Trinity and Christology According to Gunton

****For those of you following the saga, I have passed my oral exam. All that now remains is the dissertation proposal, and that small matter of actually writing the dissertation. While I'm worrying about that, please enjoy the following.****

“What, then, is the relation of the doctrine of the Trinity to…christology…? Pannenberg has famously said…that the trouble with traditional christologies is that they make the mistake of presupposing the doctrine of the Trinity. Rather, he holds, any doctrine of the Trinity must be the outcome of christological thought. In a sense, the latter is true. A [proper] doctrine of the Trinity…can only be the result of thought about the economy of salvation through Christ and the Spirit. That is the necessary order of knowing: from God’s relatedness to the world, make known in Christ, to a doctrine of his eternal being in relation. But the order of being must take a different orientation. If there is to be talk of the incarnation, it must presuppose the existence of a triune God, for it holds that the one through whom the world was made has become part of that world in order to redeem it from its bondage to decay. In that respect, the two doctrines, of God and of Christ, offer each other mutual support, or, rather, are dependent upon one another. Without a presupposed Trinity, the doctrine of the incarnation becomes an absurdity. With it, the point of the doctrine of the Trinity comes to be further realised, for it can be understood that it is not absurd that the agent of creation, the one through relation to whom it comes to be, by whom it is held in being, and to whom it is directed, should so involve himself in what he has made.”

Colin E. Gunton, Christ and Creation: The Didsbury Lectures, 1990 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005): 75-6.

I’m very sympathetic with a lot of what Gunton writes here. However, I do wonder about his way of parsing the noetic and ontic orders. For Gunton, these orders run parallel but in contrary directions. I’m far more inclined to side with Barth and see them as parallel and running in the same direction. Gunton’s position here is conceptually rather tight, and that is to be admired. But I wonder if he unnecessarily elevates the doctrine of the incarnation to a matter of faith. Now, I don’t mean to imply that I think the doctrine of the incarnation is somehow less than true – I affirm it wholeheartedly. But, it seems to me that such a conception is a conclusion rather than a starting point. The starting point is the faith affirmation and conviction that Jesus is Lord within the 1st century CE Jewish milieu. From there it isn’t too hard to get to a robust two-nature’s Christology as well as a doctrine of the Trinity – as the early church did.

So, while the doctrine of the Trinity is conceptually bound up with the doctrine of the incarnation in the way that Gunton proposes, the noetic order reaches back a little further. Of course, Barth takes this faith affirmation and conviction, seeing the noetic and ontic orders as concurrent rather than counterveiling. This means that there is no sense in which the Trinity relates to creation apart from considerations of Jesus. In other words: Barth is supralapsarian, and Gunton is not.

T.F. Torrance on Karl Barth's Significance

This is from the first page of Torrance’s introduction to Barth’s Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920-1928 (Louise Pettibone Smith, trans.; New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

Karl Barth is the greatest theological genius that has appeared on the scene for centuries. He cannot be appreciated except in the context of the greatest theologians such as Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, nor can his thinking be adequately measured except in the context of the whole history of theology and philosophy. Not only does he recapitulate in himself in the most extraordinary way the development of all modern theology since the Reformation, but he towers above it in such a way that he has created a situation in the Church, comparable only to the Reformation, in which massive clarification through debate with the theology of the Roman Church can go on. Karl Barth has, in fact, so changed the whole landscape of theology, Evangelical and Roman alike, that the other great theologians of modern times appear in comparison rather like jobbing gardeners.

Hyperbole at points? Maybe. Crying for further clarification? Certainly. Still, leave it to TFT to write such a sweeping account of Barth’s significance.

T.F. Torrance on Evangelistic Preaching

***For those of you who care, I'm sitting my last qualifying exam today - systematic theology. While I'm slaving away, enjoy some good ol' TFT.***

Thomas F. Torrance, When Christ Comes and Comes Again (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957): 8-9.

There are aspects of modern preaching which give rise to great anxiety, the temptation of the popular preacher to build the faith of the congregation on his own personality, to parade his knowledge of modern literature, to feed his people with constant diagnosis of the various maladies of our time instead of with the substance of the Gospel, to allow an existentialist decision to oust from their central place in the Gospel the mighty acts of God in Christ, and so to give the people anthropology instead of Christology, or to preach the Church instead of Christ in His Church and so to give the congregation the traditions of men instead of Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection, Ascension, and Advent. A sheep lost in a snowstorm may eke out its life a little longer by feeding upon its own wool, but the Church cannot live very long by feeding upon its own experience or conventions instead of the Body and Blood of Christ…Too often the Word of God is bound in the fetters and techniques of an “evangelical tradition” which is man-made and does not derive from the Gospel itself, and can only succeed in making important elements of the Word of none effect.

Those of you who read this blog regularly, or had the good fortune to encounter the friendly disagreement between Ben Myers and myself over whether and to what extent T.F. Torrance can be considered a Barthian, know that I enjoy reading Torrance and think that his theology is a far sight better than some. Passages like this are part of the reason why. Here TF reveals himself to be a staunch advocate of preaching the gospel and a supporter of the church’s evangelistic mission, but also to be a critic of much that passes for this. His criticisms – as well as his positive counter-proposal – still apply.

New Center for Barth Studies Book Review

Matthias Gockel reviews Bruce McCormack's Orthodox and Modern. Be sure to check it out!

Kathryn Tanner on “whether” and “how” God can be said to respond to our prayers

*****For those few of you who care or might minutely be interested, I'm sitting my qualifying exam in philosophy this morning. I know it sounds like lots of fun, but its not really. Take my word on it. Anyway, enjoy this from Tanner while I slave away.*****

Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005): 97-8.

“Christians do say…that God responds to the prayers of the faithful. Are there not, then, exceptional cases where God’s agency for created effects is determined by what the creature does? We have to say that a statement like ‘God grants petitions’ holds, not because God’s agency is itself altered by prayer, but because prayer is according to God’s will a necessary created condition in particular cases for a created effect or for the alteration of the usual order of created cause and effect. To say that God makes up for the deficiency of created causes to produce the effect for which a person prays is to say, according to our account, that God’s created intention includes the effect and the prayer as its condition but not adequate secondary causes.

“Could one say instead that God creatively intends his own agency to be conditioned by prayer? If one could, one would avoid talk of the creature’s influencing or altering divine agency in any strong sense. Such statements can only collapse, however, into the ones we have just recommended…[I]t is appropriate to say things like ‘God hears our prayers’; God’s creative intention may be said to include ‘himself’ as genuinely affected by creatures. One cannot talk in the same way to suggest the conditioning of God’s very agency by creatures; the divine agency forming a creative intention cannot be included in any real sense within it.”

Good stuff, but definitely dense. I found this volume to be quite tedious, but full of little surprises.

New Music from 'The McMakens'

It seems that it is family promotion month here at DET. You may remember that I recently posted about an article that my brother and his wife wrote for Relevant magazine. Well, as it turns out, they have just released their first album, entitled Sleep Easy They have been working on it a long time, and it is sure to be well put together (I haven't heard it all yet - maybe I'll get a free copy for writing this notice! :-P ) In any case, if you'd like to listen to "nine original songs and two folk arrangements [that] capture this duo's timeless songwriting, lush instrumentation, and evocative vocals: (copy from their website), you can order now. And, if you live in the Chicago-land area, think about dropping by one of their shows.

How do worship and mission relate?

No, I'm not tipping my hand just yet. But, my brother and his wife have recently published a short piece on the topic that is worth a read over at Relevant Magazine - "Your Worship Isn't Enough". Those of tired of the rather dry and rationalist approach taken here at DET may find their more evocative and conversational tone refreshing.