The Perfection of Glory in Humility: What Karl Barth would have had to Say about Redemption

Karl Barth famously was not able to complete his magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, the final volume of which was to treat the doctrine of redemption. But the general contours of what Barth would have had to say in that volume can be discovered by following the trajectory of his thought, specifically as key developments in his later work are set next to his discussion of redemption in his first lecture cycle in dogmatics at Göttingen. This article contends that in view of revisions to his treatment of Christ's humiliation and exaltation, which reflect his handling of election in CD II/2, Barth would have had to conclude three things about redemption. First, Christ's humiliation for us is an eternal act not set aside in the eschaton. Secondly, humanity's eschatological exaltation takes the form of actualized utter dependence on God defined by corresponding life‐acts of uninterrupted self‐giving. And thirdly, that ‘redemption’ entails having a share in God's unique freedom to have his life in and with another; just this is life in the Spirit. Together, these conclusions characterize a kind of glory which is not opposed to humility but perfected in humility.     

THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST'S NORMATIVE SPIRIT: A CONSTRUCTIVE READING OF SCHLEIERMACHER'S PNEUMATOLOGY

Contemporary theologians have enriched our understanding of the Holy Spirit's identity and broadened our grasp of the pneumatological tradition, but a crucial question has not been sufficiently addressed: while we have renewed understandings of who the Spirit is and what the Spirit does, very little has been said about how the Spirit works. On the basis of some clues from Schleiermacher, this essay elaborates and defends an answer to this question. According to this proposal, Christ's normative Spirit is mediated through a process of mutual recognition which carries on the Spirit of Christ's beliefs and actions.     

A Compelling Trinitarian Taxonomy: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theology of the Trinitarian Inversion and Reversion

In trinitarian theology, the problematic place of the Holy Spirit in the taxonomy of the immanent Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) does not seem to correspond to what is revealed in the economy (Father, Holy Spirit and Son). Because of this pneumatological problem, some theologians have abandoned the traditional trinitarian taxonomy. This approach, however, does not provide a finally convincing answer that is consistent with both the biblical witness and the theological tradition. In this article, I argue that Hans Urs von Balthasar's theology of the trinitarian inversion and reversion does provide a convincing answer to the trinitarian taxonomy problem. After supporting my thesis by first referencing the traditional trinitarian taxonomy offered in Augustine's de Trinitate and then examining the possibility of abandoning the taxonomy given by Jürgen Moltmann and Leonardo Boff, I will offer von Balthasar's solution as the most compelling trinitarian taxonomy, especially in light of the ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.     

Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Speculate after Barth?

This essay asks what Karl Barth meant by ‘speculation’ in volume two of the Church Dogmatics. Rather than equating speculative theology with metaphysical theology in general, Barth views speculation not as a monolithic act but as a conglomeration of modes of theological speech that undermine God's revelation in Jesus Christ. This essay argues that Barth's views of speculation, rather than undercutting the use of metaphysics in theology, pave the way for a responsible Christian use of metaphysics by tying one's use of categories and concepts in theology closely to the text of Scripture.     

Liberation Pneumatology: On the Unfettered Work of the Holy Spirit in the World

Despite the frequent refrain concerning the paucity of attention paid to pneumatology in the theological discipline, a review of literature over the past fifty years reveals that pneumatology is an idea whose time has come. However, while writings on the Holy Spirit are manifold, systematically developed pneumatologies are not. In response to this reality, this essay explores four contextually constructed pneumatologies based in communities experiencing marginalisation, oppression, and exclusion: Latin American, womanist, Latinx, and black. These pneumatologies not only represent particular ethnic, social, and racial contexts, but also express a particular hermeneutical perspective on the presence and action of the Holy Spirit, i.e., that of liberation. This perspective reflects the conviction that each genuine act of the Holy Spirit is essentially liberating—individually, socially, politically, ecclesially, and theologically. While other effects accompany this experience, liberation emerges at the heart of the encounter with Spirit. Exemplifying this in multiple ways are pneumatology as the irruption of the Spirit by liberation theologian José Comblin, pneumatology as the memory of the future by womanist Linda E. Thomas, the Holy Spirit as the improvisation of God by black theologian David Emmanuel Goatley, and the Spirit dwelling in convivencia by Latinx theologian Néstor Medina.     

'Experiencing' Alpha: Finding and Embodying the Spirit and Being Transformed--Empowerment and Control in a ('Charismatic') Christian Worldview

This article analyses the Alpha Course, the 15-session evangelising programme designed by Holy Trinity Brompton. It argues that it is a popular form of evangelism influenced by the 'charismatic' movement, which aims to initiate participants into a particular religious 'experience'. It further argues that the course aims to stimulate participants to locate themselves, psychologically and socially, within a 'charismatic' worldview. The article aims to examine, phenomenologically, the Alpha 'experience', through an ethnographic analysis of the course and in particular its Holy Spirit weekend. The article relates Alpha to the wider beliefs and practices of the 'charismatic' movement and religious experience and assesses what it means for contemporary Christianity. It seeks to show that the initial 'experience' gained on the Alpha Course is continued within 'charismatic' experience in church meetings and services and looks at the personal empowerment and social control that may be at work.     

The Hidden and Triune God

Luther rightly perceived that God is hidden in his presence. The challenge systematically is to integrate discourse about God's hiddenness with a serious trinitarianism. The attempts by Gregory Palamas and Karl Barth to do just this are judged inadequate. A constructive proposal begins by recognizing that God's hiddenness is an impenetrability of his moral agency in his history with us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rather than a correlate of God's ontological uniqueness or our creaturely epistemic limitations. God's hiddenness must be thought of in terms of the sheer factuality of God the Father, which limits theodicy; the suffering of the Son, and thus the rejection of idolatry; and the freedom of the Spirit.     

THE INSPIRATION OF GOD AND WOLFHART PANNENBERG'S “FIELD THEORY OF INFORMATION”

Abstract This paper will examine the implications of an extended “field theory of information,” suggested by Wolfhart Pannenberg, specifically in the Christian understanding of creation. The paper argues that the Holy Spirit created the world as field, a concept from physics, and the creation is directed by the logos utilizing information. Taking into account more recent developments of information theory, the essay further suggests that present creation has a causal impact upon the information utilized in creation. In order to adequately address Pannenberg's hypothesis that the logos utilizes information at creation the essay will also include an introductory examination of Pannenberg's Christology which shifts from a strict “from below” Christology, to a more open “third way” of doing Christology beyond “above” and “below.” The essay concludes with a brief section relating the implications of an extended “field theory of information” to creative inspiration, as well as parallels with human inspiration.     

How Revolutionary is the Holy Spirit?

Most theologians agree that the early church neglected the Holy Spirit in formulations of the Trinity, and in recent years, many books have been written to redress this deficiency. Pentecostal theologians are especially invested in recovering a fuller doctrine of the Holy Spirit. These two monographs, one by an established scholar (Steve Studebaker) and the other by a relative newcomer (Andrew Gabriel), are among the best on this topic. Both are unafraid to be critical of Pentecostal theology and both are valuable for their specificity. Gabriel revises the divine attributes of classical theism while Studebaker goes even further by arguing that the Holy Spirit constitutes the Trinity. Neither author is sympathetic to Social Trinitarianism, and Studebaker in particular is critical of Richard of Saint Victor, who is often credited as an early progenitor of the social model. This first complete translation of Richard's treatise on the Trinity, by Ruben Angelici, reveals a radical view of the Holy Spirit and thus needs to be taken seriously by all future discussions of this topic. Richard not only gives the Holy Spirit its own personal identity but also ties the Spirit to God's power of listening, just as the Son is God's Word.     

‘Word without Measure’: The (Ir)reducible History of Jesus Christ in John Webster

John Webster's Christology bears a twofold character. First, Webster attends to the particular identity of the Son of God who is and acts in and as Jesus Christ. Second, Webster articulates, in increasing measure, the rootedness of the Word's assumption of the flesh in the Son's eternal relation to Father and the Holy Spirit. Both features of Jesus' history – namely its irreducible particularity and architectural traceability – establish God's self-correspondence: the concrete history of God with us corresponds to God's eternal being and act. Webster's later work accords material priority to the Son's antecedent existence as the second person of the Holy Trinity. I locate the impetus for this shift in Webster's theological construal of history which serves, in turn, to inform and revise the dogmatic task of unfolding Jesus' history. No longer inhibited by a predominately modern view of human history, Webster more readily traces the history of Jesus Christ to the eternal procession of the Son of God.     

Mozart Among the Theologians

The essay compares and contrasts the philosophical, theological, and aesthetic approaches to Mozart in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard's aesthete A (Either/Or, I), Karl Barth (primarily Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), and Hans Küng (Mozart: Traces of Transcendence). Whereas Kierkegaard's A outlines a non‐religious ‘daemonic Mozart’, Barth and Küng depict two contrasting theological understandings of Mozart's music. Barth's Mozart reflects a Reformed aesthetic, with Mozart as a ‘parable’ of gospel, whereas Küng's Mozart reflects a Roman Catholic ‘sacramental’ vision of music and religious faith. The essay explores how these different visions of Mozart are shaped by both their theological and aesthetic commitments.     

Theology as Conversational Event: Karl Barth, the Ending of "Dialogue" and the Beginning of "Conversation"

This essay deals with a commonly voiced concern with Barth's theology as expressed in the form that his theology illegitimately secures itself from critique, polices its narrow location assiduously and only lets in a few carefully vetted others when convinced that they can be useful. In contrast, through exploring John Milbank's distinction between dialogue and conversation it becomes possible to critique James Barr's and Clark Pinnock's understandings of “conversation” in a way that serves to hear Barth, and what it entails for theology to be “conversational”, significantly differently. Indeed, it will be maintained that “conversation” is an appropriate metaphor to apply to what Barth was doing with his theology.     

Tyndale's Disagreement with Luther in the Prologue to the Epistle to the Romans

Abstract

Although it is generally assumed that Tyndale's Prologue to the Epistle to Romans (1526) is a translation of Luther's Preface (1522), this article examines those places where Tyndale deviated from a straight translation of Luther's text, and supports Thomas More's statement that Tyndale was a worse heretic than Luther. Tyndale's doctrine of God, the Father, Christ, and especially of the Holy Spirit, faith, righteousness, flesh and spirit, the state of fallen man and the temporal regiment show Tyndale was not doctrinally a Lutheran when he wrote his Prologue to Romans.     

SPIRIT AND CREATION

Abstract. The theology of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is not only a rather neglected but also a very diffuse subject. The neglect stems from the priority that was given in the early centuries to Christology. The diffuseness of pneumatology may well be a result of the bewildering variety of ways in which “spirit” or “Spirit” (Hebrew ruach, Greek pneuma) appears in the Bible. I attempt to bring the various activities ascribed to the Spirit under one heading, transmission of information, and then to see what can be learned from modern science about the role of the Spirit in creation. I suggest a distinct role of the Spirit in creation, jointly with but different from that of the Logos. Other occasions of a concerted action of Spirit and Logos are seen in the birth of Christ and the eschatological event. All of this leads to a trinitarian definition of creation.     

A ‘Glaring Misunderstanding'? Schleiermacher,Barth and the Nature of Speculative Theology

Both Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth attempted to keep Christian dogmatic theology free from abstract philosophical speculation. However, Barth thinks that Schleiermacher is guilty of the very speculative theology to which Schleiermacher is so averse. This article will defend the claim that Barth misreads Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre, such that Schleiermacher's theological method and formulations are just as anti‐speculative as Barth's. To defend this claim, this article examines what Barth considers to be speculative theology as well as his accusation that Schleiermacher is guilty of such speculative proposals. After considering Barth's challenges, this article defends Schleiermacher's methodology and theology as anti‐speculative. Finally, several additional accusations against Schleiermacher (those of Bruce McCormack and Thomas Curran) are overcome.     

Moving in the Spirit

Together towards Life (TTL) holds together a theology of the God of life and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit with the renewal and transformation that begins with a commitment to justice and peace at the margins and anticipates the eschatological vision of the renewal of the whole creation. The theme of the forthcoming World Mission Conference in 2017 in Arusha (Tanzania), “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship,” marks the intersection between TTL and the Busan call for the pilgrimage of justice and peace. The theme invites participants to advance reflection on the life‐giving power of the Holy Spirit and the role of transformative communities moving together in hope of God's reign to come. The example of the World Council of Churches’ work on a Theology of Life shows that choosing this direction has implications for the practices of doing theology and even the organization of the forthcoming World Mission Conference. A fascinating task indeed!     

PNEUMATOLOGICAL RELATIONS AND CHRISTIAN DISUNITY IN THEOLOGY‐SCIENCE DIALOGUE

Ecclesial divisions shape and distort the developing interdisciplinary dialogue between Christian theology and the natural and social sciences in ways that can be better understood by focusing on pneumatology, specifically on the variety of ways in which by grace we relate to the Holy Spirit—as giver of life, as Lord, as powerful anointing, as God's gift of wisdom, and as wellspring from Jesus Christ. Each denominational camp of Christians has centered its appreciation of the Holy Spirit on one of these relationships, sometimes to the neglect or marginalization of others. This appreciation drives the favoring of some scientific disciplines and suspicion of others. For instance, Pentecostals and charismatics emphasize the Spirit upon us, speaking through the prophets. This tends to privilege personal narrative and testimony. The closest cognate science is cultural anthropology. Issues of social construction of reality, cultural imperialism and relativism, and narrative history dominate consideration of science's theological possibilities and pitfalls in ways distinctive to that pneumatological camp. Engagement and disengagement with other disciplines of learning are driven in part by our theological loyalties and antipathies to unreconciled bodies. Hence a fuller engagement with the sciences becomes an ecumenical task, not just a generically Christian or specifically Pentecostal or Wesleyan one.     

Definitive,Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth's Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4

Karl Barth's doctrine of baptism articulated in Church Dogmatics IV/4 is due for reassessment. Interpretation of this part of Barth's intellectual legacy has been conceptually determined by unresolved tensions within the Reformed tradition's sacramentology and by a widespread notion that Barth shifted from one side of this tension to the other over the course of his career. This article contests that notion and argues that Barth's doctrine of baptism is more sophisticated than often thought. By developing the concept of ‘paradoxical identity’ as a way to describe how Barth thinks about the relation between divine and human action, this article sheds new light on the value of Barth's work in Church Dogmatics IV/4.     

“I am NN”: A Reconstruction of Anscombe's “The First Person”

This paper develops a way of understanding G. E. M. Anscombe's essay “The First Person” at the heart of which are the following two ideas: first, that the point of her essay is to show that it is not possible for anyone to understand what they express with “I” as an Art des Gegebenseins—a way of thinking of an object that constitutes identifying knowledge of which object is being thought of; and second, that the argument through which her essay seeks to show this is itself first personal in character. Understanding Anscombe's essay in this light has the merit of showing much of what it says to be correct. But it sets us the task of saying what it is that we understand ourselves to express with “I” if not an Art des Gegebenseins, and in particular what it is that we understand ourselves to express with sentences with “I” as subject that might seem to express identity judgments, such as “I am NN”, and “I am this body”.     

Deconstructing the Linearity of Grace: The Risk and Reflexive Paradox of Mary's Immaculate Fiat

Abstract: Beginning from Pope Pius IX's doctrinal definition in Ineffabilis Deus, this article explores the circular paradox of the Virgin Mary's immaculate fiat. Fully contingent on Christ's work of reconciliation (and ‘immaculate’ by virtue of it), Mary's fiat paradoxically precedes that work and consents to it. The article suggests that this circularity is integral to the intimate bond that unites Mary's fiat to the Son's kenosis on the cross. Her fiat thus points the way of redeemed creation into the reflexivity of God's own intra‐trinitarian communication. Mary is hereby read as ‘the way to prayer’, the ‘epiphany’ of the Holy Spirit (as Alexander Schmemann names her) who cries ‘Abba, Father’ on behalf of those who do not know how to pray.