue.39 He gives another interesting reference to the synagogue in his interpretation

32

 Ad Corinthios prima 14, 14; 14, 19 (CSEL 81, 2, 153–155).  See A.A.R. Bastiaensen, Ere wie ere toekomt: Over ontstaan en vroege ontwikkeling van de Latijnse liturgie [Glory to Whom Glory is Due: On the Origin and Early Development of the Latin Liturgy] (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2006), 21–22; 28–32; G. Bardy, La question des langues dans l’Église ancienne [The question of languages in the ancient Church] (Paris: Beauchesne, 1948), 160–164. 34  Ad Corinthios prima 11, 23–25 (CSEL 82, 2, 127). 35  Ad Corinthios prima 11, 22, 2–3; 11, 33, 1 (CSEL 82, 2, 126; 130). 36  See 1 Cor. 14:24. 37  Ad Corinthios prima 14, 24 (CSEL 82, 2, 157). 38  1 Cor. 12:29. 39  Ad Corinthios prima 12, 28 (CSEL 81, 2, 141–142). 33

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of 1 Corinthians 14:31, which reads that “you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged.” He explains that this is the tradition of the synagogue, which we want to follow; for admittedly he [Paul] writes to Christians, that is to say, to those who descend from the Gentiles, not from the Jews. [His intention is] that they debate, the elderly people sitting on chairs because of their dignity, the following generation on benches, and the youngsters on mats on the floor.40

In this passage, Ambrosiaster most probably does not refer to the common eucharistic worship, but rather to Bible study meetings. Although Jerome informs us that in the Rome of his time aristocratic women like Marcella discussed the scriptures and even learned Hebrew,41 Ambrosiaster would not allow women to participate in such debates. He does not pay any attention to the aspect of Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 that in Corinth women were allowed to prophesy if they covered their heads. From this chapter, Ambrosiaster highlights the inferiority of women to men, and maintains that women have not been created according to God’s image and are not entitled to speak in the church, because it is the priest or the bishop who represents Christ. In his view, women have to veil their heads out of reverence for the bishops, who are called angels in 1 Corinthians 11:10.42 Ambrosiaster briefly repeats this view on women in his comments on 1 Corinthians 14:34–35. He quotes this passage at the very end of the entire chapter, after 1 Corinthians 14:40. This textual witness provides us with an important argument that originally these verses were a gloss that was subsequently inserted either after 1 Corinthians 14:33 or after 1 Corinthians 14:40.43 In spite of Ambrosiaster’s inclination to apply Paul’s instruction directly to his own church, he still is aware of the time that had elapsed since Paul. He wonders why it does not happen in his own time that people have God’s gift (gratiam dei), by which he means the more conspicuous gifts such as performing miracles and exorcizing demons. His answer is that these gifts were necessary in the beginning, in order to give a solid foundation to the Christian faith. He afffijirms: “But now it is not necessary, since one people leads another people to the faith when their good works and plain preaching come to light.”44 40

 Ad Corinthios prima 14, 31 (CSEL 81, 2, 159–160).  Jerome, Epistulae 39, 1 (CSEL 54, 294). 42  Ad Corinthios prima 11, 5–10 (CSEL 81, 2, 121–123). 43  Cf. footnote 12. 44  Ad Corinthios prima 12, 31, 2 (CSEL 81, 2, 144). 41

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The second complete commentary on 1 Corinthians that has been preserved is in fact a collection of homilies. They have been delivered by John Chrysostom when he served as a priest in the church of Antioch, Syria (386–398 C.E.). Like Ambrosiaster, he refers to the trinitarian debates in his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 12:4–6, which deals with the gifts bestowed by the Spirit, the Lord, and God. He observes that Paul does not confuse the hypostases of Father, Son, and Spirit, but declares the equal honour to God’s essence. If Paul had considered the one inferior to the other, Chrysostom remarks, he could not console the person who was vexed.45 Contrary to Ambrosiaster, however, Chrysostom more often pays attention to the diffferences between the fijirst Corinthian church and the church of his own time. He thinks that the Corinthian Christians fijirst celebrated the “mysteries,” by which he means the eucharist, after which they had a common meal in which the poor shared in the provisions of the rich.46 Chrysostom understands that originally the Christians met in houses, for he says: “Formerly, private houses were churches.”47 He explains that at that time those who were baptized spoke in tongues and prophesied, and some of them performed miracles.48 Unlike Ambrosiaster, he does not conceal that in Paul’s time women used to pray and also to prophesy; concerning the gift of prophecy he refers to the daughters of Philip, who were prophetesses, and the prophecy of Joel about prophesying sons and daughters.49 He shares the view already held by Origen, that the tongues in which they spoke were existing languages, such as Persian, Latin, and Indian, and that the apostles received this gift in order to preach the

45  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 29, 3 (PG 61, 244). Most probably the words καὶ Υἱοῦ (“and of the Son”) have been omitted erroneously in PG 61, 244, line 11, for the equivalent et Filii occurs in Migne’s Latin translation. See also NPNF I, xii, 171: “the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost”. 46  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 27, 1 (PG 61, 223–224). 47  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 36, 5 (PG 61, 313); translation J.L. Kovacs, 1 Corinthians Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators (The Church’s Bible; Grand Rapids—Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005), 238. 48  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 29, 1 (PG 61, 239). This description of the early church was also inspired by passages such as Acts 9:36–43; 10:44–48; 13:1–2; 14:8–10; 19:1–7; 20:9–12 etc. 49  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 26, 1; 26, 3 (PG 61, 213; 216–217); see Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17; 21:9.

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Gospel in foreign countries.50 He says that the gift of discernment of spirits was necessary to distinguish between a Gentile diviner or soothsayer who spoke in ecstasy and under compulsion, and a Christian prophet who spoke with a sober mind and knew what he said.51 Prophecies had to be discerned in order to prevent that a diviner intrude into their meetings and act as a prophet, whereas in reality he was inspired by the devil.52 Chrysostom also understands that in Paul’s time Christians used to make psalms by virtue of a charismatic gift and to teach by virtue of such a gift.53 In spite of Paul’s criticism of the confusion and disorder of the Corinthian meetings, Chrysostom calls the church of that time “heaven” in which the Spirit governed all things and inspired the leaders.54 In one homily he wonders why the spectacular manifestations of the Spirit of that time do not happen anymore.55 In another homily he explains Paul’s words that “prophecies will come to an end” and “tongues will cease”56 by saying that these gifts had been introduced in order to lead people to faith; and since the faith has been disseminated everywhere, the use of these gifts has grown superfluous.57 Love, however, never ends,58 and therefore Chrysostom says to his flock that even if they worked miracles and raised the dead, they would never astonish the Gentile Greek so much as by their humble, kind and mild behaviour, since nothing can attract people so strongly as love.59 In spite of this rationalization of the disappearance of the conspicuous gifts of the Spirit known from the beginnings of Christianity, he yet characterizes his own church as a woman who had fallen from her previous prosperity. Although she still shows the chests and caskets of the golden ornaments, the truth is, according to Chrysostom, that she has been bereft of them. In his view, the church of his own time only has the symbols of those gifts of the Spirit. As an example, he says that in the worship of his

50  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 29, 1; 35, 1 (PG 61, 239; 296); Origen, In Epistulam Pauli ad Romanos I, 15 (AGLB 16, 77 or PG 14, 860A). See M.F.G. Parmentier, “Das Zungenreden bei den Kirchenvätern” [The Speaking in Tongues in the Church Fathers], Bijdragen: Tijdschrift voor fijilosofijie en theologie 55 (1994), 378–398 (382–384). 51  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 29, 1; 29, 3 (PG 61, 241; 245). 52  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 36, 4 (PG 61, 311). 53  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 36, 3 (PG 61, 310). 54  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 36, 4 (PG 61, 312). 55  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 29, 1 (PG 61, 239). 56  1 Cor. 13:8. 57  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 34, 1 (PG 61, 287). 58  1 Cor. 13:8. 59  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 33, 5 (PG 61, 283).

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own time also two or three speak in turn, and when one is silent, another begins.60 He quotes the response of the people “and with your spirit,” which shows, in his view, that of old they used to say so being inspired not by their own wisdom but by the Spirit. However, such liturgical elements are only “signs and reminders” of what happened in the worship of the fijirst Christians in Corinth.61 Another reference to the liturgical practice of Chrysostom’s time is found in his comment on the Corinthians’ habit of speaking in tongues without interpretation. Paul said that someone who does not understand a thanksgiving spoken in tongues cannot confijirm it by saying “Amen.”62 Chrysostom explains that the layman does not hear the fijinal words “forever and ever” (εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων), and thus cannot say “Amen” at the proper moment.63 He reminds his audience that in Paul’s time they all came together and sang psalms, “of one heart and soul;”64 Chrysostom admits that in his time they still do so, but says that what lacks is unanimity, and that instead of peace there is war everywhere.65 In a moving passage he gives a very critical characterization of the worship of his own church in these words: Formerly, private houses were churches; but now the church is like a private house, or, rather, it is worse than any house. At least in other houses one can fijind things all in order, since both the lady of the house is seated on her chair with all elegance, and the female slaves weave quietly, and each of the male slaves has his appointed task at hand. But in the church there is great commotion and confusion, no diffferent from a tavern. There is such laughing and uproar, people shout as if they were in a bathhouse or a marketplace, and everyone makes a racket. And these things happen here only; since elsewhere it is not even permitted to address one’s neighbour in the church, not even if one sees again a friend who was absent for a long time, but these things are done outside, and very decently. The church is not a barbershop, or a perfume store, or a workshop in the marketplace. It is a place of angels and archangels, God’s kingdom, heaven itself. If someone who had left heaven would have taken you there, even if you saw your father or your brother, you would not dare to speak; thus neither here you should utter anything else, except for the spiritual words. For even the things of this place are heaven. If you do not believe me, just look at this table and remember for whose sake it is standing here and for what reason. Consider

60

 Cf. 1 Cor. 14:27, 29–30.  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 36, 4–5 (PG 61, 312). 62  1 Cor. 14:16. 63  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 35, 3 (PG 61, 300). phrase: e,g, Gal. 1:5, Heb. 13:21. 64  Acts 4:32. 65  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 36, 5 (PG 61, 313). 61

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who comes forth to this place, and feel a thrill of anticipation. Indeed, when someone sees the throne of a king, his spirits are raised as he awaits the king’s coming. The same applies to you: do not wait until that awesome day to tremble; rise up. Even before you see the curtains (παμα-πέτασματα) removed and the chorus of angels advancing, ascend to heaven itself. (. . .) For the church is not a place for conversation but for teaching. (. . .) There must always be one voice in the church since it is one body.66 For this reason only the reader speaks, and while he does so, even the bishop sits in silence. Only the chanter chants. If all join in, the voices come as if from a single mouth. And only the preacher is to preach. But when everyone is conversing about things many and sundry, why should we preachers vex you to no purpose?67

In this interesting passage Chrysostom presents the church building as heaven and as God’s kingdom. Angels and archangels are present there, and when he alludes to the one who comes forth to the table, he means Christ who comes to the altar. When the curtains before the altar are removed, the faithful are allowed a look into heaven where the angels are advancing.68 The faithful are exhorted to ascend spiritually to heaven.69 Chrysostom applies Paul’s prescriptions about one person speaking at a time to the order of the liturgy, in which one person reads the scriptures or sings or delivers the homily, while others are to keep silent—although in practice this apparently was not the case, if we may believe him and if he does not exaggerate. He understands the admonition that women have to be silent in the church in the context of the noise and commotion in the Antiochian church, for he interprets it with regard to women in Paul’s time who were chatting during the meeting; they were not even allowed to ask a question in the church, but had to ask their husbands at home.70 For Chrysostom this also applies to the women in Antioch.

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 Cf. 1 Cor. 12:12.  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 36, 5–6 (PG 61, 313–315); for the translation, see Kovacs, 1 Corinthians Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators, 238–239, and NPNF I, xii, 220–221. 68  Cf. his Homiliae in Epistulam ad Ephesios 3, 5 (PG 62, 29), concerning the eucharistic sacrifijice: “when thou hearest the words, ‘Let us pray together,’ when thou beholdest the curtains (ἀμϕίθυρα) drawn up, then imagine that the Heavens are let down from above, and that the Angels are descending!” (translation NPNF I, xiii, 64). 69  See D. Rylaarsdam, “On Earth as if in Heaven: John Chrysostom on Christ, Priests, and the making of Angels,” J. Baun et al. (eds), Studia Patristica 47. Papers Presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2007 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 237–241 (238). 70  Homiliae in Epistulam primam ad Corinthios 37, 1 (PG 61, 315–316). 67

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As a matter of fact, these patristic comments on 1 Corinthians 11–14 only give a limited insight into the extent to which Christian worship in Rome and Antioch in the second half of the fourth century difffered from the beginnings in Corinth. Yet Ambrosiaster’s and Chrysostom’s commentaries do give us interesting impressions of the ways in which these two authors looked back on the early Corinthian worship and appropriated Paul’s admonitions to their own contexts. Ambrosiaster’s rhetorical and hermeneutical strategy is to minimize the diffferences, since he applies Paul’s text as directly as possible to the church of his own time. He compares speaking in tongues with using the Greek language in a Latin-speaking church, a habit of which he disapproves. To prophesy means to interpret the scriptures or to proclaim the coming of the Lord as it is professed in the creed. The mystery of the eucharist is a spiritual medicine and defijinitely not a meal. Ambrosiaster pretends that in Christian worship nothing is hidden or veiled. He compares the charismatic worship of the Corinthians with the intergenerational study of the scriptures as was done in his church, following the tradition of the synagogue. In Ambrosiaster’s view women are excluded from such Bible study, although contemporaneous sources testify to learned women who studied the Bible together, and even to women who taught the interpretation of the scriptures to men. However, we may assume that such meetings were not part of the common eucharistic worship. Ambrosiaster’s casual references to the creed said after prayer, to the oblation of the eucharist and to the preference for saying or singing certain liturgical elements in Greek all suggest a rather organized liturgy. This is also true for John Chrysostom’s comments, but in a diffferent way. He describes the church building as heaven and as God’s kingdom, where angels are present and where people can spiritually ascend to heaven. In his church, the altar is hidden behind curtains, but these are removed during the celebration of the eucharist. His remarks about the reader, the chanter and the preacher and about liturgical formulations such as “and with your spirit,” and “forever and ever” responded by “Amen,” testify to an elaborated liturgy. However, to a lesser extent than Ambrosiaster, Chrysostom is inclined to pass over the diffferences between the early Corinthian worship and the liturgy of his own time, and he regrets that the manifestations of the Spirit described by Paul have been lost in his own time. Yet he strongly recommends the spiritual strength of the worship of his own church, although at the same time he feels compelled to

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criticize the Antiochians who do not sufffijiciently pay attention to it since they chat and laugh while the service is going on. Whereas Ambrosiaster simply accepts the developments in the shape of Christian worship since Paul, and mostly selects from 1 Corinthians 11–14 what he can apply to his own situation, John Chrysostom more acutely deals with the diffferences between the past and his own time. Both authors agree, however, that in the beginning the conspicuous gifts of the Spirit were manifested in order to convince the unbelievers of the truth of the Christian faith, which in their own time had been widely established, so that the Christians could now convince others by means of their love, good works, and plain preaching.

ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM. BAPTISM OF CHILDREN IN THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS Jacob van Beelen “One Lord, one faith, one baptism”, says Ephesians 4:5. However, that ‘one baptism’ is a controversial issue regarding its meaning as well as to the answer to the question to whom it may be administered. Alongside many churches that practice infant baptism there are many other churches that deny the possibility and the legitimacy of it. The relation between baptism and (personal) faith is in permanent dispute between churches, but also within churches. A recent example of such a dispute is to be found with regard to the general synod of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. In September 2008 the synod discussed the subject: “Baptism, remembrance of baptism, and renewal of baptism.” The majority of the members of the synod held the opinion that renewal of baptism would undermine baptism of infants. Although with some hesitation, they thought there would be some room for a form of remembrance. In April of the following year, the discussion continued and the general synod accepted a second report with the signifijicant title, “Starting points for a remembrance of baptism.” The word renewal has disappeared from the text. The report gives a clear defense of baptism of infants: “One who has been baptized at the age of an infant, later may hear that Christ has chosen for him or her too”, in other words, as the classic Order for the Administration of Baptism says: they are “received unto grace in Christ.” “God makes a choice for us. He makes a covenant with us. That emerges strikingly in baptism of infants.”1 At about the same time, Van de Beek defended baptism of children from another point of view. He put emphasis on the eschatological aspect of baptism. The coming of Jesus takes place when the times have reached their

1  Generale Synode Protestantse Kerk in Nederland, Uitgangspunten voor Doopgedachtenis [Starting Points for a Remembrance of Baptism], (KTO 09–04), 6 en 8. The words “Received unto grace”: Reformed Church in America, Liturgy and Confession (New York: Reformed Church Press, 1990). Translated from the original Dutch.

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fulfijillment. It is these last days.2 “Jesus’ time is not merely an event in a series of moments in the course of history, but it is closing event.”3 By baptism we are involved in that event. An individual event then is not the point, even though a personal conversion is included in order to not be locked out from the Kingdom. It is a re-creation, wherein everything will become new.4 “It is a new creation. It does not concern salvation of individual souls, but the new reality of God.”5 It is the new reality in which children also are included. Our choice to believe is not the act of decision: only God’s decisive intervention through Christ makes all the diffference.6 Nevertheless, parts of the protestant churches deny the possibility and the legitimacy of infant baptism. They usually practice baptism on the basis of confession. Churches that celebrate infant baptism are blamed because they have detached baptism from personal faith without any biblical basis for it, they argue. Nowhere in the New Testament has it been written that infants must be baptized. Generally speaking, churches admit that one cannot fijind a clear and positive statement on infant baptism in Scripture. Of course, they may well appeal to a tradition that is centuries old. Many witnesses in the Early Church testify in favor of infant baptism, in particular from the latter half of the second century after Christ onward.7 But protestant churches that consider the sola scriptura of fundamental importance cannot count the argument of a very long tradition to be sufffijicient. Such churches therefore do make an appeal to Scripture. They may hold the opinion that a direct connection between circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New Testament can be made.8 They can also state that the New Testament gives indirect evidence in several places. Texts from the Acts of the Apostles are quoted, saying that somebody is baptized together with the members of his or her household. Often one adds the words of Jesus himself, who says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder

2

 Eph. 1:10; Hebr. 1:1. Bible quotes are from the New International Version.  A. van de Beek, God doet Recht. Eschatologie als Christologie [God does Justice. Eschatology as Christology]. (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 107. 4  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 174. 5  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 215: “Het is een nieuwe schepping. Het gaat niet om individueel zielenheil, maar om de nieuwe werkelijkheid van God”. 6  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 217. 7  Van de Beek mentions Irenaeus, about 180 A.D. Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 217. 8  For example the classic sixteenth-century Order for the Administration of Baptism of the Reformed Church in the Netherlands: “Since then Baptism is come in the place of circumcision, infants are to be baptized as heirs of the kingdom of God and of his covenant.” Reformed Church in America, Liturgy. 3

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them,” and thus one cannot exclude them from baptism.9 Also mentioned is the statement of Paul in 1Corinthians 7:14, “For the unbelieving husband has been sanctifijied through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctifijied through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.” This article does not deal with these well-known texts, however, but focuses on the Letter to the Ephesians. I will examine the tenability of the proposition: ‘The Letter to the Ephesians, one of the writings of the New Testament, gives an almost direct proof of infant baptism.’ Certainly, I admit that even in this Letter it has not been literally ordered that infants have to be baptized, but it contains relevant writings about church, baptism and children. The Letter has a difffijicult text-critical problem. Not all manuscripts make mention of the church of Ephesus as its address. Opinions have been divided also about the authorship. Is it a letter from Paul or a letter from someone else using the name Paul? Neither question is relevant for this article. There is no doubt that the Letter to the Ephesians is part of the canon of the New Testament and we have to examine whether a proof of infant baptism is to be found in the New Testament or not. Nearly all introductions and expositions of the Letter to the Ephesians agree that a main theme of this Letter is: “unity of the church.”10 It is a unity that deals about the relationship with Christ. It is a unity in Christ. Although the name Ephesus in the address of the Letter may be controversial, that does not apply to the terms that specify the addressees. They are called “the saints,” “the faithful in Christ Jesus.” In the following verses the author uses other terms as well, that in a certain way elaborate on the fijirst ones. Therefore all of them, addressed in the Letter, are called “saints.” They have been adopted by God, the Father, as his children and share in all the blessings that are in Christ.11 And this saying also applies to them: “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith―and this not

9

 Luke 18:16.  For example, John Muddiman, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians. (London and New York: Continuum, 2001), 49: “The appeal for unity among Christians is the overarching theme of Ephesians in its fijinal form and provides the chief motive for its composition.” Also Gerhard Sellin, Der Brief an die Epheser. Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neuen Testament Band 8 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 61: “Das Hauptthema des Eph ist das Motiv der ‘Ein(s)heit” [The main theme of Eph. is the motif of unity]. 11  Eph. 1:5. 10

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from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”12 They are “fellow-citizens with God’s people and members of God’s Household,”13 the Church, that is the body of Christ.14 Unity with God and Christ, and unity within the church, is continually stressed. Diffferences fall apart: the ancient antagonism between Jews and gentiles has been bridged.15 Unity is a fact, which does not mean that the church has no structure. Just because of the unity of “the saints” it is necessary to mention the different categories within it. Some are Christians with a Jewish background and others are Christians with a gentile one. The author, however, also addresses both wife and husband, both child and parent, and both slave and master. The mutual relations between them, as have been stated in the Letter, correspond with normal relations of that age, but in a way they are essentially diffferent from that, what is usual in the society of the Roman Empire. For all relations within the church have been influenced by our Letter’s main theme: unity. It is a unity that is marked by love, in relation to God. All of them belong to the saints, including even children and slaves. It applies to all of them: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” The Letter does not give any indication that another distinction has to be made. It does not mention of any category of (younger) people who have not been baptized yet.16 Children belong to the church in Ephesus. For children the word τεκνα has been used in Ephesians 6:1. The word τεκνον points to a relationship of descent, either a biological or a spiritual one. It does not say of what age these children are. Even when children have become adults, one may use this term to designate their relationship to their parents.17 For this reason, several scholars suppose that this text does not say anything about infant baptism. Lincoln concludes: “From the context, the children in view here have to be old enough to be conscious of a relationship to their Lord and to be appealed to on the basis of it, but young enough still to be in the process of being brought up.”18 He rather thinks 12

 Eph. 2:8.  Eph. 2:19. 14  Eph. 1:22–23. 15  Eph. 3:6. 16  W.A. Strange, Children in the Early Church (Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1996), 125. 17  Walter Bauer, Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 19715), Albrecht Oepke, in TDNT V (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983): “the child from the standpoint of origin.” Muddiman, Ephesians, 272: “. . . for the word ‘children’ does not denote dependent minors only; adult offfspring can also be so addressed (see Luke 15:31), especially in the Jewish tradition, as the citation from the Decalogue makes clear.” 18  Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians. (Dallas: Word Books, 1990), 403. 13

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they are teenagers instead of younger children. Hoehner, however, does not think that to be necessary, “but certainly they would not have been infants. (. . .) In this context, Paul, no doubt, had in mind children old enough to understand and exercise their free will.”19 It seems to be a strong argument against the possibility that young children are meant in Ephesians 6:1, but I have some objections. Firstly, it is true that tekna may also refer to teenagers and adults, but that does not exclude infants. It is possible these tekna are not little children, but possibility does not always imply necessity. Secondly, both Lincoln and Hoehner cannot make clear from which age children have to be included as members of the church. The Letter does not give a criterion for an age limit. They seem to argue that the decisive question is, whether one can understand the content of faith or not; but they do not say who will decide whether a child has enough understanding of what is said. We also cannot say that “understanding” is the criterion whether one is admitted to baptism or is to share in anything else that has been mentioned in the Letter about faith and the manner of a Christian life. It is not right to say someone is able to be a believer only if he or she understands sufffijiciently the content of faith. In fact, it is the same discussion as has been mentioned by Van de Beek, the discussion about the fijides quae and the fijides qua. As Van de Beek says, it is not de deed of faith of men, that is decisive, but faith which believes that God saves.20 A comparison with the Greek-Roman opinion of childhood or the Jewish one does not help us. In Greek-Roman culture, childhood is the age between birth and the beginning of puberty. Next is the age of youth that ends at the age of thirty years. Jewish culture classifijies the stages of life in a similar way: children, youth, adults, elderly people, and very aged people. The Misnah Tract Aboth says that a boy at the age of fijive will read the Bible. He starts to study the Talmud at the age of fijifteen, etcetera.21 Whatever classifijication is used, we cannot say we fijind a sharp line between the age before and the age after becoming a member of the community.

19  Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians. An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 20032), 786. Cf. Sellin, Epheser, 459: “. . . insofern (kleinere) Kinder als Adressaten einer solches Briefes wie der Eph schwerlich in Frage kommen.” 20  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 217: “De vraag is dus: geloven we dat God in Christus beslissend heeft ingegrepen en dat aan Hem het koninkrijk en de kracht is, of niet.” 21  Josef N. Neumann and Marcus Sigismund, “Geburt, Kindheit und Jugendzeit”, in: Klaus Scherberich (Hg.), Neues Testament und Antike Kultur. Band 2: Familie—Gesellschaft— Wirtschaft (Neukirchen – Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2005), 52–57. See page 53.

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In the Letter to the Ephesians “the ability to understand” is clearly not the criterion. The author again and again underlines that there is one church. Within it all members are addressed. All people, all categories within it belong to the church. Certainly, it is true, the word “child” of Ephesians 6:1 does not give an indication of the age of these children. However, the context of this section makes mention of households dealing with the relationship between wife and husband, between child and parent, and between slave and master. And within this, no restrictions are made. There are no age limits or social limits. That would also not be possible as the emphasis placed on unity, the central term in this Letter, would be seriously disturbed. We now have made our fijirst argument that supports the proposition. Because in the Letter to the Ephesians the children belong to that one church, they share in that one baptism. No age limit is mentioned for the children. So we may say, that the Letter to the Ephesians does not only indicate the possibility of infant baptism, but also the probability that all members of a Christian household are baptized, infants included. They are all addressed as baptized members of the church. This does not prove the proposition. We only can speak of probability, not of certainty. However, I have a second argument yet. In the Letter to the Ephesians there is a set of diffferent words to defijine the church. The author uses the plurals: “the saints, the faithful;”22 “fellow-citizens with God’s people;”23 “members of God’s household,”24 but he also emphasizes the unity of the church by using a collective term: “the body (of Christ);”25 a “mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ;”26 a “building, the holy temple;”27 “a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit;”28 and fijinally he compares the church with a wife. He introduces a parallel between the relation of man and wife and the relation of Christ and his church. I will not examine the relation itself,29 but I pay attention to the fact that the church is specifijied with a collective. The church is a unity, about

22

 Eph. 1:1.  Eph. 2:19. 24  Eph. 2:19. 25  Eph. 1:22; 3:6; 4:4, 12, 16; 5:22. 26  Eph. 2:13. 27  Eph. 2:21. 28  Eph. 2:22. 29  As I have said before, although the relations between husband and wife, between parent and child, and between master and slave have been maintained in the Christian 23

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which is said, Christ makes “her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”30 It is controversial whether this passage deals with baptism or with something else. Some scholars think it has to do with Jewish wedding custom, namely the bath which the bride takes the day before her wedding.31 Floor, however, justly remarks that it is not right to interpret this text by rabbinic customs of later ages.32 The majority, Floor included, thinks this passage speaks about baptism. I agree. However, even though I pay no attention here to the debate concerning the meaning of the phrase “through the word”, but I agree with those scholars, who hold it as the preached Gospel.33 Who is baptized?—The church, as mentioned. Noting this fact, some commentators make the move to the individual believers without any hesitation.34 However, they move too quickly. For it says the church, and not the members of the church.

church, these relations have changed essentially. Husband, parent, or master does not rule over wife, respectively child, or slave in an absolute and harsh way. The relation between them rather is a relation of submitting one another in love (5:21). Jostein Adna, “Die eheliche Liebesbeziehung als Analalogie zu Christi Beziehung zur Kirch. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Studie zu Ephese 5,21–33 [The spousal view of love as analogy to Christ’s view of Church].” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 92e Jahrgang 1995, 464–465; Sellin, Epheser, 446. 30  Eph. 5:26. Literally, “having cleansed by the bath of water,” Muddiman, Ephesians, 265. Hoehner, Ephesians, 752: “The noun loutron refers to “bath, bathing place” or “water for bathing, washing, bathing.” In the LXX it occurs only three times (Cant. 4:2; 6:6; Sir. 34:25) and consistently has the meaning of washing.” 31  Robert G. Bratcher, and Eugene A. Nida, A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians (London: United Bible Societies, 1982), 142: “Its background seems to be, in this context, the bath a Jewish bride would take before the wedding.” Muddiman, Ephesians, 264; Sellin, Epheser, 448. 32  L. Floor, Efeziërs. Eén in Christus (Ephesians. One in Christ. Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1995), 191. 33  Floor, Efeziërs, 192; William Hendriksen, Ephesians (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 252; Muddiman, Ephesians, 264–265; Sellin, Epheser, 448–449. Several possibilities are mentioned by Bratcher and Nida, Handbook, 142: “(1) the proclamation of the gospel; (2) the words which a Jewish bridegroom addressed to the bride at the wedding; (3) the baptismal formula spoken bij the minister at baptism; (4) the confession of faith spoken by the person receiving Christian baptism.” 34  A clear example is to be found with Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Mac Dill: Mac Donald Publishing Company, s.a.) IV.VIII.12. He has quoted Eph. 5:26–27 and then he says: “For if he daily sanctifijies all his people, purifijies, refijines them, and wipes away their stains, it is certain that they have still some spots and wrinkles, and that their sanctifijication is in some measure defective. How vain and fabulous is it to suppose that the Church, all whose members are somewhat spotted and impure, is completely holy and spotless in every part?” (Original Latin: “Nam si omnes suos in dies sanctifijicat, expurgat, expolit, maculis abstergit: certe adhuc naevit ac rugis quibusdam aspersos esse, eorumque sanctifijicationi deesse nonnihil constat. Ecclesiam vero sanctam et immaculatam iam

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Hoehner is close to a correct explanation, although he draws an incorrect conclusion. He says: “Whereas in 5:2 Christ’s death was characterized as on behalf of individual believers, here it is represented as on behalf of the church, the body of believers.”35 That is right, but then I have to disagree with him where he sees a distinction between this passage and a former one in Ephesians 1:7. He says: “As an individual believer is redeemed and sanctifijied, so also is the church, purchased by Christ’s death and sanctifijied.”36 Because of the diffference between the two passages he thinks Ephesians 5 does not deal with baptism. “Here, too, the washing has reference to the cleansing accomplished by Christ and not the ritual of baptism.”37 And: “In addition, baptism is always administered individually whereas this context speaks of the efffect of Christ’s death on the body of believers.”38 However, in my opinion baptism is not now and never administered individually. Lincoln has clearly formulated this, as he says: “Again, in line within the writer’s perspective in this passage, the Church as a whole, and not merely individual believers, can be seen as having been sanctifijied through baptism as a washing.”39 This all deals with the death of Christ upon the cross. Jesus gave himself for the church: “If Christ’s death is the point in history at which his love was demonstrated, baptism is the point at which the Church experiences Christ’s continuing purifying love for her as his bride.”40 We must consider communities, as Van de Beek says, for

penitus ac omni ex parte censere, cuius membra omnia maculosa et nonnihil impura sint, quam inane ac fabulosum est?” Edition Berlin: Guilelmum Thome, 1846). Compare Hendriksen, Ephesians, 252, “. . . applied to the minds and hearts of those who are baptized. . . . and believers are sanctifijied and cleansed.” Incomprehensible seems to me the reasoning of Bratcher and Nida, Handbook, 140, bij 5:23: “This is, of course, a shorthand way of saying ‘he saved those who compose the church,’ since the church, as an entity, does not exist as a group of unsaved people.” 35  Hoehner, Ephesians, 750. 36  Hoehner, Ephesians, 750. 37  Hoehner, Ephesians, 753. 38  Hoehner, Ephesians, 754. 39  Lincoln, Ephesians, 375. Compare Muddiman, Ephesians, 49: “Perhaps even more insidious is the modern Western tendency to treat Faith as a private matter and to judge the Church by its utility (or otherwise) in lending support to the religious preferences of the individual. Against this Ephesians protests that salvation is essentially corporate: we are saved together or not at all, for salvation consists in breaking down barriers and celebrating a common new humanity in Jesus Christ.” 40  Lincoln, Ephesians, 375. Compare Schnackenburg, Epheser, 526: “Grundsätzlich geschieht die Reinigung schon durch den Tod Christi am Kreuz; alle spätere ’Reinigung’ geschieht in der fortwirkenden Kraft seines Todes.”

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otherwise we exclude that Christ has died for us, and then we cannot share in his life.41 That is why we would take the wrong view if we consider baptism as a single event. As mentioned, there is a connection between baptism and the self-offfering of Christ cleansing the church. But there is more to say, for the words “the washing with water,” also point to one coherent event. Admittedly, in Romans 6 baptism is directly connected with the death and resurrection of Christ, and Titus 3:5 calls the bath “the washing,” or “bath of rebirth.” Ephesians 5 does not speak in such an explicit way. On the other hand, Ephesians 4 says to the saints: you have “to put offf your old self,” and “to put on the new self,”42 and Ephesians 5:2 exhorts us “to live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offfering and sacrifijice to God.” Dealing with baptism, Van de Beek has objections against the term “washing” (literally in Dutch bad, “bath”). Notwithstanding the arguments he uses, I think that stance is not necessary. He does not want to connect “bath” with baptism, because it makes us think too much as if something has to be washed offf that clings to us, whereas it goes far deeper, for we have to lose our old existence. He pleads for the use of the word “offfering.”43 I think this is an improper contrast. Ephesians 5 shows that the word “bath” is an adequate term as well, provided it is connected with the self-sacrifijice of Christ. It deals with a total sacrifijice leading to death. We plunge entirely into the waters of death. It is not merely taking a shower. Christ gave himself because of that specifijic love that calls to love in purity and holiness. The decisive point is therefore the eschatological event upon the cross, the defijinitive intervention of God.44 It is underlined by Ephesians 4:5 “one

41  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 215, “Strikte toepassing van een individueel denken sluit uit dat Christus voor ons gestorven is en wij participeren in zijn leven.” 42  Eph. 4:22–24. 43  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 169–170. Compare Muddiman, Ephesians, 264: “The imagery of a wedding begins here to be blended with the imagery of sacrifijice in relation not only to the death of Christ but also to the preparation of the Church, in a way strongly reminiscent of the wedding between the Church and ‘the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world’ in the Apocalypse of John;” 265: “The allusion is more likely to be to the cultic ablutions that precede the offfering of sacrifijice.” 44  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, for instance see 191–192: “Christus is het einde en daarom geen type van onze doop. Wij participeren juist in Hem als in het ene beslissende handelen van God” [Christ is the end, and therefore not a type of our baptism. Indeed, we participate in Him as the once decisive act of God]; 218: “De doop is de wijze waarop

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Lord, one faith, one baptism”. I take this saying literally, exactly as it has been written. It is one baptism, for it has been connected inseparably with the baptism Jesus has undergone.45 Stronger yet, it is that one baptism, by which He is cleansing the church. As Van de Beek says, “Baptism is not an individual event, but a participation in the cosmic revolution, in which we are taken into a new creation, which is the re-creation of the old creation.”46 Each time baptism is administered, it is that one-and-only baptism. It is not the baptism of a certain person, a baptism of that woman, that man, that child, that master, or that slave, and the next time the baptism of someone else. When I have been baptized, it was not my baptism. So again, the essence of baptism does not concern our deed of faith.47 Van de Beek is right by saying that the centre of faith will become infringed when my decision is the decisive factor. However, “only the eschatological deed of God saves the world.”48 It is not my baptism; it is the one and only baptism of Christ on behalf of the church, and so it is on behalf of that woman, and that man, that child, that slave, and that master. It is on behalf of both the Jew and the Gentile. It is on behalf of an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher, and all other saints.49 And that is why any administration of baptism is in remembrance of Jesus Christ, a proclamation of the Lord’s death until he comes.50

mensen worden betrokken in Gods handelen in zijn koninkrijk dat komende is.” [The baptism is the manner in which human beings become involved in God’s acting in his Kingdom that is at hand.] 45  There are no sufffijicient reasons for saying that this passage does not concern the baptism with water but with baptism with the Spirit. Floor, Efeziërs, 146: “Het ligt meer voor de hand dat hij hier met de éne doop de doop met de Geest in gedachten gehad heeft. Door de doop met de Geest worden zowel Joden als heidenen begiftigd met de gaven van de nieuwe bedeling.” Floor thinks there is a contrast between baptism with water and baptism with the Spirit. The latter he has connected with the spiritual gifts, but he cannot base it in the passage he is dealing with. 46  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 175: “De doop is niet een individueel gebeuren, maar participatie aan een kosmische omwenteling, waarin wij worden opgenomen in een nieuwe schepping die herschepping is van de oude schepping.” 47  Therefore, I disagree with Brinkman, who says: “The central point in every baptism will always have to be the personal confession of faith and the preparedness to participate in the Christian community in which one is baptized.” Martien E. Brinkman, “The Rediscovery of the Meaning of Baptism—Its Contribution to a Public Theology,” Journal of Reformed Theology, Volume 2, Number 3 (2008), 266. 48  Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 217. 49  Eph. 4:11. 50  1 Cor. 11:24–26 compared with Rom. 6:3–4.

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It says “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and if for that reason this baptism means that we participate in Christ, in his death and his resurrection, and thus in the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection and eternal life, and if we have to consider communities instead of single individuals, and if Christ also has died for children, then baptism even of the smallest infant is that what must be assumed in the Letter to the Ephesians.51 The alternative is that one does not participate in Christ until he or she has reached a certain age (which age?), and has obtained enough knowledge to understand baptism and consciously believes in Christ. But in that case the line of argumentation in the Letter does not fijit anymore and the triad “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” has been violated. The Letter does show us, on the contrary, by means of all the exhortations the author makes, that participating in Christ and being baptized, does not make the saints passive but active. Whosoever shares in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism”, deals with the putting offf the old self and putting on the new self as a process of continuing renewal52 to be one and to remain one of the faithful in Christ Jesus. The conclusion: the denial of baptism of infants who are members of a household and members of the church, is contrary to the content of the Letter to the Ephesians. The alternative would be that infants are not members of the church. If that were the case, it would not be clear at which age children will become members, and why such a sharp line is to be drawn within a household.53 Instead, children, even infants, do share in

51  Compare the argumentation of John Calvin, Institutes IV.XVI.22, after quoting Eph. 5:26: “If, by baptism, Christ intends to attest the ablution by which he cleanses his Church, it would seem not equitable to deny this attestation to infants, who are justly deemed part of the Church, seeing they are called heirs of the heavenly kingdom. For Paul comprehends the whole Church when he says that it was cleansed by the washing of water. In like manner, from his expression in another place, that by baptism we are ingrafted into the body of Christ (1Cor. 12:13), we infer, that infants, whom he enumerates among his members, are to be baptised, in orde that they may not be dissevered from his body.” (original Latin: Si testamentam baptismo vult Christus ablutionem, qua ecclesiam suam emundat, aequum non videri ut suo in parvulis testimonio careat, qui in ecclesiae parte iure censentur, quum haeredes regni coelestis sint nuncupati. Universam enim ecclesiam Paulus complectitur, ubi dicit mundatam lavacro aquae. Nihilo secius et ex eo quod alibi dicit (I. Cor. 12, 13), nos in Christi corpus per Baptismum esse insertos, colligimus, infantes, quos membris suis annumerat, baptizandos esse, ne a suo corpore divellantur.”). Calvin’s argumentation is not the same as my interpretation, particularly concerning the notion of the church as a collective in relation to the individual believer. 52  Eph. 4:22–24. 53  It also conflicts with Matthew 19:14 where Jesus says about infants: “Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

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Christ’s death on behalf of the church. They are members of the church. Together with all the other saints they also are exhorted to be renewed and “to live as children of light and fijind out what pleases the Lord.”54 Although we cannot fijind a statement such as ‘your infants have to be baptized’, we have several arguments for saying that ‘the Letter to the Ephesians, one of the writings of the New Testament, gives an almost direct proof of infant baptism.’ Thus the proposition in this article evidently holds.

54

 Eph. 5:8, 10. Compare Van de Beek, God doet Recht, 217: “We nemen hen mee door de nauwe poort en op het smalle pad. Dat zal consequenties voor hen hebben. Ze zullen ervaren dat het leven niet anders is dan een gestadig sterven. Maar er is geen denken aan dat we hen dat zouden willen besparen.” [We take them along through the narrow gate and on the hard way to life. That will have consequences for them. They will experience that life is no other than a steady dying. But we cannot possibly think that we would spare them that].

THE WELCOMING TABLE? THE LORD’S SUPPER, EXCLUSION, AND THE REFORMED TRADITION Robert R. Vosloo 1. Introduction In a chapter entitled “De Kerk” (“The Church”) in Bram van de Beek’s recent book Is God terug? (“Is God back?”) he states his deep-seated conviction that the Lord’s Supper is central to the life of a Christian and the church. He therefore advocates frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper—at least weekly or even more often.1 In the same chapter he also writes about the need for church discipline (“tucht”) as an ecclesial practice.2 In my contribution to this Festschrift in honor of Bram van de Beek I want to address some questions regarding the relationship between the Lord’s Supper, hospitality and church discipline. At the heart of my reflection is a concern with fijinding a way to relate a focus on the Lord’s Supper as a feast of radical inclusion and hospitality to the need to protect the integrity of the meal through disciplined practices. I offfer these reflections in the hope and confijidence that Bram van de Beek’s work on ecclesiology will provide important theological insights and pointers in this regard, given—among other things—his profound knowledge of the Reformed tradition. One could argue that the Lord’s table is not a table of separation and exclusion, but can be described as “the welcoming table” (to use the title 1  A. van de Beek, Is God terug? (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010), 92. Van de Beek writes: “Het centrale moment van het leven van een christen zou de viering van het avondmaal moet zijn en dan niet eenmaal in de drie maanden, maar minstens wekelijks en liefst nog vaker. Het is onvoorstelbaar dat er kerklijke gemeenschappen zijn die eenmaal in de drie maanden een avondsmaalviering genoeg vinden. Kan dat ooit de viering van de liefde zijn? Meer nog: kan dat ooit de viering van het leven zijn?” (92) [The central moment of the life of a Christian ought to be the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and thus not once every three months, but weekly, and even more frequently. It is incredible that some ecclesial communities fijind a quarterly celebration sufffijicient. Can that ever be enough to celebrate Love? Indeed, can that ever be a celebration of life?] 2  Van de Beek comments: “Het wordt hoog tijd dat de kerk weer tucht gaat uitoefenen en dan niet pas als een dominee beweert dat God niet bestaat.” (Is God terug?, 97) [It is high time that the church again exercises its discipline, and not wait until a pastor opines that God does not exist.]

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of a well-known short story by Alice Walker).3 The unconditional acceptance of all participants at the Lord’s Supper afffijirms the visible unity of the body of Christ and the grace of the Host. The Lord’s Supper is thus inextricably linked to the notion of hospitality, as well as to the need to challenge certain reductive practices of exclusion and restricted access. One can even ask whether the exclusion of people from the table as part of church discipline does not often result in a form of moral gatekeeping that threatens to negate the welcoming character of God’s grace. In this article I want to afffijirm the importance of viewing the Lord’s Supper as a welcoming table. This particular emphasis is highlighted by referring to the way in which a synodical decision by the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa in 1857 legitimised separate worship and separate celebrations of the Lord’s Supper along class and race lines. In the fijirst part of the paper I revisit this decision and its historical context, drawing in part on the work of the late Chris Lofff, as a way to point to the need not to separate the Lord’s Supper from the notions of inclusion and hospitality. With this historical example in mind, the rest of the article elaborates on, and complicates, this emphasis on the Lord’s Supper as a welcoming table by drawing on certain aspects of the thought of the German Reformed theologian Michael Welker and the sixteenth-century Reformer John Calvin. The last section of the paper offfers a few concluding remarks on the Lord’s Supper as a practice of hospitality among other disciplined practices that enable, and are enabled by, the visible unity of the body of Christ in time. 2. Separate Tables: The Decision of 1857 In November 1857 the synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa took a decision that would later prove to have great historical signifijicance. This decision reads as follows (in translation): Synod regards it as desirable and Scriptural that our members out of heathendom should be accepted and incorporated within our existing congregations, wherever this can happen; but where this measure could, as a result of the weakness of some, obstruct the advance of the cause of Christ amongst the heathen, then congregations consisting of heathen converts, or which

3

 See A. Walker, In Love and Trouble (San Diego: Harvest, 1967).

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may still so be formed, shall enjoy their Christian privileges in a separate building or institution.4 (my emphasis)

Although this decision afffijirms that ideally and in the light of Scripture, the coloured and black converts to Christianity should be incorporated into the existing Dutch Reformed congregations, it did open the door for exceptions by making allowance for the “weakness of some” (i.e. the prejudices of some white members). Over time, however, this “state of exception”5 paved the way for establishing a situation in which the exception became the rule. What was viewed as a temporary measure became the status quo. What was the background of the infamous 1857 decision? In 1855 a group of 45 white members approached the church council of the congregation of Stockenström in the Eastern Cape (where the white members were in the minority) with a request that separate communion services be held for them.6 This request was denied by church council. The group made a second appeal in which they asked that they at least be served by white church council members after the Lord’s Supper had been celebrated by the rest of the congregation. With reference to texts such as Romans 14:1

4  Acta Synodi NG Kerk 1857, 168. The original statement reads: “De Synode beschouwd het wenschelijk en Schriftmatig dat onze ledematen uit de Heidenen in onze bestaande Gemeenten opgenomen en ingelijfd worden overal waar zulks geschieden kan—maar waar deze maatregel ten gevolge van de zwakheid van sommigen de bevordering van de zaak van Christus onder de Heidenen in den weg staan—de gemeente uit de Heidenen opgericht of nog op te rigten hun Christelijke voorregten in een afzonderlijke gebouw of gesticht genieten zal”. [The Synod considers it prudent and Scriptural that our members from the Heathens are received and incorporated in our Congregations wherever this is feasible—yet that where such an action hinders the cause of Christ because of the weakness of some—the congregation formed or yet to be formed enjoy their Christian priveleges in a separate building or setting.] 5  For a discussion on the use of the notion of “state of exception” in political theory, see G. Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 6  The congregation of Stockenström grew from a community of Khoi people established on the banks of the Kat River (near Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape). At fijirst the London Missionary Society ministered to this community, but in 1831 it joined the Dutch Reformed Church as its fijirst black congregation. In the following decades the white members of the Dutch Reformed Church who moved into the area joined the Stockenström congregation. For an account of the historical background of the decision of the synod of 1857, see C. Lofff, “The history of a heresy” in J.W. De Gruchy and C. Villa-Vicencio (eds), Apartheid is a heresy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 10–23. See also J. Christofff Pauw, Anti-apartheid theology in the Dutch Reformed Family of Churches: A depth-hermeneutical analysis (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2007), 71–76. For an engagement with the decision of the Synod of 1857 within the context of a discussion of the ethics of reading Scripture, see S.E. Fowl and L.G. Jones, Reading in Communion: Scripture & Ethics in Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 96–99.

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(“Welcome those who are weak in faith”), they asked in their appeal that the church council must not be too harsh on their “weaknesses.” Although the church council allowed that white church council members be chosen, they did not agree to the separate celebration of the sacrament. The presbytery of Albany—under which the congregation of Stockenström resorted—took notice of the request of the white minority group and suggested that, because of the weakness and prejudices of these members, the church council should allow that one or more tables be set afterwards to serve them. How does these events relate to the synod of 1857? According to Lofff, an elder from Malmesbury—who was aware of the event in Stockenström from a report in the offfijicial Dutch Reformed Church newspaper De Gereformeerde Kerkbode—requested that the decision of the presbytery of Albany be read to the synod of 1857 during a debate about a request from the congregation of Ceres (in the Western Cape) for a separate building for coloured members.7 The debate evinced two positions. On the one hand, there were those who felt that (racial) prejudices must be challenged. On the other hand, some pleaded for a policy of caution, most likely claiming that these practices of separate communion services were already prevalent in many congregations. When the synod reconvened the next day, Rev. Andrew Murray Senior, made the proposal (quoted above) aimed at resolving the thorny issue. He proposed that while the synod ideally wants to see that converts from heathendom be accepted and incorporated into the existing congregations, “due to the weakness of some” separate worship services could be allowed to advance the cause of Christ among the heathen. The matter was brought to a vote and accepted with a large majority. From these complex series of events it is thus evident that the separate celebration of the Lord’s Supper by diffferent racial groups was related to the discussion on separate worship services in separate buildings. In principle the synod rejected separate services, but in practice this decision, which may originally have been wellintentioned, legitimised separation. Although one must not isolate this decision by the synod from its historical context or over-emphasise its

7  The presbytery of Albany decided “that to the Honourable Church Council of Stockenström it be recommended, in order to meet the prejudice and weakness halfway, that after Holy Communion had been administered to the older members of the congregation, one or more tables be administered for the new or white members” (“Dat aan den Eerw Kerkeraad van Stockenstroom aanbevolen word om ter tegemoetkomen van vooroordelen en zwakhede nadat het Avondmaal bediend is aan de ouder lede der gemeente, een of meer tafels te bedienen voor de nieuwe of blanken lede”). See the Minutes of the DRC Presbytery of Albanie, 194; cf. Lofff in De Gruchy and Villa-Vicencio, Apartheid is a Heresy, 18.

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signifijicance, it did play some role in paving the way for the establishment of separate Dutch Reformed Churches along racial lines.8 Moreover, the mission policy of the Dutch Reformed Church continued to play a major role in providing the moral underpinnings for the theological legitimisation of the policy of apartheid. It is furthermore important to note that the decision of 1857 deviated from a previous decision by the synod of 1829 in which the synod maintained that Holy Communion was to be administrated simultaneously to all members without distinction of colour or origin, because this practice was an unshakeable principle built on the infallible Word of God. A pastor from the Somerset West congregation placed this issue on the table at the synod of 1829, because the church council was of the opinion that Holy Communion must be administered separately (as was already the practice in some other congregations). Like the decision of 1857, the historical background to this decision of 1829 entails a dramatic narrative,9 but 8  The fijirst separate Dutch Reformed Church was the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in 1881. This was followed by the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (1910, 1932, 1951, 1952) and the Reformed Church in Africa (1965). These churches mainly had coloured, black and Indian members respectively. In 1994 the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and the largest part of the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa united to form the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). 9  The background events to the inquiry from Rev. Spijker of the Somerset West congregation (or Somerset-Hottentots Holland congregation, as it was then called) at the synod of 1829 had to do with the demand of a certain Bentura Visser (referred to as a “bastaard”, i.e. a person of mixed blood) to be served Holy Communion simultaneously with the other members. He had applied for membership shortly before and this was granted because one of the elders presented a good testimony. The issue was also raised whether he could receive Holy Communion with the rest of the congregation. Rev. Spijker was clear that this must be the case, but some congregation members referred to the practice in other congregations, in which the white members were served fijirst (men before women) and then the black members. Rev. Spijker felt this was wrong, but because the practices of some other congregations (such as Stellenbosch) carried some weight, he accepted the decision of the church council. When Bentura Visser took Holy Communion for the fijirst time, he did so together with the white members. Some white members, however, were very unhappy because he dared to receive the sacrament together with “born Christians”. A heated debate followed in which one church member even referred to a (mis)translation of Deuteronomy 23:3 (“A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth generation”). The case of Somerset West was dealt with at the presbytery meeting of Cape Town, which advised that, according to the Bible and the spirit of Christianity, exceptions cannot be made regarding the joint celebration of Holy Communion. This was also the decision of the synod of 1829. In his very interesting discussion of these events, church historian Chris Lofff also points to the fact that the decision of 1829 might also have been influenced by the presence of a public state offfijicer (known as the “Kommisaris Politiek”), who felt that this matter must not turn into an issue that led to conflict at the synod. See Lofff in De Gruchy and Villa-Vicencio, Apartheid is a Heresy, 16–17.

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sufffijice it to say that the background events in this case also emphasized that the joint celebration of the Lord’s Supper by people of diffferent races and origins brought racial prejudices and tensions to the fore. While the decision of 1829, whatever the motivation, maintained that separate celebrations of Holy Communion are unacceptable, the “weakness of some” decision of 1857 would play a role in normalising prejudices and opening the door to more blatant forms of class and race injustice. In 2007—precisely 150 years after the event—the decision of 1857 once again featured in ecclesial and public discourse in South Africa. The Western Cape synod of the Dutch Reformed Church accepted a proposal (October 2007) with a great majority that the synod should revoke the 1857 decision based on “the weakness of some.”10 The documents that motivated this proposal state that in efffect the decision has already been reversed by previous decisions that underlined the commitment to church reunifijication.11 Nevertheless, the documents make the case that that particular decision had led directly and indirectly to much pain and humiliation in the lives of many children of God, people created in God’s image. The 2007 decision also acknowledges that the 1857 decision made it very difffijicult for the Dutch Reformed Church to speak in a biblically and theologically sound way about the unity and mission of the church. The documents prepared for the 2007 proposal moreover argue that the primary theological error of the 1857 decision was that the synod legitimised an understanding of the church in which faith in the Christ of the Scriptures was not viewed as the only condition for church membership. The 1857 decision was seriously flawed in that it allowed for a depiction of the church, worship and celebration of the sacraments in which human prejudices and natural creation ordinances such as culture, race and language received greater prominence than the Word of God. The recommendation to the synod of 2007 expresses the hope that the revocation of the 1857 decision would serve the Dutch Reformed Church well by placing its current reunifijication process on a new track in which the church could

10

 A similar decision was also taken by the Eastern Cape synod in 2007.  The Dutch Reformed family of churches is currently in a process of reunifijication. For many people this process is painfully slow, although some still cherish the hope that it will came to fruition in the near future. 11

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think together as sisters and brothers about the future of the church, its calling and its unity.12 At the 2007 meeting of the Western Cape synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, Allan Boesak (as Moderator of the Western Cape Synod of the Uniting Reformed Church) made the following signifijicant comments in his acceptance speech in which he described the revocation of this decision of the synod of 1857 as a moment of great historical and theological value, something to be accepted with gratitude and joy. Boesak said: [This decision] repairs and reconfijirms our communion (“verbondenheid”) with Christ and with each other through Baptism and Holy Communion, so that we can pray with John Calvin that this sacrament will be so engraved within our hearts that we will know that Christ only has one body, of which He made us all partakers, and that none of the brothers (and sisters) can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any kind offfended by us, without at the same time injuring, despising, rejecting or abusing Christ . . . we cannot love Christ without loving Him in our brothers and sisters . . . because we are members of the same body.13

Boesak continued: This decision is a sacred renewal of the memoria Christi. From now on the Lord’s Supper will not remind us any longer of the “weakness of some”, but of the unlimited grace of God in Jesus Christ and the power of that grace that is enough for us . . . The decision of 1857 was taken in the sign of exclusivity and human weakness; the decision of 2007 is taken in the sign of the inclusivity of God’s embrace.14

This very brief account of the 1857 decision of the synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, and of its symbolic revocation 150 years later along with the responses it evoked, highlights the point that the Lord’s Supper should not should not be the cause of remind us of exclusion fuelled by (racial) prejudice, but should be viewed as a sign of God’s unconditional embrace. If one underlines this close link between the Lord’s Supper and hospitality—given the view that the Lord’s Supper is a feast of unconditional acceptance—one can still ask the question: how should one view the church’s discipline practices that are often intertwined with exclusion

12  It is, of course, a question whether one can really revoke a decision from the past in this way, but the decision was clearly aimed at making a symbolic gesture. 13  Handelinge van die Vyf en veertigste vergadering van die Sinode van die Ned Geref Kerk in Suid-Afrika (Wes-en Suid-Kaapland), 15–19 Oktober 2007, 115. 14  Handelinge 2007, 115, 116.

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from the Lord’s Supper? There is clearly a diffference between exclusion from the table on the basis of class and racial prejudice and the exclusion resulting from church discipline, but the important question of how to think in theological terms about the relationship between hospitality and church discipline (with regard to the Lord’s Supper) remains. 3. The Feast of Unconditional Acceptance? In his book What Happens in Holy Communion? Michael Welker makes the following statement as a possible answer to the question posed in the title of his book: “Holy communion is an event of unconditional acceptance of all the participants” (his emphasis).15 The question can be asked, however, how such a statement relates to Scriptural passages such as 1 Corinthians 14:27–29, where we read: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves . . .” According to Welker, the lack of clarity about the meaning of phrases such as “examine yourselves” and “in an unworthy manner” has had the fateful consequence that the Supper could no longer be understood as a feast of reconciliation, rejoicing and peace. He argues: “Instead it came across to many persons as an anxiety-producing means of moral gatekeeping. In a sad irony, the feast of unconditional acceptance of human beings by God and among each other was misused for intrahuman control.”16 In the process the Lord’s Supper was often reduced to paralysing selfexamination and condescending clerical control.17 In the light of this unhealthy understanding of the Lord’s Supper, Welker makes two important remarks. First, “in the celebration of the Supper, God unconditionally accepts human beings who, in a threatened world, have fallen under the 15

 M. Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 69.  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 70. For similar arguments see also J. Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (London: SCM Press, 1977), 242–260. 17  For van de Beek’s more sympathetic engagement with the phenomenon of hesitation in taking the Lord’s Supper (“avondsmaalhuiver”), see his essay “Ambt en avondmaal” [Offfijice and the Lord’s Supper] in A. van de Beek, Tussen traditie en vervreemding: over kerk en christenzijn in een veranderende cultuur [Between tradition and estrangement: concerning being church and Christian in a changing culture] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1985), 115–125. 16

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power of sin.”18 This includes even the enemies of communion with Christ. Welker stresses the point that Jesus did not celebrate the Last Supper with his disciples simply “because they were the small, faithful apostolic elite, the few irreproachable models of integrity, the glorious Twelve, to whom the administration of Jesus’ legacy is entrusted on the basis their moral and religious blamelessness.”19 No, the fijirst recipients of Jesus’ supper were Judas “who betrayed Him”, “Peter, “who denied Him”, and the disciples, “who abandoned Him and fled.” They all participated fully in “the night of betrayal”. Thus one can argue that Jesus’ pre-Easter practice of table fellowship, which demonstrated acceptance of the community’s enemies and sinners, “reaches an exemplary apex in Jesus’ celebration of the last supper.”20 In addition to this comment on the unconditional acceptance of all participants in Holy Communion, Welker also makes a second remark, namely that the church of Christ (i.e. the Christians who compose that church), “must take care that this meal is celebrated in accordance with the meal’s identity.”21 Therefore the celebration of the meal should not contradict or pervert the meal’s identity. This implies that human beings ought to judge for themselves whether they do in fact embody in their celebration of the sacrament the unconditional acceptance of all participants. Where pride or lack of love reigns, for instance, they should excuse themselves from the Supper. Welker emphasises that it is important that each person judge himself or herself, but he also states that “no one has the power and the authorization to exclude a particular person or a particular group of persons from participation in the Supper!”22 Welker calls attention to the fact that it is exactly because of the misuse of the Supper in order to exercise moral control and oppressive domination over others that Paul expresses his reproach in 1 Corinthians.23

18

 Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 71.  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 71. 20  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 72. 21  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 71. 22  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 71. 23  Welker devotes a few pages in What Happens in Holy Communion? to a discussion of the question of what the “unworthy eating and drinking” in Corinthians refers to. He considers two interpretative options that rest on subtle translation diffferences. The fijirst option accepts that the church in Corinth fijirst ate a normal meal and then celebrated the Supper. The more wealthy members arrived earlier and satisfijied their hunger. By the time the poor arrived there were only bits and pieces left. Paul’s reproach then urges the more afffluent members to have this meal at home prior to religious communion. Welker also discusses a second interpretative option that draws on the work of the New Testament 19

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It is clear that Welker wants to protect the celebration of the Lord’s Supper from reductive moralisation. In light of his understanding of the relation between law and gospel, he emphasises the importance of safeguarding the strict interconnection between justice (all participants are placed on equal footing), the acceptance of the weak and sinners, and thanksgiving to God for God’s goodness, preservation and deliverance. All practices that obscure these intentions and interconnections make human beings “unworthy” to receive the sacrament. For Welker, Holy communion is thus an event of unconditional acceptance of all participants and not a test case to express the moral self-assertion of the community. When persons deny or mask—in whatever way—this unconditional acceptance, they are celebrating the meal “unworthily.” Therefore Welker remarks: “The self-denominated ‘righteous’ who wants to sit in judgment over others must instead judge whether they themselves are taking seriously the radicality and breadth of the reconciling work of God and Jesus Christ in the Supper!”24 Notwithstanding his emphasis on Holy Communion as an event of unconditional acceptance of all the participants, Welker does seem to be aware of the tensions that often arise between the “acceptance of the weak” and the preservation of the cultic form. He comments that “little gestures can express defijicient mutual acceptance, can demonstrate inequality and justice, or can wound the sensibilities of the weak, and thereby pervert the Supper. Therefore cultic clarity and integrity are important.”25

scholar Otto Hofijius. According to this interpretation, the unsociable behaviour of the wealthy is also demonstrated in the celebration of the Supper itself, which in Paul’s time included a full meal. Welker refers to Hofijius’s discussion, which argues that the decisive Greek word in 1 Corinthians need not be understood temporally as “taking ahead of time” but can just mean “taking out”. The reproach is then against people taking out their own food and eating it. Because the rich and the poor brought diffferent kinds of food, this ‘taking out’ highlights social tensions and the poor are reminded of their oppressed condition. According to Welker, Hofijius also argues that the phrase “wait for one another” (v 33) can also mean “welcome someone, show hospitality to someone.” Paul is thus not making a plea for the separation of the normal and the ritual meal, but that the meal must not evince injustice and lack of consideration/mercy. Welker writes: “Instead of demonstrating mutual acceptance and justice in the celebration of the Supper, the perverted meal becomes a sign and demonstration of inequality and injustice . . . The celebration of the meal happens ‘for judgment’ when egotistic, indiffferent, and brutal forms of behavior not only injure fellow human beings, but at the same time pervert and make a laughing stock of Christ’s intentions of instituting the meal. Under such conditions the community comes together ‘for the worst’ and ‘for judgment’ ” (Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 78, 79). 24  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 73. 25  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 80.

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This argument points to the need for pastoral oversight in dealing with questions such as “May we celebrate holy communion with grape juice as well?” and “Must we use the common cup or individual glasses?” It is therefore important to address the issue of the “weaknesses of some”. But an overburdened sensitivity can also lead to unworthy celebration. As Welker observes: “A complete liberation from fears of contagion and problems of communication would ultimately result in self-service with shrink-wrapped bread and wine while seated in front of a screen showing a video of a holy communion service!”26 In situations of conflict pastoral creativity and sensitivity are therefore of the utmost importance in order to celebrate communion in a way “which takes account of peoples’ scruples, without destroying the biblically given forms.”27 The historic events leading to the 1857 synod decision of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and its aftermath illustrate that it is not always easy to take into account peoples’ scruples or “weaknesses” without stepping over the thin line that results in the legitimisation of prejudice and the obstruction of justice. What is necessary is wise pastoral oversight by pastors, synods, presbyteries and above all by congregations as a whole that challenges self-interest and indiffference, and protects the vulnerability of the socially weaker members,28 a task that Welker describes as a “careful, loving, and creative labor.”29 Welker rightly challenges the view of the Lord’s Supper as an anxietyproducing means of moral gatekeeping and emphasises the need to afffijirm the importance of the Lord’s Supper as a feast of unconditional acceptance and radical hospitality. The question can be asked, though, whether the problem for most churches and church members today is really one of guilt-ridden self-torment and harsh clerical control, or whether passive indiffference, the lazy legitimisation of the status quo and the lack of commitment to communal pastoral oversight is not more prevalent. 26

 Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 81.  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 82. 28  It is important to note that Welker does not reduce the Supper to a ritual of mutual acceptance. Elsewhere in What Happened in Holy Communion? he writes: “Holy communion is by no means simply about the symbolization of just, brotherly and sisterly relations. If we want to understand what happens in Holy Communion, thanksgiving to God, the glorifijication of God, and the breaking and distributing of the bread and wine must not be torn asunder and placed over against each other . . . In the Supper the relation of humans to God and the intrahuman relations, the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ dimensions must remain closely and indissolubly bound together!” (62). 29  Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion?, 83. 27

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Welker rightly warns against Eucharistic malpractices. However, legitimate questions regarding church order and discipline also come to the fore when one reflects on the notion of the unconditional acceptance of all participants at the Lord’s Supper. In many Christian traditions (also in Reformed traditions) one fijinds practices—often practices with long and complicated histories—that seek to protect the integrity of the meal, albeit through modes of “exclusion.” How must one view the possible tensions between, on the one hand, the emphasis on the meal as a feast of radical hospitality and, on the other hand, the need to protect the integrity of the meal through disciplined practices? With this question in mind, let us turn to some aspects of the theology of John Calvin. 4. The Lord’s Supper, Church Discipline and Mutual Love In Book 4 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which considers “the external means or aids by which God invites us into the society of Christ and holds us therein,” Calvin comments: “I confess a great disgrace if pigs and dogs have a place among the children of God, and a still greater disgrace if the sacred body of Christ be prostituted by him. And indeed, if churches are well ordered, they will not bear the wicked in their bosom. Nor would they indiscriminately admit worthy and unworthy together to that sacred banquet.”30 Clearly church discipline is important for Calvin. Elsewhere in the Institutes he writes: “as the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the church, so does discipline serves as its sinews, through which the members of the body hold together, each in its own place.”31 For Calvin the removal or hindrance of discipline contributes to the ultimate dissolution of the church. His metaphors regarding discipline might not appeal to everyone today. For instance, when he writes that “discipline is like a bridle to restrain and tame those who rage against the doctrine of Christ; or like a spur to arouse those of little inclination; and also

30  J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, volume 2 (ed. J.T. McNeill; trans. F.L. Battles) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 4: 1/15, 1029. 31  Calvin, Institutes, 4: 12/1, 1230. For a discussion of Calvin’s views on church discipline see, for instance, J. Plomp, De Kerkelijke Tucht bij Calvijn (Kampen: Kok, 1969) and R.R. De Ridder, “John Calvin’s Views on Discipline: A Comparison of the Institution of 1536 and the Institutes of 1559” in R.C. Gamble (ed.), Articles on Calvin and Calvinism: Calvin’s Ecclesiology: Sacraments and Deacons, Volume 10 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 293–300; G.H. Haas, “Ethics and Church Discipline” in H.J. Selderhuis (ed.), The Calvin Handbook (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), especially 342–344.

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sometimes as a father’s rod to chastise mildly and with the gentleness of Christ’s Spirit those who have more seriously lapsed.”32 One has to take care not to make a caricature of Calvin in this regard. While Calvin, for instance, admits that pastors are often more lenient towards the “wicked in their bosom” than they should be, he also critiques those who think it a sacrilege to partake of the Supper with the wicked for being more rigid than Paul. Calvin argues that Paul “does not require that one examines another, or every one the whole church, but that each individual proves himself [1 Cor. 11:28].”33 Here Calvin is making essentially the same point as Welker, albeit that Calvin adds that this “cognizance belongs to the church as a whole and cannot be exercised without lawful order.”34 It is clear that Calvin sees the purpose of discipline to protect the honour of God and the integrity of the church as the body of Christ. This also relates to the Lord’s Supper. He writes that “we must preserve the order of the Lord’s Supper, that it may not be profaned by being administered indiscriminately. For it is very true that he to whom its distribution has been committed, if he knowingly and willingly admits an unworthy person whom he could rightfully turn away, is as guilty of sacrilege as if he had cast the Lord’s body to dogs.”35 Having said this, one should also add that Calvin challenges a certain kind of misguided rigor and accordingly makes a plea for moderation and gentleness. He is even critical of the ancient church, which he often describes as the “ancient and better church,” and argues that “we cannot at all excuse the excessive severity of the ancients . . . when they imposed solemn penance and deprivation from Holy Communion sometimes for seven, sometimes for three, sometimes for four years, and sometimes for life, what could be the result of either great hypocrisy or utter despair.”36 A careful reading of the Institutes reveals Calvin’s plea for gentleness in both public and private censure.

32

 Calvin, Institutes, 4: 12/1, 1230.  Calvin, Institutes, 4: 1/15, 1029. 34  Calvin, Institutes, 4: 1/15, 1029. 35  Calvin, Institutes, 4: 12/5, 1232, 1233. Calvin refers in this regard to a quotation from a sermon by Chrysostom, in which Chrysostom attacks the priests who, fearing the power of great men, was afraid to exclude anybody. Calvin writes: “Let us not dread the fasces, the purple, the crowns; here we have a greater power” (Institutes 4: 12/5, 1233). This example refers to fearing those with power. It is ironic, however, that the practices of exclusion are more often directed not at those in power, but at socially vulnerable members. 36  Calvin, Institutes, 4: 12/8, 1236. 33

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Without such restraint there is the danger of sliding “from discipline to butchery.”37 It would be a misreading of Calvin to say that his emphasis on church discipline lapses into one-sided moralism,38 although one can certainly be critical of some aspects of his own application of these ideas. What is more, many Reformed churches have often mixed moralistic considerations into their practices of church discipline. In this regard the churches in the Dutch Reformed family of churches in South Africa have to a greater or lesser degree often been guilty of practising a moralising form of church discipline that has barred people from the Lord’s Supper in a way that did not always protect the integrity of the meal. At times this understanding of discipline resulted in a reductive celebration that did not do justice to the Lord’s Supper as the feast of unconditional acceptance, reconciliation and joy. It is furthermore important not to separate Calvin’s remarks on the necessity to preserve the order of the Lord’s Supper through discipline from his emphasis that the Lord’s Supper implies mutual love. Calvin argues that the Lord intended the Supper as a kind of exhortation that has the power to “quicken and inspire us both to purity and holiness of life, and to love, peace and concord.” The Lord communicates his body to us in such a way that he is made completely one with us and we with him. And since we all partake in the one body, “it is necessary that all of us also be made one body by such participation.”39 Calvin also writes, and it is worth quoting him at length:

37

 Calvin, Institutes, 4: 12/9, 1236.  As Wilhelm Niesel notes in his discussion of church discipline in Calvin’s theology: “Thus church discipline does not exist in order to promote moral conduct of the church, or in order to attain purity in church life . . . The reality of the church depends not upon our standards, even though they may have been commanded us, but solely upon the work of Christ accomplished towards us through Word and Sacrament.” See W. Niesel, The Theology of Calvin (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), 198, 199. 39  Calvin, Institutes, 4: 17/38, 1414, 1415. Calvin also refers to how the bread represents this unity: “As it is made of many grains so mixed together that one cannot be distinguished from one another, so it is fijitting that in the same way we should be joined and bound together by such agreement of minds that no sort of disagreement or division may intrude” (1415). See also Calvin’s “Treatise on the Lord’s Supper”, in: J.K.S. Reid, Calvin: Theological Treatises (The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. XXII) (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 151. For a good discussions of the development of Calvin’s views on the Lord’s Supper see, for instance, W. Janse, “Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology: Three Dogma-Historical Observations”, in: H.J. Selderhuis (ed.), Calvinus sacrarum literarum interpres (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 37–69 and W. Janse, “Sacraments”, in: H.J. Selderhuis (ed.), The Calvin Handbook (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 344–355. For reflections that bring Calvin’s understanding of the Sacraments into conversation with questions concerning the unity of the church, see M.E. Brinkman, “Calvin’s Eucharistic vision and the unity 38

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We shall benefijit very much from the sacrament if this thought is impressed and engraved upon our minds: that none of the brethren can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any way offfended by us, without at the same time, injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do; that we cannot disagree with our brethren without at the same time disagreeing with Christ; that we cannot love Christ, without loving him in the brethren; that we ought to take the same care of our brethren’s bodies as we take of our own; for they are members of our body; and that, as no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be afffected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him.40

This powerful passage from Calvin on the unity of the body of Christ has been quoted in full in a document written by the South African antiapartheid theologian Allan Boesak entitled “God Made Us All, But . . . Racism and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.”41 This document was sent by the Alliance of Black Reformed Churches in Southern Africa (ABRECSA) to delegates attending the meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Ottawa, Canada in 1982—an event that would become an important marker in the church’s struggle against apartheid. This document, which was a plea for the World Alliance to play a more active role in the struggle against racism, described racism as structured sinfulness and also refers to the fact that racism in South Africa makes it virtually impossible to share in the natural expression of unity within the body of Christ, namely the Lord’s Supper. These words gained special weight from the controversy that erupted when the delegations of the black Dutch Reformed Churches refused to share Holy Communion with the members of the white Dutch Reformed Church.42 The events in Ottawa further prepared the ground for a process which resulted in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church calling a status confessionis with regard to apartheid and later adopting the famous Belhar Confession in which the notion of the unity of the body of Christ plays a pivotal role.43 of the Church”, in: Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 51 (Supplementum), 2010, 302–312, as well as D.J. Smit, “Calvin on the sacraments and church unity”, in: D.J. Smit, Essays on Being Reformed (Collected Essays 3; ed. R. Vosloo) (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2009), 165–188. 40  Calvin, Institutes, 4: 17/38, 1415. 41  A.A. Boesak, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation, and the Calvinist Tradition (New York, 1984), 107. 42  For a discussion of these events, see Pauw, Anti-apartheid theology in the Dutch Reformed Family of Churches: A depth-hermeneutical analysis, 187–194. 43  For the draft confession of Belhar and the accompanying letter, as well as for some very informative essays on the confession, see G.D. Cloete and D.J. Smit, A Moment of Truth: The Confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984).

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It is thus not surprising that in the discussions on church reunifijication in South Africa the fact that the Lord’s Supper implies mutual love has often been highlighted, also with reference to Calvin. For Calvin the Lord’s Supper is sweet and delicate spiritual food for those who, in tasting it, are moved to thanksgiving and mutual love. But it is a deadly poison to those for whom it does not arouse to thanksgiving and love. When people rush to the Lord’s table without any spark of faith and zeal for love, they profane and pollute the sacrament by not discerning the Lord’s body. They bring judgment on themselves by mixing the sacred symbol of Christ’s body with their own discord. Calvin also makes it clear that it is faith and love that are required, not perfection. He writes: “Therefore, this is the worthiness—the best and only kind we can bring to God—to offfer our vileness and (so to speak) our unworthiness to him so that his mercy may make us worthy of him; to despair in ourselves that we may be comforted in him; to abase ourselves that we may be lifted up by him; to accuse ourselves that we may be justifijied by him; to aspire to that unity which he commends to us in the Supper; and, as he makes all of us one in himself, to desire one soul, one heart, one tongue for us all.”44 Calvin’s eucharistic theology can thus rightly be described as a theology of grace and gratitude (to use the title of Brian Gerrish’s study).45 5. Graced Practices In the fijirst part of this article I referred to the decision of the 1857 synod in South Africa which opened the door for legitimising separated worship along racial lines.46 In the light of this, and in the light of the discussion of

44

 Calvin, Institutes 4: 17/42, 1419. Calvin also writes: “for it is a sacrament ordained not for the perfect, but for the weak and the feeble, to awaken, arouse, stimulate, and exercise the feeling of faith and love, indeed to correct the defect of both” (1420). 45   B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002). Gerrish writes: “The holy banquet is simply the liturgical enactment of the theme of grace and gratitude that lies at the heart of Calvin’s entire theology” (20). 46  It is, of course, also possible to talk about gender exclusion at the table. As Reformed feminist theologian Leanne van Dyk writes in her essay “The gifts of God for the people of God” in Amy Plantinga Pauw and Serene Jones (eds), Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006): “Ambiguity clusters around the wonderful Calvinian theme of feasting at the table of God’s hospitality in the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper has long been undermined by the exclusion of women as ordained clergy . . . A distinctively Reformed feminist approach might illuminate the issue of woman’s ordination in a new way by stressing the implications of a Reformed

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aspects of the thinking of Welker and Calvin, a few theological trajectories can be highlighted concerning the celebration of the Lord’s Supper by the church as the body of Christ. First, it seems of paramount importance to afffijirm the view, as expressed by Welker and others, that Holy Communion is an event of unconditional acceptance or hospitality. The Lord’s Supper, however, does not symbolise some kind of vague and abstract tolerance of an idealised or romantisized “other,” but must be viewed—as Calvin reminds us—as a concrete expression of, and call to, mutual love as a response to God’s love for humanity in Christ. In this sense the one cup and the one bread symbolise the unity of the church and, at the same time, challenge sinful prejudices and unjust divisions within the one body of Christ. Second, together with the focus on the Lord’s Supper as an event of unconditional hospitality, we have to take care to celebrate the meal in accordance with its identity. This requires disciplined practices. Such a statement does not qualify the unconditional nature of the event, but radicalises it. While the emphasis on the protection of the integrity of the meal does challenge a laissez faire approach to the Lord’s Supper, it does not imply an opening for a moralistic form of church control that uses the sacrament as an instrument of “moral gatekeeping” (to use Welker’s phrase). On the contrary, it actually turns the tables on such a focus by challenging us to see that it is exactly our prejudices against unconditional grace that are under judgement. As David Ford comments on the feast of the Kingdom in the light of Jesus’ generosity and compassion: “There is a sharp note of exclusion, but it is one that follows from the inclusiveness. The excluded are those who cannot bear God’s generosity and will not imitate it.”47 Third, disciplined practices are not to be viewed as something over against grace and hospitality but, if done well, as acts of hospitality.48 Both hospitality and discipline are graced practices.49 Therefore the church’s discipline must not mimic certain forms of the discipline of the state or the market. The uncritical juxtaposition of hospitality and church discipline,

sacramental theology for hospitality at the table” (218, 219); cf. also Smit, Essays on Being Reformed, 177. 47  D.F. Ford, Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 269. 48  See W.T. Kavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 243. 49  On the notion of graced practices, see also Serene Jones’s essay “Graced Practices: Excellence and Freedom in the Christian Life” in M. Volf and D.C. Bass (eds), Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2002), 51–77.

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which equates hospitality with indiffferent tolerance and church discipline with a reductive moralism, ought to be avoided. This requires a theology of wisdom that fosters a graced-tinted ethical optics that also takes the church’s history of dehumanising exclusions into account. As Amy Plantinga Pauw writes: “As the body of Christ in the world, the church is a broken and diseased body, mirroring the ills and divisions of the larger society. Yet it remains a mysteriously powerful channel of God’s grace to us.”50 Lastly, while retaining the focus on the Lord’s Supper as an event of unconditional acceptance of all participants, it is important to afffijirm that the integrity of the meal is protected when it is situated within a set of graced practices formed and transformed by the Word. These practices include lament, confession, forgiveness and truth-telling.51 In Bonhoefffer’s famous formulation he describes cheap grace as “preaching forgiveness without repentance,” “baptism without the discipline of community,” “the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin” and “absolution without personal confession.”52 Bonhoefffer thus points to the interrelationship between the sacraments and other practices of the body of Christ. 6. Conclusion The 1857 synod decision and its aftermath recalled in this article serve as a reminder not to compromise the radical nature of the inclusivity of God’s embrace. In reflecting on the events that led to the decision of the synod of 1857 one must also be mindful of the fact that the group of church members in the Eastern Cape who wanted to have separate tables was a minority group in what they perceived to be beleaguered situation. They were probably seeking for ways to afffijirm their identity and ensure their survival. In situations such as these, which are playing out with increasing frequency in various forms in our globalising and polarising world today, the temptation looms large to compromise the grace of God’s embrace in 50  See the essay by Amy Plantinga Pauw “The Graced Infijirmity of the Church” in Amy Plantinga Pauw and Serene Jones (eds), Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 191. 51  For a theological engagement with some of these practices, see Volf and Bass, Practicing Theology; J.J. Buckley and D.S. Yeago (eds), Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church and D.M. Ackermann, After the Locusts: Letters from a Landscape of Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/ Cape Town: David Philip, 2003). 52  Bonhoefffer, D., Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoefffer Works, Vol., 4) (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 44.

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the name of protecting identity, establishing security or ensuring survival. Amidst these temptations, the right administration of the Lord’s Supper serves as a continual reminder to the church to embody visibly God’s haunting hospitality. The challenge remains, however, to emphasise the Lord’s Supper as a feast of unconditional hospitality and to protect its integrity. How to give form and concrete manifestation to this challenge demands continuous theological reflection. Without doubt, Bram van de Beek’s theological work (and more specifijically his work on ecclesiology) will inform these important discussions by calling upon the church to remain faithful to its Christian identity.

THE TEACHING CONCERNING THE LORD’S SUPPER IN THE 1559 HUNGARIAN REFORMED CONFESSION OF MAROSVÁSÁRHELY (TRANSYLVANIA) Botond Kund Gudor and István Pásztori-Kupán The evolution of religious identity constitutes a matter of great debate between Protestant churches and secular historians. Antithetical opinions exist in both European and Transylvanian Protestantism. While Reformed church historiographers note the appearance of a written confession of faith of a given religious denomination unambiguously as a defijining moment of religious identity, secular historians often consider the confessio fijidei only as a typical manifestation of the religious élite, i.e. as an intellectual product rather than a personal choice of identity. In this latter view the emphasis lies on the historicity of the religion and not on its spirituality or beliefs. According to the church-historical defijinition, the Reformation is a belief-continuum, a process of disseminating the gospel in which God is the main acting subject.1 It is not accidental that the evaluation of the Reformation by secular historians is more focused on prominent personalities, whereas the Reformation of the masses is often considered as hardly being a process of careful deliberation, with doubtful depth of sincere probing. The question is unavoidable: how and when did the Calvinist Reformation manifest itself in Transylvania? Was the Helvetic trend a mere self-defijinition of the Protestant élite or did it represent a wider social identity? The publication of polemical tracts and confessions of faith in the fijirst decades of the Reformation are visible achievements of a strengthening identity. Besides the wording of the doctrines, mostly but not regularly, in such publications the external order of the church is considered as being a part of the religion. Numerous tracts and confessions of faith were intended to help the followers of the Swiss Reformation in gaining the same secular recognition as the Lutherans. Nonetheless, even within

1

 See Dezső Buzogány, “A Marosvásárhelyi Hitvallás teológia- és egyháztörténeti helye [The Theological and Church-Historiographical Place of the Confession of Marosvásárhely],” in: Marosvásárhelyi Hitvallás [Confession of Marosvásárhely] 1559 (Kolozsvár: EREK, 2010), 5–12.

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reformatory groups, the diffferences between teachings required clarifijication in order to avoid confusion. The Confession of Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureş / Neumarkt) of 1559 does not contain an exposé concerning ecclesiastical order, yet it tries to promote reconciliation with the Lutheran party without abandoning its method of peaceful persuasion. Many of such Reformed publications have begun to surface again by making these documents available to international readership.2 In the relevant literature, 1564 is widely considered as the offfijicial date of the formation of the Transylvanian Reformed Church. This is due to the January 1564 Diet of Segesvár (Sighişoara / Schäßburg) which initiated the religious debate, and to the following Protestant Synod of Nagyenyed (Aiud / Straßburg am Mieresch) held in April 1564, where the formal separation of Transylvanian Lutheranism and Calvinism occurred.3 The Transylvanian ethnic and religious polarisation also became evident: the Saxons (Siebenbürger Sachsen) remained Lutherans, while “the church of the Hungarians” followed the Calvinist trend, being labelled as

2  German Protestants have pursued the publication of Lutheran and Helvetic confessions since 1928 in fijive projected volumes, edited by Heiner Faulenbach and Eberhard Busch. See Lukas Vischer, ed., Reformiertes Zeugnis heute. Eine Sammlung neuerer Bekenntnistexte aus der reformierten Tradition (Neukirchen – Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988); Eberhard Busch et al., Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften 1/1 1523–1534 (Neukirchen – Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002); Georg Plasger and Mathias Freudenberg, eds, Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften. Eine Auswahl von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005). For the edition of Hungarian confessions see Mihály Bucsay and Zoltán Csepregi, “Thesen des Pfarrkonvents in Nagyvárad (Oradea / Großwardein), 1544” and “Das Bekenntnis der Synode zu Erdőd von 1545” in: Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften I/2. 1535–1549, ed. by Heiner Faulenbach and Eberhard Busch (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2006), 429–438 (Nr. 32) and 439–448 (Nr. 33). See also Bucsay and Csepregi, “Das Abendmahlsbekenntnis zu Marosvásárhely (Neumarkt), 1559,” in: Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften II/1. 1559–1563, ed. by Heiner Faulenbach and Eberhard Busch (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2009), 97–115 (Nr. 52). Bucsay and Csepregi published the rest of the Hungarian religious documents: “Confessio catholica von Eger und Debrecen, 1562,” “Confessio brevis der Synode zu Debrecen, 1567,” “Confessio Cassoviensis, 1568” and “Confessio Varadina, 1569,” in: Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften II/2. 1562–1569, ed. by Andreas Mühling and Peter Opitz (Neukirchen – Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2009), 1–165 (Nr. 58), 347–401 (Nr. 62), 403–408 (Nr. 63) and 409–414 (Nr. 64). 3  János Karácsonyi, “Erdély és a kapcsolt részek vallási állapotai 1526-tól 1571-ig [The Religious Situation of Transylvania and Its Attached Parts],” in: Az erdélyi katolicizmus múltja és jelene [The Past and Present of Transylvanian Catholicism], (Dicsőszentmárton: Erzsébet Könyvnyomda Részvénytársaság, 1925), 40. Cf. Jenő Zoványi, A magyarországi protestantizmus története 1895-ig [The History of Hungarian Protestantism until 1895] (Máriabesnyő-Gödöllő: Attraktor, 2004), 49–62; Sándor Szilágyi, Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek [Records of Transylvanian Diets] 21 vols (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1897–1898), II, 187, 227, 231 (hereafter: EOE).

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“sacramentarian” or even “neo-Nestorian”. This decision, however, had been preceded by councils, confessions, meetings and rowdy political events.4 The fever of religious change is marked also by the fact that even the resolutions of the Lutheran Transylvanian Diet in 1558 still ardently protested against the “sacramentarian” trend.5 This was a further sign that—after Lutheranism—the Helvetic line of Reformation was also loudly rapping on the gates of politics.6 The secular rigorousness which had been guarding the Catholic– Lutheran balance became loosened after Queen Isabella’s death on 15 September 1559. The education of the young reigning prince Johann Sigismund (János Zsigmond) became the responsibility of chancellor Mihály Csáky (1505–1572) and of Giorgio Blandrata (1515–1588), the prince’s personal physician, who was a Socinian thinker. With the decline of fijirm political control the Transylvanian Reformation gained new momentum. Although in seventeenth-century Transylvania religious matters were mostly a question of power, at the beginning of the Reformation it was the hesitant attitude of politics and this existence of a power vacuum which unequivocally favoured the expansion and development of Protestantism. Transylvanian society, despite all appearances living amidst religious debates, communicated not only at the level of the theological élite, but also at the level of the town as a religion-choosing community that was also actively engaged in these disputes. The most important and most sensitive topic of Protestant dialogue was the interpretation of the Holy Communion. Although it is outside the main focus of our present study, one has to observe that the main theological diffference between Luther’s and Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper was deeply rooted in their respective Christological models: the former followed the Alexandrian, the latter the Antiochene tradition. Their answers

4  István Bitskey, Hitviták tüzében [In the Crossfijire of Confessional Disputes] (Budapest: Gondolat, 1978). This work meticulously presents the atmosphere of the time, yet does not mention Marosvásárhely Confession (1559). Two subsequent Anti-Trinitarian confessions are worth mentioning, which are also linked to Marosvásárhely and Dávid Ferenc. See Jenő Zoványi, Magyar protestáns Egyháztörténeti Lexikon [Hungarian Protestant ChurchHistorical Lexicon] (Budapest: A Magyarországi Református Egyház Zsinati Irodájának sajtóosztálya, 1977). Cf. János Kénosi Tőzsér and István Uzoni Fosztó, “Úrvacsoraviták 1557–1564 [Debates over the Lord’s Supper 1557–1564],” in: Az Erdélyi Unitárius Egyház története [The History of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church] (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Unitárius Egyház, 2005), I, 133–145. 5  See the decisions of the Diet between 27 March–3 April, 1558 in EOE, II, 93. 6  Karácsonyi, “Erdély”, 39.

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to the question whether the fijinite could indeed contain the infijinite differed accordingly. Thus, the mode of the Lord’s presence in the bread and wine was predetermined by their assumed Christological system, whether explicitly or not. Any discussion of the so-called “communion-debates” is therefore required to acknowledge this fundamental starting point, i.e. that the dispute over the Lord’s Supper was ultimately a Christological issue. In this sense Transylvania was no exception. It is not at all accidental that the Helvetic trend became labelled as “neo-Nestorian”. While the Lutheran party clung to the principle of ubiquitas (omnipresence), the Helvetic interpretation, especially that of Heinrich Bullinger, became gradually publicized through Debrecen. It is precisely the year 1559 which proves to be the landmark in the wider acceptance of the new, Helvetic doctrine concerning the Lord’s Supper. As a result, the positions of Transylvanian conservative Lutheranism were prejudiced in the most unexpected places, namely on the level of the Transylvanian theological élite, which accepted the Helvetic Reformation through German mediation. The conversions of Gáspár Heltai (Caspar Helth, 1510–1574) and Ferenc Dávid (David Hertel, 1520–1579) signalled the new changes of the Transylvanian Reformation regarding Holy Communion. The participation of the previously Lutheran Ferenc Dávid, fijirst in the Nagyvárad (Oradea / Grosswardein) meeting (18 August 1559), and then as a supporter of the Helvetic trend at the Saxon council of Medgyes (Medias / Mediasch), corroborated the spiritual conversion which the bishop himself had also undergone.7 This, however, was not an isolated phenomenon of personal conviction change of a few. The mood swing of the people of Kolozsvár and Marosvásárhely cannot be ignored. According to historians, the debates on Holy Communion led to the mass seclusion of townspeople by means of issuing ‘Holy Tickets’.8 There was an immediate need for clarifijication in order to harmonize doctrine with practices as well as for preaching and liturgical reasons. This is precisely why the later Nagyenyed Council can be considered as an efffect or consequence, through which a formal constitutional framework for the emerging Reformed Church was sought. It is therefore the confession of faith of the earlier (1 November 1559) Council held in the

7

 Kénosi—Uzoni, “Úrvacsoraviták”, 133–145, 140.  Kénosi Tőzsér János—Uzoni Fosztó István, “Úrvacsoraviták”, 141.

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castle of Marosvásárhely,9 which unequivocally signals the acceptance and the spread of the Helvetic religious identity in Transylvania, influenced at the time by Bullinger. This was prefijigured by Melanchthon’s “media sententia” represented by Mátyás Dévai Bíró (†1545) and István Szegedi Kis (1505–1572), exemplifying an intermediary approach in which the signs of the Holy Communion—the body and blood of Christ—are present in the promise and not physically. Melanchthon’s Transylvanian and Hungarian disciples clarifijied their views in Marosvásárhely, leaning towards the Helvetic approach, as a consequence of the wider European debate over the issue.10 One needs to bear in mind that the ideas presented in the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549 between Calvin and Bullinger had undoubtedly reached the Transylvanian theologians. Furthermore, Melanchthon’s irenical position may well have prevented the Hungarian Reformers to move towards Zwingli’s more radical doctrine.11 The confession of faith this article discusses here can be considered as the joint confessio fijidei of Transylvanian and Hungarian religious intellectuals, including Ferenc Dávid, Péter Méliusz Juhász (1532–1572) and other signatories who played key roles within the Hungarian Reformation. Furthermore, it is also the expression of a newer religious identity of Transylvanian Hungarians (and Germans becoming Hungarians). Méliusz, a preacher from Debrecen also contributed by continuing the work of his predecessor, the Transylvanian Márton Kálmáncsehi Sánta. Kolozsvár and Marosvásárhely offfered the opportunity, whilst Méliusz’s theological training proved suitable for the purpose. The accuracy of the German translation, which was published in 1563 in Heidelberg (in the same year as the Heidelberg Catechism) can be attributed to Ferenc Dávid.12 In order

 9  See Vilmos Fraknói, “A marosvásárhelyi hitvallás [The Confession of Faith of Marosvásárhely],” in: Magyar könyvszemle november–december (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1878), 277–282; Kiss Áron, A XVI. században tartott magyar református zsinatok végzései [Decrees of Hungarian Reformed Synods Held in the 16th Century] (Budapest: Magyarországi Protestáns Egylet, 1881), 44–53. Cf. Gábor Incze, “Az Urnac vaczoraiaról [On the Lord’s Supper],” in: A reformáció és ellenreformáció korának evangéliumi keresztyén egyházi írói [The Evangelical Christian Church Writers of the Age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation] (Budapest: Incze Gábor, 1938). Most recently Buzogány, “Marosvásárhelyi hitvallás”, 45–56. 10  Buzogány, “Marosvásárhelyi hitvallás”, 20. 11  Buzogány, “Marosvásárhelyi hitvallás”, 39. 12  Beschluss und Form der Lehre vom Testament und Abendmal unsers Seligmachers Jesu Christi, (Heidelberg: Johannes Mayer, 1563). Cf. Kathona Géza, “Méliusz Péter és életműve [Péter Méliusz and his Life-work],” in: A II. Helvét Hitvallás Magyarországon és Méliusz

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to fulfijil his aim, Méliusz contacted Ferenc Dávid with the help of Gergely Molnár, the rector from Kolozsvár.13 The frequency of Transylvanian confessions of faith during this period betrays the intention to settle the identity-crisis of the new community, shaken by the conflict between Lutheran and Helvetic Reformation. The debate in Marosvásárhely was the moment when the Hungarian Reformed Church, following the Helvetic line, separated itself doctrinally from the Lutheran Church of Transylvanian Germans (Saxons). Both the place of venue and the phrasing of the confession are signifijicant. There are indications that, while in 1552 the still mostly Catholic magistrates of the town might have banished the Evangelical preacher,14 they were instead actively taking part in the debates caused by the Reformation.15 It would become one of the strongholds of Helvetic Protestantism, as a result of the work started in 1557 by the preacher Máté Göcsi (†1585).16 The continued success of Anti-Trinitarians made the Reformers in Transylvania and Hungary determined to create a common theological platform. Marosvásárhely (originally Székelyvásárhely) thus became the starting point of the Reformation of the Székely people.17 The Helvetic Reformation of larger Transylvanian towns occurred between 1552–1559, creating an important theological basis for the continuation of Protestant mission towards inner Transylvania, i.e. Székely Land.

életműve [The Second Helvetic Confession in Hungary and Méliusz’s Life-work] (Budapest: MREZS, 1967), 143–144, 201. 13  From the Saxon historian Schaesaeus. See Jakab Elek, Dávid Ferenc emlékezete [The Memory of Dávid Ferenc] (Budapest: Magyar Királyi Egyetemi Könyvnyomda, 1879), 41. 14  Cf. József Pokoly, Az erdélyi református egyház története [The History of the Transylvanian Reformed Church] (Budapest: EREK, 1904), I, 77. Cf. Zoványi, A magyarországi protestantizmus története, 28. 15  See “Borsos Sebestyén Krónikája: Világnak lett dolgairól irott krónika [Written Chronicle about the Events of the World],” in: Mikó Imre, Erdélyi történeti adatok [Historical Data of Transylvania] (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum Egyesület, 1855), I, 173: “[on 11 August 1556] they were in a great toss about choosing a religion, because almost half of the town, its majority had accepted the new heresy, that of Blandrata”. 16  József Koncz, “Göcsi Máté, the Very First Minister of the Reformed Church in Marosvásárhely (1552–1585), the Third Bishop in Transylvania (1579–1585),” in: Marosvásárhely és vártemploma [Marosvásárhely and Its Fortress Church], ed. by Endre Medvigy (Budapest: Ráday Gyűjtemény, 1990), 80. Cf. Mihály Balázs, “Toroczkay Máté Vásárhelyen [Toroczkay Máté in Vásárhely],” Keresztény Magvető 2002/2–3. (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Unitárius Egyház, 2002) see in http://kermagv.unitarius.com/regi/magvetok/2002/2002_23/2002_23_ balazsm3.htm (accessed: 2 September 2010). 17  Géza Nagy, “Méliusz”, Kálvinista jellemképek [Calvinistic Characters] (Kolozsvár: EREK, 1930), 22.

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The fact that the Confession of Marosvásárhely had been drawn up in Hungarian (and not in Latin, as one could have easily expected at the time) signifijies not only a theological, but also a cultural-linguistic or even ethnic separation from the German-speaking Lutherans of Transylvania. Concerning its theological content it is hardly a coincidence that its German translation was sent to Heidelberg, where it was published in 1563.18 In 1559 Zacharias Ursinus (1534–1584), the Reformed theologian and Catechism-writer in Heidelberg followed the Helvetic Reformation. In 1561, Frederick III (1559–1576) also decided in favour of the Reformed party at the conclusion of a local theological dispute, which had commenced at the beginning of his reign. The publication of the Marosvásárhely Confession and of the Heidelberg Catechism within the same year in Heidelberg has a double signifijicance: it shows both the urgent need for instructional argumentation and evinces the clear spiritual connection between geographically distant, yet theologically close bodies of Reformation. The 1559 council of Marosvásárhely represents a remarkably important moment within the history of the Transylvanian Reformed Church. It is understandable that 1 November 1559 is considered the date of birth of Transylvanian Helvetic Protestantism, although the formal establishment of the Transylvanian Reformed Church took place only in 1564. The Marosvásárhely Confession became a basic document,19 creating a spiritual unity between Transylvania and Tiszántúl (Debrecen and its environs). Putting it into the wider perspective of the famous Reformation documents, it is certainly connected not only with Calvin’s Institutes of 1536, but also with the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, which was rapidly accepted and used ever since by all Hungarian Reformed communities. The intention of the council of Nagyvárad (Oradea / Grosswardein) held in August 1559 was to unify the Upper-Hungarian and Transylvanian Helvetic Protestantism. This “small council” ought to be regarded as an important precedent leading up to the council and Confession of Marosvásárhely.20 The text was printed in 1559 in Kolozsvár in Heltai Gáspár’s

18

 Zoványi, A magyarországi protestantizmus története, 60.  See Gábor Sipos, Az erdélyi református egyház múltjából [From the Past of the Transylvanian Reformed Church]. http://misszio.reformatus.hu/cm/cd/02_erdely_tortenete/az_ erdelyi_reformatus_egyhaz_multjabol_erdelyi_reformatus_egyhazkerulet_tortenete.doc (accessed: 2 September 2010). 20  “A kolozsvári egyház lelkészeinek és az erdélyi egyházakban helyesen tanitó több lelkészeknek az Urvacsoráról szóló helyes értelmök védelme [Defence of the Right Interpretation of the Lord’s Supper of the Ministers from Kolozsvár and of More Correctly Teaching Ministers within the Transylvanian Churches],” in: Kiss, A XVI. században tartott 19

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printing house, who labelled it as written by “the Christian teachers from all over Hungary and Transylvania”, i.e. as being the work of preachers gathered from two separate countries.21 The Marosvásárhely Confession represents the religious reconciliation of two Hungarian political entities, which for the moment settled the tensions between the Swiss and German trends satisfactorily, and attempted to offfer an integrated, Transylvanian interpretation of the Lord’s Supper with a clear Helvetic emphasis. In 1559 the council of Marosvásárhely had three achievements: fijirst, that the two former theological opponents in questions regarding the Holy Trinity, i.e. Dávid and Méliusz were temporarily reconciled. Secondly, that the Lutheranism of Dávid and of Heltai was replaced by a Helvetic interpretation of the Lord’s Supper. Thirdly, the Transylvanian Helvetic Protestantism brought about a theological harmony in support of the new confessional identity. The community of Hungarian ministers was united in defending the Helvetic doctrine, enabling itself to embrace the Reformation of Heidelberg and its Catechism a few years later. As recently observed, the teachings of the Heidelberg Catechism and of the Marosvásárhely Confession concerning the Lord’s Supper are consonant as of “having been cut offf the same root”.22 In light of the above, the question of religious identity in Transylvania requires a broader interpretation. The fact that towns and regions were seeking for an identity should not be ignored. The formulation of the confession together with the clarifijication of diffferences between the opinions of the élite undoubtedly reached its aim. Nonetheless, the confession of faith bears the expression of the masses’ religious identity by the élite and on the one hand provides a starting point for the Protestant mission, whilst on the other hand promotes an active theological solidarity with Protestant Europe. The Marosvásárhely Confession of 1559 is a unique achievement within the history of Reformation for various reasons. First, it was written and published in Hungarian and not in Latin, which betrays a clear reformatory intention, i.e. to make the Bible as well as the credal statements available to the public in their native tongues, thus integrating them into the

magyar református zsinatok végzései, 47. Cf. Pokoly, Az Erdélyi Református Egyház története, I, 126. 21  Tibor Klaniczai, “Hungária és Pannónia a Reneszánsz korban [Hungary and Pannonia in the Age of Renaissance],” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 91–92 (1987–1988), 6. 22  Buzogány, “Marosvásárhelyi hitvallás”, 40.

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theological discussion. Furthermore, it attempted to avoid any separation between the various trends of Reformation already present in Transylvania. Although its function was to reconcile the mainly Helvetic oriented factions with each other, it also attempted (albeit unsuccessfully) to mediate between the Swiss and Lutheran teachings about the Lord’s Supper. The main authors of this important historical-theological document were Ferenc Dávid and Gáspár Heltai from Transylvania as well as Péter Méliusz Juhász and a few of his fellow-ministers from the region of Tiszántúl in Royal Hungary. The contribution of Méliusz must have been signifijicant, since quite a few formulae within the Confession are very similar to some of the statements in his sermons uttered at Debrecen or in his published works. The Marosvásárhely Confession as a common achievement of various Hungarian ministers strengthened and furthered the tradition of theological collaboration amongst spiritual leaders who were living in remote areas of the one-time Hungarian Kingdom, even after its collapse which had taken place earlier, during the same century. The theological input of this Confession is that it follows the more irenical and flexible line of Melanchthon’s teaching concerning the Lord’s Supper. It is a clear sign that by the middle of the sixteenth century the Transylvanian Hungarian Reformers came to accept the Helvetic and Melanchthonian interpretation. The following Hungarian–English bilingual edition is accompanied by annotating footnotes in order to explain the most important aspects of textual tradition and theological message. The Hungarian text follows the 1559 edition of Gáspár Heltai, with some minor orthographical adjustments. 23

Az Úrnak vacsorájáról való közönséges keresztyéni vallás Melyet a keresztyén Tanítók mind egész Magyarországból, s mind Erdélyből a Vásárhelyi szent Zsinatban töttek, és kiadták a Krisztus Jézus Szentegyházának építésére. M.D.LIX. Esztendőben, Mindszent Napján.

A common Christian confession concerning the Lord’s Supper 23 Composed in the Holy Synod of Marosvásárhely and published for the edifijication of the Holy Church of Christ by the Christian teachers from all over Hungary and Transylvania in the year 1559, on All Saints’ Day.

23  The present annotated translation of István Pásztori-Kupán should be considered as being the defijinitive one in comparison to the text in James T. Dennison, Jr., ed., Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation: Volume 2, 1552–1566 (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 134–139, which was published with a few errors and lacunae due to the inaccessibility of some relevant sources at the time.

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Table (cont.) A Krisztus Jézusnak testével és vérével való igaz Részesülésről, az Úrnak vacsorájában Micsoda az Úrnak vacsorája?

Concerning the true partaking in the flesh and blood of Christ Jesus in the Lord’s Supper What is the Lord’s Supper?

Az Úrnak vacsorája (amint szent Pál szól) a Krisztus Jézus Testével és Vérével való igaz részesülés, mely részesülés lészen a kenyérnek és a bornak vevőjétől, hitnek általa, mely hit az ígéretben a Krisztus Jézust hozzá kapcsolja, és teljes reménységgel és bizodalommal ragaszkodván ez ígérethez: „az én Testem tiérettetek halálra adatik, az én Vérem tiérettetek kiontatik”, részesül a Krisztus Jézussal és minden javaival, melyeket szent halálával és vére kiontásával szerzett, tudniillik az örök boldogsággal.

The Lord’s Supper (as Saint Paul says) is the true partaking in the flesh and blood of Christ, from the side of the recipient of the bread and wine through faith, a faith which connects Christ Jesus to him/her in the promise, whilst [the recipient] clings to this promise with full hope and confijidence: “My body is given over to death for your sake, my blood is shed for your sake”24—[which means, that the believer] partakes in Christ Jesus and in all his benefijits, that is, in the eternal happiness, which he [Christ] procured by his sacred death and the shedding of his blood.25

Miképpen lészen ez a részesülés?

How does this partaking take place?

Lészen igaz hitnek általa. Mert miképpen az ígéretet hittel vesszük, azonképpen az ígéretnek álattyát [lényegét]26 és gyümölcsét, mely a

It happens through true faith. For in the manner in which we receive the promise by faith, in the same fashion we also have to receive

24 25 26

24

 Cf. Lk. 22:19–20.  Cf. with Question 75 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “How are you admonished and assured in the Lord’s Supper, that you are a partaker of that one sacrifijice of Christ, accomplished on the cross, and of all his benefijits? Answer: Thus: that Christ has commanded me and all believers, to eat of this broken bread, and to drink of this cup, in remembrance of him, adding these promises: fijirst, that his body was offfered and broken on the cross for me, and his blood shed for me, as certainly as I see with my eyes, the bread of the Lord broken for me, and the cup communicated to me; and further, that he feeds and nourishes my soul to everlasting life, with his crucifijied body and shed blood, as assuredly as I receive from the hands of the minister, and taste with my mouth the bread and cup of the Lord, as certain signs of the body and blood of Christ.” http://www.ccel.org/creeds/heidelberg-cat .html (accessed: 2 September 2010). 26  The Hungarian term “állat” in this case does not mean “animal”, but rather “állapot”, i.e. “state” or, as in most of the similar cases in the relevant sixteenth century theological literature, “essence” or “substance”. 25

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Table (cont.) Krisztus Jézusnak érettünk megtöretett Teste és bűnünk bocsánatáért kiontatott Vére, hittel kell vennünk. És ez mi módon legyen, rövid beszéddel így magyarázzuk meg. Az Isten akarván beteljesíteni minden ő ígéretit, melyeket eleitől fogva az emberi nemzetnek tett vala, adá érettünk az ő Fiát. És az emberi testet érettünk felvévén, halált szenvede a mi üdvösségünkért. Mind megtestesülése mind halála miérettünk lőn, és ennek minden haszna miénk lőn, úgyannyira, hogy az ő Testének felvétele lőn oka, hogy a mi testünk mindenestől fogva el ne veszne. Halála és feltámadása lőn oka, hogy örökké élnénk. Testesülése azért, halála és feltámadása nékünk örök életünk. De hogy ennek a jótételnek emlékezeti a mi elménkből és lelkünkből ki ne esnéjék, szerzé a végvacsorát a Krisztus, melybe külső jegyek által emlékeztet az ő jótéteményiről, és egyszersmind, hitnek általa, e jókat közli az ő híveivel, nemkülönben mint közölte a végvacsorán az Apostolokkal.

by faith27 the essence and fruit of promise, which is the Body of Christ Jesus broken for our sake and his Blood shed for the forgiveness of our sin. How this happens, we shall explain in a short discourse, as follows.28 God, willing to fulfijil all his promises he had made to the human race from the beginning, gave his Son for our sake. And taking on the human flesh for us, he sufffered death for our salvation. Both his incarnation and death happened for our sake and all its benefijits became ours to the extent that the assumption of his Body became the reason for our own body not to perish altogether. His death and resurrection became the reason for us to live eternally. Therefore, his incarnation, death, and resurrection are our eternal life. Nevertheless, in order that the remembrance of this benefaction not to fall out from our minds and souls, Christ instituted the last supper, in which he reminds [us] of his benefactions through external signs, and, simultaneously, he communicates these goods to his believers through faith, in the same manner as he communicated them to the Apostles during the Last Supper.

27 28

27  See e.g. the following passage from Chapter 21 of the Second Helvetic Confession: “By this sacred rite the Lord [. . .] feeds us with his flesh, and gives us his blood to drink, which, being received spiritually by true faith, nourish us to eternal life”. http://www.ccel .org/creeds/helvetic.htm (accessed: 2 September 2010). 28  This and other similar signs suggest that the Confession may well have emerged from sermons concerning the Lord’s Supper.

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Table (cont.) Annak okáért mikor azt mondja a Krisztus Jézus a végvacsorán a kenyérről, „ez az én testem”, nem egyebet ért rajta, hanem azt, amit szent János evangéliomában mond: „én vagyok az életnek kenyere”. Mert ott nem egyebet ért a Krisztus Jézus, hanem hogy az ő Teste minékünk kenyerünk és étkünk, mellyel él és tápláltatik a mi lelkünk, és a lélek által a test. Mert a test él a lélektől. Semmi nem egyéb annak okáért a Krisztus Jézusnak Testét ennünk, és Vérét innunk, hanem a szívnek teljes reménységével és bizodalmával hinnünk, hogy az ő Teste miérettünk adattatott halálra, Vére miérettünk ontatott ki, bűnünknek bocsánatára, és hogy csak az ő Testének és Vérének áldozatja miatt tartatunk meg az örök életre. Ekképpen hitnek általa részesülünk a Krisztus Jézus Testével és Vérével.

Consequently, when during the last supper Christ Jesus says about the bread that “this is my body”, he does not mean anything else by it, but what Saint John says in his Gospel: “I am the bread of life.”29 For there Christ Jesus does not mean anything else than that his Body is our bread and food, by which our soul lives and is nourished. And the body [is nourished] through the soul, for the body lives from the soul. Therefore, to eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ Jesus is nothing else than to believe with the full hope and confijidence of the heart that his Body was given over to death and his Blood was shed for our sake and for the forgiveness of our sin, and that we are saved for eternal life only because of the sacrifijice of his Body and Blood. In this manner we partake in the Body and Blood of Christ by faith.30

A Christus Testének étele miért mondatik lelki ételnek?

Why the eating of Christ’s Body is said to be spiritual food?

Továbbá, erről a részesülésről mondjuk, hogy lelki és nem testi módon lészen, mert a hit, amely ezt veszi, a léleké, nem a testé. Ennek utána, a javak is, melyeket e vacsorába

Further, we say that this partaking is spiritual and not corporal, since the faith, which receives it, belongs to the soul and not to the body. Consequently, the goods we receive in this supper

29 30

29  At this point one might claim that the reference to Jn. 6:48 betrays the influence of Zwingli’s explanation at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 as opposed to Luther’s literal interpretation of “hoc est corpus meum”. Nevertheless, the subsequent sentences clarify that the authors have moved far beyond a mere symbolic or rational understanding of the sacrament. 30  Cf. with Question 76 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “What is it then to eat the crucifijied body, and drink the shed blood of Christ? Answer: It is not only to embrace with believing heart all the suffferings and death of Christ and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin, and life eternal; but also, besides that, to become more and more united to his sacred body, by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us; so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding ‘flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone’ and that we live, and are governed forever by one spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul.”

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Table (cont.) veszünk, mennyei és lelki javak, nem testiek. Továbbá, ennek a Krisztus Jézussal való részesülésünknek csatornája a Szent Lélek, ki által minden javait is reánk ötli, és velünk közli a Krisztus Jézus, mint szent János mondja, „ebből ismerjük meg, hogy ő mibennünk lakozik, és mi őbenne, hogy az ő Lelkéből adott minekünk”.

are also heavenly and spiritual goods, not bodily ones. In addition, the channel of this partaking of ours with Christ Jesus is the Holy Spirit, by whom Christ Jesus bestows upon us as well as communicates with us all his benefactions, as Saint John says, “By this we know that he dwells in us, and we [dwell] in him, because he has given us of his Spirit”.31

Hányféle étel légyen az Úrnak vacsorájában?

How many kinds of eating are in the Lord’s Supper?

Itt azt is meg kell értenünk, hogy az Úrnak vacsorájában kétféle eledel vagyon: lelki és testi. A lelki avagy mennyei, Krisztus Jézusnak szent Teste és szent Vére. A testi a kenyér és a bor. És miképpen kétféle az eledel, azonképpen az étel is kétféle: testi és lelki. A test veszi a testi eledelt, a

Here we also have to understand that in the Lord’s Supper there are two kinds of food, namely spiritual and corporal.32 The spiritual or heavenly one is the holy Body and holy Blood of Christ Jesus. The corporal one is the bread and the wine. Thus, as the nourishment is twofold, in the same manner the eating is also dual:

31 32

31  Cf. 1 Jn. 4:13. As pointed out above, the authors follow Calvin’s and Bullinger’s argumentation, speaking of the soul’s nourishing by Christ’s body and blood through faith, and adding that the channel of this partaking is the Holy Spirit. Cf. with Article 23 of the Consensus Tigurinus: “Christ, by our eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, which are here fijigured, feeds our souls through faith by the agency of the Holy Spirit”. See Henry Beveridge’s translation in: http://www.creeds.net/Tigurinus/tigur-bvd.htm (accessed: 2 September 2010). Cf. also with Question 79 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “Why then does Christ call the bread ‘his body’, and the cup ‘his blood’, or ‘the new covenant in his blood’; and Paul the ‘communion of body and blood of Christ’? Answer: Christ speaks thus, not without great reason, namely, not only thereby to teach us, that as bread and wine support this temporal life, so his crucifijied body and shed blood are the true meat and drink, whereby our souls are fed to eternal life; but more especially by these visible signs and pledges to assure us, that we are as really partakers of his true body and blood by the operation of the Holy Spirit as we receive by the mouths of our bodies these holy signs in remembrance of him; and that all his suffferings and obedience are as certainly ours, as if we had in our own persons sufffered and made satisfaction for our sins to God.” http:// www.ccel.org/creeds/heidelberg-cat.html (accessed: 2 September 2010). See also Ch. 21 of the Second Helvetic Confession: “by the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit they [the faithful] also inwardly receive the flesh and blood of the Lord, and are thereby nourished unto life eternal”. http://www.ccel.org/creeds/helvetic.htm (accessed: 2 September 2010). 32  For a detailed discussion of the “kinds of eating” see Ch. 21 of the Second Helvetic Confession.

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Table (cont.) kenyeret és a bort, mely étel mondatik szentség szerint való ételnek is. A lélek veszi az ígéretben a Krisztus Jézusnak szent Testét, szent Vérét, hit által.

corporal and spiritual. The body receives the corporal nourishment, i.e. the bread and the wine—a manner of eating, which is also called eating according to the sacrament [i.e. “sacramental eating”]. The soul receives in the promise the holy Body and the holy Blood of Christ Jesus.

Miképpen legyen jelen Krisztus a vacsorában?

In what manner is Christ present in the Supper?

Továbbá, azt is eszünkbe vegyük, miképpen legyen a mi Urunk Krisztus Jézus a vacsorában jelen. A szentegyháztól soha a Krisztus Jézus el nem távozik, Isteni természete és hatalmassága szerint, miképpen ő maga mondja: „én veletek vagyok mind világ végezetig”. Én, én visellek titeket még vénségtekben is. Effféle ígéreti szerint a szentegyházban mindenha jelen vagyon a mi Urunk Krisztus Jézus. De e jelen voltának fölötte a vacsorában az ő teste, vére is jelen vagyon a hitnek, az ígéretben. Mert a hitnek oly ereje vagyon, hogy a távol való állatokat [valóságokat] is jelenvalóképpen veszi az Igében. Mert a hitnek mind a távol való, s mind a közel való hely egy.

Further, we should also bear in mind in what manner is our Lord Christ Jesus present in the Supper. Christ Jesus never departs from the holy church according to his divine nature and power, as he himself says: “I am with you always, to the end of the world”.33 I, I take care of you even in your old age. According to such promises of his, our Lord Christ Jesus is always present in the holy church. Nevertheless, beyond this presence, his body and blood are also present in the supper, for the faith, within the promise. [This happens] because faith has such a great power, that it receives even the remote realities as being present in the Word. Since for the faith both the remote and the nearby places are one.34

33 34

33  Mt. 28:20. Cf. with Question 47 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “Is not Christ then with us even to the end of the world, as he has promised? Answer: Christ is very man and very God; with respect to his human nature, he is no more on earth; but with respect to his Godhead, majesty, grace and spirit, he is at no time absent from us.” http://www.ccel.org/ creeds/heidelberg-cat.html (accessed: 2 September 2010). 34  Although the doctrine of impanation or a local inclusion of Christ’s body and blood in the elements of the Lord’s Supper in the sense of an extra-sacramental conjunction was rejected by Lutherans as well, they still maintained the ubiquity of Christ’s body. The Marosvásárhely Confession, however, beside refusing the inclusio localis, adheres to the Antiochene Christological model represented by the Swiss Reformers in regard to the fact that both natures of Christ retain their specifijic properties. Therefore, the attribute of omnipresence of Christ’s divine nature is not transferred to his human nature, i.e. to his

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Table (cont.) Ekképpen írja szent Pál a Galáciabelieknek, hogy szemük előtt feszíttetett meg a Krisztus Jézus. Maga35 nem Galáciában, hanem Jeruzsálemben, régen annak előtte, feszíttetett vala a Krisztus Jézus. Ábrahámról is azt mondja a Krisztus Jézus, hogy Ábrahám látta az ő napját azaz idejét, melyben a Krisztus Jézus a testben e világban élt. Maga a Krisztus Jézus születésének előtte sok száz esztendővel holt vala meg Ábrahám. Ezenképpen e mai nap a hivőknek is jelen vagyon a mi Urunk Krisztus Jézusnak szent Teste, és szent Vére, az ígéretben, hit által, miképpen a Galáciabelieknek a Krisztus Jézusnak feszítése jelen volt, és Ábrahám pátriárkának a Krisztus Jézusnak napja. De ezt értsed hitben és lélekben lenni, nem testiképpen. Mert test szerint a Krisztus Jézusnak ül Atyjának jobbján, honnan az ő ígéretiben minden javait közli mivelünk, éltet, táplál és oltalmaz.

És ezenképpen mondjuk jelen lenni a Krisztus Jézust az ő híveinek jótéteményiről is, melyek az ő Testéből, az ő ígéreti szerint, mireánk 35 36 37 származnak.

It is in this sense what Saint Paul writes to the Galatians, that Christ Jesus was crucifijied before their eyes,36 although Christ Jesus had not been crucifijied in Galatia, but in Jerusalem, a long time before. The Lord Christ Jesus says about Abraham also, that Abraham had seen his day, i.e. his time, in which Christ Jesus lived in this world in the flesh, yet Abraham had died many hundred years before the birth of Christ Jesus. Similarly, the holy Body and holy Blood of our Lord Christ Jesus is also present for the believers today37 within the promise, through faith, in the same manner as the crucifijixion of Christ Jesus was present for the Galatians, and as the day of Christ Jesus [was present] for the patriarch Abraham. Nonetheless, understand this as happening through faith, spiritually, and not in a corporal sense. For according to the body, Christ Jesus is sitting on the right hand of the Father, whence he shares all his benefijits with us, according to his promise, vivifying, nourishing as well as protecting [us]. And it is in this manner that we say also about the benefactions [availed to] his believers that Christ Jesus is present [through them], since these [benefactions] derive upon us from his Body, according to his promises.

body. The Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s corporal omnipresence is discarded within this same chapter: “for according to the body, Christ Jesus is sitting on the right hand of the Father”. This is also consonant with the answer to Question 80 of the Heidelberg Catechism. For a more detailed discussion of this matter see István Pásztori-Kupán, “The Doctrine of Communicatio Idiomatum in the Theological Thinking of Heinrich Bullinger,” in: Emlékkönyv Tőkés István kilencvenedik születésnapjára / Festschrift für István Tőkés zum 90. Geburtstag (Kolozsvár: PTI–EREK–KRE, 2006), 299–323. 35  In this context, the Hungarian word “maga” does not mean “himself”, but “although”. Cf. with the text of 2 Cor. 6:8–10 of the 1590 edition of Gáspár Károli’s Bible translation. 36  Gal. 3:1. 37  This is another sign showing that the Confession emerged from sermons explaining the Lord’s Supper.

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Table (cont.) Mondja magát a szentegyház fejének. Mert miképpen a tagoknak a főtől vagyon indulatjok [kezdetük] és életük: azonképpen mi a Krisztus Jézus testének érdeme miatt élünk. Mondja magát szőlőtőnek. Mert miképpen a szőlővessző a szőlőtőtől él, és onnan vészen zsírt és erőt, azonképpen mi is a Krisztus Jézus Testének érdeméből vett élettel élünk. Mondja továbbá a szentegyház vőlegényének magát. Mert miképpen a vőlegény táplálja és oltalmazza az ő hites társát, azonképpen a Krisztus Jézus őrzi és táplálja az ő szent egyházát. De ezeknek e jótéteményeknek mind feje a Krisztus Jézusnak megtestesülése, miért hogy a mi testünket vette fel és testünket közlöttük ővele, úgyannyira, hogy (amint szent Pál szól) húsunk az Ő húsából legyen, csontunk az ő csontjaiból. Annak okáért lehetetlen, hogy minket elhagyjon, és ne oltalmazzon hatalmával, miképpen ember az ő tagjaitól, csontjaitól és testétől el nem távozhatik. Annak okáért e sok jótéteményekért és javakért is, melyek mireánk a Krisztus Jézusnak Testéből áradnak, mondjuk, hogy a Krisztus Jézus e Vacsorában jelen vagyon, és közli mivelünk minden javait, az ő ígéretiben.

[Christ] calls himself the head of the holy church,38 because as the members have their beginning and life from the head, in the same fashion, we live by the merit of the Body of Christ Jesus. He calls himself the vine,39 because as the branch has its life from the vine, thence receiving its nourishment and energy, in the same fashion we live by a life taken from the merit of the Body of Christ Jesus. Further, he calls himself the bridegroom of the holy church,40 because as the bridegroom nourishes and protects his faithful companion, in the same manner Christ Jesus guards and nourishes his holy church. Nonetheless, the fountainhead of all these benefactions is the incarnation of Christ Jesus, inasmuch as he assumed our body and we imparted our body to him, to the extent that (as Saint Paul says) our flesh is of his flesh, and our bones are of his bones.41 For this reason it is impossible for him to leave us and not to protect us with his power, just as one man cannot depart from his members, bones and body. Consequently, due to these many benefactions as well as benefijits, which are pouring upon us from the Body of Christ Jesus, we say that Christ Jesus is present within this Supper and shares all his benefijits with us in his promise.

38 39 40 41

38

 Cf. Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18.  Jn. 15:5. 40  Cf. Mt. 9:15; Mt. 25:1–13; Mk. 2:19–20; Lk. 5:34–35; Jn. 3:29. 41  Eph. 5:30. 39

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Table (cont.) De mondjuk, hogy e jelen létel nem Nevertheless, we say that this presence testi jelen létel, hanem lelki. Mert csak is not corporal, but spiritual presence, a hit fogja és érti ezt meg, nem a test. since only the faith can grasp and understand this, not the body.42 Hogy a hitetlenek nem veszik Krisztusnak szent Testét, szent Vérét

That the unbelievers do not receive the holy Body and holy Blood of Christ

Oly jelenlétét azért a Krisztus Jézus Testének és Vérének nem valljuk, mely hitnek kívüle legyen. Mert a hitnek kívüle senkivel magát a Krisztus Jézus nem közli. Annak okáért tagadjuk, hogy a hitetlenek Krisztus Jézus Testét vegyék.

Therefore, we do not confess such a presence of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, which is outside of faith, because Christ Jesus does not impart himself to anyone beyond faith. Consequently, we deny that the unbelievers may receive the Body of Christ Jesus. Mert valakiben a Krisztus Jézusnak If someone does not possess the spirit lelke nincs, az Krisztus Jézusnak Testét of Christ Jesus within himself/herself, nem veheti. A hitetlenekben nincsen he/she cannot receive the Body of a Krisztus Jézusnak lelke, mert azt Christ Jesus. The unbelievers do not mondja szent Pál, hogy Krisztusnak possess the spirit of Christ Jesus within Beliállal semmi közi nincs; azért a themselves, since Saint Paul says that hitetlenek nem vehetik az ő Testét. Christ has nothing in common with Belial;43 thus, the unbelievers cannot receive his Body. Továbbá a Krisztus Jézus is azt Further, Christ Jesus also says that the mondja, hogy aki az ő Testét eszi és one who eats his Body and drinks his Vérét issza, el nem vesz. A hitetlenek Blood will not perish. The unbelievers elvesznek: azért az Ő Testét nem eszik, perish: thus, they neither eat his Body, 42 43 Vérét nem isszák. nor drink his Blood.

42  See e.g. Chapter 36 of the French Confession of La Rochelle, published in the same year 1559: “We confess that the Lord’s Supper, which is the second sacrament, is a witness of the union which we have with Christ, inasmuch as he not only died and rose again for us once, but also feeds and nourishes us truly with his flesh and blood [nous repaît et nourrit vraiment de sa chair et de son sang], so that we may be one in him, and that our life may be in common. Although he be in heaven until he come to judge all the earth, still we believe that by the secret and incomprehensible power of his Spirit he feeds and strengthens us with the substance of his body and of his blood [par la vertu secrète et incompréhensible de son Esprit il nous nourrit et vivifijie de la substance de son corps et de son sang]. We hold that this is done spiritually [spirituellement] not because we put imagination and fancy in the place of fact and truth, but because the greatness of this mystery exceeds the measure of our senses and the laws of nature [ce mystère surmonte en sa hautesse la mesure de notre sens et tout ordre de nature]. In short, because it is heavenly [céleste], it can only be apprehended by faith [ne peut être appréhendé que par foi].” http://www.creeds.net/reformed/ frconf.htm (accessed: 2 September 2010). 43  Cf. 2 Cor. 6:15.

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Table (cont.) Annak utána szent Pál is szólván a Vacsorabeli méltatlan ételről és italról, nem ezt mondja: „aki a Krisztus Jézusnak Testét méltatlanul eszi”, hanem: „aki a kenyérből méltatlanul eszik, és a pohárból méltatlanul iszik, vétkezik a Krisztusnak Teste és Vére ellen”. Mi legyen ez, [ugyan]azon szent Pál megmagyarázza: Kárhozatot vészen, úgymond, magának. Tudjuk pedig azt, hogy a Krisztus Jézusnak Teste nem kárhozat, hanem élet.

Saint Paul also, when speaking about the unworthy manner of eating and drinking at the Supper, does not say that “whoever eats the Body of Christ Jesus unworthily”, but that “whoever eats the bread or drinks from the cup unworthily will be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord.”44 The same Saint Paul explains the meaning of this, saying that [the one who eats or drinks unworthily] takes damnation to himself/herself. Yet we know that the Body of Christ Jesus is not damnation, but life. Therefore, the unbelievers do not Azért a hitetlenek a Krisztus Jézus receive the Body of Christ Jesus Testét nem veszik állattya [lényege] according to its substance and szerint, és lélek szerint, hanem csak spiritually, but merely the signs of the a Krisztus Jézus Testének és Vérének jeleit, a bort és a kenyeret. Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, the wine and the bread. Végezetre, haszontalan dolgot a Finally, Christ Jesus never commanded Krisztus Jézus sehol nem parancsolt, anything useless, which could be mely minekünk veszedelmünkre harmful for us. The reception of the volna. A Krisztus Jézus Testének vétele Body of Christ Jesus without faith is hit nélkül haszontalan, ezért azt nem useless—so he does not command it. If parancsolja. Ha nem parancsolja, he does not order it, then he does not nem is akarja; tehát erővel tőle el nem want it either. Thus, we cannot take vehetjük, akár mint [ti. bármennyire it [i.e. his Body] from him by force, is] adjuk szóval a hitetleneknek. regardless of how much we might give it verbally to the unbelievers. Az Úr vacsoráját mi végre kell gyakorlanunk?

For what purpose do we have to perform the Lord’s Supper?

Utolszor, azt is mondjuk és valljuk, hogy az Úr Testének és Vérének vételére a szent Vacsorában int és kényszerít minket. Először, a mi Urunk Krisztus Jézusnak parancsolatja, aki azt mondja: „Vegyétek, egyétek. Igyatok ebből mindnyájan”. És „tegyétek ezt az én 44 45 emlékezetemre” stb.

Finally, we also say and confess that within the Holy Supper the Lord exhorts and compels us to receive his Body and Blood. First, it is a commandment of our Christ Jesus, who says, “Take, eat; drink from it, all of you”. And “do this in remembrance of me” etc.45

44

 Cf. 1 Cor. 11:27.  Cf. Mt. 26:27; Mk. 14:22; 1 Cor. 11:24–25.

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Table (cont.) Annak utána a hasznok, melyeket az Úrnak Vacsorájában veszünk: Először annak okáért, a Krisztus Jézus vacsorájának hozzánk való vétele erősíti a mi hitünket, a Krisztus Jézusnak ígéretiben. Mert miképpen a külső jegyek meg nem csalják szájunknak és szemünknek érzékenységét: azonképpen a Krisztus Jézusnak ígéretiben igazán adattatik a hivőknek a Krisztus Jézusnak szent Teste és szent Vére, a hit által, kikből mireánk a megújulás és elevenedés száll, mint szent Ágoston szól: „Aki, úgymond, akar élni, vagyon honnét éljen: járuljon ide, higgyen, egyesüljön Krisztussal, hogy megéledjen”. Annak utána, int e szent Vacsora hálaadásra is, hogy a mi Urunk Krisztus Jézusnak velünk való jótéteményiről és javairól, melyeket halálával és feltámadásával szerzett, hálát adjunk. Melyről szól a Krisztus Jézus, mondván: „Ezt tegyétek az én emlékezetemre”. Szent Pál is: „Valamennyiszer észtek e kenyérből, az Úrnak halálát hirdessétek”. Harmadszor, int az atyafijiúi szeretetre is. Mert miképpen a kenyér, mellyel a test él, sok búzaszemből vagyon, és a bor sok szőlőszemből: azonképpen nekünk, kik egy főnek tagjai vagyunk, egyesekké kell lennünk, melyről szól szent Pál, mondván: „Egy a kenyér, 46 47 48 49 sokan egy test vagyunk”.

Then the benefijits we receive within the Lord’s Supper: First, our reception of the Supper of Christ Jesus strengthens our faith in the promises of Christ Jesus. For as the external elements do not deceive the senses of our mouth and eyes, in the same fashion, within the promises of Christ Jesus, the holy Body and holy Blood of Christ Jesus is truly given to the believers through faith. From these [i.e. from his Body and Blood] renewal and redemption descend upon us, as saint Augustine says, “whoever wants to live, has whence to live: let him/her come near, believe, and unite with Christ in order to be revived.”46 Further, this Holy Supper urges us also to thanksgiving, thus to give thanks to our Lord Christ Jesus concerning his benefactions and benefijits he provided for us, acquiring these by his death and resurrection. About which Christ Jesus speaks, saying, “Do this in remembrance of me.”47 Also Saint Paul, “As often as you eat of the bread, proclaim the Lord’s death.”48 Thirdly, it also urges us to brotherly love. For as the bread by which the body lives is made of many seeds of wheat, and the wine of many seeds of grape, in the same manner, we, who are members of one head, have to become one. Saint Paul speaks about this, saying, “There is one bread, and we who are many are one body.”49

46  Cf. Augustine, Tractatus in Johannis evangelium [Tractate on the Gospel of John] 26, 13: “He who would live, has where to live, has whence to live. Let him come near, let him believe; let him be embodied, that he may be made to live.” See Migne, Patrologia Latina 35, 1613: “Qui vult vivere, habet ubi vivat, habet unde vivat. Accedat, credat; incorporetur, ut vivifijicetur.” 47  Lk. 22:19. 48  1 Cor. 11:26. 49  1 Cor. 10:17.

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Table (cont.) Negyedszer: különbséget teszen miköztünk és a hitetlen pogányok között, kik a szentegyháznak nem tagjai. Egyszersmind vigasztal is a szentegyháznak megmaradásáról mind világ végezetig, szent Pálnak mondása szerint, ki azt mondja: „Valamennyiszer a kenyérből esztek, és e pohárból isztok, az Úrnak halálát hirdessétek, míglen eljő”.

In the fourth instance, it distinguishes us from the unbelieving Pagans, who are not members of the Holy Church.50 Simultaneously, it also comforts us concerning the continued existence of the Holy Church until the end of the world, according to the words of Saint Paul, who says, “As often as you eat of the bread and drink of the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes”.51 Ezt a hív és istenfélő keresztyének By seeing and understanding this, the látván és megértvén, e szent és faithful and God-fearing Christians üdvösséges tanítást meg ne utálják, should not despise this sacred and hanem lelkük vigasztalására erről salvifijic doctrine, but rather ought to gyakorta elmélkedjenek. És buzgó meditate upon it frequently for the szívből, lélekből kérjék velünk consolation of their souls. From within egyetemben a Krisztus Jézus nevében a devoted heart and soul they should pray together with us, in the name of a szent Lelket, ki minket minden Christ Jesus, for the Holy Spirit, who igazságra megtanítson, és tegyen minket a Jézus Krisztusban egyesekké, will guide us into all truth52 and make hogy őneki miköztünk valami kedves us one in Jesus Christ so that he may dolgai lehessenek. Ámen. have some pleasing achievements among us. Amen. Kolozsvárott Nyomtattot, Heltai Printed in Kolozsvár, in Gáspár Heltai’s Gáspár műhelyében, 1559. offfijice, 1559.

50 51 52

50  The message of this sentence can be understood better in a historical context. The victory of the Turks (i.e. “the unbelieving Pagans” as the Hungarians regarded them in the sixteenth century) at Mohács (1526) and their conquest of Buda, the Hungarian capital (1541) marked the end of the mediaeval Hungarian Kingdom and imposed a serious threat upon the relative independence of the Transylvanian Principality. The subsequent consolation in the text concerning the continued existence of the Holy Church bears an important historical and theological message: regardless of the present fate of the nation, the believers, who are distinguished from the pagans by their very access to the Lord’s Supper, must cling to the promise of the returning Christ. The Marosvásárhely Confession gives here a theologically adequate answer to a highly complicated and dangerous historical situation. 51  1 Cor. 11:26. 52  Cf. Jn. 16:13.

FAMILY-MODELED CONGREGATION Tamás Juhász Introduction The following article emphasizes the view of the church as communio sanctorum, reflected in classical form by the Catechism of Heidelberg, question 55: “What do you understand by the communion of saints? . . . Every member of Christ . . . must know it to be his duty to readily and cheerfully employ his gifts, for the advantage and salvation of other members”. It is within this ecclesiological frame that I try to justify the possibility and feasibility of family-modeled church. In my opinion there are some forms of behavior of social groups of people in small villages, in extended families, in neighborhoods, that can be adapted to church-order and to the ministry of the church. My concrete thesis is the following: Our church should adopt its thinking, planning, and acting in terms of family-sized congregations in order to defend itself against today’s global political influences, against ideas alienated from Christianity, against the destructive efffects of an inhuman economy. Four Observations I have four observations that attracted my attention. They not only reflect on the question that lies ahead, but also cast light on a few characteristics of the family-modeled congregation. a). My fijirst observation recalls the title and economic program of the British economist E.F. Schumacher (Small is beautiful) written in 1973, fijirst mentioning the concept of sustainable development.1 According to Schumacher, “small is beautiful” since small sized, clear-cut, adaptable companies are cost-saving, human, and sustainable. A similar concept had already been highlighted by the Transylvanian economist, Kálmán

1  The book is available (27.01.2011): www.ee.iitb.ac.in/student/~pdarshan/SmallIsBeautiful Schumacher.pdf.

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Konopi2 in 1931. The family-modeled congregation would also be suitable for offfering forms of behavior to redress the state of economy. b). My second source of inspiration was a study by A. van de Beek, in which he describes the tasks and opportunities of church and Christianity in a world of changing culture.3 One of the shortcomings of today’s cultural environment is the absence of real authority. Van de Beek emphasizes that only belief in God is able to give a structure of authority to a society that uses false authorities (idols and ideologies). Believers represent a real authority which presupposes the existence of people “with essence”, of people who meet God. “We shall not expect any more a comeback of the great-family (the clan). But even church groups and church congregations are able to take the place of a meso-structure: a valid community in which members feel welcome.”4 c). The third observation comes from my own experience of familymeetings we organized in the last fijifteen years. Since 1997 we have organized a meeting for family-members and relatives every summer. From the about 120 descendants of my grandfather who belong to the extended family, usually 60–70 members come together. These people get to know each other more and more closely. Families living in Hungary and Transylvania, but also in faraway countries participate. What we named earlier the “unifijication of the Hungarian nation beyond the borders” is no longer a joke, but a small realization. d). The small community/big family way of thinking, which can be linked to kinship meetings, has also a peculiar characteristic: the Christianity of the families of ministers, an expression used by Helmut Thielicke.5 He writes about the stimulating and exemplary efffect of the piety which exists within minister’s families, but he warns of the danger that it can lead to a piety which does not come from the heart, it can become formal, stereotypical or Pharisaical, and even repulsive. There are well known cases in which people who grow up in minister’s families come to occupy an important role in public life.6 We can also give a few examples, when

2  Konopi Kálmán, Emberséges közgazdaságot! [We need a humanized economy], in: Mezőgazdasági Szemle [Agricultural Review], Dicsőszentmárton, 1931/12, 279–280. 3  A. van de Beek, Tussen traditie een vervreemding. Over kerk en christenzijn in een veranderende cultuur (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1985). 4  A. van de Beek, “Een vaderloze maatschappij” [A fatherless society], in: Tussen traditie en vervreemding. 5  Helmut Thielicke, Theologische Ethik I., J.C.B. Mohr (Tübingen: Paul Siebeck, 1951), 180–182. Thielicke uses the term “Pfarrhaus-Christentum” [parsonage-christianity]. 6  The political parties of the Hungarian nation from Transylvania are represented in the European Parliament by three people, all three of them are reformed, two of them

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this family model leads to the exact opposite outcome with consequences of deviation and deep alienation. In my opinion, however, the Christianity of minister’s families in Transylvania shows a specifijic community building and shaping power. Many positive examples prove it. In Transylvanian minority life, kinship relations between minister’s families, especially extended families, can be very strong. Obedience and responsibility often becomes a life-style: we have to take care of the members of our congregation, our partners who belong to the family of Christ, in the same way we do with our own flesh and blood, our family. We have to organize our faith-community in the same way we pray and work together with our kin: we have to mobilize the spiritual Israel, which God entrusted to us and exercise as the Christian life together. Biblical Roles With this in mind, it will be instructive and illuminating to fijind out the role the Bible attributes to the family, to the household itself. These biblical groundings, as we will see, do not defijine family and household structures merely formally, but they also provide us with suitable material for the content of the defijinition of a family-modelled congregation. a) Family and Child-Blessing The fijirst blessing and commandment received by the fijirst man and woman is extended to the family and to all the members of the household as well. The biblical blessing is not an end, it is a beginning. It does not conclude a process or an action (as we interpret the blessing at the end of a church service), but it starts it all. The blessing is God’s creative power, which starts the reproduction of life. It is mentioned three times in the story of creation: “And God blessed them . . .” First on the fijifth day when he created the fijish and the birds, the second time when he created humans on the sixth day (this blessing refers also to the beasts of the earth He created earlier), and lastly it refers to the seventh day, when the blessing marks the dawn of the day. The blessings given to the animals and to humans show an essential diffference. The word-act of God that is repeated every day (“And

come from a minister’s family with many children and both of them are ministers with a big family.

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God said . . .”) becomes personal here for the fijirst time, and only here: God blessed them and said to them: “Be fruitful and increase in number, fijill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fijish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1,28). Everything the other creatures fulfijil through their reproductive, self-preserving instinct, the human carries out with his personal and voluntary obedience. What does God’s primary blessing give energy to? The answer to this question is that God’s blessing gives power to this creature to carry out three tasks received as a commandment: – Be fruitful! – Increase in number; fijill the earth and subdue it! – Rule over all living creatures! The fijirst task serves the preservation of humankind, the procreation and birth of a suitable number of offfspring. As a fijirst consequence of the blessing, man and woman do not experience their own male-female characters only as a momentary community having an end in itself, but rather as a community facing the future of procreating and giving birth to children. The more children are created and born, the more clearly it certifijies that the creative power of God’s blessing empowers man and woman, and that they are obedient to God’s commandment. The second task is not synonymous to the fijirst one. Being fruitful is about fathering and bearing descendants, while multiplication is about staying alive and growing in health of the children born to them. Only vital descendants are able to fijill the territory given to them, to replenish and subdue the earth. Interpreting this locus, a biblical scholar of Kolozsvár makes reference to the—old parish registers that are hundreds of years old. They clearly show that a mother may have had ten to twelve children, but that sometimes half of them, or in worse cases even more, died before being confijirmed.7 Our great-grandparents and ancestors fulfijilled the commandment of being fruitful, but because of contagious diseases multiplication was much smaller. However now that baby- and child mortality is almost insignifijicant, we could multiply rapidly if we were to fulfijil the commandment to be fruitful. Finally, being fruitful also means to fijill the earth, the territory marked for us. 7  Kozma Zsolt, Szavak az Igéből [Vocables from the Word] Kolozsvár, 2003. 24–25 and 30–31.

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According to God’s command the third task is dominion (rule). We shall point here only to one philological aspect of this word: in its basic sense, dominion suggests a harsh and fijirm subjection. The occurrence of this word in other biblical passages may lead us to the conclusion that the ruling human is responsible for the surrounding world created by God, or in a fijigurative sense that the human executes stewardship over the world. This dominion however is not expanded to other people or human creatures. This means that God does not want people to dominate each other. Originally the Bible sees the relation to a fellow man as a brotherhood realized under God’s sole dominion, and the man-woman relationship is referred to as a matching “helper-partner” relation. It is very important to note that God’s threefold command of blessing is valid only when taken together as a whole, inseparable. If the command of fructifijication means the raising-up of viable and surviving descendants, the previous meaning of the command for multiplication should be complemented. The obedience to this command is not only manifested when many children are born out of a marriage and thus consider the blessing of more to be efffected more intensively. Instead, a family is blessed in which the number of born and raised descendants is necessary for the inhabitation and dominion (stewarding) of the created world (which is the living space designated and possessed by all of us). b) Household in the Bible It is a well-known fact, that in both Old and New Testament the term oikos refers not only to the house as a building, but also to the community of people living there: in the fijirst place the family, then the relatives which depend on the house father, and even the slaves, too. Neither the Hebrew nor the Greek language has a word for “family”, but they use the term beth or oikos instead. “Family” in modern sense is not equal with oikos, because in the Bible it meant quite more than a biological community. It meant a community of people living in the same tent, under the same roof and around the same hearth. Not only this wide meaning—wider than the blood-relation familymembers—makes the term oikos fijitting to be compared with the church and the family, but also two other considerations afffijirm this: – It is God, who builds up the house (Ps 127), but this building operation of God happens without construction material: it is a work of creation. That means, the community of people in the oikos is gathered by God.

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The Old Testament often speaks about Israel, God’s chosen people, as the house of God. – It is a work of creation, when God’s Son gathers a community chosen for everlasting life (see Heidelberg Catechism 54). This theological view of oikos is emphasized by the house-churches and the household codes of the New Testament. It is well-known that the folks of the Old Testament were organized along a tribal-generation-family level, and that the church of the New Testament was centered on the community of faith and love instead of the blood-relations. Nevertheless, the latter was also organized in familytype communities of a household-shape. The fijirst Christian meetings took place in house-churches, and they were named kat’oikon congregations. The house-churches in the primitive church include not only the family of the house-father, but also a few other persons and groups, because it was open for all Christians from diffferent origins. The total number of Christians hosted in a house-church was about 10–40 persons.8 The strong bounding element among these Christians was the piety and the shared fear of God. “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24,15). The very same concern and responsibility for the salvation of the entire family is shown by Cornelius (Acts 10), by the jailer in Philippi (Acts 16), and by Stephanas (1Cor 1) when they decided to be baptised along with their entire households. The families of the Old and the New Testaments are all characterized by reciprocal solidarity manifested in the time of peril and distress, in the spirit of “weep with those who weep” (Rom 12, 15). At the death of Jacob, the mourning transcends the circle of relatives and it is shared even by the pharaoh and his household (Gen 45, 2 and 50, 8). The lack of solidarity of the relatives towards an endangered family in their clan will bring to them the title of a “Family of the un-sandaled” (Deut 25, 10) and this was to be made public in the entire Israel. The moral admonitions about the policies and the right attitude toward marriage, family and work are an important part of the paraenesis of the New Testament. Eduard Schweizer perceived a specifijic contrast in the Colossians. This letter warns us about the higher things (2, 21 and 3, 2), but the policy from 3, 18–4, 2 is about living in the world, about some kind of “sober

8  Peter Stuhlmacher, Der Brief an Philemon (Zürich – Einsiedeln – Köln – Neukirchen – Vluyn: Benziger – Neukirchener Verlag, 1975). Exkurs über die Hausgemeinden, 70–75.

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profanity”. This certifijies that the New Testament is in accordance with the created world of marriage, family and work as personal, and not artifijicial, or merely functional structures. The diffferences between husband and wife, between parents and children, between lords and slaves, are not anchored in the order of nature, and thus it implies no sub- or supra-ordination when we feel at home in these personal structures. We are not looking for a rigid world order behind these structures; even less do we construct ideologies concerning them—we just take cognizance of them. Within families and in work-relations, personal contacts make us aware of who is weak, who is indigent. Compared to the pagan Greek morality it is quite an advance that women, children, and servants can be subjects of moral acts.9 Later, paganism sneaks back in under a Christian mask, and the “sober profanity” which thinks about the given order without ideological meaning is then relativized so that the proper biblical connections vanish.10 The relationalities of personal structures in the immediate or extended family are expressed by Gábor Czakó with the term “dynamic hierarchy”.11 A variety of roles in the family reflect the threefold ministry of Christ: prophet, priest and king.12 For example, it is usually a High Priest service task when the father (or even grandfather) reads the Bible or starts saying prayer at the family table. Yet when at his last birthday my 3-year-old grandson criticized the whole family by reminding us “We didn’t say any ‘Come-Lord-Jesus!’ ”, then, in that moment the little child was the High Priest. c) Transcendent Function of the Family? In the view of Sándor Karácsony, the greatest Hungarian pedagogue of the 20th century, family connections are not only relational, but they have a transcendent function, too. He emphasizes that the most important factor in education is not the teacher, not the school, nor the state, or the public realm, but the family. All other factors are less important or even without any importance, as long as this one factor exists. Why is education by family so special? We have to grasp the three introductory theses from Sándor Karácsony:

 9

 Eduard Schweizer, Der Brief an die Kolosser. (Zürich – Einsiedeln – Köln – Neukirchen – Vluyn, Benziger – Neukirchener, 1976). Exkurs (zu 3,18–4,1): Die Haustafeln, 159–164. 10  Eduard Schweizer, Der Brief an die Kolosser, 162. 11  A well-known Roman-Catholic thinker from today’s Hungary. Quoted from his reading at the Family-Conference, Marosvásárhely, 27.09.2010. http://www.erdely.ma/hitvilag .php?id=75157&what=archivum of 30, January 2011. 12  Heidelberg Catechism Q&A. 31.

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c1) “The real form of education is the Wonderful Life itself, because only this kind of life can be free. Humanity in the universe is limitless, existence is sub specie aeternitatis timeless, and for this reason inexplicable. It is a wonderful freedom that we live—me and you—existing ‘sub specie aeternitatis’ in the universe. One who limits the limitless, who explains the incomprehensible as comprehensible, deprives us from our freedom” A real free life is thus rooted in transcendence, because it let wonder—the infijinite, the timelessness and the incomprehensibleness—be wonder. c2) This wonderful life in freedom is the frame for social education, which means always a direct action: one person, the educator, acting upon the other person, the pupil. The fijirst one is active, the second one is passive. c3) The third factor to understand family as a special place for social education is the idea of coordination as a basic structure of the society. The Hungarian set of mind doesn’t know any subordination or supra ordination: Hungarian people always think, speak and act in a coordinating manner. This circumstance is reflected in the structure of Hungarian language as well. “In the Hungarian mindset coordination—meaning the correlation between me and you—can only be comprehended if the principle of one to the other is given, or even guaranteed in a transcendent manner. This is only possible in a single way: on a family basis. In the Hungarian mindset our binding to the other family members is not altruism, and our reluctance is not egoism. Our opposition is not class struggle. The opposite pole is not individualism. The other person is inside me or missing from me. If he/she exists inside me, then my act is service, thus bearable. If he/ she exists inside me, but the reciprocal is missing from him/her, then my act is sacrifijice, and this surplus can restore the dislocated basic relation between us. If he/she exists inside me, but the reciprocal cannot exist (in the case of a child or a weak, old, or sick person) then my act is love and the social relationship is again possible between us”.13 Family education is important because only family can prepare a person with the integrity needed to be sent to school. “The more parental houses there are with fresh air that train grounded people, houses that are

13  Sándor Karácsony, Ocsúdó magyarság [Hungarians in rising] (Budapest: Széphalom Könyvműhely, 2002), 32.

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themselves inhabited by people, the higher the chance that persons with integrity will exit schools and enter the big life.”14 d) Steward and Stewardship in the Bible15 When all the members of a household formed an economic community, they worked together like the Wife of Noble Character and her house (Proverbs 31, 10–31). Not only the common work, but also the common consumption was part of the community. In the world of waste, and consumer behaviour we should follow the commandment of Exodus 12, 4 word for word: “If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbour, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat”. Family-life needs coordinating, and God provides for leadership: it is the steward of the parables. --Who is a Steward? The well-known word-pair ‘strangers and sojourners’ occurs frequently in both the Old and New Testament; fijirst of all I think of 1Chronicles 29, 15 and Ephesians 2, 19. The expression refers to foreign people living among others without settlement right, citizenship, and right to inherit, but who are allowed to work, to have subsistence, and be protected by the family– genus–village, just like family members and local citizens. Although the meaning of this word-pair still has to do with being a foreigner, and one in transit at that, both texts call the paroikos as sojourner and servant ahead of God. The paroikos gets the dignity belonging to the oiko-nomos function. The paroikos-oikonomos is thus a steward. The whole context of the Scripture teaches us that we can talk about steward only in the case when people themselves adopt God’s order of salvation, the oikonomia. What is God’s oikonomia? To answer this question we have to remember the two concepts of time used in the New Testament: the human time (kronos) and the divine time (kairos). The second one marks the fatal moments which have to do with God’s salvation, when the eternal God steps into the time we can count. God chooses

14

 Sándor Karácsony, op. c. 254.  See for the next paragraphs Helge Brattgård, Im Haushalt Gottes. Eine theologische Studie über Grundgedanken und Praxis der Stewardship (Berlin und Hamburg: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1964), 37–89. 15

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such moments and puts them in a coherent order, the oikonomia. A steward is someone who is living in the kronos but recognizes the kairos, who is prepared for these moments, so that God can use him or her in the plan of salvation. (1 Corinthians 4, 1) From the steward-parables of Jesus I emphasize now Luke 12, 42–48. The good steward has three features: – faithfulness—everything belongs to his lord, he is responsible to him, so he cannot use anything for his own purposes, he keeps himself back, and preserves everything. Faithfulness is his right relationship with the lord. – brightness—the right relation to the things committed to him. He manages everything in the right time. He is focused on the situations, the circumstances. The Lord is late, unexpected things can occur. On the contrary side: the bad and wicked servant has unfruitful thoughts, avoids risks, and misses the creativity of love. – knows the day—is aware of the obligation to give account. --What is Stewardship? English Bible-translations use this term for the oikonomia. Oikonomia is an international technical term in diffferent languages for the economy, even though basically it means household, housekeeping. The oikonomos (steward) was the free man or servant to whom the lord handed over the leadership of the household. If we say that a steward is someone who gives money and time for the benefijit of people, we narrow the meaning of the term oikonomos as used in the Bible. The servant responsible for the household in the parable did not necessarily offfer or give, but planned with two foci. He kept count of the money, the property of the lord, and he was prepared to be called to account by his lord. The dual accounting can mean: he counted the days, when, whom, what kind of work he has to give, and what he has to pay for it. But he never knew when he was called upon to give an account to the lord, so he had to be prepared any time. If the steward counts on the return of the lord and the responsibility of giving account, this means for the household that he has to oversee, that there is a higher ideal above the family, a not-worldly authority, the King of Kings. The steward is correlated to the Lord, and thus he gets his identity, human dignity, and thus the family gets a peaceful rhythm, a daily balance. The self-respect and identity obtained in this way is the basis of Christian stewardship. And the concept of biblical stewardship is the only moral

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standard the family-modeled church can use to fijight with the wordly consumer outlook. It can theoretically offfer remarks of wisdom on the subject of economy and its management. Family-Modeled Congregation a) A family sized congregation can achieve a collective behaviour that would bear witness to Christ’s sovereignty over our lives and our world. This is sorely needed nowadays because many people think that their lives are being ruled by politics, by media that proclaim foreign ideas, and by distant and unknown lords of the economy. And by thinking that way, one is not taking any action against this fact, but rather tolerates foreign influence. Yet mass society cannot offfer any kind of protection against this foreign influence. Even congregations of six- or eight hundred church members led by one pastor only (so-called “one man’s churches”) can do very little about it. The reason why a family-scaled congregation is efffective is found in the fact that it is open, it is built on trust, and is interconnected with other congregations due to their confessional unity and unity of actions. b) How large is a family-scaled congregation? Just so large that one “head of the family” (that is, the pastor, the curator, the presbyter, the diacon, the youth leader, etc.) should be able to oversee it: know all members by their names, address them by their names, visit them, and mobilize them. In the past there ten to twelve family members used to live and work together in the large family. Whenever there was a bigger collective job to do, they used to gather 30–40 relatives together in order to help along. If a presbytery or consistory is able to organize even a large two- or three thousand member congregation into such small communities, then the family scaled model can be realized even in large congregations. The fewer families (maximum of fijifty persons) one presbyter needs to “get moving”, the more flexible the whole community is. One should form communities according to streets, blocks, stairways in cities, and by natural neighbourhoods in villages.16

16  Recommendation in the rapport of Section Witness of the General Assembly of the WCC, New Delhi 1961: “In urbanized and industrialized regions of the western world . . . church congregations should try to organize in secularized parts of the society small Christian cells of groups: a handful typists and shop assistants in a great store, a dozen workers from diffferent sections in the factory, eight researcher scholars and their wife’s from a chemical factory, a group of Christian teachers from the faculty of a high

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c) The organizing of para-churches can be a success or a failure, but in every case it witness is to address local solutions in a global world. It can be a matter of life or even of survival. “Family trees are always trees of knowledge and often they are also trees of life”.17 Friedmann’s view fortuitously coincides with one of A. van de Beek’s repeatedly asserted thesis: Christians do not change the world for better. Christian thought—or religion in general—has no need to merge with human progress or politics, because it has to do with eternity, and not with utility.18 The Hungarian pedagogue, the Rabbi from New York, and the Dutch reformed theologian, see and say the same as the steward of the Bible: the extended family, the household-people, the small church-community, have no signifijicance in themselves. They pass beyond themselves, their existence and actions have a transcendent goal: to witness to the presence of God in this world and to witness to the real life and future of human creatures in God’s world.

school, a mini-congregation of Christian believers from two or three streets which gathers in one’s house. They should try in their own special territory of life to become a church, people of God”. Cf. G. Brennecke (ed.), Jesus Christus das Licht der Welt. Berichte [Jesus Christ the Light of the World News], 1963. 89, quoted by Gottfried Holtz, Die Parochie. Geschichte und Problematik (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1971), 50. 17  Edwin H. Friedmann, Generation to generation. Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York London: The Guilford Press, 1985). 33. 18  A. van de Beek, “Christian Identity is Identity in Christ” in Christian Identity. Edited by Eduardus Van der Borght, (Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2008), 27. A. van de Beek, “To Be Free, Religion should Keep Herself Free.” in Freedom of Religion. Edited by A. van de Beek et alii, (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010), 218–219.

PREACHING THE WORD OF GOD F. Gerrit Immink A Theological Sketch of a Homiletical Dilemma In protestant worship the sermon is characterized as the ministry of the Word of God. The notion “Word of God” refers to the Bible. Preaching so to say ‘borrows’ its status of Word of God from the Bible as Holy Scripture. The Reformers were of the opinion that Scripture is not simply God’s Word in its fijirst giving, but also in its every repetition.1 Somehow the Word of God is not weakened when it is preached. On the contrary, if preaching is faithful to the Scripture, then preaching has the status of the Word of God. God offfers his grace and redemption through the exposition of Scripture in the sermon. Does this imply that the sermon as such can be understood as the voice of God? The characteristic formula of Bullinger Predicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei seems to suggest this. The intention of this formula certainly is not to underline a quasi divine authority of the preacher, but to safeguard the trustworthiness of God’s promises made in the sermon. The community of faith can trust the grace and peace of God as presented in the sermon. This view on preaching is directly related to the authority of Scripture. For the Reformers the authority was not the result of a decision of the church, nor coerced by any external human authority. The submission to Scripture was understood as a genuine movement of the heart, a joyful act of faith. “Scripture spontaneously manifests as plain an idea and apprehension of its truth as things do of their color—white and black—or of their taste—sweet and bitter.”2 The idea is that in the reading and exposition of the Bible, the community of faith will receive direct evidence of its truth, in particular when the community is inspired by the Spirit of God. When the methods of literary and historical criticism took the lead in the universities during the rise of the Enlightenment era, the authority of the Bible was no longer self-evident. Yet in the protestant churches the Bible remained the source of preaching, and the protestant worship 1

 T.H.L. Parker, Calvin’s Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 24.  John Calvin, Institutes, I.VII.2.

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service continued to be Word-oriented. However, the relation between Bible and Word of God became more puzzling. According to Lischer, “[t]o one, the Bible’s authority is bound up with inspiration; to another, its divine authorship; to yet another, the gospel.”3 Josuttis observes that the perspectives on the authority of Scripture changed over time. In times of radical criticism the emphasis was put on the content of the Gospel, or on the person of Jesus.4 In the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in circles of modern theology, the notion Word of God was more and more replaced by religious experience. This latter notion has stronger anthropological roots, is more bottom up, although open to the transcendent, and easier to accommodate to change-over-time. A good example of this modern approach is the work of the German practical theologian Friedrich Niebergall. In his lecture ‘Die moderne Predigt’ in 1904 he argued that the origin of dogmas and Holy Scripture is the religious personality.5 The Bible is a book from a diffferent era and culture, and we must ask ourselves what was going on in and among the people at that time, and why they expressed themselves this way. Legends and myths (Dichtung) are part of religious expressions. According to Niebergall, a sermon is the activity of a religious personality, who, from his perception of the Gospel, serves a community of faith in order to answer their questions and to sustain them in their needs. It is debatable whether the typical protestant view on faith, viz. that it is God who bestows his grace upon us, is kept alive in an approach that emphasizes religious experience instead of the Word of God. Thurneysen, Karl Barth’s friend and fellow-combatant, vehemently attacked the homiletical ideas of liberal Protestantism in a lecture on preaching in 1921 and argued that the preacher has to do just one and only one thing: to proclaim the name of God. “Don’t worry about the psychology of the hearer, and about the so-called knowledge of the human character. Don’t speak about human experiences in the pulpit, neither about pious experiences (of yourself or of someone else). But: knowledge of God, proclamation of God.”6 Barth and Thurneysen discovered that in that terrifying time of Nazi-Germany human experiences were confusing and misleading, and 3

 Richard Lischer, A Theology of Preaching. The Dynamics of the Gospel (Durham: The Labyrinth Press, 1992), 58. 4  Manfred Josuttis, Die Einführung in das Leben. Pastoraltheologie zwischen Phänomenologie und Spiritualität (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 1996), 51–53. 5  Friedrich Nierbergall, “Die moderne Predigt”, in: Gert Hummel (Ed.), Aufgabe der Predigt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), 9–74. 6  Friedrich Thurneysen, “Die Aufgabe der Predigt”, in: Hummel, Aufgabe der Predigt, 113.

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they confessed that only the announcement of God’s kingdom to come could make a diffference. The kerugma on the one hand and the human condition on the other, form the two horns of a homiletical dilemma. The Christian faith is a trust in and an answer to the God who speaks and acts. The Reformed tradition confesses God’s provenience, and upholds the distinction between divine initiative and human reception, while granting priority to the former. The gift of free grace implies that God bestows forgiveness and justifijication upon us. Consequently, God is the initiator and he is the subject of the divine actions. Kerugmatic theologians fear that preachers, when they start inductively from the human condition, will not turn their eyes to God’s perspective (Gottes Gnadenwahl).7 On the other hand, other homileticians fear that the emphasis on God’s work will disregard the real situation of the hearer. The preacher, as Ernst Lange argued, has to start with the hearer and his or her situation. “Preaching means: I speak with the hearer about his or her life. I speak with him or her about his or her experiences and worldviews, hopes and disappointments, successes and failures, missions and destinies. [. . .] The hearer is my theme, and nothing else.”8 Likewise Craddock argued for inductive preaching and in the mainstream New Homiletic preaching is described as an experiential event. In this contribution I will argue that this dilemma can only be understood from the perspective of the practice of preaching. Hence the question is: What is really going on in the performance of the sermon? How is the idea that God speaks related to the act of preaching and sermon listening? In order to obtain an insight into the practice of preaching I will fijirst deal with preaching as a human performance. Then I will turn to the specifijic religious dimension of preaching: does the sermon somehow mediate Christ? Finally I will turn to the exposition of Scripture in the sermon and argue that the kerugma is invented in the intersection of theological exegesis and lived faith. Preaching as a Performance Preaching is an inter-human communicative practice, and as such a social act. On the part of the preacher it is a speech act, on the part of the hearer 7

 Rudolf Bohren, Predigtlehre (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986), 466.  Ernst Lange, Predigen als Beruf (Stuttgart/Berlin: Kreuz Verlag, 1976), 58.

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an act of listening. Let us fijirst look at the preacher. In the sermon the preacher represents a world. This can be expressed in many diffferent ways. By telling a story, picturing a situation, explaining a biblical text, reflecting on faith, proclaiming the gospel, and so forth. The world that is projected reaches further than the here-and-now. It may bring near what is far away, it may provoke human imagination and reach into the future, it may awaken forgotten experiences. “Because sermons ‘bring into view’ unseen reality”, Buttrick argues, “they will, of necessity, dabble in metaphor, image, illustration, and all kinds of depiction.”9 In their sermons preachers make statements about the world around us, about God, about faith. They refer to a world—a world that comprises our daily life and yet reaches beyond. A world in which God is somehow involved. In addition, preachers present this world in a particular way. Preaching is after all a rhetorical act. Sermons are a work of art; they have a proper design. “There is a right form for each sermon, namely, the form that is right for this particular sermon. [. . .] The right form derives from the substance of the message itself, is inseparable from the content, becomes one with the content, and gives a feeling of fijinality to the sermon.”10 Some preachers construe the sermon as a homily, they use conversational language. Others use a more argumentative line of thought. In contemporary homiletics the ‘narrative art form’ is quite popular. It is important to note that the sermonic interaction constitutes a relationship between the minister and the gathered community. This relationship turns out to be rather important in sermon listening. Listeners report that the integrity of the performer is an important part of the preaching act. This is not really a surprise, because the preacher is involved as a person, both existentially and as a co-believer. Some listeners even perceive the sermon as an experience of the relationship with the pastor.11 Some relate preaching more to the pastor than to the content. “When I know a pastor is speaking from his or her life, her own experience and their values and the way they live their life, the sermon is much more meaningful.”12 On the part of the gathered community the act of preaching constitutes the activity of listening. Hearing a sermon is an activity, it involves attention and participation. Not only in terms of grasping what is said and

9

 David Buttrick, Homiletic. Moves and Structures (London: SCM Press, 1987), 113.  H. Grady Davis, Design for preaching (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958), 9. 11  Ronald J. Allen, Hearing the Sermon. Realtionship / content / feeling (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2004), 29. 12  Allen, Hearing the Sermon, 30. 10

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understanding the meaning, but also in terms of attending, weighing and appropriating. Attentive listening to a sermon requires an activity of the human heart and mind. The hearer who attends to what is said, possibly has illuminative insights, or contemplates and reflects on what is said, or pursues moral and spiritual improvement. Such activities of the human mind are intensifijied in sermon listening. “In hearing a sermon listeners start thinking about their lives in a religious framework: what their everyday life looks like from the perspective of the Scriptures, how they have to act according to the internal normativity of the Christian faith, and what it means to trust God in the midst of sorrow.”13 The act of preaching is an utterance in a dialogue situation, it is a face-to-face dialogue between the preacher and the congregation. It is the preachers’ intention to interact with the experiences, questions and beliefs of the congregation. So, when preacher and audience meet in the event of preaching, both have their own part to play. The listeners, however, complete the conversation.14 How they accomplish this, depends on the communicative function that is intended and desired by the preacher. When a preacher informs or instructs the congregation, the listeners will hopefully understand and believe what is said. When a preacher intends to encourage, listeners will hopefully feel encouraged (the emotional reaction included). So far we have observed that preaching is both a speech act and an act of listening. In recent homiletics the insight has grown that the face-to-face dialogue between minister and congregation has the characteristics of a performance. This is due to the fact that the spoken word has a specifijic performative power. What the preacher says in the sermon, has a bearing on the mind and heart of the listener. In speaking, preachers create a world of meaning, and they invite the listeners to become part of that world. And listeners, in their turn, enjoy that world or benefijit from it in relation to their own situation of faith.15 While listeners pay attention to the sermon, they relate it to their own worries and longings at the same time. Listeners become personally involved, their human self is activated, they become active participants of the preaching moment. A good sermon

13  Theo Pleizier, Religious Involvement in Hearing Sermons. A Grounded Theory Study in empirical theology and homiletics (Delft: Eburon academic publishers, 2010), 253. 14  Pleizier, Religious Involvement, 48. 15  Pleizier, Religious Involvement, 217.

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evokes existential involvement in the listeners. Listeners recognize their personal situations, or the social realm in which they live. A sermon is not a sermon until it is performed. The setting of the liturgy contributes to the process of involvement and actualization on the part of the listener. It is precisely this liturgical setting that accentuates the sermon as a performance. The spoken word (of the sermon) is a speech act with performative power and in the drama of social interaction the human self is activated. According to Childers “performance is a term that neatly encompasses both the mechanical and the organic aspects of the preaching moment, both the human and the divine.”16 Preaching as a Religious Practice On Sunday morning the worshipping community awaits the presence of God. In hearing the sermon faith in God is awakened, stimulated, challenged or even created. The participants become aware of God’s benevolence and justice, and they are longing for the kingdom of God. Can we also say that the Sunday service, as a performance, brings about God’s presence? The worshipping community invokes the Holy Spirit (epiclesis), both in relation to the reading and preaching of the Scriptures, and the administration of the Holy Supper. So, the practice of worshipping evokes a specifijic religious activity. This activity actualizes the human self, existentially, spiritually and religiously. In the context of worship, the human self exhibits also a receptive connotation: an openness to God, an awaiting of God’s salvifijic presence. But what about God? Can we interpret the actions of the people in such a way that these actions bring God to the stage? In the performance the human self is involved, existentially and religiously. Is the worshipping community also actualizing the divine self? Actualizing faith in God is one thing, but actualizing God’s mercy and salvation as something that God bestows upon us is another thing. Is the worshipping community actualizing the Word of God as a Word from God? Manfred Josuttis argues that the participants get involved in an energetic activity of the Holy Spirit.17 An activity such that God is the agent and performer, and the human being the recipient. For the same activity Ninian Smart uses the word re-enactment: 16  Jana Childers, “The Preacher’s Performance”, in: Paul Scott Wilson (general editor), The New Interpreter’s Handbook of Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008), 214. 17  Josuttis, Einführung, 85–101.

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Why then do hymns and prayers so often go on to say things about God? Things, moreover, which are usually very well known to the hearers and presumably also to the Lord. The reason lies in the performative character even of these descriptions; for their function is celebratory. In telling God at Easter that he has raised his Son up from the dead, the worshipper is not reminding God or the congregation, but re-presenting the event. [. . .] If a hymn or liturgy re-enacts some primary sacred event, and does so in part by the use of words, the role of those words is to mimic the original.18

This quotation has a more Christological perspective. The historical revelation in Jesus Christ is re-enacted and commemorated in the service. The once and for all and decisive work of God in Jesus Christ is somehow present and active in the Sunday service, not only as a work of the community, but rather as a work of God. This is characteristic of both the Roman Catholic as well as the Protestant tradition. In the Roman Catholic rite the Eucharist is understood as an actualization of the offfering of Jesus Christ, and in a protestant worship the sermon—as the Word of God— serves the pneumatic presence of Christ. So, both traditions expect the presence of Christ (presentia Christi). According to the sociologist Riesebrodt, the best way to understand religions is to study their practices. What then is distinctive of religious practices? They practice a relationship. By participation in religious practices people practice communion with super-human powers. They have intercourse with these powers, and they believe that these powers have influence on their lives and on the world. “In general religious practices embody the idea that by means of culturally determined media one can get in contact with these powers, or can have access to them.”19 The way in which people have access, depends on the current religious imagination and the available cultural forms. Riesebrodt distinguishes four diffferent methods: (1) symbolic acts—such as praying, singing, offfering, taking vows, (2) manipulation: magic acts, wearing mascots, (3) forms of mystic ecstasy and ascetic behavior, (4) activating human capacities such as contemplation and illumination. Riesebrodt distinguishes between three diffferent types of religious practices. The fijirst and most basic type is a practice which constitutes contact with the divine. This type presupposes some sort of intervention,

18

 Ninian Smart, The Concept of Worship, (Londen: Macmillan 1972), 27.  Martin Riesebrodt, Cultus und Heilsversprechen. Eine Theorie der Religionen (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2007), 113. 19

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mediation or intercession.20 The four methods mentioned above are all part of this intervening practice. These practices, as Riesebrodt argues, are mostly labeled with the word ‘cult’. “Liturgies”, he says, “express the meaning of religion.”21 In addition to these practices of intervention there are two other types: discursive practices and practices which regulate human behavior. Discursive practices are forms of inter-human discourse where people talk about these super human powers, discuss access to these powers and reflect on the appropriate techniques. Hence, discursive practices are so to say reflections on the more basic intervening practices. In ‘regulating practices’ people deal with the appropriate rules for daily life: how to live, what to eat, how to bury the dead, and so forth. The central idea is that the intervening practices play the fijirst fijiddle. Discursive and regulating practices are dependent upon the practice of intervention and originate here. “Not the fact that people believe in a transcendent power, but the fact that people make contact with this power, is ultimately the justifijication of all religious practices.”22 Practices of intervention dramatize and realize the contact with the divine. Do Protestants understand the worship service as a practice of intervention? And, in particular, do they understand the sermon as such? Or would they rather see the sermon as a discursive practice? Protestants do have strong reservations with respect to the idea of intervention: the worshipping community can in no way manipulate God.23 These reservations have two dimensions. (1) Because of the decisive role of faith, the human self plays an important part in its contact with God. Consequently, all that happens in the Sunday service must be accessible for the human mind, i.e. no magic in the ritual and no manipulation of the human choices. (2) Assent to the freedom and sovereignty of God in his actions towards and his presence among the worshipping community. The worshipping community cannot put God on stage, neither by ritual, nor by church authority. This implies a receptive attitude on the part of the worshipping community, and—particularly in the reformed tradition—a strong emphasis on the epiclesis. In modern Protestantism these principles have advanced the secularization of the Sunday worship service. In the 18th and 19th centuries this 20

 Riesebrodt, Cutus und Heilsversprechen, 114.  Riesebrodt, Cultus und Heilsversprechen, 129. 22  Riesebrodt, Cultus und Heilsversprechen, 127. 23  Josuttis, Einführung in das Leben, 92. 21

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has led to a strong emphasis on the human subject as the centre of all God’s works and to a depreciation of the institutional dimensions of worship. If Gods works at all, He will work in the depth of the human soul— and in the worship service the individual expresses his or her faith. In the second half of the 20th century hermeneutics took the lead, and the emphasis was, once again, on the human side: how to interpret texts? In modern Protestantism preaching runs the risk of becoming either purely discursive or being primarily focused on giving advice for a way of life. On the other side of the protestant spectrum—in the Barthian wing—there were also strong feelings of reservation with respect to the idea of intervention. Here, the idea of God’s freedom was at stake. God alone, Miskotte argued, is the subject of his Word.24 The preacher has to acknowledge: this word of mine as such is not the Word of God. And yet—in his or her service to the Word—the preacher will trust that only if God is with us the Word of God will happen. [Dutch: ‘geschiedt het Woord’] Preaching as a Practice of Faith How does the Word of God function in the actual sermon? It is important to realize that preaching is a practice. And a practice is a constellation of actions. “A practice involves a group of component actions that have been shaped into a larger pattern.”25 We already observed that preaching involves both an act of delivering the sermon and an act of listening to the sermon. These two acts are inseparable. Moreover, preachers prepare their sermons. In order to preach, the preachers use skills of exegesis and theology to fijind out what the text once meant, and they use the skills of a pastor and of societal and rhetorical analysis to fijind out what a text might say on Sunday morning. These preparatory acts are part of preaching as a practice. By entering into the preaching event, the congregation enters into a deeper understanding of the Scriptures by means of textual attentiveness. This happens through the participatory performance itself. The listeners may relate their listening to their personal engagement with the Bible or to their participation in Bible study groups. These practices are part and parcel of their hearing the sermon. Listeners relate the sermons to their 24  K.H. Miskotte, Het waagstuk der prediking (Den Haag: D.A. Daamen Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1941), 43–44. 25  James Nieman, “Why the Idea of Practice Matters”, in: Thomas G. Long & Leonora Tubbs Tisdale (editors), Teaching Preaching as a Christian Practice. A New Approach to Homiletical Pedagogy (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 21.

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own worries and longings, and the sermon may help them to come to terms with their concerns about life and faith. In his empirical study Religious Involvement in Hearing Sermons, Pleizier distinguishes broadly speaking three types of attentiveness: life-world attentiveness, textual attentiveness, and kerygmatic attentiveness.26 Listeners become oriented towards these realities that appear in the world of the sermon. Their minds and souls have moments of concentration such that they are dealing with these dimensions. It is important to realize that these dimensions are intertwined. A sermon is called ‘practical’ when the sermon makes listeners think about signifijicant areas of their lived lives and lived faith. This life-world-attentiveness is not in contradiction with the proclamation of the gospel, for listeners also become focused on the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. This kerugma is of course presented and heard in diffferent ways, but it nonetheless has its own substance in the preaching event. What about textual attentiveness? In the act of preaching the preacher deals with the Bible as a written text. To underline this, it is appropriate to quote the Bible literally. Citation, paraphrase and narration are genuine methods of dealing with Scripture in the sermon. Textual and literary attention can be justifijied by the fact that the Bible functions as a Holy Book. Yet there are many problems lurking in the background. How to deal, for example, with the tension between the literary form and the historical situation? Preacher and congregation are engaged in an act of reading and interpretation. In the circles of historical criticism the meaning of the text is connected with the author’s intention. Modern literary criticism, however, advocates a somewhat diffferent approach: the meaning of a text is in a text. So the emphasis is not on the historical author, but on the literary work itself. The text has a certain autonomy, and this implies that the meaning of a text is not found in its origin, but in its performance instead. So the meaning is not found in the intention of the author; rather, in the interaction with the hearer/reader. Most preachers feel the tension of these two positions. Preachers intend to do justice to the text of the Bible, but they do it in such a way that the biblical text becomes a constituent of the total preaching moment. As an integral part of the sermon the quotation and explanation of the text will

26

 Pleizier, Religious Involvement, 219–225.

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have a bearing, an impact on the hearer. “Texts are not packages containing ideas; they are means of communication. When we ask ourselves what a text means, we are not searching for the idea of the text. We are trying to discover its total impact upon a reader—and everything about a text works together to create that impact.”27 “In biblical studies, the historical disciplines have looked upon the texts as a result of certain events and interactions, while the preacher looks upon the text as the cause, the generator, of events and interactions.”28 Written texts, and this certainly holds true for the Bible, not only have an original meaning, but they receive a new and current meaning in front of the texts. In the sermon the biblical text becomes one of the components of the performance and it is precisely in this new setting that the text receives dynamic power. In the awareness of the spiritual power of the Spirit, hearers have illuminative moments, moments of insight, inspiration and exhortation. Insights, in and by which they relate bits and pieces of textual meaning to their concerns about life, about God, about the world, about the future, and so forth. It is exactly in the intertwining of the biblical text and lived experience that the kerugma is invented. The kerugma manifests itself in the intersection of textual meaning and lived faith. In his preparation the preacher has been searching for the meaning of the biblical text, but he realizes that the text is not exhausted by the authorial meaning. The community of faith appropriates and completes the meaning. In the preaching moment the original meaning and the current meaning somehow converge. And precisely at this point theological reflection and spiritual inspiration come to the fore. Which content is at stake? What message is true at this moment in time? At this point, faith based theological reflection is crucial, both on the part of the minister and on the part of the listener. Preaching is a witness of the good news, so that the hearers can make it their own. A sermon discloses the true kerugma and is a ‘Word of God’, if and only if both preacher and listener receive the message as faithful to the biblical text and plausible from a lived-out faith.

27  Thomas Long, The Witness of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1987), 12. 28  Fred B. Craddock, As One Without Authority (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), 113.

MINISTER AS WITNESS Allan J. Janssen The church is under threat; and consequently the ministry is under fijire. Pressure comes from a variety of sources: congregations are fearful for their continued existence; church leaders are concerned with the fading presence and influence of the church in contemporary society; and countless articles by experts in church life offfer difffering solutions to the church’s current malaise. The minister of a local congregation is often faced with a list of expectations he or she cannot live up to. This leads to a sense of inadequacy with its accompanying sense of failure and often enough depression. In his book on virtue ethics, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre identifijied three “character types” prevalent in contemporary society: the therapist, the aesthete and the manager.1 One can easily translate those types into ministerial expectations. The minister is expected to be an expert in pastoral relations; a liturgical virtuoso; or an administrator of a thriving religious institution. Today we might add the word ‘entrepreneur.’2 It is my contention that these expectations are deadly not only for ministers (and I mean that quite literally) but for the church as well. I maintain that the minister is called, educated, and ordained to be witness to the acts of God as a herald of the gospel.3 In this article I hope to explicate that claim by examining the offfijice of minister of Word particularly as described by Dutch theological A.A. van Ruler. I will focus on how he describes the preacher’s task in particular. Furthermore, I will notice that the minister as witness gives expression to the apostolic nature of the church. His view of the minister as witness may

1  Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 29. 2  This image of the minister as entrepeneurial manager has been around for some time. See H. Richard Niebuhr, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry (New York: Harper & Row, 1956) with his image of the minister as “pastoral director.” 3  For an angry description of this state of afffairs, see Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), especially the Introduction.

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give new encouragement to wearied preachers and, more importantly, may offfer the possibility of new life for the church.4 Van Ruler describes the work of the preacher when he noted that ‘in essence each Sunday morning an apostle stands behind the pulpit who has come out of Palestine where he has witnessed the decisive acts of God’s revelation and actions.’5 That claim couples the minister’s task as witness with the apostolicity of the church. The church can exist only as it called into existence by its Lord; only, that is, as the secret and core of its existence is outside itself. To speak of apostolicity as an essential attribute of the church is an attempt to articulate the fact that the church exists as a truth is spoken, a truth that humans cannot come upon by their own devices. This truth has as its foundation not a truth that can derived from shared human assumptions nor can it be discovered empirically. It can only be told because it has been witnessed: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen wit hour eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.” (I Jn. 1:1). Ministry, then, is a means by which God in Christ and through the Spirit guarantees the apostolic essence of the church. However, the preacher who stands in the pulpit in the fijirst decades of the twenty-fijirst century has not, of course, witnessed the events of Palestine with his or her own eyes or ears. She or he is the recipient of the apostolic message; if you will, a witness at second hand, or one who brings the report of the witness. This is apostolicity through the apostolic message.6 Put simply, the minister is the one who sets before the church the full story and claim of Scripture.

4  For a full treatment of Van Ruler’s doctrine of offfijice see my Kingdom, Offfijice, and Church: A Study of A.A. van Ruler’s Doctrine of Ecclesiastical Offfijice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). This doctoral dissertation was completed under the supervision of A. van de Beek in 2005. Van de Beek himself has been interested in questions of ecclesiology and offfijice. See, for example, his early essays on offfijice contained in Tussen traditie en vervreemding: Over kerk en christenzijn in een veranderende cultuur (Nijkerk: G.F. Callenbach, 1985). His perspective on offfijice evolved, from a low church view as evidenced in this book, to later years when he advocates for bishops in the church. See his Is God terug? (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010). For Van Ruler’s view of offfijice see also A.N. Hendriks, Kerk en ambt in de theologie van A.A. van Ruler (Amsterdam: Buijten en Schipperheijn, 1977). 5  Van Ruler, “De prediker zij zich bewust van de Ernst van zijn taak,” in A.G. Barkey Wolf, ed., Hoe vindt u dat er gepreekt moet worden?, 2nd ed. (Zwolle: LaRiviere & Voorhoeve, 1959), 139. 6  See Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry on the apostolic nature of ministry, especially Ministry, IVB. Faith and Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982). For a commentary see Eduardus Van der Borght, Theology of Ministry: A Reformed Contribution to an Ecumenical Debate (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 295 fff.

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H. Berkhof, in his study on the apostolicity of the church, put it as follows. The original apostles are characterized by their presence with Jesus hence as eye-witnesses and as they were sent by Jesus. The church, in turn, ‘receives communion with Christ through the mediation of the apostles themselves and itself sets forth the witness of the apostles in the world.’7 This witness found its way into history through the formation of the canon. Berkhof concludes, ‘The acknowledgement of the living presence of the apostles with the church, in the sense that they stand living and guiding above the church and so accompany her day by day, is only empowered where the church founds itself solely and completely on Scripture as the clear and sufffijicient word, through which the apostles as Christ’s ur-ambassadors still live with us and speak to us.’8 Interestingly, the Roman Catholic, John J. Burkhard, in his study on apostolicity, will say something similar when he talks about what he calls the ‘apostolicity of life’: ‘The holy Scripture is the “institutional element” through which Christianity is constantly led to recognize its calling to the communion of the church, and by which its recognition of other constitutive elements of the church willed by Christ, such as the sacraments and the ministry, is maintained.’9 Van Ruler articulates his understanding of this reality by agreeing that in the church’s emergence from the New Testament, its source is the witness of the apostles. The church is rooted in a particular revelation, that of Jesus Christ.10 Jesus, in turn, is set within the context of the whole scripture. Jesus is the Messiah of Israel.11 The minister, then, as the fijigure ‘out of Palestine,’ reports this. The apostolic offfijice is necessary for preaching to happen. Indeed, this is what Van Ruler calls the ‘tradition par excellence,’ as he uses the metaphor of the relay race. The apostolic message is handed on from one to another.12 “The sermon is in essence a story. What

 7  H. Berkhof, “De apostoliciteit der kerk,” Nederlands Theologische Tijdschrift II, 3, 1948, 152.  8  Berkhof, “Apostoliciteit,” 198.  9  John J. Burkhard, Apostolicity Then and New: An Ecumenical church in a Postmodern World (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2004), 33. Burkhard, of course, speaks of other forms of apostolicity. See my discussion of Burkhard in another context in “The Classis/ Presbytery as an Expression of the Apostolicity of the Church, in Allan J. Janssen and Leon van den Broeke, eds, A Collegial Bishop? Classis and Presbytery at Issue (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). 10  Van Ruler, “Christusprediking en rijksprediking,” in Verwachting en voltooing (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1978), 43. 11  “Christusprediking,” 46. 12  “De prediking,” Van Ruler Archives, I, 433, 3.

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happened in Palestine must be told.”13 What the prophet, evangelist and prophet have to say in handed on. For that reason, the minister’s task, as a faithful reporter of the witness, is to engage in the hard work of doing Scriptural exegesis, for the sake of the message, and hence for the sake of the congregation.14 Because the minister embodies the apostolic reality of the church, the church has found itself speaking of the ministry as an offfijice in the church.15 While offfijice is a non-biblical category, it is a way of expressing the notion that God’s Spirit creates and uses particular institutions to further God’s purposes in history.16 Van Ruler would argue that the offfijice of the apostle is the original (and originating) offfijice, albeit not an offfijice of the church but in the kingdom (and hence for the church).17 Berkhof would conclude his study on apostolicity by noting how offfijice is rooted in the apostolic message: ‘In the true apostolic church the Scripture is the grondsacrament. For in, with and under its words is Christ himself in our midst represented by the apostles, with his doctrinal authority, his governing power and his absolution.’18 The minister as offfijice bearer does not, for Berkhof, replicate the apostle; rather, offfijice stands between the apostles and the church: ‘The meaning of the offfijices is to maintain the congregation in its apostolic foundation and vocation.’19 With this understanding, though, offfijice exhibits a character that stands over and against the church. Van Ruler speaks of what he identifijies as the schaliach character of offfijice. Rooted in the Jewish law of messages, the schaliach brings the message from one to another. It is an ambassadorial function.20 This is a message of a witness that the church cannot fijind within itself. This is offfijice understood not as the particularization or summary of the offfijice of believer, but as coming to the church. Thus far, one could understand ministry within the framework of the apostolicity of the church as carrying forward the report of what happened

13

 Van Ruler, “Preekdefijinities,” in Theologische Werk VI (Nijkerk: G.F. Callenbach, 1973),

120. 14

 Van Ruler, “De prediker,” 4.  In using the general term “minister” I am not making a particular case for a Reformed minister of the Word. The historic offfijice of bishop could well be understood as that offfijice of ministry that hands on the apostolic message. 16  On Van Ruler’s theology of offfijice, see my Kingdom, Offfijice, and Church, chapter 4, especially 181–184). 17  Kingdom, Offfijice, and Church, 157fff. 18  Berkhof, “Apostoliciteit,” Nederlands Theolgische Tijdschrift II, 4 (1948), 199. 19  Van Ruler, “Apostoliciteit,” 199–200. 20  Van Ruler, Bijzonder en algemeen ambt (Nijkerk: G.F. Callenbach, 1952), 28, 29. 15

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in the past. The report keeps the church honest to its origins. That is in fact the case, but it does not exhaust the matter. It is the case because witness is to a history, and the history is to the story of Israel and to the Messiah Jesus. The God of the church is not only a God who engages history, but who created history and who entered history decisively as a human. That history can only be reported. However the minister doesn’t simply witness to a past. The story of Scripture, as history, is a story that points to the future. Van Ruler will claim that proclamation is eschatological; it happens ‘neither in the world not in the church alone, but in the kingdom of God.’21 If this is the news, indeed good news, of the breaking in of the future into the present, this can only be reported. Furthermore, it can only be reported as it emerges from the revelation, the apokalupsis, that discloses itself in Scripture. This is the message that has become more than report. This is Christ present in the report itself. ‘The preaching of God’s Word is God’s Word itself; not only a human witness to God’s Word.’22 ‘In preaching Godself appears in Christ among us. God speaks to us!’23 This is not doctrine; it is not an argument for an idea. This is a person.24 This person has given himself to be known; he has efffected salvation from human imprisonment to sin. But more, he has established a bridgehead in the world from which he can set out to establish his kingdom in the world.25 Van Ruler contrasts what he calls ‘Christ-preaching’ from ‘kingdompreaching.’ As we noted above, the church fijinds it relatively easy to understand its witness as the preaching of Christ. And so it is, Van Ruler argues. In a purely Christological context, preaching is of the forgiveness of sins, of the power to overcome sin, of the victory of death, and indeed of participation in the divine nature.26 But preaching is more than that. The Messiah of Israel is about more than atonement; he is about the kingdom. It is not about the church that is established, but about a world that has been

21  Van Ruler, “De ambten,” Van Ruler Archives, III/12, 25. On this see Kingdom, Offfijice, and Church, 214–218. 22  Van Ruler, “Kerk en prediking,” Van Ruler Archives, I/97, 2. Cf. Second Helvetic Confession. 23  Van Ruler, “De prediker,” 139. 24  See on this J.H. Gunning, Jr., Jezus Christus de middelaar der Gods en der menschen (Amsterdam: Hoveker & Zoon, 1884), where he argues against a theology represented by Scholten in which principle or doctrine stands at center. No, Gunning argues that this is about a person, see especially 23f. 25  Van Ruler, “De prediker,” 139. 26  Van Ruler, “Christusprediking,” 45.

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made acceptable to God.27 ‘We preach Christ, but we mean (bedoelen, i.e. ‘purposes’) the kingdom, we have as the aim ourselves and our world as the kingdom of God.’28 This too is apostolic. The apostles proclaimed Jesus Christ and his work in the fullness of time. Their message was for the whole work, for the need of all human beings, and much more, it included the entire cosmos.29 ‘So far as one understands that the preaching of the gospel of the cross is the proclamation of the power of God to the salvation of the entire human existence, and that this preaching in a very essential way takes place not in the church but in the world for it happens in the kingdom of God, and consequently is an apostolic event, to that extent one also understands that there is no contradiction here. For indeed, the fully developed apostolic vision on the essence of the church blooms immediately and directly out of the Reformation’s foundational thesis that preaching is the kernel of the existence of the church.’30 The kingdom does not coincide with Christ. This is about God acting in the world through the Spirit. God acts in the world, in creation. God works in Christ to atone for the sinful human so that this person can receive back a humanity that had been imprisoned and can now perceive and experience the world as the kingdom of God. Understood from this perspective, preaching ‘in the fijirst place is a lyrical expression of the mystery of being.’ It is the ‘opening of the eyes to see the glory and holiness of God, to the kingdom of God in all of existence, in all things great and small.’31 This is not self-evident. This too must be preached. To the extent that God is at work in the world through the Spirit efffecting the kingdom, humans remain captive to sin. We become trapped in both the pride of optimism and the despair of pessimism. Human sinfulness disables the human from a clear perception of God’s kingdom work, a work that is present not only in the creation, but in the new creation.32 Scripture’s story is of a humanity that tends inevitably to the cross, and of the God who engages the human not only at the cross, but the God who so shapes, so sanctifijies, a people to live into the world. The kingdom is proclaimed,

27

 “Christusprediking,” 46.  “Christusprediking,” 47. 29  Van Ruler, Het apostolaat der kerk en het ontwerp-kerkorde (Nijkerk: G.F. Callenbach, 1948), 30. 30  Het apostolaat, 35. 31  Van Ruler, “Christusprediking,” 48, 49. 32  Article 2 of the Belgic Confession is apt here. God created the “beautiful book” to allow us to “ponder the invisible things of God,” human sin clouded our eyes to the evidence that is, in fact, present. Hence God communicates through the holy and divine Word. 28

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reported, and the human is set in a situation in which he or she must respond.33 As we noted, the locus of the kingdom is the world; it is not constricted to the church. That entails that the message to which the minister is witness is intended not only for the assembled congregation, but for the world. Van Ruler uses two images to illustrate that the preacher is witness to those outside the walls of the church. The fijirst uses the image of an ‘orange crate’ on which the preachers stood to preach out of doors during the time of the Reformation in the Netherlands. These were called ‘hedge preachers’ because they preached in open fijields. That, maintained Van Ruler, symbolized the fact that preaching is to reach beyond the walls of the church; the message involves and implicates the public as well as those who gather in church pews.34 The second image is the sounding board. As the sounding board on a piano magnifijies and broadcasts the sound of strings that have been struck, so the congregation is the sounding board for the preacher.35 The minister’s witness takes place within the congregation; even so, fijiltered through the congregation, the words reverberate in the world of the public around the church. The epistemological character of the faith, then, is of witness or report. It is about a truth that happens. The faith does not claim a theory of truth that can be verifijied or justifijied on the grounds put forward by reason or science. The faith does not provide an independent means to access a transcendent reality. It will tell a story that strains credulity and would be dismissed, except that it happened. It is the story of the God who reveals God’s intentions with humanity and creation in ways that stand crosswise to systems of power in this world that use death as a means. It is the story of a God so involved with the human creature that God’s involvement discloses itself as a love that could not have been conceived nor expected by the human. It is the story of a God who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, the God whose kingdom intentions were contradicted by the human and yet who turned that contradiction into a means of salvation. It is the story of the God who took up residence in this world, and whose life and breath, the Holy Spirit, dwells in this world still,36 and who continues to work toward the victory of God’s love. It is the story of a particular God, the God with the name, YHWH, who is nothing less than Father, Son and 33

 Van Ruler, “Christusprediking,” 48.  Van Ruler, Reformatorische opmerkingen in de ontmoeting met Rome (Hilversum: Paul Brand, 1965), 179. 35  Van Ruler, Reformatorische opmerkingen, 195. 36  See K.H. Miskotte, Bijbels ABC (Baarn: Ten Have, 1966), particularly chapter 3. 34

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Holy Spirit. Without this story being told and reported, the human will fall prey to the temptation of other stories, to the tales of other gods. If the minister is at core a witness and not simply a leader or manager of a religious institution, such an understanding implies that what he reports is an alien message. It can only be told. As gospel, it will often be received with surprise and delight. It does not reflect the received opinion that a person is made worthy by dint of his or her own achievement but is justifijied by God’s gracious action in Christ. It announces a forgiveness that is impossible for the human to efffect. It proclaims a hope for a world when all roads appear to lead to death and despair. Still, even gospel can be resisted. That can happen because it is contradicts our consensus on what counts for good news and thus is often resisted because the message calls the human to account. It contradicts the narrative by which a society—and its members—live. The human, in the church(!), will attempt to tame the alien message, to turn it to our own advantage. Jefffrey MacDonald accuses the contemporary American church of conforming to a consumer culture when congregations ‘bend over backward to meet people’s desires. We think if we provide it and they like it, they will come. Conservatives and liberals share the same consumer orientation and the same temptation to put peoplepleasing programs above disciplined faithfulness.’37 The minister is set in offfijice because the church needs to hear a word it resists; its life, and the life of the world, depends on it. A second implication follows on the fijirst. The messenger is not in control of the message. Again, because the preacher is an offfijice-bearer, an ambassador, it is not his or her message to compose. This fact inoculates the church from ideology. The report cannot be forced into the straightjacket of ideology, not even one with a religious tone. In one place, Van Ruler contrasts the sermon from an address. The address, or speech, which attempts to win the other over to my understanding of matters, is in essence propaganda.38 But it is neither the preacher’s message nor is it a condensation of the religious convictions of the congregation. Attention to the apostolic nature of the offfijice points the messenger back over and again to the original message, which is Scripture’s untamable story. This in turn gives expression to the sovereign freedom of God. God is not captive to human consideration. And because God is not so captive,

37

 Cited in Lillian Daniel, “Selling Out?,” The Christian Century, Vol. 128, No. 2, January 25, 2011, 24. 38  Van Ruler, “Kerk en prediking,” 1.

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God is free to speak God’s liberating word to the congregation. In fact, God can and does turn even resistance and contradiction to God’s kingdom intentions. The church and the world can close their ears to God, but that does not, fijinally, frustrate God’s way into the world. Moreover, this fact frees the minister as witness. The task is not to conform to the desires of the congregation or of its culture, but only to be faithful to the witness. Again it is the apostolic character of the church that liberates both the minister and the congregation–and by extension the creation. I claimed above that the ministry gives expression to the apostolic nature of the church. It is not, however, the exclusive expression of apostolicity. That would be too much for it to bear. The Spirit creates institutions that help to carry that character. One thinks of dogma, confession, tradition and church order. It is church order in particular that concerns itself with apostolicity (and with other attributes of the church as well, of course). In churches with a historical episcopacy, it is the bishop who oversees that the message conforms to its divine source. In synodical/presbyterial orders it is the assembly of elders and ministers that does so. In his latest book, Is God terug?, Bram van de Beek reflects sadly on the present state of the church. In a paragraph on offfijice he notes that the minister is not a manager and not an entertainer. He cites with approval II Timothy 2:2: ‘What you have heard from me through many witnesses, entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well.’ He argues that as leader or overseer, indeed as a sort of bishop, the minister is to help to guide church councils and congregations into the way of Christ. If they do not, the illness of the church will only get worse.39 Is God back? ‘Yes,’ Van de Beek answers fijinally. God has never abandoned this world. My intention has been to argue that this is the case in the church as well. God has called witnesses and will call witnesses to speak a truth that must be spoken to the world, and so through the church. This is leadership, but the leading emerges not from human genius, but from the God revealed in Christ present in the Spirit, the God of history who has acted and acts still and who beckons from the future. It is for that reason that the church joins gladly in the creed when it confesses that it believes in ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.’ The ministry is one instrument that God uses in the church, and therefor ‘gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life . . .’40

39

 A. van de Beek, Is God Terug? (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010), 95–96.  Heidelberg Catechism, Answer 54.

40

NEARING THE BRINK OF DEATH? DYING, RENEWING AND NEWLY BORN CONGREGATIONS IN PROTESTANT AMSTERDAM Henk de Roest Introduction On Reformation Day 2009, during a meeting of the Protestant Church of the Netherlands in Amsterdam (PCA), a booklet was presented to the 250 people who attended. The booklet contained examples of what were labeled ‘inspiring activities’ that had been organized in the winter season 2008–2009 by its 21 congregations in order to make a connection with people in their respective neighborhood areas and apartment buildings. The activities were also called ‘missionary initiatives’, a phrase that only ten years earlier would have caused raised eyebrows and an allergic reaction in most congregations, except for the more orthodox reformed ones in the PCA. The booklet was given the title: ‘It has already begun . . .’ a quote from a worship song by Dutch poet-theologian Huub Oosterhuis with words that are reminiscent of Isaiah’s prophecies. One of the attendants remarked, that while secularization, dropping church membership rates, and diminishing churchgoing began in the cities, “it now seems that ecclesial creativity and enthusiasm are emerging in the city”. The observation was welcomed with applause. The whole meeting breathed a hopeful, future-orientated, atmosphere. After years of ‘ecclesial depression’, it felt as though the climate had changed. What, I wondered, had happened here? In the nineteen-nineties my wife, Renske Zandstra, was minister of Word and Sacrament for ten years in one of the congregations in the northern part of Amsterdam. The congregation was small: most families that had been active members in the beginning had moved to the cities north of Amsterdam, leaving a graying community and only few families behind. At her farewell in 1999, my wife was very concerned whether the congregation would have enough organizational vitality to persist, given the fewer members and churchgoers, volunteers, leadership, and fijinancial means. Now, eleven years later, the congregation has not died but is still alive, as vulnerable as ever. The current minister expressed the same concerns in a lengthy interview that I had with her: will this congregation be here ten years from now? In addition, she felt torn between two roles. On

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the one hand, she feels a sense of urgency to start missionary activities since at the city level she sees the inspiring ‘results’, on the other hand she is dedicated to her aging parishioners and wants to offfer the pastoral care that they deserve without being able to contribute much. What, I wondered, is happening inside parishes when the church calls for missionary renewal? What is happening in protestant Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands, the city where my former professor Bram van de Beek has been teaching systematic theology for almost 10 years? It seems that some congregations are dying, others are searching for missionary renewal, and there are newborn congregations too. We will have to be more precise in our phrasing of the question. Are there pointers for missionary renewal and if so, how is this renewal experienced? Did the discovery of the church’s missional vocation emerge out of perspectives and practices that had been simmering for a long time or was there a catalytic moment? Is there, as pastors seem to indicate, a split between ‘mission’ and ‘maintenance’? More questions could be asked, and in-depth inquiries have not yet taken place; even so, I venture to give some indications for future research. My current insights have been gained by an inquiry that was carried out by ten students under my supervision. They interviewed a total of 57 key-persons in all 21 congregations with semi-structured questionnaires and observation assignments.1 Their research report formed the basis of the booklet referred to at the beginning of the introduction above. In addition, I interviewed key-fijigures at the city church offfijice, analyzed vision documents and websites, and interviewed ministers. In my description and analysis I shall confijine myself to the PCN congregations, although I will point at remarkable signs of renewal that can be seen in the more evangelical, orthodox congregations in Amsterdam as well. In addition, to get a clearer picture of the situation Amsterdam, I will describe the developments in Lutheran Amsterdam and will offfer some data with regard to immigrant churches. In contrast to former decades, Dutch protestants seem to have discovered opportunities to learn from other cultures. More formal relations are established as well. The diaconal offfijice of the Protestant Church

1  M. Buitenwerf-van der Molen, J. Franken, J. Leeflang, H. Reijn, C. Splinters, Missionaire communicatie in Amsterdam. Een onderzoek naar missionaire activiteiten in Amsterdam, vanuit geloofsgemeenschappen verbonden aan de Protestantse Kerk in Nederland. PThUOnderzoeksverslag (2009).

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of Amsterdam (PCA) offfers all kinds of services and migrant churches are asked to give advice in missionary and diaconal matters. In several neighborhoods joint services of traditional and immigrant churches are being organized on specifijic occasions. The activities take a ceremonial form. Although the experienced diffferences may be too large to allow for true collaboration, immigrant churches have a potential to stimulate renewal that has been discovered by the established congregations. Mapping the Field of the Protestant Church in Amsterdam (PCA): 1965–2005 In the 1960’s and 70’s, as in all the cities in The Netherlands, congregations in Amsterdam crumbled. Membership rates dropped rapidly, partly for demographic reasons and partly through people leaving the church. As a result, several formerly vital congregations had to close down their buildings, others merged, and some died. Entire faith communities disappeared and congregations that around 1970 built new churches in order to house 350 people, soon discovered that only 40 individuals were fijilling the pews. Money, always a sensitive resource in church life, became scarce. Letting non-church groups use the premises could still generate income. Providing the building at a modest cost could be an ‘incubator’ in which new activities could get offf the ground. Precisely charging minimal costs, however, endangered prospects for long-term continuation. In addition, the volunteering of time to make activities happen decreased. Congregations became dependent upon the efffort of a few stalwarts. The availability of regular volunteer work was thus further reduced. In the last four decades, Amsterdam witnessed the closing of at least thirty church buildings, Roman Catholic and protestant. Some were repurposed for new functions as a shop, pub, wedding location, multicultural stage, library, pop-temple; others demolished. The PCA sold thirteen church buildings and lists them as ‘former properties’. Six church buildings were demolished. In chronological order: Saronkerk (sold; year unknown), Oosterkerk (1974; sold to the municipality of Amsterdam, now foundation organizing cultural activities), Petruskerk (1978; now wedding location of the municipality), Maranathakerk (1985; sold to Coptic Orthodox Church), Amstelkerk (1986), Elthetokerk 1 (1992), Bethlehemkerk (1993), Buiten Amstelkerk (1995), Regenboogkerk (1995), Pro Regekapel (1995), Raphaëlpleinkerk (1996), Noachkerk (1999), Pniëlkerk (2002). In addition, six churches were demolished: Raamkerk (1965), Koepelkerk

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(1970), Funenkerk (1975), De Uitweg (1989), Waalkerk (1990), De Opgang (demolished in 2007; a new smaller church with the same name is part of a multifunctional center that opened in 2010). Church historian Peter van Rooden writes that Christianity in Amsterdam collapsed in a short period of time.2 He strongly rejects the hypothesis that this was caused by the modernization process of Dutch society. On the contrary, modernization in The Netherlands ran parallel with the formation of four distinct simultaneously existing social worlds that were also represented on a political level: these forms of closely knit social organization had a protestant, roman-catholic, liberal or socialist collective identity. A strong social control imposed limits upon exchange and borderline crossings. Marriage and friendship between members of these social worlds were always submitted to debate, among close relatives, but also in the local area. The moral communities, in the Durkheimian sense, had their own values, rituals and prohibitions. This so-called ‘pillarized society’ broke down by the cultural revolution in the sixties which included the ideal of a reflexive, expressive and liberated subject. The sixties also subverted the norms and ritual behavioral patterns that had shaped social life for decades. The large moral communities, including the socialist one, evaporated. Oral history, allowing former church members who are now elderly people to speak about their experiences, demonstrates that after the sixties they usually drifted away from the church. The narratives of the evaporation of the previous religious pattern of life are accompanied by positive memories, in which the increasing reflexivity is more evident. One Amsterdam woman tells that praying before dinner stopped when the children left the house, ‘because you think, why should you keep on doing that?’ According to another woman, faith just died slowly. Van Rooden asserts that his respondents did not necessarily make a conscious, well-considered decision for another pattern of life; rather, the former pattern disappeared without being noticed. The beliefs of these respondents had not been reflective, but were taken for granted; they were not wellreasoned, but had a ritual character. Dutch religion in the fijifties ‘went without saying’. It was not a way to express one’s identity as an individual, but a way of belonging to a community. These major moral communities

2  Peter van Rooden, “Oral history en het vreemde sterven van het Nederlandse christendom” [Oral history and the strange dying of Dutch christianity], Bijdragen en Mededelingen betrefffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden [Contributions and notes concerning the History of the Netherlands] 119 (2004), 524–551.

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crumbled and faded away at a great pace. For example, while in the 50’s the Bethlehemkerk in Amsterdam-North, had a thousand churchgoers in its evening service, by the 90’s it was closed. The Muider-church, which always used to be full, counted sixty churchgoers on average in 2003. Some fijigures may illustrate these developments. Until 2003, the Protestant Church Amsterdam saw a steady drop in membership rates of about 5% per year. From 2005–2006 membership rates still dropped by 3,7%, from 19812 to 19082 members. The fijinancial defijicit over a period of one year in 2003 was more than € 1.000.000 (1 million). For 2005 an estimate was submitted, showing a defijicit of € 720.000. If circumstances remained unaltered, in 2010 the defijicit would be € 2.000.000. In 2003 the situation was described as a downward spiral movement: Fewer churchgoers lead to . . . being less attractive for (new) people, leads to . . . fewer volunteers, leads to . . . fewer means, leads to . . . a loss in capacities for being attractive, leads to . . . a further reduction of the number of churchgoers, again leads to . . . being less attractive, etc.

The church council of the PCA saw to its dismay that the PCA as a whole was nearing the brink of death. It was a sharply defijined, decisive moment in the story of protestant Amsterdam. The council had to discern its vocation in terms of place and time. The church started a journey to new life that might be described in process terms as retrenching, improving and renewing. Paving the Way for Renewal In 2005 the city church council made a decisive move. Far-reaching proposals were made in a policy document. The document expressed a strong concern for the near future: When its policy will remain unchanged the Protestant Church of Amsterdam will be severely threatened in its existence. The ship must change its direction. It is now or never! (. . .) Do we want to be an attractive church? But how? It is not easy to create a structural change, certainly not with an ageing membership-pool.

The document was ambitious and full of imagination.

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henk de roest We envision a process of change and renewal, involving hundreds of people. When they will become enthusiastic for the process, they will become the ambassadors that will help to make new initiatives possible. Their enthusiasm will time and again ignite a fijire in others to participate. (. . .) In 2010, Protestant Amsterdam will have to be alive and hopeful for the future.

A new structure was created, making use of existing Church law to allow a process to emerge. First, the various congregations were asked to ‘offfer’ diffferent members to form brainstorm sessions. These included secretaries of church councils, people working with youth and children, people involved in pastoral care, people working in the diaconate, people with competences with regard to money, publicity people, students, wardens, ministers, musicians and former church members. They were asked: ‘What are we good at? What do we stand for? What do people expect from the church? Do we know what they expect? What are our blind spots? Is it possible to offfer new and inspiring activities?’ Secondly, the participants of the brainstorm groups were mixed and assigned to diffferent groups. The same questions returned, the groups now being created around themes like ‘missionary renewal’, ‘diaconal work’, ‘communication and publicity’, ‘youth’, ‘music’, ‘pastoral care’, etc. These so-called core groups were asked to develop plans, and outline policy for their theme. Together, the chairpersons of these groups form the core council. Here all the plans are gathered and cross-connections between the core groups are stimulated. The offfijice-bearers together act as a board of advisors and this group meets together only four times a year. The advantages are, fijirst, that people now gather in order to create plans and do volunteer work in the fijield where they are competent. Secondly, the core groups can consist of members and non-members. Precisely these fresh arrangements make innovation possible. There is no longer a shortage, but an abundance of ideas. Thirdly, now the core council can make decisions about time paths and what resources (money, space, time, people, task-descriptions, and competences) are necessary. The functions and responsibilities are clearly divided. The previously slow turning rounds of less than inspiring council meetings immediately came to a standstill. The core groups had the freedom to communicate with the congregations and come up with plans. In order to support the whole process, a new protestant center was opened too, fijinanced by the sale of a large nursing home. The latter is now turned into the Dutch department of the Leningrad Hermitage. The new protestant center, next to the Hermitage, consists of several premises. There

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is a diaconal center that focuses on the social problems of exclusion and poverty; an administration center that offfers support to the congregations with advice, courses, and youth work; a mission house where young people from all over the world are living together; a house for pastoral care among homeless people; a center for supporting illegal immigrants; and there are apartments for young people who are learning to live by themselves. The PCA sees as its vocation to pay attention to everyday life and to connect the problems of daily living with the Name of God who said: ‘I will be there with you. I will not leave you alone’. At the same time the PCA wants to make space for the vision of a good creation, where everything will fijind its place and where the tears will be washed away. To not lose sight of this vision there is a garden with trees, flowers, and grass; a free space where people can rest and enjoy themselves. It is also a garden of praise that connects to the biblical ideas of the Garden of Eden and of the Garden in which Maria of Magdalene asked the gardener for the man who gave her life, Jesus of Nazareth. The mission statement reads: ‘The PCA wants to demonstrate God’s love for the city.’ The Current Situation of Protestant Churches in Amsterdam In 2010, the wider picture of protestant Amsterdam shows an immense variety, particularly in South-East Amsterdam. This part of the city has more than 80 protestant churches. Some are not bigger than ten members. These came into being from immigration growth, founded by immigrants themselves, or by Dutch Christians and churches in an attempt to offfer hospitality, or to evangelize among immigrants3 (Jansen & Stofffels 2008, 19). In the so-called ‘churches-assembly-building’, or ‘multi-church building’ called ‘The Candlestick’, fijifteen churches are assembled. On January 1, 2008, South-East counted 78,922 inhabitants (vs. Amsterdam’s total of 748,290), of whom 63,4% had a non-Western background, 8,2% a Western background and 28,4% a Dutch background. In Amsterdam as a whole in 2005, 10% of the population (75,000) consisted of Christian immigrants, of whom 24,000 are regular churchgoers4 (Euser et al. 2006, 40). There are 3  M.M. Jansen & H.C. Stofffels (Eds) “A Moving God” Immigrant Churches in the Netherlands, Munster/Berlin/Zurich: LIT Verlag 2008. 4  H. Euser (2006), “Aantallen migrantenchristenen en hun kerken”, in: H. Euser et al., Migranten in Mokum: de betekenis van migrantenkerken voor de stad Amsterdam. (Amsterdam) 34–36.

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church services in 37 languages. In a recent dissertation Mirella Klomp states: ‘Every Sunday afternoon a cacophony of sounds spreads over the area. In churches, car parks and school buildings, dozens of Christian congregations gather for worship’5 (Klomp, 2009, 7). From the limited empirical research that has been done, it seems a rather adequate estimation that 3,5% of the people in Amsterdam can be considered regular (protestant) churchgoers, 24,000 immigrants—mainly in Amsterdam South-East—and 2,500 non-immigrants, attending one of the mainline Protestant churches in Amsterdam, for a grand total 26,500 people. A wider picture of protestant Amsterdam also includes the renewal that takes place in the more orthodox reformed congregations. In a September 2010 meeting of ‘Amsterdam on the move for Jesus Christ,’ the platform included Christian-reformed, (Vrijgemaakte) ‘Liberated’-reformed and two orthodox reformed PCN-congregations, consisting of nine ‘mother-congregations’ and six church-plants (‘daughter-congregations’). The conversations demonstrated that growth is taking place both in a qualitative and a quantitative sense. Leadership teams consist of people from diffferent backgrounds: protestant, and those without any religious afffijiliation as well as muslims and pentecostals. According to the church planters, ‘gospel-centeredness’, ‘contextualizing’ and ‘a focus upon daily life in the city’ enables the emergence of these teams.6 These developments are important for assessing the empirical reality of Protestantism in Amsterdam. Several research projects in The Netherlands and in other Western European countries indicate that we are entering a phase of postdenominationalism. Cross-denominational relationships are also more common than ten years ago, allowing increasing possibilities to learn from each other. In addition, the Evangelical Lutheran Church should be mentioned. Although part of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, the ELC in Amsterdam operates independently from the PCA. It has one church council for the whole city and fijive so-called ‘focuses’, centered around fijive church buildings. Here too, since 2004, a new policy document guides the activities that is called ‘The Swan Spreads her Wings,’ created by the concern of a dying church. The fijive focuses, contrary to what they were 5  Klomp, M. (2009), The Sound of Worship. Liturgical Performance by Surinamese Lutherans and Ghanaian Methodists in Amsterdam. Diss. PThU. Print: Ridderkerk. 6  J. ten Brinke, “Het evangelie centraal, contextgericht en focus op de stad” [The gospel at the center, context oriented, and focused on the city]. Soteria, (2010) 27/3, 46–52.

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used to, and contrary to the ecclesiological convictions of the ministers, had to distinguish target groups, for example ‘thirtysomethings’, ‘migrants’ or ‘elderly’. Being driven by a ‘profijiled identity’ led to opposition, but was fijinally accepted. Each focus has a motto: ‘Far and near’, ‘The secret of the way’, ‘Colorful and safe’ etc. that is referred to time and again in leadership weekends and congregational meetings. Cooperation with nonchurch organizations is highly encouraged. The overall agenda is to offfer high quality outreach in order to enable growth in a quantitative sense too. In addition the identity-question was posed again: what is our unique ‘selling point’? How can Luther’s insights on grace and solus Christus be translated for the target groups? The ELC considers its vocation to offfer the richness of the Lutheran tradition in a highly diverse way, depending on the situation and circumstances. The 2010 picture is that its members and visitors are ageing, but that the quality and diversity of what is offfered is highly appreciated. Surprisingly, new—as well as young—volunteers are attracted to a project or commit themselves for a longer period of time. Key fijigures now speak of their church as creative and ‘very much alive’. They note a varying commitment, due to a more fluid character of the church. Young people who are asked to get involved in a task consider it ‘an honor’ to participate. The Current Situation of the PCA Confijining ourselves to the Protestant Church of Amsterdam, since 2005 the situation has changed. In 2010 we see that the steady loss of 4–5% has halted. The membership rate fluctuates now around 19,200, (baptized members and confessional members). The number of confessional members increased by 753 members.

Bapt.

Confess.

Total

2010 2009 2008 2007

5399 5531 5719 5975

13673 13766 13537 13461

19072 19297 19256 19436

2006

6162

12920

19082

Percentage (+/–) –1,17% +0,21% –0,93% +1,86%

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The overall number of participants, including guest members, is currently 27,377. This number has increased recent year as well. The revenues show the same picture as the membership rates. Contrary to the expectations they have not decreased. 2004 1 567 339 euro 2005 1 511 286 euro 2006 1 567 239 euro 2007 1 604 248 euro 2008 1 604 015 euro 2009 1 576 830 euro Thus, on the city level we see surprising signals of stabilization in membership and church attendance rates. The organizational vitality, measured by resources such as membership, building, leadership, fijinance, and time, is strengthened; although I hasten to add that guarantees even for the near future cannot be given. In addition, interesting is a new development that fijits within the concept of renewal. During the period 1980–2010 more than half of the overall number of church buildings disappeared by merging with another congregation or by closing. In 2010, in addition to the existing church buildings, there are now new spots. These relate to six new protestant church plants. Five of these represent communities started with the intention to create a new faith community. These communities are highly contextualized, in close connection with their respective neighborhoods. In the new housing development, IJburg, created in the IJ-lake area in the east of the city, a congregation called ‘The Trunk’ started in 2004. This community had major difffijiculties in the fijirst phase, but in 2009 it found a new existence as a ‘house of meaningfulness’. In September 2010, close to ‘The Trunk’, a new ‘missionary minister’ started working in order to create another faith community too. The PCA facilitates his work. Near the Free University, in the heart of the banking and business area, bible classes attract dozens of young accountants, lawyers, and bank employees. They read the book of Exodus together and form a faith community in an embryonic stage. Another example is a newly born multi-ethnic congregation in a socalled ‘problem cumulating area’. The population of the neighborhood consists of 110 nationalities. Many inhabitants have low incomes and live in small and badly maintained houses. The 5 pm services form a central element in this congregation. The services in its ‘mother-congregation’ are

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attended by highly educated people (according to one person in the community ‘they have a Dostojewski-alloy’). The services in the ‘daughter’congregation are attended by people who are less well educated. Each of the services has a liturgy that is defijined for this target group. Sermons are supplemented by cartoons. While cofffee and cookies are offfered after the services in the ‘mother congregation,’ the services in the ‘daughter congregation’ end with a meal. The new congregation is directed by a holistic approach: it wants to contribute to people’s spiritual, mental and physical well-being. Its weekly children’s program attracts children by the dozen. In summary: in this city where churches were recently closed by the dozen, church planting within a mainline church is now taking place. Money is allocated to these initiatives in a conscious and deliberate way. Although they are not self-supporting, their capacity for self-governing is remarkable. Inside the 21 PCA Congregations The picture is diverse in 2010. Renewal and shrinking back from renewal, mission and maintenance run parallel. The process that started in 2005 has its advocates and its critics. In between are those who consider the process highly necessary while they also note how it simultaneously puts a pressure on both ministers and volunteers. On the one hand, stories of creative renewal are told. Renewal is noted: fijirst, in the creation of partnerships with organizations in the area; second, in new activities for both members and non-members; and third, in the liturgical recontextualization of the gospel in new songs, art works, symbols and rituals. An example is the Oranjekerk (Orange Church). On its website the congregation describes itself as ‘open, hospitable and inviting.’ The entrance to the building is special: it is a wrought iron gate shaped as a computer chip. Thus the church wants to demonstrate its ‘openness to today’s world.’ The congregation states that it is important to be there for each other and to be present for the district. All its activities are considered ‘missionary activities.’ During weekday afternoons the church is open; adjacent to the building a ‘biblical garden’ is created as an oasis of tranquility. The garden is maintained by both church members and local residents. The congregation organizes art expositions by and for the benefijit of residents, artists, and members. Regularly, ‘open studio’ and ‘studio-weekends’ for artists are held. Several times a year there is a major exposition. The worship

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area was renovated in 2001. Artistic events have become a key element in the life of the church. One Sunday each month, music sessions are organized by, and for the benefijit of, residents, members and music lovers. The congregation offfers also cooking classes, meals for people that have had mental problems, and movie nights that also start with a common meal using recipes from the country in which the story of the movie is set. The church actively participates in the social network of the neighborhood and meets on a regular basis with the mosque in the area to discuss social problems and organize common activities like a project on praying and meetings about ‘the stranger.’ The organizational vitality of the Orange Church has managed to sustain its life and energy over a number of years. Its activities attract both members and residents. In their own neighborhoods, the 21 PCA congregations are challenged by the aforementioned core groups. Representatives of the congregations are also member of the group. On the city level, at the same time, a climate of learning from each other is stimulated. Activities include crossdenominational meetings and ‘inspiration-trips’ to London in order to visit new ways of being church. All the ministers read books on missionary renewal together on a monthly basis. The turnaround in the structure of the church also makes it possible for people from congregations with difffering ‘profijiles’ and implicit theologies to meet each other and to be inspired by each other. Collaboration and what has been labeled ‘co-creation’ is in the air. Uniformity is not established. In our research we found that congregations difffer greatly in the defijinition that they give of ‘missionary communication’. ‘Openness for the neighborhood,’ ‘Being there,’ ‘Making a diffference by contributing to the livability of the area,’ ‘Contributing to social cohesion,’ are descriptions heard in several congregations, while others defijine it as ‘Bringing people into contact with Jesus,’ or ‘Showing Gods empowering and healing Spirit.’ Some connect ‘missionary’ with ‘conversion’ and distance themselves from the term altogether. Yet, practically all congregations wish to make an outward movement. On the other hand, several ministers, including the advocates of renewal, complain they are overburdened and that the focus on being missional and the necessity to create new and inspiring activities is added to an already congested pastoral agenda. In addition there is a growing insight that an existing congregation can hardly be the agent to renew missionary communication on behalf of the neighborhood. Not only do people belong to diffferent life style settings, but the personal agenda of the members is fijilled too: everyone is busy. Also, the question is whether those who are attracted by a single project will become new volunteers.

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These ministers do acknowledge that meetings at a city level in the new structure are inspiring, that participating in ‘network-table-meetings’ of neighborhood caregivers is fruitful. and that these meetings may lead to new initiatives and experiments, but they are also expressing a renewalfatigue. Critics of the process go one step further. They indicate that the church council overlooks the ageing individual, who has been a member of a congregation for years, who considers his or her belief of vital interest and who legitimately asks for pastoral care. Grievances are also expressed with regard to money allocations, especially when it is perceived as being at the expense of the traditional congregation. Conditions for Change The question remains to be answered, what is happening in Amsterdam? Research on the church in other contexts demonstrates that conditions for change or structural renewal can be favorable or unfavorable.7 First, empirical research on change in churches demonstrates that what is labeled as ‘spiritual management’8 performed in teamwork by ministers and church councils does contribute to renewal or even transformation. It enhances the capacity to learn. It is about being ‘rooted,’ connected to one’s spiritual resources.’ A positive side efffect is that if a professional views his or her leadership as a spiritual task (as Monika Udeani has concluded) it reduces the risk of a burn out.9 Second, entrenched mental models, i.e. solid convictions and rules and roles in the congregation, influence the space for change. In fact they often limit this space. Also the expectations of the members with respect to their church are a considerable factor that can either favor change and renewal or thwart it.10 Applying it to Amsterdam, the resistance against the phrase ‘missionary communication’ in Amsterdam is partly due to solidifijied theological convictions of the ministers and to the expectations of the members.

 7  S. Stoppels, Voor de verandering. Werken aan vernieuwing in gemeente en parochie. (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2009), 101fff.  8  H.-J.U. Abromeit. Spirituelles Gemeindemanagement. Chancen—Strategien—Beispiele. (Göttingen, 2001).  9  M. Udeani, Auferbauung—eine vergessene Dimension der Gemeindeleitung. (Würzburg, 2006). 10  P. Senge, The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. (London: Random House, 1990), 203.

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Third, the space tolerated in a congregation for making mistakes is influential. Is experimenting encouraged or discouraged? In new-born congregations for example, making mistakes is common. It belongs to the core experiences. Church plants like those in Amsterdam have been called the research and development department of the church. Fourth, the presence of non-conformist individuals is imperative for renewal. People who dare to cross boundaries are a necessity. At the same time, these individuals have to be accepted as belonging to the community. When he or she is ‘one of us,’ the possibilities for change is enlarged. Case-studies demonstrate that an urban congregation is likely to get another profijile particularly when a new minister has become acquanted with the habits, customs, core convictions, in short, the culture of the congregation.11 Trust is therefore a core concept.12 Fifth, theories on congregations as learning communities indicate that a favorable setting for learning is a relatively small group.13 In Amsterdam we note that an abundance of ideas is being generated in core groups that include critical non-church members and function as learning teams. Thusfar we have not asked if the discovery of the church’s missionary and outward direction emerged out of practices that had been simmering for a long time or if there was a catalytic moment. The answer is clear and confijirmed by the respondents over and over again. The decisive— sixth—favorable factor was a sense of urgency, of ‘holy urgency’, that led to fundamental change: a totally new structure that liberates creativity. The motto became: We have to put over the helm, or otherwise the ship will run ashore and our treasures will be lost.

The new framework makes it possible to be innovative but this framework could only be created when the PCA was nearing the brink of death. It seems to have been the necessary condition for organizational readiness. The structure now triggers accidental discoveries and it encourages improvisation. This factor can be explained by theories of crisis, based upon case studies of numerous companies that experienced a turn-around.14 In these

11  R. Brouwer, Geloven in gemeenschap. Het verhaal van een protestantse geloofsgemeenschap. (Kampen: Kok, 1990). 12  R. Strunk, Vertrauen. Grundzüge einer Theorie des Gemeindeaufbaus. (Stuttgart, 1987). 13  Hull, J. What prevents Christian adults from learning? (London, 1985). 14  D.K. Hurst, Crisis and Renewal. Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change. (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002).

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theories a shared acknowledgement of a crisis that severely endangers the future of the organization is the catalytic moment. The necessary next step is to divide those who it may concern in task groups. These need to be completely diffferent from old groups and committees. The third step is to provide room for informal chats, sometimes called ‘bubbles’, in which the original values of the organization are rediscovered. The new microclimate enables a cooperative atmosphere. Former barriers are broken down. It generates a sense of being valuable for the organization. Finally, a new structure is created in order to liberate creativity. In this phase one can speak of an ‘architectural renewal.’15 A new pride of belonging to this organization fijills the minds and the hearts of the members. The question as to what constitute in Amsterdam the original values of the church, its primary vocation, is now continuously being brought to the fore. This is also the case when the process is criticized. The seventh and fijinal factor: the process in Amsterdam was stimulated by a new attentiveness to the context. The congregations started to see the area with new eyes, asking how the neighborhood and existing nonchurch organizations could become a resource to them. The key factors that are identifijied by this research are therefore spiritual management, theological convictions of ministers and the expectations of the members, space for experiment, non-conformist individuals, learning teams, a sense of urgency, and attentive observation of the context. Within the congregations ingrained assumptions and habits influence the space for renewal. Yet things may ferment precisely when members participate in ‘network-tables,’ ‘art platforms,’ ‘community centers’, etc. In Amsterdam, again, the decisive factor for breaking new ground was the consciousness of sinking to the bottom, combined with a strong conviction that this will lead to the disappearance of what is valuable in the Christian tradition. Amsterdam also demonstrates that a journey to new life can start when a congregation is reborn or newborn.16 What is the church? What is our vocation? What is our missionary, diaconal and pastoral vocation? Where are we? For whom are we church? What will be our structure—adequate to what we envision? What are the means that we can use? These are the core questions of a newborn community. The six newly born PCA 15  N.M. Stratford, Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will. (New York: Doubleday, 1993). 16  Noort, G., Paas, S., Roest, H. de, & Stoppels, S. Als een kerk opnieuw begint (When a Church Starts Again). Handboek voor missionaire gemeenschapsvorming. (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2008).

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congregations are constantly changing, although institutionalization is inevitably taking place. Yet, they are flexible, their activities are limited. Everyone caries a responsibility. They are vulnerable, survival and growth is imperative. The developments in the PCA, in the dying, the renewed and newborn congregations empirically confijirm the statement that—as Jan Hermelink writes—church can become a ‘reflexive concept.’17 As our preliminary inquiry tells us, precisely when a church is nearing the brink of death, the meaning of what church is or stands for becomes more intense. This intensifijied meaning demonstrates that church is not static, but implies a vocation, an assignment that has to be fulfijilled by its members. There is a vocation with regard to what the church is considered to communicate, but also to it’s design and structure. It entails the responsibility to interpret what is going on also in theological terms, implicit ecclesiologies can become explicit, in order to reflect upon one’s communicative identity: what the church is, what it can promise, and what it longs for. Ecclesiological reflection comes home to where it belongs: in the faith community. Thereby its practices are loaded with a tension, a transcendence both from the outside and from within. At any time someone can ask a question with regard to the vocation of the church. What is our ‘raison d’être’? Why are we here the way we are here? Why do we gather at this time? What are our distinct features? How does Scripture shape our imagination? What are the narratives we live by? With whom can we create linkages that might turn out to be meaningful? All the resources of faith are opened up again. Conclusion In Amsterdam, the sense of urgency originated not at the grassroots but at the administrative level. In guarded language, now in 2010, we may say that a new wind started to blow. The helm is put over. The situation shows signs of a re-awakening to the real fundamental issues. This is demonstrated, however, not only in the renewal itself, but also in the controversies at the level of the congregations about the course of the ship and the content of its treasures.

17  J. Hermelink, “Praktische Theologie und Kirche”, in: C. Grethlein, & H. Schwier, Praktische Theologie. Eine Theorie- und Problemgeschichte. (Leipzig, 2007), 399–455, esp. 450.

THE CONFESSIONS AND THE MOTIF OF THE STRANGER Matthias Smalbrugge I Confession as a Literary Technique The story is a famous one. Petrarch is climbing Mont de Ventoux, accompanied only by his brother,1 and struggles for at least half a day to reach the top of this impressive mountain. At the beginning of their journey they meet a shepherd who some fijifty years ago had climbed the mountain himself and who strongly advises the two brothers not to go on. In spite of this, they continued and although Petrarch himself constantly erred and took the wrong tracks, they fijinally arrived safely at the top. There, the scene was astonishing. They looked out over the Alps and could even see the Mediterranean. The sight was breathtaking. Suddenly Petrarch realized that he was carrying the Confessions of St. Augustine with him. He took the precious volume and opened it at random. His eye fell on this passage: ‘And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains and the mighty waves of the sea and the wide sweep of rivers and the circuit of the ocean and the revolution of the stars. But themselves they leave behind.’ What he was reading was a fragment of the Xth book,2 the book where Augustine deals with the importance of memory. What we remember, says the bishop of Hippo, is such a multitude of things that you could 1  Epist. Fam. IV, 1. See as a general introduction to the works and life of Petrarch, Victoria Kirkham, Armando Maggi, Petrarch, A Criticial Guide To The Complete Works, (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2009). Ricardo Fubini, Humanism and Secularization, From Petrarch to Valla, (Durham/London: Durham University Press, 2003); Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Petrarch’s Genius. Pentimento and Prophecy, (Berkeley: University of Californa Press, 1991); Chris Tazelaar, Nalezing, in: Petrarca, Het leven in eenzaamheid en Brieven aan zijn broer, (Baarn: 1993), 433–480; Chris Tazelaar, Francesco Petrarca, De top van de Ventoux. Vertaald, ingeleid en van aantekeningen voorzien door Christ Tazelaar (Baarn: 1990). Petrarch says that after long hesitations, he decided that no one else was better suited than his brother. His friends were all people whom he could criticize for one thing or the other. So his brother functions as a model of perfection. Perfection, ability to do what you have to do, is a theme that will recur in his story. See Claude Lafleur, Pétrarque et l’amitié. Doctrine et pratique de l’amitié chez Pétrarque à partir de ses textes latins (Paris: Les Presses de l’Universite Laval, 2001). 2  Ibid., IV, 25. The fragment has been taken from Confessions 10,8,15: et eunt hominess admirari alta montium et ingentes fluctus maris et latissimos lapsus fluminum et oceani ambitum et giros siderum, et relinquunt se ipsos.

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compare this heap of memories to a vast palace with many rooms. But that is not his main point. What he is aiming at is the fact that there is an inner world we need to turn to. In interpreting it in that way, it was this particular fragment that struck Petrarch, and it was as if a precious insight was brought to him. These lines confronted him with his own life. He was always looking at the outside of things, but suddenly there was a kind of inner voice, admonishing him and telling him to turn inwards. He submitted to this call and considered himself, in a certain way, converted. It is a rather surprising moment but also a surprising account. Surprising, because it is built up with elements from other conversions and it therefore sounds like the literary use of spolia, plunder. We know of this particular moment in the life of Petrarch because he related it in a letter addressed to his confessor, Dionysius di Santo Sepolcro. The latter was an Augustinian monk who had become Petrarch’s confessor when he was teaching in Avignon. He also was the same man who gave Petrarch a pocket edition of the Confessions, a small book Petrarch always carried with him, in fact. Here we meet the fijirst literary element: a story related to your confessor, quoting the Confessions from an edition you received from this very confessor, is not just a note relating what happened to you these last days; it is a confession. A confession about the lack of inner life, a confession about the fact that life is a pilgrimage that cannot be realized without erring and taking wrong tracks. A confession of the realization that man is a stranger to himself, and that he travels in order to fijind himself without knowing whether this goal can be reached—a theme that is a topos in the biblical world as well as in the classical one. But fijirst of all, this account to his confessor is a literary imitation of the Confessions: it uses the same images, the same scenes, the same techniques. For what does Augustine tell us about his own conversion in book VIII of the Confessions? That it was partly provoked by reading the story of another conversion. That conversion, however, in its turn was also provoked by the story about a conversion. For this is what Augustine tells us. Just before his own conversion, in the midst of a deep crisis, he heard the story of two servants of the emperor. These two men, walking and talking together, entered the house of some Christian servants and found the story of the conversion of St. Antony. Having read the story of his conversion, the two servants converted themselves. Having heard the telling of this conversion, it was the start of the conversion of Augustine. Finally, Petrarch converted at the reading of the Confessions. Even so, he also adds a new detail. He tells us about St. Anthony who converted when hearing

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the reading of the Gospel.3 A conversion in which the element of perfection surely wasn’t absent, since Anthony converted himself at the encouragement of the gospel to be perfect as is our Father in heaven. So at each stage, a former conversion is adopted by a new reader and thus becomes the model of a new conversion. Petrarch identifijies himself with the conversion of Augustine, as Augustine did with the story of the two servants, who themselves were converted by the story of St Antony, who converted himself at the reading of the Gospel. It is as if we have the portrait of man reading a book about a man reading a book about a man reading a book about a man reading a book. Therefore, what is most striking in this technique is the use of the element of recurrent memory.4 Someone converts himself, remembering the conversion of someone else, who converted himself also by remembering the conversion of a third one, and so on. But these conversions happen only in case we do remember something. Most often, however, we tend to forget what we ought to remember if we ever want to be able to live our lives willfully. Memory and recollection: that is what life is about. Not in order to linger on the past and to escape from reality, but in order to convert ourselves and to become aware of the truth of our lives. That seems to be the reason anyway, that Petrarch had already quoted the Confessions a few lines before this fragment. There the theme is also remembrance. He remembers that it is exactly ten years ago that he left Bologna after having fijinished his studies. Ten years in which many changes have occurred. Indeed, they happened with such force and influence that he has to acknowledge that he is not yet in a safe harbor, where he calmly can recollect the past storms.5 No, there is not yet a safe haven, he is not yet saved. Which makes him cite book II of the Confessions,

3  Quod iam ante Antonio acciderat, quando audito euangelio ubi scriptum est ‘si uis perfectum esse . . . .’ ad se dominicum traxit imperium. 4  The literary character of the Confessions has recently been underlined by James J. O’Donnell in his Augustine. A New Biography, (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), but the discussion is much older than his publication. However, up to now, the relation between the three autobiographical works, the Soliloquia, the Confessiones and the Retractationes, has not yet been sufffijiciently studied. See also: Matthias Smalbrugge, God en de geboorte van het zelfportret. Augustinus en de leer van de verwijzing, geboorte en vernietiging van het subject [God and the birth of the self portrait. Augustine and the tenet of referencing, birthing, and destructing of the subject], (Amsterdam, VU oration, 2009); and Brian Stock, Augustine’s Inner Dialogue. The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity, (Cambridge: University Press, 2010). 5  Epist. IV, 1: nondum enim in portu sum ut securus praeteritarum menimerim procellarum.

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where Augustine writes: I desire to recall my foul actions and the carnal corruption of my soul. Not because I love them, but that I may the more love you, o my God.6 So the scheme Petrarch is using, not only in the passage where he is quoting book X but also elsewhere, is that of the opposition between memory and oblivion. We have forgotten to remember, though we ought to be able to fall back on our memory. Not only in order to remember the past as a kind of history, but in order to be able to confess our weaknesses and shortcomings. So the quotations of Augustine which Petrarch uses, concern memory and the notion of the past. Therefore, we must pay attention to some elements of the Augustinian theory of memory beforehand. The aim of this article will thus be to examine to which degree Petrarch follows Augustine and to which degree he difffers from his great example. My thesis will be that he uses Augustine, but does so in order to break the established chain. The way Petrarch is writing about conversion—about the wanderings a human being undertakes in his life—is totally diffferent from Augustine’s conceptions. The theological view will be abandoned in favor of a concentration on man himself. The inner world we are talking about, is not, in Petrarch’s view, the place of revelation of God, but the place where a human being is born and comes into being.7 But in order to rightly see these diffferences, we must fijirst examine some elements of the Augustinian theory of memory. II The Role of Memory, the Discovery of Errors At the outset, we have to know: what is the meaning of memory in the Confessions?8 Memory, as considered by Augustine, can be seen as the principal element creating the identity of the writer. It is in writing down his memories, that the author becomes aware of who he or she is and was. So memory creates identity. But perhaps the word ‘create’ isn’t even the

6  Conf. II,1,1: recordari uolo transactas foeditates meas et carnales corruptions animae meae, non quod eas amem, sed ut amem te, deus meus. 7  See, Sophie Bogaert, Etienne Kern, Anne Kern-Boquel, Les énigmes du moi [The enigma of me], (Paris 2008); Gwenaëlle Aubry, Frédérique Ildefonse (eds), Le moi et l’intériorité [I and my interiority], (Paris, 2008). 8  See, Johannes Bachtendorf, Augustins Confessiones (Darmstadt 2005); Roland Teske, Augustine’s Theory of Soul, in: Eleonoree Stump, Norman Kretzmann, The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge 2001), 116–123; F.B.A. Asiedu, Paul and Augustine’s Retrospective Self: The Relevance of Epistola XXII, REAug 47 (200) 145–164.

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right term; perhaps we’d better say that the identity of the writer9 is recreated by the act of remembering and that memory is the path we must take if we want to reach the One who gives this recreation, God.10 For what Augustine says in the Confessions, is that he had lost himself. He didn’t remember himself, so to speak. He had become a big question to himself: factus eram mihi magna quaestio.11 But not only had he become a great question to himself, his whole identity was something that didn’t seem to exist. Was he really someone?12 Wasn’t it true that the whole house of his life was a ruin: ruinosa est?13 That his soul was just living in anguish?14 All such qualifijications do not stem just from a certain feeling of misery, the situation is far worse. The reason his life is such a ruin is due to the fact that he has been erring his whole life. He has been traveling like some famous predecessors, but these journeys of his haven’t brought anything but errors. He has been wandering around in life, making mistakes, not even knowing how to search, what to look for and what to want. The error motif is therefore a very strong one: the word occurs frequently. For example, Augustine mentions the travels of Aeneas, but only in a negative way. There is a certain resemblance between them, but Aeneas can only be seen as the dark shadow Augustine fears. Talking about Aeneas, he refers to his voyages and then uses the word ‘error’. He tell us that he was obliged to learn about the wanderings of Aeneas, but that he now considers these to be merely errores that made him forget his own ones.15 Again, referring to the founder of Rome, he admits he would have preferred to simply read these fascinating stories and odysseys—errores as he calls them again—than applying himself to learning them by writing and reading them.16 At his point, looking for a third time to the stories about Aeneas, he is struck by the fact that what school education brings

 9  Which makes us attentive at the element of the Augustinian rhetoric. See: Richard Leo Enos, Roger Thompson et al. The Rhetoric of St. Augustine of Hippo. De Doctrina Christiana and the Search for a Distinctly Christian Rhetoric, (Waco: 2008). 10  See, Etienne Kern, Saint Augustin, Les Confessions, Livre X, (Paris : 2008). 11  Conf. IV,4,9. 12  Conf. I,6,9: Quid ante hanc (aetas infantiae) etiam, dulcedo mea, deus meus? Fuine alicubi aut aliquis? 13  Conf. I,5,6. 14  Ibid.: angusta est domus animae meae. 15  Conf. I,13,20. 16  Ibid.: Nam ecce paratior som obliuisci errores Aeneae atque omnia eius modi quam scribere et legere.

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to a child is in fact a heap of errores.17 However, neither could he himself avoid that his own ways are also erroneous.18 What we notice in these fragments is that Augustine is constantly alluding to the double meaning of the word ‘error’, which is journey and wandering, but also error, mistake. For him, a man is lost on his journey if God is not the one who determines the destination. Travelling without God is by defijinition an error. But then what is the reason he quotes Aeneas in such a negative way? For Aeneas is the outstanding example of a man, albeit pagan, who is on his way to a destination and whose destiny it was to found Rome. If that is the case, you cannot conclude that his journey is a kind of senseless travelling. And isn’t it also true that his gods did closely watch his journey in order to guarantee that he might reach his destination? Certainly, that is all true. Nevertheless, this journey remains a specifijic example of a journey full of errors. Worse, it is a journey ending up in death. Dido kills herself, a scene that deeply moved Augustine and made him weep.19 But at the same time, the story of Aeneas made him forget that his own wanderings were no less leading him to death as well. The words ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes’20 are totally applicable to his own situation. Therefore, what is essentially lacking in the quest of Aeneas, is a life bringing saviour. Aeneas is not the one who proves the destiny of man, but his errors. Our travels, which very often resemble those of Aeneas, qualify us defijinitely as strangers. We do not belong to ourselves; we have lost ourselves. Even if we are pilgrims, even if we are travellers—we are strangers looking for our destiny. Therefore, it is meaningful that Augustine doesn’t use other words for the notion of a journey. He could have used words like peregrinatio, vagatio, itinerarium, iter, via. He does so rarely,21 apparently because he considers errors to be one of the main motifs of his life. He is drinking a wine

17  Conf. I,13,22: At enim uela pendent liminibus grammaticarum scholarum, sed non illa magis honorem secreti quam tegimentum erroris signifijicant. 18  Ibid.: et adquiesco in reprehensione malarum uiarum mearum. 19  Conf. I,13,20: et flebam Didonem exstinctam ferroque. 20  Conf. I,13,21 Et haec non flebam et flebam Didonem exstinctam ferroque extrema secutam. sequens, ipse extrema condita tua relicto te et terra iens in terram; et si prohiberer ea legere, dolerem, quia non legerem quod dolerem. Talis dementia honestiores et uberiores litterae putantur quam illae, quibus legere et scribere didici. 21  Conf. VII,21,27: Et aliud est de siluestri cacumine uidere patriam pacis et iter ad eam non inuenire et frustra conari per inuia circum obsidentibus et insidiantibus fugitiuis desertoribus cum principe suo leone et dracone, et aliud tenere uiam illuc ducentem cura caelestis imperatoris munitam.

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full of errors,22 driving towards confusion and errors,23 strolling away from the herd,24 persevering in errors25 that have to be refuted26 and must be confessed.27 His errors are like the wind you are feeling,28 errors he shared with a friend29 that made him think in a false way about God,30 having as a consequence that his heart separated itself from God.31 He went along with rhetoricians32 and he couldn’t support that he was blamed for suggesting that is was God who erred instead of man.33 So the voices of errors were dragging him outside,34 making him erring in the doctrine of faith.35 Finally however, God made him look upon his errors,36 leading him to the idea that he had to imagine God in terms other than physical ones.37 That was the way he was liberated from his errors.38 He is no longer obliged anymore to think about the devil39 and knows that God makes him alive.40

22

 Conf. I,16,26: uinum erroris quod in eis nobis propinabatur ab ebriis doctoribus.  Conf. I,20,31: Ita irruebam in dolores, confusiones, errores. 24  Conf. II,2,4: aberrans a grege tuo. 25  Conf. III,11,19: detestans (sc. Monica) blasphemias erroris mei. 26  Conf. III,12,21: ut dignaretur (sc. episcopus) mecum colloqui et refellere errors meos. 27  Conf. IV,1,1: Sine me, obsecro, et da mihi circumire praesenti memoriae praeteritos circuitus erroris mei et immolare tibi hostiam iubilationis. 28  Conf. IV,2,3: Quid est enim aliud uentos pascere quam ipsos (sc. daemones) pascere, hoc est errando eis esse uoluptati atque derisui? 29  Conf. IV,4,7: Mecum iam errabat in animo ille homo. 30  Conf. IV,7,12: Non enim tu eras, sed uanum phantasma et error meus erat deus meus. 31  Conf. IV,12,18: Intimus cordi est (sc deus), sed cor errauit ab eo. 32  Conf. IV,14,23: At ille rhetor (sc. Hierius) ex eo erat genere, quem sic amabam, ut uellem me talem, et errabam typho et circumferebar omni uento. 33  Conf. IV,15,26: Dicebam illis garrulis et ineptus: cur ergo errat anima quam deus fecit? Et mihi nolebam dici: cur ergo errat deus? Et contendebam magis incommutabilem tuam substantiam coactam errare quam meam mutabilem sponte deuiasse et poena errare confijitebar. 34  Conf. IV,15,27: Quia uocibus erroris meae rapiebar foras et pondere superbiae meae in ima decidebam. 35  Conf. IV,16,31: sacrilega tupitudine in doctrina pietatis errarem. 36  Conf. V,6,11: Coram te cor meum et recordatio mea, qui me tunc agebas secreto prouidentiae tuae et inhonestos errores meos iam conuertebas ante faciem meam, ut uiderem et odissem. 37  Conf. V,10,19: Et quoniam cum de deo meo cogitare uellem, cogitare nisi moles corporum non noueram (neque enim uidebatur mihi esse quidquam, quod tale non esset) ea maxima et prope sola causa erat inevitabilis erroris mei. 38  Conf. V16,26: Et ecce ades et liberas a miserabilibus erroribus et constituis nos in uia tua et consolaris et dicis: currite, ego feram ; et ego perducam et ibi ego feram. 39  Conf. VII,3,5: His cogitationibus (sc de diabolo) deprimebar iterum et sufffocabar, sed non usque ad illum infernum subducebar erroris ubi nemo tibi confijitetur. 40  Conf. VII,6,8: nam quid alius a morte omnis erroris reuocat nos uita. 23

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He is able to talk about his errors to wise men such as Simplicianus41 and Ambrose.42 Such is the view that Augustine holds with regard to his life and the journey it represents. It is full of errors and the only possible thing for a man is to turn to God in order to fijind back his own identity. Thus the truth is that Augustine hasn’t found the truth, and that the only memory he has is that of his errors. He has become a regio dissimilitudinis43 and so he must conclude that he has lost the similitudo he once had with God, who created us in his image and similitude. That is the one side, the remembrance of our errors. But then again, these errors can only be realised when there is also another memory inside us. We do not only have the remembrance of our faults within us, we also bear in us the memory of God self, says Augustine. Therefore, when admiring the huge dimensions of our memory, he also observes that it is inside this memory that we fijind the divine presence: ‘Behold, as much as I am going through my memory, searching for You, O Lord, I have found that you can not lie outside of it. Conversely, since I learned of You, neither did I fijind You from that what is not remembered, for since I learned of You I have not forgotten you.44 We remember God, and that is the way in which we fijinally come to know Him. Only by searching our memory may we discover God. God is in fact the oldest memory we have. Before we can remember ourselves, we remember God. So thanks be to God that we can discover who we are! And what then is it what we are? We are sinners, we are human beings that have been erring all our lives. But the faults of this life can only be taken into account when we look at God. We can only remember our misdoings when we remember God. We can only see our errors if we remember that what lives in our memories is the truth which is God: for since I thus learned of You I have not forgotten You. For where I found truth, there I found my God, the very truth that I have not forgotten since I learned of it. Therefore, what I have learned of you, you shelter in my memory, and thereby I fijind you when I remember them, and

41

 Conf. VIII,2,3: Narraui ei (sc Simplicano) circuitus erroris mei.  Conf. IX,5,13: Et insinuaui per litteras antistiti tuo, uiro sancto Ambrosio, pristinos errores meos. 43  Conf. VII,10,16: Et inueni me longe esse a te in regione dissimilitudinis. 44  Conf. X,24,35: Ecce quantum spatiatus sum in memoria mea quaerens te, domine, et non te inueni extra eam. Neque enim aliquid de te inueni, quod non meminissem, ex quo didici te. 42

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delight myself in You. These are my holy delights, which You hast given me by Thy mercy with regard upon my poverty.45 Such is the manner in which Augustine talks about memory. It is a way leading to ourselves, but only after having discovered Gods presence in our lives. It is God who leads us to ourselves, it is God, being the truth, who makes us aware of our errors. If memory has a function, it is to discover God. Memory is not just a kind of library where the books of our past have been stocked. No, it is a way of discovering a hidden truth. Of course, all this is very much the platonic model that we meet in this way of reasoning. But it is much more than merely a repetition of pagan wisdom in a Christian form. That we remember God is thanks to the grace of God.46 Grace has its defijinite form in the person of Jesus Christ. Memory is not a hidden capacity of man, a capacity that could prove to us the existence of God without God acting within us. We cannot climb the stairs to God, it is God who descends to us, who becomes man in order that we become God so that we may climb the upward way. III Petrarch and his use of the Augustinian example What does Petrarch do with this spiritual heritage? Apparently, he adopts the whole scheme of Augustine. He too, recalls his past and his endless wanderings. And when he looks back at the times he has lived up to then, he too realizes the mistakes he made. Climbing the mountain proves to be the perfect example of his errors. He climbs and tries to make progress. But he doesn’t succeed. He is taking the wrong paths and ends up in the valleys instead of fijinding the way leading to the top.47 In fact, he frequently chooses the wrong way and he is obliged to realize, at any of

45  Conf. X,24,35. Nam ex quo didici te, non sum oblitus tui. Ubi enim inueni ueritatem, ibi inueni Deum meum, ipsam ueritatem. Quam ex quo didici, non sum oblitus. Itaque ex quo te didici, manes in memoria mea, et illic te inuenio, cum reminiscor tui et delector in te. See also the way Julia Kristeva writes about Theresa from Avila, in: Cet incroyable besoin de croire (Paris: 2007), 102 fff. 46  Conf. X,3,4; X,31,46; X,36,59; X,39.64 (with the opposition between meritum and gratia). 47  Ego mollior ad ima uergebam, reuocantique et iter rectius designanti respondebam sperare me alterius lateris faciliorem aditum, nec horrere longiorem uiam per quam planius incederem. Hanc excusationem errabam, cum nihilo mitior aliunde pateret accessus, sed et uia cresceret et inutilis labor ingrauesceret.

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these moments, that he doesn’t make any progress. What he is doing is not climbing, but descending.48 Once he realizes this paradox of wanting to climb a mountain but in reality going downhill, he has his fijirst moment of reflection and meditation. Isn’t all of this the image of mankind struggling to arrive at the blessed life? We all wish to fijind the life of happiness, but in order to fijind it, we must do more than stroll, and instead climb many mountains. For the blessed life is the highest goal we can set for ourselves. It can be compared to the top of a mountain which we can only reach after having overcome the many hills that lie between us and this shining mountaintop. Therefore, it isn’t enough merely wishing to climb to this top. Rather, we must eagerly strive to end up at that goal. He underlines this idea by quoting Ovid (Letter from Pontus; 3, 1, 135), where the poet says: ‘wanting is not enough, you have to try to seize the goods’ [uelle parum est; cupias, ut re potiaris, oportet]. We hear again the sound of the element of perfection. Thus fijirst of all, it is not within Holy Scripture that he fijinds the mirror and reflection of his thoughts. It is not in the word of God that he fijinds the words to confess his errors, instead it is in one of his favorite pagan authors, Ovid, which he will cite again in this small confession. Apparently, to him, Rome is more important than Jerusalem.49 Secondly, this quotation shows that we shouldn’t be pessimistic about our possibilities. It seems almost certain that we can climb this mountain and that we can reach the blessed life. But it demands strenuous effforts. We want it, certainly, but that is not enough. We must long for it, we must desire it (cupias). We can fijind the same theme in his inner dialogue with Augustine, the Secretum, where he stresses the fact that man has to do his utmost in order to live according to the highest standards. Therefore, the word: cupias. But that is a word Augustine wouldn’t use. He had his own ideas about the desires of man and thought that the blessed life was not within our reach, precisely because of these desires. Desires do not strengthen our will and willpower, they are weakening them. They don’t lead us to perfection, they place perfection beyond our reach. Augustine arrived at the notion that our desires represent the way of leading us astray. They are the paths leading us into the valleys instead of helping us to reach the top. The whole dispute with the Pelagians was centered on

48

 Iterum ad inferiora deicior.  See, Barbara Vinken, Du Bellay und Petrarka. Das Rom der Renaissance [Du Bellay and Petrark. Rome of the Renaissance], (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001). 49

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this sole word: desire. Desire was the perversion of the will and since it was perversion, it showed that the will was no longer whole. On the contrary, the will was divided. As an instrument to achieve something, it was also the reason why we did not manage to attain this achievement. For instance, we want to obey God. But at the same time, we must admit that there are many voices in us that do not want us to obey God. We honestly want it, but we also fail to want it. Our will, as St Paul already proved in Romans 7, is a divided will and Augustine couldn’t think in another way. He knew that his own will was divided. He had promised himself to live in chastity. But he still dreamed of women. Who or what conjured up this dream? He couldn’t say that he didn’t dream the dream himself. Was he a divided person than? In fact, there was no other conclusion. There was a great distance between Augustine and himself within himself.50 Of course, Petrarch knew how Augustine thought about desires and his objections against cupiditates. He knew of the dispute between Augustine and the Pelagians, but he preferred to choose his own way. He starts with the Augustinian idea of human errors, but he modifijies it into the theme of the human drive. Thus, what seems to be his technique specifijically, is to use the schemes he found in Augustine but turn them upside down. That is the way he pictures Augustine in his Secretum, for instance. In that work he seems to borrow the style and arguments of Augustine. In a way, it even looks as if he is imitating him, for the Secretum is totally comparable to the Soliloquia of Augustine, a work in which Augustine had a dialogue between himself and his Ratio. Petrarch imitated this dialogue in his Secretum in writing down a dialogue (in fact a monologue intérieur) between himself and fijictional Augustine, creating again, as did Augustine several times, a self-portrait.51 But here again, he turns the motives of Augustinian theology upside down. The opinions ‘his’ Augustine holds in this Secretum are not really Augustinian ones, but are in fact purely ‘Pelagian’. Petrarch stresses the importance of virtue, the necessity of fijighting one’s own weakness. He is underlining the role and the importance of our moral behavior and thus takes a Pelagian stand. The same happens in this Epistola written to his confessor. The word cupio is taken in a sense that only Ovid can illustrate: it is the efffort a man ought to exercise in order to reach the goals he set himself. Without taking into account however that 50  Conf. X,30,41: Et tamen tantum interest inter me ipsum et me ipsum intra momentum, quo hinc ad soporem transeo uel huc inde retranseo! 51  See Karl Enenkel, Die Erfijindung des Menschen: die Autobiographik des frühzeitlichen Humanismus von Petrarca bis Lipsius (Berlin: 2008).

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these effforts would be considered to be vain effforts if he was following the Augustinian views. Yet still, Petrarch continues to suggest that he is following the steps of the bishop of Hippo. After that fijirst moment of reflection, a second one follows. When Petrarch and his brother are halfway, they stop and take a rest. Again, his thoughts move to the works of Augustine and he quotes from the Confessions.52 It is the fragment where Augustine says that he wants to remind himself that his past is characterized by ‘foul actions and carnal corruption’. Happily however, he has left all these foeditates behind. Petrarch seems to agree with that characterization. At the same time he adds that, as to these foeditates, he is not yet himself in a safe harbor. On the contrary, he clings to the passions of his past. Certainly, he regrets that he is still clinging to them, but it is useless to deny their reality. Nevertheless, he tries to do so by saying that he no longer loves them. But immediately after that phrase, he has to admit that this is not the truth. The truth is that he still loves these passions, though against his will.53 He loves them in a more faithful way, indeed even in a sadder way. But he loves them and he cannot deny that this love is the reality of his life. He didn’t leave them behind, they are still present. Thus the second moment of reflection doesn’t bring us nearer to a true conversion. If it is a conversion, than it must be a conversion to love. The letter he is writing to his confessor remains the confession of a return into oneself. But the relation Augustine had created between confession and conversion to God has not been adopted by Petrarch. Therefore, the second moment of reflection seems to prove our fijirst impressions. What he is doing, is borrowing the schemes Augustine taught him, but he doesn’t adopt their content. On the contrary, what he does, is radically changing the meaning of confession and conversion. It seems that the confession becomes a detailed story of an inner journey, and the conversion is the conversion from the exterior world to the inner one. Certainly, we are strangers. But the home we are longing for is not a heavenly kingdom, but an inner world we all can reach. It is not an in

52  Conf. II,1,1 Recordari uolo transactas foeditates meas et carnales corruptiones animae meae, non quod eas amem, sed ut amem te, deus meus. 53  Amo, sed uerecundius, sed tristius; iamtandem uerum dixi. Sic est enim; amo, sed quod non amare amem, quod odisse cupiam; amo tamen, sed inuitus, sed coactus, sed maestus et lugens. Et in me ipso uersiculi illius famosissimi sententiam miser experior: Odero si potero; si non inuitus amabo.

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paradisum te deducant angeli that sounds in his letter, it is an in meipsum me deducat animus meus. But the journey hasn’t ended yet and Petrarch continues his climbing of Mont Ventoux. They arrive at the summit and there Petrarch takes the Confessions and reads the lines we already quoted. It is the third moment of reflection. The efffect is astonishing. Petrarch keeps silent during the whole of their descent; he speaks no more and meditates about the fragment he just had read. What was the essence of that fragment? First of all, the observation that man is always inclined to turn himself to the exterior terrestrial world. It is an element Petrarch recognizes in himself which causes a feeling of deep resentment. Petrarch knows that it is one of the main traits of human behavior, but he shows himself highly irritated. He should have known, already by reading the pagan philosophers, that the only thing that matters is our mind (animus). There is nothing greater than our mind.54 A point of view he will repeat some lines later.55 What we do, is turning ourselves to the exterior world, while in fact we should look at the inner man and admire the nobility of our mind. Such nobility can only be spoiled if we turn away from our origin and thus turn into dishonor what God gave as our honor.56 So the conversion places our mind and soul in the center of our reflection. What matters, is self-knowledge and thus an approach to ourselves that makes us understand ourselves and prevents us from abandoning ourselves. For that had struck Petrarch the most: reading in Augustine that we have abandoned ourselves (homines . . .  relinquunt se ipsos). We have forgotten ourselves and therefore we must learn to remember ourselves again. He doesn’t say that it is God we forgot and that we have to remember Him. No, the inner ascension we have to make, is the journey towards ourselves. What matters is our mind, our soul. But the soul is no longer the meeting place between man and God, it is the meeting place between man and his lost self. So, once we have found ourselves, we stay in a certain way at the summit of the mountain. We are no longer the ones that focus on time as personal history, but on time as the inner space we are discovering. Put in another way, once we have found ourselves, we have found the divine in ourselves. We 54

 Iratus mihimet quod nunc etiam terrestria mirarer, qui iampridem ab ipsis gentium philosophis discere debuissem nihil praeter animum esse mirabile, cui magno nihil est magnum. 55  Nobilitatem animi nostri; and, Quid equuleus deberet terrere animum appropinquantem deo. 56  Admirantique nobilitatem animi nostri, nisi sponte degenerans ab originis suae primordiis aberrasset et quae sibi dederat in honorem deus, ipse in opprobrium conuertisset.

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have found that God and man cannot be separated. Suddenly, we see the structure of his letter. Of course it is a confession. But in a pure NeoPlatonist way. Augustine made Neo-Platonism a model of understanding the most difffijicult themes of Christian belief, notably the trinity. He mentions clearly that he owes very much to the books of the Platonists,57 but that the Word has become flesh and that it has identifijied itself with our human condition, that can’t be found in these other books.58 Put in other words, human wisdom and philosophy can be very helpful, but the name of Jesus is totally absent in that philosophical tradition.59 Petrarch does the opposite. He transforms Christianity into Neo-Platonism. He begins by taking a Pelagian point of view, then places love in the center of our attention, and ends up with the discovery of our deepest self. In doing so, he leaves the name of Jesus out of his thoughts. What we are talking about is God in the philosophical way,60 not in the soteriological way that might include the name of Jesus. However, although Petrarch places the mind at the center of his thoughts, he also mentions God as a goal to which we ought to strive. For he writes that we cannot be afraid of anything when struggling to be nearer God in comparing this efffort to the ones we have to overcome when we climb a mountain. But then again, God seems to be the goal we can reach only if we leave behind us the temptations of this earthly life with all its lofty appetites. God is no longer the One that makes us consider ourselves as sinners and as people that do not know how to arrive at any form of knowledge which has not its ground in God himself. The notion of man as an image who can only arrive at a certain knowledge of himself when looking at the One who created him in His image, is absent. Reading the fijirst lines of book X of the Confessions, where Augustine says, “I know You as agent for my knowing, I know You, even as I am known”,61 is a turn of phrase Petrarch would not have been able to repeat. He is not the one who lives with the idea that God is the One we need in order to know ourselves. No, the idea of God (though this might be a slightly

57

 See, Catherine Salles, Saint Augustin, un destin africain (Paris: 2009), 189fff.  Conf. VII,9,14. 59  Conf. III,4,8: nomen Christi non erat ibi. 60  See: Frédérique Lenoir, Le Christ Philosophe, Paris 2007, who states: ‘Pétrarque montre que le christianisme vaut surtout parce qu’il parle de la profondeur de l’être humain, de son intériorité. En cela, il rejoint la sagesse des auteurs anciens qui cherchent à comprendre l’homme. Christianisme et sagesse antique ne s’opposent donc pas, mais tiennent le même discours à partir d’un point de départ diffférent’. (171) 61  Conf. X,1,1, cognoscam te, cognitor meus, cognoscam, sicut et cognitus sum. 58

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anachronistic way of putting it) is rather instrumental. God is the one that makes us ponder about ourselves and about the way we look at the outside and inside world. God is the way we discover our errors, and in that sense God is the truth. But God is not a truth that can be separated from our own lives. God is intimately related to our inner being and can be considered as the truth we fijind inside ourselves. He is not One who represents a truth independent of his creation. Therefore, it becomes quite understandable that we fijind in this new version of the Confessions ancient elements, but certainly not the Augustinian element of divine grace,62 which becomes later the base of the doctrine of the predestination. Petrarch chooses other ways. He uses Augustine, but does so in order to say exactly the opposite of what the bishop of Hippo had said. IV Conclusion It is time to formulate some conclusions. The main notions we studied in this article were the ideas of ‘confession’, ‘error’, and ‘conversion’. It was shown that the notion of confession was heavily used by Petrarch. In his eyes a confession is the written form of an inquiry of one’s own personal life. But he changes the content of this confession, although he maintains all the exterior characteristics. He writes to his confessor and thus his letter can be considered to be a confession, certainly. But his confession is only the confession of personal weakness. It addresses the very moment of realization that he doesn’t live up to his own standards. Standards that oblige him to concentrate on the inner life. In that respect, this confession is a humble acknowledgement of failing in one’s duties. Petrarch recognizes that he has turned himself to the worldly side of life and that he has overlooked the demands of a inner life in which we can overcome the fear of death: happy is the man who is skilled to understand Nature’s hidden causes; who beneath his feet all terrors casts, and death’s relentless doom, and the loud roar of greedy Acheron. This is his conclusion, which he formulates by quoting some verses of Virgil.63 But the confession is not the confession of his faith. It does not imply that he is only capable of discovering himself by confessing his life to God. The confession is 62  See: Volker Henning Drecoll, Die Entstehung der Gnadelehre Augustins [The genesis of the doctrine of grace in Augustine], (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). 63  O nimium Felix! Siquis usquam est, de illo sensisse aritrer poetam: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis auari (Verg. Georg 2, 490–92).

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certainly a confession of faults and errors, but it is not the confession of a sinner. We do not need God in order to understand our misdeeds, we are able to realize what they are by ourselves. We are our own mirror, we don’t need God to be our mirror. The double orientation that Augustine uses—concentrating on God in order to concentrate on himself and vice versa—is absent in the letter of Petrarch. On the contrary, confession is here the specifijic concentration on ourselves. Even if we address ourselves to someone else, this person is but instrumental in the discovery of ourselves. Secondly, the notion of error. Error has to be understood as the wanderings we undertake in our life. We often do not take the right direction and therefore much of our travels has to be qualifijied as an error. But error is not the word that essentially qualifijies mankind. Of course, we make mistakes. But we can do better. We can climb a mountain. It is for good reasons that Petrarch starts his tale by referring to Philip of Macedonia, who climbed the Haemus.64 Apparently, a man’s destination is to climb mountains and to prove that we are all part of a royal descent. So, in the end, errors are not confronting us with our weakness but with our strength. They show us what we must do and what we can do. Error therefore becomes the notion of travel in which you can always redefijine your destiny. In fact, the classical examples of Virgil and Homer remain very valuable models. Therefore, we may conclude that in the end Petrarch is closer to Marcus Aurelius than to Augustine.65 Finally, the element of conversion. Conversion is not the conversion to God, but to our inner life. This is plain and clear when we look at the last phrase of this letter to his confessor. In these concluding lines, Petrarch asks his friend to pray that his thoughts, though they may be vague and instable, lead to the One, the Good, the True, the Certain, a stable Abiding [ad unum, bonum, uerum, certum, stabile se conuertant]. He doesn’t speak about God. Of course, we can interpret this unique good as God. But it is much more akin to Plotinian language than to an Augustinian one. Augustine himself was deeply influenced by Neo-Platonism, but spoke a language that is far more biblical than Plotinian. In Petrarch’s letter, we see the inverse.

64  Cepit impetus (sc cupiditas ascendi) tandem aliquando facere quod quotidie faciebam, praecipue postquam relegenti pridie res romanas apud Livium forte ille mihi locus occurrerat, ubi Philippus Macedonum rex . . .  Haemum montem Thessalicum concendit. 65  See Pierre Hadot, La citadelle intérieure. Introduction aux ‘Pensées’ de Marc Aurèle, Paris 1992/97. Especially, ch X,7, Les ‘Confessions’ de Marc Aurèle, 440 sqq.

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Therefore, the conclusion may be that Petrarch used an old literary model but changed it radically. He frequently alludes to the Confessions of Augustine, but what he does is the opposite of what Augustine did in his Confessions. With Petrarch, a Confession becomes the model of literature that speaks to us of the travels and wanderings of mankind. We may be considered strangers, but that has to be understood as travelers. It is no longer the stranger we meet in Genesis 23:4 when Abraham speaks of himself as a stranger. Or a stranger as Augustine might have seen himself to be, a man who has lost himself and can only be saved by fijinding his ultimate destiny in God. Instead, the stranger in the eyes of Petrarch is the man who sees his life as a journey that will bring him to himself. It is a model that shall be used by Rousseau, Joyce and Wilde and that will lead us to the most famous mountain in literature, Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann. Confession will become the element that leads us to the great debates about human nature, paradise, and hell at the same time. A last question follows, however. Bram van de Beek concentrated on the heart of the Christian tradition and situated its essence in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God. Not a lesser God, not a portrait of God, but God in purest form. And therefore, Christ portrayed as the savior and redeemer, but also as the ultimate judge. Van de Beek radically confesses, so to speak, that Jesus is Lord; the Lord who taught his disciples on the Mountain.66 This is another mountain than the one Petrarch speaks of. Petrarch doesn’t even as much as allude to the Sermon on the Mountain in this letter. Are these mountains, the one Petrarch and the one Jesus sat on far from one another? They really do seem to be. Petrarch leaves Jesus out of his Confession, although he continues to use Augustine as his main example. Petrarch even seems to take fijirm Pelagian stands. Therefore, I will not try to reconcile what must remain separated, or at least sharply be distinguished. But I wonder whether the function Petrarch gives to words and language, is not the most revealing point of his Christian belief. Apparently, what he taught to be the essence of Christianity is that words matter. He quotes the words of Augustine and fijinds in them a space in which he can move. A space that allows him to discover a journey and a destiny he had forgotten. 66  Van de Beek is clear, in the Sermon on the mountain Jesus is acting, viz. speaking, as God himself. See, A van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De christologie als hart van de theologie, (Kampen:Kok, 1998), 132. ET: Jesus Kyrios. Christology as heart of theology (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2003), 143.

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In that sense, words can become the very essence of incarnation. If that is true, then language matters, literature matters. It might confess, without confessing Jesus, that God can be found in words. Not only in biblical words, because we would deny the fact that the great Confessions, symbola have been formulated thanks to a non-biblical language, and therefore in all kind of languages. In that case, theology is fijirst of all a matter of defijining the epistemological worth of all language spoken coram Deo. Then theology is not dealing with orthodoxy, but with language as a model of incarnation. If that is the role of theology, van de Beek might be considered to be comparable to the younger brother of Petrarch, the one with whom he choose to climb his mountain.

“AS A DEER LONGS FOR FLOWING STREAMS . . . .” THE CHALLENGES OF POSTMODERN SPIRITUALITY FOR PROTESTANT THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH Szilveszter Füsti-Molnár Introduction Often, as I recall the past, I am astonished by the threshold experiences of my life along the Christian pilgrimage which formed me more than I was aware. These include sacred places and the inadequacy of any fijixed place or institution in spite of their overwhelming forces. I remember my expectations during disconcerting moments of transition and movement in my life. I remember wonderful fijindings with deep appreciations. Also expectations of being found by God! These were moments beyond a transitory state. They formed wonderful appreciations of discovering the work of the Holy Spirit in my life while learning the limits of my expectations . . . . (Sz. F-M)

This paper might be seen as a cautious step forward toward the introduction and recognition of the theme of postmodern spirituality as a major challenge for the church and its theology today. The special focus of this paper is on the wider analysis of a comparison of postmodern spirituality and Christian spirituality, especially within the scope of Reformed church ecclesiology. In the last few decades spirituality has become a leading theme in the social sciences. It is on the agenda in theological debates but is also influenced by the diffferent approaches to spirituality outside of the boundaries and bases of religion. On the one hand, one must consider the meaning of spirituality outside of the realm of religious and theological understanding, while on the other hand, the interrelation and interdependence of spirituality and religion (theology) need to be considered also. A theological clarifijication of (Christian) spirituality is needed on several levels. In this way a sense of direction might become clearer in the unfocused state of becoming lost in the Mystery of God, as seems to be happening in our so called postmodern age. Firstly, this paper aims to introduce the most characteristic elements of the postmodern age and its consequences for human condition. Secondly, we make an attempt to collect the main features of secular spirituality.

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Thirdly, we outline the important distinctive elements of Christian spirituality. Fourthly, we introduce the distinctive features of protestant spirituality, and in our conclusion we make a suggestion for a careful step forward for Reformed ecclesiology. The Context of Postmodern Spirituality The following brief description of postmodernism is limited to the special interest of this paper. Our aim is to give the most visible signs and influential elements of the post modern context. Firstly, the notion of ‘postmodern’ is used in many ways pointing to very diffferent meanings. From a cultural point of view, B. Latour points to the falsity of the myth of postmodernism by saying that there are direct fault lines in cultures throughout time.1 In Central and Eastern Europe postmodernism has arrived relatively late and very rapidly―while even modernity was still catching up in Eastern Europe. The concept of postmodernism itself is a complex and seemingly obscure notion. It is complex because pluralism and relativism are its main internal parts. One of the leading forces in postmodernism is its flux. Postmodernity afffects society’s way of thinking, acting and evaluating. Yet, the term postmodernity is unclear because it suggests the general viewpoint that modernism is over, which is debatable.2 Secondly, Deconstruction,3 as a critical method, is one of the main features of postmodernism. This becomes the fertile soil for many options. We have less certainty in our existential questions but more choices. If one gives up the task of a systematic construction4 even in theology, the hermeneutical basis and identity is in danger of being lost. This could lead to a subjective relativism whereby one is in danger (as we all are) of absolutizing our own persuasion. For example, we defijine our conditions

1  Latour claims that the diffferent movements in cultures are not irreversible. He gives a number of examples from the Middle Ages to the early modern period to show that certain aspects of the late medieval theological thinking in fact underpin later characteristically “modern” ideas. B. Latour, We have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter, (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). 2  D. Kolb, Postmodern Sophistications: Philosophy, Architecture, and Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 3  Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). 4  As it appears in the thoughts of Mark C. Taylor, Erring: Post-modern A/theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

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in relation to life or church-community according to our own measurements or even prejudgments. The objectivity of human rationalism is often questioned in this process, and as a result most people become suspicious of a normative interpretation of truth. Finally, the dangerous influence of these negative tendencies results in the decay of truth for society. In the Hungarian context this danger of losing our way in a labyrinth of value-choices is now a reality. Truth was ideologized in communism and today truth is suspect in postcommunist societies. When institutions (such as the government or the church) fail to maintain and practice even their own truths, people become skeptical―perhaps of all truth. Groothuis calls attention to the importance of spirituality as one of the basic elements of objective truth.5 A validation of the fact that spirituality should play an important role as a pillar of objective truth is not an easy task because of the rejection of universal truth by the postmodern context. Our surroundings seem to fijight against such absolutes in order to liberate individual consciousness. Such opposition is due to the fact that, while exercising their authority, powerful institutions often hide their ideological control behind the mask of universal truth.6 Thirdly, the dominant force of individualism is a concomitant part of the postmodern context. The peculiarity of our age can be detected in its irony. “In virtually every corner of the globe human beings spin around and around, living out their lives as individuals paradoxically compelled in their ‘private’ lives to make choices from a range of options that are enumerated and managed by institutions they cannot see and people they never meet face-to-face.”7 The same process is detectable in the Christian setting. Kärkkäinen makes an important point on the basis of Harvey, namely that in the postmodern context, Christian (traditional) church denominations are made up of a majority of those “who still call themselves Christians but their lives are distinctively secular, with the

5  D. Groothuis: Truth Decay. Defending Christianity against the Challenges of Postmodernism, (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 164–165. 6  K.J. Vanhoozer: “Theology and the Condition of Postmodernity: a report on Knowledge (of God)” in the Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, (Cambridge: University Press, 2000), 11. 7  Barry A. Harvey, Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1999), 2. The citation is from Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology, Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 221.

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experience of God in worship and prayer not fijiguring very prominently in all that they do.”8 Consequently, the postmodern context fosters idiosyncratic religious and non-religious spiritualities, while the ideological criticism of religion reinforces the alienation of contemporary seekers from institutionalized religion. The lack of foundations and of an integrated worldview leads to the rejection of master narratives.9 The result is that the main characteristic of the postmodern age is the fragmentation of thought, which leads individuals to focus their attention on the present moment and immediate satisfactions. Yet in this foundationless, relativistic and even alienated context there is often a powerfully experienced need for some focus of meaning, direction and value. No doubt this need leads to an intense interest in various forms of spirituality. Christianity (and religion in general) is greatly challenged by postmodernism while being part of it. One of the main struggles for institutionalized religion is that it is extremely difffijicult to reconcile with postmodern sensibility. Christianity presupposes a unitary worldview for which the master narrative flows from creation to the end of the world, thereby giving a solid ontological basis and eschatological purpose. Christianity lays claim to universal validity in the present and future while promising an eschatological fulfijillment for personal longings and for sacrifijicial social commitment. The Postmodern Human Condition Some features of the postmodern human condition can be detected in the following tendencies. Firstly, faith in the development of modern science and in the progress of human accomplishments seems to have become inadequate and arrived in many ways at the end of trust in comprehensive systematic interpretations. People of the twenty-fijirst century are not committed to development, objective knowledge, or to the necessity of basic truth. Today’s societies in many ways ignore universal morality and absolute values in order to maintain relativity. We are witnessing the demolition of macro- and micro-structures, which strengthens rootlessness. There seems

8

 Barry A. Harvery, Another City, 222.  As it is assumed by J.F. Lyotrad as early as in the 1960’s. See, J.F. Lyotrad: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, (Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1984), 31–37. 9

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to be contemporary consequences already present in people’s identityformation. Mobility and flexibility have become the main features of human condition in everyday life in globalized economically-centered societies. Social relations are falling apart,10 which results in loneliness for many individuals. Hungarian sociologist Ropolyi vividly describes this process as follows: “Postmodern personality is born in the process when the inflation of personality is taking place; such personality might become ‘worldwide’ but also very light.”11 Postmodernism is creating a ‘weak subject’12 and a ‘fragmented-self ’.13 To use Polish sociologist Zygmund Bauman’s phrasing, the postmodern basic life experience is the ‘liquid life’14 where there are no fijixed points and thereby uncertainty seems to be permanent. In other words, being a weak subject can be a way of life strategy. Instability and conformity to the circumstances result in a mechanism for survival. Secondly, there are a number of characteristics which are strengthened as a result of the above mentioned process of postmodernism. According to Lasch’s famous theory, the heritage of modern societies has a flair for becoming narcissistic.15 Narcissists live with having multiple purposes to fulfijill. The bubble of the number of choices, in contrast to what people can truly achieve, deepens the gap between the ‘idealistic-self ’ and ‘true-self ’. Culture, for example through the media, makes people believe in ‘great dreams’ and flattering ideas, suggesting that people are able to complete their self-actualization according to the illusions of their ‘idealistic-self ’. Most people have to pay dearly for a false realization: people’s self-esteem is overestimated and their self-realization becomes fragile and vulnerable. We see this clearly in contemporary Hungary. People are struggling with a number of defijiciencies (often measured by the promises of advertisements), therefore they are never satisfijied, which in turn weakens their

10  L. Løvlie: “Postmodernism and Subjectivity,” in S. Kvale (ed.), Psychology and Postmodernism, (London: Sage, 1992), 119–134. 11  L. Ropolyi: “A virtuális valóság természetéről” (About the Nature of Virtual Reality), Cs. Pléh, Gy. Kampis, V. Csányi (eds): Az észleléstől a nyelvig [From Sensation to Language], (Budapest: Gondolat, 2004.) 30–55, 52. 12  Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne, (Weinheim: VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, 1991), 316. 13  J. Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil, (London: Verso, 1993), 5–6. and M. Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 47. 14  Z. Bauman, Liquid Life, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 2. 15  C. Lasch: The culture of Narcissism—American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, (London: Norton/Abacus, 1997), 31.

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sense of responsibility in all areas of life. Due to the countless options, uncertainty in concrete decisions is a debilitating force, which often leads to unfocussed half-solutions.16 According to Fukuyama we live in the time of small personalities. “One does not have to be a hero!”17 Postmodern people are tolerant and open for otherness. This positive characteristic, if over applied, could mean that one does not face problems, and in fact ignores them. This, in turn, leads to lack of commitment to a value-system. The result, we can say, is that for an average person in this uncertain world, the only certainty is the enjoyment of moments of life. Without some true meaning for life, existence becomes estranged, especially with the experience of the absurdity of death, and people are left alone. Therefore what remains is not much more than the assurance of their own existence, which can only focus on the moment. Altogether, postmodernism is an open and formless transitory ‘system’. I do not fijind that it shows signs of a mature and integral view on the future or on humanity. Yet it is hard to avoid its influence because of its attractive (but often unpredictable) nature. In fact, since postmodernism believes that we must deconstruct all positions (‘stand’points) into ‘view’points, this prevents anyone from evaluating it. This postmodern irony implies that postmodernism needs to be deconstructed. The divergent use of the notion of spirituality is also due to the above mentioned postmodern human conditions, which we will introduce more in the following section. Aspects of Spirituality in a Secular Context As a preliminary concern, we have to call attention to the historical fact that spirituality was not distinguished from religiousness until the arrival of the forceful pressure of secularism in the twentieth century. The (popular) disillusion with religious institutions is often a hindrance to personal experiences of the sacred, and this deepens the break-line between spirituality and religion.18 Spirituality has begun to acquire distinct meanings

16  P. Popper: Felnőttnek lenni . . . a „létező” és a „készülő” ember [Being Adult . . . the Raised and the Growing], (Budapest: Saxum, 1999), 35. 17  F. Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last Man, (New York: Free Press, 1992), 300. 18  R.P. Turner, D. Lukofff, R.T. Barnhouse and F.G. Lu: “Religious or spiritual problem: A culturally sensitive diagnostic category in the DSM-IV ”, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1995), 183; 435–44.

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and connotations in the postmodern secular context, which Jameson calls “heterogeneity without a norm”.19 The spirituality which has become prominent in the secular context mostly focuses on the ego. The seekers and fijinders of this kind of spirituality mainly operate apart from a community. These spiritualities are very much characterized by a postmodern temptation, namely, the quest to turn away from religion and to entice people to create a self-styled spirituality of one’s own. People are mainly interested in expressing themselves. Publishers and bookstores report that spirituality is at the centre of contemporary writing and reading. Workshops on every conceivable type of secular spirituality abound. Spiritual renewal programs multiply the spiritual directions. Spirituality has even become a serious concern of business executives, in the workplace, among sportsmen and in the entertainment industry. Spirituality in the secular context can be viewed as a cultural phenomenon, referring to the adherence to a spiritual ideology without the avocation of a religious framework. Secular spirituality in principle might embrace many of the same types of practices just as religious spirituality does, yet the motivation nevertheless is diffferent. Clearly, since secular beliefs are radically diffferent from those found in most religious spiritual traditions, the emphasis is likely to be on practice rather than on belief, and on the inner peace of the individual rather than on a relationship with the divine. Proponents make a case for a form of secular spirituality in which the motivation is simply to live happily.20 In the conclusion of Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, the contemporary moment is presented, surprisingly enough, as one of the historically unprecedented homogeneities. The postmodern, he writes, “must be characterized as a situation in which the survival, the residue, the holdover, the archaic, has fijinally been swept away without a trace”.21 “We no longer are encumbered,” he continues, “with the embarrassment of non-simultaneities and nonsynchronicities. Everything has reached the same hour on the great clock of development or rationalization”.22 This hour still has room for “new ‘religious’ formations,” Jameson concedes, but these similar formations are

19  F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke UP, 1991), 17. 20  T. Wilkinson, The Lost Art of Being Happy; Spirituality for Sceptics. (Scotland: Findhorn Press, 2007), 207–240. 21  F. Jameson, Postmodernism . . ., 309. 22  F. Jameson, Postmodernism . . . , 310.

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utterly unrelated to ‘religious traditionalisms,’ which have “melted away without a trace,” and they have nothing to do, either, with ‘the spiritual,’ which also has disappeared. The culture that remains is in Jameson’s eyes “efffortlessly secular”: “spirituality by defijinition no longer exists: the defijinition in question is in fact that of postmodernism itself ”.23 Disorientation in the use of the defijinition of spirituality in the secular context is due to the postmodern mindset, namely that such a notion is possible to use without any concrete content. Therefore it is possible to accommodate anything. In that sense, one can agree with Jameson’s above mentioned opinion. We can conclude the quest for the content of secular spiritualism by saying that some of the basic motifs are visible. At the basis we meet a considerable openness to the transcendent, also in the secular context. What can easily be misleading is that this openness can be related to anything which shakes us, either with the feeling of afffection or of fear.24 The content of secular spirituality often seems to be connected to the immanent of the seculum, but it is labeled as ‘transcendent’. Humanity itself is transcendable, whenever the goal is to go beyond our own limits. In this way it is possible to distinguish a so called smaller and greater transcendent experience. Smaller here means ‘within the boundaries of our human limits’ (more connected to immanent reality), while a greater is to go beyond immanent reality. The Swiss psychiatrist, Scharfetter, who practicioner of the modern defijinition of spirituality, is operating with the human consciousness under the term ‘spirituality’. 25 The discovery of our own spirituality is a way of self-knowledge which leads to a higher state of self-consciousness. This means that we reach a realm of consciousness close to ultimate reality where everything is interconnected in a holistic way. Spiritual experience can therefore go beyond the individual and beyond material reality, but it is also related to these, since this experience comes alive through the meeting of empirical reality. The secular spiritual experiences are often not more than some sort of a mystical self-acknowledgment and it would thus be an exaggeration to call these an experience of God. One way to help to clarify the fuzzy state 23

 F. Jameson, Postmodernism . . . , 387.  D. Németh, Hit és nevelés [Faith and Education], Valláslélektani szemléletmód a mai valláspedagógiában [Religious-psychological Viewpoint in Contemporary Religiouspedagogue], (Budapest, 2002), 164. 25  C. Scharfetter, with R.M. Falconi, Hollenstein, M., Jacobowitz, S., Rhyner, L. Soni, The spiritual path and its dangers. An overview for counsellors and Psychotherapists, (Stuttgart: Enke, 1991) 1. 24

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of secular defijinitions of spirituality is to distinguish spiritual desire, which is clearly an anthropological aptitude, from spirituality which is fulfijillment of that desire, when the quest fijinds rest in its object, the Sacred. Basic Elements of Christian Spirituality The contemporary postmodern views we have pointed out in the previous section are often based on amorphous notions of self-discovery, actualization and relativism. In contrast, Christian spirituality is deeply rooted in a particular historical tradition whose teachings defy moral relativism. We will limit our investigation of Christian spirituality to some of the basic principles of Scripture. The Christian theological tradition of spirituality often refers to the Pauline tradition. The etymological root of spirituality derives from the Greek word pneuma (spirit, spirit of God) and is connected to the Latin spiritualis (spiritual). In Paul’s letters pneuma and pneumatikos (spiritual persons) are often used together, which deepens the meaning of the notion of Christian spirituality. This is especially true if we consider the counter part of pneuma, which is not soma (physical) but sarx (carnal). The Pauline use of the words clearly indicates that the contrast is not between body and soul, but rather that which is in contrast with the Spirit of God, is carnal. Basically, two kinds of frame of mind oppose each other. The battle of the sarx and pneuma is not subjective but a cosmically objective phenomenon. When people say ‘yes’ to the demand of sarx they become sarkikos; when they follow the godly pneuma they are pneumatikos. The identity of being a pneumatikos or sarkikos is not an integral component part of human beings―rather these are outward aspects. The soma is the responsible person(ality) whose decision-taking must decide between the alternatives of pneuma and sarx by means of the psyche (life force, selfconciseness).26 It is obvious that the understanding of Christian spirituality is impossible without God’s revealed will in Scripture. In accordance with Sheldrake, one of the most important features of Christian spirituality could be expressed through discipleship. This is a basic element of

26  Zs. Varga: Görög-magyar szótár az Újszövetség irataihoz [Greek-Hungarian Dictionary to the New Testament], (Budapest: Ref. Zsinati Iroda Sajtóosztálya, 1992), 792–794, 914. P. Sheldrake: A spiritualitás rövid története [A Brief History of Spirituality], (Budapest: Kálvin Kiadó, 2008), 14.

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the experience of conversion: becoming a disciple (Mk. 1, 15).27 Obedience to the call for conversion makes the following of Jesus Christ possible. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fijishers of men.”28 It is important to call attention to the fact that Jesus is the one who elects and calls a person to discipleship.29 Therefore, becoming a disciple cannot be seen as one’s own initiative. The human responsibility is in the answer to God’s call. The disciple can only take part in the service of the coming of the Kingdom of God if she or he radically breaks with their own past (for the sake of the Gospel). A disciple loses his own life in order to fijind it.30 Discipleship, as an important element of Christian spirituality, is more than the following of Jesus. The disciple has to unite with Christ (unio mystica cum Christo), because that is how unifijication can happen with the Father through the Holy Spirit and the Son. Paul expresses this in the Letter to the Romans by saying that one shares the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.31 As a short elaboration of the interrelation of discipleship and Christian spirituality, it is distinctively important to point out that this process is not possible without a community. God gathers a church chosen to everlasting life32 and by way of the unifijication with Jesus Christ we may become members of his church and thereby children of God33 and inheritors of God’s promises.34 The only reason this community is one body, the living body of Christ,35 is due to the unity with Christ. Therefore the spirituality of such a community cannot neglect the doxological aspect in its Christian existence, which fijinds its roots in harmony with the times of the Old

27  καὶ λέγων ὅτι Πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ: μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ [and saying, the time is fulfijilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news]. 28  Matt. 4, 19. 29  “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit— fruit that will last . . . .” (Jn. 15, 16). All English quotations are taken from the New International Version of the Bible. 30  “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mk. 8, 35) 31 3  “ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” (Rom 6, 3–5) 32  Heidelberg Catechism question and answer fijifty-four. 33  Rom. 8, 15. 34  Gal. 4, 6. 35  1Cor. 12, 12–13.

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Testament spirituality, whereby the emphasis was on the remembrance of God’s gracious acts in history. So far, before turning our attention to some of the specifijic aspects of protestant spirituality we can conclude the following observations comparing secular and Christian spirituality. Firstly, the anthropological and theological approach regarding the definition of spirituality is diffferent. In an anthropological sense spirituality is openness for transcendence. That openness pervades sensation, thoughts and actions. In the religious context such an aptitude fijinds its object in the holy, in the divine, in God. The Christian understanding of spirituality refers to the whole Christian existence, where life is dependent on the guidance of the Spirit of God. Secondly, the more dominant anthropologically flavored defijinitions of spirituality are manifested in very many forms that display a lack of focus which could give a clear orientation to life. In contrast to this, a theologically qualifijied spirituality, as a visible form of faith, is always an answer to God’s saving acts given in Jesus Christ. In this way our life can be represented as an offfering to God, no matter how harmful sinful human existence is. The following question is thereby raised: Is there any common ground where the two kinds of approach to spirituality may share some sort of a mutual principle, and through this one might take a careful step forward. Some of the Main Features of Reformed Spirituality After stirring up the diffferent layers which have been massively heaped on spirituality, we want to fijirmly stand on the truth of the particula exclusiva of the Reformation by which our reformed theology’s anchor becomes more vivid. Spirituality for protestant theology becomes sharper if one considers the doctrine of justifijication. In this doctrine a clear distinction is made between the acts of God and human deeds, which have led to a emphasis on sola gratia and sola fijide since the time of the Reformation. Salvation is an act of God alone. Human deeds cannot contribute to it. With the issue of spirituality, therefore, clarifijication is needed about how faith and spirituality are connected. To avoid soteriological misunderstandings one needs to radically distinguish pious living (praxis pietatis) from faith. In earlier protestant theology praxis pietatis (‘piety’) was the terminology often used for the concept of ‘spirituality’. The question how faith can be manifested needs to be answered. Faith manifests itself by

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its fruits which are not limited only to the liturgical forms of the worship services but pervade everyday life as well―according to the teachings of reformed theology. The specialness of protestant, Reformed spirituality, flourishes from these above mentioned criteria and stands on the pillars of ‘without the knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self ’, and on the creation as theatrum gloriae Dei, as well as on the unio mystica cum Christo—as is expressed in Calvin’s thought―which we now aim to introduce briefly.36 As a preliminary concern, we have to call attention to the fact that the gospel in the twenty-fijirst century does not difffer from what we can fijind in the Holy Scripture: before any human attempts to fijind God, God became human (prologue to the Gospel of John). God’s grace (sola gratia) is found in his irrevocable revelation in Jesus Christ (solus Christus). This is the starting point from which people can respond with praiseful life devoted to him. The principle of solus Christus identifijies the disorientation of postmodern spirituality and the causes of insecurity in life. Without the Knowledge of God There is no Knowledge of Self In order to gain existential security by way of protestant spirituality, it is worth turning to Calvin’s word at the beginning of the Institutes:37 “It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself [sui notitiam, which also includes all mankind and all creation] unless he has fijirst looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.”38 Calvin also makes it clear by emphasizing: “we shall not say that, properly speaking, God is known where there is no religion or piety”.39 His understanding of piety is “reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefijits induces”.40 Calvin, in accor-

36  See also B. van de Beek, ‘Calvinism as an ascetic movement’ in W.A. Alston & M. Welker (eds), Reformed Theology, Identity and Ecumenism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 205–222. 37  Calvin’s theological masterpiece, The Institutes, are not only a summa theologica but also a summa pietatis according to the fijirst edition of the Institutes (1536). Calvin describes his book in the subtitle of the 1536 edition as “encompassing almost the whole sum of piety [pietatis summam] and whatever necessary to know about the doctrine of salvation, a work most worthy to be read by all who are zealous for piety” (emphasis mine). 38  J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by J.T. McNeill, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 1.1.2., 37. 39  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 1.2.1, 39. 40  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 1.2.1, 41.

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dance with Lactantius (Divine Institutes), straight forwardly comes to the conclusion that “no religion is genuine unless it be joined with truth”.41 Therefore, any other kinds of attempts to know God “are merely toying with idle speculations”.42 Further, “the pious mind does not dream up for itself any god it pleases”.43 When someone truly starts to know God, then such a “pious mind . . . immediately betakes itself to [God’s] protection, waiting for help from him”.44 God’s truth is inseparable from Jesus Christ (solus Christus). “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1, 17)45 and Calvin also declares when explaining the third commandment: “for thus we confess him to be eternal and immutable truth”.46 Christ is the source of truth and wisdom, and Christians grasp that truth through faith, which is a gift from the Holy Spirit.47 Theatrum Gloriae Dei The thought of the whole creation as the theatrum gloriae Dei is another important element for spirituality in Reformed theological thinking as based on Calvin. In this way one may widen the circle of the understanding of Reformed spirituality. Calvin’s application of the metaphor of theatrum mundi, in contrast to a tradition many centuries of old in the western thinking and culture,48 gave an almost uniquely positive meaning to the world as theatre of God’s glory. Susan Schreiner points to the fact that the concept of the theatrum gloriae Dei cannot be disconnected from Calvin’s understanding of falling in sin.49 According to Calvin’s thoughts, due to the fall of humanity the world is fragile and is on the edge of chaos. Only God can save the world from its immediate collapse. “The Spirit of the Lord attracts everything, it all lapses back into nothingness” and “the stability of the world depends on the rejoicing of God in his work”―as Calvin puts

41

 J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 1.4.3, 50.  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 1.2.2, 41. 43  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 1.2.1, 42. 44  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 1.2.1, 42. 45  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 2.7.16, 364. 46  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 1.8.23, 389. 47  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 3.2.6, 548–49. 48  The metaphor of the ‘world as theatre of divine glory’ was mainly used to illustrate human life’s vanity and the failure of human tasks. (See for example: Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Chrysostomos, Augustine, or Ficino). 49  S. Schreiner, The Theatre of His Glory, (Grand Rapids MI: Bacer Acedemic, 2001), 22–28. 42

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it in his commentary on Ps.104, 5–6. 50 The providence of God (creatio continua) saves the world and the protagonist of this monumental drama is God himself. The contemplation of God means seeing God’s majestic glory through nature’s wonderful scenes as well. Therefore, Calvin also makes it clear that without the eyes of faith the native human capacity to grasp the signifijicance of God’s performance in the world remains blind.51 As the whole created world is theatrum, all performers are designated to glorify God’s wonderful beauty. On the huge stage of the theatrum mundi, a unique place is given to the church. Among the performers, this special community should be the one for whom the drama is most clear. The community of the church in its form of worship receives the drama of God in a most appropriate way, since God calls the church to be the fijirst recipient of God’s revelation. Unio mystica cum Christo The most import foundation of the Christian human existence is the union with Christ, the unio mystica cum Christo. Calvin calls attention to this in the Institutes: First we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has sufffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us.52

Community (unio mystica) with Christ is more than just belonging to him. It is more than the ‘covenantal relationship’ and the following of him. Calvin on the basis of Scripture talks about “engraftation in the body of Christ”.53 “The same purpose is served by the sacred wedlock through which we are made flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone [Eph 5, 30], and thus one with him.”54 The truth we can participate in is the truth of Christ; consequently it is not faith itself which holds the truth.55 The unio mystica cum Christo should be comprehended as a spiritual unifijication which is 50

 Henry Beveridge (ed.): Commentary on the Book of Psalms (Vol. IV.), (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003), 148–149. 51  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 2.2.26, 286–287. 52  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 3.1.1., 537. 53  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 3.2.30., 576. 54  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 3.1.3., 541. 55  J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 3.2.10., 554.

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the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Calvin carefully explains the unifijication with Christ, keeping in mind the ascension of Christ’s human nature as well. When we think of union with Christ we must recognize that there is no mixing of the human and the divine ‘essences’ and that such communion does not happen among equal partners.56 Calvin was consequent about this teaching in his interpretation of the sacraments as well. On the basis of Calvin’s thought, the following conclusion can be drawn about Reformed spirituality and postmodern spirituality: – Firstly, human openness (by necessity) to the transcendent is not only an anthropological aptitude but since it belongs to our created nature there is no doubt that it points to our humanity’s dependence on the Holy Spirit. – Secondly, one of the major features of protestant spirituality is the fact that God’s acceptance of humanity is unconditional. People can do nothing for their salvation. In contrast, other kinds of non-religious spiritualities are not aware of the necessity of salvation for humanity. The principle of sola gratia secures us from the disorientation of fijinding the Sacred through our own merits. Spirituality in protestant understanding is not an aim but a consequence. – Thirdly, while postmodern spirituality promises the illusion of the unifijication with God, reformed spirituality becomes most concrete in the existential meeting with God through his revealed Word. Here one can fijind another specialty of protestant spirituality, namely the importance of the preaching of God’s Word. In this way it also becomes obvious that God’s saving plan for humanity does not exclude human consciousness. – Fourthly, protestant and especially Reformed spirituality is Trinitarian. All of reality refers to the one God who revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Faith which comprehends God also includes the whole world as the creation of God. That becomes very clear in Calvin’s interpretation of the world as the theatrum Gloria Dei. Humanity is liberated for responsible work in the world. The One Triune God, whose most characteristic nature is the love relationship among the equal members, gives us an inspiration about how to transform the church and society.

56

 J. Calvin, Institutes . . . 3.11.10., 736–738.

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szilveszter füsti-molnár Conclusion—a Careful Step Forward for Reformed Ecclesiology

Having shown many diffferences in the motivations between Christian, especially protestant, spirituality and postmodern spirituality, we end up with three diffferent basic models concerning the connection of religion (church) and spirituality. The fijirst is that spirituality is alienated from religion, where one may speak of two diffferent entities. The second is when a certain kind of spirituality becomes a rival or even an enemy of religion. The third is when spirituality and religion are each other’s alternatives. It would be easy to conclude that religion just as well as the institutional church may provide an appropriate context of spirituality. But one cannot overlook the facts of the fijirst two models. The church in the world has a responsibility concerning how it operates through its institutional influence. It is possible to abuse its power, as we see in a number of examples in the history of Christendom. Institutionalized religions may empty tradition by many means: for example through rituals which have no content, clericalism, corruption, abuse of power, and also by concentrating only on the expectations of their contemporary context. These phenomena are often the root cause of people’s distrust towards the church. When the church falls into these errors it often happens that instead of the values the church should concentrate on, the church only focuses on itself. When an authentic Christian life-program and spirituality are not distinguished from the mistakes of the institution, there is often a general rejection of the church. The time of the reformation is a positive example of how to start solving such problems, but one can also learn from the extremes of that time that the church can end up falling into exclusivism. The institutional church’s existence is a paradox, and the realization of that can help us avoid radical extremes or indiffference. For the interpretation of this paradox in regard to our ecclesiological considerations, it can be useful to introduce the notion of ‘thresholds’―or liminality, which is borrowed from the science of anthropology. Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner described the transition involved in rites of passage by means of the Latin word limen, meaning ‘threshold’.57 This concept describes the experience of movement involved in having left one place, especially one conventional state of being, and not yet having arrived at another―so

57  Cf. Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960) and Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), 94–130.

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that one is “betwixt and between”. Such threshold experiences force one to question old identities and entertain new ones, standing in the doorway like the Roman god, Janus and looking in two directions at once. We believe that a juxtaposing of conflicting identities is very much also part of the exercise of faith. Nowhere is that exercise made more possible than in threshold experiences of liminality. And such experiences are also realities of the paradoxical existence of the church on its pilgrimage (in via) in the world. We can explore more fully the implications of this for the spirituality of the church by shortly referring to four characteristic elements as revealed in Scripture. – The fijirst conviction is that God is a God free in his omnipresence, and can never be comfortably contained in any place. Yahweh dwells in thick darkness58 far beyond the control of those who fijix the holy into secure and accustomed structures. God is always essentially beyond knowing, and beyond being placed. There is however a tension in this kind of theology by the very mystery of revelation itself. The God who can be located by no one is nonetheless made known by the free acts of God’s own self-placement. (For example in Eden, the burning bush, Sinai, the tabernacle and the temple.) A biblical dialectic persists between placement and freedom, iconic and non-iconic experiences of God, or ‘temple theology’ and the theology of a boundless God.59 – The second conviction is that the liminal experience of being in transit forms a primary metaphor of the encounter with God. “Turning around”, the process of metanoia often occurs in situations of displacement or transition. It is on the marginal ground between places and beliefs held certain, that the Spirit of God may come with overwhelming power. One can think about Paul’s conversion experience on the road between Jerusalem and Damascus. Or we can also refer to the story of the Ethiopian minister of fijinance as he was met by Philip while traveling south from Jerusalem on a chariot, and they discussed the prophet Isaiah. The story ends with the Ethiophian’s request to be baptized. – A third conviction is that biblical faith will always demand an identifijication with the marginal, unplaced peoples of this world. One’s liminal experiences necessarily make one sensitive to disposed and

58

 1Kings 8, 12.  Cf. W. Brueggemann, The Land, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977). Also look at 2 Samuel 7, 4–11 and 1Kings 8, 12–61. 59

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uprooted people everywhere, and will allow entertaining personal connections unimagined before. Biblically, this understanding is deeply rooted in the experience of Israel as a displaced people―the memory of their journey through the wilderness, their encounter with exile. This means that their pleas for justice invariably included a particular concern for those who had been victims of dislocation. The homeless, especially widows, orphans, cities of refuges, the precepts of the year of Jubilee are all illustrative examples of that. – The fourth conviction touches upon the heart of liminal spiritual experience. This is the forsakenness of Jesus Christ on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”60 Liminality appears between the “my God” and “why have you forsaken”. Jesus sufffered that tremendous sense of abandonment, of separation from the Father, precisely in order to re-unite all human beings to God, as they were detached by sin, and to re-unite them to one another. Jesus did not remain in the abyss of that infijinite sufffering. With unimaginable, immense efffort he re-abandoned himself to the Father (“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”).61 Jesus gave example for how to face the most varied forms of disunity, separation and abandonment: he opened the way to overcome them and he gave the deepest meaning to the mystery of unity. We believe that the above considerations, in light of the labyrinth of postmodern spirituality and its many threshold experiences, may open (re) new(ed) perspectives for Reformed ecclesiology in the contemporary context where Christian spirituality may flow more freely in the fulfijillment of the God-given task for Christian existence and the Church.  . . . do we not discover each day that we are on our own thresholds of the liminal stages of Christian existence, as well as thereby estranged at times from the given ‘well-ordered world’? This teaches us to say: “but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without efffect”.

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 Matt. 27, 46.  Luke 23, 46.

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STRANGE PEOPLE. TOWARD A REALISTIC ECCLESIOLOGY René de Reuver Intention Those who know Bram van de Beek do know that the church is important for him. He grew up in Lunteren, a little Dutch village in the so called ‘Biblebelt’. The church had, and still has, a prominent role in this village. Van de Beek started his working life as a minister in the church, after which he became a professor within the Dutch Reformed Church, where he held the ministry of ‘doctor ecclesiae’ at the Leiden University until his transition to the Free University Amsterdam (VU). Although a systematic study by him about the church has not yet appeared, during all those years as a systematic theologian Van de Beek was thinking about the church.1 He communicated his views verbally and in occasional writings. In recent years it has been noted that his views of the contemporary churches were quite sharp and had a critical content.2 This is a way of doing theology which is typical for Van de Beek. Theology has to be defijiant and has to incite to reflectivity. He said once if nobody gets prickly about a publication, it probably wasn’t worth writing it. Good theology has to arouse and give rise to contradiction. Van de Beek could be the orthodox anecdotal minister who says to his wife after coming home from a church council meeting: ‘I have to revise my position’. ‘Why, what

1  In the most recent part of the dogmatic series, part 2.1. Spreken over God: God doet recht [Speaking about God: God does justice] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 292, 387, he has announced a volume about ecclesiology. For English titles of Van de Beek’s works see the bibliography listings in this Festschrift, in which titles of Dutch-only publications are also given in a literal translation. 2  In the compilation Tussen traditie en vervreemding, over kerk en christenzijn in een veranderde cultuur (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1985) he speaks generously about the church speaking through the words and deeds of the members (82), about the richness of pluriformity as an aspect of catholicity (99) and about the structures which are needed to create a unity without usurping the other (112). In Gespannen liefde. De relatie van God en mens (Kampen: Kok, 2000), 134, he concludes by commenting that a Christian has an unhappy consciousness in speaking about the church. His most recent Dutch publication, Is God terug? (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010) derived from his worries about the quality of the church (5). The remaining walls of the Jedburgh Abbey (Scotland) are shown on the cover of the book. This impressive ruin acts as a symbol for the church.

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happened?,’ would the concerned woman say. ‘the men—in that era ministry was a man’s job—praised me!’ The temptation of a Liber Amicorum is to only praise the jubilee person. The question is whether Van de Beek would be satisfijied with that. Van de Beek wants to stir up complacency and give rise to contradiction through his publications, especially in those addressing church matters. His theology is reminiscent of a prophetic call. That is why the service of a critical reflection the best thing is we could do for him. The case and cause of the church is worthy to attempt doing just that. That is why I would like to give a critical reflection after a brief review of the fundamental aspects of the ecclesiology of Van de Beek. I will end this article with an opening toward a realistic ecclesiology. It will become evident that the backdrop of my own work as a minister in a disadvantaged neighborhood of The Hague plays a role in this. Van de Beek’s Faith in the Church The ecclesiology of Van de Beek can be summarized with the translation of an originally Greek version of the Niceno-Constantinopolitanum: ‘We believe in the church’.3 Van de Beek calls his contribution to the Festschrift of Lukas Visscher4 ‘Credimus in Ecclesiam’ with a wink to the historic different choices of the Greek and the Latin translation of the Credo. He expresses in Latin his preference for the Greek translation. According to Van de Beek, until 400 the usual Latin translation of the Greek ‘pisteuo eis’ was ‘credere in’. In his early work August quotes the Credo in that way. It changes when Rufijinus5 omits the word ‘in’ in his Latin translation. According to him the addition is superfluous and theological incorrect. His argument for this is that we can’t believe similarly in the church as a creation of God and at the same time in God as the Creator. This argument

3  H. Denziger, Enchiridion Symbolorum Defijinitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum (Friburgi – Barcinone: Herder, 1952), 42. The original Greek version reads: “(Pisteuomen) Eis mian hagian, katholikèn kai apostolikèn ekklèsian”. In the Latin translation, “Et unam sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam”, ‘eis’ was not translated. 4  A. van de Beek, “Credimus Ecclesiam” in S. Füsti-Molnár, Genius Loci, Sárospataki Református Teológiai Akadémia (Sárospatak, 2006), 17–39. 5  Tyrannius Rufijinus (345–410) was studying in Rome when he met Hieronymus. After his baptism he became a monk and left for Jerusalem. Later, in Egypt, he got to know Origenes. A lot of his work was translated in Latin. He returned to Rome in the year 397, where he wrote his Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum around the year 400.

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gains validity in the West; Calvin adopts it as well.6 Van de Beek thinks this Western development is co-motivated by a growing awareness of the value of the individual.7 According to him the Western church has made a dramatic turn to the human aspect of the church thanks to this development. “The Pelagian controversy is a clear expression of this shift. (. . .) Rufijinus’ refutation of the divine character of the church is the dramatic conclusion from his own experience and from the new spiritual landscape in the church.”8 The Eastern church has never made this turn. In the East the articulation kept ‘in’ the church as a mystic community with God. The Western church had to give up the faith in the church, because the church was seen more and more as a human enterprise that belongs to this world. The Eastern church could keep the faith in the church, because it is “conceived in its essential being and not in the empirical behavior of her members. The church was considered as the dwelling place of God in the spirit and the body of Christ.”9 Van de Beek chooses frankly for this Eastern ecclesiology. He looks with suspicion upon the development of the Western church and of its theology from the fijifth century onward, during which the church connects more and more with the Roman State.10 To him the ecclesiology of the East stores and safeguards the secret of the church better than the West because there is a tight connection with the New Testament and early Christianity.11 He reduces the ‘notae ecclesiae’ to the Godhead. God is the One, Holy, resident in the world and visible in Christ, as the apostles testifijied. The church is only church in as much as she reflects this unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. In that way she is the object of faith, as a bride of Christ. People could, and should, believe in this church. She is the eschatological community which proclaims and celebrates the coming of God in Christ, to save people from their sins. Here preaching is the

6  John Calvin, Institutes 4.1.2 trans. Henry Beveridge. http://www.reformed.org/books/ institutes/ 7  Compare with the Confessions of Augustine, written around the year 400, a work that is called the fijirst autobiography. 8  Van de Beek, “Credimus in Ecclesiam”. 9  Van de Beek, “Credimus in Ecclesiam”. 10  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 245–249, 359. Van de Beek sees this in the notion of divinity and Christology as well. See: A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie (Kampen: Kok, 1998), 72–86. 11  Because of church unity it is striking that Van de Beek advocates the return of the Protestants to the Romana instead of a joint return of Protestants and Roman-Catholics to the Orthodox church. See: A. van de Beek, “Een aantrekkelijke kerk”, Wapenveld 54.4 (2004). http://www.wapenveldonline.nl/viewArt.php?art=13.

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rendering of the testimony of the prophets and the apostles. Baptism— and the weekly (!) celebration of the Lords Supper—efffect the dying of the believers to themselves and to their world, in order to be raised up into Christ as an eschatological reality. In this way the church is a community of Strangers without any home in this world, unlike pilgrims who do still always have a home somewhere.12 The church is a community of immigrants who meet each other in this world around the cross of Christ.13 The individual religious experience is not constituent for this community; rather the ‘intervention’ into the faith of the church catholic accomplishes this. It is in ‘that which is taught everywhere, always and by everyone.’ Van de Beek takes this defijinition of catholicity from Vincentius of Lerinum (about 430).14 The canon, the Credo, and the ministry, are needed as surveillance tools to preserve the essence of the church. As a fourth such tool, Van de Beek adds the sacraments of baptism and the Lords Supper.15 The church has to be attractive to the bridegroom, Christ, instead of being popular or being committed to the welfare of the society. Canon, Credo, Ministry and Sacrament provide the fijitting bride to her groom. The sharpness of the most recent publications of Van de Beek about the church comes from his worries about the content of a lot Protestant communities in The Netherlands. Many of these communities are working on the attractiveness for people, and their usefulness for society. This veils that they are indicated as missionary churches. According to Van de Beek this is not truly important. The only concern the church has is whether she is attractive for her groom. It isn’t worthwhile putting your shoes on for a church without these concerns.16 For Van de Beek it is clear: the church as such is at stake, not so much because of the secularization, but because of being church too little. His appeal is: ‘ad fontes’, going back to the apostolic testimony of God, who came in Christ to bear our lives and to liberate the sins of sinners.17

12

 Van de Beek uses this distinction made by P.F. Theron: Van de Beek, Gespannen liefde,

125. 13

 Van de Beek, Gespannen liefde, 125–127.  A. van de Beek, “Cultuur en katholiciteit. Vasthouden wat overal, altijd en door allen geleerd is”, J. Kronenburg and R. de Reuver (ed.), Wij zijn ook katholiek. Over protestantse katholiciteit (Heerenveen: Protestantse Pers, 2007), 189–202. 15  Van de Beek, “Een aantrekkelijke kerk” en Gespannen liefde, 132. 16  Cover of the short book Is God terug? 17  In his pamphlet about the church he has take up an article about sin: Van de Beek, Is God terug?, 73–91. 14

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If Someone Forces You to Go One Mile, Go Two In his ecclesiology Van de Beek plumbs deep. His earnestness is spellbinding in every sentence he writes. The church needs are high mountains, and the churches care runs deep. You cannot call this prophetic appeal a ‘simplistic sermon, blind to the good’. For certainly, the prophet’s cloak fijits Van de Beek well as theologian: theology has to interfere indeed. Nevertheless, not only this habitus incites sharp criticism. It is above all the theological grief he displays about his church, the Protestant Church in The Netherlands. This church is in decline according to him, because she seems to alienate her very identity. Van de Beek wants her essence rediscovered. The church has again become determined by her core business. This sharp theological criticism pleads to be heard. Only at the cost of losing herself can the church can go beyond this decline. Van de Beek wants to touch the heart of the ecclesiology. For this, theological rethinking and ecclesiastic reversal are sorely needed. As a systematic theologian, Van de Beek focuses particularly on the dire need of theological rethinking and less on the concrete reversal. In the 2009 Dies Natalis speech of the Protestant University, ethicist Gerrit de Kruijfff drew attention to the specifijic character of this reversal.18 According to him the radicalism of the Gospel has the heart in the mind. The radicalism should evolve in ‘small twists’19 and strike the iron while it is hot. If you want to shape the radicalism of the Gospel in social life, you cause rumors of war and create despair because of its ultimate failure or opening a flight-path into mysticism. This warning is apropos for ecclesiology as well. Radicalism requires realism. Fundamental changes in thinking require a realistic turn. It is true for ecclesiology as well that a radical shape of church renewal is a cause of rumors of strife, and that it creates despair, or instability of the church due to a mystical greatness. The emergency of the state of the church shapes the ecclesiology of Van de Beek. The context of the Western church forces him to go this mile. However, if someone forces you to go one mile, you have to be prepared to go a second mile as well.20 The fijirst mile of systematic criticism asks for a second mile of small ecclesiologic twists. That Van Beek has to go this

18  Gerrit de Kruijf, Kleine wendingen. De realistische ethiek van Emil Brunner. [Small turns. The realistic ehtics of Emil Brunner] (Utrecht: derde rede Dies Natalis Protestantse Theologische Universiteit, 2009). 19  De Kruijf, Kleine wendingen, 8. 20  Matt. 5:41.

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extra mile can be shown from his observations regarding the new Protestant Church in the Netherlands.21 He describes this church as an entertainment group that wants to accommodate as many people as possible, yet is barely aware of where actual ministry exists. The role of oversight has virtually disappeared, youth enough to learn on catechesis and children through the children’s service (kindernevendienst) of worship are held. His analysis culminates in the question: “Are we focused on Christ in the church?”22 This question does make sense. However, his analysis and his suggested solutions are too crude and rudimentary. Those who mislead members of the congregation, Van de Beek wants released of their ministry of teaching.23 Who should make this judgment, and how the church can be built up instead, he doesn’t say. About the practical-theological considerations that underlie many church activities Van Beek is silent He also ignores the loyalty and dedication of many catechists, youth workers, and leaders of children’s services who make it a creative and engaging way to communicate the gospel. The question of Van Beek they recognize, but not his analysis. It stands to reason that because of this rough analysis the valid question is no longer heard. And that is unfortunate. His criticism does deserve a hearing. But to be heard fully, Van de Beek has still to go a second mile. His current criticism goes deep, but it doesn’t reach far enough. It is radical, but has too little flesh on its bones. The second step towards realism is necessary to safeguard his ecclesiology from cynicism and to shelter it from being seen as a mystical flight into Docetism. Henk Berkhof, the predecessor and tutor of the young Bram Van de Beek in Leiden, refers to the dual character of the church. The church is a community with Christ as well as an institute. Believers belong to the church and thereby they shape the church together. The church is their mother, while the members are also a family.24 The fijirst point asks for the second, while the second rests on the fijirst. Various aspects of salvation are needed to do justice to both the mother and to the family as representing the community and its members. Berkhof calls these ‘transfer elements.’25 In addition to the sermon, the Baptism, and the Lord Supper—which are underscored by Van de Beek as well—he points to instruction and 21

 Van de Beek, Is God terug?, 92–107.  Van de Beek, Is God terug?, 108. 23  Van de Beek, Is God terug?, 97. 24  H. Berkhof, Christelijk geloof. Een inleiding tot de geloofsleer (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1973, 2e druk), 360. English translation: Christian Faih. An Introduction to the Study of the Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 343. 25  Berkhof, Christelijk geloof, 363. 22

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education, the conversation and dialogue, the diaconate, the outreach services, the ministry of presence and comforting, and the church order.26 They are all needed as ‘transistors’ of God’s salvation of people. The church harbors insiders, seekers, childhood baptizers, guests, interested, et cetera. The church needs a multitude of Berkhof ’s ‘transfer elements’ to reach them all. These diffferent transfer elements, like the faith conversations with children at their own stage of development and in their own room provided for that purpose, the pastoral encounters, the diaconal meals, and so on and on,, deserve a dogmatic place within ecclesiology as well. Without flesh on the bones of Christ, the body cannot function. All this is also strongly emphasized in practical theology. Within that discourse the stretch of the entire ‘two miles’ can be indicated with concepts believing and belonging. In the church people experience God and community, where they are seen and counted, where relatives in the faith are received. ‘Believing’ and ‘belonging’ are going hand in hand. They cannot live without each other. ‘Believing’ cannot live without ‘belonging’, while ‘belonging’ is not sustainable without ‘believing’.27 ‘Believing’ and ‘belonging’ are the two foci of the ellipsoid called ‘church.’ They are the two distinguishable but inseparable conditions for being church, although they both do ask for their own transfer elements. Within a realistic ecclesiology, even dogmatically, there is room for both ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’. Stratifijication in Believing It is proper that Van de Beek sticks up for ‘believing’ as a core moment of being church. The practical theologian Henk de Roest does this as well. The thread of his recent book about the church is the theorem that the outdoor church cannot live without the indoor church. If there is not a way inward, the way outward cannot be made durable. Belonging does not exist without believing. Being church without believing is out of the question. The ecclesiology of Van de Beek underscores this theorem. Even so, believing contains diffferent layers. It is necessary to offfer each of these layers theological emphasis and support. Henk Berkhof notes that faith

26

 Berkhof, Christelijk geloof, 364–411.  Henk de Roest, Een huis voor de ziel. Gedachten over de kerk voor binnen en voor buiten [A house for the soul. Thoughts about the church for inside and for outside] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010), 197–200. 27

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as doctrine often only takes into account fijirst-rate believers, a stance by which the ecclesiology becomes docetic and even irrational.28 To avoid such docetism it is necessary to reckon with these layers of believing. The Bible pays abundant attention to these layers; in Hebrews 11 as well, the chapter where the title of this ‘Festschrift’ comes from. This chapter is eminently about believing. It recounts several examples of ‘faith in action’,29 of faith witnesses who go on their way ‘by faith’ (pistei). After Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Moses follows. In the seven verses dedicated to him,30 the terms ‘by faith’ are used fijive times. Only for Abraham it is used even more often. The fijirst time it relates to his parents. They are hiding Moses for three long months ‘by faith’, without any hesitation to disobey the order of the Pharaoh. The last time the word ‘faith’ is used it is related to the people of Israel, who are leaving Egypt led by Moses. “By Faith they passed through the Red Sea as on dry land.”31 For this journey of the people of Israel trough the Red Sea the same word pistei is used as for Moses who refuses to be named the son of the daughter of the Pharaoh: he prefers to be treated just as the people of God. He considers the reproach of Christ is bigger than the treasures of Egypt. Exodus 14 recounts the passing of the people through the Red Sea—by faith. Their faith appears to consist mainly of hesitations and resistance against Moses. “You should have left us in Egypt. It was better to die there than here in this desert”, they complain.32 Their believing appears to be wafer-thin at the bank of the Red Sea, with the threat of the armies of the Pharaoh behind them and the sea before them. Belonging to the people of Israel is the only sure fact that remains, and it seems to be a disaster in the making. A new deportation to Egypt and many deaths are looming. Only after Moses calls them to be steadfast and to trust “the deliverance the Lord will bring today”,33 do the people do see an angel of God who has build a shield behind them.34 They can go safely on the path through the sea that God has made for them35 and thereby their walk-

28

 Berkhof, Christelijk geloof, 421.  The heading of this chapter in the Today’s New International Version (TNIV) (London: Holder & Stoughton Publishers, 2004). 30  Hebr. 11:23–29. 31  Hebr. 11:29, TNIV. 32  Ex. 14:10–12. 33  Ex. 14:13–14, TNIV. 34  Ex. 14:19. 35  Ex. 14:21. 29

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ing ‘by faith’ get a boost of respect and trust. “And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared (wejiru – ‘oyvey’) the Lord and put their trust (wajaaminu – ‘amen’) in this God and in Moses his servant.”36 The questionability of ‘by faith’ endures beyond that moment; the author of Hebrews 11 indicates the near malevolence and fear which the people display when Moses and God require such ‘by faith’ again. When the people of God are on their way to the promised land, the ‘by faith’ motive existed mainly as a sense of belonging, until that watery passover/exodus moment, that is. Leaving this familiar ‘belonging’ behind is even mourned by many. Living ‘by faith’ can be that layered, apparently. This example of Hebrews 11 illustrates in ecclesiology (as being a formation of a people) that it is necessary to pay attention to the diffferent layers of believing, and not just to take account of those who fijirst believed. Towards a Realistic Ecclesiology Van de Beek had made a decisive fijirst step towards an actual biblical ecclesiology. Yet a second step is needed to come to a realistic ecclesiology. The church is not ephemeral; it is the concrete body of Christ. There are three fundamental notions for such a realistic ecclesiology. The fijirst says that the church is living ‘by faith’ of Hebrews 11. Van de Beek pays proper attention to this primary notion of the church. Without catholicity, that which by all, always and everywhere is believed, there is no church. The faith in the God of Israel who incarnated in Jesus Christ both alienates and connects. Therefore, the example of Abraham in Hebrews 11 is fundamental. Through the calling of God Abram becomes “a stranger in a foreign country.”37 So it is for Moses. By faith Moses refused to be known as the son of Pharaohs daughter, and therefore he left Egypt.38 The voice of God alienates people from their natural links. It makes them foreigners and strangers on earth;39 foreigners (xenoi), immigrants, who do no longer deeply belong somewhere. They are sojourners (parepidèmos), people in transit who know that their origin and salvation is not dependent on the context in which they live, but depend actually and factually

36

 Ex. 14:31, TNIV.  Hebr. 11:9, TNIV. 38  Hebr. 11:24, 27a. 39  Hebr. 11:13. 37

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on God. This is the reason that Abraham refuses to receive the gift from the Hittites, the cavern of Machpelah as a graveyard for his wife Sarah.40 He pays the amount requested without negotiation. Surely he maintains he is a foreigner and stranger (ger wetosjab).41 He does not belong to the inhabitants of Philistine lands, and thus he does not make use of their favors. Strangeness is inherent to the Abrahamic followers of the God of Israel, and likewise, it is to the church of Christ. Strangers—not because the church exists of peculiar personalities who are performing strange behaviors, but because God alienates them of their natural origin and context. Hebrews 11 speaks of very ordinary and diffferent people of Israel among the nations who have become strangers trough their faith in the strange invisible God of Israel.42 They are living in the world, but they are not of the world. The second notion that typifijies a realistic ecclesiology is the awareness that ‘by faith’ not only exists but consists of two components, believing as well as belonging. They are interconnected by the call of God, which not only alienates, but connects as well. God calls Abraham away from his country, away from his people and his father’s household (and thus in fact twice removed from the ancestral land, in fact). At the same time God promises to him that his offfspring will become a great nation.43 So alienation and connection are going hand in hand—around Jesus as well. Jesus calls people to leave hold of everything, to follow him, and to become a member of his new community of followers. Believing and belonging are two sides of the same case. Both are necessary for the church and both are asking for their own forms of attention: investment and maintenance. As Hebrews 11 shows, the long line of believers demonstrates both moments when it comes to believing, and others situations when it comes to belonging. A realistic ecclesiology negotiates both coefffijicients in a theological way. Next to the baptistery and the altar, the church offfers a place to eat and to drink with each other. The church is the house where there is baptism and the celebration of the Lords Supper, yet at the same time it is a place for eating with each other and drinking a cup of cofffee with each other. The third characteristic notion for a realistic ecclesiology consists of many expressions. Practical theology rightly is concerned with manifesta40

 Gen. 23.  Gen. 23:4. 42  Hebr. 11:27b. 43  Gen. 12:1, 2. 41

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tions of the church in many diffferent forms with a provisional character. The church is not a static but a dynamic institute.44 Practical theologians do even speak about a liquid church.45 The church does not only exist as a gathering on Sunday morning, in includes the diaconal community of strangers who are coming home to God as well. And furthermore, the church is a network of seekers who are coming together at a moment of their own choosing to learn about God through and with each other. Missiology reflects on this diversity of ‘fresh expressions of the church’46 by speaking of a ‘mixed economy of church’.47 New, temporary forms of community are growing next to the ancient expression of the community gathering on Sunday morning, with their calibrated liturgy. Such forms are needed to reach many diffferent people. The expression of the church on Sunday morning does not reach everyone, even though the Gospel is intended for everyone. Hence there is a need to create space for new forms of being church. A realistic ecclesiology systematically combines such diffferent old en new forms and expressions of church. Strange People These notions, outlining a realistic ecclesiology, could be presented with the image of the church as a strange people. People who are not formed by race, nationality or tradition, but by the call of the strange God of Israel, who died at a cross. Who belongs to this God, belongs also to the people that are God’s own. These two things are not available separately. As Christ is not without a body, God is not without his people. He calls people out of the bonds of their existence. Hebrews 11 testifijies this: Abraham out of Ur, Moses out of Egypt, and Rahab out of Jericho. This is not to leave them to themselves, but to add them to a new people of strangers. The God of Israel is a God of such people. Hebrews 11 shows the strangeness and diversity of these people. Very diffferent people are a part of this.

44

 De Roest, Een huis voor de ziel, 150–151. Chap. 4 elaborates this, 150–195.  Pete Ward, Liquid Church (London: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002). See also: Kees de Groot, “Fluïde vormen van kerk-zijn”, in: R. Brouwer e.a., Levend Lichaam. Dynamiek van christelijke gemeenschappen in Nederland [Living Body. Dynamics of christian communities in the Netherlands] (Kampen: Kok, 2007), 240–280. 46  Mission-Shaped Church. Church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context (London: Church House publishing, 2004). 47  Mission–Shaped Church, ix. See also: Gerrit Noort e.a., Als een kerk opnieuw begint. Handboek voor missionaire gemeenschapsvorming [When a church begins anew. Manual for missional community building] (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2008), 243, 352. 45

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Their existing ‘by faith’ is their common denominator, it shapes them to a unity. This faith consists of believing and belonging. The beginning of Hebrews 11 is vehement. The fijirst name that sounds is Abel. The Bible only mentions the profession of this ‘in-vain’ human being (the name ‘abel’ means ‘in vain, vanity’), and at a good day he sacrifijices his best fijirstborn animals to God. That very day becomes fatal for him.:his brother Cain strikes him dead.48 His ‘believing’ only appears to be one of dedicated sacrifijice. Furthermore, nothing further is said about him. Strikingly, this little known, in-vain human being is the fijirst righteous one who will be slain because of his faith. Over the centuries there will be many to follow . . .  Further down the line we encounter Joseph. His faith contains more of belonging than of believing. Father Jacob adopts Joseph’s two Egyptian boys as sons of Israel on his death bed. Joseph himself on his own death bed his brothers swear that, once leave Egypt, they are to take his sarcophagus with them to the promised land and to bury it there next to the ancestors, instead of leaving his body behind in an Egyptian pyramid.49 Two women have a pivotal place in the line of faith witnesses of Hebrews 11 as well. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, and Rahab, a public woman from Jericho, both belong to the strange people. The infertile Sarah becomes the mother of these strange ‘by faith’ people.50 Rahab, the outsider from Jericho, is adopted by the strange people ‘by faith’.51 According to Joshua 2, here faith exists out of awe for the God of Israel, but also in her cunning in protecting herself and her family from the forthcoming destruction of Jericho.52 No matter how complex believing and belonging were in this story, Hebrews 11 records her action as characterized ‘by faith’. The many believers who pass the review in Hebrews 11 are very diffferent from each other. Not only because of their diffferent times and situations they were living in, but for the various ways of believing as well. Nevertheless their ‘by faith’ forges them all to be a people of strangers. Hebrews 11 mentions these ancestors so that the readers of the letter are encouraged to confijirm these people ‘by faith’. New members of such by-faith-people are necessary for those who preceded them in faith as well, because “only together with us would they be made perfect.”53 Members of this strange people

48

 Hebr. 11:4; Gen. 4:1–8.  Hebr. 11:21–22. Gen. 48:5; 50:24–26. 50  Hebr. 11:11. 51  Hebr. 11:31. 52  Jos. 2:9–13. 53  Hebr. 11:40, TNIV. 49

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do need each other. Believing is personal, but it is not private. Such ‘by faith’ connects believers to God and are enjoining God’s strange people, yesteryear as well as today. It shapes ‘brothers and sisters.’ The image of the church as strange people is not an anachronism. Israel, precisely as the people of such a God, does not have a patent on it. The people of God start with Abraham and exclude no one by design. It is a conforming image for a realistic ecclesiology because it provides the church both with her identity and by her people’s character. Not nature but the Voice of the Calling One54 constitutes these people. The God-who-Speaks calls people out of their bondage. He rescues them from their nationalism as well as their individualism. God’s convocation brings together a very diverse people on Sunday morning, as the Scriptures are read aloud, and bread and wine is distributed. And, equally demonstrates community during the real Dutch ‘sacrament of cofffee’ after worship, or during a meeting of immigrants and indigenous children who are eating together and talking about the Bible in their own space. Strange people show the church in her strangeness and in the realism of the actual people gathered. Such a church criticizes the individualized Western culture where the utility of the church often is measured by what is ‘produced’ for those who worship and for the society at large. The church knows about the layers of faith and ‘by faith’ and gives space to a varying diversity of people who fijind themselves forced to go not one but two miles. Such a realistic ecclesiology challenges Van de Beek to go the second mile.

54  This term alludes to the work of practical theologian Gijs Dingemans, De stem van de Roepende. Pneumatheologie [The Voice of the Calling One. Pneuma-theology] (Kampen: Kok, 2001).

ROME OR JERUSALEM? BRAM VAN DE BEEK ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH Henk van den Belt Within the scope of this article it is impossible to describe the ecclesiology of Bram van de Beek in detail. Not only because ecclesiology is the most difffijicult part of Christian dogmatics,1 but also because his thoughts on the issue are dispersed throughout his writings. His ecclesiology is still developing and he is still working on the volume on pneumatology and the church in his series Speaking of God.2 Any analysis of his ecclesiology is premature until he offfers his elaborated view. Nevertheless, certain developments can be traced from what he has written thus far. One of these is his growing emphasis on the institutional unity of the church. 1. Church Unity is Relative In 1996 Van de Beek contributed to a volume on the unity of reformed Christians published on the occasion of the forty-fijifth anniversary of the society for reformed students C.S.F.R. The article opens with the confession that the author does not fijind organizational unity of churches necessary. “To me the unity of the church is not an article of faith and therefore it does not have a status confessionis.”3 He appeals to the fact that the word ‘one’ in the creeds dates from the synod of Constantinopel (381). One organization is superfluous, because the church is already one in Christ.

1  Oepke Noordmans, Verzamelde werken (Collected Works), ed. J.M. Hasselaar, (Kampen: Kok, 1978–2004), vol. 5, 326. 2  A. van de Beek, God doet recht: eschatologie als christologie [God does Justice: Eschatology as Christology], Spreken over God 2.1 [Speaking of God], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 11. Two earlier volumes are A. van de Beek, Jezus Kurios: christologie als hart van de theologie, [Spreken over God 1,1], (Kampen: Kok, 1998). Translated as A. van de Beek, Jesus Kyrios: Christology As Heart of Theology, [Studies in Reformed Theology, vol. 1], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002). A. van de Beek, De kring om de Messias: Israël als volk van de lijdende Heer [The Circle Around the Messiah: Israel as the People of the Sufffering Lord] Spreken over God 1, 2, (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2002). 3  A. van de Beek, “Één in Christus,” (One in Christ) in A. van de Beek a.o., Het brood dat wij breken: om de eenheid van een verdeelde kerk, [The Bread We Break: The Unity of a Divided Church], (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1996), 44–58, 44. C.S.F.R. stands for Civitas Studiosorum in Fundamento Reformato.

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There are several references to the unity of the church in his early publications.4 This unity in pluriformity, however, is not the unity of an organizational worldwide institute.5 This kind of unity he “gladly leaves to Rome, where people like to speak of the ‘una sancta’ ”.6 Van de Beek criticizes the use of the catholicity of the church as an instrument of power. Originally the word catholic means the communion of all local churches, but Augustine is the fijirst to use the word to claim, over against the Donatists, that his church is the true church. Catholicity thus becomes a weapon in a church conflict. Unity in the New Testament refers to the unity of the congregation rather than to that of all the churches. The need for an organizational unity occurs only around 400 A.D.; the church adopts the prerogatives of the Roman Empire. “So the one church under the one bishop of Rome maintains the unity in all diversity over against all schismatic movements. Unity in this sense is a matter of power.”7 According to Van de Beek, the ecumenical ambitions of the World Council of Churches are still colored by imperialism. The advocates of the reunifijication of Protestants in the Netherlands see unity as a solution to secularization; the underlying idea is that unity makes Christians stronger. He even interprets the emphasis on organizational unity as schismatic. All schismatic overemphasize one partial truth; unity is the favorite partial truth of the ecumenicals. After offfering an exegesis of John 17, Van de Beek explains how his position relates to that of Hendrikus Berkhof (1914–1995), his predecessor

4  In all pluriformity, people who confess Christ as Lord are one. A. van de Beek, “De pluriformiteit der kerk” [The Pluriformity of the Church], in A. van de Beek, Tussen traditie en vervreemding: over kerk en christenzijn in een veranderende cultuur [Between Tradition and Estrangement: On the Church and Christian Life in a Changing Culture], (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1985), 98–103, 100. We already are one in Christ and we have to seek ways to fijind agreement with each other. A. van de Beek, “Kerk in veelvoud of verbrokkeling” [Church in Plurality or Broken into Pieces], in Van de Beek, Traditie en vervreemding, 104–114, 114. It is a very strong expression of the unity of the church when Van de Beek equates dividing the church with the unpardonable sin. A. van de Beek, De adem van God: de Heilige Geest in kerk en kosmos [The Breath of God: The Holy Spirit in the Church and the Cosmos], (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1987), 84. 5  The positive valuation of the plurality or pluriformity of the church remains in his later writings. The true unity of the church exists only in Christ and in this world it has the form of plurality. A. van de Beek, Gespannen liefde: de relatie van God en mens [Tense love: The relationship of God and Human Beings], (Kampen: Kok, 2000), 124. 6  Van de Beek, “Één in Christus,” 44. 7  Van de Beek, “Één in Christus,” 45. The abuse of power in the church is an important motive to stress the plurality in the unity of the church in Van de Beek’s earlier publications, cf. Van de Beek, “Kerk in veelvoud,” 104–105.

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at Leiden. In his book The Catholicity of the Church Berkhof explains catholicity as the Lordship of Christ over the whole world.8 Van de Beek agrees with this Christological approach, but criticizes Berkhof for being too optimistic about the development of history. The pleroma, mentioned in Ephesians and Colossians, is not a glorious fullness, but it is the fullness of the sufffering of Christ. True ecclesiology rests in the cross of Christ. The church is the church under the cross. Van de Beek’s Christology is the key to his ecclesiology; the notion that ecclesiology is founded in Christology remains characteristic for his position.9 Van de Beek’s low qualifijication of organized unity in this article also flows from his use of Calvin’s view of the church as a mother. He interprets this metaphor, derived by Calvin from Cyprian, as a tool to criticize the Roman Catholic identifijication of the body of Christ with the institutional church. The ‘mother’ metaphor creates some distance. The church brings the people of God forth, but is not identical with it. She is only one of the external means of grace, never a goal in itself. The two metaphors of the body and the mother are used throughout Van de Beek’s theological development, but the emphasis shifts from the mother to the body. The low view of unity might have gained an extra emphasis because Van de Beek was critical of the process of church unity that fijinally led to the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. The general fear in the 90s that the reunifijication would lead to a new split became true in 2004.10 Writing in 1996, Van de Beek, on the one hand, found that the advocates of this reunion made organizational unity a goal in itself.11 On the other hand, he criticized the opponents of identifying the historical form of the ‘Godplanted church’ with the church itself.12 In this specifijic context, he found unity of believers that recognize each other in the Lord more important than one church organization. Still, the way this article nuances with the organizational unity of the church is surprising in light of Van de Beek’s later statements on the issue.

8  Van de Beek, “Één in Christus,” 45. He refers to H. Berkhof, De katholiciteit der Kerk [The Catholicity of the Church], (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1962), 81–87. 9  A. van de Beek, “Verantwoordelijk voor de liturgie,” [Responsible for the Liturgy], Tijdschrift voor Liturgie [Journal for Liturgy] 92 (2008), 204–211, 204. 10  Cf. H. van den Belt, “Three Forms of Unity or of Disunity: The Confessions in the Recent History of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands,” in E. Van der Borght (ed.), The Unity of the Church. A Theological State of the Art and Beyond, [Studies in Reformed Theology], no. 18, (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 157–168. 11  Van de Beek, “Één in Christus,” 55. 12  Van de Beek, “Één in Christus,” 57.

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He says that any historical church form is relative, because the church is only a means and she is already one in her Lord. “Ultimately, organizational unity is no more important [. . .] than the question if the custodian did not forget to switch on the heating of the church building in time.”13 2. Unity is Essential for the Church In 2007 Van de Beek presented a declaration on church unity at the biannual conference of the International Reformed Theological Institute held in Cluj/Kolozsvár (Romania). This unpublished document very well illustrates his shift to organizational unity. In the fijirst part he lists some fundamentals; the church is the body of Christ and because Christ is one the church cannot be divided. He says that a divided church is ultimately a blasphemy.14 The unity of the church is also visible and structural. The present situation of the church is in sharp contrast with her very being because of the many denominational divisions; it is a state of non-being, for the body of Christ cannot be divided. Unity can only be attained by conversion to the Lord and to each other and not in the way other institutions are united. Conversion means acceptance of each other. The second part of the text discusses the instruments of unity, the canon, the creeds and the offfijice. The early Christian symbols are the hermeneutic key or the regula fijidei to understand scripture. All later confessions have a diffferent status. Typical for Van de Beek’s later view of church is the analysis that “the third instrument, church offfijice, is not very much elaborated in the Reformed tradition. This has resulted in a large variety of denominations.”15 The Reformed churches are called upon to consider the restoration of the offfijice of the bishop. The church needs someone who is responsible in person for its tradition and unity.

13

 Van de Beek, “Één in Christus,” 58.  Van de Beek, “A Call for Church Unity,” [Unpublished concept declaration for the IRTI meeting in Cluj/Kolozsvár (Romania), July 8, 2007]. [1]. The declaration gave occasion to some discussion among the members of the Institute and probably for that reason Van de Beek left it unpublished. 15  Van de Beek, “Call for Church Unity,” [2]. Cf. “With the giving up of the offfijice of the bishop the unity with the church of all ages [ . . . ] has been broken.” Van de Beek “Verantwoordelijk voor de liturgie,” 207 n6. Van de Beek derives the three instruments of unity from E.P. Meijering, Geschiedenis van het vroege christendom: van de jood Jezus van Nazareth tot de Romeinse keizer Constantijn, [History of Early Christianity: From the Jew Jesus of Nazareth to the Roman Emperor Constantine], (Amsterdam: Balans, 2004), 237–250. Cf Van de Beek, “Verantwoordelijk voor de liturgie,” 207 n5. 14

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The third part of the concept-declaration goes even further in stressing institutional unity. The Reformation did not intend to start new denominations, but it aimed at reformation of the one church of Christ. Van de Beek suggests that all Christians should accept the bishop of Rome as the leader of the universal church. This was the case before the great schisms.16 His far-reaching proposal is based on the conviction that the present state of the Roman Catholic Church difffers from the time of the Reformation and that many abuses have disappeared. Rome is searching for a common understanding of scripture with Protestants, therefore they have no argument any more not to join the bishop of Rome. The declaration is not a wholesale Protestant surrender to Rome. Van de Beek is of the opinion that the Roman Catholic Church should abstain from all prerogatives of the papacy. The document expresses a deep longing for the unity of the Early Church. The Reformed Churches should maintain their confessions, the core of which is to be found in question and answer 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism, that we do not belong to ourselves, but to Christ. This confession, one of the most foundational phrases in Van de Beek’s theology, should take away all fears to give up ourselves on behalf of the one body of Christ. Although the statement was intended for discussion and Van de Beek left the possibility open for individual members to subscribe to the declaration partially. But the meeting of the IRTI decided that accepting the text would be premature, especially because the institute has the character of a theological platform. The concept declaration of Cluj, however, does show the heartbeat of Van de Beek’s later ecclesiology. The diffference with the earlier article on church unity evokes the question why this shift took place. 3. An Analysis of the Shift A fijirst answer could be that Van de Beek says diffferent things in diffferent contexts. The context of the ‘small ecumenism’ of the reformed denominations in the Netherlands difffers widely from the international context of the IRTI. For the church as a whole, Van de Beek only sees one solution to the problem of disunity, a return—though conversion to each other― to the one church, symbolized in the bishop of Rome and his authority as

16

 Van de Beek, “Call for Church Unity,” [3].

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primus inter pares. Acknowledging the priority of the bishop of Rome is something else than accepting the infallibility of the pope or of the institutional church. Stressing global church unity can easily go together with questioning local organizational unity; the diffferences between a few Dutch protestant churches are so unimportant on the world-wide scale that it is not necessary to waste energy on church unity as long as the great schism remains. Thus Van de Beek’s local congregationalism is the reverse side of his universal episcopalianism. No matter how true this analysis may be, it does not sufffijice to explain the shift in emphasis. The development is rather gradual: from a spiritual notion of unity, though an essential unity to an organizational unity.17 One of the continuities is the notion that the unity of the church, just as the unity of God, is not the unity of number one, but the unity of love and relationship.18 As we have seen, Van de Beek develops his ecclesiology in discussion with Berkhof. That ongoing discussion partially explains the shift. The influence of Berkhof ’s Lordship theology is strong in Van de Beek’s early pneumatology. He characterizes the work of the Spirit as a historical progression and concludes that “God is the God of our human history and our human history is the history of God[.]”19 The influence of Berkhof on the development of Van de Beek’s theology is an interesting fijield for further research. Van de Beek became more and more critical about Berkhof ’s and his own early optimistic view of history.20 While he takes a salvationhistorical approach to eschatology and the coming of the kingdom in his earlier works, Van de Beek later criticizes the optimism of discerning or even erecting signs of the kingdom.21 The kingdom of God has already come and through faith Christians participate in this eschatological reality: they

17  Ontmaskering is an example of the second phase. “The disunity of the church is her shame. It is also a heresy. I don’t mean at all that the church should be one organizationally, in the sense of one single organized institution.” A. van de Beek, Ontmaskering: Christelijk geloof en cultuur [Unmasking: Christian Faith and Culture], (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001), 78. 18  That the unity of God and thus of the church is not numerical, but relational is a thought that Van de Beek often utters. A. van de Beek, Alle feesten tegelijk!: Overdenkingen over Gods bevrijdende nabijheid (All Feasts at Once: Meditations on Gods Liberating Presence), (Baarn: Callenbach, 1997), 73. 19  Van de Beek, Adem van God, 311. 20  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 11. 21  Van de Beek, Gespannen liefde, 129.

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live in the one kairos of the fulfijilled time.22 This approach to eschatology makes the earlier idea of historical development superfluous. This also afffects his ecclesiology; placing the church in a historical perspective easily leads to a nuanced view of its unity. When history becomes normative, unity becomes relative. While Van de Beek fijirst started to argue from the given historical reality, he later takes his starting point in the eschatological reality in Christ and this makes unity normative. Closely related to his a-historical eschatology is his Christology in which the sufffering Jesus is identifijied with God. We know no other God than Jesus. In his later writings Van de Beek places a stronger emphasis on unity in the doctrine of God, than in his earlier ones. “The Lord is one. That is the basic confession of Israel and it should be the basic confession of the church.”23 The unity of Christ with God is the basis for the unity of the believers with Christ and in a derived sense of Christians with each other.24 In his elaboration of the questions evoked by his book Jesus Kyrios he calls the organizational multiplicity of the church a sin, but he still adds that the multiplicity is a sign that institutional unity is not essential.25 Only in his second volume, the book on Israel, the full implications of his Christology are worked out. In the sufffering Christ and in the sufffering of Israel God identifijies himself with his people.26 This identifijication of the one God implies a call for unity that reaches further than a confession that the church is already one in Christ. Israel and the church must be faithful to the unity of the shema and that is something else than believing in unity; “the shema is also the foundation of the unity of the church, and the church’s being split is nothing else than the sin of Jeroboam who caused Israel to sin.”27 Apparently this emphasis on the unity of the triune God

22

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 147.  A. van de Beek, “De Here is één,” [The Lord is One], Theologia Reformata 46 (2003), 197–209, 197. According to Philippe Theron the unity of God is a major motive in Van de Beek’s work. P.F. Theron, “Unity and Justifijication: The Faithfulness of God, the Faith/ fulness of Christ, and the Faith of the Church,” in E.A.J.G. Van der Borght (ed.) Religion Without Ulterior Motive, [Studies in Reformed Theology, vol. 13] (Leiden: Brill, 2006) 119–138, 122. 24  Van de Beek, Alle feesten, 72–77. “The communion of the body is First of all the unity with Christ. This is the basic meaning of the concept of the body of Christ[.]” A. van de Beek, “One God and one Church: Considerations on the Unity of the Church from the Perspective of Biblical Theology,” in Van der Borght, Unity of the Church, 249–266, 257. 25  Van de Beek, Gespannen liefde, 123–124. 26  Van de Beek, Kring om de Messias, 398. 27  Van de Beek, “De Here is één,” 199, cf. 199. This article reflects a response to questions evoked by De Kring om de Messias. On the shema cf. Van de Beek, “One God and one Church,” 249. 23

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implies that faith in a hidden unity is not enough without faithfulness to that unity. This line of thought appears clearly in an article from 2004, written just before the reunifijication and split of the Dutch Reformed Church. It is titled ‘The sin of Jeroboam: On the Unity of the Church’. Van de Beek starts with a reference to John Calvin’s view of the church, but he no longer uses the metaphor of the mother to criticize the institutional church. Calvin must be interpreted in line with Cyprian from whom he derives the metaphor.28 Calvin’s drive for unity does not apply to the invisible, but to the visible church. “The basis of the unity is the one Christ. [. . .] We witness that we no longer belong to ourselves, but to Him our faithful Savior. We have an ex-centric identity. Our identity lies in Him.”29 The church has two constitutive marks: word and sacrament. Next to these, the offfijice is the means by which the unity of the church is kept and this naturally leads to a fourth element of unity, namely the unity of organization. This unity does not have to be hierarchical as in Roman Catholicism, but it may be much looser, like the structure of the Early Church. It is impossible, however, that there are diverse denominations. The unity of the one body of Christ is founded in the unity of God. The texts that call for unity resound the shema and therefore disruptions in the church are a denial of the shema.30 Because the name of God is at stake, living in several denominations instead of in one Christian community, is blasphemy. The division of the sanctuary by Jeroboam can be applied to the disunity of the church. The Protestant separation from the one church looks like the Israelite separation from Jerusalem. The decline of Rome in the Middle Ages, for instance, justifijies the resistance of abuse of power and idolatrous elements in worship, but it does not justify the establishment

28  In an earlier article Van de Beek had already dealt with the link between Calvin and the Early Church. A. van de Beek, “The Dis-unity of the Reformed Churches,” in L. Vischer (ed.), The Church in Reformed Perspective: A European Reflection, (Genève: John Knox Centre, 2002), 109–133. 29  A. van de Beek, “De zonde van Jerobeam: Over de eenheid van de kerk,” [The sin of Jeroboam: On the Unity of the Church], in A. van de Beek and W. van Laar Ed., Sola Gratia: Bron voor de Reformatie en uitdaging voor nu, opstellen aangeboden aan dr. W. Balke, [Sola Gratia: Source for the Reformation and Challenge for Today, Essays Presented to Dr. W. Balke], (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2004), 180–198, 182. 30  Van de Beek, “Zonde van Jerobeam,” 184. For the importance of the shema for the understanding of the unity of the church, Van de Beek refers to the dissertation of P.F. Theron, Die Ekklesia as kosmies-eskatologiese teken: Die eenheid van die Kerk as “Profesie” van die eskatologiese Vrede, [The Ecclesia as Cosmic-eschatological Sign: The Unity of the Church as ‘Prophecy’ of the Eschatological Peace], (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1978).

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of a separate denomination. “Notwithstanding all the emphasis of the Reformation on the justifijication of the ungodly, its representatives apparently refused to apply this confession to the church as institute.”31 The national protestant churches encouraged nationalism, just like Jeroboam who created his own sanctuary to establish his own nation and to keep it under control. The article blames the process of reunifijication in the Protestant Church for not placing Christ in the center. The unifijication should only be one moment in a much broader process of reunifijication of all churches worldwide with reciprocal acknowledgement of sacraments and offfijices.32 The article closes with a remark on the Nicene Creed. “Protestants like to emphasize that we do not believe in the church. We believe the church and we believe in God. The original text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed thinks diffferent. It says without hesitance: ‘We believe in one holy catholic church.’ That later versions change this is a lack of faith.”33 The discovery of this element of the original text of Nicea marks and typifijies the shift in Van de Beek’s ecclesiology. Only a few years earlier, in 2000, he still defended the view he now rejects: “The creed says: ‘I believe a holy catholic church.’ It does not say: ‘I believe in a holy catholic church.’ [. . .] Some versions of the confession do say this about the church: ‘I believe in the church.’ Happily, that does not belong to the core of the confession.”34 The development in Van de Beek’s ecclesiology hinges on the rediscovery of the Early Church and its emphasis on real and material unity. The shift of interest to the Early Church roots in the conviction that the context of the fijirst ages of Christianity is closer to the modern secular context than that of the corpus christianum of the Reformation time. Van de Beek

31

 Van de Beek, “Zonde van Jerobeam,” 193.  Van de Beek, “Zonde van Jerobeam,” 197. Cf. “The whole church is at stake. The unity of Protestants is not enough for that goal. [. . .] As long as the reunifijication of the whole church under the legally appointed bishops is not restored, culture has more authority than the Holy Spirit.” A. van de Beek, “Cultuur en katholiciteit: Vasthouden wat overal, altijd en door allen geleerd is,” [Culture and Catholicity: Maintaining what has been Taught Everywhere, Always, and by All] in: J. Kronenburg and R. de Reuver (eds), Wij zijn ook katholiek: over protestantse katholiciteit [We are also Catholic: On Protestant Catholicity], (Heerenveen: Protestantse Pers, 2007), 189–204, 200. 33  Van de Beek, “Zonde van Jerobeam,” 198. 34  Van de Beek, Gespannen liefde, 133. Van de Beek also wrote separately on the issue. A. van de Beek, “Credimus in Ecclesiam,” [We Believe in the Church], in: S. Füsti-Molnár (ed.), Genius Loci, (Sárospatak: Sárospataki Református Teológiai Akadémia, 2006), 17–39. 32

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stresses the importance of the confession of the church of all ages: “I think that the Early Church can help us more than the Reformation.”35 His turn to the Early Church is typifijied by the discovery or reinterpretation of the preposition ‘in’: Van de Beek writes that “the unity of God as confessed in the unity of the Spirit is the unity of the church. The church is the expression of God as the one God. Therefore the Creed goes so far to say that we believe in one church, as we believe in one God.”36 4. What about Jerusalem? Jerusalem does play a role in Van de Beek’s theology, though he admits that it is difffijicult to give it a proper place.37 In his article on the ‘Sin of Jeroboam’ Van de Beek says that the unity of God becomes visible in the Old Testament in the unity of worship in one sanctuary. Even in the New Testament “Jerusalem is the place where God was pleased to reveal himself in Christ. [. . .] That glory was the glory of the Crucifijied One, who received the death sentence in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem it is fijinished.”38 Jerusalem was not holier than other places and the one sanctuary had also not always been there. The place that God chooses is where He wants to be worshiped.39 Neither is Christianity a centralized religion; Jerusalem is merely the starting point of the missionary movement to the ends of the world. The true New Testament sanctuary is the body of Christ, where He dwells as the Truth through the Spirit. “[A]ll Christians together are one dwelling place of the Spirit because the Spirit is one and cannot be split up.”40 Hope for an eschatological conversion of the Jews was common in the early church41 and it was shared by many theologians of the Dutch Further

35  A. van de Beek, “Kerkorde en kerkelijk beleid,” [Church Order and Ecclesiastical policy] in A. van de Beek, W. Balke, and J.D.Th. Wassenaar (eds), De kerk op orde? Vijftig jaar hervormd leven met de kerkorde van 1951 [The Church In Order? Fifty Years of Reformed Life with the Church Order of 1951], (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2001), 276–292, 290. 36  Van de Beek, “One God and one Church,” 266. 37  Van de Beek, Kring om de Messias, 357. 38  Van de Beek, “Zonde van Jerobeam,” 187. 39  The Old Testament never speaks of the dwelling of God in two or more places at the same time. Van de Beek, “One God and one Church,” 261. 40  Van de Beek, “One God and one Church,” 263. 41  Wessel H. ten Boom, Profetisch tegoed: de Joden in Augustinus’ De civitate Dei, [Profetic Credit: The Jews in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei], (Kampen: Kok, 2002), 221–223.

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Reformation and Puritanism.42 This hope is absent in Van de Beek’s eschatology. In the book on Israel he discusses millenarianism, but he rejects a worldly expectation of the realization of Gods kingdom; millenarianism reminds him of Berkhof ’s optimistic belief in progress.43 Although he feels some sympathy for the Irenaeus’ expectation of the earthly fulfijillment of God’s promises in the eschatological kingdom of Christ, he is cautious not to take the promises too literally. According to his analysis, Irenaeus changed his mind anyway.44 The eschatological hope regarding the Jews is not only missing in his theology of Israel, but Israel as a people is also missing in his eschatology. Van de Beek’s fear for the optimism of historical progress probably causes a blind spot in his theology and this has implications for his ecclesiology. Regarding the relationship between Israel and the church, Van de Beek rejects both a theology of replacement and a theology of incorporation.45 The new eschatological reality of being in Christ simply annuls the importance of being a Jew or a Greek. But the growing emphasis on the organizational unity of the church seems to imply a certain kind of replacement of the Old Testament people of God by the New Testament body of Christ. At least the way he treats Jerusalem implies that the body of Christ replaces the Old Testament sanctuary. God’s dwelling in Jerusalem is merely a symbol of the New Testament indwelling of the Spirit in the church. Jerusalem does no longer play a role in salvation history. To the contrary, “the God of Jerusalem is not the God of history, but the God of a location, where he reigns above the cosmos and above the times.”46 Perhaps Van de Beek should take the eschatological role of Israel and Jerusalem in salvation history more serious. The church cannot be truly one as long as Israel, the oldest brother does not join the feast meal of the 42

 Mathijs van Campen, Voetiaanse en coccejaanse visies op de joden gedurende de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. [Voetian and Cocceian Views on the Jews in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries] in Gans Israël [Whole Israel], vol. 2 (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2007). Iain Hamish Murray, The Puritan Hope: A Study in Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy, ([London]: Banner of Truth Trust, 1971). 43  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 258–261. 44  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 74–78, cf. Van de Beek, Kring om de Messias, 387–388. 45  Van de Beek, Kring om de Messias, 171, 177. In the case of replacement the unity of God’s promises is in danger and in case of incorporation the coming of Christ becomes superfluous. Van de Beek, “One God and one Church,” 251. 46  A. van de Beek, Schepping: de wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid, (Baarn: Callenbach, 1996), 270. Parts of the book are translated as A. van de Beek, Creation: The World As Foreplay of Eternity [Translated Excerpts and Condensations of the Dutch Book, Schepping: de wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid] transl. P. Okke Postma (Hastings-on-Hudson: Creation Theology Workgroup, Reformed Church in America, 1997).

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Father and his son. Real church unity will not be achieved by a return to Rome and but by a return to Jerusalem, or rather a return of Jerusalem to its one God and one Messiah. Pilgrims do not need to go back to Rome, but they should look forward to Jerusalem, homesick for the coming kingdom of God.

LIVING LAW: KARL BARTH, BRAM VAN DE BEEK AND THE 2004 PROTESTANT CHURCH ORDER Leon van den Broeke Introduction Bram van de Beek learned the word parrhesia1 from the Dutch theologian Oepke Noordmans (1871–1956).2 It means to be frank or open. Van de Beek used this word to reflect on matters of church order in his Netherlands Reformed Church particularly—in view of the uniting church that became the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) from 2004 on. I will follow Van de Beek’s path and make use of parrhesia to explore one of Karl Barth’s four presuppositions on church polity: living law. To what extent is the 2004 Protestant Church Order an expression of living law? First I will explain Karl Barth’s understanding of church polity. I will follow this with a description of Van de Beek’s understanding of church polity. In this it will become clear that church polity has an imago problem. Because the notion of living law implies dynamic law I will explore its four aspects: foundation, formulation, application, and evaluation, to inquire the extent to which the 2004 Protestant Church Order is an expression of living law.3 Karl Barth What did Karl Barth mean by living law? In 1955 he wrote on the order of the church.4 It was part four of his Church Dogmatics on the doctrine 1  A. van de Beek, “Vervlogen hoop en een nieuwe start,” [Evaporated hope and a new start] Th. Klein (ed.), Veertig jaar orde in de Hervormde Kerk? Schetsen rond de hervormde kerkorde [Forty years of order in the Reformed Church? Sketches concerning Reformed Church order] (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1992), 91. 2  I thank my American friend and colleague Allan J. Janssen for his help with improving my English. 3  Rik Torfs, Mensen en rechten in de kerk [People and law in the church]. (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 29–43; Rik Torfs, “Liefde en recht gaan hand in hand. Een denkoefening over de verhouding tussen theologie en recht” [Love and law go hand in hand. A mental exercise concerning the relationship between theology and law], Tijdschrift voor Theologie 36 (1996), 270–289. 4  This section of his Church Dogmatics was also published separately; K. Barth, Die Ordnung der Gemeinde: Zur dogmatischen Grundlegung des Kirchenrechts [The Order of

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of reconciliation, written from the perspective of the risen Lord. Barth noted four presuppositions for church polity in paragraph 67. Church polity should be serving (Dienstrecht), liturgical (Liturgisches Recht), living (lebendiges Recht) and exemplary (vorbildliches Recht). To set the stage for living law this article will not be complete without a few sentences about the other three presuppositions. Church polity should be at fijirst serving law because the Lord did not come to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45). As Christ’s body the church is in order when and because its acts are characterized by service. The church of Jesus Christ exists whenever it serves the Lord. And the members of the church exist whenever they serve each other. That is the beginning and the end of all church polity. Serving law is unambiguous, total and universal. It is unambiguous, because there is no ruling law (Herrschaftsrecht) besides serving law and it cannot be mixed up with any speculative purpose. Serving law in the church is required of every member. Church polity as serving law is also total, because service is not one of the functions of the church’s essence, but service is essential in all of its functions. And thirdly, everything and everyone is submitted to the service of the Lord. Church polity should also be rooted in and focussed on the liturgy. In worship, church polity encounters its own and essential object (Gegenstand). Something I do miss in Barth’s thoughts about liturgical church polity is lack of his reference to the very fijirst apostolic writings, e.g. Didachè and Didaskalia as they are very much liturgical-church polity documents. They mainly contained regulations for worship service, including baptism and Eucharist. Church polity should also be exemplary because of its status as law sui generis. From this angle it can be exemplary for the development and application of human law in general and for the rights of political, academic, cultural and other communities. This does not mean however that only they can learn from church polity. On the contrary, there is or should be a mutual influence and interaction. Barth states that church polity should be a living body of Christ while its head, Jesus Christ, is alive. He is the living Christ, the resurrected one. Therefore the body, the church, cannot be dead, but should be living as well. Because Christ is alive, church polity must have a living, dynamic and

the Congregation: About the dogmatic grounds of church polity] (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1955).

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agile character. This does not imply however that church polity should be without format or words, only rooted in instincts and feelings, thereby avoiding juridical amendment and codifijication. A sort of Docetism in church polity is not at issue here. Thus, church polity is unfijinished and hence provisional. The church should have or take the courage to Provisorium (Mut zum Provisiorum), e.g. the courage to consider matters of church polity and church order as provisional. Church polity moves between worse to better, although Deo bene volente. This makes church polity dynamic. Church polity tries to abstract from worse and focuses on getting better. To put it diffferently, church polity deals with ius constitutum—law as it is—but should also deal with ius constituendum—law as it should be. Van de Beek and Church Polity In this fijield of tension—church polity as a dynamic process between worse and better, between ius constitutum and ius constituendum—Van de Beek was also active. He not only taught Dogmatics at the Department of Theology at the University of Leiden, but also Church Polity. In 1989 he wrote an article on the hermeneutics of church orders.5 Three years later he shared his view about church policy and church polity in the Netherlands Reformed Church and in the process of unifijication of the Netherlands Reformed Church, the Reformed Church in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Netherlands.6 Van de Beek expressed his sorrow and his hope; there was, however, more sorrow than hope. He feared a new church order that would be a copy of the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order that would add another division in the declining militia Christi. He hoped that the new church order would be a fruit of creativity instead. In this article he uttered serious warnings. He feared a united church that would be a clone of his Netherlands Reformed Church, a bureaucratic and an administrative church. Yet, he made effforts to show another path for the church of the future. In his opinion, a church order should give room to the proper vocation of the church: a place in the world where the Word of God in Jesus Christ would be heard and spoken,

5  A. van de Beek, “Hermeneutiek van het kerkrecht,” [Hermeneutics of church law] W. van ’t Spijker and L.C. van Drimmelen (eds), Inleiding tot de studie van het kerkrecht [Introduction to the study of church polity] (Kampen: H.J. Kok, 1988), 59–72. 6  Van de Beek, “Vervlogen hoop,” 70–106. See note 1.

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a place where God’s acts would be proclaimed.7 Such a church order will be much shorter, because the very fijirst task of the church is to help the members in the local congregations to understand what it means to be a Christian today.8 Yet, even if this stage would be reached, Van de Beek would not be completely satisfijied. His aim was not only a reorganizing of the church policy, but also of the church polity. A decade later, Van de Beek contributed to a book commemorating fijifty years of the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order. Herein he expressed his two-fold fear: a church order as a purpose in itself, and the growing gap between church policy and church polity.9 According to him, the church order lacked vision and was self-regulating. He wrote that one has to conclude that the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order was no longer suited to the ecclesiastical situation at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium. And while the church order of the uniting church would be built on the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order, he feared the worst for the church of the near future. The above-mentioned writings have to be seen in the context of an unpleasant experience. Van de Beek had been member of the sub Study Group (Draft) Church Order.10 This group was responsible for making a translation of the church polity found in the four drafts of the Study Group Future Design of the Uniting Church.11 The drafts were made in 1982, 1984, 1986 and 1989. The sub Group worked toward a common kind of church polity. This was meant as a growth process. However, the General Synod Council of the Netherlands Reformed Church disagreed with the vision of the subgroup. It decided that the process of making a common kind of church polity does not start anew, but only by designing and laying out some basic articles of church order.12 Besides, the General Synod Coun-

7

 Van de Beek, “Vervlogen hoop,” 92.  Van de Beek, “Vervlogen hoop,” 93 and 97. 9  A. van de Beek, ‘Kerkorde en kerkelijk beleid’ [Church order and church governance], in: W. Balke, A. van de Beek and J.D.Th. Wassenaar, De kerk op orde?: Vijftig jaar hervormd leven met de kerkorde van 1951, (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2001), 276–292. 10  The other members were G.D.J. Dingemans (chair), L.C. van Drimmelen, E. Hazelaar, D.G. van Vliet and H.B. Weijland; Verslag SoW-Kerken [Report Together-on-the Way Churches] (27–29 oktober 1988), 208. 11  Verslag Samen op Wegkerken (27–29 oktober 1988), 34–38 and 197–211; Verslag (27– 29 oktober 1989/1990), 142, 144, 147, 148, 166, 174–175 and 182–186; K. de Kruijter, “Over op een ander spoor: Een ingrijpende koerswijziging in het SoW-proces (1989 en 1990),” Switching tracks: a farreaching course adjustment in the SoW process] Historisch Tijdschrift Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland 2, jrg. 1 (2003), 2–14; Van den Broeke, Een geschiedenis, 425, 445–459. 12  Verslag 1989/1990, 142. 8

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cil considered that the process of fijinding and shaping common church polity would lead to the decline of constitution of the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order, the so-called Roman articles. That would be unacceptable. Also the joint assembly of the Netherlands Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands was of the opinion in 1989/1990 that the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order had to be the blueprint for the uniting church and not the common church polity of the above mentioned sub Study Group (Draft) Church Order.13 The objection of disappointed members of both the Study Group and the sub Study Group was that the General Synod Council of the Netherlands Reformed Church and the joint synods considered the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order too much as an end in itself and too little as an instrument. The sub Study group came to an end suddenly. The members left disappointed. The church order for the uniting church ultimately was indeed based upon the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order. An Image Problem Such an event is not rare. Discussions about church government and church order are sometimes overheated. Unfortunately, this strengthens the image problem church polity has and gives ammunition to those who claim that church polity is a dead discipline. Therefore, it is usually not one’s fijirst thought that church polity should be—or is—living church polity.14 Van Ruler wrote humoristically, yet strikingly, that people

13

 Verslag 1989/1990, 174–175, 182–186.  Allan J. Janssen and Leon van den Broeke (eds), A Collegial Bishop: Classis and Presbyteries at Issue, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010), (The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America 66), passim; Leo J. Kofffeman, Het goed recht van de kerk: Een theologische inleiding op het kerkrecht [The fair justice of the church: a theological introduction to church law], (Kampen: Kok, 2009), 9; Leon van den Broeke, Classis in crisis: Om de classicale toekomst [Classis in crisis: About the future of classes] (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2009), 14–15; Leo J. Kofffeman, Gestalte en gehalte: Oecumenisch-theologische en kerkrechtelijke implicaties van het visitekaartje van de VPKN [Form and content: ecumenical-theological implications of the calling card of the United Protestant Church in the Netherlands] (Kampen: Theologische Universiteit van de Gereformeerde Kerken in Kampen, 1994) (Kamper Oraties 3), 30; Knut Walf, Vragen rondom het nieuwe kerkelijk recht [Questions about the new ecclesiastical order and discipline] (Hilversum: Gooi en Sticht, 1988), 11; J. Plomp, Presbyteriaal-Episcopaal? Rede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van hoogleraar aan de Theologische Hogeschool te Kampen op vrijdag 6 oktober 1967 [Presbyterian-Episcopate. Inaugural oration at the Theological Seminary in Kampen] (Kampen: Kok, 1967), 37–38; A.A. van Ruler, Reformatorische opmerkingen in de ontmoeting met Rome [Reformed remarks on encounters with Rome] (Hilversum-Antwerpen, 1965), 120; M. Geiger, Wesen und Aufgabe kirchlicher Ordnung [Essence and Task of Church 14

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in Protestant churches regard church polity as the general regulations of the draughts (checkers) club.15 According to him, people have the idea that church polity is about church order only—and that is not an attractive and certainly not an alive concern. Many church members, pastors and even theologians as well, consider church polity as useful for the order of the church as a fijirst-aid-kit when a pastor or consistory fijinds itself in trouble. Church polity is much more than that, however. It is true that in ecclesiastical life, church order has more the imago of a book of fijixed and unchangeable rules, a law book. And if the church is not alert to church order, it is either neglected or emphasized as a paper pope. Church polity and church order are not hot items, neither in the church nor in theology. But does that necessarily imply that church polity is not alive—e.g. dead? The Foundation of the 2004 Protestant Church Order And, specifijic to our question, is the 2004 Protestant Church Order a living entity? The church order comes in a set of two books, 480 pages long, and contains the ordinances and the bylaws (the general regulations). Van de Beek was right in 1992 and 2001, when he noted that the church order of the planned united church would be a copy of the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order.16 Indeed, the current church order does contain a great many rules that try to organize in minute detail the way the Protestant Church in the Netherlands ought to live and work. The church order is divided into a constitutive church order that contain nineteen—the so-called Roman—articles, and a church order laid out with a broader scope that contains fourteen ordinances. In 1944/45, the Dutch jurist, H.M.J. Wagenaar, wrote the draft for the 1951 Netherlands Reformed Church Order.17 He made a distinction between the constitution and the ordinances. He was of the opinion that the church constitution should contain theology and had to carry its principles, whereas the ordinances

Order] (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag AG Zollikon, 1954) (Theologische Studien 42, hrsgb. von Karl Barth), 45. 15  Van Ruler, Reformatorische opmerkingen, 120. 16  Van de Beek, “Vervlogen hoop,” 104; Van de Beek, “Kerkorde,” 289. 17  W. Balke, H. Oostenbrink-Evers, De Commissie voor de Kerkorde (1945–1950): Bouwplan, agendastukken en notulen van de vergaderingen ter voorbereiding van de nieuwe kerkorde (1951) van de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk, [Commission of Church Order (1945–1950): Blueprint, agenda papers and minutes of meetings in preparation for the new church order (19510 of the Netherlands Reformed Church] (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1993), 129–131.

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were technical-administrative of nature and therefore more practical and easier to amend or change. The choice for building the 2004 Protestant Church Order upon its predecessor meant that the framework of the current church order would be based upon the one already developed in the fijifth decade of the twentieth century. Although this format had advantages—such as the distinction between constitutive church order and ordinances—the new church order has the imago of being the fruit of a bureaucratic and administrative church policy, and the result of a church-politics process of three uniting churches rather than the fruit born of a new and creative church-polity process. Because it developed during a complex process of union of three denominations, the new church order has the character of a compromise. Although the Together-on-the-Way process had started in 1961 as a dynamic, creative and missionary process, toward the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-fijirst century it seemed to result in yet more church politics. The efffect of this impression aggravated the image problem that church polity and church order already had. The process was also hampered by the lack of balance between ecclesiology, church polity, church order, church policy and church practice. If one of these fijive elements in a dynamically flowing process is over-emphasized or becomes less important than others, it grinds into a stand-still church polity and thus in a church (order) that is not living or even flexible. Van de Beek pointed out in 2001 that the issue of gritty church policy (not polity) was overstressed and feared that this process would not end in a truly united church.18 However, one can change this perspective to one that does account for the progress that was made. Despite all the objections and tensions around the church order, one can also wonder that the tedious and complex process resulted in an agreement upon a uniting church order at all! In addition to enumerating the above-mentioned fijive elements, it should be added that these are to function in a continuously dynamic process. If it is the case that the new church order is a stalemate, and will not be adjusted or improved upon for years or even decades, it will reinforce the impression the death of church polity. And if there is too little connection between church polity and what congregants in the local congregations need and want, people will be disconnected with all three: church polity, church policy and church order. Church policymakers need to be

18

 Van de Beek, “Kerkorde,” 282.

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A diagram of the relationship and interactive fijields between ecclesiology, church polity, church policy, church order and church practice

aware of the possibility and the challenge of this dynamic continuum. For only in this way will church polity be a living essence, and will the church get the opportunity to (re)vitalize. The South-African ecclesiastic, C.J. Smit, stated in 1987 that church polity is not laboratory science, but has everything to do with practical implementation despite the above-mentioned fears.19 I agree with Smit only partially and I would go a step further by stating that church polity is also laboratory science, for it is more than only practical implementation. Church practice does need theoretical reflection and foundation. 19  C.J. Smit, “Kerkreg en kerkorde in diens van kerkregering. Oorsig oor ’n beskouing” [Church polity and church order in service of church governance. Overview of a perspective] In die Skriflig jrg. 21 n°, 82, 17.

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And the foundation is more than a theoretical or a practical construction. It is also about the confessional construction: Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, as we will see below. The Formulation of the 2004 Protestant Church Order A tension exists between the juridical and theological components of all church orders. A defijinition of church order is: translated or transferred ecclesiology in juridical format, or as the American ecclesiastic Allan J. Janssen describes it: “Church order is ecclesiology in action.”20 I would rather say: Church order is living ecclesiology translated or transferred in juridical format. The content of a church order does require juridical language in some articles. Yet that does not necessarily exclude a living aspect. A jurist may not always understand the theological well-turned (or even woolly) phrases much—as would be the case with Art. I. And many theologians and lay people have difffijiculties with a church order that is too juridical. On the one hand, when the church presents itself to the world, it will not be sufffijicient to have only theological notions in the church order. On the other hand a juridical church order will not challenge Christians to build up their congregations and faith in daily life. Therefore, church polity requires theologians and jurists who are skilled and have an eye for both the theological and juridical languages, for both the content and the format of church orders. The Application of the 2004 Protestants Church Order I will explore this broader stance by demonstrating some applications of the articles from the constitutive church order, even though they might sound vague and are not always explicitly operationalized in the subsequent ordinances. They might sound enlivening, but they are not always functional. A closer look will be given in the overview below. The constitutive church order is divided into three parts: 1. the vocation of the church and the congregations; 2. the life of the congregations and the church and 3. the order of the church 20

 Allan J. Janssen, Constitutional Theology: Notes on the Book of Church Order of the Reformed Church in America (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000) (The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America 33), 6.

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In all of these three parts, many articles give rise to the notion that church order is not dead. In the very fijirst article, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands expresses that it reaches forward to the coming of the Kingdom of God, art. I.1. The ecclesiologist Leo Kofffeman calls art. I ‘the business-card’ of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.21 This is followed by the assignments that the church hears and proclaims the Word, art. I.2. The church confesses, in obedience to the Holy Scripture as the only source and standard (norm) of the ecclesiastical proclamation and service, the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, art. I.3. This confession is to be understood in relationship with the confession of our ancestors, e.g. the Apostolicum, the Niceum and the Athanasium; the Unchanged Confession of Augsburg and the Confession of Luther; the Catechism of Heidelberg, the Catechism of Geneva, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort. Moreover, the church acknowledges the signifijicance of the Barmen Theses and the Konkordie of Leuenburg, art. I.5. It is important to note that this church order does not only refer to confession of the past or the present, but states that the church confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour ‘every time again’,22 art. I.6. The article adds that the church should do this by celebrating, speaking, and acting. The goal of this confessing every time again is the renewal of life in culture, society and state. The article further adds that the church should confess God’s promises and commandments for people, powers and governments. The manner in which these additions are phrased—and likewise in several of the following articles, art. I.8, 9 and 10—gives rise to the thought that this was more suitable to the mid-20th century than the early 21st. Even so, the words every time again are an expression of living law. Yet they overemphasize that the church has a word/Word for the world, and more than hints at too much of a superior attitude and too little of a serving attitude. However, this latter observation does not pertain to art. I, 7: The church is called to give expression to its unrelinquishable solidarity with the Jewish people. As a Christ-confessing community of faith it seeks a dialogue with the Jewish people concerning the understanding of Holy Scripture, in particular as regards the coming of the Kingdom of God.

21  Leo J. Kofffeman, Gestalte en gehalte: Oecumenisch-theologische en kerkrechtelijke implicaties van het visitekaartje van de VPKN, (Kampen: Theologische Universiteit van de Gereformeerde Kerken in Kampen, 1994) (Kamper Oraties 3). See footnote 14. 22  In Dutch: ‘Telkens opnieuw’.

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This article demonstrates an open attitude. The church must give shape to its ‘unrelinquishable solidarity’ with Israel, specifijically regarding the understanding of the Holy Scripture and the coming of the Kingdom of God. Here the church is defijined as a ‘Christ-confessing’ community. There is no church order article that is as well-known as this one. Anyone who feels committed to the cause of the Israelis, the Palestians or both, recalls or refers to this very article. The question is whether this article can be considered as an aspect or as an attestation of living law, or merely as a lively law that stirs to action, sometimes taken in a negative sense. Those who favour the Israelis base their opinion on this article, whereas those who are on the side of the Palestinians feel uneasy with this article. It becomes part of a political (church) battle wherein people shout down others, in which the article is used as a paper pope or as holy by defijinition.23 Church polity and church order matters are always provisional. This seems an important hint for seeing church order as a living law. It is remarkable that in art. I the assignment of the church is put in the present tense: the church confesses, seeks, etc. This present tense does not mean that this article is only reserved for the policy makers in the church or its ministers of Word and sacrament. Art. III.1 states that congregations are gathered around Word and sacraments. But there is more. The 2004 Protestant Church Order also gives a responsibility to those who are baptized. They are called explicitly to confess Jesus Christ and to bear responsibility in and for the congregations, art. III.3. Besides, all members are called and justifijied to use their gifts to fulfijil the task Christ gave the congregation. And it is the consistory who coordinates the gifts, the tasks and the cohesion in the life and the work and to focus in everything on the appraisal of the Name of the Lord and the service in the world. The service to the Word of God is expressed in art. IV: 1.  the preaching of the Gospel, the celebration of the baptism, 2. and the Lord’s Supper in public worship; 3. the ministry of prayers 4. the missionary work 5. the diaconal work 6. the pastoral care

23  A. van de Beek, De adem van God: De Heilige Geest in kerk en kosmos [The breath of God: The Holy Spirit in church and cosmos] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1987), 135.

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7. the spiritual education 8. all other work that serves to build up the Body of Christ. It is the main task of the public offfijice of Word and sacraments to have the congregation concentrate on salvation and its vocation, art. V.1. The offfijice-bearers together are responsible for the building-up of the congregation in the world by taking care of: 1.  the ministry of Word and sacraments 2. the missionary, diaconal and pastoral work 3. the spiritual education 4. the supervision 5. the stewardship over fijinancial afffairs 6. and other work serving to build (up) the congregation, art. V.2. The congregation convenes in order to read Holy Scripture, to preach and hear the Gospel, to celebrate baptism and the Lord’s Supper, to sing songs of joy and thanksgiving, to pray, and to fulfijil the tasks of mercy and justice, art. VII.1. Art. X makes some statements about the missionary, diaconal, and pastoral work of the congregation. It is consistent with these aspects of the church as a whole, but also in its well-turned phrases. As such, they demonstrate a connection between church and society. A remarkable subsection, number 5 of section X, expresses that in a mutual relationship the congregations thankfully make use of insights and experiences of congregations whose members have another cultural background. The congregation is not only missional, celebratory, diaconal, and pastoral, but is also a leading community. This includes the fact that the congregation is continuously engaged in a never-ending process, art. XI. Supervision is grounded in the mercifulness of Jesus Christ. It occurs to the glory of God, to preserve the congregation, and to minister to those who err, art. XII.1. The members of the congregation are called to look after each other, to pastor, to love, and to build each other up in faith, hope and love, art. XII.2. The church does not live on its own and does not have as only church a word/Word for the world. The church seeks the unity, the fellowship and the cooperation with other churches of Jesus Christ, also in its missionary and pastoral work, art. XVI.1–3. New and eye-catching is art. XVI.4. It states that the church in its work of witnessing and serving has a respectful attitude with regard to other

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religions. Such an article did not exist in any of the previous church orders of the three partners in the process of uniting. It demonstrates that this church order is not only connected to the past, but is an expression of the period in which it developed and in the time wherein the church lives and works. Finally, the living aspect of the 2004 Protestant Church Order is also stressed in the last article, XIX. Herein it is written that—in circumstances for the country and the people so extraordinary that a normal functioning of the church is impossible—it is temporarily legitimate to allow the authorized ecclesiastical bodies to make necessary decisions that deviate. This is, however, not a new article, but it existed already, with diffferent wording, in an article in previous church orders. The Evaluation of the 2004 Protestant Church Order It is remarkable that after only fijive years the church order is already in a process of revision.24 The Committee for Evaluation of the Church Order began to research the acceptance and application of the church order in practice: ‘Are the new rules clear and applicable?’ The research was clearly meant to discover how the church order regulations function in the church. Specifijic items that had the attention in this process of revision were:  1. the improvement of the quality congregations and the church 2. to reduce the overburdening 3. to simplify the rules 4. to improve the freedom of movement for the congregations and the church 5. to save money On the one hand it is a question whether it is wise to make such major decisions within just a couple of years. There has been little time to get acquainted with the church order and the church order received too little time to prove itself. On the other hand, church practice and church policy makers required a general revision of the church order. The developments in the church and the world are happening quickly and require

24

 http:/www.pkn.nl.

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adjustments. Besides, apparently there is some unfijinished church order business to do. The situation and era in which the 2004 Protestant Church Order was written difffers from the sixth anniversary of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. The 2004 Protestant Church Order needs simplifijication, just as—in my opinion—every church order should be simplifijied, if possible. I will not state that every church order should contain as few regulations as possible. That could lead to the same problems as an overloaded church order: being unspiritual and not applicable. The discussion is not so much about more or less regulations, but about a church order that is or is not an expression of spiritual and dynamic church polity, church policy, church practice, ecclesiology and church order. The great danger of a formalistic, bureaucratic and technical church order as an expression of a formalistic, bureaucratic and technical church is always present.25 The fijinancial situation required the closing of the nine regional service centres and a new position—read: less clout—for the nine general classical assemblies. In these centers, classical assemblies cooperate in a certain region. Generally speaking, a church order should keep up with the times and should not be or become a petrefact.26 There is not only the possibility of improving the church order, but even the obligation to improve it. A church order should not be written in stone and it should not function as a paper pope. The chair of the Commission on Church Order, Barend Wallet, made the promise that the revised church order will be more flexible.27 But he afffijirms that the revision is not about a renewal of the church order. The constitution section will not be changed, although he had to add that there has to be a small change, namely the fact that the general classical assemblies will disappear. Strictly speaking, that has nothing to do with ecclesiology, he stated. And, truth be told, he followed a rule that was made when the 2004 Protestants Church Order was introduced: fijive years after its introduction there would be a general

25  E. Wolf, “Zur Rechtsgestalt der Kirche,” [About the position and shape of church law] Bekennende Kirche, Martin Niemöller zum 60. Geburtstag [Confessing Church, Martin Niemöller on his 60th birthday] (München: Kaiser, 1952), 254; Max Geiger, Wesen und Aufgabe kirchlicher Ordnung [Essence and Task of church order] (Zürich: 1954), 36 (Theol. Studien Heft 42). 26  D. Nauta, Verklaring van de kerkorde van de Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland [Explanation of the church order of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands] (Kampen: Kok, 1971), 22. 27  Wim van Egdom, “Ds. B. Wallet: Kerkorde wordt soepeler” [B. Wallet: Church order becomes more flexible] Reformatorisch Dagblad, September 15, 2010, 2.

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revision of this church order, but not a renewal. One member of the general synod that gathered on September 16, 2010 made the statement: this is mere repair-legislation with too little vision. And although Wallet replied that the adjustments are, according to synodical decisions, not part of renewal, but of revision, Van de Beek would see in the recent and current development in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands a confijirmation of what he wrote in 1987: Very rarely do protestant churches come to a complete revision of the church order, more likely they change only some articles. The efffect of this is a fragmented church order without a clear theological vision as the basis of the whole, with the risk of adjustments ad hoc.28

In his opinion the writing of a church order is just as much a spiritual task ‘that must be undertaken under the guidance of the Spirit as, for instance, the formulation of Christian ethics or any other spiritual act for that matter’.29 So, living law is or should be spiritual law. Conclusion Is the 2004 Protestant Church Order an expression of living law? The genesis of this church order prevents a ‘yes’ to this question since it is a result of a difffijicult process of unifijication. The “Together on the Way Process” (Samen op Weg) started as a spiritual and missionary process, but it almost dead-ended in church politics and ecclesiastical bureaucracy. It was not quite a spiritual process. Not all the church members joined the merger. Some of them separated and started new denominations. The outcome of the merger of three denominations was still three denominations: the united church and two new denominations. The church order for the new united church, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), is a compromise between the three former denominations and its respective progressive and conservative wings. As such, there had to be some inherited imbalance between ecclesiology, church polity, church order, church policy, and church practice. Moreover, such an amalgam church order is of necessity somewhat forced and not smooth. And the

28

 Van de Beek, De Adem, 136.  Van de Beek, De Adem, 135; P. Coertzen, Church and Order: A Reformed Perspective (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 32 (Canon Law Monograph Series 1). 29

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process of evaluation of this church order, a mere fijive years after its existence, is already more about revision than renewal. On the other hand, when I read and re-read the constitution, its confessional character caught my eye again. It confesses that Christ as the Head of his church is living. That implies that Docetism in church polity is not at issue. Church polity belongs to the bene esse of the church. That does not necessarily mean that a church order needs to be perfect. Although a church order has always a provisional character, hopefully it is on its way from worse to better. Gustav W. Heinemanns stated in 1954 that law by nature is a piece of an emergency order. With this instrument God’s patience guides us.30 Nevertheless, we have an imperfect church order at issue. Still, some constitutive articles demonstrate new elements, such as respect for other religions. Despite the partially woolly and well-turned phrases, and despite the fact that some of these phrases are more suited to the mid-twentieth century than in the early twenty-fijirst century, some articles are stated in the present tense as if they give the church and its members the assignment to witness to the living Lord. This present tense demonstrates something signifijicant: not only offfijice-bearers or general assemblies, but every single church member confesses or should confess every time again Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. It points out the dynamic and living aspect of this church order. In this way the church order prevents us from becoming too involved in administrative-technical details. The details are for the ordinances, but the constitution bears a theological fundament. From this perspective we get close to Van de Beek’s vision on church order: it should give room to the proper vocation of the church; that is: a place in the world where the Word of God in Jesus Christ will be heard and spoken, a place where Gods acts will be proclaimed. Church polity should therefore benefijit from people like Heinemanns, Barth and also Van de Beek, who have vision and the courage for provisorium, not only by writing about church policy and church politics, not only by being prophetic, but also by taking parrhesia to step up and to state that the church order should not be a paper pope and to write about the founding elements of church polity. One of these elements is that church polity is or at least should be living law.

30  Gustav W. Heinemanns, ‘In Reiches dieses Königs hat man das Recht liebe (Ps. 99,4)’ [In the Kingdom of this God one loves the Law]. Vortrag auf dem Kirchentag in Leipzig [Address at the Church convocation in Leipzig] Die Stimmer der Gemeinde [The Voices of the Congregation] 6 (1954), 385.

AND THEY RECOGNIZED HIM IN THE BREAKING OF THE BREAD VAN DE BEEK’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE NECESSARY RETHINKING ON THE PROTESTANT EUCHARISTIC PRACTICE H. (Bert) de Leede In the concluding remarks of his farewell lecture on ‘Speaking of God. About the source of the theological knowledge’, at the occasion of his retirement on the 16th of September 2010, Van de Beek speaks about the Eucharist as ‘source of the practising of theology’. The actual source. Those who speak about God should know God. We know God in the community of the church. Therefore, communion of Bread and Wine is the most concentrated shape of this actual knowing. By focussing on this point, Van de Beek radicalizes the theme of his farewell oration: Speaking about God is possible, but can only be done within and from within the community of the church. ‘Praying’ precedes ‘thinking’. Theology is church theology, and church theology is scientifijic when it reflects upon itself in a consistent and logical way, starting from its own presuppositions. In that sense, practising theology is in essence reflecting on the Eucharist.1 This concluding statement of his farewell lecture is in line with other recent pronouncements of Van de Beek. He argues in a powerful way for a central place of the celebration of the Eucharist in the faith of the church. Van de Beek is not afraid of using sharp pronouncements in his argument. He thinks it inconceivable that Christian life can exist without the regularly, weekly, celebration of the Eucharist. To him who is acquainted with the Early Church, it is incomprehensible to live as a Christian without this ‘medicine of immortality’. The same applies for the place of penance and discipline with a view to celebrating the Eucharist. Van de Beek then points to the discipline of both doctrine and life. The communion of the Eucharist touches the essence of ethics and in that way it afffects the necessity of discipline. It touches the heart of the confession that Jesus is 1  “The celebrating congregation is the foundation of faith . . . The source for theological practice is found in the celebrating church, in Word and Sacrament: in the celebration of the Eucharist that cannot exist without the Word of God, of which the words of institution are the utmost concentration.” A. van de Beek, Spreken over God. Over de bron van theologische kennis. [Speaking about God. About the source of theological knowledge.] VU University, Amsterdam, September 16, 2010.

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the Christ. In short: discipline of doctrine and life are inextricably bound up with the Eucharist. Where does this focussed emphasis on the Eucharist in Van de Beek’s work come from? Well known publications of Van de Beek, in which the Eucharist could have been a likely theme are his dissertation “De menselijke persoon van Christus” [The human Person of Christ] (1980), or “De Adem van God. De Heilige Geest in kerk en kosmos” [God’s Breath. The Holy Spirit in Church and Cosmos] (1987), or “Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie” [Jesus Kyrios. Christology as the heart of Theology] (1998; ET 2003) and possibly also “Schepping—de wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid” [Creation—the World as a Prelude to Eternity] (1996). These signifijicant works all show that this eucharistic theme was not dealt with in a prominent way. In the index of Jesus Kyrios, an integral discussion on the words of institution does not occur with the Synoptics and with Paul. That is remarkable. Van de Beek was concerned with the Eucharist, during the nineteen eighties, as a result of the matter of church elders who would not attend the Eucharist- in the Dutch Reformed Church.2 However, this was a somewhat isolated matter and narrowly specifijic. In connection with this article, however, it is important that Van de Beek, in connection with this specifijic issue of avoiding the Eucharist, has approached the Eucharist from the primacy of the congregation. Starting from that primacy of Christian fellowship, he takes a stand against individualism with its emphasis on the faith—or defijicit thereof—of the individual. Otherwise, his view on the signifijicance of the Eucharist at that moment in time is completely in line with the Reformed tradition. It is about remembering, celebrating, and expecting, with the emphasis on the fijirst-mentioned: the remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross, within the tension of the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’. In his subsequent theological reflection and successive publications, the Eucharist has not been a specifijic theme either until very recently,

2  A. van de Beek, “Ambt en Avondmaal” [Ecclesial Offfijice and Eucharist], Tussen Traditie en Vervreemding-over kerk en christen-zijn in een veranderende cultuur. [Between tradition and alienation—about church and being a Christian in a changing culture] (Nijkerk: Callenbach 1985), 115–125. Van de Beek regrets that church elders and members of the congregation avoid the Eucharist, but at the same time he takes a stand for them. Within the congregation they are the mirror of the defijicit of the longing for, or the thirst for God. In the same manner Van de Beek ascribes the shortage of many charismas that have not been given to everyone. Some even lack the gift of faith, which is dealt with by Paul in 1 Cor. 12:9.

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that is. How can that be explained? Is his recent strong interest in the Eucharist an example of the agility of Van de Beek’s theology? That is possible. However, agility does not imply capriciousness or inconsistency. In our opinion, Van de Beek’s view on the central place of the Eucharist is a further radicalizing of his growing emphasis on christology in theology. In that sense it is very consistent indeed when Van de Beek unfolds his view on the Eucharist in his God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie (2008) [God does Justice. Eschatology as Christology] and—to be more specifijic—in its concluding chapter. ‘The Resurrection of the Crucifijied’ is the break-through of the Kingdom, and in that way, in essence, the end of history at the same time. Anyhow, the Resurrection undervaluates history: the old has passed. This fact is celebrated at the eschatological meal, the Eucharist, by the ‘ones baptized into Christ’. The Eucharist is the last thing that can be said of God’s acting in our interest. Conversely, the Eucharist is the fijirst and most fundamental thing that must be said of the life of the Christian on earth. To put it diffferently: our walks in such life are in heaven, it is not to be found here on earth; this is celebrated by us in the Eucharist, for here and now we celebrate heaven on earth. Therefore, the more often we celebrate the Eucharist, the better. Van de Beek’s case for the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper is not a sudden impulse or posthumous lip service to Calvin but it is a radicalizing of the equalization of theology and Christology in Van de Beek’s thinking. Van de Beek’s view on the Eucharist touches a more widely felt necessity to rethink the signifijicance and the place of the Eucharist in the faith of congregations within the (Dutch) Protestant Church, not in the least in its more orthodox wing. In this article we engage in a conversation with Van de Beek and we will proceed in three ways: 1.  We will start with a short summary of Van de Beek’s view on the Eucharist3 as found in the concluding chapter of God does Justice. 2. We will note some fruits of reading and we will ask some questions on the tenability of Van de Beek’s doctrine of the Eucharist. 3. We will fijinish by asking the question how we can do justice to a number of valuable theological and ecclesiological intuitions of Van de Beek.

3  In the remaining of this article, we will use this word Eucharist as much as possible; this is in line with Van de Beek’s own plea. Compare Van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 343.

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Van de Beek quotes Irenaeus’ expression about the Eucharist as ‘pharmakon anastasias’ with approval. The Eucharist is ‘medicine for immortality’. Participating in the Eucharist is participating in eternal life. The eschatological feast—of which the prophets speak, of which the Psalms sing, to which Jesus’ parables refer, and that the many meal-occasions in Jesus’ life and after his resurrection anticipate—on the one hand, and the Eucharist of the congregation on the other hand, belong to the same fijield of language and thought.4 It is the meal of the baptized, i.e. of those belonging to the eschatological community of all who have passed from death to life. They are ‘in Christ’, having been baptized into Him by the Holy Spirit. As a result, they share in God’s holiness. Because of the perfectum of Cross and Resurrection—it is fijinished—it is about the present of the eschaton at the celebration of the Eucharist. The Wedding of the Lamb has come. The Eucharist itself is the celebration—which is more than the expectation—of the coming of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is present among us in the shape of the crucifijied King and in that way it is now among us. We should not weaken this reality by putting the emphasis on the ‘not yet’.5 Because then we misjudge what is meant by anamnesis, remembrance. It is with approval that Van de Beek quotes Power: The Pauline text is . . . . readily related . . . to the sacramental communion of the living church with the risen Christ, whose death it remembers and proclaims . . .  Thus the eschatological expectation of the Lord’s coming that emerges from his death is carried over into the church’s worship and therewith into its life, lived in the wisdom of the cross and in the hope of the resurrection.6

Van de Beek closely adheres to the interpretation of the Eucharist by Marcus Barth in his study of 1945.7 Barth also emphasizes the eschatological character of the celebration of the Eucharist. However, Van de Beek goes one step further than Barth does. Regarding the celebration of the

4

 A. van de Beek, God doet recht, 330.  Here we hear the diffference compared to Van de Beek’s view in 1985. 6  D.N. Power, The Eucharist Mystery: Revitalizing the Tradition (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 40. 7  M. Barth, Das Abendmahl; Passamahl, Bundesmahl und Messiasmahl [The Lord’s Supper; Passover meal, Covenant meal, Messianic banquet] (Theologische Studien 18, Zollikon/Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1945). 5

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Eucharist he does not want to hear about the so-called eschatological reservation, the ‘not yet’ in the ‘already’. Jesus says He will not drink again from the cup ‘until that day when He drinks from it anew in His Kingdom’. After the resurrection we hear that the Risen One, at his appearances, is eating and drinking with those who belong to him, and that they recognize Him ‘in the breaking of the bread’.8 That means that the Kingdom has come; it is an ‘already’ without the ‘not yet’. When the congregation is eating the bread and drinking the wine, and thus his body and blood, it celebrates eternal life, the heavenly liturgy. Still it is done ‘sub specie crucis’ and while being aware of the anti-Eucharist, ‘the meal of the vultures’ according to Revelations 19.9 That reality is also present. As a consequence, the congregation is celebrating the eternal Sabbath in a world of martyrdom (during the fijirst centuries) and amidst worldly struggle for dominion and bloodshed in Congo, Darfur (during the 21st century). Nevertheless, in the Eucharist the congregation celebrates and realizes that the world has been judged. The old has passed. History has been put into perspective. We died to the world and that is why we live as ‘having nothing, yet possessing everything’, etc.10 For we are aliens on earth. In the Eucharist, the congregation celebrates the eschaton, which has come (eternal life); and it does so by remembering Christ’s death. This remembering is something diffferent from merely recalling. Yet, in the Protestant—and surely in the Reformed—tradition it has become the latter. It has become Zwinglian in the practice of the Eucharist.11 By using the word ‘remembering’ Van de Beek means something else. When celebrating the Eucharist, the congregation presents Christ’s death for the sins in the practice of the Christian life. That Christian life is ‘dead to the world’ but ‘alive to God’.12 That is the meaning of the anamnesis. The remembrance of Christ’s death is again and again appropriating the fact that death is behind us—our old life, the world of sin. We have transferred to another

8

 Luke 24: 30, 31.  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 324–326. 10  II Cor. 6:10. 11  That is also how Muis evaluates the situation. See J. Muis, “De presentie van de Heer in het heilig avondmaal” [The Lord’s presence in the holy supper] in: Gerrit de Kruijf and Wietske de Jong (ed.), Een lichte last. Protestantse theologen over de kerk [A light burden. Protestant Theologians about the Church] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010), 221–235. 12  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 340. The classical rubric to administer the baptism also speak about ‘this life (of the ones being baptized ‘in Christ’) which is nothing than a continual death’ and emphasizes thereby the eschatological character of baptism. Baptism is the crossing-over from death into life ‘in Christ’ and, in this way, the essence of the life ‘in Christ’ is ‘being dead to the world’. 9

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homeland. We have received new passports and we each have been given only one. In this world we are away from the Lord.13 In this world we are aliens, transients; no longer at home. That is, as Van de Beek underlines, the original meaning of ‘sacramentum’. That used to be the oath of allegiance to the emperor through which one belonged to him with one’s whole life, once and for all.14 Transfer and Transubstantiation—Rereading the Discussion of the Eucharist The political and social change with Constantine in 313 also gradually implies a radical reinterpretation of the Eucharist in the sense of a deeschatologicalizing of it.15 Instead of the Eucharist as the eschatological feast with Christ as host (the Risen One) and gift (the Crucifijied One) at the same time, the Eucharist comes under the auspices of the church as being an instrument of mediation of salvation. Instead of remaining as church the very community of those who ‘have moved out of the world to the life ‘having been baptized into Christ,’ ’ the church becomes the community of those in this world to whom God’s salvation had to come and to whom salvation must be given. The church is becoming an increasingly indispensable agent by efffecting this mediation of salvation and of holiness as mediator of the ‘sacramentum incarnationis’. That line was strongly emphasized in the later realist tradition in an interpretation that resulted in the doctrine of the ‘transubstantiation’ within the Roman Catholic Church. “The bread and wine of the eucharist are . . . seen . . . as sacred objects on the altar”.16 Alongside this more objective, realist line we see the more subjective line already with Augustine, where the emphasis is more on the faith of the recipient of bread and wine. So we see two lines in the long history of thinking about the Eucharist, and of the tension around it. On the one hand, there is the emphasis on the

13

 II Cor. 5:6.  Veterans used to settle in so-called ‘colonies’ where they were granted a piece of land. Those colonies were seen as belonging to the mother country. One was, and remained, a Roman civilian although one lived far away from Rome. The same illustration is used by Paul in II Cor. 5. 15  A comparable ‘de-eschatologicalizing’ also happens with Baptism: from ‘being baptized in Christ’ to ‘incorporation in the common church’. Van de Beek, God doet recht. 168–220. 16  W.R. Crockett, Eucharist: Symbol of Transformation (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1989), 107, being quoted by Van de Beek, God doet recht, 365. 14

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real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, with the tendency to objectively anchor that presence in the elements themselves. In the doctrine of the transubstantiation it even comes to an identifijication of ‘signifijicant’ and ‘signifijied’. On the other hand, there is the stress on the necessity of faith in Christ and the truthful intention of the recipient of Bread and Wine. The tension between these two extremes played out in the Eucharistic debate as it has taken place from the early Middle Ages until today. In this article we have decided not to refer to the way in which Van de Beek analyzes this area of tension and how he positions the Reformation in it. What is important is his conclusion: we should go beyond this conflict in order to really make progress in the Christian Oecumene. It is necessary therefore, to radically return to the early Christian meaning of the Eucharist as the meal of the eschaton. Two key words are important in Van de Beek’s argument for our further conversation: transfer and transubstantiation. Transfer—the Direction of the Movement We already encountered the fijirst concept. Baptism is the transfer of a person from the state of the old one to the state of the new person. We are being ‘baptized into Christ’ and thus we become part of the Body of Christ, of the congregation, of heaven on earth. The actual dividing line in this world is “between the community with God in Christ and the existence without Him.”17 ‘After Constantine’ the direction of the movement turned around. It no longer is a movement from us towards God, but from Christ towards us. He comes to us with His mercy and in the church that mercy is present.18 Van de Beek argues for a renewed turning around of this movement as we think of the Eucharist. Concepts that the early church used could then become clear once again. We already mentioned

17  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 359. “That dividing line is more real than the one of the biological death, of the one between bodily presence in the World and the transcendent world of God.” 18  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 359. Van de Beek acknowledges the fact that in the continuing ecumenical reflection on the Eucharist in recent decades more attention began to be paid to eschatology as focus of the Eucharist. For example, it showed in the report Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry of the World Council of Churches, (Lima, Peru, January 1982). Van de Beek’s objection is that it remains an aspect of the Eucharist and not the foundation, the essence. In the meaning giving in BEM it stands still with the Eucharist as ‘foretaste’ of the eschatological meal. Compare God doet recht, 375–376. The direction of the movement has not yet turned around.

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the concept ‘sacramentum’, calibrated by Tertullian to mark the essence of that transfer. In the same way that the soldiers of the emperor no longer belonged to their families (country, place of birth), the baptized into Christ no longer belong to their fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters. They have become a member of the militia Christi.19 We celebrate that shape of the Christian life as sacrament in a concentrated form at the Lord’s Supper. Transubstantiation—your Bodies as Living Sacrifijices Transfer, sacramentum, and transubstantiation. The concept of transubstantiation intends to give the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist a theological expression. The Roman Catholic church of the Middle Ages tried to anchor that presence in the transformation of the substance of the elements of bread and wine in the body and blood of Christ; in a sacramental manner and in that way not less essential and realistic. Van de Beek applies the terminology of the transubstantiation to what happens in that transfer of the life that has moved over from the state of being without Christ to the state of the new life and the Eucharistic celebration of it. Then all of life changes, together with all elements of it. Everything shares in the new creation. Everything old has passed away; see everything has become new. Van de Beek then applies the terminology of the transubstantiation on the believers as a new creation. “Like the bread remains just bread and at the same time essentially Christ’s body, the believers remain just people of flesh and blood and at the same time they are a new creation. That is the reality of their existence”, according to Van de Beek. They really are a new creation. They are the body of the Lord. That is more real than their earthly existence and the mortality of their bodies. “Ontologically speaking, they are a new creation although they still look earthly.”20 Van de Beek develops his argument by ‘fijilling’ it with terminology taken from Christology. “Just as the eternal Living One and the Pantokrator is a carpenter in the shape of a visible human being, the visible congregation is likewise”. “Just as the kingship of Christ in this world has the shape of the cross, likewise the

19

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 377.  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 379.

20

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new creation that is the congregation has in this world the shape of people of flesh and blood, being subjected to illness, persecution, etc.”21

Evaluation and Questions We come to our second question, about the discoveries of our reading and the tenability of Van de Beek’s vision. In his articles about the Eucharist, Van de Beek brings the theological and ecclesiastical discussion about the Eucharist into sharp focus. This is to be commended. There is much reason to be concerned about the signifijicance given to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper—or the lack thereof—in the faith of many people in the Protestant churches. The unity of Word and Sacrament—also confessed by theological voices of the Reformed reformation—does not function in the faith of the churches. The low frequency of celebrating the Eucharist (four to six times a year), the vagueness about what happens in the Eucharist, and the lack of sensitivity (we fear) to the meaning of the sacrament―the results of it all is that many people (think they) can actually do without. A new kind of Eucharist avoidance has emerged. Faithful members of the congregation ‘occasionally’ leave their places unattended because the church services take a long time (read: are dull). Many children and youths within the congregation are allowed to stay at home ‘because the Eucharist is celebrated’. They grow up without taking part in Eucharist services. The admission to the Eucharist of non-confessing members (read: therefore children also) has not brought about real change in this respect. Something more fundamental is going on which we cannot ‘solve’ by (liturgical) adjustments to the existing practice. This fundamental problem is brought up by Van de Beek with great resolve. In his contribution he offfers insights from the New Testament and the Early Church research that are fruitful for the theological discussion within the church. This is of great importance, for the time is also ripe in the church. Below I note a few positive fruits of reading Van de Beek’s work: 1.  The Eucharist is not the fulfijilment of the pesachmeal. Where the Reformed theology read the relation of the Old and New Testament as ‘promise and fulfijilment’ or as ‘image and thing itself ’, the Eucharist was considered to be the fulfijilment and replacement of the Jewish Pesach 21

 Van de Beek, God doet recht, 379.

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meal.22 On completely difffering theological grounds, many people across the wider church consider, the Lord’s Supper as a Christian variation of the Jewish Passover, the seder meal. One fears that to many people the idea that the Eucharist is the celebration of being baptized into communion with Christ has become a mystery. As a consequence, large segments of churchgoers do not understand the essence of this Sacrament and how sacramentality functions. 2. In the New Testament, the Lord’s Supper has been anchored in the Resurrection of the Crucifijied Lord Jesus Christ. Among students of the New Testament, the relation between Jesus’ last meal with his disciples and the Eucharist is historically controversial. Is the relation immediate and primary? Or is it a connection which was constructed at a later time and thus secondary, which has been ‘read back’ in the words of institution in Luke 22: 19 and 20 and in Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 11: 24 and 26? Whatever the case, those words of institution do not constitute an unbroken line between the Eucharist and the Jewish pesach. Much more do they echo the prophesies about the eschatological feast for all nations, the meal stories from the parables, and Jesus’ deeds. 3. The format of the Eucharist in the early Christian congregation is that of community meals in the Greek-Roman world. This, also, is at odds with the often supposed synagogue roots of the Lord’s Supper. In fact, for the weekly gatherings with a meal on Sunday evenings, the early Christian congregation adapted the format from the numerous societies in the Roman culture. The Romans gathered together in some kind of dinner clubs with meal and conversation, speeches and songs.23

22  Likewise, Baptism is supposed to have replaced Circumcision, according to the classical form for the administration of the Holy Baptism. 23  Compare the farewell oration of H.J. de Jonge, Avondmaal en symposium. Oorsprong en eerste ontwikkeling van de vroegchristelijke samenkomst [Eucharist and symposium. Origin and fijirst development of the early Christian gathering] Leiden, 2007. “The Christian supper or Eucharist does not date back from the Saturday synagogue study of Scriptures, but from the common Hellinistic gatherings of society.” (p. 5). De Jonge argues that the interpretation of bread and wine as representing (the body and blood of ) Christ and the interpretation of the Eucharist as being put into practice on the night of his sufffering and dying, is very old, although secondary. The Didachè does not know this interpretation. It is a further working out of the expression ‘He has died for us’, early on in the thirties and forties of the fijirst century. His death is their death and His resurrection is their salvation. (p. 9). For the secondary nature of the connection of the Eucharist—bread and wine— with the body and blood of Christ, ‘broken and shed for us’ and the words of institution at het last supper, see also G. Theissen, De godsdienst van de eerste christenen—een theorie van het oerchristendom [Religion of the fijirst Christians—a theory of Early Christianity], (Kampen: Agora, 2001), 181–183.

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4. Van de Beek rightly emphasizes that the one baptism in Christ is the admittance to the new life, which is celebrated in the Eucharist. To put it diffferently, baptism—in the Easter night, after a long lasting catechizing training—is the admittance to the new life. That is the reason why baptism is connected to the paraenesis.24 The Eucharist is the celebration of the new life, in unison, the communion of the Body of Christ. Therefore, the Eucharist is connected to discipline.25 The New Testament has a clear focus on the unity of the Body of the Lord and on everything that threatens this unity. At the Eucharist it is made evident if the congregation also understands the meaning of unity and what unity demands. 5. Van de Beek rightly observes that in the Reformed churches, and surely in the Reformed church-family, the Zwinglian view on the Eucharist has defeated the Calvinistic one. Losing sight of the fact that the Eucharist is rooted in eschatology and thus in the Resurrection and in the communion with the Risen Lord―sub specie crucis―unintentionally further advanced the Zwinglian interpretation of the Eucharist in the Protestant tradition. The Eucharist increasingly became a remembrance meal of Jesus’ dying, a long time ago in the past. Muis also points to this development and rightly states that a large number of the participants in the Eucharist in fact think in a Zwinglian way about what is happening in the celebration. To Calvin it is clear that Christ is really present in the Eucharist by the symbols of Bread and Wine, in a spiritual way—but not less real; yet the current practice, however, has developed diffferently. The consequence is a hollow concept of the Eucharist and a lack of understanding of Christ’s real presence.26

24  Also compare the relation between the paranetical parts and baptism in the NT Letters, for example, in Rom. 6 and the fijirst Letter of Peter. 25  Compare the emphasis in the Letters on the communion with (the Body of ) Christ that does not bear the intercourse with a prostitute, or the participation in the religious practices at the meals in pagan religious meetings. “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? . . . .You cannot partake at the table of the Lord and the table of demons” ( I Cor. 10: 16 and 21). 26  Compare J. Muis, The Lord’s presence in the Eucharist, in: Gerrit de Kruijf and Wietske de Jong, Een lichte last, 224. “Calvin now states with Zwingli that the body of the risen Lord is in heaven and with Luther he states that the believers receive the body and blood of Christ by eating bread and drinking wine. Here he assumes the work of the Spirit in the believers who eat bread and drink wine. The question is whether this strong emphasis on the work of the Spirit in the believers eventually had to lead to a Zwinglian practice in the Reformed tradition.”

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6. Van de Beek has forcefully put the relation of the unity of Word and Sacrament back on the agenda of reflection within the Protestant church, for the sake of the functioning of the service as the heart of spirituality. He rightly states that (the preaching of ) the Word has been devalued because of the de-eschatologizing of the Eucharist.27 He means all forms of the Word as making Christ present. Put diffferently, the essence of the church service is at stake! Does something really take place in the service? In conclusion: Van de Beek’s view on the Eucharist as the eschatological meal of the baptized in Christ has good New Testament credentials.28 The tenability of Van De Beek’s view comes under pressure when he identifijies the Eucharist with the meal of the Kingdom which has come, the meal of the Lamb, the eschatological feast, without eschatological reservation to put it metaphorically. Here communication breakdowns occur. One example is the far-fetched explanation of the sour wine at the crucifijixion together with the word of Jesus saying that He will not drink the fruit of the vine till He will drink it newly in His kingdom.29 The break-downs concern more than this one example, however. Van de Beek undervalues the importance of History, for instance. The ‘baptized into Christ’ are ‘dead to the world’, aliens on earth. Radically spoken, they are ‘no longer from these parts,’ and they experience that most strongly in the celebration of the Eucharist. It is heaven on earth. The reality of history, of working, of living, and living together, of the life from Monday morning till Saturday evening, does it matter? At this point, the reader experiences a breakdown in communication. What are the consequences when History is devalued in such a way? Does not this view abandon the human person in his or her actual earthly life? One should be able to live, to work, to love, to sufffer and to fijight. Here, recurring questions about Van de Beek radical stance arise; these are far-reaching questions because they touch ethics, the relation between ‘church’ and ‘state’. They also confront

27  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 381, note 337: “Consequently, there is no realization that the celebration of the Word and that of the Eucharist are equally holy. An ‘avoiding of the Word’ does not exist in the Reformed churches. Precisely the unity of Word and Sacrament in the early Reformation implies that there cannot be a distinction between the holiness of the Word and that of the Sacrament”. 28  Beside H.J. de Jonge—in note 23 above—see also again Theissen, De godsdienst van de eerste christenen, 183–184. 29  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 331.

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us with the question of how we are to evaluate the reinterpretation of the sources of faith by the church in the fijirst centuries, when its Naherwartung, the expectation of a soon return of Christ, was not fulfijilled; when the Christian faith became a religion of the majority; when the relation of church and public realm reversed. Van de Beek rightly redirects these far-reaching questions to his critics; even while at this moment, in the 21st century, the position of Christian ethics has radically changed; even while at this moment following Christ raises questions about Christian ethics in a secular society as well as in facing a vital, newly arrived’ religion, Islam. The discussion is not at all fijinished yet, but has only just begun. Even so, the Achilles’ heel in Van de Beek’s thought is his identifijication of eschatology and Christology. He is consistent in his theological development, be it with sometimes large detours along other paths and with other vistas.30 In our opinion this identifijication of eschatology with Christology causes difffijiculty in Van de Beek’s—otherwise justifijied—revision of the Eucharist. This dynamic becomes concrete when he begins to speak in terms of the doctrine of the Two Natures, about the ‘baptized in Christ’, around the Lord’s Supper and at the meal at home. Earlier in this article, we already noted this feature. Now we will develop this slightly further. The believers are in heaven and on earth at the same time, according to Van de Beek. “Ontologically they are a new creation, although their looks are still earthly”, we already quoted earlier.31 He continues: “In this way the bread ontologically is the body of Christ and the wine essentially His blood although the looks and the chemistry are entirely earthly.” “The reality of the Eucharist ultimately has everything to do with the reality of the resurrection: it is about this concrete earthly existence which receives eternal life.”32 At this point Van de Beek gets stuck, precisely because he draws that parallel between bread and wine (i.e. people of flesh and blood, illness, persecution and death) and Body and Blood of Christ (i.e. new glorifijied creation) and ‘fijills’ that parallelism ontologically. The christological expression ‘truly God and truly human’ cannot be applied to the new human having been baptized in Christ. Here a diffferent duality fijits, the one

30  We believe we are justifijied in identifying a dominant line of thought running from his dissertation about the relation of two natures of Christ via Jezus Kurios to God doet recht. We see in Van de Beek’s work a radical christological concentration in his ontology and his theological doctrine of knowledge. Also compare our observation in note 1 in response to his farewell lecture. We will let this rest, for now. Other contributers to this volume will deal with Christology specifijically. 31  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 379. Also see note 20. 32  Van de Beek, God doet recht, 379.

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of ‘simul justus’-‘simul peccator’, or ‘new self ’-‘oldself ’. These are pneumatological categories. The christological categories alone are not sufffijicient to gauge the reality we celebrate at the Eucharist. Without pneumatological categories pressure will not hold and will eventually result in deflation and collapse. The Spirit who guides into all truth, does justice to the new creation and the reality of the congregation as a provisional shape of that new creation. And in that way the Spirit does justice to the history of the God’s people in the struggle of the Spirit against the flesh. Being Challenged by Van de Beek We fijinish by asking our third question: How can we do justice to a number of justifijied theological and ecclesociological intuitions of Van de Beek? To put it diffferently, what happens when the protestant view of the Eucharist is seen in the light of New Testament eschatological expectations? I make a few concrete observations: 1.  The Lord’s Supper deals with the celebration of the break-through of the eschaton, the Kingdom. That demands a larger eschatological emphasis in the celebration itself than usually has been the case until now. The ‘until He comes’ should set the tone of our celebration. 2 Being the meal of the realized eschaton, the Eucharist confijirms and underlines the exile of the congregation on this earth. The relation between the ability to share in the communion of bread and wine on the one hand, and the way of life, the ethics of the congregation on the other, is therefore evident. 3. The practice of the Eucharist, therefore, can never do without a catalogue of sin, which should be brought up to date again and again. The world is changing and with it the nature of the exile. A catalogue of sin in the Eucharistic practice is not some kind of catalogue of morals and values for law-abiding citizens. The Gospel is in principle not moralistic. How then does it difffer? The New Testament is very clear about this. The ethics of the congregation that celebrates the Eucharist become concrete in particular by overcoming and removing cultural, religious and socially sanctioned divides, gaps and (hierarchical) distinctions, without equalizing them. That is a tour de force, to which Paul needs to dedicate more than a few words in his letters. ‘The bread that we break is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?’ In breaking the bread, Christ constitutes communion and forms a new community where contrasts

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are overcome: Jew-pagan, man-woman, lord-slave, poor-rich, weakstrong. Those diffferences are there, they are not being denied, but they are no dividing factors and should not be so in principle. Precisely at the Eucharist that becomes clear and should become clear. At the Lord’s Supper, the question is decisive whether we have Christ’s mind in us and not whether we are all of the same mind or have the same origins.33 4. The few times the New Testament explicitly speaks about the Eucharist, it addresses this essence of the congregation, the community (koinoonia). The congregation is a critical community in the face of social structures and ‘normal’ relations. It does not seek confrontation for its own sake, but it ‘happens’. To the Eucharistic practice it means that we do not sidestep confrontation at the decisive moment, but ‘being innocent as doves’ subsequently straighten up. That was the power of people who, at the right moment, saw that a separate Eucharist table for black and white is sufffijicient ground to fundamentally reject a political system of Apartheid in South Africa. 5. With regard to religious diffferences, this means for the Eucharistic practice that the Lord’s Supper is in principle open to all that know the Host and accept his invitation. Thus a separation of the Eucharist table by denominational dividing lines is in conflict with the Eucharist. This is also the case when posing a unity of confession as condition to the invitation and participation. The Eucharist is in principle open to the whole Christian Oecumene. 6. Baptism in Christ is the access to the communion of the body of Christ and in that way in principle to the participation in the Lord’s Supper. At the same time, all that eat and drink should discern the body of the Lord. This asks for an intensive education regarding baptism and a reconsideration of the early Christian catechizing and training. In the baptismal practice, it should become the norm again that those longing for the baptism of their children confess Christ’s name themselves and take part in the communion of the Lord’s Supper. 7. Children of the congregation that have been baptized, and who have come to the age of discretion and discernment, are allowed to take part in the celebration of the Eucharist. The introduction of a confijirmation at the beginning of adolescence is worth considering, after good confijirmation classes. Such a confijirmation, as long as it is accompanied

33

 See, for example, I Cor. 10 to 14 to learn to how many tensions it leads.

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by continuing religious education, also is a form of initiation into the mystery, the sacramentum. 8. The equality of Word and Sacrament, and the distinctive nature of Christ’s Presence at the breaking of the bread, demand a higher frequency of the celebration of the Eucharist. Calvin’s desire should no longer remain a pious wish. It is evident that a fijirst step towards increasing the frequency to once-a-month already demands a lot from the church service as a coherent complex of rituals. At the same time, reflection on, and a gradual development toward, a church practice in which every service concludes with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, holds great promise. For religion in general, and also the Christian faith in particular, is concerned with a ‘leading to, and initiation into, the mystery’: communion with Christ and remaining in Him. Because ‘they recognized Him in the breaking of the Bread”.

PART FIVE

CREATION THEOLOGY

NO CREATION STORIES IN HOLY SCRIPTURE. VON RAD’S VIEW ON THE RELATION BETWEEN COVENANT AND CREATION REVISITED Harm Goris Background For a modern Reformed theologian, Bram van de Beek has shown a remarkable interest in creation theology.1 He wrote two books on the topic: Schepping, de wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid (Creation, the world as prelude to eternity), published in 1996, and Toeval of schepping? Scheppingstheologie in de context van het moderne denken (Chance or creation? Creation theology in the context of modern thought). The latter came out in 2005 and resumes some of the material covered by the fijirst book. For many theologians working within the Reformed tradition, creation has become a questionable issue, especially because of the derailed science-religion discussion and also on account of the verdict of dialectical theology on the doctrine of creation.2 Trained as a scientist himself, Van de Beek knows how to put the debate about creation between scientists and theologians on the right track.3 In this paper, I shall focus on the other important interlocutor for a present-day theology of creation: dialectical theology. As Van de Beek himself is critical of Barth’s theology, but endorses Von Rad’s biblical-theological argument that creation should not be isolated from history, I have chosen the latter as representative of dialectical theology.4 By revisiting Von Rad’s original position I intend to uncover some of the implicit ideas that we have about the meaning of

1  I thank the members of the Thomas Institute at Utrecht for their very useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. In particular I would like to mention Herwi Rikhof, Henk Schoot and Stefan Mangnus. 2  Terrence Fretheim lists eleven reasons and causes that led to the “marginalization of creation” in biblical sciences and theology during much of the 20th century: Terrence Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament. Relational Theology of Creation (Nashvile: Abingdon Press, 2005), ix–x. 3  Bram van de Beek, Toeval of schepping? Scheppingstheologie in de context van het moderne denken (Kampen: Kok, 2005), 94–169. For translation of titles of Van de Beek’s published works, see the complete bibliography provided elsewhere in this Liber Amicorum. 4  Van de Beek, Toeval, 30–33, 112–113.

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‘creation’ and that influence our reading of Scripture. When we become critically aware of the conceptual assumptions with which we read what Scripture has to say about creation and history, we can begin rereading these texts in a novel way. I shall suggest such a rereading and in doing so I hope to contribute to the discussion of a theological topic that is so dear to Bram van de Beek. Introduction In 1936 Gerhard von Rad published a short, but epoch-making article entitled ‘The Theological Problem of the Old Testament Doctrine of Creation.’5 Von Rad’s bold statement in this paper is that Israel did not believe in God’s creating activity as independent or separated from God’s redemptive work in history. Focusing on creation texts in Deutero-Isaiah and in the Psalms, and mentioning the Genesis accounts of creation only in passing, Von Rad argued that the meaning of these texts is only to highlight the wonder of God’s salvifijic activity in the covenant with Israel and to inspire the people’s confijidence and faith that God will continue to care for them through mighty deeds. There is a “complete absorption of the doctrine of creation into the prophetic doctrine of salvation.”6 His conclusion was that “ . . .  in genuine Yahwistic belief, the doctrine of creation never attained to the stature of a relevant, independent doctrine. We found it invariably related, and indeed subordinated, to soteriological considerations.”7 Von Rad’s view was readily adopted by dialectical theology. However, in the 1970s his thesis that creation is only an epiphenomenon of salvation in the Old Testament, became subject to severe criticism. Also Von Rad himself began to attenuate his former view and came to admit the theological signifijicance of Israel’s (critical) adoption of creation motifs from the Umwelt, particularly in the wisdom literature. Like his colleague Claus Westermann, von Rad acknowledged that the natural order and regularities of the cosmos are theologically relevant and reveal God’s care

5

 Gerhard von Rad, “Das theologische Problem des alttestamentlichen Schöpfungsglaubens,” in: G. von Rad, Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament, vol. I, (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1958), 136–147. Translated as: “The Theological Problem of the Old Testament Doctrine of Creation,” in: G. von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (London: SCM Press, 1984), 131–143. 6  Von Rad, “Theological Problem,” 137. 7  Von Rad, “Theological Problem,” 142.

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for his people.8 Nowadays, there is almost general consensus among Old Testament scholars that creation cannot be reduced without remainder to salvation history. It is not a question of either/or as the early Von Rad thought, but of both/and. However, how to conceive of the relation between the two remains a problem. As Reventlow points out, the relation is either not explained (Hans Heinrich Schmid), or history is subordinated (Rolf Knierim), or the unity of history and creation is only realized in the eschaton (Francis Watson).9 Terrence Fretheim thinks that creation is the comprehensive context or matrix within which God’s particular redemptive acts occur.10 Claus Westermann, fijinally, states that they are not related conceptually: creation and salvation stand in a polar relation to one another and cannot be brought together under a higher, synthesizing concept.11 In this paper, I want to propose a diffferent theological reading of Old Testament texts. In my interpretation, ‘creation’ is not an additional category besides ‘covenant’ or ‘salvation history’, but one that functions from within the biblical stories of the covenant and of God’s acting in time. In the Old Testament, I shall claim, ‘creation’ is intended to unearth or explicate the conceptual depth structure of the covenant narratives. ‘Creation’ reminds us that the One who acts in the covenant is God, who is unlike any other covenant partner or any other agent. Creation texts aim at safeguarding and articulating the divinity—or, if one prefers, the transcendence—of the covenant partner. Consequently, I shall argue that the most important creation text in the Old Testament, Genesis 1, is not a narrative or a story, and that the story of Gen. 2–3 is not about creation. First, I shall analyse the conceptual dichotomies that rule Von Rad’s paper from 1936. In doing so, I want to make explicit a number of associations we (tacitly) make when talking about ‘covenant’ and ‘creation’. Next, following in Von Rad’s footsteps, I shall focus on prophetic texts and the Psalms that link covenant with creation. My conclusion will be that the

8  For a good summary of Von Rad’s original position within the context of the German ‘Church Struggle’ against Nazi ideology and of the subsequent developments in Old Testament theology, see: Walter Brueggemann, “The Loss and Recovery of Creation in Old Testament Theology,” Theology Today 532 (1996), 177–90. 9  See the survey in: Henning Graf Reventlow, “Creation as a Topic in Biblical Theology,” in: Creation in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. by Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hofffman (London: Shefffijield Academic Press, 2002), 153–71. 10  Fretheim, God and World, 10–11. 11  Claus Westermann, Schöpfung (Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag, 1971), 166–167. The unity of creation and salvation, Westermann adds, lies in God Himself.

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texts reveal three theological motives for making this connection: (1) the universalization of the covenant in space, as encompassing all peoples and the whole world, and also in time, as eschatologically realized at the end of history, (2) the belief that Israel’s keeping of the covenant depends on God’s activity and (3) the incomprehensibility and inefffability of the divine covenant partner. After that we shall turn to the texts in Genesis 1–3. Taking the clue from a suggestion made by Herwi Rikhof, I shall defend the claim that Genesis 1 is about creation, but is not a story, while Genesis 2–3 is a story, but not about creation.12 The concluding paragraph will present the results of the discussion for a theology of the covenant and of creation. My approach in interpreting the Old Testament texts will be explicitly theological. That is why the title of this paper has ‘holy Scripture’ and not ‘Bible’. I shall adopt a reading that takes the composition—both the process and the result—of the biblical canon as we have it now, to be decisive for the authoritative, theological meaning of the text.13 Distinction between ‘Covenant’ and ‘Creation’ in Von Rad A close reading of Von Rad’s 1936 paper shows that the author sets up a number of value-laden, interrelated oppositions to diffferentiate ‘creation’ from ‘covenant’. Creation is associated with ‘nature’, ‘cosmos’, ‘natural order’ and is opposed to ‘history’, ‘salvation’, ‘election’. Creation has to do with ‘protology’, covenant with ‘soteriology’. Creation is associated with “Canaanite Baal religion,” “non-Israelite source” and “Egyptian origin,” in contrast with the “faith of Israel,” “the original, genuinely Yahwistic faith” of the covenant.14 In the context of creation, ‘land’ has the meaning of ‘soil’, ‘birth’ and ‘agrarian products’, while in the context of covenant it has the political meaning of the ‘promised land’ and of a ‘nation’.15 In Wisdom

12  Herwi Rikhof, “Schepping: meer dan groene ethiek,” in: Anneleen Decoene, Jacques Haers, Marianne Servaas (eds), Wanneer de schepping kreunt in barensweeën. Hedendaagse reflecties over schepping (Antwerp: Halewijn, 2008), 21–32, in particular 24–27. 13  I am sympathetic towards the ‘canonical reading’ of Brevard Childs. See e.g. his Introduction to Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979) and The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). However, in the line of Von Rad, I also want to acknowledge the theological signifijicance of the so-called Traditionsgeschichte, which tries to trace the history of the development of the underlying theological ideas that directed the process of biblical canon formation. 14  Barth’s distinction between ‘religion’ (Religion) and ‘faith’ (Glaube) resonates here. 15  This is a veiled criticism of the Nazi ‘blood and soil’ (Blut und Boden) ideology.

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literature, Von Rad claims, an isolated doctrine of creation is expressed in “reasoned, reflective theology,” in a “highly rationalized mode of speculation,” in contrast with the “portentous (ahnungsschwere), bizarre, mythical struggle against the dragon,” found in Deutero-Isaiah and the Psalms, where it is meant to highlight God’s redemptive action with regard to Israel in history. There is also an opposition in names of God: creation is attributed to El, “the most colourless possible word for ‘divinity,’ ” while salvation comes from Yahweh, which Von Rad probably reads as a proper name for Israel’s personal God. One may readily supplement the list of polarities. Allegedly, the idea of creation leads to speculative metaphysics and implies the preservation of the present status quo, but speaking about the covenant calls for prophetic ethics, critical action, and change. Creation is ruled by determination and necessity, whereas history and the covenant constitute the realm of human freedom. Creation belongs to Kant’s pure reason and covenant to practical reason. Creation is subject of philosophy and science, the covenant is subject of historiography and exegesis. Creation is expressed rationally in concepts, but the covenant is based in human experience and fijinds expression in literary form. Creation goes with (Catholic) natural theology and analogia entis, but the covenant with (Protestant) revelation through Scripture alone and the analogia fijidei. Finally, the opposition has gender overtones as well: the cycle of the seasons, fertility, birth, nutrition etc. have female connotations, and the goal-orientated dialectics of covenant theology has male characteristics. This enumeration of oppositions linked with the distinction between creation and covenant is not exhaustive. But it serves to make us aware of the implicit associations and biases with which the distinction is constructed and which we are prone to read into the biblical texts. Prophets and Psalms It was already mentioned that in his 1936 paper Von Rad argued mainly from texts in Deutero-Isaiah and some of the Psalms. And rightly so, for ‘creation’ is a key issue in these texts. I follow Von Rad and begin with what prophets and psalms say about creation. The passage that Von Rad thinks is “most remarkable of all for our theological enquiry” is Is. 51:9–10: Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! Awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago! Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?

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harm goris Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over?

In Von Rad’s reading of the text, the ancient creation myth of the defeat of the primordial dragon is put to the service of reciting Israel’s birth, the story of the Exodus from Egypt through the Red Sea. What I want to argue for is that Von Rad is right, but that there is more to it. In my view, there is a specifijic reason why ‘creation’ becomes connected with the notion of the covenant. The motive lies in a radicalization of the latter. Influenced by the experience of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Babylonian Exile, Israel’s reflection on the depth and all-embracing scope of the covenant, and also on the peculiarity of its covenant partner and of his activity, begins to take more defijinite shape. First, the covenant is universalized in space. Through Israel all peoples will be included in the covenant. Israel will be made a light to the nations (Is. 42:6; cf. Ez. 36:23) and all nations will gather to Zion (Is. 2:2–5, 25:6–9; also Is. 11:10, 45:22, Ps. 22:28, Ps. 87, 96, 98, 102:16–23). Second, the covenant is universalized in time, that is, it is eschatologized. Israel begins to hope for a defijinite, fijinal fulfijilment of the covenant. The ‘Day of the Lord’ (Is. 13–14) marks the beginning of a new exodus (Is. 18–19, 40:3–5, 52:11–12) and there will be a new or renewed, everlasting covenant, no longer interrupted by Israel’s disloyalty (Ez. 16:60-62, 37:26; Is. 43:18–19; Jer. 31:31–40 and 32:40). God is the sole ruler of history and the eschaton makes an end to the vicissitudes of history.16 Third, the reason why the new covenant will no longer be broken is because God will give his people a new heart and pour out his own spirit over them (Ez. 36:26–27; cf. Ez. 11:19–20; Jer. 31:33 and 32:39–40). Israel’s fijinal covenantal obedience will be God’s own work.17

16  See Henk Leene, “History and Eschatology in Deutero-Isaiah” in: Studies in the Book of Isaiah. Festschrift Willem A.M. Beuken, ed. by J. van Ruiten and M. Vervenne (Leuven:University Press and Peeters, 1997), 223–249. 17  See Bernhard Anderson, “Exodus and Covenant in Second Isaiah and Prophetic Tradition,” in Magnalia Dei. The Might Acts of God. Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright, ed. Frank Moore Cross e.a. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976), 339–360. Deutero-Isaiah, Anderson argues, reinterprets and synthesizes the conditional Mosaic Sinai covenant and the more unilateral, unconditional Davidic covenant (also related to the covenants with Abraham and Noah). In addition to Anderson’s view, I want to stress that the obligations and conditions of the human partner(s) are not cancelled, but will be fulfijilled forever by God’s gift of the spirit and the new heart.

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Finally, Israel testifijies to the divinity of Yhwh and to his incomprehensibility and inefffability (Is. 40:18–25, 42:8–9, 45:15, 48:12, 55:9). He is unique and cannot be compared with anyone or anything else. One text in which we fijind all these elements together and related with God’s creative activity, is in the so-called ‘fijirst song’ of the ‘Servant of the Lord,’ Is. 42:5–9 5

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it [creation],18 who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: 6 I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you [Israel’s obedience is God’s work]; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations [universalization in space], 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 8 I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols [God’s uniqueness]. 9 See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare [eschatology]; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

Israel becomes more aware of the profoundness of the covenant and of God’s acting within it, and therefore describes the new covenant in terms of a ‘new creation’ or a ‘recreation’ (Is. 48:7, 65:17–18, Jer. 31:4).19 To put it briefly, in the prophetic texts we do not fijind the notion of creation fully subordinate to the notion of the covenant, as the early Von Rad thought, nor are the two merely juxtaposed. ‘Creation’ serves to bring

18  The NRSV uses a past tense (“created the heavens and stretched them out”), but the Hebrew participles suggest that this creative activity of God “is not limited to a once-only event in primordial history [ . . . ], but is timelessly efffective”: Ulrich Berges, Jesaja 40-48, Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament (Freiburg [etc.]: Herder, 2008), 235. 19  See Carroll Stuhlmueller, Creative Redemption in Deutero-Isaiah (Rome; Biblical Institute Press, 1970). Stuhlmueller concludes that in Deutero-Isaiah “the idea of creation helped to bring out the colossal proportions of redemption” (236). Also Leene, “History and Eschatology,” 248: “The fijield in which Yhwh proves that he is Creator is the fijield of history [italics by Leene].”

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out the radicality of God’s covenant. The next question is how this reading of the prophetic texts relates to Genesis 1–3. Genesis 1–3 The fijirst three chapters of Genesis have been the most influential biblical texts on creation in the history of Christian theology. All modern commentaries distinguish the text of Gen. 1:1 to Gen. 2: 4a from the text of Gen. 2: 4a to Gen. 4. In accordance with the classical, 19th-century documentary hypothesis, the fijirst is attributed to the Priestly source (P-text) and the second to the Yahwist source (J-text). In the 1970s, the documentary hypothesis began to come under severe criticism, but for the sake of convenience I shall continue to speak about the P- and the J-text.20 The point I want to make is: the P-text is about creation, but it is not a story, while the J-text is a story, but is not about creation. Biblical scholars are used to talk about Gen. 1–11 as ‘primordial history’ (Urgeschichte), in distinction from the so-called ‘history of the fathers’ (Vätergeschichte), which starts with Abraham in Gen. 12. Also ‘creation stories’ (Schöpfungserzählungen), ‘creation reports’ (Schöpfungsberichte), ‘creation myths’ are common usage to refer to the two texts in Gen. 1–3. In my view, this way of speaking is misleading. As I read the book of Genesis, creation does not belong to history, not even to primordial history. The P-text is not part of a literary whole, called Urgeschichte, but stands apart as literary unit in itself. The J-text, on the other hand, is part of the Urgeschichte, but, as I shall argue below, it is not about creation. I have three kinds of arguments for my claim. Of the fijirst kind are a number of literary genre diffferences between the P- and the J-text.21 The P-text is not a story or a history. Taken in its entirety, it does not have the literary characteristics of a narrative or a drama. It is more like hymn, a doxology (Westermann) or a psalm.22 The strong formal structure of the

20  The distinction between the two Genesis texts on the basis of the use of diffferent names for God precedes the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis by at least 150 years. It was fijirst formulated by the German scholar Henning Bernhard Witter in 1711. See Jean Louis Ska, ‘The Yahwist, a Hero with a Thousand Faces. A Chapter in the History of Modern Exegesis,’ in: Abschied vom Jahwisten: Die Komposition des Hexateuch in der jüngsten Diskussion, ed. by Jan Christian Gertz e.a. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 3. 21  See Rikhof, “Schepping,” 24–25. 22  Bob Becking, “Once in a Garden. Some Remarks on the Construction of the Identity in Genesis 2–3”, in: Out of Paradise. Eve and Adam and Their Interpreters, eds Bob Becking and Susanne Mennecke (Shefffijield: Shefffijield Phoenix Press 2011). Becking contrasts what he

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text, the parallelisms and verbal repetitions are features of Hebrew poetry. Moreover, there is only one actor, God, and He is engaged in a totally unique kind of activity: the Hebrew verb ‘to create’ (barah) occurs in the Old Testament only with God as subject. True, there is a temporal order of seven days, but it has clearly been modelled after a cultic scheme of the week culminating in the Sabbath. Moreover, the order does not make sense when taken literally: the light is created on day one, but the light sources appear only on day four. Finally, the very fijirst word bereshit may indicate not only a chronological but also a qualitative, structural priority of God’s creative activity.23 But also taken in its temporal sense, it could be argued that the notion of an absolute beginning is more than an ordinary time-indicator or date, like the ‘day’ ( jom) with which the J-text opens (Gen. 2: 4b). An absolute beginning of time or history is not just the fijirst part of it: then history has already begun. The J-text, on the other hand, is a story, a narrative, a drama, with multiple characters (God, Adam, Eve, serpent) who interact and communicate with each other. There is a logical temporal sequence, a plot, and a crisis with a dénouement. In the J-text, God is one of many agents and his activity is described by means of ordinary verbs (mould, make, breathe etc.). My second argument regards the fijinal, canonical composition of the book of Genesis. The Redaktionsgeschichte has not been a theologically irrelevant, mere random process of collecting texts. Biblical editors have had serious and profound theological reasons and motives for selecting, adapting and arranging texts into the canonical form and order as we have it now.24 Regarding the J-text, it is likely that originally there were two separate stories: one about creation, in particular about the creation of human beings (Gen. 2: 4b to Gen. 3), the other about the ‘Fall’ (Gen. 3). The Yahwist editor combined the two into one narrative. However, the focus of the whole of the J-text is the ‘Fall’, that is, the disruption of relationships: between God and humans, between man and woman, between humans and the (wild) animals, between humans and the earth, and between

calls the ‘creation psalm’ of the P-text with the ‘garden story’ of the J-text (3–4). I do not deny that there are some narrative elements in parts of Gen. 1, but the overall composition is not a narrative. 23  Wolfgang Oswald, “Das Erstlingswerk Gottes—zur Übersetzung von Gen 1,1,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 120 (2008), 417–21. 24  Recently, biblical scholars have begun to rediscover the signifijicance of the (fijinal) redactions of biblical texts. See Markus Witte, Die biblische Urgeschichte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), 1–52. This tendency goes well with the canonical approach of Brevard Childs.

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humans and their own (naked) bodies. By including the original creation story of Gen. 2, the editor intended to bring into relief the disruption of the harmony of the relationships as meant by God. In this way, Gen. 2 enters into the service of the Gen. 3 and ceases to be a creation story. Obviously, the text retains elements that are signifijicant for a theological anthropology, but these regard ‘creation’ rather in the sense of ‘passive creation’ (creatio passiva), the result of God’s activity, and not so much the creatio activa. The fijinal editor of the whole of the book of Genesis—and, we might add, of the whole of the Pentateuch, of the Old Testament and of Scripture—put the P-text before the J-text with a specifijic theological purpose. In this way, the P-text begins to function as a kind of prologue or heading to the whole of Genesis—and to the whole Pentateuch, Old Testament and Scripture.25 The J-text of Gen. 2–3, on the other hand, constitutes with chapters 4–11 one textual unit. The whole of Gen. 2–11 can rightfully be called ‘primordial history’ (Urgeschichte) and its literary genre is best described as aetiology (Von Rad). This means that these stories are not literal reports of actual historical events but expressions of Israel’s experience of the permanent, general structures—political, economic, cultural, and existential—that make up the context of the dynamic, particular course of its actual history of salvation.26 Finally, there is the theological argument that the Fall, evil, sin, disobedience, failure—or however we label it—which is the dominant theme of the J-text, cannot be part God’s creative activity. God is not the auctor peccati and sin is not an integral part but a disruption of God’s good creation.27 Therefore, the J-text of Gen. 2–3 is not about creation and has to be separated from the P-text. The alternative is to split the J-text in two

25  S. Dean McBride Jr. “Divine Protocol: Genesis 1:1–2:3 as Prologue to the Pentateuch,” in: God who Creates: Essays in Honor of W. Sibley Towner, ed. by William P. Brown and S. Dean McBride Jr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 3–41. However, I disagree with McBride’s characterization of the P-text as a “chronicle . . . [that] documents what happened at creation” (7). Cf. also Mark S. Smith, The priestly vision of Genesis 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009): “Its textual location also represents an efffort or claim to make it fijirst and primary relative to all other biblical accounts [of creation, HG]” (156). Contrary to Smith, I would not label the P-text “from the perspective of its content . . . very mythic” (156). 26  See Westermann, Schöpfung, 29–47. The table of nations in Gen. 10 is an aetiology of Israel’s political context; the origin of cities, agriculture, music and metalworking is ‘explained’ in Gen. 4; human existential failure occurs in chapters 4, 6, 9 and 11. 27  See Bruce C. Birch e.a., A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 34.

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and to take Gen. 2 together with the P-text of Gen. 1 as one “canonical picture of creation,” while Gen. 3 is joined to the following chapters (4–6) as to constitute one text about the intrusion of sin and its consequences.28 This strategy meets the theological requirement that God cannot be the creator of sin. However, from the viewpoint of literary composition it seems awkward to break up the unity of Gen. 2–3 and combine Gen. 1 with Gen. 2. On the basis of the three arguments set out above, I conclude that Genesis does not have creation stories: Gen. 1 is about creation, but it is not a story. Gen. 2 is a story, but is not about creation. Understood in the sense of divine activity (creatio activa), creation does not belong to history and is not an event during the fijirst moments of time. Placed at the very beginning of Holy Scripture, the notion of creation colors the whole of (sacred) history and all of God’s acting in time. In the fijinal section of this paper I shall try to specify in a more positive sense what this ‘color’ is. Conclusion Israel’s ‘theology’ gradually developed from (1) the initial experiences of God’s saving acts in actual historical events, to (2) the eschatological hope for the ‘end of history’ (by universalising the historical covenant in time and space), to (3) Israel’s own confession of God as creator of everything. In other words, Israel went from ‘God is the Middle or Centre’, through ‘God is the End’, to ‘God is the Beginning.’29 And just as the ‘end of history’ is not identical with the fijinal part of history—for then it would not be the end of it—also ‘the beginning’ of history does not coincide with the fijirst part of history. Creation is not a story, it does not belong to history. It cannot be expressed in whatever narrative, whether a myth, saga, report, chronicle, story or recital. It indicates God’s activity as something that cannot be described or narrated. Not a narrative itself, the notion of creation functions as an interpretation key for reading the narratives of sacred history

28

 This strategy is chosen in Birch, Theological Introduction, 39–46.  It is interesting to note that two of the classical proof-texts in Scripture for the later doctrine of ‘creation out of nothing’ occur in the eschatological context of the resurrection of the dead: 2 Macc. 7:28 and Rom. 4:17. This suggests again the transition from eschatology to creation theology, at least in the history of theological exegesis. 29

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in Scripture. Von Rad had already said “The Old Testament tells a story”30 and ever since the 1970s ‘narrative theology’ has become a dominant approach in all fijields of theology. But telling a story, or even the (sacred) story or stories, however necessary that may be, is not enough. The question how to interpret and understand the stories is equally crucial. Here the idea of creation comes in as offfering a guideline for reading the stories of Scripture. It is meant to express and remind us of the divinity of the divine covenant partner. God’s acting in the covenant, in history and in stories is unlike the acting of any human covenant partner or created agent. Creation expresses the radical diffference and inequality between the divine and the human covenant in at least the following fijive ways: 1. The initiative for the covenant is exclusively God’s, just as creation initiates the existence of created beings without their prior assent or proposal. 2. The covenant can only be broken by the human partner, not by God, as evil is not part of creation. 3. The obedience of the human partner in keeping the covenant is supported and sustained by God. God brings the positive answer of the human partner about, just as creation constitutes the very being and activity of creatures. 4. The acting of God in history, in the covenant, is not to be understood as historical, time-bound activity. Stories that tell that God reacts, repents, changes his mind etc. are not to be read as if God can be manipulated. The reason is that God is the creator of everything: nothing is withdrawn from his activity—if it were, it wouldn’t exist—and He is not subject to the control of another. 5. Although He engages in a most intimate relationship with us, He always remains the Other, the Incomprehensible one. ‘Creation,’ which cannot be reported in a story, expresses precisely the unfathomable character of God’s being and his acting towards us. God’s being and his acting in the covenant can never be fully described, told or conceived by us, only praised. One can probably extend the list of ways in which the biblical notion of ‘creation’ qualifijies and directs our reading of the stories in Holy Scripture.

30  As quoted by Westermann in Theologie des Alten Testaments in Grundzügen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 5.

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But from the fijive points mentioned above we can gather two more conclusions. First, my interpretation of creation in prophetic texts, psalms and Genesis can help to answer the question of how to conceive the relation between salvation/covenant and creation. As said in the introduction of this paper, biblical scholars have not yet come up with a satisfactory answer. In my view, ‘creation’ expresses the deep-structure of ‘history of salvation’ and this safeguards the unity of God’s activity towards us. Second, we have to examine critically our own concept of what the term ‘creation’ means. In my analysis of Von Rad, I tried to show that all kinds of modern conceptual dichotomies determine our preconceived idea of ‘creation’ and lead to a biased reading of Scripture. The oppositions I have especially in mind are the identifijication of creation with nature and the contrast of the two with culture and politics. Creation in Scripture is more than God’s ongoing, cosmological, sustaining activity and blessing in life, growth and reproduction. Salvation, on the other hand, although bound up with the historical particularity and political fate of Israel—and of Jesus and of the Church—is not limited to this particularity, but encompasses fijinally the whole of humanity and also all of non-human reality (‘new heaven and a new earth’). We have to reconsider and revise, or maybe ‘deconstruct,’ the conceptual oppositions that rule our preconceptions of what ‘creation’ and ‘salvation’ mean. Reading Holy Scripture as critically and meticulously as we can, is, I think, the best way to achieve this.

AN ALTERNATIVE CREATION BELIEF: AN INTERPRETATION OF JOB 36:26–37:13* E. Gerrit Singgih Introduction The seriousness of large scale ecological destructions and its implications for the life of the world—among them the problem of climate change— has been acknowledged by many, and effforts to prevent their continuation have been promoted. Even theologians and biblical commentators are referring to this issue in their discourses. As early as 1981, John C.L. Gibson wrote a commentary on Genesis, in which he seriously tried to interpret some texts in the light of Lynn White’s criticism of Christianity, especially the text of Genesis 1:26–28, which became the basis of religious legitimation for the exploitation of nature. White’s famous article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”, was published in 1967, and it was none too late when only after 14 years a biblical commentary appeared on a popular level that took White’s criticism into consideration . . .1 Like many others, Gibson accepts White’s argument. It is not a secular criticism against Christianity (the assumption of many Indonesians, since the article was published in a secular journal, Science), but a self-critical work by a Christian believer. I quote Gibson: “. . . This is a scarifying indictment, made all the more so by the fact that Professor White is himself a practicing Christian. It contains far too much truth for any who call themselves Christians to do other than shrink in horror from it”.2 But on the other hand according to Gibson, what White is describing is a wrong kind of Christianity, based on a wrong understanding of the fijirst chapter

* This article is a further elaboration of a paper given at a conference on climate change held by The Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) and the Javanese Christian Church (GKJ), held on November 10, 2009 in Salatiga, Indonesia, and is now presented to Bram van de Beek. Long ago he came to our country and established a network where theologians from the Netherlands can get into a dialogue with their colleagues from Indonesia. 1  See John C.L. Gibson, Genesis, vol. I, The Daily Study Bible, (Edinburgh-Philadelphia, The Saint Andrew Press-The Westminster Press, 1981), 77–82. Some volumes in the series “The Daily Study Bible” have been translated into Indonesian (but not Gibson’s) and to some extent they have influenced the thinking of many Indonesian Christians. 2  Gibson, Genesis, 78.

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of Genesis. Man (sic!) has a special status in Creation, but it is a delegated status, not something inherent in his nature. The human is God’s representative on earth, his ambassador, and has no intrinsic rights beyond those conferred to him or her by God, to whom he has to render account.3 According to White, Genesis 1:26–28 is an expression of a triumphalist understanding on the part of the biblical writers. But according to Gibson, it is not, it is the reader’s misunderstanding of the text that caused this triumphalist understanding. I am a professor in Old Testament interpretation, and frequently I give courses on the interpretation of Genesis 1–11 since 1985, both for undergraduates and graduates at the Theological Faculty, Duta Wacana Christian University, Yogyakarta. After some years, I have come to think that Wright is right after all. The problem is not one of a misunderstanding of the passage, but that Genesis 1:26–28 and its surrounding texts are demeaning to nature. For here humankind is made in the image of God and the animals are not, although both are nefesy hayah, “living beings”. The plants and vegetations on the other hand, are not living beings! So it is not suitable to use Genesis 1 as basis for reflection on problems such as deforestation . . . . Of course we can modify the triumphalist tone of Genesis 1:26–28, if we give a “soft” understanding of the words rada (“to rule”, “to have dominion”, Ind: “menguasai”) and kabash (“to subdue”, Ind: “menaklukkan”), as has been suggested by James Barr, to replace the previously dominant “strong” understanding of them.4 Be that as it may, the overall tone of the passage still sounds the power of humankind over against nature. And not only in this text, but in the whole of Genesis 1–2, humankind is the centre of the universe. Gibson emphasized the role of humankind as an ambassador of God, much in the sense of the traditional Christian stewardship. But I think John Macquarrie is right, that in the doctrine of stewardship, the world (or in this context, nature) is still considered as a piece of property and the result of an anthropocentric view of the world.5 If so, then for the purpose of this bible study in the context of our concern for climate change, we should look for biblical texts which do not focus on the centrality of humankind, and the power of humankind over

3

 Gibson, Genesis, 79–80.  See James Barr, “Man and Nature: The Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament”, in David & Eileen Spring (eds), Ecology and Religion in History (New York/London: Harper & Row, 1974), 63–65. White’s article can also be found in this anthology. 5  See John Macquarrie, “Creation and Environment”, in David & Eileen Spring, Ecology and Religion in History, 43. 4

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against nature. At fijirst, this efffort may seem to be impossible, as almost all the texts which refer to nature are closely related to the role of humankind as the ruler of nature. Even the texts which refer to the relationship of God and nature ultimately yield an understanding of the role of humankind vis a vis nature. That is not surprising, since humankind is the image of God! But a closer look at the texts of the OT, such as for instance, Job 36:26–37:13 where nature is seen what it is in and of itself, may help us in imagining an alternative creation belief where humankind does not stand over against nature, but where God and nature stands over against humankind, in order for humankind to appreciate his place in the world, which is God’s creation. For this occasion I am using the New English Bible (NEB), albeit critically. So let us look at the texts. God in the tempest (or as the tempest?): Job 36:26–37:13 36:26 Consider; God is so great that we cannot know him; the number of his years is beyond reckoning. 27 He draws the drops of water from the sea and distils rain from the mist he has made; 28 the rain-clouds pour down in torrents, they descend in showers on mankind; 31 thus he sustains the nations and gives them food in plenty. 29 Can any man read the secret of the sailing clouds, spread like a carpet under his pavilion? 30 See how he unrolls the mist across the waters, And its steamers cover the sea. 32 He charges the thunderbolts with flame and launches them straight at the mark; 33 In his anger he calls up the tempest, and the thunder is the herald of its coming. 37:1 This too makes my heart beat wildly And start from its place. 2 Listen, listen to the thunder of God’s voice and the rumbling of his utterance. 3 Under the vault of heaven he lets it roll,

and his lightning reaches the ends of the earth; 4 there follows a sound of roaring

as he thunders with the voice of majesty. 5 God’s voice is marvelous in its working; He does great deeds that pass our knowledge. 6 For he says to the snow, ‘Fall to the earth’, and to the rainstorms, ‘Be fijierce’. And when his voice is heard, The floods of rain pour down unchecked.

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e. gerrit singgih 7 He shuts every man fast indoors,

and all men whom he has made must stand idle; 8 the beasts withdraw into their lairs and take refuge in their dens. 9 The hurricane bursts from its prison,

and the rain-winds bring bitter cold; 10 at the breath of God the ice-sheet is formed, and the wide waters are frozen hard as iron. 11 He gives the dense clouds their load of moisture,

and the clouds spread his mist abroad, 12 as they travel round in their courses, steered by his guiding hand to do his bidding all over the inhabitable world. 13 (deleted in NEB; see my comments below)

Job 36:26–27:13 is part of the fijinal admonitions of Elihu, the fourth person who appears out of nowhere, after the three (supposedly) friends of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, failed to make Job retracts his plea of innocence to God, and suddenly disappears again. Elihu’s argument is essentially the same as the other three, namely that Job must have done something gravely wrong. If not, why should he now sufffer so much? If he is brave enough to acknowledge that God is always in the right and that he as a mere human being is always in the wrong, then surely God in his compassion will restore Job’s condition. But to canvass his arguments, Elihu based his dispute on creation belief. For our purposes, we will not pay further attention to Elihu’s argument, but will focus on the references to creation belief in this passage. In this part of the admonitions, Elihu is saying that God is beyond comprehension. And yet it is God that is behind the changes of weather and climate. God is “the rainmaker”. God does it by gathering drops of water from the sea, and then from the mist God distils rain. The word translated “mist” (in vv. 27 and 30 NEB) is ed, and beside here, it is only found in Genesis 2:6. According to the commentators, in Genesis 2:6 ed is a subterranean river, while here, ed is a celestial river. Then why is it translated as “mist”? Because the Septuagint in v. 27 understands it that way (in Greek “mist” is nefele) and behind it we can imagine how a Greek-educated Jewish reader tried to make sense of the text.6 In Gen 2:6 and Job 37:27 the 6  But in the Septuagint, ed in Genesis 2:6 is rendered as pege, “spring”. It can go together with the image of a subterranean river. Apparently for the Septuagint, the meaning of ed as a celestial river in Job 36:27 is incomprehensible.

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mist is not created by God, but it is there before creation as a pre-existent matter. The phrase “he has made” in v. 27 NEB is an addition. In NEB, verse 31 is transposed to follow verse 28. After they are produced, the rain is sent to humankind, to the nations, so that they can make use of it, and in turn produces food for their sustenance. Here the weather is seen in a positive way as benefijicial for humankind, but at the same time it shows that humankind’s survival depends on the rain, and “the rainmaker”. Directly after the picture of “the rainmaker”, comes the picture of God as the producer of thunder and lightning, God of the meteorological elements. NEB renders v. 29b as sailing clouds, spread like a carpet under God’s pavilion in heaven. But the phrase “spread . . . under” is lacking in the MT. I think there are two elements here, the sailing clouds, and the tesyuoth, “rumblings” of his pavilion. Tesyuoth should go together with references to God’s voice and God’s thunder. In Hebrew, the word for voice and sound is qol. In 37:2 Elihu, who is terrifijied of the image he himself is drawing for Job, pleads to Job to listen to the thunder (rogets) of his voice (qolu). Here the voice of God is the thunder of God. Job is not asked to listen to the word of God, but to the thunder, which is the voice of God. Here the picture of God has some commonality with the picture of God in the context of the Ancient Near East. In this latter context it is Baal who is regarded as the storm-god, but in Elihu’s description it is associated with El (Eloah in the book of Job). Not only in the book of Job, but also in the Psalms (e.g. Ps. 18, 29) we can see the God of Israel depicted as a storm-god. In this text the storm-god appears in anger, and is about to go into confrontation with Job. So the picture of God in this text is ambiguous: on one hand we have the positive side, but on the other hand also the negative side. In NEB this ambiguous aspect is much reduced, because v. 13 is deleted!7 I think it should be retained. What we have is not a romantic picture of nature, but nature as both fascinating and terrifying! A friend of mine from Glasgow, Alastair Hunter, compares references to the Canaanite Baal/Hadad as a god of thunder which have several points of contact with Psalm 29 (the relevant verses of Ps. 29 are given in parentheses within the Canaanite texts below):8

7  This is my translation of v. 13, “whether for punishment, or whether for mercy, he puts them (i.e. the lightning bolts) to do his purposes in the world”. This is a rather free translation, as it is almost impossible to get to the literal meaning of the text. 8  See Alastair G. Hunter, Psalms (London – New York: Routledge, 1999), 68. He used Beyerlin’s NERTOT.

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e. gerrit singgih And now Baal will appoint the time of his rain. And he will make his voice [3–8 seven times] ring out in the clouds, by flashing his lightning [7] to the earth. Baal has taken his seat, the mountain is like a throne [10]. Hadad has rested on the mountain, like a storm [5–9] in the midst of the mountain, the God of Zaphon is a pleasant place, on the mountain where he shows his power. He sends forth seven lightnings, eight bundles of terror, the ‘tree’ of lightning descends [7].

If this text shares some commonalities with psalm 29 which is similar to Job 36–37, then it may also be compared to Job 36–37. So Israel shares its understanding of God as God of the meteorological phenomena with its Canaanite neighbours. On the other hand, this understanding is not alien to the traditional religious-cultural inheritance of many Indonesian (read: Javanese) Muslims and Christians, where Bayu is regarded as the storm-god. Many children in contemporary Indonesia are still named Bayu by their parents. And precisely because of this factor of the shared commonalities, I will later suggest that we return to this inheritance, in order to enable us in Indonesia at least, to stop the ongoing destruction of our planet. The third and the last picture is God as the producer of snow and the winter icing. According to Norman Habel this picture is comparable to Old Man Winter in European mythology.9 It is of course a very alien picture to us in tropical South-East Asia, and as I come to think of it, also strange in the context of Israel. Of course the climate of Israel permits snow to cover the high places, such as Mount Hermon, and in winter it could be freezingly cold, but the picture is more suitable to the continental vastness of Central Asia (possibly Uz is located there) than the Mediterranean area. But if we can agree that to be contextual does not require to be closed to others, then here in Job 36–37 we have inter-contextual images of God as God of the meteorological phenomena.

9

 See Norman Habel, The Book of Job (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985), 513.

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Some Theological Implications of this Bible-study Job 36–37 is diffferent from Genesis 1–2. Here humankind is not the center of the universe. The elements of nature are used for the benefijit of humankind, or to punish humankind, but they exist separately from humankind. Their usefulness is not necessarily related to humankind, and their dignity is not depended on humankind. Actually Gibson comes to the same conclusion in his comments on the creation of animals in Genesis 1–2. Even the huge and the fearsome aquatic beasts, like the whale or crocodile or hippopotamus with Leviathan and its cousins, had their own inalienable right to live and move in the waters.10 His conclusion, however, is not taken directly from the texts of Genesis 1–2, but from other passages such as Job 39 (which is close to Job 36–37, of course). Not to mention that the hippo and the crocodile in Job 40 could also be interpreted mythologically, just like Leviathan. To be sure, they are made by God, and as such the passage is still within the framework of creation belief, but on the other hand, they share the awesomeness which is usually associated with God. We are used to talk about nature and creation in one breath. But we have to be careful to apply this identifijication to biblical passages, because frequently there are references to nature in them which are not directly related to creation. In Job 37–38, the meteorological elements (the water, the wind, the snow) are not created, they have been in existence since time immemorial. Of course, God gathered them, and used them for his purpose, but God is not mentioned explicitly as creating them. Also in Genesis 1, the waters and the sea are not created. They are separated by God to make dry space, so that later on humankind can inhabit the land. Increasingly in our days people are talking about nature, for instance about water, as having an intrinsic value. But why does water have an intrinsic value? Allow me to give an explanation: it is because water is not created, it is a pre-existent material.11 In our passage, the meteorological elements (the water, the wind, the snow) do not just exist independently from humankind. They exist very close to God, so close that they represent God in an epiphany or a theophany. Elihu, in Job 36–37, tries to impress Job by giving him pictures of

10

 See Gibson, op. cit., 63–64.  See my unpublished paper in Indonesian (2008), “ ‘Ke mana saja sungai itu mengalir, semuanya di sana hidup’: Membangun sebuah teologi Perjanjian Lama mengenai nilai air” [“ ‘And wherever the river goes, every living creature which swarms will live: to build an Old Testament theology on the value of water”]. 11

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God in natural phenomena. In one of the pictures, the voice of God is identical with the thunder of God. Apparently for Elihu, Job does not need an encounter with the word of God, but with the power of God in the form of nature. Of course, later on in Job 38, God reveals Godself to Job as Yahweh, the same God that is worshipped by the antediluvian ancestors in Genesis 4:26. He speaks to Job, but the revelation is still very much a natural revelation. “Then the Lord answered Job out of the tempest/the whirlwind” (Job 38:1 NEB). It is the voice of the storm-god! In this era of scientifijic progress we smile indulgently at the idea of God in nature. In scientifijic descriptions of the people’s religion, frequently there is reference to God as the personifijication of nature. The term itself is already derogatory: if God is the ‘personifijication’ of nature, then it means that there is no God, only nature! So it is understandable that many will not be at ease with the picture of God as a storm-god. For Protestants (and I am a Protestant, a Calvinist even), God is transcendent and not immanent. But here in the Bible, God is immanent, but his immanence does not hinder him from communicating with humankind. I mentioned above that Indonesians share with Israel and Canaan the same picture of God in meteorological phenomena. It is this religious inheritance that we have to reappraise, so that nature is not just to be looked upon as a collection of objects for human being, but as a symbol for the immanence of God. To be sure, God is not nature, but God can reveal Godself in nature, and as such, metaphorically speaking, nature becomes God’s ‘body.’ If nature is God’s body, we cannot but show respect to nature. I derive this idea from Terence Fretheim, the American Old Testament theologian. According to him, contrary to what is usually assumed, the concept of God’s body is not alien to the Old Testament: “There is no such thing for Israel as a nonincarnate God”.12 But the context of Fretheim’s discourse is about God in human form. He acknowledges that God can appear in meteorological phenomena, but that is an appearance of God in human form, veiled by meteorological phenomena.13 That will hold for Job 38, but what about Job 36, where the voice of God is identical with the thunder of God?

12  See Terence E. Fretheim, The Sufffering of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 106. 13  See Fretheim, The Sufffering of God, 95.

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Terence Fretheim on the Theophanies In 2005, Fretheim published another work which focused on creation.14 I think that in this book he has moved from the idea of an incarnate God to God in relation with others, humankind and the other creatures. By making use of many new ideas in Old Testament theology, in which more signifijicance is placed upon creation-belief than a generation ago, he is able to build an Old Testament Theology that is based on creation. Of course, this is something that is needed to bridge the gap between Old Testament Theology which commonly begin with salvation in the sense of liberation or deliverance, and Systematic Theology which commonly begins with creation. Now both can be based upon, or at least start, from creation! The second point which Fretheim stressed in his book is that creation belief is concerned with relatedness. So what he sought is not just an Old Testament Theology of Creation, but a relational Old Testament Theology of Creation! Already in his book on the sufffering of God, he made this relatedness the reason why God sufffers.15 In his book on creation, this theme of relatedness is put in the context of God and nature. God’s appearance to Job, which we discussed above, is a theophany, in which the speech of God is set within the natural order and brings knowledge regarding creation.16 Contrary to many who think that the theophany of God bypasses Job’s problem of sufffering, Fretheim holds that the speeches of God in the theophany do in fact speak to Job in his sufffering and about his sufffering.17 Job is questioned by God not because he has sinned—his claims that the world does not function in a precisely ordered way is accurate—but because of how he interprets this disorderliness: it is not faulty, for the unpredictability is precisely the world that God intended. Human sufffering, even sufffering such as Job’s, is allowed to occur in a good, wellordered world because the world is not a risk-free world.18 14  See Terence Fretheim, God and the World in the Old Testament: a Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005). 15  See Fretheim, The sufffering of God, 148. 16  See Fretheim, God and the World in the Old Testament, 233. 17  See Fretheim, God and the World, 234. Among others, Fretheim mentions Crenshaw, who has a very diffferent opinion: the speeches of God are not related at all to human suffering; see J.L. Crenshaw, “When Form and Content Clash: The Theology of Job 38:1–40:5, in Cliffford and Collins (eds), Creation in Biblical Traditions, 71. Now see, J.L. Crenshaw, Defending God: Biblical responses to the Problem of Evil (Oxford: University Press, 2005), 187. 18  See Fretheim, God and the World, 235.

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In Job 40:6–41:34, God refers to Behemoth and Leviathan. However strange they are, they are not necessarily evil. They are part of the world that God has created. At the same time, these creatures are revealing the kind of good creation wherein human beings can be hurt and sufffer. God did not create a risk-free world, and that world included animals, who, although majestic in their own right, could sometimes harm human beings.19 According to Fretheim, our inability to understand passages such as the theophanies in the book of Job is also aggravated by the idea of the world as a machine. Twice he refers to the idea of the world as a machine: . . . “for God did not intend the world to be a machine”20 and . . . “For all the world’s order and coherence, it doesn’t run like a machine; a certain randomness, ambiguity, unpredictability and play characterize it complex life”.21 The idea that the world is a machine is of course a product of modernity, and it seems to me that Fretheim is asking us to move from a modern interpretation to a postmodern interpretation of creation. The third and the last point in Fretheim’s discourse we will touch upon, is about nature and the forces of nature. In the book of Psalms, according to Fretheim, praise of God is not the privilege of human beings. The non-human creatures can also praise God. This non-human praise of God occurs some fijifty times in twenty-fijive contexts within fourteen psalms.22 One example is Psalm 148:3–10. Contrary to the usual view, in which nature is only to be seen as having an instrumental value (due to anthropocentric interpretations of the psalm), Fretheim pleads for a unifying view of world reality that brings God, humankind and the natural order together in an interconnected whole. There is no aspect of the natural order which exists without God’s involvement. God is to be distinguished from the world of nature but not separated from it.23 An interpretation of Psalm 148 and related passages, where nature is praising God, should consist of scope of a less anthropocentric and more inclusive view of the nonhuman aspects of the world and of God. This is more in accordance with the contemporary scientifijic view, in which the universe is understood of complex interrelationships that fijit together into a unifijied whole. And moreover, we live in a time when an increasing number of people have an ecological consciousness, a new sense and

19

 See Fretheim, God and the world, 235–236.  See Fretheim, 237. 21  See Fretheim, 239. 22  See Fretheim, 249. 23  See Fretheim, 251. 20

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experience of the oneness of all things, which calls for new images regarding creaturely relationships.24 The reasons for praise are expressed in Ps 148:5b–6, 13. In verses 5b–6, the reason given is the very fact of existing as part of the creation by God and of being given a particular place within the created order for all time. The praise expressed is the praise of being just what they are.25 Praise occurs when the creature fulfijills the task for which it is created. When it comes to the theophanies, we see even more the description of a close relatedness between God and the natural order. God appears, clothed in the elements of nature. What does it mean for natural phenomena to be considered as the clothing or the companion of God? Fretheim answered: it means that there is a certain fundamental compatibility between God and the natural order. The principle fijinitum capax infijiniti could be applied in this case; the fijinite is capable of bearing the infijinite. The fact that theophanies function as revelatory events means that the function of nature in theophany is only an intensifijication of what is true of nature otherwise. 26In the pictures of theophany the sea roars, the waters are troubled, and the hills quake. But as Fretheim noted, the storms are no more stormy than other storms and the magnitude of earthquakes could have been measured on a Richter scale! If nature does bear God and yet retain its characteristics as nature, then we can, biblically speaking, talk about God in nature, and picture Yahweh as a storm-god. Conclusion: Climate Change and Creation Belief How can we face the challenge of climate-change? When I was a seminary student in Yogyakarta in the 1970s, I never experienced whirlwinds (Ind: “angin puting beliung”; Javanese: “lesus”). But when I became a faculty member in the same institution (which is now a university) more than 35 years later, whirlwinds have become an actual threat to the people of Yogyakarta. According to the experts, they are caused by climate change, and climate change is caused by human avarice, which causes pollutions and deforestations. So whirlwinds are the fruit of our sins, and such, they can also be seen as punishment for our sins. How are we going to reconcile this idea with whirlwinds as God’s theophany?

24

 Ibid.  See Fretheim, op. cit., 258. 26  See Fretheim, op. cit., 261, his underline. 25

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In the context of theological discourse on the impact of ecological disasters are usually two lines of thought come to the fore. The fijirst is to trace the destructions to human avarice. This thinking is usually dominant within the Semitic-Protestant theology. The other is to trace the destructions to the disrespect of nature. This disrespect is caused by the desacralization of nature. This thinking is dominant within the NonSemitic-Catholic theology. But we have seen above that Fretheim could prove that the Semitic theology does not need to be seen in a monolithic way. Certainly, creation belief in the Old Testament could also yield an understanding in which nature bears God. In other words, Old Testament theology of today could claim that God is not only the wholly other or transcendent, but also immanent! In Indonesia the fijirst line of thought is held by Robert Borrong, and since the publication of his book, Etika Bumi Baru (“A New Ethics of Earth”), his influence in the discussion on faith and ecology has been enormous. But I think that the two lines of thought should not be seen in an antithetical way. The sin of avarice is surely contemptuous of God. When the heart is full of sin, there is of course no proper place in it for God. And when the heart is not aware of the presence of God within, it will also ignore the presence of God in the world, i.e. in nature. Beside the pleas to lead a new life, where the welfare of others and of the coming generations are taken into account, it is also necessary that Christians in Indonesia try to re-appreciate their own local traditions, in which nature is seen as bearing the divine, or God as the immanent one in nature. Of course this should be done in the light of the biblical traditions, but we have seen that the biblical traditions are indeed not necessarily against the immanence of God. When the fijight against human avarice and the fijight to respect God in nature go hand in hand, it could also attract other Semitic traditions (Islam) and non-Semitic traditions (Hindu, primal religions), so we can have a religious mobilization in the fijight for the salvation of the earth. When the origins of the whirlwinds are traced to human avarice, then there could be an assumption that—once the heart is cleansed from avarice and human beings repent from their sin—the world will be free from natural destructions. This is I think a wrong assumption. It is true that the frequency of the whirlwinds and other forms of natural disasters are increasing, and their impact is more disastrously felt than before. We have to do something to prevent the situation to get totally out of hand. For the followers of the fijirst line of thought, it means stricter forms to control human avarice. But for the followers of the second line of thought, it means a new way of life, in which people show respect for nature. The

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recent waves of natural disasters (including the most recent one as of this writing: eruptions of the volcano near Reykjavik, Iceland, which is disrupting air trafffijic in all of Europe) could be seen as a object lesson for human beings: nature is more powerful than anything else, even more powerful than human beings. And because nature is powerful, natural disasters will happen, and you can do nothing about it. That is actually an old lesson that we Indonesians have learned from our ancestors, but then we forgot them when we became fascinated by the glory and glare of globalization, wherein people think that they can control everything. Nature is powerful, as it bears God.

“WHAT WAS GOD DOING BEFORE MAKING HEAVEN AND EARTH?” THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE DOCTRINE OF GOD IN TRADITIONAL AFRICAN RELIGION AND THE NORTH AFRICAN THEOLOGIAN AURELIUS AUGUSTINE1 J.H. (Amie) Van Wijk 1. Introduction The question of God is the most important question in human life. Who is God? How is God? What is God doing? The question “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?”—which Augustine referred to in his famous book Confessiones2—is a question about the creativity, eternity, yes the divinity of Godself. It is a question about who God really is and what God did and is still doing. Many answers can be given to this question—and many are indeed given. It may be a question which originates from pure curiosity but it may also be a question which arises from honest concern and interest. How does God relate to the universe? Is God interacting with his creation or a distant God who does not interfere with his creation? Of course, for atheists the question of God is not transparent and acceptable but a very dangerous idea which can only be wholeheartedly rejected.3 But not all people are atheists. Modern atheism is to a very large extent a result of the rationalism and modernism of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Africans, for example, are very religious people and from ancient times paid tribute to God as their perceptions would allow. Christians also, such as the great theologian of North Africa, Aurelius Augustine, accept God as the creator and sustainer of life and creation.

1  My colleague J.A. van Rooy, a missiologist, read the manuscript and made some valuable comments. 2  Confessiones, 11.12; see T. Gill (ed.), Confessions of St. Augustine (Alachua: Bridge-Logos, 2003), 320. 3  See ‘inter alia’ R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Black Swan, 2007); A.L. Pellencin, Ateïsme: Die Saak teen God [Atheism: The Case against God] (Pretoria: Publiself, 2007); G. Claassen, Geloof, bygeloof en ander wensdenkery. Perspektiewe op ontdekkings en irrasionaliteite) [Faith, Disbelief and other Wishful Thinking. Perspectives on Discoveries and Irrationalities] (Pretoria: Protea, 2008).

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The author of this article is an African (South African) and decided to investigate what traditional African religion teaches about God as well as what Augustine,4 the greatest theologian that Africa produced so far, has to say on this subject—as well as how we should relate the two approaches. 2. The God of Traditional African Religion: God as the Supreme Being How does traditional African religion view God? (The focus is largely on Sub-Saharan views.) Investigation shows that Africans are incurably religious and religion permeates all departments of life. Although there are many examples of animism and polytheism in Africa, there is one basic trend namely in the direction of monotheism.5 Research shows however that it is important not to generalise when the concept of God is reviewed.6 It is therefore prudent to diffferentiate between many facets and diffferent models of ideas of God in Africa.7 One model is to view God (Modimo) as an impersonal, all-pervading energy of life, not as a person at all (Sotho/Tswana). In a second model (INkosi yeZulu) God’s majesty, greatness and inaccessibility is emphasised (Zulu/Xhosa). It is good that God is a distant and

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 His fame and appraisal seem to be endless. H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek I (Reformed Dogmatics I) (Kampen: Kok, 1928), 115 remarks that Augustine “does not belong to one church, but to all churches together. He is Doctor universalis . . . He is the most Christian and most modern of all Church Fathers . . . Augustine was the dogmatist of the Christian Church.” O. Noordmans, Verzamelde Werken 8. De kerk en het leven [Collected Works 8. The Church and Life] (Kampen: Kok, 1986), 519 refers to him as “the greatest theologian of the Christian church”. H. Küng, Christianity: The religious Situation of our Time (London: SCM, 1995), 288 mentions that “no fijigure in Christianity between Paul and Luther has excercised greater influence in theology and church than Augustine.” K. Armstrong, The Case for God. What Religion really means (London: The Bodley Head, 2009), 119 says: “Apart from St Paul, no other Western theologian has been more influential than Augustine in both Protestant and Catholic Christianity.” 5  See E.G. Parrinder, What World Religions teach (London: George G. Harpar, 1963), 97–99; J.A. van Rooy, YAHWEH AND MODIMO. The Relationship between God and Man in the Old Testament seen in the Context of African Concepts of God (Potchefstroom: PUCHO, unpublished ThD Thesis, 1995), 6. 6  Van Rooy, YAHWEH, 12. 7  See B.J. van der Walt, Kultuur, lewensvisie en ontwikkeling: ‘n Ontmaskering van die gode van onderontwikkelde Afrika en die oorontwikkelde Weste [Culture, Life Vision and Development: Unmasking the Idols of underdeveloped Africa and overdeveloped West] (Potchefstroom: PUCHO/IRS, 1999), 104–106; and especially Van Rooy, YAHWEH, 12–44 and J.A. van Rooy, Hear Africa! The Message of the Old Testament in the African Context (Potchefstroom: PUCHO, 1996), 3–7.

“what was god doing before making heaven and earth?” 699 uninvolved God, for should he come nearer, his awesome power would harm or destroy whatever and whoever approaches. This view of God depends on Africans’ view of hierarchy. God is at the top of the hierarchy of powers; the space between God and mankind is fijilled by gods, divinities and spirits and petitioners can only reach God through these intermediaries. One cannot have direct contact with a superior power like God, but one might approach through intermediaries like the spirit of the chiefs and of important persons. It means that Africans usually approach God through the subordinate deities, because they fijind the transcendence of God too perplexing, and therefore are constantly at a loss how to approach him.8 Nyamiti9 also refers to the strong sense of God’s transcendence in African religion which resulted in the cult of worship being watered down, for God is so far removed as to have no interest in humans—he is the ‘distant’ and ‘unconcerned’ God; “hence the cult of ancestors and other cosmic realities tends to overshadow divine worship”. A third model views God (Mwari) as the fijirst ancestor-chief (Shona/ Venda). According to this idea, God is not the sovereign, eternal Creator, no more than the spirit of the fijirst chief of the tribe, very powerful, but still no more than a creature. A fourth model approaches the Biblical concept of God. It sees God (Leza) as personal, nearby, transcendent, omnipotent and involved and One whose interest is of a moral nature (Zambia/Botswana/DRCongo). What is lacking here is God’s revelation in Christ. The above-mentioned explanations of the African view of God are more or less the standard description found in many handbooks.10 Van Rooy11 concludes that there is “a vast diffference between the Old Testament concepts of God and the traditional concepts of most African peoples.”

8  See L. Nyirongo, The Gods of Africa or the God of the Bible? The Snares of African Traditional Religion in Biblical Perspective (Potchefstroom: PUCHO/IRS, 1997), 18, with reference to E.I. Metuh. 9  C. Nyamiti, “The Doctrine of God,” in J. Parrat (ed.), A Reader in African Christian Theology (London: SPCK, 1987), 62. 10  See J.S. Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa (London: SPCK, 1970); E.B. Idowu, African Traditional Religion: a Defijinition (London: SCM, 1973). See also J.H. Evans (Jr.), We have been Believers: An African-American Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 53–76. For a totally diffferent approach, see G.M. Setiloane, The Image of God among the SothoTswana (Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1976). 11  Van Rooy, YAHWEH, 32, 190.

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Some of these ideas are, however, challenged by research done by Turaki.12 Turaki criticised the traditional approach for being too eclectic, while he himself opts for a more holistic approach where God is defijined and interpreted within the context of the comprehensive traditional African worldview.13 Although many scholars are in agreement that the concepts of transcendence and remoteness have been used to explain the nature of African beliefs in the Supreme Being14 it should not be ignored that the traditional concept of God is complex and thus difffijicult to explain and to interpret accurately.15 “God’s transcendence or remoteness should not only be interpreted in Western theological terms, but also in terms of a holistic cosmic community with some forms of the hierarchy beings— God’s involvement or non-involvement in the every day life of the people can also be interpreted in terms of his communal religious function, hierarchy of beings and not exclusively in terms of his transcendence as African scholars would have us believe”.16 In this context God can indeed be referred to as a personal Being as well as an impersonal Power.17 “God may be viewed in a pantheistic, polytheistic, anthropomorphic manner, as a Supreme Power or a Supreme Being. The African traditional concept of the Supreme Being has a wide spectrum of defijinition, which should always be held in view”.18 God’s “distance from humans may not strictly be an ontological transcendence, but may be of a spatial distance, whether in mystical/ spiritual terms, spatial/geographical terms as a result of his assigned role and function in the cosmic community”.19 While considering the complex character of the African Supreme Being, it cannot be denied that a (large) element of transcendence and remoteness can be ascribed to the God of traditional Africa. There is little direct contact with him and little direct involvement from his side. A person is not able to experience his love in and through the Mediator Jesus Christ. It is intriguing to discover that while the African time concept is more past- than future-orientated,20 the question “what was God doing before

12  Y. Turaki, Christianity and African Gods. A Method in Theology (Potchefstroom: PUCHO/IRS, 1999), 143–180. 13  Turaki, African Gods, 146, 149, 179. 14  Turaki, African Gods, 147. 15  Turaki, African Gods, 156. 16  Turaki, African Gods, 150. 17  Turaki, African Gods, 155. 18  Turaki, African Gods, 155. 19  Turaki, African Gods, 156. All italics by Turaki. 20  See Van Rooy, Hear Africa!, 12.

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he made heaven and earth?” was never thought of and therefore not dealt with. It was no question at all. It was an axiom: God is the Supreme Being. 3. Intermezzo: The God of the Greeks: The Great Idea, the unmoved Mover and the One The question may arise: why this interlude? It is important to make this excursion because of the great influence that the Greek view of God has had on the Church Father Augustine. It is a well-known fact that the younger Augustine had gone through phases of Manicheism, skepticism and Neo-Platonism, all of which influenced his view of God. In one stage he thought of God as material and it was Greek philosophy that helped him to think of God in terms of spirituality. What was the Greek view of God?21 While Plato (427/8–347/8 BC) thought of God as the highest principle of rationality, the One, the Idea,22 Aristotle (384–322 BC) developed the idea of an Unmoved Mover.23 He argues that all things are involved in processes of change, moving from potentiality (a boy/acorn) to actuality (a man/tree). To explain the existence of the world of potential things, there has to be the existence of some actuality at a level above potential or perishing things. Thus there should be a Being that is pure actuality without any potentiality—the highest level of being—that is the Unmoved Mover. Aristotle, however, did not think of the Unmoved Mover as a Being that thinks or prescribes purposes for the world; in a sense the Unmoved Mover does not know anything precisely because it is not a kind of being as much as it is a way of explaining the fact of motion. To explain the comprehensive motion from potentiality to actuality and ultimate perfection of these potentialities, Aristotle referred to the Unmoved Mover as the “reason for” and the “principle of ” motion. As such the Unmoved Mover can be seen as the eternal principle of motion. For Aristotle there

21  It is widely accepted that Greek philosophy had an immense influence on many aspects of Christian theology, not the least on the doctrine of God and God’s interaction with the world, see J.J.F. Durand, Die lewende God [The living God] (Pretoria: NG Kerkboekhandel, 1976), 12–13. 22  See S.E. Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy (New York: McGraw, 1988), 60. 23  See Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 93–95; P. van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God. Augustine as a Negative Theologian (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 25–31.

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was never a time when there was not a world of things in process and therefore he denied the idea of a “creation” in time. The Unmoved Mover causes movement in the same way as a lover moves a beloved, namely by the power of attraction and not by force. In this same way the Unmoved Mover, being a fijinal cause, also becomes an efffijicient cause through the power of attraction, by being desired and loved, by inspiring the striving toward natural ends, a process that goes on eternally.24 It is well-known that Augustine was influenced by the Neoplatonism of Plotinus (ca 204–270 AD). It is reported that Augustine once said that Plotinus would have to change “only a few words” to become a Christian!25 (It must be admitted that Plotinus reached a very high level of philosophical sophistication in his Enneads.) “Through Augustine, Neoplatonism became a decisive element in the intellectual expression of the Christian faith during the Middle Ages”.26 So how did Plotinus view God?27 Plotinus developed a doctrine of God as the source of all things and as that to which man must return. The everchanging material world cannot be the true reality, Plotinus argued— following Plato. True reality does not change, is transcendent, infijinite; is not material, not fijinite, not divisible, uncreated, unalterable, without any complexity; in short Absolute Unity—God. God transcends the world, he is simple, without duality, potentiality or material limitation. In a sense God cannot engage in any self-conscious activity and creation since this would in the end imply some kind of change. How then, could such a God be the creator? Plotinus now makes use of the metaphor of emanation. Things flow from God, not through a free act of creation but through necessity, as light emanates from the sun and water flows from a spring. In this way God is the source of everything and everything manifests God— although not in a pantheistic way. The nature of emanation is from the higher levels to the lower: God > Mind (nous) > soul > body > matter > higher nature > lower nature > evil. Just as light emanates from the sun as

24  Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 95 comments in this regard that “what in Aristotle’s thought was the unconscious principle of motion and immanent form of the world, the Unmoved Mover, became, especially at the hands of Aquinas in the thirteenth century, the philosphical description of the God of Christianity.” But such a “God”, who is pure understanding, pure nous, “is not the religous God who becomes involved in the afffairs of man. Aristotle’s “God” is immanent in the world, making the world an intelligible order.” 25  See Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 125. 26  Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 129. 27  See Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 124–129; Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 39–42.

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origin in ever-diminishing intensity, so also gradations of being are found, representing a decline in degrees of perfection. Although God is inaccessible to the senses of man, he can be reached through mystical ecstasy. This ecstasy, this ascent of the soul to unity with God—which is salvation—is the fijinal result of right conduct, correct thinking and the proper disposition of the afffections—and this only through many incarnations of the soul. The question what God was doing before creation was no question at all to the Greek philosophers. God’s existence was accepted as an axiom and a postulate. 4. The God of Augustine: The Trinitarian God When we start to reflect on the doctrine of God in Augustine we have to keep in mind that we are far removed from traditional African views. It is the same geography but an entirely diffferent theology. Although a North African, Augustine was a Christian theologian, albeit deeply influenced by Greek and especially Neoplatonic views. Augustine fijirmly stood in the tradition of Western theology, which implies inter alia the tradition of Tertullian, Irenaeus, Cyprianus, Athanasius, Hillary and Ambrose. As a Christian theologian he was well aware of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381). “[The] Augustinian conception of the Trinity was—in its fundamental features—embodied for the Western churches in the so-called Athanasian Creed, or Symbolum Quicumque”.28 Of course it is impossible to do justice to Augustine’s views on God in one short article. He himself wrote a masterly but rather difffijicult book on the Trinity, De Trinitate (399–422/426), and many scholars reflected on his views in this regard.29 What I have in mind is to highlight some of the key 28  R. Seeberg, Text-book of the History of Doctrines. Vol. I. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 241. Echoes of the ‘Athanasian’ creed is found in Augustine’s De Trinitate, see E. Hill (trans.), Saint Augustine: The Trinity (New York: New City Press, 1997), 255 as well as T.J. van Bavel (trans.) Augustinus van Hippo: Over de Drie-eenheid [Augustine of Hippo: On the Trinity] (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 16–20. 29  See in extenso A.D.R. Polman, De leer van God bij Augustinus [The doctrine of God in Augustine] (Kampen: Kok, 1965); M. Schmaus, Die psychologische Trinitätslehre des hl Augustinus (Münster: Aschendorfff, 1967) and P. van Geest, Incomprehensibility. For shorter contributions on this topic, see W. von Loewenich, Augustin—Leben und Werk (München: Siebenstern Taschenbuch, 1965), 124–145; Hill, Trinity, 18–59); L. Ayers & M.R. Barnes, ‘God,’ in A.D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through the Ages. An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 384–390; R. Williams, De Trinitate in A.D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine through the Ages. An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 845–851; S. Macdonald, ‘The

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features of Augustine’s view of God as we fijind it in his own books with special reference to his De Trinitate. 4.1 God as Mystery When Augustine reflects on God and tries to answer the question “What is my God?”,30 he would time and again remind us of the complexity of the question, especially when it comes to a reflection on the Trinity. God is inexpressible and incomprehensible. “Throughout his career Augustine insists on God’s ultimate incomprehensibility. For Augustine, we can and should come to a comprehension of what God is not, but coming to a sense of what God is, is highly difffijicult”.31 In this regard Augustine is a follower of the apophatic (negating) theology of the East.32 If you understand, it is not God (si comprehendis, non est Deus).33 Rather say more to God about God, than about God to God.34 “Who can understand the all-power Trinity?” he would ask, and then continue with: “Rare is the soul who, when he speaks of the Trinity, also knows what he speaks”.35 “When we think about the Trinity we are aware that our thoughts are quite inadequate to their object, and incapable of grasping him as he is”.36 In Book 7.7 of the De Trinitate he reminds the reader: “The total transcendence of the godhead quite surpasses the capacity of ordinary speech. God can be thought about more truly than he can be talked about, and he is more truly than he can be thought about.” In his last book he concludes

divine Nature,’ in E. Stump & N. Kretzmann (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 71–90; M.T. Clark, De Trinitate in E. Stump & N. Kretzmann (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 91–102; Van Bavel, Drie-eenheid, 7–39; T.J. van Bavel,” ‘Wij moeten leren het onuitspreekbare op onuitsprekelijke wijze te zien’. Theologie en spiritualiteit in Augustinus De Trinitate,” in P. van Geest & J. van Oort (eds), Augustiniana Neerlandica. Aspecten van Augustinus’ spiritualiteit en haar doorwerking (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 165– 185. See also S. Lancel, Saint Augustine (London: SCM Press, 2002), 368–390; J.J. O’Donnell, Augustine, Saint and Sinner. A new Biography (London: Profijile Books, 2005), 289–294. (I do not deem it helpful to use a small letter ‘g’ for God as was done by O’Donnell.) 30  Confessiones, 1.4. 31  Ayers & Barnes, ‘God,’ 389. 32  See Van Bavel, ‘Het onuitspreekbare,’ 183; Clark, De Trinitate, 95; Van Geest, Incomprehensibility. 33  See Ayers & Barnes, ‘God,’ 389; Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 175–192 esp. 189. 34  De catechizandis rudibus, 13.18; see G. Wijdeveld (trans.), Augustinus: Het eerste Geloofsonderricht [On the Instruction of Beginners] (Baarn: Ambo, 1982), 41. 35  Confessiones, 13.11. 36  Trinitate, 5.1.

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in typical style with reference to the Trinity: “It is certainly a marvelously inexpressible and inexpressibly marvelous thing . . . .”37 It is therefore understandable that in the midst of his endeavour to clarify what the Trinity stands for, he would remark: “Yet when you ask ‘Three what?’ human speech labors under a great dearth of words. So we say three persons, not in order to say that precisely but in order not to be reduced to silence.”38 Augustine is quite willing to use “not merely one interpretation but as many as can be found.”39 In his long efffort in trying to “unravel” the mystery of the Trinity, Augustine would always presuppose the authority of the Holy Scripture,40 but he would also show appreciation for the contribution of the church as well as human reason. Therefore he would gather material from the authority of ecclesiastical tradition and from divine scriptures by a process of human reason. “And I hope no one in his senses”, he would say, “will take sides against reason, no one who is a Christian against the scriptures, and no man of peace against the Church.”41 Reason alone is not enough for seeking truth “without any faith in the mediator.”42 “Faith seeks, understanding fijinds” (Is 7:9).43 “Unless you believe, you will not understand”—a famous (mis-)quotation of Augustine (because it is from the Greek Septuagint and not from the Hebrew text).44 “We must believe before we can understand.”45 4.2 God as Spirit On the long road to discover the Triune God, Augustine had to overcome at least two obstacles. Being influenced by Manicheism’s dualistic view of God, he had to discover God as immaterial: God is spirit and not a material Being (cf. John 4:24).46 Augustine made a very important discovery when he gained the insight that God’s immateriality and infijinity was not just

37

 Trinitate, 15.43.  Trinitate, 5.10. 39  Trinitate, 1.31. 40  Trinitate, 1.4. See also Polman, De leer van God, 397–399; Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 156. 41  Trinitate, 4.10. 42  Trinitate, 14.26. 43  Trinitate, 15.2. 44  Trinitate, 7.12. 45  Trinitate, 8.8. 46  De haeresibus, 46; see J. Gehlen-Springorum & V. Hunink (trans.), Ketters en Scheurmakers [On Heresies] (Bubel: Damon, 2009), 71–85. 38

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consonant with but could be used to defend and develop his pro-Nicene account of the Trinity.47 Hill48 is of the opinion that Neoplatonism with its idea of incorporeal and immaterial substance contributed to Augustine’s talking about God in a much sounder manner. The other discovery was that the name of Christ was not mentioned by the Platonist and Neoplatonist philosophers—something that we will discuss later on. It was while Augustine was still a youngster of nineteen years that he read the Hortensius of Cicero that changed his attitude completely and turned his prayers to the Lord God. “It gave me new hope and desires”, he wrote.49 And further: “For You, O Most High, are most near, most secret, most present. You are without limits, wholly everywhere, yet nowhere in space, and are not shaped by some physical form.”50 There’s no doubt: God is incorporeal.51 This was a fundamental discovery for Augustine: God as immaterial, infijinite and the source of all existence—over against the Manichean materialistic and dualistic accounts (which he held at that time).52 The Manicheans diffferentiated between an unchangeable and high God (the God of the New Testament) and a lower changeable God (the God of the Old Testament) who made the lower material world.53 It was while reading the books of the (non-Christian) Platonists that Augustine discovered that God is the source of all perfection and truth, being itself and distant from all.54 In his Confessiones Augustine mentions that the books of the Platonists provided him with the important methodological principles for his thinking about the divine, because they taught him to look inward into his own soul rather than to the external material world. The books of the Platonists “admonished me to turn into myself, so I entered my inward

47

 Ayers & Barnes, ‘God,’ 387.  Hill, Trinity, 49. 49  Confessiones, 3.4. 50  Confessiones, 6.3. 51  Sermo, 53.7,12–14; see G. Wijdeveld (trans.), Twintig preken van Aurelius Augustinus [Twenty Sermons of Aurelius Augustine] (Baarn: Ambo, 1986), 139, 144–145. 52  Ayers & Barnes, ‘God,’ 384, 387. 53  Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 46–50. Van Geest also draws attention to the fact that next to the readings of Plotinus, Augustine was also influenced by the allegorical exegesis of Ambrose in his understanding of the inexpressibility (and immateriality) of God (Incomprehensibility, 42–44). 54  Confessiones, 7.1.10. In his Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti (397) [Against the “Foundation Letter” of the Manichees] he opposed Manicheism because it prescribed limits and materiality to God. 48

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soul guided by You. So, I entered, and with the eye of my soul, such as it was, saw above the same eye of my soul and above my mind the Immutable (Unchangeable) Light.”55 He discovered God as spirit, so to say, through an inward-upward movement.56 This view also resounds in the last chapter of his mature work De Trinitate where he wrote: “And so, since we rank the creator without a shadow of doubt above all created things, we have to admit that the creator supremely lives, and senses and understands all things, and cannot die, decay or change; and that God is not body but the most powerful, just and beautiful, the best and happiest spirit of all”.57 What is intriguing in this discovery is the fact that it was the reading of non-Christian philosophers that opened Augustine’s eyes to the “spirituality” of God—and not the Scriptures or the church tradition or even God Himself. Or did God use the writings of a heathen to open the eyes of a Christian? Did not Augustine himself once say that Plotinus would have to change only a few words to become a Christian?58 And what a wonderful treatise we have in the Enneads of Plotinus! 4.3 God as the Father of Jesus Christ Augustine was fascinated by the Greek philosophers, especially Neoplatonism as represented by Plotinus, but also Pophyry, to such an extent that it is sometimes difffijicult to separate Platonic from Christian strand in his thought,59 although we have to admit that in the last analysis Augustine reaches beyond Plotinus and even fundamentally breaks with him.60 What seems to be clear from Augustine’s wrestling with the doctrine of God, is the impossibility, almost futility, to talk about God without talking about Jesus Christ. Talking about God without any reference to Christ is a futile exercise.

55

 Confessiones, 7.10.  Macdonald, ‘Divine Nature,’ 72, 75–78. 57  Trinitate, 15.6. 58  See Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 125. 59  Ayers & Barnes, ‘God,’ 385. Ayers & Barnes, ‘God’, 386–387, summarise Augustine’s early doctrine on God as follows: (1) Augustine discovered God’s immateriality, infijinity and providential ordering in reading Platonist texts (Plotinus); (2) Augustine’s borrowing from Neoplatonic reading were partial; (3) Augustine’s engagement with Neoplatonic writings occurred during his progress back to Christianity. 60  See J.J.F. Durand, The many Faces of God. Highways and Byways on the Route towards an orthodox Image of God in the History of Christianity from the fijirst to the seventeenth Century (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2007), 21. 56

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In his Confessiones he refers to this truth more than once. It is true that Cicero changed his mind, but “one thing dampened my enthusiasm: that the name of Christ was not in it.”61 This theme also reverberates in his De Trinitate where he writes: “The most eminent heathen philosophers philosophized . . . without the mediator, that is without the man Christ . . . ”62 “Our knowledge is Christ, and our wisdom is the same Christ.”63 It is very clear: “The sure and proper foundation of the Catholic Faith is Christ.”64 In the following section we will deal with Augustine’s view of the Trinity, how the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit relate to one another and to creation, but at this stage it is important to realise that “the name of Christ” is the key to understand who God really is and what He does. 4.4 God as a Trinitarian God65 When we reflect on God the Trinity, it is important to keep in mind that Augustine was reacting against the Unitarianism of Arius as well as the modalism of Sabellius.66 New research also discovered that homoians67 were active in Milan before Augustine’s baptism.68

61

 Confessiones, 3.4; see also 5.14, 7.19,21.  Trinitate, 13.24. 63  Trinitate, 13.24. 64  Enchiridion ad Laurentium de fijide spe et caritate [Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love], 5; see H. Paolucci (ed.), St. Augustine: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love (Washington: Regnery Gateway). See also Poman, De leer van God, 410–411. 65  The Trinitarian concept is a well-developed concept in Augustine: Enchiridion, 9; De doctrina Christiana [On Christian Doctrine], 1.5; see D.W. Robertson (trans.), Saint Augustine: On Christian Doctrine (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1958), 10; Sermo, 213.7 in Wijdeveld, Twintig Preken, 27); Sermo, 105.4; see J. Gehlen-Springorum, V. Hunink, H. van Reisen & A. Six-Wienen (trans.), Als korrels tussen kaf: Preken over teksten uit het Marcus- en Lucasevangelie [As Corns amongst Chafff. Sermons on Texts from the Gospels of Mark and Luke] (Amsterdam: Ambo, 2002),112. See also Polman, De leer van God, 399–406; Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 161–174. 66  Van Bavel, Drie-eenheid, 15–20. See also De haeresibus 41 (on Sabellianism) and 49 (on Arianism). 67  Homoiousians held to similarity in substance between Father and Son while homoousians held to identity of substance between Father and Son (consubstantial: Nicea) (Clark, De Trinitate, 100). See the remark of G.C. van Niftrik, Kleine Dogmatiek [Abridged Dogmatics] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1961), 423 in this regard: “The welfare of the church depended on this one letter, this iota.” 68  See Williams, Trinitate, 845; Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 177–179. In his biography on Augustine his friend Possidius refers to two debates Augustine had with two Arians, Pascentius and (bishop) Maximus, see J.E. Rotelle (ed.), The Life of Saint Augustine by Possidius, Bishop of Calama (Villanova: Augustinian Press, 1988), 75–76. 62

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Augustine’s great work De Trinitate, written (dictated) from 399– 422/426, is the product of a genius and a mastermind. We know that when he was halfway through Book 12, tiresome admirers published the book without his consent and that Augustine protested and stopped writing; his friends eventually prevailed on him and he fijinished the work.69 In De Trinitate Augustine attempts to elucidate the Christian faith that there is one God and yet three persons, that there is unity and also diversity when we speak of the one God. We call God trinitas and not triplex.70 In books 1–4 he investigates exegetical material and questions which we face in the Old and New Testaments; books 5–7 deal with issues raised by Arian controversies, while books 8–15 contain attempts to clarify the Trinity psychologically (with reference to the image of God in man). Great emphasis is laid on the fact that God, as Divine Being, is unchangeable (incommutabilis).71 God is also the highest simplicity (simplicitas).72 Augustine willingly accepted and taught the unity and equality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.73 When we read about God in the Old Testament we must accept that the Trinitarian God was involved.74 Book 4 argues that the heart of the mystery lies in the eternal generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit. Augustine rejects the Neoplatonic approach (held by Plotinus and Porphyry) that man can achieve purifijication to contemplate God by their unaided intellectual powers and that the human intellect could know Him without a mediator or faith, because man has to be purifijied by faith in the crucifijied and resurrected Christ.75 Augustine argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was the centre of Christian spirituality, intended to afffect one’s way of life.76 Throughout books 5–7 God’s simplicity is seen as corollary of God’s other key characteristics of immateriality, immutability and the source 69

 See Hill, Trinity, 20.  Trinitate, 6.8. 71  Trinitate, 3.21; 5.2,6. That God cannot change is very important to Augustine, see ‘inter alia’: Sermo, 223A.5, see J. van Neer ‘et al.’ (trans.), Aurelius Augustinus: Als licht in het hart. Preken voor het liturgisch jaar [As Light in the Heart: Sermons for the liturgical Year] (Baarn: Ambo, 1996), 106); Sermo, 23.15, see G. Wijdeveld (trans.), Augustinus: Carthaagse Preken [Carthagian Sermons] (Baarn: Ambo, 1988), 39; T.J. van Bavel (trans.), Augustinus: Commentaar op Ps 118/119 [Commentary on Ps 118/119] (Baarn: Ambo, 1996), 83. “The attribute that Augustine links most closely to true being is immutability” (Macdonald, ‘Divine Nature’, 84). 72  Trinitate, 6.6. 73  Trinitate, 1.7–1.13. 74  Trinitate, 2.17–22. 75  Trinitate, 4.20–24. 76  See Clark, Trinitate, 94. 70

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of all Being.77 Augustine makes use of the Greek formulation of the Trinity, namely one ‘being’ (ousia) and three ‘substances (hypostaseis) and the Latin one ‘being/substance’ (substantia) and three ‘persons’ (personae), although he is uncomfortable with the terminology.78 He used them in order not to be reduced to silence—as we have seen.79 “There must be neither confusion nor mixing up of persons, nor such distinction of them as may imply any disparity.”80 The Holy Spirit is equally with the Father and the Son “the simple God”, unchangeable and co-eternal.81 From Book 8 onwards Augustine investigates the possibility that, because we are God’s image, there must be some clue as to how we consider the Trinitarian God within our own nature. “The second and very beautiful part of the De Trinitate thus combines psychology and metaphysics, anthropology and theology.”82 In Book 8 Augustine discovers an image of a trinity in love (charity), namely the lover, the loved and love.83 In Book 9 he detects another image of the trinity but now in the human mind, namely mind (mens), knowledge (of the self ) (notitia sui) and love (of the self ) (amor sui).84 Book 10 reflects on another trinitarian image in the mind, namely memory (memoria), understanding (intelligentia) and will (voluntas)85 —but notice: the image of God is not to be found in this trinity.86 In Book 11 Augustine looks for traces of a trinity in the ‘outer man’, for instance in the act of seeing,87 but concludes that this trinity is not the image of God.88 Books 12–14 continue the seeking for a kind of trinity in the ‘inner person’. After Augustine examined all the above-mentioned trinities, he concludes as follows: the fijinal and perfect image of God is to be found not 77  Ayers & Barnes, ‘God,’ 388. For a summary of God’s characteristics, see Confessiones, 1.4, 7.1; Trinitate, 15.5,8. The fact that God is omnipotent does not imply that there are many things which God cannot do: God cannot die, cannot sin, cannot lie and cannot err (Sermo 213.2, see Wijdeveld, Twintig preken, 23). 78  See Seeberg, Text-book, 239; Williams, Trinitate, 848. 79  Trinitate, 5.10. 80  Trinitate, 7.12. 81  De civitate Dei, 11.10; see M. Dods (trans.), The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo: The City of God, Vol. I & II (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1949), 448; see also G. Wijdeveld (trans.), Aurelius Augustinus: De stad van God [The City of God] (Baarn:Ambo, 1983), 507–508. 82  Lancel, Augustine, 380. 83  Trinitate, 8.10–13. 84  Trinitate, 9.18. 85  Trinitate, 10.17–19. 86  Trinitate, 13.26. 87  Trinitate, 11.2–5. 88  Trinitate, 11.7.

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merely in the mind’s remembering, understanding and loving itself, but in its remembering, understanding and loving God.89 There is no similarity in every aspect of the image of man to the trinity of God; we should note “how great the dissimilarity is whatever similarity there may be.”90 Regarding this, Williams91 remarks: “The image of God is to reflect God relating to God. Thus while there are vestiges or likenesses in the triadic structure of the mind, it is only when the mind is turned Godward that the image in the strict sense is discernable.” Hill92 is of the opinion that Augustine does not discern an image of the Trinity in the three faculties of the soul, namely memory, understanding and will—this “serious misunderstanding” was the responsibility of Peter Lombard.93 Also, Van Bavel94 fijinds it dubious to speak of “Augustine’s psychological doctrine of the Trinity”. It may be a reference to the approach of Schmaus,95 although a reference to Schmaus is lacking. Augustine concludes his 15 books on the Trinity with a reminder how little we can now see all this, since the image is still incomplete in us. Why do people not just believe what the sacred writings tell us about the Trinity? he asks. The work ends with a prayer. Much more could be said about Augustine’s treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity—I have highlighted only a few key features. Williams96 concludes: “The genius of De Trinitate is its fusion of speculation and prayer, its presentation of Trinitarian theology as, ultimately, nothing other than a teasing out of what it is to be converted and to come to live in Christ.” So what was God doing before making heaven and earth? Augustine answers that the eternal God precedes any given period of time. “You are ever-present eternity, so You precede all times past, and extend beyond all future time.”97 “Your years are but a day, and Your day is not recurrent . . .  Your ‘today’ doesn’t yield to tomorrow and doesn’t follow yesterday. Your ‘today is eternity.”98

89

 Trinitate, 14.15–21; see also 15.27.  Trinitate, 15.39. 91  Williams, Trinitate, 849. 92  Hill, Trinity, 19,25. 93  See also Confessiones, 13:11 where Augustine refers to three things in ourselves (to be, to know and to will) and rermarks: “These three things are quite diffferent from the Trinity . . . ”; see Gill, Confessions, 391. 94  Van Bavel, Drie-eenheid, 15. 95  Trinitate, 15.49. 96  Williams, Trinitate, 850. 97  Confessiones, 11.13. 98  Confessiones, 11.13. 90

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Scripture tells us that humans are created in the image of God and that they are therefore irreversibly religious. Although they may know God, they do not glorify and give thanks to Him (Rom. 1:21); they rather worship “unknown gods” (Acts 17:23). They suppress the truth by their wickedness. Sin transformed humans from God-seekers into self-seekers and worldseekers. Therefore the gospel of Christ and the message of hope has to be proclaimed to all humankind which has to be convinced that true life is only to be found in faith in the one true God. Now the question arises: what role should the doctrine of the Trinity play in proclaiming the gospel of Christ to the people of Africa? Missionaries and missiologists wrestle with the question at what stage the mystery of the Trinity should be elucidated to young African Christians, for instance before or after they have become Christians and accepted the gospel of Christ? Is this sophisticated dogma appropriate and transparent to the African context or should African Christians themselves become involved to formulate a doctrine of the Trinity in their own language(s) using their own concepts? In Western theology some effforts were made, with varying degrees of success, to re-interpret or reformulate the doctrine of God and the Trinity inter alia by Barth,99 Moltmann100 and Berkhof.101 But they are all Western theologians using Western concepts and Western formulations. The quest for an African exploration and explanation of this mystery is still in a very early phase.102 Kombo103 draws attention to the fact that African people do not think in either Neoplatonic or idealistic terms. “They do not understand the theological concepts ‘substance’ and ‘persons’ in terms of either the Neo-Platonists or the Idealists.” He argues that African

99  K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik I/I: Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1955), 367–404. 100  J. Moltmann, Trinität und Reich Gottes. Zur Gotteslehre (München: Kaiser, 1980), 144–206. 101  H. Berkhof, Christelijk geloof. Een inleiding tot de geloofsleer (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1990) 109–149, 326–333 [ET of 3rd edition (1979): Christian Faith. An Introduction to Christian Faith (Grand Rapids): Eerdmans, 1979]. See also Durand, Lewende God, 63–77; S.J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God. The Trinity in contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); K. Armstrong, A History of God. From Abraham to the Present: the 4000-year Quest for God (London: Vintage, 1999), 130–158. 102  See Kombo, J.H.O., The Doctrine of God in African Christian Thought. The Holy Trinity, Theological Hermeneutics and the African Intellectual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 103  Kombo, Doctrine of God, 272.

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cosmology does not allow the African to think in Trinitarian terms but is of the opinion that the doctrine of the Trinity can be expressed for Africans using African metaphysics.104 He seeks a tentative solution in the following direction: “Using the African metaphysics rather than NeoPlatonism or Hegelianism to describe the standard Trinitarian formula of ‘One Substance Three Persons’ means that we are to reflect on the African metaphysics of God, substance and persons. In African thought, one God is not a static substance or nature described by the concept of Ntu, rather, the concept of One God refers to the Great Muntu. The African ontology knows of only one Great Muntu. To say that the Great Muntu has made himself known in three persons is to say that the Son and the Holy Spirit are perfect reflections of the Great Muntu”105—a formulation that reminds of the Sabellian approach. To a great extent we can agree with Kombo’s presupposition: “The doctrine of God in African theology, must remain biblical (Trinitarian), but it must be modifijied, indiginized and inculturated.”106 Yet a great task still lies ahead in this fijield for African theologians.107 6. Concluding Remarks In our search for truth about God the following considerations must be taken seriously: (1) Talk about God (and the Trinity) is talking about a mystery. Our doctrinal formulations do not, and cannot, describe or defijine God in fullness. Our expressions are human and provisional. “We know in part”, as Paul says (1 Cor. 13:12). “And these [i.e. creation] are but the outer fringe of God’s works; how faint the whisper we hear of God! Who then can understand the thunder of God’s power”? (Job 26:14). We have a constant challenge to fijind illuminating expressions of our faith in God which are on the one hand congruent with the biblical truth but on the other hand are also meaningful to Christians in their particular cultural contexts.

104

 Kombo, Doctrine of God, 273, 274.  Kombo, Doctrine of God, 275. 106  Kombo, Doctrine of God, 260–261. 107  D.J. Bosch, Heil vir die wêreld. Die Christelike Sending in teologiese perspektief [Salvation for the World. Christian Mission in theological Perspective] (Pretoria: NG Kerkboekhandel, 1979), 239–242. 105

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(2) The doctrine of God must be formulated in a way which gives serious attention to God’s revelation in creation but especially in the Old and New Testament (cf. Deut. 3:14; Matt 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:13). (3) In our efffort to formulate our Christian confession about God, especially the Trinity, it is important to distinguish between the Trinity as concept and the formulation of that concept in a specifijic dogma.108 Whilst the concept is fully Biblical (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:13), the dogma of the Trinity is a human attempt to formulate something about Someone who is in the last instance inexpressible and incomprehensible. (4) The transcendence of God should not be emphasised at the cost of his immanence and vice versa. The modern debate on panentheism should carefully consider this truth. (5) Theologians must try to keep the economic and metaphysical approaches to the doctrine of the Trinity in balance. Later developments in Western theology show that the economic approach gradually virtually disappeared in favour of the metaphysical approach.109 The way in which Augustine describes the unchangeability (incommutabilitas) of God, does not always comply with the biblical revelation of the character of God (cf. Is. 38:5; Jon. 3:10).110 It is more correct to refer to God’s reliability and stability in this regard. (6) The tension between the apophatic approach (via negativa) and the afffijirmative cataphatic approach (via afffijirmativa) of speaking about God, creates the opportunity to exploit a third possibility namely the approach of exceeding (via eminentiae), which implies that God exceeds all our propositions in an inexpressible manner.111 Speaking about God in this way honours God as mystery, but not in such a way that nothing meaningful can be said about God. (7) All God-talk outside Christ is not talking about the God of the Bible. The cross of Christ, afffijirmed in the resurrection, is decisive for the

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 See Augustine, Trinitate, 1.31.  Durand, Many Faces, 51. 110  Augustine’s efffort to solve this problem does not satisfy: God changes his “ways”, leaving his “plans” unchanged (Confessiones, 1.4). See in this regard: Polman, De leer van God, 361–369; Durand, Lewende God, 76:88 and J. Verkuyl, De kern van het christelijk geloof [The Essence of the Christian Faith] (Kampen: Kok, 1992), 39–61. See also Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 211–213. 111  See Van Geest, Incomprehensibility, 35–38. 109

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essence of God.112 Anyone who speaks about God without Christ, speaks not about God as we know Him. Christian theology cannot be practised without Christ.113 Christ is, historically and theologically, the key to “unravel” the mystery of the Trinity. (8) It is the task of Christian theology to rethink, explain and elucidate the old Christian confessions for African Christians in a meaningful and truthful way so that they can understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the gospel of the kingdom of God. This implies a responsible process of inculturation, indiginisation and contextualization.114 It must be a case of saying the same things in a new way, but not saying diffferent things in a diffferent way (nove dicere sed non nova). (9) There may arrive a time that the church of Christ may decide to formulate a new confession on God or add a clearer explanation of what was earlier confessed about God. The question, “What was God doing before making heaven and earth?” is a wrong question. It applies time categories to an eternal Being. If one really wants to give some kind of answer to this question, it may go in this direction: God was preparing Christ for the salvation of the world!115 (Because “God is love” (1 John 4:8).)

112  A. van de Beek, Waarom? Over lijden, schuld en God (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1984), 277 [ET: Why? On Sufffering, Guilt and God Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990]. 113  See the following studies of A. van de Beek: Wonderen en wonderverhalen [Miracles and Stories on Miracles] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1991), 228; Schepping: De wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid [Creation. The world as prelude to eternity] (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1996), 155–164; Jezus Kurios. De Christologie als hart van de theologie [ Jezus Kurios. Christology as the Heart of Theology] (Kampen: Kok, 1998), 13–46, 71; Gespannen liefde. De relatie van God en mens [Tensive Love. The Relation between God and Human] (Kampen: Kok, 2000), 87. Even eschatology can be defijined in terms of Christology, see A. van de Beek, God doet recht. Eschatologie als christologie. Spreken over God 2.1 [God performs justice. Eschatology as Christology. Speaking about God 2.1] (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008), 109–147, 221–266. 114  See D.J. Bosch, Transforming Missions. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 420–432, 447–457. 115  See Calvin, Institutio, 1.14.1, in this regard: “It was a shrewd saying of a good old man, who when someone pertly asked in derision what God did before the world was created, answered he made hell for the inquisitive.” See H. Beveridge (trans.), Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979).

TO WHICH THE WHOLE CREATION MOVES CREATION THEOLOGY IN TENNYSON’S IN MEMORIAM Frank Sawyer Introduction This essay written in honour of Prof. dr. Bram van de Beek ties into the theme of being at home and also lost in the world. Said in another way: it is about our pilgrimage in regard to creation and salvation. In Tennyson’s words, we climb life’s “altar stairs” (LV).1 Our brother Van de Beek is a great encourager for many, including students and professors across continents and overseas. He has continually held before us the fact that we are pilgrims in faith and also in theology. I trust that this little essay will help bring this theme into focus by noting various aspects of creation theology in Tennyson’s longest poem series. Tennyson’s In Memoriam struggles with the relationship between faith and knowledge. It asks questions about the possibility of human progress, about sufffering and hope, and it deals in the widest scope with the meaning of life and death. The poet enters into the problem of our identity as human beings in the world of nature and culture—and this in turn is accompanied by investigations into many tangent ideas which illustrate the question, now from one side, now from another. The reader on this pilgrimage will understand that I am not giving a full exegetical discussion of the poem, since it is comprised in total by 711 four-line stanzas and these in turn are divided into 131 numbered sections. When it is printed with nine stanzas on a page, as in the edition I am using, it is 79 pages long, which is unusual for a poem. But as said above, it is a series, and its stepping along the path of several themes partly forms a unity and partly seems at times haphazardly joined. That is its charm as well as its difffijiculty for the reader seeking to understand the nuances. We usually think that a poem gets to the heart of the message in shorter form than prose

1  The Roman Numerals refer to the numbered sections of the poem which run from 1 to 131.

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does. But Tennyson needed many pages to bring his thoughts and feelings into relief (whereby we may think of the double meaning of that same word as ‘making more vivid’ as well as ‘removing distress’). What we shall do with his well-crafted and also at times cumbersome thoughts, is highlight some major themes in this long lyric by dividing it into 9 movements or sections. The theme holding this essay together is the question of the meaning and the dynamics of creation theology, as expressed throughout In Memoriam. At the start it is important to take notice that Tennyson, as poet and thinker, would not want us to hear only his answers but also to listen to his questions. The poem has many voices and so we may rightly expect this to point to a continuing diversity of dialogue. The voices are Tennyson’s at times, but at times the voices are those of others. Or better: all the voices are his as poet, but are not to be pinned upon him as a person. They help us think about many possible questions, answers and half-suggestions, in relation to the great themes of life. Even when the voices may be Tennyson’s more personally, which he need not hide, we are dealing with many layers of meaning. The poem refers to the person Tennyson and a variety of events in his life, to his own reflections and hints at accepting or rejecting interpretations in regard to many themes—but he allows for other personae or voices in the poem, to argue with him. Indeed, there are a myriad of literary references which scholars fijind in various lines and as it were, between the lines.2 Tennyson himself said that it was the voice of the whole human race that can be found in this series of poems. He addressed some of the great social, political, scientifijic, philosophical and religious problems of his time. The poet reminds us that abstractions cannot satisfy the human spirit.3 The Poet Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) was the son of a church minister and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, starting in 1827. His friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam dates from those years and Hallam was engaged to Alfred’s sister, Emily. It was a profound shock to Tennyson when Arthur Hallam, who was on vacation in Vienna, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age

2

 Paul Turner, Tennyson (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 118fff.  Robert Bernard Martin, Tennyson—The Unquiet Heart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). 3

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of 22. As the years went by, and after difffijiculty in getting good reviews by the critics, Tennyson became established as a poet with the works he published in 1842. When he fijinally published his masterpiece, In Memoriam, in 1850, he was appointed Poet Laureate (succeeding Wordsworth)—and he held this laureate longer than any other English poet. He was to be known as the most popular Victorian poet and has never lost his charm for many readers. Queen Victoria insisted that he accept the title of Lord Tennyson (after the poet had declined the offfer many years earlier). Since he was very shortsighted and found it difffijicult to write, he composed various parts of his poems in his head and then wrote them down. Some of his lines have entered into common sayings, such as, “. . . ‘T is better to have loved and lost/than never to have loved at all”; and: “There lives more faith in honest doubt, /Believe me, than in half the creeds.” Tennyson is remembered for longer works, as well as powerful short lyrics, such as “Break, Break, Break”, “Tears, Idle Tears”, and “Crossing the Bar”. Thomas Edison made wax cylinder recordings of the poet reading some of his verse. Tennyson is buried at Westminster Abbey.4 Structural Sections and Themes When In Memoriam A.H.H. appeared in print for the public in 1850, Tennyson became known as the most important poet living in England. Sixty thousand copies were sold the fijirst year. The work was composed by bits and pieces during seventeen years (1833 to 1850) in memory of his friend Hallam with whom Tennyson discussed literary, religious, and philosophical ideas. Hallam had also been the young Tennyson’s early literary manager who helped him get his youthful poems into print. In Memoriam, written during a period of many years after the loss of Hallam, was a struggle of thoughts, written out of respect for his friend but also as therapy for Tennyson himself against his grief and loneliness. T.S. Eliot called the poem a confessional diary; this is very much the case. On another level it is also a philosophical inquiry into the meaning of human existence and the relationship of knowledge, faith and hope—all stretched into a cosmological inquiry. We do not need to, nor can we, separate the subjective

4  For more on the life of Tennyson, see, Robert Bernard Martin, op. cit. Also, Andrew Wheatcroft, The Tennyson Album—A biography in original photographs (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980); Norman Page, Tennyson—An Illustrated Life (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1992).

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feelings here from the objective side of the answers looked for. Indeed, as Paul Tillich says: “Feeling is no nearer to the mystery of revelation and its ecstatic reception than are the cognitive and the ethical functions.”5 Said in another way: “the Gospel tells us that only the pure in heart shall see God. Tennyson wants to say the “pure in heart and sound in head”.6 So even though the poem is mediated through many feelings, it is also very much a poem for the mind. Hallam had written a book called Theodicaea Novissima in which he explored a discussion concerning the rational support for theology, whereby scientifijic information and logical arguments are used to uphold religious beliefs. Tennyson’s In Memoriam also makes use of a similar analysis which argues that subjective experiences and feelings must have an objective basis to warrant some of our conclusions about God and world as well as about the purpose of human life. Hallam said that there is a correspondence between the way we are as human beings and the way the world is structured. This is similar to Augustine saying that our heart only fijinds rest in God. Some call this the ‘psychological argument’ for belief in God: namely, because we feel a need for God, we suppose God exists. It is true that this psychological argument is not a full proof. On the other hand, it is not therefore to be totally ignored, for it is not merely a ‘psychological’ argument, but refers to the wider argument of ontological structures and to their meanings. Philosophers have tried to show the correspondence of subject and object: experience by the perceiving ‘subject’ is by means of the ‘objective’ structures and data with which we interact. We cannot talk about what is purely subjective or objective, but only about the intertwining of these. All our speaking about God is also analogous. Tennyson realizes this and makes full use of such a correspondence between God and world in his reflections on a theology of creation. As we follow the poem, we shall see that Tennyson is not only writing poetical expressions; he is doing serious theology, even if expressed in the poetic mode. The theological aspect is not an adornment, but rather at the essence of his inquiry. Three theological aspects appear to dominate: i) revelation, or how we may know God; ii) creation, or the manifestation of the divine presence in the world; and, iii) hope, because of Christ, the “Strong Son of God” who came among us.

5

 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Nisbet & Co Ltd, 1968), 127.  A. Dwight Culler, The Poetry of Tennyson (Yale University Press, 1977), 181.

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The poem is perceived to have 9 ‘movements’ (although these sections are not labeled).7 However, comments by the author point in this direction. These sections can be listed as follows: 1.  Stepping stones of grief (I–VIII). 2. The burial ship (IX–XX). 3. The path forward (XXI–XXVII). 4. Eternal life—is it possible? (XXVIII–XLIX). 5. Steps of doubt and trust (L–LVIII). 6. Wandering in dreams of despair and hope (LIX–LXXI). 7. Inner peace and progress (LXXII–XCVIII). 8. Pilgrimage to a new day (XCIX–CIII). 9. Hope toward which ‘the whole creation moves’ (CIV–CXXXI). We shall provide introductory remarks concerning each of these and indicate how creation theology is referred to within each section. 1. Stepping Stones of Grief The fijirst stanza of section one sets the wide theme in an impressionable way: I held it truth, with him who sings  To one clear harp in divers tones,  That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.

The nine theme sections of the poem divided into 131 numbered parts, form 711 stepping-stone stanzas (each comprised of four lines), which prove to be difffijicult and slippery. Yet they lead to a higher conclusion about life’s meaning. Throughout the poem Tennyson explores thoughts about ways of rising beyond our failures and futility. Perhaps even beyond fijiniteness, beyond death. Along the way he mentions forms of biological and social evolution, future hope based on higher stages of morality, formal and experimental aspects of religious faith, as well as transcendent intuitions in dreams—whether in the night or in the daytime. With these grand questions we are in the middle of philosophical views concerning permanence and change, as well as questions of entropy and progress. This brings us back to pre-Socratic philosophers such as Heraclitus and

7

 Culler, op. cit. provides an analysis of these nine sections, in ch.8, 149fff.

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Parmenides, who tried to investigate what is permanent and what is changing. This in turn relates to the nature of the world and the question of form and substance, or essence and attributes. Plato and others discussed what is really real. While some philosophers wanted to pin reality down to one element such as earth, air, fijire or water, others spoke of the great logos, which meant the divine mind (with a world plan). For the Platonic line of thought it turned out that the ‘really real’ is not seen, but can be logically deduced. Socrates, the great master of dialogue, drank the hemlock while saying that he had faith in the future life of the soul. Much later the question of progress would be dealt with in many ways, as for example Hegel’s views on thesis, antithesis, and a new synthesis. He spoke of the progress of the Spirit or Mind (Geist), and in comparison this makes our contemporary ideas about democratic, capitalist and technological progress look a little thin. For even though these factors often dictate the condition of our contemporary western-style lives, they cannot tell us how to make qualitative, ethical choices, nor do they provide an adequate understanding of our humanity. Tennyson lived in another age, which was already in many ways modern (the Enlightenment had stirred many minds)—but his time was not yet late modern and far from postmodern. He stands at a great divide between past certainties and the present challenges to these. Tennyson expresses the situation of thinkers since Kant who must now say that reason cannot answer the ultimate questions (of God, freedom and immortality), and yet these ‘metaphysical’ questions remain of existential interest to us.8 Although abandoned by the anti-metaphysical mood, these life and death matters were taken up in a new existentialism. Tennyson introduces the question of spiritual progress for the developing self and world, because we need to know if we are headed primarily toward death or new life. Is it possible to go beyond the views of a Stoic? The Stoic, it is said, has courage in spite of fate and death, for the Stoic knows about renunciation. However, the Stoic does not know about salvation in the biblical sense of the restoration of the creation.9 Tennyson felt the attraction of the Stoical views, but his great stepping stones are those toward salvation. This also means that he is not a modern exclusivist human-

8

 Cf. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (London: Harcourt, 1978), Introduction, 14f.  Cf. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952; second ed. 1980), 17. 9

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ist.10 As Tillich commented upon such choices: “Modern humanism is still humanism, rejecting the idea of salvation.”11 Said in another way: Tennyson is philosophical but also theological. When we begin with section one of Tennyson’s poem we fijind that there is a great sorrow which dominates and this of course is the reason Tennyson is writing. Some of the images refer to city life: for example, a bald street, a dark house, doors waiting for the absent friend, and even the “chimney glows/In expectation of a guest”. But the images from nature are just as strong (II): Old Yew, which graspest at the stones  That name the under-lying dead,  Thy fijibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. The seasons bring the flower again,  And bring the fijirstling to the flock;  And in the dusk of thee, the clock Beats out the little lives of men.

The ‘yew tree’ is a symbol of death. Some see it referred when Elijah’s sat under the ‘broom bush’ and wished to die (I Kings 19). It appears in Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard and in T.S. Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday with the theme of the ‘juniper-tree’. The point of these lines is to establish the fact early on in the poem that our lives are lived in the shadow of the yew tree, the shadow of death. The seasons come and go, nature flowers forth, but we also live by the clock and the time allotted to us before the yew tree wraps its roots around our bones. The fact of death is established, but what value may we give to it? That is Tennyson’s question throughout the poem: is there a creation theology which goes beyond the brute visible facts of nature? How do life and death, time and a spiritual vision of eternity, relate? How may people “rise on stepping-stones/Of their dead selves to higher things”? In order to reach abundant life we need to reflect on the meaning of death. 2. The Burial Ship In section two, the poet imagines the body of his dead friend being transported home on a ‘fair ship’ across a placid ocean. Tennyson is symbolizing 10  For a major study of exclusive humanism, see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007). 11  Courage, 19.

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his need to view the death and burial of his friend in a way enshrined by peace. The ship symbol is well known from Egyptian funeral ships which sail into eternity with the souls of the dead. But Tennyson also relates this to Noah’s ark and to the dove as a symbol for the spirit: Lo, as a dove when up she springs  . . .  Like her I go; I cannot stay;  I leave this mortal ark behind,  . . . 

This second section begins with a prayer request (addressed to the ‘fair ship’), a prayer for protection and peace upon the remains of the beloved friend, that he may come home gently to those who mourn him. This is poetic self-therapy for his grief, but he also admits in XI:12 Calm is the morn without a sound,  Calm as to suit a calmer grief,  And only thro’ the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground:  . . .  Calm and deep peace in this wide air,  These leaves that redden to the fall;  And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair . . . 

This is a willed calm which may have existed in nature that morning, but not in his heart. He goes on to say that “the shock” (XVI) of Hallam’s life gone,  . . . stunned me from my power to think And all my knowledge of myself; And made me that delirious man  Whose fancy fuses old and new,  And flashes into false and true, And mingles all without a plan . . . 

By talking about “false and true” Tennyson refers to the question of meaning, the question of the world, humankind, God, purpose and hope. What, if any of these, is trustworthy? He discovers a calm within, but it is a “calm despair”. He is calm because he is still stunned. He is disoriented.

12  Three dots between the stanzas means that I am passing some by in order to quote those (in the same section of the poem) most relevant to the point in question.

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This raises questions dealt with in existentialist philosophy: it is not only our daily routine which counts—we must also come face to face with ourselves. That is, with our values, our worldview, our faith and doubts, our hopes and despairs. Suddenly “knowledge of our self ” (Socrates) becomes extremely important. When we face the great important events of the self, such as birth, baptism, marriage, ethical challenges and the horizon of death, our choices turn into stepping stones for social and psychological development along with moral and spiritual development. The poet is considering his “path” in life. This path goes through times of disorientation, so that the death of a friend “stunn’d me from my power to think/And all my knowledge of myself ”. He comes close to giving up, but knows he must continue on ahead and seek more light upon the stepping stones. The image from nature which he uses in this context is “leaves that redden to the fall”. This is an expression which refers to the autumn as the time of the falling of fruit and leaves, the falling away of life as winter comes. He adds that this is the time of “the chestnut pattering to the ground”, which he claims is almost a calm sound echoing in the background of his silent grief. So, in the fijirst two sections of the poem he points out that death is intertwined within the seasons of nature and there is a calm which comes from the falling leaves, yet this is not a comfort to him. He uses the word ‘calm’ six times within eight lines, but admits that what he is experiencing is “calm despair”. 3. The Path Forward In section three the poet thinks back on the walks and talks he had with Hallam (XXII): The path by which we twain did go,  Which led by tracks that pleased us well,  Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow . . .  But where the path we walk’d began  To slant the fijifth autumnal slope,  As we descended following Hope, There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;

This analogy of the path is as metaphysical as physical. The time spent together included walks and hikes, but also the path of discussion about knowledge and faith. What is lost with the death of his friend is communion and a meaningful life path to be walked. ‘The path’ is a prominent religious and philosophical way of speaking. We are homo viator, pilgrims

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seeking meaning, seeking goodness, and seeking God. The image of a path is dominant in religion. Buddhism speaks of an eightfold path to fijinding the harmony of an ethical and spiritual life. We also fijind this emphasis of the path in Taoism, for Tao means ‘the way’ or the path of walking wisely. In Islam the surah which comes at the beginning of the Koran is repeated in the Muslim’s daily prayers and emphasizes the path:13 In the name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate: Praise be to Allah, Creator of the worlds, The Merciful, the Compassionate, Ruler of the day of Judgment. Thee do we worship, and Thee do we ask for aid. Guide us in the straight path, The path of those on whom Thou hast poured forth Thy grace. Not the path of those who have incurred Thy wrath and gone astray.

In the Old Testament the ‘Torah’, or God’s law, is also called ‘the way’. Thus we read: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105). The fijirst Christians were called people of the ‘Way’ (Acts of the Apostles 9:2 & 24:14). The path in the numerous stages of In Memoriam is fully religious and fully philosophical. Another way this is seen in the poem is that when discussing the greatness of knowledge, the poet also puts this in the context of the ‘pillars of wisdom’, drawing on Proverbs 9:1. For Tennyson, wisdom includes the knowledge of God. Indeed, the path is one of climbing higher. Tennyson was aware of Plato’s ‘steps’ (epanabathmoi) from earthly to divine beauty, truth and goodness. Similarly, he knew of Augustine’s statement about turning our vices into a stairway (scala) or ladder by treading them under our feet, and climbing higher.14 The poet himself spoke of this poem as “the way of the soul”. Meanwhile, Tennyson wants to tell us, the path is not easy and not always clear. In the fijinal analysis not everything rests with us. Later in the poem he writes, in LVIII: We pass; the path that each man trod  Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:  What fame is left for human deeds In endless age? It rest with God.

13  Translation in Huston Smith, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (Harper SanFrancisco, 1991), 242. 14  Turner, op. cit., 121.

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Meanwhile Tennyson ends this third section with the often quoted lines (XXVII): I hold it true, whate’er befall;  I feel it, when I sorrow most;  ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

The creation theology in the poem has turned from the surrounding scenes of nature spoken of earlier, and then begins to concentrate on the warmth of human relationships as a pointer toward some end to our pilgrimage which cannot be erased. This is a way forward, for “I hold it true, what’er befall”. The exterior happenings do not totally diminish the inner light of hope. Hope, for example, that a loved one lost does not mean everything lost. Somehow creation and salvation belong together. In the next section the poet looks directly at the question of death and everlasting life. 4. Eternal Life—Is it Possible? Is there progress, perhaps even eternal progress? This is the question of section four of the poem. Is there personal immortality or is there annihilation? These questions are fully philosophical and fully theological. We may recall Socrates’ witness to the immortality of the soul as he faced death. On the other hand, ever since Democritus there have been atomists who argue that reality is basically material, rather than primarily mind or spirit. Epicurus based his ethics on the materialism of Democritus. Today the view of ‘scientifijic materialism’ as the key to basic reality is often an influential mode of thought. Some, like Immanuel Kant, have suggested that belief in immortality has a rational basis, for this is the logical conclusion of ‘practical reason’. That is, the moral law demands an endless progression, and when we think of endless progression we come to the idea of the immortality of the human personality. William James, in his Giffford Lectures (1902) on The Varieties of Religious Experience, said that personal immortality, or eternal life, was the basic meaning of religion for most people on the popular level. The moral nature of humanity then is said to point to existence after death, whether this is interpreted as a reward for moral conduct, or as the conclusion of continual progress toward the Good. This was of course the basic Platonic view. Christianity broke with the idea of an ‘eternal return’ of cosmic cycles (which Nietzsche revived) and gave us a historical and progressive view of the coming of the Kingdom of God. This progress is not our accomplishment, but must be seen as the gift of God for the redemption of his world. In other words, the

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redemption of the creation does not come from within created reality, but along with every good gift, is given ‘from above’ (James 1:17) by the Creator. That is what a theology of creation contributes to the discussion of ‘progress’. Tennyson, as many today, was struggling with the issue of how much truth and certainty come from the great human possibilities of science and technology—and the limits of these.15 He saw that science and technology do not answer the questions of the heart. That is why he continued to think philosophically and theologically. Tennyson wanted to maintain the basic views of theology because he was aware of the contemporary materialist challenges—as when he says in XXXIV: My own dim life should teach me this,  That life shall live for evermore,  Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is;

The poet speculates on such matters as death and sleep being similar (XLIII). He further has an extended section of the idea of the soul descending into material reality as the basic law of nature (XLV): The baby new to earth and sky  What time his tender palm is prest  Against the circle of the breast Has never thought that ‘this is I’: But as he grows he gathers much,  And learns the use of ‘I,’ and ‘me,’  And fijinds ‘I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.’ So rounds he to a separate mind  From whence clear memory may begin,  As thro’ the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defijined.

This being the case, then there could be a return, a “Remerging in the general Soul” (XLVII). Tennyson offfers some further speculation about

15  Among numerous sources on this today, I mention Wendell Berry, who speaks of an over-extended faith in science and technology as a modern ‘superstition’. Cf. Berry, What Needs to be Subtracted, an interview with David Cayley, ed., Ideas—on the Nature of Science (Fredericton, New Brunswick: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Goose Lane Editions, 2009), 149fff.

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eternity, but knows we have no clear answer. The light and the shadows intertwine, like light reflecting on shadowy pools of water (XLIX): From art, from nature, from the schools,  Let random influences glance,  Like light in many a shiver’d lance That breaks about the dappled pools.

Tennyson’s creation theology does not jump to conclusions; it begins with the question: what is the basic nature of reality? How do our present life and eternity relate to each other? How should we view our life in the body? Classically stated: how do soul and body relate to each other ‘in the long run’? Which hopes are merely fanciful and which based on the grand design of everything? How can we rise above the great sorrows of fijinite life? All of these are also Tennyson’s questions. He now turns directly to the problem of trust and doubt. 5. Steps of Doubt and Trust Section fijive (L–LVIII) on doubt and trust gives us the heart of the question in a powerful way. It is both a high point of faith and a low point of doubt and uncertainty. We hear both a complaint and a prayer (L). Be near me when my light is low,  When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick  And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame  Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;  And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry . . . .

But then the poet confesses (LIV): Oh yet we trust that somehow good  Will be the fijinal goal of ill,  To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet;  That not one life shall be destroy’d,  Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete; Behold, we know not anything;  I can but trust that good shall fall

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frank sawyer  At last—far offf—at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. So runs my dream: but what am I?  An infant crying in the night:  An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.

Tennyson knew about naturalistic materialism and evolutionary ideas. He had read Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Lyell’s Principles of Geology, and Chambers’ Vestiges of Creation, all of which brought forward the debate about evolution. The poet seems to like the idea of Chambers, that whatever evolution may exist, it involves a great progress organized by God. So he speaks of a grand vision of “One God, one law, one element,/And one far-offf divine event/To which the whole creation moves”. Tennyson says that we trust that the creation is not only continually under the weight of death, but somehow in some “far offf ” solution, it may be that “every winter change to spring”. The phrase “every winter change to spring” is at heart a great statement of creation theology. It is an analogy, based on the seasons. But it is not an easy analogy. The poet mixes the image of a wheel (“all the wheels of Being slow”) with the possibility of taking steps forward. He knew about Dante’s magne rote (great wheels or circles of regress and progress). Paley had likened the cosmos to a great clock in which every tooth of the wheel is linked in the rotation of time.16 In Memoriam itself deals often with the circularity of life and death, but as part of God’s wise plan for some good future. The poet speaks not so much about an ‘eternal return’, as rather ‘eternal progress’. This theme is always showing up time and again, not only in the Stoics, the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, and of course Nietzsche, but also in discussions at the cutting edge of cosmological speculations today. Tennyson made his choice within a framework of creation theology, in the sense that God’s purpose is that “far-offf divine event/To which the whole creation moves”. Tennyson knew that the argument about the design of creation is offfset by the argument of sufffering. He was aware that the strange wonders of creation draw some people “to God and repel others”.17 As the poem continues, Tennyson comes back in the next stanzas (LV) to the steppingstones of the very fijirst verse of the poem, which now become altar-stairs to God:

16 17

 Paul Turner, op. cit., ch.7, ‘In Memoriam A.H.H.’, 114fff.  Quoted in Culler, 177.

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I falter where I fijirmly trod,  And falling with my weight of cares  Upon the great world’s altar-stairs That slope thro’ darkness up to God. I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,  And gather dust and chafff, and call  To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.

Yet both the hope and the doubt, the moments of revelation and those of darkness, are maintained side by side—and indeed, mixed through each other (LVI): O life as futile, then, as frail!  O for thy voice to soothe and bless!  What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil.

So we have a mixture of approaches. He mentions the great “altar-stairs“, the human search for meaning and for God, as well as the given situation of dead-end roads and the fact that much is left unknown and unrevealed, “behind the veil”. This unknown is not merely unknown information, but also the unknown reasons for sufffering, for experiences of meaningless, and for gnawing doubt. It may be that there is hope and salvation, but these seem to be hidden just when we need them most. We are often left “with no language but a cry”. The powerful images of “a maniac scattering dust” and “a Fury slinging flame” point to the question of meaning and absurdity raised by our existential experience. This is a central theme in literature, whether in Job, Ecclesiastes, Shakespeare, Tolstoy or Camus—and the list is without end because the human condition all around the world leads to the great questions of life and death, which also troubled Tennyson. The poet tries to frame his questions within a life-and-world-view. He experiments with a creation theology. He hopes that nothing lives in vain, and that the good shall at last come to all. Yet not knowing this in any fully defijinable way, he still concludes that trust is the only way forward. He is dealing with the question of ‘theodicy’, or the relationship between a good God and the evil and sufffering in our world. The typical questions related to this are found in Tennyson’s poem. Do we sufffer because of defects in the creation? Because of our own evil? Is sufffering a testing of our commitments? Is it a training toward spiritual progress? The poet points in several places to all of these aspects. But he also returns time and again to the conclusion that the full answer is “behind the veil”. We

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may try to trust, but we cannot see things fully. At the same time, Tennyson stubbornly insists that there must be some stepping stones, a path, a way forward. This is a creation theology which does not abandon hope when the sun of meaning sets for awhile. 6. Wandering in Dreams In section six (LIX–LXXI) the poet tries to give meaning to the remembrance of his friend by imagining how the relationship would have continued had Hallam lived longer. This includes some more cheerful thoughts. Tennyson is warmed by his admiration for Hallam, but he imagines that he himself is a more lowly fijigure, hardly worthy of the friendship from one who was destined to a greater role and a greater rank in life. Then the poet writes fijive sections which are dreams. In the fijirst, he dreams of Hallam’s gravestone, the letters of his name shining in the moonlight and giving hope in the darkness. In the second section, Tennyson says that the problem is that he cannot dream of Hallam as dead. Yet if he dreams of Hallam as alive this does not “resolve the doubt”. In the next section he dreams of an angel in the night, who speaks comfort to him: “The voice was not the voice of grief ”. In the fijifth dream he is walking again with his friend. The setting includes the joys of nature: While now we talk as once we talk’d  Of men and minds, the dust of change,  The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old we walk’d Beside the river’s wooded reach,  The fortress, and the mountain ridge,  The cataract flashing from the bridge, The breaker breaking on the beach.

In these dreams Tennyson meets Hallam and there is a time of peace and friendship again. These are dreams of hope and fulfijillment. The vision of the past and present realities point to a future reality. This is a way of doing eschatology by analogy. And analogies seem to come in abundance to poets. We all know that psychology asks critical questions about religion as wish-fulfijillment. It is often supposed that such wish fulfijillment has no ground in reality, whether past, present or future. However, others say

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that the correspondence between the need and the answer, or between intuition and salvation, is a real correspondence.18 Stated in short form: if the heart does not desire salvation, the head won’t fijind it. When the dream section ends with images of creation (woods, river, sea waves), this is a way of saying that Hallam is not lost forever, nor is the whole creation lost forever. 7. Inner Peace and Progress Section seven refers to the fijirst anniversary of Hallam’s death (1833) and ends just before the year 1834 is over. For the second time the poet writes of Christmas. During the fijirst Christmas after the death of his friend, he says that the bells ring out peace and goodwill, but he would almost wish to die before he hears them anymore, for they bring the confusion of “sorrow touched with joy” (XXVIII). Now he writes (LXXVIII): Again at Christmas did we weave  The holly round the Christmas hearth;  The silent snow posses’d the earth, And calmly fell our Christmas-eve . . . 

We see the poet has made progress in accepting the death of Hallam; his spirit is calmer than a year before. In this long section of the poem he develops the feeling of continued communion and communication with his lost friend. Tennyson remembers places where they had spent time together and now imagines an on-going dialogue between them. His great sorrow is now mixed with a kind of thankfulness, in words quoted by others ever since (LXXXV): This truth came borne with bier and pall,  I felt it, when I sorrow’d most,  ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all—

Also in this section we fijind a resolution to the question of doubt: doubt can take away our trust and faith, but it can also make us stronger if we face the difffijicult questions. In fact, it is by means of the memory of his friend’s honest intellect and deep faith, that Tennyson now makes

18  William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005).

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progress on the stepping-stones of life and the altar-stair to God. He is no longer only a pilgrim with his head bent in the weight of sorrow, for he can now speak of the glories of the pilgrimage (LXXXII): Eternal process moving on,  From state to state the spirit walks;  And these are but the shatter’d stalks, Or ruin’d chrysalis of one.

These lines turn to the brighter side: the pilgrim does progress. Each step we make fades behind us like an unneeded ruined chrysalis (the outer cocoon of the caterpillar)—and the implied result is that we shall now be revealed as a beautiful butterfly. Bright as this is, the poet must turn back to daily reality and the struggle to fijind faith (XCVI): Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,  At last he beat his music out,  There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,  He would not make his judgment blind,  He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length To fijind a stronger faith his own:  And Power was with him in the night,  Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the cloud,  As over Sinai’s peaks of old,  While Israel made their gods of gold, Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.

Doubt is not always the opposite of faith, but can be part of the struggle for faith. As Tennyson says, by fijighting doubts one gathers strength. The reason that faith also lives in ‘honest doubt’, is that we are obliged to clarify what we believe and why. The poet puts a punch into his views by comparing honest doubt to the creeds. But he is careful: he says “half the creeds”. The point is that one cannot rest in one’s doubt, nor in unexamined creeds. Tennyson challenges us to confess that God dwells not only in the light, but also in the darkness. We experience God’s absence in the darkness of life; yet God is present. This is a full theology of creation: if we enter the light or the darkness, God is there, and we cannot step outside of God’s presence (Psalm 139).

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8. Break with the Past and a Pilgrimage to a New Day This short section was written in 1837 at the time the Tennyson family moved from Somersby to High Beech at Epping Forest. The move becomes symbolic in the poem for the starting of a new day. This part and the rest of the poem turn outward toward the world, dealing with themes of social change, natural and cultural evolution, as well as progress in faith. The theme in the last section of the poem speculates about great hope for humanity including scientifijic, ethical, and spiritual progress. Let us now look at the last theme. 9. Hope Toward which the Whole Creation Moves The last section is longer and wraps together all what the poet wants to say. It opens with a third Christmas, this time strange, because the poet now lives in another place, and he realizes on Christmas-eve that “these are not the bells I know”. But the poet is far more cheerful and optimistic than in the previous times. He says that they should celebrate not Hallam’s death, but his birth. New Year is now added to Christmas. In often quoted lines, he writes (VVI): Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,  The flying cloud, the frosty light:  The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new,  Ring, happy bells, across the snow:  The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.  . . .  Ring out false pride in place and blood,  The civic slander and the spite;  Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease;  Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;  Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free,  The larger heart, the kindlier hand;  Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

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This vision wraps the social, economic and political together in a great longing of hope. Salvation in Christ is proclaimed as the basis for great transformations. “Ring in the Christ that is to be”, can be interpreted both as a longing for the return of Christ, as well as a symbolic way of speaking of the development of a higher mankind. There was a lot of scientifijic and social evolution, if not revolution, in the air. The modern age was bringing a new faith in technology. Global expansion was a reality. But Tennyson was too deep a thinker to believe that progress would be easy. Nor does his ‘social gospel’ necessarily deny the eschatological need for the return of Christ. The vision of social and moral evolution is balanced by Tennyson’s deeply spiritual prayers in the poem, including the prayer to Christ added as an introduction to the whole poem. Throughout the poem there is a balance between the personal and the cosmic aspect; and this is similarly found in Tennyson’s Christology. He could know this from Paul. One wonders what Tennyson would have made of Teilhard’s writings. He incorporates views in that direction, as one voice among others. There are numerous Biblical phrases in the poem which some see as a systematic way of leading up to the Christological highpoint of “ring in the Christ that is to be”, and underscored by the introduction referring to the Strong Son of God.19 In section CXVIII, Tennyson refers to various kinds of development, to both natural and cultural evolution. But as the poem progresses he draws the conclusion that God cannot be found unambiguously in nature where violence and death rule, nor in society which is full of injustice, nor in reason which is prone to ideological error and abuse. God can only be found by means of the heart (CXXIV): I found Him not in world or sun,  Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;  Nor thro’ the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun: If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,  I heard a voice ‘believe no more’  And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep; A warmth within the breast would melt  The freezing reason’s colder part,

19  For a study of this, see Ward Hellstrom, On the Poems of Tennyson (Florida University Press, 1972).

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 And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’

Tennyson is saying that the shadow side of reality is extremely strong and therefore we cannot fijind our way by reason alone. It is proper for reason to question things and beliefs; but the heart rebels against the doubts of reason when reason becomes cold and unbelieving. The heart knows things which reason cannot grasp. Yet Tennyson was critical about religion, writing in his poem Maud, “The churches have killed their Christ”, and in his play, Becket, sometimes we “mix our spites and private hates with our defense of Heaven”. The poem comes to a heightened end with the thought that everything is cooperating toward some good purpose. Indeed, while the poem begins with a death, it ends with a wedding. As Tennyson himself wrote, “It is rather the cry of the whole human race than mine. . . . It begins with a funeral and ends with a marriage—begins with death and ends in promise of a new life . . . .”20 All the experiences of sorrow and doubt have led the poet to a greater grasp of hope and love. In the last line of the poem (CXXXI) Tennyson is thankful for the noble memory of Hallam, his friend,  . . . who lives in God That God, which ever lives and loves,  One God, one law, one element,  And one far-offf divine event To which the whole creation moves.

The poem ends with those words. However, Tennyson could not quite leave it and he added an introductory section of eleven stanzas which summarize his view. In these introductory stanzas (dated 1849, while the whole poem is dated as beginning from 1833), he underlines his faith in a personal God of love, and the importance of harmonizing faith and knowledge: Strong Son of God, immortal Love,  Whom we, that have not seen thy face,  By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

20  Andrew Wheatcroft, The Tennyson Album—A Biography in Original Photographs (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 60.

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frank sawyer Our little systems have their day;  They have their day and cease to be:  They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. Let knowledge grow from more to more,  But more of reverence in us dwell;  That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before, But vaster . . . 

We live by faith, by analogies which speak of falling leaves, and winters which turn to spring. But Tennyson wants more than symbols—he founds everything on the Word become flesh. The additional opening stanzas quoted above are a prayer. And the conclusion after his long pilgrimage is that we are headed towards a “far-offf divine event/Toward which the whole creation moves”. What we express inadequately now in words, images or music is not fijinal. The poet says that one day the music shall be “vaster”!

THE EBB AND FLOW OF CREATION THEOLOGY AT STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY: A STORY IN SIX CHAPTERS Ernst M. Conradie and J. Christofff Pauw Introduction Bram van de Beek has written extensively about creation theology. This is probably not surprising given his training as a natural scientist: during his lectures he would say “all life is dependent upon death”, referring to the biological requirement of nutrition gained from dead or decomposed matter. He is also a regular visitor to South Africa. He holds an appointment as extraordinary professor in the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University and owns a house in Stellenbosch. In this contribution we will not engage specifijically with his understanding of creation theology. Instead, we will explore the complex story of creation theology in the South African reformed context, viewed through the lens of “Stellenbosch” in the 20th century, in six brief “chapters”. Our intuition is that the history of reformed theology in South Africa after 1930 could be read as a history of grappling with an adequate understanding of the relationship between creation and salvation. This theme calls for some clarifijication and demarcation. We will focus on reformed theology of mainly Dutch origin, thus excluding the role of Presbyterians and Congregationalists. While it is impossible to exclude the influence of other theological institutions (Bloemfontein, DurbanWestville, Potchefstroom, Pretoria, UWC and a number of theological colleges), the focus will be on the way in which theological movements had an impact on the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch (where both Van de Beek and I studied). Only publications of an academic nature or written by academics will be considered, thus excluding the influence of ecclesial resolutions, sermons and the theological reflections of the laity. We will begin the story in 1930, after the infamous Du Plessis trial and with the advent of apartheid theology. It will be concluded in 2000, the year when the Theological School of the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa shifted the basis of its training from UWC to Stellenbosch, with farreaching implications for theological education at both institutions. It is also necessary to reflect on the focus of “creation” theology. As we will argue below, there are diverging and highly contested ways in which

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this may be understood. Perhaps it is the easiest to relate this to diffferent questions that may be asked. Some focus on the question how God created the world and therefore on the act of creating (creatio, understood as creativity, making, forming, producing), thus prompting questions about the relation between theology and the sciences, reflection on creationism, the specifijic focus of the biblical texts, big bang cosmology, evolutionary theory, and worldviews based on such theories. Some focus, instead, on what God created (creatura). This may lead the inquiry in diffferent directions, depending on what features of the subsequent creation are emphasised: its ordered patterns (creation ordinances?), its beauty or its fragility (raising environmental concerns), its inherent dynamism (prompting questions about continuing creation and divine action in this regard) or its imperfections and the sufffering embedded in God’s otherwise good creation (prompting reflections on “natural sufffering” and the theodicy problem). Others would concur yet would focus instead on the question what creation is for. What is the ultimate telos of the world and—more specifijically—of the emergence of humanity? This may prompt questions about human vocation but also reflections on Sabbath, communion with God, the recapitulation of all things, and doxology. Yet others argue that any such a focus on the product of God’s work may open the door for unwanted forms of natural theology. Instead, they suggest that the focus should be on the identity of the Creator, allowing for Patrological, Christological, Pneumatological and trinitarian avenues to be explored. Finally, there are those who would regard “creation” merely as one theme that can become a lens through which one may revisit all the other theological issues. It serves as a funnel through which one may fijilter and distil the message of the Christian gospel. This would typically prompt inquiry about the relation between creation, fall, providence, salvation, the formation of the church, and eschatological re-creation. In the discussion below it will become evident that these diffferent ways of understanding creation theology often leads to confusion and thus become highly contested. Given the space available, we need to paint the landscape in broad strokes only. We hope that this map of the terrain would offfer hypotheses for a further, more detailed inquiry that would be required here. 1. The Νeo-Calvinist Ηegemony in South Africa Apartheid theology may be regarded as a deeply contextual form of creation theology making selective use of neo-Calvinist concepts. It is best

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understood as a secondary ideological and theological legitimation of decisions about Christian mission, ecclesial governance, and the structuring of society that were taken primarily on pragmatic grounds to serve the interests of a particular group on the basis of the social construction of diffferences of race, class, language, culture and religion. The theological legitimation of apartheid remained signifijicant because it inhibited a critique of the implied social structures since it was portrayed as God-given. There has been some lively discourse on the various roots of apartheid theology (and of Afrikaner civil religion). Despite diffferences in emphasis, there is little doubt that apartheid theologians understood themselves to be in continuity with the neo-Calvinist theology of Abraham Kuyper (and Herman Bavinck). It is widely agreed that this amounted to a rather selective and misinterpreted version of neo-Calvinism, but the question remains why it was indeed possible to use (and abuse) Kuyper’s writings in this way. More specifijically, apartheid theology developed the notion of creation ordinances into a quite comprehensive cosmology, with specifijic reference to the philosophy of law as proposed by Herman Dooyeweerdt and the grounding of the structures of society in creation ordinances as proposed by H.G. Stoker (Potchefstroom). According to apartheid theology, the diffferences of race, culture and civilization are embedded in the very orders of God’s creation. After Babel, such diffferences had to be maintained in order to prevent human hubris and any grandiose dream of integration or Empire. Salvation is only possible when such cosmic order (understood as apartness) is restored, if necessary through law and order. Indeed, apartheid offfered not only a theology of creation but also a quasi-soteriology: since people are so different, the only way to maintain peace and to preserve one’s own identity is through separation. According to apartheid theology, God’s re-creation (and the church as the fijirst fruits of such re-creation) can only afffijirm and restore the diffferentiated structures embedded in God’s creation (creatura). Such structures of course include ethnicity. Whereas God separated peoples on the basis of ethnicity, this “necessitates” a pluriformity of ecclesial institutes.1 This position culminated in the report on Ras, Volk, Nasie en volkereverhoudinge in die Lig van die Skrif (Human Relations and the

1  This is epitomised by the position of F.J.M. Potgieter, Kerk en samelewing—’n Wesenskou (Kaapstad: N.K. Kerk-Uitgewers, 1990), 45–62.

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South African scene in the light of Scripture), submitted to and approved by the general synod of the Dutch Reformed in South Africa in 1974.2 It should be noted that Stellenbosch hardly played a signifijicant role in such developments, although Prof FJM Potgieter was deeply involved in the discussions. However, it endorsed all the decisions and the subsequent pleas to introduce apartheid legislation. Following the Du Plessis case, those who prided themselves as maintaining a form of reformed orthodoxy, following the “old paths” (the “Oupajane”) ensured that all subsequent appointments in the School of Theology at Stellenbosch would be in line with this direction. Potgieter’s argument in support of racial segregation in church and society demonstrates this. In his opening address to the Stellenbosch Theological Faculty in 1958 he summarised his position. In creation, he stated, there is unity in diversity and pluriformity. This applies also to human beings, who are created in the image of God, and would have remained one were it not for the fall. Due to sin, however, human ability to maintain unity in social, state and church organisation was weakened (and will stay weak “until the last day”) to such an extent that God, according to Scripture, graciously intervened with the spraakverwarring and revealed diffferentiated pluriformity as his Will for this earthly age since the fall. The unity of the human race in Christ can only be realised in the hereafter. Much of this argument was based on quotations from various Kuyper texts and a number of biblical passages,3 and his conclusion for South Africa was that any attempt at integration or mixing of white, coloured or black people (in social, political or ecclesial life) would directly contradict the revealed will of God.4 Following Kuyper, Potgieter argues that over time the division between nations and races actually increases, also in the life of the church. He uses

2  For a detailed discussion, see Murray Coetzee, Die ‘kritiese stem’ teen apartheidsteologie in die Ned Geref Kerk (1900–1974): ’n Analise van die bydraes van Ben Marais en Beyers Naudé (Ph.D. thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2010), (Wellington: Bible media, 2011) chapter 2.5. 3  CJS Lombaard, ‘The Bible in the Apartheid debate’ in: J.W. Hofmeyr, et al. (eds), 1948 Plus 50 years. Theology, apartheid and church: past, present and future, (Pretoria, 2001), 71–73, discusses the favoured texts used in this line of reasoning, namely Genesis 11, Deuteronomy 32:8, Acts 1:8 & 17:26 and later also 1 Corinthians 7:17–24, Revelation 5:9 & 7:9. 4  F.J.M. Potgieter, “Veelvormige ontwikkeling: Die wil van God”, Die Gereformeerde Vaandel 26:1 (1958), 5–15. Elsewhere in this article he writes that this era “is ’n intermezzo wat deur God gewil is, en dit vind aanleidende oorsaak in die sonde, maar sy bewerkende oorsaak in die Algemene genade” (p. 13).

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evolutionary arguments to explain why the early church could still accommodate diffferences: the early Jerusalem church was still “formless” and “embryonic” like a newly born child. But over time the child lays offf the formless and becomes an adult who can no longer be conceived of “without the forms”. And so it is in the Church also: “Initially there was still place [in the church] for the formless, but now after so many centuries, no longer.”5 He struggles to maintain this argument in the light of Kuyper’s rejection of the national church. For Kuyper, writes Potgieter, there are only local churches who together form the one, visible Church of Christ (“because in Christ there is no Jew or Greek or Barbarian, all are one in Him”). However, this unity does not reveal itself technically through a single organisation, continues Kuyper. Such unity will only be revealed in the hereafter. From this, Potgieter concludes that the ecumenical synods can take no decisions with binding power, since the (Reformed) principle of the representation of the local church must be maintained.6 That this conclusion does not justify his evolutionary argument and racial segregation in the local church remains unexplained. 2. Consolidation and Confijirmation of a Biblicist Notion of Creation The interest in creation theology amongst apartheid theologians allowed for considerable theological attention to themes such as cosmology, “general revelation”, “common grace” and the natural sciences (but not evolutionary biology!). Here the lack of clarity on the relationship between, for example, general and special revelation proved to be disastrous. Support for apartheid was found in sources other than the special revelation of God in Christ—such as history, culture, nature or rationality. These sources therefore came to carry greater weight than biblical revelation. The natural theology in the DRC that provided support for apartheid focused much attention on the history of the Afrikaner people and their destiny as a chosen people. Reference was made to the notion of trusteeship as found in Galatians 4:2, which legitimated the superiority and domination of the Afrikaner nation over other nations, even claiming that the dominated could only benefijit from this situation. In efffect this

5

 Potgieter, 11.  Potgieter, 13.

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created a civil religion, namely where “the history of a people becomes the hermeneutic principle for interpreting the Bible.”7 On the basis of the consolidation of apartheid theology there emerged some room for further inquiries regarding the question of how God created and the cosmological order that was thus established. While this could have prompted detailed conversations with the natural sciences (as illustrated in the writings of Kuyper and Bavinck), at Stellenbosch this was hardly the case. A small number of books were published after 1950 on cosmology and evolution but these became increasingly reactionary and Biblicist, if not creationist.8 Admittedly, this applies less to Johan Heyns’ Die evolusie-teorie, which was published during his years of teaching at Stellenbosch, yet he repeats the theme of order in creation: everything is created to its own nature.9 This view was perhaps strongest represented by Potgieter in his attempts to deal with evolution and the relationship between theology and science. For him, biblical creatio (Gen 1:1) and formatio (from Gen 1:3 onwards) is in direct contrast to the transformation proposed by evolutionary theory. God created diffferent root types (“grondsoorte”) that are not resolvable. For him, the Bible teaches the creation of a single human type (monophilogenesis) and varying types of plants and animals (polyphilogenesis). Within these types, which remain constant, mutation (and since the fall, degeneration) is possible, thus allowing for the far greater diversity of animals than would have fijitted into Noah’s ark—and, he adds, allowing for the diversity of nations (“volkeverskeidenheid”).10 Thus, even while defending human unity and uniqueness over and against evolutionary continuity between animals and humans, the apartheid theme of diffferentiation retains its

 7  G.J. Rossouw, “Essentials of apartheid” in: J.W. Hofmeyr, et al. (eds), 1948 Plus 50 years. Theology, apartheid and church: past, present and future (Pretoria: University of Pretoria, 2001), 91.  8  A book by Stephanus du Toit, Bybel, skepping, evolusie (Johannesburg: Voortrekkerpers, 1968) and the booklets by D.F.M. Strauss, Evolusie: kernpunte van die moderne afstammingsleer onder die soeklig (43 pages) (Bloemfontein: N.G. Kerk-Jeugboekhandel, 1983) and Carolus Reinecke, Skepping en evolusie (Potchefstroom: Instituut vir Bevordering van Calvinisme, P.U. vir C.H.O., 1970) probably had little influence in Stellenbosch though.  9  Johan A. Heyns, Die evolusie-teorie (Stellenbosch: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, n.d.), 59–60. 10  Potgieter, F.J.M. “Weerspreek die gedagtes van skepping en evolusie mekaar?” Die Gereformeerde Vaandel 20, no. 4 (1952): 159. Another Stellenbosch theologian, Professor P.A. Verhoef, even used the degeneration argument to explain the primitive appearance of Australopithecinae and Neanderthals, should science assert these to be human-like creatures (Verhoef, P.A. “Die eerste mens.” Die Kerkbode, 6 Jan. 1965, 14.)

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foothold in this phase of Stellenbosch’s creation theology. The argument rested entirely on general revelation. It is interesting to note that these reactionary tendencies continued well after the wane of apartheid theology and up to the 1990s, as illustrated in the work of Pieter Pelser11—who instigated cases of ecclesial discipline against several Stellenbosch academics, reminiscent of the Du Plessis case. Although such voices became increasingly isolated in academic and ecclesial circles, there remains vehement popular support for such positions if judging from letters to Afrikaans newspapers. As many scholars have observed, apartheid theology was partly shaped by Princeton fundamentalism. It emphasised a form of orthodoxy that lacked a historical consciousness and a hermeneutical consciousness12 following the “hermeneutical vacuum” that emerged after the Du Plessis case. It followed an a-historical theological method that attempted to identify eternal biblical principles that could then be applied to the South African context. This method was also followed in creation theology. Biblical evidence could be used to construct a view on the origins of the universe, of life on this planet, of the human species, and of diffferent races that paid scant attention to insights emerging from the empirical sciences except for polemical purposes, especially in response to evolutionary biology. One may observe that apartheid theology never developed a full-blown form of creationism (following the later trajectories of Princeton fundamentalism), but that may have merely been the result of

 11  See Pieter J. Pelser, Evolusie & die Bybel: kan hulle versoen word? (Stellenbosch: Bybeldenke Uitgewers, 2001). 12  See Chapter 6 of Coetzee, Die kritiese stem. The Stellenbosch Biblical scholar Bernard Lategan has argued that the theological direction of the Dutch Reformed Church after the Du Plessis afffair partly explains why the theological justifijication of apartheid could be maintained for so long. Du Plessis represented a “spirit of intellectual inquiry and open debate” by maintaining the unity of all knowledge and a philosophical optimism characteristic of the Enlightenment. During his time at Stellenbosch hermeneutical debates on the relationship between religion and science were followed with keen intellectual interest and “theology was respected as an equal partner in this process”. His banning created a “structural defijicit in DRC hermeneutics,” but “the more enduring and long-term legacy was the loss of a critical consciousness. Theology at Stellenbosch no longer functioned as the conduit for scientifijic inquiry and intellectual ferment—elements so characteristic of Du Plessis’ tenure at the Theological Seminary. More than anything else, this shaped the attitude of the DRC towards change and prepared a mentality that instinctively sided with the status quo” (B.C. Lategan, ‘Preparing and keeping the mind-set intact. Reasons and forms of a theology of the status quo’ in: W. Weisse and C. Anthonissen (eds), Maintaining apartheid or promoting change? The role of the Dutch Reformed Church in a phase of increasing conflict in South Africa (Münster: 2004), 57).

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a lack of theological interest in the subject matter or of self-isolation from American discourse on creationism. 3. A Brief Window of Wrestling on Creation and Salvation (1978–1982) The struggle against apartheid theology could be read as a critique against the form of creation theology described above. It rejected the disjunction between creation and the Christian message of salvation in Jesus Christ. This begs the question how the relation between creation and salvation should be understood. How is the Christian faith in God as Saviour and as Creator related? This matter was hotly debated in continental Europe following Barth’s critique against natural theology and Von Rad’s work on tradition history in the Old Testament, suggesting that Israel’s faith in God as Creator may be regarded as an extrapolation of its faith in the God of the Exodus. The same underlying issues were embedded in the struggle against apartheid theology. Within the Dutch Reformed Church a number of theologians (all critics of apartheid theology) recognised what was at stake. During a brief window from 1978 to 1982 a number of monographs were published in Afrikaans where this issue was explored. Stellenbosch was not at the heart of this wrestling although these monographs were prescribed in courses. The general direction was afffijirmed by the lecturers at that time (Jonker, Du Toit and later Theron). In his one-volume Dogmatiek, published in 1978, Johan Heyns (who taught at Stellenbosch from 1966–1970) offfers in a few paragraphs a critique of the direction introduced by Barth, namely where creation is regarded as the external basis for the covenant and where God created with a view to the incarnation of the Son. He does so by reiterating Bavinck’s position on grace restoring nature. Salvation as re-creation afffijirms God’s work in creation. Without the historical order of creation and salvation the meaning of both would be lost.13 While Heyns may be regarded as a diplomatic critic of apartheid, it remains a question to what extent he was influenced by neo-Calvinist philosophy and its underlying understanding of creation ordinances. He certainly attempted to keep faith and reason, science and theology, creation and salvation together through an emphasis on the eschatological kingdom of God.

13

 See Johan Heyns, Dogmatiek (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1978), 103.

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In Adrio König’s work on creation theology, Hy kan weer en meer (1982) the influence of the Barthian approach is more evident. He afffijirms that creation is indeed a matter of faith that depends on the identity of the Creator—and therefore does not provide common ground with other religious traditions. That the One who created is indeed a God of love cannot be derived from observations of nature’s beauty and misery.14 As indicated in the title, König highlights the soteriological and eschatological signifijicance of the way in which the theme of creation is addressed in the biblical witnesses. Inversely, salvation is often described in creation terminology. On this basis he discusses the relation between creation and salvation at some length. He acknowledges with Bavinck and Van Ruler that the ontological priority lies with creation. It is God’s creatura that is saved. The aim of salvation is the restoration and renewal of the fallen creation, not a rejection or a replacement of creation with something new.15 At the same time, with Barth and Noordmans, he afffijirms an epistemological and confessional priority for faith in God as Saviour.16 He seeks to harmonise these positions (Barth and Van Ruler) from a Christological point of departure.17 If Christ is Creator, Saviour and himself creation, then Christ may indeed be the very goal of creation. From God’s point of view, creation may well be an aim in itself (it has intrinsic worth),18 but from our human point of view the glory and honour of God is the goal of our existence. Again, this comes together Christologically: Jesus was truly human and truly divine. König acknowledges the critique against Barth’s notion that creation is the external basis for the covenant, but defends this approach on the basis that the covenant (and the work of Christ) cannot be reduced to its soteriological signifijicance. The fijirst chapter in Flip Theron’s doctoral thesis on “Kosmos en eschaton” offfers perhaps the most profound discussion of the issues at stake. He wrestles with the positions of Barth, Bavinck, Berkhof, Berkouwer, Noordmans and Van Ruler. Theron explores the signifijicance of the product of God’s work and formally afffijirms its given reality against any form of docetism as a matter of faith in the Creator (but not as self-evident!).19 He

14

 Adrio König, Hy kan weer en meer (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1982), 152–154.  König, Hy kan weer, 189. 16  König, Hy kan weer, 153. 17  König, Hy kan weer, 201. 18  König, Hy kan weer, 194. 19  Flip Theron, Die ekklesia as kosmies-eskatologiese teken: Die eenheid van die kerk as ‘profesie’ van die eskatologiese vrede (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1978), 3–5. 15

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regards sin primarily as privation of the good and afffijirms that sin extends as far as creation without destroying it. It indicates that creation has gone in the totally wrong direction. He also afffijirms Van Ruler’s suggestion that one’s regeneration does not annul one’s birth. Creation is not shunned but is saved. On that basis he questions even Noordmans’ position, namely that creation is judgement and separation and not formation.20 Creation as creatura cannot be absolved in its relationship with the Creator (it exists in itself), but this relationship is nevertheless so fundamental that creation cannot exist but in and through this relationship. That creation still exists despite the fall, cannot be explained from what is “left over” in creation but only through God’s faithfulness. It can be understood only through faith and not on the basis of any point of contact or quality in humanity.21 Is the continuity between creation and eschaton therefore to be understood only theo-logically, that is, in terms of God’s faithfulness (together with Christ’s incarnation ex virgine and the Spirit’s creativity)? This seems to be Theron’s position. He rejects any notion of nova creatio and afffijirms Bavink’s notion of “re-creation” terminologically. However, he is evidently wary of the notion of “restoration” since this may invite an independent interest in creation ordinances.22 He acknowledges that the continuity and discontinuity between cosmos and eschaton should be stressed equally.23 Re-creation is indeed creation, not from nothing, but from death and destruction. With Barth he is willing to describe the covenant as the telos of creation (as creatio) and to consider whether there is an element of completion (and not only salvation) in the eschaton. From this point onwards Theron follows Noordmans rather closely. Re-creation (herschepping) is primarily understood as an act of God and, increasingly, through the lens of a forensic notion of justifijication, as

20

 Theron, Die ekklesia 30, note 66.  Theron, Die ekklesia, 9–10. 22  In and article on nature and grace Theron identifijies fijive models in this regard: 1) Grace completes and elevates nature; 2) Grace destroys nature; 3) Nature itself is grace; 4) Graces restores nature and 5) Grace recreates nature. Here his reservations regarding Bavinck’s position and his alignment with Noordmans become evident. The focus is certainly on faith in God’s act of re-creation. How this touches upon nature is less clear since Theron seeks to resist any positive meaning attached to nature, precisely since he is wary of the way in which nature and ethnicity (volk) has become intertwined in apartheid theology. See Theron, “Natuur en genade, Kerk en volk” in: Conrad Wethmar & Cas J.A. Vos (eds), ’n Woord op sy tyd (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1988), 157–172. 23  See Theron’s formula: “Die skepping gaan deur die dood heen, maar dit gaan dan ook deur die dood heen. Deur sy oordeel, red God die skepping.” (Die ekklesia, 11). 21

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God’s gracious judgement over sinners and the whole fallen creation. Recreation is therefore not formation either, but separation, that is, judgement. Creation itself has no form (“gestalte”) other than the broken form of the cross. Theron professes to know little more about the product of God’s work (creatura), other than it was declared to be “very good”. In Noordmans’ famous formulation, creation is little more than a “spot of light around the cross”. Theron describes the (unity of the) church as an eschatological sign of God’s reign on this basis, since the church becomes visible only in terms of this particular sign. The continuity is therefore condensed to a knife’s edge: it rests on a discernment of this judgement alone. Although this judgement literally makes a world of diffference, it becomes a question whether Theron (and Noordmans) can consistently avoid docetist and even Manichaean undertones.24 How is this message of God’s gracious judgement heard and understood in terms of our human pre-understanding and our vocabularies? Where and how does it touch the reality that is afffijirmed as God’s own creation?25 How can this lead to the sanctifijication of the whole of reality? If re-creation is judgement and no formation, how can this lead to (social) transformation? Jaap Durand’s Skepping, mens, voorsienigheid (1982) includes three sections on 20th century creation theology. With Barth he afffijirms that creation is indeed a matter of faith. It is a confession regarding the identity of the Creator, namely as the loving Father, that is based on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ—not an answer to a speculative question about the origin of all things that could be derived from innate knowledge or observing the world.26 On the basis of the distinction between creatura and creatio, Durand argues that the confession of faith in creation as act of God transcends any human ability to gather knowledge of the world. To infer knowledge of the Creator from the world would also amount to a fatal underestimation of the impact of sin. With Berkhof he suggests that the confession that the world is the work of loving Creator is all but obvious from human experiences of sin, sufffering and death. Such a confession can only follow from God’s revelation. Although he acknowledges a 24  For an exploration of these issues, see Ernst M. Conradie, “Kosmos, kerk en eschaton: In gesprek met Flip Theron”, Ned Geref Teologiese Tydskrif 45:3&4, 788–805. 25  See Theron’s cryptic comments about the incarnation as ex virgine. It is not something that comes up through creation but that overcomes creation in such a way that it is indeed God’s creation that is saved. One is left to wonder with Mary how this may be possible (Luke 1:37). Theron, Die ekklesia, 10–11. 26  Jaap Durand, Skepping, mens, voorsienigheid (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1982), 83–84.

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certain noetic priority for knowledge of God as Saviour, Durand rejects the notion that faith in God as Creator was extrapolated from Israel’s experiences of God’s acts of salvation. He insists that creation and salvation is treated in the biblical texts as inseparable.27 The same applies to the fijirst and the second articles of the creed. With this he hesitantly afffijirms Barth’s Christological concentration if not his point of departure. In a second section Durand explores the question whether this noetic priority of faith in God as Saviour also implies that the covenant has an ontic priority above creation in terms of the divine counsel—as Barth maintained in his notion that creation is the external basis for the covenant. He offfers a sympathetic discussion of Barth’s Christological point of departure, namely that God created for the sake of the covenant with humanity. If Christ as the second person in the triune God can only be understood as incarnate, God necessarily had to create the world. He contrasts Barth’s supralapsarian position with a variety of Roman Catholic and Protestant positions that follow an evolutionary understanding of God’s work, including creation, elevation and completion. In each case God’s act of creation is teleologically directed towards God’s reign, but this may be viewed from the inception (Bavinck?), from the centre (Berkhof ) or from the end (Moltmann and Pannenberg). He also contrasts these with Van Ruler’s return to the more traditional position, namely that Christ’s incarnation must primarily be regarded as God’s “emergency measure”, as a response to sin. Salvation therefore does not imply a replacement of the fallen creation with something new (nova creatio) but that God’s beloved creation, is saved, restored, healed. Unlike Theron, Durand does not regard the debate between supralapsarian and infralapsarian positions as complementary; he criticises both for penetrating so far into the eternal divine counsel.28 If the focus is on God’s eternal decrees, this retracts something from the meaning of

27

 Durand, Skepping, 81–82.  One may wonder to what extent Durand shares Berkouwer’s reservations about the place of creation theology in Barth’s supralapsarian approach. Berkouwer suggests that the manner in which redemption and creation cross each other, imperils the signifijicance and decisiveness of history. He observes that Barth’s supralapsarianism draws him to emphasise the unity of God’s work more than its distinctness. However, Berkouwer suggests that the unity of God’s work and the rejection of a historicising of the works of God (as if God could be surprised by historical developments) are not necessarily contrary to such a step-wise sequence. This suggests that there is a need to avoid both a compartmentalising of the various aspects of God’s work (for which Bavinck and Kuyper have been criticised) and a fusion of God’s work (for which Berkouwer criticises Barth). See G.C. Berkouwer, The triumph of grace in the theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1956), 250–260. 28

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history, of the reality of sin and the ministry of reconciliation. The way in which both creation and salvation is thus understood becomes inevitably docetic.29 Indeed, this focus on history is typical of Durand whole oeuvre.30 In a third section Durand explores the relation between creation and evolution. Although he does not follow Teilhard de Chardin’s position, it is clear that he took note of it with considerable interest. Here too, it becomes clear that Durand does not reduce creation to an extrapolation of faith in God as Saviour. This allows him to explore the relation between faith and science in more detail when compared to Jonker, for example. However, he insists that the boundaries between the disciplines should be respected. Theology cannot say much about the nature of God’s creatura, while science cannot penetrate towards the act of creatio either. If it does, it tends to offfer a substitute for religion that cannot be derived from scientifijic observations.31 The primary task of Christian theology is to reflect on the confession that this world is and remains God’s own beloved creation. Thereby it offfers a theological re-description of this world in which we live (with a focus on creatura). 4. Diverging Notions of Salvation—and Creation After this brief window of wrestling with the relationship between creation and salvation there emerged a need to clarify the notion of salvation itself. If this was not to be understood in neo-Calvinist terms as the “restoration” of the order God established in creation and after the Babel (based on racial diffferences), how could it be re-interpreted? Jonker and Theron, the two systematic theologians at Stellenbosch in the 1980s, explored three diffferent root metaphors for salvation in a series of meditations on alien community, alien righteousness / justice and alien liberation.32 The fijirst volume emphasised the uniqueness of the church as an eschatological community (see below). Inclusion in the household of God takes place only on the basis of God’s grace. The second volume

29

 Durand, Skepping, 96–98.  For this emphasis, see Dirk J. Smit, “In die geskiedenis ingegaan” in Ernst Conradie & Christo Lombard, Discerning God’s justice in church, society and academy: Festschrift for Jaap Durand (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2009), 131–166. 31  Durand, Skepping, 114f. 32  See W.D. Jonker & Flip Theron, Vreemde gemeenskap (Kaapstad: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1981); Vreemde geregtigheid: oor die regverdiging uit die genade alleen (Kaapstad: N.G. Kerkuitgewers, 1983) and Vreemde bevryding (Kaapstad: Lux Verbi, 1989). 30

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offfered a classic exposition of the Lutheran and reformed notion of forensic justifijication: our righteousness is based only on God’s gracious forgiveness (contrary to Arminian and Methodist inclinations), irrespective of diffferences of race, class or culture. The third volume explores the notion of liberation on the same basis—so that it becomes clear that liberation in society can only follow upon justifijication and sanctifijication in an ecclesial context. Freedom comes from forgiveness. This volume is more reactionary than the other two and should be understood against the background of the theological turmoil of the mid-1980s, discussions on the phrase “in a special way the God of the poor and oppressed” in the Belhar confession, resistance against the influence of liberation theology in the then Dutch Reformed Mission Church and an implicit critique of the Kairos document published in 1985. For Jonker, especially, salvation was best understood in terms of the root metaphor of “reconciliation” in Jesus Christ. Christ is the Mediator between us and God.33 Only on this basis is reconciliation in church and society to be approached. Jonker would therefore afffijirm the critique against apartheid theology, namely that it is based on the fundamental irreconcilability of people. He himself was often regarded as a reconciliatory fijigure, epitomised by his famous confession of guilt on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church at the Rustenberg ecumenical conference in 1990.34 In this light, the critique against “church theology” in the Kairos document regarding calls for reconciliation (including the National Initiative for Reconciliation) as avoiding the underlying issues of justice and the quest for democracy must have been hard for Jonker to appreciate. This prompted a more reactionary phase in his later years. One may therefore conclude that soteriology dominated the theological discourse at Stellenbosch during this “chapter.” One is left to wonder whether the emphasis on salvation in Christ suggest a complete lack of interest in the theme of creation35 and in discourse on science and

33

 See Willie Jonker, Christus die Middelaar (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1977).  See the famous confession of guilt in Louw Alberts & Frank Chikane (eds): The road to Rustenburg (Cape Town: Struik, 1991), 92. 35  In an electronic search of all Licenciate, BD, Masters and Doctoral theses completed in systematic theology at Stellenbosch University after 1970 we could locate only two Masters theses on the theme of creation, namely by AF du Toit on the relation between sin and creation in the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr (“Die verhouding tussen skepping en sonde in die teologie van Reinhold Niebuhr”, Magister tesis, Universiteit van Stellenbosch, 1984) and by Willem Moore on creationism (“Die wetenskaplike kreasionisme: ’n Analise”, Magister tesis, Universiteit van Stellenbosch, 1992). 34

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theology in this context. If faith in God as Creator is indeed an extrapolation of faith in God as Saviour, what diffference does it make, if any, to describe such salvation in terms of the root metaphors of forgiveness, reconciliation, sanctifijication, liberation, reconstruction or the formation of a human rights culture? It is striking that creation theology also received very little if any attention in the context of those who used “black and reformed” as a form of self-description (until 2000 outside the Stellenbosch context). Is this a sign that an interest in cosmology all too often constitutes a form of legitimation of the dominant social order? Or may it be understood as a critique against apartheid theology and an emphasis on issues of social justice?36 5. Ecclesial Approaches to Creation In this “chapter” of the story of creation theology the main decisions taken in the previous chapter were afffijirmed and the consequences spelled out. Creation theology is thus regarded as an extrapolation of faith in God as Saviour, especially in Jesus Christ. The focus is on the identity of the Creator, who is precisely as Saviour also the sovereign Lord over the whole universe. This sovereignty is recognised fijirst of all in the church as a community of disciples, the body of Christ. Following the lead of Barth’s Church Dogmatics and the calls for the unity of the church in the church struggle against apartheid, there was an obvious need to emphasise the distinctiveness of the church as an eschatological communion, an “alternative community” (David Bosch), a confessing church (Bonhoefffer & De Gruchy), a cosmic-eschatological sign of God’s coming reign (Theron). Here the church (instead of the university or civil society) is regarded as the primary “public” of theological reflection.37

36  The one exception is the study of L.R.L. Ntoane, A cry for life: An interpretation of “Calvinism” and “Calvin” (Kampen: Kok, 1983). Ntoane’s argues that there are signifijicant diffferences between Calvin and the theological approaches of F.J.M. Potgieter and J.A. Heyns, especially in terms of the way in which the created order is introduced. In this way he embraces Calvin’s theology as an instrument for the black liberation struggle (1983:252), but distances himself from the “Calvinism” which he fijinds in Potgieter, Heyns and others. 37  The emergence of an interest in “public theology” at Stellenbosch came only after 2000. Here it may be noted that it is possible to explore the signifijicance of the Christian faith within various public spheres (including the biophysical environment!) without much reference to the doctrine of creation.

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This ecclesiological turn is perhaps best associated with the legacy of Willie Jonker whose major work on the relevance of the church was published posthumously.38 Here he explores the challenge posed to the church by the Enlightenment (and secularisation) in depth. He carefully describes the “turn to the world” in the theology of Barth and its subsequent influence on various forms of political theology. The focus is on the relevance of the church in human society, not on the world as God’s own beloved creation:39 the starting point remains Christology and any form of natural theology (any point of contact between God and the world, church and society other than Christ) is resisted. The question that Jonker addresses is whether the church is even required in the Holy Spirit’s work in society. Although his sympathy is with Barth, he clearly stresses the role of the church as community of faith in proclaiming the message of salvation from sin.40 He thus afffijirms the ecclesiological turn and insists that the subsequent turn to the world is dependent on that for any adequate form of theology. This ecclesiological turn is also evident in numerous publications in which Dirkie Smit (who already had a contract with Stellenbosch University in the 1990s), following Barth’s lead, explored the confessional roots of Christian theology. Confession is here regarded as embodied confession and as situated discourse. Such embodiment is primarily understood in terms of the body of Christ, so that the church remains the primary “public” of theological reflection. The whole of the Christian faith, including creation theology, is best understood only on that basis. The obvious strength of this emphasis on the distinctiveness of the church is that the prophetic distance from the rest of society can be maintained. In the context of a cultured form of Christianity (most notably in Nazi Germany and apartheid in South Africa) this provided a necessary

38  See Willie Jonker, Die relevansie van die kerk (Wellington: Bybel-Media, 2008). The manuscript was completed around 1988. 39  In the bibliography of Jonker’s publications in a Festschrift for him there is no reference to the theme of creation. See Flip Theron & Johann Kinghorn, Koninkryk, kerk en kosmos: Huldigingsbundel ter ere van Prof W.D. Jonker (Bloemfontein: Pro-Christo, 1989). The closest association is his discussion of the cosmic scope of the work of the Holy Spirit, but there the emphasis is also on the church’s mission in the world. See Jonker, Die Gees van Christus (Pretoria: N.G. Kerkboekhandel, 1981), 248–272. It is quite interesting to see how rarely Jonker uses the term “creation” in his study on the relevance of the church—mainly for the creation of the church by the Word and occasionally eschatologically. It is seldom used in the sense of creatura (although “earth” is used occasionally and world or society continuously) and then typically to discuss the position of liberal theologians. Nevertheless, there is one rather surprising reference to “common grace” (see p. 148). 40  Jonker, Die relevansie van die kerk, 151–153.

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source of inspiration to resist the taming of the power of the gospel to transform church, society and indeed the whole world. It allowed for a critical theological re-engagement with spheres of society such as education, the economy, political processes (and even the bio-physical environment), typically in the form of prophetic critique or by asking what the unique role of the church would be in addressing social concerns. An emphasis on the eschatological uniqueness of the church allows less room to explore the continuity between creation and re-creation or the similarities between the church and the world as God’s own creation. The “Protestant principle” tends to override the “Catholic substance” (Tillich). This made it difffijicult for Stellenbosch theologians to address a number of issues where the relationship between creation as creatura and church required clarifijication. How should the relationship between faith and science be understood especially with respect to big bang cosmology and evolutionary biology? How should the problem of natural sufffering, if not natural evil be addressed? How should medical and psychological data be assessed in dealing with human sexuality and especially homosexuality? How can one account theologically for the continuity between the religion of Israel and the other religions of the Ancient Near East? How, then, should contemporary dialogue with other religious traditions be approached? How should the point of contact between human ways of understanding and the Christian understanding of the gospel be clarifijied hermeneutically? Is it hermeneutically possible to avoid any form of natural theology? If embodied confession may serve as a point of departure for theological reflection, how does one account for the origins of such a confession, for the knowledge of God, for intimations of transcendence? At Stellenbosch the ecclesiological turn elicited a very lively interest in congregational studies by the mid-1980s. Here the emphasis was not so much on a reformed understanding of church order, but on aspects of church growth, the functioning of cell-groups, leadership structures and patterns, the various ministries within the ecclesial community, the task of pastors to equip the laity for such ministries and so forth. Although some reflected theologically on the “dynamics of a community of faith” (Coenie Burger),41 the ecclesiological turn soon developed an ecclesiastical character. The emphasis was on the internal upbuilding of Christian communities (“gemeentebou”), if not on American style “church growth”. In

41  See Coenie Burger, Die dinamika van ’n Christelike geloofsgemeenskap: Nuut gedink oor gemeentes (Cape Town: Lux Verbi, 1991) and Gemeentes in transito: Vernuwingsgeleenthede in ’n oorgangstyd (Cape Town: Lux Verbi, 1995).

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this context there was a complete lack of interest in creation theology— especially the divisive debates on theology and science or homosexuality. The ecclesiological turn thus fostered a narrow preoccupation with the church in a next generation of pastors and theologians. At worst, this led to a corporate style focus on ecclesial management and issues of “leadership”, often borrowing heavily from the corporate world or from psychology. However, since such a narrow preoccupation with the upbuilding of the church would by itself be sterile, there also emerged by the early 1990s a very lively interest in foreign mission. The outreach of the church was therefore emphasised, but this was no longer practised in a cross-cultural way in the South African context—given the legacy of apartheid and the missionary activities of the church that was so deeply associated with that. Instead, within the boundaries of South Africa there gradually emerged an interest in community development and more specifijically the role of the church in such development. Programmes in this area were introduced at Stellenbosch towards the late 1990s. This interest in the engagement of the church in community development later also manifested itself in provisional inquiries regarding earthkeeping ministries. This interest only began to flourish and become more widespread in the Dutch Reformed Church after the turn of the century, thus falling strictly speaking outside the period investigated here. It should be noted that the interest here is not so much in creation theology, except that the beauty of God’s creation (as creatura), the fragility of South Africa’s ecosystems, and the need for nature conservation are emphasised. The ecclesiological focus is maintained. This probably precluded a lively interest in issues of eco-justice although the prophetic stance embedded in Barth’s theology (as recognised by Jonker)42 would later allow for work in such areas, most notably through the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology and its programme on globalisation led by Dr Allan Boesak (also only after 2000).

42  Each of these subsequent developments is discerned by Jonker in his study on the relevance of the church and more specifijically the “turn to the world” in Barth’s theology: the emphasis on mission (as missio Dei), on the social agenda of the church and even on ecological concerns (see p. 156). In a brief note Jonker recognises that dialectical theology was never interested in renewing church structures or to initiative programmes for the upbuilding of congregations (see p. 56), since the church is not understood in cultural or sociological terms but as an eschatological creation through God’s Word (here Jonker does use the word “creation” freely).

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6. Ongoing Fermentation: The Place of “Creation” in Christian Theology Amongst those who resisted apartheid theology and who also criticised the neo-Calvinist notion of creation ordinances there remained some who did not follow the Barthian turn to soteriology and ecclesiology without reservations. One may identify some ongoing fermentation regarding the proper place of “creation” in Christian theology. Such fermentation was prompted by the same list of concerns mentioned above, namely regarding faith and science, the inevitability of natural theology, the use of data from the various sciences in theological argumentation and ethical discourse, the presence of other religions and a range of social concerns. Such fermentation was never dominant at Stellenbosch, at least not up to 2000, but nevertheless made its presence felt in one way or another through colleagues from other institutions, alumni and postgraduate students. The most obvious example where such fermentation is evident is in the occasional publications of Jaap Durand who lived in Stellenbosch and influenced his colleagues and friends in one way or another. Although Barth’s influence was evident on his critique against apartheid in terms of the fundamental irreconcilability of people, Durand maintained a range of other interests in conversation with the social and natural sciences. In his book on democracy ’n Tuiste vir almal (1990) Johann Kinghorn recognises the need to reflect theologically on the signifijicance of this world in which we live now. This follows a hermeneutical understanding of the task of theology, namely not only to proclaim the gospel but to seek “forms of afffijinity” with current social patterns and structures in order to embody and practice the Christian faith in the world. This requires, Kinghorn argues, an adequate creation theology, cosmology and anthropology in order to do justice to the world as world. When theology does not take the world seriously, the world will also not take theology seriously. Christian theology will become nothing but a monologue.43 To avoid creation theology in the aftermath of apartheid theology is to loose touch with reality, to cut the chord between church and society, God and the world, the gospel and the embodiment of the gospel, faith and scientifijic knowledge, grace and nature, Word and flesh.44 Kinghorn thus focuses on

43  See Johann Kinghorn, ’n Tuiste vir almal: ’n Sosiaal-teologiese studie oor ’n gesamentlike demokrasie in Suid-Afrika (Stellenbosch: Sentrum vir Kontekstuele Hermeneutiek, 1990). 44  Kinghorn, ’n Tuiste vir almal, 97–98.

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the world in which we fijind ourselves now and insists that this world is God’s creation, the ordered patterns emerging from the creative love of God.45 This is the world that God loves. This is not to underestimate the reality and distortion of sin, but to recognise that the gospel may have a transformative impact in this world, precisely because it is God’s beloved creation. On this basis Kinghorn explores the afffijinity between the gospel and the emergence of democratic structures in society, based on openness and accountable freedom. In this way he recognises the hermeneutic role of natural theology. Another example is in the work of Christo Lombard (a Stellenbosch alumnus) who did his Masters and Doctoral theses on Arnold van Ruler (at UWC). This offfered an alternative approach to that of Barth, one in which creation theology and the fulfijilment of God’s law becomes central.46 Christ becomes God’s emergency measure that demonstrates God’s radical loyalty to his beloved creation. Here the emphasis is again on creatura and not only on the identity of the Creator. Salvation is not about the Saviour or about salvation or even about being saved but about the being of that which is saved.47 Towards the very end of the period under investigation such fermentation is also evident in contributions by Ernst Conradie, at that stage mainly in conversation with Jürgen Moltmann. The emergence of feminist theology and queer theology, where an interest in so-called non-theological data necessarily plays an important role, only became evident at Stellenbosch after the period under investigation. Conclusion This overview of the ebb and flow of creation theology at Stellenbosch University requires further detailed exposition. It indicates that creation theology at least may serve as a valid lens through which the issues that Stellenbosch theologians struggled with can be viewed. It also indicates

45

 Kinghorn, ’n Tuiste vir almal, 103–104.  See Christo Lombard, “Adama, Thora en dogma: die samehang van aardse lewe, skrif en dogma in die teologie van A.A. van Ruler”, (D.Th. thesis, University of the Western Cape, 1996). 47  See, for example, Arnold A. van Ruler, Verwachting en voltooiing: Een bundel theologische opstellen en voordrachten (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1978), 55. 46

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that the struggle to understand the proper place of creation in the task of Christian theology as a whole remains unresolved. Here Bram van de Beek as an Extraordinary Professor in the Faculty of Theology remains an important, regular and much appreciated conversation partner for Stellenbosch theologians in order to fathom what is at stake in this regard.

SHOULD WE DROP THE FALL? ON TAKING EVIL SERIOUSLY Gijsbert van den Brink ‘The Fall Above All is the Place Where Biology and Theology Conflict’1 Van de Beek on Creation in the Light of the Cross “The roaring lion and the lethal bacteria are God’s creatures, as is the laboring human being with his deadly suffferings. That is the way God created the earth, not as a world that was alien to Him, but as his own world, with which he was as familiar as with the cross on which He was nailed.”2 Viewing creation through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ, Bram van de Beek offfers an account of creation which is sensitive to the fact that the natural world we inhabit has been a world “red in tooth and claw” (Alfred Tennyson) from the very beginning of its existence. Rather than being at odds with what might be expected from a loving God, the myriad forms of predation, waste, sufffering and death in the natural world are reflected in the sufffering and death of Jesus at the cross—which according to the Christian faith tradition is at once a shocking cruelty and the supreme revelation of God’s love. Van de Beek’s doctrine of creation is very much in line with theological accounts of Christian science-and-religion thinkers who take seriously the ramifijications of evolutionary theory. Many of them—among others, Arthur Peacocke, John Haught, George Murphy, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Christopher Southgate, and Celia Deane- Drummond—resort to Christology and especially to the cross of Christ in an attempt to come to terms with the problems of theodicy with which an evolving creation confronts us.3 As far as I know, however, Van de Beek nowhere in his work

 1

 R.J. Berry, “Did Darwin Dethrone Humankind?,” in: R.J. Berry & T.A. Noble (eds), Darwin, Creation and the Fall. Theological Challenges (Nottingham: IVP, 2009), 72. 2  Bram van de Beek, Toeval of schepping? Scheppingstheologie in de context van het moderne denken [Incident or Creation? The Theology of Creation in the Context of Modern Thought] (Kampen: Kok, 2005), 183. 3  Cf. e.g. Arthur Peacocke, “The Cost of New Life,” in: John Polkinghorne (ed.), The Work of Love: Kenosis as Creation (London: SPCK, 2001), 21–42; Niels Henrik Gregersen, “The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World,” Dialog 40 (2001), 192–207; George L. Murphy, The Cosmos in Light of the Cross, (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2003); John F. Haught, God after Darwin, 2nd ed., (Boulder: Westview Press, 2008), 49–60; Christopher Southgate, The

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interacts with any of these authors except Peacocke. Apparently then, it was his keen theological intuition (and probably his conscience as a biologist as well) which led him to a vision that closely resembles that of leading experts in the science-and-religion debate. However this may be, being a theological maverick in many respects, Van de Beek appears to be quite an ‘ordinary’ modern theologian in his doctrine of creation. Perhaps we should even say that he is at the forefront of where Christian theology is heading in the wake of the discoveries of contemporary evolutionary science. On closer inspection, however, Van de Beek’s main argument for his view of creation as imbued with evil, sufffering and sin is intriguingly different from that of his peers. In fact, Van de Beek hardly appeals to the current state of the art in the evolutionary sciences. Rather, his argument is that we should not attribute all forms of sufffering that we encounter in creation to some kind of historical Fall. That is not because this notion has been falsifijied by evolutionary history, but because it would turn human sin into a merely accidental and accessory phenomenon—thus not taking it seriously enough. “What concerns me is that we humans are sinful rather than just having sins. One may connect this with a historical Fall, but usually things don’t work that way. Rather, the idea that humans have been created well and that only then sin came in is used as an argument to underline the goodness of present-day human beings, with their human possibilities and talents.”4 In short, Van de Beek rejects the notion of a historical Fall because according to him it implies an overly optimistic anthropology that fails to take evil seriously enough. Instead, we should consider the many evils and suffferings of our world as inherent to God’s creative purposes, although we do not know why God created such a world.5 But is that true? Does the traditional notion of a historical Fall indeed detract from the seriousness of sin and evil, so that we should rather admit that creation was ‘fallen’ right from the beginning? Van de Beek’s Groaning of Creation. God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Louisville: WJK Press, 2008), 48–52, 56–59, 75–77 (but cf. the caveats on 50); Celia Deane-Drummond, Christ and Evolution (London: SCM Press, 2009), 170–185. 4  Bram van de Beek, “De vrije gunst die eeuwig Hem bewoog” [The Free Grace that Eternally Moved God], Reformatorisch Dagblad, September 24th 2010. 5  “Christ brings to light the truth of the world: the truth of the cross, of sufffering, guilt and death. We don’t have to close our eyes for these things in the world. For they are real. This is God’s world. Why this is so? I can’t give an answer. I can only observe it.” Van de Beek, Toeval of schepping?, 236.

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claims on the issue tie in with a wider debate among Christian believers. Therefore, in this contribution I would like to assess what is at stake in this debate. To what extent are the scientifijic and theological reasons for dismissing the notion of a (pre-)historical Fall that brought sin into the world convincing? Let us fijirst turn to the scientifijic side of the issue. The Scientifijic Story One might argue that it is wrong to start a theological account of the Fall by looking at the science of human origins. After all, theology has to concentrate on its core business, which is to think through the presuppositions and implications of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as testifijied by the scriptures. Scientifijic arguments belong to a diffferent ‘language game’ that should not be confused with theology, and should at best be taken into account after the proper theological work has been done. True as this may be, however, when we bring scientifijic considerations to the fore only as an after-thought we might easily underestimate their force and misunderstand their import. Therefore, we look fijirst at the scientifijic story, not to let our theological account be dictated by or conflated with it but to realize which questions should be taken into account and with which tensions we may be confronted. So what is the scenario that emerges from the contemporary scientifijic study of human origins? Roughly speaking, the main lines of the story are as follows. The human species came into being through longstanding processes of evolution. Sharing a common ancestry with the apes, our ancestors looked less like modern humans and more like the ancestors of the apes the more we go back in time. This is clear from the fossil record as it has been established during the last century or so. Starting from the oldest hominids called Ardipithecus (dated 5–4 million years ago), the brain size of our ancestors gradually increased when it went from Australopithecus to Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens and fijinally Homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. the modern-looking human being (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is most often believed to have stemmed from Homo sapiens through a separate branch that did not survive the evolutionary process). The oldest fossils of Homo sapiens have been found in Africa, and they are usually believed to date back some 500.000 years ago; the fijirst modern-looking members of Homo sapiens seem to have appeared between 200.000 and 100.000 years ago. Recent studies of genetic diversity in the present-day human population confijirm these timescales, and further suggest that our ancestors were

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at a minimum number (a so-called bottleneck) about 150.000 years ago, so roughly around the transition to modern humans. This smallest group, however, must still have consisted of at least 5,000–10,000 people, rather than coinciding with only one pair of individuals. Thus, polygenism (i.e. the theory that we humans originally stem from many diffferent ancestors) is much more plausible than monogenism (according to which humans ultimately stem from a single pair). Remarkably, however, the low level of genetic variety in contemporary humankind strongly suggests that we all descend from one and the same population rather than stemming from several geographic regions. From Africa the offfspring of this fijirst group of the modern-looking Homo sapiens spread into Europe and Asia, then to Australia and the Pacifijic islands, and fijinally to the Americas.6 In the evolutionary processes that led to the human species as we now know it, natural selection played an important role. Our ancestors had to compete with others for food, shelter and other scarce resources. They had to protect themselves from predators and other threats, and so they developed sophisticated mechanisms of defense and aggression in order to survive as a species in the struggle for life. These mechanisms have been studied in animals that are relatively close to human beings from a genetic point of view, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, and it turns out that “practically all of the overt acts regarded as ‘sinful’ in humans are part of the normal, natural repertoire of behavior in other species” such as these.7 Bullying, deception, infanticide, cannibalism, lethal warfare against neighboring groups—all these types of aggressive self-serving behavior not only have been observed, but seem to be pervasive among many species.8 In general, the animal world is much more cruel than many people realize, with sufffering and violence being endemic in it. Sometimes the causing of extreme pain and slow deaths to other animals is built into the very structure of an animal’s organism. To be sure, we also know of many

6

 Although there are some minor variations, these data are commonly accepted, also by many scientists who are committed Christians. Cf. e.g. Deborah B. Haarsma & Loren D. Haarsma, Origins. A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, and Evolution (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive, 2007), 199–203; Berry, “Did Darwin?,” 56–57. For the genetic details, see Francis Collins, The Language of God, New York 2006, 126; Dennis Venema, “Genesis and the Genome: Genomics Evidence for Human-Ape Common Ancestry and Ancestral Hominid Population Sizes,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62 (2010), 166–178. For a somewhat more detailed picture, see Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (Oxford: Monarch Books, 2008), 214–225. 7  As says Catholic paleontologist Daryl P. Domning, Original Selfijishness. Original Sin and Evil in the Light of Evolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 102. 8  See for examples Downing, Original Selfijishness, 102–104.

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examples of social cooperation and other forms of ‘virtuous’ conduct among animals; but even these patterns of behavior are often believed to serve the survival of their own species (or genes), showing what we might call a form of collective self-interest.9 If we human beings emerged from this realm of violent primates, inheriting many if not all of the character traits and behavioral patterns just mentioned, it seems that Van de Beek must be right when he argues that there has never been a pristine time when everything was still alright.10 More specifijically, it seems that this scenario does not allow for some historical or primordial Fall. Death and decay, sufffering and starvation have been part of the natural world long before humanity appeared on the scene, so that nature did not ‘fall’ into such a state as a result of human behavior. However, not only such realities, but even—and this may be the hardest part of the scientifijic story—we human beings ourselves seem to have been aggressive savages from the very beginning of our existence. Rather than having fallen it seems that we were ‘created fallen.’11 No wonder that Arthur Peacocke bluntly says: “The traditional interpretation of the third chapter of Genesis that there was a historical ‘Fall,’ an action by our human progenitors that is the explanation of biological death, has to be rejected. (. . .) There was no golden age, no perfect past, no individuals, ‘Adam’ or ‘Eve’ from whom all human beings have descended and declined and who were perfect in their relationships and behaviour.”12 In short, things have never been substantially better than they are today, so there is no reason to speak of a historical ‘Fall’ into the present state. Or is there? Theological Considerations Not being a scientist, I am not competent either to confijirm or to contradict the picture of human descent that was sketched in the previous section. Perhaps, some time spans or numbers will turn out to be somewhat exaggerated and further research will lead to more nuanced conclusions.  9  Downing, Original Selfijishness, 106–107; cf. John R. Schneider, “Recent Genetic Science and Christian Theology on Human Origins,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62 (2010), 202. 10  Van de Beek, Toeval of schepping?, 188. 11  Jefff Astley, “Evolution and Evil. The Diffference Darwinism Makes in Theology and Spirituality,” in: Stephen C. Barton & David Wilkinson (eds), Reading Genesis after Darwin (Oxford: OUP, 2009), 173. 12  Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientifijic Age, enlarged ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 222–223.

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Perhaps, some of the estimations were put forward by scientists with a strong view in the creation-evolution debate, who were subconsciously led by the wish to come up with ‘hard facts’ that are devastating to their anti-evolutionist opponents.13 Anyhow, there are still many uncertainties when it comes to human origins. Questioning or qualifying widely held scientifijic assumptions, however, is too easy a way out of the problems here—especially when we only retreat to such a strategy when the reported data for some reason do not please us. So let us take for granted that the scenario we just sketched is true, and that we have to drop the idea of an historical Fall. To what kind of theological concerns would that lead? As far as I can see, there are at least three corollaries which might be deemed problematic from a theological point of view. Let us discuss these in turn. 1. First, it is sometimes argued that without a historical Fall, there is no longer any need for atonement or for a Savior. As a creationist battle cry goes: “No Adam, no Fall; no Fall, no Atonement; no Atonement, no Savior.”14 If that were true, the heart of the gospel would be jeopardized. Clearly, however, it is not true. The nature and necessity of Christ’s atoning work do not logically depend on the way in which we became sinners, but on the fact that we are sinners. And neither evolutionary theory in general nor the specifijic picture of human descent given above rules out this fact. To the contrary, the seriousness of our sinfulness (both as a state and as a series of acts) and thus our need for redemption is even underlined by our evolutionary background, as is sometimes acknowledged by theologians who take this background seriously. Christopher Southgate, for example, claims that liberal models of atonement as only a subjective experience in human beings provoked by Christ’s example of self-giving love won’t do the job. Rather, “the impact of the Christ-event must be an objective one.”15

13  This is not as outrageous as it may seem; e.g., some of the data given above go back to publications of Francisco J. Ayala, who acted in a highly politicized lawsuit as a witness against attempts to introduce ID-theory in US school programs. One need not put into doubt Ayala’s integrity in order to hope that also more disinterested scientists are involved in the study of evolutionary genetics. 14  Cf. George McCready Price, Back to the Bible (Washington: Review & Herald, 1920), 124. For a recent version of what is essentially the same claim, see David Anderson, “Creation, Redemption and Eschatology,” in Wayne Grudem (ed.), Should Christians Embrace Evolution? (Nottingham: IVP, 2009), 91. 15  Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 76. Downing, Original Selfijishness, 152, is more inconsistent when he conceptualizes salvation in terms of the life of Jesus being offfered to us by God as a pattern we should imitate, because this largely Pelagian view fijits ill with his emphasis on original sin as handed on by propagation rather than imitation (145).

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To be sure, our understanding of what salvation (or redemption) actually amounts to will be afffected by the way we view our evolutionary origins, since it becomes difffijicult to unpack this notion in terms of a return to a perfect past state. It is false, however, to suggest that the very structure of Christianity collapses as a result of this. As George Murphy argues: “The Christian claim is that a savior is needed because all people are sinners. It is that simple. Why all people are sinners is an important question but an answer to it is not required in order to recognize the need for salvation.”16 2. Secondly, the evolutionary picture of humankind as emerging from an animal world full of sufffering and violence seems hard to reconcile with the Christian confession of the goodness of creation. This is not a matter of some scattered biblical texts from the Genesis-account. Rather, taking its cue from these texts, belief in the goodness of creation became of crucial importance for the early Church in its struggle with widespread dualist assumptions of Gnostic and Marcionite progeny. Thus, the afffijirmation that the natural world essentially reflects God’s goodness rather than belonging to the realm of evil became a core tenet of Christian thought. But how can the natural world reflect God’s goodness if from its very beginning it was pervaded by huge amounts of violence and pain, the extent of which we cannot even begin to fathom? This is, of course, a very hard question. Two things should be pointed out, however. First, evolutionary biology makes a diffference here in a quantitative rather than in a qualitative way. The atheist philosopher Quentin Smith relates what once happened in the middle of the night when he slept in a cabin in the woods: Cries of terror and extreme agony rent the night, intermingled with the sounds of jaws snapping bones and flesh being torn from limbs. One animal was being savagely attacked, killed and then devoured by another. A clearer case of a horrible event in nature, a natural evil, has never been presented to me. It seemed to me self-evident that the natural law that animals must savagely kill and devour each other in order to survive (. . .) was sufffijicient evidence that God did not exist.17

Now note that nothing in this report is dependent on our knowledge of evolution. Smith’s horrifying experience can be, and no doubt has been, shared by countless people living long before Darwin. Believing in the

16  Murphy, “Roads to Paradise and Perdition: Christ, Evolution, and Original Sin,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 58 (2006), 110. 17  Quentin Smith, “An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29 (1991), 159.

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essential goodness of creation has always been in many respects a belief against appearances. Of course, that is the case even more so now we have to accept an exponentially longer past during which such ‘atrocities’ have been taking place. How can we reconcile this idea with God’s goodness? However, the conventional solution—that God has punished the animal world in this way as a response to the human rebellion against Him— leads to equally serious questions concerning God’s goodness and justice as the idea that God created the natural world in this vulnerable way right from the beginning. When the traditional explanation of animal sufffering (as God’s response to human sin) does not strike us as challenging God’s goodness to the same extent, this may be due to the very fact that it is a traditional explanation: it can be traced back to the early Church18 and we have become quite familiar with it throughout the centuries. But there is no biblical warrant for it.19 Second, many evolutionary scientists as well as religion-and-science scholars point out that the huge amount of waste, starvation, sufffering and premature death in nature is inextricably connected to the rise of everything we value most in creation, including our own human lives. Following up on others, Christopher Southgate develops this ‘no pain no gain’ observation as follows: “I hold that the sort of universe we have, in which complexity emerges in a process governed by (. . .) Darwinian natural selection, and therefore by death, pain, predation, and self-assertion, is the only sort of universe that could give rise to the range, beauty, complexity and diversity of creatures the Earth has produced.”20 To my mind, this “only way argument,” as Southgate dubs it, unduly compromises God’s omnipotence,21 and Southgate himself is well aware of the fact that, taken on its own, it cannot function as an adequate form of theodicy. Still, however, the argument helpfully reminds us of the fact that goodness may be exemplifijied in more complex ways than we might expect. As the fijinal chapters of the book of Job make clear, we are perhaps not in a position to evaluate the nature of God’s goodness as exhibited in the natural world. And biblical scholars have forcefully argued that the afffijirmations of 18

 Cf. Theophilus of Antioch (c. 115–185), To Autolyckus, II 17.  Cf. Henri Blocher, “The Theology of the Fall and the Origin of Evil,” in: Berry & Noble (eds), Darwin, 165: “The idea that animal death and catastrophic events, earthquakes or tsunamis, are consequences of Adam’s disobedience (. . .) lack[s] all biblical warrant.” Cf. John J. Bimson, “Reconsidering a ‘Cosmic Fall’,” Science & Christian Belief 18 (2006), 63–81 for a discussion of the relevant biblical texts that supports this thesis. 20  Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 29. 21  Cf. Gijsbert van den Brink, Almighty God (Kampen: Pharos, 1993). 19

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Genesis 1 that everything which God had made was (very) good should be interpreted in functional rather than in straightforwardly aesthetic terms: creation is good not because everything is so beautiful, but because it is perfectly fijit for the purposes God has with it.22 If this is correct, we might still be able to afffijirm creation’s original and essential goodness even in the face of all the natural evils that have always beset it. 3. Third, however, dispensing with the notion of a historical Fall has yet another corollary that should be carefully taken into account before paying the price, and this one brings us back to Van de Beek’s point about taking human evil seriously. For contrary to Van de Beek, it can be argued that the notion of the Fall does precisely that, i.e. taking evil seriously in its sheer otherness rather than seeing it as part of the fabric of life. If we humans fell into a state of sinfulness by a wrong choice of our own free will, we cannot refer to ‘the way we were built’ as an excuse for our conduct. Nor can we point to some external cosmic power to condone ourselves. Thus, the doctrine of the Fall enabled Christianity to navigate the narrow path between the Scylla of monism and the Charybdis of dualism. Moral evil is neither inherent in the natural world, nor is it to be ascribed to some evil cosmic force. Rather, it is we humans who are to blame for it in the end. This notion of the Fall is closely connected to the doctrine of original sin: the wrong choices of our earliest ancestors somehow afffected our moral situation, causing such a strong inclination to sin in us that sin became “inevitable though not necessary” for all of us.23 This implies a fairly dim view of the human possibilities, but still one that safeguards our personal responsibility rather than ‘naturalizing’ evil. The one who is usually seen as the fountainhead of this doctrine of the Fall and original sin is Augustine. Accordingly, those who want to dispense with the notions of the Fall and original sin, either in the name of human autonomy or in the name of evolutionary science,24 usually consider Augustine as the main culprit. As Alan Jacobs has pointed out, however, many pre-Augustinian readings of Paul on the issue strongly resemble Augustine’s views, as do secular post-Enlightenment voices such 22  E.g. Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11. A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 645. 23  Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Scribner’s, 1941), Vol. 1, 150: “The Christian view of man (. . .) afffijirms that the evil in man [sic] is a consequence of his inevitable though not necessary unwillingness to acknowledge his dependence (. . .).” 24  An example of the fijirst is Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988), 98–126; an example of the second is Schneider, “Recent Genetic Science,” 202–203.

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as, for example, that of Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism.25 So perhaps, after all, Augustine was just a good reader of Paul’s letters. To be sure, the portrayal of Paradise as a state of what Augustine considered to be perfection, with for example no desires being involved in sexual intercourse, belongs to his own embellishments. Augustine’s basic intuition, however, that “sin came into the world” (Romans 5:12) rather than being inherent in the world was thoroughly Pauline. Since John Hick made his by now classic distinction between Augustinian and Irenaean types of theodicy,26 it has become common to suggest that Irenaeus developed a doctrine of the Fall and original sin that is “very diffferent” from Augustine’s views.27 Indeed, Irenaeus considered the fijirst sin as “a premature step into adult independence (. . .) rather than a fall from a state of perfection already achieved.”28 But the contrast is often over-stated, since Irenaeus endorsed many aspects of the doctrines of the Fall and original sin that were to be developed in more detail by Augustine. For example, like Augustine, Irenaeus did not think of the Fall as an inevitable event; further, he held that the sin of Adam not only inflicted death upon his descendants, but also drew them into bondage to sin, because it was humanity that sinned in Adam.29 All this is hardly surprising, since it stems from a natural reading of Paul’s argument in Romans 5, according to which “the many died through the one man’s trespass” and “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (vs. 15, 18; NRSV; note that these afffijirmations do not rest on the notorious crux interpretum in vs.12). But then, presumably Paul’s line of reasoning in Romans 5 stems from the infelicitous fact that he was “not a careful reader” of the Genesis-

25  Alan Jacobs, Original Sin. A Cultural History (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 32–33, who especially criticizes Pagels here. In personal communication (November 17, 2010), Professor Pagels has pointed out that she begs to difffer with Jacobs on Tertullian, whom she considers to be a strong defender of human free will. While confijirming this, J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Rev. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1978), 175–176 offfers several quotations to show that Tertullian nevertheless considered human nature to be “transformed from its primitive integrity into rebellion against its Creator, the causal connexion being provided by the quasi-physical identity of all souls with Adam” (176). 26  Cf. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London: MacMillan, 1966). 27  Bimson, “Doctrines of the Fall,” 119. 28  A.N.S. Lane, “Irenaeus on the Fall and Original Sin,” in: Berry & Noble (eds), Darwin, 145. 29  Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3 18, 7; 5 16, 3; 5 17, 1; 5 21, 1, as quoted by Lane, “Irenaeus,” 141–142. Cf. M.C. Steenberg, Irenaeus on Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 168: “An attempt to read Irenaeus as presenting no scheme whatsoever of an Edenic ‘Fall’ would be to overestimate the case.”

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narrative on the garden of Eden?30 Again, this remains to be seen. To be sure, the notion of original sin is absent from Genesis 2–3, and in other respects as well Paul develops the themes fijiguring in this passage in his own way (to some extent drawing upon forms of exegesis current in Second Temple Judaism).31 However, Christopher Southgate rightly argues that “it is perfectly appropriate for a community of interpreters [I suppose he has in mind the Christian church, GvdB] prayerfully to decide that a certain text is a ‘hermeneutical lens’ that allows a particular theme in scripture to be understood in a particular way.”32 Moreover, there are important continuities between both texts, such as that Genesis 2–3 too pictures moral evil as a strange and inexplicable intrusion in God’s creation rather than as its inevitable shadow-side. As Cornelius Plantinga says: “Sin is an anomaly, an intruder, a notorious gate-crasher. Sin does not belong to God’s world, but somehow it has gotten in.”33 This, I propose, is what we mean by characterizing the human choice for sin as a fall. To be sure, the use of this metaphor can be criticized on various counts. There is nothing in the text of Genesis 3 which entails it; it is open to misinterpretation in Greek and Gnostic ways, as the metaphysical fall from a higher spiritual level of being into the lower realm of the material world; and last but not least, the image of a downward movement easily conjures up the spurious idea of a pre-Fall state which was by all means perfect. Still, according to the Genesis account the fijirst sin implied a taking of the wrong track which can not so easily (if at all) be undone. It involved a transition to another state of being-in-the-world, which henceforward became characterized by the pervasiveness and the serious consequences of sin. The alternative reading of Genesis 3 as symbolizing the coming-of-age of humanity and thus portraying an upward rather than a downward movement,34 is incompatible with the severe

30  Patricia Williams, Doing without Adam and Eve. Sociobiology and Original Sin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 42, who hardly substantiates this claim; in fact, like in Pagel’s book (n. 29) her extensive criticism of Augustine (40–47) stands in contrast with the near-absence of any serious discussion of Paul. 31  Cf. the classic study of N.P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1927), 118–122. 32  Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 146, who adds that Paul’s understanding of the Fall and original sin can be seen as such a lens through which one may read Genesis 3 (although he himself does not do so). 33  Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be. A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 88. 34  As, e.g., in L.M. Bechtel, “Genesis 2.4b–3.24: A Myth about Human Maturation,” JSOT 67 (1995), 3–26.

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God-given punishments in response to the fijirst couple’s acts (vs. 14–19), as well as with the gradual increase in evil-doing and sufffering in the subsequent chapters of Genesis (from which Genesis 2–3 is all too often isolated). As John Bimson rightly notes, “the story is one of catastrophic losses rather than gains.”35 Note that, if indeed sin is an intrusion in God’s creation in this way, the Fall should be seen as somehow historical. By this I do not mean that its occurrence can be made plausible by using the tools and standards of contemporary historiography—clearly, it can not. Nor do I mean to suggest that the Fall-narrative should be read ‘literally’ (i.e., taking the text at face value); it is widely acknowledged by biblical scholars that the text displays symbolic imagery, fijigurative elements and other literary conventions of the time. What I do mean is that the story “deals with an originative event that gave a catastrophic twist to our relationship with God.”36 The Genesis narrative does not portray human sin as equi-temporal with God’s good creation—an observation which debilitates the so-called paradigmatic reading of the passage, according to which it only symbolizes the universal human tendency to seek to be ‘as Gods’ by grasping at more than is given to us.37 No doubt the passage has this paradigmatic function, but apart from that it also has an aetiological function: it attempts to answer the question how we humans came to be this way.38 As soon as we conflate creation and Fall, we move to a substantially diffferent view of the nature of evil, giving it a metaphysical rather than a historical status. To be sure, in one way the metaphysical view takes evil more seriously. For if sin is a historically contingent rather than a metaphysically necessary phenomenon, it is not bound up with human nature and therefore we can in principle be liberated from it without losing our humanity. In fact, the gospel tells us that there has already been a person with a fully human nature who did not get contaminated by evil, and by whose saving work we can indeed be liberated from sin and its

35

 Bimson, “Doctrines of the Fall,” 112.  Bimson, “Doctrines of the Fall,” 112; cf. Blocher, “Theology of the Fall,” 159: “The issue is not whether we have a historical account of the Fall, but whether we have the account of a historical Fall.” 37  Thus Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 101–102. 38  Cf. Bimson, “Doctrines of the Fall,” 109, who refers to various recent contributions to biblical scholarship in support of this aetiological interpretation. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2 (Göttingen: VandenHoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 301–302, doesn’t do enough justice to this point. 36

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consequences. Fortunately, the gospel nowhere requires us to take moral evil seriously to such an extent as to consider it irredeemable. Rather, it belongs to “the sunny sides of sin”39 that it is a historically contingent and therefore redeemable reality. In another way, however, it is the historical view which takes human evil more seriously, because if it were a necessary consequence of the way the world is built (as in the metaphysical view) then clearly we could not be blamed for it.40 This suggestion, however, makes God’s indignation about human sin as it is palpable throughout the Bible entirely unintelligible; clearly, even though we are often misled by seductive powers (cf. the role of the snake in Genesis 3), in the end it is we humans who are to be blamed for our wrong-doings.41 Therefore, contrary to Van de Beek’s suggestion, we need a historical notion of the Fall precisely to take evil seriously—as seriously, that is, as the biblical narrative of creation, Fall and redemption requires us to do.42 But is such a notion possible at all, given what we found above (pp. 763–765) on the evolutionary background and development of our species? That is the question to which we must now fijinally turn. Understanding the Fall in an Evolutionary Context It is often claimed that what ‘we know’ about our evolutionary backgrounds does not allow for the possibility of a historical Fall as sketched in the previous section. Yet, during the past couple of years several scholars have come up with proposals for re-imagining the biblical Fall within an evolutionary context. Some of these proposals are more plausible than others. The most vulnerable ones are those which try to harmonize biblical and scientifijic sets of data while ignoring the distinctive character of theology as having to do fijirst and foremost with our human relationship to God. Other proposals, however, are more nuanced and sophisticated, 39  Dutch theologian A.A. van Ruler (1908–1970), who was famous for the playfulness of his theological style, once wrote a short paper under this title; cf. “Zonnigheden in de zonde [1965],” in: Gijsbert van den Brink & Dirk van Keulen (eds), Van schepping tot Koninkrijk. Teksten (1947–1970) uit het theologisch oeuvre van A.A. van Ruler (Barneveld: Nederlands Dagblad, 2008), 121–124. 40  Cf. Lane, “Irenaeus,” 148, and especially Blocher, In the Beginning (Leicester: IVP, 1984), 160–170. 41  Thus, correctly, C. John Collins, “Adam and Eve as Historical People, and Why It Matters,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62 (2010), 155. 42  Cf. Williams, Ideas of the Fall, xxxiii: “We conclude, then, that (. . .) it is impossible to lift the Fall out of the time-series without falling either into Manicheism or unmoral monism.”

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in that they try to respect the integrity of both the sciences and theology but still attempt to relate the two in meaningful ways. To start with, several authors have suggested that the fijirst humans who according to the Genesis narrative were addressed by God need not necessarily be equated with the fijirst members of Homo sapiens. As Derek Kidner already argued some decades ago: “[T]he intelligent beings of a remote past, whose bodily and cultural remains give them the clear status of ‘modern man’ to the anthropologist, may yet have been decisively below the plane of life which was established in the creation of Adam.”43 Yet, this seems unconvincing since the Genesis narrative emphasizes the role of Adam and Eve as somehow standing at the source of all humanity. For example, Eve is being called “the mother of all living” (Gen.3:20).44 Therefore, it is more reasonable to suppose that the bestowal of the image of God on certain hominids more or less coincided with the dawn of human consciousness. Given the fact that dates and periods of time in the study of human origins are subject to ongoing (and probably neverending) debate, I would rather refrain from speculating about them, but as we have seen the usual estimations of when this happened are somewhere between 200,000 to 100,000 years ago. What is more important, however, is that as present-day human beings we all stem from a single population. To be sure, as we have also seen this population never seems to have consisted of only one pair of individuals. Therefore, in making sense of the Genesis-story we have to view Adam and Eve as the tribal leaders or otherwise the main representatives (the ‘federal heads’ one might say) of this original group. Interestingly enough, this corresponds to the ambivalence in the Hebrew text of Genesis as to whether ‘Adam’ should be interpreted as a proper name or as a general noun (‘the human being’). As Karl Rahner pointed out, even in terms of polygenism the fijirst population of humans was a biological-historical unity, since they shared both the same biotope and their divine destination.45

43  Derek Kidner, Genesis (Leicester: IVP, 1967), 28; Kidner’s approach has recently been adopted by Tim Keller, “Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople,” (2010), 10–12 (see http://fijirstthings.com/blogs/evangel/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Keller_white_paper .pdf; last visited November 18, 2010). 44  See Bimson, “Doctrines of the Fall,” 116, over against Berry, “This Cursed Earth: Is ‘the Fall’ Credible?,” Science & Christian Belief 11 (1999), 38–39, and Alexander, Creation or Evolution, 241–243. 45  Karl Rahner, “Evolution and Original Sin,” Concilium 3 (1967), 6/13 (Church and World), 32. Note that this is also in line with a famous proof-text for monogenism, Acts 17:26, which literally says that God made all nations “from one.”

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At some moment in time, then, this population was confronted with the dilemma of either responding to God’s calling or rejecting it by continuing to behave in accordance with the aggressive inclinations which it had inherited from its animal ancestors. At that crucial juncture of history, they took the wrong track: The fijirst human beings had a responsible choice between their lustful, aggressive dispositions and the more altruistic, co-operative dispositions that would have led them to grow in the knowledge and love of God. (. . .) From a religious viewpoint, the deepest purpose of human existence is the free development of a relationship of joyful obedience to the will of God, within a community of justice, peace and love. It is that purpose which was rejected when the fateful choice was made of a path of autonomy, of rational self-will, which placed the descendants of those fijirst humans in bondage to self and its consequent conflict and sufffering.46

We may appropriately call this dramatic change the Fall. Even if we think of it as a process rather than a single event,47 it must have started somewhere and at some time. The fijirst human beings fell, not from a state of spiritual perfection but surely from a state of innocence, since they had not been morally responsible beings before the enormous widening of their consciousness and their emerging awareness of the divine law. In that sense, and in that sense only, they lived in what has traditionally been called a ‘state of integrity.’48 This is not to deny that they used to kill, deceive, to be sexually promiscuous and to do other things that are sinful for us;49 but as Paul says, when no law applies—and that is the case as long as there is no relationship within which a moral law can be established—sin cannot be imputed (Romans 5:13). Rather than preserving this state of guiltlessness, however, the fijirst humans chose to spoil it once they became aware of their responsibility. 46

 Keith Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium (Oxford: Oneworld, 1998), 133.  Cf. John Polkinghorne, “Scripture and an Evolving Creation,” Science & Christian Belief 21 (2009), 166: “That human turning inwards was the Fall—not a single disastrous ancestral event, but a process that was an attempt to claim human autonomy and to refuse heteronomous dependence upon divine grace, a deeply mistaken move of which we are now all the heirs.” For an argument in favor of ‘gradual polygenism’ as distinct from ‘punctiliar polygenism,’ see Denis O. Lamoureux, I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 138–140. 48  Or should we, following Marguerite Schuster, The Fall and Sin. What We Have Become as Sinners (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 15–16, argue that they were even in a ‘state of righteousness’ in so far as already before they sinned they had a primitive moral conscience, being aware of right and wrong in light of the command of God? But this is a largely theoretical discussion. 49  Cf. George Murphy, “Roads to Paradise,” 114. 47

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One may object that given their evolutionary background it would have been very difffijicult for them to avoid the aggressive acts of their ancestors; but then we must imagine that their awareness of God and God’s aims with them “was particularly clear, uncluttered by the spiritual darkness that eventually clouded the minds of the human race because of its turning away from God.”50 It was this turning away from God’s fellowship rather than the kind of morally wrong behavior as such which made the fijirst human beings guilty. Moreover, from their ancestors they had also inherited dispositions to forms of socially constructive and cooperative behavior (as we still see these in many primates today).51 However, they used their newly acquired capacities of high-level consciousness and free choice in the wrong way, by refusing to trust and obey God and turning their gifts into a means of self-assertion. As natural as that had been for their ancestors, as unnatural this was for them.52 From that time onwards, however, the inclination to turn away from God spread both synchronically within the fijirst population and diachronically to all of humankind. For our purposes here there is no need to specify the means that were (and still are) operative in this spreading of human sin. Especially, there is no need to limit this to genetic transmission.53 Other trajectories should be taken into account with equal seriousness. First of all, there are congenital traits that are not genetically encoded but have to do with our earliest experiences, such as fetal alcohol syndrome. More importantly perhaps, there are forms of social and cultural heredity, operating through parenting, and more broadly through a culture’s adat and through this world’s ‘principalities and powers.’ Schwager has imaginatively elaborated the social aspect in terms of René Girard’s mimetic theory, reading Genesis 1–11 in light of girardian patterns of rivalry and aggression spawned by

50  Robin Collins, “Evolution and Original Sin,” in: Keith B. Miller (ed.), Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 470. 51  Murphy, “Roads to Paradise,” 114; for high appraisals of primate social behavior, see e.g. Frans de Waal, Good Natured (Cambridge: HUP, 1996). In line with this, some (e.g. Deane-Drummond, Christ and Evolution, 162), ascribe morality to nonhumans as well as to humans. 52  Raymond Schwager, Banished from Eden. Original Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation (Leominster: Gracewing, 2006), 52. 53  For the difffijiculties of such a biological view of the ‘mechanism’ of original sin, see Collins, ‘Evolution and Original Sin,’ 472. However, as Blocher, Original Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 124–126 argues, the possibility of biological factors being involved should not be ruled out; Blocher points to psycho-analytical insights that may help us understand why (untamed) sexuality “is so closely bound up with our commonest apprehensions of original sin and actually contributes to its tyranny” (124).

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competitive imitation.54 Last but not least, not only the Catholic but also the Protestant tradition holds that there is such a thing as the spiritual privation of God’s fellowship and the loss of God’s ‘supernatural’ gifts, resulting in a deep sense of sinful alienation and anxiety.55 Presumably, all these factors contribute to the universal spreading of sin throughout the generations.56 At the same time none of them annuls our individual responsibility for our sins. In such ways, then, we can make sense of the classical notions of the Fall and original sin in an evolutionary context. In doing so, we are not naively harmonizing every element of the Genesis-accounts with contemporary science, as if the results of modern science are somehow already hidden in the Bible. Rather, we try to show how the biblical narrative of creation, fall and redemption provides a theological understanding of our common history as human beings.57 This theological understanding enables us to take human evil more seriously than metaphysical accounts that consider it a necessary ingredient of our natural world—though not so seriously as to consider it irredeemable.58

54

 Schwager, Banished from Eden, 15–25; cf. the summary and adoption of this approach by Bimson, “Doctrines of the Fall,” 118–119. 55  Blocher, Original Sin, 127 (mentioning Calvin, Turretin and Edwards); Collins, “Evolution,” 471–473. Cf. Rahner, “The Sin of Adam,” Theological Investigations XI (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 255–262. 56  Cf. Collins, “Evolution,” 470–471; Murphy, “Roads to Paradise,” 116. 57  The view that the Fall narrative of Genesis 3 has only an isolated and marginal position in the Old Testament has been refuted by T. Stordalen, Echoes of Eden. Genesis 2–3 and Symbolism of the Eden Garden in Biblical Hebrew Literature (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), e.g. 474. 58  I am grateful to the scientists Cees Dekker, René Fransen and Pieter J. Slootweg for their valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this contribution.

EPISTEMOLOGY, ONTOLOGY AND RECIPROCITY. BRINGING BRAM VAN DE BEEK INTO DIALOGUE WITH JOHN POLKINGHORNE Johan Buitendag Dialogue, an Ontological and Epistemological Framework Hans-Georg Gadamer, renowned for his monumental hermeneutic contribution,1 refers somewhere to “the dialog which we are”.2 It implies that ontology builds on dialogue and on a dialectical reciprocity.3 Gadamer expounds this principle even further when he sees understanding as the dialogue between question and answer (elsewhere he refers to it as the “logic of question and answer”), the purpose of which is to establish agreement about the subject matter under discussion.4 Therefore, to Gadamer the dialogue or conversation is an important way of coming to understanding.5 This implies that epistemology builds on dialogue too. In this frame, I will endeavour to take part in this illustrious enterprise by paying tribute to an internationally respected colleague and friend, Bram van de Beek and his fruitful contribution to theology, especially to systematic theology. Interdisciplinary Dialogue, a Transversal Plane While admitting that it is impossible to capture Bram van de Beek’s contribution to theology extensively, I shall endeavour to illuminate a specifijic perspective on his vast interest in and contributions to our fijield. I posit 1  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (Glen-Doepel, W. (trans) 2nd ed. London: Sheed and Ward Ltd, 1979). 2  “das Gespräch, das Wir sind” in: Paul Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences”, in: Thompson, J.B. 1981 (ed.), Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 86. 3  Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics”, 78. 4  Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt, Understanding Hermeneutics (United Kingdom: Acumen, 2006), 114. 5  Gijs D.J. Dingemans, Als Hoorder onder de Hoorders: Een Hermeneutische Homiletiek [As Hearer among Hearers. A hermeneutical homiletics] (Kampen: Uitgeversmaatschappij J.H. Kok, 1991), 80.

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that, as Van de Beek is also a versatile academic, the transversal plane of Wentzel van Huyssteen could be a fijitting common ground for saying something about Van de Beek’s contribution.6 For it is on this fruitful plane that a variety of disciplines meet one another on mutual ground and interact in a dialogical and dialectical way in order to explore and even create (!) reality. In this article, I shall attempt to converse with Bram van de Beek who is both a theologian and a biologist, and to bring him into conversation with John Polkinghorne, a physicist and theologian of stature.7 Accordingly, in this quest for meaning (ontology) and understanding (epistemology), they (or rather their viewpoints) are the horizons that should fuse.8 In the reciprocal process of understanding, it is not only the horizons of the present and the past that should fuse, but also the horizons of the self and the other.9 Of course the angle of the article will be coloured by my own understanding (how could it be otherwise?) of each of these two academics, and it will be a limited encounter, because their distinctive fijields and contributions are so immense that it is utterly impossible to cover the whole in one article. This fijits in a hermeneutics of fijinitude, which acknowledges our restrictions. After all, no totalitarian or absolute view is possible. Efffective history and reflection thereon always occur within the frame of human fijinitude.10 Still, we will have a transversal dynamic between representatives from at least three disciplines, namely biology, physics and theology, although Polkinghorne views himself as merely a physicist with a serious theological interest.11 He views it as his task to reflect on the relation between science and theology and at the same time to address lay people, and

 6  J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 217. 7  John Charlton Polkinghorne is a former Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an Anglican priest. See John Polkinghorne, The life and works of a bottom-up thinker (Zygon, vol. 35 no. 4, December 2000), 955.  8  “Horizontverschmelzung” in: Gadamer, Truth and Method: 272–273.  9  Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics,” 75–76.  10  “Erfahrung ist also Erfahrung der menschlichen Endlichkeit. Erfahren im eigentlichen Sinne ist, wer ihrer inne ist, wer weiß, daß er der Zeit und der Zukunft nicht Herr ist,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. (4. Auflage, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, Paul Siebeck, 1975), 339.  11  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 957.

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not necessarily academics.12 That is the reason why Polkinghorne prefers writing articles and short books rather than extended expositions or academic textbooks.13 Common Ground In writing this article, I faced the challenge of fijinding and identifying distinct commonalities or diffferences between Van de Beek and Polkinghorne. Common ground and diffferences both contribute to the fruitful transversal conversation between science and theology. The fijirst common factor is that both conversationalists acknowledge the importance and dynamics of the current exchange between science and theology. Polkinghorne emphasises the dynamic relationship between physics, theology and biology.14 Every discipline has its own rightful place in this dialogue. Polkinghorne illuminates it in this way: “Modern physics describes a word of intrinsic unpredictability and deep relationship. Theology provides answers to the meta-questions of why the world is rationally transparent and rationally beautiful and why it is so fijinely tuned for carbon-based life. Biology’s fundamental insight of evolutionary process is to be understood theologically as creation ‘making itself ’.”15 Here Polkinghorne agrees with Gadamer’s view that the social sciences—and these include theology—are better equipped than the natural sciences to balance the danger of seeking the inaccessible ideal of absolute knowledge. “The ideal of a completed enlightenment has refuted itself and precisely with this the human sciences have won their particular task: to remain always mindful of their own fijinitude and historical conditioning in scholarly work and to resist the self-apotheosis of the enlightenment.”16 These diffferent disciplines challenge, enrich and stimulate one another. It is not only in a specifijic discipline that growth and changes occur, but also interdisciplinary—between diffferent disciplines. Just as physics for example was forced to think and act less absolutely and to move beyond

12

 Polkinghorne, The life and works, 956.  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 959. 14  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Science and Theology in the twenty-fijirst century (Zygon vol. 35 no. 4, December 2000), 941. 15  Polkinghorne, Science and Theology, 941. 16  Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Truth in the Human Sciences”, in Wachterhauser, BR (trans. & ed.), Hermeneutics and Truth (United States of America: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 31. 13

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Newtonian physics and even beyond the general and specifijic relativity theories to quantum physics, biology may be expected to move beyond a merely mechanical focus in the 21 century.17 In theoretical physics in particular, it is regarded as an ideal to arrive at a fijinal theory, in other words, what is called the ‘grand unifijied theory’ (GUT). Polkinghorne usually claims to reason inductively, but he sometimes argues deductively. For Polkinghorne theology in principle fulfijils the role of a TOE (theory of everything). “I see the interdisciplinary interaction of science and theology as being part of the noble human quest for understanding. For me, theology, as it seeks to speak of God, the ground of all that is, is fulfijilling the true role of a Theory of Everything. A theological view is a total view, based on the claim that at the deepest level the universe makes total sense.”18 To be more specifijic, Polkinghorne thinks that he has the solution: “. . . a true ‘Theory of Everything’ is in fact provided by Trinitarian Theology.”19 I concede that he does not want to say with this statement that the Trinity can be deduced from nature, but that nature could be understood so much better if it were considered on the basis of Trinitarian theology. In his opinion, certain aspects of science’s understanding of reality could be better understood and would make greater sense when seen from a Trinitarian perspective. One therefore sees a clear correlation with Moltmann’s view that the trinity is the internal foundation of the entire process of the world.20 Van de Beek reasons from the more personal experiential theology that developed in the 1980s where the former defijinite distinction between theology and science is now fading. Science is not as “scientifijic” as it used to be, and theology not as theological.21 And according to Van de Beek, this transversal exchange and dynamic hermeneutic relationship and interaction are not restricted only to the fijields of the physical and biological

17

 Polkinghorne, Science and Theology, 941.  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 960. 19  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity. A Christian Encounter with Reality (New Haven, Great Britain: Yale University Press, 2004), 61. 20  Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God: the doctrine of God (M. Kohl, Trans. London: SCM Publishers, 1981), 63. 21  “Dat zou beteken dat de theologie minder wetenschappelijk is dan Berkhof zich voorstelt. Dat zou ik kunnen beamen, maar ik zou er onmiddelijk bij zeggen dat ook de wetenschap minder wetenschappelijk is dan Berkhof zich voorstelt,” in: Abraham van de Beek, “Antiochië en Alexandrië in Leiden [Antioch and Alexandria in Leiden]” in: Waar is God in deze tijd? De betekenis van de geschiedenis in de theologie van Dr. H. Berkhof [Where is God these days? The meaning of history in the theology of Dr. H. Berkhof] (G.F. Callenbach, 1994), 25. 18

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sciences and theology, but also incorporate models in the human sciences and even in literature and history.22 This of course fijits well with Gadamer’s emphasis on language and history.23 However, there is a word of warning from Van de Beek when we venture on this transversal plane. He believes that the natural sciences are human endeavours that attempt to name human experiences in the physical, chemical and biological fijield and their relation to one another. Theology is the science that endeavours to verbalise human experiences with God and their relations to one another.24 Every discipline has its own method, fijield and language, and one should be cautious about simply interchanging language, terms and concepts among the diffferent sciences.25 That being said, the fact remains that all sciences are human attempts to approximate the same reality from diffferent viewpoints. Playing on this mutual (transversal) fijield does not revoke the distinct diffferences among disciplines and sciences, but leads to a dialogical and usually dialectical interaction among the diffferent sciences. Gifts To Van de Beek the world, reality, life and existence are gifts from God.26 We receive these gracious gifts from God’s hand (an ontological gift) and appropriate them with human knowledge and investigation (an epistemological task). Accordingly, the title of one of Van de Beek’s articles is: “What do you have that you haven’t received?”27 Polkinghorne thinks that science and theology are in a position to bestow gifts on each other.28 So both Van de Beek and Polkinghorne share the conviction that reality and existence are gifts from God and that both theology and science have a valid claim and viewpoint as well as a contribution to make to this transversal fijield.

22  Abraham van de Beek, Toeval of schepping? Scheppingstheologie in de context van het moderne denken [Creation or incident] (Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok, 2005), 123. 23  Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, 60. 24  Abraham van de Beek, “Wat hebt gij dat gij niet hebt ontvangen”? [“What do you have that you have not received”] in: Licht-geraakt: Wetenschapsbeoefenaren over de relatie van hun gelovig christen-zijn en hun werk [Light-touched: Academians address the relation of their faith as Christians and their work] (Nijkerk: G.F. Callenbach, 1995), 140. 25  Van de Beek, “Wat hebt gij”?, 140. 26  Van de Beek, “Wat hebt gij”?, 124. 27  Van de Beek, “Wat hebt gij”?, 124. 28  Polkinghorne, Science and Theology, 941.

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Polkinghorne likes to use the expression “verisimilitudinous knowledge” in both science and theology in their quest for truth.29 As a result, he distinguishes between knowledge and truth, in the sense that truth is always greater than knowledge: it is indeed accessible but not completely comprehensible. Our knowledge is therefore at most only truth-related. Science does not have a special method to guide it to the truth; conversely, theology does not have a special claim to revelation, to which it ostensibly has the sole claim. However, the interface between science and theology does not lie in the fact that they both seek and to some extent defijine the truth, but also that they both begin pertinently with faith by having a realistic confijidence in the rational reliability of understanding our experience. This brings us to the heart of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, namely the concept of prejudice.30 Next to the “fusion of horizons”31 and the emphasis on history and the efffect of history, i.e. the “consciousness of historical efffijicacy”,32 the concept of “prejudices” is central to Gadamer’s hermeneutics. These three concepts work together in a dynamic hermeneutic interaction. “The unsurpassable concept of the fusion of horizons endows the theory of prejudice with its most peculiar characteristic: prejudice is the horizon of the present, the fijinitude of what is near in its openness toward the remote.”33 Prejudice According to Van de Beek, the hermeneutic interaction encompasses not only the influence and dynamics between science and theology, but also the scientist’s and the theologian’s shared determination of the fundamental choices that are determined by their culture, philosophy, faith, personality and personal history. For example, Van de Beek refers to Einstein whose refusal to accept the quantum theory stemmed from his conviction that God does not gamble.34

29  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Science & Theology (Minneapolis: MI: Fortress Press, 1998b), 20. 30  “Vorurteile” [“Prejudice”], in: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 250–269. 31  “Horizontverschmelzung” in: Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 289–290. 32  “Wirkungsgeschichte” or “Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein” in: Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 284–289. 33  Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics,” 75–76. 34  Van de Beek, Toeval of schepping?, 119.

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Polkinghorne in turn admits that his primary point of departure is his faith as a Christian believer, and then his studies and insights in physics follow.35 Polkinghorne’s theological reflection can therefore be characterised by two distinct principles: his respect for the traditional understanding of the Christian faith—he builds on the Nicene Creed—and his bottom-up thinking; he proceeds from experience to understanding.36 Therefore, Van de Beek and Polkinghorne both admit and acknowledge their own prejudices. According to Van de Beek, it is impossible to undertake dogmatic studies without prejudice, as Gadamer has illustrated.37 Of course, one should be willing to let this prejudice be challenged and even be corrected. Scientifijic progress depends on this willingness to learn and to be corrected. Van de Beek adds that our scientifijic endeavours can never be parted from our personal convictions and experiences.38 In this prejudice, our personality and personal circumstances also play a role. “When it’s about our scientifijic endeavours, it’s always about personal involvement, just as, when it’s about our faith, it’s always about personal faith.”39 These prejudices are coloured by our personal involvement, motivation, experience, growing insight, increasing investigation and giftedness.40 Van de Beek has an interesting perspective on the way prejudices work. Prejudices difffer from one person to another, and they don’t primarily depend on the scientifijic discipline in which the scientist works, but rather on the type of person he/she is.41 A theologian, physicist or biologist can, therefore, possess a prejudice which is not bound to the discipline they are investigating. This makes the transversal plain of dynamic interaction even more interesting, complex and challenging! According to Gadamer, a prejudice is not always conscious, although it is better to be aware of it and to use it as a starting point for change and exchange.42 Prejudices are therefore not only or even primarily epistemological, but rather ontological as they constitute—consciously and unconsciously—our whole existence.

35

 Polkinghorne, The life and works, 955.  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 957–958. 37  Abraham van de Beek, Descriptief en prescriptief in de ecologische discussie (NTT 43: Valkenburg ZH, 1989), 21–30. 38  Abraham van de Beek, “Inleiding” [“Foreword”] in: Licht-geraakt-, 7. 39  “Als het gaat over ons wetenschappelijke bezig zijn, gaat het altijd om persoonlijke betrokkenheid, net als het, wanneer het gaat over ons geloof, altijd gaat om persoonlijk geloof,” in Van de Beek, “Wat hebt gij”?, 124. 40  Van de Beek, “Wat hebt gij”?, 124–125. 41  Van de Beek, “Inleiding”, 8. 42  Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 254. 36

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Polkinghorne states that he himself utilises a bottom-up process in his investigation. He moves from experience to understanding.43 History is experience over the course of time. His much-disputed and controversial dictum stems from this: “Epistemology models ontology”.44 By contrast, Van de Beek postulates: “To be created precedes our creativity.”45 So in Polkinghorne’s terms, Van de Beek holds the opposite tenet to that of “ontology precedes epistemology”. Van de Beek augments Karl Barth’s position. “God is neither an object of our reason nor a function of our morals, but God precedes our thinking and acting. It is not our creativity which shapes God, but it is the creating God by whom we can exist.”46 Although this is a truth both Van de Beek and Polkinghorne adhere to, Polkinghorne chooses to reason from the epistemological perspective and Van de Beek more from the ontological reality of God as Creator. To Van de Beek, history is just as important as for his tutor Hendricus Berkhof, although he diffferentiates himself from his teacher in two respects, namely the generation he was born into, as well as the theological school he associates with.47 His view on history is therefore more realistic and sober than the positivistic perspective of his predecessor. Van de Beek associates himself with the Alexandrian school, not with the Antiochian school.48 The Alexandrian thrust is far more ecumenical, mysterious and mystic—in short, more apophatic. God can never be captured in a kataphatic way, but we can speak about God in apophatic language. Polkinghorne admits this readily; he himself sometimes thinks apophatically as well, although this is a point of confusion for it is not always certain whether Polkinghorne really adheres to that. He states that his “discourse will be qualifijied by the warnings of apophatic theology concerning the inaccessible mystery of the divine, but surely something must be said, even if human language is necessarily being used in some open and ‘stretched’ sense when it is applied to God.”49

43

 Polkinghorne, The life and works, 955.  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 958. 45  Abraham van de Beek, “To be created precedes our creativity” (Louvain studies 19, 1994), 34. 46  Van de Beek, To be created, 38. 47  Van de Beek, “Antioch and Alexandria in Leiden”, 12. 48  Van de Beek, “Antioch and Alexandria in Leiden”, 22. 49  John Charlton Polkinghorne, “The Demise of Democritus,” in: The Trinity in an Entangled World. Relationality in Physical Science and Theology. Ed. by John Charlton 44

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In this sense, Gadamer’s key ontological concept (which joins prejudice, authority and tradition), namely “Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein” comes to mind: the on-going efffect of history on reality; or in Paul Ricoeur’s words: “consciousness exposed to the efffects of history”.50 To Gadamer the efffect of history and therefore also of tradition can never be ignored; especially in research. “Our historical consciousness is always fijilled with a variety of voices in which the echo of the past is heard . . . Modern historical research itself is not only research, but the transmission of tradition”.51 In this, Van de Beek is in the tradition of Barth and Levinas. “Theologically Barth’s position is very attractive; he starts with God. God is the creative subject and nothing precedes Him.”52 Van de Beek reasons from a theological-ontological perspective and adheres to Barth’s emphasis on God’s revelation. He therefore sees God as the Wholly Other (“the dialogue that we are”), but he also incorporates the stance of Levinas that converses with the other one, not necessarily with God, but with another human being. “The human face of the other precedes my acting. In this human face of the other God’s calling comes to me, because this call is an absolute one with which we cannot play around.”53 Actually, Van de Beek combines the persons of God and man as an ontological cornerstone on which man’s contribution can be built. Van de Beek does, however, feel a slight discomfort with Barth’s viewpoint: “This uneasiness is unanimously expressed both by liberals and pietists: the theology of Barth is isolated from experience, not only from physical experience, but especially from religious experience. The subjective creativity of God is so great that our own subjectivity is absorbed by it.”54 Van de Beek also expresses discomfort with Levinas’ perspective: “Levinas, it is true, solves the problem of experience by seeing God in the face of the other one, but he is one-sidedly fijixed on the moral call to such an extent that God is removed from the rest of experience.”55 Van de Beek fijinds the essential balance in a responding or a subjected subjectivity.

Polkinghorne. Advance Uncorrected proof. (Wim B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge U.K., 2010), 12. 50  Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics,” 61 & 73. 51  Gadamer, Truth and Method, 253. 52  Van de Beek, To be created, 38. 53  Van de Beek, To be created, 37. 54  Van de Beek, To be created, 38. 55  Van de Beek, To be created, 38.

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johan buitendag If we want to speak theologically about God, it is out of the question that God would merely be an idea that we create. We cannot start with the human being as a reasoning and acting subject . . . But we cannot speak about the human being as an object either like God. The human being is not a thing. Consequently, we can do as Barth and Levinas, i.e., propose that we consider the human subject as created by the other One. Our subjectivity is a responding or even subjected subjectivity.56

From this argument we can postulate that “reality precedes our consciousness. Our self-consciousness follows our being.”57 Here we approach the language of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher also considers reason and the active human subject as insufffijicient for belief. He bases this on a feeling of ‘absolute dependence’.58 So, to Schleiermacher as well, the human being is primarily dependent and passive.59 In a sense, Van de Beek agrees with Schleiermacher but in another he also difffers from him. “For Schleiermacher the dependence is recognition of the absolute self-consciousness . . . This absolute primordial condition is without history and experience. Herein lies the basic diffference with my position: our dependence is one of history and experiences in which God, in which human beings, in which the whole of reality continue to grant us new data and to reveal itself in surprising ways to us.”60 In other words, Van de Beek incorporates and recognises the efffect of history and experience. In this sense he approximates Gadamer’s concept of “efffective history”.61 Van de Beek explains his position further: “Being precedes consciousness.”62 This too can be translated as: Ontology precedes epistemology. The experience of the passive subject presupposes the subject of a preceding active sentence. We cannot start with the primary subject. If we would do so, it would mean that we could climb up to heaven. But in the experience in which something is granted to us, it is presupposed that it is handed over to us . . . So religious experience is not a perception of an active projecting mind, but of a passive experiencing subject who perceives that the other One comes as a gift. God gives God to us. God reveals God to us.63

56

 Van de Beek, To be created, 38.  Van de Beek, To be created, 41. 58  “schlechthinniges Abhängigkeitsgefühl” in: Van de Beek, To be created, 41. 59  Van de Beek, To be created, 41. 60  Van de Beek, To be created, 41–42. 61  “Wirkungsgeschichte” in Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 284–289. 62  Van de Beek, To be created, 41. 63  Van de Beek, To be created, 40. 57

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And God is always greater! “God always exceeds the symbol we fijind, even the symbol of the philosophical absolute, and appears in fijinite human experience. In that way God is greater than the ‘Deus semper maior’. God is also greater than the human face and greater than the categorical imperative. God is greater than the guarantor of our knowledge and greater than the Bible. Even all our symbols and experiences are inadequate to comprehend God.”64 Therefore God is greater than epistemology and also greater than ontology. Ontology exceeds epistemology and God exceeds ontology! Obviously, no all-embracing or absolute view is possible. Efffective history and reflection thereon always take place in the frame of human fijinitude.65 Gadamer states that “experience is also the experience of human fijinitude. Experience in the actual sense is, although we are here, we know that time and future is not here (yet)”.66 Accordingly, Gadamer proposes an ontology and consciousness of fijinitude. “There is ‘no overview’ which would enable us to grasp in a single glance the totality of efffects. Between fijinitude and absolute knowledge, it is necessary to choose; the concept of efffective history belongs to an ontology of fijinitude.”67 A Natural Theology or a Theology of Nature? This takes us to the next point of agreement or rather disagreement between John Polkinghorne and Bram van de Beek, namely the question of a theology of nature or a natural theology. In this regard, Van de Beek expounds the confusion that sometimes exists between creation and nature. Sometimes people mean “creation” but they speak about “nature”. Nature can refer to the essential character of things, or to the natural orientation of mankind—either positive of negative. Nature can also refer to the living and biological world or even to creation. A natural theology can therefore refer to the possibility that we might come to God through

64

 Van de Beek, To be created, 40.  Gadamer, Truth and Method, 320. 66  “Erfahrung ist also Erfahrung der menschlichen Endlichkeit. Erfahren im eigentlichen Sinne ist, wer ihrer inne ist, wer weiß, daß er der Zeit und der Zukunft nicht Herr ist,” in: Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 339. 67  Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics,” 74. 65

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our natural orientation and through our experience with our surrounding world.68 Up to a point, Van de Beek agrees with Karl Barth’s rejection of natural theology. Barth’s rejection of natural theology stems from the negative orientation of humankind and therefore our inability to know God from our own ability of nature.69 In unison with Barth, Van de Beek rejects a natural theology in principle, but this is a specifijic kind of natural theology. The form of natural theology that he rejects is an absolutist degrading of God, which sees God as a cosmological reality and as merely a conclusion of human epistemology.70 According to Polkinghorne a “revised and modest natural theology and the issue of divine action has been on the top of a science and theology agenda.”71 As a consequence, Polkinghorne proposes a more sophisticated natural theology.72 As a “particle physicist” Polkinghorne cannot break free from a propositional understanding of matters such as the “special providence”, “immaculate conception”, “miracles” and so forth.73 Actually Polkinghorne’s epistemological viewpoint automatically leads him to a natural theology, although he admits in principle that natural theology should give way to a theology of nature: “I’m deeply impressed by the rational order and transparency of the physical world. This has encouraged me to support a revived and revised natural theology . . . I admit, however, that when we look at the deeply ambiguous story of biological history, natural theology has to give way to a theology of nature.”74 As far as Polkinghorne is concerned, theology must attest to the fact that the natural scientifijic model has its defijinite boundaries; the modesty of an apophatic theology should not, therefore, be despised.75 Human beings need the revelation of God in order to know reality. God is the basis and foundation of the one world. The important point that Polkinghorne makes is that a theology of nature has in fact replaced a natural theology.76

68

 Abraham van de Beek, Schepping De wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid [Creation: the World as a Prelude to Eternity] (Callenbach, 1996), 49. 69  Ibidem. 70  Van de Beek, Toeval of schepping?, 127–128. 71  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 955. 72  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Science and creation—The search for understanding (Templeton Foundation Press, SPCK, 2006), 18. 73  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Trafffijic in Truth (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), 50. 74  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 960. 75  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Reason and Reality (London: SPCK, 1994), 29. 76  Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity, 61.

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It no longer concerns nature, which should teach us something of God, but concerns God who can teach us something about nature. Only in this way is there enough distance from detestable deism. It gives the scientist a particular meta-interpretation of the facts.77 After all, we exist in one world and can compartmentalise reality into reason and revelation, not into the sacred and the profane.78 I have myself advocated this view.79 Van de Beek reasons from a more apophatic, intuitive viewpoint. Van de Beek emphasises that even when Polkinghorne admits that a natural theology can never lead to the knowledge of a personal God—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—he nonetheless advocates a natural theology.80 Knowledge of God grows intuitively from our experience of reality and plausibility. But this is a general knowledge of God—a God without face or history. We get to know God personally and specifijically only through the revelation of his Word!81 Building on the second article of the NGB (the Belgic Confession), Van de Beek adheres to both—that God reveals his nature through creation and through Jesus Christ. In our experience of God in nature, we meet the same God as in the proclaiming of Jesus Christ!82 Van de Beek therefore chooses a more deductive theology of nature, though he acknowledges the validity of a certain natural theology. The fusion of the horizons of an epistemological natural theology and an ontological theology of nature would therefore prove to be fruitful and balanced. Critical or Constructive Realism? Polkinghorne views himself as a critical realist. “For me, the critical realism that many of us both in science and theology embrace encourages a strategy that I have sought to encapsulate in the slogan ‘Epistemology models ontology’.”83 By this he means that what we can know and what we cannot know should be taken as a reliable guide to what is actually

77

 Polkinghorne, Science & Theology, 77–78.  John Charlton Polkinghorne, One World. (London: SPCK, 1986), 78. 79  Johan Buitendag, 2009, ‘Nature as creation from an eco-hermeneutical perspective: From a “natural theology” to a “theology of nature”’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 65(1), Art. #272, 10 pages. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v65i1.272. 80  Van de Beek, Creation: the World as a Prelude, 128. 81  Van de Beek, Creation: the World as a Prelude, 128. 82  Van de Beek, Creation: the World as a Prelude, 141. 83  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 960. 78

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the case. This is in fact the issue about which he has been most criticised and misunderstood.84 Where philosophy wrestled with the issue of spirit and matter, and often struck against one of the two kerbstones of either a dualism or a monism, Polkinghorne wants to take a middle position of complementarity by speaking of a “dual aspect monism”. 85 This takes as its point of departure the assumption that there is “just one sort of world ‘stufff ’, one substance”, but that it does manifest diffferently as the spiritual and mental poles of human experience. Although the mental is grounded in the material, it cannot be reduced to it as if it were merely an epiphenomenon of it. After all, there is only one reality, though with a double aspect. In other words, the analogy of the wave or particle in terms of the observability of electromagnetic radiation can be applied here. By taking this approach, Polkinghorne believes he achieves a balance in critical realism between the two extremes of modernism and postmodernism.86 Polkinghorne is committed to his insight that epistemology always precedes ontology, and therefore models ontology. For this reason, this statement appears frequently in his works. I found the most flexible description of it in his book, Quarks, Chaos & Christianity, where he says: “Scientists are realists; they believe that what we know, or what we can’t know, shows us what things are really like. My wife gave me a sweatshirt with the stirring motto ‘Epistemology Models Ontology,’ or in less learned language, what we can know is a reliable guide to what is the case.”87 My understanding of this proposition by Polkinghorne is that human understanding has the capacity to learn to know reality as reality is. What we know therefore corresponds to the actual being, although our knowledge is still only partial. Unlike Kant, he wants to work from phenomenal reality, which to some degree does extend to the noumenal reality, as he also conceded in a personal interview.88 Though limited, humankind can therefore nevertheless enter the “inaccessible light”.89

84

 Polkinghorne, The life and works, 961.  Polkinghorne, Science & Theology, 54–55 & 61–62. 86  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 5. 87  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos & Christianity (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005), 85. 88  L.F. Harris, Divine Action: An interview with John Polkinghorne in Cross Currents, 48 (1), (1998, Spring), 3–12. 89  1 Tm 6:16. 85

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Polkinghorne regards physics as to be understood in the classical sense where physics concerns the nature of things as revealed by the natural sciences. Metaphysics is to him the overarching frame of reference as seen by the individual disciplines (take note of the sequence!). Although physics is now the point of departure, it does not determine metaphysics, on which it is based. Critical realism is therefore not a matter of opinion, but of comprehension. Or as Ian Barbour fijirst put it, “The hallmark of the real is not observable any more, but the intelligible”.90 And this is also why, to Polkinghorne, the word “critical” is so important in critical realism. This is no exercising of a naive or metaphysical grasp, but a calculated exercising. The interface is therefore rationally mediated. Yet Polkinghorne does not want to equate explanation and comprehension with each other.91 For Van de Beek this would be a calculated and epistemological stance. Without denying the reality, Van de Beek proposes a more apophatic stance. “We have to far more guard against religious claims of absoluteness. Theology and philosophy always are inclined to connect the word ‘God’ with the absolute, with the one, with the unrelativizable. It is precisely this wherein lies the problem of modern theology: God is absolute reason, absolute morality, absolute feeling. So we meet only an idol and not the living God.”92 Thus, although Van de Beek admits knowing just one subjective reality, he holds onto the plurality of God and God’s revelation of Godself as the triune God.93 Polkinghorne is prepared only to say that science is “socially influenced”, but not “socially constructed.”94 Whereas in my opinion Van de Beek would propose that science is “divinely revelatory and socially approached”. Epistemology in Polkinghorne’s construct is far too narrow a concept, at least in so far as it concerns theology. By contrast, Van de Beek’s ontology could be a far too broad and general concept. In my opinion, Polkinghorne runs the risk of making too much of nature and a natural theology—an epistemic fallacy—and Van de Beek runs the risk of making too much of God’s revelation and grace—an ontic fallacy. Therefore Polkinghorne

90  Andreas Losch, Our World is more than Physics: a Constructive-Critical Comment on the Current Science and Theology Debate (Theology and Science, 3 (3), 2005), 276. 91  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Serious Talk (London: SPCK, 1995), 63. 92  Van de Beek, To be created, 40. 93  Van de Beek, Creation: the World as a Prelude, 140–141. 94  John Charlton Polkinghorne, Beyond Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998a), 11.

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would be inclined to naturalism and Van de Beek to elitism. Perhaps Polkinghorne should take constructionism more seriously and Van de Beek should make more of Barth’s “Lights of Nature”.95 In this regard, I wish to suggest a synthesis, namely, in Losch’s terms, a constructive realism.96 In order to comply with this, Polkinghorne and Van de Beek should place a bi-directional arrow between epistemology and ontology. In this way they both would take more theologians of the postfoundational paradigm with them. Then we would no longer speak of critical realism but rather of constructive realism. This ought to unite an epistemology of natural science and a hermeneutics (ontology) of theology. Fides Quaerens Intellectum et Imaginem True to the traditional stance of the natural sciences, Polkinghorne begins his quest for comprehension and understanding nowhere else than from the bottom up. This is an inductive and epistemological-hermeneutic premise. The process of investigation always moves from experience to understanding—it is a practical, almost empirical point of departure.97 We encounter this in virtually everything he has written. “A theological style of bottom-up thinking comes closest to scientifijic habits of thought.”98 Polkinghorne prefers a practical, almost empirical theological approach, although he shows appreciation for systematic theologians such as Moltmann and Pannenberg.99 Thus “fijides quaerens intellectum”. That being said, systematic theology has, according to Polkinghorne, usually been qualifijied by a deductive, top-down approach that speaks in general and speculative tones.100 This could of course apply to Van de Beek as well, being a fijine specimen and representative of systematic theology. To Polkinghorne’s intrinsic and epistemological “fijides quaerens intellectum”, I think Van de Beek, who identifijies himself with the Alexandrian school of thought, might add: “Fides quaerens imaginem”.101 In a reciprocal hermeneutic interaction between these two viewpoints, both should be

 95  Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik (IV/3 Studiensausgabe Zurich, Theologischer verlag, 1986–1993).  96  Losch, Our World is more than Physics, 283.  97  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 958.  98  Polkinghorne, Science and Theology, 941.  99  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 958. 100  Polkinghorne, The life and works, 958. 101  Van de Beek, “Antioch and Alexandria in Leiden”, 22.

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appropriated or even fused in a reciprocal dialogue: “Fides quaerens intellectum et imaginem”! Conclusion Therefore, Polkinghorne’s epistemological approach (“epistemology models ontology”) and Van de Beek’s ontological approach (“being precedes consciousness”) interact in a dialogical and dialectical hermeneutic spiral in order to enhance interdisciplinary understanding and balance. There is a place for both approaches on a transversal interdisciplinary plane. Only in this dynamic interaction can an epistemic fallacy as well as an ontic fallacy be avoided. A hermeneutic fusion of Gadamer’s “the dialogue which we are” conversing with his “dialogue of question and answer” works not only as a balance between the latent epistemic fallacy of John Polkinghorne and the latent ontological fallacy of Bram van de Beek, but also enhances and enriches the dialogue and mutual appreciation between science and theology and between a natural theology and a theology of nature.

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIEND! A SYSTEMATIC-THEOLOGICAL APPRECIATION OF BRAAM VAN DE BEEK’S THEOLOGY OF CREATION AS CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY-SCIENCE DIALOGUE Daniël P. Veldsman Introduction More than a decade ago, the systematic theologian Bram van de Beek of the then Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk at the Rijksuniversiteit at Leiden, wrote in his Schepping: de wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid on the intensifying debate between the natural sciences and theology, the following: “A theology of creation is far richer and more challenging than the question on science and theology”.1 The question that spontaneously presents itself is what precisely Van de Beek means, whether such a statement can be justifijied, and if so, in what sense does theological reflection on creation suggest to be “richer” (‘rijker’) and “more challenging” (‘boeiender’). Focusing mainly on this earlier publication as well as Van de Beek’s2 more recent partial reworking thereof in Toeval of Schepping?, I will pursue this question, highlighting the ways and formulating the pointers in which Van de Beek’s contribution “helps us”3—or not—in engaging with the increasingly intensifying dialogue between theology and the natural sciences. Firstly the historical background will be sketched against which Van de Beek set his understanding of the relation between theology and natural sciences. Secondly the concepts of Creator, creation and creature  1  A van de Beek, Schepping: de wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid (Baarn: Callenbach, 1996), 10. Vgl A van de Beek, Toeval of schepping? Scheppingsteologie in de context van het moderne denken (Kampen: Kok, 2005), 7: “De theologie van de schepping is veel rijker en boeiender dan deze vraag”. For the sake of our international readers, I will translate Van de Beek’s original Dutch text. Since many of his formulations however have a special Dutch connotation, I will retain the original text either in brackets or in a footnote. 2  Currently at the VU Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 3  The formulation is a playful reference to the well-known song “With a Little Help from My Friends” (originally titled “A Little Help from My Friends”) by the Beatles in the 60’s. It is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, released on their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. It was briefly called Bad Finger Boogie supposedly because Lennon composed the melody on a piano using his middle fijinger after having hurt his forefijinger.

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will be explained in order to highlight Van de Beek’s dynamic viewpoint on his theology of creation within the theology and science relationship, and his criticism of Intelligent Design will be discussed. Lastly I will critically engage Van de Beek’s viewpoint, focusing on the aspects in which his theological understanding of the term “helps us”—or not. Van de Beek’s Historical-Theological “Finger” on Creation In his contribution in Lichtgeraak, a collection in which Dutch scholars write about their relationship as Christians to their academic work, Van de Beek leaves a clue on where his viewpoint on the topic of creation will come from, stating: “We have not conjured up (‘thought-out’) ourselves, but have been given to ourselves”.4 How does “to be given to ourselves” color the unfolding of his theological understanding of creation, and to where does his viewpoint on the theology-science debate point us? As young scholar Van de Beek5 experienced no conflict between faith and the natural sciences. The opposite was rather true: it presented a challenge. A challenge from his personal faith experience lived between “geheimenis” (mystery) and theoretical analysis. Over the last decade, although the challenge remained, it has intensifijied and shifted in focus with a double movement. On the one hand a movement in which we fijind a passionate formulation and defense of Intelligent Design; on the other hand a movement that simply leaves the question on the historical relationship of phenomena open. For van de Beek this situation calls for a revisiting and revision of our understanding of the challenge. It is a challenge according to Van de Beek6 that has to be understood from its long history. The contemporary experience of the broken relationship of a “nabijheid” (“nearness”) in the union between God, nature and humans, has been fed and driven by technological advances following the 17th century developments within the natural sciences. From this period onwards the experience and understanding of nature is captured in (mathematical) formulas, and human ratio declares itself—in a reductionistic manner—as master of nature. On the one hand nature is seen as 4  A van de Beek, Lichtgeraakt (Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1995), 126: “We hebben onszelf niet bedacht, we zijn aan onszelf gegeven.” 5  Van de Beek, Schepping, 9–10; Van de Beek, Toeval, 7–8. The fijirst four chapters of Schepping and Toeval are identical. For reference purposes I am going to make use from this point onward of the most recent text of 2005. 6  Van de Beek, Toeval, 12fff.

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an independent entity (autonomous) with an own purposefulness. On the other hand, the human becomes the centre of all reflection. And where originally God could still “fijind a place” in nature, it changes drastically, however, as the empirical and the rational fijirstly drives God from nature to the realm of morality, and subsequently altogether from the landscape of history. In the technological world of the end of the 19th century, God has disappeared completely. And the church—symbol of a bygone era— was the grave of God (Nietzsche). But after World War I, technology was fijirmly established as a deadly force, and the enlightened culture of liberal Protestantism became a source of violence. The “nearness” has turned and grown into alienation. Both philosophers (in existentialism) and theologians (in dialectical theology) took on the challenge of the imprisonment of the objectifijication of humanity. Both groups produced in Europe only shadows of hope within either the imprisonment of a world without God, of a divided world between experience and reality. Stronger impulses for conquering the division came from—among others—the American philosophical contribution of process theology. And the most influential viewpoint that developed, found expression in Intelligent Design, fuelled by the basic conviction: “There is design in nature and not only change. And design implies a Designer”.7 Was this the ultimate viewpoint that would bridge the division faith/experience and nature/natural sciences? It did indeed promise more than any other viewpoint up to this point in time. But another dark shadow remained on the horizon, namely that of history. For this very reason, he states: “The modern sciences are not faith’s most difffijicult obstacle, but history”.8 Against this historical background, Van de Beek “points” to the relationship between faith and the empirical as the most basic issue to be addressed. Can the former make us experience diffferently, to bring about new relationships, to act diffferently? Can the latter make any contribution to faith? Van de Beek however does not want to pursue the questions from the traditional angle of the “wholeness” (heelheid) of creation, but from its “brokenness” (gebrokenheid). Thus, given the “dark shadow of history”, Van de Beek subsequently qualifijies his quest carefully: ‘De vraag hoe de moderne wetenschap zich verhoudt tot het geloof in God de Schepper

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 Van de Beek, Toeval, 38: “(E)r is een ontwerp in de natuur en niet alleen maar toeval. En ontwerp lijkt een Ontwerper te impliceren”. 8  Van de Beek, Toeval, 40: “(N)iet de moderne natuurwetenschap (is) het grootste obstakel voor het geloof, maar de geschiedenis”.

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is nietig vergeleken bij de vraag hoe de ervaring en waarneming van het lijden zich tot het geloof verhouden.’9 For Van de Beek, the quest is a theological quest, that is, a quest in search of an answer about the (type of) God that we believe in as Creator, and the signifijicance of being a creature of this very God. Creator, Creation and Creature For Van de Beek,10 creation (“schepping”) is a theological term, not a cosmological term. Creation as a theological term expresses our world of experience (“ervaringswereld”) in relation to God, but then—in distinction to the term “nature” (that expresses how the world is)—as a critical term. It expresses how the world should be! It is a “should” that emphasizes the “relationship” between humans and God—an emphasis not on why we see the world in relation to God, but that we see the world in relation to God. And this is a that that is historical-culturally determined by the symbolic universe we fijind ourselves in.11 This determination, however, cannot be pinpointed since the symbolic universe not only perpetually confijigures itself ever anew (being always “on the move”), but is also “culturalized” and individualized, subsequently escaping any efffort to a “fijinal” formulation of any kind. But it does present itself “as a reality unfolding toward the human” (“als naar hen toe komende werklijkheid”),12 that is, as a reality that “comes to us” in an appealing manner. Regarding our experience of the symbolic universe, Van de Beek argues that this represents its most fundamental aspect:

 9  Van de Beek, Toeval, 43. (“The question on the relationship between the modern sciences and faith in God as Creator is quite unimportant in comparison to the question of how the experience and observation of sufffering relates to faith”). 10  Van de Beek, Toeval, 53.  11  In a following chapter, Van de Beek, Toeval, 124 describes his understanding of a symbolic universe more clearly, stating: “(M)en (kan) het symbolische universum ook opvatten als een hermeneutisch network van samehangende ervaringen, verwoordingen, modellen en theorien”. (“One can understand the symbolic universe as a hermeneutical network of related experiences, formulations, models and theories”). 12  Van de Beek, Toeval, 66. It is difffijicult to capture the Dutch formulation in an English translation that conveys the meaning clearly. Perhaps it can be better described as follow: The symbolic universe is experienced in terms of symbols that the individual fijinds attractive / convincing / appealing—and in this sense not as reasoned choice, but as something that simply presents itself as such, as something that “comes over us”.

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De symbolen worden ons uitgereikt. We worden erdoor aangesproken. We maken onze werklijkheidsbeleving niet, maar die is ons gegeven. Zo zijn we uiteindelijk aan onszelf gegeven.13

The crucial point to be taken from Van de Beek’s argument, is that he approaches the human world of experience as a gift, and thus in conscious opposition to the Cartesian viewpoint that has established itself within Western culture, namely that of the constituting ego, characterised by his well-known dictum of cogito ergo sum.14 As gift we experience ourselves bodily within the symbolic universe as subject, as person, and therefore not along the line of the Cartesian dichotomy (“tweedeling”). It is much rather an experience of diffferentiation, layerdness, incomprehensibility of reality in which the symbols of the symbolic universe are ordered in a multi-signifying manner, and in which its borders appear fluid. In the same manner as which we experience ourselves—and others—as mystery, we experience our relation to reality as mystery in the sense that reality is always more than our perspectives that we have of it. Through our perspectives, that is, in symbols, we make sense of our life stories and of those of others. In our everyday “sense making” of our reality, we discover the openness of our symbols, that is, the symbol as invitation to discover even more of the mystery of reality as an ongoing and never-ending enriching experience. And within the enriching experience we become increasingly aware that the mystery is bigger than we suspected and much less graspable than we thought! And faith? Where, according to Van de Beek, does it fijit into the “sense making” process of our lives? Faith is understood as the “expression of our being addressed by God”.15 We fijind “our being spoken to” in the symbols

13  Van de Beek, Toeval, 68. The emphasis is by Van de Beek. (“We are given the symbols. We are being addressed by these symbols. We do not invent our own experience of reality, but it is given to us. In this sense, we are ultimately given to ourselves”). 14  Striking similarities—but also diffferences—can be distinguished between Van de Beek’s argument and that of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion. Marion also approaches his understanding of God as donation (gift). Marion describes the excess of this experience as a saturated phenomenon. It is so overwhelming it is almost like looking in the sun. It is an experience according to Marion that takes place on the threshold of the [im-]possible. In this respect the approaches of Van de Beek and Marion are quite similar. However, they diverge sharply in the epistemological positioning of the knowing subject. Marion takes his lead from the constituting ego and qualifijies the “gaze” of the worshipper, characterising it either as idol or icon. See especially Jean-Luc Marion, “The saturated phenomenon,” Philosophy Today 40 (1996), 103–24, and J.-L. Marion, The impossible for man—God, in: John D. Caputo & Michael J. Scanlon (eds), Transcendence and beyond. A Postmodern Inquiry, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 17–43. 15  Van de Beek, Toeval, 84: “expressie van ons aangesproken zijn door Hem.”

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of scripture, that is, as God’s revelation to us. It is a revelation as part and parcel of our symbolic universe in all its complexities. It reveals God as Creator. It reveals humans as creatures and the world as creation. This brings us to the focus of our pursuit, namely an understanding of a theology of creation, and thus of the relationship between theology and the natural sciences. Theology and the Natural Sciences De natuurwetenschapper kan de kosmos evenmin vastleggen als de theoloog God kan bevatten16 Any dichotomy (“tweedeling”) according to Van de Beek17—be it with regard to the sciences, language, or symbolic universe—does injustice to the multi-dimensionality of reality, and to the discontinuities within the person that he/she is him/herself. In order therefore to do justice to its multi-dimensionality, Van de Beek fijirst investigates the level (“niveau”) on which the dialogue is to take place. With regard to theological reflection, his vantage point is an understanding of theology as a science that analyses the symbols through which we say that God speaks (that is, scripture) and that fijinds expression in faith (that is, as religious experience) as that what we have heard. The “what we hear” that fijinds expression in faith, brings about a new experience of more—a complex, referential, dynamic, layered more. The whole of reality comes into play in its reflection on the relation of God to the world. From a theological perspective, theology is the queen of sciences whereas all other sciences are seen as ancillary sciences.18 With regard to the natural sciences, his vantage point is an understanding of the sciences in which each discipline within its respective fijield (chemistry, physics, etc.) entertains a specifijic aspect of reality and not the whole of reality. However, it does look at the whole of reality insofar—for example—it is physical or biological. Van de Beek19 subsequently distinguishes three

16  Van de Beek, Toeval, 102–3. (“Just as the natural scientist cannot fully comprehend the cosmos, the theologian cannot fully grasp God”). 17  Van de Beek, Toeval, 99. 18  One has to keep in mind that from the perspective of the other sciences, theology in turn represents an ancillary science. See Van de Beek, Toeval, 102. 19  Van de Beek, Toeval, 103. He immediately acknowledges that such a distinction represents an oversimplifijication of the complexity that is at stake.

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levels (“niveaus”) namely the incomprehensible reality, the experienced reality of our symbolic universe, and scientifijic reflection that endeavors to uncover the nature and coherence of these very symbols. The dialogue between theology and the natural sciences unfolds where the various relations between symbols, and symbols to reality, come into play. For example: What is the relation between the scientifijic model of evolution and faith in God as creator? For Van de Beek, the dialogue runs along three lines, namely between (1) theological models and the empirical;20 (2) between models of the natural sciences and the direct experiences of faith,21 and (3) between theologians and practitioners of the natural sciences. The fijirst two lines serve primarily as disturbers (“unrestmakers”) within each respective fijield. Whereas the initial dialogue takes place along line two, it thrusts eventually toward line three, and takes place as a dialogue between models—and not between faith and science as such!—that have developed within the respective fijield (for example: between Creationism as model from the theological fijield, and Evolution as biological model from the fijield of the natural sciences). For Van de Beek22 this dialogue is necessary and fruitful for the following reasons and with many enriching implications. Our awareness, that the symbols that make up our symbolic universe are too small to express our relationship to God, and that all our knowing is but tentative, entail no threat for our experience of faith within the theology-science dialogue. At least, no threat is posed as long as we understand the symbols as gift, i.e. as gift for the enrichment of our experience of the world. However, it is threatening if the receptive attitude turns into an attitude of rule, of a possessive relation as an expression of nothing more than the afffijirmation of the self. The former experience, that

20  This represents an internal dialogue within the theological fijield. In short it can be characterized as the dialogue between revelation and experience.  21  Given the reductionistic character of the natural sciences, Van de Beek argues that the dialogue will take place on the level of the philosophy of science. In such a dialogue, God will not be a topic, and therefore it will be a dialogue between science and religion. This careful qualifijication in my opinion is very helpful and necessary to understand and offfer a critique of the argument of the Dutch philosopher Chris Buskes in his Evolutionair Denken in a constructive manner with regard to his exposition of Evolutie en Religie. See Chris Buskes, Evolutionair Denken. De invloed van Darwin op ons wereldbeeld, (Amsterdam: Nieuwezijds, 2006), 267–296. In the South African context the very recent publication of the philosopher Alex Antonites, Evolution: fact or theory? (2010) represents an impressive contribution to the natural science—theology dialogue. 22  Van de Beek, Toeval, 106–7.

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is, of enrichment for our faith, fijinds a good example in the signifijicance of models of the natural sciences (e.g. evolution)23 for our understanding of creation as a relational concept, of its dynamism, of creation as historical processes. The problem as such—for example with the theory of evolution—does not lie with an understanding of humans in relation to animals, but with the reductionistic view of life that informs evolutionism.24 The challenge—otherwise—that evolution poses, does not have to lead at the same time to any break with tradition as Van de Beek argues, since tradition inherently holds the very elements that make the new perspectives or connections possible. From this explanation the relation between the natural sciences and theology can be depicted as hermeneutical, and specifijically as functioning as prerequisite for meaningful interpretation, but also often to act as impulse (literally to open our eyes!) for establishing new paradigms for theological reflection. This on the other hand does not imply that theological insights do not influence the outworking of models in the natural sciences.25 The fijirst crucial point is the reciprocal influence, determined by the worldview of the specifijic thinkers. The second crucial point is the often uncritical attitude (read: arrogance) within the natural sciences to make their interpretation of reality absolute. God is then for them very often obsolete.26 This same attitude (read: arrogance) within which a specifijic understanding of reality is made absolute also fijinds expression within theological

23

 Delightfully Van de Beek, Toeval, 114, states: “De mens is schepsel en hoort in de kring van de schepselen thuis. Dat heeft Darwin eens en voor altijd duideljik gemaak voor degenen die het nog niet wisten van Linnaeus en al veel eerder uit die bijbel. We kunnen niet doen alsof wij met God een onderonsje hebben tegenover de rest van de schepping.” (“The human being is a creature, and belongs part and parcel to creation as home as do other creatures. Darwin made this clear once and for all, also for those who did not hear it from Linnaeus earlier or from the bible. We cannot act as though we have some privileged access to God over against the rest of creation”). The reference to Linnaeus is to his description as a zoologist of homo sapiens in his Systema Naturae as animal—almost a century before Darwin! 24  An opposite reductionistic approach can also be found in an understanding of being human in which being human is reduced to the relationship to God. Or to state that for humans to be endowed with reason implies that we are not put together by chemicals. 25  Van de Beek mentions Einstein’s refusal to accept quantum theory since God did not play dice! See Van de Beek, Toeval, 119. 26  The most recent example of Van de Beek’s point in the European context can be found in Stephen Hawking’s latest book The Grand Design, 2010 in which he explicitly states that science is in no need of God. Within the South African context the book Geloof, bygeloof en ander wensdenkery, 2008, by the well-known journalist George Claassen of Cape Town falls in the same category.

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circles, for example in creationism. The third point—important for scholars within the theological fijield—pertains to their theological understanding and attitude toward natural theology, especially the traditional distinction of a general (in nature) and special (in scripture, specifijically in Jesus Christ) revelation. For Van de Beek this very problematic distinction has to be rethought and revised from the perspective of the unity of personhood. It is this very unity of which the unity of the symbolic universe is made. The fourth important point relates to the nature of the scientifijic activity that takes place in each respective fijield. Although interaction between the fijields are important and should be encouraged, it is very often simply necessary. This is because certain fijields together inform the symbolic universe, and overlap in many ways, thus spontaneously partnering in a hermeneutical window on aspects of reality. The natural sciences, especially physics in this regard (and consequently technology), have made a tremendous contribution; they are most probably the most successful and influential contributor. The human sciences—in contrast—lack far behind for various reasons; with culture perhaps being the most determinative factor. Whereas theological reflection previously enjoyed the status of queen of the sciences, it has now been replaced by physics and biology. However, this does not have to be the case. Perhaps better said by Van de Beek27 in an almost pastoral tone: Er is alle reden rekening te houden met die natuurkunde, maar laten theologen zich in de eerste plaats met God bezig houden en verder ook hun oor te luisteren leggen bij de zusteren in de wetenschappen, die op het moment onder het regime van die energierijke dame van de fysica weinig kans krijgen.

Thus, having positioned himself regarding the relation between the natural sciences and theology, Van de Beek fijinally turns to a specifijic influential new challenge with regard to a theology of creation, namely of intelligent design (ID). We now turn to his critical evaluation of ID. The following formulation—unintelligent proposal—is mine, not Van de Beek’s. The argument to substantiate ID as unintelligent proposal, is Van de Beek’s, not mine.

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 Van de Beek, Toeval, 151. (“There are plenty of reasons to take the natural sciences seriously, but fijirst of all let theologians take God seriously, and moreover also lend an ear to the sister sciences, who at the moment really get little chance to make themselves heard under the regime of the energetic lady physics”).

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daniël p. veldsman The Unintelligent Proposal of Intelligent Design

Within a theology of creation, an evaluation of ID according to Van de Beek28 calls for a theological judgment in which a careful distinction has to be made between design and designer, designer and Designer, Designer and Creator, and Creator and the God that has revealed Godself in Jesus Christ. The persuasive power of ID is two-pronged. It lies on the one hand with its straight for-ward dictum: Look at the facts before your eyes that logically conclude to ID. On the other hand is ID fuels sharp points of passionate criticism: Creation is not a product of chance. And what about all the missing links? Even so, the vehemence with which such arguments are presented make clear that there is more at stake in the debate than only a scientifijic issue: worldviews and hidden agendas heatedly come into play. The basic question to focus on is for Van de Beek29 whether the argumentation of ID is sound or not. Given the “irreducible complexities” of natural phenomena that we can observe, identify, and construct theoretically, ID does not lead in the last instance to more than the fascinating exposure of similarities between human brain patterns and cognitive processes (read: intelligence) and natural structures and processes in their complexity (read: ordered patterns). To deduce a designer from these striking similarities is not a necessary deduction, and is simply going too far. Does design implies a Designer? If it does imply a designer, then it is as an immanent phenomenon and not as transcendent Power. At the same time it implies intelligence as immanent intelligence and not as transcendent intelligence. If theology is understood as speaking about the transcendent God, then this fijinding is of no use. Perhaps it can help if the very complexity of natural phenomena is seen as the revelation of God? That is only possible by means of an error of reasoning (“denkfout”) if fijirst causes (transcendent Power) and second causes (natural causes) are confusingly conflated.30 This argument

28  Van de Beek, Toeval, 202. See also his short exposition of Intelligent Design in Nederlands Dagblad, 3 Feb 2006. 29  Van de Beek, Toeval, 204. 30  Van de Beek, Toeval, 213, makes his point quite clear: “Hoe kunnen we dan wel God kennen, als Hij zich alleen in het immanente kan openbaren en tegelijk het immanente natuurlijk te verklaren is? God is in elk geval niet kenbaar als de conclusie van een logisch vertoog . . .”. (“How is it then possible to know God after all if God reveals Godself only in that which is immanent, and when that which is immanent can at the same time be

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addresses the afore mentioned dictum: look at the facts. But what about the missing links? That has to do for Van de Beek with the nature of fossils since eventually all life forms naturally decompose completely, and it is only the more common species that might be discovered because they had a larger chance to have been preserved under good circumstances. What then are we to do with ID? Theologically nothing if our purpose is to (reasonably) provide a (scientifijic) foundation for our belief in God. It is not a foundation. But this does not mean that those of us who believe in God cannot stand in awe before the beauty of coherence in nature. Put diffferently: Praise has another source! But what is the conflict then about? Why do the faithful fijight evolution theory? Why do the unfaithful fijight ID? The fijirst question has to do with the conclusion and not the content of evolution theory as such, and that is: exclusive naturalism. Exclusive naturalism lives by the absolute claim that we can explain the world naturally, and are in no need of God. The second question, on the opposing of ID by the unfaithful, most probably has its strongest reason in the theistic aspect of ID. Just as the faithful are annoyed and angered by the exclusion of God from a naturalistic position, so are the unfaithful annoyed by the theistic emphasis on a controlling power, and thus subsequently the determinism (and loss of freedom) that comes with it. This represents for Van de Beek the most probable core of the debate: human freedom versus determinism. Almost as postscript, a last critical question to the debate comes from those who do not talk about ID, but rather SD (stupid design). They emphasize the waste in nature, the cruelty in nature, and death. These are all phenomena—not only in nature, also in human history—that contradict the so called noble defense of intelligent design. Put diffferently: the issue of theodicy represents for Van de Beek the death blow for ID.31 And sin adds an unavoidable question mark. How are we then to approach the confession of God as creator?

explained in natural terms? God is not knowable in any way as the conclusion of a logical argument”). 31  The question of human sufffering has been a conscious and consistent theological theme in Van de Beek’s writings from the onset of his theological career. See his Waarom? over lijden, schuld en God (1984). Also in his later works such as Rechtvaardiger dan God (1992), Jezus Kurios (1998), Gespannen liefde (2000), De kring om de Messias (2002), Eén mens maakt het verschil (2007) and God doet recht (2008).

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I fijinally turn to Van de Beek’s conclusion and to an evaluation of his viewpoint. Given the argumentative importance in Van de Beek’s exposition of the symbolic universe, the tentative character of our reflection and convictions, the issue of theodicy and sin in his explication of a theological understanding of creation, I suggest can be captured again in a playful reference to the Beatles’ song. My evaluative judgment is indicated in the following title: ‘composing the music of creation with a hurt fijinger.’ Composing the Music on Creation with a Hurt Finger ‘Laten we de wereld niet mooier voorstellen dan die is’.32 For Van de Beek, the factors of chance (“toeval”) and determination will always direct our reflection on the world and on the way we ultimately make sense of creation and our historicity. We have, however, to understand that in life itself they are an operational mix. This implies that we as creatures will not be able to come to a conclusive viewpoint upon nature (that is, composing our understanding—read music—of creation). As faithful persons our conclusiveness can only come from the persuasive power of the Spirit of God. For Van de Beek the experience of the presence of God is an all-important constituting factor in the confession of God as creator. This makes creation a theological term. Precisely how creation came into existence (in dialogue with the natural sciences), and how we have to make sense of God’s ongoing providence is for Van de Beek a secondary question. The fijine-tuning of God’s intelligence in love (as the true mystery of life), and its fijine-tuning in the cross of Jesus Christ (that is, where the “hurt fijinger” points to), is for him the more comprehensive and important primary question to address if we are to make sense of that what we have received and have not thought out ourselves. This is how Van de Beek’s basic conviction “to be given to ourselves” (“we zijn aan onszelf gegeven”) has colored the unfolding of his theological understanding of creation. This is also why he sees the question of faith’s relationship to history as far more richer (“rijker”) and challenging (“boeiender”) than the signifijicance of the theology-science dialogue. The strongest theological thrust of Van de Beek’s exposition lies in his provocative mix of dialectics and rhetoric, unfolding a theological

32  Van de Beek, Toeval, 236. (“Let us not depict the world as being prettier than it really is”).

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perspective on creation that is especially helpful in addressing the contemporary challenge of methodologically undressing the tight-fijitted modernistic rational robe of totalization.33 Or, if you like: a hermeneutic of violence. It is a robe—or hermeneutic—that has been knitted on a logical-positivist pattern—especially over the last century. Strongly promoted by many fijields within the natural sciences, especially physics, it was knitted—by the rational strategy of absolute reason, through sensory observation, and by experiment—into a robe of absolutistic and reductionistic approaches to the self, to knowing and meaning, and to reality. In attempting to come to terms with this situation in a positive theological sense, the Swedish theologian Ola Sigurdson captures it well in stating: If human reason no longer holds out any promise to be absolute in the sense that it would be able to transcend all conditions of language and history, there are no longer any absolute reasons to claim that the possibility of a religious existence ceases to be an option for serious, thinking human beings.34

Not only are there no longer any absolute reasons to claim that the possibility of a religious existence ceases to be an option for serious, thinking human beings. It is (again?) an inviting option. Our reflective eyes have also been opened in an encouraging manner in diffferent contexts of disenchantment to deal and cope with the shadowy rest of modernism and—in psychological terms—the return of the repressed (or of “postmodernism” if you like). It is a surprising return of, amongst others, the subject religion.35 With regard to the subject, the ideological bracketing of

33  The concept totalization refers to a specifijic “post-modern” phenomenon namely the problematization of conceptualization. It entails the insight that through much of our conceptualisation we do violence to the realities that we seek to express or capture in our concepts. Most often these concepts or the capturing process becomes a means of manipulation, domination or seizure, such that one who has the concept of the thing has the thing in one’s grasp. In short: the encountered phenomenon is reduced to the measure of the concept. See in this regard James Smith, Speech and theology (London: Routledge, 2002), 4. 34  Ola Sigurdson, “Beyond secularism? Towards a post-secular political theology”, Modern Theology 26, 2 (2010), 179. 35  This statement can be substantiated in reference to the following flood of recent literature and comments. To mention but a few: God is back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World (2009) by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge; Postsecularism: The Hidden Challenge to Extremism (2009) by Mike King; The Plot to Kill God (2008) by Paul Froese; Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (2009) by Terry Eagleton; The Palm at the end of the Mind (2009) by Michael Jackson; Do we need religion?: on the experience of selftranscendence (2008) by Hans Joas (translated from German). Two older but still very relevant publications are The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian

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the contextually determined knowing subject and his/her role in knowing and the disclosure of meaning has been lifted. With regard to the return of religion, well that is a surprise.36 It is “returns” within broadened horizons of reflection. Graham Ward37 identifijies three broadened horizons in this regard, namely of (1) the role of the “unsayable” and the “unrepresentable” as it both constitutes and ruptures all that is said and presented; (2) The self as divided, multiple and therefore never self-enclosed but always open unto that which transcends its own self-understanding, and (3) the movement of desire, initiated and fostered by the other. And the “place” where the three interlace, is the body. In the conceptualization of his viewpoint on creation, Van de Beek formulates his approach in such a manner that it does not become a means of domination, seizure and encompassment, such that one who has the concept of the thing has the thing in one’s grasp. It fijinds expression in his: 1. the very vantage point of brokenness and conviction that we are not a product of our own reflection, but that we have been given to ourselves;

Legacy is Worth Fighting? (2000) by Slavoj Zizek and the collection of essays The Future of Religion (2005), edited by Santiago Zabal. An important publication in the South African context, published in 2006 by the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, is the collection of essays with the title Secular Spirituality as a Contextual Critique of Religion, edited by Cornel du Toit. The so-called surprising “return of religion” in the 21st century is described by various authors in diffferent ways: The sociologist Peter Berger remarks that the world today “. . . is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever”. See Peter L. Berger, The desecularization of the world: a global overview, in: Peter L. Berger (ed.), The desecularization of the world: resurgent religion and world politics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 2. The journalist Jonathan Benthall, Beyond belief, in Times Literary Supplement (Dec 11, 2009), 3 writes: “In spite of science and secularism, religions are gaining strength . . .”. Even the well-known British Marxist Terry Eagleton says: “. . . (T)o speak of a post-religious age is to speak a good deal too hastily”. See Terry Eagleton, Reason, faith, and revolution: reflections on the God debate (London: Yale University Press, 2009), 100. 36  Sigurdson, “Beyond secularism”, 185 insightfully states: “Perhaps no part of the world is as surprised over the recent upsurge of religious movements across the globe as Europe. In Europe more than anywhere else, it has been taken for granted that modernity and progress more or less means the decreasing importance if not the eventual disappearance of religious faiths.” Interestingly, the British theologian Graham Ward chooses not to speak of a return of religion, but of “resurgence” of a new “visibility of religion”. In his opinion, three traits of this resurgence can be identifijied, namely Fundamentalism, the deprivatization of religion, and the commodifijication of religion. See Graham Ward, The politics of discipleship. Becoming postmaterial citizens (Grand Rapids: Michigan, 2009), 131–147. 37  Graham Ward, The politics of discipleship, 325.

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2. understanding of the symbolic universe as something that “comes over us”, and subsequently the gift-character of the human world of experiences; 3. epistemological privileging of hear over see; 4. depiction of the relation between the natural sciences and theology as hermeneutical; 5. original criticism of ID by invoking the question of sin and theodicy; 6. pastoral plea for an understanding of the fijine-tuning of God’s intelligence in love and the cross of Jesus Christ. In addressing the threat of totalization, Van de Beek and Marion display many similarities in their approaches. Whereas Van de Beek addresses this threat implicitly, Marion addresses it explicitly. There is however one important diffference that I would like to raise as point of criticism on Van de Beek’s approach from the Marion angle. Let me briefly explain. From a phenomenological perspective, Marion38—in my opinion39— provides an exciting positioning of our theological discourse within the broadened post-modern horizon of the “unsayable” and the “unrepresentable” as it both constitutes and ruptures all that is said and presented. It is a positioning on the threshold of the [im-]possible to speak—with our fijinite language—of the infijinite God in such a manner to respect God’s transcendence (and not to privilege immanence over transcendence) and not to violently reduce God to the measure of the concept. In Marion’s approach we fijind a re-thinking of our concept of concepts otherwise in the sense that they rather point than grasp. It is ultimately a re-thinking of our concepts that they do not turn out in the end to be idols—idols of ourselves. This re-thinking for Marion40 can all be captured in the term 38

 Marion, “The impossible for man”, 22fff.  Whereas I have found Marion’s argument useful, there are others—such as David Wood, professor of Philosophy at the Vanderbilt University—who are not at all comfortable with Marion’s approach (see the chapter “A concluding Roundtable” in: Caputo & Scanlon, Transcendence and beyond, 219–238. For Wood, Marion’s argument is wholly unconvincing, and it reeks of a new scholasticism. The Irish philosopher Richard Kearney fijinds Marion’s understanding of the impossibility of forgiveness unacceptable since for Kearney the forgiveness of God should be something that enables us to forgive rather than something that teaches us its impossibility. For Catherine Keller, professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University, Marion turns impossibility into a Christian doctrine! Given the limited space and focus of my article, I will not address their criticism here, but sufffijice to say that I especially value Marion’s ability to conflate logic, epistemology and ontology in his phenomenological viewpoint, and thereby addressing key modernistic rational dimensions of totalization. 40  Jean-Luc Marion, God without being (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), 8. 39

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icon. For Marion the idol is a matter of constitution, that is, no object or sign is inherently idolatrous, but is rather constituted as such by a subject which intends the object as either that which will absorb its aim / gaze (the idol), or that which will deflect the gaze beyond itself to that which it refers (the icon). As manners of being for beings—and not as two classes of being—the diffference between the two lie in the way in which they signal that to which they refer. It simply means: They signal in diffferent ways! The “signaling” is not dependent upon the subject, but the way in which they are constituted by the “gaze” of the subject: “The gaze makes the idol, not the idol the gaze.”41 Both idol and icon are fabrications: that is not the issue at stake! How then is the diffference in terms of signaling to be understood in which both are fabrications? In the idol, the worshipper’s gaze is satisfijied by the idol itself, fijinds it end in the idol, and fails to be referred beyond it. Thus the gaze settles for immanence and fijinitude, and it is this operation of the gaze which constitutes the idol: For the fabricated thing becomes an idol, that of a god, only from the moment when the gaze has decided to fall on it, has made of it a privileged fijixed point of its own consideration; and that the fabricated thing exhausts the gaze presupposes that this thing is itself exhausted in the gazeable. The decisive moment in the erection of the idol stems not from its fabrication, but from its investment as gazeable, as that which will fijill a gaze.42

Whereas the idol is thus constituted as idol since it no longer refers to a transcendence, but has become an immanence or presence which satisfijies the gaze of the worshipper (and allows no invisibility!), the icon points beyond itself, refers the gaze through and beyond it to a transcendence which cannot be made present. The icon presents a diffferent mode of being which stands in antithesis to the way human consciousness makes the world present to itself. The icon’s purpose is to (ap)present that which cannot be made present, that which is absent. Put diffferently: the icon is a visible indicator of the invisible in which the gaze is to overshoot and transpierce itself and not to collapse (that is, not respecting) the distance (or diffference) between that which is not present and that which is captured in conceptual thought. The icon provokes a vision of the invisible (which is a gift of the other) and the infijinite, and to receive it in its own excessiveness. For Marion, we are drawn by the icon beyond a world

41

 Marion, God without being, 10.  Marion, God without being, 10.

42

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created in the human consciousness by human ideas to the condition of reality “out there”. In Van de Beek’s exposition, the “out there” is explanatory and hermeneutically captured in our symbolic universe and colored by the symbols of scripture. He states: We spreken over (God) in de symbolen waarin Hij zich voor ons manifesteert, op een manier waarin we zelf zijn betrokken. Waar het nu in in een scheppings-teologie om gaat, is de vraag hoe de primaire symbolen voor God, zoals de Schrift, Jezus, de Geest, het taalsymbool ‘God’ zich verhouden tot de andere symbolen uit ons symbolisch universum, ook tot het symbool dat voor onze eigen person staat.43

On this point in my opinion, a blind spot is exposed in Van de Beek’s argument. Marion explicitly acknowledges in the “operation of the gaze” its fabrication character (whether icon or idol), and thus merges hermeneutics and epistemology. However, while Van de Beek’s “gift” character of the symbols on the one hand functions precisely as an argumentative strength on the level of its (biological) origin, it leaves closed the self-critical process of how these theological models come about within theological circles. Thus it disables it very own justifijication in relation to the other sciences, although remaining open on the level of interdisciplinary dialogue, on the other hand. Put diffferently: Insight within the contemporary science-theology dialogue—specifijically those of evolutionary epistemology44—should inform in a self-critical manner the way that theologians construct their models (of rationality) for making sense of the “gifted scriptural symbols” within the symbolic universe. These very (interdisciplinary) insights are not to be handled as dialogical “afterthoughts”, but have to inform the very shaping of our theological theorizing from its beginning. 43

 Van de Beek, Toeval, 85. (“We speak about God in the symbols in which He manifests Himself. But then in such a manner that we ourselves are involved. The important question subsequently for a theology of creation is thus how the relationship between the primary symbols for God (such as Scripture, Jesus, the Spirit), the language symbol God, and other symbols from our symbolic universe—also to the symbol of personhood—is to be understood”). 44  An example of what I have in mind can be found in the work of the Princeton theologian Wentzel van Huyssteen, Alone in the world? Human uniqueness in science and theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). He argues that our theological reflection is not only shaped by the enduring influence of its own traditions (that is, by its social, historical and cultural embeddedness), but by the deeper biological roots of human rationality. In my opinion the latter does not fijind expression in Van de Beek’s hermeneutical approach.

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To conclude: writing as a South African scholar within a society that is deeply afffected and traumatically troubled in many ways by hurt, disenchantment, deprivation, political turmoil—in short: by “gebrokenheid” (brokenness), Van de Beek’s contribution on a theology of creation, formulated from a perspective of “brokenness” fijinds my greatest appreciation. It is more than helpful in exploring the “whereto” of the pointing of his theological “hurt fijinger”, that is, the fijine-tuning of God’s intelligence in love and in Jesus Christ. It is more than just helpful to (further) pursue imaginatively the transformational and healing implications of what I hear from him in his original theology on creation and confession of God as creator.45 But then not from the conviction of being only a “voorspel” (prelude) to eternity,46 but just as much as a kairos moment to be constructively seized here and now.

45  Van de Beek will most probably difffer from my formulation, given his viewpoint in Nederlands Dagblad, 15 Jan 2009, in which he is taken on by his colleagues regarding his viewpoint on human’s ability to change the world. 46  See the critical discussion by Hans Schaefffer, Createdness and Ethics: the doctrine of creation and theological ethics (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 272 of Van de Beek’s viewpoint on creation as prelude to eternity.

PART SIX

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN DIGNITY J. (Koos) M. Vorster 1. Introduction1 The 1996 constitution of South Africa sets human dignity, in addition to freedom and equality, as one of the foundational values that should serve as the paradigm for the understanding of the fundamental rights that are defijined in the constitution and in the legislative processes. This is a move away from the discriminatory past where racial, cultural, religious and gender favouring were allowed through legal sanction. Human dignity, as it is offfered in the constitution, is founded in the classical Kantian tradition that holds the view that humans have an inherent dignity as a result of their rational nature and that the right of the individual surpasses everything else.2 In 1995 the constitutional court in South Africa defijined human dignity as follows: “Recognising the right to dignity is an acknowledgement of the intrinsic worth of human beings: human beings are entitled to be treated as worthy of respect and concern. This right therefore is the foundation of many of the other rights that are specifijically entrenched in [the Bill of Rights].”3 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, for instance, also refers to the inherent natural dignity of humans.4 Humans are dignifijied because they are human. The same view on human dignity exists in the Roman Dutch Law, and determines that the natural human dignity of a person may not be afffected.5 These formulations clearly demonstrate that the concept of human dignity in constitutional thinking in general is founded in a humanistic view

 1  It is indeed a privilege to submit this article in the honour of Bram van de Beek. His personal advice and his thought provoking publications and lectures at international conferences are always a personal inspiration and I am highly grateful to him for this enrichment of my own theological work. 2  J. De Waal; I. Currie, & G. Erasmus, The bill of rights handbook (Western Cape: Juta, 2001), 176. 3  S. v. Makwanyane (3) SA 391 (CC) par 144. 4  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations (1948), 1. 5  G.E. Devenish, A commentary on the South African Bill of Rights (Durban: Butterworth, 1999), 82.

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of life, even if such anthropology claims to be free of values and neutral in the foundation of human rights. A person has human rights because that person is human. Due to the origin of the concept in Western liberalism and its humanistic foundation, the concept of human dignity has therefore long been viewed with suspicion in the Reformed tradition because it was seen as foreign to Christian anthropology.6 The Reformed tradition rather emphasised the depravity of humankind and departed from the position that humans can have no dignity due to sin.7 Humans by nature tend to hate God and their fellow humans. Even in the twentieth century this view has been held in certain Dutch reformed circles by for instance Schilder.8 This view, edifijied by the appearance of the Pietism of the eighteenth century, led to the rejection of the idea of human rights as propagated by Locke.9 The view could also be indicated as a possible reason why the concept of human dignity was neglected in the Afrikaans reformed tradition and as a reason for the Afrikaans churches’ uncritical attitude towards Apartheid. The growth of the discipline of Theological Ethics together with the human rights violations in colonised countries, the Second World War, the rise of the Constitutional state, and the secularisation of society through modernism led to a new consideration of the concepts of human dignity and human rights within Christian circles. Ecclesiastical bodies such as the World Council of Churches (1978), the World Federation of Reformed Churches (1977), the Lutheran World Federation (1978), and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (1983), as well as theologians such as Barth;10 Bonhoefffer;11 Moltmann12 and Berkhouwer13 contributed to this

 6  G.C. Berkhouwer, Dogmatische Studiën. De mens het beeld Gods [Dogmatic Studies. The human being as image of God] (Kampen: Kok, 1957), 46.  7  P. Ramsey, Basic Christian ethics (Louisville: Kentucky, 1993) 290; J. Moltmann, God in creation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 229.  8  K. Schilder, Heidelbergse Catechismus. Zondag 1–4 [Sunday 1–4; Q & A 1–11] (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre N.V., 1947), 298.  9  J. Locke, Two treatises of government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 351. 10  Karl Barth, Christengemeinde und Bürgergemeinde (Zürich, Evangelischer Verlag, 1946), 33.  11  D. Bonhoefffer, Ethics (London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 181. 12  J. Moltmann, The original study paper: The theological basis of human rights and of the liberation of human beings (In Miller, A.O. A Christian declaration of human rights (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 31. 13  G.C. Berkhouwer, Dogmatische Studiën. De mens het beeld Gods, 34.

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development. Gradually most churches within the Reformed tradition positively evaluated the concepts of human dignity and human rights.14 Thus far, the doctrine concerning the dignity of humans within Christianity has mainly been founded on the Scriptural idea of the imago dei (the human as image of God). In his thorough research on this concept Jönsson indicates that the imago dei is set in the Old Testament as the point of departure for the mutual relations amongst people.15 The deeper message of the concept is that people should respect each other because all are bearers of the image of God. Ferguson also remarks: “Consequently, the doctrine of the image of God forms the theological basis for the Christian’s understanding of, and response to, ecological concerns, humanitarian concerns, sexual concerns, evangelistic and apologetical concerns and eschatological concerns.”16 Although human dignity is no longer questioned within the Christian tradition, other questions are raised. Two very current questions in this regard are the following: – Is there any noteworthy diffference between the Christian and the humanist perspectives on human dignity? – If there is a noteworthy diffference, does this have any bearing on human rights itself? Will this diffference of views really have an efffect on the interpretation of human rights in a constitutional state? The present investigation shall focus on these two questions. The central theoretical argument of this investigation is that there is a fundamental diffference between a Christian and a humanistic foundation of human rights, and that this may lead to diffferences in the interpretation and application of human rights. These fundamental diffferences are revealed when it is argued that Scriptural revelation offfers more information than only the imago dei that can serve as foundation of human rights. The explanation of this information can enrich the concept of human rights and lay down clearer principles for an ethics of human rights. As point of

14  J.M. Vorster, Ethical perspectives on human rights (Potchefstroom: Potchefstroomse Theological Publications, 2004), 430. 15  G.A. Jönsson, The image of God. Gn. 1:26–28 in a century of Old Testament research (Lund: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988), 72. 16  S.B. Ferguson, “Image of God” in: S.B. Ferguson and D.F. Wright eds (New Dictionary of Theology, Leicester, Inter-Varsity, 1988), 329.

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departure one should state that Moltmann already moved in this direction.17 His work was supplemented by a recent publication of Nico Vorster that dealt with the matter of human dignity in the context of South Africa in the light of central themes in Scripture.18 He comes to the conclusion that the imago dei, the covenant and social justice, the re-creational work of Christ, and the meaning of the concept kingdom of God together form the notions along which the full meaning of a Christian view of human dignity can be discovered. He argues this paradigm convincingly. This present investigation aims to take this argument further by investigating additional revelation historical information that relates to human dignity. The notions that will be investigated include the following: – The human being as receiver of spirit and the creational gifts of the Holy Spirit. – The human being as the caretaker of creation. – The human being as heir to the new earth. In order to process these three statements, the meaning of the imago dei is fijirst summarised, and at the end contextual implications of a Scriptural view on human dignity are indicated. 2. Imago Dei: The Human Being as Image of God The creation of the human being as image of God has several implications for the Christian anthropology. These implications have been spelled out to a greater or lesser degree by diffferent theologians since the Reformation. It can rightly be stated that, in spite of the emphasis of the total depravity of the human being in terms of redemption in Christ only and the reconciliation with God, the reformed tradition does not depart from a quite pessimistic view of the human being in interhuman relationships. The depravity of human beings makes for incompetence in terms of selfredemption, but it does not at all bring them on the level of an animal. Humans receive a dignity with regard to their interhuman and societal relationships that has to be respected by other humans and by authoritative institutions. This dignity rests on the human being’s imago dei.

17

 J. Moltmann, God in creation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 213.  N. Vorster, Restoring human dignity in South Africa. Essays in Christian anthropology for a new dispensation (Potchefstroom: Potchefstroomse Theological Publications, 2007), 34. 18

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Calvin did not use the term human dignity.19 Yet he does award the human being special value. He explains that the creation of the human being on the sixth day is not without meaning. God fijirst creates the home of humans, and then provides the angels to serve as protectors of the human being and as guards of sanctity.20 God therefore awards the human being a certain status. The human being is the most royal and the most splendid proof of the justice of God.21 However, the human being’s greatest quality lies in being made in the image of God, which primary lies in the intellect and heart, or in the capacity of the soul.22 Although the human being became estranged from God with the Fall, the image of God in the human being was not completely destroyed.23 The human being keeps the value awarded to it during creation and all commands related to this remains valid. The reformed tradition expanded on this foundation for a Christian anthropology and set a basis for an ethics of human rights and responsibilities. Although he does not found Christian anthropology in creation only, Barth expanded on this topic and indicated that the imago dei leads to a covenant relationship in which the human being is offfered true humanity.24 In this way the human being becomes a relational being with God and other people. Precisely in the expression of this offfered humanity does the human being mirror the imago dei. Stated diffferently, the human being’s capacity for humanity is proof of the image of God. This is why manslaughter is rejected so strongly in the Old Testament. Barth calls this prohibition one of the great commandments in the Old Testament laws.25 The humanity of the human being as a relational being is seen as the foundation of ethical behaviour in interpersonal interchange. The purpose of human behaviour is to protect and conserve life with all that it entails, such as empathy, care and concern. With this view, among other things, Barth developed a Christian anthropology that rebelled against the individualism and rationalism prevalent during the Enlightenment.26

19

 John Calvin, Institutes, I:XIV:2:147. (1.14.2.147)  John Calvin, Institutes, I:XIV:2:152. (1.14.2.152) 21  John Calvin, Institutes, I:XV:1:172. (1.15.1.172) 22  John Calvin, Institutes, I:XV:3:178. (1.15.3.178) 23  John Calvin, Institutes, I:XV:4:179. (1.15.4.179) 24  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume III. The doctrine of creation. Part 4 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark—translated by A.T. Mackay, et al., 1961), 116. 25  Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. Volume III. The doctrine of creation. Part 4, 344. 26  D.J. Price, Karl Barth’s anthropology in light of modern thought (Grand Rapids: B. William Eerdmans, 2002), 97. 20

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Berkhouwer contributed to a new consideration within the Dutch reformed tradition, and therefore also in the Afrikaans reformed tradition, regarding the meaning of the imago dei and the ethical implications of this idea for modern society.27 He agitates with principled foundations against the early protestant idea that the imago dei has been entirely lost and that it therefore holds no further consequence for ethics. After a thorough consideration of the arguments on the double aspect of the imago dei—namely the general and the specifijic, as argued by several diffferent theologians—he concludes that the imago dei in the human being remains intact and that this forms the foundation of a Christian anthropology. A denial of the human being’s imago dei abstracts the human being from a relationship with God and makes a Christian anthropology impossible because the human being is then no more than an animal. In this respect he agrees with Barth.28 He furthermore spells out the multiple theological implications of the imago dei, of which the most important is that the human being ultimately becomes the “mankind of God” through the reconciling blood offfering of Christ. In this way the human being receives the capacity to fulfijil a God-given role in the world.29 A human being can also search for the justice of the kingdom of God. The greatest ethical implication of the imago dei is, according to Berkhouwer, the possibility to be free; not in the sense of freedom of will, but freedom of human slavery and bondage. The person who departs from a view of the human being’s imago dei has to obey the people’s call for freedom, and the church has to support these struggles for freedom.30 The human being’s imago dei provides the foundations for political freedom. Moltmann took the argument regarding the ethical consequences of the imago dei even further.31 According to him the concept is primarily a theological concept, and after that it becomes an anthropological concept.32 He argues the imago dei in its mutual relation to the imago Christi and Gloria Dei est homo.33 In his argumentation of the imago dei he says that this original title of the human being should be brought in relation to man’s glorifijication in the kingdom of God. At its core the concept 27

 G.C. Berkhouwer, Dogmatische Studiën. De mens het beeld Gods, 34.  G.C. Berkhouwer, Dogmatische Studiën. De mens het beeld Gods, 95. 29  G.C. Berkhouwer, Dogmatische Studiën. De mens het beeld Gods, 391. 30  G.C. Berkhouwer, Dogmatische Studiën. De mens het beeld Gods, 369. 31  J. Moltmann, The original study paper: The theological basis of human rights and of the liberation of human beings (in: A.O. Miller, A Christian declaration of human rights, 1). 32  J. Moltmann, God in creation, 221. 33  J. Moltmann, God in creation, 216. 28

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says something of God in se who creates an image of Godself and then enters into relationship with that image before it says something of the image itself. The image then, in turn, indicates a relationship between God and humans. The created human being therefore lives in a certain relationship with God. Humans are therefore not isolated objects, but relational beings. The relationship within which the human being has been created is realised in three fundamental relationships, namely as representatives of God who may rule over all things in His name, as God’s partners with whom He wants to speak, and as the human being as the visible image of God’s greatness. The power to rule is qualifijied by stewardship. This image-bearing is not only manifested in a few characteristics of the human being man, but in its entire humanity. “The whole person, not merely his soul; the true human community, not only the individual; humanity as it is bound up with nature—it is these which are the image of God and his glory.”34 Wright emphasises the same idea with his statement that the imago dei is that which the human being is, and not something the human being has. Imago dei does not indicate certain qualities of man, but the human being as such.35 The biblical idea of the imago dei, as it is argued in the reformed tradition, undeniably has special implications for the Christian anthropology and for social ethics. The concept gives a deeper value to the concept of human dignity. Without it a Christian ethic can say little about human relationships, human rights and bio-ethics. The idea as it is expounded in the reformed theology is summarised well by Nico Vorster when he says: “(The imago dei) is a functional and relational concept that defijines human nature in relation to God and assigns human beings a special place in creation. Human beings are God’s representatives on earth and thus are endowed with a special status of dignity.”36 The image is not something in the human person, but it is the person himself.37 A Christian perspective on human dignity is also enriched by investigating other Biblical motifs. The article consequently pays attention to some of these motifs.

34

 J. Moltmann, God in creation, 221.  C.J.H. Wright, Old Testament ethics for the people of God (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), 119. 36  N. Vorster, Restoring human dignity in South Africa. Essays in Christian anthropology for a new dispensation (Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom Theological Publications, 2007), 75. 37  In this regard Vorster refers to the book of B.W. Anderson, From creation to new creation. Old Testament perspectives (Minneapolis Michigan: Fortress Press, 1994), 6. 35

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3. The Human Being as Receiver of Spirit and the Creational Gifts of the Holy Spirit The description in Gen 2:7 should carry specifijic signifijicance. It reads: “. . . the Lord God formed the human being from the dust of the ground and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and the human being became a living being”. The word nefesj indicates life in the Old Testament—that of the human being as well as that of the animal.38 It cannot be deduced from these passages alone that the life of the human being is above the life of an animal. However, the theological context is important. Diffferent from animals, human beings are created in a relationship to God and to each other. Human life does not originate from the human being itself, but comes from God. Brueggemann et al. says in this regard: “God’s very life is then breathed into the sinner; something of God’s own self becomes an integral part of human identity, enabling life to move from God out into the larger world.”39 This life is more than the biological life. The human being receives spirit, a spirit that does not stop existing with biological death, but that continues existing in God.40 The spirit is the seat of love and sufffering, longing and hope.41 That is why life is so important in the creation.42 The life that God gives the human being is more than the biological life; it is a comprehensive expression of human’ spirit in a sense for religion and justice. Of course, all these qualities were disturbed by sin, but they were not destroyed. Even if people become disobedient to God, God still shows them general grace. Calvin says that the gifts that people have do not come from the human being himself, but that they are special gifts from God bestowed on a human being in diffferent ways, but according to a special measure, not holy in itself. 43 The fact that sinful people are artistic, show fijine talents, can make good laws, can practice science in a developmental manner, can show kindness and can establish an orderly society,

38

 See also Gen. 1:20; Lev. 17:11 and Deut. 12:23.  W. Brueggemann, A theological introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abington, 1999), 51. 40  See Ps. 16:10; Ps. 86:13 and Ps. 89:49. 41  F.J. Pop, Bijbelse woorden en hun geheim. Verklaring van een aantal Bijbelse woorden [Biblical words and their secrets. Explanation of a number of Biblical words] (’s Gravenhage: Boekencentrum N.V., 1964), 591. 42  R.F. Wüstenberg, A theology of life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 136. 43  John Calvin, Institutes, 2.3.3.298. 39

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does not rest on the foundation of inner goodness based on humanity, but comes from God because He does not want to surrender his creation to total anarchy. However, these gifts are not adequate for sinful human being’s to work out or deserve its salvation by itself. The gifts only serve to conserve creation. Such gifts can be called the creational gifts. And “the work master of these gifts is the Holy Spirit.”44 Apart from the fact that the human being therefore receives its spirit from God, the human being also receives the creational gifts of the Holy Spirit. The fact that life and the creational gifts that people receive remain even after the fall of the human being is especially meaningful for Christian anthropology, and this fact is highlighted by several Old Testament scholars from diffferent theological traditions. Brueggemann, for one, deduces from the blown-in breath of life that the human being becomes human, and as a human person, has human dignity.45 The creational gifts of the Holy Spirit are limited to the care of creation. But humanity is also bestowed with re-creational gifts of the Holy Spirit. The entire humanity is represented in the new humanity in Christ. Like a tree that is pruned yet is still the tree even though some branches go to waste, so the entire humanity is renewed in Christ even though some individual people are lost. That is why the new humanity receives the imago Christi, according to Moltmann.46 The image of God is repaired in Christ and the human being has to grow to meet this image again. Through a community of faith with Christ, people once more become what they were meant to be. These gifts are primarily the benefaction of the cross of Christ that is given to sinners. The indescribable greatness of God’s love and his grace is expressed through this. He offfers his Son and a sacrifijice of atonement so that people may be saved and creation can be fully repaired. Humanity is saved in the new humanity that enters into a real faith relationship with God. The fact that not everyone embraces this offfering in faith is not God’s fault, but the fruit of the human being’s lack in obedience and tendency to inhumanity. The fact that God gives salvation as well as the Saviour shows

44  A. De Bondt, “De algemene genade” [General Grace], in: Berkhouwer, G.C. & Toornvliet, G. Het dogma der kerk [The dogma of the the church]. (Groningen: Jan Haan, 1949), 276. 45  Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament. Testimony, dispute, advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 450. 46  J. Moltmann, God in creation, 225.

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how important humankind is to Him. And precisely because God deems the human being important, people should deem each other important. The cross should therefore be seen as the deepest principle of human dignity. If God can have compassion with the human being in this way, should human beings not have compassion with each other even more? If God shows so much grace, how much more should people not show grace toward each other? 4. The Human as Caretaker of Creation The dignity of the human being lies in the fact that God appoints each to take care of creation.47 This command is repeated in the second creational narrative.48 Von Rad explains the texts against the following background: “Just as powerful earthly kings—to indicate their claim to dominion— erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear, so the human being is placed on earth in God’s image as God’s sovereign emblem. The human being is really only God’s representative, summoned to maintain and enforce God’s claim to dominion over the earth.”49 As representative of God, the human being receives the task to rule over creation by discovering it and taking care of it. This “rule over creation” does not give the human being the right to exploit and destroy earth. White contends in his contentious article that Christianity is responsible for the current ecological crisis because it gave the human being divine sanction to exploit earth as ruler.50 This rule, granted to the human being, should not be seen as license for shameless dominance. Wright indicates in his criticism of White that from the earliest times Christian theology held the opinion that the rule granted to the human being implied careful attention.51 This care means unfolding and unfurling and responsible use, and not exploitation, abuse and enrichment in the name of “ruler”. Christ is the only dominium terrae.52 That which the human beings are, namely imago dei, also equips them to fulfijil the task of caretaking. Wright says: “If having dominium over the

47

 Gen. 1:28.  Gen. 2:15–17. 49  G. Von Rad, Genesis, a commentary (London: SCM Press, 1961), 58. 50  L. White, “The historical roots of our ecological crisis”, Science 155 (1967), 1203. 51  C.J.H. Wright, Old Testament ethics for the people of God (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), 140. 52  Moltmann, God in creation, 27. 48

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rest of creation is not what the image of God is, it is certainly what the image of God enables.”53 Creation establishes a triangular relationship namely God as the owner of everything, the human being as caretaker and creation as the world where everything that has been created lives. The earth belongs to the Lord, but he gives it to mankind.54 This gift is not a property transfer, but an entrustment. The triangular relationship God, Israel, land is often stated in Old Testament ethics as the norm for property law and land restitution, as in the prescription of the year of the Jubilee.55 In the further development of revelation history it becomes a salvational triangle of God, humanity and creation.56 The person who takes care, acts in obedience to the Commander, they who destroy and oppress insult their Maker.57 Brueggemann distinguishes three elements in this command namely calling, permission and prohibition.58 This view can be argued as follows: God calls the human being to live on earth and to work it. He gives permission that the human being may use creation, but not in such a manner that it attempts to become like God. In this lies the prohibition of the command. Humans are God’s agriculturers, but not his equals, humans have human dignity, but is not equal to God and responsible to God for the expression of this human dignity. The command to work and conserve therefore awards the human being a certain value, but it cuts offf all humanism at the root because the human being has human dignity in service of God, and does not have human dignity instead of God. People do not have human dignity due to their inherent human status, but because God awards them dignity in the cultural mandate—amongst others. With this presupposition, the paths of a Christian view of human dignity and a humanist view of human dignity diverge. Good governance of creation should therefore be in line with Christ’s renewal of all things. The re-creation is the architectural plan according to which people should practice their stewardship with regard to nature. As believers grow in the process of sanctifijication, they should lead creation in the process of glorifijication. They become part of the eschatologically driven history: together with creation they should move from justifijication

53

 Wright, Old Testament ethics for the people of God, 119.  Ps. 115:16. 55  See J.M. Vorster, Christian attitude in the South African liberal democracy, 45. 56  C.J.H. Wright, Old Testament ethics for the people of God, 103. 57  Prov. 14:31. 58  W. Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 46. 54

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to sanctifijication and from sanctifijication to glorifijication. In other words, together with their own “becoming holy”, they should unfold and conserve the beauty of creation. True humanity can only be expressed in a relationship with God, because, says Moltmann: “the restoration or new creation of the likeness to God comes about in the fellowship of believers with Christ: since he is the messianic imago dei, believers become imago Christi, and through this enter upon the path which will make them Gloria Dei on earth”.59 Preuss argues the matter from another point of view, but still summarises this idea well with his statement: “From the beginning, God has given the world to humanity. The world—and that does not simply mean fellow human beings—is the object of human moral behaviour and discourse, and humanity may and should order the world responsibly before this God and in relationship with its Creator.”60 Therefore, humanity in its Christian sense should always be coupled with responsibility towards God and servitude to people and to creation. 5. The Human as Heir to the New Earth In addition to the doctrine of creation, the cultural mandate, and Pneumatology, Christology as well as Soteriology also emphasise the dignity of the human being. The promise of restitution and renewal runs through the Old Testament. The spoiled creation will be renewed. For this reason Moltmann is of the opinion that the beginning should always be explained in the light of the end, and the end in the light of the mystery of creation. “The earlier is understood in the light of the later, and the beginning is comprehended in the light of the consummation.”61 God renews all things and people share in this through their community of faith with Christ. The renewal precisely starts there where sin made its entrance, namely in the human being. And, just like sin polluted creation from the heart of the human being, so the renewing work of God will repair creation from the heart of the human being. Although not all people will place their sanctity in Christ, all of humanity is saved in Christ. Individual persons are lost, but not humanity as an entity. Just like an obedient remainder of Israel represented the continuation of God’s people along the route of promise

59

 Moltmann, God in creation, 226.  H.D. Preuss, Old Testament Theology. Volume 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 238. 61  Moltmann, God in creation, 226. 60

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and fulfijilment in the Old Testament, the believers in Christ ultimately represents the entire humanity.62 The special value of the human being in this regard is emphasised in Gal. 4:6: “So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” In Christ the human being is no longer a slave of sin, but an heir who receives the new heaven and the new earth and eternal life from the will and testament of Christ. And in the new dispensation the culture of the human being is also sanctifijied. Humankind’s obedient care of creation and the human’s work as stewards in fulfijilment of their calling as image bearers of God, follows them into the new heaven and the new earth.63 The stewards’ scientifijic results, their technique, the taking care of the earth, and the artistic unfurling of creation that was attained as stewards in service of God, become part of the glorifijied heaven and earth. Therefore the dignifijied person’s dignifijied labour is also part of God’s plan of renewal. The revelational fact that God uses the human being as instrument in the renewal of creation and that God destines the human being for the new dispensation and sanctifijies culture, indicates the value that God attaches to it. No human being deserves any of this. This human dignity can therefore not lead to self-importance and an arrogance of rights, but should direct the eyes to God and the special responsibility that God placed on the human being—the responsibility to live in community with God, to respect fellow human beings, to respect human life, and to unfold creation and care for it. Once again the essence of the Christian perspective of human dignity comes to the fore, namely that human dignity cannot take a position next to God, but a position before God that should be coupled with responsibility towards Him. 6. Contextual Implications of Human Dignity The question is: does the Christian perspective on human dignity have other implications for a human rights dispensation than what a humanistic view would have? The answer is inarguably yes! The following diffferences can be mentioned, for instance:

62  See J. Bright, The kingdom of God. The biblical concept and its meaning for the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), 71. 63  Rev. 14:13.

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6.1 A Christian perspective on human dignity places individual rights and responsibility in a close relationship.64 In contrast to the unbridled insistence on individual rights of people as formulated in the humanist manifesto’s, this perspective will make people aware of their responsibilities and commitments in their dealings with other people and with institutions of authority. In humanism the rights override the responsibilities while the Christian view of human dignity will give preference to the responsibilities. 6.2 A Christian perspective on human dignity should take human life seriously. Contrary to the humanistic view with its high premium on the rights of the individual to decide regarding their own bodies and lives, the Christian perspective states that human life does not belong to the individual, but to God. People have received the breath of life from God and are—in their humanity—God’s image. This goes for the unborn child as well. The foetus also lives in a relationship with God.65 For the same reason a human being has the responsibility to protect the life of a terminal patient for as long as possible. Seen from this perspective, abortion and euthanasia will be evaluated as immoral. 6.3 A Christian perspective on human dignity will show respect for people’s calling to sanctifijication of life. Divine institutions such as the monogamous heterosexual marriage and the family will be respected and all legislation that deviates from this premise, will be seriously questioned. 6.4 A Christian perspective on human dignity will have an eye for the interests of the poor. In comparison to the uncritical acceptance of measureless economic prosperity of the humanist neo-liberal philosophy, this perspective will plead for the implementation of socioeconomic rights and will emphasise the duty of the state to care for poor. Christian human dignity means commitment to the poor and the oppressed. 6.5 A Christian perspective on human dignity will plead for the interest of the community above the right to an individual’s privacy when it comes to healing, prevention and information regarding the current HIV/Aids pandemic. Here again, the Christian view of human dignity will difffer inherently from the humanist preference on the

64

 Vorster, Ethical perspectives on human rights, 85.  Ps. 139:13; also see J.A. Heyns, Teologiese etiek. Deel 1 [Theological ethics. Volume I] (Pretoria: NG Kerkboekhandel, 1982), 193. 65

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unlimited right of the individual as it is evidenced in the South African discourse. 6.6 A Christian perspective on human dignity will plead for the protection of the ecosystem over and against the developmental urge of globalisation in the name of prosperity for the individual. 7. Conclusion Christians can have peace with human dignity as a core value of the constitution. Yet an analysis of this core value in the light of the tota scriptura shows that there is a huge diffference in the content and implications of the Christian and the humanist perspectives of human dignity as applied in South African jurisprudence. This diffference brings forth further and deeper diffferences in the interpretation of what human rights entail in practice, and how it currently takes form in the South African Liberal Democracy. Christians have the calling to evaluate the new dispensation in South Africa from a Christian perspective on human dignity and to spell out the full implications of these to society.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND A SOUTH AFRICAN CHARTER OF RELIGIOUS RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS Pieter Coertzen This article is dedicated to Bram van de Beek in gratitude for his contribution to the realisation of freedom of religion. 1. Freedom of Religion: The Nature of a Christian Contribution to Dialogue and Co-operation Because Christians are called to seek justice,1 one can argue that they are also called to political involvement, as well as to involvement in society. The belief that God’s redemption is at work in this present world is one of the reasons why Christians ought to engage in political activity. According to reformed theology, Christians must bring Christ’s renewing influence to bear on public life, furthering the cause of God’s Kingdom in this world in obedience to Scripture. In a country like South Africa this will of necessity entail both dialogue and co-operation with other religions and cultures. As a matter of fact, the make-up of the pluralistic South African society offfers a unique opportunity for dialogue and co-operation between the religions in our country for the sake of the good of all the citizens of the land and as a witness to the common grace of God. As to the nature of Christian involvement the following characteristics can be mentioned. 1.1 Modesty Christians must always be cautious to claim that they speak for the Lord. Smidt quotes Skillen “We must constantly act with an attitude of true humility. We should undertake every civic duty, every political action—we can add every dialogue and co-operation—with the avowed understanding that they are not God’s will but only our response to God’s will. The attitude of humility will lead us to be modest and self-critical in our claims

1

 Amos 5:15, 24.

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and stated intentions.”2 A true understanding of freedom of religion ought to keep Christians from an uncompromising claim that they alone have the answers to the problems of the land and that nobody else can make any meaningful contribution. At the same time, Christians must witness to the fact that they have a very important contribution to make. 1.2 Toleration Toleration is a second important characteristic of a Christian contribution to dialogue and co-operation. Tolerance does not mean indiffference or relativism. Genuine toleration calls for peaceful co-existence despite the fact that there are areas where real disagreement exists. Forbearance/ toleration means permitting the other with whom we disagree to exist and, when appropriate, to persuade and engage others by words. In the present age, prior to the full establishment of the kingdom of God that will be fully inaugurated with the second coming of Christ, we must exercise genuine tolerance and action that defends both truth and co-existence.3 In Article 8 of the Preamble to the SA Charter of Religious Rights and Liberties it is clearly stated that the recognition and efffective protection of the rights of religious communities and institutions will contribute to a spirit of toleration among the people of South Africa.4 1.3 Mutual Respect A third contribution that Christians can make to the dialogue between religions in South Africa is one of respect for the other. To difffer with a person—even to difffer in a very fundamental way—does not mean that one need not respect that person. For Christians it is very important to always remember that every human being is created in the image of God. As such, every person deserves our respect and we are under the obligation to show them respect as well as to treat them with respect. Article 6, 5(b) of the Constitution of South Africa states that it is the task of the Pan South African Language Board to promote respect for all languages used by communities in South Africa, including German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Portuguese, Tamil Telegu and Urdu; and Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit

2

 Corwin Smidt, “The Principled Pluralist Perspective”, in: P.C. Kemeny, Church State and Public Justice. Five Views (Downers Grove Illinois: IVP Academic, 2007), 147. 3  Smidt, The Principled Pluralist Perspective, 147–149. 4  SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, Preamble 8.

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and other languages used for religious purposes in South Africa.5 Article 7 of the Constitution states that the Bill of Rights in the Constitution (Chapter 2), afffijirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. All of this points to the respect that the citizens of SA owe each other and which is in any case a calling for Christians in their fulfijilling of the commandment to love their neighbours. Article 8 of the Preamble to the SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms highlights the role that that a Charter can play in the fostering of a spirit of mutual respect among the people of South Africa when it states “The recognition and efffective protection of the rights of religious communities and institutions will contribute to a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance among the people in South Africa.”6 1.4 Dialogue and Co-operation In a pluralistic country like South Africa, people that share the same kind of values due to their religious convictions although they do not necessarily belong to the same religious community, need to engage in dialogue and co-operation in the matters that concern all. They also need to co-operate with each other in order to articulate and fijind that which is the best for the country and all its citizens—the elderly as well as the children, blue collar as well as white collar workers, single persons as well as married couples and families, government as well as subjects. Article 7 of the preamble to the SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms underlines the importance of the contribution of religion to the furthering of the common good of the people of South Africa. This requires that religions co-operate with one-another.7 2. A Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms as Part of the Dialogue and Cooperation 2.1 The Constitutional Position of Religion in South Africa The South African Constitution describes freedom of religion in rather vague terms merely as “. . . the right to freedom of conscience, religion,

5

 SA Constitution, art 6, 5(b).  SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, Preamble 8. 7  SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, Preamble 7. 6

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thought, belief and opinion”.8 It further states that “. . . religious observances may be conducted at state or state aided institutions” given that they comply with certain conditions9 Article 15(3) provides for “— marriages conducted under any tradition, or a system of religious, personal or family law.”10 Article 9(3) of the Constitution stipulates that the state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against any one on one or more grounds, including—among others—religion.11 In article 31 the rights of religious, cultural, and linguistic communities are stated, namely to enjoy their culture, practice their religion, use their own language, as well as to form associations and organs of civil society.12 Article 185 places stipulations on the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities,13 while article 234 provides for the possibility that Parliament may adopt Charters of Rights consistent with the provisions of the Constitution.14 Primarily it is, and remains, the task of the religions and religious people of South Africa to identify their religious rights in a way consistent with their own religious identity and within the ambit that the Constitution and the laws of the country allow. If the religions and religious people of South Africa do not accept this task it will be taken over by government, the courts of the country and society, and it will be administrated in a way which will not necessarily further freedom of religion. It would be a way that again could work Constantinianism in hand, in which the state does protect religion but at the same time also rules over religion. In the history of South Africa we fijind a Constantinian relationship between state and religion from 1652 up until the new Constitution of 1994. In fulfijilling their tasks, churches and religions must ascertain their deepest roots and identity, and also make sure of the rights and obligations that spring from those roots and identity. They must also take note of the Charter of Human Rights contained in the second chapter of the Constitution, as

 8

 SA Constitution, article 15(1).  SA Constitution, article 15(2). 10  SA Constitution article 15(3). 11  SA Constitution, article 9(3). 12  SA Constitution, article 31. 13  SA Constitution, article 185. 14  SA Constitution, article 234.  9

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well as of all those acts of Parliament which further describe the content and application of the rights concerned. The following examples of such acts may be mentioned:

• Section 9 (the right to equality): the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, Act 4 of 2000 • Section 23 (labour rights): the Labour Relations Act, Act 66 of 1995 • Section 32 (the right to access to information): the Promotion of Access to Information Act, Act 2 of 2000 • Section 33 (the right to administrative justice): the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, Act 3 of 2000   • Directly or indirectly, numerous other acts make the rights in the Consti-

tution efffective as well, as in the case of health, housing, education, the environment, the rights of children, the right to vote, and the rights of accused persons and prisoners.15

Religions need to position themselves with regard to the rights in the Constitution and acts that describe the content and application of those rights in a responsible manner in order to determine whether they can subscribe to them as a religion or to avail themselves of the grounds on which they may want to limit those rights in their organization. 2.2 Why a Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms? Many reasons can be given why a Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms can be useful. We fijind most of these reasons formulated in the Preamble to the Charter. 2.2.1 Preamble Article 1 “WHEREAS human beings have inherent dignity, and a capacity and need to believe and organise their beliefs in accordance with their foundational documents, tenets of faith or traditions” 16 The phrase “inherent dignity” of human beings refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 which reads “recognition in the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”17 One can also say that human beings have an inherent need to be religious and to direct his, her or their belief and actions in relation 15

 E.F.J. Malherbe, Motivation for the SA Charter, art. 4.  SA Charter, Preamble 1. 17  John Witte, The Reformation of Rights. Law, Religion, and Human Rights in early Modern Calvinism. (Cambridge – New York – Melbourne – Madrid – Cape Town – Singapore – Sáo Paulo – Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 32. 16

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to an ultimate origin, meaning, purpose of life, existence of what is for them “the holy”.18 Each and every human being responds with his other soul, mind, conscience, intuition and reason to revelation, transcendent values—to what is for them “the holy”.19 In addition to this response, human beings also have the need to organise their religious beliefs. This can fijind expression in a creed, a cult, a code of conduct as well as in a confessional community.20 The preamble to the Charter, and all the bodies and individuals who endorse it, recognises this inherent dignity, capacity and need of all human beings and thereby also recognises the important place of religion in society. Each of the religions will of course recognise it in terms of their own worldview, thoughts, beliefs, opinions and theology.21 For many Christians and Christian denominations, but also for other religions, the recognition will be done on the ground that man was created in the image of God and that God calls his people to recognise, obey and honor the Creator as such. The renowned Jewish academic Irwin Cotler sees the essence of religion as that “we are all created in the image of God—organized around the inherent dignity of the human person, and the equal dignity of all persons”22 which is thereby established. Other Christians claim that the “inherent dignity” of the human person stems from human beings created by God. The “rights” that people and concurrent associations have are granted to them by God with a specifijic purpose. This then also brings along certain duties to which persons and associations must adhere.23 2.2.2 Preamble Article 2 “WHEREAS this capacity and need determine their lives and are worthy of protection” Article 2 of the Preamble fijirstly states that the capacity and need for humankind to believe and to organise their religious beliefs is something that determines the lives of human beings.

18  John Witte, “Introduction.” John Witte & Johan D. van der Vyver, Religious Human Rights. Religious Perspectives. (The Hague: Marthinus Nijhofff Publishers, 1996), xxxiii. 19  Witte, Religious Human Rights, 1996, xxxiii. 20  Witte, Introduction, xxxiii. 21  SA Constitution, 15(1). 22  Irwin Cotler, “Jewish NGOs and Religious Human Rights: a Case Study”, in: John Witte & Johan D. van der Vyver, Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective. Religious Perspectives (The Hague: Martinus Nijhofff Publishers, 1996), 236. 23  H.G. Stoker, “’n Kursoriese Besinning oor Menseregte”, in: H.G. Stoker, Oorsprong en Rigting, Band 1 (Kaapstad: Tafelberg-Uitgewers, 1967), 114–115.

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Many see the right to freedom of religion as the most fundamental human right. Witte quotes Georg Jellinek from his work Die Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte: Ein Beitrag zur moderner Verfassungsgeschichte [The Explanation of Human and Citizen Rights: a Contribution to the modern history of its constitution] (Leipzig, 1895), 42 that religious human rights is “the mother of many other rights.”24 Cottler writes that the Jewish religion and Jewish religious rights are at the core and the foundation of universal human rights as a whole. He then continues that “violations of Jewish religious rights—be they through forced conversions, expulsions, inquisitions, pogroms, and yes, genocide—have been one of the most persistent and enduring hatreds in all of human history.”25 For Rifffat Hassan, the Qur’an is the Magna Charta of human rights and a large part of its concern is to free human beings from the bondage of traditionalism, racism, sexism, slavery or anything else that prohibits human beings from actualizing the Qur’anic vision of human destiny embodied in the classic proclamation: ‘Towards Allah is thy limit.’26 The second part of Preamble 2 states that the capacity and need of human beings are worthy of protection. The South African Constitution, in article 234, allows for Parliament to adopt Charters of Rights consistent with the provisions of the Constitution.27 Already in 1990 Judge Albie Sachs wrote “Ideally in South Africa, all religious organisations and persons concerned with the study of religion would get together and draft a charter of religious rights and responsibilities.—It would be up to the participants themselves to defijine what they consider to be their fundamental rights.”28 Freedom of religion is guaranteed by article 15 of the Constitution, yet about the content of this right very little else is said. The South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms is exactly an attempt by the religious communities in South Africa to take up the opportunity offfered by Article 234 of the Constitution, and to defijine what they consider to be their fundamental rights. The Charter is a document which comes from a large number of religious communities in South Africa and in it they say 24

 John Witte, “Introduction” xxxiii.  Irwin Cotler, “Jewish NGOs”, 236–237. 26  Rifffat Hassan, “Rights of Women Within Islamic Communities”, in: John Witte & Johan D van der Vyver, Religious Human Rights in Global Perspectives. Religious Perspectives. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhofff Publishers, 1996), 370. 27  SA Constitution article 234. 28  Albie Sachs, Protecting Human Rights in a new South Africa, Contemporary South African Debates (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990), 46–47. 25

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what they consider to be their fundamental rights. The determination of religious rights cannot be left only to the legislature or to the courts of the country to decide. The religious communities themselves are the bodies that are to take up this responsibility; they are compelled to this by the SA Constitution that guarantees freedom of religion. 2.2.3 Preamble Article 3 “WHEREAS religious belief embraces all of life, including the state, and the constitutional recognition and protection of the right to freedom of religion is an important mechanism for the equitable regulation of the relationship between the state and religious institutions” The notes under article 2 of the Preamble have already referred to the viewpoints from diffferent religions about the centrality and importance of religion. Religion is not something separate that does not belong in the public place. “Religious belief embraces all of life including the state.”29 In the case Christian Education vs. Minister of Education in 2000, the following was said about the role of religion in the lives of people: “For many believers, their relationship with God or creation is central to all their activities.”30 Very important in this regard is the fact that the Constitution of South Africa protects the right to freedom of religion.31 The South African Constitution also recognises that there is no wall of separation between religion and the activities of the state when it allows that in compliance with certain conditions religious observances may be conducted at state or state aided institutions.32 The Constitution further allows for the recognition of marriages established under any tradition, or a system of religious, personal or family law, or “systems of personal and family law under any tradition, or adhered to by persons professing a particular religion.”33 Article 31 of the Constitution allows for the forming, joining and maintaining of religious, linguistic and cultural associations and other organs of civil society—given certain provisos—while article 185 provides for a Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.34

29

 SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, Preamble 3.  Christian Education South Africa v Minister of Education 200(4) SA757 (CC) para. 36. 31  SA Constitution, article 15(1). 32  SA Constitution, article 15(2). 33  SA Constitution, article 15(3). 34  SA Constitution, articles 31 and 185. 30

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All of this makes it important that there must be an equitable regulation of the relationship between the state and religious institutions. For this reason the SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms is a very important and necessary document because, by defijining and providing details about the content of the religious rights which religions claim, it can help the state to treat all religions in SA on an equitable base. This can help to secure, keep and promote the relatively good relationship that exists between religions and the state in South Africa. 2.2.4 Preamble Article 4 “WHEREAS religious institutions are entitled to enjoy recognition, protection and co-operation in a constitutional state as institutions that function with jurisdictional independence” Preamble article 4 states the right of religions in South Africa to enjoy recognition, protection and co-operation in a constitutional state. The raison d’etre for a Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms is that it spells out what the rights are for which religions can claim recognition, protection and co-operation from a constitutional state. In the last part of the article it is said that religious institutions are institutions that function with jurisdictional independence. The meaning of what is understood under this jurisdictional independence is to a large part spelled out in the fijive subarticles of article 9 of the SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms: the right to determine own confessions, doctrines and ordinances; the right to self-decision in these matters, the right to regulate own afffairs; the right of authority over own afffairs; the right that the judiciary of the country shall respect the authority over own afffairs and respect for confijidentiality in own afffairs and communications.”35 By clearly spelling out all of the above, it can help to restrict unnecessary involvement of the state in the afffairs of religions. It is important that article 9.5 of the Charter states that every religious institution is subject to the laws of the land and that any non-observance of a law resulting from the exercise of the rights in the Charter must be justifijied by the religion.36 Although it is not said in article 9.5, such justifijication of the limitation of rights by a religion must be done in terms of article 7.3 and article 36 of the Constitution of SA.37

35

 SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, article 9.  SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms article 9.5. 37  SA Constitution, article 7(3) and article 36. 36

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2.2.5 Preamble Article 5 “WHEREAS it is recognised that rights impose the corresponding duty on everyone in society to respect the rights of others” This article in the Preamble states is clearly that every right in the Charter to which religions in South Africa can lay claim brings with it a corresponding responsibility and duty. The one person or body’s right to freedom of religion entails the duty to also recognise the other person or body’s right to freedom of religion. In this sense the Charter fulfijills a very important role as a roadmap of what the religious rights are that every person, be it an individual or an association, can claim and at the same time what the religious duties are that every person—individual or association—has to obey. Rights never apply without limitations. When a religious body imposes limitations on the rights of its adherents it has the duty to proof that the limitation is done in concurrence with its faith identity or to protect its faith identity. The SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms may never be used to legalise or even open the possibility for criminal activities or actions prohibited by law.38 2.2.6 Preamble Article 6 “WHEREAS the state through its governing institutions has the responsibility to govern justly, constructively and impartially in the interest of everybody in society” Religion apart from its involvement with individuals in society, is also involved with many other social entities; for example, marital unions, families, corporations, social institutions, etc.—those which can be called the plurality of associations. However, it can be said that the state is the most encompassing entity in its own right39 which a religion/church can encounter in its earthly existence. The state encompasses and co-ordinates, inter-alia by its legislation and policies, all individuals, corporations, and institutions, which include religions, within its sphere of authority. Christians believe that such authorities are divinely instituted; in other words, it is an instrument of the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or to say it in still other words, the state is the great human representative of Christ’s sovereignty over the whole of creation—even if a state itself does not always recognize itself as such. This is also why, with reference

38  E.F.J. Malherbe, Motivation for a Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, 2007, article 7. Photocopy, SA Council for the Promotion and Protection of Religious Rights and Freedoms. 39  Johan van der Vyver, Leuven Lectures on Religious Institutions, religious Communities and Rights, (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 35.

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to Romans 13:6, many Christians confess that state authorities are God’s servants who are executing their God-given command. This conviction brings to the fore a remarkable parallel between church and state in that the centre of the church’s existence is simultaneously also the fijinal centre and authority of and over the state—Jesus Christ the Lord! Apart from being divinely instituted, the state is also a historical institution, a human, cultural response to God’s call to do justice in the public relations that exist in our lives. Through the course of history the state has taken on many diffferent forms, such as kingdoms, principalities, empires, commonwealths, tribal arrangements, etc. Sometimes these arrangements were more just and at other times less just. Sometimes they were even straightforwardly unjust, but they were always ways of structuring the political life in their times and contexts. In the same way, contemporary states are our societies’ better or worse answers to God’s call to concretely structure political life. This implies that states may be reformed so that they can deal in a more just manner with society.40 The state, as embodying a political community, can be characterized by its specifijic concern: to ensure that people and institutions, directions and contexts, are publicly integrated in just ways. The state that has this as its main task is always territorially bound and should function by way of legal rule with the intent to bring about public justice.41 In other words, such a state will then be obliged to recognize, integrate and protect the plurality of individuals, associations, directions and contexts which fall under its authority. For the church this will mean—as for all other institutions and associations—that the state must allow them the space and the freedom they need to fully respond to their God-given calling. However, should the actions of institutions an associations fail to achieve their essential tasks, or distort the lives of others or harm their members, the state must act to ensure that just public relations exists between all and that the common good shared by all societal actors is achieved. The preamble to the Charter formulates this latter contingency by stating that the governing institutions have the responsibility to govern justly, constructively and impartially in the interest of everybody in society.

40

 Hiemstra, Church State, 39–40.  Hiemstra, Church State, 40–46.

41

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2.2.7 Preamble Article 7 “WHEREAS religious belief may deepen our understanding of justice, love, compassion, cultural diversity, democracy, human dignity, equality, freedom, rights and obligations, as well as our understanding of the importance of community and relationships in our lives and in society, and may therefore contribute to the common good” In this article of the Preamble the encompassing role of religion in all areas of life is once again mentioned, as it was in article 3 of this section. Now, however, emphasis is placed on the qualitative value of religion. Religions can bring added value to societies and to a country. “Religious belief may deepen our understanding of justice, love, compassion, cultural diversity, democracy, human dignity, equality, freedom and rights and obligations”. The article then goes on to state that religious belief also deepens “our understanding of the importance of community and relationships in our lives and in society.” And when all of this happens it will contribute to the common good of a country. It is good that all these values that religion can bring to a country are mentioned one after the other in the Charter. But this should not limited to just those values mentioned in the Charter. It must be remembered also that religion can play a very important role in promoting other positive values in a country as well—values like good citizenship, protecting nature, anti-corruption, honesty and loyalty, to name but a few. The State can take note of the important contribution that religions can make to a country. But just as rights bring about obligations, so these values also call religions to take stock of the quality of their contribution to society. The deepening of the values mentioned will not take place ipso facto. Religions will have to see to it that they deepen these values in their members and followers. At the same time the deepening of the values and the attainment of the common good in society is an excellent opportunity for religions to dialogue and co-operate. 2.2.8 Preamble Article 8 “WHEREAS the recognition and efffective protection of the rights of religious communities and institutions will contribute to a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance among the people of South Africa” A last reason why a Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms is necessary is mentioned in article 8 of the Preamble. If the rights of religious communities and institutions as mentioned in the Charter are recognised and protected, the document will contribute to a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance among the people of South Africa. It has been said “religion

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is high voltage; it can energize much or electrocute many.”42 History is full of examples that illustrates the power of religion. The South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms is an honest attempt to help the people of South Africa to foster mutual respect and tolerance for each other through the power of their religious beliefs. 2.3 The South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms as Endorsed on 21 October 2010 (The content of the Charter is grouped under specifijic headings in what follows) 2.3.1 The Right to Believe or Not to Believe (Charter article 1) Charter article 1: Every person has the right to believe according to their own religious or philosophical beliefs or conviction (hereinafter convictions) and to choose which faith, worldview, religion or religious institution to subscribe to, afffijiliate with or belong to. 2.3.2 No Force or Indoctrination to Believe (Charter articles 2–2.3, 2.5 [see also 6.2]) Charter article 2: No person may be forced to believe, what to believe or what not to believe, or to act against their convictions. Charter article 2.1: Every person has the right to change their faith, religion, convictions or religious institution, or to form a new religious community or religious institution. Charter article 2.2: Every person has the right to have their convictions reasonably accommodated. Charter article 2.3: Every person has the right on the ground of their convictions to refuse (a) to perform certain duties, or to participate or indirectly to assist in, certain activities, such as of a military or educational nature, or (b) to deliver, or to refer for, certain services, including medical or related (including pharmaceutical) services or procedures. Charter article 2.5: No person may be subjected to any form of force or indoctrination that may destroy, change or compromise their religion, beliefs or worldview. 42  Max Stackhouse, “Why Human Rights Needs God: A Christian Perspective”, Elizabeth M. Bucar & Barbara Barnett, Does Human Rights Need God? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 27.

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Charter article 6.2: Every person has the right to share their convictions with another consenting person. 2.3.3 Religious Rights and Medical Treatment Charter articles 2.3(b); 2.4 Charter article 2.3(b): Every person has the right on the ground of their convictions to refuse (b) to deliver, or to refer for, certain services, including medical or related (including pharmaceutical) services or procedures. Charter article 2.4: Every person has the right to have their convictions taken into account in receiving or withholding medical treatment. 2.3.4 The Obligations of the State with regard to Religious Rights (Charter articles 3–3.2 and 9) Charter article 3: Every person has the right to the impartiality and protection of the state in respect of religion. Charter article 3.1: The state must create a positive and safe environment for the exercise of religious freedom, but may not promote, favour or prejudice a particular faith, religion or conviction, and may not indoctrinate anyone in respect of religion. In approving a plan for the development of land, the state must consider religious needs. Charter article 3.2: No person may be unfairly discriminated against on the ground of their faith, religion, or religious afffijiliation. Charter article 9.33.1: The state, including the judiciary, must respect the authority of every religious institution over its own afffairs, and may not regulate or prescribe matters of doctrine and ordinances. 2.3.5 The Right to Freedom of Association (Charter articles 1, 4 and 4.2) Charter article 1: Every person has the right to believe according to their own religious or philosophical beliefs or conviction (hereinafter convictions) and to choose which faith, worldview, religion or religious or institution to subscribe to, afffijiliate with or belong to. Charter article 4: Subject to the duty of reasonable accommodation and the need to provide essential services, every person has the right to the private or public, and individual or joint, observance or exercise of their convictions, which may include but are not limited to reading and discussion of sacred texts, confession, proclamation, worship, prayer, witness, arrangements, attire, appearance, diet, customs, rituals and pilgrimages, and the observance of religious and other sacred days of rest, festivals and ceremonies.

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Charter article 4.2: Every person has the right to associate with others, and to form, join and maintain religious and other associations, institutions and denominations, organise religious meetings and other collective activities, and establish and maintain places of religious practice, the sanctity of which shall be respected. 2.3.6 The Right to Observe and Exercise Religion (Charter articles 4–4.4) Charter article 4: Subject to the duty of reasonable accommodation and the need to provide essential services, every person has the right to the private or public, and individual or joint, observance or exercise of their convictions, which may include but are not limited to reading and discussion of sacred texts, confession, proclamation, worship, prayer, witness, arrangements, attire, appearance, diet, customs, rituals and pilgrimages, and the observance of religious and other sacred days of rest, festivals and ceremonies. Charter article 4.1: Every person has the right to private access to sacred places and burial sites relevant to their convictions. Such access, and the preservation of such places and sites, must be regulated within the law and with due regard for property rights. Charter article 4.2: Every person has the right to associate with others, and to form, join and maintain religious and other associations, institutions and denominations, organise religious meetings and other collective activities, and establish and maintain places of religious practice, the sanctity of which shall be respected. Charter article 4.3: Every person has the right to communicate within the country and internationally with individuals and institutions, and to travel, visit, meet and enter into relationships or association with them. Charter article 4.4: Every person has the right to conduct single-faith religious observances, expression and activities in state or state-aided institutions, as long as such observances, expression and activities follow rules made by the appropriate public authorities, are conducted on an equitable basis, and attendance at them is free and voluntary. 2.3.7 The Right to Maintain Particular Matrimonial, Family and Personal Legal Traditions (Charter article 5) Charter article 5: Every person has the right to maintain traditions and systems of religious personal, matrimonial and family law that are consistent with the Constitution. Legislation that is consistent with the Constitution

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may be made to recognise marriages concluded under any tradition, or a system of religious, personal or family law, or to recognise systems of personal and family law under any tradition, or adhered to by persons professing a particular religion. 2.3.8 The Right to Freedom of Expression (Charter articles 4.3, 6–6.3) Charter article 4.3: Every person has the right to communicate within the country and internationally with individuals and institutions, and to travel, visit, meet and enter into relationships or association with them. Charter article 6: Every person has the right to freedom of expression in respect of religion. Charter article 6.1: Every person has the right (a) to make public statements and participate in public debate on religious grounds, (b) to produce, publish and disseminate religious publications and other religious material, and (c) to conduct scholarly research and related activities in accordance with their convictions. Charter article 6.2: Every person has the right to share their convictions with another consenting person. Charter article 6.3: Every religious institution has the right to have access to public media which access must be regulated fairly. 2.3.9 The Right to Share Convictions with Consenting Persons (Charter article 6.2) Charter article 6.2: Every person has the right to share their convictions with another consenting person. 2.3.10 The Right to Religious Dignity (Charter article 6.4) Charter article 6.4: Every person has the right to religious dignity, which includes not to be victimised, ridiculed or slandered on the ground of their faith, religion, convictions or religious activities. No person may advocate hatred that is based on religion, and that constitutes incitement to violence or to cause physical harm. 2.3.11 The Right to Education Consistent with One’s Religious Convictions (Charter articles 7–7.3) Charter article 7: Every person has the right to be educated or to educate their children, or have them educated, in accordance with their religious or philosophical convictions.

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Charter article 7.1: The state, including any public school, has the duty to respect this right and to inform and consult with parents on these matters. Parents may withdraw their children from school activities or programs inconsistent with their religious or philosophical convictions. Charter article 7.2: Every educational institution may adopt a particular religious or other ethos, as long as it is observed in an equitable, free, voluntary and non-discriminatory way, and with due regard to the rights of minorities. Charter article 7.3: Every private educational institution established on the basis of a particular religion, philosophy or faith may impart its religious or other convictions to all children enrolled in that institution, and may refuse to promote, teach or practice any religious or other conviction other than its own. Children enrolled in that institution (or their parents) who do not subscribe to the religious or other convictions practised in that institution waive their right to insist not to participate in the religious activities of the institution. 2.3.12 The Right to Receive and Provide Religious Education (Charter article 8) Charter article 8: Every person has the right to receive and provide religious education, training and instruction. The state may subsidise such education, training and instruction. 2.3.13 The Right to Institutional Freedom (Charter articles 9–9.4) Charter article 9: Every religious institution has the right to institutional freedom of religion. Charter article 9.1: Every religious institution has the right (a) to determine its own confessions, doctrines and ordinances, (b) to decide for itself in all matters regarding its doctrines and ordinances, and (c) in accordance with the principles of tolerance, fairness, openness and accountability to regulate its own internal afffairs, including organisational structures and procedures, the ordination, conditions of service, discipline and dismissal of offfijice-bearers and members, the appointment, conditions of employment and dismissal of employees and volunteers, and membership requirements. Charter article 9.2: Every religious institution is recognised and protected as an institution that has authority over its own afffairs, and towards which the

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state, through its governing institutions, is responsible for just, constructive and impartial government in the interest of everybody. Charter article 9.3: The state, including the judiciary, must respect the authority of every religious institution over its own afffairs, and may not regulate or prescribe matters of doctrine and ordinances. Charter article 9.4: The confijidentiality of the internal afffairs and communications of a religious institution must be respected. The privileged nature of any religious communication that has been made with an expectation of confijidentiality must be respected insofar as the interest of justice permits. 2.3.14 The Rights and Obligations of Religion with Regard to the Law of the Land (Charter article 9.5) Charter article 9.5: Every religious institution is subject to the law of the land. A religious institution must be able to justify any non-observance of a law resulting from the exercise of the rights in this Charter. 2.3.15 Tax, Charitible and Other Benefijits May Be Given to Religious Institutions (Charter article 10) Charter article 10: The state may allow tax, charitable and other benefijits to any religious institution that qualifijies as a juristic person. 2.3.16 The Right to Solicit, Receive, Manage and Spend Voluntary Financial and Other Forms of Support and Contributions (Charter article 11) Charter article 11: Every person has the right, for religious purposes and in furthering their objectives, to solicit, receive, manage, allocate and spend voluntary fijinancial and other forms of support and contributions. The confijidentiality of such support and contributions must be respected. 2.3.17 The Right to Conduct Upliftment (Support), Social Justice, Developmental, Charity and Welfare Work (Charter article 12) Charter article 12: Every person has the right on religious or other grounds, and in accordance with their ethos, and irrespective of whether they receive state-aid, and of whether they serve persons with diffferent convictions, to conduct relief, upliftment, social justice, developmental, charity and welfare work in the community, establish, maintain and contribute to charity and welfare associations, and solicit, manage, distribute and spend funds for this purpose.

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3. Conclusion The South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms was publically endorsed on the 21st of October 2010 in the Board Room of the University of Johannesburg. The keynote speaker was the Honorable Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa Mr. Dikgang Moseneke. Short papers were also given by Prof Marinus Wiechers. former Vice Chancellor of the University of South Africa; Dr. Nokuzola MnDende, Prof. Iain Benson and Prof. Rassie Malherbe. After their addresses the Charter was endorsed by representatives of the religious communities. Apart from Christians, there were representatives of the Jewish community, the Muslims (both the Muslim Judicial Council and the Ismaeli community), various groupings of the Hindus; The National Council of the Baha’is of South Africa; representatives of African Traditional Religions as well as African Independent Churches. Twenty four Christian denominations and religious bodies also endorsed the document, as well as representatives of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, Women’s organisations, Youth Movements, the Education Desk of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Griekwa Independent Church, the Religious Department of the South African Broadcasting Corporation; The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa; The Commission for Religious Freedom of the Evangelical Alliance; the Open Doors Society, Trans World Radio and Media Production Houses. After the endorsement ceremony a South African Council for the Promotion and Protection of Religious Rights and Freedoms was established. This body is now the owner of the copyright of the Charter and has as one of its tasks to eventually take the Charter to Parliament to be accepted as a law of the land. In the meantime bodies that have endorsed the Charter can call upon its existence in the exercising of their religious rights and the courts of the land have to take note of the existence of a SA Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms. The most basic human right, freedom of religion, is the driving force behind everything that has happened. South Africans are very fortunate that our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. The Charter is an attempt by all mentioned above, as well as those that will join in the future, to use the space created by our Constitution for freedom of religion.

DIVINELY APPROVED SUICIDE-TERRORISM? A CHRISTIAN CRITIQUE OF THE DEATH OF SAMSON Bernhard Reitsma 1. Theological Tension The story of Samson (Judges 13–16) is ambivalent. On the one hand it is a dramatic story of the victory of one of God’s servants over God’s and Israel’s enemies; it is often loved by children. On the other hand it is also a very violent history; Samson seems to enjoy the indiscriminate killing of the Philistines. It is especially Samson’s self-chosen death (Judg. 16:30) that is a poignant illustration of the aforementioned ambivalence. It appears heroic: Samson is willing to sacrifijice his life in order to destroy the enemies of Israel. Although captured and blinded by the Philistines and a showcase of the defeat of Israel and of their God Yahweh, by a miraculous return of his powers he is able kill many Philistine by tearing down the temple of their God Dagon. This, however, also raises many questions. Samson’s suicide strongly reminds us of recent suicide operations by Islamic militants in New York (9/11) and Palestine.1 Both Samson and the Islamists are willing to die in order to kill as many ‘enemies’ as possible. The triumphant comment by the book of Judges—that the dead whom Samson killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life2— seems to indicate that despite his mistakes and failures, Samson was still a successful Judge. Moreover, it suggests that all of this was approved by God if not actually ordered by him. The question that needs to be answered is how to value the death of Samson? Would interpreting his suicide martyrdom as heroic not lead to a mindset that regards people of other religions as enemies of God who need to be stopped at whatever cost? What exactly is the relation between the God of Israel and one of the fijirst suicide operations in history? Is the God who instructs his people through the words of Jesus to love their

1  David Canter (ed.), The Faces of Terrorism. Multidisciplinary Perspectives, (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), mentions Samson as one of the fijirst suicide terrorists, 8, 20. 2  Jdg. 16:30b (ESV).

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enemies and to pray for those who persecute them3 nonetheless behind Samson’s suicide mission? Is this God the same as the God who according to Paul wants people to bless those who persecute them, and who urges them not to repay evil with evil, nor to avenge themselves, but to feed their hungry enemy, give them something to drink and to overcome evil with good?4 In order to deal with this question of how to appreciate Samson’s martyrdom, we will fijirst briefly analyze his suicide and its similarities to modern suicide operations, especially in the name of Islam. Secondly, we will see how the book of Judges appraises the life and actions of Samson, in order to fijinally come to a critical Christian theological evaluation of Samson’s death. In this process our primary focus will not be the historical-critical issues of the text, but we will mainly try to understand the theological message of the text in the wider context of the book of Judges.5 1.1. The Death of Samson and Μodern Suicide Terrorism; Defijinition When we want to compare the death of Samson with modern suicide operations, we should fijirst of all realize that Islamists would never refer to them as suicide; suicide in Islam is forbidden.6 Muslims extremists consistently speak of martyrdom operations. The one killed during the operation has not committed suicide, but is regarded as a martyr. There is, however, a diffference between the traditional meaning of martyrdom and relatively recent forms of attacks in the name of Islam. Traditionally from a Christian perspective a martyr is someone who has died for his faith, not willing to renounce his or her commitment to Jesus Christ;7 more generally the idea of martyrdom is also applied to dying for a noble cause.8 Being killed here is not the primary intention of the action, but the side efffect of a higher goal. In suicide terrorism today, however, the death

3

 Matt. 5:44 (ESV).  Rom. 12:14, 17, 19, 20, 21 (NIV). 5  Cf. for some of these issues, Jan Pieter Bommel, Simson in tweevoud: Een onderzoek naar de ontstaansgeschiedenis van Richteren 13–16 (Samson in duplicate. A research into the genesis of Judges 13–16), (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2004). 6  Cf. Q. Sura 2: 195; Sahih Bukhari, Hadith 445, 446 (Vol. 2, Book 23), Hadith 604 (Vol. 8, book 77). 7  Cf. ‘Martyr’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09736b .htm. 8  Cf. e.g. Ralph P. Martin; Peter H. Davids, ‘Martyr’ and ‘Martyrdom’ in: Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Developments (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000). 4

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of the attacker is deliberately and strategically included in the operation. Islamists deny this diffference and rather compare suicide operations with heroic but sometimes suicidal actions of soldiers during war-time. When no options are left, sacrifijicing one’s own life is often preferred over humiliation or abuse or defeat. Still we would want to draw a line, albeit a sometimes very thin line, between an act of war, which certainly will lead to death and an act of war with suicide as the central key to killing as many enemies as possible. These kinds of suicide operations have been rare in history. It is only since 1980, and particularly since 2001, that there number has dramatically increased.9 Contrary to what is sometimes thought, it is also a relatively recent development in Islam; suicide terrorism is not typically Islamic.10 1.2. Characteristics of Suicide Operations Explaining the rationale behind suicide operations is difffijicult, since it is a very complex phenomenon. Apart from religious or nationalist motives, there are also strategic, and personal motives.11 Nevertheless, in relation tot the 9/11 attacks and Palestinian suicide actions in Israel/Palestine some common denominators have been mentioned in diffferent kinds of research that are interesting for our study of Samson.

 9  Cf. Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win. The Strategica Logic of Suicide Terrorism, (New York: Random House, 2006), 11fff., who also shows that suicide bombings did not occur in Israel before 1994. Cf. also Bruce Hofffman, “The Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” in: Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment, Russell D. Howard and Reid L. Sawyer (Guilford: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004), 268; According to data compiled by the Rand Corp., about three-quarters of all suicide bombings have occurred since the Sept. 11 attacks, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/ AR2005071601363.html, Dan Eggen and Scott Wilson, ‘Suicide Bombs Potent Tools of Terrorists, July 17, 2005. 10  M. Horowitz, ‘The history and future of Suicide Terrorism’, Foreign Policy Research Insitute, E-notes, http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200808.horowitz.suicideterrorism.html, Aug. 2008. Cf. Pape, Dying to Win, 11fff.; Canter, Faces of Terrorism, 8, 9 Pape refers to Jewish Zealots, in the fijirst century CE, to the Ismaili Assassins in the 11th and 12th century, to Japanese Kamikaze fijighters during the second world war and Tamil fijighters in Sri Lanka. 11  Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God. Why Religious Militants Kill, (New York: EccoHarper Collins, 2003), 51–54 describes diffferent aspects of the suicide martyr and his or her motives. Cf. also Horrowitz, ‘The history’, who mentions diffferent theories that mention all kinds of explanations for suicide terrorism, like occupation, outbidding, religion and globalization, military strategy and personal, practical and religious or nationalist aspects. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. The global rise of religious Violence. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2003, has described and analyzed different kinds of religious violence.

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a. Honor and Dignity One of the most important and necessary values in non-Western and Islamic societies is honor and dignity. Honor is ascribed to a person because of social status, age, property and land, the reputation of the family, accomplishments, etc.12 Someone’s identity and position in society is inextricably bound up with the level of honor he/she possesses. Therefore it is imperative to guard one’s honor. Loss of honor requires an immediate response to restore it and to purify one’s name.13 Not responding implies acceptance of the humiliation; what people say about you apparently is true. Restoring honor is usually a complicated, expensive or painful process; sometimes it requires the death of the perpetrator, in a similar way that certain crimes in diffferent judicial systems (used to) require a death sentence. From this perspective the 9/11 attacks—and in a slightly diffferent way suicide operations in Palestine—can be seen as a reaction to a strongly and widely felt humiliation of the Muslim world by the West—or in the case of Palestinians by Israel. Many Muslims interpret the economic and political weakness of Muslim countries as a result of the economic, political and military imperialism of the Western world in the last two to three centuries.14 Especially the establishment of the State of Israel—with almost unconditional support of the West—in the heart of the Islamic world, has angered Muslims. In this context the 9/11 attacks were meant to restore honor to the Muslims and their religion.15 In his statement after 9/11, Bin Laden explicitly mentioned humiliation as an incentive—if not the incentive—behind the attacks. He said that the United States had tasted just a very small proportion of what “we have tasted for tens of years. Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years.”16 In this statement he repeated

12  Cf. Rob Ermers, Eer en Eerwraak (Honor and Honorkillings), (Amsterdam: Bulaaq, 2007), Ch. 2, 19–82 describes intensively the meaning and importance of honor, especially in community cultures. 13  Cf. Ermers, Eer, 31. 14  Cf. Colin. Chapman. ‘Islamic Terrorism’. Is there a Christian Response? (Cambridge: Grove Boooks Limited, 2005), 9; Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam. Holy War and Unholy Terror, (New York, Toronto: Random House, 2004), 112. 15  Cf. Hans Werdmölder, “Eer” (“Honor”), Dagblad Trouw (Daily Newspaper), 22-092001, 45. This is the reason why the 9/11 attacks led to a resurgence of Islam and Islamic awareness. 16  Cf. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1585636.stm. Bin Laden calls the attitude of America towards the 9/11 attacks and casualties hypocritical, since the US has been involved in inflicting much larger numbers of casualties in e.g. Japan at the end of WW II,

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his three grievances towards the US that he had already mentioned in his fatwa against “Crusaders and Jews” (read: Americans) in 1998:17 1. The occupation of the holiest parts of the Islamic lands, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering it, humiliating its people, and using it as base to attack neighboring Muslim countries.18 2. The devastation of Iraq and the killing of innocent civilians, which was especially sensitive since Bagdad held the seat of the Islamic Caliphate for approximately 500 years and is therefore considered an important part of Islamic territory.19 3. The establishment of the State of Israel and the occupation of Islamic land, combined with inflicting injustice on the Palestinians.20 The situation of Palestinian suicide martyrs is slightly diffferent, for they are responding in the context of confronting military occupation. For Palestinians the situation in the occupied West Bank and the isolated Gaza strip is a continuous source of humiliation, with little hope of improvement.21

dropping nuclear bombs and calling it a “debatable” issue; when however “a dozen of Americans were killed in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq,” the world stood up for America. The 80 years that Bin Laden mentions refer to the situation from the end of the Ottoman Empire till 2001, in which the West has imposed its will on the Middle East, cf. Chapman, Islamic Terrorism, 9. 17  In 1998 Bin Laden created the World Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders and issued a fatwa in which he announced that it is the individual duty (see below under c) for all Muslims to kill US citizens and their allies. The full text of this fatwa is included in Marvin Perry and Howard E. Negrin (eds), The Theory and Practice of Islamic Terrorism. An Anthology (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008) Part 2, Ch. 1, 45–46. 18  According to an Islamic tradition Muhammad did not allow non-Muslims, Christians nor Jews, to live or be on the Arabian peninsula, cf. Sahih Muslim, Hadith 4366 (book 19); Al-Muwatta, Hadith 5.17 (book 45). It is said that this only applied to the Hijaz at fijirst, but was later extended to the whole of the Arabian peninsula. Another tradition claims that Muhammad himself allowed Christians and Jews living on the Peninsula at fijirst to stay there and that Umar, the second Caliph (634–644 CE) fijinally expelled them, cf. Sahih Bukhari, Hadith 531 (volume 3, book 39); 380 (volume 4, book 53); Sahih Muslim, Hadith 3763 (book 10). In any case, it is still an injunction today and the reason non Muslims are being banned from the Hijaz. 19  This has of course become an even stronger issue since the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003. 20  All of this to a certain extent also explains why many Muslims felt very awkward about 9/11. For although the majority of Muslims around the world strongly rejected these suicide actions and the killing of innocent people, many of them still could identify with the deeper motives of the felt humiliation. Many could also identify with the three incentives Bin Laden mentioned. 21  Cf. Naim Ateek, Suicide Bombers. What is Theologically and Morally Wrong with Suicide Bombings. A Palestinian Christian Perspective, Sabeel Documents 1, (Jerusalem: Sabeel, 2003), 9–11: Ateek emphasizes that the daily life of young Palestinians has in itself already become “an experience of death”. They have “no options and very little to lose”. It is considered a “legitimate way of resistance”. It is important to note here that there is a

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b. Personal Purifijication and Penance In a quite diffferent, but related way, the issue of honor applies to the personal situation of terrorists. Ruthven describes how many of the attackers of 9/11 felt heavily polluted by exposure to the Western World. They seemed to have been at war not only with the world they lived in, but also with themselves.22 They were involved in gambling, were drinking alcohol, exposed themselves to pornography, were visiting prostitutes, and so on. In short they were participating in everything that was un-Islamic and the mark of ‘unbelievers’. They were committing Kufr and crossing God’s boundaries. Living in the West for them was a test of how to survive and culturally integrate, in which they were haunted by “loneliness and uncertain identities,” “sexual misery of desire and repulsion” and obsession with decadence.23 They were not able to access the spiritual and esthetic richness of the western culture, which resulted in tensions and alienation.24 The only way out of this deadlock for them was to die as a martyr in a holy war. In their perception of Islam, only this could guarantee complete purifijication, forgiveness of sin and direct access to Paradise.25 Their participation in the 9/11 attacks can therefore be (at least partially) interpreted as a desire for total purifijication. A document left behind by the hijackers portrays the attacks mainly as an individual action to please God, a form of privately experienced ‘worship’—if that term makes any sense in this context.26 This form of Islam to them was mainly discovered as a kind of personal regeneration experience.27 There is nothing about selfless devotion to the community’s defense, nothing about the wrongs that are being redressed through martyrdom. It is a very narcissistic experience.28

correlation between honor and land. In most if not all Islamist or other terrorist activity besides honor, there is always also the issue of land and landownership. 22  Cf. Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God. The Islamist Attack on America, (London – New York: Granta Books, 2002), 19fff.; Stern, Terror, 54. 23  Ruthven, Fury, 19, 20. 24  Ruthven, Fury, p. 20. One of the shaping fijigures of the Muslim-Brotherhood in Egypt, Sayid Al-Qutb had a similar experience during his months in the USA, cf. Ruthven, Fury, ch. 3, 72–98. 25  Only if you die in defending land, property, family, religion or if you die in the way of Allah, cf. Q. Sura 22: 39, 40, cf. Sahih Muslim, Hadith 259; Al Bukhari Hadith 660 (Book 3); Abu Dawoud, Hadith 4754: the people that one kills have to be enemies of God. 26  Ruthven, Fury, 38. 27  Ruthven, Fury, 18, expressed very “narcisstically”. 28  Ruthven, Fury, 18.

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The experience of Palestinians in the occupied territories is signifijicantly diffferent: they do not feel defijiled for participating in a sinful culture, but feel desperately humiliated by the situation in the occupied territories. In Palestinian areas or camps one hears young Palestinians expressing their desire to die an honorable death. “If I cannot choose how to live, I will choose how to die”; or “if I cannot live with honor, I will die with honor.”29 c. Rationale: Jihad and Martyrdom The two previous elements can only be understood against the background of the overall conceptual framework of holy war or jihad. As mentioned before a person can only be considered a martyr when he or she dies fijighting for a good cause, i.e. in holy war or jihad. Bin Laden already in 1998 explicitly indicated that the Muslims struggle with the West (crusaders and Jews) is a form of (military) jihad. In this framework of thinking there is a diffference between offfensive and defensive jihad. Offfensive jihad, spreading Islam through military struggle,30 is not an individual duty in the same way that the fijive pillars of Islam are. It is a duty of the community and at least some Muslims need to be involved. However, when Islamic territory is being attacked, then jihad becomes an individual duty for all Muslims to defend their country.31 Bin Laden emphasizes that this is the situation of Muslims today. The West, that is the Crusaders and Jews, have declared war “against God, his messenger and the Muslims”, since they have occupied the Arabian Peninsula, invaded Iraq and continue to support Israel. Therefore jihad has become an individual duty and every Muslim is obliged “to fijight the idolaters at any time when they fijirst fijight you.”32

29  This is what the author has heard Palestinians say in refugee camps in Lebanon; Ateek, Suicide Bombers, 9, speaks of a “desire to avenge their wasted life”. 30  Not all Muslims consider military struggle the only way of spreading Islam in jihad, cf. Anthony McRoy, From Rushdie to 7/7. The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain, (London: Social Afffairs Unit, 2006), 94–102. 31  Within the Muslim community there is a discussion whether jihad is only military or that there are other interpretations. Jihad means literally to strife, to exert, and sometimes the “lesser jihad” is distinguished form the “greater jihad”, the last being the struggle against evil in one’s own life, the fijirst being military holy war, cf. McRoy, From Rushdie, 94–98. The other discussion is, whether the lesser jihad is only defensive, or offfensive as well. In any case, offfensive jihad is no longer applicable for Islamists, because the conditions cannot be met. All terrorists today operate on basis of defensive jihad, cf. Mc Roy, From Rushdie, 100–102. 32  Bin Laden’s Fatwa in Perry, Theory and Practice, 46.

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In this context Muslims in general distinguish sharply between the situation in Palestine and the view of Bin Laden. There is more support for the Palestinian predicament, including the guerilla war against Israel, since Palestinians are actually fijighting an occupation and an army.33 1.3. Samson Although his action seems to have been a desperate last resort to overturn the outcome of his failing ministry and not a thought out strategy, there are some striking similarities between Samson’s death and modern suicide operations. a. Honor and Dignity Samson’s death is meant to restore the honor of God, his nation and himself. If he fails as judge, it implies defeat, humiliation and loss of land for Israel. It also brings disgrace on Yahweh. Samson’s failure will be interpreted by the Philistines as a victory of Dagon over Yahweh, as can already be seen from their celebrations in the temple of Dagon after the capture and blinding of Samson. That partially explains his fijinal and desperate action to overturn his defeat. Although Samson himself does not mention this aspect of divine and communal honor explicitly in his own words, the story of Samson within the overall message of Judges provides this wider perspective.34 b. Samson’s Purifijication and Penance By being captured and blinded, Samson is personally humiliated and disgraced as a judge and summoned to entertain the worshippers of the God of the Philistines to demonstrate his defeat. He failed his offfijice terribly and sinned against God and his calling. This is the personal failure and impurity with which he seems narcissistically to be obsessed when he chooses martyrdom. In his fijinal prayer Samson does not even mention repentance, God’s overall purpose, or even the predicament of Israel. He just asks God to revenge the loss of his own eyes. This is what he is concerned with and what he probably considers as the restoration of his purity and honor. This is very similar to the self-centeredness of the 9/11 perpetrators.

33

 McRoy, From Rushdie, 104–106.  In this context honor, dignity and land are connected as they are in most if not all Islamist militant operations. 34

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c. Rationale of Holy War The idea of holy war is assumed, since Yahweh is described in chapter 16 of the book of judges described as being at war with the Philistine god Dagon. The background to the overall story of Judges is Israel’s fijight with the Canaanites in which Yahweh participates. A failure to acquire the land would be interpreted by the Canaanites and Philistines as a defeat of the God of Israel. Against this background, the death of Samson can only be viewed as part of a holy struggle; through it the god of the Philistines is defeated when both his temple and the majority of his worshippers are destroyed. This ultimately seems to be the only justifijication that can be given for Samson’s action in the book of Judges. Because the Philistines are the enemies of God, they can and should be killed. The triumphant conclusion of the author of the book of Judges, that Samson in his death killed more Philistines than during his whole lifetime, seems to underscore the fijinal victory of God and his judge. 2. The Story of Samson in the Context of Judges In trying to understand the relationship between God and Samson’s suicide operation we now need to see how the story of Samson is evaluated in the book of Judges itself. Traditionally the life of Samson is seen as heroic and as a model for Christians.35 It is a popular story in Children’s Bibles. His death is often felt as turning a seemingly inevitable defeat into a miraculous victory. The book of Judges, however, is less triumphant than it seems. It paints a much more ambivalent, if not negative, picture of Samson. Several issues lead to this conclusion: a. First of all, the book of judges describes a kind of circular pattern in the history of Israel in the land. In 3:7–16:31 we fijind stories of the six major judges with the same basic components, adding stories about minor judges in between.36 These components have been programmatically introduced in chapter 2, especially in v. 17–22, which appears to be a kind of theological outline of the book:37 35  Cf. K. Lawson Younger Jr., Judges/Ruth. The NIV Application Commentary, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 34. 36  Cf. Lawson Younger Jr., Judges/Ruth, 34, 35, with minor changes in each cycle. 37  Cf. Bruce C. Birch, Walter Brueggeman et al. (eds), A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 20032), 208 describe a shorter but essentially similar pattern, points i–iv.

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i. Israel abandons the Lord and does what is evil in His sight. ii. The Lord abandons Israel and hands the Israelites over to their enemies, whom they serve for a number of years. iii. Israel cries to the Lord for deliverance. iv. The Lord is moved to compassion and raises up a deliverer ( judge). v. Israel is saved out of the hand of their oppressor by the judge. vi. There is peace in the land. b. Secondly, this pattern is not just a neutral circular repetition, since there is also linear development. However, this development is one of “progressive deterioration”.38 The history of the judges is spiraling downwards, as has already been outlined in the theological program of the book. Israel does not want to listen to the judges that God raises up to deliver Israel (point iv and v of the pattern) and continuously prostitutes itself to other gods.39 Moreover, even if they would listen, it would only be for as long as the judge was alive. When the judge passes away, people return “to ways even more corrupt” than those of their fathers. The decline is progressive.40 It is especially the last three major judges who exemplify this decline, Gideon, Jephtha and Samson. Gideon, often seen as an example of trust in God, ultimately leads the Israelites to prostituting themselves by worshiping an idol, which leads to a return to Baal worship.41 Jephtha’s story is even more dramatic in that it leads to the human sacrifijice of Jephtha’s own daughter.42 Samson fijinally is the judge who fails his offfijice signifijicantly by disobeying God (associating with Philistine women and prostitutes) and by not keeping his Nazarite vow. He is described in the book as the (anti)climax of the judges.

38  Cf. Lawson Younger Jr., Judges/Ruth, 35. The variations in the framework components “indicate the changing state of Israel as seen in the succession of the major/cyclical judge cycles”. 39  Jdg. 2:16, 17 (NIV). 40  Jdg. 2:18–21 (NIV). 41  Jdg. 8:27, 33; this resembles the story of the golden calf in Ex. 32. The story of Gideon is pivotal in the book of Judges; it separates the fijirst three major judges from the second three, the fijirst being not only of better descent than the last, after the fijirst three judges, Israel and its history is restored to the situation of before the judge, after the last three judges things are worse than before, cf. Lawson Younger Jr., Judges/Ruth, 38, 39. Gideon is also the only judge that leads people to worship an idol he himself made before his death. 42  Jdg. 11:30, 31, 34–39.

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c. Thirdly, although the basic components of the theological outline are present in the story of Samson, certain aspects are missing or have been adapted. We do not for example fijind Israel crying to God.43 There is no mentioning of peace in the land after the deliverance by Samson; on the contrary, after Samson chaos only increases. In addition the focus is changing since Samson is more occupied with himself than with the predicament of Israel or with the worship of God. He is doing what is right in his own eyes and is mainly fijighting for himself and his personal revenge. These and other elements44 seem to indicate that the story of Samson reflects the overall concern of the book that the history of Israel is spiraling downwards. Both the literary structure of the book and its theology suggest that it is the (anti-)climax of the stories of the judges. d. Fourthly, although Samson is more successful in his death than alive,45 this is not a sign of triumph. In the TeNaKh suicide is always present in a situation of fijiasco.46 We can therefore say that the so called triumph of Samson in his death is not the reversal of a tragic mistake, a kind of fijinal vindication of Samson, but the apex of his failure. Samson indeed accomplishes more for God dead than alive—not because of Samson, but because of Yahweh.47 This is the end of the judges, both literally and spiritually. The remainder of the book of Judges, chapters 17–21, makes perfectly clear that the offfijice of judges itself utterly fell short.48 It had not been able to bring Israel back to worshipping and obeying Yahweh. The repeated conclusion is that ‘all the people did what was right in their own eyes, since there was no King.’49 e. Fifthly, the theological signifijicance of the story of Samson is strengthened by the fact that the pattern of Samson’s life parallels the pattern of the history of unfaithful Israel.

43

 Cf. Bommel, Simson, p. 126.  The literary movement in the book also points to Samson as the climax of the cyclical structure of the book, cf. for more specifijic details Lawson Younger Jr., Judges/Ruth, 35–43. 45  Jdg. 16:30. 46  Cf. the stories of Saul, Abimelek, Ahitophel. 47  Cf. Lawson Younger Jr. Judges/Ruth, 327. 48  Cf. Bruce C. Birch, Walter Brueggeman et al. (eds)¸ A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 20032), 211. 49  Jdg. 17:6; 18:1, 19:1; 21:25. 44

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i. As Samson visits a prostitute, Israel prostitutes itself with other Gods.50 ii. As the Lord has left Samson and given him over to his enemies, the Lord has left Israel and given them over to their enemies.51 iii. As Samson cries to the Lord, Israel cries to the Lord.52 iv. As God defeats Samson’s enemies, he also defeats Israel’s enemies. v. As Samson failed as judge, Israel failed to complete the conquest of the land and consequently to resist the temptation of the nations.53 In short, Samson is presented by the book of Judges as a kind of microcosm, Israel in a nutshell. Samson’s story is therefore meant as a kind of mirror to Israel,54 showing how far they have degenerated by not obeying God. f. Finally, the story of the judges does not end without hope. In relating the sin of Israel to the absence of a king55 a new future for Israel is anticipated. The implication is, that once there will be a king, everyone will no longer be doing what is good in his/her own eyes. Kingship is introduced here from a positive angle, representing Yahweh as King.56 This hope builds on two other features of the book of Judges. First it is clear from Judges 16 that the failure of Samson does not imply God’s failure. Although Samson is not rescued from his enemies, God still triumphs over his enemies, even in Samson’s death. Dagon is not able to protect the Philistines from Yahweh, who answers Samson’s prayer in returning his strength to him “just once more”.57 Secondly, God had promised from the beginning that he would never break his covenant with Israel. That promise creates hope, even in a situation where Israel has abandoned Yahweh.

50  Cf. Jdg. 16:1 and 2:17 (NIV). It is probably no coincidence that the downfall of Samson starts with visiting a Philistinian prostitute. This creates a link between the story of Samson and the story of Israel, for Judges describes Israel’s worshiping other Gods as prostituting, cf. Jdg. 2:17, 8:27, 33, Ex. 34:15, 16, Lev. 20:5, 6; Deut. 31:16 (NIV). 51  Cf. Jdg. 16:20 and 2:14, 15. 52  Cf. Jdg. 16:28 and 10:10. 53  Cf. Jdg. 2:21, 22, 25, cf Lawson Younger Jr., Judges/Ruth, 324. 54  Lawson Younger Jr., Judges/Ruth, 324. 55  Jdg. 21:25. 56  There is also a more negative view of Kingship, cf. 1 Sam. 8; both views however, agree on the fact that ultimately it is Yahweh who is the King of Israel and that earthly Kingship can only succeed when God is acknowledged as such. 57  Jdg. 16:28 (NIV). Contrary to what the Philistines claimed (Jdg. 16:24) it was not the god of the Philistines—Dagon—that had given Samson in their hands, but Yahweh, for He had left Samson (Jdg. 16:20).

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Concluding from these six points we can say two things about the death of Samson. 1. Samson’s death is not a sign of victory, but of failure. Had Samson been more obedient, this death would not even have been necessary. The story of Samson, especially the end of his life, is the apex of the failure of the offfijice of the judge. It has not brought salvation to Israel, nor did it succeed in bringing Israel back to worshipping and obeying Yahweh. 2. There is hope, not because of, but despite Samson’s death. It is God who raises hope that ultimately his people will be brought back to worshipping him only. The hope is in a king, who represents Yahweh as King of Israel. All of this implies that the self-chosen martyrdom of Samson is not approved by the book of Judges. It is not described as a model or paradigm for the people of God in their relation with people of other faith. This is not the way God would choose to deliver his people. This, however, does not make the rejection of Yahweh, either by the nations or by Israel itself, any less serious. Judges in general remains within the framework of holy war. The opposition between Israel and other nations is also an opposition between the people of Yahweh and those who worship other gods. However, this is not worked out ethnically or nationally, for it is clear that Israel in Judges regularly abandons Yahweh and starts to worship other Gods. The hope is that the presence of a king would have an efffect on Israel’s relationship with God, although the issue of what should happen when, inspite of having a king, Israel would even then continue to abandon the Lord is not addressed. 3. Conclusion: A Christian Theological Approach to the Death of Samson A Christian theology of the self-chosen death of Samson should underline the negative conclusion of Judges that suicide-martyrdom is not a sign of victory, but a sign of failure; it is disapproved of. This is because Christian theology can only start from the awareness that Yahweh has ultimately revealed himself and his nature in Jesus Christ. Van de Beek has strongly emphasized that this should be the heart of all Christian theology.58 58  Cf. A. v.d. Beek, Jezus Kurios. Christologie als hart van de theologie [Jesus, Kurios. Christology as the Heart of Theology]. Spreken over God [Speaking about God] 1,1 (Kampen 1998), 10.

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“Christology is at the heart of all theology for it is Jesus who revealed us the deepest truth about God. . . .”59 The person of Christ can only be understood from the centre of his work, i.e. his death and resurrection. In this light Jesus is the anti-image of Samson. Samson by sacrifijicing his own life meant to kill as many enemies as possible; Christ by laying down his own life intended to save the “ungodly” or “enemies” of God.60 “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many”.61 That should qualify the Christian community in issues related to holy war. This does not mean that we view God as a sentimental sweet God—as Van de Beek might fear. It means at least that the coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be accomplished by earthly means of war and violence. Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world.62 It is not up to the people of God to advance the Kingdom through holy war, nor to implement judgment on behalf of God. The church should be aware that the judgment of God begins with the household of God.63 The question that remains and needs to be further researched is what all of this implies for our understanding of war and violence against perceived enemies of God64 and of eternal judgment. Can we say that the coming of Jesus Christ continues the Old Testament perspective of Judges, albeit on a higher level, or does it completely transform our paradigm? Van de Beek’s work urges Christian theologians to continue researching this.

59  V. Fabella, ‘Christology from an Asian woman’s Perspective’, in: R.S. Sugirtharajah, Asian Faces of Jesus (Faith and Culture Series) (New York: Maryknoll, 1993), 211–222, 212. 60  Rom. 5:6–10. 61  Mark 10:45. 62  John 18:36. Cf. Extensively B.J.G. Reitsma, De kerk in de context van de islam: macht of minderheid [The Church in the Context of Islam, Power or Minority] (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2008). 63  1 Petr. 4:17 (ESV). 64  This is particularly true in the context of the conflict of the Middle East and (Christian) Zionism.

SIMUL JUSTUS AC PECCATOR AND NON-SELF AND/OR NON-SELF. A BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE Hendrik M. Vroom Introduction For a long time, the discussion partners for Christian theology were secularists and atheists. But now, in addition to Christianity and atheism, more and more people are turning towards other traditions to fijind meaning and inspiration. Freedom of religion and the growing supply of diffferent philosophies of life are spreading an atmosphere of relativism, leading to the further privatisation of religion. The church needs to learn how to live in a pluralist society and ‘always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks . . . a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear’ (I Peter 3:15). The attempt to account for one’s faith to everyone who asks thus presupposes a great deal of openness toward other traditions, respect for and knowledge of those traditions, and insight into one’s own tradition. The time for Christian monologues is past: now we have to learn dialogue and it should be part of the training programme for ministry. Elements of dialogue are comparison and witness, but dialogue implies reciprocity. I witness and listen carefully and truly to the witness of the other. Dialogue is reciprocal. The theological faculty of the VU University in Amsterdam has programmes for training both ministers and imams and is in the process of setting up programmes for training Hindu and Buddhist leaders as well. Students cannot put offf thinking about their own beliefs only any longer. In one discussion on the question if all these programmes can be taught at an ecumenical Christian university, Bram van de Beek, dean of the faculty at the time, said that if our Christian students cannot explain the Trinity to a Muslim, they will not be able to explain it to the youth in their churches either. They have to learn to compare and to explain their beliefs to others—just like the members of their churches must learn. In one of the courses that all students at the faculty (Christian theology, Islamic theology, and religious studies) have to take, they have to formulate a theological statement and defend it in debate with other students. They also have to formulate the most serious objections of other traditions to their own beliefs and respond to them.

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People have to learn to engage in dialogue. Ministers, imams, pundits, and Buddhist leaders have to learn to live in the same pluralist society in which the members of their churches, mosques, and others live. The training of Christian students for the ministry should not take place in ivory towers but in the hurly-burly of real life. They have to sharpen their minds, broaden their hearts, show the power of their love in order to witness to all those who ask them why they believe in God as the Creator of the world, the redeemer of the affflicted, and forgiver of sins. The central point is that God has revealed his own heart in the Lamb in the centre of the throne (Revelation 7:17: ‘in mesooi tou thronou’). This paper is a study in Buddhist-Christian dialogue.1 In 1990 I was invited to a Buddhist-Christian dialogue, to present a paper, and to participate in a discussion with Masao Abe in a plenary session. Abe was one of the most well-known Zen voices in Western culture, and had been more involved in dialogue with Christian theologians in the USA and Western Europe than the members of the Kyoto School (of Philosophy) were. The conference took place on Pentecost in a conference centre of the Catholic Grail Movement in the dunes west of Amsterdam. The participants were those interested in dialogue, including students and academics. Abe’s paper was published in the very fijirst issue of Studies in Interreligious Dialogue.2 Here I will elaborate the main lines of my presentation in that dialogue, adding material from my later studies in this area. First, I will introduce the method of comparison and a few elements of the theory of religion, i.e. how I have learned to view the nature of religious faith and beliefs. I will only state them briefly and not go into detail. Then I will explain the Protestant doctrine of simul justus ac peccator. In the next section I will discuss the anthropology (or non-anthropology) of Masao Abe and some philosophers of the Kyoto School, Kitaro Nishida, and Keiji

1  I thank dr. Henry Jansen for the improvement of my English. Re-reading the proof of this article I noticed how much my thought depends on what I learned from him, and other former students involved in dialogue such as Christa Anbeek’s Denken over de dood. De Boeddhist K. Nishitani en de christen W. Pannenberg vergeleken (Kampen: Kok, 1994), colleagues as Jerald D. Gort (e.g. his discussion with Masao Abe on the deeper meaning of Christian righteousness) and Rein Fernhout (‘Kevalam Khitthassa punnena mutti (Salvation through the Merit of Christ Alone): An Attempt to Translate the Central Theme of Protestant Christianity into the Language of Theravada Buddhism’, in: Inus Daneel e.a. (eds), Fullness of Life for All. Festschrift for Jerald D. Gort, Currents of Encounter 22 (Amsterdam/New York: Editions Rodopi, 2003), 279–91, and teachers and colleagues in biblical studies and in systematic theology, such as Bram van de Beek. 2  Masao Abe, ‘God and Absolute Nothingness’, Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 1 (1991), 58–69.

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Nishitani: the doctrine of self and non-self. Finally, I will compare both doctrines and evaluate them. Of course, much more could be said concerning each step in the description and argumentation. The challenge of this paper is to extract those threads we need from the broader issue, and explain them clearly and concisely. The comparison of doctrines involves distinguishing elements in both doctrines and searching for commonalities, diffferences, and possibly contradictions. I look not only for analogies between traditions but also for commonalities and diffferences. If we say that religion A has doctrine p, which is analogous to doctrine q in religion B, the next question is if believers in both traditions share elements in their faiths. We can analyse the background of those analogies and what that background reveals about being human, about God, and about religion. Therefore, although we can note analogies, we have to go deeper. We have to look at how doctrines express insights into life that two traditions share. In that case, those insights refer to the same human experiences but interpret them within the framework of another view of life. Indeed, much of what systematic theologians do is think about how to formulate the insights into God, the world, and human life that have been given to us in revelation. The formulations are not the insights themselves. When somebody does not understand what we are attempting to explain, we sometimes say, ‘Oh, let me explain it in another way.’ ‘Behind’ our formulation is an insight into reality, and that insight is based on experiences. Such insights are part of a way of life, i.e. they are related to practices, morality, and how we live. They concern practical knowledge regarding one aspect of life. In theoretical thought we try to relate various insights by constructing a theory. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that the insights of Christian faith—or of other traditions—will result in consistent theories. On the contrary, when we speak about God we acknowledge that we are speaking about the unseen, and we have to confess that we are looking through a mirror dimly. Therefore, insights into life are the building blocks of a worldview, and they can travel through history and enrich other traditions—if they are plausible. From this perspective in dialogue, we can discover insights that we have in common, even though we might express them diffferently. We could share some insights while disagreeing on other aspects. To fijind ways to communicate our tradition better, our attitude should be one of investigating and exploring rather than prejudging in such a way that prevents us from rethinking it. In this contribution we will compare the central doctrine from the Zen Buddhist tradition with a very central Protestant doctrine. Those doctrines are ‘comparable’ in the sense that they interpret a basic characteristic of

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human existence, i.e. the experiences of the brokenness of the world and alienation from true life. This alienation has to do with selfijishness and a lack of spontaneity, but it also concerns the acknowledgement that we cannot live a perfect life or ‘make’ ourselves righteous and happy.3 It is in this dark area of the human self and its efffects, its status of being apart from others as a self and a part of the whole, that the Christian doctrines of grace and works and being simultaneously justifijied and a sinner and the Buddhist doctrines of anatman, emptiness, and contradictory identity have their meaning. They are ‘comparable’ in the sense that they throw light upon the ‘same’ basic characteristic of human existence. I will sketch the main lines of the Lutheran and Reformed confession of the simul justus ac peccator (both justifijied and a sinner) and the Zen insight of Ego sive Non-Ego (I or also No-I). Both insights have been formative in the lives of millions of people who participated in these traditions. Simul Justus ac Peccator: Grace and Sin The doctrine or, better, confession of sin and grace states that human beings are loved and forgiven by God while remaining sinners at the same time. When speaking about the church as a holy community and addressing Christians as a holy people, the New Testament epistles presuppose that Christians try to be holy but at the same time are sure to fail—and certainly on the deeper level of sin. The idea that human beings are sinners is often understood superfijicially. First, the Calvinist tradition has been seen as pessimistic: people never do what is required of them, they are always inclined to make mistakes, are imperfect beings, and can never be joyful. Humans never can be what and how God wants them to be. Second, sins are seen as acts against the will of God; God has given humans the possibility of fulfijilling his commandments—otherwise God would be inconsistent in demanding that creatures act in ways they cannot. Therefore, God has given people free will so that they can follow His commandments, which are not impossible to keep. This is the line of thought in liberal Christian theology, especially in the Free Will Defence.4 3  Cf. Paul R. Fries, ‘The Pursuit of Happiness, the Production of Evil and the New Christianity,’ in: H.M. Vroom (ed.). Wrestling with God and Evil: Philosophical Reflections. Currents of Encounter 31 (Amsterdam/New York: Editions Rodopi, 2007), 75–89. 4  See the forthcoming VU- doctoral dissertation of Thaddeus Williams, Love, Freedom, and Evil. Does Authentic Love Require Free Will? (Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi Editions, 2011).

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From the biblical perspective, sin is a state of being and not a special act. The story of the fall is not a historical narrative but is intended to convey insight into human existence. Humans do not live up to the ideals of what we should be. Religious truth requires self-involvement and a change of perspective. There is no one who does good, not one (Psalms 14:3; 53:4). The heart of the issue is not that people do wrong but that, in addition to the wrong we do, we do the right thing for the wrong reasons—and one such reason is our own interest.5 The normal pattern of life is to choose and pick those rules that are in our own interest. Ensuring our reputation as good individuals takes care of the rest. Jesus challenged the idea that those who adhered to the rules were better than sinners. Because obedience to rules does not guarantee a morally good life, New Testament ethics is predominantly a virtue ethics. Sanctifijication is not primarily a matter of learning to live in accordance with God’s commandments but to become somebody who does the good for the sake of the good, out of loving-kindness and righteousness. At the heart of Christian ethics are the Sermon on the Mount and the great commandments of loving God with one’s whole heart and power and mind and loving one’s neighbour as oneself. Both commandments are even considered equal in Matthew 22:34 since to love God is to participate in God’s love for people (I John 4:16–19; Matthew 5:45–48). Those who think that the Protestant preoccupation with sin is pessimistic are right in that the heart of the Protestant tradition holds that all our acts fall short the ideal, of how or what we should be. We do not say the right thing at the right moment and often do not act in ways that benefijit others. The commandment to love others like ourselves is not a matter of rules but goes beyond the level of rules and norms to the spontaneity of the heart and the creativity to go beyond the obligations of the state and religion in helping people cultivate love, mercy, and righteousness. If we think about what that means, even our best works are pale. We have to make compromises all day long between the interests of those for whom we are directly responsible, the interests of those for whom we could take responsibility, and the interests of all for whom we cannot take responsibility. On the personal level, we have to choose to neglect some things and concentrate on others, because we cannot do all that is necessary.

5  Cf. Galatians 4–5 and Romans 7:9–11; W. Schmithals, Die theologische Anthropologie des Paulus. Auslegung von Röm 7,17–8,39 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980); Herman Ridderbos, Paulus (Kampen: Kok, 1966), 139–60.

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In addition, in the dark in-between of forced choices and impossibilities, our own interests and those of our tribes creeps in. The world’s cultures are full of tribes, and the modern West full of ‘networks’ that take care of their own interests. In some respects the notion of sin comes close to the Buddhist notion that the world is ‘insufffijicient’, never perfect and always lacking. There are no easy solutions to personal problems, let alone the problems of our global world. The world economy is too complicated and natural disasters too enormous to be able to settle on the right way to share and be generous. There are not enough hours in the day to make the contributions we could. We have to accept the limitations of our lives and the complexities of our world.6 We fijind our way in the grey area of life’s complexities, and, if we are honest, we have to agree with Paul that the good that we could do and sometimes even want to do, we do not, and the bad we do not want to do we sometimes do (Romans 7:15–25). If this reality is accepted, a much more positive way to live is possible. In short, in the words of Luther: pecca fortiter (do not be concerned about sin). Humans are sinners, who are dependent upon grace as beggars are dependent on gifts. Luther’s fijinal words were ‘Wir sind alle Bettler, hoc est verum’ (We all are beggars, that is the truth).7 We live out of grace. It is truth, i.e. seeing reality as it is, and grace, i.e. being accepted by God, that sets us free (John 8:32). In John this reality is called being in Christ. There is a fijine line between doing something because we think we have to do it, and doing the right thing spontaneously. Grace is that fijine line. The Reformation rejected the idea of earning merit with God, stressing instead the forgiveness of sins that allows God to accept sinners as if they are just, justifijied by forgiveness and grace. They are holy not because of what they do but because they are declared just and holy. Against the background of the medieval stress on guilt and eternal punishment, the Reformation proclaimed full forgiveness and the divine verdict of justifijication. Because the righteousness of Christ is reckoned to the sinner, this being just is called iustitia declarativa (declared justifijication). However, because sin is part of worldly existence, people do not cease being sinners. Of course, sanctifijication was a major issue, as the Reformed tradition has

6  David Tracy, ‘On Tragic Wisdom’, Wrestling with God and Evil, 13–24; Hendrik M. Vroom, ‘Why Are We Inclined to Do Evil? On the Anthropological Roots of Evil,’ in: o.c., 131–46. 7  Martin Luther in a letter to Philipp Melanchthon, dated August 1521: ‘Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fijide et gaude in Christo, qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi!’, Werke, Briefwechsel, Band 2 (Weimar Ausgabe), 272, 84–85; ‘Wir sind Bettler’: Luther, Werke, Tischreden, Band 5 (Weimar Ausgabe), 168, 35.

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emphasised through tertius usus legis, i.e. the use of the law as a rule of gratitude. So Christians who live out of grace and forgiveness are both: justifijied from one perspective, and sinners from another—justifijied and sinners at the same time (simul justus ac peccator). If we also include the imperfection and brokenness of the world, we could enrich the notion of acquittal through the idea of being saved but living in a world characterised by irreparable shortages, imbalances, and disasters—which are difffijicult to explain as consequences of human guilt alone. The world is under a spell of darkness, as it has also been claimed, and whoever is saved in Christ is rescued from this imperfect world. Nevertheless, one aspect of imperfect human existence is sin in the sense of not being who and how we are meant to be and could be. This view of sin and forgiveness opens the way to a more humane society. It deepens the biblical message that all human beings have been created in God’s image and have value.8 The insight that ‘No one is without sin and all are in need of forgiveness’ widens the notion of human value to equality because all are equally sinners, nobody has any special merit and all live out of God’s grace. This extends to the gifts we have. In a sense, these gifts are not ours. The so-called liberal idea of humanity holds that each individual has talents and must be given the opportunity to develop those talents in whatever way he or she wants. Biblical anthropology is relational and views humans not as isolated individuals but as members of a community. In principle, the ‘normal’ tribal communities—all over the world—are broken open to become part of the widest possible community of humankind. God is at work all over the world, as the story of Jonah testifijies.9 Christian morality is neither individualistic nor tribal nor, we should emphasise, national. All are sinners; no one is better than any one else. Love is universal. This includes criminals and people who have not understood the real value of life. This insight brings us to the interesting parallel with the Zen Buddhist view that is central to this paper. In the ‘normal’ world, on the ‘conventional’ level of society criminals are criminals, but on the religious level they are as valuable as everyone else. They have simply had another life: perhaps they grew up in a dysfunctional family and had bad friends,

8  See ‘Jürgen Moltmann’s Search for a Liberating Anthropology’, as described beautifully in Ton van Prooijen, Limping but Blessed, Currents of Encounter 24 (Amsterdam/New York: Editions Rodopi, 2004). 9  Cf. Hendrik M. Vroom, ‘Christians and the Religions’, in: Eduardus Van der Borght (ed.), Christian Identity (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), 313–23 (317).

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a teacher who lacked understanding, or they could not meet their fijirst boss’ expectations. What is merit? What is guilt? From the religious perspective, the good that we do is done by grace. The criminal should convert, confess his or her guilt, and ask forgiveness. The one who is righteous by society’s standards should thank God for the gifts she has received and use her potential in the service of her neighbours and especially those who are given into her care. This twofold view of a Christian as justus ac peccator widens to the twofold view of all human beings as created in the image of God and sinners that are loved by God on the religious level and at the same time the people as they are experienced in ‘normal’, ‘conventional’ life. Paradigmatic here is Paul’s confession when he is accused of having done several things wrong during his stay and work in Corinth (I Corinthians 4:4). He answers these complaints by saying that he has tried to do things as they should be done and that he is not conscious of any failures. Then he relativizes his own conscience: a ‘good’ conscience does not guarantee that we have acted properly, for our failures are hidden to ourselves and we do not know our own motives. Therefore, Paul says, I do not judge myself but Christ judges me, adding between the lines: and this Judge is merciful and full of forgiveness. In that way the confession of sins and the acceptance of forgiveness is not a matter of simply doing as one likes. Rather, it makes it possible to treat other people with compassion: all human beings are sinners and (potential) children of God, and all have gifts that they should use for others or, as we would now say, for society at large. It is: to end your own project and do as your hand fijinds to do. Christian freedom is self-less spontaneity. Together with John Newton, the former slave trader turned minister, many Christians express their faith through the hymn, Amazing Grace and through its words, ‘ ’tis grace hath brought me safe thus far.’ When somebody fails and goes astray, we should say: ‘but for the grace of God go I.’ I think that this deeper confession is the basis for a humane society, and I think that the idea that everybody can help him- or herself and will do so ends up in a harsh society without much neighbourly love and responsibility.10

10  This would be a good topic for a doctoral thesis: to investigate the anthropological background in the so-called Rheinic economies (with their extended social security system) and American culture on this point. I think that the stress on human imperfection has made it possible to build another culture of care and welfare. However, the stress on welfare as a right instead of stressing mutual care carries the risk of undermining the

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This short description of the simul justus ac peccator doctrine combines a whole cluster of basic Christian insights into reality as it really is. Let us try to list these insights that—within the greater cluster of Christian insights—together form the background of the simul justus ac peccator: 1. God created the world and human beings; 2. The world contains a great many good things, but it also contains complexities, troubles, and unpredictable disasters that make life hard for many people and test others; 3. Because of attachment to their interests, the preference for benefijiting their relatives, and the complexities of life, humans do not live up to their tasks and responsibilities; 4. Humans have been given gifts and tasks and responsibilities in creation and in relation with other human beings; 5. In Christ God saves and reconciles the world, forgives sin, and declares believers justifijied; then they are—in that sense—free from bondage; 6. All human beings are of equal value because they are created in the image of God and all are sinners; love extends to all people; 7. Simul justus ac peccator. If we try to characterise these insights as short descriptions we could formulate them as follows: 1. God created the world and humanity 2. The brokenness of the world 3. Attachment and sin 4. Relationality 5. Iustitia declarativa—grace and freedom 6. The value of all humans—love 7. Simul justus ac peccator These insights are interwoven with belief in Christ, reconciliation, and other Christian insights, but I think that these seven are useful for a comparison with Zen Buddhist anthropology—that needs more introduction in this Volume with studies in Christian doctrine.

culture of reciprocity. Cf. Hendrik M. Vroom, ‘Sin and Decent Society: A Few Untimely Thoughts’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), 471–88.

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The expression in the title of this section comes from Nishitani.11 The two doctrines of classical Buddhism are an-atman and partitya samutpada. The alpha privans ‘a’ in an-atman means the denial of a permanent self (atman) as understood in Brahmanic thought. Of course, the rejection of anything permanent in each human individual—or, better, all being—is a fundamental critique of the Hindu idea of the divine and the world. It also rejects the basis of most Western worldviews, including Christianity and humanism. Humans have no self they can develop, no soul, or any other permanent identity. The rejection of the self is not just a theoretical construction; its primary target is the way in which people experience things and act. It is precisely the idea of being somebody with a personal identity that is the cause of trouble and sufffering. If we think we are somebody, we lose our openness for experience because we have to take care of our ‘self.’ Our self-interest forces us to think from our own perspective. This ego-centeredness narrows the fijield of considerations we take into account before we act; the world in which we live boils down to what we feel, what we select from our experience, and what touches our hearts more than something else does. In the West, this Buddhist objection to the self/ ego might be understood as a warning against egoism, but that does not even cover half of what is meant here. The point is that the egoism of somebody who thinks he is somebody—not in the metaphorical sense of being important but in the straightforward sense of being a separate unit or being—is a structural quality of a human being that entails a structural shortcoming in the experience of reality as it appears to us. It is not just an epistemological blindness but also an anthropological deformation. Because we separate ourselves from others, we exclude them from our immediate consciousness; only if we try to correct this shortcoming can we think of others. We can say that the interests of others are our interests, but structurally they are secondary compared to our spontaneous and primary experience and consciousness. In other words, the Buddhist critique of the Christian rule that we should care for others just as we care for ourselves is, fijirst, that it is naive. It does not solve the root problem of our perspective; our perspective is always ours and falls short of really taking the interests of the other into account. Second, even the

11  Keiji Nishitani, Was ist Religion? authorized German translation by Dora FischerBarnicol (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1982), 249.

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perspective of another self is a wrong starting point, because double egocentrism does not transcend egocentrism.12 That is why the central vice, according to Buddhism, is attachment to the self. The attachment to the self and others leads to all kinds of attachments, be it the inclination to steal or the inclination to help people who have survived earthquakes and tsunamis. In the end, neighbourly love is also a means of giving meaning to the I or of fulfijilling its purpose and succeeding in its project in life.13 We internalize meanings and aims of life and learn to select from among them and set our own goals. During processes of identity formation and inculturation we set our personal aims—within the context in which we live, most of us do so in accordance with what is normal in our circles, others go against the grain—but all of us determine the norms by which our conscience feels good or bad. In Christian terms, the root of all sin is attachment to ‘me,’ to the self. Attachment is an all-pervasive phenomenon that, with a great deal of efffort, is to be conquered by detachment. The second dogma of Buddhism is the other side of this coin: everything is related to everything; there is nothing with ‘its’ own existence. The river flows on, with new drops constantly replacing the ones moving on. The clouds keep changing; the sky is blue and sunny, or dark, windswept, and stormy. Just like the weather, all beings change, are part of an allencompassing process. If ‘I’ am empty, and ‘you’ are empty, what exists? There are no separate things—they are what they are in their relations with other things. When explaining this, it sometimes helps to introduce it by means of examples that are used to explain continental European phenomenological philosophy. Let us suppose we are sitting in a classroom with eleven students around the table. How do we experience the class? We do so, of course, from our perspective, i.e. the place where we sit or stand. Each of the eleven students has another perspective and different expectations—partly depending on whether they have prepared for this class or not or if they expect the teacher to present something interesting or boring. What is reality as it is in this class? The reality is richer than the picture we draw of the table with the students’ names. The true reality is what occurs in and among all those present. There

12  See Keiji Nishitani’s rejection of Martin Buber’s I and Thou as a relation of two selves in his ‘The I-Thou Relation in Zen Buddhism’, in: Fred. Franck (ed.), The Buddha Eye, (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 47–60 (49). 13  See Masao Abe’s critique of love as a positive attachment (next to hate as a negative attachment), in Zen and Western Thought, ed. by William R. La Fleur (Houndmills UK: Macmillan, 1985), 225.

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are twelve perspectives, and no one is able to experience them all. Each person has his or her own thoughts, and some interact with one another. We can, and we actually do, constantly guess what is going on in their minds; we interpret their faces and project some feelings. But we cannot know for certain because we are looking and interpreting from our perspective, and we cannot sense all that is going on. The term ‘perspective’ itself is too one-sided to include the whole range of associations and feelings that have developed in our career. This classroom is connected with thousands of memories, backgrounds, and associations, and not just university programmes. In Buddhist thought—and experience—all things are related. Because nothing exists in itself, all things exist in their relatedness (without a permanent subject to which all characteristics are related). However, these relations are what beings are. In that sense, there are no beings; all beings lack a core that makes them what they are; they are, instead, part of a great web of interrelatedness. A thing is no thing; what exists is emptiness, i.e. empty of any self-being. If there are no subjects, there are no entities; vice versa, if there are no entities, there is no subject. What ‘is’ is what appears. The reality of that classroom with twelve persons is these ‘individuals’ in their interrelatedness. However, this interrelatedness does not stop at the walls of that classroom but extends to each of them, their past, their expectations, and their relations with others, the weather, and the climate. Nothing is excluded from this interrelatedness; it is constantly changing. The technical term is pratitya samutpada, often translated as interdependent co-arising: everything exists; it arises and disappears, and the next thing appears, in a continual and all-encompassing development. After this short sketch of epistemology and ontology, we now can deal with anthropology. A classical Buddhist metaphor of a human being is that we are made up of fijive parts, just like a chariot with wheels, an axle, and other parts. Humans are made up of fijive skandhas: sensation or feeling, perception, conception, apperception, cognition/discrimination. What we call consciousness is also composed of parts, without a subject as ‘owner’, just as much a part as the others. Many Western people do not have difffijiculty understanding that their body is subjected to the laws of nature and that the water they drink goes to all the cells in their body. Salt, sugar, and all food particles travel through our body and help refresh or harm it. In this sense, we are what we eat. It is less obvious that our inner world, with its precious feelings, beautiful ideals and ideas, is just as determined by what enters our eyes and ears. We are made by our

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environment, our mind as well as our body, and at time t2 we are nothing more then what has been made at time t1 .14 In addition, if we have no self and are not attached to our expectations for our future, we have no secret drives or hidden agendas and can—in the end—be open to what happens around us. In the Zen-inspired thought of the Kyoto School thinkers have said that this emptiness of permanent substance and its unbroken relatedness is, in fact, fullness.15 Emptiness is fullness in the same way, perhaps, as swimming is being part of the water and sailing is being taken up into the interplay of water and wind. The unbroken chain of reality as it is cannot be named without dissecting the interdependent whole. A swimming match comprises all that is a part of it—the pool, the lines, the clock, the referee, the trainer, the competitor, the hopes and fears, the organisation that sent the swimmers, the parents who brought the child to the pool for training, and all wider relations around the event. Because everything is related to other things, there is emptiness (a lack of permanent substances) and the fullness of the fijilled whole of what exists. Twelve people sitting around the table in a classroom are a richer reality than a ‘drawing’ of the table with only the names of the students. Pure experience is the experience of this whole with its relations, some close, others fading away to far places, to the past and the (im)possibilities for the future.16 Times and places are dimensions of this particular place that we are part of. If we are part of that place, we are just there and are not distracted by self-consciousness. Attachments distract. They take away our spontaneity because we have second thoughts and bring in irrelevant elements, especially our interest, both for our families and ourselves. Then we do not do what is good but come up with a compromise between the good and what is good for us, as the Western refrain asks: ‘What’s in it for me?’ The idea of being somebody and the I-consciousness are the sources of attachment. So it is clear that ignorance of reality and attachment to the self and so many things that the self desires (or negatively hates), are the two main shortcomings. They block a pure perception of reality and

14  The diffference with those modern neurologists who think that consciousness is dependent upon biophysical processes in the brain, is that Buddhist would reject the distinction between a biophysical entity and (a secondary, dependent) consciousness. There are no separate entities, organs, thought, accidents, or whatever. 15  Nishitani, Was ist Religion? e.g., 254–59. 16  See Kitaro Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good (1911), transl. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 3–10.

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thus become the source of sufffering—which is not the same as sometimes experiencing pain. Sufffering is the attachment to the self in the experience of pain, ‘the pain about the pain’. Life includes pleasures and pains, but attachments make them my pleasures and my pains, and make me do everything to prevent extra sufffering. We sufffer twice, the real pain and the pain that I sufffer and do not want to sufffer. It goes even deeper. Although attachments are not selfijish per se, they steer us in a wrong direction. We want the best for our children, but sometimes what we want is not the best for them in the end. We want to have a certain way of life, but if the world changes, that way of life can be impossible to realise or be very difffijicult to maintain. Indeed, people have to live with the setbacks of life, and many see their ideals end up in smoke. Less openness for what life brings us implies disappointment and regret. Openness requires that all our plans and hopes are provisional. We have to change not what we want but the act of willing itself. Now we can take a further step. If we can let go of our desires and attachments, we will not be disappointed and harmed if our project fails and life goes on in other directions. Nevertheless, as long as we have a will, our selves are part of our project. Our ethical project is self-attaching. It tells us when we are good or bad because what we do is good or bad, and so we are attached to our ethical project, our conscience, and our ideals of a humane society. Not only are thieves and burglars attached, but fijine, upstanding citizens are attached just as much as they are. The problem of attachments is not a moral but an anthropological issue, beyond good and evil. The only solution is to change and end our own projects. Because I am not a subject, I get rid of it by shedding this phantom. This serious step is indicated by the term ‘Great Death’.17 This expression may look like a metaphor but it is not. Enlightenment is the end of the ego/ self. The enlightened human who lives on is not him- or herself anymore. The Great Death is not an ethical conversion—‘from now on I will do the good’—but an ontological change. I think we can put this diffferently, as a healing of being because what has been separated becomes one. If this happens, and the ego dies, that human has no will of its own anymore. To have a will one needs a self. When there is no self, there is also no will. When there is no self, and no project of the self, the human who lives on can now be totally open for reality. That is pure experience: one feels the joy, the sufffering, the expectations, and disappointments in others. One

17

 Nishitani, Was ist Religion? 66, passim.

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sees the possibilities and impossibilities of a situation. In this awakening to reality, attachments are lost, and ignorance has been overcome; in this openness, mahakaruna and prajna, i.e. great compassion and wisdom, emerge.18 Karuna, compassion, is great and all-embracing, and because all things are experienced in their interrelatedness, this compassion is far-reaching. Because experience is all-embracing, all considerations are taken into account and so wisdom arises. The training for such awakening is a growth in awareness and clarity about desires and feelings. After the Great Death, the person lives on but now as one who lives for the good of all beings, until he or she goes the way of all flesh and dies. That may produce sorrow but not the sufffering of total loss. Now we have to ask who this self-less person is who lives in self-less spontaneity— to use the same phrase as above in relation with Christian freedom and ‘Christ in me’. Who is this self-less person? For government offfijicials, the person who is enlightened and lives on has the same identity as before. One’s personal identity is now the story of one’s life, i.e., the development of this particular Self/Non-Self in the wider relations in which it stands, with its historical dimension. The free person now is part of the whole of interrelated reality but experiences specifijic situations. Kitaro Nishida expressed this interwovenness of the self and the absolute as ‘contradictory identity’: ‘Oneself and Buddha are not two (Pao-Chi) . . .’, ‘the whole Buddha is nothing but oneself.’19 The enlightened person is an indivisible part of the whole, specifijic but empty of any being of his or her own. It is a person without a will of his or her own who responds, as Abe states spontaneously, to the needs and possibilities of the situation: no desires or afterthoughts of one’s own stand in between one and the environment in which he or she acts.20 On the ‘conventional’ level, the person just uses the terms of this blinded world and can speak with non-enlightened people about what is right or wrong to do. On this ‘conventional’ level, enlightened persons do not have a self but an identity. In how they experience 18  Abe, ‘Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata’, in: John Cobb and Christopher Ives (eds), The Emptying God (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 3–65 (50). Because good and evil are interdependent, it is impossible to overcome evil by the power of good, cf. Abe, Zen and Western Thought, 191. The relation of this to the Sermon on the Mount has to be rethought. See also Vroom, A Spectrum of Worldviews. An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion in a Pluralistic World, Currents of Encounter 29 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi 2006), 190–196. 19  Nishida, Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, transl. David A. Dilworth (Honolulu: University of Hawai Press, 1987), 47–123 (98): ‘Religion consists in this contradictory identity of transcendence and immanence.’ 20  Abe, ‘Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata’, 55–58.

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and live, they are uninterruptedly one with reality: True self-centredness is a ‘self-less’ self-centeredness, the self-centredness of a ‘self that is not self ’.21 Let us try again to summarise the most important basic insights in this view of human beings and the world: 1. The real world is an interrelated whole in which all things are related and have no permanence; 2. The world as we experience it ‘normally’ is impermanent and insufffijicient; 3. We are attached to ourselves, and this attachment afffects our pure experience; we act in wrong ways and cause sufffering and conflict; 4. In reality we are emptiness (shunyata); 5. If we are enlightened, we will follow the lead of emptiness/fullness spontaneously and will be full of compassion and wisdom; 6. Interrelated with all other beings; 7. Ego-less and a specifijic being. In short: 1. Pratitya samutpada & anatman 2. Impermanence of all things 3. Attachment to the self—sufffering 4. Shunyata—spontaneity 5. Enlightenment, spontaneity, mahakaruna, and prajna 6. Interrelated—respect for all beings 7. Ego sive Non-Ego Comparison Now we can compare both clusters of basic insights that form the backgrounds of both short formulations of the centre of both ‘anthropologies.’

21  Nishida, Was ist Religion?, 375: ‘Wahre Selbstzentriertheit ist eine “selbst-lose” Selbstzentriertheit, die Selbstzentriertheit eines “Selbst, das nicht Selbst ist” ’; ‘A person is an appearance, behind which is nothing that could appear,’ op. cit., 132 (my translation). In the background are the words from the Heart Sutra: form is emptiness and emptiness is form. The old Mahayana distinction between conventional and ultimate truth plays a role here as well; cf. Vroom, Religions and the Truth, Currents of Encounter 2 (Grand Rapids/ Amsterdam: Eerdmans/Rodopi, 1989), 174.

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Protestant Christian thought

Zen Buddhist thought

God created the world and humanity The brokenness of the world Attachment and sin Relationality Iustitia declarativa—grace and freedom Value of all humans—love Simul justus ac peccator

Pratitya samutpada and anatman The impermanence of all things Attachment to the self—sufffering Shunyata Enlightenment, spontaneity, mahakaruna, and prajna Interrelated—respect for all beings Ego sive Non-Ego

The main diffference between these worldviews is that Zen Buddhism is a cosmological one without a creator (1). In this cosmological view all things are part of one cosmic reality. This is a radically diffferent view from the monotheist belief in a Creator.22 From this it follows that the status of human beings is radically diffferent as well. In biblical thought humankind has a special status and special responsibilities; in Zen human beings are completely immersed in the emptiness of reality, fully interwoven (4), but that is not all! In addition to these radical diffferences are deep commonalities in the brokenness and impermanence of the world (2), attachment as the root of evil and sufffering (3), the value of all humans (Christian) and all beings (Buddhist) (6), and the most fascinating correspondence: the fulfijilment of existence that happens to people (5) and the double-sidedness of human existence (7) which Christians could call a double belonging—though not without qualifijication. In relation to the healed existence (5), both ‘parties’ acknowledge that the healing comes from elsewhere. People have to detach themselves from self-centeredness, empty themselves in order to make room for the source of life (God in me/Christ in our heart led by the Holy Spirit; the will of shunyata), and become free to do what is good spontaneously. People can do a lot and prepare themselves and do open themselves for the change, but such change comes like the wind. In Christianity, the realisation that one is a sinner can be a deep experience; in Zen it is called Great Doubt or Death and has sometimes been described as letting oneself die inside: to let oneself fall and fall, and then the self can die and disappear. In

22  In other Buddhist ‘sects’, the Buddha or boddhisatvas are given divine traits. In some new Pure Land Schools in Japan, the Western Paradise has almost developed into a version of heaven.

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Christianity, people are saved by grace, and sin is forgiven so that they are declared justifijied before God. Notwithstanding deep diffferences regarding the renewed existence and the ways of salvation, I think that both parties share experiences and insights that are basic to both traditions. First is the analysis of the alienation experienced in this so-called normal world (greed, thirst, blindness, selfijishness, hate, conflicts, self-inflicted sufffering).23 Second, there is the confession that life is possible through the death of the ego—in Christianity this is symbolised in baptism. The third is the complete relativity of worldly merit. Fourth, both stress inner renewal instead of new rules in the new life. (This is even more so in the Lutheran than in the Reformed tradition).24 Fifth, both traditions speak of the freedom of the living being that is not grounded in auto-nomy or what is often called hetero-nomy.25 Sixth, the central virtues are the fruits of such religious renewal. The virtues are diffferent in each tradition: for Buddhism, they are wisdom and compassion, and, as Abe said, in (Western?) Christianity, love and justice—which, he thinks, bind people to their selves. I think that, on a deeper level, compassion and ‘universally merciful righteousness and love’ are much closer than they may appear (cf. e.g. Matthew 5; I Corinthians 13). The question Christianity must pose to Zen is if compassion without pure neighbourly love is true compassion. On this point, both traditions could learn from each other in a sympathetic and open critical dialogue. The main issue of this paper is point 7. It is remarkable that both traditions acknowledge a double-sidedness to life as a Buddhist and as a Christian: living in conventional society—imperfect, attached, and broken as it is— and at the same time participating in emptiness or the Kingdom of God, as No-Self or renewed self graced and declared justifijied. I think that here these traditions come exceptionally close in the existential experience of a double belonging—to the realm of this broken world and to the world as it really is. In the Gospel of John salvation is here and now. In Christian eschatology the New Era is here already but not yet present. To bring both perspectives together—no-self and living in this world—Nishida introduced the term ‘contradictory identity’ in his last work. Nishitani used the term soku (Latin: sive; Dutch: oftewel; German: oder anders): Life soku

23

 Nishitani, Was ist Religion? 65–74, with a comparison.  Nishitani, Was ist Religion? 133, compares it with conversion. 25  Nishitani refers to Paul’s saying that he is an instrument, a tool (Werkzeug) of God, Was ist Religion? 417, meaning that he is free from the (normally) human. 24

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Death, Being soku Nothingness. Thus, we write: Self soku Non-Self—both together. The Self is Not-Self and the Not-Self is Self, as other Zen thinkers would say. The diffference is that, for Christianity, sinner and justifijied are qualifijications of a self-in-relations while in Zen the individual ‘is’ a Non-Self soku Self. Despite this diffference, the common element is that the person combines the immanent and transcendent aspects. On this experiential level, many Christians and Zen practitioners can understand each other very well. The question Buddhists do ask of Christians is if belief in God is not an all-too-human projection and in the end an attachment. Is it not cheap grace to trust such forgiveness instead of seriously emptying oneself of false self-identity? Actually, this critical question corresponds with critiques made by innovators throughout the history of the church. Of course, the idea of a Creator leads to many questions by Buddhists and others in relation to God’s sovereignty, the imperfection of the world, and the presence of evil in Christian thought. The main questions Christians can ask Buddhists are, fijirst, if this doublesidedness of the empty life—immersed with shunyata—and this-worldly life in a broken world does not hide a real diffference that cannot be captured by terms like soku and contradictory identity. Can the brokenness of the world be overcome in an immanent transcendence? The second question is if the idea that enlightenment helps one to live spontaneously and as a better person presupposes that the cosmic reality as it is, is full of sufffering that should be overcome. If so, then we have to accept that the cosmos includes a schism between the imperfect and the ideal—and by consequence even a deep religious experience cannot overcome the conventional diffference between good and evil.26 The disunity of good and evil cannot be overcome, and the relation between God and evil remains a mystery with which Christians can live because of the belief that in Christ’s live God knows evil and that God conquers evil. The exposition of Zen ideas and its analysis of human existence, its implicit critique of Western ‘liberal anthropology’ as a false idea of humanity challenges theology to rethink its own tradition. Who sees the ‘strangeness’ of Buddhist salvation and ‘new life’ cannot circumvent the strangeness of a Gospel that has been called a stumbling block and a foolishness to this (conventional) world.

26  I take the term ‘overcome’ here in the Hegelian sense in which contradictions are surpassed in unity, also the unity of conventional and ultimate truth.

PUBLIC THEOLOGY IN A SUFFERING WORLD? Nico Koopman 1. Introduction A few years ago, Bram van de Beek, who is extraordinary professor of Systematic Theology in the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University, gave a lecture at the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology on the theme of no religion with ulterior motive. During discussion time, a police offfijicer challenged Van de Beek about the meaning of the love and honour of God for the sufffering and plights of so many people that she has to work with from day to day in crime and violence-ridden South Africa. She could not accept that this God does not have the motive to change the plight of wronged people. She could not accept that this God does not call his church to be concretely involved in the struggles of people whose dignity is violated. She could not accept that the honour of God and the actualisation of human rights are not closely related. She could not accept that participation in preliminary manifestations and actualisations of God’s coming kingdom does not belong on the agenda of Christians. This woman’s questions can rightly be addressed to that paper of Van de Beek. In various publications during the last decade Van de Beek has echoed similar positions that would raise the same questions and concerns. Too often it has looked as if Van de Beek opposes the public involvement of churches. Too often the impression is created that the idea of participation in the work of the Holy Spirit to efffectuate God’s kingdom is theologically implausible. Too often it looks as if the notion of Public Theology is an expression of practicing religion with ulterior motives. When this police offfijicer addressed her questions to Van de Beek, I almost wanted to be a Van de Beek apologist and tell her about Van de Beek’s earlier works in which he developed a, what I want to call, Public Theology that paves ways for engaging with the plights of sufffering and wronged people, and that spells out directives for the concrete public involvement of Christians. His later work should be read through the lense of his earlier works, I wanted to tell the police offfijicer. This might render a more favourable and just interpretation of Van de Beek. I also wanted to tell her that this theologian is one of the most committed people to dignity and justice that I know. I wanted to refer to his many

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highly-acclaimed initiatives to serve the quest for justice in public life in various countries, his in-depth and illuminating theological criticisms of apartheid and racism in South Africa, his various attempts to foster peace amongst the religions in his own country, and his engagement with and impact on the thinking of policymakers in The Netherlands. This paper therefore investigates the theology of the so-called later and earlier Van De Beek, and concludes that the perspectives of the earlier Van de Beek might help us to draw more favourable conclusions about Van de Beek’s more recent views on the public involvement of church and theology. 2. The Later Van de Beek—Involvement in the World as Mortifijicatio? a. In his address and eventual article Van de Beek1 pleads that we do not serve God with ulterior motives, and that we should guard against instrumentalising faith. Religion can easily be used to justify major wrongs. We therefore need to be cautious in our public involvement in a broken and sufffering world. He cites Liberation Theology, theocracy, and pietism, including the so-called prosperity gospel, as examples of religion with ulterior motives. For him the aim of faith is God alone. We do not serve God or our fellow-creatures for any gain or utilitarian reasons. He proceeds to argue that God does not commit Himself to us, and does not love us with any ulterior motive. That God dies in Christ with his children is the deepest expression of human dignity and of divine glory.2 Van de Beek echoes these views over the last decade in various other publications as well. In his professorial inaugural address at the Free University in 2001 Van de Beek3 argues that the theologians of the early church did not seek for the harmonising of the gospel with the surrounding culture, but that they practised culture-criticism. Their apologetics did

1  This address was later published. A van de Beek, Religion without ulterior motive, in Eduardus Van der Borght (ed.), Religion without ulterior motive (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2006), 7–20. 2  In response to Van de Beek’s thinking about religion with ulterior motives Dirkie Smit argues convincingly that the love of God, the loving-kindness of God did not have any ulterior motive. But although it does not have an ulterior motive, this loving-kindness of God does have a motive. Its only motive is the redemption in Jesus Christ of God’s people and of his world. See D. Smit, No ulterior motive—and Public Theology?, in Eduardus Van der Borght (ed.), No ulterior motive, 21–46. 3  A van de Beek, Ontmaskering. Christelijk geloof en cultuur (Zoetermeer, Uitgeverij Meinema, 2001).

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not strive to make faith acceptable to culture, but to unmask the thinking of culture as lies and untruths.4 He criticises contemporary pneumatologies and ecclesiologies that understand the work of the Spirit and the calling of the church as one of renewing the world, and not as one of unmasking the wrongs and injustices of the world.5 He also reckons that Abraham Kuyper’s idea of the common grace of God is unacceptable since it suggests that true knowledge and truth is not only in Christ, but that it can be reached through the sources of culture like natural science and philosophy.6 He7 criticises the kingdom theology that became famous in the circles of the “apostolaats theologie” in The Netherlands as well as in the theology of the World Council of Churches and amongst Liberation theologians. This kingdom theology is constructive with regard to the criticism that it offfers of the injustices and wrongs of prevailing social, economic and political systems. It is, however, to be rejected since it functions with the logic of these systems, is co-opted and perverted by the power play of contemporary culture, and sacrifijices the autonomy and uniqueness of the gospel by becoming one of the various role-players in the power play. In a later publication Van de Beek8 even states that this kingdom-theology proclaims that the gospel of Jesus Christ is an ideology that wants to change the world. They forget that the kingdom-theology of Christ refers to the house of the Father where Jesus prepares a place for us. Van de Beek9 reckons that even orthodox theologies can compromise the gospel in subtle ways. He argues that the Cappadocians of the second half of the fourth century ACE succeeded to harmonise gospel and culture by, like Arius, watering down the confession that Jesus is truly God with their orthodox sounding formulation that Jesus is really God. Lastmentioned formulation portrayed Jesus as a human being with divine qualities. Van de Beek prefers fijirst-mentioned formulation, Jesus is truly God. This formulation indicates, in line with Athanasius, that in Jesus God enters into our human condition of sufffering.

4

 A van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 7 and 16.  A van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 12. 6  A van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 25–26. 7  A van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 73–78. 8  A van de Beek, Tentbewoners, in A van de Beek, W. Visscher, B.J. Spruyt, Burgerschap en cultuurparticipatie (Heerenveen: Uitgeverij Groen, 2010), 26. 9  A van de Beek, Ontmaskering, 76–78. 5

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Van de Beek10 emphasises that Christians are called to live as strangers in the world. We long for heaven. Our citizenship is in heaven. Our thinking and practices are determined by heaven. Since we are so strange, since we focus upon heaven, we make no compromises. We do not need mechanisms like human rights. With an appeal to Origene he11 argues that pastors who want to engage political life, actually view their ecclesial offfijice as below their ambition. There is, according to Van de Beek,12 no continuity between our earthly existence and eternal life in Christ. Van de Beek emphasizes that the focus upon heaven does not imply a denial of our earthly and bodily existence. It, however, implies a relativising of life on earth.13 Living as strangers in the world acknowledges our strangeness to the world, but it does not imply that we do not take life in this world seriously. We forsake the world, but we are not uninterested in this world.14 We are involved in the world, but our involvement in the world is always a cross-involvement. The cross refers specifijically to the cross of Christ. We share in the sufffering of Christ for the world. Because He sacrifijiced himself for the world, we give ourselves for the world. As Christ did not defend his identity, we too do not defend our identity. Since our life is hidden in Christ, nobody can take away our identity. Since we do not have to defend our identity we can give our lives in service of others in their sufffering.15 In this world we live the life of mortifijicatio, of dying unto oneself. In this world the cross of Christ is the only shape of the kingdom of God. Only in the life to come, in the aeon of glory, does the kingdom manifests in the shape of the resurrection, in the shape of vivifijicatio.16 And this cross-form of the kingdom is carried in this world by the church and not the state. In this world we are not commissioned to build the kingdom, or to create signs of the kingdom. Here we witness about the kingship that was revealed on Calvary. To act diffferently would be a modern form of Pelagianism.17

10

 A. van de Beek, Tentbewoners, 13–15, 16, 17 and 20.  A. van de Beek, Tentbewoners, 25. See also A van de Beek God doet recht. Eschatologie als Christologie (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema, 2008), 241. 12  A. van de Beek, Tentbewoners, 11, 29, 30 and 38. 13  A. van de Beek God doet recht, 234. 14  A. van de Beek God doet recht, 221–225. 15  A. van de Beek God doet recht, 225–226. 16  A. van de Beek God doet recht, 229–230. 17  A. van de Beek God doet recht, 255. 11

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b. This brief analysis of the so-called later Van de Beek demonstrates that Van de Beek is very cautious about the public involvement of Christians and of churches. At worst we can accuse Van de Beek of culturepessimism, of withdrawal from the world, of propagation of an ethic of no responsibility for the world, of the unwillingness to dirty your hands by making unavoidable but crucial compromises, and of inadequate empathy for the sufffering people of this world. At best we can argue that even though he does not use the words Van de Beek actually pleads for a radical type of public involvement, public theology, social ethic, which pleads for recognising our sin and shortcomings as human beings, and for recognising that salvation only comes from Jesus Christ, and for recognising the discontinuity between this world and the new aeon in Christ, a public theology which pleads for a life of mortifijicatio as disciples of the crucifijied Christ without which the new cannot come into being. The frustration of the police offfijicer would probably oscillate between these two interpretations. My suggestion is that the public theology and ethics of the so-called earlier Van de Beek would perhaps tip the scale to the latter and more favourable of above-mentioned two interpretations of Van de Beek. 3. The Earlier Van de Beek—a Public Theology of Sufffering? a. The earlier van de Beek is very explicit about the public engagement of Christians. He is a theologian who deals theologically with the plight of sufffering people. He fijirstly deals with the question of the presence of God amidst our sufffering. He secondly deals with the presence of Christians amidst sufffering and consequently develops a pneumatological ethics which invites Christians to concrete and public engagement with the plight of sufffering people. From the earlier Van de Beek we learn that theology that engages public life need to deal with the question of the relationship between God and sufffering. Public Theology needs to provide some illumination into the age-old burning question on how we can reconcile various forms of sufffering with confession of faith in the triune God, who is simultaneously almighty and good. Theology needs to reflect upon the presence of the triune God amidst the sufffering of humans and the rest of creation. In close connection with this fijirst mandate, Public Theology, secondly, needs to reflect upon and brings to light the presence and participation of human beings in the sufffering of the world. This discussion will mainly focus upon the ethic that Van de Beek constructs.

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In his second major theological work Van de Beek18 deals with the relationship between God and sufffering. Courageously, intellectually very clearly, and with pastoral empathy he addresses the question on how we can continue confessing faith in a God who is perfect in both might and love, amidst the sufffering of billions of people and nature. If God is almighty He can prevent sufffering, and if He is all-loving he wants to prevent sufffering. So, if He does not want sufffering, and if He can prevent sufffering, why does sufffering persist in the world? Van de Beek employs Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theories to address this question. In fact, he was the fijirst theologian to employ Kuhn’s paradigm theories so extensively. Van de Beek19 namely argued that in the Bible, in the Christian tradition of two millennia, and in the experience of sufffering people today, we can identify two major ways, two paradigms, two meaning-giving, sense-making frameworks, that people employ to deal with the question about God and sufffering. The fijirst paradigm that people appeal to almost intuitively is the one which argues that God is almighty. God and almightiness are viewed as synonyms. Sufffering is explained in terms of the confession of faith in an almighty God. The second paradigm, which became famous in the fijirst part of the twentieth century with its massive, global and public expressions of suffering in amongst others the two world wars, genocides and famine, deals with sufffering in terms of the paradigm of the perfect goodness and love of God. Based on this analysis Van de Beek develops a Trinitarian theology of sufffering which entails that in Jesus Christ God chooses against sufffering and that the Holy Spirit efffectuates and actualises this choice of God to be God in the manner of Jesus Christ. b. Based on this Trinitarian analysis Van de Beek develops what I call a Trinitarian, specifijically a pneumatological ethics in a world of sufffering.

18  A. van de Beek, Waarom? Over lijding, schuld en God (GF Callenbach bv, Nijkerk, 1984). This book was translated into English by D. Vriend: Why? On God, guilt and sufffering (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990). Two responses to this book that are taken into consideration in this discussion are the following: H. Berkhof et al., Nogmaals waarom?: artikelen over en reakties op het boek van dr A van de Beek, Waarom? Over lijden, schuld en God (GF Callenbach bv, Nijkerk, 1986); N. Koopman, God en die lyding? ‘n Teologiese evaluering van A van de Beek se paradigmateorieë oor die lyding (Unpublished master’s thesis, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, 1993). 19  A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 12–27.

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This pneumatological ethics illuminates the role of human beings, of disciples of Jesus Christ in collaboration with non-Christians, in the midst of so much sufffering and despair in the world. Humans have a twofold calling in a sufffering world. We are called to think and speak, specifijically to think and speak with the triune God amidst sufffering (meedenken en meepraten met God). Our fijirst calling, therefore, is to pray. The second dimension of our calling is to concretely act with the triune God in the world (meedoen met God). He provides a powerful theological rationale for the concrete involvement of humans in the plight of sufffering people and the realisation of salvation and the kingdom. Van de Beek20 writes quite remarkably about the ethical and public implications of prayer in a broken world. He reckons that there is place for prayer in the form of meditation that is informed by the proclamation of the Word of God and celebration of the sacraments. Amidst all the challenges in life we need time to come to rest, to become quiet. Although he does not elaborate on this point he makes room for discussing the impact of meditation upon a broken, sufffering world. Van de Beek even discusses practices of exorcism as manifestation of the authority that Christ bestows upon his church.21 He acknowledges the existence of evil in the personal form of the devil, of Satan with his demons.22 For Van de Beek, prayer is always prayer for the coming of the kingdom of God. Through that prayer we agree with God’s choice to save the world. Through that prayer we express our longing for the efffectuating of the kingdom. Through that prayer we challenge and encourage God to actualise the kingdom. Through that prayer we protest against any form of sufffering which is a sign that the kingdom and the choice for Christ had not been actualised. Our prayers should be taken up with all the prayers and longings of the whole creation of God in which the Spirit participates and which only the Spirit can comprehend. Moreover, our prayers should wait upon the Spirit who works patiently in the world so that nobody should be excluded from redemption. Our prayers for the coming of the kingdom and for the realisation of God’s will are on the one hand protests against persisting sufffering in the

20

 A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 306–321.  A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 175. 22  A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 193. In later publications Van de Beek thinks along the same lines regarding the personal existence of evil, e.g. A van de Beek, Wonderen en wonderverhalen (GF Callenbach bv, Nijkerk, 1991), 147–164. 21

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world. They are also appeals to God to actualise his choice in Jesus Christ. Our prayers are an expression of the theonomic reciprocity between God and humans which is a midway between autonomy and heteronomy. Humans do not function in separation from God’s will. Neither are we called by God in a manner that excludes our thinking, talking, protest, challenge and doing with God. Van de Beek helps us to re-appraise the meaning and signifijicance of normal Christian practices like prayers for our calling in a sufffering world. To reflect upon this question should be a central mandate of Public Theology. The second dimension of human participation in the sufffering of the world is, according to Van de Beek,23 our involvement through concrete actions. The Spirit invites us to participate actively and concretely in the work of the actualisation of the kingdom. The spirit is at work in individuals, in the church and also outside the church. We should be involved in acts of compassionate justice with people who do not belong to the church as well. Where-ever acts of compassionate justice are seen, there signs are seen of the coming kingdom. Here Van de Beek condones signs of the kingdom explicitly, in contradiction to later positions of him. He also writes24 about the complex, ambivalent, ambiguous and even tragic nature of Christian ethics and of Christian engagement with a suffering world. For him the most important norm for Christian ethics is the question whether our actions serve the coming of the kingdom or whether our actions are stumbling-blocks for the coming of the kingdom. He, however, acknowledges that we are not always sure which choices to make in specifijic situations. He, for instance, refers to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa when we were not sure whether violent forms of protest should also have been opted for. Van de Beek also refers to the fact that we often have to dirty our hands in the choices we make. We cannot be involved in a sufffering world without running the risk of making mistakes. He reminds us of the reality that even though a choice might be good, it becomes wrong when it becomes clear that a better alternative

23  A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 321–327. For other corresponding positions regarding Van de Beek’s thinking about ethics see, amongst others, A. van de Beek, Schepping. De wereld als voorspel voor de eeuwigheid (Baarn: Callenbach, 1996), 359–405; A. van de Beek, De kring om de Messias. Israel als volk van de lijdende Heer (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema, 2002), 225–253. 24  A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 321–327.

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did exist at the time that we had made that specifijic choice. He reminds a Christian ethic and a Christian Public Theology that we should seek the redemption of the total human being and of the totality of humanity. We should, for instance, not only seek economic liberation. We should also recognise the need for salvation of the wealthy. It becomes clear that it is not always that easy to discern which actions serve the coming of the kingdom and which not. Van de Beek25 argues that in the following, not imitation, of Christ, we receive illumination in ethical matters. The Spirit of Christ inspires us. In the communion of the Spirit, which includes communion with the Word of God and with fellowbelievers, we receive guidance in ethical matters. Van de Beek26 motivates us to be involved in the sufffering world in the wonderful assurance that the kingdom is coming in the world. The Spirit is at work in the world to actualise the kingdom, and the Spirit involves humans and the rest of creation in this efffectuating of the comprehensive Trinitarian work of redemption. 4. Conclusion If I read the later Van de Beek through the lens of the earlier Van de Beek, and if I consider the consistent concrete practical involvement of Van de Beek in public matters, I do fijind reasons to convince the police offfijicer of Van de Beek’s concern for the plight of sufffering people in the world and of the public thrust of his theology. I do fijind reasons to conclude that the later Van de Beek pleads for a specifijic type of public involvement, namely a cross-informed one, an involvement in the mode of mortifijicatio. And even though I do reach such a favourable conclusion a remaining thought is that Van de Beek might have helped us more if he could acknowledge to a higher extent that mortifijicatio and vivifijicatio, cross and resurrection, cannot be separated in the way he seems to be doing. In this life of sufffering, and not only in the next life, vivifijicatio and resurrection are indispensable for our redemption.

25

 A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 167–168.  A. van de Beek, Waarom?, 327–338.

26

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Jacob van Beelen is a Specialized Minister in the PKN (PCN) serving as Advisor of Classes in the Province of Gelderland. [email protected] Henk van den Belt is Assistant Professor of Reformed Theology at Utrecht University on behalf of the Reformed League in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and Assistant Professor in Systematic Theology for the International Reformed Theological Institute at the VU University Amsterdam. [email protected] Wessel ten Boom was Pastor of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands between 1988 and 2008 and is Editorial Secretary of In de Waagschaal. [email protected] Gijsbert van den Brink is Associate Professor of Christian Doctrine at the Faculty of Theology, VU University Amsterdam, and Extraordinary Professor of Reformed Theology at the Protestant Theological University, location Leiden. [email protected] Martien Brinkman is Professor of Ecumenical/Intercultural Theology at the VU University Amsterdam. [email protected] Leon van den Broeke is Assistant Professor Religion, Law and Society/ Church Polity at the Faculty of Theology at the VU University Amsterdam and Pastor in Sint Pancras. [email protected] Johan Buitendag is Dean of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Pretoria. He holds the chair of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at the same Faculty. [email protected]

898

list of contributors

Jaesung Cha is Associate Professor of Dogmatics, Presbyterian Theological Seminary in the Philippines. [email protected] Pieter Coertzen is a Professor Emeritus of Stellenbosch University. He is the Convener of the South African Council for the Promotion and Protection of Religious Rights and Freedoms and a Visiting Professor of Comparative Church Law in the Faculty of Canon Law at the Catholic University of Leuven. [email protected] Ernst Conradie is Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics in the Department of Religion and Theology at University of the Western Cape in South Africa. [email protected] Adelbert Denaux was Professor at the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Leuven from 1990–2003, and since then serves as Dean of the Tilburg School of Theology. [email protected] Andries Hielke Drost is an ordained Pastor in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. In 2007 he became Chairman of the Council for Church and Israel in the PCN. [email protected] Szilveszter Füsti-Molnár is an ordained Pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church. He is an Associate Professor at the Systematic Theological Department of the Sárospatak Reformed Theological Academy. [email protected] Paul van Geest is Professor of Church History at Tilburg University and Extraordinary Professor of Augustinian Studies at VU University Amsterdam. He is also Director of the Centre for Patristic Studies at these universities. [email protected] [email protected] Harm Goris is an Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the School of Theology, Tilburg University. [email protected]

list of contributors

899

Botond Kund Gudor is Magyarigen (Ighin/Grabendorf) researcher at the Alba Iulia University, Transylvania – Romania. [email protected] Gerard Cornelis den Hertog is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Theological University of Apeldoorn. [email protected] I. John Hesselink is Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology of the Tokyo Union Theological Seminary and of Theology Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. [email protected] Jan Hoek is Professor of Systematic Theology, Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven, Belgium, Professor of Reformed Spirituality, Protestant Theological University Kampen and Senior Lecturer Dogmatics, Academy of theology, Ede, The Netherlands. [email protected] Gerrit Immink is Rector of the Protestant Theological University and Professor of Practical Theology at the same university. [email protected] Allan Janssen is an Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary and is the Senior Pastor of the Community Church of Glen Rock, New Jersey USA. [email protected] Támas Juhász is Professor in Systematic Theology at the Protestant Theological Seminary in Cluj/Kolozsvar, Romania. [email protected] Cornelis van der Kooi is Professor of Western Systematic Theology at the VU University Amsterdam, Chair of the Department Dogmatics and Ecumenics, and Director of the Center of Evangelical and Reformation Theology (CERT). [email protected] Nico Koopman is Dean of the Faculty of Theology, and Director of the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. [email protected]

900

list of contributors

Gerrit de Kruijf is Professor of Ethics at the Protestant Theological University, location Leiden and Honorary Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. [email protected] Sjaak van ’t Kruis is a Pastor of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and an Advisor to the General Secretary and the Board of his church. Doctorate degree: 1998 (Groningen) in the fijield of missiology. [email protected] Bert de Leede is a Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology and a Researches in Homiletics at the Protestant Theological University. [email protected] Daniel L. Migliore is Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology, and Professor Emeritus, at Princeton Theological Seminary. [email protected] Christiaan Mostert is Professor of Systematic Theology in the Uniting Church Theological College in Melbourne and a member of the United Faculty of Theology there. [email protected] István Pásztori-Kupán is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Protestant Theological institute Kolozsvar (Cluj/Klausenburg). [email protected] Christof J. Pauw is Manager for the International Academic Networks at Stellenbosch University’s Postgraduate and International Offfijice and a Research Associate of Systematic Theology and Ethics at the same university. [email protected] Arjan Plaisier is the Secretary of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. [email protected] Ad Prosman is Pastor of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. [email protected]

list of contributors

901

Bernard Reitsma is Extraordinary Professor at the VU University, Amsterdam, for the Church in the Context of Islam and the Christian University of Applied Sciences in Ede (CHE). [email protected] René de Reuver is currently Pastor of the Protestant Markuskerk in The Hague and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. [email protected] Henk de Roest holds the Chair of Practical Theology at the Protestant Theological University, location Leiden. [email protected] Riemer Roukema is Professor of New Testament Studies at the Protestant Theological University, location Kampen (Netherlands). [email protected] Frank Sawyer was a Department Head at Sárospatak Reformed Theological Seminary, Hungary. [email protected] Alan P. Sell has held two pastorates, academic posts in England, Canada and Wales, and the Theological Secretaryship of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. [email protected] Matthias Smalbrugge currently serves as Pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in Aerdenhout and is Extraordinary Professor Christianity and European Culture at the VU University. [email protected] Adrianus Cardinal Simonis was Bishop of Rotterdam (1970–1983), Archbishop of Utrecht (1983–2007), and President of the Roman Catholic Episcopal Conference of Holland. He was created Cardinal Priest in the Consistory of May 25, 1985. He participated in the Conclave of April 18 to 19, 2005, which elected Pope Benedict XVI. [email protected]

902

list of contributors

Emanuel Gerrit Singgih is Professor of Biblical Interpretation and Contextual Theology at the Theological Faculty, Duta Wacana Christian University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. [email protected] Dirkie Smit is Professor of Systematic Theology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. [email protected] Ferenc Szűcs serves as Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenical Studies at the Theological Faculty of the University of Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. From 2004–2008 he was Rector of the University, and from 2003–2009 served as President of the Collegium Doctorum of the Reformed Church in Hungary. [email protected] Eep Talstra is Professor of Old Testament at VU University Amsterdam. [email protected] Johann Theron is a Minister in the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State in the Department of Dogmatology. [email protected] Eduardus A.J.G. Van der Borght is Desmond Tutu Chair Youth, Sports and Reconciliation and Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenical Theology at VU University Amsterdam. [email protected] Willem van Vlastuin is Assistant Professor in Systematic Theology at the VU University Amsterdam on behalf of (and as Rector) of the Seminary of the Hersteld Hervormde Kerk. [email protected] Amie van Wyk is Emeritus Professor of Potchefstroom University for CHE (now North-West University), South Africa. He has a ThD. in Theology. [email protected] Daniel Veldsman teaches Systematic Theology at the University of Pretoria. [email protected]

list of contributors

903

Rian Venter is Professor in Systematic Theology and Head of the Department Dogmatology at the University of the Free State (South Africa). [email protected] Wim Verboom was an ordained Minister in the Reformed Church in the Netherlands and Professor of History of Reformed Tradition and Assistant Professor of Church Education at Leiden University. [email protected] Koos Vorster is Professor in Christian Ethics North-West University (Potchefstroom Campus) and Advisor at the United Nation’s Human Rights Council. [email protected] Nico Vorster is Extraordinary Professor in Systematic Theology at the Theological Faculty of the Northwest University in South Africa. [email protected] Robert Vosloo currently teaches Church History in the Department of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology at the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is also a researcher at the Beyers Naudé Center for Public Theology housed in the faculty. [email protected] Henk Vroom is Professor Emeritus in the Philosophy of Religion of the Theological Faculty of VU University Amsterdam. He has been invited to the Roche Chair on Religion and Culture 2011–2 at the Japanese Institute for Religion and Culture at Nanzan University, Nagoya (Japan). [email protected] Paul Wells is Professor of Systematic Theology and Academic Dean of the Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence, France. [email protected]

INDEX 9/11, 853, 855–858, 860 african religion, xxi, 698–699 Alexamenos, 37, 40, 43, 45, 47, 49–50, 53 Alexandrian School, 26, 198, 262, 786, 794 Alexandrian Tradition, 26, 30–31, 33, 54, 61, 103, 198, 220, 262, 505, 786 Ambrose, xix, 279–282, 284–289, 291–294, 460, 580, 703 Ambrosiaster, xx, 457, 460–464, 468–469 Amsterdam Evangelical Lutheran Church, 564–565 Immigrant churches, 563–564 Orange church, 567–568 Orthodox Reformed Congregations, 564 Protestant, 557–573 Anabaptist, 372, 378, 379 anatman, 870, 882–883 anthropocentric view, 684 anthropology, xix, xxii, 123, 186, 197, 200, 209, 213–219, 221–222, 405, 412, 606, 678, 710, 757, 762, 818, 820–823, 825, 868, 873, 875, 878, 885 Antichrist, 149, 152, 153 anticipation, anticipatory, 213, 402–403, 406–407, 409 Antiochene School, 30, 33, 198 Antiochene Tradition, 26, 30, 33, 198, 262, 505 anti-Christian, 150, 154, 160 anti-Jewish, 148, 156, 159, 160 anti-Judaism, 159, 160 anti-Semite, 152, 157, 159 anti-Semitism, 148, 152, 156, 158, 185, 224, 229, 231, 236 apologetic, xx, 358, 361, 819, 888 apostolicity, 436, 441, 548–550, 555, 611 ars moriendi, 329–333, 340–341 assimilation, 179–180, 182–183 Athanasius, 26, 29–30, 53–54, 64, 199–200, 337, 703, 889 atonement, xviii, 113, 129–137, 139–143, 146, 248, 265, 271, 273–274, 551, 766, 825 attachment, 875, 877, 879–883, 885 Augustine, xv, xix–xxi, 29, 53–54, 216, 237, 241, 246, 249, 251–254, 256–257, 261, 263–264, 279, 303, 337, 521, 573–578, 580–589, 624, 656, 697, 698, 701, 703–711, 720, 726, 769–770

Baal/Hadad, 672, 687, 688, 862 baptism, 28, 29, 44–47, 64, 115, 118, 182, 405, 408–411, 431, 439–440, 443, 447, 471–482, 489–500, 548, 612, 614, 618, 636, 645–646, 657, 661, 665, 708, 725, 884 baptised in or into Çhrist 653, 654–658, 660, 662–663, 665 infant baptism, xx, 23, 64, 471–474, 476, 482 one-and-only baptism, 480 Barth, K., xix, xxi, 18, 21, 33–34, 55, 77, 101–102, 107–114, 127, 183, 187, 214–217, 222, 232, 234, 261, 267, 297, 301, 305, 366, 371, 375–378, 387–390, 536, 635–636, 650, 654, 669, 712, 746–750, 753–754, 757–758, 786–788, 790, 794, 818, 821–822 beauty, 295–308 in J. Edwards, 303–305, 308 in K. Barth, 305–306, 308 in Patristic Era, 302–303 believing—belonging, 615–618 benefijicence, 282–289 benevolence, 288–289, 293, 305, 540 Berkhof, H., 17, 19, 21, 24, 26, 44, 55, 66, 69, 72, 231, 236, 374, 414, 549–550, 614–615, 624–625, 628, 633, 712, 747, 749–750, 786 Bible Books Acts, 87, 91–92, 97–98 Deutero-Isaiah, 673–676 Genesis, 676–679 Joel, 311, 315–326 Judges, 853, 854, 860–865 Luke, 87, 98–100 Romans, 223 Bible translation, 177, 311, 318, 532 biblical scholarship and systematic theology, 309–310, 313–314, 325–326 blasphemy, 64, 265, 269–271, 273–274, 626, 630 blessing, 91, 161, 165, 171, 182, 229, 243, 282, 333, 340, 352, 367, 473, 525–527, 681 Burkhard, J., 549 Calvin, J., xix, 53, 123, 125, 131–132, 176–177, 202, 214, 223–231, 235–236, 243, 332–334, 341, 349, 360, 368, 371–373, 378–379, 394, 412, 484, 489, 494–499, 505, 507, 509, 602–605, 611, 625, 630, 653, 661, 666, 821

906

index

Canones of Dordt, 115, 118, 120–121, 123, 125, 127 Canons regular, xiv caritas, 256, 261, 289 catholic character, 336 catholicity, 73, 436–437, 441, 443, 446, 450, 611–612, 617, 624–625 Chalcedon, 214, 259, 272 chiliasm, 180 chosen/ness, 124, 176, 183–184, 226, 231, 232–233, 241–242, 272, 435, 440, 471, 486, 528, 555, 600, 743 Christ’s sovereignty, 533, 842 Christian spirituality, 591–592, 599–601, 608, 709 christianity of the families of ministers, 524 christic principle, 210, 222 Christology, xvii–xix, 25–26, 31, 38–40, 44–45, 47, 50–52, 57, 89, 99–109, 111, 114, 115–116, 118, 120–121, 126–127, 169–171, 175, 186, 190, 193, 195, 197–198, 201, 206, 209, 211, 213–222, 231–232, 255–256, 258, 263, 265, 268–269, 274, 373–374, 394, 399, 401, 413, 417, 419, 421, 422, 427, 447, 448, 449, 505–506, 516, 625, 629, 653, 658, 663, 707–708, 736, 754, 761, 828, 866 and Hellenistic culture, 99–100 in-naturation, 189–198 kenotic christology, 104–107 Christomorphic, 221–222 chronos, 29, 394, 400, 416–418, 420 Chuang Tzu, 191–192, 195–196 church, 223–225, 399, 403–411 and state, 7, 10, 13, 66, 372, 442, 843 body of Christ, xvi, 8, 118, 228, 336, 338, 406, 411, 434, 474, 484, 494–495, 497, 499–500, 513, 518–520, 604, 611, 617, 625–627, 630, 632–633, 636, 646, 657, 661, 663–665, 753–754 church Discipline, 483, 484, 490, 494, 496, 499–500 faith in the, 610–611 mixed economy of, 619 order, xx–xxi, 19, 23, 161–162, 167–168, 170, 460, 494, 523, 555, 615, 635, 637–645, 647–650, 755 polity, 635–643, 645, 648–650 structure, 562, 568–570, 572 unity of, 431–444, 623–643 Cicero, xix, 279–294, 706, 708 Civitas Studiosorum in Fundamento Reformato, 623 classical Hebrew syntax, 311, 319, 323 climate change, 683–684, 693 Cognition, 261, 299, 308, 403, 878

collective, 97, 145, 165, 185, 476, 533, 560, 765, 847 common good, xx, 9, 11–13, 283, 287, 379, 835, 843–844 communion sanctorum/communion of saints, 338, 363, 365, 437, 523 Communion (with—the Body of—Christ) 654, 660–661, 665–666 confession, xx–xxi, 22, 31–32, 37, 109, 115–116, 118, 120, 122–125, 127, 128, 132, 161, 168, 173, 180, 185, 186, 216, 238, 274, 282, 292, 303, 336, 358, 418, 423–424, 472, 500, 503–504, 507–511, 555, 573–577, 582, 584–590, 623, 626, 627, 629, 631, 632, 644, 650, 651, 665, 679, 697, 706, 708, 714–715, 749, 751–752, 754, 755, 767, 807–808, 814, 841, 870, 874, 884, 889, 891–892 confession of la Rochelle, 519 literary technique, 573–576 congregations, newborn, 558, 566–567, 571–573 congregationalism, 628 Consensus Tigurinus, 507, 515 constitutional position of religion in South Africa, 835 conversion, 50, 52, 90, 117, 150, 158, 179, 181, 228, 246, 387, 472, 506, 568, 574–576, 584–585, 587–588, 600, 607, 626–627, 632, 839, 880 correlation, 156, 184, 187, 200, 344, 530, 782 covenant, xxi, 119, 138, 142, 144–146, 163–166, 168–173, 177, 184, 187, 225–228, 230, 246, 270, 343–345, 347, 350, 352–354, 414, 435, 471, 670–675, 679–681, 746–748, 750, 820–821, 864 creation, xv–xviii, xxi, 24–25, 27–28, 30, 34, 112, 117, 129, 141, 193–194, 199–200, 207, 222, 260, 287, 297, 299–300, 303–304, 330, 334, 343, 345, 347–352, 355, 362, 372, 375, 388, 389–390, 392, 394, 398, 403–404, 406, 408, 418, 422–423, 425–426, 434–437, 454, 472, 480, 488, 525, 527–528, 552–553, 555, 563, 567, 587, 594, 602–603, 605, 610, 652, 658–659, 663, 664, 670–681, 739–759 creational gifts, 820, 824–825 creationism, 740, 745–746, 803, 805 theology of creation, 669, 691, 720, 728, 734, 741, 797–800, 802, 804–806, 808–810, 814 cross, 8, 26, 34, 37, 39, 40–46, 49, 104, 107–108, 117, 119, 127, 132, 136–138, 207, 220–222, 241, 245, 247–250, 332, 353–354, 374–375, 398–412, 415–424, 427, 449, 455,

index 478–479, 552, 608, 612, 623, 652, 654, 714, 749, 761, 808, 811, 825–826, 890 cultural optimism/idea of progress in history, 381–382, 386, 394, 395 Cyprian, 625, 630, 703 Cyril of Alexandria, 26, 103–104, 199–200 De imitatione Christi, xiv deportation, 182, 184, 616 desire, 576, 582–583 desire for heaven, 340–341 dialogue, 779, 781, 787, 795, 867–869, 884 interreligious dialogue, xvii, 833, 868 diaspora, 168–172, 225 divine guest, xviii, 87, 92, 95–96, 98, 100 docetism, 614, 616, 637, 650, 747 Dodd, C.H., 359–360, 397 donatists, 624 dynamic hierarchy, 529 ecclesiology, xvii, xx, xxi, 45, 90, 186, 405, 431, 433, 442, 447, 453, 483, 501, 591–592, 606, 608–611, 613–619, 621, 623, 625, 627–629, 631, 633, 641–643, 648–649, 757 ecological disasters, 694 empire, 94, 176, 293, 300–301, 358, 450–453, 455, 460, 474, 624, 741, 826, 843 Enlightenment, 3, 24, 26, 33–35, 54–55, 107, 132, 151, 179, 241, 391, 450, 452, 535, 697, 722, 754, 769, 781, 821, 880, 882–883, 885 epistemology, 135, 192, 412, 779–780, 786, 788–795, 813, 878 error, 107, 290, 333, 364, 488, 576–581, 587–590, 606, 736, 806 eschatology, xvii, xix–xx, 29, 50–52, 373–374, 471, 479–480, 357–370, 397–412, 413–418, 421, 422, 455, 654–655, 657, 664 eschatological community, 407, 411, 611, 654, 751 eschatological feast/meal, 653–657, 660, 662 eternal life, 25, 117, 124, 135, 225, 282, 288–289, 291–292, 294, 336–337, 362, 367, 381, 398, 481, 513–514, 555, 654–655, 663, 721, 727, 829, 890 ethics, 89–90, 181, 197, 280–281, 284, 299, 305, 378, 382–395, 398, 547, 649, 651, 662–664, 673, 694, 727, 818–819, 821–823, 826, 871, 891, 893–894 Eucharist/Lord’s Supper, xxi, 44, 51–52, 369, 373, 376–379, 405, 408, 410–411, 431, 439–440, 443, 447, 458–459, 462–464, 467, 483–486, 488–490, 492–501, 505–506, 510–513, 515–517, 519–522, 541, 636, 645–646, 651–666

907

Eusebius, 251 euthanasia, xix, 329, 366–367, 830 exegetical methodology, 312, 318 Experientia, 17, 255, 257, 261, 263 Faith and Order, xx, 431–444 fijinal judgement, 49–50 Forsyth, P.T., 362 freedom, 9, 13, 95, 103, 105, 107, 111, 142, 184, 190, 217, 221, 238, 266, 335, 344, 345, 360, 369, 440, 455, 530, 542, 543, 554, 562, 607, 647, 673, 722, 752, 758, 807, 817, 822, 833–837, 839–849, 851, 867, 870, 874–875, 881, 883–834 Gadamer, H.G., 779, 781, 783–785, 787–789, 795 Gavrilyuk, P., 103–104, 112 globalization, 451–452, 695 God, 697–715 God as ‘personifijication of nature’, 690 God as ‘The Rainmaker’, 686 God doet recht, 40–43 governments, 8–11, 644 Gunning, J.H., jr., 387, 551 heaven, xvi, xx, 25, 28, 33, 44, 99–100, 137, 190, 192, 194, 196, 197, 200–201, 203–205, 219–220, 232, 274, 282, 289, 296–298, 300, 316, 330–331, 333, 335, 337–341, 345, 347, 350–352, 359, 360–363, 366–369, 372, 376, 378, 382, 398, 415, 419, 421, 424, 435–436, 465–468, 480, 575, 653, 657, 663, 667, 681, 685, 687, 697, 701, 711, 715, 737, 788, 829, 890 Heidelberg Catechism, xviii, 115–118, 121, 123, 125, 127, 132, 330, 385–386, 507, 509–510, 512, 514–517, 528, 627 Hepburn, R.W., 364 hermeneutics, 23, 543, 637, 780, 784, 794, 813 historical continuity, 162–163, 171, 173 historical critical research, 310, 313 historical discontinuity, 162–164, 167, 169, 171–172 HIV/AIDS, 830 Holy Spirit, 34, 97, 110, 115, 119–121, 131, 165, 170, 173, 212, 238, 273–275, 304–305, 337, 365, 373, 375, 382, 389–391, 394–395, 411, 426, 434, 454, 515, 522, 540, 553, 591, 600, 603, 605, 652, 654, 708–710, 754, 820, 824–825, 887, 892 holy war, 856, 858–859, 861, 865–866 homiletics, 309–310, 326, 537–539 honor, 101, 106, 123–124, 129, 175, 193, 257, 585, 838, 856, 858–860

908

index

hospitality, xviii, xx, 87–92, 95, 97–100, 307, 483–484, 489–490, 493–493, 499–501, 563 household, 89, 256, 459, 472, 474, 476, 482, 525, 527–528, 531, 532, 534, 618, 751, 866 Hruby, K., 246, 248 human dignity, xxi, 532, 817–821, 823, 825–827, 829, 831–833, 835, 844, 888 Humanities, 217, 219 Imago Christi, 822, 825, 828 Imago Dei, 819–823, 826, 828 immutability, 102, 105–109, 112, 709 impassibility, 101–104, 108, 111–112 incarnation, 26, 39, 44, 103, 106–108, 113, 117, 131, 189–190, 197–199, 201–202, 206, 210, 213, 220–222, 262, 302, 306, 344, 348, 353, 354, 365, 397, 411, 415–416, 448–449, 513, 518, 589–590, 656, 703, 746, 748–750 individual, 12, 26, 133, 136, 137, 145, 165, 185, 193, 208–210, 221, 225, 229, 256, 261, 330, 359, 398, 436, 441, 443, 452, 472, 477–478, 481, 495, 543, 560, 570, 593–594, 597–598, 652, 764–765, 777, 817, 823, 825, 828, 830–831, 838, 842, 846–848, 858–859, 871, 873, 876, 878, 885, 894 industrial revolution, 3 instinct(s), 147, 155–160, 526, 637 Intelligent Design, xxi, 798, 805–807, 811 International Reformed Theological Institute, xvi, 20, 626–627 intertextuality, 315, 317–318 ipsissima verba Jesu, 258 Irenaeus, 53, 242, 248, 633, 654, 703, 770 Islam, 244, 246, 358, 453, 663, 694, 726, 854–859, 866 Islamic, 853, 855–859, 867 Islamist, 853–855, 860 Israel election of, xix, 27, 101, 162–163, 169–172, 435, 443, 528 land, 93, 238–240, 243–248, 250, 254, 827, 687–688 people, 40, 88, 107, 113–114, 161–177, 175–181, 184, 186, 237, 238, 240–251, 253, 254, 223–225, 270, 282, 317, 434, 608, 616, 618, 621, 629–630, 633, 670, 672–675, 679, 746, 750, 755, 828, 835 state, 161, 168, 173, 178, 186, 645, 856, 859–860 Jenson, R., 102, 104, 114, 308 Jewish, 147, 148, 156–160, 175, 182 jewry, 147–148, 151–152, 156–158

laws, 178–179, 182, 185, 550 mission, 177–178, 182–183, 185–187 relation with Christians, 177, 182, 248 jihad, 857, 859 Joannes van Schoonhoven, J., xv John Chrysostom, xx, 339, 457, 464–469 John of Damascus, 246 John Paul II, xv Jonker, W.D., 751–752, 267, 746, 754–755 judgment, 29, 40–42, 44–47, 131, 150, 176, 180, 183, 185, 245, 251–252, 292, 315, 318, 321, 331, 333, 341, 352–354, 375, 378, 381–382, 384, 387, 392, 394, 402, 404, 408, 409, 455, 490, 492, 498, 593, 614, 726, 866 justice, xix, 11, 28, 42, 45, 49–50, 57, 126, 131–135, 140, 142–144, 146, 239, 243, 268, 282–289, 293, 294, 338, 348, 352–353, 373, 379, 384–385, 387, 414–415, 492–493, 540, 608, 664, 751–753, 756, 768, 820–821, 824, 833, 837, 843–844, 884, 888, 894 justifijication (of the ungodly), 389, 392 kairos, 29, 279, 387, 394, 400, 407, 413, 415–417, 420–424, 426–427, 532, 629, 814 kairos (palestinian document), 237, 238, 242–244, 246–250, 253, 254, 752 kenosis, 109, 213, 218, 220–222, 269 kerugma, 258, 537, 544–545 kingdom (of God), 8, 43, 48, 91–92, 95, 161, 164–165, 180, 238, 240, 280, 330, 340, 347, 349, 377–378, 385–386, 397–412, 414, 416, 449, 540, 551–552, 600, 628, 634, 644–645, 715, 746, 820, 822, 834, 866, 884, 890, 893 koinonia, 434–345, 438, 443, 450 Kyoto School, 868, 879 latinitas, xiii liminality, 606–608 liturgy, 180, 408, 411, 461, 466–468, 540–541, 567, 619, 636, 655 living in the world, 45, 47, 371, 529, 618 living law, 635–636, 644–645, 649–650 love, xviii, 8, 106, 109–112, 115–116, 128, 131, 133–134, 138, 142–143, 146, 171, 174, 203–207, 213, 218, 222, 238, 248, 261–262, 281, 301, 304, 307–308, 316, 336–338, 363, 403, 499, 553, 563, 758, 761, 825, 871 Luther, M., 53, 125, 153, 175, 224–225, 250, 332–333, 372, 388–389, 393, 412, 422, 565, 872

index MacIntyre, A., 363, 547 Mackintosh, H.R., 359–360, 366 macro-cosmos, 213 Marcella of Rome, 463 martyr, 53, 184, 246, 350, 854–855, 857–859 martyrdom, 49, 655, 853–854, 858–860, 865 media sentential, 507 members, 149, 182, 361, 367, 472, 474–477, 481–482, 485, 488, 493, 500, 553, 560, 562, 567, 570, 640, 649 memory, 97, 573, 575, 576, 580–581, 608, 710–711 meteorological elements, 689 micro-cosmos, 209, 213 miracles, 463–465, 790 modern devotion, xv morality, 11–13, 48–50, 54, 156, 289, 389, 391, 393, 529, 594, 721, 793, 799, 869, 873 mortifijicatio, 418–420, 426, 888, 890–891, 895 Muller, A.D., 376 Muller, J., 359, 376–377 natural sciences, 17–18, 23–24, 743–744, 757, 781, 783, 793–794, 797–799, 802–805, 809, 811 nature, 683, 684, 685 Nature and Mission of the Church, 431–444 negative theology, 4, 701–702, 704–705, 714 Neo-Calvinism, 366, 387, 740–743, 746, 751, 757 Neo-Platonism, 130, 252, 303, 586, 588, 701–703, 706, 713 new covenant, 119, 138, 164–166, 170, 172–173, 344, 347, 352, 674–675 new Jerusalem, 299–301, 348, 350, 352, 369 Nicea, 259, 423, 703 Nicea-Constantinopolitan Creed, 631 non-self, 868–885 Noordmans, O., 18, 273, 275, 279, 282, 381–394, 623, 635, 698, 747–749 notae ekklesiae, 611 Nuttall, G.F., 362–363 Oberman, H., 224–225 offfijice, 550 old man winter, 688 omnipotence, 105–107, 11–112, 133, 142, 768 oneness, 199, 410, 436, 446, 447, 450, 693 ontology, 192, 215, 412, 713, 779–780, 786, 788–789, 791–795, 878 Origen, 197, 251, 169, 358, 464 otherness, 135, 206, 216, 372, 450, 596, 769

909

Palestinian, 161, 855, 857, 859–860 Palestinians, 237, 239, 240, 243–245, 247, 248, 250, 254, 856–857, 859 pastoralia, 366–369 patripassionism, 102, 111 pelagianism, 247, 890 penal substitution, xviii, 131–135, 140–141, 145–146 peregrinatio/peregrination, 330, 341, 578 performance, 537, 539–40, 543–545 petrarch, 573–590 pilgrim, 29, 47, 87, 159, 166, 279–280, 282, 289, 292, 294, 330, 333, 340, 369, 372, 397, 433, 578, 612, 634, 717, 725, 734 platonism, 335 pluriformity, 23, 624, 741–742 pneumatology, 22, 34, 43–47, 50–51, 170, 374, 395, 623, 628, 828 Polkinghorne, J., xxi, 299, 779–786, 789–795 Pope, 176, 624, 627–628, 631, 640, 645, 648, 650 postmodern spirituality, 591–592, 602, 605–606, 608 practical piety, 337, 338, 341 practices, 13, 410, 431, 442, 483–484, 486, 489, 492, 494, 496, 498–500, 506, 537, 540–543, 558, 570, 572, 597, 869, 890, 893–894 preaching, xx, 162, 175, 184, 186, 258, 339, 345, 379, 463, 469, 500, 506, 535–540, 543–545, 549, 551–553, 605, 611, 645, 662 predestination, xviii, 18, 33, 118, 121, 123, 125–126, 587 presence (of Christ), real presence (of Christ), 661, 662, 655, 657–658, 661, 666 private life, 9 problem of war, 383 prolepsis, 402–404, 406, 409 prophetic, 48, 93, 95, 176, 184, 251, 314, 317–318, 321, 324–325, 347, 375–376, 378, 411, 436, 610, 613, 650, 670–671, 673, 675, 676, 681, 754–756 Protestant Church in the Netherlands, 31, 624–625, 631, 635, 649 Providence, 8, 21, 292, 337, 385–386, 604, 740, 790, 808 public involvement, 377, 887, 888, 891, 895 public theology, xxii, 756, 887–888, 891, 893, 895 puritan/puritanism, 303, 339, 359, 368, 381–383, 393, 633 Ragaz, L., 376–377 reciprocity, 90, 287, 779–780, 794–795

910

index

recollection, 99, 575 reformation, 30–31, 53–54, 104, 116, 122, 126, 153, 175, 177, 224, 305, 338, 341, 358, 372, 386, 503, 505, 510–511, 552–553, 557, 601, 606, 627, 631–633, 657, 659, 820, 872 relations, 873–885 religious rights, xxi, 834–837, 839–846, 851 renaissance, 133, 153, 224, 573–590 renewal, 558–559, 562, 564, 566–568, 569–571 missionary, 558, 562, 568 resurrection, 26, 32–34, 39, 43, 92–93, 101, 107, 111, 117, 128, 155, 180, 189, 219, 222, 242–243, 247–250, 259–260, 262, 266, 334–336, 341, 344, 347, 351, 362, 364, 381–382, 390, 392, 398, 400–411, 417–426, 455, 479, 481, 513, 521, 544, 600, 653–655, 660–661, 663, 714, 866, 890, 895 Ruler, A.A. van, 17–18, 21, 73, 161–173, 414, 547–553, 639, 747, 748, 758 rumination, xiv–xv sacrament, 29, 125, 184, 220, 340, 405, 409, 439–440, 455, 488, 491–492, 497–500, 605, 645–646, 651, 658–660, 662, 893 sacramentality, sacramental, 222, 410, 654, 658 sacramentarian, 505 sacramentum, 656, 658, 666 word and sacrament, 659, 662 sacrifijice, 206–208 salvation, 91–92, 95–96, 106–109, 114–115, 119–121, 133, 135, 140, 168, 176, 184–185, 228–230, 233–236, 251–254, 317–318, 344–347, 399, 403–404, 407, 409–411, 435–436, 454–455, 531–532, 551–553, 601–602, 660, 670–673, 746–753 Samson, 853–855, 860–866 satisfaction, 129–136, 144–145 Schola Augustiniana, 256–257, 264 scripture (as liber experientiae), 263 second coming, 413, 415, 422–425, 427 secular, 591, 593, 596–598 Sermon on the Mountain, 390–392 shema, 629–630 shunyata, 882–3, 885 simul iustus et peccator, 876–885 sin, 868–885 sinlessness, 265–269, 272–275 social education, 530 socinian, 505 socio-cultural identities, 431–444 soteriology, 123, 168, 219, 265–266, 274, 413, 417–418, 422–424, 427, 672, 741, 752, 757, 828

South Africa, xx, 7, 20, 25, 49, 57, 440, 484, 488, 493, 496, 642, 665, 739–759, 814, 817, 820, 831, 833–837 apartheid, 20, 487, 497, 665, 739, 741–746, 752–754, 756–757, 818, 888, 894 South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms, 837–845 spiritualization, 253, 254 Steiner, R., 376 Stellenbosch, 25, 37, 739–740, 744–746, 754–759 stewardship, 289, 527, 531–532, 646, 684, 823, 827 stranger, 28–29, 87–89, 91–97, 99–100, 279, 282, 294 Jesus, the heavenly, 92–96 structures of sin, xv substitution, 176–177, 182 sufffering, 101, 175, 245, 267, 887, 889–895 suicide, 366, 853–857, 859, 860–861 supralapsarism, 246 Supreme Being, 698–701, 712–713 surplus, 217 Tao, 189–198, 201–206 Tao Te Ching, 191–192, 194, 203–205 teknon, 474–476 telos, 295–308, 347, 350, 352–353, 740, 748 terrorism, 182, 357–358, 853–855, 857, 859, 861, 863, 865 Tertullian, 102, 251, 268, 337, 658, 703 textual composition, 310, 311, 313–314, 317–318 The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, 484, 486–489, 493, 497 theandric, 210, 222 theodicy, 21, 35, 731, 740, 761, 768, 770, 807, 808, 811 Theodore of Mopsuestia, 198 theological continuity, 162, 164, 166, 171–173 theological discontinuity, 162 theology-science relation, 297, 744, 756, 782–783, 797–798, 803, 808 theomorphic, 214–215, 222 theophany, 218, 689, 691, 692, 693 Thomas a Kempis, T.a., xiii–xiv, xvi, xxii, 339 totalization, 809, 811 transcendent, 109, 189–192, 214, 299, 414, 417, 421, 449, 452, 455–456, 529–530, 534, 536, 542, 553, 598, 605, 690, 694, 699, 702, 721, 806, 838, 885 transformation, 48, 165, 214, 219, 222, 289, 307, 378, 438, 441, 443, 454, 569, 658, 736, 744, 749, 814

index transubstantiation, 656–658 Transylvania, 503–508, 510–511, 522 trinity, 461, 464, 708–711, 713–715 triumph over death, 334 unio mystica, 413, 425, 427, 600, 602, 604 unity, 445–453, 473–474, 476 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 817, 837 vindication of the cross, 249 vitality, organizational, 557, 566, 568 vivicatio, 418–420, 426, 890, 895 von Rad, G., xxi, 670–675, 678, 680, 746, 826

911

Welker, M., 484, 490–495, 499 Wolterstorfff, N., 379 Word of God, 104, 115, 117, 199, 247, 252, 258, 352, 487, 488, 535–541, 543, 545, 582, 637, 645, 650, 687, 690, 893, 895 World Council of Churches, 33, 186, 408, 438–439, 445–446, 451, 624, 818, 889 World War I, 181, 383, 388, 799 World War II, xix, 185, 187, 224, 235, 384 worship, xviii, 37, 40, 43, 45, 47, 49–52, 176, 308, 314, 353, 369, 376, 457–469, 484, 486, 488, 498, 535, 540–543, 557, 564, 567, 594, 602, 604, 614, 621, 630, 632, 636, 645, 654, 699, 712, 726, 846, 858, 863, 865