Reading Barth with Charity

George Hunsinger

Description

Karl Barth and his legacy have dominated theology circles for over a decade. In this volume George Hunsinger, a world-renowned expert on Barth's theology, makes an authoritative contribution to the debate concerning Barth's trinitarian theology and doctrine of election. Hunsinger challenges a popular form of Barth interpretation pertaining to the Trinity, demonstrating that there is no major break in Barth's thought between the earlier and the later Barth of the Church Dogmatics. Hunsinger also discusses important issues in trinitarian theology and Christology that extend beyond the contemporary Barth debates. This major statement will be valued by professors and students of systematic theology, scholars, and readers of Barth.

Sujets

• Christian theology
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 14 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441221933
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 2015 by George Hunsinger
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www . bakeracademic . com
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2193-3
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Contents
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction xi
1. Grace and Being: The Charter Document 1
2. Seek God Where He May Be Found: An Important Exchange 39
Interlude 73
3. Being in Action: The Question of God’s Historicity 75
4. Two Disputed Points: The Obedience of the Son and Classical Theism 115
5. Revisionism Scaled Back: A Partial Dissent 137
Conclusion 157
Appendix: Analogia Entis in Balthasar and Barth 175
Author Index 181
Subject Index 183
Back Cover 187
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the members of the Yale-Washington Theology Group for their incisive and helpful comments. I also profited especially from the suggestions of Khaled Anatolios, Matthew Baker, James J. Buckley, Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Matthew Levering, and William Werpehowski. Paul D. Molnar and my dear wife, Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, read through the entire manuscript with keen eyes, offering invaluable advice in helping me to improve the text. I could not have asked for better editors than David Nelson and Christina Jasko, who were encouraging throughout. Responsibility for the final product is of course my own.
Abbreviations CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics De Trin. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate Inst. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion KD Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik Or. Gregory Nazianzen, Orations Or. Cat. Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration rev. revised translation S. theol. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica sec. section
Introduction
Recently the world of Barth studies has been rocked by an internal debate. As is familiar by now, certain scholars, whom I will call “revisionists,” contend that for Barth, God’s pretemporal decision of election in Christ is the ground of God’s trinitarian identity. In effect what this means is this: No election, no Trinity. “Traditionalist” interpreters like myself, on the other hand, reject this view as misguided. The evidence in Barth, they believe, points very much in the opposite direction: No Trinity, no election. For Barth, according to the traditionalists, God’s pretemporal decision of election presupposes God’s prior reality as the Trinity. God’s trinitarian identity in no way depends on election.
I embark on this present study because I am puzzled by how the revisionists have responded to their critics. I had expected that they would do more to come to terms with the considerable body of counterevidence. I had imagined that important texts disconfirming their position would be more fully addressed. For example, in Church Dogmatics , volume II, part 2—the volume that is said to shift decisively in the revisionist direction—Barth states that Jesus Christ’s identity as God’s Son “of course does not rest on election.” 1
As telling as it is, this statement is far from isolated. Many related passages can be found throughout the Church Dogmatics . One finds them not only prior to Barth’s supposed change but also within II/2 itself, and then afterward, all the way through to the last volumes of his dogmatics. I have wondered why this body of material doesn’t give the revisionists more pause. Although they know about it, they proceed as if it can be safely placed to one side without damaging their case. This is the procedure that has puzzled me. I propose to explore what may lie behind it.
The Principle of Charity
In recent analytical philosophy, an appeal is commonly made to “the principle of charity.” It is designed to guide the interpretation of texts, especially difficult or ambiguous texts. Although there is no single authoritative definition, the principle of charity is widely taken for granted in the practice of contemporary philosophy. Here is a summary of what is involved. 2 The principle of charity seeks to understand a point of view in its strongest form before subjecting it to criticism.
A suspension of one’s own beliefs may be required in order to attain a sympathetic understanding. One assumes for the moment that the ideas under consideration, regardless of how difficult they may seem, are both true and internally coherent.
The emphasis falls on seeking to understand the texts as they stand rather than on picking out difficulties or contradictions. If apparent contradictions are found, an active attempt is made to resolve them.
Donald Davidson has suggested, for example, that the principle of charity means attempting to maximize sense and optimize agreement when it comes to doubts about the inner coherence or factual veracity of the viewpoint under consideration. 3 If it is possible to resolve apparent contradictions (or ambiguities) through a sympathetic interpretation, a presumption exists in favor of that interpretation.
A presumption exists by the same token against any interpretation that resorts to the charge of inconsistency without attempting to resolve apparent contradictions. Only if no successful interpretation can be found is one entitled to conclude that a viewpoint is inconsistent or false.
Critique is always possible but only after an adequate effort has been made for an interpretation that does not call a viewpoint’s truth or coherence into question precipitously. The attempt to maximize intelligibility through the resolution of apparent contradictions is related to a corollary, which is called “the principle of humanity.”
As Daniel Dennett explains, one should attribute to the person whose views one is considering “the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances.” 4
The principle of charity gives us a set of criteria by which to assess the revisionist position. Does it seek to understand Barth’s theology in its strongest form before subjecting it to fundamental criticism? Has it truly sought to understand Barth before picking out supposed difficulties or contradictions? If apparent contradictions are discerned (as they are), has an active attempt been made to resolve them in Barth’s favor? If no such attempt has been made (as it has not), does not a certain presumption exist against this interpretation? Finally, do the revisionists honor the principle of humanity, or do they seem to adopt an attitude of condescension toward the writer whose views they are considering? In short, are the revisionists entitled to their key claim that Barth’s views on election and the Trinity, when taken as a whole, are “inconsistent”?
These are my preliminary questions for the revisionists.
Evangelical Calvinism and Rationalistic Calvinism
Before pursuing this line of inquiry, a second line will also be opened up. In the writings of Thomas F. Torrance, a distinction is made between “evangelical Calvinism” and “rationalistic Calvinism.” 5 Although these terms point mainly to differences in content, it is a divergence in the mode of reasoning that interests me. Despite the ways in which their contents may overlap, rationalistic Calvinism departs from evangelical Calvinism by its modus operandi .
Evangelical Calvinism, as explained by Torrance, was a minority position in Anglo-Saxon Calvinism, although he believed it to be closer to Calvin himself. Torrance associated it with John Knox and the 1560 Scots Confession, to which he might have added the Heidelberg Catechism. By comparison with its more influential cousin, the idiom of evangelical Calvinism was more biblical and less scholastic. It retained a more open-textured structure as opposed to a taste for sharp distinctions and scholastic rigor. It believed that theological statements pointed away from themselves to the truth about God, which by its nature could not be contained in finite forms of speech and thought, but also that without theological statements, such truth could not be mediated. It judged, according to Torrance, that the filial was prior to the legal, that the personal was prior to the propositional, that the inductive took precedence over the deductive, and that spiritual insight placed constraints on logical reasoning.
The priorities of rationalistic Calvinism were more or less the reverse. Rationalistic Calvinism, for Torrance, was associated with Theodore Beza, the Westminster standards (1646–48), and the Synod of Dordt (1618–19). It was known for such extreme outcomes as limited atonement, a debate between “supralapsarianism” and “infralapsarianism,” and a legalistic construal of “covenant” that tended toward synergism. These unfortunate ideas reflected a certain mode of reasoning. The legal was prior to the filial, the deductive to the inductive, and the propositional to the personal. There was a general tendency to draw logical conclusions from abstract propositions and to arrange the results in water-tight systems. As Torrance saw it, this type of Calvinism predominated from roughly 1650 to 1950 in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially in Scotland and the United States.
A statement by Hilary of Poitiers, the fourth-century doctor of the church, can help to focus this contrast. He wrote, “ Non sermoni res, sed rei sermo subjectus est